The Icepick Cometh

Dear readers (both of you),

We're now more or less blogging exclusively over at our WordPress.com site at http://theicepickcometh.wordpress.com.

So c'mon and visit us over there and read The Icepick's new post on the Dark Knight and President Bush, a reaction from a movie nerd to a piece earlier this summer in the Wall Street Journal.

Thanks for reading and for following us over there.
That is all.

Hugs and hisses,
PublisherCat

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Sorry about my progressive brethren bashing her speech tonight, and I agree with absolutely nothing she said (in fact, was enraged throughout with what she was saying, especially in mocking community organizers — has Sarah Palin ever been in a big city, ever shook the hands and cared for someone in an inner city setting?), but Obama-Biden have a real fight on their hands.

The Republicans do nothing better than fire up their base and encourage them to come out in overwhelming, angry numbers from those small towns I know so well. They do this much better than the Dems do in pulling in their own base (in a battle between bringing in college students vs. small-town residents on Election Day, never bet on the college students). Palin may get an "F" for content — frankly, she misrepresented Obama's position on taxes and there's a lot of talk about her late-coming opposition to the Alaskan bridge-to-nowhere — but I think Gov. Sarah Palin hit it out of the park as far as delivery. Sorry, but it's true.

You can hate everything she said, you can make fun of her accent or her sneers all you want, but she was probably the best speaker with the best delivery among the Republicans since the primaries began. I'd be worried about meeting her again on the national campaign trail in four or eight years.

I'm wondering how many voters from my own Generation X will swing toward McCain with a running mate from the 28- to 47-year-old set that was Raised on Reagan. Oh sure, all the people I know would never consider voting for him, no matter who he was running with. But that's a small, mostly urban-leaning segment of the population. My own generation, I still believe, is largely conservative.

And don't underestimate the Hockey Mom appeal — as Campbell Brown was saying a little while ago on CNN, that femininity, that "mom-ness" (for lack of a better word, and I'm paraphrasing here) carriers a lot of weight for many voters. (Brown later questioned Harry Reid's use of the word "shrill" to describe Palin's speech, noting that word is almost always used to describe a woman, not a man. That kind of response from Reid is not what Obama needs.)

And to take Brown's analysis a step further, there will be women, moms especially but feminists too, who will vote for McCain-with-Palin, even as Palin stands against everything they themselves stand for and have fought for, simply because they can connect with her. And, no, I am not talking about Hillary's former and still supporters. I'm talking about the fence-sitters.

Even Hillary connected with women as a Woman, but not necessarily as a Mom, not in the way that Palin I think just did, simply by dint of having more children to trot out onto a stage.

Finally, frankly, McCain is savvier than credit has been given him. By announcing the Veep pick as soon as the Democratic Convention was over, but not a minute sooner, he didn't let the Dems attack her during Prime Time Convention TV. But by also airing the family's pregnancy laundry publicly, he surely must have anticipated the media firestorm that would have resulted (there's unfortunately more focus on that than there has been over legitimate criticisms, such as her lack of experience, her back-and-forth on pork-barrel spending, and her husband's past connection to a secessionist movement; as always, sex sells in the public imagination; and there's also this.).

And, of course, a big enough media firestorm that they can (accurately or not) link to the Democrats against a defendable Republican (i.e., not Larry Craig) almost always produces a bitter, well-organized, how-dare-you, victimized backlash that brings out the loyal troops, picking up steam and on-the-fencers along the way. Well played, McCain.

This is a real fight, and if you don't believe me and underestimate this, then get ready for four years of McCain-Palin.

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McCain's VP choice and her very public position on the Abortion debate aside, I have been uncomfortable with some aspects of the discussion over her teen daughter's pregnancy. While very relevant in light of Palin's anti-Choice politics, and relevant to the so-called Family Values debates and the moral high ground claimed by the Republicans, that's exactly where the line should be drawn and end. Does it mean the VP is a bad mom more focused on her career than her children? There's a lot to criticize Sarah Palin over, and I'm not sure I'm ready to level that as a criticism.

Now, does it relate to her anti-Choice politics and the general Republican theme that strong morals and a Family Values-style upbringing is the sole cure to curbing teenage pregnancy (and evidently all the other ills perpetrated by those godless liberals)? You bet it relates. But I almost want to wear kid gloves with her over this whole issue.

Perhaps it's that I know enough wonderful non-traditional families in which the children were born to a young mom, or to unmarried couples, or to adoptive parents (married or united). So as much as the debate relates to Palin and McCain — and even the quick statements from their campaigns that the young couple will wed makes me wonder if, in trying to show that the couple is "doing the right thing," they're also leveling a subtle insult to non-traditional families — I must admit to some discomfort over some of the criticism.

Now, on the other hand, her prior (though very recent) courtship of the Alaskan secessionists and her husband's enrollment in that party is more than fair game — the gloves come off for that one, and come off with a quickness. Talking Points Memo closes their recent post on this issue with this:

It's worth pondering how big a deal it would be if Obama had ever courted the support of a group whose head had said this kind of thing about America and her flag. Oh, wait...

And while we're on it, questions about the State Trooper scandal and her lobbyist's connections are also open to close public examination.
 

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Perhaps it was a speech that was more policy-oriented and political than broad and overtly hopeful, but Mrs. Icepick said that's what she wanted to hear, so who am I to argue?

