PMB loves the English, and is privileged to be perched comfortably in an English dwelling. But he can't help himself at the moment. It's routine to hear English friends and acquaintances smugly denounce Americans, for their football (soccer), their lack of 'culture' (whatever that means), their nationalism, their guns and religion, even their (very un-English) public and political sentimentality. More often than not these denunciations come from people whose impression of the US is derived either from the English print media (whose coverage of all things American is as cartoonish and myopic as is the American media's coverage of Palestine), or a view of Times Square on a brief visit to New York for which a junket beyond Manhattan would constitute some kind of ethnic cultural overload for the average Brit. Come World Cup time, especially in matches against Germany, however, virtually everything the English allege about Americans that the English in fact espouse and embody threefold simmers to the surface. Beyond the English flag epidemic (that Germany hopefully cured yesterday), the patronizing comments by British TV announcers about little 'Africa' defeating the US ('it's men versus boys, and right now the boys are on top'), and the references to non-European countries suddenly 'learning' how to kick European ass all over the pitch this year, CBS news and the LA Times have included some gems that PMB, with much ambivalence, feels the need to highlight:
CBS NEWS:
"In England, they joke about the war, German accents and Hitler.
In Germany, they joke about the fact that the English joke about the war, German accents and Hitler.
The Germans used to get offended. Now they look on in slightly patronizing bemusement as English newspapers trot out ethnic stereotypes about war, Aryan races and bombing, preparing their readers for yet another agony-filled elimination game against their old foe Sunday.
With the German team now being made up of Poles, Turks, a Spaniard, a Ghanaian, a Nigerian and even a Brazilian, it's harder for the English to make fine German-baiting jokes. The Daily Star tried, coming up with a demonizing World War II remembrance headline, "Mixed Master Race," to describe the composition of the German team.
And the Daily Express offered this deep literary analysis: "Our national poet (Shakespeare) wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets. His German equivalent wrote 'Faust,' a gloomy two-part drama about a man who sells his soul to the devil, and a novel called 'The Sorrows of Young Werther.' . . . The latter sparked a craze of copycat suicides among romantic young men. Generations of pupils forced to study Goethe's work know how they felt."
Here's the real joke: The Germans don't really care."
LA TIMES:
"The sad truth of the matter is that England's players, with few exceptions, are an arrogant, ignorant and unpleasant lot. They are paid far too much by their Premier League clubs, where their true allegiance lies, and their ability individually and collectively in an England shirt does not match their swagger.
It is not too much to say that the worthless and nationalistic English tabloids are reflected in the English team. It's all about drinking, drugs, womanizing, gambling, fast cars and slow minds. Little England written large.
Consider, for just a moment, these sophomoric headlines from the gutter press in the days leading up to Sunday afternoon's match at the Free State Stadium:
"Germans Wurst at Penalties."
"Herr We Go Again."
"Job Done, Now for the Hun."
"Das Boot Is on the Other Foot.""
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Political (Haircut) Reform
People are always talking about how politicians can be so untrustworthy and disconnected from 'everyday' citizens; how bitter partisanship is alienating voters; how something in politics needs to change before we can seriously reinvest ourselves in the notion that these talking heads can really make a difference for the better.
Well, PMB has a simple solution that could dramatically alter the face of politics for the better: political (haircut) reform. The proposed new law, which is straightforward and easy to implement in virtually any country in the world, reads as follows:
"No person shall be eligible for political office who parts his hair on the side and combs it across his forehead."
Examples of current politicians who would be rendered ineligible for political office by virtue of their haircuts are pictured below:
Virginia Governor (R) Bob McDonnell
Senate Minority Leader (R) Mitch McConnell
House Minority Leader (R) John Boehner
Without question, the disqualification of men who look like this from politics would make way for a whole new kind of politician, such as one who hasn't dedicated an entire life to becoming an establishment archetype.
Well, PMB has a simple solution that could dramatically alter the face of politics for the better: political (haircut) reform. The proposed new law, which is straightforward and easy to implement in virtually any country in the world, reads as follows:
"No person shall be eligible for political office who parts his hair on the side and combs it across his forehead."
