I will be blogging at Whiskeysplace.wordpress.com, for the moment.
This site will remain open, but due to the takedown (still don't know why, but my thanks to the Google team who brought it back up) I've moved everything to wordpress. All the comments, etc.
Please bookmark Whiskeysplace.wordpress.com as the new place for Whiskeys Place. I will have a post up soon on Conservatism.
Thanks for all the kind support.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Chuck Finale: What Network TV Tells Us About Love and Marriage
Most people don't go to church anymore. Charles Murray notes that regular religious attendance is pretty restricted to the White Upper Class. But people, still, even with network audience erosion, park themselves in front of the TV every day. Television, and the attitudes it both reflects and helps create, in a feedback loop, is very interesting. It is a giant, two-way mirror into both public attitudes and elite opinion (nothing on TV, overwhelmingly, reflects anti-elite opinion) that if examined closely can predict trends and emerging opinions.
The Series Finale of NBC's "Chuck," one of the most unusual shows on the air, certainly helps the argument that TV's messages are worthy of examination. They also reinforce the observation of David Mamet, who in "the Secret Knowledge" said that years ago, love stories consisted of two people who loved each other intensely, and overcame barriers to be together. Today, love stories consist of people who don't really like each other, but decide for outside reasons to make a go of a relationship. Telling, that is. There is a reason for it. And another.
The first reason is of course, that today's society has absolute freedom. Freedom to be with whoever you choose. There are no Scarlett Letters anymore, nor forbidden love. Heck even Gays can marry, if not in say, South Dakota, then certainly California, or Hawaii, or Massachusetts. Gays can cohabit as partners anywhere. Openly gay personalities are beloved on TV, from Ellen, to Neil Patrick Harris, to the entire cast it would seem of Fox's "Glee," beloved of tweens, teen girls, and their moms. Almost any kind of relationship is possible, which is why Hollywood mines the past, ala Jane Austen, or various disabilities, such as The Surrogate where a man in an iron lung loses his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt.
There are no real barriers, that are believable, so the barriers Hollywood uses to amp up tension, are two people who have their own internal barriers: at least one does not like the other, and there is no mutual longing found fairly quickly. Instead outside forces combine to make people stick together. Generally involving one or more of the following actors and actresses: Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, the Ugly Truth, 27 Dresses, Life as We Know It); Gerard Butler (also the Ugly Truth, the Bounty Hunter, PS I Love You), Sandra Bullock (While You Were Sleeping, the Proposal), Matthew McConaghey (Failure to Launch), and any Jennifer Aniston movie. "Chuck" definitely falls into this category.
This is generally Hollywood's formula now: two people meet, one falls for the other, the other not. Outside forces (drunken one-night stand pregnancy, morning show stunts, immigration enforcement/deportation, a "spy assignment" as an asset handler) force the (almost always the woman) to put up with the obnoxious guy and over a period of being exposed to his "real" good qualities and inspiring better, more adult behavior, leading to finally a "real" relationship. Almost always, the deck is "stacked" by having handsome, virile men play the man-boys, Josh Duhamel, Butler, Owen Wilson, McConaghey, Ryan Reynolds, or "Chuck's" own Zachary Levi. Heigl famously objected to being paired in the movie "Knocked Up" with fattie Seth Rogen, which was just a performance. Even professional actresses doing a performance for a movie soon forgotten by everyone involved, object to being "insulted" by being paired on-screen with a less than A-List Alpha A-hole. In their minds it makes them look ugly.
The second, more hidden reason is that Hollywood itself has little confidence, reflected in both its own hot-house relationship failures, and ugly power dynamics, and the larger outside world, in any lasting, real relationship. This is particularly true in entertainment aimed at women. This is what guys tend to like:
Dr. Pepper Ten? Well it is funny, "not for women," chiefly because of the total absence of any kind of relationship drama.
Hollywood relationships don't last long. This has an effect particularly on writers, who tend to reflect this difficulty in what they create because they see it and know it well. The demands of catering to "ups and downs" in a TV or movie relationship, aimed at attracting women, makes this an easy short-cut as well. This caters to what blogger Dalrock calls the Endless Courtship Fantasy, such as the "Christian" movie "Fireproof," where the husband has to win his divorcing wife back all over again, constantly. Or the Vow (where a car accident leaves a wife with no memory of a husband who must woo her all over again). It is the fantasy of being eternally young, eternally pursued, eternally not having to make a choice, eternally the center of a man's attention. A roller coaster, and a proven way to attract women, either as a Pick Up Artist (that's a classic technique -- push/pull attraction, designed to elicit high highs and low lows of feeling that women get hooked on) … or a television or movie script writer. Offering the same thing. Because it works.
In short, Endless Courtship is the female immature version of playing WoW all day. Or slacking through life. No way to build a lasting relationship, that is critical for creating and sustaining a family. Creating and sustaining a family requires an adult moving-beyond passion, ups/downs in emotions, in favor of stability and sacrifice that kids need. That is what the nuclear family is all about, being more than just two people feeding the need (of one) to create intense emotion(s). Rather, mature and stable self-sacrifice and mutual dependency that raising healthy kids demands. Increasingly, both on-screen and in wider life, that sort of mutual self-sacrifice is just not in the cards, save for the few genetically blessed or the upper classes.
Not when ultimate freedom means walking away. How sad is that? That love stories depend on shadowy government agencies, or threats of deportation, or some bounty hunter, or taking care of a friend's baby after they die, to fall in love and get married? But that is the state of romance in movies and TV today, reflecting the reality of ultimate freedom. Anyone can and will walk away in a heartbeat. Sickness and health? More like, "Not happy, see you, bye!" Increasingly, relationships are defined by movies, TV, and real life, as endless courting not mature devotion. The attitude of endless courting, following an obvious "Happy Divorce" metaphor, and no actual mature relationship, characterized the finale in "Chuck."
Which is a shame, since there were many things that made "Chuck" unique: observations on relative advantages in intelligence in men and women; how truly repulsive omega males are to women (and how that is behaviorally based), and why Omega males stay that way; the idea of "improvement" of a beta male into a credible Alpha, with the help of family, friends, and (naturally) a hot, tough, but underneath sensitive woman. Certainly the show encapsulated the idea that it took an act of God (or his replacement: the Government) to put a man and a woman who obviously belonged together, well, together.
One of the really unique observations in "Chuck" was intelligence. The Bartowski siblings, Chuck and his older sister Ellie, are both highly intelligent, and attractive, tall people. Their father was depicted as a super-genius (and played by Scott Bakula). But Chuck's intelligence is consistently played as one reason for his lack of confidence and success with women generally, and the beautiful spy-handler he falls for in particular (Sarah, played wonderfully by Yvonne Strahowski). Star Zachary Levi does a great job portraying fumbling nervousness because he can imagine, in painful detail, the rejection, the mistake-making, the obvious disadvantages that his character's real persona (as opposed to his spy alias) create for him. His sister, who is shown to be equally as intelligent, and a Doctor, has no such problems. She is the pursued, and had been won by a guy who is both a Greek God (Ryan McPartlin), and a fellow Doctor. For her, intelligence was a plus, her brains plus beauty won her the top guy, who Chuck and best-pal Morgan (the incomparable Joshua Gomez) nickname "Captain Awesome." Because the guy is indeed, awesome.
Time and time again, Chuck over-thinks things, in approaching women, like he would approach a video game, or computer program, or any other highly technical problem. He also obsesses over particular women and gets one-itis, shown as a weakness on the show repeatedly. His great strength (sustained focus) thus becomes a hideous weakness, one that in the series pilot shows him bailing out of his own birthday party to avoid the inevitable humiliation around girls. This quandary is familiar to any guy who has been around high-IQ men and women. The women have no real problem, for the most part, in social settings, while the guys around women are ill at ease. Because all their strengths: obsessive focus, over-thinking, attacking complexity, produces failure after failure. And they don't know why. After all, it brings them success in work.
Also fascinating was the Beta Male/Omega Male hang-out of the "Buy More," a retail hell based loosely on Best Buy (with elaborate parody clothing and sets). Clearly the writers had worked retail, and the stupid employee hijinks ('Mystery Crisper' where best pal Morgan eats blindfolded long-lost employee lunches in the break room fridge) ring true for any who have ever worked retail. As do the Omega Male characters, particularly Lester and Jeffrey (Vik Sahay, Scott Krinsky, comic gold). Two guys so low on the totem pole they can't even see up, and who consequently lack any ambition or motivation other than to be difficult and destructive. "Chuck," as the leader of the group of Omega Males, is shown as their check from disaster,as a natural leader, but one whose lack of any woman in his life leads to "Going his own way" which amounts to going nowhere. A man who opts out of society, who has no hope of girlfriend or family life, easily ends up like Lester or Jeffrey. As Jeffrey put it, "Off by eight. Hammered by eight-fifteen." That's clearly where Chuck is headed, before Sarah shows up.
Slowly but surely, Chuck helps pull not only higher Omega male pal Morgan, but even Jeffrey and Lester out of Omega-dom, and for Morgan into an actual, real, sustainable relationship with a decent girl, and Jeffrey and Lester into some semblance of human functionality. That was a nice touch, though for much of the series, female fans found Jeffrey and Lester predictably appalling instead of funny. If you were a guy you understood. They were just difficult. Because they had no motivation to be otherwise.
Also interesting was the growth of Chuck as a character into a more commanding, assertive, confident, and important man, therefore worthy of sexiness. The deck was stacked again, with Zachary Levi's height and good looks helping things along, and his native intelligence shown to be an asset in "work" be it the useless "Buy More" retail hell work, or "spy work" (which bore as much resemblance to reality as Get Smart or Man from UNCLE). This the female fanbase liked. There are, after all, only so many Alpha males. And everyone likes a fixer-upper, as long as it is not a complete gut job. Merely a coat of paint, some new floors, and you're done! So too was the frustrations of the super-spies (Strahowski's "Sarah" and Adam Baldwin as "Casey") with the retail hell idiocy of a strip mall environment, though Baldwin's character dealt with it better, being a man. As dominant and assertive and comfortable as the spy Sarah was in colorful and exotic settings, the mundane world was a challenge and a mystery to her. The show clearly depicted the mundane, boring, grindingly meaningless life at the "Buy More" as better tolerated by the men, who could put up with it better, than the female characters.
But the center of the show was basically the observation of David Mamet, that two people who had no real love for each other try and make a relationship; again with the Government instead of God putting them together. The relationship was unequal, of course, and in the "Knocked Up" mode instead of the "female pursuit" mode of say, "the Proposal" where the chick pursues the hot guy. Here it is the guy pursuing the hot chick. Endlessly. And unequally, since the show took three seasons for the girl to even acknowledge she loved the main character, and another after that for her to marry him.
And … if that is the view of Hollywood, on what makes romance? The view preached to every woman (and gay) watching at home? [Chuck did skew somewhat male, as this post shows, being number 4 in male skewing in 2010.] Well the nuclear family is doomed. At best, one can be a hot and intelligent woman and find herself courted by a semi-Greek God and fellow med-student. But at worst, the intelligent man finds he must constantly be proving how Alpha he is, and how "romantic," by courting the woman endlessly, forever. Even after marriage. All that time on romance means no time for family formation. Ever. If you want to look at declining birth rates, one need only look at the social dynamics created by absolute freedom. It pretty much demands all available effort be put into constant courtship and romance, at the expense of starting a family for all but the most Alpha of men.
In the show's finale, Sarah, reverts her to the cold, hard, tough assassin she started out as, via the hackneyed ("the Vow" movie) device of memory loss. She does not regain her memory, and she shares only a kiss and some laughs with the hero, before the show fades out. Given that the show required three years for her character to even have feelings and act on them, and another year to marry the guy, what is shown on-screen is a "Happy Divorce" where the girl, now back to where she was, but with more human emotions, moves on with her life. While the guy, stuck again with a super-computer in his brain, has no money, no future, no motivation (lacking critically the girl), and now no extended family/friends, since they've all moved on to other things. Given the lack of warmth, trust, or any sign of "love," by the Sarah character, the show seems to say that even when made into a credible Alpha, any real difficulty means at best a happy Good-bye (the show is titled, in typical Chuck fashion, "Chuck vs. the Good-bye.")
Fan Opinion was mixed, some loved, it, others not so much. [Most of the commenters there are obviously female, and thus a useful peek into how they saw the show.]
The whole finale was of course, a thinly-disguised metaphor for divorce. The heroine loses all feelings and happy memories for the hero, is manipulated by an outsider villain (who resembled a fat, sleazy divorce lawyer), is cold and resentful to the hero throughout, never trusts or believes in him, removes herself from his family and friends, leaves several times, and in the end shares some happy reminiscence of good times past and not well recalled. A "happy divorce," but a divorce nevertheless. You could say that the shows writers and creators did not even buy the show's emotional premise -- that the two leads belonged together and would end up together. A fairly compelling portrait of Marriage 2.o, in Health but in Sickness, for richer but not poorer, to have but not to hold, requiring endless courtship, could not have been better constructed on any show in Hollywood.
And what is frustrating is that emotionally, psychologically, this is one big fat lie. Particularly to women, who end up believing it. Does Demi Moore look happy to you? Doing "Whipits" and K2 Spice (the former is the nitrous oxide from Whipped Cream cans, the latter some synthetic weed) is not the act of a happy woman. Particularly not indulged with one's grown, 23 year old daughter. The Daily Mail reports she is being treated for anorexia and other issues after suffering convulsions from Whipits and K2 Spice. Once one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, she now looks like the picture above. Madonna, and other former beauties all share the same fate. Meanwhile soon-to-be ex husband Ashton Kutcher has no worries. Stepping right into the Charlie Sheen shoes on camera and in real-life, he's more popular than ever and has been asked back to co-star in "Two and A Half Men."
Both dramatically, and in real life, the challenge of ultimate freedom, and choice, where women and men can walk away from marriage, at any time, for any reason, makes the selection of the best, most faithful and loyal partner one can get, critical. Women in particular, since they lose attractiveness far quicker than men, walk a razor's edge. One false move, one bad choice, and there is no Second or Third Act for them. Their romantic lives are ruined, and with them the chance for most (save the wealthiest celebrities) at any possibility of a happy family life. This ought to be the real driving dramatic choice, and matching one in real life? How do I know that the last best hope I have for a guy who will stick with me when I get old and ugly is not walking past right now? That is the dramatic situation women ought to be given, by the Church of Television.
