Kit Stolz

Entertainment conquers reality: objective proof found

For decades the witty H.L. Mencken had a good time bemoaning the tase of Americans, decrying the booboisie. the philistines, the "swinish multitudes," but also insisting that "The United States…is incomparably the greatest show on earth."

In his book Life the Movie, a decade ago, the critic/writer Neal Gabler took this idea a step further, arguing that in this country, life has been overtaken by entertainment values, such that Americans see their own lives as an inferior form of the real thing. As Gabler puts it:

It is not any ism but entertainment that is arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time — a force so overwhelming that it has finally metastasized into life.

If the overwhelming popularity of reality shows weren't proof enough for this alarming thesis, here today comes objective fact.

The newspaper USA Today, according to its own staffing records, now has more reporters and editors covering entertainment (27) than reporters and editors covering science, the White House, the federal government, and Congress — put together (23).

Gabler goes on to argue that entertainment has led us to think that our own lives are second-rate versions of what they would be with better entertainment values. Think how charming we might be if cleverly rewritten; how handsome we would be if played by George Clooney!

No wonder the planet is ignored. Its changes come too slowly. Climate change isn't disastrous enough — needs better production values!

But leave it up to The Onion to put the same thought more entertainingly:

WASHINGTON—According to a report released this week by the Center for Global Development, climate change, the popular mid-2000s issue that raised awareness of the fact that the earth's continuous rise in temperature will have catastrophic ecological effects, has apparently not been resolved, and may still be a problem.

[cut]

Thus far, the study has gained unanimous favor in the scientific community, which was admittedly surprised in 2008 and 2009 at how quickly a defining issue that will undoubtedly affect everyone on the planet became so heavily politicized and took a backseat to health care reform, the housing bubble, and replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.

Perhaps the Ignorital pills to be marketed in the far, far future will help.

Who was the first great blogger?

A debate rages:

The New York Review of Books suggests Emerson:

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.” In this respect the bloggers of our age have more Emersonian genius in them than our analytic philosophers, for good or ill.

The Los Angeles Times nominates Twain:

Having created a quintessentially American brand of humor and style of literature, Mark Twain (1835-1910) can now add to his myriad accomplishments the title of America's first blogger. No matter that the "Autobiography of Mark Twain," edited by a team led by Harriet Elinor Smith, weighs in at more than 5,000 pages.

And Andrew Sullivan picks Montaigne:

Sarah Bakewell reiterates what I've long argued, that the greatest blogger avant la lettre was Montaigne:

Once upon a time to be a blogger was to be declasse. Now it's to be ahead of your time.

Why is Facebook so bland?

Zadie Smith has an idea:

Here’s my guess: [Mark Zuckerberg] wants to be like everybody else. He wants to be liked. Those 1.0 people who couldn’t understand Zuckerberg’s apparently ham-fisted PR move of giving the school system of Newark $100 million on the very day the movie [about Facebook] came out—they just don’t get it. For our self-conscious generation (and in this, I and Zuckerberg, and everyone raised on TV in the Eighties and Nineties, share a single soul), not being liked is as bad as it gets. Intolerable to be thought of badly for a minute, even for a moment.

Didn't think a generation could be more self-conscious than the Boomers, but if you look at the movie — which begins with rejection, and circles back around to it in the end — it makes sense.

The nihilistic American voter

As a couple of veteran Washington observers have recently noted, the American voter of today is something of a nihilist.

He doesn't really know what he wants, but he sure as hell knows what he doesn't want: what he's got.

Here's Doyle McManus, in an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times today, on the subject of a past president now almost universally rejected, by everyone from the Tea Party to the angry left:

It was only by distancing themselves from the Bush presidency and its failures that the GOP won control of the House. That strategy, though, leaves a central problem: They have defined themselves mostly by what they are not. They have rejected both Obama's government activism and Bush's high-cost "compassionate conservatism," but they haven't detailed what their promise of tough fiscal conservatism means beyond repealing Obama's healthcare law.

And here's Tom Toles, in his wryly witty way, a day or two ago from his sketchbook:

Should be an interesting next couple of years.

Climate scientists not pushing back against denialism, says American Geophysical Union

A story Sunday in the Los Angeles Times reported that climate scientists were joining in an effort to "push back" against a rise tide of climate change denial. The story said that Monday the American Geophysical Union would announce an effort by 700 scientists to "speak out as experts."

But today the AGU said no, they were organizing no such effort, simply making climate scientists available to answer questions by email, as they had last year, and would again.

"In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate sceptics or congressional conservatives," [said] Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union.

But the story got a ton of publicity: Maybe the public (or the media) wants such a push back?

