Whose internet?
Recently, the UN has been debating the issue of internet control. The question, of course, is why the United States has it and other governments do not (though Slate's
Adam Penenberg righly points out, "the idea that the United States 'controls the Internet'—or could control the Internet—through ICANN is a canard" because the internet is very much an independent, disaggregated, and uncontrollable entity). Penenberg is certainly right, which might render the whole debate rather moot in the long run.
Still, for the sake of argument and perhaps also because I find something compelling in the idea, I'm going to take sides in this one. And, perhaps much to the surprise of those who know me as an ardent internationalist, I'm siding with the United States.
It is of course arguable--quite compellingly arguable--that the internet is primarily a social good. As such, it seems, the UN might indeed be the natural administrator and governor of the net. Moreover, the internet is a rather strange entity, unlike other commodities in that monopoly makes it work not more sluggishly, but better. If we had 15 different competing, unconnected worldwide computer networks, we'd each have access to far less information, and the whole thing would be less useful. This is a ridiculous idea anyway; the nature of the net is such that a single person's computer could serve to link two separate networks--and it seems near impossible that this wouldn't happen given a parallel network of any size. The upshot? There is one internet, for all practical purposes, and it's not like the UN could construct (or purchase) a different one for the non-Americans on this earth who don't want to be bound by ICANN's internet laws.
But here's the thing. ICANN doesn't really make internet laws--at least, not in the way that the UN is thinking. ICANN is a technical body. Its systems let us type in domain names instead of number strings in our internet search bars, and its rules organize different websites into the .gov, .edu, .ca, .org, and .uk varieties. They don't do a darned thing about the content of sites posted at these names, though. And while its true that no government or organization is likely to be able to control the internet's content, bad governance COULD undermine the net so as to make it practically useless. The main problem, after all, is neither hostile governments nor pretensions to content control; it is rather the more mundane problem of bad convention-building.
Here's what I mean. What makes the internet such a valuable tool is its relative order alongside its popular accessibility.
Wikipedia might be seen as a microcosm of the internet itself (and as such it will, I hope, serve as a valuable example); there are commonly agreed upon rules and standards which govern the writing of Wikipedia articles, and which make the site searchable, predictable, and useful--but anybody can update the articles and add their knowledge, which makes it a wonderful and, indeed, useful repository of facts, fiction, and stories. What we need--and largely what we have--is a balance between order and information. The problem with government regulation (whether that means regulation by a heavy-handed US government or regulation by a UN body) is that politicians and diplomats may have a lot to say about the implications of internet control, but very little to say about practical code-writing, domain-name organization, or suggested internet standards that keep the whole thing from degenerating into an unusable bit-filled chaos.
I would see nothing wrong with handing internet control, such as it is, over to a government that truly wanted to control and improve the organization and structure of the internet (though they'd have to realize that much of this control takes the form of practical suggestions that make the internet easier to navigate, and not actual legally-binding rules). But others can already do that (though why they'd want to remains a question); you
could build a parallel number reader that would take an IP address and show "Gobbledegook On The Net" instead of "www.google.com"--and this would be wholly legal (with absolutely no question if you happened to be located outside of the United States--and, within, doesn't the US have legal power domestically?). You could create an organization to list and label all the addresses already listed and labelled by ICANN, assigned with the new names. You could therefore use today's information to create whole new styles of web browsers and whole new organizational schemes. The point isn't that it can't be done, then, but that the UN doesn't feel like starting from scratch. And for good reason: ICANN's system works. Well, fine, so let's do it ICANN's way. But that gives the international community no right to take it over.
For what it's worth, I will say that ICANN is already a highly internationalist institution, employing people from all over to help make routing and domain name control reasonably intuitive for and compatible with systems owned by people the whole world over. Disbanding it, or simply moving it under UN auspices, at best won't have much effect; at worst it may lead to a much less usable internet. And besides, ICANN (or some similar body) has to be located somewhere in the physical world, and the truth is that it seems obviously better that that somewhere be here in a rich and stable United States than in Tunisia or China or someplace where actual internet bullying may take place or where, perhaps more frighteningly, ICANN servers could fail (which would halt domain name assignment). Perhaps we could nominally declare ICANN offices to be on UN property, but there doesn't seem to be much substance in the change. In short, if the UN wants to be in charge of the internet while making few or no changes in the practical work of ICANN, then I don't see the point and I fear possible future consequences of meddlesome governance. And if the idea is instead to make real changes while disbanding ICANN's current organization in the process, then I confess that I
am worried.
