Writes Thomas Frank (the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and a book I've read and recommend, "Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?").
Consider Politico’s famous email tip-sheet, Playbook, which is read religiously every morning by countless members of the DC press corps, including myself. About two-thirds of the publication consists of useful summaries of the day’s news stories.A foreign object jammed rudely into their creamy world...
The rest, however, is a sort of People magazine for the Washington journalist community, in which the reader is invited to celebrate leading journalists’ (and politicians’) birthdays, congratulate leading journalists (and politicians) for their witty phrase-making, learn which leading journalist (and politician) was seen at which party and anticipate which leading journalist (and politician) is going to be on which Sunday program....
But there is an unwritten purpose to these daily honor rolls of journo/political friendship and that is to define the limits of what is acceptable.
Like the guestlist at Lally Weymouth’s party in the Hamptons, which was described so salaciously in Playbook a little while ago, a tiny handful of people and publications and ideas are in; everyone else is out....
They know what a politician is supposed to look like and act like and sound like; they know that Trump does not conform to those rules; and they react to him as a kind of foreign object jammed rudely into their creamy world, a Rodney Dangerfield defiling the fancy country club.
Yes, he is a pricker forward.
I'm glad to get a perfect chance to use that term I learned yesterday — pricker forward, a synonym for instigator from the 16th century.
Frank is portraying Trump as a masculine stereotype (a rude jamming object) and the press as a feminine stereotype (swanning about in a "creamy world"). It's a rape metaphor.
Now stand back and let Donald Trump make a sandwich:
He hates small food, you know.
Posts
96 comments:
Loved "I learned this in Europe" line
DaDonald can't get no respect...not on CNN and MSNBC.
ditto Bill C.
I wonder if any of the meats in Rodney's sandwich had hard-to-understand Italian names.
Answering my own wondering:
The Rodney Dangerfield character is the son of an Italian immigrant, we're told.
Not too clear from the character's name Thornton Melon.
I said the name out loud and Meade said "Elon Melon."
I laughed, then after a while said: "Why did you say Elon Melon? Was it because it's Elon Musk, and there are musk melons, or because Elon is Melon without the 'M'?"
He just laughed and said: "Elon Muskmelon."
There's first base before you get to the foreign object thing, unless you're a celebrity.
Just as Trump is relentless against the Fake Media, the MSM has become relentless with WaPo, NYT, CNN and McClatchy in overdrive.
The same dynamic with Dangerfield in 'Caddyshack':
[Ty has just been asked by Al to partner up against Judge Smails in a $20,000-per-person golf match]
Judge Smails: Can I have a word with you? ln private?
Ty Webb: Sure thing, Judge.
Judge Smails: Listen, your father and I prepped together, went to war together, played golf together. We built this club, he and I. And let's face it, some people simply do not *belong*. Let's not... cave in too easy. What do you say, Ty?
[Smails and Ty start to laugh]
Ty Webb: Let's make it $40,000.
Al Czervik: Hey, great!
Ty Webb: [to a glaring Smails] You know, Judge, my dad... never liked you.
I am Laslo.
The Press learned to suck the cock of Socialism in Europe.
I'm not sure how dating works if you don't have baseball.
Who knows in Europe, or for Eskimos for that matter.
Loading the kayak.
Obama proved their thesis that experience and competence are not important. It only matters if you look like a President.
We are now running the country like Drama Club.
it shows
"Who knows in Europe, or for Eskimos for that matter."
It's how many fingers you get into the igloo.
I am Laslo.
"Yes, he is a pricker forward. "
It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
I am Laslo.
ANother manifestation of the elitism.
Notice the resemblance to Trump in Dangerfield's attitude to the crowd in his way : "Comin' through, hot stuff, look out will ya?" Like it or not that's the way they do things in New Yawk. Great reference, professor.
I second Ann on "Listen, Liberal,". Brutal take on the Dems by one of their own.
Interesting about Playbook. Must be the last "Social Notes" published in the US.
The Lesson of Rodney Dangerfield:
If the Church of the Elites cannot be torn down at least we can laugh when someone farts in it.
I am Laslo.
