Say Goodnight, 2006

With a grateful nod to Ann Althouse, I will commemorate New Year’s Eve with an 11-month-old New York Times column about sleep.  

Ever since I was a child, I have called myself an insomniac.  I’ve always envied those who could fall asleep “when my head hits the pillow.”  My insomnia is a sporadic visitor who won’t leave.  I will be unable to sleep for several nights in a row, interrupted by a night or two of recuperation, then more nights of insomnia, with the pattern repeating for several exhausting weeks. Then, without fanfare, it goes away and I sleep fine for awhile, but the problem always returns.  But during these phases, I always fall asleep when I don’t want to; when my wife and I start watching a DVD for example. Then I awaken.  I feel deeply rested, even if I’ve only slept 20 minutes. And I can’t fall back to sleep for hours.

I’ve tried so many things to deal with it.  Medication, a ban on caffiene after 2 o’clock, yoga-like meditation…. For years I went to sleep with all-news radio, particularly with announcers like Beach Rogers, who could describe a nightful of murder and mayhem in a voice that never strayed from calm rationality.  All in pursuit of the critical eight hours of altered consciousness we are said to need for our health and sanity.  

I figure there must be a Darwinian logic to insomnia.  It’s so common.  I’ve wondered if it has something to do with our ancestors’ need for vigilance against attacks from rival tribes or wild animals.  Maybe my vigilance hormone runs a little hot.

It turns out, according to University of Virginia history professor Roger Ekerch, that I’m misinformed.  Those eight solid hours we’re told we need and feel entitled to… didn’t used to be so solid:

In all likelihood, we have never slept so soundly. Yes, the length of a single night’s sleep has decreased over the years (upward of 30 percent of adults average six or fewer hours), but the quality of our sleep has improved significantly. And quality, not quantity, sleep researchers tell us, is more important to feeling well rested.

This is not to minimize the torment of insomnia over the course of a restless night. But for most of us, slumber is reasonably tranquil — especially when compared with what passed for a night’s rest before the modern era. Despite nostalgic notions about sleep in past centuries, threats to peaceful slumber lurked everywhere, from lice and noxious chamber pots to tempestuous weather.

Worst in this pre-penicillin age was sickness, especially such respiratory tract illnesses as influenza, pulmonary tuberculosis and asthma, all aggravated by bedding rife with mites. One 18th-century diarist recounts that asthma forced her husband to sleep in a chair for months, with “watchers” required to hold his head upright. Among the laboring poor, whose living conditions were horrendous, sleep deprivation was probably chronic, prompting many to nap at midday, much to the annoyance of their masters.

As if these maladies were not enough, we now also know that pre-industrial families commonly experienced a “broken” pattern of sleep, though few contemporaries regarded it in a pejorative light. Until the modern age, most households had two distinct intervals of slumber, known as “first” and “second” sleep, bridged by an hour or more of quiet wakefulness. Usually, people would retire between 9 and 10 o’clock only to stir past midnight to smoke a pipe, brew a tub of ale or even converse with a neighbor.

Others remained in bed to pray or make love. This time after the first sleep was praised as uniquely suited for sexual intimacy; rested couples have “more enjoyment” and “do it better,” as one 16th-century French doctor wrote. Often, people might simply have lain in bed ruminating on the meaning of a fresh dream, thereby permitting the conscious mind a window onto the human psyche that remains shuttered for those in the modern day too quick to awake and arise.

This should make you sleep a little better in 2007, no?  If you can manage to sleep through the night, it’s because you are thankfully free from foul odors and lice anxiety.  If you can’t, maybe it’s because you have some business to attend to, perhaps romantic, perhaps psychological, perhaps sacred.

It’s only due to the influence of light that we have “consolidated” our sleep, according to Ekerch’s column.  The light keeps us awake longer.  In pre-industrial times, we would succumb much earlier to a “first sleep,” and then arise from it in a complacent state caused by a rise in the hormone prolactin — the same hormone that “allows hens to sit happily upon their eggs for long periods.”

That’s contentment.

Ekerch cites Dr. Thomas Wehr, a sleep researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health as suggesting that “some common sleep disorders may be nothing more than sleep’s older, primal pattern trying to reassert itself — ‘breaking through,’ as Dr. Wehr has put it, into today’s ‘artificial world.’”

I resolve, therefore, to stop worrying about insomnia in 2007.  I sleep just fine. 

Happy New Year!

San Francisco, Looking at the Pacific from Pt. Lobos, 12/28/06

Clear, cold and windy here, just like in LA.

Christmas Night, 2006

A  belated Christmas card from Southern California to the world.  Taken Christmas night off Paseo Del Mar.  

Lace ‘em Up, It’s Boxing Day!

I’ve been doing a little research on Boxing Day, which might or might not be today, December 26th.  The most commonly-used phrase about Boxing Day?  “Its exact origins are obscure.”  Also: “Another theory is…” 

Most sites that purport to explain it take pains to disassociate the holiday – it is a holiday in the U.K. and many Commonwealth countries including Canada – from “pugilistic competition.”  But they don’t have a better explanation.  It seems a bit strange that millions of people have this day off from work, but there is no reason for it.  How do you celebrate Boxing Day, other than staying home?  What if you grew up in a country that celebrated Boxing Day, and moved to one (like the U.S.) that doesn’t?  If your boss doesn’t give you the day off, can you claim discrimination?

There are a few other holidays that celebrate nothing in particular.  Most companies give their employees the day after Thanksgiving off, although I’ve worked several places that require you to use up a vacation day.  You know you’re still considered entry-level if they make you go to work the day after Thanksgiving.  New Year’s Day barely qualifies as a holiday.  “Hey everybody, look.  We can finally use the new calendar!”

Compared with the day after Thanksgiving, however, New Year’s is loaded with tradition, especially in Southern California.  That’s right, we own New Year’s Day out here.  Except when it falls on a Sunday.  Luckily, we won’t have to deal with a Rose Parade on January 2nd again until 2011.

Boxing Day is often prized as a workday in the U.S., I’ve found.   “I love the week between Christmas and New Year’s,” many former colleagues would tell me.  “Nothing happens.”  They spend the week getting caught up.  I suppose there are two types of office workers in this country.  Those who like getting caught up during the last week of the year, and those who think they’re so important, they try to time their vacations for when things aren’t busy.  For companies that end their fiscal year on December 31, however, the week after Christmas can be stressful.   

