January 2009

Mike Kazin in an email (published with his permission):

Perhaps you gotta be steeped in left history to get excited by this or be Joe Klein– But the only time I broke down in tears watching the big concert today was when Pete Seeger, all 89 years of him, started singing the two “radical” verses of This Land Is Your Land that almost always get cut when the song is sung in public, or in countless elementary schools across the nation (pasted below). I bet Pete was thinking, “This is the way Woody wrote it and so I’m going to make sure the whole country hears it.” How long before some right-wing blogger mentions that this song was written by a member of the
Communist Party — whose best buddy and fellow comrade made it to the Lincoln Memorial to bring it all back home?

When you add this to all the encomia to King and to Rosa Parks and to Lincoln the Emancipator– well, the left’s definition of patriotism is now dominant– only six years after anti-war posters reading, “Peace is Patriotic” sounded absurdly marginal. Change I can believe in…

“As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there
And that sign said – no tress passin’
But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office – I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.”

All reasonable^TM commentators now agree that nationalisation of big banks like Citigroup, Bank of America and Royal Bank of Scotland must take place soon, explicitly or otherwise. As I said at just before the second (failed) Citigroup bailout) banks like Citi are not only too big to fail, they’re too big to rescue with any of the half-measures that have been tried so far.

It’s obvious that “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly” and cleanly, without any dodges designed to hide the reality of nationalisation. The longer these zombie institutions are allowed to run on public money, but under the existing discredited managers, legally answerable to the private shareholders, the bigger the costs the public will ultimately face.

Nationalisation would resolve a lot of the difficult questions around ideas such as the creation of a “bad bank” to hold all the toxic assets accumulated during the boom. That’s critical as long as policy is aimed at turning the troubled banks around while keeping them private, but it’s unimportant once all the debts and assets have been taken on to the public balance sheet. Once the big banks are nationalized, the government can take its time salvaging whatever assets are still worthwhile and preparing for the reconstruction of a private banking system under a completely new system of regulation, a task that is likely to take several years.

The big question is, what should governments do with the banks once they own them? Clearly, there’s an imperative for banks to start lending again, but there is no benefit in making yet more bad loans. And, right at the moment, credit-worthy borrowers are hard to find. The immediate concern must be to ensure that commercially sound loans aren’t being constrained by the need to bolster bank balance sheets. Then, governments need to consider whether some form of support for loans, such as interest rate subsidies or guarantees (secured against assets seen as having a long-term value that exceeds their current market value) should be part of the policy response to the recession. Such policies have plenty of risk associated with them, but the risks are mitigated a bit if the guarantor and the bank owner are ultimately the same (in this case, the public).

Obviously, this is not the kind of question economists have spent a lot of time thinking about until fairly recently. I don’t imagine many of us would have expected, a year ago, to be reading the Wall Street Journal castigating Henry Paulson and the Bush Administration for the (partial) nationalisation of the Bank of America. No doubt plenty of mistakes will be made. But there is no time for leisurely reflection here. As in 1933, the next hundred days will make a big difference, one way or another.

My 4-year old iMac is on it’s last legs. The DVD drive no longer works and, although everything else is fine and functional, it’s just plain slow. I have the money, so what’s the problem?

It’s this: everyone was hoping for a new iMac to be announced at Macworld, but no dice. It’s been a long time since a new iMac appeared and it seems certain we’ll have something exciting by June at the latest. But I don’t really want to wait. I’m morally certain I could CAUSE something new and exciting to be announced and rapidly rolled out, by the simple act of buying one of the old ones. I doubt very much it would take more than a week. This would, of course, be intensely annoying to me. But everyone else would be very happy. They could buy whatever the happy shiny new thing turns out to be. (At the very least, they could buy the old thing that I just bought for significantly less than I paid.) So: should I let the knowledge that I will be bringing joy to millions of other mac users, in the form of a hot new iMac, tip the scales in favor of buying the old one right now? Should I buy altruistically, in effect? Bonus question: if I knew that by throwing a fat man off a bridge in front of an oncoming trolley I could make Apple release a new iMac, would it be ok to do it? So long as I didn’t get caught?

