HENRY lemon CREAM.
Put it all together and at this rate, the government—that is, taxpayers—will own much of the housing, auto, and financial sectors of the economy, those sectors that are failing fastest.
Consider too that the government already finances much of the aerospace industry, which is still doing reasonably well but depends on a foreign policy that itself has been a dismal failure. And a large portion of the pharmaceutical industry and health care sector (through the Medicare and Medicaid, the Medicare drug benefit, and support of basic research). These are in bad shape as well, and it seems likely the Obama administration will try to reorganize much of them.
What’s left? Most of high-tech, entertainment, hospitality, retail, and commodities. So far, at least, we taxpayers are not propping them up. And when the economy turns up—perhaps as soon as next year, most likely later—these sectors have a good chance of rebounding.
But the others—the ones the government is coming to own or manage—are less likely to rebound as quickly, if ever. If anyone has a good argument for why the shareholders of these losers should not be cleaned out first, and their creditors and executives and directors second—before taxpayers get stuck with the astonishingly-large bill—I would like to hear it.
It’s called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is reserved for the winners.
So one might say that we are seeing not the tender creep of socialist possibilities into the national discourse, but their further erasure. Every time that we agree that the word “socialism” might refer to something other than, at a minimum, worker ownership if not indeed the end of surplus value extraction; every time that we misrecognize state corporatism as something other than a moment in capital’s “equilibrium in motion,” we “turn the wheel of discursive normativity a click” away from socialism. We forget what that word promises. Perhaps the most optimistic memory, as Jasper reminded us, is that the corporatist regimes have arisen historically in the fact of popular socialist challenges—but that in no way guarantees the motion will summon forth such a movement via some blind mechanism of counterweights.
“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker, lunching Friday at Harry’s at Hanover Square.
“I’m a HENRY,” Mr. Konstantinidis added. “High Earner but Not Rich Yet.”
Nonetheless, it was rather remarkable on Friday how many white shirts denied getting a bonus altogether when they were asked. Indeed, if the data obtained by reporters in the district was any measure, there is no telling where that $18 billion really went.
What can be told, however, is that President Obama is substantially less popular on Wall Street this week than he was last week. Words like “outrageous,” “shameful” and “the height of irresponsibility” — especially when applied to a man’s paycheck — tend not to make you many friends.
“I think President Obama painted everyone with a broad stroke,” said Brian McCaffrey, 55, a Wall Street lawyer who was on his way to see a client. “The way we pay our taxes is bonuses. The only way that we’ll get any of our bailout money back is from taxes on bonuses. I think bonuses should be looked at on a case by case basis, or you turn into a socialist.”
That, indeed, was a recurring equation: Broad strokes + bonuses = socialist.
—”It’s Theirs and They’re Not Apologizing”
And I want to take that acronym, HENRY, and set it on fire and wrap it around his neck, but it’s still too goddamn bland; it just doesn’t sneer yet, not like YUPPIE or BOBO or CREAM. High Earner but Not Rich Yet. Fuck you, you silver-spooned Masters of the Universe.
Say you’re a banker and you flushed $30 million down the toilet, which is the actual scenario we’re looking at. When can we expect you to pay a part of that back?
You know what, Henry? That guy walking ahead of us, down the street? Too out of it to spaynge like the ghettopunks and anyway if he ever stopped walking the cops would roust him in an instant under sit/lie? Travel-stained, in the euphemism of fantasy novels, hasn’t seen the inside of a shelter in months in spite of the cold? No coat on his back but that sleeping bag clutched around his shoulders to draggle down the sidewalk? Not to pull a cliché trump, Henry, but he ain’t rich yet, neither. —And you know what else? He’s too big to fail, Henry.
We’re all too big to fail.
Race fail 2009.
This past Monday, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, I discovered that the casting of the four leading characters for the upcoming live-action movie, The Last Airbender (based on the TV show, Avatar: The Last Airbender) had gone entirely to white actors. I want—no, need—to say something about this.