Let there be no doubt: This was a passionate address, and there were touches of inspiration in between the specifics and firey rhetoric that put to rest questions of whether Obama can go on the offensive when needed — a Jedi-like approach of using force when diplomacy and reason have failed.

In many ways, it was a cumulation and conclusion to the major speeches we've heard this week — Hillary's inspiration, Bill's reminder of our own potential, Kerry's preemptive attacks, and Biden's foreign policy focus.

There was the forward-looking call to serve the next generation and the Kennedy-like call to service, something I particularly liked:

And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

But in between the policy talk, and right before invoking the legendary speech delivered 45 years earlier, Obama did not forget to focus on the theme that brought him so far: Hope.

Instead, it is that American spirit — that American promise — that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance.

He distanced himself from the old (and inaccurate) criticism of liberalism of the ’70s — that government owes you something, but you owe nothing. Instead, Obama focused on the hard work we all must do and offered a call for personal responsibility.

Yet, in many ways, in many of the approaches he offered, there was a welcome return to the progressive themes that he seemed to abandon since the end of the primary season. While acknowledging the country's differences on Choice, guns and same-sex marriage, he sounded very much like a progressive in calling for an ambitious end to our dependence on foreign oil within 10 years — though 2018 sounds like a long time away, it's not. He also endorsed progressive ideas like eliminating tax breaks to corporations that don't need them and ending crippling capital gains taxes for small businesses, ensuring a "world-class" education to every child, fulfilling the promise of affordable health care, and, especially as the father of two young daughters, addressing major concerns of Hillary's supporters, most notably equal pay for all women.

Far be it from this cynic to agree with a sentiment like "We are a better country than this," but let's see where we can take this.

Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

Strong and forceful, specific yet still broad, practical yet still full of Hope.
 

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Sorry I haven't linked to my man Mark Kriegel as often as I should — I am still having trouble forgiving him for going Hollywood and moving to sunny L.A., to say nothing of his current employer — but he has hit it right on the head with this column, which my Father the Would-Be Sportswriter shared with me.

Kriegel argues that New York has truly become home of the Hedge Fund Class, and its sports teams are reflecting that reality. Forget Gawker's Creative Underclass — they (we) are just the rabble mob muttering underneath this pile of money. Yes, the money has arguably brought a cleaner, safer city, but at the cost of keeping it, and by extension most of the desirable places in the state and the country, nearly unaffordable to the middle class, to say nothing of anyone trying to support a family at a lower rate than that.

It's a weird twist on Benjamin Franklin's famous quote on liberty and safety — the money has brought both (or as much as attainable in these dark days), but at a cost that none but the wealthy can afford.

At least the Yankees are not laying off workers part-time, at least as far as we know. Then again, who knows what Hank Steinbrenner has up his sleeves for the average front-office worker?

Hey, we reached 102! (as in, this is the 102nd published post and you actually read this far).

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I admit I was hoping for more liberal politics (I'm a liberal, after all, though I prefer "progressive," much the same way conservatives prefer that label rather than "reactionary"), but this post from The Root on Obama's pragmatism reflects my own thoughts from a week ago.

Here's a sample from "The Audacity of Pragmatism" by John H. McWhorter:

Politics is about pragmatism and compromise—even for leftists, even for black ones.

and

Some Obama fans, one suspects, would almost savor that as an opportunity to go martyr, decrying how the evil system thwarted the audacity of hope.

Check out this New York Times article — "In Illinois, Obama Proved Pragmatic and Shrewd" by Janny Scott — from last year for more examples of Obama's necessary practicality, a trait that reflects our generation even more than anyone's left or right political leaning.
 

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Perhaps it is the right time for a reckoning of sorts. We've spent a lot of space here slagging on the Boomers, and justly so. But this is not to forget what my own generation has wrought.

I was reminded of this by a comment from an obviously angry Boomer to a Talking Points Memo Café Reader Post last week, and also because I was returning some videos, er, up late last night watching American Psycho on HBOZ (which I think is an underrated, though often poorly directed, satire on the ’80s. I'm digressing again, I know.)

My generation largely revered Reagan as youngsters, looked up to late-Boomer (and early Gen X'er) Yuppies and DINKs and the ’80s stockbroker culture, to say nothing of unleashing Charlie Sheen (both in real life and Bud Fox from Wall Street). My generation also whelped Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity (both born in 1961, the same year as Obama). My own politics aside, we were fast on our way to becoming a more conservative generation than our parents — think Alex P. Keaton and you're not far off the mark — at least until George W. Bush came along.

According to Michael Connery on TPM Café, late-era Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are still the most conservative segment of voters in the country, raised in part during the boom of College Republicans in the 1980s and into the 1990s, during a time period, Connery notes, when Democrats ceded the seeding of the next generation of would-be liberals in the aftermath of Mondale and Dukakis. Democrats didn't begin to rise again until after Bill Clinton came to power, who nevertheless appealed more to the centrist base represented by the Democratic Leadership Council than traditional liberals.

In Strauss & Howe's book Generations, the authors note that in 15 of 16 polls from 1981 to 1988, my generation gave Ronald Reagan a higher approval rating than other other generation, except for the still-living members of Gen X's related generation, the Lost Generation (born between 1883-1900).

All is not lost, though, from my Progressive perspective. In fact, Republicans have to be kicking themselves for potentially blowing it with the Young because of the turn-off of George W. Bush — I wonder if, in the back of their minds, this is where some of the Republican backlash at Bush is coming from. Not that former Bush-supporters are suddenly going to become liberals, but the lustre is long gone.

