NYCweboy

Everybody's Free... To Feel Good.

I've been noticing, lately, that I seem to have gotten away from film and TV reviews, especially film crit, and cultural criticism more generally. I've especially noticed it because I walk out of films thinking "I should write a review" - most recently, Machete and Easy A - and then coming home and deciding "why bother."

I'm planning to rectify that... but there's something I wanted to share, more generally, about the state of entertainment, that I think might be relevant.

The past few days, I've been having a pair of fascinating conversations - and one non-conversation - with friends about the new television season. Slowly, and somewhat selectively, I've been finding new and returning shows to watch, getting up to speed on new storylines and characters. It's been, well, entertaining... and it was, actually, thinking that I should, finally, get around to reviewing Glee that got me thinking about my own struggles to keep up with critical writing.

But in sharing some of my early impressions with my pals, I got some interesting, even bewildering feedback, which I think may be a general trend: people aren't watching TV like they used to, not the way they used to, and not in the numbers they used to. There's been some general discussion about changing viewing habits and the rise of "reality television", but I'm not sure anyone has placed all the latest changes in viewing in a context that seems relevant: the effect of the economic downturn, and a sense, I think, that entertainment is a luxury many of us can't afford and maybe even shouldn't have.

This is especially related to television, since TV watching, since its inception, has been an American pastime of mass taste and mass cultural appeal. From the early days, when everyone - and we do mean pretty much all Americans with TVs - used to watch Milton Berle or Ed Sullivan. Even well into the seventies, American TV was characterized by massive events where everyone tuned in to see them. The Super Bowls that used to get 70+% of homes watching, The Oscars as well.

Since the eighties, that sense of mass culture attached to TV has broken down, for a number of reasons. Cable TV, most obviously, splintered the viewing public into ever smaller pieces of the viewing public, and with it came the potential to attract larger niche audiences with specifically tailored programs - whether you think of that in terms of say, Top Chef attracting people interested in food and cooking, or BET  and Logo, designed to appeal to minority audiences who have not seen themselves widely reflected in network programming.

Lately, all of that has been further complicated by these intertubes; with YouTube and other options to see video on computers, fewer people need to be tied to a box at home or a specific time to watch. "Have you seen...?" now becomes a question we use to share content with one another, rather than an assumption that we all have, already, been exposed to the same pieces of cultural significance.

All of this, I think, has affected our ideas about what it is to be entertained, what we expect from entertainment, and how we seek out what we value. Few people, really, commit themselves to a weekly routine of television watching at a specific time to see the newest installment of a favorite program; it can be recorded, or watched online, or watched on DVD at a later date. Timeliness means less (this, oddly, is actually more true of reality television than many suspect: the heavily edited programs are often fully assembled as a series before any of them air, meaning that the events that seem "new" can in fact be months, even up to a year, old).

I'm not sure it's surprising then, that changes in viewing habits and interests have dealt something close to a body blow to scripted television. The half hour sitcom of my youth - two and three camera affairs shot in TV studios before audiences... are all but totally dead. NBC's damaging bet on The Jay Leno show, wiping out a week's worth of dramas at 10pm may have been disastrous... but nearly everyone in the business admitted that, in many ways, there was a logic to it that couldn't be denied. Series television is expensive, and not many shows produce the results needed to be worthwhile.

Still, I think the last year or two has seen an even bigger shift in viewing, driven by eonomics: as people see entertainment not reflecting their own realities, there is becoming less reason to watch.

TV has always struggled to reflect the lives of people who are not upper middle class: the programming field is filled with lawyers, doctors, and other educated professionals, well off families in suburban idylls whose main problem amounts to who junior will take to prom. The idea of struggling to get by, of how to meet a mortgage and car payment, of kids working to cover their own necessities... these things don't happen, much, on TV. Up until the recent downturn, even in previous recessions, I'm not sure it mattered. People remained hopeful, generally, that things would improve, and that we could, in time, continue to achieve the American Dream, especially as it was reflected back to us on the screen in our living room.

