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kny111 · 5 years ago

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As an instrument of oppression and control, modern police departments are deeply rooted in some of the most racist and repressive colonial institutions of the United States. Since the establishment of the first policing systems like the Night Watch, the Barbadian Slave Code, the urban Slave Patrols, to the “professional” police forces and other law enforcement agencies, every one of these organizations has had the task of surveilling and controlling the population while imposing and upholding colonial law mainly through the use of force and coercion.

US police force was modeled after the British Metropolitan Police structure ; however, the modus operandi –especially when policing poor working class, migrant, brown and black neighborhoods- in the present, resembles the procedures of the 18th century Southern slave patrols, which developed from colonial slave codes in slave-holding European settlements in the early 1600s.

Colonial Law Enforcement

Essentially every colony in the western hemisphere, be it French, Spanish, Portuguese or English, had difficulties when it came to controlling its slave population and designed similar systems to manage the problem.

As early as the 1530s, runaway Indigenous and African slaves already presented a problem for Spanish invaders in the regions now known as México, Cuba and Perú. Some of the first recognized precursors of slave patrols deployed in the 1530s were the volunteer militia Santa Hermandad or the Holly Brotherhood, which chased fugitives in Cuba. The Hermandad had been established in Spain in the 15th century to repress crime in rural areas and then transferred to the Spanish colonies. The Hermandad was later replaced by expert slave hunters known as rancheadores, who regularly employed brutal tactics. These slave catchers used ferocious dogs to capture escapees. In Perú, enslaved and free blacks “owned by the municipality of private individuals” aided the Spaniard Cuadrilleros in Lima in the apprehension of runaways starting around the 1540s.

Administrators of the Spanish and Portuguese empires passed laws to handle slave-related situations, including the capture and punishment of renegades. Eventually, every Caribbean island and mainland settlements created their own rules and regulations and used a combination of former slaves, paid slave catchers, and the militia as apprehenders, all of them forerunners of patrols.

By the 1640s, Barbados, an English colony, had put in place a formal military structure which included white males, obviously but also indentured servants and even free blacks whose primary functions were patrolling slaves and protecting the island of foreign attacks.

“Though there be no enemy abroad, the keeping of slaves in subjection must still be provided for.” - Barbados Governor Willoughby

Years later other English island and mainland colonies adopted the Barbadian slave code as model, including Jamaica in 1664, South Carolina approximately in 1670, and Antigua in 1702.

Slave patrols in the Southern Colonies

The slave patrols emerged from a combination of the Night Watch, used in Northern colonies, and the Barbadian Slave Code initially employed by Barbadians settlers in South Carolina in the early 1700s.

As Southern colonies developed an agricultural economic system, slave trade became indispensable to keep the economy running. African slaves soon outnumbered whites in some colonies and the fear of insurrections and riots led to the establishment of organized groups of vigilantes to keep them under control.

In The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638 – 1870, W.E.B Du Bois quotes South Carolinian authorities: “The great number of negroes which of late have been imported into this Colony may endanger the safety thereof.” And “…the white persons do not proportionately multiply, by reason whereof, the safety of the said Province is greatly endangered.”

All white men aged six to sixty, were required to enlist and conduct armed patrols every night which consisted of: Searching slave residences, breaking up slave gatherings, and protecting communities by patrolling the roads. Historian Sally E. Hadden, notes:

“In the countryside, such patrols were to ‘visit every Plantation within their respective Districts once in every Month’ and whenever they thought it necessary, ‘to search and examine all Negro-Houses for offensive weapons and Ammunition.’ They were also authorized to enter any ‘disorderly tipling-House, or other Houses suspected of harboring, trafficking or dealing with Negroes’ and could inflict corporal punishment on any slave found to have left his owner's property without permission. ‘slave patrols’ had full power and authority to enter any plantation and break open Negro houses or other places when slaves were suspected of keeping arms; to punish runaways or slaves found outside their plantations without a pass; to whip any slave who should affront or abuse them in the execution of their duties; and to apprehend and take any slave suspected of stealing or other criminal offense, and bring him to the nearest magistrate.”

Free blacks and “suspicious” whites who associated with slaves were also supervised. Slaves lived in a state of trauma and paranoia due to the terror that these patrols instilled in them. Various former slaves from different colonies provide an account of their daily lives.

“[A runaway] was with another, who was thought well of by his master. The second of whom… killed several dogs and gave Messrs, Black and Motley (patrollers) a hard fight. After the Negro had been captured they killed him, cut him up and gave his remains to the dogs.” - Jacob Stroyer (Neal, 2009)

“Running away… the night being dark… among the slaveholders and the slave hunters… was like a person entering the wilderness among wolves and vipers, blindfolded.” - Henry Bibb (Neal, 2009)

Rather than punishing, the primary purpose of this racially focused law enforcement was to, “prevent mischief before it happened”. Racial profiling became the fundamental principle of policing and the definition of law enforcement came to be white –and whitewashed- patrolmen watching, detaining, arresting and beating up people of color.

In an effort to establish a consistent surveillance and identification system, the slave pass, one of the earliest forms of IDs, was created to prevent indentured Irish servants from fleeing their master’s property, to identify Native Americans entering white colonies to trade, and to limit mobility of black slaves, of course. Still, thousands of slaves and indentured servants managed to escape into Spanish Florida, the Appalachian Mountains and the big coastal towns where, “a fugitive could mix into the large populations of free blacks and skilled slaves... (surviving)… much like the undocumented immigrants of today, hated and hunted by white society but useful to small craftsmen and other employers who hired their labor at submarket wages.” (Parenti, 2003)

After the Civil War white slave owners realized that race as obvious criteria for conviction or punishment was no longer “legal” – in theory at least. Slave patrols were officially terminated at the end of the Civil War, but their functions were taken over by other Southern racist organizations. Their law-enforcement aspects; detaining “suspicious” persons, limiting movement, etcetera, became the duties of Southern police agencies, while their more violent and lawless aspects were taken up by militia groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

1800s; The Birth of the Modern Police Departments

Establishing the exact date to mark the beginning of modern policing in the United States is difficult, since the evolution of older systems like the Constables, Night Watches, and slave patrols into the “new police” was slow. However, we can take the mid-1800s as the years in which the present system of law enforcement dependent on a permanent agency with full-time paid officers was first conceived.

Among the first cities in the country to create such agencies were Boston in 1838, New York in 1845, Chicago in 1851 and St. Louis in 1855; and again, the motive behind the creation of these “peacekeeping” forces was the need to control the “unruly” classes as the emerging industrial economy and new Victorian standards of “morals” demanded it.

Starting in the early 1830s, a chain of riots triggered by race, religious and labor disputes, swept across various cities in the northern region of the country and authorities responded by assigning their Night Watch patrols the riot control function, but they soon learned that a volunteer watch system was ineffective. Day watches also proved to be useless. Full-time, police officers were needed.

“The process of capitalist industrialization led to increasing economic inequality and exploitation and class stratification. Rioting became an essential political strategy of an underclass (a surplus population) and a working class suffering this increasing economic deprivation. The modern system of policing evolved to control this riotous situation.” (Eitzen, Timmer 1985)

“New York City had so many racial disorders in 1834 that it was long remembered as the "year of the riots”. Boston suffered three major riots in the years 1834 to 1837, all of which focused on the issues of anti-abolitionism or anti- Catholicism. Philadelphia, the ‘City of Brotherly Love,’ experienced severe anti-Negro riots in 1838 and 1842; overall, the city had eleven major riots between 1834 and 1849. Baltimore experienced a total of nine riots, largely race-related, between 1834 and the creation of its new police in 1857. In a desperate attempt to cope with the social disorder brought about by this conflict, America's major cities resorted to the creation of police departments.“ (Williams, Murphy 1990)

The concept of a professional police force was copied from London’s Metropolitan Police Department which had been established in 1829. These “peace” agents were called Peelers or Bobbies after Sir Robert Peel, founder of the institution. The American version of these agents were known as coppers, because they wore copper stars as badges on their uniforms. They were available 24/7, carried guns and were “trained to think of themselves as better than the working class they were recruited from.”

In order for the police force to be effective, Peel believed it should work under his Principles of Law Enforcement which explicitly stated an ideology summarized in the following nine points:

The police exist to prevent crime and disorder.

Police must maintain public respect and approval in order to perform their duties.

Willing cooperation of the public to voluntarily observe laws must be secured.

Police use of force depends on the degree of cooperation of the public.

The police must be friendly to all members of society while enforcing the law in a non-biased manner.

Use of physical force should be used to the extent necessary to secure the compliance of the law.

Police are the public and public are the police.

Police should protect and uphold the law not the state.

Efficiency is measured by the absence of crime and disorder.

These principles seemed flawless in theory but in practice they would prove difficult to implement in the United States. Soon after their establishment, police agencies were taken over and driven by political forces. Politicians would hire, and appoint police employees and high ranking officers as they pleased resulting in corruption, nepotism and favoritism being common in police departments around the country. Years later, reformers would try to purge these and other dishonest manners from the police of the “political era”.

Being a British model, the new police had a strong Victorian influence which placed yet another burden on the back of those being monitored; namely, the working-class. Victorian morality dictated strict legal definitions of public order and behavior, especially for womyn who already had to cope with gender and class constraints.

“(W)omen were held to higher standards and subject to harsher treatment when they stepped outside the bounds of their role. Women were arrested less frequently than men, but were more likely to be jailed and served longer sentences than men convicted of the same crimes.”

"Fond paternalistic indulgence of women who conformed to domestic ideals was intimately connected with extreme condemnation of those who were outside the bonds of patronage and dependence on which the relations of men and women were based.” (Williams, 2007)

Despotic hierarchical power relations not only between womyn and men, but also between, lower classes and the state itself were further exacerbated by the introduction of this new policing force as “immoral” conduct, other working-class leisure-time activities and poverty were officially criminalized and more arrests were made based on discretion and initiative of government officers rather than in response to specific complaints.

By the early 1900s, the police was well established as the most notorious state authority figure. Government became omnipresent by means of a more sophisticated surveillance system -over extensive geographical areas- that included, motorized patrols, wanted posters, informants, lineups, detectives, and radios.

“The Reform Era”

The 1920s-1930s reformers’ attempt to remove political influence from police – and vice versa- gave way to a more “professional” police, but in principle it remained the same.

A soft approach for restructuring the institution was taken at first. This proposal estimated that police officers could turn into some sort of “social scientist” collaborating with social workers and teachers to understand what the roots of crime and social instability were. In the end, a more enforcement-like strategy, with a “scientific and technologically advanced methodology of social control” which included a “machine-gun” school of criminology and a stricter legalistic framework was developed. In 1934, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, would attach the concept of war to policing when he declared the first “war against crime”.

“Hoover liked to compare law enforcement officers to the soldiers and sailors who protect the state in times of war. Law enforcement was an instrument of law against disorder, a strategic weapon of war to be used against an internal enemy that was to be eradicated as an enemy of state” (Barry, 2011)

This reform coincided with one of the hardest times for the working class in the country. For disenfranchised workers, strikes and riots –especially during and economic depression, became the way to express discontent not just over low wages and working conditions, but over a lack of economic and political power as well. This obviously meant a threat for corporate elitists and their governmental allies, who didn’t hesitate in sending their armies of police officers to break and repress sit-ins and rallies. Soon, the police were on the streets carrying out some of the bloodiest massacres of “enemies of the state” during the strike waves of the 1930s like: The Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago (1937), the Battle of the Running Bulls in Flint (1937), the Battle of the Overpass in Dearborn (1937), and Bloody Friday in Minneapolis (1934) to mention a few.

In the next decades, the police, FBI, DEA and other law enforcement agencies, would repress, infiltrate and destroy organizations like the Black Panthers Party, American Indian Movement, and the Weather Underground, which the state and the owning classes perceived as threats to the capitalist white supremacy.

Law Enforcement In The Present

Based on the experience attained dealing with Indigenous Nations, African slaves and other threats, the state has constantly updated and perfected its strategies. One practice remains untouched in today’s policing and law enforcing methods, though; the tradition of upholding the kind of laws that made possible slavery, racism, segregation and discrimination in the country.

In the 21st century, police attitude towards poor communities of color still resembles that of its precursors 300 years ago. If we substitute the words "slave patrols" for "police departments" and to the list of "Native Americans" and "slaves" we add "undocumented migrants", "Muslims", "political activists", etcetera, we’ll see that the narrative history of our peoples in the United States hasn’t changed much.

Analyzing police slogans like: “To Protect and to Serve” and “Committed to Excellence”, in a historical context, it becomes obvious that they’re not directed at the policed neighborhoods but at those in positions of power, since most of the time interactions and “dialogue” with working class, migrant, and communities of color in general, are reduced to what has legitimated the institution in the first place; abusive behavior and the monopoly of “legalized” violence.

In conclusion, a phrase by Williams Hubert and Patrick V. Murphy is enough to describe the history of law enforcement in the United States:

“Policing by the law for those unprotected by it”

#news #policing #policy #internet surveillance #surveillance state #police state #surveillance capitalism #capitalism #corruption #slave patrol #slave patroling #journalism #history #white history #transatlantic slave trade #slave trade #slavery

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teshknowledgenotes · 3 years ago

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THE GAMBLER – WILLIAM C REMPEL – NOTES

WHY?

Jay Vasantharajah recommended this book, I read his blog post about it and wanted to learn more.

THOUGHTS

Crazy how far Kirk got in life financially, just by using leverage, loans and moving his money around avoiding bankruptcy and just being fearless taking out loan after loan and buying more profitable businesses.

Chapter 1

Kirk nurses a small charter air service through cycles of hard times after the war, until selling his company for a windfall fortune. But the gambler decided to bet it all on some kind of capitalist trifecta. Suddenly, he was on business news pages across the country risking huge sums in a puzzling range of eclectic markets. He called it “the leisure industry”.

On the West Coast he moved to control America's oldest commercial airline. In New York and Hollywood he waged a takeover battle for the faltering but fabled MGM Studios. In Las Vegas he built the world's biggest hotel – despite a secret campaign to stop him by rival Howard Hughes, the country's richest man. At the same time, Kirk snatched Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo casino out from under decades of mob control. He mad Elvis Presley a Vegas icon.

Overnight he was a major player in the movie, resorts, and gaming industries. Friends would call him a “deal junkie”, addicted to financial thrills, whether at a craps table or at the negotiating table. Two more times he would build the world's biggest hotel. In business as in gambling, Kirk believed there was no point in placing small bets.