Several times during the run-up to the the election Trump was labelled Al Czervik. It 's fits to a T.
It is also interesting that Dangerfield's is most famous for saying: "I don't get any respect".
Frank seems to have learned something from his short spell as a WSJ columnist after "What's the Matter With Kansas" book. He didn't last long and I wonder what sort of feedback he got ?
Another term for a "pricker forward" would be a goad. Those aren't seen much in the US any more, but Robert Louis Stevenson described them and their use in Travels With a Donkey In the Cevennes. The titular donkey, unwilling to cooperate with Stevenson's desire to engage in the titular travel, has to be pricked forward with a goad that a friendly innkeeper makes for Stevenson, nothing more than a length of rod with a pin or tack embedded in the end, point outward, which is stabbed into the ass's ass to encourage velocity.
Mark Zuckerberg had an idea for a better mouse trap and got very rich from it.
Now they want to run him for President?
I wouldn't call The Trumpster a "pricker forward". There are about three syllables too many in that phrase. But he is a rather blunt instrument. I'm not certain that he is going to be able to accomplish much as he attempts to muck out the cesspool on the Potomac, but he will wind up smacking a few fellows (and ladies--he's an equal opportunity sort of guy in that regard) up longside the head. And if that's all he can accomplish, well it's a start.
My never Trump friends (and I have more than a few such types--sorta like the lace curtain Irish in their revulsion at vulgarity) could never understand that there is a big audience out here for someone to push back at our supposed "betters". Color me a deplorable mongrel American.
a Rodney Dangerfield defiling the fancy country club.
And Rodney made a career out of playing that role during a period of history (the 1980's) when the country looked favorably on the upwardly mobile.
Gonna be a long, cold, frustrating eight years for the Left.
"And if that's all he can accomplish, well it's a start. "
He's cancelled over 800 regulations and that's a big start. 50,000 to go.
DeVos and Perry are off to great starts, too. You can tell by the screams of anguish from the lefties.
Slightly OT, but relevant: on the radio this morning, intro "joke" to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: the NYT did an experiment having 6 monkeys type for a day, and whaddayaknow, what came out looked like an interview with the president of the United States.
"It is also interesting that Dangerfield's is most famous for saying: "I don't get any respect"."
Maybe he would have gotten some respect if he'd corrected his grammar as you just did for him.
Socialism is really feudalism, isn't it? The tiny crust of elites -- read lords and ladies -- offering food and shelter -- of a sort -- to the peasantry below. This contract, Marxism, was never intended to spread the wealth around but to placate the masses. The Occupy movement showed the fragility of this compact as the masses identified the 1% as evil. Bernie Sanders was the responses: a faux idealist who was himself one of the lords. He was never a threat to Hillary but a useful tool.
Trump is indeed a fist thrust into this mush. He's no Bernie and that's what really strikes fear into the hearts of the gentry.
I hate to break this to you, Darrell, but the Rove Republicans learned to suck the Koch of One World Government in Texas. And they have no worries if that government is Communist, as long as they and theirs are in it.
THAT is why they are doing their best to run President Trump out of office.
Thomas Frank is certainly no fan of Donald Trump, whatever he may write about Gentry Liberals.
Without reading the comments above, let me say the problem with many commentators and Althouse regulars is they think the people are déclassé.
Thomas Frank appears to be struggling to understand why. To her great credit, Althouse has made every attempt to understand what is genuinely foreign to her. Althouse understands many voters are Known Unknowns, from her perspective. Too many reporters see voters as Unknown Unknowns. May I suggest we henceforth call a grouping of reporters a "Cancer of Pauline Kaels"?
Those of us who grew up in the vast middle, within two standard deviations of average, understand the people in Kansas. They're typically honest, hard working and sincere. They want to make the lives of their children better. And they can be trusted to take care of themselves if we just leave them to their own formidable devices.
Patriarchy News Flash; The biggest Stick ever built was just placed into service to be carried by President Trump, or so said Secretary of Defense Mattis.
"if we just leave them to their own formidable devices."
But there is no graft in that !
To Social Workers, everyone looks like a client.
traditionalguy said... [hush][hide comment]
Patriarchy News Flash; The biggest Stick ever built was just placed into service to be carried by President Trump, or so said Secretary of Defense Mattis.
