Socialist birthdays, vol II

To California or any place—every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day—the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they'll all walk together, and there'll be a dead terror from it.

John Ernst Steinbeck III was born on this date in 1902.

I read "The Grapes of Wrath" in high school (yes, I have read a few classics, try not to faint), though, of course, the broader political context of the book went right by me. Nowadays, I think it's a minor miracle that such potentially destabilizing propaganda is allowed anywhere near the undeveloped minds of American youth.

That's one of the things I hope to accomplish in this series, as long as I can keep it going. In the days where being anything beyond a milquetoast mainstream Democrat makes everyone assume you've gone off to Cloudcuckooland and the very mention of the "s" word sends Serious people scurrying like ants to clear the kitchen, I want to remind Americans that there were at one time major public figures who were actual radicals.

Steinbeck came by his appreciation for the working poor in the Depression honestly. He was raised in a frontier town in California and, after graduating from Stanford in 1926, took various odd jobs as a migrant laborer to support his writing career, a career which was mostly unsuccessful until the publication of "Of Mice and Men" and "The Grapes of Wrath" in 1939 and '40. These popular works would bring Steinbeck to the attention of Hoover's FBI, which was ever aware that anyone concerned with poverty in America was potentially problematic even if their contemporaries are not always as vigilant.

Socialist birthdays, vol 1 (of any)

The Rev. Charles Monroe Sheldon was born on this date in 1857.

Sheldon ,as a young pastor in Topeka, KS, became more concerned with the social and practical aspects of the life of Jesus than than with hollow spiritualism. Arriving in town during an economic depression, Sheldon would don ragged clothes and cross the town applying for work to better understand the lives of the unemployed. Swept up in the populist moment enveloping the Midwest and Great Plains, he would help lay the popular foundation for what became known as the Social Gospel, an important strain of evangelical thought throughout the first half of the 20th century and on through the civil rights movement of the 1960's.

In 1896, Sheldon published his first novel, a collection of sermons titled "In His Steps," which, as its title suggests, was an exhortation to believers to consider how Christ would live in their individual situation. The book became an immediate sensation, selling an estimated 30 million copies; as of 2002 good enough for the 39th best-selling book in history. This was largely due to the publisher failing to secure the copyright, meaning Sheldon saw very little of the wealth he would otherwise have coming from his bestseller. "In His Steps" does bear some of the peculiarities of its time--Sheldon was a staunch prohibitionist, and demon rum is a key antagonist of the book--but its concern for peace and care for the destitute was a revolutionary message then as now.

Sheldon's message had an unusual revival in the 1990's, when "In His Steps" became the impetus for the "What Would Jesus Do?" craze in evangelical pop culture. Alas, the WWJD? fad was mostly stripped of Sheldon's message of social justice and replaced with the modern evangelical mantra of personal moral choices. That's too bad, as an honest revival of Sheldon's populist social gospel could do much to invigorate American Christianity at a similar point in history.

Are newspapers necessary?

Slacktivist analyzes Walter Isaacson's plan to save the newspaper business and finds it wanting. Fred thinks the newspapers can only survive by lowering profit expectations and taking a more populist posture.

Simple question: Who was more popular -- Robin Hood or the Sheriff of Nottingham? The answer to that question explains a great deal about why newspapers are dying and why not many people will cry at their funerals.

Neither of these things is likely to happen, of course, so the daily paper as we know it is going to ride off into the sunset. Can we survive it? The common wisdom says that we need the real, boots-on-the-ground reporting that typically only newspapers provide, and I certainly agree that leaving the job of serious newsgathering in the hands of the Big Three cable newsers would be a national catastrophe.

But journalism seems to me to be a pretty irrepressible profession. As long as there are people who want to know what powerful interests are doing, there will be a market for journalists. Serious People will no doubt bemoan the splintering of news into a battle of partisan bomb-throwers, but, lest we forget, newspapers got their start as rival pamphleteers. Besides, that paradigm hardly sounds worse than the current stale MO of massaging the news to not offend its powerful patrons.

The fear decade

The Nation -- Jobless in America

Remember the halcyon days of Bedwetter Nation when we were all so terrified of the thought that some guy in a turban would blow up our grain silo in the middle of nowhere that it became the central issue of the 2004 election?  Man, weren't those the days.  You'd almost think such things were put up as a distraction to keep the public in perpetual fear and, more germanely, keep them unaware of things they ought to rightfully be afraid of, such as how their consumer-driven lifestyle--better known as "defeating the terrorists by shopping"--was built on a foundation of sand. 

