Saw the new Gatsby movie last week and liked it a lot. I didn’t like the old 70s one with Redford much, I found it boring when I saw it in high-school, and when I re-watched it a couple years ago I kept thinking Jack McCoy would say “Gatsby, I’m offering Man 1”. The new one captured the whole love affair with capitalism and conspicuous consumption much better (though I think I liked Gatsby’s shirts from the shirt-throwing scene better in the first one).
A lot of my favorite American books and movies are about the conflict between the seductive glitter of capitalism and the supposed emptiness and amorality of it all (“Sister Carrie” is another good example). I don’t know about you, but I like all the crazy shit we’re encouraged to buy here, especially electronics, liquor, and travel, and I wish I could afford more of it. I realize it’s mostly an empty experience but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best. The amorality of it all sometimes troubles me, but I don’t have enough totebagger or Jesus freak or back-to-the-lander in me to turn my back on it.
Alex Parenee makes the convincing case that Kinsley’s love of austerity is “a holdover from the days when it looked like liberalism Wasn’t Working and New Liberals with a bunch of crazy counter-intuitive conservative ideas were thought to be much more entertaining”, but for many others, it’s part of some misguided attempt to impose conservative morality on the capitalist system. I understand this moral urge, I favor imposing liberal morality in the form of a social safety net and the maintenance of a strong middle-class…but there’s a ton of evidence that these help generate the strong consumer base that is the bedrock of our economy anyway. Our system is based on getting people to buy stuff, and people only buy stuff when they have money.
For a lot of austerians, the conservative morals — punishing the middle-class for its excesses — come first and evidence that this might lead to better economic conditions comes second, or not at all (it’s a lot like Iraq: FREEDOM comes first, the details of the occupation comes second, or not at all). Strapping young bucks buying flatscreen teevees with their gubmint stimulus money is inherently evil, no matter what effect it has on the economy.
max
Strapping young bucks buying flatscreen teevees
with their gubmint stimulus moneyis inherently evilFTFY.
What it is with the fucking flatscreens I will never know. (‘Poor people, who are black because all poor people are black, even the white-skinned ones, are better off for there being flatscreen TV’s which they shouldn’t have anyways!’)
max
[‘Kinsley shouldn’t talk about economics, and Leon Wieseltier shouldn’t talk about war.’]
Frankensteinbeck
Yes. They get to hurt people, feel righteous, and regurgitate the abusive ‘I’m hurting you to help you’ thinking they grew up with. That’s at least two thirds of the Republican Party right there.
Breezeblock
Gang of Four??
Spaghetti Lee
I think, for the record, society could do with a little less consumption and a little more restraint in the long run. I think it would be good for society in terms of saving resources and in terms of maybe making people a little less greedy.
This is pretty standard ‘liberal’ stuff, so it sometimes surprises me how few liberals actually seem to believe it. There’s always gotta be some catch, some ‘actually, overconsumption is less damaging than you think’, some snide remark about hippies and utopias, sometimes even from people who know what ‘hippie-punching’ is–they fall victim to it themselves.
I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that tackling this sort of stuff from a big picture, top-down perspective would make more sense. Get clothing companies to figure out how to use water more efficiently. Build malls more efficient at retaining cold air so you don’t have to blast the A/C at full throttle 7 months a year. More fuel-efficient planes and cars, more electrical efficiency in appliances, that sort of thing. Hectoring individual rich people for fancy kitchen appliances or TVs/video games will most likely make them ignore you, and what does it solve? It’s not like them pledging to stop buying so much expensive crap will stop that crap from being produced-the resources are always being used.
Just my two cents.
DougJ
@Breezeblock:
Yes.
the Conster
Austerian employment policy is to hire the handicapped – to cut in line for their children at Disney. This is an inherently good and noble endeavor and is not excessive or exploitative at all because it’s all win/win and if the little people don’t like it they too can look forward to being hired when they’re handicapped after their Medicare is taken away.
Violet
I think you’re missing a step. In Iraq, oil (and Daddy issues) came first, FREEDOM was the sales job and the rest of it wasn’t worth thinking about. With the strapping young bucks buying tvs with stimulus money being evil, 1%er greed comes first, the young bucks etc. is the sales job, and the economy is an afterthought.