But, will he ever speak softly?
"To her great credit, Althouse has made every attempt to understand what is genuinely foreign to her. "
I'm not elitist. I'm elite. There's a difference.
(That's a joking reference to a post that went up yesterday, and I was not the one who said those words, in case you've been wondering.)
Maybe he would have gotten some respect if he'd corrected his grammar as you just did for him.
More likely, he would never been heard of!
The leftwing hollywood - leftwing media shaker mix.
So, the female chauvinist establishment has deemed Trump unworthy and are on a progressive baby hunt full of hopes and dreams of aborting him. Or perhaps this is a social justice adventure where there is a Choice to either abort him or force exclusion (e.g. refugee crisis). A Watergate-style coup, but Trump denies that he's a baby. What is a journolist to do without jumping the Ass? Too late.
Althouse,
I wrote a reference to exactly that in the first draft which I deleted by accident. You are elite and anybody who says otherwise (and several have in these comments over the years) is a damned fool. It's interesting that even after I (DAMN IT!!) accidentally deleted what I wrote the first time you still saw the reference I meant to make the second time I typed it.
I wonder if there was a time during which you recognized you had been dragged closer to elitism because of your station and peer group and resisted that pull. You are, I think, fairly characterized as someone who resists pushes and pulls. From afar it appears part of your nature that you have nurtured.
And now, as you make effort to understand what is foreign, people who might have assumed you were a natural political ally are left aghast that you - the Jane Goodall of Wisconsin's Recall Effort - try, honestly, to report what you see without the assumptions so many carry into the public arena.
I'm honestly impressed with just how rare your style of thinking and writing is.
Without reading the comments above, let me say the problem with many commentators and Althouse regulars is they think the people are déclassé.
Bien peasant.
Everyone gets a golden statue, and an invite to the party(D).
The Tech CEOs are not really what they seem, with just a few exceptions.
This is not a creative class, in the sense of being entrepreneurs or gifted organizers.
The last generation of these, the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Larry Ellisons and Andy Groves and Gordon Moores and the like, who were hands-on at least initially, they are gone or going, dead or retired. Even the younger bunch are hands-off these days, Thiel and Omidyar and Whitman and so forth are resting on their billions. The current bunch are management, hierarchical leaders of consolidated, no longer dynamic industries.
This sclerosis has crept up on these industries over the last 15 years or so, and the leading companies are mainly collecting the rewards, the excess profits of their market positions. But they are not the sorts of organizations that are likely to create.
I think the perception of dynamism, of being cutting edge, is simply cultural inertia.
There is a great deal of tech being developed, there is stuff out there such as quantum computing systems and quantum teleportation, and some very odd physics, as usual in major company labs such as IBM and Google and of course federally subsidized university labs. In the old days it would have been renegade personnel from these that would bail out for the purpose of commercializing the technology as their employers dragged their feet.
But that doesnt seem to happen anymore.
"Koch" rhymes with "coke."
Please keep this in mind when attempting to make strained and unfunny puns with the name.
Elon Musk is one of the few who really is still hands on pushing the boundaries. He has a weird business model, as entrepreneurs go, of having governments subsidize him for pr/cultural reasons, while he finances his rather expensive big idea, which seems to be the low-cost high-tempo satellite launch service business.
I think the rest of what he is up to is just to keep public funds flowing.
The Rodney Dangerfield comparison is pretty good, but I see it more as being like President Trump as Groucho Marx, and the Tammany-media-elite complex as Margaret Dumont.
Feminine stereotype.
Vipers who think with their boobs and ovaries instead of their brains?
It is easier for people to do what you want them to do if they can joke with you about it.
"I wrote a reference to exactly that in the first draft which I deleted by accident. You are elite and anybody who says otherwise (and several have in these comments over the years) is a damned fool. It's interesting that even after I (DAMN IT!!) accidentally deleted what I wrote the first time you still saw the reference I meant to make the second time I typed it."
It was implicit (and the reference was fresh and still memorable by me (plus, Meade and I have been using it for jokes).
