Friday, January 05, 2007
CHAOS THEORY. Adam Gopnik reports on Mayor Bloomberg's big plan for the City's next 25 years. Just as my eyes were glazing over -- "It is hard for people who don’t know what the city was like in the seventies or the early eighties to understand [blah blah blah]... Despite even 9/11... [blah blah blah]... New York is in good shape, and getting better..." -- Gopnik takes an unexpected turn:What seemed a little odd about the plan, and the speech, though, is that the one thing that leaves many New Yorkers worried, or at least uneasy, was nowhere mentioned—perhaps because the Mayor doesn’t notice it, perhaps because that worry is a little metaphysical and almost poetic, resistant to oratory or city budget numbers. It is the sense that the city’s recovery has come at the cost of a part of its identity: that New York is safer and richer but less like itself, an old lover who has gone for a face-lift and come out looking like no one in particular. The wrinkles are gone, but so is the face. This transformation is one you see on every street corner in Manhattan, and now in Brooklyn, too, where another local toy store or smoked-fish emporium disappears and another bank branch or mall store opens. For the first time in Manhattan’s history, it has no bohemian frontier. Another bookstore closes, another theatre becomes a condo, another soulful place becomes a sealed residence. These are small things, but they are the small things that the city’s soul clings to... Gopnick is a little overcautious and over-poetical, which is understandable -- he's a establishment type and the territory he's approaching here is very far from where such people normally like to be seen. The earlier, blahblah part of the essay is their real comfort zone: how wonderful that Starbuckses have replaced the crack houses, and that Disney took Times Square. No one wants to speak against safety, comfort, and the good will of the tourists who swell our economy with their vacation budgets.
In fact, if the subject is broached at all, it is always in the triumphalist terms taken by James Traub in 2003, when he suggested that now that New York had "got its swagger back" thanks to Saint Rudy (and "if that was Yuppified, I'd take it"), we could will "more theater, more cafes, more bookshops" into being and make the transformation complete: clean streets, and a cultural renaissance in the bargain!
Such types do not consider that the bargain went a little differently: the economic boom came with high rents, and the high rents made cultural activity much more difficult at the cheap end, where dreams are born. Ateliers, theatre and dance studios rentals are prohibitively expensive; so are apartments, and it's hard to attain the kind of critical mass that breeds a bohemia when you have to work all day just to sustain a marginal existence, and take two trains to an affordable crib far from anything. The evidence is all around us. The dirty 70s birthed punk-rock, hip-hop, Martin Scorsese, etc; our clean and sober era gives us the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and artisanal cheese shops. Our venues are mostly expensive barns that need star acts to keep afloat. Showcases are a luxury. New York is more than ever a place where the Best of Everything does a four-night stand, not where it is manufactured.
That is what they wanted and that is what they got. I rather expect it will only change when things get tough again -- when the tourists forsake us, when another President tells us to Drop Dead (rather than doing his own four-night stand, as Bush did in 2004 with the Republican Convention), when the bottom falls out of the housing market, when people can come to New York with practically nothing and make something out of it.
No one wants to think so, because we have been taught that economic growth is the wellspring of all good things, and that we can have it all, even a Traubian renaissance. It is hard to tell a booster that some kinds of growth come from the mulch born of decay. Our businessman mayor's plan contains many necessary items, but some things you can't plan -- especially if you don't really want them, not at the cost they would demand, and you couldn't admit it in polite company if you did.
But even if you did want them, and had the bad taste to say so, it wouldn't really matter, because if they came they would come the way such things always do -- by accident, and against our best intentions.
UPDATE. Comments on this one are fascinating. Don't misapprehend me: I'm not trying to tell you how much better it was back in my day. I wouldn't have minded coming of age in the New York of Allen Ginsberg and Marlon Brando, either, or that of Warhol and Lou Reed. From what I can tell, most postwar sub-generations of New York had something we don't have now. You may disagree. But I do wonder what features of this era future sub-gens will look back upon with nostalgia and admiration. Bottle-service clubs? Dave Matthews in Central Park? Hopefully I can hold my position long enough to find out. In every sense, things can always get worse.