What do you think the odds are that Apple will 1) drop their prices or 2) roll out a new iMac in the next couple months?

“John Crowley”:http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/ has a lovely essay on Thomas Disch in the new “Boston Review”:http://www.bostonreview.net. The essay isn’t on the WWW yet (I’ll link to it when/if it does appear), but I wanted to quote this bit about Disch’s _334_ as soon as I read it:

… why did he need the scaffoldings of futurist fiction? We might guess that if he were beginning a writing career now, with dozens of writers taking up and inventing personal worlds in irrealistic modes and nobody minding, he wouldn’t need science fiction. But I think that he was always haunted – and vivified – by the awful and the apocalyptic. In creating the world of _334_, he had the grand sweep of decline and fall, featuring numberless populations and quick-time disasters, that would allow him to admit a competing tendency to generosity and humility in dealing with individual hurt and longing. Posit a future that is cruel enough to be convincingly the future of this bad present – a hard shell for the tender snail of self – and you can bring out from it what matters most to you: the shortened version of things in the world.

When I wrote an “irritated piece”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/12/16/they-bellow-til-were-deaf/ in response to Benjamin Kunkel’s “silly essay”:http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1308 last month, I mentioned _334_ as a counter-example to Kunkel’s claims. But Crowley’s summation of Disch (perhaps because it isn’t a polemic or counter-polemic, instead being a sympathetic analysis of a particular aesthetic) says what I was trying to say far better. There isn’t any necessary reason why a particular set of literary tropes and themes _have_ to overwhelm character in dystopian or apocalyptic novels. Instead, as _334_ exemplifies, you can use the tensions between dystopia and the everyday lives of people as a source of art. Which is what _334_ does so well, and why it is a minor masterpiece.

I was on C-Span’s _Washington Journal_ this morning, talking about my “piece”:http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=can_partisanship_save_citizenship for the _American Prospect_ on partisanship and organizing. Anyone who’s interested can watch it “here”:http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=283429-4 (from about 1.01.15 for half an hour or so).

With Bush making his farewell, I thought I’d make the rounds of right-wing blogs to see how they were rising to the occasion. I wondered how low the limbo bar of low standards could go. I was a bit disappointed to start at Red State, see a post entitled “Will the Left Accept That They Were Wrong Wrong About Bush?” and come up with an instant winner. What is the author going to praise Bush for, you ask? “We stand here watching Bush kindly say his goodbyes and we see George W. Bush stepping down like every American president before him (well, except the ones that died in office, of course). Even Darth Cheney is packing up for his last ride into the sunset.”

Bush didn’t stage a coup. (Well, there are a few hours left. But it does seem that he won’t.)

That’s it.

“So, will each of these half sentient, dillweeds fess up that they were wrong? Will they turn to their fellow dillweed, whack-jonse friends and say: “Ya know, I have to hand it to Bush. He was an alright guy for following the Constitution and going home to Texas like he’s supposed ta.”

Only time will tell.

Melissa Schwartzberg at Columbia and I have an essay in the new issue of “Ethics and International Affairs”:http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/index.html on the ways in which norms structure majority-minority relations on Wikipedia and the Daily Kos. The journal has made it “freely available online here”:http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/22_4/essays/002.html.

Building on case studies of Wikipedia and the Daily Kos, we make three basic claims. First, we argue that different kinds of rules shape relations between members of the majority and of the minority in these communities in important and consequential ways. Second, we argue that the normative implications of these consequences differ between online communities that seek to generate knowledge, and which should be tolerant of diversity in points of view, and online communities that seek to generate political action, which need less diversity in order to be politically efficacious. Third, we note that an analysis of the normative desirability of this or that degree of tolerance needs to be tempered with an awareness that the actual rules through which minority relations are structured are likely the consequence of power relations rather than normative considerations.

