That's Empress to You

America Hearts Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman writes in a blog post that he is bummed out because NY Times readers search nine keywords more often than they search him, but he’s wrong if he thinks he’s not loved. People just don’t know what they like, or want. They don’t even know what they think. Take the polls that show people are unhappy about the deficit, only they’re not, and want higher taxes unless that means them, or that they think Obama is not a citizen, even when they think he was born in Hawaii.  Whatever, I still want to do my part to bolster Krugman’s self-esteem by explaining why we might type any of the following search terms onto our iPhones while lying on our sides in bed trying to get the window to stop flipping back and forth from vertical to horizontal.

Japan: Most Americans are truly saddened by the unending trauma the Japanese have and continue to suffer. But some of America’s interest in Japan can be explained by an element of schadenfreude, as many Americans have never truly forgiven them for WWII. Those are the 20% who know Japan had anything to do with WWII. The rest of us just really resent Japan for the cars.

Sugar: It’s so we can scrutinize and compare our diets to see if we’re really going to die of cancer. Let’s see. Breakfast: Pumpkin latte with whipped cream, blueberry muffin the size of a tetherball, orange juice. Snack: box of Malted Milk balls from that movie we hated. Lunch: Caesar salad with chicken (very healthy! Yay!), Big Gulp Coke… and so on.

April 19, 2011: Not sure, Paul. Maybe it’s like how some people Google their own names every day, just to see how things stand.

Obama: Just want to keep tabs on the fucker.

China: Ditto.

Education: We want to know what that Tiger Mother is going to do to her younger daughter/dog/husband now that her older daughter got into Harvard and Yale. And then we're going to do it ourselves.

Libya: Lots of us search Libya, but then can’t stand to read about this thing that’s increasingly, depressingly, looking like an endless Non-War, so we check out Greg Mortensen or April 19, but then we feel we really should know, so we search Libya again, but then we can’t stand it… and so on.

Greg Mortenson: I don’t know about anyone else but I keep reading about him because I know it’s unethical, and not-done, but I don’t actually understand how any true thing can be as interesting as a true thing told well, which sometimes requires a little narrative Spanxx.

Modern Love: Fifty percent of New York Times readers check this all the time, to see if our own pathetic lives are as pathetic as these, and if the pathetic-ness would make as good an essay as the ones the New York Times seems to like, for some reason.

Paul Krugman: We have to conduct these searches because we quote you incessantly (but only after we assess our narrative viability quotient via Modern Love). And then we hope to read that you are announcing a run for President, with Anthony Weiner as your running-mate. Or that Timothy Geithner is going on a very very long vacation and you’re taking over.

 

 

All the News that's Fit to Print

I started out writing the following post about Ross Douthat, the latest Okay-Okay-if-it-Will-Sell-Papers-Here-You-Go:-Voices-from-the-Other-Side New York Times columnist:

Ross Douthat, in his Monday New York Times column cites the 32% of Democrats who “blame “the Jews” for the financial crisis,” as proof that we’re all subject to odd ideas.  He might as well assert that a Kroger Poll of 35% of short people in the supermarket think the frozen beef is proof of life on Mars.  Why are we singling out short people here, or Democrats, when surely the percentages of people who think Jews are the devil or who are simply totally crazy, can be tracked across a wider range of the population with more telling results? 

Furthermore, Douthat seems to think the right-wing idea that Obama is a Muslim of non-American origins is harmless.  Referencing Julian Sanchez, Douthat claims that “if we understand those paranoias to be symbolic beliefs, rather than real convictions — an attention-grabbing way of saying, ‘I consider Obama phony, dishonest and un-American’ — then conservative behavior makes a lot more sense.”  But aren’t all beliefs symbolic?  Don’t they represent building blocks with which we construct our way of behaving in the world and toward the other people who inhabit it?

Doesn’t Douthat think that the Florida preacher who is planning to burn the Koran on the anniversary of September 11, is driven by symbolic beliefs?  That in fact, what he’s doing is enacting symbolic beliefs: hatred, fear and rejection of (symbolic?) Islamic beliefs?  And that others fold his hateful symbolism into their own behavior? And that those in the Islamic world might not just unleash their own symbolic gestures? And that perhaps 9/11 wasn’t itself the outcome of a symbolic belief: that because X was true (or untrue; at that time, there were a lot of small and large apprehension or misapprehensions that might have been pounced upon) all of America is evil.  Symbolic belief is not harmless.

