JOLLY DAYS, an artist's journal

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead, a frequent guest on PBS NewsHour, and left-leaning scholar, has written the most devastating piece about Obama since his election.

This is all familiar territory, obfuscated currently by ridiculous press about outlier birthers and tea party spectacle and publicity hounds like Trump and royal weddings — the press never wanted to cover Obama as an individual — they hated the bumbling Republicans too much:

The President looks like a man who is ridden by events; at just the moment when the nation craves a strong leader, the President looks weak, dodgy, uncertain.  The contrast with the inflated hopes that an untested and inexperienced Senator Obama did so much to build up is crippling.  Obama has fallen so far precisely because he and his supporters so hugely oversold him.…

We are starting to get to know this President a little better…He is a man of half measures, a man who spends so much money hedging his bets that he loses even when he wins.

Obama’s lack of leadership skills …

Here is the paradox we face:  The President is a consensus-seeker whose decision making style rewards polarization and a conciliator who loses friends without winning over enemies.

The President’s problem is not, I think, that he seeks compromise.  It is that the type of compromise he chooses is so ineffective.  Splitting the difference is not leadership; leadership is looking at the positions of two sides and finding creative new directions that give something to all sides — but move the ball down the field.

Obama’s lack of experience…

Another problem is experience, or rather the lack of it.  …he came to the White House with next to no experience at running bureaucracies or leading legislative coalitions.  He lacks Lyndon Johnson’s sure sense of what Congress will or won’t do (not to mention Johnson’s legendary ability to build support for his agenda), and he lacks the international seasoning of a George H. W. Bush or Richard Nixon. This kind of experience is what is necessary both at home and abroad to understand the agendas and instincts of various parties and to figure out innovative, forward-looking ideas that can work around entrenched positions and make genuine progress. 

Now this would be surprising if it were surprising. But it was all laid out, from the outset. All doubts were subsumed under charges of racism. Obama thinks he is a glorious amalgam of Lincoln and FDR; when he speaks he leans his head back and jabs his finger, a simulacrum of JFK. A synthesized, synthetic president.

And the media will act as though it is purely Obama’s fault…hey, Obama just went with the flow.

In a recent post I refer to the discussion between Carlo Strenger and Robert Wright about feelings of insignificance in contemporary society. I focused on one aspect of Strenger’s point but put aside his emphasis on the rankings to which everyone is subject. These rankings are everywhere on the internet Strenger noted.

As a sidenote: Whether through marks in school, or criticism face to face, or comments on the net, people say what is wrong but often not what is best. Also, often, this frame of mind says what is best by using a conformist’s formula masquerading as an idea — a comparison that the judge thinks will keep him or her safe from judgment themselves.

Yet another tactic: I’ve often read reviews of, for example, a novelist’s book of poems where the critic says, “Her poems are better than her novels.” That is, no praise for either, just one is better than the other. A passive aggressive ranking.

Extending on Strenger’s idea, this article discusses the effect of ranking.

Journalist Jonah Lehrer thinks,

“Numbers make intangibles tangible…They give the illusion of control.”

I don’t agree with that idea, but think Lehrer is correct, with some modification, in saying, ““We want to quantify everything, to ground a decision in fact, instead of asking whether that variable matters.” People don’t want control in ranking something, they want to affirm the pre-approved — what is safely “the best”. This sort of ranking is a form of laziness and cowardice. That “fact” to which Lehrer points — a number, which has the aura of science — is really an instantiation of the elevation of science as being ominiscient and irrefutable. Few scientists would make such a claim, but scientism, as John Horgan calls it, is used in this way.

What are we ranking?

I was a big fan of Michele Rhee who tried to improve her school district and lost her job. She tried to get rid of teachers whose students did not do well in tests; these tests would rank them and determine their future. She felt the teachers should be graded too; they should be fired if they did not bring their students up to the standards of those tests.

I felt she was trying to clear the way for her students. But I had my doubts as well. I never bought into the idea that tests indicate true competence, intelligence or ability. The things that matter in a person are wrapped in that individual’s character and can’t be separated out.

Ranking can be a death to true potential. A person who did not quite do well in math, like say, Einstein, still might be able to do something worthwhile. The math skill, which might be said to be a predicate for physics itself, might not be as important as the person’s imagination, insight and persistence. But how do you measure that?

In this article a writer was quoted about her obsession with the ranking of her work,

“I go to a place where everything has a number. How many advance copies, how many reviews, how many sales.”