The other lead essay is “Michael Walzer on democracy promotion”:http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/22_4/essays/001.html, which should keep Daniel entertained …

Hollywood is poised to make a Tintin movie, apparently, so we have two recent think pieces about comics’ greatest boy reporter in plus-fours. Matthew Parris declares that he’s obviously gay. The Economist somehow manages to take an exquisitely Economistesque line, getting digs in at the French while backhandedly praising Americans for their peculiar issues, while allowing that the Brits are probably somewhere in the middle. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Tintin has never fallen foul of the 1949 French law on children’s literature [making it illegal to portray cowardice positively]. He is not a coward, and the albums do not make that vice appear in a favourable light. But he is a pragmatist, albeit a principled one. Perhaps Anglo-Saxon audiences want something more from their fictional heroes: they want them imbued with the power to change events, and inflict total defeat on the wicked. Tintin cannot offer something so unrealistic. In that, he is a very European hero.

The Parris piece is mock-serious, otherwise I would have to ask: is he serious? But he sort of seems serious, so I’m wondering whether, on some level, he thinks Hergé really meant to imply that in the world of the fiction (oh, never mind, I’d just wander off into philosophy nonsense about true-in-the-world-of-the-fiction. Parris is obviously taking the piss.) So the question we’ve got to ask is: are Tintin and Haddock sex jokes likelier to be funnier, on average, than the corresponding Batman and Robin jokes, which we have certainly all heard by now? (Obviously it’s much funnier to make jokes about Tintin and Haddock being Batman and Robin.) But Parris makes some interesting observations. What do you think?

Let’s turn the question around: are there actually such things as old-fashioned adventure books for boys that don’t seem vaguely campy, hence homoerotic? Because all you need is: no women. (Except for mom, maybe.) A bunch of males doing things together that don’t quite make sense, but it’s all very urgent. The male characters talking funny.

I do concede that the Tintin books are far more exclusively male-populated that even the standards of healthy boys’ adventure would seem to demand.

One thing The Economist claims, in passing, which I’m not really sure about, is that Tintin is almost unknown in America. Obviously you have to judge by the standards of comics not, say, Paris Hilton. If you show the average American a picture of Tintin, will they not know who this kid is? I’ve have noticed that Tintin is oddly missing from some ‘best comics’ lists. Wizard’s list is hopelessly capes&tights, so no surprise there. But here’s another. No Tintin. [UPDATE: nope. He’s there, after all. I missed him because I searched for his name spelled correctly – Hergé – rather than minus the accent. Ahem.] I read Tintin as a child. Didn’t lots of other people?

A few years ago, I “wrote that”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/09/17/acquis-fiction/

Nearly every corridor in every building of the Commission, Council and Parliament has two or three examples [of EU official art] along its walls – spectacularly bland and uninteresting prints and photographs, always with the twelve stars on a blue flag in there somewhere. The art is contentless and affectless because any strong statement, or even conveyed sense of geographic location, would probably offend somebody in one or another of the member states. There’s something about the EU that seems completely inimical to lively cultural expression.

Now a Czech art-prankster has “put this theory to its test”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9eb2dae-e2a4-11dd-b1dd-0000779fd2ac.html, and found that member states are indeed liable to get offended.

Sited prominently in the headquarters of the EU Council in Brussels, a flagship work of art – which was designed to demolish national stereotypes by mocking them – has caused diplomatic outrage. Not only that, the piece turns out to be the work of a single Czech artist despite having been billed as the collaborative effort of all 27 member states. … As countries digested depictions of their character, such as a Dracula-inspired theme park (Romania), a rudimentary lavatory (Bulgaria) and a flooded land with minarets poking through (the Netherlands), the Czech presidency was forced into a public apology. … Other national depictions in the artwork include: Luxembourg as a lump of gold on sale to the highest bidder; France emblazoned with the word grève , or strike; Denmark made of Lego; and Sweden lying within an Ikea flatpack. Britain is simply missing – supposedly a reference to its euro-scepticism. But some diplomats appear in little doubt of what action they would like to see, namely the removal of the eight-tonne “modern art installation” from the bleak and lofty but all-too prominent atrium of the council’s main building.

