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This American Lie

Maybe it's just a matter of timing - I didn't see it until late Friday afternoon, and the paid blogosphere does seem to cut out before Happy Hour on Fridays - but I'm surprised that the exposure of Mike Daisey as something of a fraud isn't resonating more on the right.

That may sound odd, but bear with me.

The discrediting of NPR has been an odd hobbyhorse of the right's most ardent screechers, something about the confluence of soothing voices, liberal boilerplate, and perceived objectivity, from what I can tell (roll that all up in a ball and you get... Nina Totenberg). James O'Keefe, in one of his more amusing sideshows, helped take out the head of fundraising at NPR with a tape of a conversation with a fake Middle Eastern investor, which led to a stunning series of off-point comments from senior officials at NPR that mostly made matters worse. NPR was also at the center of the Juan Williams "scandal", in which Williams was dropped as a commentator after telling Bill O'Reilly that he harbored suspicions that Muslims on his flights were possibly terrorists. 

Given all that, surely someone on the right will spend the weekend chortling as This American Life, one of NPR's most popular shows, has had to retract its most popular podcast, an episode recorded with Mike Daisey about Apple's dubious record manufacturing iPads and iPhones in China. Adapted from his monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" garnered a lot of attention, and started a string of modestly bad press for Apple, which has tried to minimize the fallout while trying to beef up standards at its plants (and I say "modestly bad" because none of it has really hurt Apple's sales or profits). 

Daisey's claims - that Apple's plants were rife with child workers and exposure to dangerous chemicals, among other horrendous practices - had been questioned by knowledgable reporters (though the practices were also confirmed by their reporting), but it wasn't until this week that Marketplace, PRI's business show (also on NPR), found Daisey's chinese translator who was with him on that trip, who said much of what Daisey claimed to witness - speaking to child workers, or observing workers injured from chemical exposure - never happened. Daisey calls it "dramatic license", now, and TAL is red faced.

But this isn't really just about This American Life; the New York Times has already had to issue its own correction to an online op-ed Daisey wrote making similar claims, and the Associated Press is looking at retracting coverage they did of Daisey on the topic as well. Others will surely follow. Even New York's Public Theater, where Daisey's show has been running, had to issue a statement generally supporting Daisey, but admitting that the show is not exactly entirely accurate (and that's okay, cause that's how drama works. Or something).

Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this - this is a "Mainstream Media" disaster of large proportions, undermining a popular storyline (corporate malfeasance! Cheap Chinese manufacturing practices! Labor rights!) that the right already can't stand. And this, really, is a classic unforced error: no James O'Keefe fakery needed, no dicey ideologue like Juan Williams to make the scapegoat. This was, as Ira Glass admitted, simply shoddy journalism that tends to undermine the credibility of a show like This American Life - failing to ask basic questions, check primary sources, or to make sure that information was fully confirmed. It doesn't help that TAL often comes off as smug, slightly sanctimonious, and hipper than thou on most topics it covers; this was hubris waiting for a fall.

Conservatives may shy away form this because it is, after all, Apple; on the one hand, an emblem of exactly the kind of capitalism they want to enshrine, while at the same time, a do-gooder sort of firm that liberals love to shop because it seems hip and cool and socially conscious. Embracing the discrediting of Daisey, when Apple still faces unpleasant questions about its corporate actions and conditions in factories, could easily be a two-edged sword, and it may just be that conservatives miss the connections: all that raling against MSM and bad journalism is less potent when there's no obvious political payoff.

On the other hand, it's the very clean spin of the Daisey case that I think should give lefty defenders of NPR through the previous scandals some pause: it's one thing to have been pranked by O'Keefe and his ilk, it's no fun having to defend the notion that Juan Williams didn't deserve all of what he got... but the through-line here is much like the unraveling of the NYT after Jayson Blair: lying to your editors shouldn't be this easy, and it's just arrogance to have missed the signs that this report was seriously flawed. Many lefties will, no doubt, want to take the line that Daisey's real disaster is undermining the efforts to investigate Chinese factories. But this, really, amounts to "he may have stretched the truth, but he wasn't wrong" and that's not true. This wasn't stretching, it was fabrication and falsehoods. Journalism can't let that stand. And NPR, as a whole and not just on one program, probably needs to reexamine its mission and how that mission is pursued. 