But the real truth is, I don't think UN member states are actually concerned about the technical and organizational state of the internet. (In fact, neither is the US government, which is a very good thing.) The biggest problem seems simply to be that ICANN is a public-private not-for-profit nominally acting under the auspices of the US government. Well, so why don't we just set it free? Get rid of that annoying public-private partnership status and let ICANN float alone like an NGO or an unafilliated company. It can remain a not-for-profit, but let's get rid of the governmental ties. Perhaps that would soothe the restless minds, without turning the internet into a big mess. Moreover, it would allow ICANN free motion; if in fact the US government started passing problematic or restrictive laws, ICANN could relocate to another place. (Note that this is a far harder thing for an overcontrolled UN institution to do; UNESCO can't just pick up and move to Zurich or Mexico City and declare itself free of UN rules, after all.)
So this is a joint call, I guess: to the UN, to not mess too much with the wonderfully democratic and populist thing that is the internet; and to the US government, to stop laying a claim to ICANN and just to let it live peaceably within our borders and subject to US law.
(Just out of curiosity, I know I have regular readers in Canada, the UK, and Malaysia. Comments?)
Flying NYC
Best Cheap Thrill in NYC:
The Roosevelt Island TramBefore a wintry chill set in, I played softball on Roosevelt Island (technically a part of Queens) a few times. To get there, I'd always hop on the F Train near my office and emerge into daylight on the island. For the cost of a subway fare, though, you can instead take the commuter tram at 59th and 2nd. That's how I got home after the games.
The tram has got to be the awesomest cheap thrill that New York has to offer. A friend remarks, "it's like a helicopter ride through the city," and he's right. From high in the air you can see the MetLife building, the Chrysler building, and the Empire State building. You sail over the East River and the Queensboro Bridge, with an excellent view of a part of Yorktown to the north. The whole thing only lasts a minute or two, but, come on, you only paid two bucks for the privilege.
Here's what I don't get. People who live on Roosevelt Island take this ride every day. Every day! They sit there and read their papers, they forget to look out the windows, they get annoyed that the trip is taking so long. I mean, I know this is a part of the daily commute, but come
on. We people are so easily jaded, so swift to be discontented. I'd like to think that I would look out the windows every day if that were my commute. But then, I note, I don't pay attention to the subway which I do ride every day.
Still, flying high above the city seems somehow different than shuttling around deep within its tunneled-out bowels. It's freer, more open... and more unusual.
Contra Dancing
Last Saturday,
LRand cajoled me into going out to eat and then contra dancing immediately thereafter. My goodness it was great! (I have just been told that LRand beat me to the punch and has already posted a write-up
here. Oh well.)
I love dancing. Contra dancing is particularly fun, because you don't have to know anything but how to follow a lead in order to get in the dance steps... and because there's room for improvisation. The basic steps are outlined at the beginning of each dance, but there's generally time for an extra twirl here, a sneaky double-time step there. It's LOTS of fun. I'd never been contra dancing before, but I really enjoyed myself. (It couldn't have hurt that the music was
excellent folk, played by a fine live band on a stage at the front of the room.)
The other great thing about contra dancing (at least at this particular venue), a thing which just isn't true at balls or proms or homecoming dances, or at Salsa night at the Ithaca club Common Ground, or even in most dance classes, is that you really, truly don't need to bring a partner. Everybody is expected to switch partners for every dance. Of course you
might favor somebody with two dances in a night (gasp! but there is a closing waltz for just that purpose, it seems), but you'd
never stay with a single partner all night long (even if you're married to that partner!). The culture of the dance is one of great inclusivity. It is a group project, and a really fun one.
No highfalutin observations here. Merely, I'm not sure I've ever had such fun dancing (though a particular swing dance does come to mind as close competition). I will
definitely be going back!
Power to the People?
I was asked today who my heroes were. (Actually, the question was originally, "Can you tell us one of your heroes from the 21st century?") I couldn't name anybody. It's appalling.
