Posts filed under 'Fitter Happier'
To hear some pundits tell it, millions of voters switched their allegiance to Ronald Reagan right after he uttered the words “There you go again.” These debates are important in part, simply because we say they are. As I’ve said, I don’t think they tell us much about any of the players and issues involved (I already knew Brokaw was a blowhard, already pretty sure I liked Obama’s health plan better than McCain’s, etc).
Some people mentioned the visual juxtaposition of a young, energetic candidate standing next to an old man. I thought it was even more disturbing to listen to to McCain’s labored breathing into the mic (Tony Soprano, anyone?), and he also sounded scatterbrained on a number of answers. Obama was pretty strong for the first few minutes — when the most people are watching — and they both seemed to get lost in uninteresting, meandering answers during the middle innings.
I still worry about all the Americans who think Obama is Muslim, or unpatriotic, or who just don’t want to vote for the black fella. I think the polls are likely to tighten before November. But I’m pretty sure he’s going to win, and he’s going to have close to a 60-seat majority in the senate as well.
With the markets in free-fall, home foreclosures continuing to cripple the economy, and more and more Americans fearing for their futures, a lot of other things just seem really unimportant. I think McCain and Palin are disrespectful and dishonest, but I only take that seriously because they are the second-most likely duo to waltz into the Oval Office in January. But McPalin isn’t really a serious ticket; it doesn’t discuss serious issues, and it doesn’t offer serious solutions.
What matters now is how forceful Obama and the Democrats are willing to be in taking the necessary measures to address the economic woes of the country and the world, and then working to create more efficient and sustainable ways of doing things. That is going to mean putting a lot of the cleanup cost for this on the backs of the rich. It’s going to mean offering real relief to a lot of home owners with unmanageable mortgages — because the economy is not going to recover without a less toxic housing market. It’s going to mean reforming health care so it isn’t nearly as big a drain on the average paycheck.
And it’s going to require serious investment in alternative energy, infrastructure rebuilding, job creation, effective regulations on financial institutions, and almost assuredly, it’s going to require temporary nationalization of the banks.
You may disagree with the solutions I propose, but most of you will probably agree with the diagnosis; we’re in deep shit. Even a more damning juxtaposition than McCain’s age and Obama’s youth, is McCain’s petulance and selfishness contrasted with the serious times we’re living in.
October 8th, 2008
Would you like to convert some of your mp3s into ringtones for your iPhone without paying Apple a dollar a pop? Well have I got news for you, brother. All you need to do is cut that song down to less than 40 seconds. Then you can open it in iTunes and convert the mp3 into aac format. Then rename your aac file with an m4r extension, reopen in iTunes, and transfer to your iPhone. Or you could just download this program, which does all that for you.
How do I know this? A little blogger told me. He also told me that bottled water is basically a sham and that public transpo is the highway lobby’s bitch. Gotta love the Information Age.
April 6th, 2008
For a long time I have felt that Sex and the City was not only bad and obnoxious, but bad for women. When I saw a Times op-ed piece in 2003 saying the same thing, I was somewhat hurt they hadn’t tapped me to write it, but glad that they were getting the word out.
It’s not that women shouldn’t talk or care about men and shopping and such things, but it is a mistake to create a show that wraps itself in the mantle of feminism and then suggests that there is nothing more to the life of an independent woman than men and shopping and such things. HBO inspired legions of young female fans by romanticizing the materialism and superficiality of the Manhattan nightlife and helped to usher in the new era of faux feminism that acts as a buffer zone for any real worries about the continuing inequality between the sexes that happen to come close to permeating the public dialog.
Similarly, there is nothing wrong with a columnist who decides to write op-eds that are short on substance, but rich in snarky jabs at political figures, that almost always reinforce played-out caricatures. Such columns do nothing to advance political debate, but they can be entertaining, and there certainly seems to be a market for them. It is more problematic however, when said columnist purports to be new era feminist, while at the same time undermining the most powerful woman in the country by contributing to the cheap, misogynistic narratives surrounding that candidate (or “Queen Beeâ€, as Dowd calls her).