According to this site, here are some things you can do to celebrate Boxing Day:

• STEP 1: Attend a sporting event. In England, horse racing, regattas, football games and the Brighton Swimming Club’s annual dip into the icy English Channel are just some of the events that take place on Boxing Day.
• STEP 2: Remember those who have provided a service to you during the year. The postal delivery person, the newspaper delivery person, and employees of your household or business should be remembered with a tip, bonus or gift basket.
• STEP 3: Remember those in need. Tradition has it that on Boxing Day in Victorian England, the poor went from house to house bearing boxes that were filled by compassionate home owners with food, clothing and gifts. Give canned goods, clothing or your time to organizations that help the needy.
• STEP 4: Go shopping. Shopping is a popular Boxing Day activity, and the malls are usually filled with people taking advantage of after-Christmas bargains.
• STEP 5: Celebrate with friends. Provide food and drink, or organize a potluck get-together for friends and family. Make it low-key, as Boxing Day should be less hectic and more relaxing than Christmas Day.

Don’t Forget to Check Out My Christmas Links

Just like egg nog, but without the trans-fats!

I’ll keep adding to it through tomorrow.  After Monday, up the chimney it goes!

Frank Capra Was Right

In Saturday’s LA Times there is a new look at Frank Capra’s, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a film so associated with Christmas that it only appears on television twice a year, on Christmas Eve and the Saturday before. That he was making a Christmas classic came as news to Capra and RKO:

Oddly enough, the film was unceremoniously released during Christmas week of 1946. Never mind the yuletide flavor, the wintry snowdrifts in Bedford Falls and the holly wreath George Bailey carries slung around his arm — this Jimmy Stewart-Donna Reed romance was originally scheduled to open in January 1947. But RKO Studios knew it had something special and rushed it into theaters a few weeks early to meet the deadline for Academy Award consideration that year.

Capra shot much of the film on a specially constructed quaint-town set located at RKO’s ranch in the San Fernando Valley — a site that has long been overtaken by property development. In media interviews at the time, Capra did not portray it as a holiday film. In fact, he said he saw it as a cinematic remedy to combat what he feared was a growing trend toward atheism and to provide hope to the human spirit. In a moment of possible revisionism decades later, Capra said that he also realized that with the holiday season comes an inherent vulnerability in all humans, and that this uplifting tale might just ride on that sentiment.

(snip)

Capra, an Italian-born filmmaker who gave us such early classics as “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” died in 1991, but not before witnessing “It’s a Wonderful Life” take on iconic wings of sort when television began airing it regularly in the 1970s.

The movie transcended time and soared well beyond his imagination.

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Capra told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. “The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I’m like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I’m proud … but it’s the kid who did the work. I didn’t even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea.”

I remember the first time I saw it. A college roommate forced me to sit and watch it on the tiny TV we had in our kitchen. He was shocked I’d not yet seen it. At 19, I thought it was pretty corny, and couldn’t figure out what this sentimental mish-mosh of angels, Charles Dickens and Horatio Alger had to do with us, a couple of Berkeleyites in the mid-1970s.

Maybe the screen was too small. Within a few years, I realized “It’s A Wonderful Life” is simply one of the greatest movies ever made, on every level.

Watching it now, the first thing I look for are the faces. When has any film director captured and choreographed more memorable faces and facial expressions? Capra’s animated representations of people are like an unlikely combination of Norman Rockwell and Max Beckmann. Think of the “Why don’t you kiss her?” guy, or the anguished apothecary.  

Then I listen for the dialogue, which, contrary to popular belief, is almost entirely unsentimental, even brutal. You could probably get a little buzz if you knocked back a shot of whiskey every time a character growled, “What’s the matter with you?”

George Bailey to Mr. Potter: “In the whole vast configuration of things, I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider.”

Potter to George Bailey: “Merry Christmas…in jail!”

George Bailey courting the future Mary Bailey: “Now you listen to me. I don’t want any plastics and I don’t want any ground floors. And I don’t want to get married *ever* to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do.”

George Bailey, loving father: “You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?”

Truly, this movie earns the sobs it always wins from me at the end. George Bailey doesn’t just think he has a lousy life. In many ways, he does have a lousy life. He’s lucky to be married to Donna Reed at her most beautiful, but otherwise, Potter pretty much nails him in the cigar scene:

George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel. He’s an intelligent, smart, ambitious young man — who hates his job –– who hates the Building and Loan almost as much as I do. A young man who’s been dying to get out on his own ever since he was born. A young man…the smartest one of the crowd, mind you, a young man who has to sit by and watch his friends go places, because he’s trapped. Yes, sir, trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic-eaters. Do I paint a correct picture, or do I exaggerate?

The whole first half of the movie is nothing but one twist of fate after another that prevents Bailey from living the life he planned for himself. Few people are as definite about their wishes as Bailey is — and none of them come true. That’s the secret of the movie’s power. Confronted with one final twist — his idiot uncle misplacing cash that Potter is going to falsely allege Bailey stole to give to the floozy Violet Bick — he is finally done. Nothing has gone his way, and so much is arrayed against him.

He resists — mightily — the message the angel Clarence tries to teach him. He absolutely denies that, if he hadn’t lived, his brother would be dead, the sailors on his ship would be dead, his mother would be a bitter, impoverished boarding-house keeper, his wife would be a meek “old maid,” and the main street of the town now called Potterville would be one sleazy business after another. It can’t be true he was so important.

In fact, the kindness of one person — even if that person him or herself is desperately unhappy — can make all the difference in each life they touch. Like a drip of acid, that truth finally burns into George Bailey’s brain. This can be a rotten world, but kindness saves it. And when you need it most, the kindness you give comes back to you. This is something I’ve learned myself in the past few years. It’s not a secret — I’ve had my share of serious disasters, and have many times felt powerless over the pulsing flow of events into the rocky shores. But every time — every time! — the kindness of the good people in my life has saved me.

For at least 20 years, I’ve choked up at the end of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” in good years and bad, at the same moment — when George’s face finally registers the truth about life and love that, through his endless frustrations, had eluded him. Then more faces, the amazing and strange people of Bedford Falls, glowing with love as they lift up their fallen brother.

It’s a Giant Squid…but it’s a Baby Giant Squid

I realize this has already been on Drudgereport, but since the giant squid from Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea appeared in so many of my childhood nightmares, I couldn’t help but share this with you — the first video ever taken of a giant squid.  (You have to click on the link, not the picture.) 

Disappointingly, this is actually a juvenile giant squid, only about 10-12 feet long.  They can grow to 60 feet long.  The preserved, frozen carcass of a 22-foot adult giant squid can be found at the Melbourne Aquarium.

The Battle of Britain, 2006

It’s pretty clear (to me anyway) that the war in Iraq has not mutated into a civil war, as some say, but into the first major U.S. engagement with Islamism, a complicated battlefield in which we and the civil authorities of Iraq are fighting on multiple fronts against an array of different insurgent terrorist groups that, once we leave, would proceed to killing each other.  The goal is to foment a real civil war, which it’s my belief most Iraqis do not seek.  It is unclear if we can prevent this.

