By Marc Jampole
With the Supreme Court considering multiple challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 next week, Progressive Populist readers might want to delve into the long-term history of health care reform in the United States. If so, there is no better place to go than Paul Starr’s recent Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar Struggle over Health Care Reform, which traces health care reform from the earliest proposals for government-sponsored health insurance just before and during World War I.
Starr is without a doubt the guy to tackle the subject. Since its 1984 publication, his Social Transformation of American Medicine has become established not just as the seminal work in the narrow field of health care, but as one of the very most important books of American social history. Since then, Starr has taught, conducted historical research into both health care and the media and served as a senior health care advisor for Bill Clinton. He is co-editor of The American Prospect.
Here are some of the insights that I gleaned from reading Remedy and Reaction:
A lost golden moment
There was a golden moment when all the stars were aligned for a major overall of the healthcare system which would have ensured that virtually every American had healthcare insurance. Both Republicans and Democrats pretty much agreed on what to do, the various constituencies such as insurers, physicians and the public were either on board or not opposed and the president in charge supported the idea and knew how to get things done. Unfortunately, the president was Richard Nixon and a potentially watershed moment drowned in the Watergate scandal.
Mitt Romney's important role
Starr documents that the Affordable Care Act is profoundly the child of the successful Massachusetts plan that Governor Mitt Romney competently shepherded to passage and then efficiently implemented. The federal plan is derived from the same philosophy and using pretty much the same set of strategies and tactics as the Massachusetts plan. Starr also points out that Romney did not talk about healthcare reform during his gubernatorial campaign, but once in office he rolled up his sleeves and displayed enormous competence. Starr doesn’t say it, but I will: the Romney disavowal of his landmark accomplishment strongly suggests that Mitt is a value-free technocrat whose idea of being in charge is to implement competently the desires of his backers, whatever that means. By repudiating his own good works, Romney transforms himself from a major statesman to the ethical equivalent of an Albert Speer, that wonderfully brilliant architect and thinker who dedicated himself to accomplishing the will of his backers.
Not a socialist plot
Starr shows that the basic philosophy behind Obama’s plan from the beginning has been to cover more people and cut the cost of coverage while taking a pragmatic approach that does not profoundly upset the current complicated system that mixes public and private solutions and funding sources. Its dependence on private insurance and patient cost sharing derive from Republican ideas. So is the idea of not creating a “public option,” but instead establishing insurance exchanges, which are marketplaces for insurance for those not covered by government programs or their employers.
Like all compromises, there is something for everyone to hate and love about the Affordable Care Act. But Starr, who would probably have preferred a more European style system, brings up a stunning fact that should win the day with many centrists and progressives: The impact over Obama’s healthcare reform over 10 years will be to increase total healthcare costs in the United States by a worst-case 1 percent, while providing coverage to 32 million more people, or a little over 10% of the American population. By that math, the cost per person for health care goes down, which means that by applying some quick fixes to the current system, we cover many more people and at a lower cost.
It’s an imperfect law that doesn’t address all the challenges of perfecting an imperfect system, but it is nevertheless landmark legislation. Let’s hope the most right-wing Supreme Court since the Dred Scott days agrees.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
For Mitt Romney, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to win
The core of Romney’s big speech in Chicago yesterday was his accusation that the Obama Administration has pursued “an assault on freedom” with new business regulations and higher taxes. The expression freedom is bandied about a lot, especially by Republicans bewailing its imminent loss—economic freedom, personal freedom, religious freedom. But what about freedom from breathing dirty air? The freedom from hunger? The freedom from economic insecurity? The freedom from disease?
We can pose both sides of most issues as a test of freedom. In the days of the civil rights movement, it was the freedom to sit in a restaurant versus the freedom to deny service in a business establishment. The current flap about contraception pits the freedom of women versus the freedom of a religion to discriminate against women.
Of course, the more we apply the word “freedom,” the more it loses all meaning. And that’s the point!
The value of any word to a propagandist or ideologue increases as the meaning of the word becomes more amorphous, harder to pin down. And there is no more amorphous word than freedom.
The first definition of freedom in Merriam-Webster’s is “the quality or state of being free: the quality or state of not being coerced or constrained by fate, necessity, or circumstances in one’s choices or actions.” The entry, however, goes on for many paragraphs and gives many different meanings to the word. The synonyms for freedom, some contradictory, suggest how easy it is for propagandists to find a meaning to fit the moment: “self-determination,” “independence,” “liberty,” “facility,” “ease”,” right,” “privilege,” “franchise,” and even “generosity” (which is not the essence of the freedom from taxation that Romney would like America’s wealthiest to continue enjoying). Then there’s Kris Kristofferson’s definition, made famous by Janis Joplin: another word for nothing left to lose.
One anecdote on the use of freedom outside the political realm should illuminate the power of words that lose meaning. A few years ago at a family Bat Mitzvah in California, the rabbi performing the service said in his sermon that “Torah is freedom. The more Torah, the more freedom.”
It was of course, a completely false statement. The Torah, which comprises the first five books of the Jewish Bible, does include many well-loved biblical stories and all of the ones told by Jews, Christians and Moslems alike. But the Torah is primarily a book of laws, 613 to be precise, whose purpose is to restrain the behavior of people, i.e., take away their freedom. Thou shall not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. These are the birds you should regard as unclean. According to the Jewish tradition, the Torah is the source for every Jewish law, even those not mentioned in it. That includes all the laws that take away freedoms related to eating, traveling and mixing the sexes in social situations.
These laws take freedom away from people. The more Torah, the less freedom. And yet so many of the congregants smiled in agreement when the rabbi equated a book of mostly proscriptive laws with freedom.
Whether he knew it or not, the rabbi was using yet another definition of freedom. Freedom is also that feeling of supreme exhilaration and limitless power that people describe as “feeling free.” I remember when I was much younger and religious, I would sometimes read the Torah and get a sudden feeling of being free, like the feeling when I used to take my feet off the pedals and glide my bicycle down a steep hill, or the feeling when I quit one job for another one that paid 36% more. Many TV commercials will say their products help attain this “feeling of freedom.”
From kindergarten on, we are indoctrinated to the importance of freedom and “the feeling of freedom” at school and in the mass media. We are taught that the United States was founded to promote freedom (at the time, of course, only for white adult males who owned property) and that the United States is a beacon of freedom to the world. One of the major themes in our history is the gradual spread of freedom through increased freedom for our citizens and in the foreign lands that the myth says we have saved. We claim that every war we fight is to protect our freedom or the freedom of the people whose land we are invading, or both. Thinking about American freedom can swell the chests of many of us with an almost swooning pride. We have learned to feel the “freedom feeling” whenever we consider our history, culture and laws.
It is this definition of freedom—this feeling—to which Romney appeals when he talks about economic freedom. When he says the policies of his party will increase freedom, he wants people’s hearts to swell with the feeling of freedom and then recoil with the fear at the thought of lost freedom because of environmental regulation, healthcare reform or raising taxes on the wealthy. He never mentions that his tax freedom results in less money for society to help people be free from disease, from ignorance, from hunger, from the helplessness of old age and from the frustration of poverty. He never mentions that his freedom from regulation makes people less free from business scams, unsafe products, dirty air and infectious water.
Many philosophers believe that the essence of civilization is restraint. Learning restraint—limiting your freedom for your future good, the good of others or the common good—is at the heart of the process of growing up from infancy into a mature member of society.
Romney and the rest of the Republicans don’t really want absolute freedom in the economic realm. They just believe that our laws should protect the rights of individuals and organizations to do as they please (outside the sexual realm) as opposed to protecting the rights of people to have the basic human dignities of food, health care, education and the opportunity to make a living and improve their lot. Those who say that unfettered economic freedom enables more people to enjoy all the other freedoms are merely expressing their beliefs, which they constantly and inaccurately present as a fact-based theory. History, however, is filled of examples of how taking away an economic freedom—the freedom to hire children, the freedom to dump toxic chemicals into rivers, the freedom to charge what you like because you have a monopoly, the freedom to pay someone less than minimum wage or the freedom to prevent union organizing—has improved society and helped the economy. It’s one set of rights versus another. We can also call them freedoms, but once we do, the concept of freedom loses its meaning.
In the realm of political campaigning, “freedom” has become something one accuses the opponent of not loving/having/protecting/cherishing. With name-calling, we say, “you’re this,” but freedom in the Republican’s sense is conjured only in its absence as a characteristic. Saying the opponent or the idea is against freedom is a highly sophisticated form of name-calling, dependent not just on conflating different concepts of freedom, but also on a body of unproved assertions and an almost autonomic emotional reaction.
But emotions aside, keep it in mind that when Romney says the election is about freedom, he means the freedom of the economic and social class he represents to continue pulling more and more wealth from everyone else through continued low taxes for themselves and low wages and declining government benefits for everyone else.
We can pose both sides of most issues as a test of freedom. In the days of the civil rights movement, it was the freedom to sit in a restaurant versus the freedom to deny service in a business establishment. The current flap about contraception pits the freedom of women versus the freedom of a religion to discriminate against women.
Of course, the more we apply the word “freedom,” the more it loses all meaning. And that’s the point!
The value of any word to a propagandist or ideologue increases as the meaning of the word becomes more amorphous, harder to pin down. And there is no more amorphous word than freedom.
The first definition of freedom in Merriam-Webster’s is “the quality or state of being free: the quality or state of not being coerced or constrained by fate, necessity, or circumstances in one’s choices or actions.” The entry, however, goes on for many paragraphs and gives many different meanings to the word. The synonyms for freedom, some contradictory, suggest how easy it is for propagandists to find a meaning to fit the moment: “self-determination,” “independence,” “liberty,” “facility,” “ease”,” right,” “privilege,” “franchise,” and even “generosity” (which is not the essence of the freedom from taxation that Romney would like America’s wealthiest to continue enjoying). Then there’s Kris Kristofferson’s definition, made famous by Janis Joplin: another word for nothing left to lose.
One anecdote on the use of freedom outside the political realm should illuminate the power of words that lose meaning. A few years ago at a family Bat Mitzvah in California, the rabbi performing the service said in his sermon that “Torah is freedom. The more Torah, the more freedom.”
It was of course, a completely false statement. The Torah, which comprises the first five books of the Jewish Bible, does include many well-loved biblical stories and all of the ones told by Jews, Christians and Moslems alike. But the Torah is primarily a book of laws, 613 to be precise, whose purpose is to restrain the behavior of people, i.e., take away their freedom. Thou shall not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. These are the birds you should regard as unclean. According to the Jewish tradition, the Torah is the source for every Jewish law, even those not mentioned in it. That includes all the laws that take away freedoms related to eating, traveling and mixing the sexes in social situations.
These laws take freedom away from people. The more Torah, the less freedom. And yet so many of the congregants smiled in agreement when the rabbi equated a book of mostly proscriptive laws with freedom.
Whether he knew it or not, the rabbi was using yet another definition of freedom. Freedom is also that feeling of supreme exhilaration and limitless power that people describe as “feeling free.” I remember when I was much younger and religious, I would sometimes read the Torah and get a sudden feeling of being free, like the feeling when I used to take my feet off the pedals and glide my bicycle down a steep hill, or the feeling when I quit one job for another one that paid 36% more. Many TV commercials will say their products help attain this “feeling of freedom.”
From kindergarten on, we are indoctrinated to the importance of freedom and “the feeling of freedom” at school and in the mass media. We are taught that the United States was founded to promote freedom (at the time, of course, only for white adult males who owned property) and that the United States is a beacon of freedom to the world. One of the major themes in our history is the gradual spread of freedom through increased freedom for our citizens and in the foreign lands that the myth says we have saved. We claim that every war we fight is to protect our freedom or the freedom of the people whose land we are invading, or both. Thinking about American freedom can swell the chests of many of us with an almost swooning pride. We have learned to feel the “freedom feeling” whenever we consider our history, culture and laws.
It is this definition of freedom—this feeling—to which Romney appeals when he talks about economic freedom. When he says the policies of his party will increase freedom, he wants people’s hearts to swell with the feeling of freedom and then recoil with the fear at the thought of lost freedom because of environmental regulation, healthcare reform or raising taxes on the wealthy. He never mentions that his tax freedom results in less money for society to help people be free from disease, from ignorance, from hunger, from the helplessness of old age and from the frustration of poverty. He never mentions that his freedom from regulation makes people less free from business scams, unsafe products, dirty air and infectious water.
Many philosophers believe that the essence of civilization is restraint. Learning restraint—limiting your freedom for your future good, the good of others or the common good—is at the heart of the process of growing up from infancy into a mature member of society.
Romney and the rest of the Republicans don’t really want absolute freedom in the economic realm. They just believe that our laws should protect the rights of individuals and organizations to do as they please (outside the sexual realm) as opposed to protecting the rights of people to have the basic human dignities of food, health care, education and the opportunity to make a living and improve their lot. Those who say that unfettered economic freedom enables more people to enjoy all the other freedoms are merely expressing their beliefs, which they constantly and inaccurately present as a fact-based theory. History, however, is filled of examples of how taking away an economic freedom—the freedom to hire children, the freedom to dump toxic chemicals into rivers, the freedom to charge what you like because you have a monopoly, the freedom to pay someone less than minimum wage or the freedom to prevent union organizing—has improved society and helped the economy. It’s one set of rights versus another. We can also call them freedoms, but once we do, the concept of freedom loses its meaning.
