Art, Wealth, Power? What can one do, sue the Borgias? Storm the battlements of the Huntington Library and Museum to liberate Blue Boy and a Gutenberg Bible? Pass a law to make it illegal for the rich to have their portraits painted by the leading painters? Tax Shakespeare's patron? Shake down the shaman clad in cave bear skins to cough up a haunch of wooly mammoth as tax on the Lascaux rock petroglyphs? Same as it ever was.
Norman Mailer recently wrote:
posted May 19, 2005 (June 6, 2005 issue)
On Sartre's God Problem
Norman Mailer
"...Heidegger spent his working life laboring mightily in the crack of philosophy's buttocks, right there in the cleft between Being and Becoming. I would go so far as to suggest Heidegger was searching for a viable connection between the human and the divine that would not inflame too irreparably the reigning post-Hitler German mandarins who were in no rush to forgive his past and would hardly encourage his tropism toward the nonrational...."
CHip:
I appreciate the update on Harvard. It was so antisemitic when my Dad went there, that he legally changed his name from "Pasternak" to "Post" to blend in, a pseudo-Wasp-Anglo-Saxon nomenclatural way. Then 3rd cousin Boris won his Nobel Prize in Literature, and the name changed looked lame for my Dad, who was working on an English Lit degree (and eventually, after WW II, got it, cum laude).
For a while my half-sister readopted Pasternak as a last name.
I agree with you on your comment on Terry. VERY few family farms or family businesses were lost to Estate Tax. It was ROVE's doublespeak genius that promulgated the intentional misnomer "death tax."
Due to the Real Estate Bubble in greater Los Angeles, I look comfortable, owing well under $200,000 in mortgage on a home worth roughly $500-600,000. But I'd be nuts to turn that into a home equity loan, or some other scheme to cash out, nor can I reasonably sell the place while my son lives here and goes to school. And where else can I get 2600+ square feet of floor space plus several hundred more of garage and storage shed, in a beautiful green neighborhood which has (on an unusually clear day) an ocean view, up above the smog, a short walk from a National Forest? I have net assets, but they are illiquid, and so I'm painfully cash-poor.
By the way, Emperor Bush II's bizarre nonsolution to the Social Security Nonproblem starts the benefit cuts for people born the year I was born. In a nearly fatal shooting of the victim, someone's got to be the entrance wound.
Switching back to our Democracy subthread...
Quick: before they pay-per-view archive this, see:
Think You Are Savvy About the [Los Angeles Mayoral] Election?
Here are the first 4 of 17 clever questions:
1. In national, state and local elections, it's good to throw the bums out now and then because:
A: Fresh ideas are always welcome.
B: We have to let politicians know who's in charge.
C: It's time for a new set of crooks.
2. When it comes to municipal corruption, Los Angeles:
A: Is clean as a whistle.
B: Is in the minor leagues.
C: Could kick Chicago's butt halfway to New York.
3. In Los Angeles, you've really struck it rich if you:
A: Have a screenplay aimed at the right demographic.
B: Invested in real estate 10 years ago.
C: Know somebody on the airport commission.
4. An L.A. mayor's primary function is to:
A: Instill trust and leadership.
B: Keep hope alive.
C: Ignore the San Fernando Valley.
D: Always keep a safe distance from his bag men.
john:
"With my new job, I surf the web alot."
With my old job, I edited the writing of illiterates "alot."
I also suffered spamalot.
Hey, that's a catchy phrase for a song or a multiple-Tony-Award-nominated Broadway musical...
Dobson's threats are out of line
The Denver Post
[as posted by the Pasadena Star-News]
All about Dobson punishing wavering Republicans.
"... Dobson hit the roof.... Focus on the Family targeted Brown, a conservative lawmaker by any measure, as a champion of pornography, hitting him with a flurry of radio commentary, columns and ads. All this for a bill that never even left committee, proving again that Focus on the Family isn't concerned about good government, but mindless grandstanding and obedient loyalty...."
Take a switch to 'em, Jimmy! Beat Satan out them, the bastards! Then go after their wives and children. Especially the children. Jesus!