In these hard times, I think it can seem like these fantasies of good lives and easy money are nothing short of inappropriate; they're not real, they're not how we live, now. And at a time when people are worrying about how to pay bills and meet basic needs, the idea even of taking time out to be entertained may seem frivolous, extreme. The programs ought to do something more: educate us, inform us, challenge us. Entertainment simply for the sake of being entertained... that, I suspect, is becoming a luxury item. And I think that may explain, both in programming and advertising, why TV shows can seem especially out of touch to all but the well off.

Both of my friends, oddly, brought up Mad Men, in slightly different contexts. In many ways, I think the phenomenon of Mad Men - how seriously it is regarded, how "classy" it seems - reflects this growing cultural divide between the leisure class and the working one.  Mad Men, in fact, isn't actually that much fun: it's a fairly depressing show that undercuts the notions of "good life" pursuits of the Greatest Generation, for an audience of their kids and grandkids, who now see suburbia, and alcohol fueled debauchery as depressing, sinful and worse. Mad Men distills lives that used to be called "glamorous" and "sophisticated" and points to their flaws, their unglamorous realities, their painful, hidden sufferings. And for a select audience... that's often just what they want to hear and see.

In the end, what Mad Men provides on an upscale plane, is not so far removed from those who follow the travails of the Real Housewives or Jersey Shore - shows that punish those whose lives involve pleasure seeking, which allow viewers to sit in casual judgment of the lives and choices of others. We live, right now, in a mean, ugly time in so many ways. Is it any wonder that the most successful entertainments take a surprising amount of pleasure in almost unabashed cruelty?

If nothing else, I stand for the proposition that we are, all, entitled to moments of relaxation and joy. That life doesn't have to be hard. That we can, and should, allow ourselves the moment to relax, and rest... and be entertained. I'm going to work a bit harder to find and share those things that entertain, that bring joy... because we deserve it. Everybody's free, to feel good. These are hard times. That doesn't mean we deserve to be punished.

Barack Obama, And The Unanswered Question

While the right struggles with a lack of ideas and candidates on the extremes, liberals and Democrats are not in a particularly strong place going into the midterms either. Theories abound as to reasons for this, with the familiar return of most lefties favorite pastime - infighting -leading to round after round of finger pointing and blame casting If only we'd done things differently (take your pick if it was some specific legislative action or the Obama Presidency more generally), if only Democrats were more motivated, if only Obama showed leadership, if only the Congressional leadership was better... suggestions abound, all kind of true... and all, art this late date, kind of beside the point.

Just as Christine O'Donnell and the tales of witchcraft underscore the more general filings of the right to find ideas and candidates with broad appeal, the crystallising moment for the left came - to me, anyway - in the past couple of weeks, at the CNBC Town Hall that they held with the President where a widely seen exchange occured between the President and a self-described supporter:

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I’ve been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet. While I thought it wouldn’t be a great measure, I would feel it in some small measure. I have two children in private school, and the financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family. My husband and I joked that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives. And quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring through that that might be where we’re headed.

And quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer honestly, is this my new reality?

To say that Obama's answer failed to satisfy the woman's concerns isn't in doubt: the woman herself said afterwards that she was not satisfied with his response. The President took the question - as he did with a number that day - to restate and reframe various accomplishments of the Administration. He went nowhere near the suggestions of disappointment and filure to see the change she, and others, were promised... and more pointedly, he didn't particularly her overall question, about the "new reality."

It's an unanswerable question really - partly from the suggestion of "do these jeans make me look fat" questions where no answer can really succeed, and partly because the likely answer that this is indeed our new reality, will satisfy no one.