In later years he would shake up the automobile industry with separate takeover bids for each of the Big Three carmakers.

There were no tycoons in Kirk's family tree. His immigrant father an illiterate farmer and fruit peddler, was in constant financial trouble. Kirk learned English and how to brawl growing up in Los Angeles. Eviction was a recurring family predicament. He said he studied in the school of hard knocks. It turned out to be an advanced course in survival and the value of trust, loyalty and hard work.

He avoided press interviews most of his life, making him appear reclusive. He hated being compared to the hermit like Howard Hughes, whom he otherwise admired. Kirk had a thriving social life with celebrity friends and business associates among them Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Tony Curtis. He was often noted in news and gossip columns attending charity and other public events. He double-dated with Cary Grant, and their families vacationed together.

Kirk was soft-spoken and understated with a paralyzing fear of public speaking. Kirk wanted his name on nothing – not on buildings, not on street signs, not even on his personal parking spot at MGM Studios. And Kirk never defaulted on a loan and always regarded his handshake as a binding contract.

Kirk travelled without an entourage. He carried his own bags and drove his own car, typically a Ford Taurus or Jeep Cherokee. He jogged the streets of Beverly Hills and walked to lunches without a bodyguard. He refused comps, personally paying for meals and rooms even at his own hotels. Once after a business trip to New York, Kirk was halfway to La Guardia Airport when he ordered his driver back into the city. He had forgotten to tip the maids at The Pierre Hotel.

He gave away millions to charity and to people in need on the strict condition that his gifts were kept secret. When his donations grew into the tens of millions, he formed a charitable foundation. It gave away more than a billion dollars, much of it to his ancestral homeland after a deadly earthquake. In Armenia, Kirk Kerkorian is regarded as one of the saints, but at his insistence there are no monuments to his lavish generosity.

“Never look back” Kirk liked to counsel. But in the end, he reflected on what mattered most in his life. It was neither his successes nor his disappointments. It was the thrill of the risk. “Life is a big craps game,” he told the Los Angeles Times “I've got to tell you, it's all been fun.”

Chapter 2: The Kid From The Weedpatch

The Kerkorian family's financial collapse and forced relocation to Los Angeles would be among the arliest and most unsettling memories of young Kerkor's life. It also ushered in prolonged periods of uncertainty that would extend more than a decade deep into the Great Depression. Missed rent payments and evictions, sometimes as often as every three months, repeatedly uprooted the family and made the boy a new kid in a new neighbourhood over and over again.

There were lessons to be learned from adapting and re-adapting to sudden changes, unfamiliar surroundings, and frequent disappointments. The bond growing from shared struggles and distress “us against the world” fostered fierce family loyalt and underscored the value of friendships over possessions.

But all the moves were also chances for Kerkor to reinvent himself. A first step was to Americanize his name. In the big city, Kerkor became Kirk. And the farm boy who arrived in Southern California speaking only Armenian had to learn English on the streets of Los Angeles.

By age nine Kirk was hawking the Evening Express on street corners, making about fifty cents a day and turning over pocketfuls of pennies to help support his family. His earliest experience with gambling was pitching pennies and bottle caps with fellow newsies.

Ahron tried to stay in the farm business as a produce broker. For a time he had his own fruit stand near what is now Universal Studios at the intersection of Ventura and Lankershim Boulevards. With another Armenian neighbour he started a produce-hauling business, trucking fruit to the city from the San Joaquin Valley over the Tehachapi Mountains. Kirk's older sibling, sometimes including sister Rose, drove the notoriously steep and winding Ridge Route over the mountains. The family enterprise ended after one summer growing season. The trucks were repossessed.

In his teen years Kirk came to regard his father as a heroic figure. Ahron was the man who had sailed to America in steerage, landed in California without a dime, built that million dollar agriculture empire and then lost it all, but who never stopped working hard and dreaming big. And he managed all the ups and downs despite the handicap of illiteracy, with what Kirk always regarded as “two strikes against him”

With perhaps a mix of pride and chagrin, he would later describe his father as “a big, rough man who didn't take anything from anybody” But Kirk and his father shared an important gambler's trait – a degree of comfort with risk.

One of Ahron's biggest scores came when he cornered the watermelon market in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego. Summer in that desert like area had been uncommonly cool and overcast. Watermelon farmers accustomed to sunny days with temperatures well over one hundred degrees feared cucumber sized crops and financial ruin. Many opted to cut their losses by suspending irrigation and saving on water costs.

Ahron saw opportunity. He scraped together every dollar from his fruit stand business and drove more than two hundred miles to El Centro. He had enough cash to get an audience with just about every farmer in the region. Few could resist. Ahron found as many takers as he had cash for buyouts.

As gambles go, it wasn't like Ahron was shooting craps or wagering on pure chance. He was betting on the weather, something familiar to the farmer from Weedpatch. His was a big risk, but a smart bet. When the sun finally came out in the Imperial Valley, Ahron ended up with truckloads of big, ripe melons in the midst of a region-wide watermelon shortage. His watermelon jackpot was an $18,000 profit, a twenty-first century equivalent of about $250,000.

Flush with cash, the family moved into a bigger house in a better neighbourhood just west of the University of Southern California. Ahron bought a new car, invested in new business opportunities, and saw his small fortune once again ebb steadily away. Frequent family moves resumed all too soon.

Kirk discovered early in those vagabond years that every new neighbourhood and every new schoolyard was likely to be his own personal testing ground. His shy nature and slender build made him an easy target for bullies. But he was also scrappy and determined never to back down, even when the odds and the sizes of his tormentors were against him. Kirk became something of a legend among pals after a beating he suffered one afternoon on his way home from school.

A kid had beaten him up four days in a row. What Kirk noticed, even in defeat, was that each time they fought, the bully was a little less aggressive. What the bully noticed, even in triumph, was that Kirk was getting to be a serious nuisance. For Kirk, the contest was a matter of honour. For the bully, it was increasingly a chore. He was losing heart. Finally, Kirk was the last boy standing. The bully gave up. The fights stopped and they wound up being best of buddies.

Public school held little interest for Kirk and in all the family moves he was falling behind other boys his age academically. He was a bright enough student, but he was bored by the repetition of math. One of his worst subject: geography. To Kirk the world was pretty small. He never travelled outside the two hundred mile stretch of California separating his Los Angeles home from his Fresno birthplace.

Chapter 4: Scraps, Craps, And John Wayne

With the war's end in sight by spring of 1945, the aviators of the RAF Ferry Command were increasingly aware that the end was also near for the extraordinary adventure they had ll shared for the most exciting two years that Kirk, for one, could ever have imagined.

Besides providing an enormous boost to the war effort, in particular Britain's domination of the air, another far-reaching contribution by the Ferry Command was the opening of new air routes for commercial aviation. The so-called polar route was tamed, and years ahead of it's time, thanks to the pioneering experiences of intrepid wartime aviators, Kirk Kerkorian among them.

In the end, many of the Ferry Command pilots lookd for ways to stick together after the war. Some shared dreams of starting their own airline. They would need seed money for such a venture.

Kirk, like several of his buddies, reached into his pocket to ante up a starter fund. The price to get into this game, one thousand dollars each.

Kirk returned to Los Angeles knowing only that he wanted to fly and that he had to be his own boss. In a matter of days, he set up a pilot training school at Vail Field in Montebello, a msall oil town just east of the city. He was a teacher again, specializing in helping licensed pilots obtain instrument ratings as required by commercial airlines.

The booming aviation business needed large numbers of instrument-rated commercial pilots, so Kirk's flight school roster was quickly filled. Within weeks the business was turning a reliable profit. But there was no excitement, no adrenaline rush. The teacher was bored with teaching.

Chapter 5: On A Wing And A Spare Tank

Kirk wanted his own airline his own fleet of planes, his own company. He watched pilots from the Pacific war zone combine fores to launch a cargo service named after their volunteer fighter unit, the Flying Tigers. A similar dream shared by his fellow RAF Ferry Command pilots never got off the ground. But Kirk was still dreaming.

One way he could build capital fast was in the surplus military plane market. The versatile twin-engineer C-47 “Gooney Bird” better known to civilians as the DC-3, was in especially big demand among new and expanding freight haulers from Alaska to South America. Fleets of planes coated in olive drab paint were parked all over Hawaii, stranded at war's end by a fuel range limiting them to island hopping or a maximum of five hundred miles.

Kirk had a plan. He bought seven of the planes stranded in Hawaii each worth at least double its purchase price if he could get it to the U.S. Mainland. And doubled again for any plane he ferried all the way down to Rio de Janeiro. He was figuring on profits that in 2018 dollars ranged from about $90,000 to $250,000 per plane. Kirk was back in ferrying business, this time as a broker of scrapped and surplus planes – gambling on the used aircraft market his own ability to fly just about anything with wings.

Now the only he had to do was get those short-range planes from Honolulu to San Francisco across twenty-four hundred miles of ocean.

Fall 1946, Honolulu, Hawaii. Kirk had paid $12000 for the first C-47 he intended to fly to the mainland. He had more than one customer already waiting. In fact, he had likely customers lined up from Hollywood to Rio to buy just about all hi surplus planes, sight unseen. And this on was a sight, with more than its share of dents and scuffs and that tired military drab paint job. But like the teenager who restored used cars, Kirk figured he could always give it a good steam cleaning and a fresh set of “newer” wheels. Far more critical was expanding the Gooney Bird's fuel range.

Kirk went on to deliver most of his surplus acquisitions personally and without drama. His partnership was with a Brazilian flier in Rio added to his international reputation an an aircraft trader. That is, until Kirk flew down to visit his money. Most of it had disappeared without proper accounting.

It was a hard lesson to learn about sloppy accounting and partnerships with strangers, and the drawbacks of conducting business by the seat of his pants. There wasn't enough cash left over in Brazil to fight about. Kirk walked out “Take it and shove it” he said and returned to California where he went into business with his best friend, his sister Rose Pechuls. She had recently divorced, ending a marriage in which her husband chafed at feeling inadequate compared to Rose's high regard for her brother Kirk.

When a small charter airline at Los Angeles Municipal Airport went on the market in 1947, Kirk and Rose bought it a three-plane fleet with a DC-3, a twin-engine Cessna, and a single engine Beechcraft. Kirk put up most of the $60,000 purchase price after borrowing $15000 from the Montebello branch of Bank Of America. Rose invested an additional $5000 and managed the office.

Chapter 7: Art Of The Junk Deal

Life in the nonscheduled airline business remained filled with uncertainties, many from federal regulations intended to protect competing commercial carriers. The Civil Aeronautics Board(CAB), which once encourage expansion of charter services, came under increasing pressure to crack down on their intrusions into profitable commercial routes.

Kirk figured his run of good luck wasn't going to last indefinitely. He started cashing in some of his chips. Over the next year and a half he sold off some of his biggest planes, including the Californian.

His $100,000 cattle scow went to Northeast Airlines for the remarkable price of $340,000 and that was without the used passenger seats. The inveterate scrap dealer sold those separately. That transaction produced a milestone for the thirty five year old entrepreneur. For the first time, Kirk's annual income broke $100,000. He also learned a lesson: pilots don't make big money, business men do.

With proceeds from his downsizing moves, Kirk was able to pay off his bank loans, buy out sister Rose's interest, and reorganize the company. Business operations were split into two ventures, the charter service and his used plane trade. The trimmed down airline could go dormant periodically, subject to the economy's ebb and flow of the shifting burdens of CAB regulation. But his used plane brokering and bartering business never closed, keeping Kirk especially happy and financially sound. We must've traded sixty planes in those days, he once estimated.

Chapter 8: Gambling On Gambling

A decade after the war, hotel and casino development in Las Vegas was still booming. Old Route 91, the Los Angeles-Las Vegas Highway was now called the Strip, where sprawling new resorts replaced barren sandlots. Seven busy casinos lit up black desert nights, and twice as many more were already in development. As University Of Nevada gaming historian David G. Schwartz described those heady days: “It looked like opening a successful Las Vegas casino was as easy as tripping and hitting the ground”

Everyone wanted in on action from Midwest mobsters to investment managers at the Teamsters Union pension fund, from real estate developers to car dealers, from actors like the Marx Brothers and Pat O'Brien to an aviator like Kirk Kerkorian.

As a gambler himself, Kirk knew better than most the fundamentals of a casino business model: customers come in all day and night to throw money at the owners. And they love doing it... win or lose. Kirk consistently lost more than he won yet visits to Vegas “the best times” of his life. “I was just overwhelmed by the excitement of the town”

He accumulate many friends among casino owners and managers. One of them was Marion Hicks, an energetic L.A. Real estate developer who built the El Cortez Hotel in downtown Las Vegas and then the Thunderbird on the Strip. During his many commutes with Kirk, Hicks had opportunities to share some of his hard earned wisdom.

Banks in the 1940's and 1950's did not make loans to casinos for anything least of all to fund shortfalls at the cashier's cage. To cover the huge payout, Hicks and Jones turned to Lansky, “the mob's accountant”. In return for a briefcase full of cash, Lansky extracted a significant share of casino ownership and a job for his brother. Jake Lanksy not only got an executive's title but also the casino's best place to park his black Cadillac, just outside the Thunderbird offices.

Hicks introduced his dancer to Kirk at the casino bar. They were very different. He was a financially comfortable divorce in his mid thirties, she was never married and barely ld enough to rink. He was intense but shy, she was an outgoing, confident performer with a touch of blunt spoken candor like Kirk's sister Rose. He was deeply tanned with black hair, she was pale and fair-haired. So, of course they fell in love. After a two year romance, Kirk took out a marriage license in Los Angeles County and set a wedding date. Kirk was thirty seven and Jean was twenty three.

As Kirk once again was feeling lucky in love, he tried to extend that streak into business, this time the gambling business. A surge in new casino openings promised to make 1955 the biggest year ever for Las Vegas expansion. Some friends were offering to let Kirk buy in to one of thew new ones, he could own a percentage of the Dunes.

Originally envisioned as the Middle Eastern themed Araby, the Dunes opened beneath a roof mounted and lighted thirty five foot fibre glass figure of a sultan. It was on prime property kitty-corner across the Strip from the Flamingo. It boasted the widest stage in town, room for forty chorus girls, and the country's biggest swimming pool. What it didn't have, apparently, was experienced casino management and seasoned resort staff.

