2011 archive
The Business of America Is Giving America the Business 0
Cynthia Tucker speaks the unspeakable at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A nugget:
That trend is likely to continue, not just at GE but also at thousands of other U.S. companies as their managers find they can manufacture more cheaply abroad. They can also outsource accounting, engineering and technical support services, among others.
ConstiTEAtional Parties 0
(Warning: Mild innuendo and out the other.)
QOTD 0
W. C. Fields, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
The Galt and the Lamers, Have Cake, Eat It Too Dept. 0
Ayn Rand loved her some medicare and social security. But she got it under her married name, so no doubt in her head it somehow didn’t count.
And that is objectively true, in a non-Randian sort of way, that is.
Twits on Twitter 0
John Cass of the Chicago Trib takes on Deion Sanders, Jay Cutler, Carlton Fisk, and news reporters’ fascination with twits (emphasis added):
Cutler couldn’t play, the Bears lost and Sanders decided to tweet to all his fans that Cutler had no guts. A few other morons followed suit, then many ignorant, anonymously malicious fans joined in.
Sports reporters mined these seething electronic nuggets, although I don’t think they went to journalism school to report on the electronic equivalent of what was scribbled on the urinal wall in a gas station.
Follow the link to find out what Carlton Fisk has to do with all this.
Whitewashing History 0
I was in college about the time that “Black Studies” became a discipline and February became “Black History Month.”
The reasons for these were that white folks had warped or ignored (or both) the history of black persons in the United States since well before the Civil War.
The South and its partisans had tried to portray black persons as suited only for slavery, so as to justify the peculiar institution with false religion and pseudo-science; George Fitzhugh’s abominable Cannibals All was the epitome of this.
The rest of the country, having turned its back on the freed slaves and looked the other way as Jim Crow laws and other methods reduced them and their descendants to practical, if not legal, servitude, had no desire to remember its perfidy.
The purpose of “Black History Month” has always been to put black history in balance as part of American history, not to turn black history into something apart from it.
Some persons resent this. They want to forget and hide the past, perhaps even recreate it . . . .
In the Chicago Trib, Clarence Page comments of the recurring objections to the existence of Black History Month:
For example, there was Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent mythologizing of the nation’s Founders at an Iowans for Tax Relief rally.
“How unique, in all of the world, that one nation … was the resting point for people from groups all across the world,” she said, getting a bit carried away from reality. “It didn’t matter the color of their skin, it didn’t matter their language, it didn’t matter their economic status. … Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn’t that remarkable? It’s absolutely remarkable.”
It was remarkable, all right, but the slaves owned by many of the Founders, including some of our early presidents, would not recognize the nation’s early days as she described them.
Or there is Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s December recollections in The Weekly Standard of growing up in the midst of the civil rights revolution in his state: “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. Lucky for you, Governor.
“This Little Piggy Went to Market” 0
In a Jeremiad against Britain’s proposed cuts in public services, Philip Pullman rips into those who think that everything must be for sale:
(snip)
Market fundamentalism, this madness that’s infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days. The greedy ghost understands profit all right. But that’s all. What he doesn’t understand is enterprises that don’t make a profit, because they’re set up to do something different. He doesn’t understand libraries at all, for instance. That branch – how much money did it make last year? Why aren’t you charging higher fines? Why don’t you charge for everything?
Read it.
QOTD 0
Colette, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave
.
Dustbiters 0
One would think that, sooner or later, the FDIC would run out of banks to close.
Doesn’t pay to underestimate all those responsible fiscals out there mastering the universe, I guess.
This week’s crop:
First Community Bank, Taos, New Mexico
FirsTier Bank, Louisville, Colorado
Compare, Contrast 0
I don’t necessarily agree with all of this (in fact, I seldom agree completely with opinions I quote here; I select material because I believe it to be worthwhile, not because I believe it to be infallible), but I think it has underpinnings of truth.
From Seeing the Forest.
Facebook Frolics 0
Heh.
The page belonging to the 26-year-old Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who was named Time’s Man of the Year in 2010, was hacked some time on Tuesday.
The message left by the hacker read: “”Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? What do you think? #hackercup2011”.
(snip)
Embarrassingly for Facebook, more than 1800 people “liked” the update before the company took down its chief executive’s page. Facebook has made no public statement about how the hack occurred.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness deferred:
Just the ticket to make everyone observe their Miss Manners manners: a bunch of yahoos with tommy guns under their jackets.
