Frankly Curious

Fat Men Can't Run

Tue, 7 Feb 2012 00:36:19 -0600

I keep seeing this clip of Ann Coulter saying that if the Republicans don't run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and they will lose:

But when I see Christie, I am appalled.

It isn't that Christie is fat. I understand. A person's weight is largely determined by their genetics. I've seen this in my own life: other than a variation of two pounds, my body wants to weigh what it wants to weigh. Ezra Klein discussed this in an article at the end of last September: Chris Christie is not too fat to be president. But I think that while Christie might be able to be president, I'm not sure he could run for president.

It is that Christie is extremely fat.

He seems to be at least as obese as Orson Welles at his largest. And running for president is by all accounts a grueling endeavor. I really wonder if he would be up to it.

As to Klein's point that obese people don't really die earlier than other people (Welles made it to 70): I don't think that's the point; could he manage to walk 10 miles a day or work 20 hours a day? And as to Klein's point that weight is genetic: yes and no. I don't think anyone should be held responsible for being, say, 50 pounds over weight. But when they get to the point of a Chris Christie—or Orson Welles—it is more than just genetics. I don't know what's going on with Christie. In Welles' case, his habitual use of speed when he was young undoubtedly contributed to the problem. Regardless, I doubt either man could, at 50, put in the hours and miles required to run for president.

And hopefully Ann Coulter is right.

The Shakespeare Industry

Mon, 6 Feb 2012 11:24:35 -0600

It's me again. You know: the guy who loves Shakespeare but never has a kind word for him? Once again, those in the Shakespeare industry are putting out the "Shakespeare as secular Jesus" line. I watched a little documentary last night called Discovering Hamlet. It documents the rehearsals for Kenneth Branagh starring in Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, directed by Derek Jacobi. And, of course, it pissed me off from the very first line. It is narrated by Patrick Stewart, who reads:

In the history of dramatic literature there is one name that will always be remembered—a playwright whose work is universally recognized as one of the supreme achievements of the human imagination. William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and among these, one stands out from among the rest. It is called: The Tragedy of Hamlet Price of Denmark.

Shakespeare will always be remembered? Why do people think this? It has only been 400 years since he stopped writing. It was after movable type was all over Europe. It is not exactly surprising that we remember his name today. The question is whether we will remember his name in 2000 years.

Sophocles died 2400 years ago, and is still performed. Most of Euripides' 90-odd plays have survived this enormous gap of time. And Aristophanes comedies—better than anything Shakespeare managed to write with 2000 years advantage—are commonly produced.

Looking back on the reputation of Shakespeare, one quickly sees that it is the idea of Shakespeare, more than his work, that has been promulgated. In his own lifetime, Shakespeare was certainly not thought to be the greatest playwright or poet, although he was highly regarded. It wasn't until the end of the 17th century that people began to consider him a great playwright. Then, people noticed that his plays were highly melodramatic and filled with all kinds of over-the-top dramatic elements. During the early 19th century, people turned away from his plays to his poetry—especially the sonnets. In fact, this is lampooned in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Today, Shakespeare is so edited and otherwise helped along by artists and academics that the fact that there is no there there isn't even noticed by the theater and film going public.

To be clear: my problem is not Shakespeare but rather with the Shakespeare industry. It is never enough to say that Shakespeare is the writer of some very popular plays. Instead, he is the best. Later in the same documentary, Stewart reads, "Part of Shakespeare's greatness is he gives every character even the wicked and devious the chance to touch an audience with truth and honesty." What an outrageous statement! Generally, it is only the evil characters who are given any motivation at all. The protagonists are generally cookie-cutter theatrical stereotypes. "Let's put a brave young man here!" or "How about a sharp-tongued female here!" If Shakespeare had been writing in America in the early 20th century, his plays would have filled with black minstrels (played by whites in black face, of course). There is much that can be said for Shakespeare, but great characters is definitely not one of them.