Most imortantly, though, is that listeners probably need to also ak more questions, and take less reporting at face value. That's the reality of our current American Lives.

Okay, This Really Is The Gayest Beer Commercial. Ever.

Okay, I wouldn't usually go there with this, but the past 36 hours I've been having YouTube trouble (and it's related to having FireFox trouble, but I'm back to using Safari), and I didn't see this thing when I first tried to find it. This is totally NSF... well, everywhere, or anything, but definitely NSFW, I think. If I was still drinking beer, though, I think I'd have to at least go buy a six pack of theirs. Or something.

 

 

And So This Is Christmas... And What Have You Done?

Christmas has been, like much this year, a little weird, but also somehow just right. I've felt quite "spirited", full of Chistmas cheer and joy, pretty much since Thanksgiving (and even a little before that, once we decorated the store). And yet, here we are, two days out... and we don't have a tree, and a lot of other work has yet to be done.

I'm pretty sure, without looking, that I mention my love of Christmas each year; it's a family tradition, it's my Swedish heritage, and it's the optimistic kid inside of me, all rolled up. Working in retail - which has been a pretty consistent thread of my adult working life - can really grind the Christmas spirit right out of you. Us salesgirls are a hardened lot. Yet somehow, as if on cue, I hear carols and see decorations, a little switch inside me gets switched on.

And it helps to remember what's really important about Christmas and the season. In our way, the people I know who are serious about a life in retail, kind of share this notion: Christmas is so not about the things and the shopping and the decorations in October. If you can't get beyond that, if Christmas doesn't live somewhere besides the mall... I think one is bound to be disappointed, at some point in life.

One of my customers has been on pins and needles, waiting to see if her County government job would be saved from massive budget cuts, and that her county subsidized living arrangement wouldn't also go away. Yesterday, we got the final good news: her job is secure, at least for now, and she took the big step of finding a new home and is now just settling in. It is, as they say, a Christmas miracle.

I'm afraid I'm something of a traditionalist when it comes to the calendar year; I see the year ending and the new year coming and somehow, this time of year is all endings and beginnings, sum-ups and fresh starts. It's kind of obvious, kind of cliche... yet that's the pattern I see, over and over. I get to December, and my mind just starts to take stock. And plan for the next start.

As I've said, in some ways this has been a very weird, very hard year - emotionally and economically tough, full of strange endings and fresh uncertainties. This year has also been a real test of just how thoroughly I can keep up with my self-assigned task of writing continually and consistently. But here I am, at the end of the year, and I find myself focused on what remains: the good that exists, the joys that highlght my daily routines, the love I have and can freely share. As much as I don't love Lennon's Christmas carol (and this year, I realized, for the first time... it's not Yoko's fault), I find myself, for once, appreciating his song and it's simple opening. So this is Christmas... I hope you had fun.

I did, and I will.

The Payroll Tax Break Is Kind Of Dumb. And So Is Not Extending It.

So a while back, the Democrats wanted to pass a tax break for "working families" (I'm sorry, I am a lifelong Democrat and I will stand up and cheer when someone, someday, kills off the phrase "working families". It just makes my teeth grate), and they came up with this kind of silly idea: they would lower the payroll tax.

It's a dumb idea because, first, the payroll tax is the funding mechanism for Social Security. This is the same Social Security that politicians like to claim is in "danger" when it isn't- though funding Social Security payouts long term has some fiscal problems... in any case, the way to keep Social Security solvent does not involve underfunding it.

