Having somehow offended the god of the cargo cult, I’ve abandoned false hope and surrendered to reality: Nothing I write about politics matters and there is no point pretending it does. Rather than continue showing up at a party where I’m so obviously unwelcome, I’ve decided to heed the message and relieve the invited guests of my annoying presence.
“Little attention is being paid to the way our continuing economic crisis is hitting artists, intellectuals, musicians, and writers, [Scott] Timberg argues. And he suggests that the way those livings are collapsing has put the lie to the idea that the 21st century American economy would be pleasantly post-industrial, an interchange of valuable information by individuals set free by computers and technology to gather in cool places. Reality is harder, and poorer, he writes.”
— Ted Mann, “Is the Creative Class Evaporating?”
Wait a minute, while I think about all the real suffering in the world.
OK, there.
Now, wait a minute (or perhaps longer) while I try to work up some sympathy for members of the “creative class” whose fate Scott Timberg bemoans in what Mann calls a “provocative essay” at Salon:
“It’s sort of like job growth in Texas,” says Joe Donnelly, a former deputy editor at L.A. Weekly, laid off in 2008 and now pouring savings and the money he made from a home sale into a literary magazine. “Gov. Perry created thousands of jobs, but they’re all at McDonald’s. Now everyone has a chance to make 15 cents. People are just pecking, hunting, scratching the dirt for freelance work. Living week to week, month to month.” . . .
A fading creative class — experiencing real pain but less likely to end up in homeless shelters, at least so far, than the very poor — may not offer sufficient drama for novelists, songwriters or photographers.
But journalists themselves have also ignored the human story all around them. In fact, the media — businesses that have been decimated by the Internet and corporate consolidation — have been reticent at telling the tale of this erosion. Good newspapers offer responsible coverage of the mortgage meltdown and the political wars over taxes and the deficit. But it’s easier to find a story about a plucky worker who’s risen from layoff to an inspiring Plan B than it is the more typical stories: People who lose their livelihood, their homes, their marriages, their children’s schooling because of the hollowing-out of the creative class and the shredded social safety net. Meanwhile, luxury coverage of homes, fashions, watches and wine continue to be a big part of magazines and newspapers.
Timberg’s essay is “provocative” only if you consider laughably misguided to be an acceptable definition of “provocative.”
Stipulate that a bad economy is bad for musicians, artists, writers and other “creative” types. This is why we never speak of, say, a “world-acclaimed Eritrean novelist” or a “multimillionaire Cambodian rock star.” People in impoverished nations are too busy scratching out a bare subsistence to pursue careers as dancers, poets and sculptors, nor is there enough surplus wealth in such societies to support a “creative class.” Economic prosperity is therefore a prerequisite to the flourishing of a cultural elite.
Timberg references Richard Florida’s much-discussed theory about the “creative class,” which was supposed to be the driving force of a 21st-century economy, but fails to see what was wrong with Florida’s argument: The clustering of “creatives” in certain locales was an effect, not a cause. Artists and musicians flock to these places because they seek markets for their goods and services. Demand creates supply, and not the other way around. No matter how wonderful you are as a composer of sonnets, if nobody’s buying sonnets you will be poor.
So if young poetic types are writing rock lyrics instead of sonnets, this is because the customer is always right. Whether aspiring poets are writing sonnets, rock lyrics or advertising jingles, however, their ability to earn a living by their talents is dependent upon the economic success of those who pay for their services.
What Timberg offers is an appeal to the narcissistic self-pity of the “creative class” itself. The readership of Salon includes many such people, and once can imagine how Timberg’s chronicling of the woes of the “creative class” resonates with these readers: The would-be novelist working as a busboy, the aspiring artist who can’t sell his paintings, the young actor who didn’t get a callback after the last audition. Yes, these people’s dreams are being crushed, but they are not suffering worse than out-of-work carpenters and accountants. A fitting headline for Timberg’s article might be:
OBAMA’S ECONOMIC POLICIES FAIL;
ARTISTS, MUSICIANS HARDEST HIT
But that headline doesn’t fit the narrative that the “creative class” wants to hear, in which the plight of downtrodden playwrights and out-of-work ballerinas is blamed on corporate greed or some other familiar bogeyman. Timberg solicits our pity for these Victims of Society, as if there were something more tragic in the misfortune of a laid-off writer for L.A. Weekly than for a laid-off forklift driver.
So I’m trying to feel some sympathy here.
Trying really hard.
