Artistic gene? Hah! The only two things I've wanted to say in the last two days are:
1) Bright Eyes really is that good. Wow.
2) Lean Pockets may be good (Chicken Parm... yummy), but Ultra Lean Pockets are about the worst thing I've ever eaten. I mean, they're so bad it's amazing. Ham and Cheese. Wow.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
(e)motion
This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,
And this little piggy cried,
"Wee wee wee" all the way home...
- Traditional Nursery Rhyme
What moves us?
Was it roast beef that first led the little piggy to market, to community, to (inter)dependence? Was consumer culture ever thus?
Food. Our first consumption. Hunters gathering around the campfire to enjoy the fruits and the tales of the kill. What moved them to wheat field, to surplus, to specialization, to science?
Interchangeable parts. Industrial revolution.
What moved us to run off to the cities, to factories? Aggregation, combination, city anonymity. New distances, technologies, communication. Old needs, new networks. Fireside chats. Atomic colliders. Nuclear family bonds broken. Microwave TV dinners.
Restaurants are the new tribal campfire. Houston has the highest rate of eating out, almost once per work day. "When you're here, you're family."
If restaurants are the campfire, TV is village elder, tribal chief. Storyteller, decision maker. Facilitator and shaper, homogenizer of emerging consciousness. Distributor of industrial plenty. Surplus, trade, competition. Choices. New culture of variety, sensation, pleasure. Individuation, separation, isolation. TV as carrier of social currency, surrogate family: teacher, babysitter, friend.
Things gained, things lost.
What moved us then? What moves us now? Aggregation becomes disaggregation. Offshoring and outsourcing. Home offices. Telecommuting. Web-based teaching. Cultural replacement becomes displacement. Relocations. 500 channels. Netflix.
Last week CBS cancelled the last remaining network weekly movie.
Democratization or disintegration? As technology increasingly disaggregates the industrial work-centric culture of the 20th century, what new forms of social networking will we create to fill our natural dependence on each other, our need for community? The people make the city, but what happens when the people leave? What makes the suburbs?
"One man's labor market inflexibility is another's social safety net."
Should our society's laws and our personal decisions attempt to resist or enable these changes? Do we continue to break apart and make portable the social safety nets of family, community, government and religion, to enable economic transformation ("grow the pie")? Will chasing economic possibilities improve the lot of the world's poor and enable the wealthy to rebuild more traditional communities, or will it inevitably lead to overconsumption and the eventual collapse of society?
What rules will govern the evolution of economies, of culture, of community?
What moves us, and where do we go from here?
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Burnt Offerings
There's a Harvard professor who teaches a course (and has written a book) on happiness. One of his more interesting points is the role of variety.
Variety, he says, is a coping mechanism for dealing with the law of diminishing returns. E.g., after having chicken sandwiches at Wendy's every day for a week, you want something to break the routine, so that your brain finds it interesting again.
That's probably obvious, but his less obvious point is that you don't necessarily need variety for things you don't partake in constantly. There is also a value in routines, in rituals.
Moving to a new city, new apartment, new job, brings a lot of excitement and variety. It also causes a loss of rituals.
Fairfax rituals I miss:
Sunday morning breakfast at the Vienna Inn
Saturday disc golf at Burke Lake Park
Little Cheeseburgers from Five Guys
Custard from Nielsens
Sunday afternoon blackended fish special from Sweetwater Tavern
Fresh chips n salsa in my reserved lunch booth at Chevy's
"Lost" pizza parties with the work gang
Interesting how many revolve around (or at least involve) food.
Interesting how memory seems to be composed of rituals, one-off adventures, and white noise.
Variety, he says, is a coping mechanism for dealing with the law of diminishing returns. E.g., after having chicken sandwiches at Wendy's every day for a week, you want something to break the routine, so that your brain finds it interesting again.
That's probably obvious, but his less obvious point is that you don't necessarily need variety for things you don't partake in constantly. There is also a value in routines, in rituals.
Moving to a new city, new apartment, new job, brings a lot of excitement and variety. It also causes a loss of rituals.
Fairfax rituals I miss:
Sunday morning breakfast at the Vienna Inn
Saturday disc golf at Burke Lake Park
Little Cheeseburgers from Five Guys
Custard from Nielsens
Sunday afternoon blackended fish special from Sweetwater Tavern
Fresh chips n salsa in my reserved lunch booth at Chevy's
"Lost" pizza parties with the work gang
Interesting how many revolve around (or at least involve) food.
Interesting how memory seems to be composed of rituals, one-off adventures, and white noise.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Memory Lane, Pt.2
Speaking of Lobbyists...
From The Auburn Plainsman, circa 1996
Bo Jackson was the first one I saw. You know, those diamond-shaped plaques in the sidewalk at Toomer's Corner? It was the beginning of our own little Walk of Fame, like getting one of those stars in Hollywood.
I could already see the next square hole being cut out in front of Toomer's Drugs. Who's diamond would it be?
Whenever someone asks you about Auburn University, talk almost always turns to Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley. Or coach Bowden, Pat Dye or Shug Jordan. But standing there in front of Big Beat Records, I couldn't think of who our stars would be, other than our athletes.