That's okay, one can reply, because the Payroll Tax Cut had a funding mechanism in which the lost revenues are replaced by "general funds". This is usually called Robbing Peter To Pay Paul, or in this case, using tax receipts collected for one purpose to pay for other tax receipts that should have been collected but weren't, while borrowing money to make up for the shortfall.

This is really dumb. This is why department stores won't let you buy gift certificates, and then use the gift certificates to pay off your department store credit card bill.

Anyway, it's also a dumb idea to cut the payroll tax by a small amount because the small windfall most taxpayers receive is a) largely unnoticed, and b) probably not used to do things like pay down debt or improve savings. Because our economy is consumer driven, what they want people to do is shop. Which means buying things you don't need and probably can't afford. As opposed to taking some of your paycheck, and paying it into a savings plan that will pay out when you retire.

Oh, never mind.

The problem is that the payroll tax rteduction was put in place for a year, and it's now set to expire, and when it does, everyone will notice that their taxes went up. And Democrats - or more specifically, the President's reelection team - is worried that less money in people's paychecks will make them grumpy and grumpy people vote for Newt Gingrich. Or Rick Santorum. Or something.

Naturally, Republicans are in no mood to extend a tax break that makes the President look good (cue the natural segue into how Republicans Hate Working Families), and also are kind of mad about several other things, notably this plan to build a pipeline across the country north to south so that Canadian oil shale can be efficiently delivered to refineries in Texas. Oil shale is also a pretty dumb idea (slightly less dumb than fracking, but still), and the pipeline could probably be rerouted, but mostly, this "debate" is a lot of the smae thing we get these days of terrible, useless Washington politics. One dumb idea in exchange for another. None of which really addresses the problems we actually face.

I don't really care about any of this - which is why I don't write daily about the dramatic brinksmanship going on in DC - and frankly, I'd be fine if the payroll tax went back to normal and someone actually took brinksmanship over, and past, the brink. Perhaps then, something might change, a bit. I know, it's a foool's notion. But I remain optimistically foolish. Just for spite.

In any case, the payroll tax break is a dumb idea, but extending it is probably better than not extending it... but frankly, it's the fact that we're all standing around talking about this stupidity that just floors me. And also why I'd probably rather eat Christmas cookies, watch reruns of SVU, and hope the whole thing just goes away. Who's with me?

The A-List: Drama, Queens, And Silver Foxes

I debated whether to go back and review Season 2 of The A-List: New York, but reality intervened: for all my interest in jumping back into watching it... I got busy, and the work of catching up didn't quite happen.

And it just seemed long - Season 2 wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, the "reunion" was this past Monday (with more to come next Monday), Going to parties and saying bitchy things, sure... but 13 weeks of it? God help us.

And if God was a DJ... the music would be a lot louder by now.

I just finished catching up on the New York reunion, and caught the first episode of A-List: Dallas, and between them I think lies the relative pleasures and pain of watching reality shows built around a group of close knit gay men. What seemed merely slightly disappointing about New York in Season One has become impossible to ignore; while Dallas offers, it seems, mostly fresh meat, in every sense. Whether the bloom falls off the Texas rose as much as the Manhattan one, we shall see.

In one sense, I'm not sure the shows are exactly the same: while New York's conception of "A-List" was about an "almost famous" kind of success-by-association game (which, for Season 2, just seemed smaller and sadder), Dallas is more brass tacks. In a smaller, southern, gay community, a lot of what defines "A-List" is not semi-celebrity, but money. And the Dallas cast fairly drips it.

And that, really, may be more in tune for Logo's audience, in some ways, than New York. The initial promise of "A List" after all, was that we would see some suggestion of really well known gays, in fashion or design or hairdressing... or something. Instead, the small cast of "who are theys" mostly interacted with each other, until the show devolved, by the end of Season one, into a vacation from hell at Reichen's family's Maine summer home (which, if nothing else, is terribly unfair to Maine). 

