The post below on the disappearance of public showering in cocooning times got me thinking about where else we've seen a major change in awkwardness about uncovering our shame in public spaces. Other than bathing, the only other bathroom activity that we do in front of others is taking a wiz.
Unlike showering, where guys now wait until they get back home, we can't always hold it in when we need to go. So unlike the unused showers, public urinals are still in use. But it has become more common for them to have partitions between them so that no one else will see your shame.
I don't remember those at all from when I was a kid, and they do seem familiar at least from the last 15 years. I tried to find out more precisely when they started becoming common, but couldn't tell from Googling. Maybe a visit to Lexis-Nexis would turn up some industry reports about these newfangled urinal dividers. Someone else can look that up, though.
I also couldn't tell how common they may or may not have been during the previous cocooning period of the Midcentury. Some pictures of bathrooms built back then show partitions, and others don't. Even when they're there, some look original and others look like recent remodels.
That being said, I'm still going to call urinal dividers as a cocooning-era sign of anxiety about showing your shame among in-group members who would've been trusted in more outgoing times. In socially withdrawn times, more and more guys act like Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe in a public bathroom.
These dividers are not only installed in highly diverse places where everyone is a stranger, but in those where folks know each other and come from similar backgrounds.
Believe it or not, there is an entire blog dedicated to the current state of bathrooms at Brigham Young University, in the heart of homogeneous white Mormon land. (You never know what data sources are only a few exits down the information super-highway...) And judging from these pictures, their typical bathrooms have partitions between the urinals. Somehow I doubt they were in place back in the '70s and '80s.
In outgoing times, which required greater interpersonal trust, nobody thought twice about draining the snake around others. In a cocooning climate, when people are more suspicious of one another, they're much less likely to allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to uncover their shame around strangers.
October 30, 2015
October 28, 2015
In debate, Trump all but promises to neuter the media if elected
Trump has been running on an implicit anti-media platform since the beginning. Within the mainstream media, and especially during the nationally televised debates, he's been the object almost entirely of half-truths, snark, and naysaying. At the debates, he gets asked far nastier questions, in such a baldfaced tone, than any of the other candidates.
When he draws thousands and tens of thousands at local rallies, he makes a point every time to inform the TV viewers that the media cameras will never pan to show the full scope of his massive crowds, even when he directs them to. It's their passive-aggressive way of trying to play down his popularity and the unwavering enthusiasm of his supporters compared to everyone else's supporters.
In his speeches, he emphasizes time and again how dishonest the press is, to raucous applause.
Other candidates may complain about the liberal bias in the media, but Trump made it clear tonight that he takes it personally and will not forget. In his open-ended initial answer to a question about what your weakness is, he said that he is too trusting, but if that trust is betrayed, he will never forget and never forgive. If it struck the viewers as an out-of-place answer, perhaps he was giving the CNBC talking head moderators a warning not to jerk him around in front of a live national audience, and to treat the front-runner with a little respect and seriousness.
Enter question #1: "Aaaaannnnndd Mr. Trump, like, seriously? What's up with your comic-book version of a presidential campaign?"
Later question to a rival: "Aaaaannnnd Mr. Huckabee, you emphasize the importance of morality in politics. Do you think Mr. Trump passes the moral threshold cleared by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama? Or is he literally the devil incarnate?"
What, was CNBC doing some cross-promotion with tranny SJWs submitting questions from Tumblr?
If his opening statement sounded out-of-place, so did his closing statement, which he mostly devoted to explaining to the audience that he out-negotiated the host network in setting the terms and length of the debate, so if he can bring the haughty media to heel, just imagine what he can do for the country. One of the talking heads told a bald-faced lie that the debate was always supposed to be two hours, but Trump called him out as a liar. Trump also got in the message that the only reason CNBC wanted the debate to be three hours or longer was to greedily squeeze out as many advertising dollars as possible.
It's one thing to disparage the press on the campaign trail, but to humiliate a network during their own broadcast sends a strong signal about his plans for the media. You think he doesn't have plans for them? Rewind to his opening statement about how he never forgets when someone betrays his misplaced trust.
I don't know whether he plans to break up the media monopoly, to pay for his income tax cuts by levying YUGE taxes specifically on the mass media, or what. ("Hey, you gotta stay a little unpredictable, am I right?") Whatever it is, it will deal a strong blow to the propaganda machine in our country, and it will be a smash hit among both conservatives and liberals, so no one but lobbyists will be protesting. And Trump has already made clear he's not taking anyone's money and won't have to listen to lobbyists -- let alone from the media that's been smearing him the whole time! -- once he's in office.
The media are fully aware of how little trust the public has in them, since they're in the business of reading and sometimes even reporting on opinion surveys. According to the gold standard, the General Social Survey, in 2014 Americans had almost no confidence in the press. Among liberals, 10% have "a great deal" of confidence, 49% have "only some," and 41% have "hardly any". Moderates show about the same pattern. For conservatives, 5% have a great deal, 44% only some, and 51% have hardly any. Disgust and loathing for the media is truly one of the most bipartisan unifying issues out there.
The only source of comfort that the propaganda machine enjoys is the unwillingness of any major politician to want to go after them. As leaders of the Establishment, the politicians benefit greatly from the Establishment's monopolistic media arm. Only now, the front-runner for the Republican nomination and indeed in the general election has made it one of his many personal missions to cut the media down to size for having treated him so unfairly.
Most politicians not surprisingly come from a culture of legalism, but if Trump wins, they're going to get a taste of a President who follows the culture of honor.
Go get those bunch of slack-jawed faggots in the media, President Trump. All of America is behind you!
GSS variables: conpress, polviews, year
When he draws thousands and tens of thousands at local rallies, he makes a point every time to inform the TV viewers that the media cameras will never pan to show the full scope of his massive crowds, even when he directs them to. It's their passive-aggressive way of trying to play down his popularity and the unwavering enthusiasm of his supporters compared to everyone else's supporters.
In his speeches, he emphasizes time and again how dishonest the press is, to raucous applause.
Other candidates may complain about the liberal bias in the media, but Trump made it clear tonight that he takes it personally and will not forget. In his open-ended initial answer to a question about what your weakness is, he said that he is too trusting, but if that trust is betrayed, he will never forget and never forgive. If it struck the viewers as an out-of-place answer, perhaps he was giving the CNBC talking head moderators a warning not to jerk him around in front of a live national audience, and to treat the front-runner with a little respect and seriousness.
Enter question #1: "Aaaaannnnndd Mr. Trump, like, seriously? What's up with your comic-book version of a presidential campaign?"
Later question to a rival: "Aaaaannnnd Mr. Huckabee, you emphasize the importance of morality in politics. Do you think Mr. Trump passes the moral threshold cleared by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama? Or is he literally the devil incarnate?"
What, was CNBC doing some cross-promotion with tranny SJWs submitting questions from Tumblr?
If his opening statement sounded out-of-place, so did his closing statement, which he mostly devoted to explaining to the audience that he out-negotiated the host network in setting the terms and length of the debate, so if he can bring the haughty media to heel, just imagine what he can do for the country. One of the talking heads told a bald-faced lie that the debate was always supposed to be two hours, but Trump called him out as a liar. Trump also got in the message that the only reason CNBC wanted the debate to be three hours or longer was to greedily squeeze out as many advertising dollars as possible.
It's one thing to disparage the press on the campaign trail, but to humiliate a network during their own broadcast sends a strong signal about his plans for the media. You think he doesn't have plans for them? Rewind to his opening statement about how he never forgets when someone betrays his misplaced trust.
I don't know whether he plans to break up the media monopoly, to pay for his income tax cuts by levying YUGE taxes specifically on the mass media, or what. ("Hey, you gotta stay a little unpredictable, am I right?") Whatever it is, it will deal a strong blow to the propaganda machine in our country, and it will be a smash hit among both conservatives and liberals, so no one but lobbyists will be protesting. And Trump has already made clear he's not taking anyone's money and won't have to listen to lobbyists -- let alone from the media that's been smearing him the whole time! -- once he's in office.