Still, aside from Obama's popularity with my generation, and especially with the Millennials, it's possible the majority of my generation (born 1961-approx. 1980) may end up considered more conservative.

But putting the Left and Right aside, Gen X is nearly certain to end up in the Pragmatic camp, regardless of how that is defined on the political spectrum.

You see this already in Obama's post-primary shift in recent weeks, if not true to his hoped-for liberal roots, to some centrist-sounding stances. It's rather easy seeing the more centrist Hillary taking the position Obama recently staked on the FISA amendment, for instance, until you consider the gains he may realize from this position in the general election, as well as his necessary reversal to rejecting public campaign funding.

If you follow Strauss & Howe's logic and timeline, our "reactive" or "nomad" generational type, bound together as we are by our birth years, typically is less interested in ideology and more concerned about getting things done. Our "doing-what-you-gotta-do" generation is the only true way to combat the excess of the Boomers, which will haunt us for years to come with longer lifestyles embodied by "spending our children's inheritance" attitudes in prolonged retirement (hey, at least we're not Europe).

I consider myself a Pragmatic Progressive (as I would consider Obama, considering his life story and borne out by his recent political moves). Pragmatism is a hallmark of our generation. Pragmatism was the way we survived (if not thrived) growing up and beginning our careers, and it certainly will be the way we mature as leaders and advise as elders in old age. Think Harry S Truman or Eisenhower (especially upon Ike's exit, warning of the growing power of the institutions he helped promote), both members of the Lost Generation that Strauss & Howe links through history to Gen X.

Even the Wall Street types we helped popularize understand this pragmatism in coming out and supporting Obama. (link to Daily News via Talking Points Memo)

Time will tell if our conservative base or our pragmatism (or both) define Gen X in the history books, as we have the very real possibility of electing our generation's first president in the liberal yet pragmatic Barack Obama.

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There really isn't very much difference between them, at least policy-wise. Yeah, there is some difference in their health care plans and there's that silly gas tax thing. But the differences in policy between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are minuscule when compared to John McCain's beliefs.

This was my point months ago, privately: when placed side-by-side, there isn't much difference in beliefs between the two Dems.

So with that as a given, if you are going to vote Democratic, who would you rather vote for?

An inspiring, rallying speaker with little baggage who can actually make you believe "hope" is more than just a cynical campaign slogan and whose default mode by him and his handlers is not to attack, thrust, lie and wage a scorched earth campaign that threatens to not only keep the presidency in Republican hands, but to bring down an entire party with him?

Or a candidate from a former First Family with baggage dating back at least 16 years that is nevertheless beloved by swooning Baby Boomers, a candidate who represents a continuation of the angry divisive politics of the last 20 years, politics from both sides of the aisle that place mud-slinging over respect, a candidate comfortable being represented by the slimy likes of the execrable Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson, the booted Mark Penn, silly Lanny Davis and the utterly incompetent Terry McAuliffe? (And where are the women leading and directing her campaign, oh paragon of feminism and supposed inspiration to our mothers and daughters? You fired Patti Solis Doyle, the last woman who held a visible leadership post in your campaign.)

This pains me to write this, in many ways. I supported Hillary in running for Senate as a new New Yorker in 2000. I believed in her during her "It Takes a Village" days. That was inspiring. And at the time, I supported President Bill Clinton's policies voraciously.

What can I say? Obama is more inspiring. Obama has better progressive credentials. Obama, simply, is better.

Want an example of how much better? When the Rev. Wright controversy threatened to derail Obama's campaign, the candidate responded by giving one of the most lucid and inspiring speeches on race delivered in the last 40 years.

On the other hand, when charges of sexism reached a frenzy in the last 10 days, what great speech has Hillary delivered in response? Instead, she let a bunch of shrill-seeking men and women shout on her behalf on the blogs and at Saturday's Democratic Rules Committee meeting.

Slate's Meghan O'Rourke says Hillary wasn't feminist enough and talks of how Clinton has lost a generation of voters (um, I had that a few days ago). She ran as an establishment candidate. Not surprising, since the Boomers are the establishment — funny enough for the sell-out Woodstock generation that made its name in the late ’60s as anti-establishment.

Clinton simply didn't inspire awe the way Obama did. She ran as an insider, he ran as an outsider, and after almost 16 years of bickering and divisive politics, outsider status carries a lot of weight. It did across the aisle: John McCain, portrayed as the consummate Republican outsider maverick, is their nominee.

And you wonder why people are swooning for Obama, the media included? Obama is a candidate for these times, not the Boomer Clinton, not the Silent Generation McCain. "This is our time," he said Tuesday night, and the crowd roared. How could you not?

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Looking at the largely over-50 women and men disrupting the Democratic Rules Committee this afternoon with their sad Woodstocky cry of Denver! Denver! I realized something I had not previously considered. When people like them claim that this is the last chance ever for a woman to become president (which, if you believe that, then what the hell was the feminist movement about — promoting women's rights or promoting Hillary Clinton?), what they really mean is that this is the last chance for there ever to be be a Baby Boomer woman president, which might be true.

Because just like their hero, these Boomers are "all about me." It's not that there will never be a another woman who can be president (and one who hopefully won't need to ride her husband's coattails to rise to the Senate and beyond — you call that an inspirational story for women everywhere?). It's just possibly the last chance for a woman born before 1960 to become president. Quite frankly, it might possibly the last chance for any Baby Boomer to reach the White House.

