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Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Exactly how is the economy like a Faulkner novel?

Via Salon’s “War Room” blog (some scrolling required), I came across this quote from a recent Los Angeles Times story:

“The economy now is very much like a Faulkner novel,” said Rob Koepp, a research fellow at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank in Santa Monica. “You have competing and schizophrenic versions of reality. But it’s one reality.”

Apparently, Mr. Koepp is thinking of The Sound and the Fury or (even more likely) As I Lay Dying.  But what about Sanctuary?  You know, where Bush’s economic team is Popeye and you’re Temple Drake?

In other news: I haven’t been able to do any serious blogging for the past few days, but here’s an update.  I’ve been madly trying to finish an essay for an academic journal (can’t say which one, don’t want to jinx myself), and just turned it in yesterday.  On Friday I head down to Atlanta for the Modern Language Association’s conference on Disability Studies and the University-- the very first conference of its kind in the humanities.  The lineup, by the way, is terrific.

But the really good news is that I got a book proposal accepted-- for a book based on my December 2003 Chronicle of Higher Education essay on dealing with an outspoken conservative student in the classroom.  The book will be titled Liberal Arts:  What Really Happens in the Literature Classroom and Why, and I’ll be writing it all summer.  Meanwhile, I’ve just learned that my edited collection, The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, featuring essays from Rita Felski, John Frow, Jane Juffer, Jonathan Sterne, David Shumway, David Sanjek, Barry Faulk, Irene Kacandes, Steve Rubio, and Laura Kipnis, will be out in October from Blackwell (it will also have a brilliant jacket design).  And I’ve begun work on a book for NYU Press that I’ll finish over the next 15 months, tentatively titled The Left at War.

Many, many thanks to the legions of outraged conservatives who generated so much interest in my Chronicle essay.  Folks, you’ve done me another good turn, and I won’t forget it.  Remember, the book is called Liberal Arts.  I’d start ordering it from Amazon right away if I were you-- along with The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies and The Left at War.

Posted by Michael on 03/03 at 06:49 AM
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Sunday, February 29, 2004

One ring to bind them all, etc.

I was intermittently watching the Oscars tonight, and only now-- after two full years of Lord of the Rings effusions and effluvia-- did I realize how weird it is that one of the stars of a movie whose prominent characters include Bilbo and Frodo is named Viggo.  All right, go ahead, laugh at me for not catching this earlier in the sunspot cycle.  It’s happened before-- honest to God, it wasn’t until 1986 that I realized that Adam Ant was adamant, and if you’ve ever gotten a joke nine or ten years after it was told, you’ll know how I felt back then.

Still, I might as well admit that Viggo Mortensen made for a fine, world-weary Aragorn, and that it’s a good day whenever an Ex of Exene Cervenka hits the big time.  On the other hand, in the course of composing this post I’ve learned that you can order the One Ring online, and call me old-fashioned and insufficiently geeky, but I just think that’s wrong.

Posted by Michael on 02/29 at 06:31 PM
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I wish my brother George was here

Last week-- on February 26, to be exact-- the Penn State Young Americans for Freedom sponsored a talk by one Reginald Jones, entitled “Betrayal:  Sold Out by the Civil Rights Movement.” The YAF flyers posted on the Penn State campus promised that Jones would deliver the home truths that “your liberazi professors won’t tell you.”

Now, you can check out the Penn State YAF speakers series for yourself-- a pretty high-priced lineup, all told, which is something you might want to keep in mind next time the local wingnuts complain that the campus right doesn’t have enough money to counterbalance all those far-left lectures by Katie Couric.  I took particular delight in the YAF’s description of Suzanne Fields’s talk in 2000-- “As she explained, the title of her speech poked fun at the stuttering of actor and effeminate male, Hugh Grant.” That seems like something the liberal campus community really needs to hear more about.

But I have a more specific question about Reginald Jones’s talk.  What, precisely, is a “liberazi” professor?  Are the Young Americans for Freedom suggesting that campus liberals are close kin to Nazis, or-- as I have reason to suspect-- are they saying that we dress in sparkles and sequins, capes and furs?  That we drive outrageous cars and have a thing about huge rings and candelabras?

Write to the Liberace Foundation today and let them know that people like Reginald Jones are slandering a great American culture hero by associating him with the anti-American campus left.

Posted by Michael on 02/29 at 04:05 AM
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Friday, February 27, 2004

Nailbiting

Henry Farrell of the powerful Crooked Timber collective writes in with a word about Virginia Postrel . . . and what appears to be her obsession with nail shops.  It seems that I was quite wrong to suggest, back on Tuesday, that Ms. Postrel came up with her “prettier jobs picture” argument suddenly and cavalierly.  No, she’s been making this argument for the better part of a decade now.  Check out “The Nail File:  The economic meaning of manicures,” from a 1997 issue of Reason magazine:

[W]ith all due respect to Silicon Valley, one of my favorite places, that’s not all there is to the U.S. economy. So I would like to add another California-based growth industry to our set of touchstones, one that captures most major trends in American economic life: nail salons.

Twenty years ago, manicurists mostly worked in obscure corners of hair salons or catered to the wealthy. Cher got her nails done; the rest of us did not. Today, free-standing nail salons dot the commercial blocks and strip malls of cities from Southern California to South Carolina. Nails magazine pegs the market at $6 billion in 1996 for salon services alone, up from $5.2 billion a year earlier. About 239,000 people work as “licensed nail technicians.” (By way of comparison, the Business Software Alliance counts about three times as many people employed in the software industry.)