A professor adds,

The obsession with numbers…means we don’t trust or even look for the intangibles that can’t be measured, like wisdom, judgment and expertise.

And what matters finally are the intangibles.

Online, an English scientist discussed his discovery as to how children learn new words. Parents seem to know instinctively when teaching a new word, to point to the object and say, “Look at the, um, dog”.

That is, the parent pronounces the word as “thee” rather than “thuh”, and follows it with what the scientist called a disfluency — the um and ers of hesitant speech. This combination, of the pronunciation as thee, a pause, and a disfluency, triggers the child to understand it is being taught a new word; children look with more frequency at the referent when the word is presented this way.

I remember reading about how those who often have to deliver bad news are taught to present. They are told that if the news is serious but not fatal to say, “Your uncle was in an accident but he is all right”. A straight through presentation of the facts.

However, if the news is catastrophic, they are taught to say, “I have some bad news. [Here, a pause] Your uncle has died”. They are taught that after the pause, they are to leave no doubt as to the outcome. The pause is a signal for the receiver of the bad news to prepare him or her self.

In both cases, a baby learning, and the delivery of bad news, the pause seems to be a genetic, primal signal, universally recognized as a reason to take a breath and apply full focus.

Sailing by the muted TV last night I was snagged by the head of the interviewee. Familiar, but could not recall who it was. It was this guy’s head, not his face, that was striking. A sculptural head rather than substantive presence — perfect for TV. It did not hurt that his stillness gave him a Zen priest’s calm. True charisma of the modern kind.

It was the sculptor Richard Serra on Charlie Rose; Serra is being given a show of his drawings at the Met. In the photos flashed before the interview, to establish status markers, there is a shot of the Met with a big banner saying Richard Serra Drawings. The banners the Met hangs to advertise shows is a surrender to Nascar culture rather than a useful addition. It is jarring seeing those banners plastered on a putative house of culture. It doesn’t fit with the architecture and is not suggestive of the reflective nature of art.

The dignity of High Culture (often an affectation itself) has been trumped by the affectations of the Football Hall of Fame and Academy Awards. They can do grandiosity and not be called snobby because they are clearly not high culture — an unwitting irony there.

Serra’s astringent work was a necessary antidote to the excesses of the art of the 60s. An over estimate would have it that Serra was one of those who tried to swing the pendulum from the Dionysian to the Apollonian. The problem is that Serra’s work does not have the poetry of purity which is what minimalist geometric iconography is all about. Ellsworth Kelly is a better candidate if that is your taste.

Serra’s work is outlier work taken into the main tent. It depends on the negation of what came before. It does however well instantiate an aspect of the art world. That could be expressed, as one critic did at the time, by saying, “Art is not important until I talk about it.” The shameless egomania of post modernism made manifest in critic and artist.

Serra’s art is designed to make you talk about it, to provide obscure grist for the mill — a subservient role for art. It won’t contradict anything you say, because it is content free. Although Serra describes his work as experiential — the viewer weaving his way through plates of steel — the work is seeking meaning ascribed by not offering it. It flatters the audience and at the same time challenges: say you don’t respond, don’t accept the invitation to display-speculate, and you say you are not cool.

Serra’s work does have an elegant assertiveness that fits in well with corporate America however — more noteworthy in its sociological way than the images themselves. No surprise corporate America has embraced such work. Nothing to be concerned about: with subject or personal feelings, a world view or an emotional state, which might trouble a corporate boardroom. They are simply objects of ego and sensibility, now, in the 21st Century, seeming more artifacts of interior decoration than of art.

The recent show given the director Tim Burton at MoMA is more institutionally honest in its subservience to celebrity culture. Burton is actually a very talented fellow. But the large crowds drawn to MoMA by Burton’s show, and the show itself, are products of media culture, not of any desire by a cultural institution to provide its audience with a deeper, meditative experience.

This story has received a surprising amount of attention. The subject is somewhat arcane, but it fascinates.

Scientists have discovered that there are three definable ecosystems of microbes in the human gut. Any one of three distinct forests may inhabit our inner realm, crossing all the divisions human beings make among ourselves.

The scientists,

…found no link between what they called enterotypes and the ethnic background of the European, American and Japanese subjects they studied.

Any group of humans, anywhere, will have one of the three.

The potentials cascade:

The discovery of the blood types A, B, AB and O had a major effect on how doctors practice medicine. They could limit the chances that a patient’s body would reject a blood transfusion by making sure the donated blood was of a matching type. The discovery of enterotypes could someday lead to medical applications of its own, but they would be far down the road.