Certainly, there are many people I admire greatly--the names Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Ghandi were suggested to me, and they certainly fall into the category of great people who did great things. I don't much subscribe to a "Great Man" view of history, though, and this makes naming heroes difficult. I can list several great leaders whom I admire: John McCain, for his convictions and moral uprightness; Bismarck, who managed an amazing excercise in the balance of power and who managed to unify Germany in the 18th C; Washington, who defined what it was to be a democratic President (after the American model); Pericles, the great rhetorician who led Athens through a golden age; and certainly Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi, both of whom managed to radically change their respective political systems to give voice to the unrepresented in society.
The thing is, it's hard for me to think that somebody wouldn't eventually have each done these things. The English and Germans may forever squabble over whether it was Newton or Leibniz who discovered calculus--but the truth remains, in my mind at least, that the state of physics and math was such that the time was right for the development of a mathematics of continuous functions. If it wasn't Newton, it was Leibniz; if it wasn't Leibniz, it was Newton; if it wasn't either of them, I am sure that somebody (or several somebodies) would have come along in a few years' time and worked out the functions anew. And this is how I feel about most of these "heroes": there had to be a first President, and if it wasn't Washington, it would have been somebody else--somebody who would have shaped the Presidency differently, to be sure, but who knows whether or not our country would not be better off for it? The civil rights movement needed to happen, desperately, and the Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a brilliant man and an amazing orater, as well as an excellent organizer. But if he hadn't been there, would the movement still have taken form? I hope so--and I think so, also.
Of course, there must be SOMETHING in these people that makes them the leaders who actually did emerge. It may be that the time was ripe for calculus, or a unified Germany, or whatever, but it still happens that particular individuals were, whether by chance, or motivation, or an accident of birth, on the front lines of those events. I myself have a strong desire to improve the lot of the people in my country and the world at large--and what is this drawing on if not some belief that, at some level, I as an individual actually can make a difference (and perhaps even a large one)?
I'm stumped. I'm thinking. Maybe the point is that we shouldn't overly privilege a view of history that says, "Let us learn about Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Louis XIV, Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, Mao Zedong, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, and then we're done with history"--but at the same time we can't forget those people, either. They did, after all, do VERY important things. And perhaps they did them because they were particularly impressive (if not necessarily good) individuals.
Is Neutrality Necessarily Good?
Condoleezza Rice has
earned my respect with her
recent negotiations in the Middle East. Not that I haven't thought her a smart woman and a shrewd political actor in the past, but now I have finally been convinced that she is highly competent and that she has the ability to do what she thinks should be done, with the convictions to back it up.
That's not to say I always agree with her convictions, though.
I used to pride myself on a kind of political neutrality. I wanted to look at candidates individually, on their merits, and not simply as a product of their party platforms. I'm still registered with no party affiliation, but I wonder: did Bush sour me on that neutrality? I now tend to view members of his party--nationally prominent ones, at least--with a strong skepticism at the start, and they have to prove their abilities for me to grant them real respect. I'd rather give everybody the benefit of the doubt, though, presuming at first that they deserve the respect due their office--and only revoking it once I've seen them do something stupid, immoral, or incompetently. I think that's still how I view and judge individual Dems. It doesn't seem quite right, though. Partisan bickering, without thought and a willingness to grant the good arguments and abilities of the other side, is no great boon to this (or any) country.
Wilde about art
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
So was Oscar Wilde a proponent of Aestheticism, or was he not?
I mean, those two lines--the first two lines of the preface to Wilde's only novel,
The Picture of Dorian Grey--argue strongly in the affirmative. And, certainly, during his lifetime, Wilde was known as a man who privileged art over all else. He was a dandy and a wit, and he concerned himself with being interesting and clever, and with creating art and beauty and amusement. He strongly rejected the Victorian (and Platonic) notion that art should serve a social or moral purpose: "Vice and virtue are to the artist [merely] materials for an art," he tells us, and, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
But if this is the case, then what on earth is Wilde doing with
The Picture of Dorian Grey? I mean, Wilde creates a character that seems to embody his aesthetic ideal. Dorian is a "fascinating," "beautiful," and "perpetually young" member of English society. He is seduced by the promise of a life of beauty and sensuality, and he indulges himself in any number of pleasures. He is able to look upon the most horrific scenes with a kind of amoral (not necessarily
immoral, mind) aesthetic satisfaction; in his first major exploit of this sort, he dismisses his deadly cruelty towards (the ominously named) Sybil Vane as merely "the wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded.... It has been a marvelous experience. That is all." (It is, perhaps, worth noting that Dorian's cruelty in this case was caused by aesthetic agonies, too: "I was bored," he tells Sybil after watching her final performance. "You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art." When Sybil acts poorly, though--because, she says, she cannot act the mere shadows of a love that now she understands in its true glory--Dorian responds not by understanding love but rather by falling out of love with her. Sybil is nothing to him without her acting, without her art. True love is grotesque to him; its masterfully-executed artistic representation is beautiful.) When Dorian comes to view Sybil's death as the realization of an aesthetic ideal, instead of as the horrific result of his own moral failings, we see that he has himself become a particular kind of aesthetic ideal. He is the perfect realization of the pure Aesthete, a man who lives for enjoyment and passion, for beauty and youth and a perpetually interesting life.
