Closure, After All These Years

I posted not long ago about the dangerous historical similarities Islamic-fascism, namely the similarities between groups like Al Qaeda and the Nazi form of Fascism that once presided over Europe with a horrific reign of terror holds. Well today, gratefully, there is one more historic connection between the two: the two faces of evil who gained their power by preying on the weak and murdering the innocent that we associate with both, Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, both found their demise by a bullet through the brain, on the same day, May 1^st, just 66 years apart.

I do not think I can say it as well as this, or the thousands of other commentators with a better command of language and writing than I can even pretend to have. Nor can I put it, as poignantly nor as truly heartfelt as those who lost family and closer friends than I did that day. But I am a New Yorker, and I was in the city that day and I can remember the feelings, and that leads me to look at the incredible success of tonight’s news that Osama has been killed with a personal and nationalistic, and even global perspective.

I also hope that from an international sense, this opens up the Middle East to the sort of modernism, pragmatism and level of sustainable democracy that it so desperately deserves. As I wrote about in that earlier post, the issues that have led to such violence in those countries is an economic and cultural clash that has served one side so well, and seemingly hurt the other so badly. It has been a clash of cultures and mindsets, and no one person, either literally or as a symbol, has served as a larger wedge in ensuring that those two cultures, Islam and the rest of the West, would hopefully continue to clash forever. Egypt earlier this year proved that no schism could last forever, especially not in a modern society, and this moment, when the face of that schism has been destroyed, is yet another positive step for everyone, no matter where they were from.

Ultimately, this is a symbolic victory. It represents both the ultimate closure to a horrific event, yet also an opening for an entire section of the world that that needs this sort of news. The closure part is obvious: we have gone on ten years fighting since 9/11, and we have arrested or killed innocent men and supremely guilty men. Along the way, it would seem that as a country, we have encountered political loss and the loss of reputation, and certainly more significant, the loss of life for those who served our country. Others have been brought to justice, even those perhaps more directly linked to 9/11, yet none offer the sort of ultimate closure that this death does for us. It feels like everything that has gone on over the past 10 years has led to this point, a much needed victory for America, and finally a resounding response to the largest open wound in our countries history.

“The Freddy Krueger Honorary ‘Back From the Dead!’ Tour”

I have been intently following Barrack Obama’s recent cross-country “Raise Taxes-apalooza” tour, or as I refer to it, the “The Freddy Krueger Honorary ‘Back From the Dead!’ Tour,” for a while now. Before I go further, however, this post is not an opinion on raising taxes or the overall performance of Mr. Obama himself. I will save that for my next posting coming in a couple of days. Instead, I offer you my take on the laughably partisan political stance of a man who was supposed to be able to transcend politics altogether. It has neither inspired nor angered me, but instead, quite the contrary, it has tickled me.  It has filled me with the sort of jaded amusement specially reserved for those times when I get to witness a public official so blatantly, and inefficiently, enter the muddied scrum of politicking. In an age where government seemingly cannot do anything right, least of all provide protection and service to its own citizens, the least is can do is provide a few giggles.

This amusement is a product of having front row seats to witness first hand President Obama’s ongoing and increasingly awkward dance with selling his tax policy. It is a tango that has gone on from the start of his first presidential campaign until today. Tax reform has proved an uneasy partner for him, causing him to shift goals and approach more times than a teenage boy attempting to finagle his way into second base. As an unabashed lover of the old VH1 show, “Behind The Music,” however, I was able to form a more apt and complex analogy. Obama’s political journey, it turns out, has taken on the form of a narrative that most closely resembles the journey nearly every music group takes along the bumpy road to stardom.

In these cases, a band usually releases a great and original first album. This, in turn, gains them a rabid and cult-like following of fans. This was Obama during the 2008 election, where he railed against the Bush tax cuts for the rich, endearing him to the grass-roots liberals who never quite trusted Hillary Clinton, whom they suspected, with good reason, to be more “business friendly.” They perhaps got this idea from her own husband’s failed experiment with a different sort of personal taxation: letting the rich sleep in a bedroom near him and collecting the proceeds. Of course, this came out after Clinton, having removed nearly as much financial regulation as Reagan himself, pardoned Marc Rich, the financier who paid his dues to society by, well, paying Clinton.

This first album, or the 08 election, spoke to a liberal sect who had, in recent years, acted like concert goers floating listlessly from each new fad or band of the moment, hoping to capture a the new hot thing they could call their own, with the ideology of Nader and the looks of Edwards.  They had eagerly gotten into bed with Howard “The Hulk” Dean. This was followed, begrudgingly, by a flirtation with John Kerry, the man who attempted to break Al Gore’s record of most consecutive days on a campaign trail while seemingly under the heavy influence of horse tranquilizers. Finally, they had discovered the hot new band that made music just for them, and he was unlike any other candidate we had previously seen in our history.

Inevitably of course, that same band is burdened with unreasonably high expectations to follow-up their sizzling debut. The groups delayed second album inevitably becomes influenced by eager and greedy record company executives, which for the sake of comedy I envision as Rand Paul sporting a Clive Davis-esque jumpsuit, sunglasses and all. Once this album, mangled by conflicting influences and vision, is released, it is always panned as merely junk for the mainstream. By now, their original core fans have deemed them as “sell outs.” This is the equivalent of the point not so long ago, when Obama extended, and in some cases, lowered, those same Bush Tax Cuts he once so vehemently disagreed with. This, of course, was the result of his desperately attempting a compromise with Republicans after his politically disastrous and belabored passing of the albatross that was Health-Care Reform. To those who loved him first, this was the ultimate betrayal.

One interesting note and similarity: during this tumultuous period, the hardcore fans always seem to blame a certain band member, almost always the drummer with the long hair and hefty drug problem, for their supposed bad influence in navigating the bands future. It is always the drummer who showed up late each day for recording sessions with a new girlfriend, and its always he or she who introduces the front man to either cocaine or heroin. Knowing this, it might make sense for someone to frisk Rahm Emanuel for drumsticks the next time they run into him in Chicago.

Finally, comes the all-important third album. For successful bands, with a new drummer in place, this is usually when they get it all together, and make an album that brings them back to their roots. In admitting they had strayed, they are making a desperate plea to their former groupies that they are, once again, cool.

This is the point that Obama finds himself today. He is trying to be ‘cool’ again. He has visited college campuses and the headquarters of Facebook to make his point about raising taxes, ironically both places supported by the interest of those who serve as the cultural gatekeepers of ‘cool’, yet also by those who don’t even pay taxes in the first place. He needs his hardcore fans again, if not for the countries sake, at least for reelection sake. Hence my pet nickname of the “Back from the Dead” tour. Perhaps, then, it is not a coincidence that Obama has centered his liberal spiritual awakening around Easter Sunday season.

The Hope Of Opening Day

“Repetition within immutable lines and rules – baseball is counterpoint: stability vying with volatility, tradition with the quest for a new edge, ancient rhythms and ever-new blood- an oft-told tale, repeated in every game a season, season after season.”
– Bart Giamatti

Opening Day in baseball is here, and it goes without saying, for any true baseball fan it remains the true start to summer, and a moment filled with the most overwhelming, and mostly irrational, feelings of hope that one feels regarding just about anything else in life. No matter how bad your team was last season, and still figures to be once again, humans, inherently and consistently choose to ignore the obvious, blinding us from the cold, harsh realities of the situation, and show up excitedly to watch the first pitch. Baseball in this way symbolizes what is at both of best and often times worst feature: our innate desire to romanticize and create a personalized narrative of our lives, even if it means we have to lie to ourselves to do so.