The plutocrats figure out how their policies can best keep them rich or make them even richer. Then the figure out how to sell them to the public.
Spaghetti Lee
Also, as if it needs to be said, hearing ‘what we need is a return to simplicity and good old-fashioned thrift!’ from Michael Kinsley (or David Brooks, or Peggy Noonan, or George Will, or…) is obviously useless, because it never seems to apply to them. They’ve earned their penthouses and fancy kitchen sets!
I will say that, while it is annoying, people like Megan McArdle who treat conspicuous consumption like it’s some sort of competitive sport because they’ve got nothing else in their life to gloat about, can be just as annoying, if not more so.
schrodinger's cat
Kinsley’s article is stupid. It is he and the people advocating for austerity who are waging a moral crusade not Krugman. Forget about morality, austerity does not make the economy grow. When the aggregate demand is low, in the midst of a recession, businesses pull back, they don’t hire more workers or spend as much. So the government should step into the breach in the form of a fiscal stimulus, so that the aggregate demand does not contract further . The interest rates are close to zero and we are in a liquidity trap so using any monetary measures is not effective in increasing the demand.
I was inspired to make Austerity Cat after reading Kinsley’s article.
owlbear1
Someone really should tell these morons that you can’t get Cathode Ray Tube TVs anymore.
For conservatives, being poor is supposed to mean living in cardboard boxes and eating from dumpsters. Allowing poor people eat healthy food and own TVs is a direct threat to their privledge.
Comrade Dread
Here I thought it was simply greed and selfishness, the old ‘Socialize the losses, but privatize the gains” economic philosophy that has worked really well for the the upper class in the last 30 years.
They want to spend their hundreds of billions on their projects, their wars, their corporate partners, and want to chuck grandma off the $1,200/month Social Security gravy train.
Sort of like having lunch with a friend who decides to order a lobster, a filet mignon, and a $100 bottle of wine at lunch, while you order a $12 burger and have water, and when the check comes, he throws down a $10 bill and walks out of the restaurant.
Villago Delenda Est
How dare the rabble aspire to live lives of any comfort whatsoever, that’s supposed to be exclusively the province of the top 1%.
There’s a reason why Jefferson was such a Franophile, and so eager to get an estate tax in place in the US.
Suffern ACE
Well, no one in Gatsby actually comes off well. But I think the Austerians might actually Gatsby. Without the parties. Upset that Daisy has run off with that entitled Tom, and unbalanced after she reveals that at some point, yes she loved Tom and the entitlements. But of course the austerians would never never would let Daisy drive, so it’s not the same.
Spaghetti Lee
One more thing…I also think safety nets and other welfare stuff is a different discussion altogether. It seems to me (from my unsourced and uneducated personal observations) that the Stuff Gap between rich and poor people is much smaller than the money gap. Lots of poor people have cars, tvs, video games. Most have basic stuff like fridges and stoves, etc. This doesn’t mean they’re not poor: they often put themselves into debt to get that stuff or have very little money left. Rich people buy nicer varieties of that stuff and they still have lots of money left. The richest people in the country aren’t the ones who buy the most consumer goods: If you’re really rich, the bulk of your money is probably sitting in a bank or a hedge fund, not serving anyone but you. That’s what I get radical about, more than consumer goods. It’s hard to talk about income caps and such because that’s such a non-starter, but it seems like if you can’t buy all the nicest, classiest stuff on, say a few million a year*, say, then you’re just not good with money. The people who bank 9 or 10 figures and leave most of it sitting in a hedge fund are just running up the score. Even they’re not enjoying their money-not in any way beyond gloating about it (which is enough for some, I guess). Meanwhile, people get sick/starve and die. More people than us on the left ought to see the disconnect here, but I guess not.
*-This leaves out the ‘private island, swimming pool full of champagne, 85 classic cars in a private collection’ kind of luxury goods, but people who can afford that are so far out in the stratosphere that it’s hard to put them in any sort of context with the rest of us, even the ‘merely’ rich.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
If the economy grows, the slice of the pie of the top 1% might shrink a few points.