In the realm of political campaigning, “freedom” has become something one accuses the opponent of not loving/having/protecting/cherishing. With name-calling, we say, “you’re this,” but freedom in the Republican’s sense is conjured only in its absence as a characteristic. Saying the opponent or the idea is against freedom is a highly sophisticated form of name-calling, dependent not just on conflating different concepts of freedom, but also on a body of unproved assertions and an almost autonomic emotional reaction.
But emotions aside, keep it in mind that when Romney says the election is about freedom, he means the freedom of the economic and social class he represents to continue pulling more and more wealth from everyone else through continued low taxes for themselves and low wages and declining government benefits for everyone else.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Selections from the April 1, 2012 issue
COVER/Steve Kornacki
Rush poisons GOP brand
EDITORIAL
Civil liberties on the frontier
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Climate change strikes home
DISPATCHES p. 5
Current TV adds talkers to morning lineup;
Rush ads suspended;
Super PACs dominate;
Limbaugh's not the only one;
Super PACs dominate, are hated;
Kaptur emerges from showdown with Kucinich;
Work hours point to continued job growth;
Mitt ‘clear favorite’ of lobbyists;
Mitt declines Medicare, embraces vouchers for seniors;
Stuck paying medical bills of woman who sued Obamacare;
Another con talking point falls apart;
Medicare growth slowing;
Feds deny Texas women's health money;
Senate rejects Keystone XL pipeline order;
GOP blocks judge nominees in a snit ...
ROGER BYBEE
Obama weighs ins and outs of ‘insourcing’
HAL CROWTHER
Meaner — and dumber — than rats
JOSEPH B. ATKINS
GOP ‘zombies’ follow ALEC’s script
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Bone marrow transplant and the market
SAM URETSKY
Republicans practice old-time religion
WAYNE O’LEARY
Obamacare meets reality
N. GUNASEKARAN
Arab Spring avoids corporate rule
JOHN BUELL
Colleges run debt peonage business
DON ROLLINS
Evangelicals, Catholics strange bedfellows
ROB PATTERSON
French were right about Jerry Lewis
POPULIST PICKS
Coma ruins Neeson’s week
and more from The Progressive Populist
According to Mickey D’s,the hot spot for octogenarians to hook up for romance is Mickey D’s
By Marc Jampole
For the first time ever, the fast food version of Siva the Destroyer, AKA McDonald’s, is going after senior citizens—and I don’t mean newly AARPed 50-year-olds, but those in their late 70s and early 80s.
I saw this commercial for the first time during one of the many breaks during the last two minutes of an NCAA tournament game this past weekend.
The commercial unfolds as a series of vignettes, with quick fade-outs and fade-ins to tell us that it’s another day of the week. In each vignette, the same two elderly gentlemen—one bald--stare at what a former employee of mine once called a “senior babe,” an extremely attractive woman in her late 60s or early 70s. They make juvenile comments about how the bald one wants to go over and try to meet her. As far as attracting the attention of unknown members of the opposite sex goes, these guys don’t seem as if they’re out of practice, but rather as if they never really were in practice.
In every vignette, the would-be lover, his intended and the friend are drinking coffee or a special McDonald’s coffee drink—you know, sweetened coffee topped with a pyramid of white whipped froth consisting of corn syrup and dairy products, topped by a few rivulets of a thicker, less airy corn syrup tinted with food coloring and a roux of natural and artificial flavorings. They’re called McCafé drinks.
In the last vignette the potential suitor arrives at the table wearing an awful fitting toupee which transforms him into a pathetic clown. Meanwhile a bearded man, looking slightly younger and spryer than the toupéed jester, approaches the senior babe. Brandishing his McCafé drink as a peacock shows his tail, he asks if he can sit at her table. Her eyes light up and they begin an animated conversation. We cut back to the two oldest adolescent males in the jungle. The friend says the would-be lothario should have put the wig on his chin instead of his head. Before the McDonald’s music and logo, the scorned lover mugs pathetically with the toupee in a way that made me feel embarrassed for and angry at the guy at the same time.
What do we learn from this commercial?
We learn that senior centers, libraries, venues for volunteer activities, dances, houses of worship and family gatherings are not the best places to meet women when you are of a certain age. Instead, you have to hang at Mickey D’s on a regular basis. Of course, that’s a completely false impression. True enough, there must be groups of seniors who use McDonald’s to meet and schmooze once a week, or maybe every day. But what happens in this commercial is slightly different. It’s hanging at Mickey D’s to hook up. And what I’m saying is that the scene rings more false than cute because there are so many better places for seniors to meet and match nowadays.
We also learn in this commercial that the relationship marketplace for straight men in their 70s and 80s is pretty grim. In a turnaround of Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” (to which these characters would have probably danced decades ago), it’s three boys for every girl. Of course, that’s false, too. Death and illness give men the numbers advantage when it comes to late-in-life love. The older the age group, the more eligible women there are per eligible man. Neither Target nor Wal-Mart would ever commit such a demographic sin in one of their commercials. When they depict a demographic group in an ad, everything is right in every detail.
Target and Wal-Mart would also never make mean fun of its customers, although they both will “make fun with” their customers, as McDonald’s has also done through the years. “Making fun with” includes such scenes as the wife letting the husband think he’s making the buying decision; the couple arguing about what to do with the savings they have from buying something; the kids trying to use smart phone technology to trick dad into buying more treats. These are gentle teases which affirm the attractiveness of the target audiences. But depicting an octogenarian as an infantilized Pagliacci is inherently insulting to the characters and by implication to the demographic they represent, which is why the scene seems more uncomfortable than cute,
despite the peppy McDonald’s “ba-da-da-da-da” playing brightly in the background.
The irony is that whoever worked on this spot started with the right ideas. McDonald’s strategy to go after senior citizens is a good one, since the original denizens of Big Macs are baby boomers now retiring and aging.
To connect the consumption of a product with an emotion is a staple strategy of advertising, one that McDonald’s has pursued with a vengeance for decades, especially in spots featuring African-Americans and young adults. And as we have seen in many McDonald’s spots through the years, what better emotion can there be than romantic attraction? Moreover, one unifying theme shared by all McDonald’s spots for specialty coffee drinks over the past few years is an attitude best described as hip cuteness, and what could be cuter and hipper at the same time than seniors in love?
On paper, the spot has it all: It connects a product to an emotion, focuses on a target market that is of growing importance, and has thematic and design similarities with other McDonald’s spots that will help enhance the overall brand message that the company tries to make in all of its advertising.
Somewhere along the way, though, these strategies led to the uncomfortable and unrealistic mess we see in the commercial. Because it presents a reality that doesn’t exist and one in which the representative of the target market is humiliated, I’m certain that the commercial will fail with that target market.
But I’m betting it plays well with the enormous youth market for coffee drinks, i.e., the young and slightly unsophisticated who will accept the McCafé drink as a cheaper substitute for a beverage from a real coffee house or that corporate imitation known as Starbucks. The humor is a highly sanitized version of the crude and somewhat humiliating humor of a lot of youth movies. Young men and women can relate to the awkward dilemma of a boy wanting to pick up a girl in a fast food restaurant but being afraid to ask.
And there can be no doubt about it. That’s not Viagra or water from the mythic fountain of youth that the bearded elderly gentleman has in his hand that makes him so attractive to the senior babe. It’s a McCafé! The elixir of love.
For the first time ever, the fast food version of Siva the Destroyer, AKA McDonald’s, is going after senior citizens—and I don’t mean newly AARPed 50-year-olds, but those in their late 70s and early 80s.
I saw this commercial for the first time during one of the many breaks during the last two minutes of an NCAA tournament game this past weekend.
The commercial unfolds as a series of vignettes, with quick fade-outs and fade-ins to tell us that it’s another day of the week. In each vignette, the same two elderly gentlemen—one bald--stare at what a former employee of mine once called a “senior babe,” an extremely attractive woman in her late 60s or early 70s. They make juvenile comments about how the bald one wants to go over and try to meet her. As far as attracting the attention of unknown members of the opposite sex goes, these guys don’t seem as if they’re out of practice, but rather as if they never really were in practice.
In every vignette, the would-be lover, his intended and the friend are drinking coffee or a special McDonald’s coffee drink—you know, sweetened coffee topped with a pyramid of white whipped froth consisting of corn syrup and dairy products, topped by a few rivulets of a thicker, less airy corn syrup tinted with food coloring and a roux of natural and artificial flavorings. They’re called McCafé drinks.
In the last vignette the potential suitor arrives at the table wearing an awful fitting toupee which transforms him into a pathetic clown. Meanwhile a bearded man, looking slightly younger and spryer than the toupéed jester, approaches the senior babe. Brandishing his McCafé drink as a peacock shows his tail, he asks if he can sit at her table. Her eyes light up and they begin an animated conversation. We cut back to the two oldest adolescent males in the jungle. The friend says the would-be lothario should have put the wig on his chin instead of his head. Before the McDonald’s music and logo, the scorned lover mugs pathetically with the toupee in a way that made me feel embarrassed for and angry at the guy at the same time.
What do we learn from this commercial?
We learn that senior centers, libraries, venues for volunteer activities, dances, houses of worship and family gatherings are not the best places to meet women when you are of a certain age. Instead, you have to hang at Mickey D’s on a regular basis. Of course, that’s a completely false impression. True enough, there must be groups of seniors who use McDonald’s to meet and schmooze once a week, or maybe every day. But what happens in this commercial is slightly different. It’s hanging at Mickey D’s to hook up. And what I’m saying is that the scene rings more false than cute because there are so many better places for seniors to meet and match nowadays.
We also learn in this commercial that the relationship marketplace for straight men in their 70s and 80s is pretty grim. In a turnaround of Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” (to which these characters would have probably danced decades ago), it’s three boys for every girl. Of course, that’s false, too. Death and illness give men the numbers advantage when it comes to late-in-life love. The older the age group, the more eligible women there are per eligible man. Neither Target nor Wal-Mart would ever commit such a demographic sin in one of their commercials. When they depict a demographic group in an ad, everything is right in every detail.
Target and Wal-Mart would also never make mean fun of its customers, although they both will “make fun with” their customers, as McDonald’s has also done through the years. “Making fun with” includes such scenes as the wife letting the husband think he’s making the buying decision; the couple arguing about what to do with the savings they have from buying something; the kids trying to use smart phone technology to trick dad into buying more treats. These are gentle teases which affirm the attractiveness of the target audiences. But depicting an octogenarian as an infantilized Pagliacci is inherently insulting to the characters and by implication to the demographic they represent, which is why the scene seems more uncomfortable than cute,
despite the peppy McDonald’s “ba-da-da-da-da” playing brightly in the background.
The irony is that whoever worked on this spot started with the right ideas. McDonald’s strategy to go after senior citizens is a good one, since the original denizens of Big Macs are baby boomers now retiring and aging.
To connect the consumption of a product with an emotion is a staple strategy of advertising, one that McDonald’s has pursued with a vengeance for decades, especially in spots featuring African-Americans and young adults. And as we have seen in many McDonald’s spots through the years, what better emotion can there be than romantic attraction? Moreover, one unifying theme shared by all McDonald’s spots for specialty coffee drinks over the past few years is an attitude best described as hip cuteness, and what could be cuter and hipper at the same time than seniors in love?
On paper, the spot has it all: It connects a product to an emotion, focuses on a target market that is of growing importance, and has thematic and design similarities with other McDonald’s spots that will help enhance the overall brand message that the company tries to make in all of its advertising.
Somewhere along the way, though, these strategies led to the uncomfortable and unrealistic mess we see in the commercial. Because it presents a reality that doesn’t exist and one in which the representative of the target market is humiliated, I’m certain that the commercial will fail with that target market.
But I’m betting it plays well with the enormous youth market for coffee drinks, i.e., the young and slightly unsophisticated who will accept the McCafé drink as a cheaper substitute for a beverage from a real coffee house or that corporate imitation known as Starbucks. The humor is a highly sanitized version of the crude and somewhat humiliating humor of a lot of youth movies. Young men and women can relate to the awkward dilemma of a boy wanting to pick up a girl in a fast food restaurant but being afraid to ask.
And there can be no doubt about it. That’s not Viagra or water from the mythic fountain of youth that the bearded elderly gentleman has in his hand that makes him so attractive to the senior babe. It’s a McCafé! The elixir of love.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
NY Times article shows that wealthy get more in tax breaks than
Bravo to Eduardo Porter for his article titles “A Nation of Too Many Tax Breaks” on the front page of today’s New York Times’ business section.
Porter demonstrates that while the poor do get more in government benefits, the rich more than make up for it in the tax breaks that enable them to reduce the taxes they pay.