The question, and the President's rambling, unsuccessful attempt to deflect an answer, in total go to the heart of the liberal conundrum at the heart of this election. It's not that, as some try to project, that the President, or Democrats more generally don't have accomplishments to point to, changes that, while imperfect, do represent some measure of progress, and it's not just that, as other suggest, that Americans are just too upset and/or disappointed in the current state of economic affairs to  appreciate the usefulness of some government progress.

Instead, I think, the tension is most fundamentally that the last two years have been about Democrats in Congress and especially in the Administration answering questions that no one asked, and not answering the ones that were. In some sense those questions - about confidence, economic well being, and resistance to change - cannot really be answered, or the only answers can seem negative. But it's not as if, too often, anyone even tried.

That, in the end, is why the housing crisis has not been resolved to anyone's satisfaction, and why the economic problems that follow from it - the decimation of our consumer economy, and the "new normal" of so many having to make do with so much less - remain key factors in the lack of sustainable recovery. It's why the debate over taxes and the tensions over government spending have become proxy fights for unresolvable tensions about the size and purpose of government that have dogged this nation for hundreds of years.

It's unfair, and has been all along, to lay on the President sole responsibility for solving these problems or answering some of the most unanswerable questions. But still; we wouldn't be here in any sense if Democrats had set aside even one of their programmatic goals in favor of keeping the focus on the real life, practical problems so many people are struggling with in these hard times.

My own familiar example: rather than overly ambitious, overthought healthcare "reform" which has left most Americans confused and distrustful of "government mandated" solutions - and which will, in short order, run hard up against a number of ugly budget realities, as it is already; why not have pursued a tighter, more focused set of reforms that would have tried to curb Medicare's problematic fee for service failings, and restructured Medicaid as a federal program rather than block grants? The easy answer, which is that such reforms may well have failed to find broad appeal, misses the point: reforms which would have helped millions, had they failed, would have positioned Democrats as the last, best defenders of working people's needs, in a real, concrete way. That, in turn, could have spurred some of that absent energy to find Congressional majorities that would address those needs.

This isn't some essay, in some long series, to say "I think Obama was a bad choice all along and oh how I wish we had Hillary Clinton". If part of the lesson here is to say that the President isn't turning out to be the change agent touted by his most ardent supporters, I think the mistake was buying that on the first place, which is what I've said all along. President Obama may be a deep disappointment in terms of artificially high expectations; in the world of more realistic expectations, he's been a mixed bag of modestly interesting ideas, and some stirring speeches none of which quite gets the job done. If Democrats can do better... there's not much to show it. Until someone figures how to better answer the unanswered questions, disappointment and internal dissension are sure to drive a lot of left-side discussions in the coming months and years. And if Democrats don't get it together...someone, somewhere is going to answer those unanswered questions, somehow. Not necessarily in the ways many of us might like, either.

And Although I Know It's Strictly Taboo...

Over the past couple of weeks, I think there's been a couple of turning points in the upcoming midterm elections. One of them, which I'm still working on, has to do with the dismal cloud surrounding the Obama Administration and the clear weaknesses they're bringing into the home stretch for Democrats and the left more generally. But the other, for the right, can be summed up in the primary win and subsequent flameout of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware.

O'Donnell was considered one of the fringier Tea Party hopefuls, until a combination of forces - her string of especially negative ads against Mike Castle, the presumed nominee, as well as Castle's and the State GOP's ugly responses, along with the fact that Castle had never actually faced a GOP primary in his 40 year career - swept O'Donnell to a surprising, easy victory in Delaware's Republican Senatorial primary. Castle, the state's longtime Congressman, was expected to easily win statewide election, since he has done just that over and over. O'Donell, on the other hand is something of a religious activist who already lost once to Joe Biden (in 2008, after failing to win the GOP primary for Tom Carper's seat in 2006).

Much of the political calculus is irrelevant, though, now that Bill Maher has released a string of footage (which he vows to continue) culled from O'Donnell's appearances on Politically Incorrect in the nineties. The most striking, so far, is O'Donnell's apparently unforced admission that she was familiar with "witchcraft" and had a first date "midnight picnic" on a Satanic altar.