In fairness, the artist seems to have gone out of his way to prod national sore spots – other depictions include Germany (autobahns making up a rather thinly disguised swastika) and Poland (a group of monks erecting the Rainbow flag). Pictures below.

I just discovered that Daniel Pinkwater has a regular podcast [that’s the link to the site, but I prefer to get it through iTunes], which includes readings of his old books! He just got through chapter 3 of Borgel, which is drop-dead my favorite novel that isn’t Melville’s Confidence Man. And he’s reading other stuff with it. There’s this screamingly hilarious, alliterative bit about Bugsy Schwartz, M.D.-to-be. “I was looking after this broad with … a stomach ache.” You have to listen.

What are your favorite podcasts that I probably don’t know about? (I have this weird problem where iTunes decides it doesn’t like certain podcasts after a while and won’t download them anymore. Example: I can only download Rachel Maddow at work because my home mac doesn’t do that stuff anymore. I click. It tries for a second then gives up. Very strange.)

In other news, I haven’t been posting at the Valve of late. But I finally got back on that horse and hauled off and posted a great huge thing about literary stuff and Theory … just for those who are all nostalgic for the good old days.

God, I don’t want to read such a thing (you reasonably protest, and I can offer no cogent counter-argument.) Then, after you read it, you come back and complain: after all that hemming and hawing, you don’t even say whether Nietzsche has an unsatisfactorily one-dimensional account of power, in your considered opinion, or not?

Very well: it is my opinion that Nietzsche’s philosophy of power is precisely isomorphic, in dimensionality, to the subject matter of this work of art, “Monster Attack”, by young Eli Kochalka. It is the greatest work of art ever. Ergo, Nietzsche is a very sophisticated theorist of power!

I suggest you click on the Monster Attack link and leave it at that.

Patrick McGoohan is dead. Guardian obit here.

A month ago I proposed an online reading group for G.A. Cohen’s _Rescuing Justice and Equality_. (“US Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674030761/junius-20 , “UK Amazon”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674030761/junius-21 ) It is time to get started. I’ll kick-off a week from today with a post covering the introduction and chapter 1, “Rescuing Equality from ….The Incentives Argument”. We’ll then cover a chapter a week (plus the general appendix) with, I hope, other people sometimes taking the lead. Remember the rules: a condition of commenting is that you’ve actually read the text under discussion (violators will be deleted).

I mentioned last week that I’m reading Nancy Rosenblum’s On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship (Powells, Amazon). The final chapter, “Banning Parties,” has a valuable discussion of the normative implications of party bans, which speaks extensively to the Israeli example.

First, contra arguments such as those contained in this typically disingenuous post by Jamie Kirchick, it draws a clear distinction between banning hate parties (which Rosenblum argues is, within certain limits, a reasonable form of democratic self-defence) and banning parties that are threats to national identity (which Rosenblum argues is not a form of democratic self-defense). Rosenblum speaks to the rationale for Israel’s ban on the Kach party, which called for the forced ‘transfer’ of Arab ‘cockroaches’ from Israel, and sought to ban Arab-Jewish intermarriage. [click to continue…]

The Lori Drew case, in which a US woman set up a Myspace account under the name “Josh Evans” to torment a teenage girl who had fallen out with Drew’s daughter, and drove her victim to suicide, has some legal implications of interest to bloggers. Drew was ultimately sentenced to jail, not for her cruel prank and its fatal consequences, but for “unauthorized access to a computer system” by virtue of the false name under which the account was created. On the face of it, the same offence is committed (at least under US law) every time a commenter on a blog or noticeboard uses a sockpuppet to evade bans or blocks, or to post under multiple identities in violation of contractual terms.

UpdateFollowing up on some comments, I was startled to discover that, in some US jurisdictions, obtaining consent to sex through fraud regarding identity (a man pretending to be his brother in the case at hand) is a full defence against a charge of rape, and even more startled to read this post and comments at TalkLeft largely endorsing the court’s finding in this case. This isn’t the case in Australia and, though IANAL, I’m pretty sure it never has been either here of in the UK. (Update ends)

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