I can name a few now. Victoria Jackson, of Saturday Night Live fame, is a former Auburn student. Ken Mattingly, played by Gary Sinise in Apollo 13, is one of many Auburn astronauts.
Everyone in the country knows than an athlete from Auburn is going to be world class. Auburn football is "the pipeline to the NFL," and our women's basketball players and swimmers are tops. But what about a student from Auburn?
The better your school's reputation, the better your chances of getting a good job. Who wouldn't want a degree from Harvard or Yale? The only way to make sure a degree from Auburn University matter[s] is to turn out Charles Barkleys and Bo Jacksons in academics. And the only way to turn them out is to bring them in. This is where Auburn is fighting a losing battle.
Did you know that Auburn's freshmen class has higher ACTs, SATs and GPAs than the University of Alabama's? It's true. But year after year, Bama attracts more of the very best students than we do. Why? One word: Money.
Think about these numbers. Auburn has 4,000 more students than Alabama. But when it comes to recruiting National Merit Scholars, Bama beat Auburn 44-22 last year. That's not good.
When top students go to college, they usually join honors programs. But Auburn's honors program only gets half the funding per student that Bama's gets, and only about one dollar in three that goes for each honors student at the University of South Carolina. Another statistic to think about: at the University of Alabama, 80 percent of honors students are on scholarship; at South Carolina the figure is 85 percent. The University of Georgia has twice the percentage of honors students that Auburn does (1,100 versus 464), and every one of them has a scholarship. Only a third of Auburn honors students get scholarships. We must do better.
Author's note: From 1995 to 2005, Auburn ranked 77th in the number of National Merit Scholar Finalists, averaging 28 per year. Alabama? 52nd, at 44 per year.
---------------------------------
Personal Best
From The Auburn Plainsman, circa April/May 1993.
People just don't have an ounce of sense these days.
We live in a world of fetus-waving, Trade Center-bombing, tree-hugging, Waco-compounding, ethnic cleansing, holier-than-thou nuts.
That's the conclusion you would come to, watching television and reading newspapers nowadays.
The press, always hungry for a good soundbite, tend to cover only the most gaudy and sensationalistic stories.
What makes this so dangerous is there are a lot of people who get their ideas from the media.
Anyone who opposes abortion must want to kill the doctors performing abortions, they think.
On the other hand, people who support abortion rights must hate babies.
In this country we are fostering a culture of hatred and sterotypes, and many good people are getting hurt because of it. I recently met one such person.
Roger (not his real name) teaches classes here at Auburn. He was one of the many people who read James Foster's column, "If homosexuals behaved with dignity, people would respect them," in this paper last week.
Earlier this week, Roger sent a letter to The Auburn Plainsman responding to Foster's column. It was not published because he requested his name not be given with the letter, which is against this paper's policy.
I was touched by what he wrote, and decided to seek him out. After some hesitation, he decided to talk to me.
Roger is a homosexual. Because of his position at Auburn, he doesn't want people to know of his sexual orientation. I asked him what it was like coming to grips with it.
"I've fought with myself for years to try to be 'normal', but it has just made me feel hopeless," he said.
He told me he grew up in an abusive atmosphere, and only found acceptance from other males. "At eleven years old I didn't know any better."
I was surprised he didn't sympathize with the gay rights marchers in Washington, D.C. Roger agreed with Foster that they showed little dignity.
"Mr. Foster was entirely justified in his opinion," he said. However, Roger thought it had nothing to do with homosexuality.
"Homosexual or straight, scenes like those should never be for public display," he said. "They should stay behind closed doors."
I started to get angry myself. Why did the press show the freaks, rather than the perfectly normal people who marched? The truth is we tend to have respect for anyone who acts with dignity, homosexual or not.
Sure, the weirdos make great pictures, but what stereotypes do they promote?
Since I don't know any homosexuals (at least I don't know if I do), I wondered what it was like dealing with people's prejudices. Roger found it particularly hard because he considers himself to be a conservative Christian. "I am definitely not homosexual by choice!" he said emphatically. "It was more like a process that led me to where I am." It made sense to me. I mean, does anyone decide their sexual orientation?
That was when I first started thinking about the harm we writers and reporters do by catering to the public's stereotypes. What wants to read a story about a normal gay guy?
But tell him to hold a whip and chains, and then maybe we'll listen to him.
And quote him.
Roger seemed to agree. "Not all homosexuals are queers who dress in leather and spank other people on national TV.
Many of us are just people trying to make it through life in peace with God, ourselves and others."
It's inexcusable the way we treat each other sometimes. Sure, the extremists yell louder and look weirder, but when we think and talk only about them, we reinforce the stereotypes.
Those stereotypes and the hatred that comes so easily from them are hurting people in our own community.
"The Auburn Family" can certainly treat its brothers and sisters better.
Author's note: This was the only column to get rejected (twice) by my editor, and the only one that I know to have made a personal difference in someone's life.
From The Auburn Plainsman, circa 1996
Bo Jackson was the first one I saw. You know, those diamond-shaped plaques in the sidewalk at Toomer's Corner? It was the beginning of our own little Walk of Fame, like getting one of those stars in Hollywood.