What was once the norm, the ordinary, the White Picket fence and nice suburban home (shown endlessly this final season of Chuck as the just-out-of-reach fantasy for Chuck and Sarah) is now out of reach for all but the most blessed, and shown so repeatedly on TV. The smartest of women who get won by guys like "Captain Awesome," but not those "married to their careers" (such as Sarah). Indeed the crutch of career-ism for women, and the dead-end (quite literally) that it implies, was a major theme on "Chuck." That's contrasted of course by a career. Chuck's sister Ellie, first engaged, then married, to a fellow doctor she fell for in med school, certainly has a career. But it does not consume her, rather family matters of her own, her luckless brother, desire for a kid, desire for the best for her kid when she has her, all drive her endlessly. Her job is just her job. Important but not the dominant feature of her emotional landscape. It is merely how she earns money for her family, not the endpoint of all ambition and feelings. This is why Ellie, is happy and Sarah is not. SHE has a husband, and a baby, and a career where her native intelligence and caring wisdom matter. One that requires neither coldness, nor "just following orders brutality," nor constant lying and manipulation.
Because freedom cuts both ways. And absolute freedom, and the propensity to walk away, creates Lemon Markets. One that hurts both buyers and sellers, and creates a degraded, debased market:
If you look at modern relationships, outside those of say, Ellie and Awesome in "Chuck" (akin to the Upper Class, i.e. both are "vetted" as medical students, intelligent, highly disciplined, high impulse control, and put together by an institution, in their case med school), information asymmetry, rules. People don't commit, because the cost of getting burned is high, i.e. lost time (particularly for women who have less of it) with someone else. Since it is hard to tell if a man is quality or not, superficial attributes such as styling and "hotness" tend to dominate. But over-committing to the "Lemon" (say, Ashton Kutcher), leads to disaster. Meanwhile, a car looking beat up superficially, but sound in all other aspects, tends to get devalued because the soundness in other aspects is basically, undiscoverable absent commitment.
That is the conundrum that Hollywood tries to solve in Romantic Comedies. The women don't commit, because even though the guys look like say, Ryan Reynolds, or Josh Duhamel, or Gerard Butler, or Zachary Levi, they've been burned before, are skeptical of the "market value" of the prospective mate, and approach romance like a used-car buyer while consumed with careerism to fill an empty romantic void. [Really, it is remarkable how often Hollywood shows this.] In a very real sense the female leads of romantic comedies are in a used car market. Gone are the intermediaries, such as relatives, (or med school in the case of Ellie and Awesome), friends, churches, and the like in such a highly mobile and anonymous society. Therefore, how do they get together? Their mutual best friends die in a car accident (how romantic!) and they have to raise their orphaned infant together. The INS will deport a female big shot exec unless she engages in a sham marriage. A one-night drunken stand regretted instantly by the woman gets her pregnant. A driven super-spy must provide protection and handling to the CIA and NSA's only spy-supercomputer in human form, one nerdy guy with sexy Alpha potential. The two are driven together until the real value of the (generally guy) is apparent. A girl's value is easily sussed out here: attractive, intelligent, faithful. Not much needed to discover. The man is not so easily discovered.
The show's creators understood this, since they milked it for years, as the Sarah character slowly through forced interaction with Chuck found his true market value, and fell in love with him. Obviously budget concerns plagued the show (pushing to flash-backs to save cash), as did the writers falling in love with symmetry, the Chuck character taking the lead on the beach to match Sarah in the pilot, as she not he struggles with a new situation -- marriage to a guy who loves her but for who she feels nothing, and does not believe in as a man, a spy (critical for how she evaluates men), or her husband. Laughs and a kiss as they say good-bye, so Chuck can woo her all over again. Maybe.
And that is just a lie. In a society where men can also choose at will, and walk away, with freedom just a lawyer and financial sacrifice away, re-courting is a fantasy. There is always a woman younger, hotter, and prettier, with less baggage and emotional instability, to be found by any man worth having (i.e. that other women want). Endless courting just means men won't put in the effort, and bounce around in semi-slackerdom ala Lester and Jeffrey, or PUA douchery, perhaps one interspersed with the other.
It was a cheap and easy out, for the show's writers and creators, and like all cheap and easy outs, revealing in how it exposes Hollywood's true beliefs. Fundamentally, Hollywood seems to believe that yes, there is something wrong with how men and women (largely don't) come together as they should. But its solution is endless romance, which prevents family formation. That furthermore only a blessed few, as signified generally by "correct" occupations (Doctors are seldom villains) can achieve marriage and family, without falling into the trap of Endless Courtship to validate (oh so obviously) poor self-images of their female audience.
The show did alright in the ratings, but nothing like it did once just a few years ago (which was around 2.0 in 18-34 Adults). Clearly the endless romance focus, and lack of "seal the deal" stuff with the Sarah character, turned off the nerdy guys who wanted Yvonne Strahowski as their fantasy girlfriend, without bringing in any women who wanted Zachary Levi as their perfectly acceptable "fixer-upper Alpha" to cover the loss, let alone improve upon it.
I can't remember a show before that depicted a nerdy, geeky guy as the hero. One who (for a while at least) credibly got the girl. And one that depicted the retail-hell underside of "Going your own way" which amounts to going nowhere, though in very male style. The show at its best was funny, with a lot of physical humor based on humiliating (and therefore hilarious) retail outfits the sexy female super spy Sarah was forced to wear as part of her cover. I'll miss the show, and the fantastic performances by gifted actors, who were better than the scripts most of the last few years: Adam Baldwin, Yvonne Strahowski (terrifically funny in a slow-burn way), Zachary Levi, Joshua Gomez, Ryan McPartlin, Sarah Lawrence (criminally under-appreciated and under-used), and the great Scott Krinsky and Vik Sahay.
But its failures are instructive. It shows that Hollywood still does not have a handle on romance, in a world of endless freedom and eternal choices. Nor, sadly, does much of America.
...Read more
The Series Finale of NBC's "Chuck," one of the most unusual shows on the air, certainly helps the argument that TV's messages are worthy of examination. They also reinforce the observation of David Mamet, who in "the Secret Knowledge" said that years ago, love stories consisted of two people who loved each other intensely, and overcame barriers to be together. Today, love stories consist of people who don't really like each other, but decide for outside reasons to make a go of a relationship. Telling, that is. There is a reason for it. And another.
The first reason is of course, that today's society has absolute freedom. Freedom to be with whoever you choose. There are no Scarlett Letters anymore, nor forbidden love. Heck even Gays can marry, if not in say, South Dakota, then certainly California, or Hawaii, or Massachusetts. Gays can cohabit as partners anywhere. Openly gay personalities are beloved on TV, from Ellen, to Neil Patrick Harris, to the entire cast it would seem of Fox's "Glee," beloved of tweens, teen girls, and their moms. Almost any kind of relationship is possible, which is why Hollywood mines the past, ala Jane Austen, or various disabilities, such as The Surrogate where a man in an iron lung loses his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt.
There are no real barriers, that are believable, so the barriers Hollywood uses to amp up tension, are two people who have their own internal barriers: at least one does not like the other, and there is no mutual longing found fairly quickly. Instead outside forces combine to make people stick together. Generally involving one or more of the following actors and actresses: Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, the Ugly Truth, 27 Dresses, Life as We Know It); Gerard Butler (also the Ugly Truth, the Bounty Hunter, PS I Love You), Sandra Bullock (While You Were Sleeping, the Proposal), Matthew McConaghey (Failure to Launch), and any Jennifer Aniston movie. "Chuck" definitely falls into this category.
This is generally Hollywood's formula now: two people meet, one falls for the other, the other not. Outside forces (drunken one-night stand pregnancy, morning show stunts, immigration enforcement/deportation, a "spy assignment" as an asset handler) force the (almost always the woman) to put up with the obnoxious guy and over a period of being exposed to his "real" good qualities and inspiring better, more adult behavior, leading to finally a "real" relationship. Almost always, the deck is "stacked" by having handsome, virile men play the man-boys, Josh Duhamel, Butler, Owen Wilson, McConaghey, Ryan Reynolds, or "Chuck's" own Zachary Levi. Heigl famously objected to being paired in the movie "Knocked Up" with fattie Seth Rogen, which was just a performance. Even professional actresses doing a performance for a movie soon forgotten by everyone involved, object to being "insulted" by being paired on-screen with a less than A-List Alpha A-hole. In their minds it makes them look ugly.
The second, more hidden reason is that Hollywood itself has little confidence, reflected in both its own hot-house relationship failures, and ugly power dynamics, and the larger outside world, in any lasting, real relationship. This is particularly true in entertainment aimed at women. This is what guys tend to like:
Dr. Pepper Ten? Well it is funny, "not for women," chiefly because of the total absence of any kind of relationship drama.
Hollywood relationships don't last long. This has an effect particularly on writers, who tend to reflect this difficulty in what they create because they see it and know it well. The demands of catering to "ups and downs" in a TV or movie relationship, aimed at attracting women, makes this an easy short-cut as well. This caters to what blogger Dalrock calls the Endless Courtship Fantasy, such as the "Christian" movie "Fireproof," where the husband has to win his divorcing wife back all over again, constantly. Or the Vow (where a car accident leaves a wife with no memory of a husband who must woo her all over again). It is the fantasy of being eternally young, eternally pursued, eternally not having to make a choice, eternally the center of a man's attention. A roller coaster, and a proven way to attract women, either as a Pick Up Artist (that's a classic technique -- push/pull attraction, designed to elicit high highs and low lows of feeling that women get hooked on) … or a television or movie script writer. Offering the same thing. Because it works.
In short, Endless Courtship is the female immature version of playing WoW all day. Or slacking through life. No way to build a lasting relationship, that is critical for creating and sustaining a family. Creating and sustaining a family requires an adult moving-beyond passion, ups/downs in emotions, in favor of stability and sacrifice that kids need. That is what the nuclear family is all about, being more than just two people feeding the need (of one) to create intense emotion(s). Rather, mature and stable self-sacrifice and mutual dependency that raising healthy kids demands. Increasingly, both on-screen and in wider life, that sort of mutual self-sacrifice is just not in the cards, save for the few genetically blessed or the upper classes.
Not when ultimate freedom means walking away. How sad is that? That love stories depend on shadowy government agencies, or threats of deportation, or some bounty hunter, or taking care of a friend's baby after they die, to fall in love and get married? But that is the state of romance in movies and TV today, reflecting the reality of ultimate freedom. Anyone can and will walk away in a heartbeat. Sickness and health? More like, "Not happy, see you, bye!" Increasingly, relationships are defined by movies, TV, and real life, as endless courting not mature devotion. The attitude of endless courting, following an obvious "Happy Divorce" metaphor, and no actual mature relationship, characterized the finale in "Chuck."
Which is a shame, since there were many things that made "Chuck" unique: observations on relative advantages in intelligence in men and women; how truly repulsive omega males are to women (and how that is behaviorally based), and why Omega males stay that way; the idea of "improvement" of a beta male into a credible Alpha, with the help of family, friends, and (naturally) a hot, tough, but underneath sensitive woman. Certainly the show encapsulated the idea that it took an act of God (or his replacement: the Government) to put a man and a woman who obviously belonged together, well, together.
One of the really unique observations in "Chuck" was intelligence. The Bartowski siblings, Chuck and his older sister Ellie, are both highly intelligent, and attractive, tall people. Their father was depicted as a super-genius (and played by Scott Bakula). But Chuck's intelligence is consistently played as one reason for his lack of confidence and success with women generally, and the beautiful spy-handler he falls for in particular (Sarah, played wonderfully by Yvonne Strahowski). Star Zachary Levi does a great job portraying fumbling nervousness because he can imagine, in painful detail, the rejection, the mistake-making, the obvious disadvantages that his character's real persona (as opposed to his spy alias) create for him. His sister, who is shown to be equally as intelligent, and a Doctor, has no such problems. She is the pursued, and had been won by a guy who is both a Greek God (Ryan McPartlin), and a fellow Doctor. For her, intelligence was a plus, her brains plus beauty won her the top guy, who Chuck and best-pal Morgan (the incomparable Joshua Gomez) nickname "Captain Awesome." Because the guy is indeed, awesome.
Time and time again, Chuck over-thinks things, in approaching women, like he would approach a video game, or computer program, or any other highly technical problem. He also obsesses over particular women and gets one-itis, shown as a weakness on the show repeatedly. His great strength (sustained focus) thus becomes a hideous weakness, one that in the series pilot shows him bailing out of his own birthday party to avoid the inevitable humiliation around girls. This quandary is familiar to any guy who has been around high-IQ men and women. The women have no real problem, for the most part, in social settings, while the guys around women are ill at ease. Because all their strengths: obsessive focus, over-thinking, attacking complexity, produces failure after failure. And they don't know why. After all, it brings them success in work.
Also fascinating was the Beta Male/Omega Male hang-out of the "Buy More," a retail hell based loosely on Best Buy (with elaborate parody clothing and sets). Clearly the writers had worked retail, and the stupid employee hijinks ('Mystery Crisper' where best pal Morgan eats blindfolded long-lost employee lunches in the break room fridge) ring true for any who have ever worked retail. As do the Omega Male characters, particularly Lester and Jeffrey (Vik Sahay, Scott Krinsky, comic gold). Two guys so low on the totem pole they can't even see up, and who consequently lack any ambition or motivation other than to be difficult and destructive. "Chuck," as the leader of the group of Omega Males, is shown as their check from disaster,as a natural leader, but one whose lack of any woman in his life leads to "Going his own way" which amounts to going nowhere. A man who opts out of society, who has no hope of girlfriend or family life, easily ends up like Lester or Jeffrey. As Jeffrey put it, "Off by eight. Hammered by eight-fifteen." That's clearly where Chuck is headed, before Sarah shows up.
Slowly but surely, Chuck helps pull not only higher Omega male pal Morgan, but even Jeffrey and Lester out of Omega-dom, and for Morgan into an actual, real, sustainable relationship with a decent girl, and Jeffrey and Lester into some semblance of human functionality. That was a nice touch, though for much of the series, female fans found Jeffrey and Lester predictably appalling instead of funny. If you were a guy you understood. They were just difficult. Because they had no motivation to be otherwise.