But Iraq is just one front in what to me is rapidly becoming World War III.  Another major front is the United Kingdom.  You have probably already heard this news:

British intelligence and law enforcement officials have passed on a grim assessment to their U.S. counterparts, “It will be a miracle if there isn’t a terror attack over the holidays in London,” a senior American law enforcement official tells ABCNews.com.

British police have been quietly carrying out a series of key arrests as they continue to track at least six active “plots” tied to what they call “al Qaeda of England.”

Officials said they could not cite any specific date or target but said al Qaeda had planned previous operations during the Christmas holidays that had been disrupted.

“It is not a matter of if there will be an attack, but how bad the attack will be,” an intelligence official told ABCNews.com.

Authorities say they are seeking at least 18 suspected suicide bombers.

The British government’s awareness of this unending threat probably explains why Prime Minister Tony Blair declines the many engraved invitations to turn against George W. Bush.  I’m sure he knows he would be better off politically if he could cut the cord that attaches him to our widely-derided president.  But Blair sees a bigger picture for his country, and knows he can’t casually discard his nation’s most important ally for short-term political advantage.  Here’s part of what Blair said to Parliament a few days ago:

The basic point I come back to, again and again and which I have made many times here – is that whether in Iraq, or Afghanistan or indeed combating terrorism here, these battles are inextricably bound together. It is a global issue.  It needs a global response.

Which brings me to the principal consideration of Britain’s foreign policy over the past 10 years.  Global challenges can only be met by global alliances.  A nation like Britain has no prospect – none – in the world as it is developing today, of pursuing its national interest except in close concert with others.  That is why, no matter how tough the test, and these past years since 9/11 have shown how tough it can be – the alliances Britain has with America and within Europe, must remain the cornerstones of our policy. 

Do not misunderstand me.  I support the US willingly.  I believe in the EU for reasons of principle.  I supported the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq because I believed them right.  I have put Britain at the centre of Europe because I am proud that we are part of the largest political union and biggest economic market in the world.  For me these alliances have never been a struggle between individual conscience and duty to my country.  It is a happy marriage of conviction and realpolitik. 

But just for a moment, leave aside the obvious and deep-rooted ties of history with America.  Leave aside the fact that only, together, when the US finally entered WWII, were we able to succeed.  Leave aside the prospect of Britain facing the Cold War for half a century without the transatlantic alliance, an absurd thought.  Leave it all aside and focus on today and the future.

Take any problem Britain wants solving:  global terrorism – (assuming you don’t believe that but for George Bush it wouldn’t exist); climate change; Israel/Palestine; Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programme; world trade; Africa in general, right now Sudan in particular; global poverty.  We may agree or disagree with the US position on some or all of these issues.  But none of these vital British concerns can be addressed, let alone solved, without America.  Without America, Kosovo could not have been attempted.  Without Kosovo, Milosevic might still be running Serbia; and the Balkans rather than stabilising with a potential future in Europe, would have remained the destabilising force it was for most of the 20th Century.   We need America.  That is a fact.

All that, in a sense, is obvious.  But – runs the more sophisticated argument -:  America we like, this American President we don’t.  This is a comforting argument.  It separates anti-America from anti-Bush.  However it is also a cop-out.  Let us not kid ourselves.  9/11 would have changed any American President’s foreign policy.  3000 innocent people dead in the streets of New York; the Al Qaida operatives who did it, trained out of Afghanistan.  Following 9/11, American policy was going to shift.  It was going to get out after the terrorists with all America’s might and any President who didn’t do it, wasn’t going to be President for long.

When I said, after 9/11 that we should stand shoulder to shoulder with America, I said it because I believed it.  But I also thought it was profoundly in Britain’s interests.  I knew this attack wasn’t aimed at America per se; but at America as the leading representative of our values.  Look round the world today; look even just within Europe.  Britain is not the only country that faces a terrorist threat.  We all do, allies and non-allies, anyone in fact that isn’t “them”.  I thought then and I think now that defeating this threat – whose roots are deep and have been a long time growing – was going to take a generation; and I knew then and know now that defeating it, was never going to be done without an America prepared to lead as America, to its credit, has.

And the truth is, for Britain, it is always right for us to keep our partnership with America strong. 

Post 9/11, there were no half-hearted allies of America.  There were allies and others.  We were allies then and that’s how we should stay; and the test of any alliance, I’m afraid, is not when it’s easy but when it’s tough.

I rooted for a Democratic victory in 2006 and, depending on who’s nominated, will root for a Democratic victory in 2008 in part because, for a variety of reasons, a huge and important faction within our own nation — the left — does not recognize or will not acknowledge the threat Blair articulates so clearly (and Bush in-articulates so unclearly).  Perhaps as more of their own people assume positions of responsibility, the acknowledgement will come, and our nation can unite for this long struggle.

There is simply no getting around it, because every value the left holds dear — not to mention the broader American values — will be ground into dust everywhere the Islamists gain control.  To recall a long-forgotten political slogan of Richard Gephardt’s, “It’s Your Fight, Too.”  And that means you: environmentalists, labor organizers, gay activists, fighters for economic equality, multilateralist proponents of the UN, church-and-state separatists, extreme civil libertarians, “living and breathing” constitutionalists, TV and movie producers, sexually frank pop singers — all of you.  All of us.

Irony, Defined: PepsiCo in India

Indra Nooyi is an inspirational figure in India, having risen to the position of PepsiCo CEO, and becoming (according to Fortune) the most powerful woman CEO in the world. She is a fascinating person in her own right, and a great symbol of globalism.  

So you would think a visit to Dehli for Nooyi would be a tour of triumph.  Not according to the International Herald Tribune:

Unfortunately, the timing of her return could not have been worse. She walked straight into a dispute about the evils of junk food, arriving just as India’s health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, announced that he planned to ban colas and greasy snacks in schools because they were ruining the health of the nation’s children.

In a powerful speech days before Nooyi’s arrival, Ramadoss warned that the wealthy middle classes were facing a “galloping” rise in obesity, heart disease and diabetes. He promised to introduce compulsory yoga in schools along with classes on healthy eating.

Moving beyond the allegations of insecticide contamination, which have shaken sales of both Coke and Pepsi in India for the past five months, he added firmly that “with or without pesticides” colas were “harmful for health and should not be consumed.”

