Frederick Varley, the (not) Great War, and the madness of Black Friday

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Frederick Varley was one of Canada's famed "Group of Seven" painters. Originally from England, he served in World War I and became an "official war artist," producing some astounding depictions of the horror of that senseless conflagration.

Here, for example, are For What? and German Prisoners. Recently reading a book about the Group of Seven, I meant to post them on Remembrance Day, but for some reason -- and I realize I'm engaging in some questionable analogizing here -- they seem appropriate on this Black Friday.

First because what they depict is similar, I think, to the state of our culture/civilization as reflected in the madness that is Black Friday.

And second because we'd be much better people, and have a much healthier society, if we spent a bit more time thinking about the horrors of the "Great War," among other such things, and a bit less time waiting in line at Best Buy and then trampling everyone and everything in our consumer-crazed path to get hold of the latest tech gadget or other insane bargain that we think will somehow fill the sorrowful emptiness that lies within each and every one of us.

Black Friday as mythbuster

Guest post by Ramona

Ed. note: This is Ramona's fourth guest post for us. Her first three were on cruelty in America, abuse against women, and the creepiness of Herman Cain. You'll be seeing more of her here at The Reaction, and I encourage you again to check out her wonderful blog. -- MJWS

**********

Ramona is a freelance writer based in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her blog, "Ramona's Voices," is liberal-leaning, with such a small amount of navel-gazing you'll hardly even notice. She is also on the masthead at dagblog, a gathering place for dissidents and reprobates and other friendly people.

After the Thanksgiving Day gluttony is over and after our teams have either won or lost (our biggie between the Lions and the Packers went horribly awry for my loved ones, poor dears) and after we've taken our tryptophan-induced naps, the next fun thing to think about, talk about, or plan for is Black Friday, our annual Big Huge Shopping Extravaganza. It's the day when primitive survival skills kick in and the absolutely-must-haves traditionally go nuts and stampede in scenes that make even NatGeo-watchers go "Wow!"

(Rumor has it that Black Friday is the one day of the year when the Chinese pay homage to us. They would make it a national holiday, except everyone is busy at work manufacturing things for our Christmas rush.)

There's a myth in this country that goes like this: America is broke. Aside from a paltry few tax-evading King Midas wannabes, nobody else has anything much. That's the story.

Our jobless, our homeless, our soup kitchens, our empty former homes, our overflowing ERs -- that's all real. Painfully real. But what's also real is the hefty percentage of 99 Percenters who spread out at the stroke of Black Friday to go whole-hog spending astonishing amounts of ready cash and pay-later credit on stuff.

It's an American tradition contrived and perpetuated by the merchant class and, really, who are we to tell people (other than Congress) how to spend their (our) money? But a group known as "Occupy Black Friday," an off-shoot of Occupy Wall Street, while admirably opposing the longer open hours that would take employees away from their own families on Thanksgiving and endorsing the efforts to buy locally, took it one step further and came up with the idea of boycotting, instead of occupying, the major chains on That Day.  (The Occupying part wouldn't work at all, you see, since millions of shoppers would already be camping out and milling around, waiting for the doors to open.) 

Attempting to show the strength of the masses by boycotting major retailers on that all-important shopping day is one of those ideas that seems okay on the face of it, but which, in reality, is doomed from the start. It's a whisper in the wind, a dusky dot in the night sky, and here's why: I've been boycotting "Black Friday" for years now and nobody has ever noticed. Multiply me by, say, several hundred thousand and we still wouldn't be noticed. It's a happy tradition, the official start of the Christmas shopping season. Even in the worst economic downturn in decades, it's still a force bigger than all of us.

Okay, granted, this year, for whatever reasons, it seemed more intense than fun. A woman took to pepper-spraying other shoppers threatening to get too close to the prize she was after. A man slipped a DVD under his shirt, not to steal it but to prevent it from being stolen from him, and got himself shoved to the ground and bloodied for his efforts. People were knocked around and bruised. There were grim reports of shootings and parking-lot robberies. But to the victors went the spoils and it's those success stories that make it all worthwhile. (More to come the day after Christmas. Another happy tradition.)

As might be expected, the activities at "Occupy Black Friday" came to the attention of the folks over at Fox "News". Their idea of the perfect smack-down was to tell people to go out and shop 'til they drop. That'll show those damned Occupiers. Hah!

Now, I really hate to think Fox had that much influence, but this year Black Friday alone took in $11.4 billion, a 6.6 percent increase over last year, while the Thanksgiving weekend broke all sales records with a staggering $52.4 billion spent over four days. It was a jump of 16 percent over last year's sales, with record numbers of shoppers spending even more bucks on average.