The timing was unfortunate, too. Four other hotel casinos opened within a matter of weeks, with two more in advanced stages of development. There was a glut in the making. Life Magazine published a cover story questioning whether Las Vegas was growing too fast.

All the new resort operations struggled that summer. Still, Kirk submitted an application to state gaming regulators seeking approval to buy 3 percent of the Dunes. He was wiling to pay up to $150,000. He listed himself as an airplane dealer and easily passed regulatory review. After an investigation, Kirk was authorized to buy his first casino point (a one percentage share) for $50,000. But the business was too far gone to be salvaged by his late investment.

It's timing is everything this deal had nothing going for it. “They were in such bad shape” Kirk later conceded.

The Dunes managed to stay open (unlike some others), but it went through a rapid series of ownership changes that left Kirk's equity share absolutely worthless. The good news for Kirk was that he lost only $50,000. But it was a bitter lesson. “I learned then not to invest in a business I didn't run”

Chapter 10: A Crapshooter's Dream

Los Angeles Air Service had expanded to operate out of Burbank and Los Angeles and adopted a new name – Trans International Airlines (TIA), reflecting its more ambitious global intentions

Kirk's latest brainchild was a big, bold, and risky plan that could make or break his charter business stakes perversely big enough to excite the small business owner. With commercial airlines all switching their fleets to jetliners, Kirk wanted his to be the first supplemental service to own one. He wanted to buy a state-of-the-art four-engine jet-propelled DC-8. And for that he needed at least $5 million.

It turned out to be an especially difficult challenge to buy a perfectly fine prop plane on the glutted used plane market for a million to a million and a half. That was more easily in Tran International Airline's range. It net annually profits hovered around a quarter of a million dollars. But TIA's corporate value was far from sufficient to secure a loan in the stratospheric neighbourhood of $5 million.

Commercial banks were particularly leery of edging out on any limb with supplemental air carriers for fear the CAB might abruptly change its rules and shut down a profitable route or service. Regulators had done just that to TIA's California-Hawaii service the year before.

Kirk was getting signals from just about everyone that he might be out of his league, that even if his idea was sound, it was not financially feasible given his limited resources. So, he was out meeting people, testing the market, shopping for cash, riding out to visit Harold Roth at his Long Island residence near Hewlett Bay Park with Charlie The Blade.

Roth owned a tool making firm ran an East Coast vending machine empire that sprawled to St.Louis, and made loans through a corporate entity called Valley Commercial Corporation. Some of those loans were shady, as were some of his friends and clientele. One of those Tourine a.k.a. The Blade, a.k.a. Charles White, Kirk's friendly and well connected Bookie.

In arranging the meeting with Kirk, Tourine made it clear to Roth what mattered most: “He's a very good friend of mine” The emphasis was less on business than on personal favours. “He's a very nice guy. I like him a lot” he told the vending machine executive. So Roth opened his door, shook hands with Kirk, and invited him to make his pitch.

The key to Kirk's grand plan was to go all in with TIA as a defense contractor. Since 1959 when the company landed its first government bid, ferrying U.S. Soldiers and their families to North Africa, military business had become a steady and reliable source of revenue. But that wouldn't last if TIA had to compete with jets moving troops and cargo twice as fast as his prop planes.

Kirk also reasoned that if his company was the first supplemental airline with jets, he could sew up all the government business he could possibly handle and take a giant leap ahead of his competitors.

It wasn't exactly a crap shoot, but it was a crapshooter's dream a big risk for a big payout. But Kirk wasn't taking a wild guess or betting on chance. He knew the business. He saw the expansion of U.S. Military bases in and around the Pacific. And he was confident that future demand for troops and cargo would translate into strong returns on investment.

Roth listened to Kirk's enthusiastic assessment. Tourine was right. Kirk was a very nice guy. But Roth wasn't sure Valley Commercial could handle such a big investment. And across the coffee table, Kirk wasn't sure he wanted anything to with Valley Commercial and whatever came with it.

Kirk headed back to California determined to defy the odds and parlay his numerous advantages with people he knew and trusted in the more traditional banking and aviation worlds.

It was the right move. Back home Kirk's reputation was gold plated. His track record running Trans International, or LAAS for nearly two decades was the envy of the aviation business. His credit was flawless. He had a loyal friend at the Bank Of America. And he had a smart, ambitious idea.

His first stop was Walter Sharp at the Bank of America branch in Montebello a Kerkorian fan since Kirk's Vail Field flight school days. Sharp said he would try to get his main office to go for a loan up to $2 million. It was no sure thing. It was an amount well beyond a branch manager's independent authorization.

With that request pending, Kirk drove out to Long Beach to look at a plane. He had learned that Douglas Aircraft Company was refurbishing a used jetliner, the very first DC-8 fuselage that came off the assembly line back in 1958. It was being upgraded with more powerful engines and reconfigure for passenger and cargo service as a Model 50 Jet Trader. Kirk wanted that plane.

He arranged to pitch his idea to Douglas executive Jackson R. McGowan, a familiar face to Kirk. They knew each other casually, having a negotiated a couple of DC-3 deals in the past when McGowan was a Douglas vice president for sales. He was now vice president and general manager of the entire aircraft division where DC-8's were built.

McGowan was skeptical. A supplemental air service paying five million for a jet? Was he serious? But he knew Kirk's reputation. He knew his credit history. He knew his track record. And Kirk's quiet, controlled excitement describing his plans for the Jet Trader made sense. It got McGowan excited, too. There was even an escape hatch, a Plan B. If government contracts were slow or failed to materialize, Kirk could lease the plane to a commercial carrier. The Douglas exec agreed with Kirk, it was a good bet. And he wanted a piece of it.

McGowan crafted a special deal for Fuselage No. 1, the upgraded Jet Trader. Kirk came up with some cash. Bank Of America came through with the loan of about $2 million. And Douglas Aircraft Company financed the balance, an unprecedented move at the same time of about three million dollars.

On his signature alone, Kirk had assumed a personal debt load of nearly five million dollars. Default would wipe out everything he had built. Failure would give him a taste of his father's desperation back in those final days at Weedpatch. But Kirk the gambling aviation executive was going all in.

The Jet Trader deal closed in June and Kirk moved quickly. He turned to Glenn A. Cramer, a sales executive at Lockheed and leading figure in the postwar charter business, and lured him over to TIA, making him the president of the company. Cramer's mandate was to keep the meter running on their DC-8, keep it making money.

The big jet's first steady work was flying high priority military loads from Travis Air Foce Base in Northern California to Guam. More contracts followed. And just like Kirk envisioned, TIA was scooping up the cream of new defense contracts. In its first partial year of operation, the Jet Trader was single handedly propelled TIA from earnings of a quarter million dollars to $1.1 million. The company's net value surged into the multi-millions of dollars.

Chapter 11: His First Million

Sherwood Harry Egbert, the president of Studebaker Corporation, had flown out from South Bend, Indiana, to make a deal. He was an athletic, six foot four man on a mission, and in a hurry, to save his company through diversification. Studebaker already had a stylish new car called the Avanti and new investments in makers of a commercial ice cream refrigerator and other small appliances. Now Egbert and the board wanted Tran International Airlines.

Egbert came prepared to make concessions. Kirk was a classic self-made entrepreneur who ran his own company. He wasn't going to relish having a boss. Egbert assured him that Studebaker wanted Kirk to continue running the air service. Kirk would be corporate vice president and the president of Trans International, a Studebaker subsidiary. Kirk's poker face disclosed nothing.

Egbert said that Kirk would receive more than 120,000 shares of Studebaker stock, then valued at about $8.25 per share. The deal would make Kirk a millionaire, at least on paper. Egbert agreed to a proviso that if stock prices sagged more shares would be added to guarantee Kirk's sale price at a floor no lower than $950,000. Studebaker also would compensate Kirk with additional annual shares for managing the operations.

Kirk had everything he wanted, plus his first million dollars and a new Avanti. The total deal was worth about $10 million.

After receiving nearly a million dollars in stock from Studebaker at the end of the year in 1962, Kirk turned around and invested most of that fresh income $960,00 on eighty acres of sand and brush. The property was a potentially prime location near the Dunes and across the strip from the Flamingo.

Jay Sarno the maestro behind upscale motel developments from Georgia to California, already had financing lined up through personal friendships with Teamsters Union now needed to win over Kirk Kerkorian, the Strip's newest landowner.

They met over dinner, Jay Sarno wanted to build the greatest hotel-casino in the world. Kirk was intrigued but unconvinced. His ill-fated Dunes investment had coincided with the end of a Las Vegas building boom that had remained stalled for nearly a decade. Not only was Sarno daring to end that development drought, but he also proposed to do so with an ultra luxury project that was unlike anything seen before on the Strip.

Kirk eventually agreed to final conditions. His long term lease would be subordinated to the Teamsters pension fund loan. Sarno and Jacobson would pay a relatively modest monthly lease of $15,000. Kirk would receive 15% of casino profits and have access to his own two bedroom suite in the new hotel.

It would seem that Kirk was violating his first rule of business, to invest only in ventures he controlled, but he was finally gambling again on the business of gambling.

PART II THE MAKING OF A BILLIONAIRE

Trans International Airlines now with a pair of DC-8 Jet Traders, two Constellations and assorted other planes in its relatively small fleet, was barely known outside the aviation industry. Still it was well run. Profits and revenue were steadily growing. And it paid its bills. In April 1965, TIA stock went on the market and investors yawned. It didn't move for weeks.

What fainlly started moving the stock were Kirk's Armenian connections. Kirk had already been getting a lot of press attention in the pages of Mason's California Courier. The airline owning Armenian may as well have owned a fleet of flying carpets. To the Courier's readers Kirk was an Armenian celebrity nearly on a par with J.C. Agajanian, the race car owner and designer whose team had two years earlier won it's third Indianapolis 500. The Armenian community invested in to TIA, in a matter of months, Kirk had paid off the $2 million bank loan iwth which he had bought back TIA from Studebaker. Kirk himself was now sitting on stock worth more than $66 million a vast fortune by any measure. And no on one was more surprised than he was.

Kirk was ready to take full control of his very own Vegas hotel and casino. He hadn't shared the news with anyone but his close friend Shoofey and his most intimate insiders. He asked Las Vegas sun publisher Hank Greenspun to take a ride around town with him. It became a tour of hotel building sites. The tour ended on Paradise Road by the convention center. Kirk was going to change the face of Las Vegas and he wanted his friend the newspaperman to know what was coming. A month laster the news was a headline: "$30 Million Vegas Hotel Near Convention Center"

According to published accounts, Kirk had paid $5 million cash for about sixty-five acres. He planned to break ground on the city's tallest high rise hotel project later in 1967. The casino would feature the largest gaming floor in Nevada. The hotel would have fifteen hundred guest rooms, making it the world's biggest at the time. Hotel guests would have access to an adjacent country club and eighteen-hole golf course then under development. And at $30 millions, Kirk's International Hotel would eclipse Caesars Palace. Kirk launched a tender offer in the morning. His bid: $35 each for a million shares of MGM Studios. His goal: management contro.

What Kirk saw in a tired old MGM with its run of box office losers was something beyond the view of most investors. He saw hidden value. With a market price wallowing around $25 a share, investors were missing hundreds of millions in existing value, not even considering any turnaround potential. Kirk and Bautzer figured the company's actual value to be closer to $400 million or about $69 a share. What they saw was MGM's vast library of classic films, Gone With The Wind, Singin' In The Rain, The Wizard Of Oz. The company owned music publishers, a record company, overseas studios and tens of millions of dollars in real estate.

And there was the pricess cache of it's legendary name. For many, MGM spelled class, as in old Holywood glamour, gowns and tuxedos, klieg lights and red carpets. What was Leo The Lion worth? No one had ever imagined putting a price on the MGM logo. Not until Kirk Kerkorian.

Kirk would rely on a consortium of European banks to receive loans to make the MGM buy. MGM was Kirk's company to save. He controlled nearly 40% of MGM stock - 40% of Gone With The Wind, 40% of Leo the Lion.

After getting various loans paid off, paid down or renegotiated, Kirk was once again building up cash reserves in 1971, topped by the summer sale of his last million shares of stock in International Leisure. Even MGM was accumulating cash rather than bleeding it, not so much from making movies as from moving real estate. The company sold off another piece of its back lot earlier in the year for $20 million. Movie production costs had been slashed. And the box office flop rate of recent film releases had been improved from 70 percent duds to 50 percent. Presiden Aubrey was predicting MGM's best revenue numbers in many years.

Things looked sufficiently promising to Kirk that earlier in October he had convened a private meeting of his closest advisers and MGM executives for a strategic brainstorming session. How could the studio survive and thrive making movies in an entertainment market dominated by free consumer programs on television? How could its hedge its bets? Where could it go for a more reliable, steady, and growing stream of revenue?

Kirk had an idea: modified diversification of sorts. Combine the movie side of the entertainment business with the gaming side. This could be achieved if MGM borrowed about $75 million and built its own grand new Las Vegas hotel and casino. Fill it with movie memorabilia. Name the rooms, restaurants, and menu items after the stars. And call it the MGM Grand Hotel, after the 1933 classic Grand Hotel featuring Greta Garbo telling the world "I want to be alone" MGM, the film studio was going to build the hotel, own it, and operate it as a subsidiary. It would need stockholder approval, but that was never in doubt. Kirk owned 40% and was buying additional shares. MGM would take on debt for construction costs through debentures, interest bearing unsecured bonds. Unlike public offerings of stock, debenture funding would not dilute share values. The hotel would be ubilt on prime Strip-fronting property, sixteen acres already occupied on the then defunct Bonanza Hotel at the same intersection shared by Caesars Palace, the Dunes, and the Flamingo. Kirk owned the Bonanza, so MGM would pay him about $5 million, based on an independent appraisal. MGM would also purchase and adjacent twenty-six acres for $1.75 million making room for another big Kerkorian foorprint in Vegas gaming.

The MGM Grand would be even bigger than Kirk's International Hotel. For the second time in a couple of years, he was launching construction of the world's biggest resort hotel, twenty six floors with more than two thousand rooms, a casino 140 years long with more than a thousand slot machines, ninety blackjack tables, and ten oversized craps tables, and trimmed with real imported Italian marble and genuine crystal chandeliers.