It is for this reason that, each year, at around this time, I make a point to re-read two of my favorite pieces of writing, the late commissioner of the sport, Bart Giamatti’s pieces “The Green Fields Of My Mind” and “The Story of Baseball- You Can Go Home Again.” These titles seem a bit contrived at first, like a bad John Fogerty track or Mitch Albom novel. Yet as an all too passionate sports fan, especially New York Met fan (tragically), my Dad introduced these articles, published excerpts from Giamatti’s books, and since then I have always returned to them. They are like old friends, perfect companions, to both inspire and temper the sort of hope all fans of baseball inevitably feel at the start of a long season.

Baseball is a rebirth. It is the start of summer, and it is youthful in every sense. Each season takes the form of the life, and the start, not ironically in the spring, is similar to the changes in nature: born in the spring, when hope is at its highest, and carries us through the long hot days of summer, maturing and experiencing inevitable high and low points, and then, unless you have defeated the overwhelming odds, dies, just as autumn beings and the cold picks up, when we need it most. This happens, (mostly, lockouts not included) like clockwork. Life is not always certain, but the season will always start again, and follow the same uncertain path and even more uncertain conclusion. That is why baseball is seemingly the only sport that we take true solace in, during times of national or international crisis. The fact that it carries on, regardless of disaster, gives us a link to a certain normalcy that otherwise might seem ridiculous given a certain moment.

Baseball is a religious experience for the fans. What exactly is the great difference between a baseball stadium and some sort of cathedral or temple? Both exist to house a group of people who believe in something greater than themselves, a shrine people take pilgrimages to in order to feel some sort of communal relationship with total strangers around them. Fans are essentially just people who strive to be a part of a larger, ‘imagined community’ so that they can feel like they belong, and experience depression and elation together, in the same building, often only moments apart. How often can we experience the deepest and most painful of emotions and know that nearly every other person around you is feeling the same thing? The rituals we have in watching games, hoping that our idiosyncratic series of jinxes or movements might somehow make a difference, is strikingly similar to religious thought.

In order to accept ant kind of religious system, there needs to be a sort of hope or belief system that allows people to make a leap of faith to choose to believe something outside of themselves with an ending that is uncertain. Pascal described this as a 50/50 wager, no more or less, that all our hopes and beliefs and ritual will account for something in the end. Embracing a team is just like that. We invest hours and hours of emotion, watching games that often seem endless, debating the most arcane statistics with friends and relatives, with the statistically small, yet enduring hope that we will eventually be rewarded. This is in fact the driving force for fans of any sport. It is not 50-50, but it is at least something. It is the possible promotion after years of hard work, the possibility of a lifelong marriage at the start of dating. That is why we get so upset when players use P.E.D’s for contract years or choose not to run out a fly ball. We expect the same draining level of passion from our teams’ players that we put into rooting for the game ourselves, even though we have no real hope of impacting the outcome of a game and they have all the chance to.

Furthermore, baseball is a game constructed to help us play out and realize our most idealistic, and unrealistic, vision of how our lives work out in reality. The game idealizes our supposed cyclical journey through life to reach comfort by enforcing strict rules demanding that all action and progress must be contained within a semblance fair ground, guarded by foul lines that technically stretch into infinity. Going further with that concept of the infinite, baseball is also not coincidently the only American sport I know of that can technically last forever. No outside forces can set a time limit or induce a certain result: the outcome is solely and completely dictated by the merit of the efforts of each player.

In reality, naïve hopes and wishes like these are proven each day to be impossible. Often times, it is those people who take the shortcuts, operating in the grey area outside the realm of fairness and law that succeed at an unthinkable level. In life, whether we are religious or not, we need to hold ourselves to some made up ethical or moral code to keep us within the fair points of those foul lines, or else we would all simply spin out of control, with the temptation to do otherwise simply too great. We still like to think, or at least hope, that as there is in baseball, in life there exists some sort of umpire to call out those who break the loose code of legal and ethical morals we have constructed.

Baseball is also more intricately intertwined with an even deeper understanding of the purpose and meaning of life. In baseball, reaching home is the entire objective of the game, its why we play and its why we watch. It’s tantalizingly close objective, yet also an incredibly difficult feat to accomplish. The path to get there is set out by the rules of the game, and in a way, following the base paths can be viewed as an allegory for following an uncertain path in life. In life, we are met with an onslaught of setbacks and difficulties, distractions that only serve to accentuate those very difficulties. Baseball too, is a system designed to severely restrain your freedom. On your path around the bases a player is filled with temptations, stealing a base for instance, or rules that impede natural, and excessive, progress such as having to tagging up or being slowed by a ground rule double. One must pass all these obstacles, all while making sure not to skip any of the bases along the way, in order to finally return home.

If baseball can be described in one simple way, Giamatti says, it is “The story of going home after having left home; the story of how difficult it is to find the origins one so deeply needs to find. It is the literary mode called Romance.” He further defines his concept of ‘home’ as such:

“Home is a concept, not a place; it is a state of mind where self-definition stars; it is origins – the mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original, perhaps like others, especially those loved ones, but discrete, distinct not to be copied. Home is where one first learned to be separate and it remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it ever were to occur, would happen.”

Perhaps in a way that makes the sport an all too idealized version of life. As Thomas Wolfe once famously said, one can never truly ever go home again. And Giamatti concedes as much, stating that in life, not baseball, “to go home may be impossible but it is often a driving necessity, or at least a compelling dream.” Yet baseball, as Giamatti also recognizes, is the only sport I know that introduces a loaded term like home into the field of play, and that must say something about the psyche of the American people, who all feel a paternal sort of ownership over the game despite how international it has become in recent years.

Most importantly, however, baseball is family. It is the one great thread that connects generations. Attending a baseball game is about the associations more than anything else. It is a game and experience of sense memories and the personal associations we have with it. Americans associate with the game as a national pastime because of its undeniable roots to our history. For a country so young, it is the game that has existed for nearly 200 years. And most of all, we associate it with those who introduced us or taught us the game: our parents. Growing up and playing catch at such young ages is perhaps the most primitive and egalitarian form of conversation we will ever hope to have with our parents. The memories we have of the game are often not based in actualities or fact, but in how our personal histories intertwine with those memories.

Family bonds are formed over stories and memories, and baseball specifically is a game that seems to be designed with a sort of storytelling in mind. Each game and each inning lingers on, and in between the blanks it is expected that the fans, the mothers and daughters or fathers and sons, fill in the blanks. This kind of banter, often mindless but also deeply personal or historical, is only possible in a game like baseball. In one of my favorite films, Field of Dreams, James Earle Jones describes the reasons for going out to the ballpark as a way to escape the lack of peace in the real word, and a longing for the past. Fathers take their sons to games so that their children can have the opportunity to sit where they sat when they were children and cheered where they sat when they cheered their own heroes of the past. Once again, it is cyclical, just like life. I was always allowed to skip school for opening day, just as my parents had when they were younger, and that shared guilty experience of breaking the rules for something as juvenile as a meaningless game in April bonds us together. I sincerely hope that one day, I can let my own kid skip a day of school to share the same experience with me.