No stats yet on the sales outcomes of Small Business Saturday, a truly sensational idea, even if it did come from American Express.

Yesterday was Cyber Monday (designated by the online merchants who felt left out, no doubt), the lead-in to Cyber Week (because why stop the momentum of a very good thing?), and on to Christmas, the Big Kahuna of cash-heavy, gift-giving holidays.

So about that whole "America is broke" business. We're looking into it. We'll have to get back to you on that.

An antidote to Black Friday: Barry Levinson's Avalon (1990)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So it's Black Friday, the day, at least in the U.S., our consumer impulses are meant to run wild, the day the economy needs to get the holiday shopping season going lest it collapse in on itself, the day we see most clearly what modernity is really all about.

The desire to acquire, Machiavelli, the founder of modernity, called it. But instead of political acquisition, today is all about acquiring shit in one form or another.

Don't get me wrong. I like my stuff, my material goods. I like to acquire as well. But today is the day the lid comes off, the day humanity, or at least American humanity, turns wild again. If you're at a Wal-Mart or a Target today, or pretty much anywhere shit is sold, you and your fellow consumers might as well be wolves fighting over a scrap of meat. It may be a cheap blu-ray player or maybe even a Hyundai. It hardly matters. You have been programmed to shop, to consume, to acquire more and more and more, indeed to identify your very soul with your worldly possessions. It's your drug. And you're being drugged, willingly, by a society, nay, by a civilization, that requires you for its very survival to be thoughtless consumers of shit.

Sorry, is that a bit too negative? Hey, like I said, I like my stuff. I just think that Black Friday, and indeed the whole holiday shopping season, now a year of shopping seasons (Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, etc.) bleeding into one another, is our society at its most fucked up.

So today, why not do something else? Like watch a good Thanksgiving movie. (I assume you were just too busy yesterday with family and football.)

There's Plains, Trains and Automobiles, of course, the very funny (and very touching) "road" movie with Steve Martin and John Candy.

And Woody Allen's wonderful Hannah and Her Sisters, one of his truly best films, the story bookended by Thanksgiving dinners, the first bleak and depressing, the second warm and hopeful.

And then there's Barry Levinson's Avalon, the story of a Polish-Jewish immigrant family in Baltimore. It's an amazingly beautiful film with rich characterizations and a remarkable sense of time and place. It is indeed the story of America: "They shared a dream called America... in a place called Avalon." To me, it's simply one of the best films ever made about what it means to be American.

And, if you've seen it (and even if you haven't), you may recall its famous Thanksgiving scene, when Uncle Gabriel (Lou Jacobi) arrives late and says, enraged and bewildered, "You cut the turkey without me?" It's a funny scene, in a way, with this highly quotable line, but through the drama that unfolds, as well as through the context in which it takes place, we come to see the tension at the heart of the movie -- and at the heart of the American experience.

Gabriel is late because he had to drive out to new suburbs far from the urban core that had been the locus of immigrant life. Avalon, you see, is about family but also about the culture of change and dislocation, the culture of American modernity, that ultimately threatens family, or at least the extended family that is so important to the Krichinskys as to so many others.

In this sense, perhaps, there's a continuum from America's earliest European settlers through the waves of immigrants who were to one degree or another assimilated into modern American life to today's rampant consumer culture. It should be noted that the Krichinskys own a successful appliance store. I'm sure they had, or would have had, Thanksgiving sales. They, too, well removed from their less consumerist origins, would have partaken of Black Friday in one way or another.

But no matter. It's a great movie. I remember seeing it in the theaters in 1990. I was in high school in New Jersey. That opening scene, with Sam Krichinsky arriving in Baltimore to Fourth of July fireworks, pulled me in right away. It's one of the best opening scenes in any movie I've ever seen. And by the end I knew I'd seen something truly special.

If you've seen it, go back and watch it again, because you probably saw it a long, long time ago. And if you haven't, well, you simply must. Here's the trailer:

A message of hope

By Carl

Y'know, it's pretty depressing out there.

It seems like the world is heading to hell in a handbasket, and I'm tired. I get a new perspective on the Great Depression. It wasn't so much economic as it was psychologic.

At least this week, the news is mixed on the economic front: jobless claims were surprisingly low last week, Wells Fargo, universally acknowledged as one of the few strong banks out there, reported good earnings, new home mortgages are rising, and the trade deficit is collapsing. On the other hand, retail sales are still in the toilet, meaning consumers aren't shopping, the auto industry is still on very shaky ground, and gas prices will begin their inexorable summer climb this weekend as people get their cars out of the garage and start the summer driving season early.