Kirk failed at gaining a major ownership of Columbia Pictures. The sale of Kirk's Columbia Pictures stock marked a rare caputaliation at that stage in his investing history. But iwas by no financial measure a failure. Kirk had purhcased the stock at an average price per share of $17.50. Columbia Pictures bought it back at a $20 markup for $37.50. Kirk's failure to take over the Columbia studio had resulted in a fifty net profit of $75.6 million. With all that cash in his pocket, he went shopping again for another movie studio.

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unhanax · 4 years ago

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Download Book PDF The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King - Rich Cohen

PDF, EPub, Mobi, Kindle online. Free book The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Nigel Raby.

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Author : Rich Cohen

Pages : 270 pages

Publisher : Picador USA

Language : eng

ISBN-10 : 1250033314

ISBN-13 : 9781250033314

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Book Synopsis :

Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Times-Picayune The fascinating untold tale of Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. Working his way up from a roadside fruit peddler to conquering the United Fruit Company, Zemurray became a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures.Zemurray lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants,

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notbemoved-blog · 5 years ago

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Civil Disobedience and the Legacy of The Catholic Worker

After publishing last Part III of this series last week, a friend and colleague commented how unfortunate it is that the conservative Supreme Court justices (all of whom profess to be Catholic or were raised Catholic) do not seem to share this passion for social justice that Dorothy Day embodied. I agree and find it confounding. The Catholic Church took a hard-right turn in the 1980s and continues on that path today, despite Pope Francis’s best efforts. In any event, it is well to remember that there is (or was) a place in the Church for dissenters, for activists, and for those with a passion for the poor and afflicted—even if they don’t make it to the highest echelons of ecclesiastical or political life.

Dorothy Day never seemed much interested in climbing any ladders or achieving a certain status within the Church she served. “Don’t call me a saint,” she would say. “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

Here’s Part IV of my series on Dorothy Day and the history of The Catholic Worker newspaper.

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The Post-War Period

After Peter’s death, Dorothy Day continued to publish the paper, to run the New York House of Hospitality, and to oversee the growing Catholic Worker Movement. By the start of 1950, the paper’s circulation had increased slightly to 60,000; circulation remained at this plateau throughout the fifties.

The paper was still an eight-page tabloid and it looked the same as it had for more than 15 years. Only woodcuts were used for artwork; photographs were too expensive to print. In the thirties and forties, the paper featured woodcuts of Catholic worker-saints—St. Peter the fisherman; St. Paul writing in prison; St. Joseph the Worker, and many others—all the handiwork of Worker Ade Bethune.

Woodcuts by Ade Bethune ...

In the fifties, another artist, Fritz Eichenberg, produced some stunning works of art for the paper. Eichenberg, a Quaker, portrayed most sensitively in his woodcuts and engravings the spirit of The Catholic Worker. His “Christ on the Breadline,” “The Labor Cross,” and “Last Supper,” captured visually what The Worker’s writers were trying to express in words. Day wanted to touch those poorest of the poor who could not read so she often printed full, front-page reproductions of Eichenberg’s work.

... and Fritz Eichenberg graced the pages of nearly every issue of The Catholic Worker.

The Catholic Worker continued to be built around Dorothy Day’s writing. She changed the name of her column to “On Pilgrimage,” a title that seemed to describe the nature of her life.

Others contributed articles regularly. Michael Harrington, a resident Worker who later became an economist, consistently provided pieces for the paper. Harrington’s most famous work, The Other America, written in 1961, is said to have sparked the Kennedy/Johnson War on Poverty. Ammon Hennacy, a pacifist anarchist, wrote extensively of his “one-man revolution.” Robert Ludlow, an intellectual and lover of Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence—he wrote a striking piece on Gandhi’s death—became an associate editor of the paper. Columns about the day-to-day activities of the House of Hospitality and about life on the farm provided engaging copy each month.

More Issues

The Catholic Worker continued to fight for justice and peace. When the underpaid gravediggers of Calvary Cemetery—Catholics and members of a CIO union—went on strike against New York’s Cardinal Spellman, Dorothy Day supported the gravediggers. The Cardinal thought the strike was inspired by Communists and refused to negotiate. He even used seminarians, of all people, to break the strike and forced the striker to dissolve the CIO affiliation and join an American Federation of Labor union instead. Day criticized the Cardinal’s tactics and the “shameful seminarians” who broke the strike.

At the onset of the Nuclear Age, The Catholic Worker denounced the continued testing of the A-bomb and the development of the H-bomb, and called for total disarmament of nuclear weapons. Indeed, The Worker even criticized the Catholic press for its “unbalanced” portrayal of Russia and its people.

The paper also opposed the anti-Communist Smith and McCarran Acts:

Although we disagree with our Marxist brothers on the question of the means to use and to achieve social justice, rejecting atheism and materialism in Marist thought and in bourgeois thought, we respect their freedom as a minority group in this country…. We protest the imprisonment of our Communist brothers and extend to them our sympathy and admiration for having followed their conscience even in persecution.

The paper continued to criticize the Capitalist system. “Communism, considered as an economic system apart from its philosophy, is not so much the antithesis, the opposite and the contradiction of Christianity as Capitalism is.” Such critiques did not win the paper many friends in the highly charged “Red-Scare” atmosphere of Joe McCarthy America. One priest wrote to ask The Catholic Worker, “Why don’t you come out in the open, declare yourselves Bolshevik Communists and fight the Church like men?” Day, a woman, stood firm, even quoting the Popes and their attacks on economic materialism and Capitalism.

Civil Disobedience

In 1955, seven Catholic Workers, including Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy, staged a protest with twenty-three others from the War Resisters League against New York City’s annual air-raid drill. The Civil Defense Act required that all take shelter for at least 10 minutes.

The Workers considered the drills scare tactics and war preparations; they would have no part in them. The protesters informed the police beforehand of their intention to violate the law. When the siren sounded, instead of heading for shelter, the protesters sat on benches in City Hall Park. They were arrested and detained for nine hours before being released on fifteen hundred dollars bail.

When their case came to trial, the protesters made a statement explaining their brazen stance. They said they did not wish to participate in an action aimed only at creating a war mentality. Taking cover from an atomic attack was ridiculous, they said, and they offered their action, and any punishment for it, as a small act of penance for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. The judge found them guilty but suspended their sentence, so they served no jail time.

For the next four years, Workers along with others continued their protests. They were jailed each time for anywhere from five to thirty days. The Catholic Worker carried accounts of the demonstrations and explained Workers’ rationale for participating. Workers wrote about their own jail experiences and, thus, brought public attention to jail conditions and to the lives of those so confined. In 1960, one thousand people showed up to protest the “war games,” as The Worker dubbed them. When arrests were made, the Workers were passed over, prompting Hennacy to ask one of the arresting officers if he wasn’t shirking his duty. After 1960, the City gave up on its annual air-raid drills.

Slum Landlord

In 1956, Dorothy Day was handed a summons ordering her to appear before a City judge to answer charges of being a slum landlord and of running a firetrap. Since the thirties, The Catholic Worker had run a House of Hospitality, with rooms and beds for those who had no home of their own. The Houses were always liveable, although no one ever worried about conforming to any housing regulations. When Day appeared in court, she explained to the judge that The Catholic Worker was a charitable organization and that the apartments were for those who had no other place to live. “All the more reason for you to provide suitable housing” for them, the judge growled. He fined her $250 and told her that she and her fifty “tenants” would have to vacate in 10 days. Day was stunned.

Someone contacted The New York Times, which picked up the story. Public outcry about the incident caused the judge to apologize to Day, suspend the fine, and give her enough time to raise the $28,000 needed to make the house conform with local building codes. Because of the publicity, within a month most of the funds had been donated and soon the House was refurbished to meet City standards. But “Holy Mother City” had the last word. In 1958, the City informed Day and the Workers that they would have to move to make room for a new subway line!

About Cuba

When Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba succeeded in 1959, The Catholic Worker came out on Castro’s side. The paper’s critics were outraged. How could a Catholic paper endorse a government opposed to the Church? Even friends of The Worker were astonished and thought the paper had compromised its pacifist position. Day answered both critics and friends in the article “About Cuba.”

To her critics, Day said:

It is hard … to say that the place of The Catholic Worker is with the poor, and that being there, we are often finding ourselves on the side of the persecutors of the Church. . . . One could weep with the tragedy of denying Christ in the poor. . . . Fidel Castro says he is not persecuting Christ, but Churchmen who have betrayed him (in the poor). . . . (Castro) has said that the Church has endured under the Roman empire, under a feudal system, under monarchies, empires, republics and democracies. Why cannot she exist under a socialist state? He has asked the priests to remain to be with their people….

To her friends, she said:

We are certainly not Marxist socialists nor do we believe in violent revolution. Yet we do believe that it is better to fight, as Castro did with his handful of men … than do nothing. We are on the side of the revolution. We believe there must be new concepts of property, which is proper to man … there is Christian communism and a Christian capitalism as Peter Maurin pointed out. We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and will be happy to see how they work out in Cuba.

The criticisms continued, however, and Day, at age 65, decided to go to Cuba to report first-hand on Castro’s revolution. Her reports were printed in her “On Pilgrimage” column from September through December of 1962. She recounted day-to-day experiences among the Cuban people in a touching way that gave her readers an idea of exactly what was happening to both Church and State in Cuba. Many praised her Cuban reports as her best journalistic work. One admirer wrote simply, “Thank you for your courage on Cuba.” After Day’s personal reports on Cuba, the controversy stopped.

(To Be Continued)

This is Part IV of a series of articles on The Catholic Worker. Click on links for Part I, Part II and Part III.

#Dorothy Day #The Catholic Worker #Ade Bethune #Fritz Eichenberger #civil disobedience #Michael Harrington #The Other America #A Penny A Copy #Robert Ludlow

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digital-strategy · 5 years ago

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Anxiety within digital media is, in part, fueled by the domination of tech giants Facebook and Google in the digital advertising space

Digital media companies, once marked by rapid growth as legacy media faltered, are consolidating in hopes of riding out the perfect storm of dwindling digital advertising dollars, tighter bank lending and lukewarm interest from venture capitalists.

A recent spate of three mostly stock-based deals are indicative of the dark clouds that have been looming over the digital media landscape for some time. Questions about the viable future of digital media have swirled around the industry for years.

Last month, Vox Media acquired New York Magazine parent company New York Media in a $105 million all-stock deal, according to The Wall Street Journal. About a week later, Vice Media acquired Refinery29 for $400 million, followed a few days later by Group Nine Media snatching up PopSugar in a stock deal that valued the female-focused celebrity and lifestyle publisher at more than $300 million.

Also Read: BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Mic: Inside the Crisis in Digital News

“These moves are emblematic of the challenges in digital media,” Matt Sheehan, a digital media veteran and faculty member at University of Florida, told TheWrap. “The value has never been in the content, but rather the platform, and platforms become more valuable the bigger they become. I think we’re going to see more of these mashups as companies try to grow, and those who aren’t making these moves now are probably deep in discovery to what moves they can make so they aren’t left behind.”

Building value through scale has been seen as the key to survival for digital media companies. In its acquisition of Refinery29, Vice said the hope is that the company will bolster its digital business, and that Vice is relying on Refinery 29’s original programming, experiential, e-commerce and burgeoning creative agency divisions to introduce additional streams of revenue into the company.

Also Read: BuzzFeed Chairman Ken Lerer to Step Down

Vice has suffered significant financial struggles in recent years. The company lost more than $100 million in 2017 and was on track to lose more than $50 million in 2018, with revenue between $600 million and $650 million, the Wall Street Journal reported last year. And it kicked off the year laying off roughly 10% of its staff.

Refinery29 also missed revenue projections last year and went through two rounds of layoffs accounting for about 17% of the total staff.

The anxiety within digital media has been, in part, fueled by the domination of tech giants Facebook and Google in the digital advertising space.

“I’d attribute the mergers to what I see as a revenue rake-up,” Sheehan said. “More and more of these companies, attempting to compete with the social and search behemoths for dwindling advertising scraps, need to build the most robust psychographic-based audience networks they can. The moves I’ve seen in the last few weeks seem to signal just that. Investors love growth and combining these revenue streams supplement and strengthen the portfolios these firms can sell.”

Also Read: Vice Media Acquires Refinery 29

As an example of how the consolidation can attract new investment, following Vice’s Refinery29 acquisition James Murdoch’s new holding company Lupa Systems bought a minority stake in the soon-to-be combined media company. Murdoch also sits on the Vice Media board of directors.

At the start of the year, BuzzFeed and Verizon’s AOL, Yahoo, Oath and HuffPost all announced severe staff cutbacks. And late last year Mic laid off the majority of its editorial staff before selling itself to Bustle for $5 million.

Before laying off 15% of the staff in January, BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti floated an idea to the New York Times that would see digital media platforms like BuzzFeed, Vice, Refinery29, Vox and others all merge together in order to turn around their financial fortunes. His argument was that would be the best way to begin to wrestle away ad dollars from the likes of Google and Facebook.

“Google and Facebook are both grabbing two-thirds of the incremental digital spend and with Twitter, Pinterest and Snap doing well in mobile, there is just less potential revenue to be had,” senior media research analyst Michael Nathanson wrote via email. “Would say that many of these deals involve financial sponsors who want to both find a more scaled solution for cost saves and shared tech investment and a potential exit path moving forward.”

Also Read: James Murdoch Buys Stake in Vice Media (Report)

It’s likely that the merger fever isn’t fading away anytime soon. There are still publishers, such as BuzzFeed, that have expressed interest in joining forces, and there’s a question as to whether the acquisitions that have been made can be enough to help keep those companies’ heads above water.

But digital media is in such a state that it’s almost a foregone conclusion that more consolidation is on the way.

“Who is next?” Nathanson wrote. “Whoever hasn’t done a deal yet.”

11 Media Winners of 2018, From Hope Hicks to Rachel Maddow (Photos)

2018 was a tumultuous year for members of the media. For many, even most, it was a grim period of layoffs, consolidations and paywalls. But for others, it was a year full of triumphs.

Wrap

Sean Hannity: The Fox News host would have appeared on TheWrap's list of media winners simply for hosting the #1-rated cable news show on TV, but it's his unique personal relationship with President Trump, who he is known to call regularly, that made him the only choice for the top spot.

Getty

Bryan Goldberg: In an otherwise ugly year for media, which was marred by layoffs and consolidations, the Bustle kingpin proved a standout success. His acquisitions of Gawker and Mic.com for bargain-basement discounts suggest plans for a burgeoning digital empire.