It was a rude welcome for the visiting celebrity. Nooyi fought back bravely, stressing that PepsiCo wanted to work with the Indian government to combat “the prevailing sedentary lifestyle,” which she identified as the root cause of obesity-related illnesses. She announced that her company’s “Fun for You” products (colas and snacks) would be balanced by its “Good for You” line (waters and energy drinks). But the expected exuberance of this trip was dampened by the controversy.

The deeper and more tragic irony is that just as India faces an obesity crisis, it continues to struggle to feed its children. According to Ramadoss, 50-60 percent of Indian children are malnourished. 

Certainly, the American stereotype of India has shifted quickly from that of desperate poverty to one of outsourced efficiency and business success.  But with success comes the cycle of workaholism, two-income families, the increased reliance on food you can grab off a convenience store shelf or get through a drive-thru window, and all the health problems that come with living that way.  

Ramadoss made it clear that his strategy for tackling India’s new weight problem would be to target precisely the products Nooyi was in Delhi to sell. He conceded that there might be “legal hindrances” with introducing a blanket ban on colas and chips in schools, and he proposed introducing a system of fines and penalties instead.

Health experts welcomed Ramadoss’s decision to highlight the growing problem of obesity in India.

Ambrish Mithal, senior doctor at an obesity center run by Apollo, a private hospital in Delhi, said that by conservative estimates at least 30 percent of women and 20 percent of men in urban areas were already clinically obese, although some experts put the real figure at closer to two-thirds of women.

“Malnutrition continues to be the bane of India, but the people who matter in this country are affected by the opposite problem,” he said. “The worst sufferers are the people working in the multinationals in urban India; they make up the new work force driving the nation’s economy, working to put India on the world map. A vital component of our manpower will become sick if steps are not taken to address this.”

A world of meaning in the doctor’s use of the phrase “the people who matter in this country.”  Certainly, Nooyi’s company has picked up his not-subtle message about whose problems count the most.  PepsiCo will be investing $500 million in India over the next five years, “part of which will go to building a new research center outside Delhi, where scientists will work on concocting low- calorie and low-caffeine drinks,” according to the IHT.

America’s Starving Obese

Read this profile of Berkeley biochemist Bruce Ames — an admirably stubborn and brilliant researcher focused on cancer and aging, who made enemies among the environmental community for pooh-poohing their fears about pesticide exposure.  

Ames’ focus now is on obesity and malnutrition — and the millions of American who suffer from both maladies at the same time.

Here’s a long excerpt from a much, much longer piece.  It ran in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.  The whole piece, written by Leah Messinger, is worth your time.

Recently, Ames overheard a colleague mention 60 cases of rickets at nearby Children’s Hospital Oakland. The disease, which is caused by vitamin D or calcium deficiency and had essentially been eliminated in the United States, is still common in countries with an unpredictable food supply. How, Ames wondered, could ailments such as rickets, which have historically been associated with malnutrition occur in a population that grows increasingly plump?

Could it be, he asked, that a society gorging on empty calories is simultaneously starving itself of the vitamins and minerals needed to keep its internal gears churning? Or that children who once played outdoors in the sunshine required to make vitamin D in the skin now stay indoors, hypnotized into inactivity by their TV screens? For years obesity was a sign of wealth; people with limited cash went hungry. But as cheap, highly processed foods have taken root in our supermarkets, narrowing the shelf space for fruits and vegetables, obesity is more frequently associated with poverty.

Ames continues to assemble evidence that a dearth of micronutrients can damage DNA. “We’ve been taking human cells in tissue culture, and they go through a certain number of generations and then they senesce,” he explains, adding that when the cells are deficient in a certain micronutrient, they senesce, or age, prematurely. “We still have to prove it in people and at what level, but so far for every vitamin and mineral deficiency we’ve looked at they senesce early and we see a lot of DNA damage.”

A properly functioning body requires healthy mitochondria, the “power plants” of nearly every human cell. Vitamins and minerals fuel the mitochondria, which in turn burn fats, carbohydrates, and protein in food to form energy for the rest of the body. With age, mitochondria degrade and lose efficiency. Oxygen radicals, atoms with unpaired electrons that are also called “free radicals,” result from that inefficiency and bind with other molecules to interfere with normal cell operations.

Inadequate micronutrient intake, Ames believes, affects the mitochondria in much the same way as aging. He has proved in tissue cultures that micronutrient deficiencies can degrade DNA, leading to the production of mutated chromosomes that can cause cancer. Over the short term, nature appears to be kind to the mildly micronutrient deficient human body. But chromosome disintegration will result in dire long-term health consequences, Ames says. In the absence of enough nutrients, he postures, “What nature would want is for the animal to survive, but anything long term will be ruthlessly dispensed with. So it’s a triage system. And I think DNA damage is long term. It shows up as cancer 30 years later.”

A college roommate of mine was one of Ames’ acolytes, and although I was a mere English major and then a journalism graduate student, I learned quite a bit from Ames through secondary osmosis.  This is a new direction for him.  In the absence of good farmer’s markets and a culture that worships poor eating habits, Ames says in this story that the fastest, cheapest and most effective solution might be widespread distribution of vitamin pills that could provide the ingredients missing from the typical American diet.

What the #$*! Does SCAG Know!?*

When the Southern California Association of Governments puts out its annual State of the Region report, it’s usually a one-day story in the L.A.-area local media, and no story at all in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., where one could argue SCAG’s findings are really aimed — at the custodians of the mythical treasure chests where money to build all the roads, commuter rail lines, housing and schools we need is supposed to come from.  

SCAG’s report would get even less attention if it weren’t for the easy PR hook of a “report card.”  The report card itself is unpleasant reading, as the headlines reflect: “Quality of Life is Dim.” “State of Region Report is Bleak.” “Traffic Negatively Affects Life in SoCal…Duh.” The LA Times didn’t bother with it, instead choosing to focus on how the Inland Empire used to be affordable, but not so much anymore.  

The percentage of households able to afford a median-priced home in Riverside and San Bernardino counties dropped from 48% in 2001 to 18% last year, as the median price for an Inland Empire home increased from $157,000 to $374,000 during the same period, the study found.

Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge is also a SCAG board member and was in charge of this report.  As he assesses the explosive growth in his area, he makes the point that has always annoyed me about SCAG:

Loveridge compared his region’s growth to the boom that hit Orange County and the San Fernando Valley years ago. “You try to learn lessons,” he said, “but there are clearly market forces and social forces that help shape what takes place.”

New residents are moving to Riverside and San Bernardino counties from elsewhere in the United States, the study showed, bucking a larger regional migration trend.

Last year, 24,000 more people left Southern California to live and work in other parts of the United States than moved here, according to SCAG statistics.

Regional officials suggested that that turnaround could reflect Southern California’s cost of living, including high housing prices. The region last year registered a near-record-low mark in housing affordability, the report found. Still, it has not dampened the region’s housing construction boom.