Also interesting was the growth of Chuck as a character into a more commanding, assertive, confident, and important man, therefore worthy of sexiness. The deck was stacked again, with Zachary Levi's height and good looks helping things along, and his native intelligence shown to be an asset in "work" be it the useless "Buy More" retail hell work, or "spy work" (which bore as much resemblance to reality as Get Smart or Man from UNCLE). This the female fanbase liked. There are, after all, only so many Alpha males. And everyone likes a fixer-upper, as long as it is not a complete gut job. Merely a coat of paint, some new floors, and you're done! So too was the frustrations of the super-spies (Strahowski's "Sarah" and Adam Baldwin as "Casey") with the retail hell idiocy of a strip mall environment, though Baldwin's character dealt with it better, being a man. As dominant and assertive and comfortable as the spy Sarah was in colorful and exotic settings, the mundane world was a challenge and a mystery to her. The show clearly depicted the mundane, boring, grindingly meaningless life at the "Buy More" as better tolerated by the men, who could put up with it better, than the female characters.
But the center of the show was basically the observation of David Mamet, that two people who had no real love for each other try and make a relationship; again with the Government instead of God putting them together. The relationship was unequal, of course, and in the "Knocked Up" mode instead of the "female pursuit" mode of say, "the Proposal" where the chick pursues the hot guy. Here it is the guy pursuing the hot chick. Endlessly. And unequally, since the show took three seasons for the girl to even acknowledge she loved the main character, and another after that for her to marry him.
And … if that is the view of Hollywood, on what makes romance? The view preached to every woman (and gay) watching at home? [Chuck did skew somewhat male, as this post shows, being number 4 in male skewing in 2010.] Well the nuclear family is doomed. At best, one can be a hot and intelligent woman and find herself courted by a semi-Greek God and fellow med-student. But at worst, the intelligent man finds he must constantly be proving how Alpha he is, and how "romantic," by courting the woman endlessly, forever. Even after marriage. All that time on romance means no time for family formation. Ever. If you want to look at declining birth rates, one need only look at the social dynamics created by absolute freedom. It pretty much demands all available effort be put into constant courtship and romance, at the expense of starting a family for all but the most Alpha of men.
In the show's finale, Sarah, reverts her to the cold, hard, tough assassin she started out as, via the hackneyed ("the Vow" movie) device of memory loss. She does not regain her memory, and she shares only a kiss and some laughs with the hero, before the show fades out. Given that the show required three years for her character to even have feelings and act on them, and another year to marry the guy, what is shown on-screen is a "Happy Divorce" where the girl, now back to where she was, but with more human emotions, moves on with her life. While the guy, stuck again with a super-computer in his brain, has no money, no future, no motivation (lacking critically the girl), and now no extended family/friends, since they've all moved on to other things. Given the lack of warmth, trust, or any sign of "love," by the Sarah character, the show seems to say that even when made into a credible Alpha, any real difficulty means at best a happy Good-bye (the show is titled, in typical Chuck fashion, "Chuck vs. the Good-bye.")
Fan Opinion was mixed, some loved, it, others not so much. [Most of the commenters there are obviously female, and thus a useful peek into how they saw the show.]
The whole finale was of course, a thinly-disguised metaphor for divorce. The heroine loses all feelings and happy memories for the hero, is manipulated by an outsider villain (who resembled a fat, sleazy divorce lawyer), is cold and resentful to the hero throughout, never trusts or believes in him, removes herself from his family and friends, leaves several times, and in the end shares some happy reminiscence of good times past and not well recalled. A "happy divorce," but a divorce nevertheless. You could say that the shows writers and creators did not even buy the show's emotional premise -- that the two leads belonged together and would end up together. A fairly compelling portrait of Marriage 2.o, in Health but in Sickness, for richer but not poorer, to have but not to hold, requiring endless courtship, could not have been better constructed on any show in Hollywood.
And what is frustrating is that emotionally, psychologically, this is one big fat lie. Particularly to women, who end up believing it. Does Demi Moore look happy to you? Doing "Whipits" and K2 Spice (the former is the nitrous oxide from Whipped Cream cans, the latter some synthetic weed) is not the act of a happy woman. Particularly not indulged with one's grown, 23 year old daughter. The Daily Mail reports she is being treated for anorexia and other issues after suffering convulsions from Whipits and K2 Spice. Once one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, she now looks like the picture above. Madonna, and other former beauties all share the same fate. Meanwhile soon-to-be ex husband Ashton Kutcher has no worries. Stepping right into the Charlie Sheen shoes on camera and in real-life, he's more popular than ever and has been asked back to co-star in "Two and A Half Men."
Both dramatically, and in real life, the challenge of ultimate freedom, and choice, where women and men can walk away from marriage, at any time, for any reason, makes the selection of the best, most faithful and loyal partner one can get, critical. Women in particular, since they lose attractiveness far quicker than men, walk a razor's edge. One false move, one bad choice, and there is no Second or Third Act for them. Their romantic lives are ruined, and with them the chance for most (save the wealthiest celebrities) at any possibility of a happy family life. This ought to be the real driving dramatic choice, and matching one in real life? How do I know that the last best hope I have for a guy who will stick with me when I get old and ugly is not walking past right now? That is the dramatic situation women ought to be given, by the Church of Television.
What was once the norm, the ordinary, the White Picket fence and nice suburban home (shown endlessly this final season of Chuck as the just-out-of-reach fantasy for Chuck and Sarah) is now out of reach for all but the most blessed, and shown so repeatedly on TV. The smartest of women who get won by guys like "Captain Awesome," but not those "married to their careers" (such as Sarah). Indeed the crutch of career-ism for women, and the dead-end (quite literally) that it implies, was a major theme on "Chuck." That's contrasted of course by a career. Chuck's sister Ellie, first engaged, then married, to a fellow doctor she fell for in med school, certainly has a career. But it does not consume her, rather family matters of her own, her luckless brother, desire for a kid, desire for the best for her kid when she has her, all drive her endlessly. Her job is just her job. Important but not the dominant feature of her emotional landscape. It is merely how she earns money for her family, not the endpoint of all ambition and feelings. This is why Ellie, is happy and Sarah is not. SHE has a husband, and a baby, and a career where her native intelligence and caring wisdom matter. One that requires neither coldness, nor "just following orders brutality," nor constant lying and manipulation.
Because freedom cuts both ways. And absolute freedom, and the propensity to walk away, creates Lemon Markets. One that hurts both buyers and sellers, and creates a degraded, debased market:
Akerlof's paper uses the market for used cars as an example of the problem of quality uncertainty. A used car is one in which ownership is transferred from one person to another, after a period of use by its first owner and its inevitable wear and tear. There are good used cars ("cherries") and defective used cars ("lemons"), normally as a consequence of several not-always-traceable variables such as the owner's driving style, quality and frequency of maintenance and accident history. Because many important mechanical parts and other elements are hidden from view and not easily accessible for inspection, the buyer of a car does not know beforehand whether it is a cherry or a lemon. So the buyer's best guess for a given car is that the car is of average quality; accordingly, he/she will be willing to pay for it only the price of a car of known average quality. This means that the owner of a carefully maintained, never-abused, good used car will be unable to get a high enough price to make selling that car worthwhile.
Therefore, owners of good cars will not place their cars on the used car market. The withdrawal of good cars reduces the average quality of cars on the market, causing buyers to revise downward their expectations for any given car. This, in turn, motivates the owners of moderately good cars not to sell, and so on. The result is that a market in which there is asymmetrical information with respect to quality shows characteristics similar to those described by Gresham's Law: the bad drives out the good (although Gresham's Law applies to a different situation).
"Lemon market" effects have also been noted in other markets, such as used computers . There are also parallels in the insurance market, where, unless those least likely to need insurance (i.e., those least likely to get in accidents) are forced to buy insurance, it is those most likely to need insurance compensation who tend most to buy insurance.
If you look at modern relationships, outside those of say, Ellie and Awesome in "Chuck" (akin to the Upper Class, i.e. both are "vetted" as medical students, intelligent, highly disciplined, high impulse control, and put together by an institution, in their case med school), information asymmetry, rules. People don't commit, because the cost of getting burned is high, i.e. lost time (particularly for women who have less of it) with someone else. Since it is hard to tell if a man is quality or not, superficial attributes such as styling and "hotness" tend to dominate. But over-committing to the "Lemon" (say, Ashton Kutcher), leads to disaster. Meanwhile, a car looking beat up superficially, but sound in all other aspects, tends to get devalued because the soundness in other aspects is basically, undiscoverable absent commitment.
That is the conundrum that Hollywood tries to solve in Romantic Comedies. The women don't commit, because even though the guys look like say, Ryan Reynolds, or Josh Duhamel, or Gerard Butler, or Zachary Levi, they've been burned before, are skeptical of the "market value" of the prospective mate, and approach romance like a used-car buyer while consumed with careerism to fill an empty romantic void. [Really, it is remarkable how often Hollywood shows this.] In a very real sense the female leads of romantic comedies are in a used car market. Gone are the intermediaries, such as relatives, (or med school in the case of Ellie and Awesome), friends, churches, and the like in such a highly mobile and anonymous society. Therefore, how do they get together? Their mutual best friends die in a car accident (how romantic!) and they have to raise their orphaned infant together. The INS will deport a female big shot exec unless she engages in a sham marriage. A one-night drunken stand regretted instantly by the woman gets her pregnant. A driven super-spy must provide protection and handling to the CIA and NSA's only spy-supercomputer in human form, one nerdy guy with sexy Alpha potential. The two are driven together until the real value of the (generally guy) is apparent. A girl's value is easily sussed out here: attractive, intelligent, faithful. Not much needed to discover. The man is not so easily discovered.
The show's creators understood this, since they milked it for years, as the Sarah character slowly through forced interaction with Chuck found his true market value, and fell in love with him. Obviously budget concerns plagued the show (pushing to flash-backs to save cash), as did the writers falling in love with symmetry, the Chuck character taking the lead on the beach to match Sarah in the pilot, as she not he struggles with a new situation -- marriage to a guy who loves her but for who she feels nothing, and does not believe in as a man, a spy (critical for how she evaluates men), or her husband. Laughs and a kiss as they say good-bye, so Chuck can woo her all over again. Maybe.
And that is just a lie. In a society where men can also choose at will, and walk away, with freedom just a lawyer and financial sacrifice away, re-courting is a fantasy. There is always a woman younger, hotter, and prettier, with less baggage and emotional instability, to be found by any man worth having (i.e. that other women want). Endless courting just means men won't put in the effort, and bounce around in semi-slackerdom ala Lester and Jeffrey, or PUA douchery, perhaps one interspersed with the other.
It was a cheap and easy out, for the show's writers and creators, and like all cheap and easy outs, revealing in how it exposes Hollywood's true beliefs. Fundamentally, Hollywood seems to believe that yes, there is something wrong with how men and women (largely don't) come together as they should. But its solution is endless romance, which prevents family formation. That furthermore only a blessed few, as signified generally by "correct" occupations (Doctors are seldom villains) can achieve marriage and family, without falling into the trap of Endless Courtship to validate (oh so obviously) poor self-images of their female audience.
The show did alright in the ratings, but nothing like it did once just a few years ago (which was around 2.0 in 18-34 Adults). Clearly the endless romance focus, and lack of "seal the deal" stuff with the Sarah character, turned off the nerdy guys who wanted Yvonne Strahowski as their fantasy girlfriend, without bringing in any women who wanted Zachary Levi as their perfectly acceptable "fixer-upper Alpha" to cover the loss, let alone improve upon it.
I can't remember a show before that depicted a nerdy, geeky guy as the hero. One who (for a while at least) credibly got the girl. And one that depicted the retail-hell underside of "Going your own way" which amounts to going nowhere, though in very male style. The show at its best was funny, with a lot of physical humor based on humiliating (and therefore hilarious) retail outfits the sexy female super spy Sarah was forced to wear as part of her cover. I'll miss the show, and the fantastic performances by gifted actors, who were better than the scripts most of the last few years: Adam Baldwin, Yvonne Strahowski (terrifically funny in a slow-burn way), Zachary Levi, Joshua Gomez, Ryan McPartlin, Sarah Lawrence (criminally under-appreciated and under-used), and the great Scott Krinsky and Vik Sahay.
But its failures are instructive. It shows that Hollywood still does not have a handle on romance, in a world of endless freedom and eternal choices. Nor, sadly, does much of America.
...Read more
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Strange Politics of TV's Alcatraz and Person of Interest
There is only one institution in America with any reach. Only one that really shapes culture. Only one that reflects, and changes it. No, its not churches. Hardly anyone goes to Church any more. Nor is it politics, unaffiliated people are growing and will soon outnumber Republicans. There is only one institution that matters. That is television. True, it does not have the reach it had with only three networks, and no cable tv. But there it is, 17 million people watched the Golden Globes. It is, outside sports and a few other live events, a mostly female-gay ghetto. But it still shapes the attitudes and cultural assumptions of most women. Which brings us to Fox's Alcatraz and CBS's Person of Interest. Both are shows with somewhat strange politics. Alcatraz wants to indict the White male America of the past, for well being White and Male. Not sufficiently multicultural. Meanwhile Person of Interest posits that icky White beta males are the main threat to personal security in NYC, and Black men and women NEVER EVER commit crimes. Why? Because their viewers are nearly all female, and that is what that audience wants.
First, Alcatraz. seen in the trailer below:
Basically, a young White girl with a pixie haircut, and no discernible man in her life, but "hot" (this IS San Francisco, after all), is recruited by a semi-evil cranky old White guy, to work with a "diverse" team of well, a fat Mexican comic book fan and "Professor" and some Indian chick to solve the mystery of why everyone disappeared from Alcatraz. Sub-plots include the wicked, bad White guy who killed her first, less fat Mexican cop partner, who is her ... grandfather! And also the Indian doctor being a time traveler or something, she shows up in a flashback in 1960 in Alcatraz.
The whole thing is laughable, with hard-case WWII vet and Alcatraz con meekly doing what "they" (a voice on a telephone) tells him to do, because well that's what bad, dangerous White guys do. Or guys from 1963 suddenly knowing that they are being watched by video surveillance cameras. Or that time-travelers would use that to ... hire hitmen. Of course!