And we can’t have that.
ranchandsyrup
Over the past week I have noticed that the younger generation only sees Gatsby as an unfulfilled love
“great” love story between Daisy and Gatsby and not a critique of societal head-up-its-assedness.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spaghetti Lee:
All that reeks of the sort of socialism that Dick Cheney warned us about when it was suggested that energy conservation might be an effective means of reducing our overseas energy needs.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Well at least the academic backers of austerity, the other Harvard duo, Alesina and Ardagna were advocating for austerity due to its supposed expansionary properties. A study that has been thoroughly debunked.
swbarnes2
@owlbear1: @owlbear1:
I think for conservatives, anyone other than them or theirs living outside of a cardboard box is an affront. Middle class people aren’t good enough to enjoy buying things, they aren’t even good enough to enjoy sex, let alone living through a difficult pregnancy. When people they don’t approve of (pretty much everyone) tries to live a decent life, they are reaching beyond their desserts, and it’s morally right for them to be smacked down hard.
srv
Perhaps you can help Bobo in understanding why there is no morality at the DoJ, no one to stand up and defend The Constitution.
Too Many Flat Screens.
jl
Many people are deeply confused and like to rationalize whatever feels good at the moment. That is my take away from the discussion.
As for consumer electronic flapdoodles, I guess they’re OK. I like cell phones for the convenience of texting and very portable (for for ATT, semi-portable) voice communication. Bud dammit, I still can’t figure out and don’t care about most of the bells and whistles. But then, I am an old fart.
StringOnAStick
@schrodinger’s cat: Austerity Cat is purrfect; I can’t recall a better single image explanation of a political concept ever, especially involving cats.
raven
I just started “The Guns at Last Light” by Rick Atkinson. It’s about D-Day and the drive across Europe and he begins with a description of Britain mentions “Austerity Bread” with a hint of sawdust. That’s what they’re gunnin for.
Trollhattan
@owlbear1:
Sure you can: you steal one from another poor person. Pretty sure that’s what O’Reilly told me. Then you order some [email protected]#%ing ice tea.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@ranchandsyrup: The “carelessness” of Tom and Daisy is something the youngsters aspire to these days, not look down upon.
jl
@StringOnAStick: thanks, I missed Austerity Cat. I agree, an excellent summary.
? Martin
I don’t understand why we haven’t impeached yet:
Obama breaches Marine umbrella protocol
Worse than Hitler!
schrodinger's cat
@StringOnAStick: Thanks!
Trollhattan
@ranchandsyrup:
That, and an aspirational, “When I’M rich, I’m so going to do it better than Gatsby!”
Trollhattan
@? Martin:
What if they’re Bulgarian death umbrellas? Did anybody think of that?
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee: Above a certain income you should be required to own a boat[1]. That will drain the excess and create jobs in boat building and maintenance.
Go up another bracket and you’re required to get an airplane.
[1] A hole in the water into which one pours money.
ranchandsyrup
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Fucking hell. Attaching onion to belt, going to yell at clouds and for kids to get off my lawn post haste.
? Martin
@Trollhattan: Still have to impeach.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
I will give the Air Force credit for one thing…they are allowed to carry and use umbrellas (the Army hates them, too, so fuck your class A’s in a rain storm…) to show that they’re smart enough to keep the rain off their uniforms. Of course, these are the guys who fly stealth bombers that aren’t so stealthy in the rain, but whatever…
schrodinger's cat
@? Martin: This doesn’t make sense, what is the problem here? Winger gibberish has become its own language.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: When the fuck did you wear Class A’s? I wore em comin and goin in airports and that was it. And umbrellas are for limey’s and fly boys.
Ivan X
I watched it until about the party scene, and then I just had to leave, so I did. The book has weight because it tapped into the deep veins of American capitalism and culture. In the movie, by giving everything the hyper treatment — making everything look, and everyone act, entirely unreal — it was no longer about America because it didn’t actually look like anywhere that exists, so it had no actual resonance. It was pretty much the Fifth Element in the jazz age, and that didn’t work for me. I guess it’s one of those movies where if you can enter the world of its intentional artifice, you can enjoy it, but I couldn’t. Also, too, Spider-Man was narrating.
