Paid Idiot Ross Douthat Thinks the Poors Can’t Handle Freedom

Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times

Last week professional idiot Ross Douthat was ranting about how big gobmint’s forcing people to buy health insurance (eventually no doubt under threat of being sent to the FEMA camps) would be a terrible encroachment on personal liberty, but this week Douthat seems to be in love with the big daddy state, arguing that casinos and pot will destroy families. Like Lenin he believes that liberty is so precious, it must be rationed.

His “argument” begins incoherently, and remains so throughout. He starts off with this statement: “Based on what stirs passions and wins headlines it would be easy to imagine the the only cultural debates that matter in America are the ones that have to do with sex.” Grammatically it’s a complex sentence, but what does it even mean?

Where has he been reading these headlines? The National Enquirer? Which “cultural debates” are he referring to? Could it be gun control? How is that related sex? Is he agreeing that the bigger the gun, the smaller the dick and the whole thing is about the fear of castration? Or is he talking about marriage equality, which is only “about” sex to those who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how other people do it? Could he be referring to abortion? Sex does lead to pregnancy. But I thought the anti-abortionists were all about the right to life, and not simply out to punish women for sinning or getting raped? Maybe he’s referring to contraception, and how forcing employees to provide health insurance that covers it is wrong because that leads to non-reproductive sexy time?

Douthat continues – “the way we think about sex and reproduction have wider repercussions as well.” Well yeah, I can see that. I mean if you think everything is about sex, and sex outside of a very narrow parameter is the worst, then yeah that has repercussions. And apparently that is how Ross thinks because then he rants about casino gambling for a couple of paragraphs, somehow linking pro-casino to pro-marijuana legalization. Douthat sees both as part of some kind of “social libertarian” conspiracy. But he never shows how the two issues are aligned. Are bills coming up that link both? Are the same groups that work on casinos also working on pot legalization?

Somehow I don’t see a bunch of pot-farmers worried about the feds seizing their land really caring a whole lot about casinos, nor do I see casino owners who’d much rather see people drunk (and uninhibited) rather than high (and sleepy) lobbying to legalize pot.

Funny, I thought libertarianism was going to be the GOPs next brand — fiscally conservative but staying out of your private life? Ross didn’t get the memo. He’s an old-timey conservative – the kind who wants a society where there’s a tight lid on personal liberty AND lower taxes.

His rant about pot is all over the place.. Since even he can’t suggest that marijuana is worse than alcohol or tobacco, he offers a few statements pulled directly out of his ass, including the idea that legalization will “certainly” increase use. Really? Then how does he explain that cigarettes are still legal, but use in the US has declined considerably, or that the era of the “three martini lunch” is long gone, without much change in the law – other than harsher penalties for drunk driving.

Douthat makes a couple more unsubstantiated claims about marijuana, including that it limits educational attainment and economic mobility. And this is because only kids in the hood light up a dooby before school? Or maybe Douthat believes it’s only bad for the poors. You know what really limits education and economic mobility, Ross? Being stopped and frisked on your way to school, lengthy prison sentences, no access to student grant programs because of “drug violations,” growing up in a single parent home or being raised by relatives because one or more parents are in prison for dealing pot. You know what else limits education? Really crappy schools, lack of equity in public education, and, oh yeah, poverty.

Then he makes one of his trademark irritating leaps into what he thinks goes on in the minds of “liberals” – “social liberals and libertarians regard the costs of family breakdown as a price worth paying for emancipation from sexual repression.”

I thought we were talking about marijuana? Or casino gambling? Or marijuana and casino gambling? Why is he bringing sexual repression into this? Could it be that he’s simply obsessed with sex? I’m just asking the question.

He then goes into the idea that “what seems like a harmless pleasure to the comfortable can devastate the poor and weak.”

Ok. So basically he’s going with the exact same argument used by the pro-temperance forces back in the early twentieth century because that prohibition worked out so well. Maybe Ross would be happier if we lived in a land where we simply had one set of laws for the poors and another for their betters.

And then he brilliantly ends with “pots and slots no less than bread and circuses, it can simply distract their minds, dull their senses and make them easier to rule.”

Silly me. I thought the bread and circuses were spectacles like the Ted Cruz faux-filibuster, or Benghazi-gate, or hearings about how forcing employers to pay for health insurance encroaches on religious freedom, or maybe the government shutdown. Aren’t Sarah Palin, the Donald and Rush supposed to be clowns? Isn’t everything on Fox news meant to distract and dull the senses?

(If you enjoyed this rant, you might really enjoy reading an entire novel written by Marion, or maybe starting off with a shorter work.)

What Terrible Offense Did the The New York Times Commit Today?

Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times

The New York Times is not as awful as say The New York Post, but that’s an unfair comparison. The Post stopped printing news a long time ago, and is owned by an evil megalomaniac who is destroying America. To its credit, The Times does still carry old-timey news stories written by actual correspondents in remote and sometimes dangerous parts of the world, and while it’s owned by a family prone to nepotism, they probably are not in league with Satan. However, every time The Times tries to do “lifestyle,” “arts” or anything other than straight news or quirky obits, I have to ask myself, “Who the hell do you think your audience is NY Times?”