9:57 PM by roy edroso
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MORAL GUIDEBOOK -- COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED! Ace of Spades will link you to hot pics of a naked cheerleader, but first you have to listen to a lecture:Something has seriously gone wrong in this culture. God knows I'm not a super-strict virtuecrat or anything, but a steady diet of MTV sex shows, Sex & the City, and the like now has many, verging on most, young girls pretty much behaving like gutterwhores...
I don't think the ubiquity of porn has much of an impact, because in order to sell this behavior, you have to sell it as cool, chic, hip, an attractive "lifestyle choice"... Etc. The commenters are all over it: "I blame the Boomers. Judging by her age, I'd bet her parents were just enough a part of the Summer of Love that she (and her peers) grew up in an environment that was pretty much 100% sexually indiscriminate..."
And in the background, a soft, ceaseless chorus of wankwankwankwankwankwank like crickets in the country.
Ah well -- They think up so many new ways to be ridiculous that it's kind a relief to see them working the classics.
11:24 AM by roy edroso
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Thursday, January 04, 2007
WHEN ALL YOU HAVE IS A JACKBOOT, EVERY PROBLEM LOOKS LIKE A CULTURE WAR. "As for Don McLean's 'classic' ["American Pie"] -- I still hate it but with less gusto after learning that it is in fact anti-hippy" -- Dean Esmay.
Please, nobody tell the poor guy about "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" -- or, given he's an Elvis Costello fan, "Tramp the Dirt Down."
Everything is politics to these guys. Imagine a life like that! It's almost sad enough to stop me from making fun of them.
4:46 PM by roy edroso
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SHORTER PETER WOOD: Anger makes Democrats very unattractive, which is why nobody voted for them in 2006.
(I must add that a semiotic deconstruction of the Works of Jon Chait was about the last thing I ever expected to read at National Review Online. It was annoying enough when these people were tugging our sleeves, pointing at Michael Moore, and going, "See that fat guy? That's what you look like." On the other hand, it will be interesting to see what happens when this meme is force-fed to the base: imagine a national network of warbloggers and other operatives trying to rouse the populace against Jonathan Chait Democrats. If that doesn't work, they can do the one about how Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock was even worse.)
11:39 AM by roy edroso
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A LIBERAL MUGGED BY AUTHORITARIANISM. I make fun of libertarians sometimes, but really, like most of us these days, I'm something of a lipstick libertarian myself -- you know, all about maximum freedom until you push my statist buttons. For example, I support laws against child labor, yet insist on a right to consensual sodomy. What a hypocrite I am!
Whether I am as much a hypocrite as the Lip Libs of The Corner or the Ole Perfesser, I leave to be judged by my non-existent God. I will say that Hit and Run is one of my favorite blogs, and that the only thing that kept me from wasting a whole morning raging over Victor Davis Hanson was this eloquent David Weigel analysis -- or should I say dialysis? In any event he sure takes the piss out of the old clown.
See, they do too have a sense of humor! Now they just have to stop standing too close to you when they talk.
UPDATE. Oh, and the Hit and Run commenters -- who all have girlfriends "away at college," and adult acne* -- are also brilliant. Fave line so far: "'Think tank' has become a byword for 'place where people who are wrong about Iraq work.'"
* This is a joke. My site is full of jokes like this. Due to my complex psychological makeup, gentle ribbing is one of the few ways I can show affection. Yet despite my curmudgeonly pose, I love all my fellow creatures, especially when I'm on mescaline.
10:07 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, January 03, 2007
BUT OLD MAN RETARD, HE JUST KEEPS ROLLING ALONG... "If Syriana is profitable it’s thanks to overseas sales, and I’m sure terrorist recruitment centers everywhere." -- that ever-reliable source of culture-nerd nuttage, Libertas.