We might expect Wilde to idealize Dorian's life, since in his own life he seems to have idealized the aesthetic principles that drive his character. Yet the moral of
Dorian Grey seems to be the rather Aristotelian idea that man in fact
cannot succeed in living the beautiful life separate from the good life. If this is unexpected, it is also surprisingly refreshing; it is pleasant to reflect that beauty alone does not atone for one's sins (though
that may be a highly problematic conflation of aesthetic and moral sense!).
To be sure, Dorian tries to separate soul and body, morality and sensuality. He
wants to live an aesthetic life, to privilege only the latter of each of those pairs. And, indeed, he nearly succeeds in separating the two, in acting for sensuous reasons while disregarding morality. Dorian never quite manages the disaggregation, though, and he goes through several periods of anger, fear, unhappiness, guilt, and conscience when he remembers (or is shown) his moral failings. If Dorian is trying to live a purely aesthetic and therefore conscience-free life, he is in the end a miserable failure.
But what about the message from members of "society?" Sure, Dorian fails by his own lights, but in social circles he is constantly held up as a kind of ideal. He truly is perpetually interesting, always lovely, a splendid pianist and delightful flirt. Yet Dorian's social acceptance is based on naive misunderstanding; others--Lord Henry excepted, perhaps (but perhaps not)--think not that Dorian has succeeded in pushing morality aside, but rather that he represents the perfect melding of beauty and goodness. If they hold him up as a kind of ideal, then, it is only because they are deluded by his beauty and their own conviction that such outward delicacy could not hide so horrible a soul.
There is an interesting thematic tangle here. On the one hand, Wilde's novel questions the authenticity of appearances, and suggests that members of society are naive to judge Dorian's character by his looks. After all, Lady Narborough's pronouncement to Dorian that "you are made to be good--you look so good" rings obviously false for those of us who know the vices of Dorian's day-to-day existence. Her equation of beauty and virtue, we realize, is clearly misguided. Yet on the other hand,
A Picture of Dorian Grey simultaneously reaffirms the idea that, for most of us, appearance
does betray morality. After all, while Dorian's face never turns savage, nor cruel, nor grotesque, this is only due to his extraordinary (and unbelievable) circumstances. When it comes to everybody else, however, Wilde seems to imply that we in fact
can judge by appearance. We wear the burdens of our souls upon our faces, and the ugly is the bedfellow of the immoral. Only when one's soul becomes, like Dorian's, a feature of a painting (instead of a feature of our person) is this not true.
This is a tangle that is never resolved. Is Wilde truly suggesting that, for the non-Dorian Greys in the world, beauty and goodness are practically interchangeable, and that one is a stand-in for the other? This is the implication, but it seems to be belied by the rest of the novel. Perhaps the only resolution (and a weak one at that) is that the two are linked, if not precisely the same thing. Just as Dorian cannot live an aesthetic life while removing himself completely from the cares of morality and virtue, then, others cannot privilege morality without showing it in their carriage, in their expressions, and on their faces.