As for Hamlet: academics and actors love the play because they are still trying to figure it out. It is long enough and obscure enough that everyone feels there must be great meaning in it. But there isn't. The play is supposedly about Hamlet finally getting around to helping his poor dead father doomed to walk the earth until his murder is avenged. What does Hamlet need to do? Kill Claudius. But Hamlet does nothing but be obnoxious and kill lots of innocent people. In the end, he does kill Claudius, but not because of his father. He kills him because he sees Claudius kill his mother! How is that great drama?

Can we stop treating this man as though he is some kind of artistic singularity? People don't even do that for Mozart or Beethoven, and the case for each of them is far stronger.

Paul, Niall, and Fareed

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 22:52:40 -0600

On 8 July 2010, Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson were on Fareed Zakaria GPS.[1] Niall Ferguson was saying that we have to deal with the budget deficit now. He's been saying this for years. Paul Krugman was saying that we need to stimulate the economy. He also said that eventually, we would need to deal with the budget deficit, but to do so now was wrong and probably self-defeating because it would hurt the economy and thus hurt tax revenues.

After interviewing both men, Zakaria came on alone to give his thoughts on what should be done. He said he agreed with both men. We should stimulate the economy now and work to close the budget deficit over the long-term. You can probably already see the problem here. Although he claimed that he agreed with both men, he only really agreed with Krugman. What Zakaria was proposing was exactly what Krugman had said. Ferguson didn't say we needed to balance the budget eventually; he said we needed to do it now. We are coming up on two years, and still US government bonds are ridiculously low. Ferguson is finally coming around.

The problem here is not that Ferguson was wrong; it is rare indeed when Krugman is not right about such matters; pity the man who decides to argue against him. The real problem is that we have journalists like Fareed Zakaria who will not say what they think or what is obvious. He insisted on making nice and pretending to accept Ferguson's fallacious ideas. And that makes it appear like the two sides are equally valid.

We're only supposed to do that about global warming.

[1] This is the only video I could find. I know the whole thing is available somewhere online.

On Good Reasons for Suicide

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 22:13:30 -0600

There is nothing so much as watching the Super Bowl to make one start a list of reasons for suicide. How can you not? They are thrust in your face!

Most notably, of course, there is the dullest of sporting events: football. It is deadly. First, there is the fact that there is very little actual play in the game. It looks very bad compared to soccer, basketball, hockey, rugby, or even the pastoral baseball. Then there is the fact that the teams seem more like dysfunctional hospitals than sporting groups, where every player is specialized to the point of not being able to play any other position. Could you imagine a kicker filling in for a safety? So the main event is not worth watching, which is one reason.

Then there is the fact that there is no square inch without an advertisement. And after a while, you begin to think that this is actually the main event: "I must buy a Motorola headset." This is another good reason.

Madonna performed at the half time. It was an amazing show. It was big, exciting, entertaining, professional. It could not have been any better. And it was awful. All that creativity and work and money spent to create something that looked like it shouldn't be allowed outside the city limits of Las Vegas. This was a great reason.

The high point of the show was a commercial for some truck—let's say it was Dodge, but I'm not sure. This man manages to escape sure death to meet his friends in the city, which frankly doesn't look like a place worth escaping to. Then it starts to rain frogs, which, you know, makes me think they are trying to appeal to Christians. And that is definitely a good reason.

The high point of the event was a Hulu commercial with Will Arnett. He's a funny guy and he even uses a line from Arrested Development. That in itself is not a reason.

But in the end, it seemed like my entire culture was just commerce. The creative and able people only create things to sell with but one thought: maximizing profits. And with complete honesty, I am deeply, deeply depressed. I see now how much a man of his time George Orwell was. 1984 was a great book. And movie. But it is no longer necessary to enslave people. They gleefully do it themselves.

Conservative Liberals: am I Wrong?

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 15:55:12 -0600

VoteView has provided the following graph of how much to the right or left all the presidents since World War II are:

This is interesting in that it shows very clearly that Obama is the most conservative Democratic president in the post-war period. But it also goes against my often stated contention that Democrats are now more conservative than Republicans of the past.