This is all, for lack of a better word or keener intellect, really silly stuff. Personally, I have always detested the tendency for intellectuals to insert an excessive amount of psychoanalytical babble to anything, especially something as benign and fun as going to a game of baseball. Yet, here I am, writing four pages comparing baseball not only to a religion, but also analogous to the meaning of life and family in its entirety. Still, there must be a rational explanation for the utter irrationality of fans relationship with sports, and American’s with baseball specifically.

I am a lifelong and long suffering Mets fan, and the past three years for me have been historically hard to handle. On the field, we as fans have witness the greatest collapse in the history of the sport, causing us to miss the playoffs, and then years followed by smaller collapses or odd injuries and even odder plays that has led me to be convinced there is some sort of karmic curse on the franchise. Furthering this notion, just this off-season came the news that the team and its owners were broke, robbed blindly (or, allegedly, not so blindly) by Bernie Madoff, the man who operated his entire life outside the sanctity and comforts of the foul lines. Despite all of this evidence to the contrary, I still became giddy with the start of Pitchers and Catchers earlier this year. I found myself intently following the feel good stories of the spring, hoping, quite unreasonably, that Player X might finally stay healthy through 162 games this year, or Player Y might finally realize his potential, and give at least 20 quality starts.

Is any of this likely? Probably not. It is possible, though. And just as in life, I chose to hang onto that thinnest thread of possible good because it’s the only thing I could. For this reason, and many others, I found myself rushing home a few weeks ago, skipping my last class of the day, in order to catch the opening pitch of the new season. The Mets of course, were nearly no-hit and lost in a typically feeble fashion. But I was happy: I had once again skipped school for a righteous cause, and I was once again irrationally optimistic when I had no right to be on my 22nd Opening Day.

A Lifeline for Serious Film Fans

The implications of the Academy Awards the other night were much more interesting than the actually awards themselves. The hosts, James Franco and Anne Hathaway, proved to be, as expected, awkward and not up to the task. Furthermore, as has been the case for far too long now, the show was far too long, spending countless hours focusing on awards no one in the general public quite understands, and even worse, hours of Hollywood doing what it does best: patting itself on the back. Instead, the results of the major categories, as well as some interesting points about the films themselves should have led the audience, and America in general patting its collective self on the back. Most all of the films nominated and all of those awarded were smaller, adult focused films with independent backing, and focusing on topics that generally don’t make any money. The last point is what makes this year so very interesting, however. These films did make money, unexpectedly large sums of it in fact, and the implications of their box office success may change the course of the American film business and consequently film product for at least the near future.

Looking at the numbers, and the statements from studio heads, the future of film generally points in one direction: those that focus on children, usually CGI, and those that focus on young teenage boys or girls, namely mindless comic book films and their sequels for the former and, interestingly enough, horror films produced in the 10 to 20 million range for the latter.  In fact, Disney head Rich Ross took over the studio just a few years ago with the goal of only making family films with the potential for sequels and franchising.  Over the last few years, the top 10 grossing films for each have almost entirely been G rated or PG-13. Among those, really the only true adult films, outside of comic book based or twilight (whatever the heck that is) were inception and Avatar; with The Hangover representing the only true R rated film. Much has been made of this. With the inception of Netflix and other methods for streaming videos, the movies that Studio heads trust most are those that are driven intensely by a clear demographic that could also be considered “spectacles” or tentpole “event” pictures.

The independent film industry, on the other hand, which had gained so much prominence in the 1990s with the rise of companies like Miramax, were the sole parties responsible for making movies of taste. Yet, these companies died from multiple wounds. The first was self-inflicted, a victim of taking on too much capital during the hedge fund boom, and as a result they were tempted to spend wildly making expensive movies. They had left the comfort zone of adult driven serious films capped at a budget of $40 million or so, and as a result made poor decisions. The other death knell was the destruction of the DVD business at the hands of Netflix or I-tunes and other Internet companies. The DVD business was a key source of a revenue, and without it, once the hedge fund money dried up with the crash of 2008, companies that cared about taste rather than the bottom line in films nearly ceased to exist. Even those that did survive and were able to produce recent films like The Hurt Locker, faced a bitter pill to swallow: critics loved their works, and Oscar awarded them, yet they barely made back in profit what they had spent on their budget.

This years Oscar’s film, however, were different. Films like True Grit and the Town earned over $90 Million dollars, and films like Black Swan, the Social Network and the eventual Oscar winner The King’s Speech all earned over that sum themselves. Those are numbers that executives expect from their larger comedies, starring bankable stars, not serious films starring actors who have never appeared on a commercial in their lives. What happened? Well The New York Times recently proposed that perhaps the fact that America is aging as a whole is contributing to a larger number of adult theatergoers. The expansive number of baby boomers has in turn created an audience without kids to cater to and, now that they are retired, not much to do otherwise. Another argument is simply that the product was better this year, and that studios, though at a scale dwarfed by what they do with their larger summer films, managed to get behind them and market them more effectively than they had in the past. Personally, I have my theories but don’t have a set concrete opinion just yet. I think what happens, not quite this summer, but during next winters season and the summer after that, when the effects of the success of these sort of films can truly be felt, will let us know if perhaps the quality films, with real cultural resonance have been offered a last minute lifeline.

The Chiseled Face of Relief

Who needs sympathy when you can have Fergie?

More and more, it seems that in order for a relief effort to work, the need for an important, significant cause is overshadowed by the need for a celebrity to make it hip. The lagging tsunami relief effort coordinated to help those in Japan, well below what other recent, and similarly tragic events such as hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti, raises the question of what drives us to give money to relief efforts? At the risk of sounding detached and cynical, although that’s one of my favorite risks, it’s clear that what drives us to philanthropy is not our inherent altruistic nature but instead our increasingly, and somewhat bizarre, obsession with celebrity.

The question is, though, is there anything necessarily wrong with that? and the simple answer is, no. Whatever works to inspire people to give to others and to help is a good thing. But its sad that there exists a flip side to that: without an effective “marketing” campaign, situations can be neglected and overlooked.

There is a great moment in the recent film Bruno, where the title character, played by Sascha Baron Cohen, goes to see two blond “specialist” in the field of choosing charities to support. While I am not entirely sure that such a field should, or even actually does, exist, the two women depicted in the film help advise celebrities which worldwide trauma, whether it be Darfur or Haiti, they should get their formidable name and chiseled features behind. This is not matchmaking made out of aligning two needs together, but instead it is matchmaking nurtures one narcissistic side of the equation, with the hope that the other side, the one desperately in more need, is helped as a result.

Associating “hipness” with charity is not a new thing. The original combatant in the war against pollution and littering is not Teddy Roosevelt, whose progressive reforms on factories and other excessive elements during the tail end of the great industrial period, but instead perhaps the tears of the crying Indian, the pop-culture hero from the 1970s ads. This sort of charitable commercialization, thus, is not just beginning. But it does seem as though we are in the eye of some sort of storm.