“Some things are pretty obvious already,” Dr. Bork said. Doctors might be able to tailor diets or drug prescriptions to suit people’s enterotypes, for example

Yet another affirmation, as if one were needed, that we are all of the same DNA soup made.

We’ve just seen a great documentary with the unfortunate title, “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould”.

Documentaries are dependent on subject. The Civil War documentary by Ken Burns was his best because of the wonderful letters and photographs. Burns has never matched that fine piece.

Gould, some kind of genius, was a riveting subject. Photogenic — you would cast him as the eccentric, poetic soul, too fine grained for this world — an articulate, wonderfully talented individual; the man was a Seeker. Gould lived music, inhaled it, inhabited it when he played. He is renowned for clarity and extraordinary technique. His deep psychic connection to the great architect of music, the genius Bach, makes complete sense — they are so opposite in their tendencies.

Watching Gould perform is like watching a sentient spider delicately crafting a web. He sat on a low chair, an artifact his childhood — and partly because he had a back injury as a child. This enhances the sensation of watching a magician at work as he chants along with the music. He invests the music and loses all sense of self. The noted “oddness,” he wore gloves to protect his hands and an overcoat even in warm weather, weren’t affectations, although later he saw the utility of such eccentricity for an audience more drawn to surface than substance. It would draw them to him. In England he would simply be called an eccentric without disparagement but in consensus America he stood out.

Gould’s inner struggle seemed to me a battle between the performer and the artist within. Performers need an audience; they need the feedback and the applause. It is at root a shallow relationship. But the artist works alone and digs deep, trying to reach that deeper self that he might touch the audience at some primal human level. Gould finally surrendered to the artist in himself, worked in the studio, not publicly performing, but instead leading the way to electronic renditions. The problem is that he was a performer. He was riveting to watch, in his confidence and ecstatic trance; there was no way he could improve the improvisational fascination of his performances with a perfection of sound.

It was such a wonderfully done documentary. Beautifully integrating photos and video and incredible music. There is a real sense of the human being, Glenn Gould, communicated in this film by these empathetic filmmakers.

This fascinating dialog between a psychologist, Carlo Strenger, and Robert Wright, has a stimulating and familiar ring. It is a discussion, like many, both intelligent and ultimately unsatisfying. Maybe all discourse threatens to fall off the cliff as logical discussion can easily become display behavior… but they deserve credit for giving it an honorable try.

Strenger wrote a book called The Fear of Insignificance. He feels the prevalence of ranking and the worldwide media, which he calls the “global entertainment system,” make us acutely aware of our smallness in the scheme of things. We don’t have status and it is shoved in our face. He points out that popularity is valued over achievement. That being known is a value in itself. Not achievement, but simply awareness of self by others.

He expands this to the tribal groups that make up the world, from nations to religious affinity groups, and feels this applies here as well. He feels ultimately it is a fear of death that drives all this. Something of a let down in analysis begins with that obvious predicate of all philosophy.

He feels, and this is where the falloff occurs abruptly, that the answer is a global sense of tribe and a universalist philosophy.

I hope all that is fair to Strenger’s well meaning ideas. But they simply don’t resonate. We will always be tribal creatures, are so genetically predisposed, and the issue is really not individual universalist affinity, but rather that each tribe be open and compassionate to other tribes. You really would not want to live in a world that had a mumbling generalist culture. The heritage of people matters. But that does not have to be exclusive. So this issue is not in individual transformation, but in group self-concept — allowing for an inquisitive inclusiveness rather than defensive isolation. So the focus should be on education of the insulated tribes— many societies just don’t tell the truth to their people.

Wright has an Israel problem that always obtrudes. He identifies with “demands” made by the enemies of Israel, thinking it is logic driving their behavior. And Wright thinks there is some logical solution: do what they want. He feels their arguments are the sole arguments to be acted upon. This is reminiscent of celebrities lolling in Beverly Hills proffering advice to the unwashed; the privileged of course don’t have to deal with the consequences of their advice — they are well away from jeopardy or daily contact with the issues.

Well I was about to stop my regular checking of Steve Martin’s tweets, but then Steve put out a heartfelt appeal for an opening line for a “new scurrilous stand up” act.

Steve came up with,

Hello, muckel fucles. I see a lot Scurvy Bar Nuns here tonight. Sweet Haile Selassie, barn f’narkin, Milk-a-Whats. Kiss my sassafras.