In Dallas, on the other hand, one doesn't expect any real boldface names, and fame isn't the issue. And, so far, the situation is way more incestuous, and perhaps more in tune with the real gay life of more gay men in the smaller cities. So when the religious semi-closeted Republican fundraiser has a crush on the sexy underwear company executive, along with the trust fund party boy and the successful real estate developer... I suspect I wasn't alone in nodding knowingly at every sudsy turn. Ah, to be twenty two and stupid and tipsy again!

Okay, so not... but that's what The A-List is all about, and either it has an appeal or it doesn't. New York, I think, for all the interest it's generating online (or so they say), seemed dismal and repetitive this season, all bitching and backbiting with little relief, and the addition of a wild card straight woman seemed disruptive. One of the things that struck me about season one was how it captured a lot of the reality of a gay man's life in New York, a life very separate from women, straight or gay. As season two devolved into "who does or doesn't like Nyasha", a sense of the show's central organizing principle got a bit lost. And also... generated a good bit of "who cares." It's telling, I think, that the biggest outlier of New York's cast - photographer Mike Ruiz - both came off as more sensible and sane than his costars, and also quickly decided that doing this is not for him. And Ruiz offered a put-down that really stood in, I think, for a wide swath of Logo's older viewers, pointing out that as you get older, there's really no need for a lot of pointless drama in one's life.

Whether Dallas can avoid the pitfalls - whether familiarity, in other words, simply does breed contempt - remains to be seen; at first blush, the cast is charming enough, the relationships engaging and the world on display at once familiar and fresh. For more than a few northerners, I suspect, this world will really seem quite alien. Just from my time spent in Baltimore, and traveling, I'm impressed with the way they captured the flavor of modern urban southern life, in all its garishness and inherent contradictions, the mix of familiar gentility and a more up to date racy edge (and, let's all note, the show is very, very white, which is at least an honest nod to how separate southern gay communities reflect the basic segregations of southern life). Unlike New York, the show has more sexual tension and a greater nod to the romantic lives of its main characters. 

Bottom line, of course, is that Logo won't amount to much with a world of "original programming" that makes it the gay Bravo (I know! Like Bravo isn't that, anyway!) - all "Drag Race" superstars mixed with "Real Gays of [Name Your Town]". (And, just an aside, let's ask... what, were Miami and Los Angeles busy? How about San Francisco? Jeez...) The A-List is an all fluffy, cotton candy exercise in TV that improves no one, and tells us very little... except that, still, these gay lives, in all their shallow details, are still lives that don't otherwise get entirely seen. It's a shame that New York seems to have to have lost sight of what ittle value it can bring to the conversation, of puttting some "realness" into the mix of TV's discussion about gay men's lives. For now, that "realness" in all its perplexing sexiness and shallowness, seems to be better served in Dallas. Which, suddenly... I find fascinating.

The Iceman Melteth

One of the disasters that befell us during my brief hiatus, here at home, was that we lost our refrigerator. I don't mean it ran away... I mean it just up and stopped working.

At first, we thought it was repairable, and so did the repairman. He carefully cleaned and dusted and tinkered, and in the end we got back a wheezy, grumbly thing that sort of made ice and sort of kept things cold... but it had "last legs" written across it.And about 5 days later, the whole thing just gave out. 

It probably didn't help that the refrigerator was built in 1968. After we found that out, it was hard not to admit that 40+ years of work for a fridge is pretty damn good. 

These moments - power outages, the death of an appliance - are a reminder and a wake up call to just how for granted we take some of the most basic technologies. My mom and I both quickly realized that the miracle of refrigeration is something you miss most when you need... ice cubes. Without ice for beverages, everything just seemed that much worse. I was reduced to filling up a large cup with ice to bring home after work, just in case.

(And, if you don't know, Starbucks is a place where one can get, on request, a cup of ice or water or both for no charge. Yes, we think a lot of people take too much advantage of it... but after this month's experience, I'm a lot less judgmental of the requests. I've been there... and sometimes, people just need ice and some water.)

