Gaybraham Lincoln

Reports are that the $5 bill will soon have nifty purple and grey accents. To die for!

Why? It would seem that counterfeiters--who cost "us" a whole $62 million last year (which could have paid for one coffee break in Iraq)--bleach $5 bills and print fake $100 bills on the paper because the security strip is in the same place on both bills. Those goddamn criminals and their eyes, that they use, to notice the obvious, which in this case is a major fuckup by the government! Damn the criminals!! Who could have foreseen this problem?!

So we get some gay makeover money that looks like it came off the floor of a Brazilian disco. Super.

Frankly, does anybody care what the bills really look like, as long as they have value? You may have noticed that ATMs don't give out $5 bills much anymore. What does that tell you?

The Living Example of Randomness

From Matty P.:

Travelling on a bus from the University of Chicago north, back into town, minding one's own business, when suddenly from another passenger: "Hey, look! It's the mayor!" Heads turn and there he is. Dick Daley, shaking hands by the side of the road at 35th and Cottage Grove. The man still commands eyeballs, even if nobody knew what the hell he was doing there.

The Free Market, Revealed and Defended (at last!)

Freedomnomics, by John Lott

Oh boy. Where to even begin with this book review? Let’s first ascertain whether Freedomnomics: Why the free market works and other half-baked theories don’t, stands up to its own title. Is it about “freedom”? No, not really. The book is a smattering of short “the author takes on” topical segments, not all of them having to do with notions of “freedom.” For instance, I am clueless as to what a justification of high gas prices and price gouging by hoteliers during a natural disaster have to do with “freedom.” Similarly, I don’t know, even after finishing this book, why fines for small-scale environmental polluters are advancing “freedom,” nor how a pension fund’s successful intervention in a lawsuit in order to preserve portfolio value ensures our “freedom” as opposed to TIAA-CREF's profits.

Perhaps “freedom” is a bad measuring tool; bad because we don’t know what it means. How about the rest of the title? “Why the free market works…” stop right there! Now, that’s an argument, yes? No. Not really. What does the author mean by “free market”? We can only assume he means the American free market, since there isn’t much else that would qualify anywhere else in the world, ever. Indeed the author, John Lott, PhD (twice referred to in this manner at the outset) tells us in the introduction that, as opposed to countries that he maintains tried True Communism in the 20th century and failed miserably, “countries that stuck with the free market have prospered.” The author apparently has confused American capitalism with a "free market." How unfortunate (and, I'll add, fatal to the whole project).

But he didn’t say “America.” In fact, Lott then proceeds to tell the reader that "Naturally, suspicion of corporations is paramount" when Americans consider their own circumstances, politicians “convene hearings to rail against oil companies,” and “(n)ewspapers denounce ‘corporate greed,’ arguing that the only thing keeping any big company from turning into another Enron is the watchful eye of government regulation.” There is no endnote to back these declarations and if you have lived in this country, watched a television, or read a newspaper in the last decade you know why: because those assertions are patently false. Which newspaper has argued that all corporations are little Enrons and that we need massive government intervention--was it owned by McClatchy or NewsCorp? I’m lost already—and that’s page 3. This bodes ill.

And then, suddenly, we are talking about the United States: “Is the US economy truly just a giant, Hobbesian free-for-all that encourages duplicity in our everyday transactions?” Who said it was? Who are you arguing with? No need for 200 more pages if it’s going to go on like this…oh no, he’s not finished! “For example, consider eBay, the Internet (sic) auction site. Even in its anonymous forums, sellers develop reputations by allowing customers to rate their transactions.” That’s it? eBay, an international cyberspace trading company, is your example of the “American free market” that proves its superiority? I give you animalporn.com. Game, set, match, good night.