(Any random Libertas post will lower your esteem for kulturkampfers by several degrees, no matter how low it is already, but if you're pressed for time just read this one about how all post-60s Republican Presidents had a sense of humor, and all post-60s Democratic Presidents did not. Money shot: "SNL did a very funny skit about Carter.. It portrayed him as naive, cowardly, and small. Had Akroyd shaved the mustache and added a dash of anti-semitism it would’ve been perfect.")
2:31 PM by roy edroso
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BLACK AND WHITE TURN IT ON, FACE THE NEW RELIGION. At the Weekly Standard Joseph Epstein's talking about American Presidents who are "believers" and American Presidents who are "unbelievers." All our Presidents have professed some sort of faith, of course, and Epstein himself -- overcome, perhaps, by a spasm of sequential thought, or a glance at his word count -- declares that "I do not know American history well enough to run through all 43 of our presidents, designating the believers and nonbelievers among them." But he recovers quickly, and says he can hit the target from Truman onwards:Truman wasn't supposed to possess anything resembling belief; when he came to the presidency at the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he was considered a politician of the ward-heeling type, beholden to the Pendergast machine in Kansas City. Yet he was called on to make some of the most significant decisions of the 20th century--including that of dropping atomic bombs on Japan--and it is impossible to imagine him making that decision without deep belief in its rightness. As it happens, the decision was one that every American serviceman, even ardent liberals among them, viewed as the correct decision. You can already see the pattern emerging here: where biography, or any empirical evidence, fails to show True Faith, it may yet be inferred from positive results -- if it's good, it's the product of belief!
But the longer this goes on, the sloppier things get:
"Dwight David Eisenhower had no strong beliefs that I can make out... Eisenhower believed in order... But his belief was cool... To be a true believer, passion is required." (Translation: He really dicked us with that military-industrial complex thing, and integration. No True Faith for you!)
"John F. Kennedy was a non believer... Had he lived longer, Kennedy might have come to belief..." (Translation: I want to say he burns in Hell but we have to throw aged Catholics a few bones or the Republicans are fucked in 2008.)
"The great irony of Johnson's career is that the man everyone considered the operator par excellence until he ascended to the presidency was brought down by his own genuine beliefs." (Translation: Thank God they can't blame him on us!)
"Difficult to imagine Richard Nixon actually believed in anything." (Translation: They can't even blame us on us!)
"Gerald Ford was on the scene too briefly to establish any strong beliefs, let alone act upon them. Yet, beliefless though he may have been, he seems to have been the right man at the right time..."
Jeeeesus fucking Christ, who needs it? In the end, belief is shown to be of ambiguous utility -- "If Churchill was a believer, so was Hitler." Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad; sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't.
Why then does this miserable, seemingly useless essay even exist?
Because belief is a big deal for conservatives -- it's one of their distinguishing market equities, a point of difference that has helped win elections for their candidates. But now that conservatives are in a bit of a trough, and liberal Democrats are starting to claim the benefits of religiosity for themselves, they have to work a little harder to hold onto that equity.
These guys can't just yell "Jesus" anymore and expect rubes to come running. But they can get one of their culture-critic types to chew over the issue of belief intellectual-like, dropping along the way slurs against people they don't like. It's the total cynic's version of "taking the high ground" -- like Jerry Falwell retreating from his Moral Majority lightning-rod to concentrate on running Liberty University, or Albert Brooks aping the psychologist in Real Life ("Oh, you think you're the only one who can write things down? Well, I can write things down too! Here, look -- 'I... never... said... that'").
It's a way of looking thoughtful without taking the trouble to think.
I can see why they'd want to rebrand along more upscale lines, but this may be a bad fit, like selling Ovaltine as an energy drink. Still, the American People have bought worse crap.