Also Read: New Gawker Media Owner Bryan Goldberg Eyes 2019 Relaunch

YouTube

Los Angeles Times: The iconic LA broadsheet was well on its way to the losers' column under the disastrous leadership of Tronc. The paper, however, was rescued by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong for a half-billion dollars. Now, in swanky new offices, the paper is expanding.

Getty

Chris Cuomo: The CNN anchor had always been a standout on the network's morning show, "New Day," but he really came into his own after a move to primetime in June of this year. Cuomo is still way behind his rivals at MSNBC and Fox News, but he has injected new life into the hour, which had been moribund under its earlier host Anderson Cooper.

CNN

Hope Hicks: The former White House communications director and Trump whisperer managed to leave the White House scandal-free and with her reputation intact in February. She then landed herself a plush new gig at "new" Fox where she serves as comms chief. Just 30 years old, it's a good bet you'll be hearing more of her in the years to come.

Also Read: Hope Hicks Hired as New Fox’s Chief Communications Officer

Getty

The Washington Examiner: The Trump-leaning D.C. tabloid got a jolt of new energy after poaching New York Post Op-Ed editor Seth Mandel. The paper will also be expanding nationally next year, largely off the carcass of its sister publication The Weekly Standard (which will be shuttered).

YouTube

Ronan Farrow: Once an obscure MSNBC journalist, Ronan Farrow has rocketed to fame while reporting some of the biggest stories of the MeToo movement. His pieces for the New Yorker on Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman all played a significant role in ending their careers. He nabbed a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts, and — in his spare time — managed to write a bestselling book on foreign policy.

Getty

Fox & Friends: President Trump watches the nation's top cable news morning show with near religious devotion. As he has since 2011, he sometimes calls in to offer lengthy monologues about world issues. Segments from the show are regularly repackaged into the president's Twitter feed and can shape news cycles for days. When hosts are upset with him, they have occasionally looked directly into the camera to tell him so.

Getty

Rachel Maddow: America in the Trump era has also created a crop of #resistance heroes, with the brightest star being Rachel Maddow. The MSNBC host expounds nightly on the latest details of the Russia probe and delivers lurid speculation about how the latest scandal will be the one to take the president down. Maddow and her program have been rewarded in the ratings, making her the most significant (non-Fox) anchor in cable news by far.

Getty

1 of 12

While 2018 was a tough year for many, a few media folks had their best year ever

2018 was a tumultuous year for members of the media. For many, even most, it was a grim period of layoffs, consolidations and paywalls. But for others, it was a year full of triumphs.

via TheWrap

#IFTTT #Feedly

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woundvest7-blog · 5 years ago

Text

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 24: Biden flat at 28.6% (28.6), Sanders up at 15.0% (14.8%), Warren up at 15.0% (14.6%), Buttigieg up at 4.8% (5.0%), Harris down 12.2% (12.6%), others Brownian motion.

* * *

2020

Sanders (D)(1): “Tensions Between Bernie Sanders and MSNBC Boil Over” [Daily Beast]. “The backlash from Sanders-world reached a new high on Sunday, when MSNBC analyst Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S attorney for the Southern District of New York and occasional contributor to The Daily Beast, launched a personal critique of Sanders during a segment with host David Gura, saying that he makes her “skin crawl” and that he’s not a ‘pro-woman candidate.’… A senior campaign aide said the campaign believes there are possible biases in the network, but instead of shunning MSNBC they’ve been aggressive in getting their people booked. Sanders has been on the network at least nine times this cycle.”

Warren (D)(1): “Elizabeth Warren Wants to Stop Banks From Dominating Trillions in Payments” [Bloomberg]. “At issue is the development of real-time payment systems that would allow consumers and businesses to instantly access money that’s sent to their bank accounts. Everyone agrees that creating such networks is necessary. But they’re at odds over whether it’s a good idea to let big banks, which already have one up and running, reign supreme….. [Warren] wants the Federal Reserve to join the fray. The Massachusetts lawmaker, along with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and two House Democrats, plans to introduce a bill Wednesday that would require the Fed to build a competing system. They say they want to make the U.S. payments infrastructure a public utility and prevent big banks from gaining a monopoly.” • Good!

Warren (D)(2): “Warren Is No Hillary. She’s Also No Bernie” [Jacobin]. “Characterizing Warren as a ‘neoliberal‘ or, even more stupidly, a ‘Clintonite,’ some misguided online Bernie Sanders supporters seem to be trying to cast her as the archvillain in the sequel to 2016’s horror flop, Hillary. With Warren’s advocacy for aggressive government regulation, her support for redistributive programs, her sharp critique of antisocial corporate behavior, and her rejection of individualistic folklore (remember ‘You didn’t build that‘?), she’s emerged as a relatively mild but nevertheless quite serious opponent of neoliberal ideology…. However, while Warren isn’t a neoliberal, Sanders supporters aren’t the only ones making shit up. Her own supporters have been spinning a series of fictitious narratives rooted in classic neoliberal identity politics, using feminism and anti-racism to discredit Sanders’s socialist agenda… One of these curious neoliberal narratives is that only sexism could explain why people support Sanders over Warren, since the candidates are exactly the same politically. Earlier this year, Moira Donegan, writing in the Guardian, asked, ‘Why vote for Sanders when you can have Elizabeth Warren instead?’ While Warren calls herself a “capitalist to my bones,” Sanders is a lifelong socialist.”

* * *

“Biden tries to set the stage in Detroit” [Politico]. “CNN’s broadcast, which begins at 8 p.m., will also feature an introduction of the candidates and playing of the national anthem.” • The debates are already enough like a sporting event, so what next? A military flyover?

“Can’t Buy Mohammed bin Salman Love” [Foreign Policy]. Last month, credible reports emerged that the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was courting campaign investors linked to Saudi Arabia. In June, Buttigieg held a fundraiser in the home of Hamilton James, a major Democratic donor and the mastermind behind a $20 billion deal to generate Saudi investment in U.S. infrastructure. Buttigieg is not alone. The Intercept revealed that former Vice President Joe Biden’s American Possibilities PAC includes investment from former Democratic Sen. John Breaux, a lobbyist for the firm Squire Patton Boggs, which is registered as a representative for Saudi Arabia.” • Classy!

Impeachment

“Mueller testimony fails to move needle on impeachment” [The Hill]. “[S]ome of the most vocal impeachment proponents said they don’t expect Mueller’s halting testimony — in which he asked legislators to repeat their questions on multiple occasions and often declined to answer questions at all — to lend any significant new power to the effort… More than 90 House Democrats have come out in favor of an impeachment inquiry, according to a tally kept by The Hill. But impeachment backers are still mostly progressives and amount to less than half of the 235-member caucus. Only a half-dozen Democrats representing swing districts have joined the push — and even they all hail from districts carried by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.”

Ouch:

Watching the dry prose of the Mueller report leap to life in the form of hours of committee hearings reminds me of when I was a fundamentalist kid and they tried to make the Bible fun using claymation. Now kids could SEE that Amminadab was the father of Nahshom, who begat Uzziah

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) July 24, 2019

“You Can’t Beat Trump without Throwing a Punch” [National Review]. “[Democrats’] desire is that the president should be removed from office, perhaps that the result of the 2016 election itself could be abrogated. And that all this could all be effected while they remain passive observers and commentators. Perhaps they would only be the formal executors of a judgment made elsewhere…. In other words, pro-impeachment Democrats wanted Mueller to make the decision for them, to take responsibility for moving public opinion in their favored direction. This is not how impeachment works under the Constitution, and it is not how political conflict works anyway. Just as spectators of the political game, it should be obvious by now that this is the signature mistake that all of Trump’s opponents have made. A fear of direct confrontation with Trump and his base leads his opponents to hope that Trump can be defeated without hard fighting….This is a vain hope. Like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton before them, House Democrats will lose any contest with Trump so long as they are unwilling to sustain political damage in the act of inflicting more damage to him.” • Hard to argue with any of this.

RussiaGate

“These Questions for Mueller Show Why Russiagate Was Never the Answer” [The Nation]. The best question: “3. Why didn’t you interview Julian Assange? “The uncertainty in Mueller’s account of how WikiLeaks received the stolen e-mails could possibly have been cleared up had Mueller attempted to interview Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder insists that the Russian government was not his source, and has repeatedly offered to speak to US investigators. Given that Assange received and published the stolen emails at the heart of Mueller’s investigation, his absence from Mueller’s voluminous witness sheet is a glaring omission.” • Lawyers believe that you should never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer. So what does Mueller’s refusal to interview Assange say about his trust in the DNC?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“There Are Reasons for Optimism” [Noam Chomsky, Catalyst]. A long, long interview, well worth a read. Chomsky concludes: “A lot of things have improved and they’ve improved by active, organized, committed people who went to work on it and changed the world. That’s a reason to be optimistic.”

Stats Watch

Jobless Claims, week of July 20, 2019: “One of the Federal Reserve’s two central pillars policy — employment — is showing increasing and unusual strength” [Econoday]. “Labor conditions in July [may] have been at least if not more favorable than conditions in June.”

Durable Goods Orders, June 2019: “If manufacturing is the Federal Reserve’s central focus, they have less to be worried about. [Econoday]. “It’s a rare 1.9 percent jump in core capital goods orders that points to new confidence in the business outlook and the release of prior pent-up demand for new production equipment.” • What you want to see in a capitalist economy, even if most of turns out to be going to robots. More: “Revisions and the Boeing 737 aside, this report is an echo of the strength of last week’s industrial production report where manufacturing posted its strongest performance of the year, and it diminishes the need for Fed rate cuts and will have to be put into broad context or explained away by Jerome Powell at his press conference next week should the Fed indeed lower rates.”

Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index, July 2019: “Weighed down by increased uncertainty due to trade concerns and weaker domestic demand, Tenth District manufacturing activity unexpectedly slid into mild contraction” [Econoday]. “Today’s survey from Kansas joins yesterday’s Richmond Fed survey in showing manufacturing in contraction in their respective region, scaling back expectations of a general rebound in the nation’s flagging manufacturing sector that were aroused by last week’s positive Philly Fed and Empire State surveys,”

International Trade in Goods, June 2019: Exports fell very sharp[ly] with imports down. These are among the weakest results in 2-1/2 years and outside of isolated gains in May” [Econoday]. “Capital goods are the US’s strongest exports and these fell… Import contraction was deepest in industrial supplies…. Facing a sudden rush of improving economic data — whether employment or retail sales or core capital goods — the Federal Reserve will be able to point to declines in global trade as a justification for what appears to be an approaching rate cut at next week’s meeting.”

Retail Inventories [Advance], June 2019: Retail inventories contracted unexpectedly [Econoday]. “However unfavorable for the GDP calculation, low inventories at a time of strong consumer demand and what may be, based on this morning’s durable goods report, improving business demand point to the need for inventory building which would be a plus for third quarter employment and production.”

Wholesale Inventories [Advance], June 2019: Wholesale inventories rose lower-than-expected [Econoday]. As above on inventory building.

Retail: “Amazon Has ‘Destroyed’ U.S. Retail Industry, Mnuchin Says” [Bloomberg]. “U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin alleged that Amazon.com Inc. has “limited competition” and harmed the retail industry as the Trump administration announced a broad antitrust review into whether technology companies are using their power to thwart rivals. ‘If you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, it destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there’s no question they’ve limited competition,” Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday.'” • And just think! If Kamala Harris had prosecuted Mnuchin, he wouldn’t be saying this today!

Housing: “Nearly 250,000 NYC rental apartments sit vacant” [6sqft]. Early numbers from the Census Bureau’s Housing and Vacancy Survey show that the number of unoccupied apartments throughout New York City has grown significantly over the past three years–a whopping 35 percent to 65,406 apartments since 2014, when the last survey was taken. As the Daily News puts it, “Today, 247,977 units — more than 11% of all rental apartments in New York City — sit either empty or scarcely occupied, even as many New Yorkers struggle to find an apartment they can afford.” One reason for the growing vacancy rates, as the article states, is the city’s high rent, which has risen twice as fast as inflation….. Many of the 75,000 temporary apartments are pied-à-terres–think weekend or vacation homes for the rich–a number that’s expanded from 9,282 in 1987.”

Tech: “Twitter, Unable to Control Its Worst Elements, Rolls out a Site Redesign” [Fortune]. “The social media site began testing the new version of its site back in September 2018. The new look better resembles the site’s experience on modern smartphones. At the start, the new look was optional, and only available to some. Now, the redesign will be mandatory for Twitter users, disabling their ability to switch to the social network’s legacy layout.” • Amazingly, press coverage of this debacle has been universally positive; neither the designers nor the press seem to understand that phones (tiny screens, touch) and laptops (bigger screens or even monitors, mouse/keyboard) are different media. Hence the grotesquely oversized menu, the big type, the wasted screen real estate, the extra steps, and so on. The good news is that there are workarounds to the so-called “mandatory” redesign, if design is the word I want.

Tech: “How to switch back to the old Twitter layout” [ShackNews]. • The new Twitter laptop redesign really is ghastly. This technique works, though it’s not clear for how long.

Manufacturing: “Boeing says 737 MAX crisis could temporarily shut down Renton production” [Seattle Times]. “Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said Wednesday that though the company’s “best estimate” is that the 737 MAX will return to service in October, a slip in that optimistic timeline could mean the Renton 737 production line would be temporarily shut down. ‘That’s not something we want to do, but something we have to prepare for,’ he said on Boeing’s second-quarter earnings call with analysts and the press. Such a drastic step would mean temporary layoffs at the plant, which employs more than 10,000 people. ‘A temporary shutdown could be more efficient than a sustained lower production rate,’ Muilenburg said. ‘That’s what we are thinking our way through.’ Wednesday’s call also included worrying news for Boeing’s Everett factory: The new 777X that rolled out of the factory in March will not fly until next year because of delays in fixing a problem with the plane’s GE-9X engine.”• A firm with enormous quality assurance problems considers screwing over its workers…

Manufacturing: “Southwest ceasing operations at Newark airport because of 737 Max delays” [CNN]. “Southwest Airlines is ceasing operations at Newark Liberty International Airport because of the continued grounding of the Boeing 737 Max. The airline announced Thursday that Boeing’s (BA) “extensive delays” in getting its 737 Max plane back in service, Southwest has to stop flying in and out of the New Jersey airport starting November 3. Southwest called it a financial decision, saying its financial results at the airport have fallen below expectations, and it had to “mitigate damages and optimize our aircraft…. The airline operates 20 flights per day from Newark to 10 cities, including Phoenix, Austin and Chicago. Southwest (LUV) will still continue to fly from two New York area airports including LaGuardia and Islip on Long Island.” • Newark or LaGuardia…. I’d have to give it some thought.