What happened with Katrina in New Orleans is almost as unthinkable today as it was nearly six years ago. The images we saw seemed impossible to be from one of our cities. New Orleans was decimated beyond comprehension, an American city that in its destruction seemed to not be from America at all, but instead from the Third World. Yet the images of desperate citizens looting while the national guard attempted to keep order on boats with shotguns, and Sean Penn, seemed essentially like a bad post-apocalyptic movie, one that wouldn’t be so strange for Sean Penn to star in himself, as the “fictionalized hero with personal problems.” This is the role he attempted to play in real life there, and the camera man he hired to document his role and release them to the papers was there to make sure everyone knew about it. And you know what, all jokes aside, this P.R. stunt may have helped actually keep the discourse regarding the horrific event relevent past the point where people tried to move past it as a means to rationalize it.

The other event that helped keep Katrina on the front pages was the infamous video of Kanye West, next to Mike Myers who looked as though he was watching a car accident happen right before his very eyes, claiming that “George Bush does not care about black people.” This was in interesting argument to make, and anywhere outside the politically correct confines of network television, one that surely merited a discussion. The race issue with Katrina was undeniable, and while it might not be as simplistic as West’s assertion, had he made a statement like that on cable, perhaps on Bill Maher’s show, he might have been lauded as an intellectual instead of dismissed as ignorant.

Yet, the moment created a TMZ style you-tube viral video, and this was exactly what America, especially its youth, needed to keep discussing an issue and perhaps, as a result, give more thought about giving aid themselves. If one thing has become clear during the digital revolution, it’s that a piece of controversial media, a video or a tweet, that goes viral and involves a celebrity is undoubtedly the most effective marketing campaign possible, whether it involves a tragic disaster or a new summer blockbuster movie.

The issue in New Orleans remains anything but resolved. A startlingly large portion of those displaced are unable to return to their homes. Many streets still look as though the storm hit just yesterday. Rebuilding the levee’s is taking on a glacial pace. In fact, if that same storm were to hit again today, there is a good chance that a similar flooding would occur. The only person who continues to fight and build houses for those in need is, you guessed it, another celebrity: Brad Pitt. His efforts, it seems, are not so narcissistic, and perhaps that’s his problem. If he were to generate more publicity, perhaps even a controversial PR mishap, people might get a better idea that disasters need more sustained effort than a week.

While there was no controversy needed to help market Wyclef Jean’s noble efforts in Haiti, his presence has pushed the needle, forcing Americans to recognize a disaster that was incredibly close to home and desperately required our attention. Jean is a master at self-promotion, and always has been, and he used these skills to create a fund that received money via texts and other digital promotional efforts. Just as George Clooney became the beautiful, speckled gray face of Darfur, Wyclef became the face of Haiti, and for Americans to process these issues, we need a face to go along with them. We simply process and digest harder to fathom issues if they go down smoothly with a nice pop-culture image alongside.

Recent word from Japan is that they are not accepting foreign aid. Perhaps this is a product of the infamous Japanese attachment to a form of long-lost civility, or they are just developed enough to truly not need help. In the first four days of those other crisis mentioned above, Haiti raised 150 million and Katrina raised 108 million, while Japan has raised a mere 23 million. I can only imagine the possible difference if Lady Gaga would just get behind the issue…

Reform, Not Eradicate

 

Scott Walker hates your kids.

 

This supposed truth is as catchy as it is infuriating, and it is just what the teacher’s union in Wisconsin, and all other public unions across America want you to believe.  There’s just one problem: it’s not true.

 

The truth is, in fact, much more startling. The majority of states in our union face staggering budget deficits and financial issues that would make the executives at Lehman Brothers and AIG chuckle and reminisce. No, the real truth is that a large portion of these state’s budgets are spent on protecting the interests of public government unions. The scariest truth of all is that unless we seriously reform the way we deal with these unions, we will bankrupt ourselves much in the same way those banks did, with the taxpayers, as always, footing the bill.

 

These unions very existence seems to transcend the rules of rational investing and spending, private or public. They believe that they can continue to swallow taxpayer investment, receiving benefits while neglecting their own monetary contributions, and because of their bullying and powerful clout, they can do so beyond the realm of reasonable evaluation. This has been the status quo since the Kennedy administration, and despite the fact this model is causing our states to hemorrhage money at unprecedented levels, union leaders refuse to even acknowledge the need for change. I propose that, just as investors in a private company are allowed voting rights and a conference once a year to judge the direction of the company and hold its workers accountable, so too should taxpayers with the unions they subsidize.

 

Judging by their actions, unions want to be able to collectively bargain with regards to helping protect and enhance their benefits, yet they do not want to take part in any discussion about the accountability that comes with accepting special standards. It is hard to justify an entire segment of the population refusing to contribute even the smallest margin of their salaries to their own health-care or pension funds, while workers in other private industries, even those working for the federal government rather than the state, are afforded not even close to the same standards.  To use one of many examples, in New Jersey, where the budget deficit is nearly 10 billion, unions have spent millions of dollars campaigning against the notion that they might have to give even 1.5% of their salary towards their healthcare.

 

Looking at the teachers union specifically, in states like Wisconsin, taxpayers pay around 101,091 each year per teacher, a sum that is seemingly justifiable when you take into account the significant role education has in sustaining a successful and productive society and ensuring its future. In teacher’s hands, we place the most important responsibility: our kids. Yet, teachers are not held accountable for the failure of our public school system, and the humbling place our children rank worldwide in testing, because they are able to hide behind union rules that make it nearly impossible to fire teachers who have tenure, regardless of if they fail the most simple test of all: are they good teachers? Just as corrupt cops can hide behind the thin blue line of silence, failing teachers can fail their students for years, even decades, without any reproach. That is unacceptable.

 

These are all simple, and practical points, yet their simplicity and rationality underscores what is the greatest failure of the recent protests in Wisconsin that I touched upon at the start. Instead of settling on weakened unions conceding and accepting financial regulation, a significant feat, Walker saw the opportunity to kick them while they were down, and in doing so, incited a public outcry that took the debate and rhetoric away from his original point. Ultimately, by making the issue more ideological, demanding an end to collective bargaining and therefore a systematic destruction of the very idea of unions, and less practical, reforming unions to fit the financial terms of the present, Brown went too far and created a circus in the process.

 

The juvenile nature of the debate opened the door for the unions to revert to their time tested characterization of victimhood to garner support. The strategy, using the tired, yet comforting archetypes of yesterday, works. Let’s call them the “Frank Capra terms.” Big business and corrupt politicians undoubtedly dressed like “the man,” with their ubiquitous cigars somewhere nearby, attempting to break the will of the good guys, the teachers, firemen and cops.  By allowing them to weave this familiar narrative, Walker allowed the central issues to be obscured and ignored.

 

What has happened is Wisconsin may prove to be an all-important step forward or, regretfully, one backward. If anything, other states, led by Democrats and Republicans alike, can learn from the mistakes made there.  One particular Governor, Chris Christie from New Jersey, has astutely enhanced his popularity by taking a different tact from Walker, embracing the need for collective bargaining because, simply put, he knows his argument, when put in pragmatic and appealing terms, is the right one. At the very least, at least there is reasonable public discourse regarding an issue that has been ignored for too long. Regardless of how we get there, the end result must be clear: the creation of a system that works for the reality of today, not the wishful thinking of yesterday

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Market for Insanity

 

A few years from now, this whole Charlie Sheen ‘thing’ (I would say outburst but that just seems inadequate) is going to be taught in schools and universities across America. It won’t be within the context of the studying psychology and the definitions of psychotic behavior. Nor will scientist use his example or researchers, trying to understand the effects of cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and whatever else he has loudly boasted to use. No, instead, we will look at the past two-weeks, his manic behavior and the even more manic widespread public reaction and use it as a case study for what business, and more specifically, media and marketing. Through all his crazy ramblings and psychotic ranting, Charlie Sheen has provided a textbook example of marketing yourself, the William Randolph Hearst of a generation raised on twitter and TMZ.