It is naturally, chick crack. Women love this stuff, the good (puzzles, women love puzzles as any Agatha Christie fan knows), and the bad (basically the semi-lesbian, fat Mexican guy, and the cranky old guy have to chase down evil White male America from 1963 and imprison it). There's a metaphor there, and its very obvious. The shows creators feel the old, straight White male working man's San Francisco is an affront to reality, and want to bring it back to life just to imprison it. Again, chick crack: importance and unraveling the mystery without any responsibility or duty. To country, justice, family, or anything. Or sorting that out. Nope, just easy moral victories over cartoon bad guys. Because everyone knows, that in San Francisco, the most horrible crimes are committed by ... White guys.
Nope, the words of SFPD Captain Michael Biel on the causes of San Francisco's 11 murders in 2011 are:
Now, what sort of person kills casual acquaintances in disputes over money and drugs? Oh I know, I know! White guys. Usually icky beta males or lower class blue collar guys. After all, we all know the crime waves WWII vets committed (one of the bad guys in Alcatraz is a WWII vet who stole to feed his family).
Person of Interest, after an interesting start, has followed the path of pandering to the female audience's prejudices. While the pilot played with expectations, the icky beta male White guy being the victim, the "hot" woman being the killer, the main plot, bad corrupt White cops framing innocent Black victims had a noticeable subtext. All the cops were fat, bad looking ethnic White guys, Italians, Irish, and not the handsome good guys.
The most recent episode was the most laughable, embodying Eric Cartman's South Park Dictum that Black people can do no wrong. The character, the person of interest, is a beautiful Dominican woman who is a struggling lawyer, trying to free innocent Black cons wrongfully sent back to prison by their corrupt (again fat and unattractive Italian) parole officer. So the person at Child Protective Services can get a kick-back on falsely claimed kids cared for by the foster parents. The conspirators? A middle aged White couple and ... yes! An Icky White Beta Male. The "twist" is we are supposed to suspect, briefly, a noble Black woman who runs the place. Not the icky White beta male who expresses a romantic interest in the beautiful Dominican woman.
Why that plot point? Because it confirms what most of the White female audience "knows" with religious certainty. ALL Black people are noble and good, and never ever EVER commit crimes, it is racist to think so. The REAL threat is icky White beta males who might even **GASP** ask them out. How awful. Of course they are murderers and corrupt.
How does this willful denial of reality exist? Because most White women have no real contact with actual real, Black male criminals in urban areas. Or noble Hispanics. Those who do, like Alexandra "Asians in the Library" Wallace are not real happy about being second class citizens at best, harassed and threatened at worst. Black ex-cons are not in reality, noble guys trying to "turn their life around" for their son. They are in fact, brutal and dysfunctional and totally without much hope for anything else but aging out of violence. Productive and trustworthy members of society they are not.
This makes the show far different from the 1980's "Equalizer" which was also set in NYC. There, brutal Chinese kidnap or Dominican drug gangs ruled places, or organized crime, or various drug rings. While there were plenty of evil White guys, the beta male White guy was often the one the Equalizer (the incomparable Edward Woodward, sorely missed) protected. Heck even glamor-show "Miami Vice" had no problem in depicting the reality of the drug trade then, mostly Columbian drug lords. But back then, more men watched television, and therefore pandering to female-led PC was not the main concern.
One of the subtexts is that the bad guys are really bad because they are ... racist. "Framing" Black guys for committing the crimes that evil Blue Collar White guys of Ethnic Origin or Beta Male White guys do. I've seen that particular plot point three times on the show this season. That's no accident, undoubtedly the audience responded and it got repeated.
If you don't like PC, you have to destroy TV. Period. Or remake it into a place where shows fear offending .... beta male White guys, and Blue Colar guys of Ethnic Origin.
Either destroy female-led consumerism (by promoting female thrift and value-buying) or start suing the hell out of these production companies and networks for defamation of class. Sue and sue and sue and sue. Sue till the cows come home. And then sue some more. Attrition warfare against an enemy with limited time and money. Force them to abandon the shaping of culture to feed the White female professional viewpoint at its worst not best.
Puzzle stuff? I'm with the female viewers on that one. Its fun! Why not? Character development (but not by icky sex or "shocking" turns to "evil" out of comic books and soap operas) are also a positive development due to women viewers. But lets have an end to the chasing down and imprisonment of the Straight White male past, and icky Beta Male or White Ethnic guy as villain wrongfully framing innocent Black ex-cons. I'd rather watch vampires, witches, and fantasy characters out of "Grimm." Its more believable.
...Read more
First, Alcatraz. seen in the trailer below:
Basically, a young White girl with a pixie haircut, and no discernible man in her life, but "hot" (this IS San Francisco, after all), is recruited by a semi-evil cranky old White guy, to work with a "diverse" team of well, a fat Mexican comic book fan and "Professor" and some Indian chick to solve the mystery of why everyone disappeared from Alcatraz. Sub-plots include the wicked, bad White guy who killed her first, less fat Mexican cop partner, who is her ... grandfather! And also the Indian doctor being a time traveler or something, she shows up in a flashback in 1960 in Alcatraz.
The whole thing is laughable, with hard-case WWII vet and Alcatraz con meekly doing what "they" (a voice on a telephone) tells him to do, because well that's what bad, dangerous White guys do. Or guys from 1963 suddenly knowing that they are being watched by video surveillance cameras. Or that time-travelers would use that to ... hire hitmen. Of course!
It is naturally, chick crack. Women love this stuff, the good (puzzles, women love puzzles as any Agatha Christie fan knows), and the bad (basically the semi-lesbian, fat Mexican guy, and the cranky old guy have to chase down evil White male America from 1963 and imprison it). There's a metaphor there, and its very obvious. The shows creators feel the old, straight White male working man's San Francisco is an affront to reality, and want to bring it back to life just to imprison it. Again, chick crack: importance and unraveling the mystery without any responsibility or duty. To country, justice, family, or anything. Or sorting that out. Nope, just easy moral victories over cartoon bad guys. Because everyone knows, that in San Francisco, the most horrible crimes are committed by ... White guys.
Nope, the words of SFPD Captain Michael Biel on the causes of San Francisco's 11 murders in 2011 are:
But police Capt. Michael Biel told the board’s Public Safety Committee the killings are unrelated and do not represent a specific crime wave. Biel said only one of the 11 homicides committed so far this year has been gang-related. Most of the rest, he said, involved social acquaintances and ongoing disputes over money or drugs.
Now, what sort of person kills casual acquaintances in disputes over money and drugs? Oh I know, I know! White guys. Usually icky beta males or lower class blue collar guys. After all, we all know the crime waves WWII vets committed (one of the bad guys in Alcatraz is a WWII vet who stole to feed his family).
Person of Interest, after an interesting start, has followed the path of pandering to the female audience's prejudices. While the pilot played with expectations, the icky beta male White guy being the victim, the "hot" woman being the killer, the main plot, bad corrupt White cops framing innocent Black victims had a noticeable subtext. All the cops were fat, bad looking ethnic White guys, Italians, Irish, and not the handsome good guys.
The most recent episode was the most laughable, embodying Eric Cartman's South Park Dictum that Black people can do no wrong. The character, the person of interest, is a beautiful Dominican woman who is a struggling lawyer, trying to free innocent Black cons wrongfully sent back to prison by their corrupt (again fat and unattractive Italian) parole officer. So the person at Child Protective Services can get a kick-back on falsely claimed kids cared for by the foster parents. The conspirators? A middle aged White couple and ... yes! An Icky White Beta Male. The "twist" is we are supposed to suspect, briefly, a noble Black woman who runs the place. Not the icky White beta male who expresses a romantic interest in the beautiful Dominican woman.
Why that plot point? Because it confirms what most of the White female audience "knows" with religious certainty. ALL Black people are noble and good, and never ever EVER commit crimes, it is racist to think so. The REAL threat is icky White beta males who might even **GASP** ask them out. How awful. Of course they are murderers and corrupt.
How does this willful denial of reality exist? Because most White women have no real contact with actual real, Black male criminals in urban areas. Or noble Hispanics. Those who do, like Alexandra "Asians in the Library" Wallace are not real happy about being second class citizens at best, harassed and threatened at worst. Black ex-cons are not in reality, noble guys trying to "turn their life around" for their son. They are in fact, brutal and dysfunctional and totally without much hope for anything else but aging out of violence. Productive and trustworthy members of society they are not.
This makes the show far different from the 1980's "Equalizer" which was also set in NYC. There, brutal Chinese kidnap or Dominican drug gangs ruled places, or organized crime, or various drug rings. While there were plenty of evil White guys, the beta male White guy was often the one the Equalizer (the incomparable Edward Woodward, sorely missed) protected. Heck even glamor-show "Miami Vice" had no problem in depicting the reality of the drug trade then, mostly Columbian drug lords. But back then, more men watched television, and therefore pandering to female-led PC was not the main concern.
One of the subtexts is that the bad guys are really bad because they are ... racist. "Framing" Black guys for committing the crimes that evil Blue Collar White guys of Ethnic Origin or Beta Male White guys do. I've seen that particular plot point three times on the show this season. That's no accident, undoubtedly the audience responded and it got repeated.
If you don't like PC, you have to destroy TV. Period. Or remake it into a place where shows fear offending .... beta male White guys, and Blue Colar guys of Ethnic Origin.
Either destroy female-led consumerism (by promoting female thrift and value-buying) or start suing the hell out of these production companies and networks for defamation of class. Sue and sue and sue and sue. Sue till the cows come home. And then sue some more. Attrition warfare against an enemy with limited time and money. Force them to abandon the shaping of culture to feed the White female professional viewpoint at its worst not best.
Puzzle stuff? I'm with the female viewers on that one. Its fun! Why not? Character development (but not by icky sex or "shocking" turns to "evil" out of comic books and soap operas) are also a positive development due to women viewers. But lets have an end to the chasing down and imprisonment of the Straight White male past, and icky Beta Male or White Ethnic guy as villain wrongfully framing innocent Black ex-cons. I'd rather watch vampires, witches, and fantasy characters out of "Grimm." Its more believable.
...Read more
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Inexplicable Decline of Women's Tennis
For some reason, totally unknown to marketers, women's tennis has inexplicably declined both in quality, as observed in The New Republic, but also passion from the public and sponsoring revenues. Pay for tennis executives is declining, between 8 and 22 percent, as sponsorship also declined. The Women's Tour (WTA) is losing Sony Ericsson, at $88 million Tennis's biggest sponsor.
Women's tennis has fully embraced the Williams sisters, and as seen above and below, they are not exactly the model of feminine attractiveness. More like linebackers in a dress. Meanwhile, more attractive players like Maria Sharapova (tall, blonde, speaks English) are not doing well on the tour, with few wins and lower recent publicity.
Tennis is not a sport like say, Basketball, which appeals to ever-narrower groups of Americans (the NBA under David Stern failed miserably in expanding in Asia, Chinese are happy to wear pirated Kobe Bryant jerseys, not so much at paying for games or visiting NBA stars). Basketball is a sport of individual athleticism, basically a dunking contest and nothing more. Any notion of team or cooperation has long left the building, around the time Elvis checked out. Nor is Tennis a sport like Football, a brutal endeavor of tough guys lining up against each in a literal battle over turf.
Nope, Tennis is a sport with pretensions still, to gentility and good sportsmanship, of tradition and grace. That goes doubly for Women's Tennis, which is basically a competition to find the most graceful and athletic princess. The women who were truly embraced as Tennis Champions, were not ugly Eastern European Lesbians, or linebackers in a dress, who overpowered opponents like Godzilla squashing Bambi, but athletic, blonde, pretty, "nice" in deportment (on camera anyway), who every little girl wanted to grow up to emulate, and won the approval of every middle class father.
Women's sports are different from men's. Not a competition to find the toughest guy who can take on the most brutal punishment, and dish it out too, or cooperate with other men in defending turf, or engaging in one-on-one displays of athletic dominance. Nope, it is at heart an exhibition of feminine resilience and endurance matched with grace. Certainly physical, always demanding, women's sports requires the admiration of millions of middle class (White) girls who would like to be known for prowess in something as well as just beauty. This is why Chris Evert, and Tracy Austin, and Katarina Witt are remembered fondly, while Martina Navritolova, and Tonya Harding are not.
Women's tennis has embraced the Williams sisters. Who undeniably have athletic dominance. But that has led only to the decline of the sport. Does anyone really think that millions of Middle Class White girls dream one day of looking like Serena Williams? Really? All their athletic dominance, their power, their brutal efficiency, mean nothing as it meant nothing for an Eastern European Lesbian before them.
Women's tennis exists to sell their stars, as the kind of women little girls want to be when they grow up. This reality gets clouded by executives excited about "breaking new ground" or the pure dominance of not very feminine women's players. Be they Lesbian or Linebacker. Sometimes people cannot even see the obvious.
Would an alternate universe WTA where say, Sanaa Lathan or Gabrielle Union, more traditionally feminine and attractive women, were dominant champions have this difficulty? My view is no, they would not. At least, not in this degree. People do however like looking at, and following those, who resemble an idealized, younger, stronger, more attractive version of themselves. Black men and women are not racist for figuring that Woody Allen movies and Seinfeld are not for them. Nor are Hispanics racist for thinking Country Music, Larry the Cable Guy, Sundance, and the IFC Channels are not for them either. There is nothing wrong with Black people preferring Tyler Perry movies, and Rap Artists like Jay Z, to Dogme 95 movies by Lars Von Trier, and Justin Bieber. And there is not anything wrong with White girls (and their parents) preferring a White tennis star to a Black or Hispanic one. Wanting to see someone like yourself onscreen is not being one step away from a Klan rally. That this has to be said speaks to the pathetic nature of today's society, and terminal PC which masks an obvious hatred for "the Wrong Sort of White People."
At any rate, Women's Tennis will continue its decline until another Middle Class White Princess is found. Not Linebackers and Lesbians.
...Read more
Monday, January 23, 2012
Charles Murray and the White Class Divide
Charles Murray has an article in the WSJ outlining America's class divide. Murray notes the emergence of the "Super Zip Codes" that all go to the same elite schools, hold the same elite jobs, live in a very few elite cities, and live a life very different from that of the rest of the country. While at the same time among Whites, a lower class has emerged that is outside the cultural traditions and values of this country. He calls it the "Super Zips" vs. "Fishtown" (a White working class part of Philly). Arguing that both have become hereditary stations, for a number of reasons, and for an informal moral campaign to change that.