In other words, nothing SCAG does or says matters.  If you’ve been around public affairs in LA long enough, you know that by now, SCAG could phone in these reports from a shack in Wyoming.  The numbers they crunch and package for public consumption are meant to spur action to change the region’s negative trends, but they can’t even stop history from repeating itself. Against “market forces and social forces,” SCAG and the region-wide consensus of elected officials who all endorse its agenda are impotent.  

The clue to SCAG’s weakness?  The report card, with all its C’s and D’s and F’s, is a policy-wonk view that doesn’t fit with what real people think.   According to SCAG’s own survey, more than half of Southern Californians think things are going “very well” or “somewhat well,” while less than 10 percent think things are going very badly.  Only about 20 percent of Southern Californians think transportation is the region’s top problem — and the survey shows there is no consensus about what the top problem really is. Crime, environment, economic concerns, education and immigration are each named by about 10-15 percent of the region’s residents as the top problem. 

SCAG, which is chartered as a regional planning entity, claims authority “to promote economic growth, personal well-being, and livable communities for all Southern Californians,” but has few tools with which to fulfill this grandiose promise.  This is why the agency is so relentless in telling us that traffic, the environment and affordable housing are bad and getting worse.  Its leaders perpetually wait for a call from the people of Southern California to come to their rescue.  

We’ve got myriad problems in Southern California, but the ones SCAG focuses on aren’t especially unique.  The environment is now perceived as a global issue.  Where you stand on housing affordability depends on whether you are currently an owner or a renter.  Most Southern California owners have an investment that appreciates faster than most other ventures. 

Traffic congestion is part of living in an urban area; it improves only when the economy weakens, and no one wants that.  People in Southern California figure that part of living and working includes traffic jams, crowded buses and trains, parking hassles, etc.  They don’t think it’s much different in other cities, where you can also get stuck in traffic — and freeze your butt off in December.  They don’t think anyone has the answers to problems like this — least of all an obscure public agency that seems obsessed with telling them what they already know. 

*Edited, 12/17

Intimate Strangers

Talking Heads, the fascinating “new wave” band that began in the late 70s, made its biggest mark on pop culture with the hit, “Once in a Lifetime” – thanks in part to MTV’s embrace of the surreal video, but also because of the song’s highly resonant lyrics, especially:

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself; Well…How did I get here?

(snip)

You may ask yourself
How do I work this?
You may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
You may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
You may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

That song ran through my mind when reading Meghan Daum’s column in this morning’s LA Times.  She riffs on a new study that purports to show how ”the more we know about our loved ones, the less we know what they want from life,” which explains why “couples give each other such lame gifts.”  The study itself is fascinating:

An article in the December issue of the Journal for Consumer Research, snappily titled “Why It Is So Hard to Predict Our Partner’s Product Preferences: The Effect of Target Familiarity on Prediction Accuracy,” explains that we often confuse our own desires with the desires of our partners. Moreover, the study found that we tend to be more dismissive of our partners’ tastes than of the preferences of strangers.

In a series of experiments, marketing scholars in the Netherlands and Belgium showed images of bedroom furniture to couples who had been together for at least six months. Separately, each subject was asked to choose the styles he or she liked best. Then half were asked to predict what their partners would prefer, while the other half was given information about the preferences of a stranger, called “Person X,” and asked to choose styles for them based on those preferences.

As it turned out, members of the second group were much better at guessing what furniture Person X would choose than the first group was at guessing on behalf of their partners. Oops. And unbeknownst to those in the second group, their Persons X were their partners.

All of this suggested to the researchers that the more information you may have in your brain about someone, the less you may be able (or likely) to tease out their likes and dislikes. That may be a result of couples having more important things to talk about than bedroom furniture, but sometimes, the study found, it’s because we impose our own preferences on our partners, something we don’t do to mere strangers.

Technology, it seems to me, might have the answer.  In my extended family, we’re all instructed by my mother to post what we want for Christmas on our Amazon “Wish Lists.”  It’s the main reason I think she has a computer.

My wife and I force our son to sit down and write up his Christmas list at least a month before the holiday.  My wife is the hardest to pin down, so when she tells me something she wants, I make a point of memorizing it or writing it down.  Left to my own devices, I’d just screw it up.

P.S. In creating a link for “Once in A Lifetime,” I learned from Wikipedia that the songwriters, David Byrne and Eno, took the lyrics from a sermon they heard on the radio.

Don’t Wipe Out!

The poster of this YouTube clip calls it a tsunami, but that’s not the case.  However, it’s quite a ride — possibly a 50-foot wave that rolled up at Jaws, a beach in Hawaii.

According to Wikipedia, the hazards of big-wave surfing include:

In a big wave wipeout, a breaking wave can push surfers down 20 to 50 feet below the surface. Once they stop spinning around, they have to quickly regain their equilibrium and figure out which way is up. They may have less than 20 seconds to get to the surface for a breath of air before the next wave hits them. Additionally, the water pressure at a depth of 20-50 feet can be strong enough to rupture one’s eardrums. Strong currents and water action at those depths can also slam a surfer into a reef or even the floor, which can result in severe injuries or even death.

One of the greatest dangers is the risk of being held down by two or more consecutive waves without the chance to reach the surface for air. Surviving a triple hold-down is extremely difficult.

So, you root for this guy to stay on his board.  Click the video to see if he does.

It’s the Most Andy Williams Time of the Year

During a recent business trip, I found myself in a bar with three gentlemen — two of them close to me in age, one considerably younger — and discovered they all had in common a passion for the music of Andy Williams.   I tried hard not to let my jaw drop into my beer.

One talked about looking forward to relaxing in front of the TV to a DVD of Andy Williams’ old Christmas shows.  Another expressed his eagerness to put on his “Andy Williams sweater” at an upcoming Christmas party.  A third said that one of these days he was going to drive on down to Branson, Missouri and catch one of Andy Williams’ shows.  But he was warned by the first man:  Andy Williams doesn’t perform there year-round.  (Tonight, for example, he’s in Buffalo, NY.) You’d hate to go all the way to Branson, Missouri on an Andy Williams mission and have to settle for Yakov Smirnov and the “What a Country” Dancers.

These guys — they were no squares.  Their fondness for Andy Williams was genuine.  Oh sure, they liked their Claudine Longet jokes as much as the next guy.  It was taken as a point in Andy Williams’ favor that he stood by his ex-wife after she shot her lover, “Spider” Sabich.