 

America’s obsession with celebrity is neither unique nor exactly new. Anyone who has been to England recently can clearly see that they have us beat in the world of tabloid and the lengths they are willing to go. And anyone who contends that this is just a product of a generation removed from radio or books and immersed in Television and now the internet does have a valid point, but also an ignorant one. America has always been obsessed with scandal and celebrity, dating back to colonial times. Perhaps the greatest celebrity of the 19^th century was Jesse James, a man who had comics and books and songs written about him, and whose myth was as well known to Americans then as any other.

 

Just as people then were fascinated by this myth, the bad guy, going against the rules and breaking laws, people today are obsessed with Charlie Sheen, who uses hookers and cocaine as his publicity hook rather than horses and robbing banks. While Jessie James did not produce his own PR, Sheen has over the last week produced a media blitz unlike anything we really have seen before. What’s even more interesting too look at is that he has moved beyond the media establishment. He has gone on the today show, gone on Piers Morgan and gone on 20/20. In doing so he has reached quadrants, man and woman, in the 40 to 50 year old sector. Then he moved on to the world of twitter, fast replacing even Internet videos and articles as the way young people devour information, and conquered that world. He was the fasted person ever to reach a million followers, and will soon bypass every conventional superstar in fields like sports, politics and music to have the largest set of followers ever. While they all have fields, domains of specialty that demand we know them, Sheen has created a new one: insanity.

 

A Plea for Pragmatism

 

There is a great scene in the film “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” when our hero, played by the essential everyman Jimmy Stewart, makes an all-important realization: “ lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.”  This is a poignant and fairly radical thought. It is this radical notion that is the basis for what I want to propose in this post. The greatest issue facing the America, as a whole is not from terrorist or Islamic fundamentalist, rising oil prices or any other essentially external issue. The true issue facing America is more basic and fundamental: the lack of genuine, bold and pragmatic ideas at the forefront of American political policy-making and debate. The modern political climate emphasizes an adherence to knee-jerk ideology rather than discourse and genuine ideas. The downside of a world dominated by incessant news coverage and instant reaction is that popularity and positioning for elections now dominates every moment of an elected officials term. Decisions are made not based on a pragmatic understanding of what works or not, but instead on what will help you win? While it’s a distinctly American trait to distrust and blame our government and politicians, and while they make up be the public face of this issue, the problem is perpetuated by our relative inability to simply say enough is an enough.

The aversion towards potentially politically dangerous and uncomfortable public issues has led our country to overlook fundamental flaws in our economic and social systems. While America still may be, as Reagan often reminded us, a “shining city on a hill,” the illusion of that shine obscures the ruin and ongoing decay of the infrastructure within that city. Two of the most significant, and often overlooked problems revolve around our treatment of our nations poor, and more specifically, the strangulation of opportunity and hope for the minorities residing in our forgotten, war-torn inner-cities. The public education system in America has proven through its perpetual failure that the concept of equal opportunity for everyone, as a central part of the American dream, is today nothing more than a myth. The failure of the schools is merely a precursor for the uncontrollable issue of crime and drug abuse in those same neighborhoods. Furthermore, “The War on Drugs” has led to increase in crime as well as unsustainable growth in prison population and cost, while failing to make any impact in actually reducing drug use.

These are two public policy endeavors that do not require more funding or less funding, but an entirely new approach. They require we admit our mistakes in our assumptions and implementation. The numbers do not lie, but if we can examine them rationally and attempt to understand the implicit issues driving this failure, we can effect a change that goes beyond campaign slogans and stickers. There are fundamental flaws in the American system, and we have for too long attempted to attack these issues by pointing fingers at the mistakes made by others when the ultimate truth is resounding: until we actually fix the system, everyone is to blame. Going forward, we must return to a philosophy of pragmatism, a staple of the early 20^th century thought, in changing the way we approach issues, the way we think about them, and ultimately our decision on how to fix them.

These issues are neither Republican nor Democratic in nature, and their resolution cannot be found in the rhetoric of either party as they are presently constructed. It is simply too dangerous for these two established behemoths of American politics to take such a radical stand anymore. Therefore, for years both liberals and conservatives have thrown dollar after dollar at problems whose flaws were never really based in the lack of funds or equity behind them, even if that appeared to be the case of the surface and in the publics mind. Money was never the answer; it has always been the problem, fueling our ignorance. It was one of many instances of American politicians merely putting lipstick on a pig. If we fail to come to terms first with the depth of certain issues, we cannot hope to try and successfully respond to them. The great flaw historically in the American political system has always been the harmful comfort we achieve simply by putting ineffectual, short-term band-aids on gushing, systematic wounds. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, as Bill Clinton once famously stated, should the entire American government be institutionalized?

The strongest condemnation of the war on drugs might come from a man who spent his life fighting it: Former drug czar General Barry Mccaffrey. Mccaffrey, appointed by Bill Clinton, is a military man, not a career politician, a career where the truth is more important than the appearance of truth. So it is telling when he makes comments like the one below:

“We have a failed social policy and it has to be re-evaluated. Otherwise we are going to bankrupt ourselves, we can’t incarcerate our way out of this problem.”

Analysis of the drug problem, and the inefficiency of our specific so-called “war” on it, transcends any moral and cultural argument. Drugs are bad, those who sell them are bad and it is undeniable that certain ethnic and economic demographics are more mired in this evil than others. Still, despite a prevalent feeling of moral superiority over the inherently vanity and weakneess of drug abusers, if we choose to address the issue, which our government has made it its mandate to, we must at least approach it in the most practical, helpful and cost-efficient way possible.

The truth is in the numbers, and the empirical evidence. Our focus as a nation since the inception of our fight, whether in Nixon’s accumulation of Silent Majority votes up until Reagan’s righteous cultural crusade during the crack epidemic, has always been an intense focus the supply side of the issue. Drugs are fairly easy to move, unlike bombs or even guns. Despite the innumerable costs we have spent in attempting to eliminate their existence on the street corners, and those costs run a budget of nearly fifty billion dollars annually, they are too profitable, and their demand is too high for their existence ever to be realistically eradicated. We have done this through a method, as Mccaffrey highlights above, of unprecedented levels of arrests and incarceration.

Yet, in doing so, and disregarding the treatment behind the lurking other half of any drug transaction, the unquenchable demand of addiction, we have created what can be viewed in economic terms as an unstoppable market force. We refuse to analyze or accept the obvious incentive and market we have created for drug dealers by attempting to crack down on street corners and suppliers. While we hold dearly to the concept of making drugs harder for people to get, in doing so, we drive up the prices for the drugs that inevitably make it through. Today, the pharmaceutical cost of cleanly produced cocaine and heroin is only a fraction of what it might cost on the street. For the dealers, the higher the penalty we employ, the more lucrative the business becomes. By making transportation more expensive, by drying up the supply and the greater the threat of prison is, the more expensive the available stuff on the street will become. The more the competition, the stronger the drugs on the street become, and the greater the incentive it is for inner-city kids to join a drug cartel or gang. If drugs were distributed legally and responsibly, what product could drug dealers sell? What would they fight, and murder over?