Really, though, we both are and are not supposed to think of the United States while John Lott, PhD is writing. His endless use of “Some countries,” “many economists,” “those countries that did x,” and various other indefinite phrases, serve to muddy things up to the point that we can’t be sure what, exactly, he’s talking about. So, at times it seems Lott means “the United States” in a positive, look-at-our-free-market-economy way, and other times he means it in a look-at-our-overbearing-government way ("some people" will be confused by this praise/scold disjuncture in Lott’s thinking). Sometimes, he means “a typical, timeless middle class neighborhood,” and other times he means “corporations.” This last one, I think, is his real subject. Nearly every topic addressed in this book is seen from the point-of-view of the corporation as opposed to the consumer. This leads to all sorts of “why on earth shouldn’t the consumer pay more? It’s only natural to make a profit!” moments that really drive home the feeling that John Lott, PhD was raised in a bank by a sentient ATM.

This impression is made even stronger by the absolute absence of any sort of political comprehension on the part of the author. He has, apparently, never considered the thing we know as “politics,” nor does he show the least interest in what we might call “contextual facts” (he likely calls them “externalities”). So, for instance, Lott muses that politicians are far from beholden to their donors and financial backers, since they tend to vote the same way throughout their careers. The implications are, first, that politicians are therefore not phonies, because they really believe in what they’re doing. Charles Manson really believed in what he did, too. That didn’t make it good. But, Lott argues, politicians set agendas and then supporters come to them, not the other way around. Furthermore, he can prove this because retiring politicians don’t suddenly abandon their handlers’ agendas and switch votes to what they “really” believe in. You can see, can’t you, how awfully simple that is? It proves, QED, that there are no special interests in politics—just free market alliances of ideological soulmates.

Anyone who has had even minimal experience in politics—and you’d think Lott, a former American Enterprise Institute fellow, would at least have the courtesy to extend his readers this much credit—knows that that ain’t how it works. Why don’t retiring politicians go crazy and vote against all their donors’ interests? Could it be because they don’t ever really retire, but just become lobbyists? Could it be because they’re part of a caucus or party with a platform and an agenda larger than any one member or term? Could it because they don’t exist in a vacuum, at all, but have goals and plans that extend several decades into the past and future? Gee, I don’t know. What do you think? I’m starting to believe this fellow brought a knife to a gunfight; that is, he wants to be taken seriously as an intellectual but unfortunately he’s only a rather dim-witted number-cruncher.

John Lott, PhD personally assured me, on this very blog, that I’d find his book interesting and hard to classify as the work of a right wing ideological stooge. Well, you lose the bet, John, for having an argument that rests on the notion that profits are inherently good, rich people prove that, and poor people don't count. You also said your book "didn't hate America," but quite clearly, you DO hate America: you hate and fear black people, female voters, the government (which IS actually the political arrangement named "the United States of America"), and people who don't want to own guns, get married because of an unplanned pregnancy, want lower prices for life-saving drugs, and equal protection under the law. These are groups you positioned yourself against in your book, and then you tried to justify them with numbers that are, at best (at best!) disputed by other economists, not to mention academics and activists across the intellectual and social spectrum.

Also, a writing tip: the introduction of a serious scholarly tome has but one purpose and that is to justify the reader’s attention. Not only does Lott utterly fail to support his title argument—he didn’t establish that there even is, or ever was, a “free market,” nor did he discuss except in the abstract any other, “half-baked” theories—but he signals that the book itself will be a compendium of random replies to the book Freakonomics, which I haven’t read. Hell of a strategy: write a book to reply to another book. Have you heard of the telephone? You know the last names of the authors of Freakonomics, why don't you call them?

Lott basically insults the reader’s intelligence by taking the role of corporate defender/apolitical naïf (for just one more example, he discusses the gas shortages of the 1970s at length and NOT ONCE does he mention the Middle East or US policy towards the Middle East. I am serious.). This just will not do. It left me to ponder just who the intended audience of this book is. People who read Freakonomics? Why would they read this shoddy reply? Republicans? Libertarians? Given its utter lack of understanding or sympathy for the working classes and unabashed endorsement of corporate rights and wisdom, I'd say this book was written either to fulfill Lott's publishing obligation to AEI or the Hoover Institute, or else it's supposed to be read by the very wealthy to reinforce the idiotic notion that working class America is composed of a scary, ethnic, greedy, criminal rabble. But the thing is, even I don't believe wealthy Americans would read this tripe. It's just too poorly done to be anything but embarrassing.