Avram:
That set me pondering. Of (1) vapid, (2)inflammatory, (3) disillusioned, (4) nerds, and (5) bloggers, exactly how many of those five am I? How many is Bill Gates?
*sigh* I guess I must say something positive about Arianna Huffington for a change. When she ran the astonishingly expensive campaign for her lying indifferent in-the-closet husband, she actually gave speeches in favor of free enterprise space travel. She lobbied to give tax breaks to private satellite companies, which would benefit the local economy of the Santa Maria-Lompoc area, to capitalize on the Vanderberg space launch complex. But then, Newt Gingrich, first running for Congress, proposed accelerated Statehood for space colonies, so I guess that's not a partisan issue. So I eagerly await Arianna's first Science Fiction novel, which could easily be better than Newt's (sorry, mr. Baen).
Hal O'Brien:
I thank you for your many corrections.
According to The Gates Family Service Award page: "William H. Gates II attended the University of Washington on the G.I. Bill after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He earned his law degree in 1950 and launched what would prove to be a long and successful career as a founding partner of the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis. After graduating from the UW, Bill married Mary Maxwell, whom he had met when both were students at the University. Their 44-year marriage produced three children, Kristianne, Bill, and Libby, and an impressive record of service to their community."
"Involved in more than two dozen local charities, including the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Seattle Symphony, and United Way, Bill and Mary also took an active role in the affairs of the University. Mary served on the UW Foundation Board of Directors, the UW Medical Center Board, and the School of Business Administration’s Advisory Board. She was a UW Regent for 18 years and an outspoken champion of undergraduate education." But you're right, Mary Gates grew up in Seattle’s North End and graduated from Roosevelt High School where she was class valedictorian and a star forward on the girls’ high school basketball team. She received a degree in education from the University of Washington 1950. Not in Law.
True, things differ from 150 years ago, but to the Old Rich, those rules still apply, including Science being a plausible avocation, especially as it is unlikely to earn any money for the researcher. Horohito and Rothschild were not Americans, but the Old Rich, although they may give lip service to nationalism, are (if only to hedge their portfolios) inherently globalist in outlook.
I don't know much about ghostwriters for the Rockefellers, except, of course, Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose Ph.D. work was subsidized.
Yes, I'm aware that other Friends of Larry Niven read this blog, and so I omitted the details of his stories of his parents, as they were told as if in confidence. But the specifics of their initial reaction, and how he won them over, are typical of their Class.
It's true that attorney incomes vary greatly with geography, which is why I put in a geography caveat. Similarly, on pro bono and idealist and Liberal attitude.
Yes, there are biases in millionaire statistics, but the book I mention has pretty careful numerical methodology, state by state, profession by profession, broken down by age, and so forth. The real bias is in trying to define "net assets" in a way that makes sense when compared to other locations, especially other countries. Roughly half of USA citizens have ZERO wealth, no net assets. Of the half with positive wealth, half of those could only survive 3 months if their salary stopped, before they're out on the street. Half of the remainder have only 6 months. Fewer than 10% can be comfortable for 18 months to 3 years with no new income. Class is partly about whether one has the perpetual desparation that comes from the gaping holes in the safety net. Note to the English and Scots reading this: the "dole" in the USA is not perpetual. It cuts off after a relatively short time. "Unemployment Compensation" is a small fraction of salary. In my city, with my salary history, it maxes out at $140 a week, which doesn't cover gas, electricity, water, garbage collection, and similar expenses, let alone rent or mortgage. It also lasts just 26 weeks, with your having to report in writing, under penalty of perjury, every fornight that you are looking for work, have earned nothing whether or not paid, and have not turned down any jobs.
Karl Popper is dead? How can I falsify that?
Kimberly:
I don't disagree. I didn't mean that ALL lawyers were millionaires, merely that it is not uncommon for mawyers to become millionaires. Coffee stops identity theft? I have done paralegal work, unofficially, for people in other states. I had a client in Washington State who objected on Constitutional grounds to the statutory assumption there that someone arrested for driving drunk or on drugs is implitly giving permission for a blood test, even if dead. The dead can give informed consent? Sounds like a Horror novel in the making...
So Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dalí, and Marcel Duchamp go into a Los Angeles Bar.
"It's my birthday," said Dalí, so I'll have a cava. I was born on 11 May 1904 in Figueras, Spain."
"Well, I was born on 30 March 1853 in the small village of Groot-Zundert, Holland," said Van Gogh. "I'll have a genever, but put the fruit of 'Olive Trees' in it, and give me some seeds of 'Sunflowers' on the side."
Marcel Duchamp says "I'll just have a cigar and a chess set."
"Okay, are you the suspect, Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali Y Domenech?" asked an LAPD officer rising from a barstool. "You're under arrest. Mister colorful, you're going for a ride in a Black & White. Your paintings, while technically brilliant, were based on ideas that were not perhaps as bold and new as they seemed (Christ of Saint John of the Cross, 1951, for example, or the Crucifixion of 1954) - more a series of confidence tricks designed to convince the public that you were borrowing from nuclear physics or 'inventing' the anaglyph relief."
Then the LAPD cop turned to van Gogh. "Come on down to the station, Vinnie," he said. "I recognize you by your missing ear, same as in the mug shot. Are you aware that suicide is a crime?"
Finally, he puts the cuffs on Duchamp. "I'm busting you for your role in the The Richard Mutt Case. About that thing you did under the suspicious fale identity Rrose Sélavy, 'The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even,' well, we've had some complaints about the sexually suggestive title. Also, what exactly do you mean by 'L.H.O.O.Q.?' I've been told it's obscene."
The bartender finally speaks. "Yeah, and about my missing urinal...!"
David Rees has justified the Huffingtonian Blogulation. 'Bout time. Kissinger, like, was he with the Rolling Stones or some other geezer band?
"Your prophets have seen you for false and foolish visions; ... they have seen you for false and misleading oracles." [Lamentations 2:14, New American Standard Bible]
Dave MB:
Friendly amendment accepted. Take the Official Biography with 65537 grains of salt. It omits, or spins, for instance, the story of his mom being on the board of United way, and just happening to hear from boardmember Thomas J. Watson, Jr., that IBM would dearly like to have a BASIC interpreter and an operating system for their forthcoming PC. Were his parents Upper Class? They were well on the way, not from the law practice as such, but from the way they exploited the political connections therefrom. Or am still missing something? Ronald Reagan was not upper class, but the rich liked having him as a lapdog, so made him a sweetheart deal on Real Estate to get him over the $$$ barrier. He and the Emperor Bushes have returned the favor a million-fold. $10 million invested in that branch of th GOP; $10 trillion extracted from the Poor and Middle Class to reward the Upper Class. Great Return on Investment, eh?
Larry Brennan:
Officer Krupke, I'm unable to release any of the flamethrowers that you requisitioned. They're all in use by the LAPD 43-man Squamish Team.
Hal O'Brien: "Also, having any sort of an interest in science makes one déclassé in some circles. Looked at this way, Bill Gates' (or Larry Niven's) great sin against his class isn't his money, but that he made it through that grubby technology."
Bill Gates' parents were politically connected lawyers. His sin against Wealth was not technology, but the mere fact that he went to Harvard Business School, albeit he dropped out. Harvard is a Class Conscious place to be sure (my Dad went there, I could tell sories), but B-School? The rich pretend not to care about money. To openly study business is terribly Middle-Class and disgusting to them.
Science is not anathema to the Rich. Quite to contrary, 19th century science depended on The Independent Man of Leisure puttering about. Emperor Hirohito was a marine biologist. The Rothschilds had some notable naturalists. The Rockefellers explore a lot of remote places (Borneo, Amazonia).
The allowable avocations for the Rich include Science, Art, certain sports (yachting, polo), the Occult, politics.
Larry Niven has told me in detail about his parent's initial disdain for his professionalism. It wasn't Caltech they dislkiked, it was writing Science Fiction -- for MONEY! he won them over, but that's another story. His family is the Doheny family, who became rich by discovering oil in Los Angeles. They have advanced to the newer edge of Old Money now. Politics? It was a Doheny who caused the Teapot Dome scandal!