Asked about it after the clip broke wide, O'Donnell fell back on the "didn't we all do something crazy in high school" defense, which is a good demonstration of at least her press savvy, neither running away from her past, nor especially interested in rehashing or defending it.

But the damage was done, and it was damage with some wider implications, since it pretty much forced the national Republican Party into drawing some lines - admittedly late and well past where they need to be - around just how much Tea Party madness the GOP Establishment should have to embrace. And in that moment cam e a reality that's been quite clear as "Tea Party Insurgency" became the storyline of the right: that in many ways, this was about extreme, fringe efforts on the right finally getting the reins and taking control. And the longterm results may not be especially good.

O'Donnell - endorsed by Sarah Palin - has been simply the best worst example of squandered opportunities in the Senate races for the GOP this year. The other extreme examples, like Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, share her penchant for gaffes and extreme rhetoric. But even Linda McMahon in Connecticut and Carly Fiorina in California share some of this sense that they are second best choices in races where stronger candidates could easily prevail (you could throw in two time loser Dino Rossi, now chasing Patty Murray's seat in Washington state). The angry national mood, we thought, would be a boon to Republicans. But as so many have said, me included, anger alone won't solve the Republicans lack of a good message and great candidates to deliver it.

The GOP can't run away from O'Donnell, because admitting that she's too weird and fringe-y to be viable would throw the whole Tea Party movement into relief: given her background at the edges of GOP social causes and cultural conservatism, as well as actually having run for office already, O'Donnell is in many ways a more conventional candidate than many others the Tea Parties have produced (and, like some conservatives, she seems mostly to be riding the Tea Party as her latest train to success). That's why the revelations of nuttiness can be so damaging: the "anyone can play" nature of Tea Party openness, the lack of rigor to set up some base criteria for viability, is killing them. And in this free for all, it's no surprise that telegenic opportunists like O'Donnell, or her mentor Palin, can rise to prominence on good looks and a talent in front of the camera.

Of course, putting this all in big picture context tends to ignore the aspects of the story that really drive it: the reason O'Donnell's tossed off asides about witchcraft took off is because what they reveal is not minor, or casual. A lot has been made of the quick response of Wiccans, denying connections to Satanism and blood altars (and what a world we live in, when even the Wicca have spokespeople at the ready the moment bad PR crops up), but no one, really, would mistake O'Donnell's witchy past for the more recent surge of interest in Wicca's vaguely upbeat, pro-nature paganism.

Having been a teenager at the same time as O'Donnell, this story caught my eye because I remember that era all too well: and there was, among a subset of the "fast kids" in junior and senior high, a fascination with various aspects of dark, Satanist leanings. It was the period when Heavy Metal bands dabbled in Satanic visual and lyrical images, and a slew of books capitalized on salacious details of blood rituals and Satanic rites. Knowing about it was hard to avoid... but actually getting out there and joining in was not, really, just some foray into youthful hijinks. Indeed, the whole episode of O'Donnell's foray into "witchcraft" probably explains the extreme swing she's taken to fervent religiosity and moralism. It's the zeal of the convert, the desperation of a sinner made good.

Most voters, really, won't be using "witchcraft" as their deciding factor in the Delaware election, or most anywhere else. O'Donell's failures as a candidate don't begin or end with the witch story, but the story does encapsulate her problems and those of the Tea Party right more generally: the "loose cannon" comments and the out of the mainstream actions and views that make them less than successful i appealing to wide swaths of the public. Wicked witchcraft, it seems, turns out to be the bridge too far. But those outer limits were reached months ago. And from here, I tend to doubt that Republicans can find their way back to turning this "angry election" into the blanket rejection of the left they craved. Of course, there might be a spell for that, too.

Friday Evening Festival Prep

jinb
 

The Death Of Process

Welcome back!

Oh wait, that's me.