The media are fully aware of how little trust the public has in them, since they're in the business of reading and sometimes even reporting on opinion surveys. According to the gold standard, the General Social Survey, in 2014 Americans had almost no confidence in the press. Among liberals, 10% have "a great deal" of confidence, 49% have "only some," and 41% have "hardly any". Moderates show about the same pattern. For conservatives, 5% have a great deal, 44% only some, and 51% have hardly any. Disgust and loathing for the media is truly one of the most bipartisan unifying issues out there.
The only source of comfort that the propaganda machine enjoys is the unwillingness of any major politician to want to go after them. As leaders of the Establishment, the politicians benefit greatly from the Establishment's monopolistic media arm. Only now, the front-runner for the Republican nomination and indeed in the general election has made it one of his many personal missions to cut the media down to size for having treated him so unfairly.
Most politicians not surprisingly come from a culture of legalism, but if Trump wins, they're going to get a taste of a President who follows the culture of honor.
"Payback time!"
Go get those bunch of slack-jawed faggots in the media, President Trump. All of America is behind you!
GSS variables: conpress, polviews, year
No showering at school in cocooning times
Looking through old horror movies, it's striking how many shower scenes there are, from Psycho through the Friday the 13th series. Some movies dialed up the vulnerability factor by making the bather's exposure public, setting them in the showers of a locker room at school:
Then it hit me why you don't see these kinds of scenes anymore -- students haven't showered in the locker room for decades, so the intended audience of horror movies (teenagers and young adults) wouldn't be able to resonate with the setting. Carrie (1974) has a classic shower scene that anyone who went to high school in the '70s could have identified with. When they re-made Carrie in 2013, they kept the shower scene, but it must have felt forced and unfamiliar to adolescents of the 2010s.
Of course, there were public shower scenes in genres other than horror -- Porky's, Footloose, Heathers, and others -- but those are also from awhile ago.
To establish that these changes in pop culture are reflecting changes in the real world, I went Googling and found three articles from major newspapers, all in 1996: the first one from the Chicago Tribune, a follow-up from the NY Times, and yet another from the LA Times. The reporters interviewed students and gym teachers from various schools in their metro areas and were unanimous that high schoolers had stopped showering after gym class and extracurricular sports.
We can tell the change was abrupt because the gym teachers were in a state of disbelief, rather than saying that the shift had been gradually under way for awhile:
There was a court case in the Pittsburgh area in 1994, where the ACLU sued a high school to end public showering, arguing on privacy grounds (a fat chick didn't want to be embarrassed). The lawyer said he'd never received so much spontaneous positive response from around the country, meaning that this court case did not change the climate by itself but was merely reflecting the larger changes in attitudes that had already occurred throughout the country.
That's the earliest example that I could find, and it sounds about right from personal experience. I don't remember anyone using the showers in high school (fall of '95 to spring of '99). In fact, although I can recall what the locker room looked like and where the main doors and the staff office were located, I can't even remember where the showers were placed or what they looked like. My friends and I would just spend the extra 5-10 minutes of "shower time" shooting the bull.
It was like that in middle school, too (fall of '92 to spring of '95). Some of the metal kids went into the showers with their normal clothes on, and started headbanging once their hair had gotten soaked, but it was just a goof. Rarely, somebody would go in for real with their shirt off, but actually taking a shower in public -- never happened.
Here is a thread on Snopes.com from 2004 asking whether showering after gym class was a real thing or only something they showed in the movies. People who went to secondary school in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and early '90s all swear that it was real, and often enforced by the gym teachers. Nobody chimed in to say it was practiced in the mid-'90s or afterward. A more recent article from the Sun-Sentinel in southern Florida confirms that the no-shower trend has continued through the present, and was not just a phase during the era of grunge music, greasy hair, and heroin chic.
The timing of the rise and fall suggests a link to the outgoing vs. cocooning cycle, and sure enough I could not find reports of public showering at school being common in the first half of the 1950s or earlier -- i.e., the pre-Elvis cocooning era.
People in outgoing times are simply less self-conscious about their bodies because sociability requires higher trust levels than cocooning does, and trust means being willing to let yourself be vulnerable in public around other members of the in-group. In a trusting person's mindset, none of the other kids in the showers are going to try anything harmful, so why bother worrying about them? In the suspicious person's mindset, you can never know who's going to try to do you wrong when you're vulnerable, so it's best to just keep your guard up all the time. Certainly that means never uncovering your shame around others.
Only when people start withdrawing into their own private little worlds do they start to obsess over privacy and act compulsively about it. It's not a mere personal preference when 100% of students would suffer an anxiety attack from taking off their clothes in the locker room, let alone everyone showering that way. To students of the past 20-some years, it would feel more like child abuse to make the students vulnerable to the attention of their peers, all of whom they distrust, so that uncovering their shame in front of them would be the ultimate humiliation.
Not showering in public is not the only case of increasing anxiety about showing one's body in cocooning times. See this earlier post on the absence of flashing, streaking, skinny-dipping, and topless sunbathing (even in France) within Millennial-era culture. See also this related post about how young people stopped joining the nudist movement decades ago, making their membership increasingly saggy and gray-haired.
This wide variety of examples shows the importance of distinguishing between displaying your body because you trust other people not to do you wrong, and displaying it to whore for sex-appeal attention. The streakers of the '70s were not trying to increase their number of Instagram followers as an ego boost, but to put out an extreme form of the basic message about, "Hey man, what is there to be worried about or ashamed of? We all trust each other, don't we?"
Likewise, today's skin-baring young people would still drop dead from anxiety if they went out in public with no bra on, or if they went skinny-dipping with a group of friends. The code of "If you've got it, flaunt it" somehow doesn't translate into public showers, where the good-looking girls could easily one-up the uglier girls. But that would require them to be vulnerable in front a crowd of people they don't trust (their fellow students), so that's a non-starter.
Calling these changes "the new modesty," or whatever, would be foolish, given how narcissistic young people have become. "The new awkwardness" is more like it.
Then it hit me why you don't see these kinds of scenes anymore -- students haven't showered in the locker room for decades, so the intended audience of horror movies (teenagers and young adults) wouldn't be able to resonate with the setting. Carrie (1974) has a classic shower scene that anyone who went to high school in the '70s could have identified with. When they re-made Carrie in 2013, they kept the shower scene, but it must have felt forced and unfamiliar to adolescents of the 2010s.
Of course, there were public shower scenes in genres other than horror -- Porky's, Footloose, Heathers, and others -- but those are also from awhile ago.
To establish that these changes in pop culture are reflecting changes in the real world, I went Googling and found three articles from major newspapers, all in 1996: the first one from the Chicago Tribune, a follow-up from the NY Times, and yet another from the LA Times. The reporters interviewed students and gym teachers from various schools in their metro areas and were unanimous that high schoolers had stopped showering after gym class and extracurricular sports.
We can tell the change was abrupt because the gym teachers were in a state of disbelief, rather than saying that the shift had been gradually under way for awhile:
The antipathy to taking showers after gym class puzzles some teachers and coaches. "These guys don't want to undress in front of each other," said John Wrenn, a teacher at Homewood-Flossmoor High School in suburban Chicago, who can scarcely conceal his contempt for the new sensibilities. "I just don't get it. When I started in '74, nobody even thought about things like this. The whole thing is just hard for me to accept."
There was a court case in the Pittsburgh area in 1994, where the ACLU sued a high school to end public showering, arguing on privacy grounds (a fat chick didn't want to be embarrassed). The lawyer said he'd never received so much spontaneous positive response from around the country, meaning that this court case did not change the climate by itself but was merely reflecting the larger changes in attitudes that had already occurred throughout the country.
That's the earliest example that I could find, and it sounds about right from personal experience. I don't remember anyone using the showers in high school (fall of '95 to spring of '99). In fact, although I can recall what the locker room looked like and where the main doors and the staff office were located, I can't even remember where the showers were placed or what they looked like. My friends and I would just spend the extra 5-10 minutes of "shower time" shooting the bull.
It was like that in middle school, too (fall of '92 to spring of '95). Some of the metal kids went into the showers with their normal clothes on, and started headbanging once their hair had gotten soaked, but it was just a goof. Rarely, somebody would go in for real with their shirt off, but actually taking a shower in public -- never happened.