Want to see the level of contempt Hillary has for the next generations? Right now on her official Hillblazers Web page — the page for "Young Leaders for Hillary in 2008" — the dominant item on the page is something called "Project T-shirt," which states: "We need your help to make a critical decision -- our next official campaign t-shirt."

So, on the day of the Rules Committee meeting, when her candidacy hangs in the balance, the major message on her Web page specifically geared toward the Next Generation is to design a fucking T-shirt. Not go out and protest with the Boomers. Go make a pretty picture to print onto a freebie.

In other words, you're too young to be of any good of us other than making a logo. This is perfect, because it's indicative of what both the Clintons and her Baby Boomer supporters are all about. I can just see her marketing department dreaming this up, like it's some bullshit corporate gain-share team-building exercise — "I know, let's draw in some younger voters by having them design a decal for a T-shirt. That's what the young kids like to do now, with their Photoshop and whatnot. It will help us 'connect' while letting the younger voters think that we think they're important."

To be fair, Hillblazers has links down the side with "5 Things You Can Do!," like becoming a Hillary supporter on the Facebook and other newfangled social networks.

I have to say I am truly sad for any Gen X'er or Millennial who supports this candidate, especially since she and her advisers see you as nothing other than expendable pawns in her campaign.

Incidentally, Obama has a Web page for his younger supports, too, called Generation Obama (ahem, and who coined a headline using a similar phrase? Um, yours truly) talking about grassroots activism and starting a support chapter in your community, with not a hint of anything so condescending as designing a fucking T-shirt.

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OK, now that we got that out of the way, check out this headline from Talking Point's Memo: Who's Disenfranchised? by Josh Marshall. This expresses what I've been cooking in the back of my brain but never made the full jump to put into words: If those in Florida and Michigan who voted for Hillary are so "disenfranchised," what about the people in those states who did not go out and vote at all on those days because they were told that their Primary was not going to count?

Now those people's voices will only be heard as part of this compromise Hillary supporters have unsatisfactorily pressured the Democratic leaders to concoct today, by counting those two against-the-rules elections at a 50% discount.

This does not erase the fact that people didn't vote in those primaries because they were told it was more-or-less a mock election, like those elections we used to do in middle school when the candidates were Reagan, Mondale and Bill the Cat. Hillary had no compunction to disenfranchise those would-be voters by making those elections "real," essentially discarding their worth as ballot-casters in order to change the rules to suit her. Typical of Hillary. Typical of a Boomer.

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The Clinton ego machine rolls on, continuing to try its best to produce the first-ever president from the Silent Generation, represented in the form of the 70-ish John McCain.

The New York Times had a good article on McCain's generation a few Mondays ago. The article correctly echoes the research Strauss and Howe wrote about in their Generations book more than a decade ago when they, too, mentioned that the Silents have never had one of their own elected as president (the Times notes it as the generation born in the 1930s).

Born in and around the Great Depression, too young to fight in World War II, then raised and coming of age in the prosperous and mostly conforming 1950s, "smothered" and over-protected by their parents and society at large.

Re-reading that, I think of my son. Born in a recession in an era of protecting children (perhaps over-protecting, as witnessed by the vitriol over New York Sun columnist (and NYC-living) Lenore Skenazy's decision to let her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone), with perhaps a longer-term war underway and hopefully brighter economic days on the far side of all this (sometime around 2019, perhaps).

McCain's is a generation that produced Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, an in-between generation, too young to fight the Great War (and gain the glory and amass the power while perfecting the institutions laid out by FDR), but also too old to be part of the future sell-out hippies of the Baby Boomers. As film directors, think 1930s-born Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood and Francis Ford Coppola — either neurotic or lyrical, but thoughtful either way.

I find this interesting not just because of the implications for my son and our future, but also because of this inter-generational presidential race — at the moment, it's between members of three different generations. Hard as it may be to separate the issues of race and gender on their own, but think how each of the candidates formed their world views not only because of what they saw and experienced, but at what ages they were when went through these personality-forming experiences.

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No word on if you can have a flamethrower in this new edition of GTA and run around singing that classic Twisted Sister song.

See no evil, don't you play no evil, don't you bring no evil down on me-eeee.

Burn baby burn, indeed.

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I'm no economist. But if you make a bad deal as a homeowner, it's too bad on you. If you make a bad deal and you're Bear Stearns, then the Gov't gets to bail you out, even if it did a shitty job itself?

OK, that said, Win Ben Stein's Money column in Sunday's Times about executive pay is interesting. To quote:

In other words, it’s not a pretty picture. It shrieks greed and contempt for shareholders and workers. …

Now we come to a sad fact about modern American life. It was brought up by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who often said that America, through its technology, has made of itself a neighborhood, but not a brotherhood. It is a lot worse now. The nation has become, to some at the top, far more of a looting opportunity than a family.

I am not sure where this has come from — maybe from media that glamorize wealth and high-end consumption, maybe from poor moral training.

Or maybe it's now that the Baby Boomers, into their 60's and 50's and fully running the country, can set their own level of greed and continue on their course to justify their own ambitions and world view, while socking it to the next generation. Thanks, Greedy Ones!