Things have been falling apart at such a rapid rate, it's kind of hard to keep up. The election is a mess, the Obama Presidency is a mess, and, well, Congress has done been a mess for so long, that the current state of things - where they're pretty much stopped dead - looks to be kind of a relief.

There's a lot of finger pointing and hand wringing over the failure this week of the Defense Authorization bill, the bill that essentially funds all military operations, which is being used to try and legislate a couple of major changes: the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays in the military, and the DREAM Act, which gives young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they go to college or join the military.

In a not very close vote, the Senate failed to move the process forward to debate the bill, otherwise known as one of those "cloture" votes (requiring 60 votes) which have tended to hold up almost every bill the Senate is considering.

This is process stuff, which is often deemed unglamorous, unsexy, "boring"... and proof, as if liberals needed any more, that Republicans are horrible.

I am a process geek. It may be the Virgo Rising in me, or just being the child of an accountant and a teacher/therapist, but I am all about the process of doing things. Come up with a good, workable, process... and I'm yours. Seriously. I live for the stuff.

Lots of people don't. I get that. They don't worry how things work... as long as they work. They don't mind shortcuts or end-runs, if it gets the thing they want done faster, or easier, or with fewer steps. The goal of a "filibuster-proff" majority is just such and end-run: it's the wish that the rules and the process of the Senate would be ignored (and goes along with a growing rumble among some lefties to end the filibuster all together) or not matter, so Democrats, with a current 59 seat voting majority, could do as they please.

And all the problems in Washington - combined with the frustrating times we generally live in, these days - have led good people, reasonable, to a kind of anti-process madness, I think, that deserves some pushback.

Friday Evening Floralude

jinb
 

Making Love Out Of Nothing At All

Over at Tapped, Jamelle Bouie makes a good point about millionaires and self funded campaign efforts:

I doubt Meg Whitman will lose the election, but if she does, she'll be the latest in a line of self-financed candidates to fail in their electoral bids. As the Center for Responsive Politics found in a recent study, of the 20 top self-funders who competed for the House and Senate, only only six made it through the primaries: Linda McMahon, Carly Fiorina and Ron Johnson for the Senate, and Tom Ganley, Randy Altschuler and Matt Doheny for the House.

This should further counter the argument that political parties are less important to electoral success than they were in the past; even wealthy would-be politicians need support within established political organizations, if only to build grassroots support and successfully conduct the more mundane business of licking stamps, sealing envelopes and canvassing neighborhoods. Having politicians "make calls" -- ask rich party stalwarts for money -- is boring and a little demeaning, but it build connections within the party that are extremely helpful in primary contests and beyond. Having independent wealth is nice, but as we've seen this summer, it's not integral to running a successful political campaign.

It's a good point - one that I think tends to be ignored in the equations that money alone dictates outcomes in elections, and probably falls just below "anti-incumbent fever" as one of the prevailing storylines of recent campaign seasons where there's less to the reality than the storyline suggests. Even the candidates who do prevail with major personal outlays - Michael Bloomberg and Jon Corzine are the two closest to me in proximate distance and memory - often suffer longer term because the overwhelming success of slick ad campaigns can only overcome dislikability for so long. Bloomberg may have won a third term, but it was clear that had Democrats put some more effort into electing Bill Thompson, Bloomberg's tetchy, don't-question-me standoffishness was working well against him.

And as pointed as Bouie's observation is, I think he probably doesn't take it far enough - one reason that, along with most of the current crop of Tapped bloggers, I think Bouie is merely so-so as an analyst. While millionaires are an obvious example of using personal money to avoid the more crucial but harder aspects of building support from the ground up, the reality is that a similar dynamic could be applied to a wide range of candidates who use "party machinery" rather than any sort of grassroots, ground up organization to connect with voters at the local level.