Just give me a few minutes and I’m sure I’ll get there . . .
I’m going to chock this up to my thick-headed inability to understand, but I really don’t get this (emphasis original):
I’ve been shrieking this from the rooftops for years now: other women’s sexual choices affect my sexual and dating choices. Women who sleep around set an expectation for men, and then reinforce that expectation with the idea that anyone who doesn’t sleep around is a prude, repressed, or has hang-ups.
Maybe I’ve been some kind of mutant, but, even in my most wayward moments, I never considered sexuality outside of faith, for longer than the twinkling of an eye, wherein there is risk the eye offend.
Or maybe I have enough trailer-trash relatives in the extended family (one cousin was case forty-something on Judge Judy) that I knew any woman who’d consent to usage as a protein receptacle was more trouble than she’s worth.
So the fact that men exist who are merely dogs that bark in complete sentences has never bothered me. I’m not in that market. I watch them lead high-stress lives for all the trouble their hormones get them into, and feel Absolutely. No. Envy.
I don’t mind admitting that I met Mrs. Other Smitty on a site similar to this one, about 12 years ago. Whether it’s the same site or not is irrelevant. We were pen pals for several years before things became permanent. Does my experience map to the general case? Probably not.
And that’s where this post should conclude: quit fretting your existence with respect to the person on your left or right.
Be ultimately concerned with your existence with respect to the Almighty. Those other folks will take care of themselves, and, with patience, the Almighty will take care of you.
ADDENDUM (RSM): Permit me to add that (a) Smitty’s mystification is the result of his studying this problem from the perspective of morality, rather than economics, and (b) Roxeanne’s problem is that she doesn’t want to speak that fateful sentence, “Stacy McCain is exactly right“:
The old saying that a man will not “buy a cow if he’s getting the milk for free” – i.e., that promiscuous women undermine their marital prospects — expresses this supply-and-demand concept of sex. But the truth of this adage on an individual basis can also be extrapolated to the larger society: When women are generally promiscuous, men will be generally reluctant to marry. This explains why, in every culture, sluts are stigmatized. The rational basis of what feminists derogate as misogynistic “slut-shaming” is seldom articulated, but it is this: Promiscuous women make it more difficult for all women — including chaste women — to get and keep a husband. . . .
You should read the whole thing, even if you’re a feminist. Because I’m exactly right, even if no one will ever say so.
The secret of punditry is to appear to know what you’re talking about. The most successful pundits are those who can utter incomprehensible gibberish with an air of certainty and authority.
So I woke up before 4 a.m. this morning, came down to the office and turned the TV on to MSNBC. They were re-airing Sunday’s Meet the Press and, as I worked, the chatter was a sort of background music, none of which made any real impression until I heard E.J. Dionne say the phrase quoted in the title:
“I agree with Peggy [Noonan] that the underlying and often unspoken issue here is worry about American decline, and will it still be America? But I just don’t see that Chris Christie speech as being this visionary thing. I mean the clip you showed, where he said Obama wants to diminish the success of others — as far as I can tell, rich people are richer today than they were when Barack Obama took office. That struck me as a partisan Koch brothers-style attack on his part, and as for Obama . . .”
“A partisan Koch brothers-style attack”? What the hell is E.J. talking about? Does he believe that no one ever criticized class-warfare rhetoric in politics before David and Charles Koch began funding free-market activism? And isn’t any Republican’s criticism of Democratic policy (or vice-versa) in some sense “partisan”? Dionne uttered this remarkable phrase in the process of pretending not to understand New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s Reagan Library speech. In that speech, Christie quoted Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, in which Obama decried those who divide Americans. Then Christie said:
Now, seven years later, President Obama prepares to divide our nation to achieve re-election. This is not a leadership style, this is a re-election strategy. Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others. Trying to cynically convince those who are suffering that the American economic pie is no longer a growing one that can provide more prosperity for all who work hard. Insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American Dream. That may turn out to be a good re-election strategy for President Obama, but is a demoralizing message for America.
Christie here accuses Obama of engaging in class-warfare rhetoric — the president’s frequent speeches demonizing “millionaires and billionaires” who, he alleges, don’t “pay their fair share” of taxes — as part of a “re-election strategy.” What honest person can say that the president’s left-populist turn is not a re-election strategy?
It doesn’t matter, in evaluating Christie’s speech, whether or not you believe that the rich should pay more taxes. If Obama’s oratorical assaults on the rich are intended for the political purpose of helping him win re-election, then Christie’s analysis is correct.