Ah, the Boomers. Here's a completely unscientific (but revealing, to my mind) example: after a quick search and some math on three Executives cited early in the Sunday Times' story on Big Pay for Big Shots — Lawrence J. Ellison of Oracle, Alan G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs — reveal ages of roughly 63, 61 and 53, respectively. Those are the prime birth years of the Baby Boomers: 1945 to 1955.

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With March Madness™ underway, my favorite predictable crap news stories are the ham-handed hang-wringing about how many work hours the tournament costs American business.

Well, to paraphrase an old Onion headline, how many leisure hours are lost to working in today's economy, with unpaid overtime, answering e-mails and Blackberries at home, with conducting business while driving and talking on your cell phone, while surfing the Web at home to gain an edge on business the next day?

But no, the five days of handicapping and watching the first round (after which, interest drops waaaay off) is killing American business? I'm not sure this isn't a plot by CBS to get the NCAA to move all the tournament games to prime time, just like all the other sports, even if it means extending the tournament by four weeks — well, won't that be accommodating for the "student-athletes" — and, of course, a plot by Corporate America to further wring every penny out of your body and soul before discarding you to the retirement pile.

Meanwhile, Slate (blessedly and wisely) re-runs Jack Shafer's column debunking the math, myth and hysteria surrounding the annual and always predictable news stories about work-hours lost to the NCAA Tournament.

The Wall Street Journal joins the fray with a blog piece today making fun of the $1.7 billion supposedly lost this year, predicted by the firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That same firm, the WSJ says, predicted this same NCAA tournament would have cost Corporate America $3.8 billion (not a typo) in 2006. Guess we all got more productive in two years, despite the rise in online video broadcasting.

My favorite quote from Challenger Gray's press release (the WSJ provides a link), regarding the difficulty in estimating this "lost" time: "…most people are not keeping a detailed time sheet on minutes wasted during the work day." Yeah, because they probably gave up hope in keeping track of how much time Work sucks out of their non-work day.

Watch for Challenger's next press release (and the resulting gullible news stories) on Productivity Lost to eating lunch, breathing air generously provided by Your Company, getting a vasectomy and taking a shit.

In Shafer's 2006 column, he quotes another Slate post that further proves the "workplace interruption" stats are bogus.

Still, it's sad to see how many media outlets still buy this line of bullshit, though thankfully, fewer seem to be swallowing, and some actually sound balanced, if not all benevolent masterly.

But with many news outlets falling for this year after year with predictable and repetitive stories, it's a wonder they just don't re-run last year's stories, like Slate did with Shafer's piece.

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I think "The Wire" is affirming of people's basic humanity, and an argument that even though it may be futile to rebel, it's the only alternative if you want to salvage anything that remotely resembles human dignity.

Click to see Sepinwall's interview with David Simon.

Sepinwall's full review of the finale here. I remember this critic as one of the people quoted in the pre-season show, and I liked his comments then. Him, and the woman from CourtTV, which inexplicably was renamed TruTV … evidently, to show more episodes of "Cops." (Bizarre digression: They should replace "Cops" with this.)

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Hmm, or maybe not: Perhaps my faith in us all working in retail in the future was, er, misplaced. Check out this article and excerpt from Slate.com:

In the coming years, retailers, who are integrating online sales into their business models, simply won't need the same amount of acreage. The upshot: Demand for retail space is likely to grow at a pace far slower than that of the overall economy.

So, in other words, there's going to be no jobs for us in the future, including retail. Are we at world's end? Or do we all just join the fastest ships in the shipping industry?

More from the Slate article:

But e-com­merce has quietly been growing at a rate far higher than that of the overall econo­my. For the last four years, online retail sales have grown at an annual rate of more than 20 percent.

And this, with perhaps a hint of a silver lining for all our future jobs at Target, Wegman's and Stop & Shop (unless, of course, you were planning on working at the Carousel Mall, apparently)…

For 2008, [research firm] Reis projects there will be 159 million square feet vacant … But landlords shouldn't lose faith just yet. While vacancy rates are high in some depressed markets — 15 percent in Syracuse, N.Y. — there's no imminent danger of America's malls turning into ghost towns. The minute the credit crunch breaks, consumers will surely hit the malls with a vengeance.

And then there's this column from Forbes.com, which has little to do with this article and has more to do with The Present and (at least in this pull-quote) My Past and many of My Friends' Present and Past, rather than The Future…

Eventually, companies who strangle and handcuff their employees lose valuable workers and will lose market share; they will be left unprepared when the economy recovers, which it inevitably will. In reality, the abusive or neglectful boss will only be left with people who will take the abuse, and all too often these are underperformers who have little choice in the job marketplace. So, incompetent managers actually weaken the organization for the next economic cycle, while, of course, diminishing their own value and credibility. So, if you are like most managers, complaining about your distressed workload and a life out of balance, ask yourself how many great employees you helped to (unnecessarily) exit the business.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. Just needed something extra to put on my Price Chopper job application.

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Fun week for newspapers! Thanks, Romenesko at Poynter, for rounding them up. You made my evening mix of Coffee Milk and Jameson justified. Mmmm. Let start with the biggest one: the New York Times will cut 100 newsroom people. The L.A. Times is cutting, Baltimore Sun is cutting (David Simon is boiling, and so am I), everyone is cutting. What to do with all these soon-to-be out-of-work journalists when they join our jaded ranks, hopefully in gainful (and sometimes ungainful) employment? I know, how about this?