I agree that the Redford version bored me in high school, too.
Mnemosyne
I never read Gatsby in high school so I only recently got around to it. What really struck me about it is that it’s not about the rich, it’s about the upper class (aka the Topic That Dare Not Speak Its Name in American society). It doesn’t matter how much money Gatsby has, he will never, ever be able to marry Daisy Buchanan, because he is not the Right Kind of People. He didn’t go to the right schools. Gatsby’s tragedy is that he thinks he can buy his way in because WWI upended the class system, but he’s wrong. The war ended and everything went back to the way it was, which is why Daisy will never leave Tom even though Gatsby has more money.
It’s not about money. It’s about social class.
owlbear1
@? Martin:
There is no provision in the Marine Corps uniform regulation guidelines that allows a male Marine to carry an umbrella
Isn’t it obvious that Obama has condemned those two Marines to burn in Hell for eternity?
Suffern ACE
@? Martin: We truly are a stupid, stupid country and the world will be better off when our empire falls.
raven
SPRINGFIELD-The idea of Illinoisans turning to pot to treat severe illnesses moved closer to reality Friday after the Illinois Senate approved the medicinal use of marijuana over GOP objections it would encourage more serious drug use.
Go Illini, Chef Ra would be proud!
catclub
@ranchandsyrup: Don’t worry, the youngers also thought Bullwinkle cartoons were for kids.
scav
The Great Bunga Bunga?
Mike in NC
@raven:
I pre-ordered from Amazon a few weeks back, and then downloaded a free 100-page sample from iTunes to my iPad. I was so engrossed that I had to order the whole damn book (almost 1500 pages) and have been reading it all day.
raven
@Mike in NC: Yea, it’s hard to put down. Have you read The Long Grey Line about the West Point Class of 66? Really great book.
SatanicPanic
Anti-consumerism is one of those areas that liberals sound reactionary. I get that over-consumption can be bad for the planet, but we don’t have to make it into an issue of morality like some liberals like to do. I like to consume lots of books, is that bad?
It seems like it’s just the olds that are always harping on this.
(as usual I’m trying to spark some inter-generational fighting here)
BGK
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ahem. My oldest cat Jack is a full-on socialist. He always lets the youger cats eat first, and has no issue with sharing. He does maintain the top-cat privilege of dispensing slobbery allogrooming whenever he damned well feels like it.
Spaghetti Lee
@ranchandsyrup:
Well, why shouldn’t they (we)? There’s plenty of unfulfilled love stories to go around, but if you’re a teenager these days who the hell’s going to be the societal role model to teach you about class conflict and Marxism? I only got on that path because I stumbled across Kalle Lasn’s books in high school.
Roger Moore
@max:
They don’t understand the way prices come down as the technology matures. People who bought fancy flat screen TVs when they were outrageously expensive new tech- and re-bought when each new advance came out- think of them as expensive playthings. They don’t understand that you can get a huge TV for about as much as it costs to subscribe to cable for a year, and for substantially cheaper if you get a cast-off from some rich fool who always has to have the latest and greatest. It’s the same thing for their fixation on teh poors having smartphones; they still think of them as being premium devices rather than something the phone company throws in as an enticement to sign up for a long-term contract.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: ” It doesn’t matter how much money Gatsby has, he will never, ever be able to marry Daisy Buchanan, because he is not the Right Kind of People.”
Never is a long time but Faulkner answered that, wait a generation. See:
The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: Or they think they are an enticement to vote for Obama.
ranchandsyrup
@Spaghetti Lee: I’ll recommend to the TX textbook commission that they add in a unit on the subject you suggest and then surely the other states will follow their lead. It is nice to have fantasies.
raven
@SatanicPanic: As my father-in-law got older and older his whole focus was on leaving his kids as much as possible. I think older folks see this austerity shit as a way to keep what they “earned”. I’m old but I don’t have kids so I don’t care.