If on the one hand
The Picture of Dorian Grey is a book about the impossibility of the purely aesthetic life, though, it is also a book about the terrible consequences of putting too much reality into art. Just as man is inherently a moral creature, Wilde seems to be saying, art is an inherently aesthetic endeavor. And since the artist's goal is to create "beautiful things," to "reveal art and conceal the artist," then Hallowell's picture of Dorian Grey is a grand artistic failure. It is a technical masterwork, to be sure, but even Hallowell knows from the first that he has committed an offense against art; before ever seeing the picture with its grotesque changes, he is aware that he has put "too much of himself" into the painting, that it is too expressive, too Romantic, too emotionally connected. It was painted to express a kind of joy and inspiration felt by the artist, and not to amuse others or to show them unadulterated beauty. This is too personal, Hallowell knows; though the painting is beautiful, its object is not beauty, and so it is not what art should be. And this becomes all the more true as the painting changes to reveal Dorian in all his truthful perversion. In representing Dorian this way, the work becomes itself a grotesque object, if an accurate portrayal of what Dorian
should look like. But art is not meant to be accurate; it is meant to be beautiful. Such a picture, it is clear, is a failure.
We see, then, a neat reversal in this book. The painting is the possessor of a conscience or soul, and its appearance reflects a moral instead of aesthetic state. Dorian, on the other hand, is the possessor of eternal beauty, a man who is neither moral nor immoral but who is unfailingly sensual, interesting, beautiful, and "well-written" (an apt description for a literary character). Neither artwork nor man succeeds in this reversed function, however. The painting appears ugly and so it is horrific; the man acts immorally and so he is horrific. While good art is amoral and good men may be ugly, neither painting nor person is any good at all in
Dorian Grey. In the end, then, we are left with the conviction that one cannot--
ought not--live life as art (though we may be less convinced that art should be merely beautiful, or at least interesting). To be sure, we, like Dorian, can base our actions primarily on aesthetic considerations--but this is inhuman, degrading, and ugly in a man. Dorian indulges in hedonism and aesthetic pleasure left and right; he justifies cruelty and immorality (as well as kindness and friendship) by their beauty and the sensual joys he derives from them--but in the end even he cannot escape his conscience. Indeed, one last desperate attempt to do so is his undoing: he tries to ruin the painting that has served as the repository of all his sins, the reminder of his moral failings and the embodiment of his spiritual hideousness--but in doing so, he only ruins himself. Those moral failings are his own, and if he destroys them he destroys himself.
Having written this veritable tome (well, not a tome, and so not veritable: a complete misuse of language), I find that I emerge with no good sense of Wilde's ideal life. Is it primarily aesthetic? That would jibe with my conception of Wilde's own life and his self-professed affinity for the Aestheticist movement. But clearly Dorian Grey, the aesthete extraordinaire, lives a contemptible and unhappy life, and dies a horrible death. Wilde's own life aside, that seems a near-impossible reading of this particular text.
Perhaps, though, Wilde is advocating a kind of tempered aestheticism, a vaguely moral (if only for practical purposes?), primarily indulgent life. This seems to describe the life the Wilde actually lived (as opposed to the one that he theoretically advocated, above), and it is not without a grounding in the novel: for those readers who object to my bringing Wilde-the-author into the discussion of a text which may have little or nothing to do with his personal beliefs, I point to Lord Henry Wotton as a textual example of this ideal. Lord Henry is a wit and a charmer, and it is he who in many ways leads Dorian down his hedonistic and sensual path. Henry is enamored of the aesthetic, and propounds radical theories of art, morality, and truth. Yet he is largely playing an intellectual game with these theories; he is most certainly not living by them. Though Henry says he is a hedonist (and he indeed may believe in hedonistic ideals), and though he purports to dismiss morality as an acceptable justification for action (preferring to justify things by their beauty or interest value), he leads a relatively conventional and unexciting life. Where Dorian finds pleasure in the practice of his hedonism, Lord Henry finds pleasure in its theory. Under this reading, then, Wilde may simply be cautioning us not to go too far in our pursuit of the aesthetic, even as he urges us to privilege the sensual and the beautiful. The problem is, Lord Henry is never made out as an impressive character; indeed, he is hardly even a well-rounded character. Henry doesn't develop, and he doesn't seem to understand the moral and practical implications of his ideals. If in fact Wilde means to suggest a tempered aestheticism, then, he manages do so only weakly. It is not the obvious message to take home from this book.