Nevermind the news page, the business section is enough to make people depressed! That's before the piracy in Somalia, the North Korean missile test, earthquakes in Italy, the Twitter uprising in Moldova...it's enough to raise the dead!

What's really depressing is to read blogs and watch television, and everyone is looking for someone to blame. If it's not God, it's the President. Or liberals. Or Muslims. Or immigrants. Or Hollywood.

I have a better solution: it's you!

Now, I realize the way of the world is to make our problems somebody else's. Both sides of the political fence claim the other scapegoats. The right claims we liberals are trying to build a nanny state. The left believes the right wants to deny and deflect their personal responsibility towards their fellow citizens.

Guess what? Both sides have a point (altho you'd be hard pressed to prove to me at this point in time how government is doing too much for us).

So the old saw is shown to be true: if everyone else is wrong, it really is your problem.

For the past thirty years, this entire nation-- heck, the entire world, when you realize that France has McDonald's on the Champs Elysee and Wrangler jeans are hot sellers in Abu Dhabi-- has spent its days, nights, lives in pursuit of the Material Me. Even so-called "radical lefty tree huggers" have to be seen hugging the right tree.

We have the latest, newest, greatest, biggest...and ultimately, most useless...junk on the planet.

Just. Stop.

Focus on the things that really matter: your health, your weight, your family, your friends, your life. The problems of the world will start to melt away if we all just "stick to our knitting".

Want to solve the health insurance crisis? Walk. Exercise. Pay a co-pay and see a doctor before you get sick. Eat healthier. Sleep better. Skip every other drink or every other cigarette. Lose weight.

Want to help solve the banking crisis? Spend less, save more. Take twenty percent of your paycheck and bank it. Put your loose change at the end of the day in a jar, then take it to the bank and deposit it each month.

Want to prevent a war? Talk to people. Don't argue, don't judge them. Just listen to them. Sit in a coffee shop and make a point of truly understanding someone.

Want to be happier with your friends? Be happier about yourself. The weather's getting nicer, take a walk. Take a camera with you. Take pictures of the kids out playing. Do something that has meaning to you but doesn't cost an arm and leg, not because it's "material," but because you don't have to sit there with part of you adding up the total money you just spent.

Search for beauty in an unbeautiful world.

You have a material home. Create a spiritual one. A place where your mind can rest and your spirit can play.

You have a material home that makes you unhappy. You have spent your life pursuing it, because this is what you were told to pursue, and everyone else is doing it. That's a powerful influence, that "everyone else". Marketing firms have made entire fortunes on the backs of you and your neighbors, convincing you to buy this gadget or that SUV.

You have the power to quit them. Use that energy, now exhausted, now spent, on yourself. You have a window full of stuff, but a house devoid of what you need. You have things, but no love, because you cannot love a thing. It cannot love you back. You have glee, but no joy. Glee comes from knowing you've bought the new toy. Joy comes from living with what you have. Glee is a drug. It requires constant reinforcement. Joy is everlasting. it grows on its own if you just give it room.

Give room to your joy. Shun your glee. Don't you have enough? Do you have all that you need? Most of us do and are unaware of it. And besides, everything is on loan here. It can be taken from you in the wink of an eye, but the one thing that will always be with you is you.

Give to people. Give your time. Give your love. Give your joy, because the best soil for joy to grow in is soil that two people tend. Don't worry, it grows quickly!

Give your things, too. A gift given gives twice, or so the saying goes.

The damnable trap of the past thirty years is that we have taken, but we haven't taken from others...well, not much. As others have taken from us, however-- and that has happened-- we have also taken from ourselves and our futures. We borrowed money we didn't have to buy things that might not even be around now that the bill has come due.

By allowing others to take from us, we have robbed ourselves of our humanity, our dignity, and our individuality. By buying the iPod or the car or the Britney Spears CD or the Disney DVD, we have allowed others to take "us" in exchange for making us more like everyone else. We have fuller closets and emptier hearts, prettier clothes and uglier bodies, bigger cars and smaller minds.

But when you give, you maintain who you are. You become who you need to be. You keep what and who you want in your life, and you stop pushing aside the important things in life.

Yes, the world is troubled. Yes, you will be buffetted and affected and maybe even harmed for decisions you've made in the past.

But you can be the future, too, and that is where you will live. Do the things you need to do now to make that a better life.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Stimulating consumerism, encouraging debt

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I realize that part of what the economy needs is more consumer spending on big-ticket items, and so I understand why Republicans pushed successfully for a $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers to go along with a tax incentive for carbuyers, both now part of the Senate's stimulus package, but is encouraging more spending at a time when jobs are being lost and the credit market has dried up really such a great idea? I mean, you can give people any sort of incentive you want, but what if they still can't afford to buy those big-ticket items? Ten percent of a new house, up to $15,000, is nice and all, but there's still the other 90 percent to consider.