Living without a refrigerator can be done, we found, for a little over a week without going completely mad. Towards the end, the constant dining out (it sounds fun but gets old, fast), the lack of ice (not to mention ice cream), the limited options when one is desperate for food... all became a bit much to bear. And when the nice lady at Sears said the refrigerator we wanted was unavailable for 3 weeks, we both blanched... and picked a more expensive one that could be delivered in 4 days.

Our new refrigerator, then, is something of a wonder.  I've realized that, because of where I've lived (the three houses of my parents, the last purchased in 1978; as well as a string of apartments until I moved here with mom), I have never lived before with a refrigerator made after 1980. They've clearly made some advancements. The thing is amazingly quiet. It's incredibly brightly lit. There's a lot of storage space and its inventively laid out.

But, even more scandalous... we now have ice and water in the door.

I don't know about you... but ice in the door was for other people. Fancy people. Decadent people. People who couldn't be bothered to run the tap and break an ice tray. We are not those people. We don't even have a dishwasher. Even my sister, who has a pretty high end kitchen, doesn't have ice in the door (they do have freezer drawer on the bottom, and its stainless steel, so its pretty glamorous. And don't get me started on her Viking stove).

So here we are, a couple of weeks later, living in glorious decadence with the refrigerator of some other, far more fabulous home. I really expect someone (maybe from thjose government panels conservatives fear so much) to show up and tell us that are fridge is simply not appropriate, and cart it away, and return us to the slightly smaller, freezer on the top (did I mention we got a side by side? I know! So bourgeois!) days  we used to know and love.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to put my fancy Irish butter into our specially cooled butter holder. :)

Friday Field Trip: Whole Foods And PF Chang's

I tend to leave Fridays to J and his lovely pictures. It gives me a chance, among other things, to go out and do things in the world.

Yesterday, I worked early, but not a full 8 hour shift, which was a relief. Still, by early evening, I was pretty much worn out, and Mom got home too late for any early show of Midnight in Paris, the new Woody Allen film (yes, I never miss Woody Allen. Sue me). Instead, we decided to take a little field trip.

Whole Foods has been slow to expand into Westchester, which strieks me as puzzling, since the high-end grocery chain feels like a perfect fit for Westchester's large number of pampered elites. It's fittingly ironic that their initial touchdown in the county, in White Plains, was the former site of Saks Fifth Avenue, which abandoned the space when The Westchester, an upscale mall prjoect, failed to connect the store to the mall as promised (Leaving them staring at Neiman Marcus and their first arrival in the area). Saks now has no Westchester location... which is also very odd.

Lots of people - including my Mom - might think I love Whole Foods; in truth, I find them exasperating. When I first met them, still living in my Manhattan apartment, I too was blown away by the luxe-ness of the goods, the absurd prices (I don't subscribe to the "Whole Paycheck" humor, but walking out with a small grocry bag with $60 in purchases was a first), and the crowds. (One famous memory is one blizzard-y day when the line in Columbus Circle stretched through prepared foods, past the meat department, around frozen foods and back to seafood.)

By the time I moved to Boston, I tended to use Whole Foods as an occasional backup to my main shopping in more traditional grocery stores. Boston, though, is lttered with Whole Foods - one by Symphony Hall on the edge of Fenway, one in cenrral Cambridge, one by Mass General at the edge of Beacon Hill, just for starters. And their promximity to much of my everyday life made visiting them too easy and addictive.

My Mom joked last night that she could envision a lifestyle where she had the money to only shop Whole Foods. Me... I don't see the appeal. Over time, in Boston I came to realize that what the store sells, really, is a kind of snob appeal: you're not just a grocery shopper, you're smarter, hipper, and probably healthier, the stores seem to say. Whole Foods doesn't bother popular, mass produced foodstuffs of ordinary stores - no, it's all artisanal this, and farm-raised that, organic and expensive and exclusive and hard to find. I always know that, if it comes to it, I will be able to find Creme Fraiche, Clotted Cream, and fancy infused olive oil at Whole Foods. Just not, say, Diet Pepsi. Or Wheaties. And not every department opf Whole Foods can claim absolute dominance - their coffee choices, I've come to realize, are haphazard and incomplete (in part, because they've no use for Starbucks, but they also overlook good small houses like Kicking Horse).