Alternatively, and in many ways far more plausibly,
The Picture of Dorian Grey is written as an argument
against a life lived in pursuit primarily of the beautiful. After all, Dorian's own life is a failure, and he dies enraged, unhappy, guilt-racked, and painfully. Even were we to accept his life on his own (aesthetic) terms and so not be horrified by Dorian's many terrible actions, we cannot escape the fact that Dorian is several times dreadfully unhappy, and that he dies an unhappy man in the end. Is the novel then reserving the aesthetic as the exclusive sphere of art, and suggesting that it is rather morality that is natural to man and necessary for man's happiness? Does the book ultimately extol virtue? But that seems at odds with Wilde's own life, and I am not of the school that thinks his life to be wholly irrelevant to the work that he has produced. Moreover, the book itself certainly implies that a moral life lacking aesthetic consideration would be boring and unpleasurable at best, and worthless at worst.
The final possibility, of course, is that the book suggests that we embrace a happy medium that exists somewhere in the space between the aesthetic and the moral. But then why condemn Dorian so emphatically? Merely as a lesson against his extreme aestheticism? There is no equally strong lesson against living an extreme moral life, however, even if there is the hint that such a life would be boring and therefore unexciting for one's friends. If this is where
Dorian Grey leaves us, it does so uninspiringly.
So what are we to learn from Dorian Grey and his sad existence? Was Wilde a proponent of the hedonistic, passionate, sensuous life, or of a kind of considered, intellectual Aestheticism? Or was he recanting these ideals (which seems both the most obvious reading of the novel and the most unlikely explanation of it)? Or could it have been that Wilde was merely tempering his formerly strong statements about the primacy and desirability of a life lived for art's sake, suggesting that morality has an important role, too? (I might point out that this last option could have served as a kind of hedge against public sentiment that was turning against his own "immorality"--and which led to a trial in which
A Picture of Dorian Grey was ultimately used as evidence for Wilde's "gross indecency" (read: homosexuality).)
Of course, Wilde himself would probably tell us--art for art's sake, forget the interpretation and the attempts to draw moralizing ideals, and just enjoy the book, damn it!
Still, it seems disingenuous to simply dismiss the questions that Wilde so explicitly raises. If nothing else, how are we to be interesting, witty, and intellectual, if we are not supposed to think?
Vote!
Today is voting day in myriad places across the country. If it's voting day where you are, for goodness's sake,
get out and VOTE!
Television Product-ions
The most recent Economist has an
interesting article highlighting the return of product placement in movies and on TV. Why? Because with TiVo and webcasts, viewers are increasingly more likely to fast-forward past the ads. It's no use having a great advertisement if nobody watches it.
Much of the Economist's focus is on proposed legislation in EU countries in order to allow more product placement. As it is, many of these countries have heretofore subscribed to the premise that it's one thing to be explicitly sold a product, and another to be implicitly or subliminally sold a product while you think what you are doing is watching a TV show. The move to change this attitude is afoot primarily because European broadcasters are losing the advertising revenue that largely keeps them afloat (and, we presume, this trend will only be magnified as the technology improves and becomes even more popularly accessible). The Economist points out, rightly, that most European viewers watch American shows anyway (where such product placement is ubiquitous), so they're already getting the more subtle advertising that Europe fears. Moreover, says the Economist, viewing a TV show in which the main characters drink Name Brand Here Whiskey and eat Another Great Brand Potatoes is not that different from zipping by (and barely registering) a billboard or scrolling through an internet ad at the top of a web page you want to read.
All of these points may be true, and the arguments are not trivial. Still, I am left wondering if they actually make the case for increased and very subtle advertising. The Economist seems to dismiss getting "taken in" by these methods as a thing that only happens to the stupidest of people, or which is otherwise completely unimportant: "As they see the hero ply the compliant heroine with some seductive libation," the Economist writes, "sillier viewers may really believe that's the way to get sultry blondes into the sack.... As for people who believe the literal truth of what they see in soap operas--well, no amount of regulation can protect them from themselves." This last sentence is obviously true, but also a throw-away. After all, we are not concerned with people who believe the literal truth of what they see, but rather with the much more subtle intricacies of advertising.
We shouldn't so easily dismiss this stuff. I mean, advertising
works. That's why we do it. And while I have nothing strongly against advertising as a means of selling one's product, I do think it's worth considering whether we want to encourage continually blurring the lines between straightforward, no-strings-attached endorsement and paid advertising. After all, it is a very different thing to use, publicize, endorse, or tout a product for the simple reason that you like it and think it is a good product than to do the same when you have no particular affinity for the product, but rather because you're being paid. Allowing media outlets to do product placement may be economically sound (especially in a global world where networks have to compete against American companies that already reap those profits), but it also undermines the honest endorsement. If a TV show's characters wear certain clothes without receiving kickbacks, that tells us something real about the quality, cache, cost, or value of those clothes (even if that something is just "this is normal and unremarkable"). This isn't so when shows start to receive payments for their products (even if, in any particular case, the "endorsement" was unsolicited and unpaid).