At the heart of the article are two sets of bar and circle graphs. One set depicts the average that each family in various quintiles (fifths of the country) get in government benefits such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, housing assistance and food stamps. The other set depicts the amount families in each quintile save on average on what they pay in taxes because of tax breaks.
Just looking at the bar graph is enough to see that when you add up tax breaks and benefits, the wealthy make out like bandits. We can also see that we give more tax breaks than benefits, so if we ended tax breaks, we could fund the benefits and make a dent in the deficit.
But because Porter never bothers to actually add the totals, we never see the hidden story: the middle class are getting screwed, not by the poor as Santorum, Gingrich and their ilk imply, but by the wealthy.
Here’s the math:
By not adding the totals, Porter misses the fact that the middle class get so little from the deal. The middle class—those in middle fifth and second highest quintiles--get about 24% less in benefits and tax breaks than the poor do. But the wealthiest fifth get more than twice as much as the middle class do in benefits and tax breaks, and 80% more than the poor and near poor.
When we look at these numbers, I don’t see how anyone could be angry at the poor. No religion or culture that I have ever encountered ever showed anything but charity for the least fortunate among us, which makes me wonder why anyone lucky enough to be part of the middle two-fifths of the country would begrudge the poor $4,000 a year from the collective resources of the government, especially since the fund is always earmarked for specific needs, such as for food, health care or education, or vulnerable populations such as the elderly and the disabled.
The true target of ire should be the wealthiest fifth, who are better off than everyone else and yet get the lion’s share of the government’s largess.
I’m guessing that anyone in the middle who does the math (or reads OpEdge) will gain more sympathy for the position of the Occupy Movement that posits a class war waged by the wealthiest 1% of the population against everyone else. Or at least they might if the Occupy Movement could make the transition that the Tea Party movement did and become a party that has positions and supports candidates.
When we look at these numbers, I don’t see how anyone could be angry at the poor. No religion or culture that I have ever encountered ever showed anything but charity for the least fortunate among us, which makes me wonder why anyone lucky enough to be part of the middle two-fifths of the country would begrudge the poor $4,000 a year from the collective resources of the government, especially since the fund is always earmarked for specific needs, such as for food, health care or education, or vulnerable populations such as the elderly and the disabled.
The true target of ire should be the wealthiest fifth, who are better off than everyone else and yet get the lion’s share of the government’s largess.
I’m guessing that anyone in the middle who does the math (or reads OpEdge) will gain more sympathy for the position of the Occupy Movement that posits a class war waged by the wealthiest 1% of the population against everyone else. Or at least they might if the Occupy Movement could make the transition that the Tea Party movement did and become a party that has positions and supports candidates.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Television commercials enter our cultural pantheon next to Shakespeare and Lincoln
By Marc Jampole
It was only yesterday that I first saw the new TV commercial starring Mean Joe Green, a professional football player from the 1970s. The commercial, for a laundry detergent, parodies a TV spot that Mean Joe did in 1979 that makes all the lists of top 10 or Top 25 American TV commercials of all time.
In the original spot, a young boy calls to Mean Joe as the athlete trudges through a stadium tunnel after a game. The boy hands Joe a soft drink and Joe respond by tossing him his jersey.
In the new spot, it’s a housewife, played to soccer-and-bake-sale-mom-next-door perfection by sometimes raunchy comic actress Amy Sedaris. The camera angle exaggerates the difference in size between the characters much more than the original spot did. The housewife tosses a bottle of the detergent to Mean Joe, dressed in uniform and looking very sharp and buff—for a guy in his mid-60’s. When Mean Joe lobs his jersey to her, she smells it, makes a disgusted face and throws it right back to him.
A great spoof.
TV commercials have spoofed TV shows, movies and other art forms for decades. And parody sometimes enters into the revival of an old ad concept like Mr. Clean, Joe Isuzu or Charlie the Tuna, which are all cases of a TV commercial imitating itself.
This laundry soap commercial marks the first time, however, that I remember seeing a television commercial that mocks another television commercial for a different product. (If I’m wrong, please tweet me about it.)
What does it say about our culture when to understand and appreciate a television commercial, you need to know about another television commercial? One that’s 30 years old!
Mass culture chews up images and concepts quickly—be it fictional characters like Robin Hood, Mr. Spock or Jason Bourne; historical figures such as the short Napoleon or Washington crossing the Delaware; sayings like “where’s the beef?” or “I’ll be back”; real incidents like the Spitzer scandal; fictional ones like movie plots; or new products, especially strange ones. Situation comedies, comedy sketches, TV commercials, spoof movies, newspaper headlines, catalogue captions, advertising slogans, postmodern art and book titles are just some of the communication forms that cannibalize cultural references.
Cannibalization of cultural iconography occurs in many ways: Over time, we expropriate and distort the content of a cultural icon, as when Robin Hood becomes an anti-tax conservative or Martin Luther King comes to represent general service to the community. We make references to cultural icons, as when James Joyce structures Ulysses after Homer’s epic or when a secondary character in the “American Pie” movies calls himself the “Sherminator.” We morph them, as when the Terminator and Joe Isuzu become good guys. We take them out of context and thereby change their meaning, as Andy Warhol did with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.
The surest sign that an event, person, character or saying has permanently entered the public collective consciousness is that it has undergone a large number of these and other processes of cultural expropriation over years. It’s one thing for Johnny Carson to make fun of the Mean Joe Green soft drink commercial in 1982. It’s quite another to recycle the concept as a homage-cum-parody 30 years later to sell suds to housewives whose ages range from 30-65.
What would they say, those like Harold Bloom who put together lists of the great literature and other cultural artifacts with which every culturally literate person should be familiar? At first glance, you might think that they would probably frown dyspeptically at the symbolism of a TV commercial becoming as much a part of our cultural heritage as Huckleberry Finn or the founding of Jamestown.
To do so would be to stake out new ground in the culture wars. For centuries, the argument has been between high and low culture, between Latin versus the vernacular, painting versus pottery, Beethoven versus folk songs and the Beach Boys. But a television commercial is something different from both high culture and low culture. It represents commercial culture, and the cultural dictators of all ages, especially the conservative ones, have tended to warmly embrace commercial culture. The Aeneid, a piece of propaganda purchased by the Roman Emperor Augustus, makes all the lists of the cultural essentials. We see poster advertisements by Toulouse-Lautrec, the Russian Constructivists and others hanging in art museums all over the world. Why not a TV ad?
Rather than speculate on whether the Mean Joe Green laundry soap commercial marks a watershed in what defines cultural literacy, let’s have a little fun by imagining commercials in which the following well-known fictional ad characters pitched these other products. I’m not going to sketch out the commercials, only the characters and products. I think everyone can use their imagination:
So imagine if these four characters---Mikey who will try anything; the slimy Joe Isuzu; that little old lady shouting “Where’s the beef?” and Madge the wise and practical manicurist…
…were in their typical TV spot environments, but selling any of the following products—hospital systems; fast food; Wal-Mart; potato chips; financial planning; beer; or prescription drugs, say for depression or erectile dysfunction.
I especially like Madge recommending a beer and Mikey trying Cymbalta. Joe Isuzu shilling a hospital isn’t bad either.
It was only yesterday that I first saw the new TV commercial starring Mean Joe Green, a professional football player from the 1970s. The commercial, for a laundry detergent, parodies a TV spot that Mean Joe did in 1979 that makes all the lists of top 10 or Top 25 American TV commercials of all time.
In the original spot, a young boy calls to Mean Joe as the athlete trudges through a stadium tunnel after a game. The boy hands Joe a soft drink and Joe respond by tossing him his jersey.
In the new spot, it’s a housewife, played to soccer-and-bake-sale-mom-next-door perfection by sometimes raunchy comic actress Amy Sedaris. The camera angle exaggerates the difference in size between the characters much more than the original spot did. The housewife tosses a bottle of the detergent to Mean Joe, dressed in uniform and looking very sharp and buff—for a guy in his mid-60’s. When Mean Joe lobs his jersey to her, she smells it, makes a disgusted face and throws it right back to him.
A great spoof.
TV commercials have spoofed TV shows, movies and other art forms for decades. And parody sometimes enters into the revival of an old ad concept like Mr. Clean, Joe Isuzu or Charlie the Tuna, which are all cases of a TV commercial imitating itself.
This laundry soap commercial marks the first time, however, that I remember seeing a television commercial that mocks another television commercial for a different product. (If I’m wrong, please tweet me about it.)
What does it say about our culture when to understand and appreciate a television commercial, you need to know about another television commercial? One that’s 30 years old!
Mass culture chews up images and concepts quickly—be it fictional characters like Robin Hood, Mr. Spock or Jason Bourne; historical figures such as the short Napoleon or Washington crossing the Delaware; sayings like “where’s the beef?” or “I’ll be back”; real incidents like the Spitzer scandal; fictional ones like movie plots; or new products, especially strange ones. Situation comedies, comedy sketches, TV commercials, spoof movies, newspaper headlines, catalogue captions, advertising slogans, postmodern art and book titles are just some of the communication forms that cannibalize cultural references.
Cannibalization of cultural iconography occurs in many ways: Over time, we expropriate and distort the content of a cultural icon, as when Robin Hood becomes an anti-tax conservative or Martin Luther King comes to represent general service to the community. We make references to cultural icons, as when James Joyce structures Ulysses after Homer’s epic or when a secondary character in the “American Pie” movies calls himself the “Sherminator.” We morph them, as when the Terminator and Joe Isuzu become good guys. We take them out of context and thereby change their meaning, as Andy Warhol did with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.
The surest sign that an event, person, character or saying has permanently entered the public collective consciousness is that it has undergone a large number of these and other processes of cultural expropriation over years. It’s one thing for Johnny Carson to make fun of the Mean Joe Green soft drink commercial in 1982. It’s quite another to recycle the concept as a homage-cum-parody 30 years later to sell suds to housewives whose ages range from 30-65.
What would they say, those like Harold Bloom who put together lists of the great literature and other cultural artifacts with which every culturally literate person should be familiar? At first glance, you might think that they would probably frown dyspeptically at the symbolism of a TV commercial becoming as much a part of our cultural heritage as Huckleberry Finn or the founding of Jamestown.
To do so would be to stake out new ground in the culture wars. For centuries, the argument has been between high and low culture, between Latin versus the vernacular, painting versus pottery, Beethoven versus folk songs and the Beach Boys. But a television commercial is something different from both high culture and low culture. It represents commercial culture, and the cultural dictators of all ages, especially the conservative ones, have tended to warmly embrace commercial culture. The Aeneid, a piece of propaganda purchased by the Roman Emperor Augustus, makes all the lists of the cultural essentials. We see poster advertisements by Toulouse-Lautrec, the Russian Constructivists and others hanging in art museums all over the world. Why not a TV ad?
Rather than speculate on whether the Mean Joe Green laundry soap commercial marks a watershed in what defines cultural literacy, let’s have a little fun by imagining commercials in which the following well-known fictional ad characters pitched these other products. I’m not going to sketch out the commercials, only the characters and products. I think everyone can use their imagination:
So imagine if these four characters---Mikey who will try anything; the slimy Joe Isuzu; that little old lady shouting “Where’s the beef?” and Madge the wise and practical manicurist…
…were in their typical TV spot environments, but selling any of the following products—hospital systems; fast food; Wal-Mart; potato chips; financial planning; beer; or prescription drugs, say for depression or erectile dysfunction.
I especially like Madge recommending a beer and Mikey trying Cymbalta. Joe Isuzu shilling a hospital isn’t bad either.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Covering birth control v. ED pills illuminates what health insurance is supposed to do
By Marc Jampole
After I wondered the other day why those against health insurance covering birth control for women make no such objection to coverage of erectile dysfunction pills, several people tweeted me to uncover what they think is a fatal flaw in my argument: ED pills treat a medical condition, whereas birth control does not.
Medical condition versus no medical condition: At the heart of this distinction by those opposed to birth control for women is the idea that health insurance should not cover preventive medicine, such as annual physicals, mammograms, colonoscopies, Pap smears, mole removals, vaccines and dental check-ups. None of these tests or procedures cure anything, only prevent conditions or prevent them from becoming fatal. Imagine how much more suffering there would be in the world if polio and small pox were still running rampant through the world, or if the many early stage and pre-cancerous conditions were not caught.
To say that medical care and health insurance have as their sole goal to cure ailments is just wrong. Medicine and health insurance also prevent ailments.
The birth of a child is a wonderful thing, but only if the child is wanted. Pregnancy is always fraught with risks for both mother and child. Often women have ailments or disabilities that increase those risks to the point that pregnancy would be life-threatening. Those risks multiply for the child in unwanted pregnancies and can continue throughout childhood and beyond. Unwanted pregnancies can also lead to abortions, which, while not usually dangerous if performed under proper medical supervision, are objectionable to many people. To deny that birth control is part of preventive care requires ignoring a slew of data on women’s health issues.