Dionne does not engage Christie’s actual argument. Instead, Dionne pretends that he can refute Christie’s characterization of the president’s rhetoric by asking whether “rich people are richer today than they were when Barack Obama took office,” but this is a complete non sequitur.
The remark by Christie that Dionne cites is not directed at the policy Obama has hitherto pursued. Rather, Christie is criticizing the rhetoric by which Obama seeks support for the policy that Obama advocates now. Dionne attempts to change the subject by distracting us with a completely different issue, i.e., how the rich have prospered since January 2009, and then accusing Christie of “Koch brothers-style” partisanship — whatever that is supposed to mean, if anything.
Consider these two truth-claims:
The rich have made out like bandits during the first 32 months of Obama’s presidency.
Obama is now — “cynically,” as Christie says — demonizing the rich as part of his re-election strategy.
Both claims may be true and, indeed, there may be a relationship between these two claims: Obama never pushed for higher taxes on the rich during the two years when Democrats controlled Congress by overwhelming margins, and his newfound left-populist rhetoric about making the rich “pay their fair share” may be seen as an appeal to those members of the Democrat base disappointed by Obama’s previous failure to pursue such a policy. Neverthless, Chris Christie would be correct in accusing Obama of cynicism if the president’s recent advocacy of higher taxes on the rich is a matter of politics rather than policy. And there are many reasons to believe that Christie is correct about Obama’s motives.
All of this is ignored by E.J. Dionne, however, in his effort to negate any praise for Christie’s speech “as being this visionary thing.” E.J. therefore derogates Christie as having made a “partisan Koch-brothers style attack” and then tries to divert attention with a non sequitur (how the rich have fared under Obama’s policy to date) offered as if it were a self-evident refutation of Christie’s speech. Dionne’s allusion to the Koch brothers is a guilt-by-association attack, intended to tie Christie to pre-demonized scapegoats of the Left, and the word “partisan” is just E.J.’s way of saying that Christie is a Republican.
An intellectual’s job is to enlighten his audience by clarifying issues. E.J. Dionne seeks to obscure the issues in order to confuse his audience. And he thinks we’re too stupid to see what he’s doing.
Thanks to everyone who sent in their links! Special thanks to everyone for getting them in on time! To be included in next week’s Rule 5 roundup, send your links by October 8 to Rule 5 Wombat.
Ceremonial cross of John Frum cargo cult on the island of Vanuatu
Something has gone drastically wrong, and I can’t figure out what it is. About a month ago, as Wombat noted in his Aug. 28 FMJRA round-up, we got no fewer than six Instalanches in the span of a single week. There are bloggers who’ve worked for years without getting a ‘Lanche, and so we may have exhausted our karmic quota of linky-love that week, which would explain the 17% decline of traffic from August to September.
An extrapolation of that trend would mean that unless this problem can be reverse-engineered and corrected — unless we can get the blog back into the “sweet zone” — our traffic will decline to near-zero by this time next year. At least, that’s what my calculations show, but I was never much for advanced math.
Despite my wife’s pleadings (“Stacy, get off the computer before you go crazy. No, wait. Let me re-phrase that . . .” ) I’ve devoted many hours to examining causes of my increasing ‘Lanchelessness, pondering the snowball of anti-momentum that threatens to destroy everything we’ve worked so hard to build. And what brought this to the crisis point today was the professor’s post at 2:21 p.m.:
What was the point of devoting ten long months to covering the Herman Cain campaign — going back to the days of “Herman Who?” — if nothing I’ve written about Cain since his Florida Straw Poll victory is ‘Lanche-worthy? The message seems to be that I have nothing meaningful to say on the subject, now that fully-employed professional Washington political experts have taken notice of the guy.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to live in one of the six states (Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina) that have Sheetz stores, you don’t know what you’re missing. Sheetz is a chain of 400 convenience stores that offer a made-to-order fast food menu of such awesomeness words can’t quite describe it.
Mrs. Other McCain abandoned us this weekend to attend a Christian women’s retreat in Ohio, so it was just my two youngest sons and me. (She took the baby daughter with her, and the 19-year-old twin sons fend for themselves.) This morning I made a run to Sheetz to pick up three breakfast “Shmuffinz” prepared my special way, with egg, steak, pesto and mozzarella cheese.
After placing the order, I paid at the register, then waited until they called my number. That’s when I looked at my ticket and saw . . .