"I wonder if there was a time during which you recognized you had been dragged closer to elitism because of your station and peer group and resisted that pull. You are, I think, fairly characterized as someone who resists pushes and pulls. From afar it appears part of your nature that you have nurtured."
I've never felt at home with people who are smug about being elite. I've found that embarrassing or boring or bad (even sinful).
"And now, as you make effort to understand what is foreign, people who might have assumed you were a natural political ally are left aghast that you - the Jane Goodall of Wisconsin's Recall Effort - try, honestly, to report what you see without the assumptions so many carry into the public arena. I'm honestly impressed with just how rare your style of thinking and writing is."
Thanks!
Koch is just Cook in German.
Cock would be Schwanz.
The Guardian Feb 2017 - Monday, 13 April 2015 was a typical day in modern British politics. An Oxford University graduate in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), Ed Miliband, launched the Labour party’s general election manifesto. It was examined by the BBC’s political editor, Oxford PPE graduate Nick Robinson, by the BBC’s economics editor, Oxford PPE graduate Robert Peston, and by the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Oxford PPE graduate Paul Johnson. It was criticised by the prime minister, Oxford PPE graduate David Cameron. It was defended by the Labour shadow chancellor, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Balls.
------------
I am Canadian who reads much American news and it is astonishing how grads from Harvard, and Yale, dominate American society. Same article could be written about Harvard Law and how grads all seem to hire one another and only seem comfortable with one another. Something similar has happened here in Canada but not as pronounced as in US or UK.
I have been saying for about a year now that Donald Trump = Al Czervik and Trump haters = Judge Smails. Trump is no worse, no better, than previous presidents but people are reacting to him like he just peed in punch bowl.
Vipers who think with their boobs and ovaries instead of their brains
Both men and women think with their brains. They're wired differently.
A man thinking with his penis is not descriptive of the experience. It's definitely brain driven.
By analogy, the same for women.
"It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class."
I don't know that this is true. There's a bit of truth in it. They're in the same class as in social norms and manners, but they're mostly not in the same economic class. Probably a lot of journalists, like a lot of people generally, are overawed by money and care too much about knowing people with a lot of it, and most business people like to be on good terms with the press. The incentives are there for both groups to get along.
Schwanz means tail, plain and simple.
Three of the main cattle-baron leaders of the Johnson County War were Harvard men.
We had "Back to School" on a VHS tape when I was a kid. Used to watch it over and over.
As for elites, this is a dangerous trap.
Maybe being elite, by diverting the creative instinct, destroys the value of the best of humanity.
One big change I've noticed over 30 years is that American kids used to be great tinkerers, makers of things. Around here anyway they used to buy electronic components and create odd devices. These days far more of the intelligent sort are absorbed in the twin sinks of competing for top colleges or playing games. The US (and the world, to be fair) has some wonderful college applicants and no doubt formidable players of games, but not a great deal of creation.
We have been going to the original Maker Faire (look it up) since the first one in San Mateo a decade ago. Every year it has changed, in the direction of packaged "tech" exercises, outfits selling kits and the like for parents to push on their reluctant offspring. And probably not coincidentally every year it seems like its the same stuff over and over, even down to the arts and crafts.
Thomas Frank missed a key fact on the Jake love-story in WashPost. How did Jake and his wife get to clerk for the same Justice? Why was Jake mentioned in acknowledgement in a book by this Justice? How do some white people get to make all the connections - Ivy, elite foundations, great work offices (Congress, White House, State)? This is what is referred to as #WhitePrivilege. Thomas fails here.
AA said: "Maybe he would have gotten some respect if he'd corrected his grammar as you just did for him."
I frequent two (2) blogs where the grammar police have self-deputized. I do not want to lose my comment license. I have five (5) points on my record as it stands now.
Birkel wrote: "Too many reporters see voters as Unknown Unknowns"
The most infuriating thing is not that most reporters make absolutely no effort to understand the Unknown Unknowns. It's that they celebrate their own ignorance.