Actually, I'm not really kidding. My prediction, to anyone who is listening, is that in 20 years, most of us will be working retail full-time, most likely in supermarkets. And this is no knock on retail. It's just going to be the only work left in this country.

Think about it: All the remaining manufacturing jobs will be gone, and most white-collar jobs will be outsourced by then, too. With video and telephone conference-calling and high-speed connections, call centers won't be the only branches exported to central Asia. So why will they need you to sit in that cubicle? (Small consolation: why will they need your middle-manager boss in her tiny mid-row office, either?)

With most major events televised, and even the smallest city council meetings on TV or streamed through the Web, they've even experimented with outsourcing journalism overseas. That includes outsourcing the graphic artists. And check out this one, where the guy naively thinks this won't work for local news because corporate editors are going to worry about having to “spend time and resources on training these [outsourced] reporters to 'know'” their coverage areas. Papers don't spend that money to do that now in their own newsrooms, fool!

So what's left? Retail, my friends.

Ah ha! What about Amazon, you say, and all those reports about chain stores having a shitty Christmas sales season? True, that will mean fewer stores, but they will be there. Put simply, people like to shop, and there is a large segment of people that still like to go out to shop, or just walk the malls. This country's credit love affair (the subprime crisis aside) will continue to make this so.

Plus, fresh (and even frozen) foods will still make supermarkets appealing, even if you can buy boxed stuff over the Internet.

And with retail shipping growing, there will be more of a need for packagers at the various warehouses, truck drivers and deliverymen.

So essentially, we will be a nation of retail workers buying and selling from each other. I work at Stop and Shop, you work at Target, let's make a deal.

The only other growth industry I see is in trash collection (especially with all those shipped boxes to throw away, er, recycle). That is, until Mr. Fusion comes along.

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Perhaps the greatest knock against Hillary and Bill's campaign is their overwhelming sense of her entitlement to the office that will be decided this November. It says here that while that seemingly mimics the Clintonian ethos, it has as much to do with two numbers:

• 1947


• 1961

The first number is Hillary's birth year, with her coming into the world smack dab in the original Baby Boom.

The second is Obama's birth year, teetering between the aforementioned Baby Boom and the next generation, one much reviled by their older fellow Americans — commonly, often derisively, but here, proudly known as Generation X.

Hillary has endured many slights in her career, some perhaps imagined, and some very real, despite the propensity for the Republican opposition to taunt that she is claiming false injuries, all the while holding the bloody hammer behind their proverbial backs.

But in competing neck-and-neck with a younger upstart, one who may or may not be considered part of her own generation, Hillary is enduring the sleightest of slights — possibly losing the nomination to a younger, seemingly undeserving Party compatriot.

It's a typical reaction of Baby Boomers, and it shows, without a doubt, what generation Hillary considers Barack to be a part of — and it ain't her own.

Obama may enthuse some of the seemingly naïve we-can-change-the-world attitude that is both the best and one of the worst aspects of the Baby Boomers. But I don't believe his agenda it is born of a naïveté, this yearning for hope. Rather, it is really the best part of my generation — a practicality born of a world weariness acquired before one's time.

Hillary, for sure, deserves some props for her own well-paid-for world weariness, which has helped produce an almost impenetrable suit of armor, which she needs to hold her own against every kind of backlash she faces, some very much of the male chauvanist kind (this armor, unfortunately, renders the wearer incapable of producing empathy for said-wearer, a few well-timed New Hampshire tears aside).

But, remember, Hillary is very much a product of her generation. To quote her Web site, in discussing her parents and upbringing: "The life that Hugh and Dorothy created for Hillary and her two brothers was a classic 1950s middle-class suburban childhood."

Gen Xers, on the other hand, were first portrayed as slackers as young adults. See Obama's high school and college years in Hawaii and then L.A. and New York (he buckled down somewhat when he transferred to Columbia) if you want some examples of honest slacking masking an untapped reservoir of talent and potential. This generation has have been children of divorce, more so than most other generations, certainly the Boomers. Barack has got it on this account, too.

But we have also been a generation to grab what we could when we could, since the Boomers were and still are keeping the best pieces of pie for themselves, and borrowing against our future to make sure their pie is well-filled long into what should be our peak earning years. They're still telling the waitress to put it on our tab, that's all.

Obama, perhaps running before his time, perhaps stepping on some toes as the know-it-all upstart. Maybe his birthdate is a a little too early to be considered a "true" Gen Xer (though the social scientists Strauss and Howe would put him at the start of what they call the 13th Generation, their post-Boomer grouping). But teetering on the brink of both generations, he's looking more and more like he'd fall in the latter one.

And as a truly practical Gen Xer, where many see a usurper, he sees an opportunity, one aided by timing and not a little bit of good fortune (some would call it luck), leading him to this particular momentum swing. That's not only a Gen X trait, that's an American success story.

Meanwhile, this could-be Gen Xer has sped past one Baby Boomer woman, shaking her head, if not her generation's entitled fist.

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I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world — or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out thin.

Be not afraid — be girthy.

If you’re like us, and your interests include the Sunset of the Empire and Sport (“Gladiators, I salute you”), don't delay. Meet The Girth and Baby Girth. Go click; people, it’s time to get girthy.

The irony. The pity. We’re all in.

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I consider myself environmentally conscious, if not true 100% green, but I'm trying, and I want to do my part. I drive a car with pretty good mileage (stick shift, 33 mpg). I recycle, my newspapers especially, obsessively (when I get to them, that's when; so stop asking me about my newspaper stack/end-table).