And so while the tax credit might help shore up the housing market by keeping prices up -- and perhaps even reduce foreclosures by allowing people to take out smaller mortgages -- it's not clear to me how this helps fix what truly ails the U.S. economy and the financial sector, namely, too much risky lending and borrowing, and spending, at a time of global economic restructuring. Indeed, it seems to me that encouraging people to make such big-ticket purchases could actually make the situation worse than it is already by putting more and more people into more and more debt from which they'll have more and more difficulty getting out, leading to more and more foreclosures, more and more repossessions, and more and more bankruptcies.

Take the example of buying a new flat-screen, high-def TV. If you go to your local Best Buy, or a similar store, you might find a TV you want for, say, $2,000. But maybe that's beyond your budget. Or maybe you just don't need a new TV when you're already having trouble paying the bills, and maybe you're worried that you'll shortly be losing your job. Maybe you should put some money away or spend it on your kids. But what if some sort of credit were being dangled in front of you? What if, say, that TV would only cost you $1,800? Ah, now it's more reasonable. And maybe you think, what a great deal. Ten percent off. I'd better take the offer before it's off the table. Who doesn't want a high-def TV? But then, once you buy it, you still have to find the $1,800, and, given your current financial situation, you'll probably have to put it on credit. But you're already maxed out, or close to it. And what if the incentive encourages you to buy and even more expensive TV? What if that $2,500 one is the one you really want, and, well, if you can get it for $2,250, that's a pretty good deal. So why not? It's all going on credit, after all, and what's a few hundred more dollars?

I realize it's not a perfect analogy -- a TV isn't a house or a car, and you don't need to access as much credit to buy one (unless it's some super-expensive one), credit that has dried up -- but yet get the point, I'm sure. While quick-fixes to stimulate the economy are appealing, and certainly so to politicians, who must ultimately answer to constituents, encouraging Americans to buy more, and to go deeper into debt, is reckless and irresponsible, and certainly not the answer to the economy's woes.

Republicans' tax cut rhetoric is misplaced

By LindaBeth

After hearing so many Republican ideologues spouting their "tax cuts are always the solution for stimulus" rhetoric, I want to scream. Or maybe cry.

Perhaps there are other economic situations where tax cuts might be the way to go. This is not one of them, and it doesn't take an economist to explain it.

1. The reason why tax cuts could stimulate the economy is if they are spent in our economy.
2. In an uncertain economic climate such as ours, with threats of layoffs, increasing product prices, contracting lending, and overall uncertainty, people are saving more and spending less. According to the AP:

   On Friday, the government reported Americans' savings rate, rose to 2.9 percent in the last three months of 2008. That's up sharply from 1.2 percent in the third quarter and less than 1 percent a year ago.



3. Considering the economic climate, the tax cuts that the Republicans say are what is needed to stimulate the economy (which already make up about 40% of the package) are more likely to be saved or used to pay off debt than spent, and paying off debt is the same as saving in terms of economic impact.
   
4. In order to increase spending in a meaningful way, we have to address the problem of income: namely, that more and more Americans are losing theirs.
   

What's troubling as well is the recent Rasmussen Reports survey that says "Forty-seven percent (47%) say tax cuts will do more to stimulate the economy than new government programs while 32% take the opposite view." I wonder where these perceptions on the function of tax cuts comes from, and why so many think they do more for the economy. One thing that candidate Obama was so good at was speaking clearly to the American people. What President Obama needs to do is to explain exactly why what is needed right now are not drastic tax cuts and why government spending is so important for economic recovery.

Further, the tax cuts proposed will cost us $300 billion, but will give working adults only $500 per year each. That's a huge chuck of national debt for a sum that will not will not mean all that much to struggling families and could be spent more productively as a whole rather than in small parts that are more likely to be saved than spent.

Something else is also bothering me with the whole tax cuts so people can spend rhetoric. Quite frankly, I'm glad Americans are saving more, spending less, paying cash, joining co-ops, reusing goods, etc. As a former financial advisor, these are all good, healthy habits to strengthen one's present and future financial security, not to mention the non-monetary benefits (i.e. environmental). As a cultural critic, they are also ways strengthen one's connection to one's community and develop better interpersonal relationships that have been somewhat thwarted by technology. Perhaps people will begin to reevaluate their drive to consume and will look more toward quality time with family and friends, volunteering, intellectual pursuits, and enjoying the environment. I hope out of this crisis, people will develop better habits, that we will have a more critical eye toward unregulated capitalism, that we will understand the need for social services, and that consumption won't have such a stronghold in our lives. For these reasons, I hope we all change our consumption habits permanently.