Now this is good, in the sense of good, but I suggest,

Wellcum, my lively anacondas. Serve your muster with luffin and please stop muckin’ with my pecka-dillos if you want my so-sweet san souci!

It’s, it’s…nice. I think it is the exclamation mark that resolves to the purity that is Steve.

The Huffington Post is being sued by bloggers,

bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation…

The dramatic rhetoric aside, this is an interesting issue. Like Juan Williams who learned what liberal now means as taught him by NPR: join the Borg collective or be expelled from the collective with malice.

These bloggers have learned that the egalitarian affectations of folks like Huffington is really a cover story: Huffington is simply an oligarch. She sees others as useful, as a narcissist sees others as tools to their purpose. Those like her want to tell the unwashed, clinging to their guns and religion, what is right and then impose it through shame (you are a bigot if you do not agree) or ostracism via cackling snarkiness.

So Huffington, who did not deign to pay for content as she raked in money, and did not share the $315 million profit (except with her business partners) when she sold to AOL, who exploited celebrity dim wittedness to her benefit, is now making it clear to 9000 bloggers that she disdains her own work gang — as she always had. Privately she thought, “I wouldn’t work for nothing.”

There are so few moderates, so few independents it seems; maybe they just aren’t focused on by the media because there is less heat to attract an audience, and the media knows, you make more money with heat than light.

After a battle with WordPress and obstinate plugins — which resulted in Jolly Days loading as a blank page; and a battle with a cell phone company about its online payment implementation, and not being able to run today —  I’m feeling pecked to death by ducks. Until you realize the context — the greater tribulations of the world — the Arab world in turmoil with uncertain outcome; the devastation in Japan; our president who seems one step behind too often and the Republicans in disarray, the ominous future for the economy if something is not done — it doesn’t make you feel perky.

I’ve been working hard to publish more books at the iBookstore; not satisfying creative work, but rather meticulous, mind numbing work. I’m very proud of the result though:

iPad Sketchbook 3
Ira Altschiller: Works on Paper
Ira Altschiller: A Retrospective

and two more to come: picturebooks is what Apple calls them, which are fixed layout books for a better presentation of books which have an emphasis on images.

I did want to mention a funny link provided at Jason Kottke’s site

Someone at Yahoo Answers uploaded a page of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest as his own and asked for comments.

Rated as the best answer / criticism:

You know your story needs more work, so you don’t need anyone to tell you what you already know.

Comment sections are always pretty funny. Some people don’t like the snarkiness, and I’m not a big fan of that aspect, but often there are interesting ideas and commentary as well. It is the mosh pit after all. A financial journalist at bloggingheads said that she always felt that people weren’t asking questions or engaging ideas  in comments sections of weblogs, they were trying to appear smart.

The idea of sending great literature as if written by sender to an established publisher has been done over the years. Rejection letters for masterpieces like War and Peace leaves one agape — like the audience watching The Frankie singing Puttin’ on the Ritz in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Saul Bellow stopped sending his stories to the New Yorker after a full of himself young editor told him how he should correct his piece. Bellow had recently won the Nobel Prize.

We all have a love/hate relationship with media venues. They have some content we want, but there is something about the venue itself that puts you off.

The NYT has announced a subscription model that is already said to be a failed paradigm. Too complicated a fee structure; too expensive.

…The New York Times pricing seems designed not to get people to subscribe digitally, but rather to discourage existing subscribers from cancelling their print subscriptions

If you feel great affection for the NYT (anybody?), then it makes sense. But for many, like myself, the NYT is an amazingly comprehensive and interesting content provider, even with the ‘tude and bias, but it hasn’t won enough credibility to subscribe.

You know what is going to happen. The NYT has announced it is going to allow NYT links in blog posts free entry. So some bloggers will just list (aggregate) the main articles of the day (depending on their predisposition) and readers will get free entry.

Too bad about the Times really. Some very bright and able people there. Drowned in poor leadership. It looked like Bill Keller had righted the ship after Howell Raines disastrously projected Pinch Sulzberger’s predilections, making it an adversarial organ of the Left, but when that failed, Sulzberger put old-timer Keller in charge. Keller, company man, seemed a moderating voice. The NYT has drifted since then. An example: Keller put a very young and inexperienced Obama-fan reporter to cover Obama during the election. It was an embarrassment for a newspaper that had the affectation of being a journal of record.

As Keller said about Fox: anyone who thinks the NYT is “fair and balanced” has to be deeply cynical.