Librarian
I haven’t seen the new Gatsby, but I like the 1974 Redford version, because it seemed to me that those who made it tried to capture the capture the spirit of the book and the 1920s, especially in the party scenes. It seemed thoughtful and slow-paced, and I don’t like what I’ve been hearing about the new one and how it is a sensory bombardment and uses modern music and CGI.
schrodinger's cat
@BGK: My fat orange kitteh, eats Yogi kitteh’s food too, but she doesn’t have to smack him, he just lets her eat from his bowl. BTW you has very beautiful kittehs.
Mnemosyne
@BGK:
Heh. When we used to put Keaton in group boarding (back before we had 3 cats and it became way too freakin’ expensive), they told us that he very quickly became top cat and dispensed groomings to one and all in the room.
A Humble Lurker
I don’t think capitalism and buying things by itself is a bad thing. It’s just like you said; it’s amoral. It makes things a hell of a lot easier to have a dishwasher or a car or a house where you have the space to turn around in, but that’s all it does. If you try to look for a deeper pleasure in buying things than just something that can make your life easier or give you some fun distraction for a while, you’re gonna come up empty.
I would say capitalism is like any other tool: good and bad things can come from it, depending on how it’s handled. Just remember that a tool is all it is, not some weird magic wand.
raven
@Librarian: I haven’t either but if I did and someone made a peep I’d be kickin their ass up and down the aisle!
SatanicPanic
@raven: I’m more thinking of all the hippies who think buying stuff you want makes you a sellout to the man.
BGK
@schrodinger’s cat:
Thank you. I’m partial to them.
That’s Jack and Ava in the previous pic.
Sophia is not keen on the grooming.
Rizzo’s not all that happy either.
raven
@SatanicPanic: I remember how pissed off some of my friends were when I got my first “straight” job. . . at 30!
Mnemosyne
@ranchandsyrup:
To be fair, Hollywood presented Wuthering Heights as a great tragic love story and not as the creepy tale of intergenerational abuse that it actually is.
I mean, spoiler alert, but Cathy’s ghost kills Heathcliff in the book because she wants revenge for what he did to her son. Not exactly what Merle Oberon did in the movie version, y’know?
MattR
@Roger Moore:
To reinforce your point, yesterday Woot just had a refurbished Hisense 40″ 1080p LED TV on sale for $235 including shipping (which is just under $19.60 a month for a year)
Chris
I agree with what I think you’re trying to say.
To me, worrying about what consumerism does to consumerist’s “soul” or whatever is… irrelevant: ninety percent of us can’t afford to live like that anyway. It’s like all these people who talk about charity in terms of “isn’t it better morally to give voluntarily out of the goodness of your heart than to pay taxes…” It’s a worldview that sees everything as a morality tale focused on the rich guy, in which the rest of us are all just background characters.
Pardon my French, but I don’t give a fuck if the rich guy feels “hollow” from lavish spending, or if he’s not giving enough to charity to win brownie points with the Almighty. The real sin with that kind of wealth accumulation isn’t what he’s doing to himself – it’s the fact that regular people and especially the bottom 50% are going broke, homeless, hungry or whatever for want of money that the rich are pissing away or stashing away pointlessly.
As far as I’m concerned, once everybody in society’s been assured a decent human standard of living, the rich are free to blow whatever’s left on all the booze, parties and yachts they want.
Citizen_X
This country gives me me-graine.
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
Problem is, I think, a society that doesn’t attach any morality to consumption will find it much harder to care for the poor, because anyone with money is going to have that ‘I got mine Jack’ attitude and aren’t going to listen to pleas for ‘decent human standards of living’ for everyone. See Reagan, Ronald and Rand, Ayn. To get people to change society, you first have to convince them in the first place that something’s wrong with it.
Is all the talk about rich people with empty souls a bit overblown, and dependent on the privilege of wealth to begin with? Yeah, sure, OK. Better than the alternative of rich people declaring their wealth to be a moral good and a mark of superiority. We’ve been living with that alternative for a while now.