Examples abound this year; in the past week alone, the lack of groundwork probably goes a long way to explain the failures of Rick Lazio and Mike Castle to blow past fringe-y opponents who were capitalizing on the grassroots organizing that's the real secret weapon of "Tea Party" energy this year. It's the candidates who've been working the unglamorous, ordinary stuff of appearing at community meetings and senior centers and county fairs and commuter train stations to shake hands and listen to voters who've been providing stark reminders that money, really, can't replace the retail elements of politics - getting to know potential voters, hearing their concerns, offering your ideas and willingness to work.

Indeed, two stories of politicians who've overcome their bad press - John McCain and Charlie Rangel - probably serve as equally good testament to what works in the face of likely disaster. It's probably the reason that Pennsylvania's Senate race may be harder to call than people think, because both Pat Toomey and Joe Sestak seem especially keen on making the appearances. Whereas, I suspect the reverse reasons may explain why Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown can't seem to really pull away from one another: it's all spending and party operatives with those two, neither one especially keen on the retail elements of politics.

I mention this because I think many liberal and progressive bloggers have a certain kind of myopia about the politics of Democrats; as much as there's an inherent disdain for most self funders (although a nice self funder for the right lefty causes can easily get a pass), there's not an especially deep examination of the candidates who deploy Washington consultants, carefully organized union funded efforts and excessive reliance on direct mail and call banking instead of a strong volunteer network and personal appearances. If Tea Party energy and the bad economy open up opportunities for opponents in "swing districts" it's also worth pointing out that too many Democrats substitute the machinery of the establishment rather than the work of engaging voters house by house and block by block.

Or, to nationalize this example: consider all the simmering anger with Organizing for America, the Obama apparatus which was supposed to be the "secret weapon" of the Obama team, which is turning out to be both a missed opportunity and a complete dud. I've long suspected that the really appalling element of the 2008 campaign was the fantasy that the Obama people allowed to take hold that his campaign was a Dean-like example of grassroots energy when the pervasive reality was that his operatives were savvier than most at harnessing an appearance of "grassroots"  while essentially building a new, better, smarter establishment machine which didn't really plan to do any more than was absolutely necessary to be responsive to its campaign operation. The reality was a centralized, top down, consultant-heavy effort distant and distancing from the dirty work of door to door voter appeals.

Having had an opportunity to work on a heavily volunteer effort at the Congressional level, I've gotten better at being able to smell the difference: the campaigns that are working at ground level, heavily driven by volunteers and connections to the crowd, versus the consultant heavy, machinery built efforts that see volunteers as deadweight, or an afterthought. Millionaires, it's true, can't buy love. But it's also true that consultants can't just create love out of thin air, either. And the political establishment will always be caught off guard, it seems, when people actually organize and put some effort into challenging the status quo. I just wonder when a new generation of liberal and progressive activists is going to figure out just how much they've been used.

All We, Like Sheep

Is there a sadder day for a political junkie than the day you go to the polls and don't care what the outcome is? I think not. And that, among other weirdnesses, was my yesterday.

Nobody I voted for won yesterday. In the case of not voting for Kirsten Gillibrand, I didn't expect her nominal opponent, Gail Goodwin to win; still, it's kind of telling that nearly one in four New York Democrats, given a choice, picked anyone but Gillibrand, not even caring who Goodwin was (I for one, was surprised to discover I even had a choice).

In the case of Attorney General, I had some hope that Dinallo would at least make a good showing, even if Eric Schneiderman wound up winning. But Dinallo came in dead last (memo to self: any connection to Spitzer is probably a dealbreaker), and Kathleen Rice's campaign against Schneiderman had the desired effect of putting her in serious contention, though even she didn't inspire enough confidence to edge out the party's choice.

My Mom went the winning route, and I accused of being sheep (as did my friend Jennifer, when I mentioned it to her). But these days, we may all be covered in raw wool. As much as there were some surprises last night, mostly the tale of these elections is a tale mainly about status quo, about anger going nowhere, and about fear of change mostly trumping the possibility of any. I'd like to think Charlie Rangel took away the wrong lessons from his solid victory over primary challengers, but he's probably right: he doesn't need to be grateful, just more determined to steamroll any investigation, any accusation of wrongdoing, true or not. Voters are a detail, not the reason you do your job.

