The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
unblogged by TiR in 10/10
(partial list)

           (latest in a monthly series this year)



on the 25-year trajectory of the current US economy in a nutshell?

Hollywood, post the '87 crash:

"The most shocking thing to me is that a week after Black Monday it was business as usual in Los Angeles," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios. "It was like this little cocoon world so disconnected from reality: 'Let's get on and make the next deal.'" . . .

"If the product is right, the public is going to be there," said Martin S. Davis, the chairman of Gulf and Western, the parent company of Paramount Pictures. "We sell dreams. If we make the right dreams, people will come to see them."

(emphasis supplied)

jump cut to real estate market, today (the relocation of 'dreamspace'*):

" We Sell Dreams...turning the dream of homeownership into a reality!!"
(Orange County, CA realtor)

"We don't just sell real estate, we sell dreams!"
(Manatee County, FL realtor)

"We Don't Sell Homes...We Sell Dreams!"
(Terrebonne Parish, LA realtor)

"OUR DESIRE IS TO MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE. WE SELL DREAMS!!!"
(Kerr County, TX realtor)

"We don't just sell houses, we sell DREAMS!"
(Newport News, VA realtor)



*[literally the name of a realtor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn]




(Nieman: Reporters should explore the concept of the Gresham's-style dynamic in which bad ethics were a competitive advantage and drove good ethics out of the marketplace.)

or: from dreams, to marketing hype, to bullsh-t then lies?

(to USA's final, sole, remaining product for domestic consumption and export: fraud?)

on Après Goldman Sachs, le déluge?

Cheap Debt for Corporations Fails to Spur Economy:

"[Corporations] are still holding on to more cash in the same way that Noah built the ark," said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates in Toronto. "It is very telling."

on Politico as on the right track w/ cute notion of polit mega ad buys as a "Midterm stimulus," but not taken far enough: Obama -- & unwitting allies rightwing scaremonger pundits -- as having found best-ever secret goad to get stubborn hoarding superrich to part w/ huge amounts of their stashed     cash?







Again, why hoard? Perhaps the better to set up this:

Even a cursory examination of competition shows, furthermore, that under certain circumstances, when the greater capitalist wishes to make room for himself on the market, and to crowd out the smaller ones, as happens in times of crises, he makes practical use of this, i.e., he deliberately lowers his rate of profit in order to drive the smaller ones to the wall.

price tag for a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape at Max's Kansas City, as per wine list on display behind glass at this wonferful recent exhibition (which, yes, included a bowl of complimentary dried chick peas at the attendant's desk): $6.95







Jules Renard on the writings of one of his fellow Frenchmen:

Mallarmé, untranslatable, even into French.

remark noted herein, sourced herein to a March 1, 1898 journal entry








on Harry A. Franck's almost jaw-droppingly offensive chapter on Jamaica in his 1920 Roaming Through the West Indies. extracts:

Kingston is the most disappointing town in the West Indies. . . .

The insolence of nearly all the British West Indies reaches its zenith in Kingston. Even in the main street clamoring street urchins and no small number of adults trail the white visitor, heaping upon him foul-mouthed taunts. . . . Loose-mannered black females ply their trade with perfect impunity, shrieking worse than indecencies at unresponsive passers-by. . . . swarms of negroes shuffle through the hot dust, cackling their silly laughter . . . love-making in prefect indifference to the proximity of other human beings. . . .

It would be difficult, indeed, to say anything bad enough of Kingston to give the full, hot, dusty, insolent, half-ruined picture.

(from pgs. 404-05)     (above = not even the worst of it)

(volume discovered while researching the word "bagaille")

on Gide's 1927 remark:

The dumber the white man is, the more the black man looks dumb to him.

as translated here

(context viewable in Travels in the Congo, see p. 14)

(quote noted here

(Moins le blanc est intelligent, plus le noir lui paraît bête.))









on autumn 2010 as latest opportunity to gather data and to wonder about the utility of Facebook and smartphones in certain contexts for quick organization of political mass street mobilizations, e.g., here ("Facebook, le messager instantané des manifs") and here






on tax cuts [skattesänkning] as the all-purpose, Ikea-style "hex key" tool of (global?) 21st century economic policy

as per Patrik Lindvall's brilliant Aftonbladet "assembly instructions" spoof cartoon, here / here

on Little Richard on Jimi H.:

[When] Hendrix got to wailing on that guitar, making it go woo woo, it made my big toe stand up in my boot.

from Greg Tate's terrific profile on Hendrix "beyond the burning guitar," in the current, generally outstanding, summer 2010 music issue of American Legacy magazine

posted by TiR at 7:01 AM