12:49 PM by roy edroso
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SHORTER JIM LILEKS: As I was saying, the death of Old Media can't come soon enough for blog giants such as mysOH SHIT THEY SOLD MY MEAL TICKET! Uhhhhhhhhh you know what the New Owners need? Someone who can write long about bullshit. (Flirtatiously fans himself with an old matchbook.)
(alicublog tipster Nancy Nall observes, "Like he'd be able to find 'the assignment desk' at the Strib with a GPS and spy satellites.")
11:56 AM by roy edroso
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ALICUBLOG KEEPS THE DORKALICIOUSNESS FRESH! Responding perhaps to our recent themes, the Ole Perfesser insists that he's not a dork, you're the dork! Then he shoots himself up with Nanobugs that will keep him alive forever "with godlike powers."
On the count of three, everybody retuck your shirts!
10:06 AM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, January 02, 2007
DORKUS MALORKUS. Lots of talk here lately about dorks and nerds. Consider it our way of extending the holiday mood. We are laying off the truly evil propagandists for a minute to enjoy the motley and jingling bells of guys who just get a little too into their RPG.
For example, Paul J Cella, defending the honor of the Great American Midwest: ...a great but dwindling arc of towns and small cities which another Midwesterner, Willmoore Kendall, liked to refer to as the “Appalachia-to-the-Rockies” America — are regularly the target in our national media of derision, contempt, and sanctimonious criticism. These censures come from various quarters: from the entertainment media cometh the contempt; from New York the derision; from Washington the sanctimonious criticism. Oh, one is tempted to interject, cometh the fuck on. But wait for it...And so again we encounter the evidences in our beloved land, of what C. S. Lewis called the abolition of man. Ding ding ding! C.S. Lewis check! Quick search for Chesterton, Gandalf, Frazetta -- well, it's a short piece by Cella standards. And who needs nerd namechecks when he brings original sentences such as this:Can our Liberals learn nothing of the infuriating complexity of mankind from this fact: that Red America, to them the fount of nigh every prejudice, has given us men who embody the very virtues they avow their longing for in our statesmen and policticians? Canneth Lord Cella learneth that William O. Douglas, George McGovern, and a whole lot of other liberal traitors were not created in Liberal City test-tubes, but born and raised on the Plains or the Prairie? Wouldst this bloweth his mindeth?
'Swounds, what a dorknerd.
1:23 PM by roy edroso
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IN THE TIME OF LEPRECHAUNS A WIZARD, NOBLE, SPRANG! Happy New Year! One of my 7,655 resolutions is to waste less of my readers' time and get right to the money shots. Simple juxtaposition for comic effect with be frequently employed.
In that spirit, Gates of Vienna tells us about some sort of Nordic Golem who will rise from his centuries-old sleep to kill darkies for us:Now, if even a trace of the blood of the Men of the North runs in your veins, or if you have lived long enough among them to have acquired some of their spirit, the hair on the back of your neck will rise when you read these words, and you will say, “Yes! This is the hero, the man who will defend us during the troubles that are surely coming.” "Baron Bodissey" sets the scene with some snips of Ted Hughes poetry written for Heavy Metal magazine back when it was good.
Which put me in mind of this 21 century poet:In a mighty earthen crock
A Lord was boiled with his beef!
His bloated eyes popped from his head
And were stolen by a thief! More here. This is easy and fun!
10:39 AM by roy edroso
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Sunday, December 31, 2006
THE LAND OF MAKE BELIEVE. In continuance of his War On Search Engines That Don't Ask His Advice Before Devising Holiday Graphics, the Ole Perfesser gets on Google for front-loading seach results.
Not on moral grounds, of course, but because a big mob of citizen journalists will rise up and crush Google if it doesn't behave. It's a power play, basically. Sometimes the Perfesser has to flex his muscle a little.
So he quotes some other tech dork who says Google better watch it and quotes yet another tech dork who says Google better watch it.
