All posts by Steve Stern

It’s all about relationships: Bin Laden, Lewis Hamilton, and Chris Rock

Psychological Musings

There is an interesting article on Bin Laden’s three widows – isn’t that a phrase you never thought you would read, Bin Laden’s three widows? – in The Christian Science Monitor. As an aside and speaking of The Christian Science Monitor, if the president of General Motors were a Christian Scientist who did not believe in conventional medicine, do the Republicans who voted for allowing bosses to opt out of contraception on religious ground, think it would be OK to stop all medical beifits – including Viagra –  The article, quoting Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani brigadier general, says The tranquility of his large household was shattered when it was joined early last year by the oldest of his remaining three wives…There were 27 people packed into the house in Abbottabad when US Navy SEALs arrived on the night of May 2, 2011. But until a few months before that, when bin Laden’s oldest surviving wife, Khairiah Sabar, joined them, they had all got on well.

Even though it is a cliché, it is true- or, maybe that is the reason it is a cliché – that, in the end, relationships are everything, even when it is a relationship between three wives. That afterall is what Big Love was all about.

Lewis Hamilton is a great Formula 1 driver. So great that, in his first season as a Formula 1 driver, driving on the same team as a two-time Formula 1 champion – Fernando Alonso – Hamilton tied him in points scored and almost won the the Championship. Last year, he came in 5th. Last year he also broke up with his girlfriend, and fired his manager who is also his father. In other words, his primary relationships fell apart and he fell apart, too. Now he is back together with his girlfriend and has reconciled with his father, it will be very interesting to see how he does this season (which starts in 8 days and 11 hours from this posting).

As part of a series on comedy, David Steinberg interviews Chris Rock, who says his comedy is all about relationships. It is only one minute 20 seconds long and worth listening to.

 

 

Government spending and the economy

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

I often wonder if the people who say that The government can’t make jobs. are just bullshitting or if they really believe it. I wonder the same thing when I hear Romney talking about President Obama – although he rarely uses President when referring to Obama – wanting to make the United States weak. My gut reaction is that they really do not believe it and they are just bullshitting but I am not so sure.

As an aside; this is one of the positions that people seem to come to from the completely opposite position without ever having stopped in the middle. When I was a young boy, Negros were Uncle Remuses that sort of sat around – rather than working hard because they didn’t have the Protestant ethic like White People – being kindly; then, with no stop in between, they became Black Panthers who were scary. In the same way, it used to be that Roosevelt – people who thought this didn’t call him President Roosevelt – didn’t end the depression, the depression only ended because we started spending lots of money – government money – on the war; now the same people say spending government money will not end a recession. End aside.

Anyway, it does seem self evident to me that the government can  make jobs. When the government hired companies to build the Golden Gate Bridge, they, in turn, hired workers. When the Obama Administration gives money to California for the Highway Department and they hire companies to rebuild the rest stop at Black Mountain Road on Highway 280, those companies hire workers. The additional work results in additional jobs.

But, somehow, by saying The government can’t make jobs. over and over again, people start to believe it. (I used to think that the left’s constant yammering about the right wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade was similar, but, after seeing the anti-contraception – not to mention anti abortion – legislation passed in Republican majority legislative bodies, I am ready to admit I was wrong.)

Even if the meme does work, even if the people saying The government can’t make jobs. really do believe it, it is still bullshit. The Obama Administration created jobs with the Stimulus Bill and definitively made the Great Recession a little better.

Wanting to be right

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings
In writing about Andrew Breitbart’s death and life on his blog Ta-Nehisi Coates writes

….by neglecting to research Sherrod before putting up a clip of her talking, by electing to see her as little more than a shiv against the hated liberals, he deprived himself of knowledge, of experience, of insight, of enlightenment. That he might learn something from Sherrod, that he might access some power from her life, and pass that on to loved ones and friends, never occurred to him. Publicly, he lived to make himself right–a tradition that is fully empowered in our politics. Breitbart didn’t invent the art of making yourself right. But he embraced it, and then advanced it.

That is what took me to sadness. I have experienced curiosity as a primarily selfish endeavor. It originates in the understanding of the brevity of life, and the desire to see as much of it as possible, from as many angles as possible without doing too much damage to my morality. The opposite of that – incuriosity, dishonesty, the opportunistic deployment of information – is darkness. Breitbart died, like all of us will, in darkness. But as a media persona he chose to also live there, and in the process has impelled countless others to throttle themselves into the abyss.

There is much more to the blog post titled On Making Yourself Right and I encourage you to read it, but my take away was It is so easy to hang on to being right and it is so destructive. At least it is so easy for me: maybe I should say It is so easy to make somebody, who doesn’t agree with me, wrong. Maybe a week ago, I linked to a less than flattering article on Meryl Streep and then I wrote a blog post on Viola Davis a day or two later. Karen Amy took exception – mildly and politly – on my Facebook page and I could just feel myself  wanting to argue. Wanting to be right and wanting to make Karen wrong.

Around the turn of the century, Peter Kuhlman recommended an alternate history novel 1632 by Eric Flint. As I recall, he described it as amusing, but I ended reading and interpreting it as a dream with all the characters representing different facets of myself. To me, the book was all about taking down walls, letting in the outside world, listening to the other and be willing to see their point of view. All about being willing to be influenced by the world.

One of the reason that the characters in 1632 were able to let in the outside world, is because they were confidant in who they were at their core. For a long time, I kept thinking that it would make a good movie, but – now – I don’t think so. It is too last century, when we, as a nation, felt confident is who we are. It was before Bush the Younger and the disaster of Iraq, before the Great Recession, before the our national feeling of decline.

Ironically – and counter intuitively, I guess – when I am most confidant in who I am, it is easiest to hear the other person. My strong suspicion is that Andrew Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh – for that matter – are so loud because they are afraid. And they are afraid because – as Ta-Nehisi Coates so eloquently writes – they are living in darkness.


 

 

 

 

Viola Davis as an Avatar

Film, Psychological Musings

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, they opined on Meryl Streep’s win. They concluded that a major factor was that actors playing real people usually win because the Academy can compare the performance to the real person. I also think it would be useful to compare the performance to to the nonperforming actor  and this was a problem for Viola Davis.

I don’t remember most of Viola Davis’s parts and I don’t think that I am alone: the CIA Director in Knight and Day – which I sort of fast-forwarded through on the TV – a social worker in Traffic, a doctor – I have no idea what kind – in State of Play. (I do remember her as Mosella in Out of Sight but that only because Out of Sight is one of Michele and my favorite movies and we have seen it more than several times.) Going into The Help, I read about how everybody in Hollywood thinks she is great but I didn’t have anything to contrast her against.

Watching the Academy Awards, I did notice the stunning chick sitting on the aisle when Octavia Spencer got up to accept her award, but I had no idea it was Viola Davis. If only I had seen the real Viola before I saw her as Aibileen in The Help, I would have been much more impressed.