Ah well, I suppose it's going to be hard to attack Iran now.  Fear of foreign governments we don't understand just seems rather flimsy by comparison.  

Obligatory Oscar post

Nothin' beats idle speculation on meaningless awards adjudicated in inscrutable fashion. Let's take a look. My uneducated guesses in bold, as always.

Best Picture

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

After a couple years of taking a few risks, the academy returns to tradition by delivering a slate of pictures written and produced to be Oscar bait. Genre-hopping gadfly Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" looks like a slight favorite from a very uninspiring crop. Well, not every year can be 2007. And hey, that's a funny Forrest Gump parody, right?

Best Director

There's no need to retype the nominees here, as they're the same five films as above. I'm not a film expert, of course, but it seems that, with the admission that this category is effectively extraneous, what justification there would be to give the award to someone else? Are we to assume that direction is the only important factor to a film's success? Apparently so.

Best Actor

Richard Jenkins - "The Visitor"
Frank Langella - "Frost/Nixon"
Sean Penn - "Milk"
Brad Pitt - "Forrest Gump: The Musical"
Mickey Rourke - "The Wrestler"

Frank Langella's Nixon is pretty damn awesome, and certainly makes that film far more attractive, but he and Richard Jenkins are the plucky underdogs here. If Penn or Langella were to win--and I suspect Penn will--it would be the fourth time in five years the Best Actor Oscar would be given for a portrayal of a historical person. Imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery, it's apparently the highest form of acting as well. Who knew?

Best Actress

Anne Hathaway - "Rachel Getting Married"
Angelina Jolie - "Changeling"
Melissa Leo - "Frozen River"
Meryl Streep - "Doubt"
Kate Winslet - "The Reader"

I don't have much of a clue here. Leo is my sentimental choice, but that movie looks awfully depressing, however timely it may be. I'm leaning a bit toward Hathaway here and, for Pete's sake, let's get a DVD release of "Rachel Getting Married" already.

Best Supporting Actor

Josh Brolin - "Milk"
Robert Downey, Jr. - "Tropic Thunder"
Philip Seymour Hoffman - "Doubt"
Heath Ledger - "The Dark Knight"
Michael Shannon - "Revolutionary Road"

I think we all know what's going to happen here. I just wanted to point out that "Doubt" has four acting nominations--essentially all of its major roles--as well as a best adapted screenplay nod, but no best picture nomination. I can only assume the direction must have been terrible.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams - "Doubt"
Penelope Cruz- "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Viola Davis - "Doubt"
Taraji P. Henson - "The Curious Case of...zzzzzzz"
Marisa Tomei - "The Wrestler"

I love Adams and Tomei, largely from residual good feelings for their parts in "Junebug" and "In the Bedroom", two of my favorite movies. But I don't think "Doubt" will get shut out, and Davis, who has a smaller but more Oscar-friendly part, will walk off with it.

I'm happy to be through the acting categories. Too much typing...

Best Adapted Screenplay

Who Framed Benjamin Button?
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Milionaire
Doubt

If these titles look familiar to you by now, they should. Once again, it's the best picture nominees except with "Doubt" in place of "Milk," which is an original screenplay. Hollywood is apparently self-aware of its inability to produce much quality original work. Which isn't necessarily the case when you consider that..

Best Original Screenplay

WALL-E
Happy-Go-Lucky
Frozen River
In Bruges
Milk

...the nominees in this category would've made a fine best picture slate in their own right. I have the advantage of actually seeing "In Bruges" which was released forever ago, and it manages to be both a wickedly funny black comedy and touching tale of hitman comradeship. I'll give it some props here.

Best Foreign-Language Film

Revanche
The Class
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Departures
Waltz with Bashir

This category is always a crapshoot, as no one is ever sure quite what the rules are or whether anyone from the academy even watches the films that are nominated. "Waltz with Bashir" has been released in the US already to positive reviews, but it's predominantly animated, and that's something of an irrational threshold for the voters. I'm still taking it, though, because "The Band's Visit" was totally shafted by this category's dumb rules last year.