Draconian punishment and jail time has statistically proven not to be any sort of deterrent for true addicts. Prison guards and cells do not fix what is ultimately a biological problem rather than a psychological or criminal one. Yet, in no way is it treated as any sort of public health issue.  Mayors and their police commissioners can be re-elected time and again for appearing being “tough on crime,” standing behind the increase in arrests and the continued intensity of punishment as proof of their supposed strength, yet it is our job as voters to go beyond looking at those numbers and attempt to understand the quality of those numbers, and what they actually implicate.

In this particular case, the implication behind the available numbers is undeniable. The statistics this ideology of law and order have produced are impressive mainly due to their shocking enormity: America houses a third of the world’s prisoners, while 50% of our control budget was spent on incarceration, only 10% was spent on treatment in 2000. In 1997, more people were arrested for marijuana possession than rape, murder and aggravated assault combined. As drug arrests have soared, arrests for reported violent crimes like the ones above have significantly gone down in nearly every major city.  Perhaps the most alarming statistics surround exactly which ethnic group is at the center of this alarming crackdown. While African-Americans represent only 15% of reported drug users, they represent 37% of those arrested, and nearly 74% of those eventually convicted. This creates and perpetuates the cycle that is criminalizing and destroying an entire segment of our population: addiction, incarceration and unemployment. As with most other issues in our society, the strongest chance a person has to break out of that cycle is through a good and effective education. Yet, our failed public school system is instead at the very root of that cycle, the catalyst that drives the consistent failure.

The problem with education again highlights our willing ignorance towards difficult questions combined with the lack of original and complex ideas coming from our politicians. Despite spending more than double on each student as we did in the 1970s, our public school has maintained the same failing scores over that same period of time with little variation. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is catching up to us in worrisome ways. Currently, we rank 18^th overall compared with 36 other top industrial nations, and in the fields that matter most for the coming “knowledge economy,” math and science, we rank far below many of those same countries. Once again, this is a socio-economic issue. The schools that are failing, and even worse, have been allowed to fail for so long are not coincidently centrally located in our urban ghettoes. Ultimately, the only way for a parent to ensure their child gets a proper education under our current system is by purchasing a home worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the right district and right part of town that feeds into a legitimate school. The level of delusion required to allow ourselves to believe this is possible for those citizens that are already severely limit is nearly impossible to imagine, but entirely too present in reality.

In placing our emphasis on testing rather than teaching we are once again focusing on the wrong element of the issue at hand, much as we have done with the drug war for too long now. Teachers who are members of powerful unions are more secure in their jobs than nearly anyone else is in the country in their given profession, even if there are major concerns about his or her performance. For almost 90% of our public school teachers there is no evaluation and no feedback on what they are good at or what they are not good at, Teachers who cannot do their jobs should not be trusted with the single most important job in any society, the one that ensures a countries future growth and success. Kids do not vote, so their well being in the eyes of politicians looking for reelection is in making their parents think they care, at least partially. Whether or not their parents care themselves is another question altogether, but the point remains the same: relative harmony among adults, regardless of whose interest they have in mind, often leads to a passivity that disregards the essential question of this entire debate: what is best for the children? The stakes are higher now more than ever because, simply put, industry as it once existed in America no longer has its place. Labor for those whom did not finish high school or who simply did not have the adequate aptitude for jobs that require a higher intellectual skill level used to make up a blue-collar middle class in our country that has vanished as the world has grown flatter, according to columnist Thomas Friedman. Those jobs have been sent over seas. And while it may be comforting to blame the authority in this case, as has always been the tendency of the American people since colonial time, it is not the fault of the businesses forced to adapt to the realities of a new economy, it is of the work force who have no adapted to their role in the new, developing realities of the world economic forecast. Furthermore, the burden of that inability to adapt is the result of the nature of the cyclical nature of destruction that we see in our worst areas. As the African-American, Hispanic and Asian communities grow rapidly to become our majority, those wealthy enough to afford a good education will become a minority in the American workforce.

How we finally take ourselves out of this cycle is a much harder question to answer, and one that certainly goes beyond the bounds of this brief analysis. The specific plan on how to fix both these issues, whether it be legalization and regulation of drugs as a whole, or the elimination of teacher tenure and a stronger emphasis on charter schools and school vouchers, is not yet important. The first step is figuring out how we can even get to the point where we can make such a bold step. Fixing a failed policy and program from the ground up takes time and patience, and above all fortitude. In looking at current trends of politics, voters and media coverage, there seems to be a dearth in nearly every one of these qualities. It is a situation further exacerbated by the lack of honest and thoughtful political discourse. Ours is a country that over the past decade has embraced a form of debate that is not so much progressive as it is regressive. The level of debate in our country has been reduced to angry rhetoric, from pseudo-intellectuals who prefer the sensational sound byte to the reasoned argument. Debate is implicit in any healthy form of Democracy. Debate is healthy. Debate is good. But debate is essentially a means to an end, nothing more and nothing else. Debate is not the end itself.

We live in the “era of the poll”. Politics has essentially become one long, never-ending racehorse, with politicians jockeying for position as we, the people, blindly keep betting regardless of how much we always seem to end up losing. In this race, however, winning and losing is dictated by approval ratings rather than successful implementation of real ideas. If you rock the boat, and try and change the status quo, more likely than not you face a greater possibility of being voted out of office than if you instead keep quiet and coast through your term. Create a ripple, not a wave. Political Scientist Brandice Canes-Wrone, in a study on the timing and effectiveness of Presidential pandering and public appeals, reached interesting conclusions, which she prefaced by stating:

“Nearly every public question is dissected, discussed and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election.”

Her study of the modern Presidency found that the President rarely would go public and stand behind a bill unless the majority of the public supports it. If he is either highly popular or unpopular, he will not make any sort of appeal, since there would be no real tangible political capital to be gained from doing so, regardless of how important the issue is. Finally, and most telling, was that overwhelming statistical evidence shows that the President will pander to the people regarding an issue only if the policy outcome of said issue will not be found out until after the next election. Ultimately, this proves that success in politics today is measured by the ability to know when to walk away from problems rather than how you attempt to solve them. This is a leadership style based on fear of losing votes or support from certain unions or special interest groups. In fact, it is tough to call that “leadership” at all.

The problem with the two case studies briefly examined above is that on the surface they seem much more dangerous politically than they actually are.  Our greatest fear has, and always will be, taxation or an excessively intrusive government. On the surface, the prospect of fixing these two issues, and others like them, awaken our objectivist nature that is a part of our generally shared inherent American ideology. Yet, these issues are instead examples of too much government interference, too much spending and too little adequate action.  The notion that to fix schools or help the poor in the inner cities would mean to continuously raising taxes for the rich in the suburbs is absolutely not the case. As exemplified above, we spend so much money on these problems already because it perpetuates the lie that we are doing more to help these situations when in fact the only way we do can do so would be to radically change our philosophy and approach to both. If we stop spending $50 billion dollars a year on cops working overtime to inflate statistics that mean nothing, and on housing “criminals” whose crime is addiction, and replace them with the legalized sale and taxation of drugs, the profits would be undeniable. This was the belief of economist Milton Friedman, not a radical tea-party member or an ultra-leftist. If we stopped giving money to teachers who simply cannot or will not teach, and instead to more effective and potentially less costly curriculum building or engaging after-school programs, our future economic forecast and potential for productivity would be much stronger. Regardless of the party lines on both sides of the aisle, the politics of aversion and bloated governmental intrusion without any semblance of self-awareness has become a staple of administrations representing both ideologies.