I could already see the next square hole being cut out in front of Toomer's Drugs. Who's diamond would it be?
Whenever someone asks you about Auburn University, talk almost always turns to Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley. Or coach Bowden, Pat Dye or Shug Jordan. But standing there in front of Big Beat Records, I couldn't think of who our stars would be, other than our athletes.
I can name a few now. Victoria Jackson, of Saturday Night Live fame, is a former Auburn student. Ken Mattingly, played by Gary Sinise in Apollo 13, is one of many Auburn astronauts.
Everyone in the country knows than an athlete from Auburn is going to be world class. Auburn football is "the pipeline to the NFL," and our women's basketball players and swimmers are tops. But what about a student from Auburn?
The better your school's reputation, the better your chances of getting a good job. Who wouldn't want a degree from Harvard or Yale? The only way to make sure a degree from Auburn University matter[s] is to turn out Charles Barkleys and Bo Jacksons in academics. And the only way to turn them out is to bring them in. This is where Auburn is fighting a losing battle.
Did you know that Auburn's freshmen class has higher ACTs, SATs and GPAs than the University of Alabama's? It's true. But year after year, Bama attracts more of the very best students than we do. Why? One word: Money.
Think about these numbers. Auburn has 4,000 more students than Alabama. But when it comes to recruiting National Merit Scholars, Bama beat Auburn 44-22 last year. That's not good.
When top students go to college, they usually join honors programs. But Auburn's honors program only gets half the funding per student that Bama's gets, and only about one dollar in three that goes for each honors student at the University of South Carolina. Another statistic to think about: at the University of Alabama, 80 percent of honors students are on scholarship; at South Carolina the figure is 85 percent. The University of Georgia has twice the percentage of honors students that Auburn does (1,100 versus 464), and every one of them has a scholarship. Only a third of Auburn honors students get scholarships. We must do better.
Author's note: From 1995 to 2005, Auburn ranked 77th in the number of National Merit Scholar Finalists, averaging 28 per year. Alabama? 52nd, at 44 per year.
---------------------------------
Personal Best
From The Auburn Plainsman, circa April/May 1993.
People just don't have an ounce of sense these days.
We live in a world of fetus-waving, Trade Center-bombing, tree-hugging, Waco-compounding, ethnic cleansing, holier-than-thou nuts.
That's the conclusion you would come to, watching television and reading newspapers nowadays.
The press, always hungry for a good soundbite, tend to cover only the most gaudy and sensationalistic stories.
What makes this so dangerous is there are a lot of people who get their ideas from the media.
Anyone who opposes abortion must want to kill the doctors performing abortions, they think.
On the other hand, people who support abortion rights must hate babies.
In this country we are fostering a culture of hatred and sterotypes, and many good people are getting hurt because of it. I recently met one such person.
Roger (not his real name) teaches classes here at Auburn. He was one of the many people who read James Foster's column, "If homosexuals behaved with dignity, people would respect them," in this paper last week.
Earlier this week, Roger sent a letter to The Auburn Plainsman responding to Foster's column. It was not published because he requested his name not be given with the letter, which is against this paper's policy.
I was touched by what he wrote, and decided to seek him out. After some hesitation, he decided to talk to me.
Roger is a homosexual. Because of his position at Auburn, he doesn't want people to know of his sexual orientation. I asked him what it was like coming to grips with it.
"I've fought with myself for years to try to be 'normal', but it has just made me feel hopeless," he said.
He told me he grew up in an abusive atmosphere, and only found acceptance from other males. "At eleven years old I didn't know any better."
I was surprised he didn't sympathize with the gay rights marchers in Washington, D.C. Roger agreed with Foster that they showed little dignity.
"Mr. Foster was entirely justified in his opinion," he said. However, Roger thought it had nothing to do with homosexuality.
"Homosexual or straight, scenes like those should never be for public display," he said. "They should stay behind closed doors."
I started to get angry myself. Why did the press show the freaks, rather than the perfectly normal people who marched? The truth is we tend to have respect for anyone who acts with dignity, homosexual or not.
Sure, the weirdos make great pictures, but what stereotypes do they promote?
Since I don't know any homosexuals (at least I don't know if I do), I wondered what it was like dealing with people's prejudices. Roger found it particularly hard because he considers himself to be a conservative Christian. "I am definitely not homosexual by choice!" he said emphatically. "It was more like a process that led me to where I am." It made sense to me. I mean, does anyone decide their sexual orientation?
That was when I first started thinking about the harm we writers and reporters do by catering to the public's stereotypes. What wants to read a story about a normal gay guy?
But tell him to hold a whip and chains, and then maybe we'll listen to him.
And quote him.
Roger seemed to agree. "Not all homosexuals are queers who dress in leather and spank other people on national TV.
Many of us are just people trying to make it through life in peace with God, ourselves and others."
It's inexcusable the way we treat each other sometimes. Sure, the extremists yell louder and look weirder, but when we think and talk only about them, we reinforce the stereotypes.
Those stereotypes and the hatred that comes so easily from them are hurting people in our own community.
"The Auburn Family" can certainly treat its brothers and sisters better.