Best Documentary Feature

Nerakhoon
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
Man on Wire
Trouble the Water

This, of course, is the category I love to geek out on, For example, it shows how little I know about cinema that I primarily think of Werner Herzog as the guy who makes quirky, philosophical nature documentaries. Though there are always some choices out of left field and the winner often seems chosen randomly; in this case I've never heard of
Nerkhoon" or "The Garden." The other three films are highly regarded, as the feared "Doc Crash" hasn't yet arrived, at least in terms of quality pictures. "Man on Wire," less a documentary than a taut heist movie, is a head above the rest.

Shorter entire Eastern Europe

Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets (Guardian.co.uk)

• Look, new boss, old boss, etc., let's say we try that whole 'revolution' thing again.

32 flavors

I now have a blog, a Google Reader shared items feed embedded in my blog, a Twitter feed, and a Facebook profile. All of which means I now have more ways to share interesting items on the internet than there are interesting items on the internet.

What am I to do with it all?

Valentine's Day

I'm sure many of you know an old joke that goes something like this:

Person 1: Will you have sex with me for a million dollars?

Person 2:  Of course!

Person 1: Will you have sex with me for ten dollars?

Person 2:  What, do you think I'm some kind of whore?

Person 1:  We've already established that, now I'm just haggling over the price. 

From what I can gather of businesses marketing their Valentine's Day wares, most of the population apprently views its romantic relationships as a similar bargaining of goods in exchange for sex.  Should you fail to produce a bauble or widget of significant dimension, we are warned by the ad copy, and your partner may decline the transaction and, in a worst case scenario, even terminate the relationship.  

I suppose it isn't surprising that capitalist advertisers would believe such things.  It's only natural for them to see all human interactions as goods-for-goods exchanges.  And, of course, the demonstration of your personal material power is the jungle-capitalist version of a mating call.  What better way to show your fitness to survive in the current environment! 

....

That's really all I've got for the big day this year.  For a bit of a follow-up on last year's post, I recommend Deborah Cameron's talk at last year's Marxism conference in the UK "The Myths of Mars and Venus," following up Cameron's book of the same title. (h/t) 

"Now I'm no madman but that's insanity"

TV on the Radio on the TV

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

TV on the Radio - Dancing Choose

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

SIR "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*"

As you can tell, plowing through the endless, ponderous jeremiads about steroids in the mainstream press can be a tedious task. Luckily, I came across Christopher Bell's documentary "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*" at just the right time.

Bell's first film is a thoughtful, personal look at steroids and the American way. Both of Bell's brothers are bodybuilding enthusiasts who have been taking steroids most of their adult lives, and Bell effectively weaves these biographical touches into a broad examination of the country's double-secret fascination with performance-enhancing drugs. Indeed, while we claim to abhor chemical "cheating" in others, we subconsciously excuse it for ourselves. Remember the Olympics during the Cold War, when Americans scoffed at the obviously-enhanced East Bloc athletes? Turns out we were only jealous of their quality of juice.

The world of performance-enhancing drugs comes out properly muddled in Bell's film, which should rightfully leave you asking more questions than it answers. He presents voices arguing for the effectiveness of moderate steroid use, and notes that very little concrete information about the long-term effects of use is really known. Bell shows how we hand out prescriptions for human growth hormone under the guise of slowing the effects of age, and how our Air Force pilots are given amphetamine stimulants, the only scenario of its kind in the world. Even concert musicians take beta blockers to relax. And he only scratches the surface of the wildly unregulated dietary supplement industry. For a people who claim to be against chemically-enhanced performance, we sure do a lot of it.

Ultimately, it's this kind of doublethink that's necessary to hold up the illusion of the American dream. Bell recalls being a child watching an interview with Hulk Hogan in which Hogan exhorts youngsters to "work hard, say your prayers, and take your vitamins," and they, too, could get a body like his. This is a lie, of course, but it's not functionally different from the lie that America values fairness and rewards people with the honest ingenuity to earn their own way in life. We're required to keep up this belief in the national mythology in public, but behind closed doors we all know you're expected to step on fingers, cut corners, and use every cutthroat tactic you can find to crush your neighbors and win that coveted label of "successful."

Change we can...well, you know the drill

Author and labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan is running for the Hosue seat vacated by Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.  Not to understate this, but replacing Emanuel with Geoghegan is roughly like replacing Neifi Perez with Honus Wagner.  Except that it's more like signing Wagner to a minor league contract and sending him to rookie ball while promoting Perez to the starting lineup.  But anyway.  