Andy Williams gets all this respect mostly because he is the Mayor of Christmas Town.  He was, and is, the last entertainer who could present the holiday without irony.  He represents Christmas before Christmas became a battlefield in America’s culture war.   You didn’t have to be religious to feel a rush of warmth and comfort when this velvetty-voiced singer performed “Oh Holy Night,” or “The Little Drummer Boy,” alongside the more secular holiday tunes like “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” or “White Christmas.”  But if you happened to agree that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” Andy Williams didn’t make you feel left out.  He had the freedom to perform the religious-themed tunes that, say, my high-school orchestra was prohibited from playing.

What else in pop culture bridges this divide?  “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” certainly, especially the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, but also Linus’ Bible reading.  “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which shows up on most lists of the top 100 films of all time, is a curiously pagan version of Christmas.  God’s in it, an angel is a major character, but the nativity never comes up.   I’m sure you can think of others. 

I don’t know whether Los Angeles will get it’s traditional “24 Hours of Christmas” this year with the demise of pop standards on Saul Levine’s KKGO, but that always got me in the mood:  Aretha Franklin doing “Ave Maria,” followed by the New Christy Minstrels rip-roaring “We Need A Little Christmas.”  

To me, Christmas in America is the whole cheeselog — the sacred, the silly, the magic of gift-giving, the misery of shopping for them, all the rituals as well as the surprises — including finding out that that three hard-nosed guys in a bar are all Andy Williams fans.

P.S.:  A few interesting Andy Williams facts — all from his Wikipedia bio:

• His show business career began in the last 1930s when he was a member of a family act, the Williams Brothers.  The Williams Brothers backed up Bing Crosby on “Swingin’ on a Star.”
• He was a regular on the Tonight Show when Steve Allen hosted it.
• His only #1 Billboard hit was “Butterfly,” which he sang in imitation of Elvis Presley. His greatest recording (in my opinion), “Moon River,” shockingly was never #1.  He made the record only after he performed the song at an Oscar ceremony.
• He met Claudine Longet when he stopped to help her when her car broke down outside of Las Vegas.
• He is a noted collector of modern art.

A December Night in Redondo Beach

My son, my dog and I wanted to take a walk on the Esplanade in Redondo Beach on Sunday afternoon, but I had chores to do first.  But I stubbornly persisted with the idea, despite a little rain and approaching darkness.   Here’s a southerly view: 

Here was a heartfelt plea, taped carefully to a lamppost.  I hope the gnarly dude in question gives it up.

Give the Customers What They Want: Bias

This study, reported in the New York Times today, should not be surprising, but in today’s incredibly politicized media environment, it counts as news.  The University of Chicago has learned that a newspaper’s political biases reflect the belief systems of their readers. 

The authors calculated the ideal partisan slant for each paper, if all it cared about was getting readers, and they found that it looked almost precisely like the one for the actual newspaper. As Dr. Shapiro put it in an interview, “The data suggest that newspapers are targeting their political slant to their customers’ demand and choosing the amount of slant that will maximize their sales.”

On one hand that sounds a little mercenary. On the other hand, there is certainly good news in the finding. If slant comes from customers, then the views of the owners and the reporters do not matter. We do not need to fear that some partisan billionaire will buy up newspapers and use them for propaganda.

Indeed, the study found that the views of the owner had no significant effect on the slant of the newspaper. The partisanship of corporate donations from the owner had no bearing on the slant of the news coverage in the paper. The slant of a newspaper group’s other newspapers had no bearing, either. The New York Times Company’s newspaper in Spartanburg, S.C., for example, had the same slant as other newspapers in South Carolina that the company did not own.

So although politicians from both sides tend to accuse the news media of partisanship and negativity, the data suggests that they ought to blame the public. The papers basically reflect what their readers want to hear.

The study determined which papers were liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, based on the words they used.  A liberal newspaper was more likely to use the words “oil companies,” “middle class” and “public broadcasting.”  A conservative one was more likely to use “death tax,” “illegal aliens” and “nuclear power.”

This is kind of a weird way to measure bias.  If the New York Times decided to run a 10-part series on nuclear power around the world, and used the words “nuclear power” 10 times in each story, that would steer the paper toward the right? 

Anyway, this finding makes intuitive sense to me.  It would be nice to think the “objective media” still existed, but the fact is, a serious news consumer who wants the full story free of political spin, has to travel on both the left and right sides of the media nowadays, and then do some kind of averaging to find where the truth lies.

“Supreme Adequacy”

“BE ADEQUATE,” all in capital letters, were the words with which Lindsay Lohan ended her meandering tribute to director Robert Altman after his recent death. 

The e-mail, and indeed Ms. Lohan’s entire existence, gets attention because she is part of a celebrity cohort that would make a nun pine for the comforting rectitude of the Rat Pack — booze, broads, battered paparazzi and all. But I always feel a little sad for Lohan. Unlike Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Nicole Richie and their interchangeable sleazy parasite boyfriends, she had talent.  Because I was raising children during the 90s, I saw Lohan’s version of “The Parent Trap” a time or two.  She was 11 when she made it and did a fine job.  But nowadays, when Lindsay Lohan contemplates adequacy, she is looking up at an ideal that is fading away.

Jon Weisman found an interesting way to talk about “adequacy” the other day, in this post on his great blog, Dodger Thoughts.  About the Dodgers signing Luis Gonzalez to play left field next season, Jon said he is “not excited.” Gonzalez was once an excellent player, but his skills are in decline.  But then Jon added:

At the same time, I am very open to the idea that with superstar talent at a clear premium, there may be something to the idea of trying to dominate with depth, with supreme adequacy.

I like that idea.  Sometimes, “supreme adequacy” is a high enough goal for an organization — a baseball team, or anything else.   Things like genius or ”superstar talent” can’t be planned for; they are four-leaf clovers.  Truly great ideas — they’re rare. But you can assemble a team where everyone is adequate.  Not mediocre: Adequate.  Everyone knows their roles and performs their roles.  The roles are clearly delineated.  To be adequate is not easy, but it’s achievable. It’s not a mystery. 

Greatness is a mystery. There is nothing more awesome to me than observing a person who is extraordinary at … really just about anything.  But sometimes, people who think they’re special, aren’t.  And their striving to be seen as great becomes an obnoxious drama of self-delusion. 

Even the great have to master “supreme adequacy” first.  I think people used to know that, before celebrity became a goal in itself.  Maybe Altman’s death disclosed this truth to the befogged Ms. Lohan, and her subconscious is trying to point her back in the right direction. 

Have you heard the call to be supremely adequate?

It’s Different in Minnesota

If I’ve been a little less prolific lately, there’s a good reason.  I’m working. 