Manufacturing: “Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours” [The Register]. “Some models of Airbus A350 airliners still need to be hard rebooted after exactly 149 hours, despite warnings from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) first issued two years ago.” • Funny to have the famous Help Desk reponse — “Please reboot your machine and try again” — appear at such a high level. To be fair to Airbus, the problem was fixable. The article has interesting information on how Airbus aircraft are wired up.

The Biosphere

“Moody’s Buys Climate Data Firm, Signaling New Scrutiny of Climate Risks” [New York Times]. “The rating agency bought a majority share in Four Twenty Seven, a California-based company that measures a range of hazards, including extreme rainfall, hurricanes, heat stress and sea level rise, and tracks their impact on 2,000 companies and 196 countries. In the United States, the data covers 761 cities and more than 3,000 counties.” • I’m reminded of the scene from The Big Short where Mark Baum visits Standard & Poors:

“I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle.” [Vox]. “All too often, our culture broadly equates “environmentalism” with personal consumerism. To be “good,” we must convert to 100 percent solar energy, ride an upcycled bike everywhere, stop flying, eat vegan. We have to live a zero-waste lifestyle, never use Amazon Prime, etc., etc. I hear this message everywhere…. While we’re busy testing each other’s purity, we let the government and industries — the authors of said devastation — off the hook completely. This overemphasis on individual action shames people for their everyday activities, things they can barely avoid doing because of the fossil fuel-dependent system they were born into…. If we want to function in society, we have no choice but to participate in that system. To blame us for that is to shame us for our very existence.” • Amen.

“Special Report: A Cloudspotter’s Guide to Climate Change” [Reuters]. “When Gavin Pretor-Pinney decided on a whim to inaugurate the Cloud Appreciation Society at a literary festival, he never expected it to draw much attention. Fifteen years later, more than 47,000 members have signed up for a group that could have been dismissed as another example of quintessentially British eccentricity…. Global climate models are a computational mesh that use grids of the Earth that are tens to hundreds of kilometers wide. Clouds and the complicated processes they are made under are smaller in size and present a ‘blind spot’ in climate modeling, says [Tapo] Schneider, the Caltech climate scientist…. [T]he Cloud Appreciation Society decided not to get involved in the climate change debate. Asked what he made of his fellow members’ reluctance to include climate advocacy in the Cloud Appreciation Society’s work, [Walt Lyons, an atmospheric scientist and former broadcast meteorologist who belongs to the society] pauses for a moment. ‘Just appreciating clouds is a big job, because people are reconnecting with nature,’ he says finally. ‘If more people could begin to understand what they’re about to lose…’ He walks away and settles his bill with the cashier.” • Great metaphor, there. A sad ending! A very good article on clouds; the Cloud Appreciation Society is the story hook (or, I suppose, barb). Well worth a read.

“Sacramento UC Master Gardeners to host annual Harvest Day gardening event in Fair Oaks” [Sacramento Bee]. “Gardening is incredibly rewarding, but it can also frustrate, especially when a plant is struggling or bugs are plaguing your garden. But there’s help available: The Sacramento UC Master Gardeners are here to help and give advice at their annual Harvest Day event.” • Master Gardeners are a great resource.

For rail fans, a thread:

Trains are running at reduced speeds tomorrow, because of all this heat causing the rails to buckle.

Inevitably this brings out people asking “why doesn’t this happen in Spain/Mexico/other hot countries”, so it’s time for a thread about railway track. https://t.co/YlwCUiaVAl

— Alex Chan (@alexwlchan) July 24, 2019

“Real Estate Agents Trying To Gentrify Run-Down Earth By Renaming It West Saturn” [The Onion (RH)]. “With Mars almost sold through, demand for the good spots on Earth is only going to heat up, much like Earth itself.”

Guillotine Watch

Get used to it:

Tonight I tweeted a pic of a Georgetown party hosted by @maureendowd, attended by @SpeakerPelosi, @SenSchumer and DC journos. In the old days it would’ve been a benign big-shot brag. No more. It was viciously ratio’d by left and right. I deleted it. All establishments are hated.

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) July 25, 2019

Here’s Fineman’s deleted tweet:

pic.twitter.com/0I7M89N5Th

— Walter (@Waltersghost1) July 25, 2019

Class Warfare

“If You Hate Capitalism You Will Love This Map” [Vice]. “The Black Socialists of America (BSA), a coalition of ‘anticapitalist, internationalist Black Americans,’ just launched its Dual Power Map. The map promises to plot every single worker cooperative, small business development center, community land trust, and dual power project in America so ‘you can support them right now.’ But what are any of these things? What is dual power? Why should you care? At its heart, dual power is a socialist strategy concerned with helping people who are unable to have their needs met by capitalism. The strategy calls for ‘counter-institutions’ that not only meet the needs of those left behind but are run by those very people. It also calls for people to protect and develop these institutions into forms of social, economic, and political ‘counter-power’ through social movements or organizing efforts.” • Good press for BSA. I’ve been following BSA for awhile and they seem quite disciplined.

From an actual organizer on the shop floor, a thread:

I want to share some thoughts on rank and file work. I am going to avoid the touchy debates and focus on the experience of embedding yourself in a workplace to carry out work.

— Comrade Scalawag ✊🌹 (@ComradeScalawag) July 21, 2019

The labor aspect of the Gulf tanker seizures:

The tanker's owners are registered in Britain in order to be defended by her military and diplomatic power but the vessel is 'flagged' to Liberia in order to avoid British employment and health and safety legislation. And of course to avoid having RMT organised ratings on board. https://t.co/05cvtrfy3c

— Eddie Dempsey (@EddieDempsey) July 22, 2019

“Baby Boomers are staying in the labor force at rates not seen in generations for people their age” [Pew Research Center]. “The relatively high labor force participation of Boomers may be beneficial both to them and the wider economy. Some retirement experts emphasize working longer as the key to a secure retirement, in part because the generosity of monthly Social Security benefits increases with each year claiming is postponed. For the economy as a whole, economic growth in part depends on labor force growth, and the Boomers staying in the work force bolsters the latter.”

News of the Wired

The stuff of nightmares:

Two franchises can play at that… pic.twitter.com/WCuJyycxRi

— ρhαετhøṉ (@PhaethonTweets) July 24, 2019

(You may have to click “View” to see the “sensitive content,” for some nutty reason.

I like these stories:

Do good recklessly is my new motto https://t.co/u6sXHC0jlN

— dr. phoenix calida is bearly black (@uppittynegress) July 25, 2019

At the university cafeteria, the person behind me in line paid for my food — just randomly! So I have done the same for others. Not every day, but often enough. Its a small tradition and maybe not reckless, but I like it.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (JN):

What a pleasing prospect!

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of small donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals. So if you see something you especially appreciate, do feel free to click this donate button:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on July 25, 2019 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

Post navigation

← Links 7/25/19 The World’s Biggest Lawsuit: Juliana v. United States →

Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/200pm-water-cooler-7-25-2019.html

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years ago

Text

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

* * *

2020

* * *

Impeachment

Ouch:

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) July 24, 2019

RussiaGate

Realignment and Legitimacy

Stats Watch

Wholesale Inventories [Advance], June 2019: Wholesale inventories rose lower-than-expected [Econoday]. As above on inventory building.

Retail: “Amazon Has ‘Destroyed’ U.S. Retail Industry, Mnuchin Says” [Bloomberg]. “U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin alleged that Amazon.com Inc. has “limited competition” and harmed the retail industry as the Trump administration announced a broad antitrust review into whether technology companies are using their power to thwart rivals. ‘If you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, it destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there’s no question they’ve limited competition,” Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday.’” • And just think! If Kamala Harris had prosecuted Mnuchin, he wouldn’t be saying this today!

Tech: “How to switch back to the old Twitter layout” [ShackNews]. • The new Twitter laptop redesign really is ghastly. This technique works, though it’s not clear for how long.

The Biosphere

youtube

For rail fans, a thread:

Trains are running at reduced speeds tomorrow, because of all this heat causing the rails to buckle.

Inevitably this brings out people asking “why doesn’t this happen in Spain/Mexico/other hot countries”, so it’s time for a thread about railway track. https://t.co/YlwCUiaVAl

— Alex Chan (@alexwlchan) July 24, 2019

Guillotine Watch

Get used to it:

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) July 25, 2019

Here’s Fineman’s deleted tweet:

pic.twitter.com/0I7M89N5Th

— Walter (@Waltersghost1) July 25, 2019

Class Warfare

From an actual organizer on the shop floor, a thread:

I want to share some thoughts on rank and file work. I am going to avoid the touchy debates and focus on the experience of embedding yourself in a workplace to carry out work.

— Comrade Scalawag

(@ComradeScalawag) July 21, 2019

The labor aspect of the Gulf tanker seizures:

The tanker’s owners are registered in Britain in order to be defended by her military and diplomatic power but the vessel is ‘flagged’ to Liberia in order to avoid British employment and health and safety legislation. And of course to avoid having RMT organised ratings on board. https://t.co/05cvtrfy3c

— Eddie Dempsey (@EddieDempsey) July 22, 2019

News of the Wired

The stuff of nightmares:

Two franchises can play at that… pic.twitter.com/WCuJyycxRi

— ρhαετhøṉ (@PhaethonTweets) July 24, 2019

(You may have to click “View” to see the “sensitive content,” for some nutty reason.

I like these stories:

Do good recklessly is my new motto https://t.co/u6sXHC0jlN

— dr. phoenix calida is bearly black (@uppittynegress) July 25, 2019

* * *

What a pleasing prospect!

* * *

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2JQkUjl via IFTTT

#Digital Marketing #SEO #Social Media Marketing #Nigeria Digital Marketing Company #Lead Generation

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ofvernacular · 6 years ago

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Can’t Stop Keeping Up With The Kardashians

In the endless stream of content that beleaguers consumers of art, culture and entertainment, people are constantly in the search for the more scintillating, the more engaging, the more exciting. In this search for amusement and momentary escapism from the capitalistic enslavement of the daily nine to five, reality television proves to be a seductive option. Reality television promises a raw, unscripted, and uncensored experience. There is no plot, it is just a production of people’s real lives, no characters, no pretentions. Reality T.V. gives you access to, as implicit by the name, reality. The phenomena of producing real lives serves as “the ideal of what is natural” in the field of the entertainment industry, as it “diminishes the tension between the finished product and everyday life” (Adorno 1944, 5). For the scope of this essay, I will investigate the ways in which this reality is produced for spectatorship through the mechanism of the culture industry by analyzing the television show Keeping Up With The Kardashians. The episode selected for analysis is the first episode of the fourteenth season, which is also a special ‘tenth anniversary episode’, aired on September 24, 2017, celebrating ten years of the Kardashian Empire.

Keeping Up With The Kardashians, first aired in 2007 and running till date, is E! network’s highest-rated show. The megafranchise, consisting of multiple spinoffs and business endeavors, collectively garners billions of dollars every passing year earned from television salaries, celebrity appearances, social media endorsements, and make-up and fashion lines (Forbes 2018). The show follows the lives of sisters Kourtney (age 39), Kim (38), and Khloe Kardashian (34), their half-sisters Kendall (22) and Kylie Jenner (21), and other close family such as their mother and the family’s matriarch, Kris Jenner (62), brother Rob Kardashian Jr (31), stepfather Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner (69), and significant others. Each episode documents one event in the Kardashian-Jenner life, spanning from a day long to a week long, interspersed with clips from camera interviews of the separate family members commenting on the event that is taking place. The structure of all the episodes provides the audience with an immersive experience of the event, being shown (selectively) all the angles of a situation, and all recorded reactions. Each situation is dealt with and portrayed in a similar way, be it a scandal, a holiday, a party, or a personal challenge. As Adorno (1944, 9) says, a trademark of the entertainment industry is that the “content is merely a faded foreground; what sinks in is the automatic succession of standardized operations.” The episode analysed for this essay documented the media coverage of the family’s tenth anniversary celebrations, a trip taken by the three Kardashian sisters to Cleveland, and a scandal regarding Kendall Jenner’s advertisement for Coca-Cola.

It becomes evident from the beginning of the episode that the producers, in our case Ryan Seacrest and Kris Jenner, do not intend to hide the ‘industrial’ nature of the T.V. Show that they are producing. The first five minutes of the show itself revealed the Kardashian-Jenners in the middle of a production studio standing under artificial lighting against a luxurious white background, surrounded by cameramen, producers, make-up artists, crew members etc, posing for a photoshoot by The Hollywood Reporter covering the show’s tenth anniversary. The filming does not discriminate between the home lives and the business lives of the Kardashians, it testifies its promise of showing the family’s actual lives wherever they go, and so the spectator is left under the impression of watching these people in their natural habitat. The spectator accepts that the production studio is as much of a natural habitat for a Kardashian as a luxury restaurant or their home. Following this acceptance of seeing a Kardashian in a natural habitat, the spectator slowly begins to accept every depiction on the show as a truth and a reality. The episode features a vacation taken by the three Kardashian sisters to Khloe Kardashian’s boyfriend Tristan Thompson’s Cleveland house. The celebrity status of the Kardashians becomes evident as entire restaurants and amusement parks are booked out for their visit, and they are greeted by hordes of fans at multiple locations, all which is caught on camera. This stardom is juxtaposed with interval cuts of the sisters speaking to producers on camera, answering personal questions about their feelings, opinions and thoughts to bring them back in touch with the normal experience of the everyman. On being asked (note: the question prompt is never featured on screen, only the response of the Kardashian-Jenner being filmed, which too is evidently edited) about what Khloe Kardashian and her boyfriend do in Cleveland, Khloe tells the camera that they “are boring, watch T.V.” and “do normal things like cooking, cleaning…” These small interviews that are inserted into the videographical narrative that follows the Kardashians humanizes their lives, their emotions, and helps the audience feel as if they’re being communicated all essential information that may contextualize the events being filmed, while providing real human feelings for the audience to connect to. Seeing Khloe portraying herself as any other girl in a mundane relationship reassures the audience of the realness of the people whose lives they so enthusiastically yet absent-mindedly follow.