This hope, however, is a catch-22, because as we've seen, our economy depends so greatly on American spending money on stuff. But on a structural level, an American economy propagated so much by consumer spending is an unsustainable one, not to mention an undesirable one in my book. So economic stimulus needs to take place with this in mind--and clearly, the Republicans' tired rhetoric of tax cuts so people will spend is one that exists in the paradigm of
a consumption-dependent economy, the very paradigm we need to work our way out of.

(Cross-posted to Speak Truth to Power)

RIAA runs amok

By Libby Spencer

Back in the dark ages when I was young, musicians used to make vinyl albums. If you only wanted one song, you could buy a 45, which for you young folks who might not remember, was a little vinyl disk that required an insert so you could play it on your Hi-Fi. The first 45 I bought was Roses are Red by Bobby Vinton. The second was the Beatles, I Want to Hold Your Hand but I bought it for the B-side, This Boy.

Eventually, technology evolved to enable you to record from the albums to tape and this was good. Rarely does anyone love every song on an album and this allowed the listener to assemble compilations of their favorite songs. The industry whined about copyrights then too, but they didn't sue anyone since you still had to buy the album to get the songs and besides there was no practical way to track who was trading cassettes with their friends.

Now the latest technology allows the listener to download music without ever visiting a record store and share it much more widely. It also allows the record companies to track who is doing the sharing. I'll admit, I do have a little sympathy for the recording companies. To some extent, file sharing with hundreds or thousands of strangers starts to resemble stealing and the industry should be able to protect its product, but this is definitely a step that goes too far.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

This is such a greedy and stupid move. The industry needs to realize that it can't have complete control over its product once its sold, especially when their product isn't all that great anymore. Just as in every media format, the music industry has consolidated to the point where creativity is stifled and only a handful of artificially assembled groups get promoted. Most of them aren't really that good.

More and more musicians, in response to being shut out or otherwise exploited by the big labels, are taking their work directly to the public via the internet. Many give their work away for free to promote their tours. It's a model consumers have responded to positively. The recording industry could take a lesson here and adapt their own business model because if it continues to try to criminalize its remaining consumer base by threatening them with draconian rules of use, that base is likely to disappear altogether.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Christmas then, Christmas now

By Carol Gee

To compare and contrast my childhood memories with the realities of today is a clear indication that some seven decades have past since those bucolic days in Wyoming.

My Holiday Reminiscences

Then - Our Christmas tree was real, as lush as we could afford, at least 5 feet tall, and endowed with the most wonderful aroma. There was no such thing as an artificial Christmas tree until after I was grown. By then these "manufactured by humans" tree came in metal or plastic versions. The metal ones were silver or gold. The plastic came in good-weather green. But by then you could also get your real evergreens artificially "flocked" to look snowy-white.

Now - We know that this happens in lots of places. Yesterday's mlive.com (Grand Rapids Press) news story about giving away Christmas trees happens to also come from Wyoming. Merchants did not by any means give away Christmas trees in Mexico, as this Houston Chronicle article reports. It is an effect of globalization. Oregon ships about 10% of its Christmas tree crop to Mexico. Many were sold at Walmart, now Mexico's largest retailer. To quote:

First celebrated in northern Europe some 500 years ago, the Christmas tree tradition was brought to North America by German settlers in the early 1800s. City dwellers in Mexico City began buying Christmas trees in the 1950s, obtaining them from farms in the relatively chilly highlands nearby.

The Americanized tradition exploded here in recent years as Mexico became increasingly urban and wealthier. Today, more than 1 million trees are imported each season, mostly coming from Oregon. Mexican growers sell untold numbers more.

. . . At $100 to $130 or more for a 7-foot beauty, asking prices for trees at the flower market are more than double the average in the United States. That's a costly tradition in a city where $20 a day is a good blue-collar wage.

Then - Most of the decorations we hung on my childhood trees were homemade. The "garlands" were made of construction paper strips circled into multicolored chains. They also included stringed popcorn. At school we made ornaments as class projects, and Mama hung every one, ugly or beautiful.

Now - There is a growing controversy over tree ornaments imported from sweatshops in China. ABC News carried a story early in December that also included information about Walmart. To quote:

The National Labor Committee, which tracks working conditions in developing countries worldwide, released a report Wednesday titled "A Wal-Mart Christmas Brought to You from a Sweatshop in China."

It documents with photos and video, workers -- some as young as 12 years old -- working at the Guangzhou Huanya Gift Co., which produces ornaments sold in the United States at Wal-Mart and Target stores.