Here is a thread on Snopes.com from 2004 asking whether showering after gym class was a real thing or only something they showed in the movies. People who went to secondary school in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and early '90s all swear that it was real, and often enforced by the gym teachers. Nobody chimed in to say it was practiced in the mid-'90s or afterward. A more recent article from the Sun-Sentinel in southern Florida confirms that the no-shower trend has continued through the present, and was not just a phase during the era of grunge music, greasy hair, and heroin chic.
The timing of the rise and fall suggests a link to the outgoing vs. cocooning cycle, and sure enough I could not find reports of public showering at school being common in the first half of the 1950s or earlier -- i.e., the pre-Elvis cocooning era.
People in outgoing times are simply less self-conscious about their bodies because sociability requires higher trust levels than cocooning does, and trust means being willing to let yourself be vulnerable in public around other members of the in-group. In a trusting person's mindset, none of the other kids in the showers are going to try anything harmful, so why bother worrying about them? In the suspicious person's mindset, you can never know who's going to try to do you wrong when you're vulnerable, so it's best to just keep your guard up all the time. Certainly that means never uncovering your shame around others.
Only when people start withdrawing into their own private little worlds do they start to obsess over privacy and act compulsively about it. It's not a mere personal preference when 100% of students would suffer an anxiety attack from taking off their clothes in the locker room, let alone everyone showering that way. To students of the past 20-some years, it would feel more like child abuse to make the students vulnerable to the attention of their peers, all of whom they distrust, so that uncovering their shame in front of them would be the ultimate humiliation.
Not showering in public is not the only case of increasing anxiety about showing one's body in cocooning times. See this earlier post on the absence of flashing, streaking, skinny-dipping, and topless sunbathing (even in France) within Millennial-era culture. See also this related post about how young people stopped joining the nudist movement decades ago, making their membership increasingly saggy and gray-haired.
This wide variety of examples shows the importance of distinguishing between displaying your body because you trust other people not to do you wrong, and displaying it to whore for sex-appeal attention. The streakers of the '70s were not trying to increase their number of Instagram followers as an ego boost, but to put out an extreme form of the basic message about, "Hey man, what is there to be worried about or ashamed of? We all trust each other, don't we?"
Likewise, today's skin-baring young people would still drop dead from anxiety if they went out in public with no bra on, or if they went skinny-dipping with a group of friends. The code of "If you've got it, flaunt it" somehow doesn't translate into public showers, where the good-looking girls could easily one-up the uglier girls. But that would require them to be vulnerable in front a crowd of people they don't trust (their fellow students), so that's a non-starter.
Calling these changes "the new modesty," or whatever, would be foolish, given how narcissistic young people have become. "The new awkwardness" is more like it.
October 27, 2015
Convincing portrayals of ghost encounters on naturalistic TV series
Before the serial drama became a popular genre in television, it was not possible to do a serious "Halloween episode" because the dominant genre was the sit-com. Ghosts, spirits, and the like would have clashed with the light and comedic tone of the series overall. So, on hit sit-coms like Roseanne and The Simpsons, the Halloween episode took the form of the characters playing morbid pranks on one another and telling scary stories.
Then came series that follow fantastic plotlines and themes on an ongoing basis, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural. The presence of ghosts, spirits, etc., on Halloween would actually feel ordinary in the worlds that these shows are set in. Bummer.
To get the Halloween atmosphere right, the series ought to be naturalistic, so that the Halloween episode stands out as up-ending the ordinary order of things, just as it is supposed to be in real life. We've already seen that it needs to be a drama rather than sit-com, so that the tone of the Halloween episode won't clash with the usual tone. And the narrative should be serial, so that we can tell that there's a disturbance to the ordinary goings-on with the characters whose lives we already know.
The Halloween episode I remember most is the one from My So-Called Life, which features a plotline about a ghost of a former student at the high school who died on Halloween. It is played seriously, as though something supernatural has entered the mundane world of the series, which usually focuses on typical teenage drama.
In fact, for their Christmas episode they again introduced a ghost plotline that was played seriously (the ghost of a homeless teen runaway, not the Christmas Carol kind of ghost). Both ghosts appear in ordinary human form rather than transparent and wispy, which helps the viewer of a naturalistic series to suspend disbelief.
Judging from reviews of these episodes at the Onion AV Club, hardcore nerds can't stand the serious introduction of supernatural elements in a realistic drama. I don't remember these episodes having a credibility problem back then, nor when I re-watched the series a few years ago. There's nothing unrealistic about the occasional encounter with something that can't be explained naturalistically. Haven't we all had some kind of experience like that in real life? And what better time to set it in than during holidays where there's a carnivalesque atmosphere of "up is down and down is up"?
If ghosts, spirits, etc. only made appearances as recurring characters in a fantasy world, they wouldn't stand out as beyond the ordinary. The nerds who write that kind of stuff (e.g. Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) seem to think of ghosts, vampires, etc. as like invisible friends who interact with the normal characters on a regular basis.
In reality, ghosts are something that we only encounter very rarely, perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime. And those encounters do seem to take place within our mundane lives before and after, not as though we feel transported to some fantasy world where ghosts dwell, or as though some portal has opened up into our world like a horror movie. They have an unsettling surreal quality, where we can't tell if this is a natural or supernatural experience.
Have there been any similar episodes in the 20 years since the ones from My So-Called Life? Wikipedia has a list of Halloween TV specials with sections for "American drama" and "teen drama". It's hard to judge whether ghosts appear at all, or whether it's just about partying on Halloween, let alone whether the ghost encounter is portrayed seriously. It sure doesn't look like it, though.
Earlier, Twin Peaks made surreal episodes -- every episode. Expecting them every day or week is not how we have ghost-like experiences in real life.
In any case, you can watch the entire sole season of My So-Called Life for free on Hulu. The Halloween and Christmas episodes are 9 and 15, although it's worth watching the other ones in order, too, to appreciate the contrast in subject matter and theme. It's one of the few pop culture phenomena of my teenage years that I'm not embarrassed to have enjoyed, a kind of Breakfast Club serial drama for the grunge/alternative era. There's certainly a lot worse you could be streaming to get in the mood for Halloween.
Then came series that follow fantastic plotlines and themes on an ongoing basis, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural. The presence of ghosts, spirits, etc., on Halloween would actually feel ordinary in the worlds that these shows are set in. Bummer.
To get the Halloween atmosphere right, the series ought to be naturalistic, so that the Halloween episode stands out as up-ending the ordinary order of things, just as it is supposed to be in real life. We've already seen that it needs to be a drama rather than sit-com, so that the tone of the Halloween episode won't clash with the usual tone. And the narrative should be serial, so that we can tell that there's a disturbance to the ordinary goings-on with the characters whose lives we already know.
The Halloween episode I remember most is the one from My So-Called Life, which features a plotline about a ghost of a former student at the high school who died on Halloween. It is played seriously, as though something supernatural has entered the mundane world of the series, which usually focuses on typical teenage drama.
In fact, for their Christmas episode they again introduced a ghost plotline that was played seriously (the ghost of a homeless teen runaway, not the Christmas Carol kind of ghost). Both ghosts appear in ordinary human form rather than transparent and wispy, which helps the viewer of a naturalistic series to suspend disbelief.
Judging from reviews of these episodes at the Onion AV Club, hardcore nerds can't stand the serious introduction of supernatural elements in a realistic drama. I don't remember these episodes having a credibility problem back then, nor when I re-watched the series a few years ago. There's nothing unrealistic about the occasional encounter with something that can't be explained naturalistically. Haven't we all had some kind of experience like that in real life? And what better time to set it in than during holidays where there's a carnivalesque atmosphere of "up is down and down is up"?
If ghosts, spirits, etc. only made appearances as recurring characters in a fantasy world, they wouldn't stand out as beyond the ordinary. The nerds who write that kind of stuff (e.g. Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) seem to think of ghosts, vampires, etc. as like invisible friends who interact with the normal characters on a regular basis.
In reality, ghosts are something that we only encounter very rarely, perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime. And those encounters do seem to take place within our mundane lives before and after, not as though we feel transported to some fantasy world where ghosts dwell, or as though some portal has opened up into our world like a horror movie. They have an unsettling surreal quality, where we can't tell if this is a natural or supernatural experience.