I guess that makes me Bourgeois Green. But my environmental awareness doesn't include these stupid swirly Compact Fluorescent light bulbs. I cannot stand the light that emits from them — it unmazes me. They are the very definition of "not soft."

I had worries about the mercury in them, but this Slate article puts some of those fears to rest. There's really little mercury in them, so don't worry about it (as the article essentially says). Of course, eating a little asbestos with mustard on it prolly won't kill you, either. Still, I'm convinced the mercury hazard is more or less minimal (but please don't eat them).

No, for me, the CFL light is simply too harshly white (take that whiteys!). It resembles nothing of the softness of a regular light bulb. You say, so what? Deal with it. Or as one obstinate Slate commenter put it (in response to a kind of overwrought defense of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs that I'd like to distance myself from): So, your personal aesthetics will take a back seat to environmental responsibility. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Decider. It is that kind of "I'm-right-you're wrong" attitude that gives us liberals a bad name. Um, that is not to be confused with my "I'm-right-you're-wrong-attitude." Not in the least. Please move on. Nothing to see here, my fine fellow American human friend.

Make these bulbs emit softer light and make 'em capable of dimming (I can't find any that work on a dimmer, other than dimming directly from "full blast" to "off") and we'll talk. Otherwise, I'm a gonna have to find another way to offset my old-fashioned incandescent carbon emissions. Of course, Congress spent its time dealing with these bulbs rather than, um, the economy, our inner cities, and, like, The War (sort of like the case stated in that previously mentioned overwrought article that I thought I was distancing myself from). Whatevs. Next thing you'll tell me Congress is pushing for a move to corn-based fuel that will inadvertently raise food prices by raising cattle feed prices and produce a sludge that will further muck up the Mississippi and continue to send smog-spewing trucks (ethanol-running or otherwise) out on the road to deliver said fuel, rather than work a little harder and fund research for a better alternative and shun the easy skin-deep popular and politically expedient thing to do in a cynical and transparent attempt to appear "green" and win some alterna-votes and appeal to middle America, to boot. But Congress would never do that.

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In an op-ed piece Sunday in the Dallas Morning News — linked via NPR and appearing in longer-form in City Journal, the conservative Manhattan Institute's self-described "premier urban-policy magazine" — Brooklyn author Kay Hymowitz is upset: "Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood's milestones — high school degree, financial independence, marriage and children. These days he lingers — happily — in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance."

Oh, shit, where do I start on this one?

The author goes on: "It's time to state what is now obvious to the legions of frustrated young women: The limbo doesn't bring out the best in them."

First off, I’m a little old for this generation — my Generation X is older than this unnamed generation (please do not call them Generation Y — what are we going to do next: call the succeeding kids Generation Z, followed by Generation A¹ or AA?) Even so, my "older" generation of workers mostly in their 30s (let’s say 28 to 42) is barely struggling to maintain financial independence at an age when our parents had more securely achieved that goal. Given that, and given that the Baby Boomers are living longer, working longer and holding on to the better jobs longer, is there any surprise for this apparent extended adolescence, and is that such a bad thing?

(Digression: With a lack of advancement opportunities — or an effective outright blockage to enter into certain fields because of lingering Boomer hoarding — workers under 40 have shown they can and must excel in new industries and media, shunning the traditional roles and companies that Boomers have clung to for so long. Members of Generation X and this succeeding generation have long known they must carve out their own niche and hustle to get what they can — the good ones do this, anyway. Hymowitz is correct about that "responsible self-reliance" she mentions. The others are idle and waiting, and, yes, perhaps lapse into wasting. But for both the hustlers and the idle ones, their daily decompression, like the new economy, is new, perhaps raw, and it is fueled by the easy retail credit creating this false affluence in this country. It is a way of dealing with growing into flexible careers in-flux unlike anything their parents dealt with. If anything, the next battle will be between the older Gen X’ers and the Next Gen of workers 10 to 15 years younger looking to take their jobs).

Curiously though, author Hymowitz excludes criticizing women from this prolonged adolescence phase, and focuses her attention on the deficiencies of men. In her argument, your average modern 20-something woman is an overachiever who spends her disposable income on evidently worthy and traditional pursuits such as shopping, travel and dining with friends. So in her world, “Sex and the City” = good. “Entourage” = bad.

Meanwhile, she seems to long for the days of the 1950s and ’60s while at the same time clearly seems to be praising the "hyperachieving" "New Girl Order" (her words) and rising female power in the workplace. So she seems to want men who are breadwinners and do the laundry. Well, I suppose that's essentially what every man wants, too, so I guess we're even.

Except a man's pursuits, be it today's XBox and "Maxim" magazine or the social clubs and "Field and Stream" magazines of yore are unworthy. Side note: one of her good points is that men's aversion to settling down is not an entirely new phenomenon — past generations of men simply got married then avoided their wives in social (and exclusionary) clubs. But at least those men got married and had kids, she seems to be praising.

I mean, didn't she ever see “Mad Men”? Oh sure, let's bring back the ’60s, when white men only had to compete with other white men in the workplace marketplace. Is this what she is arguing for? A return to the repressed old days, when a woman like her would not be able to find a place in the marketplace, because there was largely no marketplace for women professionals? How many happy marriages from the 1950s made by teenagers and kids in their early 20s resulted in divorce, broken homes, affairs, or, perhaps as bad, a lifetime of general unhappiness, unfulfillment and uncomfortable silences? On the one hand she is praising modern women's power, ingenuity and drive and on the other she is asking for a return to young marriage when an inexperienced woman on her wedding night was as likely to been given the following advice by her own mother: just lie back, think of old England and let him do his thing on you.