It is also a shame that this columnist has such narrow and misguided views of what it means to be sexy, what it means to be smart, or what it means to be a journalist. And it is downright tragic that such a self-absorbed, intellectually shallow writer too often represents the only female voice in the op-ed pages of the paper of record. This is not to say the Times doesn’t carry its share of unreflective, intellectual lightweights — Tom Friedman, Bill Kristol and Frank Rich all come to mind — but it’s more disappointing to see such poor work coming from the most prominent female journalist in the country.
I worry that many women believe embracing male ideals of sexiness constitutes a more modern version of liberated feminism. Likewise, as someone who too often relies on cutesy sarcasm and one-liners to stand in for insightful criticism, I see Dowd using similar devices (although much more effectively) to create the facade of intelligent commentary. It’s not that easy to be liberated and it’s not that easy to be smart. I very much agree with the idea that a smart, sexy feminist is not a contradiction in terms, but I think that Dowd embodies only the most surface-level realization of those concepts.
Hillary Clinton is a smart woman. She has a better understanding of the power apparatus in Washington than almost anyone else in the country. She has maintained her frontrunner status despite the best efforts of a hostile and sexist media, and has consistently proven a better spokeswoman for her own cause than anyone else affiliated with her campaign. I don’t encourage reverence for public figures and I don’t want Clinton to become president, but the baseless grounds for which Dowd trivializes her candidacy and her as a person (not to mention her assertion that Clinton hurts feminists) are contemptible. And I did call Clinton a robot and I am a hypocrite. What’s your point?
One can attempt to make the empirical case that Clinton is manipulative, controlling, or diabolically ambitious. But using rumors, innuendo and sparse anecdotal evidence to portray what is at best a hunch as indisputable fact is unethical and beneath a Times columnist.
February 3rd, 2008
10. The Worldly Philosophers. Great book about the most influential economic minds and their ideas. Wonderful introduction into the world of economics.
9. Catch-22. Gotta have a war book on here. I personally like Slaughterhouse-Five better, but had I read that and not this I would only partially understand the universe.
8. Guns, Germs, and Steel. The history of humans. Always interesting to know. My main beef with the book is that he used that second comma after germs. Not really incorrect, but tacky and unnecessary.
7. What Liberal Media? There have now been a large number of books written about right wing think tanks, media and their impact on the public discourse. This one, by The Nation’s Eric Alterman, is in my estimation the best of the bunch. Thorough, entertaining and more objective than many of the others.
6. Fast Food Nation. Great expose on the fast food industry that also details how much it has shaped the culture and corporate climate of the country.
5. Siddhartha. You probably should read Steppenwolf, too, but I haven’t so I can’t speak to its merits.
4. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. How globalization and worldwide corporations have dropped a deuce on the earth’s eco-systems and indigenous peoples. Which we all know, but he has an insider’s perspective, and writes without being whiny.
3. Brothers Karamazov. Religion, Law, Morality, the inner demons of man, all wrapped up in a compelling drama. Not sure the guy thinks too highly of the ladies, however.
2. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. From streetsmart gangster to a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, this guy did it all. A How-To guide, if you will. One of the more intimate biographies of one of the more fascinating people.
1. Catcher in the Rye. Wonderful and depressing coming of age story about a crazy kid in a crazy world. Told first person, so it lacks some of the beautiful character descriptions of Salinger’s other great works (which you should also read), but it’s a fine novel. A book for and about outsiders (like a Wes Anderson movie). Mark Chapman and the guy who tried to assassinate Reagan were both obsessed with this book. Just throwin that out there. Crucial to understanding the universe, however.
Honorable mention: No God but God and Everybody Poops.
(Blogger’s note: This list assumes you already know your Bible, Quran and Shakespeare. And a more appropriate title would be 10 books you really ought to read if "Prison Break" isn’t on.)
(Blogger’s note addendum: For the most part, philosophers have been excluded from this post because that is a separate list.)
May 17th, 2006