Anyway, it seems like feeding a consumer culture is not always obviously good (though it may indeed be in the nature of television itself).
-----
UPDATE 11/11: This post has spurned further thoughts which you can read at
www.blackcrag.blogspot.com and
www.mayornot.com.
Rant, With Apologies
William Saletan has written
a well-informed and disturbing article that picks apart Alito's opinion in
Planned Parenthood v. Casey. I urge everybody to read it.
The truth is, a lot of the debate about Alito (or any Supreme Court nominee these days, it seems) is about the single issue of abortion. The
Planned Parenthood dissent, too, is being read in this way. Social conservatives are pleased to discover that Alito wants to make abortions more difficult to obtain; liberals are infuriated by his understanding of state interest over private rights.
The truth is, though, that
Planned Parenthood is not about abortion
per se. It isn't about the legality of abortion, or about protecting a developing fetus, or about the definitions of viable life. The case, and Alito's dissent, is plain and simple a case about women and their decision-making powers. What Alito does in
Casey is to argue in favor of a law requiring women to inform their husbands if they are going to have an abortion. Other laws might deal with when, legally, such an abortion may be obtained; the law in question (18 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 3209 (Supp.1991), which is, for reasons that escape me, "not available online from any official site") deals only with whether the woman has to implicitly ask permission if the abortion is
already legal.
Note those words:
ask permission. This is a case about whether or not women are thoughtful, reasonable, considering adults, or whether, like 10-year-olds, they cannot be trusted to look after their own good and must therefore confess to their husbands when they choose to do a completely legal thing. Importantly,
Casey is not, for example, a case about murder or crime against some unborn child. The legislature has already decided the circumstances under which an abortion is legal, and the circumstances under which it legally constitutes murder or some other crime. Having decided as a society that something is not wrong, can we trust a grown woman to make a rational decision
within that preexisting legal framework? The implication of Alito's dissent is that we cannot. (To be sure, abortion is a hot-button issue and where society--and legislatures, as representatives of society--stands may be up for grabs. Nonetheless,
Casey is simply about whether or not, insofar as abortion
is legal, a woman can be trusted to get one on her own.)
Now, surely it is true that we should want to curb the number of abortions out there. But why we should suggest that a woman's husband is more likely than the woman herself to make the "right" decision in the difficult case in which abortion is considered, or that he is more likely to protect either the woman or the fetus or both, is beyond me. We do not require grown adults (of any variety) to consult with others on any of their other legal actions--for the very good reason that we recognize that adults can make their own decisions (and face the consequences) themselves. If Alito is trying to protect women from some decision that they may regret in the future, then he is contravening this fundamental American principle of self-responsibility under a small, liberal (in the classic sense), and not overly protective government--and in the process he is saying that women can't be trusted in their decisions as much as men should be. This is patronizing, wrong, and indeed anti-American.
If, on the other hand, Alito's decision stems not from a desire to "protect" women but rather from a desire to limit the ease with which abortions can be had (which is, after all, the reading that all the pols and interest groups are giving it), then he has far o'erstepped the bounds of reasonable judicial restraint. After all, what is at issue in
Casey is not whether or not abortion is a good thing, or whether or not it should be legal (or under which circumstances it might be limited).
Casey is, remember, about a
notification law. If the premise of Alito's dissent stemmed from his simply deciding that abortion is wrong in some or all circumstances, then, this most certainly constitutes an instance of a judge treading on the toes of the legislature (which has allowed for legal abortion) and thereby legislating from the bench. (We should note here that in some cases, it is entirely appropriate for a judge to question the legality of abortion; those are cases, like
Roe v. Wade, in which the Constitutionality of abortion is explicitly at issue. Here it is not at issue, however, and for Alito to assume something that is in contradiction with the laws on the books is simply bad law.) In this case, Americans of all political stripes should be wary of Alito's self-professed hatred for "activist judges."