I recall a Twitter exchange a few months back between a journalist who wrote about guns who had gone some details laughably wrong (they always do). When he was corrected, his reply was along the lines of "Unlike my critics, I'm not a redneck gun nut and my knowledge of these trivial details is limited." He was writing about guns, got the details wrong, but that doesn't matter because only deplorables care about such things. And if you take the time to learn about guns and consider the POV of the deplorables - well, who knows where that will lead? You might end up discarding your stereotypes and herd mentality and those invitations to fancy parties will stop coming.
There is a bookstore store owner in Boston who has received ridicule because he publicly expressed qualms about selling customers the book "Hillbilly Elegy," which the nimrod seems to think is some sort of white nationalist manifesto or something. Of course the real fear is that customers who read it might develop sympathy for poor white people. We can't have that.
To analogize, I guess, using one of my current favorite books (which I only discovered five years ago!) Hippolyte Taine's "Ancient Regime". Taine describes and blames the descent of the French aristocracy (an elite if there ever was one, variously artistic, literary, military, and even entrepreneurial) on the loss of its functional role as the actual masters and administrators and, especially, the defenders of their regions, and their devolution into courtiers fighting for income and advantage from the centralizing state, in Paris and Versailles.
A dynamic class turned sclerotic by the temptations of the Parisian "swamp".
matism said...
I hate to break this to you, Darrell, but the Rove Republicans learned to suck the Koch of One World Government in Texas. And they have no worries if that government is Communist, as long as they and theirs are in it.
THAT is why they are doing their best to run President Trump out of office.
The Obamacare fiasco has outed the members of the globalist uniparty in the ranks.
They will be removed.
Ann Althouse said...
I'm not elitist. I'm elite. There's a difference.
I would have laughed if you just pricked that forward without the explanation.
Pedantic note: The phrase "what's the matter with Kansas?" did not originate with Frank. It was used as a slogan by William Jennings Bryan in one of his Presidential campaigns. Maybe someone even more pedantic than I can explain what Bryan meant and how his meaning differed from that of Frank's......I hope Kansas someday finds peace and some way to correct their endless pathologies. Kansas has suffered for too long.
Very droll, Althouse.
I see what you did there.
"Everything they [mainstream journalists] do, they do as a herd – even when it’s running headlong over a cliff. ... They are endless suckers for credentialing. ... These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class. They are professionals and they believe in the things that so many other professional groups believe in: consensus, “realism”, credentialing, the wisdom of their fellow professionals and (of course) the stupidity of the laity. ... This is the key to understanding many of their biases."
So (apropos to an earlier post) can we say that mainstream journalists are members of an elite who are also elitists?
I find the analogy between the Dangerfield character and Trump interesting. Thing was, that Dangerfield was successful in that role because a lot of people secretly sympathized with him. The American dream - make a lot of money, and move up. Except that the elites wouldn't let you join their country clubs, go to their schools, etc.
Trump has made a lot of his fortune connecting with the working class. While the elites have lost no looked down on him, and his brash bravado, that sells to much of America. The part of America that didn't go to elite colleges, etc. maybe a state school instead, or maybe not even college. His brand was tied to living large, gold facets, etc. Professional wrestling and beauty pageants. All that the country club set deplored. He really is the Rodney Dangerfield of modern politics.
The funny thing though is that this aspect of Trump is part of why he won, and his Republican opponents for the nomination probably wouldn't have. He was able to go downmarket into a demographic that had been the base of the Democratic Party maybe from its founding. Yes, he gave up some of the country club Republicans who are more worried about sharp creases and good colleges. Who were already moving in the Democrats direction. And why wouldn't they be - the colleges the upper middle class want to send their kids to are the same ones that have gone so crazily leftwards, and have been graduating more liberals than conservatives for a long time. And, indeed, that is part of what the Dems sell - a pseudo meritocracy with the right type of people in charge. The type who went to the right schools, have sharp creases in their pants, belong to the best country clubs. Etc. Thing though was, that the Democrats successfully moving into the country clubs opened up a marketing opportunity - middle and working class Americans who identify more with Al Czervik than Judge Smails. And who better to sell them than the guy who sold them professional wrestling, beauty pageants, and the Trump Taj Mahal?
Words to describe the journalist/tech exec relationship: Patron. Mark. Rumpswab. Nerd-herder.