Health insurers and medical professionals are always trying to figure out what and how many preventive tests, procedures and examinations are needed to keep people healthy while minimizing the unnecessary. After what must have been many studies repeatedly analyzed, most agree that covering birth control is worth the cost because it lowers total medical costs and prevents the pain and suffering of many unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
Now the other side will say that there’s another way to prevent pregnancies and unwanted abortion, the “little white aspirin pill between the knees” method, AKA abstinence. They ask, why make society pay for the personal decision to engage in sex? And of course, the same question can be asked about ED pills.
And so those opposed to coverage of birth control pills are left with a dilemma:
Republicans have latched onto the “birth control coverage” issue because they think they can use it to make other messages that will resonate with the right-wing. The overt messages have to do with government interference, especially as it involves health care, and the role of religion in the government and society. The subtext, though, entails some old-fashioned and wrong-headed ideas about the role of women in society.
After I wondered the other day why those against health insurance covering birth control for women make no such objection to coverage of erectile dysfunction pills, several people tweeted me to uncover what they think is a fatal flaw in my argument: ED pills treat a medical condition, whereas birth control does not.
Medical condition versus no medical condition: At the heart of this distinction by those opposed to birth control for women is the idea that health insurance should not cover preventive medicine, such as annual physicals, mammograms, colonoscopies, Pap smears, mole removals, vaccines and dental check-ups. None of these tests or procedures cure anything, only prevent conditions or prevent them from becoming fatal. Imagine how much more suffering there would be in the world if polio and small pox were still running rampant through the world, or if the many early stage and pre-cancerous conditions were not caught.
To say that medical care and health insurance have as their sole goal to cure ailments is just wrong. Medicine and health insurance also prevent ailments.
The birth of a child is a wonderful thing, but only if the child is wanted. Pregnancy is always fraught with risks for both mother and child. Often women have ailments or disabilities that increase those risks to the point that pregnancy would be life-threatening. Those risks multiply for the child in unwanted pregnancies and can continue throughout childhood and beyond. Unwanted pregnancies can also lead to abortions, which, while not usually dangerous if performed under proper medical supervision, are objectionable to many people. To deny that birth control is part of preventive care requires ignoring a slew of data on women’s health issues.
Health insurers and medical professionals are always trying to figure out what and how many preventive tests, procedures and examinations are needed to keep people healthy while minimizing the unnecessary. After what must have been many studies repeatedly analyzed, most agree that covering birth control is worth the cost because it lowers total medical costs and prevents the pain and suffering of many unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
Now the other side will say that there’s another way to prevent pregnancies and unwanted abortion, the “little white aspirin pill between the knees” method, AKA abstinence. They ask, why make society pay for the personal decision to engage in sex? And of course, the same question can be asked about ED pills.
And so those opposed to coverage of birth control pills are left with a dilemma:
- Loudly oppose coverage of ED pills (since to engage in sex is a matter of personal choice) or admit they have a double standard.
OR
- Come out against coverage of all preventive medicine.
Republicans have latched onto the “birth control coverage” issue because they think they can use it to make other messages that will resonate with the right-wing. The overt messages have to do with government interference, especially as it involves health care, and the role of religion in the government and society. The subtext, though, entails some old-fashioned and wrong-headed ideas about the role of women in society.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Arizona professor finds that tax progressivity does not matter in creating an equitable society
By Marc Jampole
Most people who have been reading the progressive or the mainstream news media know that the last 30 years have seen the United States become a less equitable society, with fewer people in the middle class and more people who are poor and near poor. By income, assets or any other measure, the top 1% now control much more of the wealth of the country than they did in 1979.
In my view, that net transfer of wealth took place in three ways:
- Tax rates were lowered and the tax system made less progressive, which means the difference in the tax rate paid by the wealthy and the poor narrowed.
- Government programs transferred less money to the poor and middle class.
- Less income went to the wages of the non-owners, non-executives and non-professionals and more went to high earners and to corporate profit.
It has long been a mantra of the left, including myself, that making taxes more progressive is one of the best ways to reduce income and wealth inequality. When I spoke with Professor William Domhoff of “Who Rules America?” fame in Santa Cruz this past January, he began to make the case that maybe we shouldn’t harp so much on tax progressivity.
Earlier this week Professor Domhoff sent me a link to an article at the blog of Professor Lane Kenworthy, Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Arizona in which Professor Kenworthy analyzes how different industrialized countries reduce income inequality. He uses existing statistics, but looks at them in an innovative way.
It turns out that no other country reduces income inequality through a progressive tax system except the United States, the nation that does the worse job of reducing the inequalities of wealth that the free market seems to generate naturally.
Professor Kenworthy writes that “the chief contribution of taxes to inequality reduction is indirect. Taxes provide the money to fund the transfers that reduce inequality.” He finds that “it is the quantity of the tax rather than its progressivity that matters most.”
Professor Kenworthy reaches the conclusion that we should consider a national consumption tax with all the proceeds earmarked for programs that help the poor and middle class. Kenworthy suggests a 5% tax with funds used for universal healthcare, universal preschool and/or high quality child care. Everyone pays the same rate on a consumption tax, which people and businesses pay when they purchase goods and services, so it is regressive.
I think the idea of any tax that has all funds earmarked to improving our tattered social service net is a great idea, and certainly worth very serious consideration when we are talking about reforming the tax system. But I warn progressives interested in getting behind this idea not to sever the link between the tax and the earmark to social service programs. If that link is severed, the right-wing will jump on the tax part and then use it to pay down the debt or cut other taxes on the wealthy.
Moreover, I was wondering if perhaps there were a more direct way to transfer wealth, and that’s to implement policies that equalize income, such as:
- Raise the federal minimum wage
- End state “right to work” laws and other anti-union laws
- End privatization of government services, such as prisons, charter schools and military supply line support, since this privatization typically leads to lower salaries for most of the employees of the privatized operation.
No matter how we prioritize the progressive economic agenda, Professor Kenworthy has thought outside the box and uncovered an important idea—that tax progressivity is not important and therefore can be a bargaining chip with the right.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Study begs question: do people get rich acting unethically or act unethically because they think they are privileged?
By Marc Jampole
The news this week that a new study found that wealthier people were more likely to behave unethically set off a chicken-or-egg debate in my mind.
In the study, Paul Piff, a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley, led a team of researchers at UC-Berkeley and the University of Toronto in a variety of behavioral experiments involving about 1,000 people.
They ran 7 experiments, all of which concluded that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals:
The researchers used a number of ways to evaluate socioeconomic status, such as education levels, annual income and the participants’ own perception of their social standing. But it didn’t matter what measure they used to sort participants into classes: those with higher status tended to behave in ways that served their own self-interest, even if it was unethical. My own view is that the reason it didn’t matter which criterion they measure: In the United States, virtually all social status reduces to money. The wealthier you are, the higher the social class, the higher the self-perception of class, the higher the annual income and the higher the level of education.
By the way, neither the study nor anyone else is saying that all wealthy people are unethical, only that a larger percentage of wealthy people than poor people will do or consider doing things that most people consider to be unethical.
Now comes the chicken or egg: do people gain higher status primarily by engaging in unethical activities? Or does having a higher status make people think they are better than others and can play by their own rules?
Let’s start with the “chicken” speculation of the authors of the study, i.e., being rich changes how people behave:
We know that there is less social mobility in the United States than ever before in its history and less than any other industrialized country.
What that means is that today’s upper class of wealth is primarily, but not exclusively, children of the upper class. That would certainly speak to the idea that the chicken came first, that is, that wealth created the pattern of bad behavior and not the other way around, at least in the current generation.
The researchers did find an “egg” explanation, which means that there may be something about cheating, lying and other unethical behavior that helps people get rich. The researchers found that unethical behavior was closely related to positive feelings about greed. Although the connection appeared to be strongest among high-status individuals, even lower-status individuals were more prone to ethical lapses if they felt that greed was good.
In other words, if you want money as an ends to itself and value the acquisition of wealth, you will be more likely to behave unethically.
Here comes the paradox: greed imbues our entire value system. We equate the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of wealth. We measure success by wealth and what it buys: the amount of the sports or book contract, the size of the diamond or the house. We admire rich people and follow their doings. Much of the mass media revolves around celebrities, who for the most part are either rich or striving to be rich. Over the past 30 or so years, our leaders have created a system that provides no constraint on the accumulation of wealth, even if that means a decline in public services for everyone else, thus confirming private greed as the central economic value.
Everywhere we go, we are told to be greedy. Now comes this research that shows that greed causes people to turn their backs on our shared norms of social and economic interactions. In other words, the basic drive that propels our society erodes its foundation.
The right-wing likes to blame many groups for the decline of American civilization that they see: The real implication of this research is that it shows that it’s not the pointy-headed academics who have led us into the fix we’re in, nor the European-style socialists, nor those who offend archaic family values.
No, it’s greed pure and simple that is sinking the United States.
The news this week that a new study found that wealthier people were more likely to behave unethically set off a chicken-or-egg debate in my mind.
In the study, Paul Piff, a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley, led a team of researchers at UC-Berkeley and the University of Toronto in a variety of behavioral experiments involving about 1,000 people.
They ran 7 experiments, all of which concluded that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals:
- In two of the studies, upper-class individuals were more likely than lower-class individuals to break the law while driving.
- In a laboratory study, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies.
- Other lab studies showed upper class people more likely to take valued goods from others, to lie in a negotiation and to cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize.
- Yet another lab study showed that those in the upper class were more likely than the poor to endorse unethical behavior at work.
The researchers used a number of ways to evaluate socioeconomic status, such as education levels, annual income and the participants’ own perception of their social standing. But it didn’t matter what measure they used to sort participants into classes: those with higher status tended to behave in ways that served their own self-interest, even if it was unethical. My own view is that the reason it didn’t matter which criterion they measure: In the United States, virtually all social status reduces to money. The wealthier you are, the higher the social class, the higher the self-perception of class, the higher the annual income and the higher the level of education.
By the way, neither the study nor anyone else is saying that all wealthy people are unethical, only that a larger percentage of wealthy people than poor people will do or consider doing things that most people consider to be unethical.
Now comes the chicken or egg: do people gain higher status primarily by engaging in unethical activities? Or does having a higher status make people think they are better than others and can play by their own rules?
Let’s start with the “chicken” speculation of the authors of the study, i.e., being rich changes how people behave:
- The independence offered by financial security may foster a sense of entitlement and a lack of concern for others.
- Affluent people may be more likely to get away with misbehavior because they have better paying jobs and better paying jobs are associated with less supervision.
- The affluent may be more willing to take ethical risks because they have the resources at their disposal to address the inconvenience of getting caught.
We know that there is less social mobility in the United States than ever before in its history and less than any other industrialized country.
What that means is that today’s upper class of wealth is primarily, but not exclusively, children of the upper class. That would certainly speak to the idea that the chicken came first, that is, that wealth created the pattern of bad behavior and not the other way around, at least in the current generation.
The researchers did find an “egg” explanation, which means that there may be something about cheating, lying and other unethical behavior that helps people get rich. The researchers found that unethical behavior was closely related to positive feelings about greed. Although the connection appeared to be strongest among high-status individuals, even lower-status individuals were more prone to ethical lapses if they felt that greed was good.
In other words, if you want money as an ends to itself and value the acquisition of wealth, you will be more likely to behave unethically.
Here comes the paradox: greed imbues our entire value system. We equate the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of wealth. We measure success by wealth and what it buys: the amount of the sports or book contract, the size of the diamond or the house. We admire rich people and follow their doings. Much of the mass media revolves around celebrities, who for the most part are either rich or striving to be rich. Over the past 30 or so years, our leaders have created a system that provides no constraint on the accumulation of wealth, even if that means a decline in public services for everyone else, thus confirming private greed as the central economic value.
Everywhere we go, we are told to be greedy. Now comes this research that shows that greed causes people to turn their backs on our shared norms of social and economic interactions. In other words, the basic drive that propels our society erodes its foundation.
The right-wing likes to blame many groups for the decline of American civilization that they see: The real implication of this research is that it shows that it’s not the pointy-headed academics who have led us into the fix we’re in, nor the European-style socialists, nor those who offend archaic family values.
No, it’s greed pure and simple that is sinking the United States.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The Great Courses video lectures presents a history of the west and calls it world history
By Marc Jampole
On the back cover of this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review was a full-page advertisement for a “Great Course” (that’s the brand name) set of DVDs or CDs titled “The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History.”
I never read these ads, but the idea of reducing history to 36 incidents appeals to my “top 10” mentality, like the “10 greatest battles in history” or the “25 most influential people of the 20th century.” Great Courses describes the video course as “36 of the most important and definitive events in the history of the world. It’s an intriguing and engaging tour of thousands of years of human history.”
With only 36 events, I assumed that selection of events to include on the list would reveal the ideological bent of the lecturer, in this case a professor at the University of Oklahoma by the name of J. Rufus Fears.
Never fear, in his list of important events of world history, Fears reveals himself to be another white male selling an old-fashioned and specifically American version of the growth of the Christian world, spiced with a survey of world religions to promote a superficial diversity. Check out the list or skip to my analysis:
There are so many things wrong with this list from the standpoint of world history that I don’t know where to start!
