The Plague Doctor Will See You Now

Unemployment as Pandemic

From Kevin Drum at "Mother Jones":

The Invisible Jobless
...

Obviously there are lots of differences between the Great Depression and our current economic morass. But one of them was indeed the press: in the 30s, the typical newspaper writer was a modestly paid high school graduate, closer to being a blue-collar worker than a member of the middle class. Big syndicated columnists like Walter Lippman were pretty well off, but they were the exception more than the rule.

Today it's just the opposite. Punditry is dominated almost exclusively, both in print and on the air, by the rich and the upper middle class. And there's just no way around it: even if you're trying hard, it's close to impossible for someone living a comfortable life to really feel the desolation and helplessness of unemployment and economic distress when they've never really experienced it themselves and live in a social circle where it's rarely a serious problem either.

The long-term unemployed don't vote much, they aren't organized, and in electoral numbers there aren't that many of them. All true. But thanks to a political and media class that's mostly pretty well off, they're also largely invisible. Writing about them is more like an anthropological exercise than a simple description of your friends and neighbors. And it's one reason that we're doing so little to help them.

If unemployment was the pet cause of powerful men and women, or a plague sweeping through America's toniest suburbs striking down nannies, neighbors, lawn care professionals and colleagues, we would never hear the end of it.

There'd be a ribbon for it by now, and telethons, as well as wall-to-wall walk-, bike- , saunter- and skate-a-thons.

The cashiers at the local Safeway, Piggly Wiggly and Whole Foods would ask you if you'd like to contribute to curing unemployment each and every time you went in for pickles or Tampons or buttermilk, because their managers would make asking that question every single time part of their quarterly review.

CEOs would compete with each other to out-extort their workers for pledges to end the blight of joblessness in America.

Teevee ad guilt-bombs about the unemployed would play during every fucking commercial break on every station (sure you can turn down the sad, sad Sarah McLaughlin music, but the jobless will still be there, staring piteously into your greedy soul.)

Big, blunt pop-up ads begging for money would impede your access to Glenn Greenwald and Michele Malkin and porn if unemployment were a pandemic, and yet that is exactly what it is fast morphing into: an economic plague which, like all of history's really great plagues, is being quickly invested with its own set of pseudo-religious myths and rituals.

Chronic American unemployment has become a form of civic retrovirus which attacks your fiscal immune system, leaving you vulnerable to a whole host of other maladies from which you were previously safe but which can now reach right into your life and destroy you.

As with a plague, modern American unemployment comes swiftly, arbitrarily and without warning. As with a plague, it can strike anywhere, but often strikes in clusters. As with a plague, it travels along identifiable vectors...right up until it doesn’t.

As with a plague, even if you recover from it, you are permanently and deeply changed by it

As with a plague, moralizers tell the unemployed that their situation is the result of bad habits or moral failings.

As with a plague, zealots reject any attempt at palliative intervention or cure as secular meddling in God's Great and Wrathful Plan to punish the economic sins of “Those People”.

As with a plague, its sufferers are shunned by a public that prefers instead to hide from scary reminders of their own vulnerability.

As with a plague,

unemployment comes with special symbols

with which the doors of the afflicted are marked.

And as with a plague, calm and sensible methods of containment and control quickly become overwhelmed by the terror of the mob and the demagogues who feed on their fear.

God have mercy on us poor, silly monkeys.

Professional Left Podcast #83

“Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.”

-- Sun Tzu

Links for this week's podcast

Dunning Kruger Effect

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Da' money goes here:

"A man thinks that by mouthing hard words

he understands hard things." -- Herman Melville

Sometime just before Thursday supper here in the cold, cold city, having just watched Day Two of the Taxes Chainsaw Massacre, I chanced to Tweet this to the big, wide world:

Somewhere, David Brooks has written "those peevish, irrational Liberals" for the 100th time. 100 more and tomorrow's NYT column is done!

Six hours after I tweeted that, this is what David Brooks actually ended up pulling out of his ass:

Ted Kennedy was a network liberal, willing to stray from his preferences in negotiation with George W. Bush or John McCain. Most House Democrats, by contrast, are cluster liberals. They come from safe seats, have a poor feel for the wider electorate and work in an institution where politics is a war of all against all.

Barack Obama ran for president as a network liberal, and entranced a Facebook nation. But in office, Obama, like George W. Bush before him, narrowed his networks. To get things done quickly, he governed like a cluster liberal, relying on partisan leaders.

The results were predictable: insularity, alienation and defeat. So now we are headed toward divided government.
...

Having read far, far too many of David Fucking Brooks' dishonest little op-ed owl pellets over the years, I can tell you that this is arguably the most prodigiously dishonest thing he has written since back in the days when he was masturbating himself blind with excitement over George W. Bush's Excellent Iraqi Adventure. (Same kinds of lies he told about Iraq , too -- a world full of cartoon villains fighting Reasonable Heroes for fictional motives in imaginary versions of real places that David Brooks clearly knows nothing about.)