If these men should in their 20s simply need to "grow up," then whom should they marry and have children with but women in the same age? And anyone from my mother's generation to my wife's will tell you how much harder it is to build a career with a child. So, this writer's response would be is to tell the man to help shoulder the burden of childrearing so the woman can continue with her career. The predictable next criticism (based on this logic) would be that the man would next be criticized for not being enough of a bread-winner.

Even today's men who do becomes ostensibly good dads today aren't good enough for her. Far be it from me to defend shameless self-promoting author Neal Pollack (Alternadad), but she nails him for being a doting father by focusing on his urge to turn his son into a little version of himself — um, so you're not supposed to share interests with your kids? In her world, she'd rather have the distant, unemotive, cold and tactical male leader as a dad, sort of like Hugh Beaumont on “Leave it To Beaver” or the guy on “Father Knows Best,” presumably so he ran raise a daughter or son who will grow up hating him for being so distant, unemotive and male-dominant.

Her opening financial arguments are equally as weak. You work in a cubicle and live in an apartment because the Baby Boomers took up all the good fucking housing and then drove the market nuts in buying second homes and McMasions. The only way you could get your own home was to take out a variable-rate mortgage, with unfortunately predictable results (read: U.S. Economy, January 2008).

Her selective use of statistics is also interesting, and the classic ruse of someone with nothing real to say. She cites the rise in the median age of marriage for men and the percentage of married 25- and 30-year-olds — and runs with it. Everything else is anecdotal evidence and riffs against box-office and best-selling successes targeted at the audience she criticizes. Excluding for same-sex marriages, more unmarried men means more unmarried women. But somehow this only the fault of men, based on her conversational evidence — "in contemporary female writing and conversation, the words 'immature' and 'men' seem united in perpetuity." No stats to back this up, of course (it "seems" indeed). And is the "contemporary female writing" she cites the same as "chit lit," that genre that celebrates single, unmarried women of the “Sex and the City” variety? If this is a problem (and I am in no way saying it is) this is a problem for both genders.

(I, myself, use no statistics in presenting my argument, but I'm a blogger, not a senior fellow at an important conservative think tank whose stuff shows up on NPR occasionally and who, incidentally, I can't get a handle on: in 1994 she evidently argued in the New York Times against sex education in schools (in favor of apparently benign ignorance) but also smartly argued against marketing to young children (she told the Times in 1999: "One of the great things about childhood in the U.S. used to be that kids were protected by the market and allowed to grow their own ideas. Now there is no time to be a kid separate from those pressures. You may have always had kids who are little princesses, but now there are 8-year-old boys that are extremely uptight if they don't get the right Abercrombie & Fitch sweat shirt.").)

(A digression: where can I get one of these research and writing jobs at a Manhattan institute or some other think-tank? Or were the last ones swallowed up by Baby Boomers, who again locked the door on the way in?)

(One other side note that I can't argue with her is the inner-city atmosphere of young boys going out to the corner in their teens to "be a man" and support their single mothers (with dads largely absent). Though not addressed in her "child-man" piece, in fairness to author Hymowitz, a Google search shows that she has addressed this issue many times elsewhere, so we'll call it a wash on this matter.)

Where are the men still living with their parents? Most of them are out by 24, and if they remain, or if they room up with a few other guys in an apartment — it's only because a Baby Boomer-favored real estate market conspires against them. Most of them are saving for their own place. The rest of them are the small-majority who will continue to live with their parents, remain unmarried into their peak earning years and then still live at home to care for their sickly and now-burdensome parents in their late-twilight years.

The author strangely attributes the ground-zero event of this generation to the debut of "Maxim" magazine in April 1997. Strange that an entire generation can be ruined (in her implication) in the debut of a magazine that featured the girl from the Drew Carrey Show (the hot one, not his plus-sized heavily made-up co-worker) on the cover.

Let's take a final look at these irresponsible 20-something lads. The newest television show to appeal to this grouping (a show she curiously doesn't mention, though it would seem to fall exactly into her category) is “Entourage.” At first glance, it is seems to be everything she hates — a male wish-fulfillment fantasy depicting 20- or 30-something men with outlandish money at their disposal (the main character is a Hollywood actor) and obscene access to beautiful women. It celebrates partying, hanging with your bros, even video game-playing. The only married guy on the show (the agent Ari) envies the young men's unmarried freedom.

But what this author forgets, and on closer glance this series depcits, is the hustle that is needed to make it in this world domianted by the Boomer economy. The main actor, his best friend and manager, the less-talented brother, especially the agent but even the lackey friend are all constantly hustling, either for the next movie deal or simply to make a buck. It's a comedy, so often this hustling is humorous or pitiful, but the show doesn't condemn the characters' efforts. That some of this scheming often involves bedding other women is part of this wish-fulfillment scheme of the show.

But you're telling me sex and the opposite sex are not on the minds of any same-aged single women?

(Special thanks to WAMC.org's "Roundtable" for linking to the original Dallas article on its Web site.)

(One final point: the photo that City Journal uses for this article? Is that from, like, 1999? Those controllers are so PSOne.)

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