Author's note: This was the only column to get rejected (twice) by my editor, and the only one that I know to have made a personal difference in someone's life.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Memory Lane, Pt 1
Early hope
From The Auburn Plainsman, circa January 1993:
"With the Inauguration of Bill Clinton, only the second Democrat to occupy the White House since 1969, there is a great chance for real change. There are many challenges facing the new administration, and Clinton's record in the history books (and the next election) will depend on how they are handled.
With all due respect to President Clinton's abilities, I offer him the following advice:
First and foremost, don't let anyone else dictate your policies. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and many opportunities for bettering America have been wasted by people trying to have their political cake and eat it too.
Your job as president is to lead the country. Congress cannot be counted on to do this. On the rare occasion when members of Congress do something on their own initiative, it usually involves perks and pay raises.
Congressmen may not like everything you do, but if you lead, they will respect you and follow. People today still marvel at how Ronald Reagan got his proposals through Congress, while George Bush had little success. The secret wasn't that somebody in the Senate hated Bush. It has been said that Congress loved Bush; it just didn't respect him, and that's why it liked him.
I'm not too worried about Congress, though. Lots of these guys and gals had the fear of God struck into them in the last election. Your real problem is going to be handling the special interests. The members of Congress, especially the Democrats, are in the same boat as you. If they screw up, they're gone. The interest groups have no such problem. Lobbyists will try to suck all of the wonderful new blood from Washington like the mosquitos they often are. They are not [your] friends, because no amount of inspiration will make them realize the true condition of America.
Once upon a time, this country was nothing but people living in isolated towns and states who came together to fight for their rights and the futures of their families. Many people died to insure the freedom of those they loved. And when the time came to build a new country, Virginians trusted New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians enough to say, "My future is tied to yours."
Your greatest strength lies in your ability to bring people together, to make them believe in something greater than themselves. The president has to make people believe in America. Actually, just allowing people to believe in America in a good start. There have always been critics of the government - usually with good reason. And nowadays, government isn't the only thing we don't trust. We don't trust each other.
The immediate challenge you face is not Iraq, Bosnia or the health care crisis. You have to allow people to believe in you, because the president is the embodiment of America at home as well as abroad. Americans have forgotten what it feels like to be Americans and what it really means. The national ringing of bells was a good start - a little silliness is part of who we are. The same country that danced in the streets after World War II seems far too jaded today for such playfulness.
Every civilization is born and grows stronger, but eventually a time comes when even the strongest must either crumble and blow away or be reborn. Americans find new strength in the things that bring us together. Unfortunately the only time we stop fighting each other is when we fight someone else.
You job, Clinton, is to lead this country back to a belief in itself. And it would be nice if we could get their without getting covered in blood."
-------------------------
Early fear
One month later... circa February 1993:
"...The most damaging issue for Clinton in the recent campaign was his handling of the draft issue. His actions did not bother the electorate so much as his inability to explain those actions.
Even now, Clinton seems to believe that the public cannot intelligently deal with sensitive issues. When significantly higher deficit figures were released by the outgoing Bush administration, it was obvious that existing economic plans would have to change. Unfortunately, rather than explaining this to the American people, the president's men tried to finesse the subject. Just as with the draft, Clinton has not been criticized about his actions so much as his tendency to avoid embarrassment.
Any real agent of change has few allies except the people themselves. With so many hard decisions to be made in the coming years, Clinton's aversion to talking hard truth with Americans could be a terrible handicap.
Unless Clinton publicly makes his case for change, he risks developing a credibility gap with the public that will cripple his presidency. After all, the people are the only friends he's got.
..."
-------------------------
Looking Back
Clinton had big ideas, but never seemed to bring the public along on them. His first acts as president addressed gay rights and abortion rules, reinforcing the increasingly common perception of Democrats being more concerned with minorities/interest groups than with the "common man" that built the Democratic coalition. Congressional Democrats were indeed in the same boat, and they were gone in less than two years. Were the lobbyists (NRA) to blame? Maybe. I'm more inclined to blame the general air of corruption in the Democratic Congress, along with an ill-fated health care plan that turned its back on the business community that had embraced Clinton.
Robbed of his governing majority, Clinton learned from Reagan and took the fight to the Republican Congress, earning their grudging respect. After that initial push, though, he never seemed to be as interested in tackling big problems as in being popular. And in the end his inability to tell hard truths cost him - and Democrats generally - the relationship with the American people that was his trump card.
And now we have George W. Bush. He learned some important lessons from Clinton and Reagan: the importance of being positive, being assertive (even aggressive) with Congress, pushing popular measures to win political capital (tax cuts). He brought people together at first with his talk of compassionate conservatism and being a "uniter not a divider", and later through the external enemy of terrorism after 9/11.
Yet in today's USA Today, Bush sits at 31% approval. An analysis of what led us here would take pages. I'd simply note that Bush also shares many of Clinton's faults. Clinton's ambition on health care ran him afoul of the medical and business lobby; Bush's attempts at social security reform did the same with seniors. We may not have gone to bed with Perot, but in retrospect his foreplay on budget deficits seem to be something we needed and still need. Clinton's internationalism led to deadly entanglement in Somalia; Bush's internationalism has done the same in Iraq, but on a grander scale. Finally, both Clinton and Bush were effective politicians whose hardball politics, shady financial connections and tendencies toward secrecy fed conspiracy theories among the frustrated and intimidated political supporters of their opposition. Clinton survived by ceasing to do anything. Bush, more ambitious, sails on, seemingly mindless of the brewing mutiny.