Does this graph make me rethink my position? Definitely. However, it isn't clear exactly what the graph means. I checked out VoteView's website in some depth and did not find the details of their process.

Here's my question: are policy positions based upon the existing (at the time) political range? I suspect that VoteView would say it is not. However, there are problems with this contention, even if VoteView made it—and I don't know that they would. Certainly, Reagan was generally a bigger proponent of tax cuts than Obama, even though—as a practical matter—Obama has cut taxes more than any president. Obama wants to raise the top tax bracket to 39% while Reagan lowered the top tax bracket to 50%. I suspect that VoteView would see this as Reagan being more conservative on taxes than Obama, even though the net practical effect is that Obama's top tax rate would be 11% lower than Reagan's.

So I think this is still an open question, and I'm open to whatever the evidence indicates. Regardless, the graph clearly puts the lie to the conservative talking point that Obama is some kind of radical socialists.

Numeracy in Shakespeare in Love

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 12:04:39 -0600

In my never ending efforts to provide my readers with the most trivial observations of life, I recently wrote roughly a thousand words about a ten cent mathematical error in the film Rocky. And I promised that I would discuss a similar issue in the film Shakespeare in Love.[1] This brings to mind an even more trivial question: why only Academy Award winning films? I don't know. It could be that I'm just not paying attention, because I noticed the math in both these films around the same time many years ago.

Shakespeare in Love begins with Hugh Fennyman and his henchmen torturing Philip Henslowe, because of unpaid debts. Henslowe proposes that they go into business together to put on a play. Fennyman likes this idea, so he begins to speculate.

Fennyman: A play takes time, find the actors, rehearsals; let's say we open in two weeks. That's what, 500 groundlings at tuppence [two pence] a head, in addition, 400 backsides at thruppence [three pence], a penny extra for cushions. Call it 200 cushions. Say two performances for safety. How much is that Mr. Frees?

Frees: Twenty pounds to penny, Mr. Fennyman!

Fennyman: Correct.

Let's do the math, shall we?

500 × 2 + 400 × 3 + 200 × 1 = 1000 + 1200 + 200 = 2400

~~Twenty-four hundred?~~ Two performances: 4800? That's twenty pounds to the penny?

The United Kingdom has since metricized their currency, but not that long ago, and for a long time before, their currency made as much sense as all the other imperial units. Here is a list:

4 Farthings = Penny

6 Pennies = Sixpence

12 Pennies = Shilling

20 Shillings = Pound

240 Pennies = Pound

So ~~2400~~4800 Pennies is, in fact, "Twenty pounds to the the penny, Mr. Fennyman!"

[1] I'm sorry to bring this up, but there was another thing in Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor's Reduced Shakespeare that annoyed me:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Two Bards

Everybody rise and give it up for Tom Stoppard. Not only did he re-energize the short-funny-alternative-Bard industry with Dogg's Hamlet ... he also helped Marc Norman write the delightful screenplay Shakespeare in Love, and he created Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his worm's-eye view of Hamlet in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (minor characters in Shakespeare's play) become the leading characters in their own story and discover they aren't up to the task. Filled with Stoppardian wit, Shakespearean in-jokes, and Beckettian existential dread, Stoppard examimes a world in which "every exit is an entrance somewhere else."

So it's a bummer to report the movie's a bit of a drag. Although very funny in spots, and a treat to watch Gary Oldman play a bumbling, funny, nice guy, you can't avoid the fact that the play is ultimately about two guys who merely watch and wait. Action heroes they're not.

With that caveat, however—enjoy.

Shakespeare in Love is a great film in all ways except for the primary plot, which is okay. Given Marc Norman's history of writing (in large groups) such gems as Cutthroat Island, I doubt that anything I actually like in this film is due to him. All that is clever and interesting is most likely Stoppard's.

I seem to be one of the few people on the planet who think that the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is better than the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It is just so much richer. In particular, it is great to watch Rosencrantz (Oldman) discover or invert Archimedes' principle, the steam engine, gravitation, conservation of energy, flight. The film is a delight that only gets better with more viewings.