Except for the Hammurabi Code and the founding of some major world religions, all the events involve the growth of the Christian West according to the mid-20th century middlebrow American version that goes from Greece to Rome to Christian Europe to the land of the free.
One quarter of all the events involve the United States, a nation that has existed for about 230 years, or a mere 2% of the time since humans began cultivating plants and animals. How, for example, did the assassination of John Kennedy change world history? Eisenhower and Kennedy had already committed us to Viet Nam and the civil rights movement was already growing. And how do both the 1929 stock market crash and the election of FDR get onto a list of 36 events that changed history?
Neither of the events representing arts and letters changed history. There are commonalities between the creative artists involved: Both are recognized by most people. Both represent more of a summing up of a tradition than a break with tradition. Both have created examples of Christian art:
There are subtle signs of ethnocentricity everywhere: For example, the founding of Europe’s first university in 1088 is mentioned, but not the introduction of the examination system in the Chinese civil service more than 475 years earlier. We learn of the Battle of Vienna in which the Christian Hapsburgs turned back the Islamic Ottomans, but nothing about the founding of any Chinese dynasty, nothing about the Mughal conquest of India, nothing about Chinggis Khan! Also note the male-centric nature of the lectures: no event involves a woman.
We would have to hear or see the lecture to know for sure, but the promotional materials suggests that Fear’s handling of slavery and its bloody demise—a major theme in world history—is a whitewash. The event representing the American Civil War is presented from the point of view of the South, i.e., “General Pickett leads a charge.” The paragraph description of this lecture on the website makes the specious claim that the South would have won the Civil War if it had won the Battle of Gettysburg. This understanding of the war conveniently forgets the tremendous resource advantage that the North had, which Ulysses S. Grant understood and used to his advantage in planning his battles. But more to the point, there is no room in the course for any event depicting the 400-year history of the slave trade, which funded the economic and technological advances of Western Europe and the United States from the 16th through much of the 19th centuries.
And who is this J. Rufus Fears, who lectures to us about these important events in world history?
The Great Course promotional material calls Fears a “historian,” but judging from what I could find about him on the Internet, he is as much of a practicing historian as Rufus T. Firefly.
An Internet search finds that Fears teaches a lot of video/audio courses for adults, all about great men or great ideas of the West or of world religions. His only publication other than course material that I could find is as editor of a book by Lord Acton, a 19th century English Catholic historian and politician. Fears did write an article in “Atlantis: Fact or Fiction,” a 1978 book of essays on possibilities of the actual existence of Atlantis that focuses on Atlantis in myth and literature. The University of Oklahoma says that he’s a professor of classics, which is not really history, although it can involve history. I cannot find one scholarly article or book by Fears, or even one book or article of popular history of the sort that David McCullough or Bruce Catton might write.
While perhaps not a historian, Fears is a regular guest on “The Rusty Humphries Show,” a right-wing radio talk show that runs on more than 250 stations. A visit to Humphries website lists some other recent guests, the usual right-wing suspects, including John Bolton, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, anti-choice activist John Schneider and Rand Paul.
I’m not saying that “The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History” doesn’t provide history to those who buy the course. But everything I can find out about the course and the good Professor Fears indicates that what we’re getting is comforting if distorted verification of the ideological imperatives of western superiority and American exceptionalism.
I think I’ll pass on Fears’ version of world history and instead reread some Fernand Braudel, Mote’s magisterial Imperial China: 900-1800 or Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
On the back cover of this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review was a full-page advertisement for a “Great Course” (that’s the brand name) set of DVDs or CDs titled “The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History.”
I never read these ads, but the idea of reducing history to 36 incidents appeals to my “top 10” mentality, like the “10 greatest battles in history” or the “25 most influential people of the 20th century.” Great Courses describes the video course as “36 of the most important and definitive events in the history of the world. It’s an intriguing and engaging tour of thousands of years of human history.”
With only 36 events, I assumed that selection of events to include on the list would reveal the ideological bent of the lecturer, in this case a professor at the University of Oklahoma by the name of J. Rufus Fears.
Never fear, in his list of important events of world history, Fears reveals himself to be another white male selling an old-fashioned and specifically American version of the growth of the Christian world, spiced with a survey of world religions to promote a superficial diversity. Check out the list or skip to my analysis:
- Hammurabi Issues a Code of Law (1750 B.C.)
- Moses and Monotheism (1220 B.C.
- The Enlightenment of the Buddha (526 B.C.)
- Confucius Instructs a Nation (553–479 B.C.)
- Solon—Democracy Begins (594 B.C.)
- Marathon—Democracy Triumphant (490 B.C.)
- Hippocrates Takes an Oath (430 B.C.)
- Caesar Crosses the Rubicon (49 B.C.)
- Jesus—The Trial of a Teacher (A.D. 36)
- Constantine I Wins a Battle (A.D. 312)
- Muhammad Moves to Medina—The Hegira (A.D. 622)
- Bologna Gets a University (1088)
- Dante Sees Beatrice (1283)
- Black Death—Pandemics and History (1348)
- Columbus Finds a New World (1492)
- Michelangelo Accepts a Commission (1508)
- Erasmus—A Book Sets Europe Ablaze (1516)
- Luther’s New Course Changes History (1517)
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588)
- The Battle of Vienna (1683)
- The Battle of Lexington (1775)
- General Pickett Leads a Charge (1863)
- Adam Smith (1776) versus Karl Marx (1867)
- Charles Darwin Takes an Ocean Voyage (1831)
- Louis Pasteur Cures a Child (1885)
- Two Brothers Take a Flight (1903)
- The Archduke Makes a State Visit (1914)
- One Night in Petrograd (1917)
- The Day the Stock Market Crashed (1929)
- Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
- Franklin Roosevelt Becomes President (1933)
- Mao Zedong Begins His Long March (1934)
- The Atomic Bomb Is Dropped (1945)
- John F. Kennedy Is Assassinated (1963)
- Dr. King Leads a March (1963)
- September 11, 2001
There are so many things wrong with this list from the standpoint of world history that I don’t know where to start!
Except for the Hammurabi Code and the founding of some major world religions, all the events involve the growth of the Christian West according to the mid-20th century middlebrow American version that goes from Greece to Rome to Christian Europe to the land of the free.
One quarter of all the events involve the United States, a nation that has existed for about 230 years, or a mere 2% of the time since humans began cultivating plants and animals. How, for example, did the assassination of John Kennedy change world history? Eisenhower and Kennedy had already committed us to Viet Nam and the civil rights movement was already growing. And how do both the 1929 stock market crash and the election of FDR get onto a list of 36 events that changed history?
Neither of the events representing arts and letters changed history. There are commonalities between the creative artists involved: Both are recognized by most people. Both represent more of a summing up of a tradition than a break with tradition. Both have created examples of Christian art:
- Dante is one of my favorite poets, one who I have studied extensively and reread quite often, but I would never claim that he changed history, not even literary history, unless you believe that no one else would have thought of writing in the vernacular instead of Latin. Other than the innovation of writing in Italian, his style represents the height of medievalism, soon to be swept away by the stylistic innovations of the Renaissance. Real literary innovators with lasting influence include Li Po and Tu Fu (late Tang Dynasty poets), Cervantes and Joyce.
- Same thing goes for Michelangelo, whose event was getting the commission to paint the Sistine Chapel. A magnificent and extremely famous painting, but Michelangelo, though imitated, did not revolutionize painting, only helped it a little to evolve. Nothing Michelangelo did was as influential as the work of Giotto, Masaccio, Van Eck, Monet or Picasso, not to mention the late Yuan Chinese painter Zhao Mengfu, who had a lasting impact on both Chinese and European art.
There are subtle signs of ethnocentricity everywhere: For example, the founding of Europe’s first university in 1088 is mentioned, but not the introduction of the examination system in the Chinese civil service more than 475 years earlier. We learn of the Battle of Vienna in which the Christian Hapsburgs turned back the Islamic Ottomans, but nothing about the founding of any Chinese dynasty, nothing about the Mughal conquest of India, nothing about Chinggis Khan! Also note the male-centric nature of the lectures: no event involves a woman.
We would have to hear or see the lecture to know for sure, but the promotional materials suggests that Fear’s handling of slavery and its bloody demise—a major theme in world history—is a whitewash. The event representing the American Civil War is presented from the point of view of the South, i.e., “General Pickett leads a charge.” The paragraph description of this lecture on the website makes the specious claim that the South would have won the Civil War if it had won the Battle of Gettysburg. This understanding of the war conveniently forgets the tremendous resource advantage that the North had, which Ulysses S. Grant understood and used to his advantage in planning his battles. But more to the point, there is no room in the course for any event depicting the 400-year history of the slave trade, which funded the economic and technological advances of Western Europe and the United States from the 16th through much of the 19th centuries.
And who is this J. Rufus Fears, who lectures to us about these important events in world history?
The Great Course promotional material calls Fears a “historian,” but judging from what I could find about him on the Internet, he is as much of a practicing historian as Rufus T. Firefly.
An Internet search finds that Fears teaches a lot of video/audio courses for adults, all about great men or great ideas of the West or of world religions. His only publication other than course material that I could find is as editor of a book by Lord Acton, a 19th century English Catholic historian and politician. Fears did write an article in “Atlantis: Fact or Fiction,” a 1978 book of essays on possibilities of the actual existence of Atlantis that focuses on Atlantis in myth and literature. The University of Oklahoma says that he’s a professor of classics, which is not really history, although it can involve history. I cannot find one scholarly article or book by Fears, or even one book or article of popular history of the sort that David McCullough or Bruce Catton might write.
While perhaps not a historian, Fears is a regular guest on “The Rusty Humphries Show,” a right-wing radio talk show that runs on more than 250 stations. A visit to Humphries website lists some other recent guests, the usual right-wing suspects, including John Bolton, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, anti-choice activist John Schneider and Rand Paul.
I’m not saying that “The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History” doesn’t provide history to those who buy the course. But everything I can find out about the course and the good Professor Fears indicates that what we’re getting is comforting if distorted verification of the ideological imperatives of western superiority and American exceptionalism.
I think I’ll pass on Fears’ version of world history and instead reread some Fernand Braudel, Mote’s magisterial Imperial China: 900-1800 or Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Selections from the March 15, 2012 issue
COVER/Chris Kirkham
States get cash for prisons
EDITORIAL
Breaking up is hard to do
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Don’t worry, eat your ‘transgenic’ food
DISPATCHES
Billionaire Romney donor threatens critics;
Payroll tax cut bill includes work sharing;
Loss of tax credits threaten wind energy;
Clearing the way for 'White Knight' harder than it looks;
US gas goes overseas;
GOP wrecks the vote;
Why did single-payer health fail in Calif.?;
'Where are the women?';
'Big Green' takes corporate cash;
Texas study shows fracking 'no problem';
Clerical skills again elude Republicans;
'Where are the women?';
Kos: Play to win;
Crazy cost of becoming president ...
BILL JOHNSTON
President needs to exercise power
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Drilling industry SNAFU
DON ROLLINS
Obama promotes education as equalizer
JOHN BUELL
Global climate change lessons from Southwest
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Romneycare improves health in Mass.
SETH SANDRONSKY
Wealth extraction sparks Mexican revolutions
WAYNE O’LEARY
Primal scream of the GOP
DAVID SCHMIDT
Mexican town embodies NAFTA
SAM URETSKY
Santorum crusades to rewrite history
CHRISTOPHER COOK
Workers rank behind social issues
JIM VAN DER POL
Small farmers keep economy moving
ROB PATTERSON
Whose ‘Homeland’ is it?
Thursday, February 23, 2012
By saying Obama follows a secular not a religious agenda, Republicans make case for reelecting the President
By Marc Jampole
The Republicans are doing a lot to restore my faith in President Obama.
First Rick Santorum accused Barack Obama of being the most anti-religious president in the nation’s history. Then Mitt Romney said that Obama sought to substitute a “secular agenda” for one based on faith.
What a relief to know we have a secular president.
What a relief, especially after weeks of hearing Santorum, Romney and the other Republicans talk about introducing religion into public policy and political decisions in one way or another.
What a relief to have reaffirmed the fact that President Obama, unlike his immediate predecessor, follows the U.S. Constitution and the wishes of our mostly deist founding leaders and promotes a secular agenda.
We are, after all, a secular country, one that is not supposed to have religion enter into government decisions, nor to favor one religion over others.
I understand that a good 20-25% of voters think differently. They believe that we are a Christian nation. What’s more, they want to force a set of values on everyone that they associate with Christian practice.
But we have to go no further than the issue of birth control to recognize how much the real world diverges from the ideals of the Christian right wing. In the real world, 98% of all women use birth control sometime during their life. In the real world, the cost of birth control is far less than the cost of an unwanted pregnancy, which means that when you ask a religious organization to pay for their employees' birth control you are asking them for no money and in fact giving them money since their insurance costs will decline.