Kimberly: "Jonathan--your upper-middle class category includes folks with annual salaries from, say, the mid-20's, all the way up to those with assets worth nearly $10 million?"
What I'd said was: "upper-middle-class = professional class, higher status white collar, doctor, engineer, lawyer, professor, or the like. Note that this includes roughly 10 million men, women, and children living in a millionaire household."
The INDUSTRIES listed include people making in the $20,000-$30,000 per annum range, but those people are the support staff, not the professionals as such. For instance, doctors are easily Upper Middle Class, but the nurses, medical technicians, receptionists, and the like are not. Lawyers can easily become millionaires, but paralegals and legal secretaries make far, far less. I've worked on & off as a paralegal specializing in Appellate and Supreme Court procedure. I've personally written motre Appellate Briefs than 95%+ of attorneys, yet they get paid $100-$300/hour and I get $30.00. I'd get more, but there's a glut of paralegals in town, you know, "L.A. Law."
My figures are from "The Millionaire Next Door" -- a fascinating breakthrough academic study, with copious statistics. Millionaires are completely UNLIKE the stereotypess ("How to Marry a Millionaire").
Kimberly: "I think each of the 'prestige professions' alone has sufficient diversity within it to encompass several of the subclasses in the middle range."
That's true too, for complicated reasons. New attorneys with private practices will take a long time just to repay their law school loans. It's much harder these days to become a partner, or for a Partner to promote to Senior Partner. Both lawyers and doctors are crippled by the costs of malpractice insurance (which does NOT meran that Emperor Bush is right to attack "Frivolous" suits). The attorney I work for most often is not making the big bucks, because he is an unreconstructed Liberal, who takes a loss on clients for whom his heart bleeds. I'd make more working for someone else, but he's so outraged by injustice that I appreciate his motivation. Sometimes I get to use a pair of his season tickets for the Dodgers, except in times of poor cash flow, he scalps them.
Kimberly: "That said, I think you are right to utilize sub-classes. And if you consider factors other than wealth, you could probably break it down further."
Education does make a difference. It is a key to upward mobility. Language does make a difference. Gender inequity is real. Ageism is rampant. America is not homogenous; regional differences are still tremendous.
What factors do you consider most important?
I see there as being three sub-classes of each of the 3 classes in the USA. Unlike the European model, Class in the US is almost entirely defined by wealth, as opposed to accent or ancestry or education.
Lower-poor = underclass = homeless and on welfare, perhaps living in a motel unable to make the payments on an apartment, looking for a job. Includes illegal immigrants, but they understand what it takes to climb.
middle-poor = renting poor, crummy apartment, blue-collar worker.
upper-poor = nicer apartment or homeowning poor, having saved for a while, or working two or more jobs.
lower-middle-class = blue-collar or entry-level white collar job, even nicer apartment, or nicer house (the homeowner and apartment issues very geography-dependent).
upper-middle-class = professional class, higher status white collar, doctor, engineer, lawyer, professor, or the like. Note that this includes roughly 10 million men, women, and children living in a millionaire household. Yes, Bush is (darn it) actually right that a millionaire can be middle-class. That's partly from inflation and the real estate bubble.
lower-rich = starts at roughly $10 million, owns multiple properties, primary income is unearned (i.e. portfolio).
middle-rich = starts at roughly $100 million, NO upper limit on wealth. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are the very top of middle-rich.
upper-rich = Old Wealth. Finally, ancestry and education matter. Rockefellers, Duponts, Rothschilds, and the like. You can only get here with several generations of the right avocations, right schools, right amount of giving a lot away to the right causes. Bill Gates is perfectly following the strategy that will make his grandchildren upper-rich.
Each sub-class lives in terror of slipping down one sub-class, and has eyes fixed on the prize of rising one sub-class. No class understands any other.
Drugs, illness, crime, or bad luck can knock you down a subclass or more VERY fast.
There is considerable class mobility, but not as much as there used to be. My insight is from having a family which unusually maneuvered between lower-poor non-English-speaking immigrant to middle-rich in one generation (as per Horatio Alger), slipped badly in the crash of 1929, and my perspective includes brief periods in working poor as well as extended periods in midle-middle and professional.