The utility of these interview cuts can be illustrated with the way the Kendall Jenner Coca-Cola scandal was dealt with in this particular episode. The depiction of the scandal completely unveiled the mechanisms of the culture industry that may prevail today. One of the first conversations regarding the scandal, about eight minutes into the episode, featured Kourtney Kardashian telling her sister Kendall Jenner on video chat that “Russel called me today saying that we can turn this into a positive and said he’d call mom,” to which Kendal replied saying “yeah, he called me…if I knew this was the outcome I would never have done anything like this.” Many allusions were made to people such as Russell who were the Kardashians’ personal publicists and other business affiliates. The conversations regarding the scandal throughout the episode revealed attempts of the family and their employed publicists to diffuse the scandal that labelled Kendall Jenner a racist for doing a culturally insensitive commercial for Coca-Cola during the Black Lives Matter protests. In an interview with the camera, Kendall explained that when she “first took [the offer] [she] thought it was going to be a good thing. The company is amazing. So many people have done it. Michael Jackson did it, Britney Spears has done it…the list goes on...I trusted everyone, I trusted the teams.” This information reveals the influence of the entertainment business on the lives of the Kardashians. The narratives created when the Kardashian-Jenners refer to the external team recording and controlling their appearances make explicit to the spectator that all social media news on the Kardashians external to the television show is mediated, untrue and ‘gossipy’, while proving the show to be the source of ‘real facts’ or information for the audience to consume unquestioningly. It is the reckless honesty portrayed by the cameras that helps perpetuate the show’s position as an unbiased documentation of now-celebrity lives.

However, “the culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises” (Adorno 1944, 10). It becomes evident to the suspicious eye that the portrayal of what is true on the T.V. show is just the product of another narrative that is trying to be created by executive producer and also star-mom Kris Jenner to clear up any unwanted controversy and keep the show popular and entertaining. Through the show there are multiple cuts where Kendall discusses her regret over starring in the commercial and having no bad intent while shooting it. There is a scene where the family discusses Caitlyn Jenner’s upcoming media appearances and their apprehension of her tendency to say politically incorrect things on camera or, in Kim’s words, “Caitlyn [being] known for saying all the wrong things.” This implies a right versus wrong narrative that could be associated with the family, and Kris Jenner’s motive to always stay on the right side becomes explicit through the content of each episode. Kendall makes clear to the audience on multiple occasions to not pay heed to her father’s public words as “the only problem is that because she’s [her] dad, people are gonna like really believe it and take it and run with it and like what does she even actually know.” Even the ending scene of the show drives home the point that any controversy created by Caitlyn Jenner regarding the Coca Cola scandal is baseless as Kendall sobbingly testifies to the camera that “my dad doesn’t actually know what happened…I just feel really really really bad…that this was taken in such a wrong way.” The T.V. show naturally monopolizes all the news on the Kardashian family, while easily being one of their most edited and mediated productions that run past several bureaucratic check-posts before the final airing.

It should be noted that the executive producer of this television show, the kingpin of the mediation who controls the final narrative created around the Kardashian Lifestyle, is in fact personally involved with the family’s fortune and appearance. This kingpin is the Kardashian-Jenner’s mother, Kris Jenner. Her influence can be felt in certain productions of truth on the show, such as writing away her popular ex-husband Caitlyn Jenner as an uninformed liar, however this observation may be based on my personal conjecture. The bitterness, also felt by her children towards their ex-stepfather, can be recorded in this show by Khloe’s statement “It’s not cause you’re trans, that’s not why I’m not talking to you, I’m not talking to you because you’re a bad mean person.” The outrage against Caitlyn Jenner is fierce in this particular episode, and the Kardashians make it a point to feature it extensively in their show, publicly demonizing Caitlyn Jenner. It is also interesting to note in the statement above Khloe’s need to clarify that she dislikes Caitlyn Jenner, but not because of her gender. The fact that the show is a product of a business industry that must appease certain public ideologies is revealed in all the Kardashian-Jenner’s effort to be politically correct on camera, and also clear up controversies outside camera regarding political correctness using extensive means such as publicists, personal social media statements et cetera. These small details make evident the fact that ultimately, the show is being produced for a particular consumer, an imagined spectator, whom the show must adjust itself to to keep him or her unquestioningly amused and involved. As Adorno (1944, 9) says, “it is quite correct that the power of the culture industry resides in its identification with a manufactured need, and not in simple contrast to it, even if this contrast were one of complete power and complete powerlessness.”

The “complete power” of these media magnates is shown in the public engagement with their brand that is formulated on the platform of the T.V. show. The blasting sales of Kylie Jenner’s make-up line that makes her one of the youngest and richest ‘self-made women’ (Forbes 2018) or the amused people who flock to watch redundant spin-offs made on different members of the Kardashian clan to remain as connected to the family as possible, prove the influence of the Kardashians on their followers. These followers are provided a “convergent media experience” (Barron 2012, 82) where they can stay in touch with the Kardashian’s personal lives through their social media accounts on Instagram and Snapchat in addition to the T.V. show and Hollywood news, adding a sense of accessibility to their celebrity lifestyle. The fanbase generated by the seemingly innocuous family can be explained by Adorno on page 8:

The consumers are the workers and employees, the farmers and lower middle class. Capitalist production so conﬁnes them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them. As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them.

Each fan following the Kardashians has become an aspirant to their lifestyle, and a subject of their brand. On page 22 Adorno continues by saying that “the assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synthetic, planned method of turning out its products is very suited to advertising,” claiming that each “interchangeable” shot of a celebrity in a production becomes an advertisement for his or her name. Every public appearance made by a Kardashian-Jenner is controlled by and also controls the brand name Kardashian. The brand infiltrates the wishes and wardrobes of its consumers. The Kim Kardashian make-up line generates its profits not from its inherent goodness as a cosmetic, but through its cosmetic connection with the queen of the pop culture industry. Every “recommendation” by the family “becomes an order” (Adorno 1944, 21). The advertising takes place in the show as well as on all platforms of media outside. Whether it be sponsored Instagram posts on Fit Tea, or in the episode under analysis, a three minute sponsored demonstration of Nurse Jamie’s Healthy Skin Solutions which the Kardashian sisters learn about, experience and review on camera. These endorsements become cultural symbols of a Kardashian lifestyle and control the tastes of the public for economic profit.

Through this essay we realize the not-so-hidden business intentions behind the reproduction of the Kardashian-Jenner family life for public reality television. What started out as Ryan Seacrest’s wish to create a successful T.V. show (Cosmopolitan 2018) has evolved into an entertainment empire headed by Matriarch and Executive Producer Kris Jenner, and her business subjects, also children, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall, Kylie and Rob. There are many instances through the T.V. show that reveal its industrial nature to us, be it the brand endorsements casually mentioned through the episode, the intimate relationship of the family with the business associates such as publicists, personal assistants, crew members etc, the revelation of the politics around Hollywood gossip or the constant editorial interruption in the forms of camera interviews that sprinkle the flow of events in each episode. Nevertheless, consumers keep desiring more of the DASH business, and “desire is always in excess of the object’s capacity to satisfy it” (Phillips 1999, 100). The Kardashians could produce as many spinoffs, brew as much controversy, and curate countless media appearances, and the consumers will never be satisfied. That is because the depiction of absolute reality promises a constant influx of possible new information, gossip and news. Because the consumers’ lives run parallel, in the same space-time fabric as their T.V. idols’ lives, the expectations do not cease. Thus every episode, like a kiss, leaves the watcher disappointed, longing for more. This disappointment ensures the return of the consumer for another round, another peck. Like a moth, the consumer lingers in front of the bright screen desiring a minute more of escapism from the rut of capitalistic enslavement, by submitting him or herself into an alternate industry that controls not their employment but their culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barron, Lee. Social Theory in Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Lerner, Rebecca. "'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' Ratings Improve." Forbes. January 26, 2018. Accessed October 29, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccalerner/2018/01/17/keeping-up-with-the-kardashians-ratings-improve/#316f29d969c2.

Phillips, Adam. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Rees, Alex. "Here's How the Kardashians Landed Their Reality Show." Cosmopolitan. October 07, 2017. Accessed October 29, 2018. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a35457/heres-how-the-kardashians-landed-their-reality-show/.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Robehmed, Natalie. "How 20-Year-Old Kylie Jenner Built A $900 Million Fortune In Less Than 3 Years." Forbes. July 13, 2018. Accessed October 29, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/how-20-year-old-kylie-jenner-built-a-900-million-fortune-in-less-than-3-years/.

#anthropology #kardashians #kuwtk #ethnography #mass mediation #adorno #media anthropology #sociology

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kensingtontariq · 4 years ago

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The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King - Rich Cohen

Read/Download Visit : https://kindleebs.xyz/?book=1250033314

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khalilhumam · 4 years ago

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Old statues, new maps

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/old-statues-new-maps/

Old statues, new maps

The Cantino World Map, incorporating geographical information based on four series of voyages: Columbus to the Caribbean, Pedro Álvarez Cabral to Brazil, Vasco de Gama followed by Cabral to eastern Africa and India, and the brothers Corte-Real to Greenland and Newfoundland Public domain.

The original version of the piece below was published on the author's Facebook page. Statues, by their nature, suggest significance. We are charged, most often, to look up to them. The difference in height matters, in perspective: what we regard at an elevation, affixed to a plinth, protected by golden braided rope, is intentional in its architecture. You can ask any member of two of Trinidad and Tobago's most prominent faiths, Catholicism and Hinduism, about the significance of statues: a smiling Krishna garlanded in malas here, a beatific Christ with weeping candles at his punctured feet there. We miniaturize them, too: small gods for our puja rooms and prayer grottos, concentrate them to an intention of worshipfulness. We conventionally understand that these are not the gods, inasmuch as they channel the gods to us. Is a statue of Christoper Columbus a god? Surely not. And yet. The Jamaican author Michelle Cliff wrote in her 1984 semi-autobiographical novel, “Abeng“, of the half-monsters Columbus believed he would find in the New World: “Dog-headed beings with human torsos. Winged people who could not fly. Beings with one foot growing out of the tops of their heads, their only living function to create shade for themselves in the hot tropical sun.” “Abeng” is a counter-imperialist text underscored by the recorded history of the white European empire. It is this empire's sculpting of Jamaican history that “Abeng” radically confronts. It asks a question similar to Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite‘s “The Cracked Mother”, which is published in Brathwaite's 1973 opus, “The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy”: “how will new maps be drafted? Who will suggest a new tentative frontier? How will the sky dawn now?” Broadly, “The Arrivants”, a work that asks us to confront the internal borders we Caribbean people have constructed within ourselves, as defense/response to the borders drawn up by empire's forces to situate us, to domicile and subordinate us, poses this repeated question: who will draw our new maps? Who will signify us to ourselves? I've listened these past weeks as citizens have impressed upon me the importance of our statues of Columbus. These men and women have told me that Columbus was a fantastic navigator to whom they feel gratitude, as one of the founding fathers of our nation's history, blueprinting the very genesis of our roots. Further, I have been told that if we pull him down, where does it stop? We will have to dismantle everything made by colonial hands in our nation, and numerous Caribbean nations. To begin to think about dismantling statues of former empires, slicing off their marble heads and pushing their alabaster, pigeon-shit-patinated bodies into our harbours, is for many of us a new and tentative frontier. It is not likely an action, of either protest or self-inquiry, that Columbus’ local devotees have ever imagined enacting: for them, the old map not only rules, but should always rule, no matter how much blood drenches it. What they perceive to be the obnoxious spectacle of contemporary activism deeply upsets them, particularly because it is a tacit attempt to begin the construction of a new map. . . and if the pro-Columbusites of so many dinner table discussions were to support such movements, it would implicitly reflect that their old systems are inherently flawed. Who wants to believe the maps they have used their entire lives, that their parents used, were systemically poorly-charted? To begin to accept that would be to begin accepting that the post-colonial mythology of “work hard, hard, hard, obey the rules, make your children be doctors and lawyers, and you will achieve success, you might even retire in Florida” is not flawless. To begin to think that your concept of history could have damaged you is to acknowledge, with statuesque discomfort, that you are—and have been—unwell under the towering gaze of an idol or two. Christopher Columbus rewarded his men with juvenile sex slaves. Here are his own words on the subject: “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.” So does the imagined dog-headed, useless-winged, monstrous-human of the outlying regions of empire become a useful commodity in the hands of the conqueror: as a labourer, as a local tourist guide by force, as a skin cushion to pierce with brutality. So too, do so many of us say that this is the price of our history: not only to know it, but to create tall, stone figurines to archive its criminal record. For me, it would be enough for us not to maintain statues of a rape capitalist, in this or any age. For others, the ends justify the broken bones and rivers of blood—and to be clear, I am not haranguing those others. I am merely reflecting on what they, by their own admission, find historic. While this debate continues, in 2020 on our island, infants are murdered in drive-by shootings. Teenagers are slain in abandoned houses. Women and children and men are dying of domestic violence. Young boys are dragged outside their houses and beaten with PVC pipe until their organs swell like rotten fruit. We, most of us, do a mixture of the best we can and the bare minimum needed to survive. Election fever begins to sing its dengue-carrying mosquito song. Christopher Columbus, untoppled, keeps watching.