While Murray is superb in describing the situation, he shies away (from Political Correctness, ingrained chivalry, or other reasons such as fear) from accurately describing the reason for the emergence of two hereditary classes, and the action needed to break them apart, and increase personal social mobility.
Why the Super Zips Emerged
Murray notes that the United States has always had an elite. But that only recently have the payoffs for being "smart" been so large, and permanent. This is a familiar argument, one made many times in the Financial Times, and one not very intellectually rigorous. Simply because the elites are characterized by heredity, not smartness. Indeed, the dirty secret is that the elites are not very smart at all.
Elites are concentrated in the media, entertainment, the law, politics, government, "activism" and a few other areas where heredity, being born to the "correct" parent(s), personal connections, wealth, and "proper" opinions on a whole host of issues is everything. Not cognitive ability.
You will find almost no elites in professions such as engineering, computer science, entrepreneurship, and the like. Apple Computer, Dell, Starbucks, Oracle, were all formed by non-elites from middle class backgrounds or worse. Microsoft remains the only major technology company arguably founded by a child of the elite. Elites do not work as petroleum engineers, geologists, physicists, electrical engineers, and medical researchers, all highly demanding cognitive professions.
Angelo Codevilla argues in the American Spectator that the Ruling Class of America, Republican and Democrat, all go to the same national schools, share the same interests, intermarry, and form the same social class:
No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class's continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.
Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America's upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and "bureaucrat" was a dirty word for all. So was "social engineering." Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.
Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century's Northerners and Southerners -- nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, "prayed to the same God." By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God "who created and doth sustain us," our ruling class prays to itself as "saviors of the planet" and improvers of humanity. Our classes' clash is over "whose country" America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark's Gospel: "if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand."
The Ruling Class, or the Super Zips, are not very smart. They have managed to run America into the ground, while in search of temporary votes to keep out those who they HATE HATE HATE (Average White middle class and working class Americans) of any power, courted disaster. Detroit is 47% illiterate, among adults. Hispanics do little better, and remain like Blacks utterly dependent on money transfered and opportunities taken from White middle and working class people to well, non-Whites.
In other words, the entire Elite political system is dependent on, sustained good times for everyone to smooth over the massive transfer of wealth and opportunities from average White people to non-Whites (and elites). And given those demands, the elites have made economic recovery impossible — no oil drilling, no oil pipelines, green dreams of failed solar manufacturing, strangling business regulations, and crony capitalism. When faced with the obvious danger — a White middle/working class populist revolt, the elites, the Super Zips, the Ruling Class, did little to avert it. Not even allowing victories and military dominance (that gives relief in cheaper oil if crushing the Iranians) to satisfy the pride and desire of the populists. Arrogant over-reach characterizes the elites. Who ran sub-prime into the ground, and with it the Nation, from which state it is unlikely to recover for decades.
Codevilla argues implicitly that Murray's answer to the Super Zips rise is "schlock sociology" worthy of Thomas Friedman and David Brooks:
Who are these rulers, and by what right do they rule? How did America change from a place where people could expect to live without bowing to privileged classes to one in which, at best, they might have the chance to climb into them? What sets our ruling class apart from the rest of us?
The most widespread answers -- by such as the Times's Thomas Friedman and David Brooks -- are schlock sociology. Supposedly, modern society became so complex and productive, the technical skills to run it so rare, that it called forth a new class of highly educated officials and cooperators in an ever less private sector. Similarly fanciful is Edward Goldberg's notion that America is now ruled by a "newocracy": a "new aristocracy who are the true beneficiaries of globalization -- including the multinational manager, the technologist and the aspirational members of the meritocracy." In fact, our ruling class grew and set itself apart from the rest of us by its connection with ever bigger government, and above all by a certain attitude.
Other explanations are counterintuitive. Wealth? The heads of the class do live in our big cities' priciest enclaves and suburbs, from Montgomery County, Maryland, to Palo Alto, California, to Boston's Beacon Hill as well as in opulent university towns from Princeton to Boulder. But they are no wealthier than many Texas oilmen or California farmers, or than neighbors with whom they do not associate -- just as the social science and humanities class that rules universities seldom associates with physicians and physicists. Rather, regardless of where they live, their social-intellectual circle includes people in the lucrative "nonprofit" and "philanthropic" sectors and public policy. What really distinguishes these privileged people demographically is that, whether in government power directly or as officers in companies, their careers and fortunes depend on government. They vote Democrat more consistently than those who live on any of America's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Streets. These socioeconomic opposites draw their money and orientation from the same sources as the millions of teachers, consultants, and government employees in the middle ranks who aspire to be the former and identify morally with what they suppose to be the latter's grievances.
Professional prominence or position will not secure a place in the class any more than mere money. In fact, it is possible to be an official of a major corporation or a member of the U.S. Supreme Court (just ask Justice Clarence Thomas), or even president (Ronald Reagan), and not be taken seriously by the ruling class. Like a fraternity, this class requires above all comity -- being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in despising the Outs. Once an official or professional shows that he shares the manners, the tastes, the interests of the class, gives lip service to its ideals and shibboleths, and is willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members, he can move profitably among our establishment's parts.
Codevilla compares the US elites unfavorably to France:
Much less does membership in the ruling class depend on high academic achievement. To see something closer to an academic meritocracy consider France, where elected officials have little power, a vast bureaucracy explicitly controls details from how babies are raised to how to make cheese, and people get into and advance in that bureaucracy strictly by competitive exams. Hence for good or ill, France's ruling class are bright people -- certifiably. Not ours. But didn't ours go to Harvard and Princeton and Stanford? Didn't most of them get good grades? Yes. But while getting into the Ecole Nationale d'Administration or the Ecole Polytechnique or the dozens of other entry points to France's ruling class requires outperforming others in blindly graded exams, and graduating from such places requires passing exams that many fail, getting into America's "top schools" is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile. American secondary schools are generous with their As. Since the 1970s, it has been virtually impossible to flunk out of American colleges. And it is an open secret that "the best" colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages. No, our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in. The most successful neither write books and papers that stand up to criticism nor release their academic records. Thus does our ruling class stunt itself through negative selection. But the more it has dumbed itself down, the more it has defined itself by the presumption of intellectual superiority.
Where Codevilla goes wrong in describing the emergence of the Ruling Elite, the Ruling Class, the Super Zips, is describing the emergence in political terms, i.e. being merely the heirs of Wilsonian upper-crust elitism. But the elites of today are nothing like those of Wilson's day, holding attitudes towards race, sexual mores, nationalism, crime, punishment, wars, and everything else that are at opposite ends of the spectrum from the old Progressive Elites. Yes elites have always entrenched themselves in crony capitalism and regulations, tension between them and the ordinary people being as old as the Whiskey Rebellion.
He describes the hatred of traditional religion, of marriage, and the family, and the worship of big government. Which is held to be able to re-order society at will, but never win wars abroad.
There is a word for people who hold such views. The natural basis for the Super Zips. The Ruling Class. The New Elites. We call them ... women.
Specifically, White professional women. A new class, never seen before in America's history. With lots of money, lots of disposable income. Hostile to traditions and values of the "old America" and in particular, the military. Desirous of a New America, multicultural, multiracial, united in opposition to "Dead White Men" and icky, horrible, Beta White males. Fond of eternal apologies (name any elite dominated by men fond of apologizing itself, name any group of women not fond of ritual and thus meaningless abasement).
The growth of the New Elites, the Super Zips, the Ruling Elites, and their attitudes has been one that has been driven by the emergence of women into new territory. It is a fundamental truism that everything has its cost. Liberation of women from drudgework, from early marriage and early deaths (often in childbirth), from non-participation in the nation's affairs, from entering into and being amply rewarded from the workforce, has helped create a modern West (in the US and Europe) that is more robust, more wealthy, and more fair in many ways. But everything costs, and the cost of the emergence of women has been the creation of a hereditary elite, a ruling class of princes, kings, queens, princesses, dukes, and what not. The Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Disney-esque fantasy, complete with adult Oprah-ized "Wise Black Woman" companionship, pushing the interests of White Professional women to the exclusion of everyone else outside the female-Elite coalition.
That is what all that wealth, power, and stability cost — long term instability by a Ruling Class driven entirely by feedback loops of making Upper and Near-Upper Class White women happy. After all, the Ruling class as Codevilla notes, appeals to be "smarter" and more "moral" than the other guys. That's an appeal to female tastes. Name a football coach who pushes that he's more moral than his opposition, or "smarter" in terms of dress, comportment, and so on. Cleverness, devious tricks, and such like (when employed for your side) appeal to men in sports, business, and the military. Appeals to moral authority and general intelligence do not. Which is why Patton ironically meant as a hit piece is popular among conservative men and "the Help" among SWPL, Professional White women. It is why tough old football coaches are beloved by male sports fan and Oprah by White women.
The Super Zips emerged because the class that provided the support, the balance, White professional women, emerged. Yes Welfare made things worse, as did crony capitalism and credentialism. But the key had always been, the post-War emergence of White professional women, newly liberated, hostile to the old ways that kept them out of power, eager to embrace personal sexual liberation, disdainful of male peers who lacked sexiness (nearly all of them, because they were equal) and thus enamored of anything and everything foreign and non-White. "Authentic" came to mean foreign and exotic, and "White" a synonym for "boring" because newly liberated White women found them so, and through massive consumerism driven mostly by their buying decisions, shaped through advertising the culture to what it is today.
In the early 1960's, commercials ran on national television wherein housewives, even of working men at factories, agonized over the quality of their coffee. Today you have commercials where rock-climbing professional women eschew marriage for outdoor adventure. With their "boyfriend." And no one says anything. Because the culture changed so much. Organically, all around the West, all at the same time.
The Super Zip emergence is probably best shown by the old WB/CW television show "Gilmore Girls," and the current CW show "Gossip Girl." Both appeal to young women, the former depicts a glamorous young single mother and her hot young bright daughter, who gets into Yale. The mother dumps her long-time devoted blue collar hunk boyfriend for the guy who got her pregnant at 16, and never did anything for her or her daughter, but is rich and arrogant and an Alpha jerk. The daughter tellingly dumps a younger version of said blue collar guy, who worships her, for a rich and drunk jerk after he humiliates the blue collar guy. The female audience went NUTS for this, and could not get enough of it. They loved the rich, arrogant bastards because they were rich and arrogant. Inherited money too, which was the best kind. "Gossip Girl" does away with even the pretense of small-town-ish life, with glamorous soap opera hook-ups among the spoiled rich kids of Manhattan.
The very things that enrage the mostly White male non-elites, makes the elites extremely attractive to the female White professionals. Who under the elites have done well, to the point where income, education, and other status-markers are higher for White women than men.
Black voters will reliably vote Democratic (Elite) about 98% or so. Year after year. Hispanics vote around 70% for elites. White men and blue collar White women, on the short end of the stick, vote 70% non-elite (or against the most elite candidate). Those who swing, significantly, from elite to non-elite, are White professional women. The good news is that they can be persuaded to vote against Dems (always the elite candidate) some times. The bad news is that they require elite characteristics in candidates to do so: Scott Brown, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush. Handsome and tall are best, at least not "angry" or "ideological" which is a Beta Male turn-off. Women voters outside the White blue collar group want fairy tales, handsome princes, and tales of hierarchy and aristocracy. In real life as in stories of vampire queens, kings, and princes. That is why the elites emerged.
Neither Codevilla nor Murray get that.
The Emergence of Fishtown
Murray notes that "Fishtown" or the hereditary lower class White hangouts have decisively rejected the idea of regular church attendance, marriage before kids, education, and males in the workforce. What Murray does not get, because perhaps he is an older male with attitudes and chivalry formed from another country (the past) is how the sexual revolution impacted all these things.
Just as most White professional women (seriously, lurk about on ANY Television discussion forum, to see the attitude) HATE HATE HATE Christianity because of its cultural limits on female sexuality, so too do lower class women. The modern era after WWII, with cheap and easy contraception, anonymous urban living (less so now with Facebook and Twitter), high personal mobility, radically increased income and freedom for women, meant a sea-change in how women viewed sex, love, marriage, and kids.
Basically, any woman that wants sex, and is half-way attractive, can have sex any time she wants with an Alpha male. Commitment and love is another thing, but sex is not. Sex with the most desirable of men (aggressive, dominant assholes) is there any time. The only threat is Christianity. Islam is a distant fire, limiting only Muslim women (who most White women don't really care about anyway) as they see it. Some pastor saying "don't be slutty and stupid" is a direct threat, because their parent(s) might echo it. No one wants to be shamed like Snooki. The popularity of Jersey Shore is as a vehicle for White women of all classes to laugh at Snooki and how stupid she is. She is the guido version of a minstrel show. Appealing mainly to women.
Of course lower class women don't attend church. Who wants a lecture on staying away from bad boys, when they are so, so sexy?
Marriage for kids is for losers, among White lower class women, not because of welfare (though it hardly helps) but because of sexiness among men. The sexiest of men, are those who are aggressive, dominant, hyper-masculine, and so naturally women want kids by them. There is not enough reason to hold out for commitment (the sexy men won't commit) and the non-sexy men who offer commitment just are not sexy enough. It is not welfare (most White blue collar women in Fishtown work, and quite hard too). It is their own income plus no social pressure (because of anonymity, and independence of income) to stay away from bad boys that drives high rates of illegitimacy (and low rates of church going).
In times past, women would compromise because lowering the bar on acceptable sexiness was the only way to have a family. Now they can earn enough, with marginal government assistance, to have kids by sexy bad boys all they want. That's better, as Roissy notes, than a lifetime of a beta male's devotion. As the proprietor of Heartiste notes, "five minutes of Alpha beats five years of Beta."
Education, and males in the workforce, are directly related to sexual rewards on the lower class. Bad boys who work part time, deal casual drugs, engage in fruitless endeavors to "make it as a musician" and layabout, get the best women. The most beautiful, the youngest, the most fertile, the most willing. Often some of the most intelligent too. Bad boys, casual criminals, are sexier. That is why they dominant fantasies oriented towards women, be they vampires or warlocks or whatnot.