? Martin
@schrodinger’s cat:
So, because Obama had a Marine hold an umbrella over him so he could give a presser in the Rose Garden with the Turkish Prime Minister, as presumed Commander In Chief he forced FORCED! that Marine to break the UCMJ. It’s exactly the same as if he told that Marine to skull fuck an aborted fetus. It’s quite apparent from the regs that Marines are to never, ever touch an umbrella ever for any reason. If their wife asks them to hand them one, they may not. They must say “Ma’am, that would breach my oath and loyalty the United States. If you ask me to hand you an umbrella again, I will be forced to shoot you in the face with my M4.” If they are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a North Korean terrorist in some villa somewhere and in the struggle the North Korean manages to disarm the Marine, the Marine must not pick up the umbrella laying there at his feet and use it for self defense. Instead he must say “Although the Geneva Convention states that I may use this umbrella to defend myself, my nation expects better and I am to allow you to kill me with your Kim Jung Il People’s Memorial Combat Knife”
It’s quite simple, really.
DanF
Austerity is way to stop the economy. I may not make any more money as a rich man, but I also know that no one is going to pass me. My dick remains among the largest in the land.
This is every bit as important as teaching the poors a lesson in morality through frugality. As long as they’re suffering, I know they aren’t gaining.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Well, there’s lots of folks for whom the greatest movie love stories are the ones that solve the class and race issues by having the male lover sink with the ship or having the non-blue human just invent technology to turn blue and get functioning tail.
I think the kids are just really kind of starved for love stories. I watched the Gatsby movie and as an adult, I thought “man, the directors want this to be a love story, but Gatsby is just creepy.” Nick and Jordan want Jay and Daisy to get together a lot more than the audience does.
Baud
@? Martin:
Umbrellas are the Devil’s accessory.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
That’s the point, though — Gatsby will never be able to buy his own way into the upper class. He can do a Joe Kennedy and get his children into the upper class by sending them to the right schools, marrying them off to impoverished upper class families like the Bouviers, etc. but Joe Kennedy himself was never accepted as being The Right Kind of People.
Daisy would never marry Gatsby because it would mean leaving her current position in the upper class, and she values that far more than mere emotion.
@Chris:
That’s why I’m saying that people think Gatsby is about money when it’s really about social class. Gatsby can buy anything he wants except the social position that he craves. It’s not really about consumerism, it’s about trying to buy himself a higher position on the social class ladder and failing, because it’s not actually about money.
jayjaybear
As one of my fellow gay activists back in college told me once, “I’d be a Social Democrat, but I love my designer clothes way too much.”
Roger Moore
@Chris:
This. To amplify, the problem isn’t with the way the rich are spending their money, it’s with the way they’re acquiring it. If you can make yourself rich while paying your employees (and contractors) well, respecting the environment, and generally making the world a better place, more power to you. You ought to be allowed to reward yourself. If you make yourself rich by cheating your workers, destroying the environment, and generally making the world worse off, it doesn’t really matter how you spend your money. There’s nothing you can do with your money that will undo the wrongs you did in getting it.
Mnemosyne
@Spaghetti Lee:
That was one of the reasons that The Descendants worked for me, though I know some people here were grumbling about The Problems of Rich People. I thought a big part of the point of the movie was that being rich doesn’t protect you from the emotional pain of having a loved one die or finding out she was cheating on you. Their problems didn’t stem from being rich, they stemmed from being human and discovering that money does not, in fact, solve every problem.
I also really liked the Sofia Coppola version of Marie Antoinette, for similar reasons.
SatanicPanic
@raven: That’s some dedication to slackerism!
BillinGlendaleCA
@MattR: And there’s always the thrift stores, we find all sorts of stuff there. Yes I’ve seen flat screens there.
artem1s
@? Martin:
According to
Marine Corpswingnut regulationsMCO P1020.34F of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations chapter 3, a white male Marine is not allowed tocarry an umbrella while in uniformappear subservient to a blah President.Spaghetti Lee
@? Martin:
Is there a logical reason for the rule anyway? Like, holding an umbrella leaves them unable to grab their pistol if necessary or something? Or is it just ‘real men don’t need umbrellas?’
And yes, this is a dumb, dumb country if people actually get angry about that.
raven
@SatanicPanic: Ah no, we thought we were revolutionaries.
ranchandsyrup
@Mnemosyne: A good point, Mnem. I told the youngsters that they should read the book and they may see other angles. Hope you are well.