That’s the industry hidden in plain sight. There’s also the business you don’t see as you walk down the street: the manufacturers and distributors that supply the salons. Nailpro, another trade magazine, lists nearly 400 manufacturers in its 1997 Gold Book directory. These companies make everything from polishes, nippers, and acrylic nail-sculpting compounds to manicure tables, polish racks, and toeless pedicure socks. Says Nailpro Executive Editor Linda Lewis, with little exaggeration, “Everything you see in that Gold Book was developed over the last 20 years.” Nail salons aren’t the biggest business in America, but they’re a growth industry that sprang up without much notice.

The first lesson they teach is: Take government statistics with a shaker of salt. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will tell you that “manicurist” is a fast-growing profession-- impressively so for a job the BLS didn’t even track in 1979. It claims there are 35,000 manicurists, a number it projects will grow to 55,000 by 2005. Now this is a business that supports three trade magazines, including Saigon Nails in Vietnamese; Nails alone has a circulation of 55,000. It is also a licensed occupation in all but a few states, and the licensing boards track active nail techs, which is where that 239,000 figure comes from. The BLS head counters have misplaced an awesome number of jobs. If they can be that wrong about licensed manicurists, imagine what they can do with gardeners, car washers, or nonunion construction workers.

The first lesson this teaches is:  Don’t read Ms. Postrel on the economy unless you are fully immersed in a great salt lake. 

Posted by Michael on 02/27 at 02:32 AM
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Thursday, February 26, 2004

Thousands of heterosexual couples descend on Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, February 26, 2004-- In an apparent response to the swell of gay marriages in San Francisco in the past two weeks, hundreds of married opposite-sex couples lined the streets of Indianapolis today in search of “civil disunion” and “common-law divorce.”

“I’ve had enough,” said Margaret Gallagher of West Lafayette.  “My husband had been fooling around for the past few years-- and he put the moves on the babysitter last Saturday.  But I can live with that.  What I can’t live with is the idea that gay couples are getting ‘married’ two thousand miles away from me.  Once I heard that, I lost all faith in the institution of marriage.”

Gallagher’s sentiments were echoed by community activist Gary Bower, who remarked that he’d long wanted to run his hands along “the strong, supple, naked thighs” of another man but had been restrained by his marriage vows.  “For twenty-five years,” he said, “I’ve expressed my sexuality in the forms approved by the state.  Basically, I closed my eyes and thought of America.  But now, if the state is going to recognize same-sex relationships as the legal equivalents of marriage, well, hell-- it’s the sailor’s life for me!”

The fallout from gay marriage appears to extend even beyond currently-married men and women seeking divorce.  Renowned men’s-rights advocate Lionel Train, for instance, has announced that divorced men with children need no longer pay child support.  “If a bunch of fruits on the Left Coast can get themselves hitched,” Train said recently, “why should fathers cough up good money to ex-wives and their kids?  Listen, if marriage goes down the tubes, alimony and child support go with it.”

Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America agreed.  “It’s just like queer theorist Michael Warner wrote in his book The Trouble with Normal,” Rios said at a press conference.  “Marriage is built on a structure of exclusion, requiring the abjection of unmarried and gay/lesbian people.  The bundle of legal and social privileges accruing to marriage is significant only if other people can’t have them.  And if you shake that foundation, the whole ideological apparatus comes tumbling down.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

(Inspired, of course, by the matchless Tom Tomorrow).

Posted by Michael on 02/26 at 04:32 AM
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Nader goes over the edge

I received an email today that just made me furious:

RICHARD NADER’S SUMMER DOOWOP REUNION XV
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES ARENA
MEADOWLANDS
Saturday, June 19 at 7:00 pm
Tickets: $50, $40, $35, $30

Starring: The Duprees - “Have You Heard”
Kenny Vance and the Planotones - “Looking For An Echo”
Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge - “Sixteen Candles”
Larry Chance and the Earls - “Remember”
The Teenagers - “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”
The Dubs - “Could This Be Magic”
Special Guest Star: Gary Puckett - “Woman Woman”

Don’t miss the exciting summer tradition of DooWop memories as Richard Nader’s Summer DooWop Reunion returns to Continental Airlines Arena. The fun starts with a tailgate party outside the arena beginning at 3:00 PM. There will also be a 1950’s and 60’s classic car display, outdoor a-cappella stage from 4:30 to 6:30 PM and autographs and pictures with the artists as they visit the outside party before the concert.

I can’t believe he’s doing this again-- after practically everyone asked him not to.  Not only will this draw thousands of people and all kinds of press attention away from John Kerry’s “Summer Rhythm and Blues / Roots Rock Reunion” in Boston that week, but it betrays Nader’s own history of consumer advocacy and progressive activism in the doo-wop sector.  I mean, come on, Gary Puckett?  Gary Puckett is about as doo-wop as the Monkees.  Are these the depths to which Nader has sunk?  What’s next, Paul Revere and the Raiders?

And why do this in New Jersey?  Because it’s a “safe state” that can’t possibly be picked up by George Bush’s “Country Celebration Featuring Toby Keith”?  Think again, people.  New Jersey is completely up for grabs-- I hear they’re even having ska, twelvetone, and Latin jazz festivals this summer.  Nader’s “doo-wop reunion” is sheer opportunism, and doesn’t deserve a single progressive’s support.

Gary Puckett, indeed.

Posted by Michael on 02/24 at 02:12 PM
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