The path to sex, and fatherhood, is based on not life in the work-force and provider beta loser-dom. But rather pure male sexiness. This is the model in the Black ghetto and Mexican barrio. It is how most of the world orders itself sexually and socially. It is how most families are formed, and have been formed, in human history. It optimizes for female satisfaction, at the expense of wealth formation for all but a few.
A man who observes the behavior of the women around him, from an early age, at Fishtown, learns hard lessons. Regardless of what women say, the most beautiful and desirable of them, those who can have any man, give themselves to the casual, bad boy criminal lay-abouts. What you reward, and perhaps no reward is worth more, you get more of. What you punish (dutiful providership and steady blue collar work among men) you get less of.
What Murray misses is the sexual component. Late marriage by a woman in her mid-thirties with many, many sexual partners (between 30 and fifty is not out of the question), kids by another man or men, often ending in divorce, is not the same as the passionate devotion of a sixteen year old beauty, a virgin or near virgin, who only has eyes for you. And will happily bear you a child. Newsflash, young women are more beautiful than the older ones.
This is borne out by Murray's own statistics. The Super Zips live 1950's lives. They might have "only" $10 million dollars, and rest assured the drudge on Wall Street is not sexy, as being sexy takes hard work (George Clooney basically works all the time to be sexy, as does Brad Pitt, and your local drug dealer). There is not enough time for Wall Street mid-level honchos to be sexy, they are busy making money. But as "the Nanny Diaries" showed, "enough" money to buy say, a Summer home in the Hamptons, or at least rent one in the Summer, and all sorts of social settings, can mitigate un-sexiness among husbands. Can cause at least regular church going (the women have already sold out sexy for the Hamptons and society) and legitimate child-birth.
For the super-rich, well the money is no object, so marriages don't last long and like Hollywood demonstrates, illegitimacy is no barrier. The Middle class is increasingly sliding towards the sexy vs. money side of things. The lower class has no hope of upward mobility (here illegal immigration has taken its toll on White blue collar wages). So that's a problem.
Women WILL trade sexy men for men with money. Will sacrifice that sexiness, that thrill of danger, that pure excitement (and even real danger, as Rihanna again pursuing Chris Brown for another Ike Turner style beat-down shows). But it takes money. Real money. Even for the Middle Class, a nice condo is no longer enough. Not even a nice house. All that frenzy over marble and granite counter-tops was really the frustration of the middle class wife or girlfriend over her man's lack of sexiness. Drowned with status consumption.
In the current situation, it takes a house (at least rented, preferably owned) in the Hamptons or about $10 million or so annual income to keep the nuclear family intact. That's the amount of money most, though certainly not all, White women require for monogamy and abjuring sexy men.
[Note, I am sure "not all women are like that." Who cares? I am describing the collective actions of White women as a whole, in society, for both good — such as increased wealth, productivity, resiliency, and stake-holders, and bad — collapse of church-going, the nuclear family, men in employment, and the rise of the elites, the Super Zips in strangleholds on most institutions of this nation. This is not a conspiracy, or the actions of "devious Jews" or "Gramscian Frankfurt School theorists" making a "long march" through institutions, nor even "women are evil." Because they are not. However, neither are women comprised of pure good and supernatural wisdom, collectively. Women, like men, respond to incentives, for either society's good or bad. I would not say a woman pursuing a bad boy and having kids with him outside marriage is "wrong" individually. In a free country it is her choice. But the social cost is horrendous, when normalized and free of stigma.]
Solutions
Murray rightly eschews Big Government solutions to this problem. Though he notes correctly that America should reform Welfare to remove incentives to single motherhood. He is correct for a campaign to make the old, church going, nuclear family, men in the workplace, value education America return to Fishtown. But he leaves Super Zips alone.
Murray is only partly right, in the solutions because again he does not understand the cause — the sexual liberation of women, and the concentration of wealth and power among Upper Class White women, who switch votes based on personal attributes of candidates. Thus, getting their way, more often than not (the power of being the deciding votes).
Fishtown won't embrace those old virtues, unless the sexual liberation of women is matched by social stigma for choices that while maximizing individual happiness for the woman, causes disaster upon society. It must be a campaign directed by women, for women, with perhaps the involvement of a few Alpha males. Beta males must and should stay directly out of it. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) campaign is a good one. Women respond to this social pressure and stigma very well, perhaps because being part of the group is far more important than for men. Everyone knows "loner" men and they form the backbone of male oriented entertainment from John Wayne to Jason Bourne. Women on the other hand are never depicted as loners in anything directed at them. They might form their own groups, but never set themselves off deliberately and permanently the way loner men heroes in movies do.
The solution is simply on the behavioral front, "don't be slutty. Don't be Snooki." Delivered by almost exclusively women, with a few sexy Alpha guys. That's it. A simple message. But one powerful given women's group behavior. [Which is both a weakness, and strength, forming the backbone of the Temperance and Prohibition and Civil Rights and Feminist and Environmental movements.]
On the incentive fronts, blue collar White guys, and White collar White guys, need to have incomes raised. Women will understandably fight tooth and nail to deny any reduction in their wealth (I would too) so that's a non-starter. But concrete action can be taken to increase earning power of White guys: deport illegal aliens (and their kids); increase military spending particularly ship and plane building; eliminate most legal immigration (and H1-B visas and variants); put import quotas on (increase local factory production); increase the ability to file and make money off patents (money to backyard tinkerers). Oil and energy production must be increased, vastly, and spending on various government make-work stuff killed.
These are all things that are difficult, but achievable. None will happen overnight, but all have the possibility of being enacted.
The most important strategic objective, however, is destroying the Hereditary Super Zips. A few observations are in order. Hollywood used to be filled with guys like Mel Brooks. A guy from nowhere, who rose to fame on writing really funny things, and pushing the envelope, not in just dirty words or taboos violated ,but form. "Get Smart" was the first zany sitcom, based not on a family but a complete idiot who parodied the James Bond smooth spy guy. Don Adams is another out of that mold, a guy who survived Guadalcanal and was a Parris Island Drill Instructor. Nowadays, comedy in Hollywood is very restricted to the Harvard Mafia. Want a job writing for the Simpsons, or Conan O'Brien? Better have graduated from Harvard. Only South Park, created by a couple of guys from Colorado, fits the old Brooksian Hollywood open to new talent that produces.
To destroy the Super Zips, it is necessary to destroy its ecosystem, the female driven consumerism. And all that is needed to do that is frugalism replacing consumerism. Buying only when needed, and on value and price, not status. The dirty secret of the Super Zips is how dependent either directly or indirectly they are on female-driven consumerism. Network and Cable TV, much of the movies, advertising, marketing, and whole swaths of government depend on either direct expenditures or indirect revenues and taxes derived from that. If Americans and particularly American women just bought say, 40% less, entire major portions of the Super Zips would collapse. Others, particularly Hollywood, would rely on entertaining people rather than just a profitable sub-group (see "the Help" the book and movie, and Oprah's career).
For the Super Zips will not go away quietly. They are happy to wreck America to get one more day in power.
...Read more
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Newt Gingrich, Anti-Patriot, Scam Artist
A true patriot, puts his country's interest before his own. Will subordinate whatever fame, fortune, and applause he will get out of book tours, personal appearances, and fund-raising, in a certain doomed effort, for the good of the country. Newt Gingrich is not that man. Instead, he is a man who is already selling America short, dooming it to destruction to Obama, should he win the nomination. The facts are clear, Newt Gingrich cannot win a general election against Obama. For the good of the country he should withdraw, and endorse Romney. Who is no sure thing, but has the best chance of beating Obama.
Sure, I know the objections to Mitt Romney. He's a Mormon. He's rich. He's handsome. He's distant, and not engaging and dominating on TV. He's a RINO. And all that. Sure, point taken. But the very things that make Mitt Romney unpalatable to much of the South Carolina Evangelicals, and Conservatives, make him the only one running to stand a chance against Obama. Newt Gingrich hands Obama a near 50 state victory. One of so massive proportions that Nancy Pelosi returns as House Majority Leader, and Reid has only 40 at most Republicans to deal with. Perhaps less. Newt is total disaster for America, and hands Obama victory.
Because he's repulsive, in every way, to women. Period.
Rasmussen has Obama and Romney tied at 44% each while Obama leads Newt:
Santorum, in a poll released today, by Rasmussen, trails Obama by ten points, 48-38.
Let us dispense with magical thinking, what Ann Coulter said was a trade of insults at Obama and the Media for Obama's re-election.
Obama has many strengths. The Media adores him, as Jesus 2.0 literally. So most low information voters, who don't care about politics, and make choices based on the media, which is most White Professional Women, are inclined to Obama anyway. Then again, he's Black. That's a built in advantage for him, again in getting White female votes. That demographic group feels "White male = boring" and fairly icky, while Black is viewed as dynamic, positive, masculine, and good. That is not fair, but that's life.
Obama has $1 billion to run negative ads, and will doubtless raise more through independent PACs run by unions and Hollywood. EVERY celebrity worthy of the name endorses him, and yes that again counts for a lot.
America is not a Center-Right nation. That ceased being true at the end of Reagan's second term. America is a place where Gays serve openly in the military, gay marriage is the law of the land in most places, Whites have no Civil Rights (according to the first Black Attorney General), Black Panthers can run voter intimidation campaigns with impunity, illegal aliens can vote in many places, and get preferential admission and tuition rates, along with college financial aid. That's not a Center-Right nation. That's not a Center nation. That's not even a Left Nation. That's a Hard Left Nation. And that's America. Today's America celebrates non-Whites, views White guys as inherently "racist" (unless they are a dominant, Alpha A-hole hottie) and engages in regular PC jihads.
Newt Gingrich will at best wage a Banzai! Kamikaze attack and go out in a blaze of glory with what is left of the old America. For those wishing to follow the path of Bushido and Yukio Mishima, the gay Japanese Ultra Right Nationalist, well Newt is your guy! Go right ahead, recite a poem to the emperor, tie on that suicide bandanna around your head, and head for the nearest ship screaming "Banzai! Banzai!"
The rest of us have to live here.
Romney's poll numbers are no fluke. Poll after poll after poll shows him being the closest to Obama. Its not a sure thing, not with the media, the innate dislike of White guys and admiration of Black guys by White women professional voters, and the enormous amount of money and (voter fraud) that Obama promises to bring to the table.
No, Newt won't "destroy" Obama in a debate. Yes Newt is a Master Debater. He's also detested by most women. Obama will remind them of this, and Newt can't go after in person that "nice Black President" who will sit there and smile with his poop-eating-grin. Any "debate" will have Anderson Cooper or Juan Williams or Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson or Al Roker or Brian Williams jumping on any grenade that might threaten Jesus 2.0. This is reality.
In a debate, Newt will look fat and old, because he is fat and old. He will look White, because he is White. He will look ugly, because he is ugly. These things matter. Women voters make their choices on them. It is why JFK beat Nixon, why Scott Brown beat the Kennedy Machine, why Reagan beat Carter. Why Clinton beat Bush. Why Bush beat both robotic Al Gore, and weirdo John Kerry "Reporting for Duty. REEEEEEPORTING for DUUUUUTY!"
He will also look like a guy who being fat, old, ugly, and White, wanted an open marriage and cheated on two wives with mistresses. Yes that matters, if you are a Republican. A Democrat can do that, and get away with it, because the Media covers for them and pushes them as Alpha males. Newt will be portrayed as the ickies of icky beta White males.
No, Obama does not have it all his own way. Mitt Romney's argument is that being rich, he's got a stake in America. He's put his own money on the line, and is betting for America. Not selling it out in any of Obama's shady deals for cronies. Reminding voters he's rich plays to women.
Newsflash. Women LIKE rich guys. A lot. Even better when they are tall, handsome, married to the same woman for years, and are somewhat distant, stand-offish, and remote. That's Chick Crack 101. Straight out of Roissy's pickup advice.
What women do NOT like is "hot" guys who are angry, intense, and come off like this guy:
That's Newt Gingrich. "You Talking to Me?" Recall in the movie, Robert DeNiro did NOT get the girl. She found him repulsive. Don't be Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. That's another way of screaming "Banzai!" on a kamikaze attack. No matter how good it feels.
Steve Sailer has pointed out many times, Blacks vote Democratic, year after year, 98%. Latinos around 70%. White men, around 70% for Republicans. No surprise there, the Democrats are the anti-White guy party and Republicans by default, the White guy party. Blue collar White women, the so-called Waitress Moms, vote Republican about 70% of the time. They get little Affirmative Action, the welfare they do get is rubbed in their face by elite Whites and the Blacks/Hispanics they deal with at social services. Meanwhile they face daily harassment from non-Whites, for being White. [Pretty much most of the horrific anti-Black violence, North and South, and anti-Chinese violence in Old California, was motivated on the principle of horror deters attacks on White blue collar women. White upper class women having servants and armed men around them to deter such a thing. In other words, defense of the blue collar, White underclass family. No wonder the violence, in places like Detroit or New York City.]
Who is in play? Why White Professional Women. Who have a foot in either camp, and trade off votes based mostly on personal preferences for the candidates. That is why candidates matter, and party and ideas do not.
All politics is mostly spoils. Who and Whom? As Lenin remarked. Who gets the goodies and who gets the shaft. White Professional women get some stuff, but not a lot. They get some welfare, but that's not enough for long. It won't allow them to live the life they want and need, and mostly live. At best it is short term safety net. Nice but not a sinecure. Most of the goodies in government, the media, non-profits, and the like, including corporate America, get hoovered up by the elites. Next come Blacks and Hispanics. White Professional women are nominally part of the anti-White guy alliance, and they HATE HATE HATE Beta White males with a passion (not the least for insulting them by asking them out). But they are very junior members. Very low on the totem pole. They eat last.
Republicans don't offer much to them. [A strategic mistake, but one dictated by their ad-hoc alliance of mostly anti-Government-Elitism and defacto White Guy party.] There is no compelling reason for say, a woman who works in HR at H-P, or accounting at Apple Computer, or marketing for Nike, to vote Republican. There is no big reason against it, just not for it.
So it comes down to which candidate is the Alpha male. The way it always does. With women. Yes in 1940, before the dawn of TV, a desperate Party picked Churchill. He lost in the first major election after the War was won. Because, news flash, women don't like fat old White guys. When they had their say, they tossed him.