Citizen_X
@? Martin: Rebecca at Wonkette has some, oh, pointed comments from her Marine brother, here:
And then said brother writes a more carefully-considered message, one that uses the phrase “subhuman motile turd.”
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
“Attaching morality to consumption” is as likely to be used in the upper classes’ favor as not, though – it’s the tool through which you repeatedly tell the poor “don’t get greedy and start dreaming above your station, it’s bad to be greedy, better that you live in honestly earned poverty for which you will be rewarded in heaven” – meanwhile the upper classes keep partying because the rules don’t apply to them.
@Roger Moore:
This. And it’s why finger-waggling conservatives telling everyone that people who want redistribution are just jealous and want to tear down the rich, as usual, have it exactly wrong and backwards. I don’t begrudge the rich their wealth. As long as they earned it honestly (and that’s a higher bar to pass than “legally,” especially these days), e.g. without harming people or denying them their due for their hard work, then good for them. They’re the ones who can’t bring themselves to earn money without tearing other people down, the ones for whom it’s not enough to be rich, everyone else has to be poor too.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Schroe- love the cat. My only complaint is that between the title and the first comment, all the best jokes were already taken, leaving me nothing witty to add when I share on FB ;)
schrodinger's cat
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Thanks fur sharing it.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
This is the main reason I don’t hate Bill Gates as much as many other people do. I don’t like Microsoft’s business practices- they did things that were definitely wrong and probably illegal- but overall Microsoft made the world a better place. They made products that people wanted and needed, treated their employees well, and made a lot of people who built the company rich, not just Gates and Allen.
Mike in NC
Is it OK just to renounce Trent Lott’s wife? Oh, wait, I was thinking of Mitch McConnell.
We weren’t allowed to use umbrellas at Navy OCS. You could wear a raincoat, but only if the entire company had on matching raincoats. Same with windbreakers. If half a formation showed up without them, but the other half did, they had to be removed so that everybody looked “uniform” while marching off to class. Thus did we ex-civilians learn the term “chickenshit”.
Todd
If a meritorious inheritor can’t lord it over as many lowly people as possible, what’s the point in having money?
If I win this Saturday’s Powerball, the cash option is serious “fuck all y’all” money. Shit, it’s Romney money.
I plan on using it like Al Czervik in Caddyshack, and being really goddamn tacky at society functions.
Suffern ACE
@Mike in NC: yes. If the marine were using the umbrella himself, that would be a problem. If the Turkish PM were allowed to get wet, that might lead to bigger problems. I’m so glad the marine wasn’t confused by this.
DFH no.6
He could be a real shit about a lot of things (misogyny among the worst, of course) so anything he (supposedly) wrote needs to be looked at skeptically, but I think old Paul of Tarsus was on to something over there in 1 Corinthians:
“if the dead be not raised, then we might as well eat, drink (and be merry) for tomorrow we die”
Some of the wisest words to be found in the entire Holy Writ, I think. Paul was an austerian’s austerian, obviously, but only because he believed that he — and any others who followed his program — thereby purchased an eternity of bliss. No pot of gold at the end? Then fuck the austerity.
Since I long ago figured out that it’s highly-fucking-unlikely that any dead are raised, taking Paul’s advice and finding some joy in my material well-being in this too-short life seems an appropriate response to the existential dread and all.
How much “eating, drinking, and being merry” is too much, and at what cost? Aye, now there’s the rub.
scav
Flat screen TVs and cell phones are like ‘world class’ heath care in the Upper Percentile American Vision. The theoretical potential of having same is deemed enough to keep the hoi polloi shut up and be happy, but heaven forfend their actually getting their grubby little paws on the real stuff.
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
I think the summary is: “Marines are the first in. We get rained on. Deal with it. We don’t want to hear of one of you guys fucking up because an umbrella got in the way.”