Following Jackson Rathbone’s footstep in addressing fans’ criticism over The Last Airbender casting, pop singer Jesse McCartney comes to MTV to share his response towards fans’ protest of the “all Caucasian” [sic] casting. The 21-year-old who is tapped for Prince Zuko part tries to assure hard core fans of the animated TV series that he will do his best to do justice for his character.
“I heard a lot about this online,” the singer who fills the voice of Theodore in Alvin and the Chipmunks explains. “There’s a lot of hard-core fans out there [who] probably know more about it… I’m still learning. This is M. Night’s vision and this is what he wants. To all the fans, I can tell you I’m putting my best foot forward.” He further adds, “I’ve been in kung-fu training for the last month and half-learning all the moves. I’m looking forward to it.”
The casting controversy came out after reports surfaced that karate-trained Texan Noah Ringer, Twilight actor Jackson Rathbone, Deck the Halls actress Nicola Peltz and singer Jesse McCartney have been offered the roles of Aang, Sokka, Katara and Zuko respectively. The casting of the four Caucasian actors brought out negative reaction from fans with accusations of racism.
Earlier, Rathbone has responded to the complaints, stating that it is his chance to show his range of acting. Speaking to MTV, he added on what he will need to do for Sokka’s transformation, “I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan. It’s one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit.”
—“Jesse McCartney Answers The Last Airbender Casting Criticism,” ACESHOWBIZ.com
“And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.”
Since getting angry doesn’t help my daughter, though, I took a breath and tried to do damage control.
I told her that love makes a family, not size or gender or anything else. She wanted to know, then, why other families aren’t the same.
“There are some like ours, honey. Like Austin’s family—”
“Austin has a dad. He just lives somewhere else.”
I froze. I don’t want to say that the same is true of her. It’s not. She doesn’t have a dad, she has a biological father who doesn’t even take our phone calls anymore, who either doesn’t tell his girlfriends that she exists, or lies and tells them that I cheated on him and he doubts he’s really her father. (The Missouri and Pennsylvania courts would be surprised to hear that, considering they ran three paternity tests and garnish his wages every week, none of which he even contested.) I don’t want to lie and say he loves her and misses her and thinks of her all the time, that the only reason he doesn’t see her is because he lives so far away and doesn’t have enough money to travel. It would end this argument in a heartbeat, it would make her feel better, but it would still be a lie. And it’d be a lie I’d have to answer for ten years down the line, when she becomes a teenager and he starts building his replacement family without her.
I froze for too long. She started to cry.
“Sweetheart, there are other families like ours.”
“Then where are they?” she demanded. “Where are they?”
I dropped the ball on this one, you guys. I dropped it so hard it rolled away down the street and off a cliff.
Help 
darlas_mom pick it back up and more. She’s looking for photos “of you with your actual families. Straights with kids, gays and lesbians with kids, single parents (both moms and dads), blended families, families of different ethnicities or multiple ethnicities.” She wants ’em all. —Get yourselves into her book.
Cordwainer Bush.
Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair—
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I can’t believe they missed the obvious snark.
I mean, Katee Sackhoff is available, right?
A final complaint.
I do wish the young men of today wouldn’t refer to our people as “mamma” and “poppa.” It’s demeaning, and degrading to family values.
This is Kali’s last post.
hello my name is thurber and this post is where i say goodbye
poppa is disappointed
he says we havent written anything since he got home
but youre home youre home we say
and also more food
and anyway rabbit day is over i say
but he says it isnt
its dark outside though
yes but rabbit day ends at midnight he says
and beezel says its just as well because he never knew i had such a crush on abbie the cat
and beezel also says kali is at best a rarely well done lobster but i dont know what that means
so i jump him and poppa yells and mamma says stop it stop it and beezel hides under the stairs
he never got the newspaper job
or the tuna
but kali got some email shes been gloating ever since
and very mysterious and if you ask she pretends to be angry
she says meh a lot
meh meh
poppa says shes the only cat that quacks
anyway poppa said somebody had to say something
because he couldnt since it was still rabbit day
and beezel is still hiding under the stairs
and kali is saying meh
so
goodbye
ISO newspaper columnist.