So much for the introduction. Let’s do chapter 1 next!

On second thought, let's not.

Careful There, Sarcastro

I am a technology retard, so I don't know if the headline will still be there an hour from now, but over on Talking Points Memo (what my link calls "Democratic Milquetoast") an AP article on Mike McConnell's request for more funds and more powers for US intelligence-gathering efforts has been labeled thusly: "McConnell Needs More Spying Power--To Fight the Cold War."

Well, snigger me timbers.

Leaving aside the question of whether we, American citizens, would want the government to be able to monitor communications inside the United States, at the root of McConnell's request is the assertion that Russia and China are spying on us (and, US) and so the American intelligence community wants to spy on them--while, of course, limiting our exposure to their efforts. While I applaud the liberal blogger's snarky categorization of McConnell's worldview--which may, for all we know, focus too much on "old" enemies instead of all the new ones we've made in the last 10 years--here's the thing about what McConnell said:

he's not wrong.

One of the great legacies of this administration that will only grow over time, becoming clearer to the point that every historian one day will point it out as though it should have been obvious, is the mishandling of Russia, particularly, but also China by the Bush ninnies. This being particularly egregious when the head moron has as his sidekick a woman, Condolleezzaa (I give up; just add some more letters) Rice, who touts her credentials as an "expert" on Russia every chance she gets. Yet, she hasn't done a goddamn thing about the growing re-Soviet-ification of Russia under Putin, added to the fact that, for all her travels and summits, not one of them has produced any tangible benefit to the United States. I, for one, have mocked Rice for her insistence that her Russia "expertise" translates to competence in foreign policy in general, but really, lady: the one nation you claim to have the bona fides to understand is one of the ones that is pressing hardest to depose us--not now but as soon as possible--as the world's most aggressive state.

So, in my kind, McConnell ain't wrong. You'd have to be blind not to see that China and Russia are big, nasty threats to us in most every way. Throw in Israel, and you've got the US's spy nightmare and nobody's doing a damn thing about it, especially those most qualified--at least in their own minds--to take action. Now, I take US intelligence's self-constructed mythology ("The Good Shepherd," anyone? All Tom Clancy books?) as proof that the CIA, NSA, and spooks in general have created far more failures than successes, but to cite their incompetence as proof that we have nothing to fear from other nations (who, again, are trying actively to knock us off the highest perch) is asinine.

"The Searchers"'s besmirchers

This fellow seems to think John Ford's "The Searchers" is an inartful piece of offal.

This is the problem and the question:
"Its reputation lies elsewhere, with two influential and mutually reinforcing constituencies: critics whose careers emerged out of the rise of "film studies" as a discrete and self-respecting academic discipline, and the first generation of filmmakers—Scorsese and Schrader, but also Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, and George Lucas—whose careers began in film school. The hosanna chorus for The Searchers is impossible to imagine, in other words, without the formalized presence of film in the university curriculum. The question, then, is: Why did the curriculum attach so intensely to so obviously flawed a movie?"

And the answer, in the form of another question is, "Haven't you ever noticed how terrible method acting and method actors are?"

The love directors claim for the movie "The Searchers" might represent a shift towards the professionalization of movie production--in the sense that it has come to require film school credentials and, as a result perhaps, films are more formalized, sterilized, and shitty. But Hollywood, when it achieved pride of place as the locus of the worldwide movie industry following WWII, became one long navel-gazing session and as a result anything that some small cadre of trendsetters deems acceptable becomes amplified until it is exalted. Thus, the "art" of "acting" for the last half-century has been at times akin to the random shrieking of howler monkeys; at times it has been the beeps and boops of ineffectual machinery; mainly it has been flabby and awkward and unabashedly ridiculous, like a greased-up fat Marlon Brando.

Why is it so beloved? Why do art fags get all faggy over art?

Who Knew the "B" in HBO...

...stood for "boxing," the "O" stood for "on the house" and the "H" stood for "Holy shit! It's..."