Blogger rehajm said...
"Words to describe the journalist/tech exec relationship: Patron. Mark. Rumpswab. Nerd-herder."
Some great words there. I esp loved "Rumpswab". Kinda like it sounds, but with connotations (from the Urban Dictionary):
"a person who is so intense and sloppy while ass kissing that he or she might as well be a bidet.
You can't expect a rumpswab like him to think critically about the boss"
We have been going to the original Maker Faire (look it up) since the first one in San Mateo a decade ago. Every year it has changed, in the direction of packaged "tech" exercises, outfits selling kits and the like for parents to push on their reluctant offspring.
Has anyone else noticed the disappearance of The Erector Set?
I had one when I was five and built things with it. I also had chemistry sets.
Some of that, like toy soldiers which I also had, is a function of climate and indoor play time. I think kids now who must stay indoors even more than we did (parental controls ) are playing video games instead.
By the way, Bruce Haydon good comment. About Trump, not rumpswab, although I like that, too.
Erector Set
We had Meccano in my youth, and it looks like Meccano bought the Erector brand around 2000. They appear to be heavily into robotics now, which is cool... I just hope they still have the all-purpose, not-designed-to-build-any-single-thing sets they had back in my youth.
I had the good fortune of being a youngest sibling, which meant all the toys my brothers cast off rolled down to me – a room full of Meccano, Lego, Lincoln Logs, Girder and Panel, Hot Wheels, the occasional HO train. Ahh, good times.
Ann Althouse said...
Was it because it's Elon Musk,
Listening to that Harris/Adams talk, I heard "Elon Musk" at exactly the same time that I read that "Elon Musk". Well, maybe a microsecond off. Maybe. (@1:33:45)
What are the chances of something like that never happening?
"Dumb Donald"--heh. If anyone at this point in history still believes in the gallimaufry of bozo economics, envy- and resentment-stoking, and old-fashioned State cultism that goes by the name of "liberalism" these days, they really have no business calling others "dumb."
"We had "Back to School" on a VHS tape when I was a kid. Used to watch it over and over."
It was filmed on the UW campus. There was a scene filmed right outside my office window. I remember watching Dangerfield directing the action on the middle of Bascom Mall.
@buwaya: "Hippolyte Taine's "Ancient Regime". Taine describes and blames the descent of the French aristocracy (an elite if there ever was one, variously artistic, literary, military, and even entrepreneurial) on the loss of its functional role as the actual masters and administrators and, especially, the defenders of their regions, and their devolution into courtiers fighting for income and advantage from the centralizing state, in Paris and Versailles."
Nothing but "studies in the school of Tocqueville," as Dicey put it long ago. T was "the teacher."
It would be nice if you are correct, Achilles, but my understanding is that they have already shoveled over $10 million into Alabama to insure a Rove Republican replaces AG Sessions. Sure would love it if they got Judge Roy Moore shoved up their Post Turtle instead...
matism said...
It would be nice if you are correct, Achilles, but my understanding is that they have already shoveled over $10 million into Alabama to insure a Rove Republican replaces AG Sessions. Sure would love it if they got Judge Roy Moore shoved up their Post Turtle instead...
I think the globalists have or will figure out the media and the DNC are a waste of time. Their obvious next step is to dump more money into the traitorous GOPe remnants particularly since there are 30 red states now and there will soon be 60 senators because of it.
One of the surest ways to eliminate someone's idea that they are "the elite"( and deserve to be treated differently) is to send them through boot camp. It's not possible, but a great educational tool for all the "hoyty-toits" would be service in the armed forces. It is hard to deny the humanity of those not "elites" when you have had to help them scrub out the shitters, or had them help you finish a conditioning hike, or shared combat rations, or slept in the same dugout with them.
Not too clear from the character's name Thornton Melon.
His family name was originally "Meloni". He changed it to Melon as he gradually transformed his father's tailor shop into the "Melon's Tall and Fat" clothing store chain.
I've never felt at home with people who are smug about being elite. I've found that embarrassing or boring or bad (even sinful).
Out of curiosity, Althouse, what was your religious training growing up? Were your parents/family religious?