Then - Presents were sometimes homemade, sometimes ordered out of the Montgomery Ward "Christmas" catalog. Re-gifting, however, was verboten with my mother. Our parents saw to it that each child's was of equal monetary value, as nearly as possible. We got one main gift each, as much as the folks could afford that year.

Now - The 2007 holiday shopping season was a worry to retailers but this International Herald Tribune headline tells a better story, "Last-minute US shoppers bring relief to retailers; post-Christmas season seen as crucial." Many of us are waiting to buy our gifts to each other at the big discounts that will come after Christmas. To quote:

Just weeks ago, the holiday shopping season seemed headed for disaster. But in the waning hours before Christmas, the America's retailers got their wish — a last-minute surge of shopping that helped meet their modest sales goals, according to data released late Monday by research firm ShopperTrak RCT Corp.

. . . The spree defied fears that a deepening housing slump, escalating credit crisis and higher gas and food prices would turn shoppers into Grinches — even in the end. Meanwhile, with the season plagued by a slew of Chinese-made toy recalls that began in the summer, there were concerns that shoppers would boycott those products. That didn't happen either.

Then - Food was always delicious, and never felt anything less than special. It was not the cost, it was the care with which it was prepared. The Christmas day menu might include ham, turkey or roast hen with bread dressing. Side dishes were mashed potatoes, candies sweet potatoes, gravy, green peas, homemade cranberry sauce, and yeast rolls. Desserts would be fruitcake, or coconut cake, mincemeat pie and homemade fudge and fondant candy. Christmas Eve's menu was always oyster stew with special little round soda crackers.

Now - I now live in Texas so here is the link to Southern Food Christmas recipes from About.com. Homemade Mexican tamales are also a big Texas tradition. Many of us order ahead and go back to the same source every year. And howstuffworks.com posted lots of "Christmas food trivia" here. To quote:

What's for Christmas Dinner in America?

• Baked ham
• Turkey and stuffing
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Sweet potatoes
• Green bean casserole
• Winter squash soup
• Waldorf salad
• Cranberry salad
• Parker house rolls
• Divinity
• Red velvet cake
• Pumpkin pie

To summarize - I never felt too tight a budget as a child. Our Christmases were celebrated together with much attention, tradition and with love. We looked forward to Christmas Eve and to the day itself when we got to open our presents. And we felt rich.

Now - now I know my folks were on a shoestring as I was growing up. The Census Bureau currently keeps track of poverty in America. I quote their 2006 Highlights:

Poverty: 2006 Highlights

* The official poverty rate in 2006 was 12.3 percent, down from 12.6 percent in 2005 (Table 3).

* In 2006, 36.5 million people were in poverty, not statistically different from 2005.

* Poverty rates in 2006 were statistically unchanged for non-Hispanic Whites (8.2 percent), Blacks (24.3 percent), and Asians (10.3 percent) from 2005. The poverty rate decreased for Hispanics (20.6 percent in 2006, down from 21.8 percent in 2005).

* The poverty rate in 2006 was lower than in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available (Figure 3). From the most recent trough in 2000, the rate rose for four consecutive years, from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.7 percent in 2004, and then declined to 12.3 percent in 2006 – a rate not statistically different from those in 2002 and 2003 (12.1 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively).

* For children under 18 years old and people aged 18 to 64, the poverty rates (17.4 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively) and the numbers in poverty (12.8 million and 20.2 million, respectively) remained statistically unchanged from 2005.

* Both the poverty rate and the number in poverty decreased for people aged 65 and older (9.4 percent and 3.4 million in 2006, down from 10.1 percent and 3.6 million in 2005)

Miscellaneous links:

1. A Special Christmas Message from Blackwater at TPMmuckraker.
2. Boston.com reports that "Bush celebrates Christmas at Camp David"
   

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

This dust-up about Christmas

By Carol Gee

Absurd! There is a certain virtue to political correctness. But, in the case of avoiding the use of the word Christmas, there is no reason to adhere to such silliness. December 25 is a valid Christian holiday that marks the birthday (arbitrarily chosen date) of Jesus Christ. Let's explore the Christmas controversy. Or, as a college student titled his recent terrific editorial, "Merry Christmahanakwanzayule."

Where did the conflict originate? A Wikipedia chart on religious demography in the U.S. might account for some of it. In 1990, 88.3% of Americans self-identified themselves as Christian. In 2001 the percentage had dropped to 79.8%. The "other religions" percentages were 3.5% in 1990, and 5.2% in 2001. People who said "No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic" totaled 8.4% in 1990 and 15.0% in 2001. (The aggregate total is slightly over 100% because of the survey's method of not adjusting for refusal to answer in this U.S. Census survey). To quote:

# the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just 8% of the total in 1990 to over 14% in 2001;
# there has also been a substantial increase in the number of adults who refused to reply to the question about their religious preference, from about four million or 2% in 1990 to more than eleven million or over 5% in 2001.