To be sure, both Romney and Santorum are playing to the hard core base that now determines Republican primary elections. But besides pandering to the right-wing “values” voters, the labeling of Obama as “non-Christian” and “non-religious” also has a subtle impact on other voters. It’s another, harder to disprove, version of the “Obama wasn’t born in the United States” canard. Wherever we fall on the political spectrum and however devout or non-practicing we are, most Americans have a Christian background and live their lives by an ethos they identify as Christian. To say that Obama is not Christian or is anti-religious (which is just another way for them to say “anti-Christian”) turns him into the “other” or the “stranger” who has historically been so feared in American culture and politics. The ultimate outsider, of course, is the Black.
There’s an economic aspect to the accusations, too: that old saw that communists and socialists are godless. Americans for decades are used to hearing the words “godless” and “socialist” (or “communist”) pronounced one after the other to describe progressives and liberals. To say that Obama is against religion is also a veiled way of saying that he is against our free market capitalist system.
And yet, I think many will share my desire that religion not enter into a president’s decision-making. I think most of us prefer that decisions are based on facts, science, reason, the law and what’s best for the country and its people.
That Romney and Santorum affirm that our current president is following a secular path gives me more confidence in what Obama is doing. That the Republican candidates don’t like Obama’s secular path is scary. Because they could get elected, and that would be trouble. We recently had a faith-based president and it didn’t really work out, unless you like useless, goalless wars, state-sponsored torture, catastrophic environmental change and the largest deficit in American history.
The Republicans are doing a lot to restore my faith in President Obama.
First Rick Santorum accused Barack Obama of being the most anti-religious president in the nation’s history. Then Mitt Romney said that Obama sought to substitute a “secular agenda” for one based on faith.
What a relief to know we have a secular president.
What a relief, especially after weeks of hearing Santorum, Romney and the other Republicans talk about introducing religion into public policy and political decisions in one way or another.
What a relief to have reaffirmed the fact that President Obama, unlike his immediate predecessor, follows the U.S. Constitution and the wishes of our mostly deist founding leaders and promotes a secular agenda.
We are, after all, a secular country, one that is not supposed to have religion enter into government decisions, nor to favor one religion over others.
I understand that a good 20-25% of voters think differently. They believe that we are a Christian nation. What’s more, they want to force a set of values on everyone that they associate with Christian practice.
But we have to go no further than the issue of birth control to recognize how much the real world diverges from the ideals of the Christian right wing. In the real world, 98% of all women use birth control sometime during their life. In the real world, the cost of birth control is far less than the cost of an unwanted pregnancy, which means that when you ask a religious organization to pay for their employees' birth control you are asking them for no money and in fact giving them money since their insurance costs will decline.
To be sure, both Romney and Santorum are playing to the hard core base that now determines Republican primary elections. But besides pandering to the right-wing “values” voters, the labeling of Obama as “non-Christian” and “non-religious” also has a subtle impact on other voters. It’s another, harder to disprove, version of the “Obama wasn’t born in the United States” canard. Wherever we fall on the political spectrum and however devout or non-practicing we are, most Americans have a Christian background and live their lives by an ethos they identify as Christian. To say that Obama is not Christian or is anti-religious (which is just another way for them to say “anti-Christian”) turns him into the “other” or the “stranger” who has historically been so feared in American culture and politics. The ultimate outsider, of course, is the Black.
There’s an economic aspect to the accusations, too: that old saw that communists and socialists are godless. Americans for decades are used to hearing the words “godless” and “socialist” (or “communist”) pronounced one after the other to describe progressives and liberals. To say that Obama is against religion is also a veiled way of saying that he is against our free market capitalist system.
And yet, I think many will share my desire that religion not enter into a president’s decision-making. I think most of us prefer that decisions are based on facts, science, reason, the law and what’s best for the country and its people.
That Romney and Santorum affirm that our current president is following a secular path gives me more confidence in what Obama is doing. That the Republican candidates don’t like Obama’s secular path is scary. Because they could get elected, and that would be trouble. We recently had a faith-based president and it didn’t really work out, unless you like useless, goalless wars, state-sponsored torture, catastrophic environmental change and the largest deficit in American history.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Why pick on affirmative action? Why hasn’t anyone sued universities about favoritism to legacies and athletes?
By Marc Jampole
Yesterday’s announcement that the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted an appeal from a rejected white applicant to the University of Texas-Austin reminds me that every time the constitutionality of affirmative action returns to the issues agenda, one question is always left out:
Why didn’t the applicant suing a university for accepting minorities with a less impressive record of academic achievement also or instead sue the university for discriminating in favor of athletes and legacies? Legacies, for those not up on academic admissions parlance, are students whose parents previously went to or have contributed money to the university.
The unfairness of lowering standards to accept athletes to an institution dedicated to intellectual achievement and professional training seems fairly obvious. I can understand giving a break on the SAT or grades to a national chess champion or the winner of a science fair, but what does sports have to do with the mission of higher education?
And yet where are the lawsuits claiming that the university acted illegally in preferring a kid with a 1000 on the SATs who can throw a football 70 yards through a tire to someone with 1100 on the college boards who has no extra-curricular activities?
The advantage given to legacies is even more unfair, because it is a major part of the rigidity in the college system that necessitated affirmative action in the first place.
A quick search of “college admissions legacies” will reveal the oft-told history of legacy preferences, which Ivy and other colleges began to use after World War I when their objective criteria were leading to the admission of too many Jews. Today, Ivy League and private colleges give from 10% to 15% legacy preference, but some give as many as 30% of all acceptances to legacy applicants. Overall, many more students are admitted as legacy preferences than are admitted through affirmative action programs. What’s more, polls find that 75% of all Americans are opposed to legacy preferences.
Yet no one sues universities because they are giving preferences to people whose parents graduated from or gave money to the school.
Correction. In his 2010 analysis of everything that’s wrong with legacy preferences in The Chronicle of Higher Education, educational policy guru Richard D. Kahlenberg cites a losing 1970’s case filed against legacy preferences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The problem was that the plaintiff included legacies in a hodgepodge of discrimination complaints, including discrimination for being an out-of-state student. Her SAT scores were 850, uncommonly low for an in-state or out-of-state UNC student both back then and now.
Kahlenberg summarizes the compelling legal argument against legacies at both public and private universities, based on the 14th amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. He also demolishes the argument that universities need legacy admissions to keep the donations rolling into the university coffers. Analysis reveals that people give about the same to their alma mater or other universities with or without the legacy factor.
The higher the university on the food chain, the more the legacy admission undercuts the ambitions of other competent but less connected candidates. Let’s face it, the more important the job, the more likely it will be filled by an Ivy or Ivy-like (e.g., Stanford or Northwestern) graduate, and if not an Ivy, a public Ivy (e.g., U of Washington or UNC) or other prestigious school. The college educated earn more in general, so no matter how you slice it, legacies come from wealthier families on average than non-legacies at virtually every university.
When you’re better off, you are more likely to have special lessons, more likely to travel abroad, more likely to participate in national youth competitions, more likely to take an SAT prep course and more likely to live the lifestyle behind the cultural assumptions of the SATs. Affirmative action is one of the ways that colleges can level the playing field.
I’m not saying that once legacy admissions are ended we won’t need affirmative action anymore. What I’m saying is that the legacy system reflects the subtle action of institutional racism and is one more reason we need affirmation action. By the way, we’ll know that we won’t need affirmation action anymore when the rate of poverty among African-Americans or the average wage of African-Americans is about what it is for everyone else.
As others have pointed out, the Supreme Court decision to take the appeal is especially disturbing in light of its 2003 ruling upholding affirmative action. In that ruling, the Supreme Court laid down some affirmative action guidelines for universities and suggested that the high court shouldn’t revisit the issue for another 25 years. Of course that was before Roberts and Alito joined the court.
Most of the plaintiffs in these affirmative action lawsuits are middle class and upper middle class whites. That leaves us with the fact that none of these fighters for equality ever thought to take on legacies. There are certainly more legacies than there are affirmative action students, and the legacies tend to include more of the children of those people who have taken money from the middle class through the economic and tax policies of the past 30 years.
It’s quite puzzling. The only answer that I have is that it’s another manifestation of the racism that has distorted the politics and social policy of this country since its inception.
Yesterday’s announcement that the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted an appeal from a rejected white applicant to the University of Texas-Austin reminds me that every time the constitutionality of affirmative action returns to the issues agenda, one question is always left out:
Why didn’t the applicant suing a university for accepting minorities with a less impressive record of academic achievement also or instead sue the university for discriminating in favor of athletes and legacies? Legacies, for those not up on academic admissions parlance, are students whose parents previously went to or have contributed money to the university.
The unfairness of lowering standards to accept athletes to an institution dedicated to intellectual achievement and professional training seems fairly obvious. I can understand giving a break on the SAT or grades to a national chess champion or the winner of a science fair, but what does sports have to do with the mission of higher education?
And yet where are the lawsuits claiming that the university acted illegally in preferring a kid with a 1000 on the SATs who can throw a football 70 yards through a tire to someone with 1100 on the college boards who has no extra-curricular activities?
The advantage given to legacies is even more unfair, because it is a major part of the rigidity in the college system that necessitated affirmative action in the first place.
A quick search of “college admissions legacies” will reveal the oft-told history of legacy preferences, which Ivy and other colleges began to use after World War I when their objective criteria were leading to the admission of too many Jews. Today, Ivy League and private colleges give from 10% to 15% legacy preference, but some give as many as 30% of all acceptances to legacy applicants. Overall, many more students are admitted as legacy preferences than are admitted through affirmative action programs. What’s more, polls find that 75% of all Americans are opposed to legacy preferences.
Yet no one sues universities because they are giving preferences to people whose parents graduated from or gave money to the school.
Correction. In his 2010 analysis of everything that’s wrong with legacy preferences in The Chronicle of Higher Education, educational policy guru Richard D. Kahlenberg cites a losing 1970’s case filed against legacy preferences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The problem was that the plaintiff included legacies in a hodgepodge of discrimination complaints, including discrimination for being an out-of-state student. Her SAT scores were 850, uncommonly low for an in-state or out-of-state UNC student both back then and now.
Kahlenberg summarizes the compelling legal argument against legacies at both public and private universities, based on the 14th amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. He also demolishes the argument that universities need legacy admissions to keep the donations rolling into the university coffers. Analysis reveals that people give about the same to their alma mater or other universities with or without the legacy factor.
The higher the university on the food chain, the more the legacy admission undercuts the ambitions of other competent but less connected candidates. Let’s face it, the more important the job, the more likely it will be filled by an Ivy or Ivy-like (e.g., Stanford or Northwestern) graduate, and if not an Ivy, a public Ivy (e.g., U of Washington or UNC) or other prestigious school. The college educated earn more in general, so no matter how you slice it, legacies come from wealthier families on average than non-legacies at virtually every university.
When you’re better off, you are more likely to have special lessons, more likely to travel abroad, more likely to participate in national youth competitions, more likely to take an SAT prep course and more likely to live the lifestyle behind the cultural assumptions of the SATs. Affirmative action is one of the ways that colleges can level the playing field.
I’m not saying that once legacy admissions are ended we won’t need affirmative action anymore. What I’m saying is that the legacy system reflects the subtle action of institutional racism and is one more reason we need affirmation action. By the way, we’ll know that we won’t need affirmation action anymore when the rate of poverty among African-Americans or the average wage of African-Americans is about what it is for everyone else.
As others have pointed out, the Supreme Court decision to take the appeal is especially disturbing in light of its 2003 ruling upholding affirmative action. In that ruling, the Supreme Court laid down some affirmative action guidelines for universities and suggested that the high court shouldn’t revisit the issue for another 25 years. Of course that was before Roberts and Alito joined the court.
Most of the plaintiffs in these affirmative action lawsuits are middle class and upper middle class whites. That leaves us with the fact that none of these fighters for equality ever thought to take on legacies. There are certainly more legacies than there are affirmative action students, and the legacies tend to include more of the children of those people who have taken money from the middle class through the economic and tax policies of the past 30 years.
It’s quite puzzling. The only answer that I have is that it’s another manifestation of the racism that has distorted the politics and social policy of this country since its inception.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
MIT professor revisits the cultures that bombed Pearl Harbor, destroyed the WTC and dropped A-bombs
I’m reading a very fascinating scholarly study called Cultures of War by MIT history professor John Dower. Professor Dower analyzes in detail the similarities in the cultural assumptions, bureaucratic decision-making processes, fascination with technology, religious orientation, use of propaganda and strategic military imperatives of four events that serve as symbolic points in the cultural history of two wars.
Interestingly enough, in all cases the decision to act proved disastrous for mankind. In three, and maybe all four, it was also disastrous for the nation/organization instigating the act:
The obvious symmetry in considering the cultures that produced all four of these actions is that they are paired: in both pairs, the actions of the United States are typically considered to be reactions against horrible deeds, by a nation in one pair and by a terrorist organization in the other.