"One of the surest ways to eliminate someone's idea that they are "the elite"( and deserve to be treated differently) is to send them through boot camp."
They would be at sick call in a day.
Except they all are applying to OCS if they even consider the military.
The draft was a wonderful leveling influence until LBJ let the college deferments go on and on.
They should have ended with a bachelors. All MDs had to go in once they finished school. If they signed up for the "Berry Plan," they got two years of post doc training then went in.
Our lefty professors were all the lefties who stayed in grad school to avoid the draft and their disciples.
As for elites, this is a dangerous trap.
Maybe being elite, by diverting the creative instinct, destroys the value of the best of humanity.
One big change I've noticed over 30 years is that American kids used to be great tinkerers, makers of things. Around here anyway they used to buy electronic components and create odd devices. These days far more of the intelligent sort are absorbed in the twin sinks of competing for top colleges or playing games. The US (and the world, to be fair) has some wonderful college applicants and no doubt formidable players of games, but not a great deal of creation.
We have been going to the original Maker Faire (look it up) since the first one in San Mateo a decade ago. Every year it has changed, in the direction of packaged "tech" exercises, outfits selling kits and the like for parents to push on their reluctant offspring. And probably not coincidentally every year it seems like its the same stuff over and over, even down to the arts and crafts.
Couldn't agree more with all of this. Everything is also turned into competition. Oh, you like to tinker? You need to be on this robotics team and focus on tinkering with these specific things. Oh, you made that out of other stuff? Yeah, that's cool. You know it really counts when you use the team stuff and make things that meet team objectives though.
Making a nation of hoop jumpers.
(Oh, no. I'm afraid I've fallen into my Mosquito Coast Dad personality.)
@ Michael K Even OCS isn't bad because sooner or later you might have to mingle with the troops. Of course, even now, there are a lot of officers who should never be allowed near troops. At OCS the "elites" will meet guys who graduated from state colleges (omg) which for the elites might be enough of a shock.
@Michael k Isn't it interesting that such a high percentage of Docs in our generation actually have military experience? I'll bet the % is much higher than the general male population of that era.
@Freeman Hunt Let's blame that lack of individuality on the liberals! Everything done has to be controlled and done according to plans developed by those "who know better than we do".
I will confess right now that I graduated from an "elite" college after attending an "elite" private school. OCS was one of the most challenging - and rewarding- experiences of my life.
What could Trump do that people here would think counts as incompetence?
At OCS the "elites" will meet guys who graduated from state colleges (omg) which for the elites might be enough of a shock.
Speaking of a shock, I was not an officer and went through Air Force basic which was nothing like the Marines, I suspect, but was pretty rigorous. Also, I was in a reserve unit so we did not go to school which the USAF kids did after 4 weeks. We had the full benefit of 9 weeks of basic. After a few weeks, we would harass the kids on KP. We were doing the KP but the kids didn;t know it and we acted like we were old hands after 4 weeks of basic.
My bunkmate was the worst you could imagine. He worked on a hay farm in Idaho and said he knew college was useless because college boys didn't even know how to stack hay. Think of an old war movie and the dumbest guy there, A genius compared to my bunkmate, After a couple of weeks, he stunk. He would not take a shower. One night, after lights out, we dragged him to the showers and scrubbed him with a brush. One of us made his bunk, another his wall locker.
Both my partners in practice had been enlisted. One in the Marine and the other four years in the Air Force in Libya, as a lab tech.
We were all in the military before Vietnam got going so we were lucky in that way,
Buwaya
The problem with Silicon Valley is not only that the industries of the 80s have matured, but also that four macro factors have changed since the Reagan renaissance:
1) The current business model for innovation in tech is small entrepreneurs get venture funding and then, instead of taking companies public as in the 80s and 90s, the VCs look for a big company to buy up the shiny new thing. This has been true since the 2000 crash in much of software, biopharma and medical devices. The ecosystem of tech investment favors insiders to the detriment of outsiders. That was not true in the 80s tech boom.
2) The big companies that buy the novelties are huge, ill-managed and marketing rather than engineering oriented.