And this -- from the same column -- is arguably the second most dishonest:

The big story of the week is that Obama is returning to first principles, re-establishing himself as a network liberal. This isn’t a move to the center or triangulation. It’s not the Clinton model or the Truman model or any of the other stale categories people are trying to impose on him.
...

Cluster liberals in the House and the commentariat are angry. They have no strategy for how Obama could have better played his weak hand — with a coming Republican majority, an expiring tax law and several Democratic senators from red states insisting on extending all the cuts. They just sense the waning of their moment and are howling in protest.

They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration. They are also convinced that Democrats should never start a negotiation because they will always end up losing in the end. (Perhaps psychologists can explain the interesting combination: intellectual self-confidence alongside a political inferiority complex).

In other words, as predicted, "those peevish, irrational Liberals" padded out with enough venom and pseudo-intellectual verbal droppings to meet his 800-word contractual obligation to the New York Times.

Not a whisper about the rapacious content of Republican positions.

Nary a peep about he malevolent and premeditated Republican behavior that led us to this place, for example, or the long and barbaric history of Republican lies, betrayals and failures that created this moment's context.

No sense whatsoever of an actual reality wherein (from the Constant Weader):

A super-majority of Americans want tax cuts for the middle class. A majority in the House & a majority in the Senate voted for tax cuts for the middle class but no tax cuts on income above $250K (for a married couple). That is the policy the President campaigned on.

In a rational world, President Obama Claus would be signing the middle-class tax cut extension this week in front of a White House Christmas tree with his funny elves Pelosi & Harry beaming at his side.
...

Because none of that is relevant to Bobo (and his dozens of loyal, wealthy readers.) Because from the safety of his well-appointed sniper's nest at the very pinnacle of American Journalism, David Brooks has never really had to given a shit about the real-world consequences of any of the mendacity he peddles.

Why should he?

After all, for America's most ubiquitous, pie-faced Conservative used car salesman, there has never been a single consequence or a moment's blow-back for being the leading spokesman for a depraved and grotesquely failed ideology.

Quite the contrary: whoring for evil men and vile causes has been very, very good for David Brooks.

As his hero George W. Bush pissed the United States treasury into the sands of Iraq, Bobo never missed a meal. As the Reagan Revolution that made his career possible finally destroyed the American economy, Bobo never missed a payday. And during all the years he cheered for sending other people's children off to die in his reckless, foreign adventures, Bobo never had to get his gated suburban marshmallow ass any closer to actual Persian peril than ordering extra sides of hummus at Applebee's.

And, if tomorrow it was announced that America was now formally a feudal corporate state run under martial law by Goldman Sachs...or the easternmost vassal province of the Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere, Inc. ...Bobo would be right there, Johnny-on-the-spot, rolling out the welcome mat for our new overlords, tucking himself into their collective ass-cracks and penning bland columns in the New York Times explaining to the serfs of the late, great United States why -- if they would just stop struggling, give up a little bit more and bow just a little bit lower -- their new peonage really is the best of all possible worlds.

Because for David Brooks, it is.


UPDATE: Again, a few words and a link to this piece were posted in the Mr. Brooks' comment section. Again they have disappeared into the pellucid digital ether.

Recession America Style: Tom Waits Friday Edition

(Brazenly stole from Batocchio)

Reader Esteev writes:

...
Similarly to SteveFromUpNorth, I am a 27 year old male with nothing more than entry level experience who visits your site for it's insight and hilarity that helps cope with a freaky future.

About a month ago I was fired. I worked for the Catholic church. While raised Catholic, I do not practice religion of any kind -- if anything, I despise it. But, I was unemployed for a year and had to take something in my field. Anyway, they got rid of me on a technicality -- I didn't attend some nonsensical Men's Conference. Oh, and not surprisingly, the man who got me the job (a family friend) was forced out 2 weeks before, but I'm suuuure that had nothing to do with me. It really was a blessing, pun intended, because I was miserable.

Zoom to the present day and I am back doing what I did during the summer throughout college: painting, fixing, maintaining and delivering boats and I've never been happier. I was lucky enough to have kept in contact with my old boss and he was happy to bring me back.

While I have never been happier, and have a farmer's tan even George Washington Carver would be impressed with, I too am nervous about the future. While in my late-20s, living at home, working in a boat yard, I've come to realize that the world is tilted in such a way that no matter what I do I'll probably just end up painting some rich guy's boat.
...

The value of happiness in one's work is not to be underestimated.

And for those who prefer their Tom Waits served musically, a little medicine I use to periodically kick my own imp of self-pity in the teeth.