For my job, I went to Minneapolis this week for about a day and a half.  They were having a cold snap — apparently cold weather happens a lot up there.  Thursday morning, I was due at an 8:30 meeting, so I rushed around my hotel room to get ready.  The final thing I did was take a quick shower.  Generally I don’t blow-dry my hair, and I don’t put any gel or spray in it.  I probably should, but I don’t.  So I’m in the streets of Minneapolis with damp hair.  Not for long, of course.  It was 2 degrees out.  I only had to get out of a cab, walk to the intersection, wait for the light and cross the street.  

A breeze blew a few locks of hair in my face, so I pushed them back. I felt something funny in the back of my head, like hair gel.  But that couldn’t be.

It was ice.  In the course of a three-minute walk, my hair had frozen. 

I liked 2 degrees. I can’t wait to go back!  

Bob Oates on the “Unique” Reggie Bush

A few years back, the LA Times Sports department decided that longtime pro football writer Bob Oates should “only” appear online.  At the time, it appeared to be a kind of demotion, or maybe a clover-filled pasture for this aging scribe to frolic in.  Now, it’s clear that for the Times as well as most newspapers, they need to look hard at how they can get people to look at their online product.  Bob Oates would be a fine writer to start promoting as “exclusively online.” 

His column today on the New Orleans Saints (and ex-Trojan) Reggie Bush is a good example.  Oates is not a flashy writer, and thank goodness for that.  But he’s thoughtful, insightful and imaginative.  Here’s a taste:

Reggie Bush is so greatly different from all other NFL players — past and present — that the question of the week is again how his employers, the New Orleans Saints, will use him in the Dallas game Sunday night. The crowd of Cowboy fans will see a player who is the NFL’s most dangerous runner in an open field. Yet the Saints have never shown that they know the best ways to get him open.

To date, they’ve been alternating Bush with running back Deuce McAllister, which is a conventional way of lining up two great players. But there’s nothing conventional about Bush. First off, the Saints should realize that as an NFL player, Bush is primarily a receiver, not a scrimmage runner. Instead of rotating him and McAllister, they should regularly start both of them, using Bush as a third wide receiver in a basic three-wide-receiver offense.

I watched some of last Sunday’s Saints game against the San Francisco 49ers, and assume it was that incredible performance that inspired Oates to write this.  When he was with USC, when Bush was “on,” he seemed unstoppable — blessed with quick moves and speed, but incredibly powerful and hard to tackle.  But that was against other college boys.  It was amazing to see this mere rookie dominate another pro team.  Sunday night’s Saints v. Cowboys game looms as the game of the year so far.

Some Desert Visions

I took these last weekend.  I’ve been messing around with them on Photoshop.  I know that’s wrong.

 

 

Let Me Tell You a Story About A Little Town Called Los Angeles…*

Harold Meyerson’s Los Angeles magazine column is not on its website yet, so you’ll just have to believe me that it’s pathetic.   Called “Topsy Turvy,” it is the kickoff to a series of features under the umbrella “The Power Issue.”  I’d call Meyerson’s piece propaganda — and Meyerson more pamphleteer than journalist — except I think he believes every word of it himself.  

In the spirit of Christmas I suppose, the story Meyerson wants to tell is like the Gospel verses that purport to show the birth of Christ and his divinity were foreshadowed by the Old Testament prophets.  In Meyerson’s cathechism, the whole history of Los Angeles has been leading up to this magical moment — the ascension of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor.  The story’s John the Baptist is the late Miguel Contreras, the man who had the vision of a “labor-Latino-liberal alliance,” and then brought it into the world — dressed I suppose in swaddling clothes.

Do I dispute the fact that Latinos, labor and liberals today dominate City Hall?  Of course not.  But how new is it?  Not very.  The trend lines bringing each of these factions into power weren’t the vision of anyone in particular, and they were clearly visible long before Contreras became head of the LA County Labor Federation in 1996.  And for all the benefits empowerment accrues to these groups, it has not shown itself to be a coalition that’s strong enough to overcome Los Angeles’ profound problems.

Meyerson has to tweak history to make it fit his mythology.  His tale includes, but minimizes and misinterprets the 20-year mayoralty of Tom Bradley, attributing his rise solely to a coalition of Jews, African-Americans and liberals.  As I understand the history, those factions got Bradley into a runoff in 1969, where he was defeated by a racist reactionary assault by incumbent Mayor Sam Yorty.  It took additional help from labor and some of the business community to get Bradley elected in 1973. 

Labor played an enormous role throughout Bradley’s reign — as strong or stronger than it does today.  Bradley’s mightiest achievement, the rebuilding of downtown, came about because of labor leaders like Bill Robertson and Jim Wood, who saw the potential for thousands of good jobs in the construction of office towers and, later, the Metro Rail.

In comparison with Los Angeles’ reputation before World War II as an anti-labor city, Meyerson makes it seem like a phenomenon of the Villaraigosa era that unions play a dominant role in choosing who sits on “more than half the seats” on the City Council.  In fact, that level of influence took hold in the 1970s.  Bill Robertson was about as big a power broker as this city has seen in the past 50 years.  The carpenters, machinists, transportation workers and several others were serious power players that at least half the council and all other elected officials had to take seriously.  The players today are different and the agendas are different, but the labor movement’s decisive strength goes back decades.

It goes almost without saying that liberals have dominated Los Angeles politics at least since Bradley’s emergence in the late 60s — back when liberals didn’t hide their philosophy behind anodyne words like “progressive,” back when liberals were much more left-wing than today’s breed.  Three of the four mayors who have served since 1973 were liberal Democrats, and the fourth, Republican Richard Riordan, was only electable in 1993 because Los Angeles was in both a deep recession and a social malaise in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots. 

Riordan, however, was the embodiment of the RINO, the Republican In Name Only — a liberal in GOP drag, who only adopts a handful of conservative ideas to maintain his party identity.  A former Bradley appointee himself, Riordan’s staff was populated by Democrats. In fact Riordan and Villaraigosa had the same chief of staff.  Riordan posed no threat to the liberal achievements of Bradley’s era.  His conservatism on law enforcement and the economy mirrored the shift in many liberals’ thinking on those subjects at the time of his election.

True, Riordan took on the unions sometimes — but so did Bradley, and so has Villaraigosa.  If you want to see a mayor who was truly obedient to labor, the only example in my lifetime was Villaraigosa’s predecessor, Jim Hahn, whose defeat was celebrated by Meyerson.

Latinos are also not new to political power in Los Angeles.  Meyerson neglects a significant success of the Latino-labor coalition:  The uphill fight to elect Edward Roybal to the City Council in 1949, a seat he held until 1962.  True, after Roybal left City Hall, Latinos couldn’t win another seat on the council until Richard Alatorre in 1985, but that was more due to the devious political genius of a Spanish-speaking Irishman, Art Snyder, whose pork-barrel politics kept him popular in East LA for two decades.  But Latinos were a part of Bradley’s grand coalition. Throughout his tenure, Bradley never had more than two deputy mayors at a time.  One of the two was always a Latino.  