The criticism that the title characters just spend the film watching and waiting is amazing, given that Martin and Tichenor seem to be aware that it is an homage to Waiting for Godot. Given that, what are the characters to do? What are any of us to do? That's life: we wait around until we die. I don't think people turn to Shakespeare when they are in the mood for an action movie.

Winter of Our Discontent Comparison

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 23:48:33 -0600

I am fascinated by the opening soliloquy of Richard III. Most of it is Shakespeare at his best and a little, Shakespeare at his worst:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass—
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph—
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate the one against the other;
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up—
About a prophecy which says that G
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

If you ever want to really get inside a piece of poetry: memorize it. Nothing is like it. In trying to memorize it, you look at it from every possible angle. I have, of course, memorized this exact speech. And so I think that I understand it pretty well. Here is my take, in more or less plain English:

The king has made us all safe and happy—he's ended the war. All the terrors that haunted us are now gone for good. We have been honored as heroes, put away our weapons, silenced all calls to arms, and rested our aching bodies. War has put on a happy face, and instead of charging his enemies, he seduces our women. But I am ugly, and though I may want love, who would have me? I am a deformed beast! Even dogs bark when I come near. So in this wimpy time of peace, I am not happy. What choice do I have? Stare at my deformed shadow? No. Since I can't have a life of love, I will have hatred. I will pass my days with villainous deeds. Already, I have spread a rumor that my brother means to murder the king. And soon, I will destroy them both!

Clearly, Richard is not a well-adjusted person. Even more: he is not a believable character. No one runs their life that way, "I have two options: lover or villain." It's ridiculous. But that doesn't make it any less fun.

Henry Irving

As is discussed in the lecture available in And I Won't Even Complain About Not Much Liking Shakespeare, Henry Irving is the first person to record Shakespeare. He probably did it in 1888. And what he recorded was this opening soliloquy from Richard III. It is a remarkable thing, because his performance is almost unrecognizable as acting. There is almost no emotion: it is all elocution. When he says the line, "That dogs bark at me as I halt by them" he says it as if he were Sweeney Todd in a melodrama. The only way to understand such a performance is to hear it as an aria. And as such it is interesting. But it tells us precious little about the character.

From this lecture, I know that the history of Shakespearean performance over the last 125 years has been one of moving away from this musical style of performance to our modern emotional style of performance. Based upon this, going backwards from 1888, we can assume that performances were even more musical, less emotionally nuanced. And thus, it is surprising to read William Hazlitt in 1814, describe the character in Mr. Kean's Richard:

The restless and sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his powers of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station, and making use of these advantages, as giving him both the means and the pretext to commit unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse and infamy.

I agree with all that Hazlitt writes here, but somehow his impressive intellect and erudition seem to fail him in that he misses the one thing that most defines Richard: his anger—at the universe for making him deformed, and everyone in it for not sharing his deficiencies. If Richard is not angry (and perhaps bored as well), I don't see what the whole play is about.

Laurence Olivier

Here is Laurence Olivier doing Richard the way I see him: angry. Beneath every line is rage and I am right there with him. This is the best performance of Richard I've ever seen, even though it is far from the most emotional or human. It is from Olivier's own star-studded filmed version in 1955. Note that Olivier has taken out the dreadful lines, "And if King Edward be as true and just / As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, / This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up— / About a prophecy which says that G / Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be."

Heartbreak Productions

Here is an interesting take on Richard. According the person who posted it, "Heartbreak Productions Richard III summer 2002. Directed by Peter Mimmack. With Andrew Cullum as Richard III. Filmed at Kenilworth Castle." He starts off very sarcastic, which I totally approve of, because sarcasm is just a veneer on anger. However, Cullum throws some self-pity in the second half of the speech that I'm not so sure of. Certainly it is a valid take on the character, but like so much of modern Shakespearean performance: a lot is created that just isn't there in the text.

Kenneth Branagh

Branagh is very good as Richard, but in this scene, he plays it too much like the melodramatic villain. His barely suppressed anger is great, but he jumps so nimbly from it to an all too clear delight that I find it jarring.