I get it. A lot of this is playing to the aspirations and fantasies of readers. What New Yorker doesn’t enjoy lusting after spacious lofts she’ll never be able to afford  in the real estate porn section? 6000 square feet. So big. Hmmm.

But when every non-news story seems to be written for the 1% of the 1%, it gets to be a little much.

What outrage was committed today? Just a line in Ben Brantley’s review of Wallace Shawn’s new play at the Public Theater, Grasses of a Thousand Colors. I am exactly the type of selective, quirky theater goer who might or might not go to see it. I could be persuaded to part with my limited designated arts dollars by a glowing review. Pareles’ review is glowing. What’s off-putting is his description of the character of Ben. Pareles writes, “You should also pay attention so that you can recognize his ilk the next time you meet someone like him in some fancy environment like Davos or the Four Seasons restaurant.”

Really, Ben? Am I the crazy one here? Am I the only one sitting in the audience at the Public Theater who’s never been to the World Economic Forum or even The Four Seasons? In fact, until I just looked it up, I didn’t even know the Four Seasons still existed. I’ll grant you, theater in the US has become an activity mostly for the few. Ticket prices are high enough to keep away the masses and our capitalist overlords work against government support for the arts. Tourists might go to see a musical spectacular on Broadway – a once or twice in a lifetime treat, but a serious play at the Public? There will probably be people in the audience who have met people exactly like Ben in the places where Ben would be. However, they won’t be all the people in the audience. They won’t even be the majority of people in the audience. Most of us will be more ordinary folk. Not poor, that’s true. But not Davos rich. Teachers, students, librarians, professionals, semi-professionals, artists of all types, retirees, etc. etc. An educated bunch for sure.

We are the ones keeping theater alive in this city. We are the ones sitting on our butts in the parking garage of Lincoln Center waiting for $20 rush tickets to the opera. We are the ones who know to go to the Play Express line at the TKTS booth, or what shows sell rush tickets and when.

If the play succeeds, it will succeed because Ben is not only the type one might run into in the highest circles, but because he shares at least some characteristics with people most of us are more likely to actually know. That doesn’t mean playwrights need to write exclusively about ordinary people, or people who are just like us. It means that in writing even about kings, the audience must see in them our common humanity.

Not having seen the play, going only by Brantley’s review, I understand it takes place in a rarefied atmosphere, but I have no idea whether a groundling like myself would even be capable of understanding it.

Possibly, Mr. Brantley was told to put something in to stroke the egos of the 1% of Times readers who do go to Davos and the Four Seasons. They’re the ones bringing in the advertisers that make even having a print edition possible. But is the aim of a good theater review to help bring in an audience, or is it to cater to a few wealthy patrons? If it’s the former, here’s an easy fix:

“You should also pay attention so that you can recognize his ilk the next time you meet come across someone like him in some fancy environment like Davos or the Four Seasons restaurant the lobby of the Public Theater or a New York Times sponsored event.”

(Marion Stein apologizes to Mr. Brantley if she misread, and he was just being humorous and too subtile for her. Possibly, she’s reached her Emily Latella years, in which case, nevermind. Also, she apologizes to Jon Pareles. Looking at the hardcopy as I wrote the blog, I initially misidentified him as the author. The error was pointed out by an astute commenter below. In any case, while you’re here feel free to look at some other posts or check this out.)

Rant of the Day — Ross Douthat Says More Stupid Sh*t

Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, , ,

Professional idiot Ross Douthat of the New York Times continues to rally against healthcare for people who make less money than he does (or as they are more commonly known the 98%) This week he does the maths and claims that the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA – which I won’t call Obamacare because for better or worse, it is not) will raise premiums. His basic gripe is because the cheapest pre-ACA plans are now “illegal” the plans that are in compliance are more expensive. He asks “Will [people] be grateful for more comprehensive coverage, even though it’s being forced on them and has higher premiums attached?”

Then he makes it seem like it’s about ideology. Liberals will be grateful he says because for them “more is simply better.” While conservatives argue that not spending money on health insurance will “free up money.” This is the fun thing about opinion pieces. You can say any idiotic thing you wish. You can pretend you know how other people think and what they want or just make up your own economics, ignoring what actual economists have to say. Also you can create false categories like “liberal” and “conservative” which have little to do with how you much anyone enjoys getting what the Republicans Continue reading Rant of the Day — Ross Douthat Says More Stupid Sh*t →

Idiots at the Opera — Notes on The Nose

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I’d never read Gogol’s short story The Nose, but watching the William Kentridge production of Shostakovich’s operatic version, it felt somehow both fresh and familiar.

Fresh because it’s easy to imagine how young Shostakovich was when he wrote the music, how new the century was, and how daring and exciting it must have been to create a new kind of opera – modern, antic, and absurd.

Familiar because of the source story’s influence both direct and indirect. A bureaucrat wakes up one morning to find his nose is gone. Then he discovers his nose is human-sized and living a life of its own. The story was written in the 1830’s, about eighty-five years before Gregor Samsa awoke to his own changed state, about ninety years before before surrealism, expressionism, and dada, somewhere close to a hundred before the birth Philip Roth, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks.

The story´s  influence on Roth and Allen is unambiguous. Look at the giant breast run amok in Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (1972), and then there’s the even more obvious reference in 1973’s Sleeper in which the future society’s dictator Continue reading Idiots at the Opera — Notes on The Nose →