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tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

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Star Trek: The Next Generation, S1, E4: "The Last Outpost"

"She begrudged her lover nothing and now, finally, it was time to offer him The Last Outpost." For some reason that would be inexplicable if you were living in the actual world of Star Trek: The Next Generation but is entirely understandable when you view it through the lens of a story written by humans about humans, every single Godlike creature in the universe seems to put humans to the test to find out if they're heedless barbarians who care for nothing but their own enrichment. It's one of the reasons I'd rather view Q as tormenting the Enterprise not because he's testing humans but because he loves Jean-Luc (there's additional proof of this in the episode "Hide and Q" when we see Q seems to be acting against the general Q Continuum consensus). I'd rather he be a romantic interest and not just another smart ass alien testing the humans to make sure they're allowed in space. But maybe humans bring it on themselves. It is possible that humans are the most arrogant race (species?) in the entire universe. One species (race?) has to be; why not humans? And every other alien race that has come into contact with other races always discuss how terribly arrogant and ambitious those humans are, with their weird emotions and concept of "love". And since humans write these stories, seemingly with the assumption that humans are somehow unique and special, the "humans must prove themselves" becomes an easy trope to slip into any plot. But before the test begins, this episode starts by introducing audiences to the Ferengi, the boot sale merchants of the universe. They're played as if the sellers at your local dirt mall inexplicably developed the technologies for space travel and teleportation and instantly launched into space to find deals and cheat people. Data explains that their entire cultural belief system is built on the motto, "Caveat Emptor." As a space faring race which interacts with other races, I can see the appeal of introducing this kind of alien characterization. Little House on the Prarie and Grizzly Adams and even Anne with an E relied on the plot of the traveling salesman character. But imagine the Ferengi homeworld before they ever left the atmosphere! Nobody trusting anybody else while everybody trying to profit over everybody else! What a terrible bunch of Boomer pricks! I wonder if there's a whole offshoot of Ferengi flower children and democratic socialists who fucking despise the way the rest of the universe views them? I suppose if there is, I'll see evidence of it in Deep Space Nine when I get around to it. I bet Quark has some family members who are all, "Ugh! Dad is such a capitalist asshat!" Seeing the Ferengi in this episode made me want to dress up as a Ferengi every Halloween for the rest of my life. Not because I love the way they look but I fucking fell in love with how they hopped around like children who just sucked down two pounds of pure cane sugar. I suppose they were supposed to look like monkeys in the zoo, incapable of standing still. But I fucking loved their fidgeting and bouncing around. Why did they drop that aspect of the character?! It's fucking endearing! I wonder what would happen to the Ferengi race if somebody sold them a cargo hold full of fidget spinners? This is yet another episode that culminates in a terrible anti-climax. The Enterprise and the Ferengi ship are locked in a force field around a planet of a long dead space empire. The crew of the Enterprise agree to work with the Ferengi to search the planet while the Ferengi cross their fingers behind their backs and plan on acting as despicable as possible. On the planet (after some minor skirmishes between the two crews), a man named Portal puts them to the test to find out if they're worthy of existing in the universe. Why does he get to decide? I don't know! I guess because he's so fucking powerful. The anti-climax comes because Portal doesn't put them through any trials or rigorous intellectual tests. He just accidentally quotes Sun Tzu and Riker is all, "I know the response to that quote! Boom! I'm interesting, right?!" And Portal is all, "You amuse me. You shall live." Aside: the man who plays Portal also played Mimo on Villa Alegre. While the Ferengi insist that the humans are liars and jerks while taking no responsibility for their own actions, Riker quotes some Sun Tzu because every nerd in the world knows that philosophical thought about strategy and diplomacy has never outdone The Art of War. Portal is suitably impressed like any space nerd would be. He not only decides to spare the humans but becomes best friends with Riker. Only a human mind could be so unique and interesting to a creature of such knowledge and power! We're so awesome! Everybody in space should embrace our quirky ways! Even though the Ferengi behave abominably, Portal lets them live because Riker points out that they'll never learn any other way. Also, I think he just thinks of them as gnats. People might be annoyed by gnats but you don't turn the full force of your intellect and emotional fury on the entirety of their species just because they're bothering you. You swat at a few of them, curse a bit, and then fucking forget all about them. I think every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation has a moral but sometimes I can't be bothered to understand it. Especially when I'm several episodes ahead of the one I'm currently writing about. They all kind of get jumbled together. This one probably has something to do with keeping an open mind and not judging too swiftly. I only say that because I think that was the moral of the Farpoint episode and maybe the moral of all the episodes I've written about so far. And what better way to get that moral across than by making the Ferengi as obviously underhanded and treacherous as possible? Maybe they shouldn't have made them so childlike and lovable as well though. Perhaps that's why they stopped making them all bouncy and fidgety. Because it was too adorable. I would have kept that aspect of them but also made them constantly hold open switchblades. Aside: Armin Shimerman who also plays Buffy's high school principle portrays the Ferengi Letek. Oh, he's also Quark in Deep Space Nine. And he's the face of the wedding gift box in Haven. Also he's the voice of Andrew Ryan from the Bioshock games (get it? "Andrew Ryan"? Ayn Rand? It's such a good game about objectivism!). It's possible part of my problem with this show (at least so far) is the pacing of the plot in regards to the theme. I suppose, taken as a whole and being charitable, what happens in many ST:TNG episodes is that the initial introductory story usually isn't the real story and often either gets ignored or is resolved in a boring or anti-climactic way (because it wasn't the meat of the theme and didn't really matter. Like the virus in "The Naked Now"). In this one, the introductory story is that the Ferengi have stolen something from the Federation. The Enterprise is tasked with getting it back. Which they do at some point but that story doesn't matter by the time they're trapped in the forcefield. It's like that thing that famous guy said which I think I mentioned in a previous review (unless it was in a comic book review) about how life happens when you're planning on some other kind of life. Star Trek: The Next Generation made a career out of it. Some people refer to these things as the "A" and "B" plot. But I don't think ST:TNG gives enough time to the initial plot to even consider it a parallel story line to the main plot. Maybe the writers get better at this as the show progresses. But even if they don't, it's not that big a deal. I get it! You need to have the crew doing something when the major shit hits the fan. And that shit doesn't have to come out of the first thing they were doing at all, although it would be nice if, just sometimes, it did. Like maybe Wesley Crusher is studying for exams and he has the replicator make him a copy of the Necronomicon after which he unleashes Hell aboard the Enterprise. Then at the end, he fails his test because, you know, it was about engineering and not raising the dead.

#Star Trek #The Next Generation #ST:TNG #The Last Outpost

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ecotone99 · 5 years ago

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[SF] The finest meal you'll ever have

At the turn of the twenty-second century, many of Earth’s colonies revolted. Within days, enemies of Earth’s mighty empire declared war, hoping to take advantage of the chaos. Forced to fight battles on all fronts, we had been dragged into the center of the third galactic war. After nearly three decades of bloodshed and meaningless carnage, Earth and her allies emerged on top. In the aftermath, countless planets lay destroyed and people all around the universe prayed for peace and prosperity. All the involved parties ceased fire and finally, soldiers could return to their homes.

Like many others, General Rayleigh wanted to put all that had happened behind him. He had led many of Earth’s troupes to countless victories and now longed to peacefully settle down and discover his place in the new world. For his service to the Empire, the president awarded him with a hefty pension and a manor on planet Leos, the birthplace of his late mother. He had spent his last twenty years fighting. War was all he knew and all that he was good at. To somebody who’d been in battle his entire adult life, the normal world seemed foreign and empty. Rayleigh, however, was not a man to live life without a purpose. He planned to spend his first month introspecting and thinking about how he wanted his new life to shape up. Leos consisted of many fertile and uncultivated lands. He could spend his money to buy land near his house and become a farmer. Else, he could use it to buy a spaceship and spend his remaining years exploring the galaxies. The possibilities were endless and soon, Rayleigh was overwhelmed with choices. One day, an unusual guest came to visit him. She was an old woman who’d traveled halfway across the galaxy to speak to him. By the time she left his house, Rayleigh had once again found purpose in life.

Ellis had been Rayleigh’s closest friend in the war. They originally met each other as recruits in the training camp and later, they’d been assigned to the same battalion. For eight long years, they fought countless battles side by side. On one of their missions, they had been stranded on an inhospitable planet. After roaming the land for many days, they finally came across a crashed and abandoned space ship. Ellis confirmed that he could fix the radio and by help would arrive by the next day. That night, as they waited for rescue, they ate their first meal in days. It was a rotten apple they’d found in the cockpit. It tasted bitter but the two quickly divided it amongst themselves and devoured it within seconds. Later that night, they talked about what all they’d do once the war was over. It had become a tradition for them to do so after every mission. It was one of the few things that kept them going. This time, they talked about opening their own restaurant. They would offer customers the “finest meal they’ll ever have”. Both knew, however, that the end of the war was nowhere in sight. They had even begun to lose hope of ever seeing the planets co-exist peacefully in harmony.

Less than a year later, Ellis was gravely injured in combat. He succumbed to his injuries before a medic could get to him. Following that day, Rayleigh started having a regular occurrence of nightmares.

Rayleigh’s unexpected visitor was Ellis’s mother. Having lost her only son, she had waited thirteen years for the war to end. When it did, she left to seek out Ellis’s dearest friend and learn about her son’s final moments. The two talked for hours, telling each other stories about the man who had meant so much to them. In the midst of their conversation, Ellis’s mother talked about his lifelong dream to open a restaurant. Rayleigh was taken aback when he heard this. He was reminded about the time they’d talked about doing so together. He’d never realized that his friend genuinely held such a dream. The moment he found out, Rayleigh made up his mind. He would honor his best friend’s memory by accomplishing his lifelong dream. He would open a restaurant and figure out a way to offer its customers the finest meal of their lives.

Rayleigh was a smart man. He had ranked first in his military when it came to mental proficiency and was one of the youngest generals in his quadrant’s history. His strategies and tactics had tipped the tide in his side’s favor on many occasions. He realized that although he was no longer a soldier fighting in a war, the mindset and strategies he had developed in wartime would be of use in the business world.

Acknowledging that his knowledge regarding the dining industry was scare and lacking, he made a decision to spend the next five years studying the history, science, and psychology of food. He traveled to Earth in an attempt to study its galaxy - renowned cuisines. By his second year, he learned Italian, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican and every other cuisine he had ever read off or seen. At each step, his main focus lay on thinking about how he could use his new knowledge to craft the finest meal a customer could have. He held the belief that successful business was driven by innovation, which came only from technology and research.

By the end of the fifth year, Rayleigh had a clear vision of what his restaurant would be and how it would operate. He spent the next three years documenting and refining his plan. By this time, his friends from the war had reached high positions. He proceeded to schedule meetings with investors he’d served with. They invited him to pitch his idea in front of everyone. Within the span of twenty minutes, everyone in the room was floored by Rayleigh’s idea and a huge number of venture capitalists agreed to pour in huge amounts of money for the project. As a year went by, suspense and mystery regarding the restaurant continued to build up.

Eleven years after he’d first decided to honor his dearest friend’s legacy, Rayleigh finally declared “Ellis and Rayleigh” open. The tagline read “The finest meal of your life”. He had carefully selected and invited various food critiques and journalists who were now lined up outside. Sharp at twelve, the doors opened for the very first wave of customers. Standing on top of the tallest tower in the city, the view from Ellis and Rayleigh was impeccable and it’s interior was impressive. Rayleigh stood proud in the center, waiting for everyone to head to their assigned seats. None of the tables had any menus or cutleries. Instead, in front of each person, there lay a sleek rectangular slab of glass. Transparent with a light shade of blue. Many brought up it’s resemblance to a smartphone. When everyone had finally been seated, Rayleigh spoke

“Thank you all for coming. Initially, the plan was to start with a huge ceremony. However, we collectively decided that it would best if instead, we cut right down to the chase and begin the demonstration. I request all of you to pick up the rectangular slab you see on your table.”

Puzzled, everyone did as he asked.

“Now hold it front and place your tongue on it, as if you’re licking it”

The entire restaurant erupted with laughter. General Rayleigh had to be joking. He couldn't possibly be serious, they spoke amongst each other.

Rayleigh joined in with a friendly laugh. After everyone calmed down, he proceeded to demonstrate. Holding up one of the slabs that he’d been keeping in his pocket, he proceeded to open his mouth and place his tongue on it. After a few seconds, the device beeped and turned to a light shade of green. On the slab, there was now a digital timer. It had been set to nine minutes and instantly started counting downwards.

Curious, everybody around the room proceeded to imitate what Rayleigh had just done. Slowly, slabs all around turned green and multiple counters started. Some started from as few as five minutes and some even started all the way from twenty-five. This time, when Rayleigh spoke, all eyes were on him.

“When the timer ends, it means that your meal has been prepared. One of our waiters will bring the dish to you. Your dish will initially be covered with a lid. We request all of you to not open the lid until everybody else has also been served”

Everyone waited. When the final dish had been served, Rayleigh finally asked them to open their lids and have a look at their food.

The entire room gave out a collective gasp. On each plate, they lay a different dish. Some people had been served pizza, some others had gotten noodles and rice. Countless dishes spanning a huge variety of cuisine could be found in the room. Even people who were served the same dish noticed huge variations in ingredients and flavors. Few of the meals were even accompanied by a custom made dessert or drink.

“Using state of the art technology, our research team has devised a way to analyze your tastebuds and monitor their interactions with your brain. Using this rectangular device, we determine the dish you’re most likely to prefer. Once determined, our team of versatile chefs begins making your favorite dish, ensuring that it’s cooked and made it in the manner you’d enjoy the most.”

The demonstration left the crowd wild. Most of the attendees were still shocked from having seen their personal favorite dishes suddenly appear in front of them. Business analysts unanimously predicted that this new restaurant would revolutionize the entire food industry and go on to become massively profitable and successful. They turned out to be right. When the first word of “Ellis and Rayleigh” got out, residents from all over the galaxy rushed to experience the finest meal they’d ever have. Within weeks of the opening, the restaurant became one of the hottest places to dine at in the galaxy. Within a year, reservations were required to be made weeks, if not months in advance. After a hugely successful IPO, Rayleigh began work to set up branches throughout the universe.

By the time he turned ninety, Ellis and Rayleigh had turned into one of the most profitable organizations of the century. Rayleigh retired soon after, passing on his responsibility and leaving the company in the hands of a trusted board of directors. A few years later, he was invited as the guest of honor for one of the company’s press conference. The research department had been working very hard and it was finally time to announce their latest innovation. The new restaurants would now do more than just analyze one’s tastebuds to create meals. They would also factor in the customer’s DNA and brain activity. This would allow the company to factor in dietary restrictions for certain meals and even recreate items from the customer’s memory. The crowds cheered as General Rayleigh walked to the stage, soon to become the first person to try out Ellis and Rayleigh’s revamped technology.

As he had done so many years ago, Rayleigh picked up the slab and placed his tongue on it. He then proceeded to let the device scan his brain and collect a sample of his DNA. When he was done, the timer displayed a waiting time of just three minutes.

Soon, his food arrived. Rayleigh lifted the lid for everyone to see. On the plate, lay nothing but a crudely cut piece of a rotten apple. Everybody in the crowd looked puzzled. A voice shouted from the back of the crowd.

“Does it not work?”, it asked.

“Quite the contrary” replied Rayleigh. Wiping off a tear that just formed in his eye, he proceeded to eat, truly the finest meal he would ever have in his life.

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