Here he is in Act 5, Scene 4. It's 27 seconds of wonderful:

Ian McKellen

The 1995 filmed version of Richard III is so stylized, that it is hard to know what to think of McKellen's understated performance. He is clearly very pleased with himself, but somehow he manages to integrate this with his hatred and frustration so that it works. (It is unfair to do a comparison of a big budget film and basically a book on tape that Branagh was doing.)

Just the same, it is hard to know if McKellen understands the speech at all, based upon the following clip. Yeah, we get it: "Sun of York" is a pun of "Son of York" and King Edward is the son of the Duke of York. But Richard does not mean these lines as stated: he would prefer it still be winter. I don't mean to suggest that McKellen really doesn't know what he's talking about. Artists are almost always at their worst when they discuss their work. But one does get the impression that he thinks he is speaking to a child of limited intelligence:

There is no doubt that the more recent actors give Richard more depth. My question is whether that is really appropriate.

Kill Your Daughters

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 12:17:47 -0600

According to MSNBC (and many other sources), "In a reversal of Susan G. Komen For the Cure's funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, the founder and CEO of the nation's largest breast-cancer advocacy agency said Friday that the group would amend the criteria that sparked a firestorm."

Despite what Komen is saying, their original decision was part of a concerted effort to destroy Planned Parenthood. According to Newsday:

Komen has explained that the defunding decision was due to the foundation's recently enacted policy to not fund organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. That would disqualify Planned Parenthood, which is the subject of a congressional inquiry begun in September by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., to determine whether it has used federal money to fund abortions, which is forbidden by law.

What isn't clear from this article is that Komen made its decision in December—after Stearns' inquiry had started. So they knew exactly what they were doing.

And they know what they're doing now. They've reversed themselves because of the huge backlash against them that was going to hurt donations to this primarily conservative, and clearly evil, group.

This can't be said often enough: despite all their platitudes to the contrary, these people hate women—especially young and powerful women. Depriving them of healthcare is just a way of killing them by subtler means than death camps and marches. Kill you daughters![1]

Update

Ezra Klein has an excellent article about Komen's turn around. He writes, in part:

Originally, Komen said Planned Parenthood was ineligible for grants because they were under congressional investigation. But they quickly abandoned that claim and moved to a more apolitical explanation: Planned Parenthood doesn�t directly provide mammography. "We have decided not to fund, wherever possible, pass-through grants," said Nancy Brinker, president of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. "We were giving them money, they were sending women out for mammograms."

...

If Komen had initially argued that they would no longer fund organizations that didn�t directly provide mammograms, they would, perhaps, have had an easier time explaining their decision. Of course, that might have meant defunding a much larger swath of organizations. It also would have meant changing their recommendations to women.

...

The likelier explanation, as Kate Sheppard has persuasively argued, is that the shifting rationales behind Komen�s decision imply that the decision to defund Planned Parenthood was based on either political or ideological considerations regarding abortion. But because many of Komen�s funders are pro-choice, it couldn�t be described that way. Hence the hunt for alternative justifications, and the eventual apology and putative reversal.

The core of Kate Sheppard's argument is the following list:

Anti-abortion groups leading the campaign against Komen's Planned Parenthood funding may have been tipped off to the decision well before it was public.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported that the decision was about abortion and that Handel was involved. The story has not been corrected or retracted.

Komen did not cancel a grant to Pennsylvania State University despite the university being the target of a federal investigation, which was the original reason Komen cited for ending the Planned Parenthood grant.

Anti-abortion groups are also declaring victory in their parallel attempts to pressure Komen on embryonic stem cell research, another hot-button issue. Anti-abortion groups have targeted Komen for providing funding to any medical institution that also conducts that type of research (even if Komen isn't directly funding it). A few weeks ago, Texas Right to Life flagged a Komen press release from late November explicitly stating that they don't support research that involves "destroying a human embryo" and have never funded that type of research. Both Life News and the National Catholic Register noted the Komen release on Wednesday evening, and Life News reported further that Komen appears to have also ended grants to institutions that conducts embryonic stem cell research. The link to the press release on the Komen site is dead now, and the press release is no longer posted in their media section. The organization did not respond immediately to a request for comment on whether they've changed their policy on this topic as well.