I saw Red again for the first time in months last night, a lovely dinner of catching up and sharing thoughts and encouragement (we both needed it). But on politics, we were both a little stuck for something to say, never ind argue passionately. Sure it's hard when you share similar beliefs, but that didn't used to stop us from arguing away the minor details of some obscure policy decision. Last night, though, there didn't seem to be a point. The bad stuff was just too bad, the lack of inspiration too apparent.

For months - close to a year, really - we've been treated to assertions that this election is a "Tea Party moment", though no one, really, can exactly spell out what that means, much beyond a moment of voter anger, mostly concentrated on the right wing, that seems determined to vote in new, unfamiliar names to replace the older, still sort of obscure ones. That Carl Paladino managed to trounce Rick Lazio was less proof of some Tea Party Uprising than a reminder that Lazio was a weak choice by the New York Republicans who never had a shot anyway. And the night's most heralded Tea Party win, by Christine O'Donnell in Delaware over longtime, but not especially remarkable, pol Mike Castle, was further proof, as if it was needed, that years of running unopposed weakens the political instincts. O'Donnell was beatable months ago; for months, Castle didn't really try. And when he did - in fairly brutal fashion - it was too late.

O'Donnell may win - considering she's a known (crazy) quantity in Delaware and already lost once to Joe Biden, it's no slam dunk - but really, the effect of treating voters as sheep works no matter who wins there, or many other places. Democrats will reliably turn out for the Democrat, Republicans will be energized to do the same for their party, and few on either side will want to consider the alternative. But neither side, really, has made a positive, affirmative case for election or reelection. Republicans want voters to hate Obama and the Democratic Congress and fear the changes inherent in things like health care "reform". Democrats want voters to hate the idea of going back to the GW Bush era. They're both kind of right... it's just all kind of beside the point.

As I say a lot these days, in may contexts - I'm not angry... just disappointed. I'm not angry about being treated like a sheep-like voter, herded this way and that, just disappointed that so few Democrats seem interested in appealing to my brain rather than my one-sided instincts. I'm not angry about the failures of government to tackle the hard issues, just disappointed that the will to do the hard stuff is just nonexistent. I'm not angry at us as a country. I'm just disappointed. We're better than this. Except, of course, if nothing changes... then we're not. Baaaaaa....

I Want You To Want Me

It's been a hectic weekend for the weboy, with a lot of impending changes on the personal life front (and no, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop blogging... maybe I'm just sensitive to how all of this looks).

I like to be a "gives 110%" type of person in my working life; whether others see it that way, well, I'm old enough now not to expect everyone to see my wonderfulness quite the way I do.  It's nice to be wanted... but these days, I don't expect to be wanted all that much.

Jennifer and I, experienced retail workers that we are, who've lived through at least two serious economic downturns, tend to agree on our view of employment: be grateful you have a job, and don't get too confident about your employer being unable to get the job done without you, no matter how essential you make yourself out to be.

I want you to want me...
I need you to need me...

I mention this because I had the very (very) flattering experience this week of being wanted. I have an opportunity to do some fairly exciting things in a new situation, thanks to a boss - who may very well read this - who I really enjoy working for, and who has already taught me a lot about being a Manager, and a worker. The chance to keep working for her, and to be wanted for my skills, is a proud and scary moment. It gives me an expectation to want to live up to.

It's nice to be wanted. It's a little daunting - okay, maybe even a lot daunting. In my more youthful days, when I was substituting arrogance for confidence, and my own assessment of myself for the frank assessments of others, I assumed I would be wanted. Now I don't... and it turns out I am. True Delight, she cried.

Friday Evening Farewell My Summer Love

jinb