Hardly Working: The economy today, by Steve Brodner

Steve Brodner, one of the hardest-working and most-talented pencil artists of our time, is moving away from his once-lovely Drawger site…but he's still putting up fascinating work on his own site.

To wit — Hardly Working, his depiction of the economy for lots and lots of us:
http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Obama in trouble, lefties and righties agree

From conservative David Brooks, on public radio Friday, when asked — as the President suggested — if it's true that President Obama has a communications problem:

Mr. BROOKS: Yeah. Well, maybe the Titanic had a communications problem with the iceberg. You know, I just think it's a wrong diagnosis. You know, 60 or 70 percent of this election was the economy, no question about that. But when you take a look at your four major initiatives: cap and trade, health care, bailouts, stimulus bill and they're all unpopular, well, usually when parties promote unpopular things, they suffer in the next election.

To lefty Ted Rall, disgusted at Obama for his lack of action on unemployment:

When both sides of the political spectrum agree that the President is fooling himself when he blames his messaging and not his actions…you know he has a real problem.

What The New Yorker wants in a fiction photograph

Will Steacy, a photographer in New York, reveals some of the requests he's gotten from The New Yorker over the years for a photographic images to go with their stories:

-A man walking a white pit bull in the city – ideally with one front leg missing
-A woman hiding behind a door – ideally with a red umbrella
-A charred grilled cheese sandwich – the bread is blackened, but the cheese hardly melted.
-A man smoking a cigarette outside looking at the stars
-A woman’s shoes covered with snow standing on a braided rug
-South end of the strip where there are cheap motels, fast-food, pawnshops, bail bonds, storefront churches, sprawling parking lots – kids hanging out there
-A table with handmade animals for sale – including a giraffe, and a Noah’s arc.
-A woman in her 40’s – details of aging skin on the face, pale, drawn, covered with too much makeup – heavy blush, dark lipstick – deep reds and purples
-A boat crossing a lake (ideally Prussian blue), either in rain & rough weather or good weather
-A chainsaw in a forest
-Details of female hands drinking coffee in a diner
-A cigarette extinguished under a silver high heel
-A sexy scene seen through a keyhole
-A woman’s hand extended with a blue pill
-A tall, skinny red head outside in the snowstorm in the beams of a trucks headlights – the snow catching in her red hair glowing in the backlight like a halo
-The hotel receptionist behind the bright green glow of the computer screen and with blue lacquered fingernails
-A woman in a wraparound red dress & red heeled toeless sandals on a dusty Irish road
-A Holiday Inn sign in a snow storm on the side of a road – both with and without a “No Vacancy” sign – dark or dusk
-Red roses on a coffin

Below, a snapshot from Steacy, cropped to fit this space…

Looks a little like a Hopper painting.

As one can imagine, he loves getting these assignments.

“The world is filled with redundant roosters”: Susan Orlean

From Susan Orlean's utterly charming New Yorker blog Free Range:

The rooster problem isn’t going to go away anytime soon. I’m no zoologist, but I’m guessing that the hen to rooster ratio is probably one to one, but the desirability ratio is about twenty million to one. The world is filled with redundant roosters.

Amen.

“We will not leave our problems for our children unresolved”: Marco Rubio

Senator-elect Marco Rubio gave a fascinating speech Tuesday night in Florida. It's been widely broadcast, major portions even on All Things Considered, but hasn't been available in print on the Web (not that I have found, anyhow).

So here, as a public service, let me present the two-edged sword of Republican idealism and denial.

Americans believe with all their hearts, the vast majority of them, and the vast majority of Floridians, that the United States of America is simply the single greatest nation in all of human history. A place without equal in the history of all mankind. But we also know that something doesn’t seem right. Our nation is headed in the wrong direction and both parties are to blame.

Yes! Leaving aside the reflexive jingoism, it's easy to agree with Rubio. It's just that global warming is "the wrong direction" to go, and the solid block of Republican denial in the Senate on the issue likely to our make our lives on that road worse. Or, perhaps more accurately, the lives of our children and grandchildren, since the effects of global warming are just beginning to be felt in this country.

Which, interestingly is a subject — the future — much on Rubio's mind.

What America is looking for are people who will go to Washington, D.C., to stand up and confront the great challenges of our time. To say, as those who came before us did, that we will not leave our problems for our children unresolved. We will not allow them to inherit our debt and our mistakes. But rather, we will do whatever must be done to ensure that for them, life will be better than for us. That for them, our country will be better than the one we inherited.

It's easy to agree with him rhetorically.

It's just that here on the ground, a future of droughts, heat waves, migrations, and rising seas is not a going to be better for our children and grandchildren.

Where is the "greatness" in that, Mr. Rubio?

[chart below from a review of the science on drought by National Center for Atmospheric Research, called "Drought under Global Warming." Click to enlarge.]