Because however bad one's particular circumstances may seem at the moment, its nothing compared to:

Pregnant women and
Vietnam vets, I say
Beggin' on the freeway
Bout as hard as it gets

Recession American Style, Ctd.

I don't think I've listened to the Windy Geriatric Network since my dad drove my brother and me to get cheap haircuts two towns over (Sitting up high on a board weathered by a million squirming little-boys...yellowing "Archie" comics...fly paper holding the fossils of tiny Paleozoic creatures...one 'a them top-hat wearing, nodding drunk-sippy birds with an ass-full of blue gin. Good times...) but I do know that it is a vast, venerable and powerful money-making Private Sector engine which you would think would have figured out how not to fall prey to the letting-dumb-fucks-run-the-place-into-the-ground syndrome.

Apparently you would be wrong.

From this interview with WGN's recently-fired talk show host Steve Cochran:

Q. Let me get this straight: WGN just fired its most talented, youngest and most versatile full-time host. I don’t get it.

A. I don’t know that I get it either. One answer may be politics, but I believe it was largely because I spoke out about what I was witnessing. I didn’t like what they were doing to the radio station and let them know that with regularity. They want people who will never ask questions and just do as they are told.

It’s also likely to be a decision from the man behind the curtain. [Tribune Co. CEO] Randy Michaels is making programming decisions and has wanted to bring in his guys for as long as he has been in charge. That’s why the new guy from WLW [in Cincinnati] was hired and why they wanted Bill Cunningham, too.

The “young-ing up” of the demos is the funniest argument I’ve heard. I was the youngest guy in the prime-time lineup. John Williams is just a year older than me at 50. The rest of the staff is 55-plus — and sounds older than that.

Q. How long have you known this was coming?

A. That is a bit unclear, but I certainly feel I was on top of the hit list for standing up for what I felt was right. This was not about change. Change is appropriate and needed in the evolution of any company. I certainly represented change when I was hired 10 years ago. The difference here is that there seemed to be no consideration for building on what worked. Instead, it was about tearing things down and the almost daily drill of insulting and threatening memos, and a sense of a total lack of respect for anyone who was here before the Zell invasion.

When I turned down the morning show, I’m certain it was not if but when they would pull the plug. The reason it took a year and a half is because the show consistently made money.

Meanwhile, the statements made from the inside about WGN were ridiculous
...

And who was Steve Cochran?

For most of his time on the air there, Cochran, 49, had been regarded as the future of the station. By all accounts, the seasoned radio veteran was being groomed as the successor to WGN’s 40-year line of top-rated morning hosts — from Wally Phillips to Bob Collins to Spike O’Dell. But as the Sam Zell era at Tribune Co. unfolded, Cochran suddenly found himself on the outs with new management (and most notably with WGN program director Kevin “Pig Virus” Metheny).

Cochran’s fate was all but sealed when he was signed to just a four-month contract extension earlier this year and demoted from afternoon drive to a two-hour midday shift. For many listeners already disgusted by changes in the station’s lineup and attitude, his ouster may have been the last straw.
...

The key to keeping your job in these parlous times is to figure out what your organization actually produces and then to plant yourself as deeply into the production process as possible.

Mr. Cochran though his organization "produced" sound decisions and listener-pleasing entertainment.

Clearly he was wrong.

Recession American Style

Blogger litbrit writes:

...Our business has slowed to a halt, after we'd already plowed what we had in the bank into our new project, an organic and hydroponic farm powered by alternative fuels (wind and solar), once the wholesale ornamental plant business ground to a quiet halt thanks to the commercial real estate sector grinding to a far more spectacular and explosive halt in 2008. We figured, people will always need to eat. And they will. But it's taken all we've got, I'm down to the last dregs of my retirement money--my beloved's has long since evaporated--and we are crossing all functioning fingers and toes that a Clean Energy grant we recently applied for comes through. Thereafter, I don't know what we'll do. I really don't.

I never gave that much thought to what life would be like when I turned fifty--later this year, I'll do exactly that--but if I'm honest, I'll admit to a hazy, sun-soaked vision of myself sitting in my lush garden, relaxing at last as my children would be well past the diaper stage and able to make their own PB&J's; I'd be halfway through writing my novel, my car wouldn't be making weird, expensive-sounding noises--it might even be one of those snazzy electric cars!--and worrying myself sick at night would be a dim memory of what things were like when the children were little and always coming down with something.

Instead, I'm looking three months down the road to the dread date, and I can't envision anything at all--it's like trying to read a distant cluster of unlit road signs while peering through the dense fog at dawn. Or else sunset.

Our beaches offer little comfort: it's much too hot this summer--even for Florida--and the breezes seem to sputter and choke before they reach us. Besides, with every passing week, those vast clots of tar creep further southward. Seaside is ruined; our escape grounds will be next.
...