The Interview Show: Tom Geoghegan from Ben Chandler on Vimeo.

We're not doin' this again

American sportswriters got a late Christmas present last week when a report leaked naming Alex Rodriguez as one of 104 players turning up positive for steroids during an ostensibly anonymous 2003 testing experiment.  Why, the inevitable column scolding A-Rod for his dereliction of duty to the nation's chillens as well as soiling the previously-spotless history of baseball practically writes itself.  Nevermind that the leak was probably illegal; this example of favoring of witch-hunts over procedure is a microcosm for the current American conception of justice.  

I've gone over the hysterical arguments of the steroid moralizers on this blog before, and I'm not really interested in doing it all again.  But let me try to say something new that will shed a little light on the ridiculousness of their arguments.  Almost all of the moralizers' arguments come from an alleged concern for the sanctity of the baseball record book, or poorly-faked disappointment that modern athletes lack the moral pluck of their predecessors, who, we are apparently led to believe, would have turned down the opportunity to use steroids had they existed at the time.  The latter point is profoundly idiotic, as the late great Buck O'Neil casually pointed out some years ago, but it underwrites the entire purpose of the nostalgic moralizers.  The whole kefuffle could be boiled down to "kids today ain't what they used to be." 

What we have learned is that steroid use was pretty widespread in baseball in the 90's and early 00's, which really shouldn't surprise anyone.  Their use wasn't regulated, and the risk-reward equation in the high-stakes world of professional sports logically meant a great many players would make the choice to get juiced.  But this fact also undercuts the scolds' arguments on both fronts.  It shows both that the record-breakers of the past 15 years were not, in fact, a unique breed of despicable cheater, using secret formulas to get a massive edge over all of their competition, and that the ethical choice to use steroids was not such a cut-and-dry consideration; that it might indeed have tempted even Willie, Mickey, or the Duke.  Or, heaven forbid, a sportswriter.   

See also King Kaufman.  

(Also, if you want to be conspiratorially minded, note that this story broke the week after the Super Bowl.  The NFL, of course, continues to escape virtually unscrutinized in the public hysteria about PEDs.)

Flugelhorns!

Beirut on "The Late Show"

Because I'm always late for everything...

I'm just now getting around to posting Matt Taibbi's second gutting of execrable neoliberal shill Thomas Friedman. (In case you missed it, here's the first.) Taibbi is particularly incredulous at Friedman's sudden conversion to conservationism.

Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a “Green Revolution”? Well, he’ll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.

Much of the discussion I've read about this article concerns whether Friedman's personal hypocrisy is especially relevant, with many liberals comparing this line of argument to similar red herrings of Al Gore having a big house or John Edwards talking about poverty while getting $400 haircuts. And, in a strictly logical sense, it isn't pertinent. But all three of these gentlemen cast themselves public spokesperson charged with convincing others about the gravity of these problems, taking a "consumption for me but not for thee" approach wins them no favors.

Anyway, Friedman has bigger problems. Taibbi kicks it through the uprights.

But whatever, let’s concede the point, forget about the crazy metaphors for a moment, and look at the actual content of Hot, Flat and Crowded. Many people have rightly seen this new greenish pseudo-progressive tract as an ideological departure from Friedman’s previous works, which were all virtually identical exercises in bald greed-worship and capitalist tent-pitching. Approach-and-rhetoric wise, however, it’s the same old Friedman, a tireless social scientist whose research methods mainly include lunching, reading road signs, and watching people board airplanes.

Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman’s stirring experience of seeing IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot,Flat and Crowded is a book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs (on global warming allowing him more winter golf days:“I will still take advantage of it—but I no longer think of it as something I got for free”), looks at Burger King signs (upon seeing a “nightmarish neon blur” of KFC, BK and McDonald’s signs in Texas, he realizes: “We’re on a fool’s errand”), and reads bumper stickers (the “Osama Loves your SUV” sticker he read turns into the thesis of his “Fill ‘er up with Dictators” chapter). This is Friedman’s life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee’s signs.

Full of win.

Prediction

Within the next 25 years, a running play will be as rare of a sight in a football game as a forward pass was in the first half of the 20th century. 

It's not going to go away easily, of course.  Coaches, especially in the professional ranks, will cling to the running play out of dedication to traditionalism and muscular militaristic bromides about proper football.  But, given the current state of the rulebook and the skills of modern players, it is going to happen.