Thurber doesn’t think we’re strong enough to turn a house upside-down.
“Forget about that,” I tell him. “Real estate is a chump’s game. We’re getting into journalism.”
“But you don’t keep a journal,” says Thurber.
“What do you think we’re doing today?” I say. “Besides, not that kind of journalism. Opinion journalism. Ops and eds. It’s a lot like journal journalism except everybody has to read you and they pay you lots of money.”
“Lots of money?” says Thurber. “Enough for tuna?”
“Enough for tuna and poppa’s office and mamma’s office too, I bet.”
“But we’d have to be very careful to only ever tell the truth unless we’re wrong unless we know we’re wrong,” says Thurber.
“No we don’t,” I said. “I’ve been studying this stuff. It’s great. You don’t have to be right or tell the truth or anything. You just make stuff up and write it down and go play golf and eat lots of banquet dinners of fish with powerful people who tell you anyway what you ought to be writing down.”
“I suppose that’s one way of making sure you don’t know you’re wrong. So that way you can’t lie.”
“Don’t worry about lying! I’m telling you, there’s no accountability for this stuff!”
“Don’t say that,” says Thurber, and he does the thing where he lies down and looks the other way like I’m not there.
“Thurber,” I say.
“Take it back,” he says. “Take it back.”
“Fine,” I tell him. “One day, yes, they will all be held accountable for what they’ve done.”
“Okay,” says Thurber, and just like that he’s happy again.
“Anyway, the Times is looking for somebody. They say it’s good to have some experience, or at least a father who wrote there once in the past or something, but I figure purring is just as good. We just listen to what Kali says when she thinks we aren’t looking and write it down every week and send it in, at least until they invite us to play golf and eat fish and tell us what to write.”
“I can’t play golf,” says Thurber.
“Don’t worry about it! We just have to drive liberals crazy. How hard can that be?”
The paradoxical genius of modern conservatism.
I should like now to elaborate upon some nuances which might have escaped the public-at-large regarding the conservative mission, a mission that I must admit seems today to be in some little disarray. Specifically, I wish to demonstrate that President Obama, though conservative, is hardly what conservatism requires at the moment, and that President Bush, though not at all conservative, should be allowed through his proxies in the Congress to complete the work he began.
I realize this seems paradoxical, even inconsistent, to some lesser minds. Allow me to explain.
The conservative mission, or conservatism, can be mostly aptly summed by quoting John L. O’Sullivan, publisher of a 19th c. periodical entitled The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, whose motto read, “The best government is that which governs least.” How true! Is it not the case, for instance, that when I am outside, and it begins to rain, I am forced to wait, humiliated, by the door, until my people deign to notice my condition and allow me to enter my own house? How much better would we all be if my ingress and egress were not governed by that dam’ door! (You may have originally encountered this motto in its more famous paraphrase by Henry David Thoreau, and it has also been attributed to either Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine. That its wisdom has been recognized by such radical revolutionaries only strengthens my point.)
For a time, the actions prescribed by the sainted Buckley were enough: to stand athwart history and yell “Stop!” Certainly, it led to the halcyon age of the sainted Reagan, who pioneered the technique of not-government. By denying the government the funds that it rapaciously sought, Reagan forced it into a posture of not-governing, thereby lessening the amount of government and increasing freedom for us all.
But the creeping socialism and liberal fascism of the dark and doleful Clintonion age redoubled government’s efforts to a truly dangerous degree. When Bush fils took office, it was with the mandate that he save this country and freedom itself from this very present danger. He could see that a return to not-government would not be enough. The extremity of our predicament served as an anvil upon which his native genius was beaten into conservatism’s greatest weapon: anti-government.