[1] Here's Lou Reed, writing about how the good people tried to help him with electroshock therapy in the song Kill Your Sons:

All your two-bit psychiatrists
are giving you electroshock
They said, they'd let you live at home with mom and dad
instead of mental hospitals
But every time you tried to read a book
you couldn't get to page 17
'Cause you forgot where you were
so you couldn't even read

Don't you know they're gonna kill your sons

Here's the song:

Why I Like Romney

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 10:59:28 -0600

I remember the 1980 presidential election. I remember that liberal-minded people were thrilled that the Republicans had nominated Ronald Reagan. And then he won, and the United States has been on a constant ride to more inequality that I fear eventually leads to some form of neo-fascism (admittedly, pro-Isreal fascism).

So I haven't been too excited with the prospect of Newt Gingrich getting the Republican nomination. It just stinks too much of 1980. What really bothers me is the Teflon issue. Reagan was called the "Teflon President" because nothing ever stuck to him. The most obvious case was the Iran-Contra Affair where Reagan's actions were treasonous.[1] Newt Gingrich seems to have the same Teflon coating.

Gingrich has terrible things in his past. And yet: no one cares. That's all in the past. That was all before he found God. Except... that he was raised Lutheran. Publicly, he has always claimed to be a good Christian. Why should we believe him now? Or more to the point: why should Christians believe him now?

I think the answer is clear. Conservative Christians believe Gingrich now because he is saying what they want to hear. And this has nothing to do with religion. What they want to hear is that abortion is bad, war is good, and the United States is "special."

It is a common liberal complaint that Jesus was very often talking about the poor, but most Christians in America are only interested in making woman carry their pregnancies to term. But the situation is much worse than this. In general, Christians (the conservative ones and those are the majority of the serious ones) don't give a damn about the poor. In fact, I think that's why the abortion (And birth control!) issue resonates so well for them: it is another way to keep the poor down. And they hate women, of course.

So I see Newt being a very dangerous candidate. When enough people say that it is unfair to talk about the man's long and varied history of personal and private corruption, the media will pick up on it. They will make it so it can't be talked about. And then, you're living in Newt's world.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a terrible candidate. I think that Obama will eat them alive at the debates. I think the campaign will be able to tar Romney as a vulture capitalist, if Romney hasn't done it for them by the general election.

So I like Romney!

[1] Of course, two Republican presidents after him also committed treason, so what's the big deal? Bush Sr. was even more involved in Iran-Contra than Reagan. And Bush Jr. had that little Social Security Privatization (Sorry: Personalization!) Tour where he repeatedly questioned the full faith and credit of the nation he was nominally leading. Oh! And Clinton got a blow job: impeach that man!

Death of the Liberal Class

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 22:31:01 -0600

I just picked up Chris Hedges' Death of the Liberal Class. It is an excellent book. He argues that the liberal class—basically, the professional class—has traditionally served as a counterbalance to corporate power. Over the past many decades, however, the corporate class has eroded and corrupted the liberal class so that it is now too small and too beholden to corporate interests to serve this critical function. But Hedges isn't naive. He knows that the liberal class has always been in important ways dependent upon corporate power. The compelling case he makes is that a system that was always fragile has crumbled to bits, only to be replaced with corporate power alone. It is well worth reading.

Here he is sounding a lot like a reasonable me:

In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements, making the liberal class a useful component within the power elite.

But the assault by the corporate state on the democratic state has claimed the liberal class as one of its victims. Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite. And reducing the liberal class to courtiers or mandarins, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, shuts off this safety valve and forces discontent to find other outlets that often end in violence.

The inability of the liberal class to acknowledge that corporations have wrested power from the hands of citizens, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have become irrelevant, and that the phrase consent of the governed is meaningless, has let it speaking and acting in ways that no longer correspond to reality. It has lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that democratic debate and choice continue to exist.