Have there been any similar episodes in the 20 years since the ones from My So-Called Life? Wikipedia has a list of Halloween TV specials with sections for "American drama" and "teen drama". It's hard to judge whether ghosts appear at all, or whether it's just about partying on Halloween, let alone whether the ghost encounter is portrayed seriously. It sure doesn't look like it, though.
Earlier, Twin Peaks made surreal episodes -- every episode. Expecting them every day or week is not how we have ghost-like experiences in real life.
In any case, you can watch the entire sole season of My So-Called Life for free on Hulu. The Halloween and Christmas episodes are 9 and 15, although it's worth watching the other ones in order, too, to appreciate the contrast in subject matter and theme. It's one of the few pop culture phenomena of my teenage years that I'm not embarrassed to have enjoyed, a kind of Breakfast Club serial drama for the grunge/alternative era. There's certainly a lot worse you could be streaming to get in the mood for Halloween.
October 24, 2015
For moron skeptics, the Bible allows everything because "Many versions, QED"
It has become clear that the attempt to popularize scholarship on the Bible has not led to a more nuanced understanding of Western civilization's sacred texts, but has instead created confusion, dishonesty, error, and downright retardation, where there used to only be mere ignorance.
Bart Ehrman, the most well known of the New Testament scholarship popularizers, found this out the hard way. A professor from an evangelical-turned-agnostic background, he wanted to enlighten believers and non-believers about what dispassionate research has to say about the Bible, and how those findings might inform contemporary debates about religion in general and Christianity in particular.
His books are easy reads, but you can get the gist of the message from the titles:
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
These were published between 2003 and 2011, after agnosticism and atheism had taken a commanding lead in American society during the 1990s. Publishing them in such a godless climate was not brave, rogue, or maverick, but simply goading on an already cynical and skeptical population by telling them that PEER REVIEWED STUDIES backed up their gut feeling about contemporary organized religion being mostly full of it.
Like most brainless mobs, though, the religious skeptics got so far out of hand that they didn't just question this or that supernatural tenet of mainstream Christianity -- was Jesus the son of God, was he resurrected, did he die for our sins, and so on -- but straightforward mundane matters like whether Jesus of Nazareth even existed, whether he led a religious movement, or whether he was crucified. Those are all basic historical facts, so imagine the embarrassment to a professor of Christian history that a decent chunk of his followers were so historically illiterate, and so smug in their convictions.
This led him to publish a popular book in 2012 whose title reveals how learned and sophisticated his audience had become:
Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Imagine a historian of ancient Rome having to write a book called, Did Julius Caesar Exist? Ignorance that profound would be too depressing for most Roman historians to even bother addressing at length.
Perhaps the most cancerous outcome of the popularization of Biblical studies has been the widespread belief that because the Bible has been copied and re-copied so many times, not to mention revised and edited by scribes who were not 100% neutral in their changes, we have no solid basis for beginning a statement with, "The Bible says ____". WHICH VERSION, WHICH VERSION, WHICH VERSION??!!
In the mind of the skeptic, in other words, the Bible allows us to believe anything about the topics it addresses, and those puritanical Bible-thumpers (booo, booo) are only quoting the particular version, among so many different versions, that happens to support their claim. For skeptics, there are alternative, competing versions either here-and-now or once-upon-a-time that undercut or even contradict the claims of the Bible-thumpers.
One of the most amazingly stupid statements to this effect came from professional ignoramus Bill Nye the Science Guy. In a 2014 debate against Ken Ham, he likened the history of reproducing the Bible to the "telephone game," where someone begins with a story and whispers it to the next person, who whispers it to the next, on and on down the line, until the final person tells a story very different from the original.
Let's ignore for the moment how copying a sacred text differs from playing the telephone game (serious vs. careless attitude, sacred vs. profane mindset, etc.). What is the point of this analogy except to suggest that the original versions of the Bible were substantially different from those of today, on a wide range of crucial topics?
Does Bill Nye really think the original version of the Ten Commandments went a little something like this? --
Have as many other gods before me as thou wilt. I mean, hey, they're all just different forms of the same Higher Spiritual Power, right?
Thou shalt not commit adultery, unless the side-chick is pretty hot, in which case, hey bro, I totally understand, I'd hit that too.
Honor thy mother and thy father, as long as they give you everything you ask for. If not, you can call them a fag on Twitter since those tightwads deserve to be shamed.
Does Bill Nye really think that, somewhere along the line before they mutated, the original teachings of Jesus included such nuggets of wisdom as these? --
Blessed are the impure of heart...
Blessed are the vindictive...
Blessed are the warmongers...
Judge others by a standard that you would not accept to be judged by.
Go and sin no more, j/k we all know sinning feels good.
Does Bill Nye really think that in the original unaltered form of Romans and 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul was actually trying to help the churches organize their local Gay Pride Parade?
It's as though the Science Guy thinks the process of copying the Bible leads to a multiverse of teachings, where at every major decision a scribe had to make, some went one way, others went another way, and still others went another way still. With so many branches extending from so many ideological points of departure, somewhere out there is an Anti-Bible that contradicts every major teaching of our received Bible, but which nevertheless traces back in an unbroken chain of transmission to the original autographs.
For skeptics, followers of the Anti-Christ just might be the literal original Christians. You can't get any dumber than this, folks. It really proves G.K. Chesterton's claim that, "A man who won’t believe in God will believe in anything."
At the outset of the crusade, the idealistic popularizers thought their audiences would develop an appreciation for the similarities and differences of the three major textual families that the New Testament comes from, or how the texts reveal the evolving beliefs and practices of the nascent Christian communities. Instead they ended up feeding the smug dismissiveness of a bunch of morons.
Maybe now Bart Ehrman understands why the ministers and priests he talks to have made a conscious decision not to open up this can of worms for their congregations.
Bonus video: see how often a typical crowd of internet scholars brings up the objection about "many versions and revisions!" when getting into a real-life argument with street-preaching troll extraordinaire Brother Dean. I found examples around 18m, 29m, 33m, 45m, and 1h 8m.
Bart Ehrman, the most well known of the New Testament scholarship popularizers, found this out the hard way. A professor from an evangelical-turned-agnostic background, he wanted to enlighten believers and non-believers about what dispassionate research has to say about the Bible, and how those findings might inform contemporary debates about religion in general and Christianity in particular.
His books are easy reads, but you can get the gist of the message from the titles:
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
These were published between 2003 and 2011, after agnosticism and atheism had taken a commanding lead in American society during the 1990s. Publishing them in such a godless climate was not brave, rogue, or maverick, but simply goading on an already cynical and skeptical population by telling them that PEER REVIEWED STUDIES backed up their gut feeling about contemporary organized religion being mostly full of it.
Like most brainless mobs, though, the religious skeptics got so far out of hand that they didn't just question this or that supernatural tenet of mainstream Christianity -- was Jesus the son of God, was he resurrected, did he die for our sins, and so on -- but straightforward mundane matters like whether Jesus of Nazareth even existed, whether he led a religious movement, or whether he was crucified. Those are all basic historical facts, so imagine the embarrassment to a professor of Christian history that a decent chunk of his followers were so historically illiterate, and so smug in their convictions.
This led him to publish a popular book in 2012 whose title reveals how learned and sophisticated his audience had become:
Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Imagine a historian of ancient Rome having to write a book called, Did Julius Caesar Exist? Ignorance that profound would be too depressing for most Roman historians to even bother addressing at length.
Perhaps the most cancerous outcome of the popularization of Biblical studies has been the widespread belief that because the Bible has been copied and re-copied so many times, not to mention revised and edited by scribes who were not 100% neutral in their changes, we have no solid basis for beginning a statement with, "The Bible says ____". WHICH VERSION, WHICH VERSION, WHICH VERSION??!!
In the mind of the skeptic, in other words, the Bible allows us to believe anything about the topics it addresses, and those puritanical Bible-thumpers (booo, booo) are only quoting the particular version, among so many different versions, that happens to support their claim. For skeptics, there are alternative, competing versions either here-and-now or once-upon-a-time that undercut or even contradict the claims of the Bible-thumpers.