The disarray of the sweet science can be observed in the following three facts:

1. Joe Calzaghe (43-0; 32 KO) vs. Mikkel Kessler (39-0; 29 KO), a fight everyone wants to see (it's like Tyson-Spinks), is going to be shown for free on HBO on November 3. It's a super-middleweight fight (168 lbs).

2. Kelly Pavlik (31-0; 28 KO) vs. Jermaine Taylor (27-0-1; 17 KO), a fight between two guys who knock people out more often than Mickey Finn (was that a hack reference?) is going to be shown for free on HBO on September 29. It's for the middleweight title (160 lbs.).

3. Juan Marquez (47-3-1; 35 KO) will fight Rocky Juarez (27-3; 19 KO) in a featherweight (126 lbs.) bout on Pay-per-view September 15. THIS fight, out of the three, is the one promoters tapped as the big moneymaker? Who is running this show?

The only question left for boxers is, do you guys even want to make money at this anymore, or are you trying to get your brains beat out for free?

Creeping Lies

After the 2000 election, stunned by the utterly surreal nature of American culture and its representations leading up to the event and then in the aftermath, I withdrew to a large degree from day-to-day political and social discourse. Like the architect of Dana Barrett’s building in Ghostbusters, I felt like society was too sick to survive. American society, anyway. We had, after all, just witnessed the theft of a national election through media manipulation and public self-delusion, and bald-faced gambits from the Bush camp that would have made Nixon himself take pause.

Superficially, it felt like the coward’s way out: I was taking my brain and going home. Withdrawal, however, had benefits. No more daily newspapers. No more CNN. No more pre-packaged bullshit propaganda videos on the evening news. No more puffed up journalists telling me which millionaire I’d love to have a beer with. I discovered more blogs, and European press outlets, and ordinary people with computers who thought clearly and spoke plainly and, like me, felt insulted and betrayed and couldn’t understand why everyone else didn’t.

And then things got even worse. Bush wasn’t content to be an idler and a dum-dum, but wanted to leave his greasy scuff mark on everything, including reaching into our homes, private lives, and to some degree, hearts and minds, and fucking with the stuff of our faiths: ideas and language. Bush—who I’m using as symbolic of a cabal of interests, not always in harmony—made it harder to think charitably about our fellow human beings. When was the last time you felt good about being an American?

And the press, not content to have elevated a fake, possibly retarded “cowboy” from regional joke to legitimate candidate, did an extended touchdown dance when “their” boy “won.” The thing about selling your virtue is, you can’t get it back. I wonder if—and this is certainly a moot consideration—the media actually fell for Bush (journalists certainly are not our best and brightest), or if it simply realized it had to continue to hold him up after the election because should the public find out what a phony the press had foisted upon the nation, journalistic credibility would be irreparably damaged? The result, in any case, is the same in terms of the path the press chose and the damage it has done to it and us.

During the period of disengagement I watched a lot of non-political TV. Nature shows, mostly. I hate birds. But I also hate cats. So much for nature shows. There are other shows about building things, catching things, and discovering things, but they fall short precisely because of their lack of political context. Crab fisherman? Are you a rabid Republican from Alaska who thinks women belong in the kitchen and that cigarettes should be free? You think we should drill ANWR? Also that the limits on commercial fishing are bogus? Wow. Compelling drama. I hope you fall overboard. NASA scientist working on a Mars mission? Eating up funding that could be used to help real people here on earth? Or are you a political appointee who is helping to prove that God created Mars on the fourth day, after farting out the moon? Or are you working on our missile shield which, thanks to Bush’s incompetence in handling Putin, it looks like we’re going to need sooner rather than later? Dork on a building show? You’re going to “explore” such mind-bending things as “how to drive a bulldozer” and “how to put up drywall”? Newsflash: most Americans are working class—we already KNOW how to drive a stickshift and use a screwgun!! Idiot!!

The last straw, though, was when one of the builder assholes did a show about building dams and levees. Naturally, he went to New Orleans, because, yeah, has there ever been a better model for levee-building than New Orleans? He led off with this line, “I’m here to show you how the Army Corps of Engineers is going to restore the levees to pre-Katrina levels!” He was very excited. So was I. I was jumping up and down and shouting, “’pre-Katrina levels’?!? They’re building the same levees that already failed??! What the fuck??!?”