But Dower carefully draws U.S. defensive motives into question: He recapitulates what we already know about the duplicitous lead-up to the invasion of Iraq by the Bush II Administration. He also reminds us that no one can say for sure that dropping two atom bombs saved more lives than the more than 200,000 that the U.S. obliterated in two fairly short bombing raids. We know for a fact, however, that the U.S. wanted to brandish its new weapon for the Soviets and everyone else in the world and wanted to stop potential grumbling at home about the cost of the Manhattan Project. Dower also shows us how much the U.S. wanted to go to war against Japan before Pearl Harbor and how much the Bush II (non)brain trust wanted to attack Iraq before 9/11.
Many would consider it blasphemy and/or treason to equate the moral bearing of Osama bin Laden and the U.S. under Bush II or Roosevelt, but Dower makes a very strong case. Here are some of the similarities:
We really did feel threatened by the combined force of the Japanese and Germans, and we really did feel threatened by the terrorist attack. But Dower makes it clear that Osama’s followers, too, felt their civilization threatened by U.S. military activity and economic and social imperialism.
The fact that many of us think that the Japanese and the extreme Islamists were fools or devils to feel that their way of life was superior merely suggests that we are unable to transcend our own cultural imperatives that tell us that our way of life is the best. I’m not saying that Al Qaida was right to launch the 9/11 attack. It was as wrong as we were to drop the atom bombs and to attack Iraq (and to pursue the Viet Nam War for that matter). But they certainly were right to think their civilization was threatened by U.S. military and political actions.
And just as Pearl Harbor united even the most vocal pacifists and isolationists in the United States, just as 9/11 united us again, so did the invasion of Iraq, the declarations by the Bush II Administration of a holy war and our establishment of a world-wide torture gulag help Osama recruit many new terrorists throughout the Islamic world. In all cases, too, the governments and terrorist organization embarked on major propaganda campaigns to convince their people that they did the right thing by unleashing death, in one case against soldiers sworn to fight to the death and in the others against innocent bystanders.
Perhaps the most horrible similarity in all the cultures of war that Dower considers in his provocative and easy-to-read book is that in all four attacks, the participants—the military men, the government officials, the scientists and engineers, the soldiers who did the dirty work—were able to forget that they were engaged in killing large numbers of people.
Many factors led to the dehumanization of the people at the receiving end of the bombs, tanks and suicide plane crashes:
These factors affected the decisions and actions of the one-party Shinto autocracy, the Christian representative democracy and the Islamic theocracy. Who has the moral high ground here?
There is no threshold for terror, for starting wars of choice or for unleashing weapons of mass destruction.
There is no military justification for bombing and attacking civilians that can offset or override the moral evil involved in killing masses of innocents.
Heinous acts of terror, genocide and lawlessness in a just cause turn that cause to evil and take from the perpetrators any claims of morality or civilization.
I came away from reading Cultures of War more convinced than ever of these things.
Interestingly enough, in all cases the decision to act proved disastrous for mankind. In three, and maybe all four, it was also disastrous for the nation/organization instigating the act:
- The Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor
- The United States detonation of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Al Qaida’s terrorist attacks by suicide crash on September 11, 2001
- The United States “war by choice” against Iraq under the false pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction and disabling Al Qaida.
The obvious symmetry in considering the cultures that produced all four of these actions is that they are paired: in both pairs, the actions of the United States are typically considered to be reactions against horrible deeds, by a nation in one pair and by a terrorist organization in the other.
But Dower carefully draws U.S. defensive motives into question: He recapitulates what we already know about the duplicitous lead-up to the invasion of Iraq by the Bush II Administration. He also reminds us that no one can say for sure that dropping two atom bombs saved more lives than the more than 200,000 that the U.S. obliterated in two fairly short bombing raids. We know for a fact, however, that the U.S. wanted to brandish its new weapon for the Soviets and everyone else in the world and wanted to stop potential grumbling at home about the cost of the Manhattan Project. Dower also shows us how much the U.S. wanted to go to war against Japan before Pearl Harbor and how much the Bush II (non)brain trust wanted to attack Iraq before 9/11.
Many would consider it blasphemy and/or treason to equate the moral bearing of Osama bin Laden and the U.S. under Bush II or Roosevelt, but Dower makes a very strong case. Here are some of the similarities:
- The use of religion as a justification and of religious imagery in manifestos about the events
- The postulation of a battle between civilizations
- The belief that your civilization/religion is infinitely superior to the civilization/religion of the foe
- A justification of killing innocent civilians, politely known as “collateral damage”
- The focus on technology (in the case of Osama, it was computers, not weapons)
We really did feel threatened by the combined force of the Japanese and Germans, and we really did feel threatened by the terrorist attack. But Dower makes it clear that Osama’s followers, too, felt their civilization threatened by U.S. military activity and economic and social imperialism.
The fact that many of us think that the Japanese and the extreme Islamists were fools or devils to feel that their way of life was superior merely suggests that we are unable to transcend our own cultural imperatives that tell us that our way of life is the best. I’m not saying that Al Qaida was right to launch the 9/11 attack. It was as wrong as we were to drop the atom bombs and to attack Iraq (and to pursue the Viet Nam War for that matter). But they certainly were right to think their civilization was threatened by U.S. military and political actions.
And just as Pearl Harbor united even the most vocal pacifists and isolationists in the United States, just as 9/11 united us again, so did the invasion of Iraq, the declarations by the Bush II Administration of a holy war and our establishment of a world-wide torture gulag help Osama recruit many new terrorists throughout the Islamic world. In all cases, too, the governments and terrorist organization embarked on major propaganda campaigns to convince their people that they did the right thing by unleashing death, in one case against soldiers sworn to fight to the death and in the others against innocent bystanders.
Perhaps the most horrible similarity in all the cultures of war that Dower considers in his provocative and easy-to-read book is that in all four attacks, the participants—the military men, the government officials, the scientists and engineers, the soldiers who did the dirty work—were able to forget that they were engaged in killing large numbers of people.
Many factors led to the dehumanization of the people at the receiving end of the bombs, tanks and suicide plane crashes:
- A bureaucratic language that used euphemisms and passive constructions to conceal horrible realities
- A focus on the complex challenge of the task at hand (as opposed to the destructive ends)
- A belief in the inferiority of the victims
- The self-deception often generated by the constant creation of propaganda for others
- A religious belief, i.e., that you’re on a religious mission
These factors affected the decisions and actions of the one-party Shinto autocracy, the Christian representative democracy and the Islamic theocracy. Who has the moral high ground here?
There is no threshold for terror, for starting wars of choice or for unleashing weapons of mass destruction.
There is no military justification for bombing and attacking civilians that can offset or override the moral evil involved in killing masses of innocents.
Heinous acts of terror, genocide and lawlessness in a just cause turn that cause to evil and take from the perpetrators any claims of morality or civilization.
I came away from reading Cultures of War more convinced than ever of these things.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
New York Fashion Week and Westminster Dogs: lots of prancing in NYC this week
By Marc Jampole
It is one of those rare poetic coincidences that both the Westminster Dog Show and New York Fashion Week unfolded in the same week this year. Some might even call it proof of an intelligent, if satirical, design behind cultural history.
Imagine: while pedigree dogs bred and trained to an arbitrary standard are parading around one floor in Manhattan at the same time mostly overly thin and mostly female models with who knows what surgeries, maquillage and other enhancements applied to imitate another arbitrary standard are parading around another Manhattan floor.
The news media and television entertainment programming have dedicated extensive space and time to both these shows. Fashion plays into the greater universe of celebrity culture, since celebrities are often the ones who wear the newest fashions or sell fashions to the consumer. As celebrity culture has grown, so has interest in these fashion shows.
In the same way, the growth of interest in the Westminster Dog Show mirrors the growth in America’s interest in dogs and other pets, as witnessed by the growing number of new products for dogs that come out each year, the growth of spending on dogs, the growth of advertising of pet products and the growth in the use of dogs as a cultural icon in other commercials. Consider, for example, the TV ad in which someone is walking a dog when his button bursts from overeating. Or the one in which a dog drinks beer with his master. The one in which a woman tells her dog that she reacts to eating a cereal the way the pooch reacts to having its belly scratched. The list of dogs popping up in commercials for other products in recent years is endless.
What’s most interesting is that in the case of both the animals and the models , these living embodiments of perfect form prance gracefully in front of the adoring crowds not just for themselves, but to glorify a third party. In the case of the dogs, it’s their owners and trainers. In the case of the models, it’s the designers whose clothes adorn their bodies.
At least the dogs get to do tricks and demonstrate their intelligence. The models could readily be replaced by a future generation of robots that looked and moved as humans do.
In the real world, most people like seeing an attractive person in interesting or provocative dress in the street, even if they would never go to a fashion show. We don’t always feel so positively about dogs, which can be big and mean-looking, howling or whimpering viragos, dangerously left to wander without leash or not cleaned up after by the master.
It’s ironic then that in the world of shows, it’s the models who are getting into trouble with the neighbors. Like its Parisian version, the New York Fashion Show is a tent affair, erected in front of Lincoln Center in Damrosch Park. Residents are complaining that between setting up, operating and taking apart two Fashion Shows and a circus, the park is out of commission for 10 months out of every year. The New York Times reported yesterday that a group of residents and a group called NYC Park Advocates announced that they had sent a “cease and desist” letter to the city and to Lincoln Center demanding that Damrosch Park be returned to its proper use as a city park.
We could break every week down to a series of three to five cultural stories that represent the playing out of long-term trends in ideological indoctrination. This week, for example, to Fashion Week and the Westminster Dog Show we might add the death of Whitney Houston, the excitement created because a devoutly Christian professional basketball player of Chinese descent played six good games and the Republicans relenting on offsets to the continuation of the temporary cut in the Social Security tax.
Beneath these immediate stories lurk ideological imperatives: the culture of celebrity; the commoditization of emotion; the idea that the private sector solves all economic problems and government none. That two of these stories are shows that take place in New York merely suggests how much the mass culture of consumption now dominates the public marketplace of ideas.
It is one of those rare poetic coincidences that both the Westminster Dog Show and New York Fashion Week unfolded in the same week this year. Some might even call it proof of an intelligent, if satirical, design behind cultural history.
Imagine: while pedigree dogs bred and trained to an arbitrary standard are parading around one floor in Manhattan at the same time mostly overly thin and mostly female models with who knows what surgeries, maquillage and other enhancements applied to imitate another arbitrary standard are parading around another Manhattan floor.
The news media and television entertainment programming have dedicated extensive space and time to both these shows. Fashion plays into the greater universe of celebrity culture, since celebrities are often the ones who wear the newest fashions or sell fashions to the consumer. As celebrity culture has grown, so has interest in these fashion shows.
In the same way, the growth of interest in the Westminster Dog Show mirrors the growth in America’s interest in dogs and other pets, as witnessed by the growing number of new products for dogs that come out each year, the growth of spending on dogs, the growth of advertising of pet products and the growth in the use of dogs as a cultural icon in other commercials. Consider, for example, the TV ad in which someone is walking a dog when his button bursts from overeating. Or the one in which a dog drinks beer with his master. The one in which a woman tells her dog that she reacts to eating a cereal the way the pooch reacts to having its belly scratched. The list of dogs popping up in commercials for other products in recent years is endless.
What’s most interesting is that in the case of both the animals and the models , these living embodiments of perfect form prance gracefully in front of the adoring crowds not just for themselves, but to glorify a third party. In the case of the dogs, it’s their owners and trainers. In the case of the models, it’s the designers whose clothes adorn their bodies.
At least the dogs get to do tricks and demonstrate their intelligence. The models could readily be replaced by a future generation of robots that looked and moved as humans do.
In the real world, most people like seeing an attractive person in interesting or provocative dress in the street, even if they would never go to a fashion show. We don’t always feel so positively about dogs, which can be big and mean-looking, howling or whimpering viragos, dangerously left to wander without leash or not cleaned up after by the master.
It’s ironic then that in the world of shows, it’s the models who are getting into trouble with the neighbors. Like its Parisian version, the New York Fashion Show is a tent affair, erected in front of Lincoln Center in Damrosch Park. Residents are complaining that between setting up, operating and taking apart two Fashion Shows and a circus, the park is out of commission for 10 months out of every year. The New York Times reported yesterday that a group of residents and a group called NYC Park Advocates announced that they had sent a “cease and desist” letter to the city and to Lincoln Center demanding that Damrosch Park be returned to its proper use as a city park.
We could break every week down to a series of three to five cultural stories that represent the playing out of long-term trends in ideological indoctrination. This week, for example, to Fashion Week and the Westminster Dog Show we might add the death of Whitney Houston, the excitement created because a devoutly Christian professional basketball player of Chinese descent played six good games and the Republicans relenting on offsets to the continuation of the temporary cut in the Social Security tax.
Beneath these immediate stories lurk ideological imperatives: the culture of celebrity; the commoditization of emotion; the idea that the private sector solves all economic problems and government none. That two of these stories are shows that take place in New York merely suggests how much the mass culture of consumption now dominates the public marketplace of ideas.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
There are too many ways that employers can raid pension plans of workers
By Marc Jampole
An article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week depicted the various ways that employers can legally raid the pension fund of their employees and retirees.