One of the most amazingly stupid statements to this effect came from professional ignoramus Bill Nye the Science Guy. In a 2014 debate against Ken Ham, he likened the history of reproducing the Bible to the "telephone game," where someone begins with a story and whispers it to the next person, who whispers it to the next, on and on down the line, until the final person tells a story very different from the original.
Let's ignore for the moment how copying a sacred text differs from playing the telephone game (serious vs. careless attitude, sacred vs. profane mindset, etc.). What is the point of this analogy except to suggest that the original versions of the Bible were substantially different from those of today, on a wide range of crucial topics?
Does Bill Nye really think the original version of the Ten Commandments went a little something like this? --
Have as many other gods before me as thou wilt. I mean, hey, they're all just different forms of the same Higher Spiritual Power, right?
Thou shalt not commit adultery, unless the side-chick is pretty hot, in which case, hey bro, I totally understand, I'd hit that too.
Honor thy mother and thy father, as long as they give you everything you ask for. If not, you can call them a fag on Twitter since those tightwads deserve to be shamed.
Does Bill Nye really think that, somewhere along the line before they mutated, the original teachings of Jesus included such nuggets of wisdom as these? --
Blessed are the impure of heart...
Blessed are the vindictive...
Blessed are the warmongers...
Judge others by a standard that you would not accept to be judged by.
Go and sin no more, j/k we all know sinning feels good.
Does Bill Nye really think that in the original unaltered form of Romans and 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul was actually trying to help the churches organize their local Gay Pride Parade?
It's as though the Science Guy thinks the process of copying the Bible leads to a multiverse of teachings, where at every major decision a scribe had to make, some went one way, others went another way, and still others went another way still. With so many branches extending from so many ideological points of departure, somewhere out there is an Anti-Bible that contradicts every major teaching of our received Bible, but which nevertheless traces back in an unbroken chain of transmission to the original autographs.
For skeptics, followers of the Anti-Christ just might be the literal original Christians. You can't get any dumber than this, folks. It really proves G.K. Chesterton's claim that, "A man who won’t believe in God will believe in anything."
At the outset of the crusade, the idealistic popularizers thought their audiences would develop an appreciation for the similarities and differences of the three major textual families that the New Testament comes from, or how the texts reveal the evolving beliefs and practices of the nascent Christian communities. Instead they ended up feeding the smug dismissiveness of a bunch of morons.
Maybe now Bart Ehrman understands why the ministers and priests he talks to have made a conscious decision not to open up this can of worms for their congregations.
Bonus video: see how often a typical crowd of internet scholars brings up the objection about "many versions and revisions!" when getting into a real-life argument with street-preaching troll extraordinaire Brother Dean. I found examples around 18m, 29m, 33m, 45m, and 1h 8m.
October 23, 2015
Reminder: Iowa caucus not very predictive of national nomination
A recent poll shows Ben Carson ahead of Donald Trump in Iowa, which may be a temporary fluke or may signal that Carson will win the state's primary with Trump in a close second.
Even in the worst-case scenario where Carson wins Iowa, would that spell doom for Trump's shot at the nomination? No: the results of the Iowa primary are a poor predictor for what happens nationally. The primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina are far more accurate predictors, and there Trump enjoys a comfortable lead.
From Wikipedia, here are the past results of the Iowa Republican primaries where an incumbent was not running. Winners in Iowa are listed first, winners of the nomination in bold.
2012 - Rick Santorum (25%), Mitt Romney (25%), Ron Paul (21%), Newt Gingrich (13%), Rick Perry (10%), Michele Bachmann (5%), and Jon Huntsman (0.6%)
2008 – Mike Huckabee (34%), Mitt Romney (25%), Fred Thompson (13%), John McCain (13%), Ron Paul (10%), Rudy Giuliani (4%), and Duncan Hunter (1%)
2000 – George W. Bush (41%), Steve Forbes (31%), Alan Keyes (14%), Gary Bauer (9%), John McCain (5%), and Orrin Hatch (1%)
1996 – Bob Dole (26%), Pat Buchanan (23%), Lamar Alexander (18%), Steve Forbes (10%), Phil Gramm (9%), Alan Keyes (7%), Richard Lugar (4%), and Morry Taylor (1%)
1988 – Bob Dole (37%), Pat Robertson (25%), George H. W. Bush (19%), Jack Kemp (11%), and Pete DuPont (7%)
1980 – George H. W. Bush (32%), Ronald Reagan (30%), Howard Baker (15%), John Connally (9%), Phil Crane (7%), John B. Anderson (4%), and Bob Dole (2%)
1976 – Gerald Ford (45%) and Ronald Reagan (43%)
So, Iowa has only predicted the nominee in 3 out of 7 cases. Not exactly a bellwether. They routinely pick soft-spoken candidates who are nevertheless destined not to secure the party's nomination. In recent primaries, they have favored candidates with strong evangelical appeal, who do not go over well at the national level.
They picked Bush I over Reagan in 1980. They picked Bob Dole and Pat Robertson both way ahead of Bush I in '88 -- when he had a record as the VP of the most liked President since Kennedy, and who'd won a landslide re-election in the previous cycle. They chose three candidates over the eventual nominee in '08, with hopeless Huckabee as their first choice. In '12, at least they almost called it, but still favored Santorum by a slim margin.
They did correctly predict Bush II in '00, Dole in '96, and Ford way back in '76. None of these correct predictions were running on a strong evangelical platform, however, the way that Carson is.
Turning to New Hampshire, their primary winner has gone on to secure the nomination in 5 of these 7 cases. They narrowly chose Buchanan over Dole in '96, and McCain over Bush II in '00. In neither case did they choose 2 or even 3 candidates over the eventual nominee, nor did their incorrect predictions choose an evangelical.
The most predictive of the early primaries, however, is South Carolina, where since 1980 every winner of the state's primary has won the nomination, except for Romney losing out to Newt Gingrich in '12, perhaps due to home-turf advantage in the Deep South.
Trump has enjoyed a healthy lead over Carson in New Hampshire, and an even wider double-digit lead in South Carolina. So even if Iowans do choose Carson over Trump, that won't matter in the big scheme of things.
By this point, Iowans are almost deliberately trying to choose someone who won't win, just to keep any one candidate from enjoying too much success. It's part of the extreme egalitarianism that the Scandinavians brought into the Upper Midwest (see the Law of Jante).
Even in the worst-case scenario where Carson wins Iowa, would that spell doom for Trump's shot at the nomination? No: the results of the Iowa primary are a poor predictor for what happens nationally. The primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina are far more accurate predictors, and there Trump enjoys a comfortable lead.
From Wikipedia, here are the past results of the Iowa Republican primaries where an incumbent was not running. Winners in Iowa are listed first, winners of the nomination in bold.
2012 - Rick Santorum (25%), Mitt Romney (25%), Ron Paul (21%), Newt Gingrich (13%), Rick Perry (10%), Michele Bachmann (5%), and Jon Huntsman (0.6%)
2008 – Mike Huckabee (34%), Mitt Romney (25%), Fred Thompson (13%), John McCain (13%), Ron Paul (10%), Rudy Giuliani (4%), and Duncan Hunter (1%)
2000 – George W. Bush (41%), Steve Forbes (31%), Alan Keyes (14%), Gary Bauer (9%), John McCain (5%), and Orrin Hatch (1%)
1996 – Bob Dole (26%), Pat Buchanan (23%), Lamar Alexander (18%), Steve Forbes (10%), Phil Gramm (9%), Alan Keyes (7%), Richard Lugar (4%), and Morry Taylor (1%)
1988 – Bob Dole (37%), Pat Robertson (25%), George H. W. Bush (19%), Jack Kemp (11%), and Pete DuPont (7%)
1980 – George H. W. Bush (32%), Ronald Reagan (30%), Howard Baker (15%), John Connally (9%), Phil Crane (7%), John B. Anderson (4%), and Bob Dole (2%)
1976 – Gerald Ford (45%) and Ronald Reagan (43%)
So, Iowa has only predicted the nominee in 3 out of 7 cases. Not exactly a bellwether. They routinely pick soft-spoken candidates who are nevertheless destined not to secure the party's nomination. In recent primaries, they have favored candidates with strong evangelical appeal, who do not go over well at the national level.