"Religion in the United States," Wikipedia, reports that 20% of Americans are non-Christian, summarizing it this way:

Most Americans adhere to Christianity. According to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (discussed below), 80% of the U.S. is Christian and 15% do not adhere to a religion. Other religions comprise 5% of the U.S. population.

One of the central parts of the conflict emanates from a segment of conservative Christians that named the controversy "the war on Christmas." Media Matters carried a post recently, " 'Somewhere Jesus is weeping' over attacks on Bill O'Reilly," devoted to this whole brouhaha. This kind of stuff is where my opening Absurd! comes from. Prosper, an online "prosperity" magazine out of Sacramento, CA, carried a 2006 dialogue, "Out of their minds - Holiday v. Christmas," that is an excellent summary of the controversy. For a lucid elaboration of the issues it is a good read.

For my part, it seems reasonable to get back to some kind of balance. That would mean thinking about the reality that twenty percent of us will not be celebrating a holy birthday on December 25. Sensitivity to that does not mean ignoring the eighty percent who theoretically mark the day that way. Buth there is a deeper reality here. And that there are a whole lot of us in the theoretical cadre. We are not regular church-going Christians. Wikipedia reported,

On the other hand, nearly 40% of respondents who identified with a religion indicated that neither they themselves nor anyone else in their household belongs to a church or some other similar institution.

. . . The top three "gainers" in America's vast religious market place appear to be Evangelical Christians, those describing themselves as Non-Denominational Christians and those who profess no religion. Looking at patterns of religious change from this perspective, the evidence points as much to the rejection of faith as to the seeking of faith among American adults. Indeed, among those who previously had no religion, just 5% report current identification with one or another of the major religions.

This dust-up over Christmas will pass. After Christmas articles will let us know how the retail world handled it. I hope we find evidence of a bit of sanity connected to the reality. What I find in the blogosphere conversation is a number of folks just want to get the holidays behind them. There is another good sized number that sends me greetings via comments or e-mails. And there is another number that totally ignore Christmas in their writings, and celebrate one of the variety of current holidays privately. Out of which of the theoretical groups you come is your personal preference. I greet you and salute you. And I am curious about who I am leaving out or insulting with the wrong phrase:

• Merry Christmas!
• Happy Kwanzaa!
• Happy Hanukkah!
• Have a good Eid al-Adha!
• Welcome to the Winter Solstice!
• Happy holidays!
  

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Matthew Good Band: "The Future is X-Rated"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Those of you who aren't Canadian may not know who Matthew Good is, or what his band was, but he was, and is, one of this country's finest rock musicians. "The Future is X-Rated" is from the MGB's awesome 1999 album Beautiful Midnight, which I highly recommend that you get hold of, and listen to, again and again, as an introduction to MG's music.

The MGB disbanded in 2001/2. MG's solo work hasn't been as strong on the whole as his band's work, though Avalanche does measure up well to the MGB's Underdogs and The Audio of Being, both of which come close, at times, to Beautiful Midnight. And his latest album, Hospital Music, is a vast improvement on his previous effort, White Light Rock & Roll Review, a return to complex and politically-charged songwriting.

Check out MG's website here.

"The Future is X-Rated" isn't one of my favourite MG songs -- "While We Were Hunting Rabbits," "Strange Days," "Prime Time Deliverance," and "Advertising on Police Cars" -- but it is nonetheless extremely good, and the video is brilliant -- like the song, a sustained, biting attack on our hyper-consumerist, wealth-obsessed culture, a recurrent theme in MG's music.

And now Christmas is for shopping,

And the shopping god is everything.

(Lethal) Toy Story

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It should come as no surprise that dangerous, lead-ridden toys have been manufactured in China, given this:

A U.S.-based workers' rights group said it found "brutal conditions" and labour violations at eight Chinese plants that make toys for big multinationals, and called on the companies to take steps for better standards.

China Labor Watch said in a report issued on Tuesday after several months of investigation that the manufacturers — which served a handful of global players, including Disney, Bandai and Hasbro — paid "little heed to the most basic standards of the country".

"Wages are low, benefits are non-existent, work environments are dangerous and living conditions are humiliating," it said.

It's bad enough, of course, that these toys were manufactured at all, much worse that they were exported to the U.S. and elsewhere, and ultimately consumed -- literally, in some cases.