So what would I look for in a presidential candidate today? After recent experiences, I'd say someone with a respect for process, for separation of powers, who acknowledges complex issues while seeking to work with others to solve them. To put that in a word, humility. No more Nixons, please.
From The Auburn Plainsman, circa January 1993:
"With the Inauguration of Bill Clinton, only the second Democrat to occupy the White House since 1969, there is a great chance for real change. There are many challenges facing the new administration, and Clinton's record in the history books (and the next election) will depend on how they are handled.
With all due respect to President Clinton's abilities, I offer him the following advice:
First and foremost, don't let anyone else dictate your policies. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and many opportunities for bettering America have been wasted by people trying to have their political cake and eat it too.
Your job as president is to lead the country. Congress cannot be counted on to do this. On the rare occasion when members of Congress do something on their own initiative, it usually involves perks and pay raises.
Congressmen may not like everything you do, but if you lead, they will respect you and follow. People today still marvel at how Ronald Reagan got his proposals through Congress, while George Bush had little success. The secret wasn't that somebody in the Senate hated Bush. It has been said that Congress loved Bush; it just didn't respect him, and that's why it liked him.
I'm not too worried about Congress, though. Lots of these guys and gals had the fear of God struck into them in the last election. Your real problem is going to be handling the special interests. The members of Congress, especially the Democrats, are in the same boat as you. If they screw up, they're gone. The interest groups have no such problem. Lobbyists will try to suck all of the wonderful new blood from Washington like the mosquitos they often are. They are not [your] friends, because no amount of inspiration will make them realize the true condition of America.
Once upon a time, this country was nothing but people living in isolated towns and states who came together to fight for their rights and the futures of their families. Many people died to insure the freedom of those they loved. And when the time came to build a new country, Virginians trusted New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians enough to say, "My future is tied to yours."
Your greatest strength lies in your ability to bring people together, to make them believe in something greater than themselves. The president has to make people believe in America. Actually, just allowing people to believe in America in a good start. There have always been critics of the government - usually with good reason. And nowadays, government isn't the only thing we don't trust. We don't trust each other.
The immediate challenge you face is not Iraq, Bosnia or the health care crisis. You have to allow people to believe in you, because the president is the embodiment of America at home as well as abroad. Americans have forgotten what it feels like to be Americans and what it really means. The national ringing of bells was a good start - a little silliness is part of who we are. The same country that danced in the streets after World War II seems far too jaded today for such playfulness.
Every civilization is born and grows stronger, but eventually a time comes when even the strongest must either crumble and blow away or be reborn. Americans find new strength in the things that bring us together. Unfortunately the only time we stop fighting each other is when we fight someone else.
You job, Clinton, is to lead this country back to a belief in itself. And it would be nice if we could get their without getting covered in blood."
-------------------------
Early fear
One month later... circa February 1993:
"...The most damaging issue for Clinton in the recent campaign was his handling of the draft issue. His actions did not bother the electorate so much as his inability to explain those actions.
Even now, Clinton seems to believe that the public cannot intelligently deal with sensitive issues. When significantly higher deficit figures were released by the outgoing Bush administration, it was obvious that existing economic plans would have to change. Unfortunately, rather than explaining this to the American people, the president's men tried to finesse the subject. Just as with the draft, Clinton has not been criticized about his actions so much as his tendency to avoid embarrassment.
Any real agent of change has few allies except the people themselves. With so many hard decisions to be made in the coming years, Clinton's aversion to talking hard truth with Americans could be a terrible handicap.
Unless Clinton publicly makes his case for change, he risks developing a credibility gap with the public that will cripple his presidency. After all, the people are the only friends he's got.
..."
-------------------------
Looking Back
Clinton had big ideas, but never seemed to bring the public along on them. His first acts as president addressed gay rights and abortion rules, reinforcing the increasingly common perception of Democrats being more concerned with minorities/interest groups than with the "common man" that built the Democratic coalition. Congressional Democrats were indeed in the same boat, and they were gone in less than two years. Were the lobbyists (NRA) to blame? Maybe. I'm more inclined to blame the general air of corruption in the Democratic Congress, along with an ill-fated health care plan that turned its back on the business community that had embraced Clinton.
Robbed of his governing majority, Clinton learned from Reagan and took the fight to the Republican Congress, earning their grudging respect. After that initial push, though, he never seemed to be as interested in tackling big problems as in being popular. And in the end his inability to tell hard truths cost him - and Democrats generally - the relationship with the American people that was his trump card.
And now we have George W. Bush. He learned some important lessons from Clinton and Reagan: the importance of being positive, being assertive (even aggressive) with Congress, pushing popular measures to win political capital (tax cuts). He brought people together at first with his talk of compassionate conservatism and being a "uniter not a divider", and later through the external enemy of terrorism after 9/11.