Was this a case of one stupid guy hosting a stupid show? Or, was he parroting a line he heard from one of the FEMA guys he had to talk to in order to get access to the Corps of Engineers site? In which case—assuming it’s the latter—is the Bush administration still controlling even the most mundane facets of the media? This was on the fucking Discovery Channel, for Christ’s sakes!

Then, the capstone: the National Geographic Channel presented a one-hour (one fucking hour!) special called “The Road to War: Iraq,” which basically interviewed White House staffers and let them catapult the propaganda. We learned, among other things, that Bush was adamant about returning to the White House on September 11, 2001, but his staffers instead insisted he fly around the country and give the appearance he was running like a hemophiliac from a box of razor blades. See, this is the magic of the supine media: Andy Card can get on the National Geographic Channel (why? Why National Geographic??) and tell us in the same breath that the President makes all the decisions and is totally in charge, but that anytime the President looks like a fool it was some staffer’s fault. The question, the same question that has always hung over Bush’s head, remains: who the fuck is in charge here? Is the administration actually run by a strong decision-maker (in which case, based on his decisions, he’s utterly stupid) or is it run by lots of people, with many competing agendas, in effect rendering the executive branch incompetent? Stupid or incompetent. What a choice.

But I digress. We already know, in excruciating detail, how stupid Bush and his circus are. The point is that their agenda, that of promulgating the acceptance of mindbending idiocy by the press which then passes on to the public, is apparently working so well that the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel are premising some of their programming on notions so incredibly and demonstrably false that one is stupefied to encounter them. On television, hardly the most subtle of information-delivery systems, it has become ordinary to club the viewer over the head with assertions that will stun him. Black is white. Up is down. The Pawn is the Decider is the Pawn is the Decider is the Pawn…

Is this necessary?

Why do people still use the term "space age"? Infomercial for wacky mattress: "It's made of 100% Space Age material! (!!)" Well, I'm sold. The Space Age was just, what? Forty years ago? Have there been any new "space age" materials invented in the last few decades?

Are "space age" products being targeted to older Americans who have no consciousness of popular culture after 1969? Even if we stipulate that the "Space Age" carried into the early 1980s (a big maybe), that was over 20 years ago. Do younger people even understand what the term means, or is it just another meaningless phrase that rolls off the ear in a sea of blah-blah-blah?

Is the term just hanging around until some ad man invents the "information age material" equivalent?

Retraction

In an earlier post, we here at TCBH mistakenly asserted that Sen. Larry Craig is a homo and that's the only reason he's being forced to resign, maybe. While it does seem that the GOP is swayed by the fact that Craig's replacement will be appointed by a Republican governor (and, for example, David Vitter's successor, had he resigned over his own pervy sex scandal, would have been put up by a Democratic governor), a very wise man--my dad--reminded me that upon further review Senator Craig is a man. Ergo, his airport restroom adventure may have had more to do with getting off on the verboten nature of the activity--its perviness, the danger of being caught, etc. This, for all you ladies out there, is what most men do, or think about doing, or pay professionals to help them pretend to do. Where is my Freud compendium??

The "ooooooh, I see..." moment came when the police report revealed that Sen. Craig was sitting in a stall to the left (as one sits) of the undercover cop. And yet, the cop distinctly remembers seeing a hand with a wedding ring come under his stall. This means that Craig was reaching across his body to show his left hand to the cop. Which begs the question, why? The wise guy would say that the good Senator was showing off the ring because it jacks up the forbidden-quotient. Meanwhile, Craig was jacking up...well, let's just say that his right hand was busy.

So, to sum up: Senator Craig, probably not gay in the permamnent sense. It's not his identity, in all likelihood; it's just a way to get off and have fun while doing it. Think, "monkey humping a football." Men, as far as we here at TCBH know them, like to have sex and will find new and interesting ways to do so if given the chance. Senator Craig's little saga--which is really quite boring--is only interesting in this psychological, not any political, sense. He certainly can't be "claimed" by the gay movement as some kind of tragic figure.

Thanks, Dad.