Examples of current politicians who would be rendered ineligible for political office by virtue of their haircuts are pictured below:
Virginia Governor (R) Bob McDonnell
Senate Minority Leader (R) Mitch McConnell
House Minority Leader (R) John Boehner
Without question, the disqualification of men who look like this from politics would make way for a whole new kind of politician, such as one who hasn't dedicated an entire life to becoming an establishment archetype.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
"To get the product up..."
It will take engineers--and damn good ones--to put a plug in the gushing oil well off the Gulf Coast that's leaked around 40 million 'barrels' of oil into the ocean, through the wetlands, and onto dry, American land; but it will take people who pay keen attention to language use and linguistic representation to put a plug in the mouths of people who can't seem to understand that the way we talk about things both indicates much about how we think about things, why we act (or fail to act) on things, and what those actions will look like.
Consider the ways in which prominent people in politics, industry regulation, and the media have talked about oil-in-quantity throughout the BP disaster:
Former US Environmental Protection Agency administrator and ConocoPhillips board member William K. Reilly, while pointing out the failure of the oil industry to reach the level of technological advancement necessary to prevent offshore and deap-sea drilling disasters, nonetheless can't help himself while marveling at the technology required to drill offshore and 'to get the product up.' For Reilly, a former EPA administrator, even in the context of describing the disaster of the endless spouting of oil from inside the Earth into the ocean, the natural substance, the sticky, black substance from the center of the Earth that existed before humans walked on two legs, is articulated as a "product." Just like, you know, a pair of shoes or a kind of breakfast cereal.
Sarah Palin, while on the campaign warpath (campaigning for herself, generally speaking, that is) has been a fiery proponent of offshore drilling. Her 'drill, baby, drill' mantra was taken up by more important colleagues like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani; but Palin in particular has phrased this desire strangely, suggesting we ought to drill for all the 'barrels of oil that are warehoused underground.' Palin is evidently so convinced of the idea that this naturally occurring substance called oil is not only inherently and primarily a commodity, but also that oil's commodity nature is best represented by thinking of oil as already prepackaged for sale, barreled-up, and stored neatly in rows in a commercial warehouse four miles beneath the surface of the Earth.
It's not just political shills like Palin, however, who chiefly conceive of oil as a prepackaged commodity. One notices with ease (given the repetition of coverage) that the standard unit for measuring the volume of oil is 'barrels,' such that even oil gushing out of control directly into the ocean (i.e. oil that is currently running wild, about as far from being corralled and commodified as possible) is measured and conceived of as 'barrels' of oil by media left, right, and center (wouldn't it be nice if the BP oil spill were really just 40 million barrels filled securely with oil floating around in the gulf, ripe for the plucking of BP cargo ships with big, barrel-snatching cranes attached to them?). Consider that the extent to which oil has been commodified, its price in barrels manipulated in finance markets far away from wells where the 'product' is extracted from the Earth, has led us to measure its volume not in standard metric or Imperial units, but in packaging units.
The reality, however, is that no matter how intensely and thoroughly we commodify something, be it a human or natural resource, a thing never becomes just a commodity. When we start thinking that we've successfully manipulated and brought under control through commodification virtually everything under the sun, divorcing material reality so far from perception, we play a very dangerous game. The language of those talking about the oil spill is telling, as it suggests that we've become so caught-up in the idea of oil as pure commodity, measured in 'barrels,' 'warehoused' underground for the taking and selling, a 'product' to be extracted, that we've lost sight of the fat, loud, sequined material fact that's been right in front of our faces the whole time: the oil floating around in the gulf and washing up on the shores in gelatinous blobs isn't available in barrels, never exited in a warehouse, and always has required tremendous labor and technology, and tremendous risk (including the risk of human life) to transform it into a neatly packaged commodity. When people get up and talk about oil, in the face of this disaster, as though it grows on a barrel tree in a warehouse somewhere, they demonstrate the very lack of care and consideration that produces disasters like the one in which we're currently embroiled. It's not that their metaphorical language should be understood literally, but that they're so deluded by the metaphor that the literal (and its attendant dangers and risks) has long since escaped them.