What really boosted Latino political fortunes in LA was the U.S. Justice Department. In the early 90s, the department sued to force the city to redraw its council district boundaries to maximize the potential for Latinos to win two more seats, for a total of three.  There are still three Latino council members today.  There probably should be four, but for the consensus desire to avoid conflict between the fast-growing Latino population and the shrinking black population.  The 2010 census will likely cost one African-American seat, and perhaps bring about two more Latino seats.  But this is demographic destiny combined with federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — not anyone’s grand strategy. 

In Meyerson’s mythology, Los Angeles was dominated by business leaders for most of its history until very recently.  In fact, at least since I was old enough to vote, business has had to form or join coalitions in order to have much political influence at all.   Even developers have to adopt the protective coloration of others’ agendas to win votes for their projects.  During Bradley’s era, business joined with labor and with the African-American and Latino communities on pro-growth policies that eventually led to a backlash among affluent suburbanites pining for preservation of Brady Bunch-style neighborhoods.  The homeowner groups — who Meyerson pretty much ignores in his fable — continue to exert strong influence on councilmembers representing parts of the San Fernando Valley and the Westside.

Meyerson is correct in observing that, beginning in the 1980s, “slowly but inexorably, all of the city’s signature big businesses–its banks, oil companies, aerospace conglomerates and department stores…were sold to or enveloped by new owners who moved their headquarters out of town.”  But why did things move in that direction — out of town?  Why weren’t LA-based corporations strong enough to be the nucleus of many corporate mergers?  

That saga is where the real story is, but it’s not one Meyerson wants to tell.  The fact is, Los Angeles has an extremely hostile business climate.  It’s heavily regulated, it’s expensive, and its public services are in tatters.  The young, eager and talented coming out of the nation’s colleges don’t think of LA as a cool place to start their careers.  Married employees with kids don’t want to deal with the bad schools, the traffic or the smog. Los Angeles is also afflicted with California’s poor business climate — a double whammy. 

I was just talking to someone in Phoenix today — the growth there is phenomenal.  Las Vegas, Reno, Portland, and other cities from Boise to Dallas are growing at LA’s expense, because they offer business lower costs, lower taxes, better services and a better lifestyle for the workforce.  Businesses want to ship their good through LAX and the Ports of LA and Long Beach.  They want to sell to the region’s huge population.  But they don’t want to have their headquarters here, and they want as little of their operations here as they can get away with. It’s just too costly and too much of a hassle.

Much of the blame for LA’s anti-business image, and California’s, falls at the feet of the portion of organized labor representing public employees.  To whatever extent labor’s political clout grew in the 90s and 00s, it was due to public sector workers taking over the labor movement.  The labor leaders in Bradley’s time, like Bill Robertson, were pro-business, because business meant jobs.  The labor leaders of the Contreras era are pro-high taxes, because high taxes pay for public sector jobs and perks.

Far from being the fulfillment of an historic evolution, the current political dynamic is in fact quite volatile and unsustainable.  Eventually, high taxes depress business activity so much that raising them brings in little additional funds.  Public services suffer as more and more of the public revenues go toward salaries and extremely generous pensions — and eventually, even the most liberal voters who give government the most benefit of the doubt will notice that despite massive resources going into the government, services aren’t improving.  Those who can afford to leave, leave.  Those who can’t leave are also those who don’t have much to give the taxman — or who can hire accountants to keep the taxman at bay. 

If there is any manifest destiny in Villaraigosa’s emergence, I think it comes from qualities unique to the man himself — his energy and enthusiasm, his charisma.  He obviously makes some people feel hopeful about Los Angeles.  He also has a great network; and better relationships with the state government, the governor and the legislature, than Bradley, Riordan or Hahn had.  That helps.

But the diminishing presence of business in Los Angeles is not a good sign, and it is not good news for liberals, labor leaders or Latinos.  In the first half of the 20th century, as Meyerson points out, business had too much power, and they abused that power to suppress organized labor and minorities.  After Bradley was elected, there was a balancing of influence between business and labor, leading to a period of growth from which all communities and factions saw benefit through working together.  The equilibrium was lost in the early 1990s, and since then, Los Angeles has been in decline.  Meyerson’s pseudo-socialist ideology blinds him to the fact that his beloved labor-liberal-Latino coalition is primarily in charge of handing out ever-smaller pieces of a shrinking pie.  It’s not clear if they know how to grow it. It’s not clear whether anyone does.

*Edited 12/2/06

“May I Speak to Mr. Dylan, Please?”*

I wanted to excerpt a piece from this week’s New Yorker about longtime radical radio host Bob Fass, but the article isn’t online.  However, the magazine’s website has something even better to offer:  Two long, downloadable clips from the show, including a rambling 93-minute, 1966 interview with Bob Dylan.  (*Update, 3/11/07.  Looks like the links were taken down. Oh well.) (*Corrected update, 3/12/07:  They’ve just been moved to here.  I’ve fixed the first link. Thanks, Steve.) 

On the Dylan Timeline, 1966 is the year he released ”Blonde on Blonde” and toured with members of The Band.  I use the term “interview” very loosely; it’ s more like a visit, although they do take calls from listeners.  I haven’t had time to listen to all the Dylan clip, but early on, he talks about meeting Liberace, expresses amazement that Lightnin’ Hopkins actually recorded a song called “I Wish I Was a Baby,” and feigns anger when a caller won’t recognize him as an “ethnic folksinger.”  

For those who hadn’t heard of him, Bob Fass went to work for NYC’s Pacifica station WBAI in the early 1960s, getting assigned the overnight beat.  He turned it into “Radio Unnamable,” which became a nightly free-form platform for alternative politics, underground music, police brutality reports, marijuana and on-air psychotherapy.  He’s been on and off the air ever since, rising and falling based on the station’s mercurial politics.  At 73, he now appears Thursday nights. According to Fisher, the other nights, Fass cruises around the city in a beat-up Chrysler, “imagining the show he might be doing.”

Over the years, Fass’ regular guests included Abbie Hoffman, who came up with the term “Yippie” while listening to a 1967 New Year’s Eve show in which Fass wondered aloud how to radicalize dope-smoking hippies, and then called to show to share his brainstorm with Fass’ listeners.  Years later, Hoffman broadcast his vasectomy live on Fass’ show. 

If you want to read the whole thing, find the New Yorker with a cartoon of a piano lesson on the cover.  The issue is dated December 4, 2006.