Douthat has devised a rhetorical construct that he apparently thinks will immunize him against accusations of bigotry and small-mindedness.  He demonstrates, for example, that yes, he can spell the word Constitution, and that he knows which words are written on the document.  Or that he’s read all the arguments in favor of marriage equality.  He then, as if following a recipe for Kobe Beef Hamburger Helper (wherein perfectly good ingredients go wildly bad), goes on to make assertions that are almost beyond steeling your stomach to refute: that there is an “ideal” of marriage (the Western Judeo-Christian, capitalist ideal – and his –  of course); that oppression and discrimination are character-building and make better Americans. 

But then I realized: I’m not a fucking columnist for the New York Times; I don’t have to make a cogent argument.   After that I realized: even if I were, I wouldn’t have to make a cogent argument.  Apparently.  I can simply say the following, which I mentioned in a Facebook post, and which, frankly, might be a better format for Douthat: Ross Douthat is a Pizza Pocket of whack.  He’s that weird looking white thing that you don’t know what it is, although it looks like something that has to do with, like, slaughter-house waste or something.  But then someone heats it up and all of a sudden, it’s oozing weird smelly nastiness.  And you’re supposed to eat it.   

Why the San Francisco Chronicle is About to Fold

The San Francisco Chronicle, like most American newspapers, is having a bad day.  Management is struggling to find a way to keep the print edition extant.  One of their solutions is to lay off journalists with decades of experience, and hire writers whose bylines I have never seen and who presumably have been hired away from the Lowell High School newspaper. 

Another is to slash arts coverage.  This is a brilliant idea, because while most of the paper's national and international reporting is reliably mediocre, coverage of local news and arts has always been the paper's mainstay. 

Instead of covering three to four dance concerts, like the New York Times did last Saturday, or, oh my God, run a book review, the Chronicle has turned its Datebook into a "lifestyles" section. The main newspaper in a city that prides itself, rightly or not, on world class theater, dance, opera and music, runs an article entitled Home workouts require little or no equipment on the first page of what used to be its arts sections.

Well, hey.  I've had quite enough of that Balanchine guy.  And who cares about post-Brechtian theater?  To me one of life's two or three greatest mysteries has always been the squat.  And now, thanks to the Chronicle, I'm thinking I don't even have to finish Remembrance of Things Past.  The whys and wherefores of human existence have now become clear:

 Squats: Typically done with a barbell. Can be done without. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, arms in front of you (or cross your arms with hands on shoulders), bend knees and lower yourself, squatting. Keep knees over toes and allow rear end to stick out. Keep back straight and do not curve into a "C" shape. Try to lower yourself until your thighs are parallel to the ground, then stand up.

If you're not tearing up now, check out the part about push-ups.

 

“At Lake Bryn Mawr Camp in the Poconos, parents tried to get their daughters' attention before the official start of visiting day.” – New York Times, Saturday, July 26, 2008

If I were one of those campers I would be praying for bears, or a lightning strike during the canoe race.

Dear New York Times

Your SundayStyles section is getting S-O-O-O boring.  And don’t be looking at me.  I’m not the one who forgot the space between Sunday and Styles.  That would be the crack addict in the art department.  

That’s not the worst of it.  Your breaking story this week: No One is Going on Vacation This Year!  Whoa.  And they’re kind of bummed out.  Did you consider consulting your lawyers before you went out on this kind of a limb? 

Also, the overuse of the word narcissist warrants this much page space?  Recall for a very brief moment the long and brilliant career of the co-dependent.

There was a good pair of purple boots in there somewhere, but I almost lost touch with their beauty when I tried to read Modern Love.  A truly good Modern Love story must achieve the right balance of unbelievably sordid behavior by one player, a highly improvised, ineffectual response by another, and wrenching sadness all around, all of which requires actually interesting characters, and someone who can write well about all of them.  There hasn’t been much of that lurking around the Modern Love corner these days. 

And then there is Vows.  Everybody gets married.  Well, almost everybody.  Still, we all want to hear about other people who get married – how they met, what drew them to one another, what obstacles they overcame – because we then get to reflect upon our own marriages and think about how they would be written up in Vows and thereby contemplated by all of America.  We love to think there are really interesting and eccentric aspects to our romances.

 This week’s couple met while they were working.  At first they despised one another, then decided they actually didn’t, then had a hard time balancing work and romance. Not interesting.  I would like to hear about the daughter of your crack addict art director meeting a Nobel Prize winning diplomat whose late wife had a long-running affair with a down-in-the-heels professional boxer.  We want them to be the most moving, dramatic versions of us, not the Bed Bath and Beyond versions of us.

You're falling down on the job.  There is absolutely nothing here that helps us to believe that there is meaning or poignancy in our lives despite its terrifyingly shallow meaninglessness.  I want my old Style Section back.  Including the space between the words.

Letters to the Editor (and you know who you are)

To the Editor:
I'm not sure I like this new index thing. I mean, just read the damn paper.

Jackson Okuhn
San Francisco, CA April 29, 2008