Yet in today's USA Today, Bush sits at 31% approval. An analysis of what led us here would take pages. I'd simply note that Bush also shares many of Clinton's faults. Clinton's ambition on health care ran him afoul of the medical and business lobby; Bush's attempts at social security reform did the same with seniors. We may not have gone to bed with Perot, but in retrospect his foreplay on budget deficits seem to be something we needed and still need. Clinton's internationalism led to deadly entanglement in Somalia; Bush's internationalism has done the same in Iraq, but on a grander scale. Finally, both Clinton and Bush were effective politicians whose hardball politics, shady financial connections and tendencies toward secrecy fed conspiracy theories among the frustrated and intimidated political supporters of their opposition. Clinton survived by ceasing to do anything. Bush, more ambitious, sails on, seemingly mindless of the brewing mutiny.
So what would I look for in a presidential candidate today? After recent experiences, I'd say someone with a respect for process, for separation of powers, who acknowledges complex issues while seeking to work with others to solve them. To put that in a word, humility. No more Nixons, please.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Treasure Trove
In 1992 I started writing political columns for Auburn University's Auburn Plainsman newpaper.
The whole column-writing thing came from a road trip with Tyson, who asked me about the issues in the 1992 election. I had my own strong opinions, but Tyson was someone I respected and I didn't want to spin the issues to reflect my own views. So for a few hours he read a list of issues and I tried to explain the positions of each party and the competing goods that were in tension. As we talked I realized that the conversation we were having was a useful one, and wasn't one I ever heard on TV or read in magazines. When I got back to Auburn I pitched the idea to the editor of the campus newspaper (after running it by Katherine who was a journalism major at the time). Thus started a weekly pattern of weekend pondering, Monday panicking, Tuesday scribbling, and Wednesday re-reading.
I cut these out and sent them to Christina, who I was dating at the time. Leftover papers were kept in a closet in the newspaper office. I never bothered to pull extra copies. When Christy and I stopped dating, old newspaper articles were the least of my interests, and given the manner of breakup, I was never inclined to contact her to ask if she happened to have a spare copy of those old columns. So I just forgot about them.
Until last Saturday. Looking through a chiffonier at my parent's house, I found a manilla envelope full of all the old articles. Did I send them home? Did my mom get them some other way? I don't remember, but an old treasure trove was uncovered.
Now, I've uncovered old journals before, and with a few exceptions reading them later is like eating live beetles while sitting naked on an anthill broadcast live on the national news. Or maybe a reality TV show. Nobody watches the news anymore, do they?
But these weren't so bad. Funny how different we write for ourselves versus others. Someone recently suggested the performance is all there is (you know who you are). I'm inclined to think there is something to that.
Anyone else out there ever stumble across something you wrote a decade ago? What did you think?
Maybe I'll post some of them up here later.
The whole column-writing thing came from a road trip with Tyson, who asked me about the issues in the 1992 election. I had my own strong opinions, but Tyson was someone I respected and I didn't want to spin the issues to reflect my own views. So for a few hours he read a list of issues and I tried to explain the positions of each party and the competing goods that were in tension. As we talked I realized that the conversation we were having was a useful one, and wasn't one I ever heard on TV or read in magazines. When I got back to Auburn I pitched the idea to the editor of the campus newspaper (after running it by Katherine who was a journalism major at the time). Thus started a weekly pattern of weekend pondering, Monday panicking, Tuesday scribbling, and Wednesday re-reading.
I cut these out and sent them to Christina, who I was dating at the time. Leftover papers were kept in a closet in the newspaper office. I never bothered to pull extra copies. When Christy and I stopped dating, old newspaper articles were the least of my interests, and given the manner of breakup, I was never inclined to contact her to ask if she happened to have a spare copy of those old columns. So I just forgot about them.
Until last Saturday. Looking through a chiffonier at my parent's house, I found a manilla envelope full of all the old articles. Did I send them home? Did my mom get them some other way? I don't remember, but an old treasure trove was uncovered.
Now, I've uncovered old journals before, and with a few exceptions reading them later is like eating live beetles while sitting naked on an anthill broadcast live on the national news. Or maybe a reality TV show. Nobody watches the news anymore, do they?
But these weren't so bad. Funny how different we write for ourselves versus others. Someone recently suggested the performance is all there is (you know who you are). I'm inclined to think there is something to that.
Anyone else out there ever stumble across something you wrote a decade ago? What did you think?
Maybe I'll post some of them up here later.
Friday, May 05, 2006
On the Contrary
So the story goes that the day the new campus opened, the university president walked alongside the architect. The president asked why there were no sidewalks anywhere. The architect said the buildings come first, then the students, and only then the sidewalks. "The buildings show the students where to go. Then the students show us where the sidewalks go."
Over time, people will wear a trail of the best way to get from A to B.
Thinking about social networks a lot recently. Social tagging of content, whether bookmarks on delicious, photos on flickr, or linked blogs, allow people to navigate organically. Podcasts allow us to hear each others' stories in our own voices across the globe.
Today I listened to a podcast about China. An author went there on Peace Corps and stayed. He writes the stories of the regular people of China. He agreed with the common view that China is opening up surprisingly fast, decentralizing authority and empowering individuals.
The same is true here. Bloggers drive the news cycle. Individuals collaborate on Wikipedia, the Internet's encylopedia. Google excels in search by prioritizing the sites most linked by other sites.