Of course, the majority of Americans deny that there IS a class system, while the Old World snickers. For writers and scientists (my wife and I are both) the European position seems to be that American creative class should have solidarity with working class, but are stupidly coopted by the ownership class.
Emperor Bush II and his ilk have done a brilliant job of demonizing the very word "liberal" and the very purpose and value of Unions. It is, ideed, time to fight back. But the Democratic party is NOT a Labor Party as such, or a Social Democratic party as such. The two main parties in the US are different, but make little sense either from European OR historical American positions.
All the above, of course, IMHO.
I think that you're inviting someone to build a Erdos-Number Bacon-number Friendster database on who connects to whom on the blogosphere. Throw in some ad revenue analytic projections, a headquarters in Bangalore, some pro forma spreadsheets, and some Internet 3.0 bar graphs and you have a business plan. Exit Strategy: be acquired by Google or Yahoo in 2010.
If SFWA were more like a Union, then ... naaahhh, never happen.
I've twice been an elected member of a Town Coucil. I've told the story here or in Making Light, so I'll cut to the chase. Once, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where Democracy had been practiced for 3 centuries, it absolutely worked.
The other time, in Altadena, California, lots of people ended in jail, as the Sheriff's Deputy son of the Chairman of the Town Council was part of a bunch of crooked cops who were laundering money for narcotics dealers. In that case, the corruption had spread to real estate payoffs, bribes of State Assemblymen (one later imprisoned for racketeering), the active involvement of the FBI, and my ally on the Council bankrupted in a First Amendment case involving allegedly defamatory email about the racketeer sexually molesting his daugher (in the record of a dicorce case) and being a Satanist priest (defamatory, said the court). After the attempt to run over my wife with a van, and the windshield of my car being shot out, and the bullet hole in the livingroom window, I declined to run for re-election.
From my data, 50% of communities have working democracy. 50% are ongoing criminal operations, pretending to be democracies. Of course, 2 data points is not statistically significant. But it has made me both more passionate about Democracy, and more skeptical. "Liberal" verus "Conservative" doesn't scratch the surface of what I see as the real issues.
"... whether Dobson would have used such punishment if he'd been raising Jesus..."
Time out, Yeshua! I told you NOT to walk on water, it freaks out the neighbors all around the Galilee. I told you to STOP turning water into wine for your bad-ass friends, who are a bunch of low-class hoodlums and sluts so far as I can see. You need to work on your carpentry, because some day you'll inherit this family business. If you don't straighten up, I'll disinherit you and give the firm to your brother James. If you don't, what's next? Starting a riot at the Temple? And how dare you keep running to Mary for her permission for everything. I'M THE BOSS, dammit. Just wait until you're married and have children, THEN you'll understand about children...
Patrick:
In the decades where I worked on contracts for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, I had numerous interactions with generals of various ranks, and with their subordinates, such as Colonels. In my estimation, some of the most genuinely virtuous people I worked with were Colonels, some of whom had responsibility over a billion dollars worth of equipment. Again and again I met a Colonel who admitted that they had zero chance of ever being promoted to General, despite their extraordinary accomplishments, because of purely political matters. Again and again there was some General promoted because of a combination of the Colonel's merit, and the General's connections, golf buddies, and church buddies. I shall never mention specific names, as much of this was told to me in confidence. But I deeply agree with your "greasy pole" ananlogy.
Emperor Bush II is sure that he's Boss, and has shown willingness to use whatever it takes to discipline Iraquis, Texas Death Row inmates, Liberals, Republicans not responding to the party Whip (a term of art in Discipline). Pope Benedict XVI used be the official dog-whipper of Theologians. Remember LBJ and the public response to his use of beagle ears? Note that all presidents, for PR purposes, have to have dogs, some of whom write books?
Tom Disch is still annoyed that the US publisher wouldn't use his title: The Puppies of Terra: Mankind Under the Leash.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2005 | 155 |
| 2004 | 65 |
| 2003 | 5 |
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