The fact is, I find Saletan's analysis compelling and Alito's decision both un-American and morally wrong. But even more strongly, I find myself annoyed by the weight that this single issue holds in American politics today. I simply can't understand why this issue alone is enough to persuade or dissuade such an enormous portion of the population that a nominee is suitable to sit in judgment on the Supreme Court. Don't get me wrong: I am no fan of Alito, as must be obvious by now. But I am at least as disturbed by his dissents that
"eviscerate" Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, that
allow people (not named on a warrant) to be strip searched by police who are looking for somebody else, and that
make it harder to bring claims of sexual discrimination in court, as I am of his opinions on abortion. How come we're not hearing about any of that stuff?
The Coffee Trader
So here's a question: How big is the market for the financial-historical fiction-mystery-romance genre of novel? Given David Liss's successes, it's got to be bigger than you'd think.
That said, I find Liss's writing style in
this book really annoying. He's done his research, and his plot is quite good, too. But of all the people to define a new popular genre, you'd think the one who succeeded would be able to grip as much with his words as with his tale.
But don't get me wrong:
The Coffee Trader is a good book and a fun read. Perhaps the reason why Liss's historical fiction is so successful, even though it
does spend an awful lot of time talking about financial markets, is that the economics merely form a backdrop to his characters. Sure, the novel features financial intrigue, loans and usury, plans to corner the coffee market, monopolies, futures, calls and puts and commodities... but these are the stuff of the daily life of its main characters, who are the real focus. You have to include this stuff, and understand it, to understand the lives of the traders in question--but really,
The Coffee Trader is a book about personal grudges, human instincts, desperation and misunderstandings.
It is also a book without a hero. The main character (Miguel Lienzo: good at heart, if also cruel and a criminal) is a person with whom we sympathize throughout the book. But by the end, he and we all know that he has acted badly and harmed nearly everybody who has tried to help him (without realizing, of course, that they were honest, or genuine, or helpful, or in danger). He has stolen his brother's wife; financially ruined both his brother and a potential friend; stiffed an honest(-ish) woman, causing her to flee town under pursuit; and contracted to have a true friend beaten to the point of losing an eye; among other things. It is not easy, however, to find these episodes tragic. After all, each of those parties was somehow guilty of one or another dishonesty or cruelty themselves, and we understand how it came to happen that Lienzo, through his own stupidity, stubbornness, righteous sense of revenge, and genuine good intentions, did all he did. Indeed, perhaps the moral of the story is that dishonesty is a recipe for disaster: by each having secrets and shady dealings, the main characters all allowed themselves to be used by another, still shadier character who was truly out to cause destruction (and who succeeded, as seems likely).
Perhaps the big problem with the book is that this
is a tragic ending. The machinations of the market--helped, of course, by one truly vengeful individual--have caused the (moral and physical, as well as economic) downfall of many well-intentioned people. One might expect to feel injustice, anger, or simple sadness at such an outcome. Instead, I found that I dismissed the book: "Eh, it's over. That was interesting enough." The plot was completely believable, but there was no sense of the upsetting and seemingly inevitable misfortune of "Death of a Salesman" or
Of Mice and Men.
That's unfortunate, because, like those works,
The Coffee Trader really is about the downfall of the common man. Lienzo has good intentions (if sometimes questionable means of realizing them): he wants to reach financial solvency, to help his friends, to worship well and to do good in God's eyes. In economic terms, it's true that he succeeds brilliantly--but he has been manipulated, and has done great wrongs by the end of the book. His failings, then, are primarily moral--but these are, to him, of the utmost importance (his criminality notwithstanding). In the final scene, we see him standing alone in his doorframe, crushed, having discovered that he was the bad guy all along. It should be a scene that reminds us of our imperfections, and of how the world can play tricks on us, and of that oft-mentioned road to Hell and the intentions that pave it. It should be a scene that makes us identify with Lienzo's pain, and understand it as concievably our own. (And this is not ridiculous; after all, we have been identifying with Lienzo for the entirety of the book.) It should be a scene that emphasizes a certain amount of terrible futility in trying to live a good life or to do right by those who have helped you, as well as the problems of focusing too intensely on wealth (even if you are living a wretched kind of life).
In fact, it is none of these things. What the final scene is, frankly, is just an aesthetically pleasing word-picture of a man standing in a doorway while his maid cooks a meal behind him.