Yes, at the end of the day, a brilliant engineering team will 'save' the day by figuring out how to stop the gushing oil, and they'll get all the credit in the media and all the funding for future salvation projects, and they'll mostly deserve it. But if the rhetoric of 'drill baby drill for those warehoused barrels of oil' persists, this won't be the last Exxon-Valdez...ahem..BP oil disaster. Conventional wisdom (it's called 'conventional' in part because it's never particularly good) suggests that 'actions speak louder than words.' Well, you rarely hear of a human action that words didn't have a hand in causing.
Consider the ways in which prominent people in politics, industry regulation, and the media have talked about oil-in-quantity throughout the BP disaster:
Former US Environmental Protection Agency administrator and ConocoPhillips board member William K. Reilly, while pointing out the failure of the oil industry to reach the level of technological advancement necessary to prevent offshore and deap-sea drilling disasters, nonetheless can't help himself while marveling at the technology required to drill offshore and 'to get the product up.' For Reilly, a former EPA administrator, even in the context of describing the disaster of the endless spouting of oil from inside the Earth into the ocean, the natural substance, the sticky, black substance from the center of the Earth that existed before humans walked on two legs, is articulated as a "product." Just like, you know, a pair of shoes or a kind of breakfast cereal.
Sarah Palin, while on the campaign warpath (campaigning for herself, generally speaking, that is) has been a fiery proponent of offshore drilling. Her 'drill, baby, drill' mantra was taken up by more important colleagues like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani; but Palin in particular has phrased this desire strangely, suggesting we ought to drill for all the 'barrels of oil that are warehoused underground.' Palin is evidently so convinced of the idea that this naturally occurring substance called oil is not only inherently and primarily a commodity, but also that oil's commodity nature is best represented by thinking of oil as already prepackaged for sale, barreled-up, and stored neatly in rows in a commercial warehouse four miles beneath the surface of the Earth.
It's not just political shills like Palin, however, who chiefly conceive of oil as a prepackaged commodity. One notices with ease (given the repetition of coverage) that the standard unit for measuring the volume of oil is 'barrels,' such that even oil gushing out of control directly into the ocean (i.e. oil that is currently running wild, about as far from being corralled and commodified as possible) is measured and conceived of as 'barrels' of oil by media left, right, and center (wouldn't it be nice if the BP oil spill were really just 40 million barrels filled securely with oil floating around in the gulf, ripe for the plucking of BP cargo ships with big, barrel-snatching cranes attached to them?). Consider that the extent to which oil has been commodified, its price in barrels manipulated in finance markets far away from wells where the 'product' is extracted from the Earth, has led us to measure its volume not in standard metric or Imperial units, but in packaging units.
The reality, however, is that no matter how intensely and thoroughly we commodify something, be it a human or natural resource, a thing never becomes just a commodity. When we start thinking that we've successfully manipulated and brought under control through commodification virtually everything under the sun, divorcing material reality so far from perception, we play a very dangerous game. The language of those talking about the oil spill is telling, as it suggests that we've become so caught-up in the idea of oil as pure commodity, measured in 'barrels,' 'warehoused' underground for the taking and selling, a 'product' to be extracted, that we've lost sight of the fat, loud, sequined material fact that's been right in front of our faces the whole time: the oil floating around in the gulf and washing up on the shores in gelatinous blobs isn't available in barrels, never exited in a warehouse, and always has required tremendous labor and technology, and tremendous risk (including the risk of human life) to transform it into a neatly packaged commodity. When people get up and talk about oil, in the face of this disaster, as though it grows on a barrel tree in a warehouse somewhere, they demonstrate the very lack of care and consideration that produces disasters like the one in which we're currently embroiled. It's not that their metaphorical language should be understood literally, but that they're so deluded by the metaphor that the literal (and its attendant dangers and risks) has long since escaped them.
Yes, at the end of the day, a brilliant engineering team will 'save' the day by figuring out how to stop the gushing oil, and they'll get all the credit in the media and all the funding for future salvation projects, and they'll mostly deserve it. But if the rhetoric of 'drill baby drill for those warehoused barrels of oil' persists, this won't be the last Exxon-Valdez...ahem..BP oil disaster. Conventional wisdom (it's called 'conventional' in part because it's never particularly good) suggests that 'actions speak louder than words.' Well, you rarely hear of a human action that words didn't have a hand in causing.
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