They picked Bush I over Reagan in 1980. They picked Bob Dole and Pat Robertson both way ahead of Bush I in '88 -- when he had a record as the VP of the most liked President since Kennedy, and who'd won a landslide re-election in the previous cycle. They chose three candidates over the eventual nominee in '08, with hopeless Huckabee as their first choice. In '12, at least they almost called it, but still favored Santorum by a slim margin.
They did correctly predict Bush II in '00, Dole in '96, and Ford way back in '76. None of these correct predictions were running on a strong evangelical platform, however, the way that Carson is.
Turning to New Hampshire, their primary winner has gone on to secure the nomination in 5 of these 7 cases. They narrowly chose Buchanan over Dole in '96, and McCain over Bush II in '00. In neither case did they choose 2 or even 3 candidates over the eventual nominee, nor did their incorrect predictions choose an evangelical.
The most predictive of the early primaries, however, is South Carolina, where since 1980 every winner of the state's primary has won the nomination, except for Romney losing out to Newt Gingrich in '12, perhaps due to home-turf advantage in the Deep South.
Trump has enjoyed a healthy lead over Carson in New Hampshire, and an even wider double-digit lead in South Carolina. So even if Iowans do choose Carson over Trump, that won't matter in the big scheme of things.
By this point, Iowans are almost deliberately trying to choose someone who won't win, just to keep any one candidate from enjoying too much success. It's part of the extreme egalitarianism that the Scandinavians brought into the Upper Midwest (see the Law of Jante).
October 22, 2015
Electronic rather than acoustic for low-key covers of over-the-top songs
After the peak of high-energy music in the 1980s, the hip new thing was to play low-key acoustic covers of songs that originally had electric instruments and layer upon layer of slick studio production effects. During the '90s, MTV put together a popular series of such concerts that exploited the trend, MTV Unplugged, and their sister channel did likewise with VH1 Storytellers.
The reasoning was that the bombast of the original hit required not just a toning down of the intensity of the performance, but a change in the instrumentation -- perhaps because electric guitars suggested electricity, high voltage, etc.? It seemed straightforward at the time, but it's not as though there weren't electronic songs that still created a minimalist atmosphere -- "Cars," "Pop Muzik," and so on.
Those minimal synthpop songs are danceable, though, and the whole point of a low-key performance is to keep your body still and get you to appreciate the music on a (relatively) more cerebral level. But then there were minimal and non-danceable electronic songs like "Song to the Siren" by the Cocteau Twins for This Mortal Coil. That one was a cover, too, showing that there was nothing incompatible between the atmosphere that the Unplugged trend was aiming for, and plugged-in instruments.
I stumbled upon a recent example of a cover of the Backstreet Boys' mega-hit "I Want It That Way". The original is about as catchy as pop music could have been in the doldrums of the late '90s, though it does sound overly-produced. Most people will probably remember this as a techno-pop song, but the main riff is from an acoustic guitar, and there's a piano as well. This shows that it's not incompatible for an over-the-top dance-pop hit to use mostly acoustic instruments.
The cover version is by Charli XCX, an electropop singer whose recent hits you've probably heard without knowing her name. First impression of what they're channeling -- "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins mixed with "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper, as sung by Gwen Stefani.
The only instrumentation is a pair of synthesizers and an electronic drum. It sounds more "unplugged" than the original, despite substituting electronic for acoustic instruments, because they're sparse and atmospheric rather than heavily layered and in-your-face. That is more important to create a low-key version; the synthetic timbre of the instruments doesn't make us feel like we're listening to a bombastic chart-topper. The slowed tempo also helps to change the mood.
In fact, the only exaggerated thing in the cover is the vocal embellishment, admittedly making it somewhat harsh to listen to. I think if she studied Phil Collins' voice better on "In the Air Tonight," it would come off much better. Simpler, cleaner, gradually escalating and receding in intensity. But then she's a Millennial, so I don't know if she can speak in anything other than mumbling, vocal fry, and tantrum-growling.
Although this is hardly the greatest re-interpretation you've ever heard, they recorded it for a cover song project by the Onion AV Club, rather than putting the most thought and effort into it for a track on one of their own albums. It is a pretty clever rendition of such a bubblegummy pop hit, though, and it's refreshing to hear an electronic approach to the minimalist cover song.
We live in another period of over-produced bombastic dance-y poppy mega-hits, and it would be nice to hear understated cover versions that still used electronic instruments, rather than the usual formula of acoustic = low-key.
Bonus: Au Revoir Simone performs an understated electronic cover of "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star. The original was not a super-slick studio production effort, but did have a heavier emotional intensity than the cute little cover version. What sound are they going for here? It sounds like Joy Division plays for a children's tea party. Prim post-punk.
The reasoning was that the bombast of the original hit required not just a toning down of the intensity of the performance, but a change in the instrumentation -- perhaps because electric guitars suggested electricity, high voltage, etc.? It seemed straightforward at the time, but it's not as though there weren't electronic songs that still created a minimalist atmosphere -- "Cars," "Pop Muzik," and so on.
Those minimal synthpop songs are danceable, though, and the whole point of a low-key performance is to keep your body still and get you to appreciate the music on a (relatively) more cerebral level. But then there were minimal and non-danceable electronic songs like "Song to the Siren" by the Cocteau Twins for This Mortal Coil. That one was a cover, too, showing that there was nothing incompatible between the atmosphere that the Unplugged trend was aiming for, and plugged-in instruments.
I stumbled upon a recent example of a cover of the Backstreet Boys' mega-hit "I Want It That Way". The original is about as catchy as pop music could have been in the doldrums of the late '90s, though it does sound overly-produced. Most people will probably remember this as a techno-pop song, but the main riff is from an acoustic guitar, and there's a piano as well. This shows that it's not incompatible for an over-the-top dance-pop hit to use mostly acoustic instruments.
The cover version is by Charli XCX, an electropop singer whose recent hits you've probably heard without knowing her name. First impression of what they're channeling -- "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins mixed with "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper, as sung by Gwen Stefani.
The only instrumentation is a pair of synthesizers and an electronic drum. It sounds more "unplugged" than the original, despite substituting electronic for acoustic instruments, because they're sparse and atmospheric rather than heavily layered and in-your-face. That is more important to create a low-key version; the synthetic timbre of the instruments doesn't make us feel like we're listening to a bombastic chart-topper. The slowed tempo also helps to change the mood.
In fact, the only exaggerated thing in the cover is the vocal embellishment, admittedly making it somewhat harsh to listen to. I think if she studied Phil Collins' voice better on "In the Air Tonight," it would come off much better. Simpler, cleaner, gradually escalating and receding in intensity. But then she's a Millennial, so I don't know if she can speak in anything other than mumbling, vocal fry, and tantrum-growling.
Although this is hardly the greatest re-interpretation you've ever heard, they recorded it for a cover song project by the Onion AV Club, rather than putting the most thought and effort into it for a track on one of their own albums. It is a pretty clever rendition of such a bubblegummy pop hit, though, and it's refreshing to hear an electronic approach to the minimalist cover song.
We live in another period of over-produced bombastic dance-y poppy mega-hits, and it would be nice to hear understated cover versions that still used electronic instruments, rather than the usual formula of acoustic = low-key.
Bonus: Au Revoir Simone performs an understated electronic cover of "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star. The original was not a super-slick studio production effort, but did have a heavier emotional intensity than the cute little cover version. What sound are they going for here? It sounds like Joy Division plays for a children's tea party. Prim post-punk.
October 20, 2015
Kiddie roots kill McDonald's and Burger King in age of foodie-ism; Wendy's left standing
For the better part of a decade, the former fast food giants McDonald's and Burger King have been losing business in the US, and have been subject to one desperate makeover campaign after another. Of the three burger giants, only Wendy's has been rising or holding steady. Why the exception?
Each generation that makes up the bulk of the customer base will reshape the fast food sector to its liking. Baby Boomers were buying fast food mostly for convenience -- for themselves during lunch break, and to avoid having to cook dinner for their children. It was part of their greater emphasis on career striving: less time cooking = more time billing.