Unmarried women voted Obama over McCain, 70-29. Married women only 50 to 47 percent voted McCain. Yes ... HUNK MATTERS! That is how women vote! Women voted 56% to 43% for Obama in 2008, while Men voted 49 to 48% for Obama. That is the gender gap. If "Marriage is just for White people" then the overwhelming majority of married White women, voted McCain only by 3%!
Rule #1 for Republicans: No old guys, White guys only if Hunk, no weird or conservative women. Women don't like that. Any of it. See Sarah Palin's favorables (women detest her, even among just Republican women).
Newt Gingrich has already has his image cemented in the critical terrain of 2012. He's an icky fat old White guy who cheated on his wives, and then threw them out for younger models. He'd be lucky to carry 30% of the Married Women vote. This is reality.
Mitt Romney is the selfish bastard who fired people, and made lots of money, and is handsome, and somewhat cold. Good God! He's the older, silver fox version of every glittery gay vampire hero, "cold" anti-hero that women love to hate and have lots of icky sex with! He's chick magnet.
Women don't care about political passion. To them that's Travis Bickle territory. One step away from asking "You Talking to Me?" and a pyscho shoot-out. [That Bickle actually was the only one to care about a pre-teen prostitute and do something about it escapes them. Because its never about the action, it is about the being and being seen. A sad but hard truth of human nature regarding how women in aggregate act.]
Yes, for the statistically illiterate, there are women who like Newt. Who are unmarried. Some Black unmarried women doubtless love Newt Gingrich and will vote and campaign for him. So what? Obama will still carry the Black vote at 99% or so, and Black women at 99.999%
Republicans have a choice. Engage in a fruitless, pointless rebellion and pick the guy who sat next to Nancy Pelosi, endorsing global warming. The guy who made millions off Freddie and Fannie. The guy who was so inept that he lost control of his Speakership and got convicted on ethics charges [Those details WILL be released, because that's how Obama operates. Period.] A guy so bad at politics he could not even keep his own Party on his side. A guy arguably worse at being Speaker than ... Nancy Pelosi. Who is as corrupt, but better at keeping her folks in line to protect her. A guy who can't get on the ballot in Virginia. A guy who is detested by most women. A guy who is fat, White, and old, just like McCain. Plus ugly, like McCain. A guy who praises Al Sharpton, and has regular lunches and dinners with media figures. A guy with a wife who needs bribes to stay in the race, with spending $1 million at Tiffany's (his latest mistress/wife). Aguy who threw a temper tantrum because he was left off Air Force One and shut down the government in response. That guy. That's who Republicans want to go down screaming "Banzai! Banzai!" with ... Newt Gingrich.
Obama has a miserable record. Nothing to run on and terribly vulnerable to events, like war with Iran, another jihadi strike, more economic collapse, oil prices spiking, and so on.No good news for him is on the horizon. But he has a way of working, that ought to worry Republicans.
Obama has consistently won by "cheating." By rigging the contest so he faces no opposition, or Alan Keyes.
Newt Gingrich is Alan Keyes. Times ten. He knows in his heart he can't win, just like Paul. He's running to sell books, and bump up his personal appearance fees after an easy Obama victory. He sat on the couch before with Nancy Pelosi. He's doing it again. Alan Keyes. Romney is at least not Alan Keyes.
...Read more
Sure, I know the objections to Mitt Romney. He's a Mormon. He's rich. He's handsome. He's distant, and not engaging and dominating on TV. He's a RINO. And all that. Sure, point taken. But the very things that make Mitt Romney unpalatable to much of the South Carolina Evangelicals, and Conservatives, make him the only one running to stand a chance against Obama. Newt Gingrich hands Obama a near 50 state victory. One of so massive proportions that Nancy Pelosi returns as House Majority Leader, and Reid has only 40 at most Republicans to deal with. Perhaps less. Newt is total disaster for America, and hands Obama victory.
Because he's repulsive, in every way, to women. Period.
Rasmussen has Obama and Romney tied at 44% each while Obama leads Newt:
Today’s numbers show Obama and Romney tied at 44% each while the president leads Gingrich 47% to 40%. Romney leads the president by four among unaffiliated voters while Gingrich trails by seven. Romney also does a bit better among Republicans, picking up 79% of the GOP vote while Gingrich attracts 74%. This is consistent with results found throughout the campaign season that Tea Party activists are willing to support whoever wins the nomination while more Establishment oriented Republicans are less likely to make such a commitment.
Santorum, in a poll released today, by Rasmussen, trails Obama by ten points, 48-38.
Let us dispense with magical thinking, what Ann Coulter said was a trade of insults at Obama and the Media for Obama's re-election.
Obama has many strengths. The Media adores him, as Jesus 2.0 literally. So most low information voters, who don't care about politics, and make choices based on the media, which is most White Professional Women, are inclined to Obama anyway. Then again, he's Black. That's a built in advantage for him, again in getting White female votes. That demographic group feels "White male = boring" and fairly icky, while Black is viewed as dynamic, positive, masculine, and good. That is not fair, but that's life.
Obama has $1 billion to run negative ads, and will doubtless raise more through independent PACs run by unions and Hollywood. EVERY celebrity worthy of the name endorses him, and yes that again counts for a lot.
America is not a Center-Right nation. That ceased being true at the end of Reagan's second term. America is a place where Gays serve openly in the military, gay marriage is the law of the land in most places, Whites have no Civil Rights (according to the first Black Attorney General), Black Panthers can run voter intimidation campaigns with impunity, illegal aliens can vote in many places, and get preferential admission and tuition rates, along with college financial aid. That's not a Center-Right nation. That's not a Center nation. That's not even a Left Nation. That's a Hard Left Nation. And that's America. Today's America celebrates non-Whites, views White guys as inherently "racist" (unless they are a dominant, Alpha A-hole hottie) and engages in regular PC jihads.
Newt Gingrich will at best wage a Banzai! Kamikaze attack and go out in a blaze of glory with what is left of the old America. For those wishing to follow the path of Bushido and Yukio Mishima, the gay Japanese Ultra Right Nationalist, well Newt is your guy! Go right ahead, recite a poem to the emperor, tie on that suicide bandanna around your head, and head for the nearest ship screaming "Banzai! Banzai!"
The rest of us have to live here.
Romney's poll numbers are no fluke. Poll after poll after poll shows him being the closest to Obama. Its not a sure thing, not with the media, the innate dislike of White guys and admiration of Black guys by White women professional voters, and the enormous amount of money and (voter fraud) that Obama promises to bring to the table.
No, Newt won't "destroy" Obama in a debate. Yes Newt is a Master Debater. He's also detested by most women. Obama will remind them of this, and Newt can't go after in person that "nice Black President" who will sit there and smile with his poop-eating-grin. Any "debate" will have Anderson Cooper or Juan Williams or Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson or Al Roker or Brian Williams jumping on any grenade that might threaten Jesus 2.0. This is reality.
In a debate, Newt will look fat and old, because he is fat and old. He will look White, because he is White. He will look ugly, because he is ugly. These things matter. Women voters make their choices on them. It is why JFK beat Nixon, why Scott Brown beat the Kennedy Machine, why Reagan beat Carter. Why Clinton beat Bush. Why Bush beat both robotic Al Gore, and weirdo John Kerry "Reporting for Duty. REEEEEEPORTING for DUUUUUTY!"
He will also look like a guy who being fat, old, ugly, and White, wanted an open marriage and cheated on two wives with mistresses. Yes that matters, if you are a Republican. A Democrat can do that, and get away with it, because the Media covers for them and pushes them as Alpha males. Newt will be portrayed as the ickies of icky beta White males.
No, Obama does not have it all his own way. Mitt Romney's argument is that being rich, he's got a stake in America. He's put his own money on the line, and is betting for America. Not selling it out in any of Obama's shady deals for cronies. Reminding voters he's rich plays to women.
Newsflash. Women LIKE rich guys. A lot. Even better when they are tall, handsome, married to the same woman for years, and are somewhat distant, stand-offish, and remote. That's Chick Crack 101. Straight out of Roissy's pickup advice.
What women do NOT like is "hot" guys who are angry, intense, and come off like this guy:
That's Newt Gingrich. "You Talking to Me?" Recall in the movie, Robert DeNiro did NOT get the girl. She found him repulsive. Don't be Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. That's another way of screaming "Banzai!" on a kamikaze attack. No matter how good it feels.
Steve Sailer has pointed out many times, Blacks vote Democratic, year after year, 98%. Latinos around 70%. White men, around 70% for Republicans. No surprise there, the Democrats are the anti-White guy party and Republicans by default, the White guy party. Blue collar White women, the so-called Waitress Moms, vote Republican about 70% of the time. They get little Affirmative Action, the welfare they do get is rubbed in their face by elite Whites and the Blacks/Hispanics they deal with at social services. Meanwhile they face daily harassment from non-Whites, for being White. [Pretty much most of the horrific anti-Black violence, North and South, and anti-Chinese violence in Old California, was motivated on the principle of horror deters attacks on White blue collar women. White upper class women having servants and armed men around them to deter such a thing. In other words, defense of the blue collar, White underclass family. No wonder the violence, in places like Detroit or New York City.]
Who is in play? Why White Professional Women. Who have a foot in either camp, and trade off votes based mostly on personal preferences for the candidates. That is why candidates matter, and party and ideas do not.
All politics is mostly spoils. Who and Whom? As Lenin remarked. Who gets the goodies and who gets the shaft. White Professional women get some stuff, but not a lot. They get some welfare, but that's not enough for long. It won't allow them to live the life they want and need, and mostly live. At best it is short term safety net. Nice but not a sinecure. Most of the goodies in government, the media, non-profits, and the like, including corporate America, get hoovered up by the elites. Next come Blacks and Hispanics. White Professional women are nominally part of the anti-White guy alliance, and they HATE HATE HATE Beta White males with a passion (not the least for insulting them by asking them out). But they are very junior members. Very low on the totem pole. They eat last.
Republicans don't offer much to them. [A strategic mistake, but one dictated by their ad-hoc alliance of mostly anti-Government-Elitism and defacto White Guy party.] There is no compelling reason for say, a woman who works in HR at H-P, or accounting at Apple Computer, or marketing for Nike, to vote Republican. There is no big reason against it, just not for it.
So it comes down to which candidate is the Alpha male. The way it always does. With women. Yes in 1940, before the dawn of TV, a desperate Party picked Churchill. He lost in the first major election after the War was won. Because, news flash, women don't like fat old White guys. When they had their say, they tossed him.
Unmarried women voted Obama over McCain, 70-29. Married women only 50 to 47 percent voted McCain. Yes ... HUNK MATTERS! That is how women vote! Women voted 56% to 43% for Obama in 2008, while Men voted 49 to 48% for Obama. That is the gender gap. If "Marriage is just for White people" then the overwhelming majority of married White women, voted McCain only by 3%!
Rule #1 for Republicans: No old guys, White guys only if Hunk, no weird or conservative women. Women don't like that. Any of it. See Sarah Palin's favorables (women detest her, even among just Republican women).
Newt Gingrich has already has his image cemented in the critical terrain of 2012. He's an icky fat old White guy who cheated on his wives, and then threw them out for younger models. He'd be lucky to carry 30% of the Married Women vote. This is reality.
Mitt Romney is the selfish bastard who fired people, and made lots of money, and is handsome, and somewhat cold. Good God! He's the older, silver fox version of every glittery gay vampire hero, "cold" anti-hero that women love to hate and have lots of icky sex with! He's chick magnet.
Women don't care about political passion. To them that's Travis Bickle territory. One step away from asking "You Talking to Me?" and a pyscho shoot-out. [That Bickle actually was the only one to care about a pre-teen prostitute and do something about it escapes them. Because its never about the action, it is about the being and being seen. A sad but hard truth of human nature regarding how women in aggregate act.]
Yes, for the statistically illiterate, there are women who like Newt. Who are unmarried. Some Black unmarried women doubtless love Newt Gingrich and will vote and campaign for him. So what? Obama will still carry the Black vote at 99% or so, and Black women at 99.999%
Republicans have a choice. Engage in a fruitless, pointless rebellion and pick the guy who sat next to Nancy Pelosi, endorsing global warming. The guy who made millions off Freddie and Fannie. The guy who was so inept that he lost control of his Speakership and got convicted on ethics charges [Those details WILL be released, because that's how Obama operates. Period.] A guy so bad at politics he could not even keep his own Party on his side. A guy arguably worse at being Speaker than ... Nancy Pelosi. Who is as corrupt, but better at keeping her folks in line to protect her. A guy who can't get on the ballot in Virginia. A guy who is detested by most women. A guy who is fat, White, and old, just like McCain. Plus ugly, like McCain. A guy who praises Al Sharpton, and has regular lunches and dinners with media figures. A guy with a wife who needs bribes to stay in the race, with spending $1 million at Tiffany's (his latest mistress/wife). Aguy who threw a temper tantrum because he was left off Air Force One and shut down the government in response. That guy. That's who Republicans want to go down screaming "Banzai! Banzai!" with ... Newt Gingrich.
Obama has a miserable record. Nothing to run on and terribly vulnerable to events, like war with Iran, another jihadi strike, more economic collapse, oil prices spiking, and so on.No good news for him is on the horizon. But he has a way of working, that ought to worry Republicans.
Obama has consistently won by "cheating." By rigging the contest so he faces no opposition, or Alan Keyes.
Newt Gingrich is Alan Keyes. Times ten. He knows in his heart he can't win, just like Paul. He's running to sell books, and bump up his personal appearance fees after an easy Obama victory. He sat on the couch before with Nancy Pelosi. He's doing it again. Alan Keyes. Romney is at least not Alan Keyes.
...Read more
Monday, January 16, 2012
Martin Luther King: The Return of Otto von Bismarck
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A day for maudlin celebration of a plaster saint, instead of the very real political genius who shaped, for better and worse, today's America. But just like Martin Luther King Jr. is regarded as Jesus 2.0, the new improved version, and the achievements and failures of the actual man who lived is lost, his actions continue to move America along the path he envisioned. And just like the Iron Chancellor, King's great triumph has sown the seeds of his own disaster, coming long after his death. Therefore let us examine both men as Machiavelli advises and admire them in as much as their actions and abilities are admirable.