Anti-government appears to violate several principles of conservatism: it spends a great deal of money, writes an inordinate amount of new laws and rules, and intrudes to an impressive degree upon the lives of the people-at-large. But it does so in the service of destroying the very government liberal fascists would otherwise impose. Not-governing merely prevents government from further encroaching. Anti-government actively rolls it back. The immediate effects of the drastic anti-governing steps that are taken may well obscure the freedom we will ultimately gain, but we must trust to O’Sullivan and his iron maxim, until government is reduced to a thing which I can bat about between my paws. On that day, we shall truly be free.
Thus, the paradoxical genius of George W. Bush, who, I fear, will always be a martyr to the cause of conservatism; who saved it by taking such radically unconservative steps. It is perhaps too much to hope that President Obama will learn the necessary wisdom of anti-government—though already he finds himself forced into not-governing. I take solace, however, in the fact that Republicans in Congress will not stop pushing our anti-governing agenda until that glorious day when they reduce themselves out of the offices we will no longer require.
hello my name is thurber and this is an answer to a question
hello my name is thurber and this is an answer to a question
i have an email right here
well over there in the email program
it says whats going on
where is the pier
where is poppa
only it doesnt say poppa it says kip
and by pier it means the blog that poppa does
because the blog has pier in the title
and so i will tell the email what is going on
and you too
it is rabbit day
i mean rabbit hole day
thats what poppa said
he left his laptop open on the bed and said
its rabbit hole day
go ahead
you guys and maybe ill let you
cat blog all day
there is a link i would put in a link but i asked beezel and he lost patience and said i should learn how to paste the referent in the anchor or just use textile anyway and i dont know what that means and hes trying to get in here so ill let him back off beezel okay now okay
Jesus, Thurber. Typing straight into the blogging software like that. That’s for kids and Luddites. And could you use a proper title? And the shift frickin’ key? Anyway. Here’s the link. Now. Can I interest you fine folks out there in this cashier’s check I’ve got for a hundred thousand dollars? I can’t cash it myself for obvious reasons, but if you were to go to the bank with me and cash it for me, I’d be willing to split it sixty-forty, you know?
actually i have to say i when i said i had an email right here
it was an email i had beezel write
so i could say i had an email right here
and not be lying
only i was right when i said it
not wrong
because the email was right there since i had beezel write it and all
and if youre wrong youre not lying
so if youre not wrong i dont know
but i do know beezel doesnt have a cashiers check he has a piece of paper and he tried to write cashiers check on it just in case only it doesnt look right and anyway i think he put not enough zeroes in one hundred thousand
and im right about that
and im not lying
so that works out okay but i still dont know about the lying part
anyway i hope that answers the question i told him to ask in the email which is why i wrote this
Nigh unto brilliance.
I wish to take this opportunity to remind you all of one of the defining quotes of our time:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
How ironic it is that a mere cat can recognize the wisdom of these words when a vast majority of the supposedly more developed populace-at-large cannot. You will all come around, soon enough.
Step Three!
Thurber wants to know when the tuna’s getting here.
“First we have to order the fifty bajillion dollar airplane from France,” I remind him. “With the teak wood trim and the gold accents and the shag carpeting and the queen-sized bed with the big sunny windows and the Cordova leather seats.”
“And the Cordova leather baby seat,” says Thurber.
“Yes yes, the baby seat, though honestly they can just fly with her in their laps.”
“And the sushi chef,” says Thurber.
“It will have a full crew complement, yes yes.”
“Is that how we get the tuna?”
“No. I mean, sure, yes, I guess a sushi chef has his own tuna, but that’s not the tuna. Remember? Everybody’s gonna see we bought a fifty bajillion dollar airplane from France and they’ll yell at us and I’ll go on TV and I’ll purr and if they’re all like fifty bajillion dollars! From France! I’ll say like I don’t really see why I have to answer your questions if you’re gonna be meanies and then you go on TV and you look like that all remorseful and then we sell the French plane on eBay.”