Neither Perf Reffed Dork 1 nor Perf Reffed Dork 2 -- nor, indeed, the Perfesser -- have any meaningful ad, traffic or other numbers to justify their warnings. Dork 2's post is actually a non-sequitur -- Google users are "dweebs" because they don't look for Britney Spears or Weather, haha! -- and perhaps linked in error; Dork 1 has a marginally more substantive complaint: that Google is acting like a big bad corporation, which it is, and all the while pretends to be Non-Evil, which it does, since Dorks of whatever numeration love to hear that shit.
But Dork 1 suggests that Google is by its predations is losing "trust," that magical fairy-dust, and suggests indirectly that said loss of fairy-dust will lead to something we've "seen... before [,when] Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft were the darlings of the valley back in the late nineties..." and the big crash that followed.
Those of us who remember the tech crash -- indeed predicted it -- also remember that it was fairly sweeping, and did not exempt companies that were Non-Evil. It exempted companies that offered things people were willing to pay for, which sort of company Google appears to be.
But Dork 1 Thinks Different:Now Google is in the position of dominance, and they definitely have the arrogance that goes with it. But they are in a very difficult spot because of that damned motto ["Don't Be Evil"], and perhaps right on the tipping point where public opinion could change. More and more, people are hoping for Google to stumble. And every time they do, the press pounces. And they always point to the motto. "People" and "press" are used more or less as synonyms here -- and actually, in our Glorious Blog Revolution, where the the Means of Production are held by the Wankers, I suppose technically everyone is "press." And maybe this is why our Dork thinks the complaints of the commentariat will cause all mankind (which is the same thing!) to dump Google out of sheer righteous indignation and avail search engines that are made by monks on organic server farms.
After all, if the Reagan Revolution taught us anything, it's that ethical behavior is much more important to ordinary consumers than pricing and performance. That's why everyone the Dorks know (and, by logical inference, the population of our solar system) has the Google motto by heart.
The Perfesser himself seems to believe the same ridiculous thing -- or his own, much shorter and funnier version of it. He hehindeeds:I've noted declining trust in Google over the past year or so, and it seems that the problem is getting worse. Google should be a lot more worried about this than it seems to be -- all you need to do to take your business elsewhere is type a different URL. Do check that "declining trust" link, where the evidence is... one Jonah Goldberg mouth-fart and a graphic link to (dare we say "paid product placement for"?) Ask.com.
With such slim evidence can "declining trust' be implied, because 1.) few people follow deep links, and so will not know how full of shit this one is, and 2.) the Perfesser's devotees are as reality-averse as he is, and inclined to believe, with or without evidence, that he and his buddies represent a groundswell.
This is not a defense of Google's hanky-panky, but a reminder that "citizen journalism" is less exempt from institutional hubris and bullshit than its cheerleaders tirelessly make it out to be.
The worst kind of pundits, I think, are the ones who are addicted to the idea that the whole world agrees with them, even in the face of contradictory facts. Pretty much the entire right-blogosphere displayed this behavior in the month before the 2006 elections (Use my own archive for examples!). That their arrogance leads to frequent and hilarious come-uppances does not excuse them, because they never learn from these reverses -- they just apply their arrogance to another area until time has passed and the coast become clear for their next beating of pots and pans on behalf of the Emerging Blogospheric Majority.
UPDATE. A correspondent takes exception to my use of the term "tech dork." I admire the strong feeling for standards and simple justice often seen at slashdot and other places where tech types gather. Anyone who stands for purity in this soiled world is going to seem a bit dorkish.
God knows I have. As a jacked-up little shit of a punk rocker, I used to think that the music industry was Moloch and that the truth was only known by guttersnipes. Had I been (and it would have been only just) killed by a falling stage monitor at age 20 and reincarnated as a tech guy, maybe I'd be dorking up a storm now, righteously wishful-thinking that Google's sellout will be noted and avenged by the masses.
So I agree that the tech dorks don't deserve my breezily dismissive attitude. The Perfesser's cynical use of them, on the other hand, deserves all that and more.
11:17 AM by roy edroso
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