But ever since Gen X-ers and Millennials came to spend most of the fast food dollars, the prevailing values have come from foodie one-upsmanship. It's part of the lifestyle striving of the generations for whom the path of career striving would lead to an already saturated niche of competition. They compete for status in the lifestyle arena instead.
The problem for McDonald's and Burger King in this new foodie-oriented climate is quite simply that they are saddled with a kiddie image in the personal memories of the target audience, which prevents them from being taken seriously as foodie-friendly restaurants.
McDonald's has had a children's clown as their mascot since the 1960s, not to mention all the other cartoony characters that have been added to their brand image over the years. Then there are the distinctly kid-focused Happy Meals, on-site playgrounds, kids' birthday parties (at least back in the '80s), and so on and so forth.
Burger King began marketing to children a little later, with the BK Kids Club that began around 1990, playgrounds, kids meals, cardboard crowns for kids to wear, etc.
Wendy's is the only one of the original corporate chains not to have lowered themselves to pandering to children. They offer kids meals, but they don't suffer from brand recognition the way that every Gen X-er and Millennial can remember the shape of the Happy Meal box with the arches on the handle, or the look and assembly of the BK cardboard crown. Wendy's never offered playgrounds, cartoon character mascots, or primary-color decor.
Not that Wendy's was branded as a sophisticated adult restaurant, but it was always meant to look and feel like a place for basically mature people, whether or not they brought children along with them. It didn't feel hostile toward children in the way that other decadent foodie places feel that cater to childless strivers, only that children weren't the focus of attention.
If you think back to childhood memories of the big three, you probably don't remember too much that was exciting about Wendy's, while McDonald's and Burger King light up all kinds of kiddie connotations.
Newly founded foodie places like Chipotle and Starbucks began with a blank slate for their branding, and were shaped by lifestyle striver values from the get-go. Wendy's may not have been a blank slate, but it was pretty close. It never really did conduct intense branding campaigns. All they had to overcome was the image of the avuncular founder Dave Thomas. But some soft-spoken guy from the Midwest already looked like his generation was leaving the stage, and his daughter would take over the family business. Enter the redhead chick playing Wendy in commercials, all grown up now to convince X-ers and Millennials that Wendy's has entered its hipper and younger foodie-friendly stage of life.
Somehow, going from an older and more sober image to a younger and more irreverent image is easier than transforming a kiddie image into a grown-up one. Perhaps it's the boundary between childhood and adolescence that makes the attempted re-launch of McDonald's and Burger King seem like such an unconvincing quantum leap.
We keep hearing all kinds of managerial hocus-pocus about being "nimble" and "agile" in the marketplace. It means shape-shifting from one clearly delineated image to another, as soon as the ground shifts just an inch.
Back on Planet Earth, that strategy takes the form of one desperate and unconvincing makeover after another -- McDonald's as purveyors of super-sized fries, then as multiculti global awareness ambassadors, then where the homos and homo-enablers sip their McCafe, and who knows what next. With Burger King's changing image -- from the BK Kids Club, to the CollegeHumor.com mascot of The King, to the caterers of the schlub army who are going to order junk food LIKE A MAN, to the neo-Midcentury Modern decor -- their agility has flushed the company right down the toilet.
Wendy's had a stable, nondescript brand for its first four decades, and subtly and seamlessly slipped into a fast casual image. It is now the only success story of the original burger chains in the age of the fickle foodie crowd, and it hardly did poor business during the earlier years when its competitors were nimbly shifting from one image into another. Wendy's was guided more by an attitude of stewardship and is winning the long game, while its spastic and agile rivals cashed in on the child-pandering craze of the '80s and '90s but have been doomed to struggling just to do the same level of American business as last year. Their only cushion is growth in the third world, where McDonald's carries prestige over tainted street food.
And should the market shift away from foodie-ism and back toward unpretentiousness, Wendy's could easily reverse the changes they've made, since they are not drastic or pervasive. Its menu is still limited and ordinary -- and timeless -- with trendy foodie-oriented items only coming through on a rotating basis, unlike the steady bloating of the menu at McDonald's with premium and niche items.
McDonald's and Burger King are allowing short-term opportunists to run the company into the ground with their protean agility, while steward-guided Wendy's will still be thriving for decades to come.
Each generation that makes up the bulk of the customer base will reshape the fast food sector to its liking. Baby Boomers were buying fast food mostly for convenience -- for themselves during lunch break, and to avoid having to cook dinner for their children. It was part of their greater emphasis on career striving: less time cooking = more time billing.
But ever since Gen X-ers and Millennials came to spend most of the fast food dollars, the prevailing values have come from foodie one-upsmanship. It's part of the lifestyle striving of the generations for whom the path of career striving would lead to an already saturated niche of competition. They compete for status in the lifestyle arena instead.
The problem for McDonald's and Burger King in this new foodie-oriented climate is quite simply that they are saddled with a kiddie image in the personal memories of the target audience, which prevents them from being taken seriously as foodie-friendly restaurants.
McDonald's has had a children's clown as their mascot since the 1960s, not to mention all the other cartoony characters that have been added to their brand image over the years. Then there are the distinctly kid-focused Happy Meals, on-site playgrounds, kids' birthday parties (at least back in the '80s), and so on and so forth.
Burger King began marketing to children a little later, with the BK Kids Club that began around 1990, playgrounds, kids meals, cardboard crowns for kids to wear, etc.
Wendy's is the only one of the original corporate chains not to have lowered themselves to pandering to children. They offer kids meals, but they don't suffer from brand recognition the way that every Gen X-er and Millennial can remember the shape of the Happy Meal box with the arches on the handle, or the look and assembly of the BK cardboard crown. Wendy's never offered playgrounds, cartoon character mascots, or primary-color decor.
Not that Wendy's was branded as a sophisticated adult restaurant, but it was always meant to look and feel like a place for basically mature people, whether or not they brought children along with them. It didn't feel hostile toward children in the way that other decadent foodie places feel that cater to childless strivers, only that children weren't the focus of attention.
If you think back to childhood memories of the big three, you probably don't remember too much that was exciting about Wendy's, while McDonald's and Burger King light up all kinds of kiddie connotations.
Newly founded foodie places like Chipotle and Starbucks began with a blank slate for their branding, and were shaped by lifestyle striver values from the get-go. Wendy's may not have been a blank slate, but it was pretty close. It never really did conduct intense branding campaigns. All they had to overcome was the image of the avuncular founder Dave Thomas. But some soft-spoken guy from the Midwest already looked like his generation was leaving the stage, and his daughter would take over the family business. Enter the redhead chick playing Wendy in commercials, all grown up now to convince X-ers and Millennials that Wendy's has entered its hipper and younger foodie-friendly stage of life.
Somehow, going from an older and more sober image to a younger and more irreverent image is easier than transforming a kiddie image into a grown-up one. Perhaps it's the boundary between childhood and adolescence that makes the attempted re-launch of McDonald's and Burger King seem like such an unconvincing quantum leap.
We keep hearing all kinds of managerial hocus-pocus about being "nimble" and "agile" in the marketplace. It means shape-shifting from one clearly delineated image to another, as soon as the ground shifts just an inch.
Back on Planet Earth, that strategy takes the form of one desperate and unconvincing makeover after another -- McDonald's as purveyors of super-sized fries, then as multiculti global awareness ambassadors, then where the homos and homo-enablers sip their McCafe, and who knows what next. With Burger King's changing image -- from the BK Kids Club, to the CollegeHumor.com mascot of The King, to the caterers of the schlub army who are going to order junk food LIKE A MAN, to the neo-Midcentury Modern decor -- their agility has flushed the company right down the toilet.
Wendy's had a stable, nondescript brand for its first four decades, and subtly and seamlessly slipped into a fast casual image. It is now the only success story of the original burger chains in the age of the fickle foodie crowd, and it hardly did poor business during the earlier years when its competitors were nimbly shifting from one image into another. Wendy's was guided more by an attitude of stewardship and is winning the long game, while its spastic and agile rivals cashed in on the child-pandering craze of the '80s and '90s but have been doomed to struggling just to do the same level of American business as last year. Their only cushion is growth in the third world, where McDonald's carries prestige over tainted street food.