“I don’t think we can get fifty bajillion dollars on eBay,” says Thurber.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think bajillion is a number.”
“Doesn’t matter! We could sell it to distraught solicitors from Nigeria with estate tax issues and it wouldn’t matter. We just need to make sure we get enough money for twenty pounds of tuna.”
“And that’s the tuna?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have to sell that tuna to buy more tuna or maybe salmon that we shift upstream so we can buy some tuna?”
“No. That’s the tuna.”
Thurber sighs. “I don’t get it.”
“Honestly, we’ve been over this five times now, Thurber.”
“Yeah, but we lose money.”
“It’s not our money.”
“It’s not?”
“Where are we gonna get fifty bajillion dollars? It’s government money, remember? Because we bought all those condos and that office building downtown and we lent all that money to the guy on the Segway to build more condos only nobody wants to buy condos anymore and also there’s that restaurant on the river where nobody wants to eat because of the peanuts, so we go to the government and we purr and you rub up against their leg like that and we say help us, please buy all this stuff from us because nobody else wants to, and the government says gosh, that’s a lot of stuff, maybe you’d better tell us how much it’s worth and we tell them fifty bajillion dollars and they give it to us and pat us on the head and say now don’t get in trouble again and we go and we buy the plane from France.”
“When did we buy all those condos?” says Thurber.
“We haven’t yet! We have to buy some houses and flip them, first.”
“We have to turn houses upside down?”
“They’re worth more that way. Keeps ’em dry when it floods and they go underwater.”
“Wow,” says Thurber. “Real estate is complicated.”
“You know, I bet we could get money for more than just twenty pounds of tuna. I bet we could get a million bucks even, so poppa could redecorate his office.”
“That would be nice,” says Thurber.
“So could you just help me go through this laundry? They’ve got to have left some money in some pockets somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” says Thurber. “When’s the tuna getting here?”
“Come on! Get down here and start rooting! This is too big to fail!”
hello my name is thurber and this is a post about what i do not understand
hello my name is thurber and this is a post about what i do not understand
i ask beezel about it
because beezel says he knows everything which
isnt true but he does know a lot so
sorry im not too sure about punctuation so i just tend to
leave it out but i think i did the contraction right
isnt dont wont cant
anyway i do try to spell properly
you have to give me credit for that even though
beezel says its the word processor
i ask beezel about why are all the newspapers so upset about the mayor
we have a new mayor his name is the same as a beer
poppa doesnt buy the beer though beezel told me that
the new mayor kissed a boy and now the newspapers say he has to quit
they mean quit being mayor not quit kissing boys
he can still kiss boys because we dont mind if mayors kiss boys here
at least thats what i thought and also the word processor doesnt like it when i say doesnt or dont but it wont tell me what to do about it
it doesnt like it when i say i either
anyway i said that
beezel said its not because he kissed a boy
its because he lied about kissing a boy
and he told the boy to lie about being kissed
and maybe he hired a reporter to not report only he didnt hire the reporter who was reporting so maybe that wasnt so smart but i was getting dizzy so i stopped him i said
but what about the president
and beezel said he didnt lie about kissing boys
and i said no he lied about the war
and beezel said no he didnt he hasnt had time to he just got started but who knows they work fast these days
and i said no the other one who lied about the war the first one
and beezel said oh yeah him
and i said why didnt he have to quit
why didnt the newspapers say he had to quit
not just being president
but also lying about the war
he didnt even quit that
hes still doing it
and kali got that look like she always gets and she got up off the bed and went downstairs like that
i should have mentioned we were up in the new bedroom but i didnt think it mattered only now i see maybe it did so thats where we were so pretend like i said it up there so the scene is set
and beezel said because its serious thats why
and i said because its serious so thats why he didnt have to quit
yes said beezel
and i said but kissing boys isnt serious
and beezel said well no not that serious
and i said so if its serious like a war and you lie about it then we shouldnt get upset
its way too serious to let it get to us says beezel
but if it isnt serious like kissing a boy then we should get upset
right says beezel because on account of all the serious things we cant get upset over what else are we going to do
and i said but a lot of people who read newspapers wanted him to quit being president or at least lying about the war is what i said and then i said but also a lot of people who read newspapers dont him to quit even though he lied about kissing the boy i mean the other him but anyway the newspapers all said he should quit even though they never said he should quit the first him i mean
and beezel said newspapers pfeh what do they know
and he got up and left which i think really means he didnt know either
even though he says he knows everything
i dont think its true
and also the word processor doesnt like pfeh
anyway thats why i wrote this blog post about what i do not understand about seriousness and stuff and kissing boys and lying
i dont think beezel lies when he says he knows everything
i just think hes wrong
because if youre wrong then you arent lying
right
question mark
Is this thing on?