And I think that’s fine. Doesn’t mean they can’t hold one if ordered, though.
cckids
@raven:
Due to my parent’s being self-employed for most of their lives, then my dad developing 3 kinds of cancer after he hit 65, there will be nothing to pass on to us (which is fine). My mom, in a rare bout of dark humor, loves to point this out & tell us that at least we won’t be able to argue about money.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Minor fix for clarity — the original ambiguous pronoun could read as if it were referring to the middle class’s excesses.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
I don’t think that’s actually what DougJ meant. The 1% think that their wealth entitles them to nice stuff, so there’s no such thing as excess where they’re concerned. Excess is when the 99% tries to have nice stuff, and the recession is the economy’s way of punishing us for our presumptuousness. Austerity forces us to suffer long and hard for trying to rise above out natural station.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@? Martin:
You’re a Corporal in the USMC. The Commander in Chief asks you to hold an umbrella over his head. So you
A) Quote the appropriate reg and refuse to hold the umbrella .
B) Hold the umbrella.
Hint: If your answer is “A” then you can start packing for the trip to Bumfuck, Afghanistan.
Roger Moore
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
FTFY. Anyone who thinks that the regulation forbids Marines on ceremonial guard duty from holding an umbrella to protect a VIP is either stupid or crazy. I’m just amazed that nobody has yet found and posted a picture of a Marine holding an umbrella for George W. Bush.
joel hanes
@catclub:
wait a generation.
He’d only have to wait five years in Texas; in Boston, three generations is insufficient.
Tom’s descendants (if any) will never be good enough for Muffie Cabot.
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: What’s wrong with Tom? Gatsby is the parvenu.
Bill in Section 147
Saw Gatsby with my 20 year old daughter. We both really enjoyed it. It wasn’t perfect but it has a lot going for it.
I thought I was old enough to be yelling at kids to get off my lawn but a couple of you are way out in front of me there.
There seems to be a horrible group of youngs somewhere that I keep not running in to. Kids today, if I can be so general, seem to be a lot more together and better than my generation at their age. And they don’t complain as much as they should. I thought it was the worst when Nixon got elected and re-elected before I could vote but they got eight years of Bush the Lesser.
Mike in NC
@Roger Moore:Has umbrella-gate bumped Benghazi-gate off the wingnut scandal sheet? It’s hard to keep up without a Newsmax account.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
Payday uniform was Class As when I was on the 9th ID staff. HHC first sergeant insisted on it. Set the example for the troops, etc. Of course, the CG could blow him off at will, but the endless parade of O-3’s were not so fortunate.
Besides, the HHC commander was a close friend of mine, and I liked to be supportive…he had a close to impossible job.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I think I wore my blues more often than my Class As.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: What is Class As? Is this some kind of military jargon?
Jay in Oregon
Conservative evangelicals will forgive Mark Sanford for adultery, Newt Gingrich for corruption, or Rick Scott for theft because it’s the Christian thing to do, but they’ll will kick their kid out on the street for voting for Obama or disown their sister for getting married to another woman.
The prophet Nostradumbass
So, did you see the movie in 3D?
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
There are various “classes” of uniforms in the US Army. Class A is the green uniform you normally see Generals wearing to press conferences. It’s the “business” uniform equivalent, with fruit salad, which is the ribbon bar with all the various ribbons representing medals for various things, valor, good conduct, graduating from basic training (I am not kidding about this one), blowing the CG in the middle of a firefight (I am kidding about this one) and so forth, . Class B is a variation of the A uniform, but often doesn’t have the suit jacket equivalent, and often doesn’t include a tie, but otherwise uses the same trousers and the same shirt. No fruit salad for the most part.
However, for actual field army units, the everyday uniform as some camouflage thing, the uniform you see on the news of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a rarity for soldiers in the field army to wear Class A’s or B’s. As Omnes indicates, most officers wear their blue dress uniform more often to official social events than they do their A’s under most circumstances, and the only enlisted troops you’ll see in blues are in ceremonial units like the Old Guard in DC, or in bands.
KS in MA
@Violet: Well said.
Bjacques
Austerianism is Lysenkoism for capitalists. It’s criminally stupid but ideologically–dare we say “politically?”–correct.
StringOnAStick
@BGK: Wow, you do have a serious black and white cat civilization!
fuckwit
An almost DIRECT QUOTE from Woody Allen, and nobody picked up on it? Hello? Anybody here?
Really.