Helping other people, and forcing your neighbors problem to be your own is, and never will be, a popular notion in American politics that has always been a product of our overall tendency of individualism. This tendency is the what makes up the difference between America and the nations of Europe her citizens fled from. With that individualistic appreciation in mind, it must be noted that the debate surrounded issues such as these are distinctively individual in nature. We have an obligation to solve other people’s problems because those same problems will soon become our own. We do not have to help anyone, but we certainly do owe it to ourselves to fix a system entirely within our control so that they have a better chance to help themselves. Some will, and some will not. But our country will become that much stronger, and that much more lean and flexible in the future by cleaning up a mess before it gets any larger. The theme of this entire analysis is more radical in concept than in its potential practice.

The first step we must take is toward embracing a politics and political debate that is centered on a pragmatic philosophy that is ingrained in American history. In his shrewd observation of the nature of the American people, Alexis de Tocqueville once called “a practical bent” the “philosophical method of the Americans.” Pragmatic philosophers like William James and John Dewey embraced the power of action derived from observation and the reality of outcomes representing the truth. Empirical evidence derived from experience, studied objectively, represent the foundation of making proper judgments on whether something works or not. It seems like a simple idea, but it is one that we seemingly long ago forgot. Too often, we let ideology get in the way of doing what is most sensible. Certain tenants of pragmatism that author Bruce Kimball highlights are as follows:

“ Every belief and meaning, and truth itself, are fallible and revisable;” going further to state “experience is the dynamic interaction of organism and environment, resulting in a close interrelationship between thought and action.”

A new implementation of pragmatism is what is needed to rationally go through each issue and focus on solving problems rather than creating controversial rhetoric. As Social Scientist Daniel Yankelovich, speaking directly about a possible modern reincarnation of a pragmatic approach to analysis, wisely reached the following conclusion:

“It seems to me that the new pragmatism, as a way of thinking, as a way of approaching problems, is a powerful way to transcend many negative cultural forces. I believe it provides the common ground we need to revitalize our national gift for problem solving”

 

Pragmatic solutions and ideas are what fuel the American democratic system, but the modern political climate creates a competition with ideas in the form of group identities, tangible interest or the influence of organization and strategy. Special interest groups and unions make politics a vote and money gathering business, rather than what it should be: a results business. Figuring what works and what does not. Once we reach this important philosophical shift, we can work not on eliminating what does not work, but instead on fixing it, not superficially, but in a systematic and enduring way. It might be a fight mired initially in inevitable failure, but as Mr. Stewart once said, at least then we can be comforted in knowing that we are doing the right thing. This is the only way that the grand experiment of ideas that is America can continue to be successful in the 21^st century. As Pragmatist William James once said, “ man can alter his life by altering his thinking.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Animal the most influential restaurant in Los Angeles?

I was driven to Animal, the much-acclaimed Hollywood restaurant, for a few different reasons. The most compelling reason, for me in particular, had been an interview I had recently read with the restaurants two chefs, the self-proclaimed “Two Dudes” Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. When asked to name their two favorite ingredients, both responded “Salt” and “Fois Gras” respectively, without hesitation or qualification. For anyone that knows my very particular food tastes, this was a dream, bordering on romantic, match for me. It was as if I had just asked a blind date what her two greatest interests were, and she had just gleefully responded “The New York Jets and Woody Allen films.”

Still, beyond my basic and enduring interest in finding a good meal, I went to Animal to find out if it lived up to the grand proclamation made by Food critic Jonathon Gold, the Godfather of Los Angeles food, who had boldly named Animal “the most influential restaurant in all of Los Angeles.” Ultimately, I found this type of grand gesture, which I originally considered another example of a critic over-using hyperbole, as in fact, being something of an understatement. Animal as a concept, the food and the emphasis, transcends just Los Angeles, and is a statement about American food culture as a whole. If you are looking for the future of American cuisine, one need not look farther than this small, unmarked restaurant on Fairfax.

Shook and Dotolo have created something of a fusion, a middle ground of bold flavors and sloppy presentation that works at an almost artistic level. Along with their closest contemporary, David Chang and his Momofuku dynasty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, they seem to relish their place in between intricate preperation and the simplicity of their ingredients, using a modest, guerrilla budget and approach to cooking, to test lines, going back and forth between the two.  Ultimately, they have found a way to combine the two greatest European gastronomical movements of the past twenty years, Fergus Henderson’s “Nose to Tail” style, peasant cuts of meat, reinvented simply but flavorfully at his St. John restaurant in a bare warehouse of London, together with Ferran Adria’s philosophy of molecular gastronomy, using science to intricately combine numerous ingredients and flavors in a way that works, but just barely. They are able to make this unlikely marriage work by dousing it in pure Americana, filtering both through the “little boy” junk and fast food that has an unquestioned place in the legacy of American cuisine post- World War II. At Animal, bar food and fast food, the pastime of Los Angeles cuisine, such as Buffalo wings and sliders are refined using ingredients like pigtails and pork belly. It is a strange and complex reinterpretation of our simplest and most classic dishes. As they say themselves: “we are not reinventing the wheel, just offering our interpretation.”

It bears mentioning that both the Animal guys, as well as Chang, fancy themselves to be something of the punk rockers in the food world, and their restaurants play into that image. The décor at Animal is almost non-existent, the walls barren and white, and the menu, which claims to change every day but as a dining companion told me rarely does, is printed on a measly sheet of printer paper. The requisite rock-n-roll plays aloud on repeat, intending seemingly to provide a statement rather than a comfortable dining experience. They represent a whole new generation of modern chefs, wearing jeans and a tee shirt rather than a white coat, with much of their fame derived from television appearances, a new standard of publicity for any new age restaurateur. Even their cookbook, “Two Dudes, One Pan,” is emblematic of their existence as the poster boys for post-modern new media, a subtle reference to the famed, and excessively crude, viral video.

Just as their fame and style is a product of the new media “food punk” culture, their food is as well. Their style of cooking is respective of tradition, but also reminds us that they come from the generation of kids whose eyes were glued to their television and “Game Boy” rather than reading or eating vegetables. Their unquestioned food ADD both helps and hurts them. They say Animal, despite its success and innovativeness, is merely “25%” what they actually want to do. Likewise, their food combines a lot of ingredients, and sometimes can feel sloppy and “unfocused,” as one (older*) reviewer for the Los Angeles Times once lamented. In multiple interviews, they seemingly long for a larger array of advanced tools and instruments in their kitchen that would allow them to veer even farther and farther off the beaten path, a goal that may ultimately be dangerous. It is no coincidence, then, that the two chefs met when they were the only two students who couldn’t control their laughter at a lecture on the “rules of culinary school.”