Increasingly, people are showing each other where the sidewalks go, and the establishment is racing to put down pavement (and put up billboards).
I set off most nights after sunset, following some worn paths in the grass, growing more excited and hopeful with each trail I cross. Will it lead to the rest of the world, will I get to know you better? Or am I merely circling the light my own home, a moth enchanted with a bare bulb, wearing a moat of safety around my castle?
A new path led me to Amy's great blog (thanks KP), and I got to thinking about all this, especially about the way we force people (and ourselves) to go off the beaten path, to walk into the unknown darkness. University students may trace sidewalks but they are still bound by a common curriculum. They choose their path, but with some prescribed destinations.
One of my required courses is realclearpolitics.com, a site with political polling data and links to lots of conservative articles. They are the fiber in my diet. After listening to lots of arguments about gas prices and rational v. emotional thinking (more on that another time), I stumbled across this tough little nugget that made me think. That made me chew.
Thanks to everyone for your footprints.
Over time, people will wear a trail of the best way to get from A to B.
Thinking about social networks a lot recently. Social tagging of content, whether bookmarks on delicious, photos on flickr, or linked blogs, allow people to navigate organically. Podcasts allow us to hear each others' stories in our own voices across the globe.
Today I listened to a podcast about China. An author went there on Peace Corps and stayed. He writes the stories of the regular people of China. He agreed with the common view that China is opening up surprisingly fast, decentralizing authority and empowering individuals.
The same is true here. Bloggers drive the news cycle. Individuals collaborate on Wikipedia, the Internet's encylopedia. Google excels in search by prioritizing the sites most linked by other sites.
Increasingly, people are showing each other where the sidewalks go, and the establishment is racing to put down pavement (and put up billboards).
I set off most nights after sunset, following some worn paths in the grass, growing more excited and hopeful with each trail I cross. Will it lead to the rest of the world, will I get to know you better? Or am I merely circling the light my own home, a moth enchanted with a bare bulb, wearing a moat of safety around my castle?
A new path led me to Amy's great blog (thanks KP), and I got to thinking about all this, especially about the way we force people (and ourselves) to go off the beaten path, to walk into the unknown darkness. University students may trace sidewalks but they are still bound by a common curriculum. They choose their path, but with some prescribed destinations.
One of my required courses is realclearpolitics.com, a site with political polling data and links to lots of conservative articles. They are the fiber in my diet. After listening to lots of arguments about gas prices and rational v. emotional thinking (more on that another time), I stumbled across this tough little nugget that made me think. That made me chew.
Thanks to everyone for your footprints.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Expensive
"What are the things that I don't even recognize as privilege..."
- KP
"the elephant in the room is that no one can live on minimum wage, and that we are making a whole swath of our society - tens of millions of people - live like animals. So that the luckier segment can live with indulgences their parents never dreamed of."
- Bill Maher
Thinking about the cost of things today. That and the old liberal elitism v. egalitarianism debate, a.k.a., are there some things one should be proudly anti-democratic about (bread n' circus culture, pulp fiction, blockbuster movies, chain restaurants, "f*cking merlot", etc)?
Annette and I like to look at paintings. There are four kinds of art we come across. There are famous prints, like the Starry Night everyone had in college. There are framed prints of less familiar paintings, which look like they were painted because someone does random brushstrokes over them with a clear varnish. There are actual hand painted canvases that are churned out, same painting over and over but painting still. Usually these involve flowers or comically overweight Italian pasta chefs.
Then there are "real" paintings. These come in two types. The first is what the general public wants. Boats. Flowers. Paris cafes. Anything French Impressionist.
Then there are the paintings we like. A jungle scene in a street market in Lilande; women in a one-room gallery in St. Emilion; untitled monochrome abstracts in a Houston Festival. Paintings seemingly done for the artist (or art) itself. Who buys these? Why do they buy them? Decoration for a beautiful house? Conversation piece for the neighbors?
The jungle was cleared when we came back for it, and the women though beautiful were unattainable. But the monochrome got a title - Red - and a home.
Our first dreamed-of indulgence now hangs blood-red over our couch. It was part of a two week party, with nice meals, cowboy hats and boots, and general fun. It was a bit expensive, as Annette noted on her last day.
Maybe things should be a little expensive. Driving around Houston I'm struck by how much I get for the work I do. Per Adam Smith, specialization means I'm good at what I do, and you're good at your stuff, so we each can do a lot of what we do and trade the leftovers. So everyone benefits. But I work at a computer 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I get what in exchange? Shelter, entertainment, roads, a car, parks, nice food, piloted travel to visit loved ones across the globe, nice clothes, you name it. Then it strikes me, I'm not just exchanging the fruits of my labor with others; I'm enjoying the legacy of what people before me have built. The libraries were built before I was born, ditto the oil refineries funding my salary.
We in the US, especially those in the upper middle class, enjoy the fruits of labor of untold millions of people. But we and our agents (government, WalMart, Krogers) have the better bargaining position, so we get the better deal. In "The Stand", Steven King writes (after Plato & co. I'm sure) that once the town gets too big for people to know each other personally, things start breaking down. Who paves the roads we drive on, who tends the parks we play in, who grows our food?