The truth is much of what Whole Foods brought to the grocery experience - the high-end items, the hot food cafes, the luxe presentations - have been adopted widely by competitors. Those with the square footage - like Shaw's in downtown Boston at the Pru, or Stop and Shop in many of its suburban locations - have similar sit down eating spaces, luxurious produce displays, and a lot of fancy olive oil. Even so... Whole Foods continue to have them beat for sheer over-the-top indulgence. As I walked past the refrigerated case devoted to nothing nut rare German and other artisanal beers, I realized  that so mcuh of what Whole Foods offers is class confirmation - come here, and you'll know you've made it. I like to think I don't need that kind of reassurance, and I can't be had for a slice of cheese (though a bottle of infused oltve oil and some fancy tortilla chips did follow me home, inexplicably).

Afterwards, Mom and I dined at PF Chang's, a similar experience in upscale mass appeal. Chang's is a fancy chain of Asian eateries, basically, a Chinese restaurant in a sleek dress. Try as they might to dress up the concept (and they're strying a lot less, these days), Chang's is every bit the aitport hotel chain store it seems to be, with a slight Asian twist. Since the economic downturn, Chang's has had to economize a bit,and they tend to feel dingier, and less epcial, if still a slight cut above, say, Applebee's. If it weren't for my endless devotion to Chinese food, I'd have completely given up long ago.

As it is, we endured one of those silly, pointless waits these chain restaurants seem determined to deliver - forced waits with handheld joy buzzer "pagers" and the promises of tables in 20-25 minutes (we wound up at ours in less than 10). It's an artifical kind of buzz creation, mostly leaving grumpy groups and annoyed dates standing around parking lots, and since the downturn began, it just feelssilly. The demand for this kind of dining has softened tremendously, but the urge to seem "special" can't be shaken.

Still, dinner was pleasant, the food reliably good, the air conditioning a nice respite from the beginnings of clingy summer heat. And overall, not that expensive. It's a weird world where luxury comes so cheap.

The King Without His Sword! The Land Without A King! A World Without Dior!

There's shocking news... and then there's just, well, genuine shock: no one, certainly no one in fashion could have imagined that today is the first day of a world without John Galliano at Christian Dior.

In the midst of fall fashion shows - especially with the Paris Pret a Porter shows for autumn starting yesterday - news this shocking just doesn't happen. Bad designers come and go. Houses go bankrupt. Collections don't work. But the King of all that is fashion does not just vanish in the middle of the night.

What has rapidly unfolded is basically this: John Galliano was arrested last week for an altercation at a bar in the Marais section of Paris, where he lives. He apparently got into an altercation with a couple, apparently tourists, and may have made an antisemitic remark to the woman (or, according to some reports, he insulted her handbag. I mean, it's not impossible). In any case, Galliano was then suspended from his role as head designer at Dior, throwing a great deal of chaos into Dior's upcoming fall show. But that seemed manageable.

Yesterday, video surfaced at a British tabloid (Galliano is English) of Galliano, in the same bar in the Marais where the altercation took place, making favorable comments about Hitler (Hitler!) and what happened during the Holocaust. It was pretty much a matter of hours before Dior announced that Galliano had been immediately fired, but not before Natalie Portman, who is the new face of perfume Miss Dior Cherie - and Jewish - denounced Galliano and said she would not be associated with him in any way.