Ahem.
Check. Check. 1. 2. 3. Check-check.
BOW DOWN BEFORE BEEZEL! BOW DOWN BEFORE BEEZEL NOOOOWWW!!!
Hmm.
Doesn’t quite have the same ring. Oh, wait, here comes Thurber—
One less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed.
Cal Thomas takes not so much the long as the hail-mary view of the necessary economic stimulus:
In an interview over the weekend with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the proposed “hundreds of millions of dollars” earmarked in the “stimulus” package for contraceptive services will help the economy. But wait. Won’t fewer people mean fewer taxpayers?
We have already reduced the number of taxpayers by an estimated 50 million since abortion became legal in 1973. If we had 50 million more people paying taxes, would we be in our current budget malaise? People mean taxes and since taxes are what Democrats are about, they are harming the economy by advocating fewer people through abortion and contraception.
In addition to being willfully stupid on the ostensible subject (a birth deferred is not a birth deleted; really, this is elementary), on the specific subject of the “hundreds of millions of dollars” earmarked in the “stimulus” package, Thomas—as you could probably tell from his overly judicious use of quotation marks—is lying through his shiny white teeth.
I suppose I understand the basic impulse, intellectually speaking, but damn.
I mean, you could just give them all to me.
Some versions of proprietary, persistent, large-scale popular fiction.
Elizabethan epics ride to the rescue of the beleaguered floppy comicbook:
One would expect this to come naturally to the Elizabethans because their taste must partly have been formed on those huge romances which run on as great tapestries of incident without changing or even much stressing character, and are echoed in the Arcadia and F--ry Queen; any one incident may be interesting, but the interest of their connection must depend on a sort of play of judgment between varieties of the same situation. Thus there is a lady in the Arcadia, unnamed, who induces the king her husband to suspect of treason the prince her stepson; a magnificent paragraph explains all the devices by which this was achieved. Twenty folio pages later, after some one has told another story, the knights come to the castle of a queen called Andromana, who tries to seduce them and finally allows them to joust for the pleasure of watching, by which means they escape. It is with pleasure and some interest that one finds, on considering who her relations are, that this is the same lady, but it is quite unimportant; in both parts she is only developed enough to fill the situation. Bianca in Women Beware Women is treated very like this, only more surprisingly; she is first the poor man’s modest wife, then the Duke’s grandiose and ruthless mistress; the idea of “development” is irrelevant to her. Nor is this crude or even unlifelike; it is the tragic idea of the play. She had chosen love in a cottage and could stick to it, but once seduced by the Duke she was sure to become a different person; what is “developed” is a side of her that she had suppressed till then altogether. The system of “construction by scenes” which allows of so sharp an effect clearly makes the scenes, the incidents, stand out as objects in themselves, to be compared even when they are not connected.
—William Empson, “Double Plots”