The premise of the article, titled “Signs Your Pension Plan Is in Trouble,” was that even healthy pensions plans that are adequately funded can be in trouble.
The article doesn’t admit it, but all of the risks to healthy pension plans described in it come down to permitted but nefarious actions by employers, including:
An article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week depicted the various ways that employers can legally raid the pension fund of their employees and retirees.
The premise of the article, titled “Signs Your Pension Plan Is in Trouble,” was that even healthy pensions plans that are adequately funded can be in trouble.
The article doesn’t admit it, but all of the risks to healthy pension plans described in it come down to permitted but nefarious actions by employers, including:
- The employer selects financial assumptions that make the plan look like a bigger burden than it really is and uses that as an excuse to freeze payouts or commitments.
- The employer offers incentives for early retirement using the assets of the pension plan, which depletes the pension plan of funds to pay retirees.
- If the employer either sells or spins off the operation, the new owner uses the assets of the plan to pay off its own underfunded obligations to its plans, thus putting the strong plan in trouble.
- A religious or other nonprofit organization changes the status of its plan to a “church” plan, which exempts it from federal pension rules including the requirement to fund the plan.
The common theme in all these scenarios is that the employer legally takes money earmarked for paying the pensions of retirees and uses it for something else. It sounds a lot like what the rightwing wants to do with public pensions: cut them to pay for tax cuts.
The article basically mongers fear, but anyone reading the article who cares about fairness should feel outrage instead.
Every single one of these tricks should be illegal. Whether unionized or not, the employee accepts pension benefits in lieu of current salary. The money in the pension plans should be sealed off from other funds into which the employer dips to meet expenses, just like Social Security is sealed off from the rest of the federal government, with its own trust. Despite recent reform, pension laws still provide too little protection to both private and public employees.
When the mainstream media chatters about the retirement crisis in America, it usually points a finger at the profligate Baby Boomers, who spent most their earnings (and thus shored up the U.S. and world economies) and now don’t have enough saved for retirement. Perhaps more should be said about the profligate company executives who treated and continue to treat the assets of pension plans as their company’s private piggy bank.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
In GOP’s alternative world, Social Security is part of overall budget and not in a special trust
By Marc Jampole
The banter between Republicans and Democrats on extending the temporary cut on the Social Security tax continues to take place in an alternative universe.
In the real world, cutting a program that is part of the budget doesn’t offset a temporary decrease in the Social Security tax, since Social Security is administered by a special trust which loans money to the federal government. A cut in the budget only cuts the amount of money the federal government has to borrow from Social Security. The government will eventually have to pay it all back, no matter what. That is, unless the rightwing has its way and the U.S. defaults on its financial obligation to repay the Social Security Trust Fund.
The original beauty of putting more money into consumers’ hands by cutting the Social Security tax rate temporarily was that as long as the federal government pays back what it owes the Social Security Administration, Social Security is safely financed for a long time, with no real problem until 2037 if current trends continue. The Obama Administration thus was able to pump money into the economy to fight the recession without hurting government finances because the money was coming from the fiscally strongest part of the government’s financial structure.
But in the Republican’s alternative world, Social Security is part of the budget and the Social Security taxes part of the revenues that the government collects to pay for its expenditures. This fiction, supported to a large degree by imprecision in the mainstream media, plays into two basic principles of the current right-wing:
The banter between Republicans and Democrats on extending the temporary cut on the Social Security tax continues to take place in an alternative universe.
In the real world, cutting a program that is part of the budget doesn’t offset a temporary decrease in the Social Security tax, since Social Security is administered by a special trust which loans money to the federal government. A cut in the budget only cuts the amount of money the federal government has to borrow from Social Security. The government will eventually have to pay it all back, no matter what. That is, unless the rightwing has its way and the U.S. defaults on its financial obligation to repay the Social Security Trust Fund.
The original beauty of putting more money into consumers’ hands by cutting the Social Security tax rate temporarily was that as long as the federal government pays back what it owes the Social Security Administration, Social Security is safely financed for a long time, with no real problem until 2037 if current trends continue. The Obama Administration thus was able to pump money into the economy to fight the recession without hurting government finances because the money was coming from the fiscally strongest part of the government’s financial structure.
But in the Republican’s alternative world, Social Security is part of the budget and the Social Security taxes part of the revenues that the government collects to pay for its expenditures. This fiction, supported to a large degree by imprecision in the mainstream media, plays into two basic principles of the current right-wing:
- Make the tax system more regressive. Unlike income taxes, everyone pays the same rate for Social Security and there is a cap on the income assessed that rate, so treating it as just another tax makes the overall tax system more regressive.
- Destroy Social Security and replace it with a risky private pension system. If Social Security is considered part of the overall budget, then the program is in trouble, since the United States has been spending more than it takes in for years, thanks to Bush II’s decade-old “temporary” cuts for the wealthy and our senseless, costly and bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The House Republicans have now retreated from their intransigent insistence that spending cuts in the budget must make up for the lost revenue to the Social Security Trust Fund from continuation of these temporary cuts through year’s end. They have clearly lost face with the Tea Party element, but to block the continuation of this temporary tax cut for virtually all workers would have lost them the election and taxing the wealthy to “compensate” for the extension would have angered their financial backers.
The Republicans may have lost the battle, but by no means did they lose the war. The months-long bickering over “funding the temporary Social Security tax cuts” did establish the false idea in the news media that Social Security is part of the overall budget. And while still strong, Social Security is financially weaker than it would be if it had the additional revenues represented by the temporary tax cut.
Another, more progressive, way to kick-start the stalled economy might have been to pump money into infrastructure improvements, alternative energy development and other job-creating programs and finance it by ending Bush II’s temporary income tax cuts to the wealthy. The Republicans have still prevented this option, despite the fact that surveys keep showing that voters wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy. So the loss of the one battle has enabled the Republicans to keep winning the war.
I want to close this post by recommending a blog called Stochastic Scientist, upon which I stumbled while responding to a tweet from the writer, Kathy Orlinsky. Stochastic Scientist covers scientific developments and offers a very pleasing and well-written mix of science news.
Monday, February 13, 2012
There are two types of right-wing extremists and both base their actions on faith, not reason
By Marc Jampole
“Tell me what you think makes a person right wing extremist.”
That’s the question posed to me on a personal tweet I received yesterday from someone names Silly Girl. Silly Girl describes herself as “pro-life” and a “Tea Party Patriot.”
Responding to Silly Girl’s question takes far more characters than Twitter’s limit. Twitter is great for sloganeering and enticing followers to link elsewhere. But it’s not a great venue for deep thought. So here’s my answer, for Silly Girl and the rest of the world:
There are currently two kinds of extreme right-wingers currently participating in the American marketplace of ideas:
Interesting enough, both types of right-wing extremist base their ideas on a faith that they believe overrides the lessons of science, history and rational thinking:
By contrast, social and econ-pol extremists differ in their approach to social control. This difference is striking when we consider that many people such as Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and John Boehner are both social and economic conservatives:
We can see this difference in the approach to control when we take a look at the major positions held by the two types of right-wing extremist. I think I have them all, but if I missed some of the major ideas of right-wing extremists, please let me know.
Basic beliefs of social right-wing extremists:
Basic beliefs of econ-pol right-wing extremists:
I label as extremists those who subscribe to either of these sets of beliefs for several reasons:
These two kinds of extremists really have nothing in common, except that they both tend to support views formed before the 18th century and both must exercise a great deal of faith to uphold their beliefs in light of sometimes overwhelming contradictory evidence. Social extremists tend to be less educated and live in the South or in rural communities; while some have money, as a group they are not wealthy. Econ-pol extremists tend to be wealthier than the average American and are not as defined by geography. In a sense, two unrelated groups have formed a partnership out of political convenience.
What is so odd about the current coalition of social and economic-political right-wingers constituting the Republican Party is that the policies of the econ-pols hurt a large majority of the social true believers, many of whom are poor, near poor or in the struggling, some would say drowning, middle class. And yet the social right-wingers continue to support the econ-pols. It’s a deal with the devil that is keeping much of America poor and driving much of middle class America towards poverty.
“Tell me what you think makes a person right wing extremist.”
That’s the question posed to me on a personal tweet I received yesterday from someone names Silly Girl. Silly Girl describes herself as “pro-life” and a “Tea Party Patriot.”
Responding to Silly Girl’s question takes far more characters than Twitter’s limit. Twitter is great for sloganeering and enticing followers to link elsewhere. But it’s not a great venue for deep thought. So here’s my answer, for Silly Girl and the rest of the world:
There are currently two kinds of extreme right-wingers currently participating in the American marketplace of ideas:
- Social extremists
- Economic-political (econ-pol) extremists
Interesting enough, both types of right-wing extremist base their ideas on a faith that they believe overrides the lessons of science, history and rational thinking:
- Social extremists have faith in religion, primarily Christianity, and refuse to believe the truth of science.
- Econ-pol extremists have faith in the unencumbered free market to solve all problems and sort out wealth in a fair manner, even though both history and economic analysis reveal that the free market often works against the best interests of society.
By contrast, social and econ-pol extremists differ in their approach to social control. This difference is striking when we consider that many people such as Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and John Boehner are both social and economic conservatives:
- Social extremists want to control actions of individuals, e.g., preventing abortions, birth control and gay marriage and forcing religion into the school and other public places.
- Econ-pol extremists want to take all limitations from the actions of institutions, specifically businesses, so they can operate free of constraints such as labor, safety and environmental laws and regulations.
We can see this difference in the approach to control when we take a look at the major positions held by the two types of right-wing extremist. I think I have them all, but if I missed some of the major ideas of right-wing extremists, please let me know.
Basic beliefs of social right-wing extremists:
- Global warming is not occurring and the theory of evolution is wrong.
- Religion should be taught in the schools.
- Abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage and birth control are wrong.
- Homosexuality is a sin and a failing, not a natural occurrence in the population.
- It’s okay to discriminate against practitioners of Islam and/or religions other than Christianity.
Basic beliefs of econ-pol right-wing extremists:
- There should be no constraints on businesses, including constraints to promote fair wages, workplace or consumer safety or a clean environmental.
- The private sector can solve all problems and deliver all goods and services better than government.
- Private institutions should replace public ones, e.g. schools, roads, prisons and military services.
- Labor organizations should be made illegal and there should be no minimum wage or other employer mandates to compensate employees fairly.
- Taxes should not only be low but also regressive, meaning that the richer one is the less one’s relative tax burden should be.
- The military should engage to protect the private interests of large American multinational companies.
I label as extremists those who subscribe to either of these sets of beliefs for several reasons:
- To believe in all of these ideas (as opposed to just one or two) defines extremism on the right.
- Unwillingness to compromise characterizes both types of extremists, and is a trait associated with extremists of all varieties.
- For the most part, these ideas are rejected by mainstream America. Most Americans support keeping abortion legal, although sometimes with limits. Most Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy. People overwhelmingly support birth control, the minimum wage and safety regulations.
- Those views of the extreme rightwing that large amounts of other Americans share usually firmly contradict all scientific evidence, such as not believing in Darwinism or doubting the occurrence of global warming. Failure to believe truth is a sure sign of extremism, all else notwithstanding.
These two kinds of extremists really have nothing in common, except that they both tend to support views formed before the 18th century and both must exercise a great deal of faith to uphold their beliefs in light of sometimes overwhelming contradictory evidence. Social extremists tend to be less educated and live in the South or in rural communities; while some have money, as a group they are not wealthy. Econ-pol extremists tend to be wealthier than the average American and are not as defined by geography. In a sense, two unrelated groups have formed a partnership out of political convenience.
What is so odd about the current coalition of social and economic-political right-wingers constituting the Republican Party is that the policies of the econ-pols hurt a large majority of the social true believers, many of whom are poor, near poor or in the struggling, some would say drowning, middle class. And yet the social right-wingers continue to support the econ-pols. It’s a deal with the devil that is keeping much of America poor and driving much of middle class America towards poverty.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Selections from the March 1, 2012 issue
COVER/Martha Rosenberg
‘Big Meat’ breeds super bugs
EDITORIAL
Who owes apology?; GOP war on women
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
DISPATCHES
Weakest inevitable nominee ever; Senate Dems concede to GOP on union rules; Romney defends Planned Parenthood defunding; Catholics support birth control; Sanders proposes curb on corporations; Corporate tax rate plunges; Arizona unionbusting; Quiet triumph of Obama care ...
JIM VAN DER POL
Enlarge loaf with trickle-up economics
DON ROLLINS
Farming while black is extra risky
BOB BURNETT
Obama’s common sense resonates
SALLY HERRIN
Rust never sleeps and money never gives up
SETH SANDRONSKY
Tea Party rise to power rebrands GOP
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Confederacy of hypocrites cuts health care
SAM URETSKY
Paul and Romney’s half-baked health care
WAYNE O’LEARY
Bain as in pain
JOHN BUELL
Mitt blames Europe for broken economy
RICHARD R. TROXELL
Restore opportunity with a living wage
ROB PATTERSON
Power, control, sexuality and sports
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)