3) The ROI on regulatory capture has become so huge (I've heard 200-10,000%), that hiring lawyers and lobbyists and making political contributions are the best financial and risk reduction investments a corporation can make as well as a huge barrier to entry against newcomers. See the history of Genentech for example. And investments in clout produce nothing of value, except lawyers who can afford homes in the SFBA.
4) The artificially low interest rates of current macroeconomic policy exacerbate the three factors above. It also encourages invention of and investment in "unicorns", high risk enterprises like Amazon, Twitter and Facebook, all of which trade at multiples far beyond their profits.
EMyrt, that sounds about right to me.
My daughter and her boyfriend have been working on an app while she was being recruited by Apple.
So far nothing has become of anything.
William
Here's the scoop on the Populists merger with the Democrats, Wm Jennings Bryan and Wm Allen White, the editor of the Kansas City Star who coined the phrase. It's not what I expected, check it out.
http://www.emporiagazette.com/news/article_c91ad250-2f1c-5a1d-addb-813b4bceb8bf.html
and an excerpt that caught my eye. with relevance to today..
"Populists represented rural America vs. the entrenched power of capital and monopolies. They wanted the government to regulate the railroads, to increase the money supply and rein in the high deflation of agricultural product prices, which was forcing farmers to pay back mortgages when they could least afford to do so. The party’s platform called for the abolition of national banks, a graduated income tax, the direct election of U.S. Senators, civil service reform, the eight hour day, and government control of the railroads."
Bruce Hayden
If this were Twitter, I'd send you a row of those hand clap emojis that Twitterers use instead of words.
But in this primitive interface, all I can do is type "Bravo!"
I'm Myrt!
"The American news media’s respect for tech CEOs and foreign-policy experts are the photographic negative of their overwhelming contempt for Dumb Donald."
I'd expect a writer who's been publishing as long as Thomas Frank has to have a better grasp of subject-verb identification.
"respect is" yes good point Mrs Whatsit.
Mark Zuckerberg had an idea for a better mouse trap and got very rich from it.
Now they want to run him for President?
@Hagar (10:16 AM), point of information. Zuckerberg did not come up with the idea for Facebook. As was documented in the move "The Social Network," the original idea was developed by the Winklevoss brothers, who paid Zuckerberg to write some code for them. He took their ideas, wrote the code, and launched the "thefacebook.com."
These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class.
Privileged, maybe. Exalted? Not so much. Journalists are held in pretty low esteem by the public.
"The problem with Silicon Valley is not only that the industries of the 80s have matured, but also that four macro factors have changed since the Reagan renaissance"
We had a big discussion about this over the 4th. One guy's client had ultimately been bought by one of the big tech companies. Great idea, demoed successfully in major venues. But the inventors had barely survived the "Valley of Death" in their funding, and came away with close to nothing. The purchaser didn't know how to commercialize the invention, and the business people in charge of their hi tech acquisitions seemed more interested in using it defensively. Which meant that they weren't actively pursuing the patent portfolio that my friend had put together for them.
Another guy there had spent much of his career on the other side - working to buy and sell high tech product lines and technology. At one mega corporation, he had the temerity to ask what the business plan was. He was ridiculed for that - until the well known founder asked the same question later that week (after apparently hearing about this guy's presentation). He has potentially been asked to come back there, but is wondering if it will just be more of the same - clueless business people screwing up interesting technology that they have purchased.
Making things worse - the big high tech companies managed to weaken the patent system once with the America Invents Act, which converted the US from First-to-Invent to First-to-File (arguably regardless of inventorship). They are try.ing to do it again with "Patent Reform" ostensibly aimed at combatting patent "trolls" (which are individuals that go after big companies for misappropriating their technology). One bill that was introduced into Congress would assess costs (mostly atty fees) against losing plaintiffs - but not losing defendants. Often, patent applications and issued patents are all that prevents the multi-billion dollar high tech companies from appropriating promising technology, so it is no surprise that these companies have come back, again, for another round. But the weaker the patent system, the harder it is to get funding. No problem for Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, but a big problem for those trying to invent the next generation of technology.
Big Mike, didn't Myspace precede Facebook anyway?
I don't see anything particularly innovative about Facebook.
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