"Mind boggling" doesn't begin to describe this turn of events. Galliano has, almost single handedly, been the guiding light for fashion's most dramatic, over the top possibilities. His Dior couture shows, season after season, have been almost instantly legendary. Even his ready to wear shows have been assured, stylish extravaganzas of styles and ideas that demand attention and set the tone for the season. He took the House of Dior - once considered sad and staid after the death of Monsieur Dior - and turned it into an enormously profitable and successful powerhouse (whether his couture line actually makes a profit is another issue altogether). Galliano is a visionary, but one who never lost sight that the real money in designer fashion is in the accessories that the masses can afford - the bags and fragrances and eyewear and makeup that account for most sales.

Whether Galliano is actually gone is still somewhat up in the air - he's apparently hired lawyers and will fight his dismissal, and French labor laws do protect workers from a lot more than American workers... but it's hard to see this working out with Galliano back at the helm of Dior; even if, as reported, he's now headed off to rehab. Indeed, along the lines of Charlie Sheen, one of the other interesting aspects of this story is that Galliano's been rumored to have a drug and alcohol problem for years, but as with Hollywood, the fashion world is loath to actually make such stories public (this, even after years and years of high profile meltdowns, most recently embodied in Donatella Versace and Marc Jacobs). There's a decided component of the creative world which insists on a separate, dangerous standard for the especially creative, ignoring destructive behavior and excusing addiction as some sort of necessary "mind expansion." It really is possible to be highly creative... and highly sober.

No one can, or should, try to defend Galliano; this is just a shocking, unexpected turn. I've been in the same room as Galliano, my friend Jennifer recently met him in Paris, and boht of us feel the shock of people who've known him for years - this just doesn't seem to fit the man we've seen, the man they know. And the idea of a World of Fashion that doesn't have Christian Dior, designed by John Galliano is just unimaginable. This is a seismic shift where one can say, breathlessly, that this does literally change everything. The land without a King! A world without Dior! Bring me a fainting couch!

I Even Have A Note From The Doctor...

The story of my silence thus far:

• Thursday the 17th: work a really hard, ugly middle shift in my old store.
• Friday the 18th: Have a man come to the house to see if we have mice - we don't, it's probably a raccoon. Attend a difficult meeting in said old store. Then go to see No Strings Attached (and want to review it), buy a new mattress for my bed, and dinner out with mom.
• Saturday the 19th: Have a man come to the house about the raccoon. Attend Red's baby shower, which runs well into the evening. Come home from that (in a raging wind storm), and go straight to bed.
• Sunday the 20th: Open at my new store, come home and meet the wild animal guy (the trap nearly blew away in said wind storm), go to see "I Am Number 4"... then spend 2 hours in the Emergency Room (and I want to write bout that too). Get sent home, go straight to bed.
• Today: Off to open the old store. And it's snowing.

I don't like to make excuses... but can you see why I might be having some trouble keeping up with the posting?

Seriously, I even have a note fomr the doctor. In the Emergency Room.

More later, barring any more disasters. :)

Apparently "Neiman Marcus Neo-Marxist" Wasn't That Far Off

My dear friend Red and I have a longstanding joke about how to reconcile our upscale personal tastes with our overarching concerns for making sure government helps those most in need. "Limousine Liberal" is, of course, the old term for this, but we felt the concept needed a more descriptive, updated, sobriquet. And so... we eventuallt settled on "Neiman Marcus Neo-Marxist" (I think we originally called it "Neiman Marcus Neo-Liberal," but that wasn't sufficiently radicalized).

In any case, apparently we're not alone. At least not to Neiman Marcus. This morning, scrolling down through Daily Kos, I stopped dead at their paid ad:

 

 

I suppose there's a point here - a Versailles related one, even - about how the Great Orange Evil shows its true colors with advertising aimed, obviously, at an upper middle class consumer; clearly Neiman's thinks there's enough commonality between its products and Daily Kos readers to at least test an ad placement. And yes, in a number of ways, just thinking about that can be disconcerting. On the other hand... why do we (on the left) sort of retroactively assume that being liberal and liking nice things is somehow mutually exclusive? Can't we be pro-Choice and pro-Prada?

Ponder those class issues, my comrades. And later we can discuss them over lunch at Saks. :)