But here's what pisses me off:

No one gave a shit about any of this, save for the few noble souls who bothered to pay attention to the labour situation in China, and the even fewer who spoke out and tried to do something about it. Consumers may plead ignorance, but is that an acceptable defence? How do you think all that crap is so cheap? If it's so cheap at Wal-Mart, how cheap do you think it was to manufacture in the first place? No matter, it would seem, as long as it's cheap. Consumers want crap and they want it cheap. Beyond that: out of sight, out of mind, not that it was ever in sight. Whether it's toys made in China or clothes made in some American protectorate in the Pacific, or some destitute location in Asia, people, many of them, children included, are being exploited, and abused, so that we in the West can have all the cheap crap we want. Go to Wal-Mart, or Target, or any other such consumer paradise. Look at the people there, the consumers, watch them closely. Observe as they raid the racks and stacks, aisle after godforsaken aisle, pushing their carts with determined abandon, piling high the booty of their deepest yet most ephemeral desires.

Do they give a shit? Hardly.

There may be ignorance behind their dazed looks and glazed visages, but, no, that is not an acceptable defence.

You've heard of blood diamonds? Call these blood toys. And the blood is everywhere.

And what of Disney and Mattel and Hasbro and the other toy giants?

"Instead of concentrating on improving product safety and workers' lives, companies spend their energy creating beautiful pamphlets on social responsibility, disputing critical reports and shifting blame," the report concludes, and there is no doubt, no doubt at all. Their "single-minded pursuit of ever-lower prices and neglect of other considerations," in mutualistic malfeasance with homegrown Chinese horrors, made this happen. Disney and its ilk may claim otherwise, talking the talk, deflecting charges, playing stupid, denying any and all responsibility, any and all knowledge, these multinational versions of Michael Vick, but, come now, what did they do before all this broke, before it became news, before the whole damned mess started to stink so much it could no longer be contained in those wretched Chinese factories?

Not much. Not much at all. Certainly not enough.

They were happy enough, more than happy, to rake in their massive profits at the expense of the exploited and abused, those beyond the reach of the media, those without a voice, those who don't matter, those about whom no one gives a shit, save the noble souls, just as Wal-Mart and its ilk were happy, more than happy, to rake in their own massive profits, just as consumers were happy, more than happy, to buy and buy and buy -- and yes, just as the owners of those wretched Chinese factories were happy, more than happy, to abuse and exploit so that massive profits could be made, including their own, and consumers could pile the booty without any twinge of their collective conscience, the dulled, narcotized conscience of our dulled, narcotized age.

And, really, no one gave a shit until one of us died, until it became a problem for us, isn't that the dark truth here? No one gave a shit about the abused and exploited, that they were dying, that they, the wretched, were being sacrificed for us, sacrificed so that we could satisfy the hollow cravings of our cult of consumerism, morphine for existential meaninglessness.

Lead in our toys! Say it ain't so!

We're shocked, outraged!

We demand action!

But the abuse and the exploitation? -- ah, well, no, we don't know nothin', nothin' at all, that all happens over there, way over there, in some faraway place, to faraway people, we don't know them, no idea, no idea at all, so what if the Chinese are fucking the Chinese, so what if those wonderful companies like Disney, those corporate benefactors that bring so much happiness to our children, that are so wholesome, so about American values, are playing along, enabling it, paying for it, supporting it, encouraging it, denying everything, so what if equally wonderful companies like Wal-Mart are selling all that crap, have you seen their prices, dirt cheap, reduced, on sale, where's my cart, huh, where's my cart, we need to pile up the booty!

And, for all the shock and outrage, what has changed? So some toys, a lot of them, have been recalled. The media are, at long last, paying attention, public awareness has swelled. And?

Go to your local Wal-Mart or Target or wherever they sell cheap crap, which is pretty much everywhere, these days. What do you find there? Is it empty? Are consumers staying away? Are they boycotting, making a statement? Has conscience won out over the mega-desire to acquire as much cheap crap as possible, as defining a desire as there is, these days?

No. No. No. No.

Life goes on. The buying goes on. The piling up of booty goes on.

The eternal recurrence of the same old shit without anyone giving a shit.

And elsewhere, too, around the world, life goes on, the same old shit, the abuse and the exploitation, the fucking and the fucking over, in China or on some Pacific island, to men, women, and children, excused and condoned, denial heaped upon denial, profits skyrocketing, happy, happy, happy, more than happy, brutality served with a global smile and a dulled, narcotized conscience.

And so it goes.

The curse of the gadget

By Michael J.W. Stickings

We want them, we need them -- the flat-screen TVs and the digital radios, I mean, and so much else like them, these mass produced, mass-consumed techno-icons of human divinity, extensions of our post-Nietzschean (faux) godliness -- but, wouldn't you know it, they're bad for the environment.

Humanity. Gotta love it.