We've got all these complicated machines making our toys, so not much blood of child or slave labor, or unsafe workplaces or environmental damage gets on anyone's hands. Businesses will naturally race to the bottom to compete. Thus we pass laws protecting our basic values, allowing businesses to compete with each other without being tempted to exploit those people and things that aren't able to protect themselves.
Reading Bill Maher's wonderful link above, I'm inclined to think minimum wage laws do the same thing, protect us from our worst impulses to get ahead at the expense of the unnamed others. Forcing ourselves to act as if we know each other in a society too crowded for that to be true.
We talked to the painter of Red, who teaches graphic design and draws great lines. Her name is Nicole Bent and her web site is http://www.nicolesart.net. After we talked for a while, she gave us a discount (more even than Annette asked for). But I'm happy that it was still well over minimum wage. Our first painting was just a little expensive. As good things should be.
- KP
"the elephant in the room is that no one can live on minimum wage, and that we are making a whole swath of our society - tens of millions of people - live like animals. So that the luckier segment can live with indulgences their parents never dreamed of."
- Bill Maher
Thinking about the cost of things today. That and the old liberal elitism v. egalitarianism debate, a.k.a., are there some things one should be proudly anti-democratic about (bread n' circus culture, pulp fiction, blockbuster movies, chain restaurants, "f*cking merlot", etc)?
Annette and I like to look at paintings. There are four kinds of art we come across. There are famous prints, like the Starry Night everyone had in college. There are framed prints of less familiar paintings, which look like they were painted because someone does random brushstrokes over them with a clear varnish. There are actual hand painted canvases that are churned out, same painting over and over but painting still. Usually these involve flowers or comically overweight Italian pasta chefs.
Then there are "real" paintings. These come in two types. The first is what the general public wants. Boats. Flowers. Paris cafes. Anything French Impressionist.
Then there are the paintings we like. A jungle scene in a street market in Lilande; women in a one-room gallery in St. Emilion; untitled monochrome abstracts in a Houston Festival. Paintings seemingly done for the artist (or art) itself. Who buys these? Why do they buy them? Decoration for a beautiful house? Conversation piece for the neighbors?
The jungle was cleared when we came back for it, and the women though beautiful were unattainable. But the monochrome got a title - Red - and a home.
Our first dreamed-of indulgence now hangs blood-red over our couch. It was part of a two week party, with nice meals, cowboy hats and boots, and general fun. It was a bit expensive, as Annette noted on her last day.
Maybe things should be a little expensive. Driving around Houston I'm struck by how much I get for the work I do. Per Adam Smith, specialization means I'm good at what I do, and you're good at your stuff, so we each can do a lot of what we do and trade the leftovers. So everyone benefits. But I work at a computer 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I get what in exchange? Shelter, entertainment, roads, a car, parks, nice food, piloted travel to visit loved ones across the globe, nice clothes, you name it. Then it strikes me, I'm not just exchanging the fruits of my labor with others; I'm enjoying the legacy of what people before me have built. The libraries were built before I was born, ditto the oil refineries funding my salary.
We in the US, especially those in the upper middle class, enjoy the fruits of labor of untold millions of people. But we and our agents (government, WalMart, Krogers) have the better bargaining position, so we get the better deal. In "The Stand", Steven King writes (after Plato & co. I'm sure) that once the town gets too big for people to know each other personally, things start breaking down. Who paves the roads we drive on, who tends the parks we play in, who grows our food?
We've got all these complicated machines making our toys, so not much blood of child or slave labor, or unsafe workplaces or environmental damage gets on anyone's hands. Businesses will naturally race to the bottom to compete. Thus we pass laws protecting our basic values, allowing businesses to compete with each other without being tempted to exploit those people and things that aren't able to protect themselves.
Reading Bill Maher's wonderful link above, I'm inclined to think minimum wage laws do the same thing, protect us from our worst impulses to get ahead at the expense of the unnamed others. Forcing ourselves to act as if we know each other in a society too crowded for that to be true.
We talked to the painter of Red, who teaches graphic design and draws great lines. Her name is Nicole Bent and her web site is http://www.nicolesart.net. After we talked for a while, she gave us a discount (more even than Annette asked for). But I'm happy that it was still well over minimum wage. Our first painting was just a little expensive. As good things should be.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
11:37 pm
Annette flew back to London today. I was looking for something profound to say about that, but the closest I've got is that I don't have to say something profound about it.
That, and this:
Days are easy.
Nights are hard.
Mornings are flipping over the test paper.
And,
there is something of a choice in deciding how to feel about things. Whether to embrace the drama. I always embraced the drama growing up. I recognize now I don't have to, but I don't know what it means not to.
I really like Katherine's new itinerant blog, having been rudely ejected from perrykat.blogspot.com.
That, and this:
Days are easy.
Nights are hard.
Mornings are flipping over the test paper.
And,
there is something of a choice in deciding how to feel about things. Whether to embrace the drama. I always embraced the drama growing up. I recognize now I don't have to, but I don't know what it means not to.
I really like Katherine's new itinerant blog, having been rudely ejected from perrykat.blogspot.com.
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