Still, during my meal there, I experienced in full effect their commitment to taking things that are challenging, and make them accessible. They literally smother their version Fois Gras, a staple of haute French cuisine, in elements of the most basic American breakfast, biscuits and sausage gravy. While they lack the tools to go all out in the style of Adria and his scientific cooking, their goal is clearly to aim towards anything strange and surprising, the creating flavors and textures from unusual ingredients that cannot be done in a common kitchen. Their style indicates an utter resentment for the Julia Child movement toward cooking styles made easy at home. Not every home kitchen can make a chicken liver mousse, and I am almost certain that fewer can concoct bacon chocolate bars. They realize that they could make a stellar and successful burger, yet they choose not too because following an easy trend would guilt them.

In my opinion, this is the future of an American food scene that at the moment is quite splintered. On one side, there are the smaller restaurants, with minimal, simple ingredients, emphasizing local produce, a product of the post-boom world and a response to the excessive mega restaurants that came to symbolize the excess of the early 2000s (any enormous pan-Asian restaurant, with multiple versions of tuna tartar on their menu, serves as an easy example). On the other, there are the high-end restaurants, using techniques we only get to see on Top Chef or Iron Chef, that charge a fortune for their incredibly varied and detailed yet distant approach to food (Grant Achatz Alinea restaurant in Chicago, considered by many as the best in the country, serves as a prime example of this) that have a devoted following but simply do not feel practical to the average, non-foodie consumer. Animal, while probably closer to the Alinea model, draws influence from both, as well as the techniques of Europe, and creates a food that is comfortable to eat while intellectually challenging to figure out or replicate. Shook and Dotolo then might be considered the Scorsese or Tarantino of food, film directors who both led independent revolutions in their own artistic mediums: using smaller budgets and a Hollywood distribution system to filter through styles from Europe or Hong Kong using a uniquely American lens. Animal is nothing short of the quintessential post-modern restaurant going forward. One can conclude, then, that it is certainly not the last restaurant of its kind.

Understanding Our Enemy

It seems recently that our focus in international matters, perhaps not our military or our politicians but our own as a society, has shifted away from Al Qaeda. This is certainly not without reason. The war in Iraq, while justified by Al Qaeda, had nothing really to do with that group at all, and distracted us from focusing on our true enemy. Despite certain random squashed attacks, many of them at a dangerously ambitious and large scale, there seems to be a feeling that we have defeated them merely by killing or imprisoning its members. Yet, giving Islamic fascism a physical limit is a mistake. It is an ideology that cannot be contained merely through military or police action, and one that is systemic in its creation and sustained success in recruiting such willing young men. The effectiveness of trying to make this sort of ambiguous intellectual argument does not, however, grab the interest of Americans who care more about crime and punishment than understanding the systematic causes and effects of an issue.

Therefore, the best way to grab the attention of the public on an issue like this is to make a frightening and headline grabbing analogy: the brand of Islamic-Fascism which fuels Al Qaeda and other terrorist cells like it has only one clear and direct link in history, and the similarities are frightening. That link is surprisingly to the sort of Nazi fascism that led to the utter destruction of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Despite representing potential harm and definite evil, it seems on the surface as if the two share few similarities. Ultimately, however their origin, fermentation and active ideological tenets are strikingly similar.

Fascism has certain universal qualities. On feature is an extremely rigid adherence to the power of the state, which combines with a very limited definition to leave little room for leeway. Fascist sees those belonging to a shared state as sharing the same blood and the same history. That is all, and there is a very small margin left for interpretation of who is with them and who is against them. Compounded with that rigidity is the utter distaste, and better yet, anger and even distrust, fascist feel for outsiders attempts to infiltrate the state. Hitler specifically took this characteristic, and used it effectively, disguising his war campaign under the guise of desperately needing to unify the state.

There also exists a staunchly anti-modernization belief, which helps in a way explain the feeling the ideology has for ethnicity. That belief fuels, perhaps more than anything, what it is exactly that feeds fascist hatred toward ideologies that promote modernization at all costs, namely Democracy and Marxist-Communism. Fascist believes in an agrarian economy and actively detests any concerted movement toward cosmopolitism or industrialization.

Those two characteristics described above, together with the personality qualities that their existence tend to indicate (such as distrust, fear and anger as well as a sort of confusion as to whom and where that anger should be placed) all create a perfect storm with regards to the existence of ethnicity.  Ethnicity represents a clear and physical manifestation of an outsider within the ever-important nation, whose infiltration and very existence is seen to soil the blood that serves as your last and strongest bond. The freedom of an ethnic group, as was the case with Jews in Nazi Europe to have some influence in industry and markets, once again is unacceptable. The essential point in this argument is the understanding that fascist mistakenly confuse ethnicity with race. To say that ALL people within groups sharing histories or cultures, real or imagined, are all exactly alike is utterly irrational. Yet, it is this utter irrationality that characterizes the fascist view of ethnic groups and it is what makes it such a potentially frightening system of beliefs.

In Germany, the national personality qualities including distrust, fear and insecurity driven delusion, sprung out of very real national wounds. The Treaty of Versailles ending World War I dismantled the economic and social constructions of Germany, an already particularly proud country compared with the rest of the world. Internal despair combined with the weakness of being torn apart by known enemies without the power to help yourself, created a fractured and wounded political and social German state. Angry at industry, the west and economic depression that influenced their lives after that first war, the people of Germany chose to follow a strong, patriarchal leader: Hitler. His promise to restore unity and power, regardless of his methods or his specific vision for the future, these broad strokes spoke to them.

Ultimately, there are four inherent qualities in the modern Islamic psyche. First, you can look at the necessary conditions for the birth of fascism I described above. For the sake of this argument, it is important, however, to understand Islamic fascism does not have one concrete homeland or a classic singular politicized body. It, instead, a collection, or network, of young men bound by religion and culture. In this regard, whereas Fascism in Germany lived for the specific nation, Islam sees religion as the nation. Still, whether religion or a nation with borders is the connection, it is all within the blood that they share. And as a group, the existence of our blood in matters economic and political, in their homeland, is harmful and intrusive.

Islamic fascism was born out of a Middle East that had once ruled the economic and intellectual world, albeit centuries ago. It is a place and a people that still deeply maintain that historical pride. Furthermore their possession of the world’s greatest resource, oil, has caused capitalist cultures to dominate their economy. Instead of oil money going towards infrastructure, it flows into the hands of those far away in the West. Frustration at the world’s development, and a sort of insecure anger at the capitalistic intrusion, have combined to create the sort of ‘ultimate’ fascist psyche that I described above.

A mutual hatred of modernization, and especially cosmopolitanism, driven by a sense of pride, drives Islamic anger towards the west, taking the form of fascism, and not surprisingly, consequently violence. They too possess a strict view of brotherhood, marked by blood, beliefs and shared experience

All of these shared and renewed characteristics of fascism leads to the large scale shared psychological traits that leads to not only increased anger toward ethnic groups, but an inability to differentiate, specify and understand such general hatred. For them, the Jews still remain an essential and easy outlet for those angers. Better yet, a vague notion of the “The West” as a whole, singular and scientifically exact entity has become just another, larger and easier target.

Understanding your enemy is half the battle. Too few people understand our greatest existential threat today, Islamic Fascism, just as too few people recognized the danger and potential for violence with Nazi’s during the early 1930s. Once we can understand their danger, and better yet, the true psychological and historical reasons behind their cause and their anger, we can better formulate a plan to combat it, and ultimately, ensure that movements like these cannot grow and develop again in the future.