Otto Von Bismarck created modern Germany. Basically out of whole cloth. A staunch practitioner of "Revolutionary Conservatism" in which he put power into the hands of the Kaiser and aristocratic Junker elite, fought Catholic culture and influence (the KulturKampf) to preserve Lutheran power, and instituted the Welfare State. From the situation wherein David McCullough, writing about John A. Roebling, escaping turmoil and government oppression in Prussia, noted that most Germans of the era mistrusted the various German states that drafted their sons, spent their lives like water, paid them nothing, and engaged in predatory taxes to fund extravagant lives, Bismarck produced safety, security, order, very limited wars (with easy victories), balance of power diplomacy, and instead of just taxes, checks from the Government. Bismarck produced a Germany, for the first time since perhaps Charlemagne, that worked. Worked for most men and women, most of the time.
But his success was his downfall. By focusing absolute power onto the Kaiser, Bismarck was left alone in desiring a status-quo power, preventing any alliance from forming against Germany by skillful diplomacy. Kaiser Wilhem, wanting an aggressive expansion of Germany commensurate with its power, sought alliances, particularly in the Balkans. Bismarck had once remarked that the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Prussian Grenadier, but the Kaiser was the Kaiser. Bismarck was dismissed, Germany sought to prop up failing Austria-Hungary, and prepared for not a limited war against an isolated enemy with no friends and little ability to fight back (Denmark, Austria, and France respectively) but a combination of great powers: England, France, Italy, and Russia. With only the dubious contribution of Austria and the Ottoman Empire in return.
Bismarck created and wrote the destruction of modern Germany. He made Germany work, as a mostly honest, efficient, and productive place to live. But in preserving his vision of aristocratic Lutheran society, he left no one to check the Kaiser and the Junker Officer Corps who produced unwise expansion of German military interests and an even worse alliance (with collapsing, corrupt Austria-Hungary). And that without buying out either France or Russia or England, as Bismarck surely would have done. Perhaps all three. By the late 1890's, however, things were radically different from Bismarck's declaration:
Bulgaria, that little country between the Danube and the Balkans, is far from being an object of adequate importance... for which to plunge Europe from Moscow to the Pyrenees, and from the North Sea to Palermo, into a war whose issue no man can foresee. At the end of the conflict we should scarcely know why we had fought.
…
One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.
Bismarck's great triumph thus led to his great tragedy. Dismissed in 1890, by a Kaiser surrounded by syncophants, and clueless militarists, Germany drifted into a war it could not win, as opposed the short and easy wars under Bismarck.
Still one has to admire his political genius. He took enemies one at a time, and did not allow foreign enemies to collect in one grand alliance. He maintained as much as possible the traditional alliance of the Three Emperors of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, manipulated socialists, liberals, and nationalists to achieve political unification of Germany under Prussian terms, and produced a nation of mostly sober, not very corrupt, and able technocrats. His eyes were on the prize, of German unification and prosperity. While he switched tactics, focus, allies, and means, he never wavered from those ultimate goals.
Dr. King was much the same. A man of considerable political genius, whose signal accomplishment: Affirmative Action, also contains its downfall. Homer Plessy was a brave and able man. But his legal challenge to the laws of Segregation failed, where Martin Luther King succeeded. Although of dubious scholarship (his Phd dissertation had been partially plagiarized) and numerous infidelities, allegedly often with married White women, King was a political genius. From his time at Boston University, he knew well Whites and particularly elite Whites in the North. He understood the power of media and particularly television. He knew well too, the political weakness of the thin remaining part of the Tidewater Aristocracy in the South and the low quality of intelligence and agility on the part of White political leadership, the so-called "Ascendancy" that David Fischer ascribed to backwoods, rural Southern leadership in "Albion's Seed."
King's genius was in realizing that because the private car and TV had led many Whites to already leave urban areas with Blacks, for the privacy of their own home and living room, he could leverage the combination of distance and graphic pictures into a "moral crusade" by Northern, Puritan-Quaker elite Whites, against those they HATE HATE HATED, Southern Whites. His strategy was not to mount legal challenges, but provoke TV-friendly confrontations, and explicitly ask elite, Puritan-Quaker Whites, to join him as God's Drum Major for Justice, in a moral crusade to "save America."
When Bull Connor turned the police dogs and water hoses on peaceful marchers, he played right into King's hands. A bullying, "cruel" action against peaceful, non-threatening Black and White marchers played out across America's living rooms. They'd never seen anything like it. King made it all up, far more than Alinsky, by actually accomplishing his goals. By provoking attack after attack, and allowing Northern Puritan-Quaker Whites from the New England, Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest, Pacific, and some Western states, to do what they wanted to anyway: punish those wicked Southern Whites, King got his victory. The Civil Rights act rested upon the conviction, that to pass it was a basic requirement for simple morality by suburban, mostly Puritan-Quaker White America. Northern "Romney Republicans" such as Michigan Governor George Romney, father of Mitt, were those leading the way for the passage and support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
What abolitionists, what extreme Reconstructionists, what W.E.B. Dubois, what George Washington Carver, could not accomplish, Martin Luther King Jr. did accomplish. At great personal risk, and through nothing more than publicity stunts designed to get media coverage. No one before (or really, since) had done such a thing, and as at was audacious and bold and altogether new, it deserves, like Bismarck's unification of Germany, to be admired.
But … King left within his own accomplishment, a poison which would ultimately destroy his goal as it accomplished it. Just like Bismarck.
Conservatives claim that Martin Luther King Jr. wanted a color-blind, non-racial society. It is true that King was against discrimination … against Black people. He was in favor of it when it came to White people. So say Jessie Jackson, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, all agree, as part of King's inner circle, that his "Dream" speech where he wanted his four little children to be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin, was boob bait for bubbas. Something King never meant, in any other way, than they should not be discriminated against for being Black. By contrast, there is ample evidence of King's commitment to Affirmative Action, or anti-White discrimination.
The exploitation of King's name, the distortion of his teachings for political gain, is an ugly development. It was Dr. King himself, as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who initiated the first, successful, national affirmative action policy in the U.S.-- "Operation Breadbasket."
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, among other cities, King staffers gathered disparity data on corporations doing business in black communities. King was so encouraged by early affirmative action efforts, he wrote: "At present, SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some twelve cities, and the results have been remarkable ... 800 new and upgraded jobs several covenants with major industries.''
King was well aware of arguments against affirmative action. Even in 1964, in Why We Can't Wait, he wrote: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."
Dr. King -- who launched Operation Breadbasket in 12 American cities -- supported affirmative action because he never confused the dream with American reality. As he put it, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" to compete on a just and equal basis.
In 1965 King compared affirmative action to the GI Bill. "Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs ... And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war." (Affirmative action for veterans is still in place today, and many qualified women are often passed over by male vets on the basis of "veteran preference").
King's quotes regarding Affirmative Action and Multi-racial society include:
"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro ..."
-- Dr. King, quoted by Stephen B. Oates: Let the Trumpet Sound
"There is no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster, that does not share power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity."
-- Dr. King, Where do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
"Integration is ... mutual sharing of power. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of society. This is a multi-racial nation where all groups are dependent on each other."
-- Dr. King, Where do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? in A Testament of Hope; Essential Writings
"Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."
-- Dr. King, Why We Can't Wait
All quotes found here.
In all practical terms, this meant 100 years or perhaps 200, or more likely forever, discrimination against White people in order to help Black ones. Expanded to include Hispanics, and perhaps other non-Whites against Whites. Just as Bismarck successfully unified Germany under a Prussian model of absolute monarchy and Junker control, so too did King end Jim Crow with discrimination against (the wrong sort of ) White people. By allying the Puritan-Quaker "Progressives" against Hillbillies, and various unpopular White people in the North. The people of South Boston in particular were made an example of, as the "wrong sort of White people." Too poor, too ethnic, and most importantly culturally not Puritan-Quaker "Progressive." Proud of being working class, contemptuous of education, and politically impotent, forced busing, block-busting, and other methods (including outright ethnic cleansing as in Detroit) made the punishment of those on the outside of the Black-Puritan-Quaker/Progressive alliance a reality. One that created permanent enemies.
Just as Bismarck's dream foundered on the incompetence of Kaiser Wilhelm, a man he himself raised to absolute power, so too King's vision founders on the inability of Blacks to create wealth, and the need for ever expanding burdens of Affirmative Action and wealth transfer from ordinary White people to pay for those who cannot survive without out it. All the while as Whites become a minority in their own country, and can look forward to treatment approximating that of a Black man who is "uppity" in Mississippi, circa 1950.
It cost Whites in the suburbs little to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Way to stick it to those evil racist White guys, beating people with batons, and using attack dogs on them. Nobody had to live around Blacks in the suburbs. And if they did, well an expanding economy and highly mobile nation, with cheap gas, meant there was always another suburb, right over the horizon. White flight in a nutshell. There was not much wealth transfer either, as welfare was limited at first, Mexicans were season workers sent home, with no rights or permanence, and limited presence at that.
But the logical outcome of King's Dream is the first Black Attorney General of the United States, appointed by the First Black President (or was it the second?) telling Congress that it was "an insult to my people" to suggest that Whites had Civil Rights. And that, furthermore, straight White guys could not be by definition, victims of a hate crime, and that hate crime legislation in no way protected them or acted to avenge them. The logical outcome of King's Dream is Detroit, controlled by Blacks, run by Blacks, after riots in 1943 and 1967 that ethnically cleansed Whites. Detroit is the culmination of King's Dream. Which in the end is a nightmare. A place where only endless amounts of White money, can prop up a people who remain 47% illiterate (and that's adults).
Just like Bismarck's Germany ultimately fell into disastrous militarism (by picking fights with multiple enemies it would be unlikely to defeat in concert), King's Dream depends on continuing White flight, continuing White wealth, continuing economic growth, and continuing domination of "the wrong sort of White people" by Puritan-Quaker-Progressive elites. The temporary had to be permanent, and that never happens.
As much as King was a tactical political genius, he was a strategic moron (like Bismarck). White guilt and status powers among a certain set of White people was powerful, but not all encompassing. As soon as mobility stopped, Blacks would make enemies. Permanent ones. Moreover, anti-White discrimination was far more hurtful, and felt directly, the more Whites declined as part of the population. Harm and hurt was spread over fewer and fewer who felt the lash harder and harder. Jobs that went to unqualified Blacks or Hispanics. Preferential admission to colleges and universities, the ticket to the good life, going to unqualified Blacks and Hispanics (that is the whole point of Affirmative Action -- that Blacks are not qualified and so must be favored). All these things make enemies. Under the media radar, to be sure, but the media while powerful is not the be all and end all of social power.
Moreover, come a sustained period of economic hardship, let alone sustained decline, continued mass migration, and the "Multiracial Democracy" that King envisioned will not be a bunch of rich White people sticking it to "the wrong sort of Whites" to help non-Whites. It will be an overt Hobbesian war of all against all, particularly as elites Whites are increasingly asked as Michelle Obama demands, to give up their power so non-Whites can have it.
The whole point of the Civil Rights movement was to help Blacks by sticking it to people who live in South Boston, or Detroit, or Birmingham Alabama, and were the "wrong sort" of White person. And that just creates ever larger groups of enemies, as demands for helping non-Whites grown and the "wrong sort" of White person grows and grows. White flight is turning already to White fight. "Racist" is now a joke word, as Cartman on South Park said, "in this day and age Black people can never be wrong." And -- "Black people are the one group no one can mess with. Ever!" That status, is solely the province of Black people as a magical totem of morality by White elites. Who in turn have lost the confidence of most ordinary Whites by screwing up the economy and making most Whites discriminated minorities in their own hometowns.
That in turn has Hillbilly-ized much of America. If all the Welfare goes to say, Detroit, or Mexican illegals and their kids (fully 85% of Santa Ana Unified School Kids qualify for the free and reduced lunch program, to the point where SAUSD got a waiver from the USDA to provide all students with free meals), then by definition there is little to help Whites in need. In time of economic distress. The King Model, which amounts to "Blacks sit in the front of the Bus, Whites stand in the back" is sure to produce a fight among Whites, who will get nothing from government but taxes they will evade, Italian or Greek style. Meanwhile those who slip from Elite to ordinary status are likely to be demanding aid for them, at the cost of that towards Blacks and Hispanics.
Already, in a deep recession, the First Black President offers no help to struggling Whites other than celebrating big parties, lavish vacations, and lectures from a First Lady with the biggest ass on a non-clinically obese person, on eating one's vegetables. While she downs lobster and Kobe Beef sliders. Meanwhile the borders have been thrown wide open and preference given to illegal aliens in admission and financial aid to universities and colleges, ahead of residents of other states and in-state Whites. That is the logical fruit of King's Dream -- discriminating against native Whites to help illegal aliens from Mexico.
King notably said:
"Integration is ... mutual sharing of power. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of society. This is a multi-racial nation where all groups are dependent on each other."
But other than minstrel type chest beating in college and professional Basketball and Football, Whites have no needs that Black people fill. Whites are not dependent on Black people, for anything other than Rap thuggery and chest beating athletes with many illegtimate kids:
Black people and Hispanic people are dependent on White people (welfare money and other income transfers), but not the reverse. A few rich White elites depend on Black people as moral tokens and status objects, but not the rest. White America has already lived through radical restructuring of society, to its detriment. As it has become poorer, more violent, with less social and upward mobility, less physical mobility, and numerical inferiority in many places to match legal inferiority. As the only non-protected class that exists. King's folly, like that of Bismarck, was to not realize the entirely foreseeable future. That Whites in a crisis would throw out status moralizing, that parts of the Puritan-Quaker elite having fallen, would prefer to have more money/power/status for them, rather than an ever expanding non-White population. And that White flight would be endless. That White fight would never occur. Because the power of TV and status-mongering elites would last forever. Just as the wisdom of the Kaiser would always forestall unwise military action in the Balkans.
So let us remember the real man. One of unquestioned physical courage, a great gift for political tactics, one with keen insights into White social and political dynamics. Not the plaster saint of no real faults and virtues. But the real man. And while we take a moment to admire his real political genius, and courage, recognize his dream, no less than Bismarck's, has become a nightmare. And let us hope and pray it does not turn out to be ashes the way Bismarck's ultimately did.
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