More at Comically Vintage.
Integrity in Government, Teabagger Style 1
Er, yeah.
Dan Demerritt, the communications director for Gov. Paul LePage, may have called for a violation of the law when he reportedly announced in an email to the governor’s closest advisers that “once we take office, Paul will put 11,000 bureaucrats to work getting Republicans re-elected.”
See the email here.
No scruples need apply.
QOTD 0
Admiral Hyman Rickover, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
A system under which it takes three men to check what one is doing is not control; it is systematic strangulation.
Snowpocalyse 0
Stamford, Connecticut, is a nice little town. It is the little city that could.
But it has its drawbacks.
Like winter.
H/T Alison for the pic.
Bad Old Days, B Movie Dept. 0
A couple of evenings ago, I watched Charlie Chan in Egypt, from 1935. A few weeks ago, I watched Charlie Chan in London, from a couple of years earlier. (I’ve been a mystery fan since I bought my first Perry Mason Pocketbook for 35 cents in Thalheimer’s Department Store in Richmond. I understand that Thalheimer’s is long gone.)
There were some interesting contrasts between them. (We shall leave aside any debate over whether the Charlie Chan series was inherently bigoted; I shall observe only that Keye Luke did not think so.)
In Charlie Chan in London, several of the characters display disdain and contempt for (and in the case of one maid, fear of) Chan because he is of Chinese ancestry, though many of them, especially the officials who know that Chan is an Inspector of Police, treat him quite normally. For the time, it was a rather bold statement about bigotry, for the audience’s sympathy was certainly with Chan.
Charlie Chan in Egypt is set against the background of an archaeological expedition exploring an Egyptian tomb, as were many B movie thrillers of the 30s. Remember that the discovery of the tomb of King Tut and the rumors of a curse were recent history; thrillers set against tales of Egyptian exploration and artifacts were all the rage.
The “comic relief” in Charlie Chan in Egypt was provided by Stepin Fetchit, who played a driver for the expedition.
What struck me was not so much the character that Stepin Fetchit portrayed (it was his typical burlesque of white folks’ idea of black folks: dimwitted, fearful, superstitious, and ignorant–see his bio linked above), but how shoddily his character was treated by the other mostly American and British characters.
True, the Egyptian characters fit common stereotypes of the day–inconsequential subservient workers and lackeys for the Brits and the Yanks, but, even in the film, they were treated with at minimum brusque courtesy and, in the case of the police, the druggist, and the doctor, with quite normal courtesy.
Indeed, in the cast of characters, Fetchit’s was the only one without even a name, having just a nickname (“Snowshoes”).
Throughout the file, his character was treated with the harshest discourtesy and abruptness. His employers did not request (and a request from your boss is still an order), they ordered, and in the nastiest tones. The contrast with the treatment of the Egyptian servants (properly, the actors, including a young Rita Hayworth, who played Egyptians; there probably wasn’t an actual Egyptian with 4,000 miles of the sound stage) shocked.
And here’s the point of this rambling post:
“Snowshoes” was irrelevant to the plot. He was the comic relief. His mistreatment did not advance the story.
Rather, the differential treatment given him was likely not even noticed by the white American movie-going audience.
It was considered the normal and proper way to treat black folks.
It still was by many when I was growing up (fortunately not by my parents).
And there are those who want those days to return.
And that stinks.
Facebook Frolics 0
Add another one to the list of reasons I’m losing interest in college football.
If you think the fuss over the NFL draft is over the top (face it, televising the draft is a strategy for ESPN to sell more NFL-related ad time and nothing more), consider this:
Facebookers have started harassing high-school athletes over what colleges they sign with. A high school star from Mississippi has quit Facebook:
“I got a lot of trash talking by both schools on Facebook, but that didn’t have a lot to do with it. But when you start getting my mom involved and my family involved, that takes it to a whole another level.”
On Tuesday, C.J. Johnson said goodbye to Facebook with this post:
“This is my last Facebook post and I’m gonna leave facebook with this. Linda Johnson has never worked as a house worker making 100,000 dollars a year and I will not be a Mississippi state bulldog and I’m not considering Mississippi state anymore bc you have constantly comment on my page send me crazy inboxes and has made my recruiting experience a living nightmare. Goodbye facebook.”
It’s only a damned game, for Pete’s sake.
Coincidently, I received this picture in an email about five minutes before stumbling over that news item (picture below the fold):