And should the market shift away from foodie-ism and back toward unpretentiousness, Wendy's could easily reverse the changes they've made, since they are not drastic or pervasive. Its menu is still limited and ordinary -- and timeless -- with trendy foodie-oriented items only coming through on a rotating basis, unlike the steady bloating of the menu at McDonald's with premium and niche items.
McDonald's and Burger King are allowing short-term opportunists to run the company into the ground with their protean agility, while steward-guided Wendy's will still be thriving for decades to come.
October 16, 2015
High tax era required tightening immigration to provide civic cohesion
The only part of Donald Trump's platform so far that is not populist is his tax plan (read it here), but we shouldn't let that get in the way of voting for the far-and-away most populist-friendly candidate to come along in a very long time, especially considering how dominant his lead has been.
Since so much else of his platform is meant to return the nation to the norms of the Great Compression, and the pinnacle of the 1950s in particular, it's worth looking into whether it is actually the anomaly it appears to be. It turns out that the trend toward high income taxes of the Midcentury lagged behind the trend toward greater civic cohesion at the grassroots level. Only once that foundation was laid did people feel comfortable sacrificing so much of their income for the common good.
First and foremost was the trend toward a more ethnically homogeneous population as a result of plummeting rates of new immigrants, as well as the percent of the whole American population that was foreign-born. Both of these rates peaked around 1910 (the green line in the first graph shows the percent foreign-born):
Nobody in any race or ethnic group would want a huge chunk of their income going to taxes that showered goodies on some alien, perhaps hostile, ethnic group. So first the American population needed to feel that they were a single, homogeneous group. That was impossible with so many foreigners streaming in during the Gilded Age. But once that reversed after 1910, it made more and more sense to think of ourselves as all Americans.
The other major trend was the labor union movement, which began in the late 19th and early 20th century, also well before the introduction of high income tax rates, or indeed before the income tax at all. Reducing immigration made people feel more ethnically similar, but some kind of labor movement was necessary to build up civic spirit and participation specifically in the economy.
Here's the history of the highest and lowest income tax rates since they were allowed in 1913 (see a table in this section):
The first income tax was barely there -- 1% on the lowest bracket and 7% on the highest. It shot up for the highest bracket only to fund US involvement in WWI, after which it was reduced to 1.5% for the lowest and 25% for the highest brackets during the 1920s -- still higher than in the 1910s, though. Thus the trend toward rising income tax rates began after about a 10-year delay from the falling immigration trend.
It would only go up from there, and remain high during the Midcentury, before tumbling off a cliff during the current long period of status-striving and widening inequality, where immigration has ramped up in true Gilded Age revival fashion. Notice that the percent of the whole population that is foreign-born hit a minimum in 1970, and began steadily rising by 1980 and after. The labor movement had already begun to take a beating by the '70s, and their influence has only weakened since then.
So we see in our current era a mirror-image of the earlier change. In the early 20th C., the first shift affected labor unions and native-born citizens, who rose in influence, and the second delayed shift raised income taxes. During the later part of the '60s and '70s, the first change was again with unions and native-born citizens -- only now they began declining in influence, and the second change lagged behind by about 10 years, where tax rates were slashed across the spectrum during the '80s (especially for the top brackets).
It would be facile to point only to the labor movement, as though it alone constrained the greed of the wealthiest, and as though the only major change during the Great Compression was taxing the hell out of rich people in crude class warfare style. In fact, even the lowest tax bracket in the '50s was paying 20 percent! There was a widespread feeling of "we're all in this together" and "we all have to make sacrifices" for the greater good of the nation.
That sentiment was only possible when the population was highly homogeneous, akin to the high taxes and generous welfare programs of the Scandinavian nations -- who, in case your social studies teacher didn't tell you, are among the most homogeneous in the world. It's not that they're highly white (which they are), but that they're highly regional-white rather than a mix of all European peoples.
See also Robert Putnam's trailblazing study showing that ethnic diversity erodes trust within communities -- not only among people of different ethnic groups, but even among those of the same group. (For example, in Los Angeles, white people don't even trust one another or form civic groups with one another.)
So, if Trump's tax plan looks typical of the current era, in contrast to his populist policies everywhere else, it's not so mysterious and is nothing to worry about. First we have to make the nation more homogeneous, and have more working people involved in labor unions, and then we can talk about raising taxes back to Midcentury levels, when we can rest assured that they'll be put toward the common good.
The focus of Bernie Sanders & Co. is putting the cart before the horse, wanting to raise taxes and trying to ameliorate inequality without first solving the problem of immigration and homogeneity.
Since so much else of his platform is meant to return the nation to the norms of the Great Compression, and the pinnacle of the 1950s in particular, it's worth looking into whether it is actually the anomaly it appears to be. It turns out that the trend toward high income taxes of the Midcentury lagged behind the trend toward greater civic cohesion at the grassroots level. Only once that foundation was laid did people feel comfortable sacrificing so much of their income for the common good.
First and foremost was the trend toward a more ethnically homogeneous population as a result of plummeting rates of new immigrants, as well as the percent of the whole American population that was foreign-born. Both of these rates peaked around 1910 (the green line in the first graph shows the percent foreign-born):
Nobody in any race or ethnic group would want a huge chunk of their income going to taxes that showered goodies on some alien, perhaps hostile, ethnic group. So first the American population needed to feel that they were a single, homogeneous group. That was impossible with so many foreigners streaming in during the Gilded Age. But once that reversed after 1910, it made more and more sense to think of ourselves as all Americans.
The other major trend was the labor union movement, which began in the late 19th and early 20th century, also well before the introduction of high income tax rates, or indeed before the income tax at all. Reducing immigration made people feel more ethnically similar, but some kind of labor movement was necessary to build up civic spirit and participation specifically in the economy.
Here's the history of the highest and lowest income tax rates since they were allowed in 1913 (see a table in this section):
The first income tax was barely there -- 1% on the lowest bracket and 7% on the highest. It shot up for the highest bracket only to fund US involvement in WWI, after which it was reduced to 1.5% for the lowest and 25% for the highest brackets during the 1920s -- still higher than in the 1910s, though. Thus the trend toward rising income tax rates began after about a 10-year delay from the falling immigration trend.
It would only go up from there, and remain high during the Midcentury, before tumbling off a cliff during the current long period of status-striving and widening inequality, where immigration has ramped up in true Gilded Age revival fashion. Notice that the percent of the whole population that is foreign-born hit a minimum in 1970, and began steadily rising by 1980 and after. The labor movement had already begun to take a beating by the '70s, and their influence has only weakened since then.
So we see in our current era a mirror-image of the earlier change. In the early 20th C., the first shift affected labor unions and native-born citizens, who rose in influence, and the second delayed shift raised income taxes. During the later part of the '60s and '70s, the first change was again with unions and native-born citizens -- only now they began declining in influence, and the second change lagged behind by about 10 years, where tax rates were slashed across the spectrum during the '80s (especially for the top brackets).
It would be facile to point only to the labor movement, as though it alone constrained the greed of the wealthiest, and as though the only major change during the Great Compression was taxing the hell out of rich people in crude class warfare style. In fact, even the lowest tax bracket in the '50s was paying 20 percent! There was a widespread feeling of "we're all in this together" and "we all have to make sacrifices" for the greater good of the nation.
That sentiment was only possible when the population was highly homogeneous, akin to the high taxes and generous welfare programs of the Scandinavian nations -- who, in case your social studies teacher didn't tell you, are among the most homogeneous in the world. It's not that they're highly white (which they are), but that they're highly regional-white rather than a mix of all European peoples.
See also Robert Putnam's trailblazing study showing that ethnic diversity erodes trust within communities -- not only among people of different ethnic groups, but even among those of the same group. (For example, in Los Angeles, white people don't even trust one another or form civic groups with one another.)
So, if Trump's tax plan looks typical of the current era, in contrast to his populist policies everywhere else, it's not so mysterious and is nothing to worry about. First we have to make the nation more homogeneous, and have more working people involved in labor unions, and then we can talk about raising taxes back to Midcentury levels, when we can rest assured that they'll be put toward the common good.
The focus of Bernie Sanders & Co. is putting the cart before the horse, wanting to raise taxes and trying to ameliorate inequality without first solving the problem of immigration and homogeneity.
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