Michelle Obama's alleged red blotches

Dear Kim,

I've been so involved in citizen politics lately that I've barely read 'Style & Taste.' Your piece about Michelle Obama caught my eye because I like your writing and sense of fair play.

I admire Michelle Obama's confidence, graciousness and devotion to the good of the country. It's nice that she cares about her appearance and enjoys clothes shopping. But for me, that's a footnote.

If she wants to hire a stylist, that's fine. Maybe the bloggers will critique the stylist from then on -- or Michelle Obama for hiring the wrong one! My point is, fashion is an art form we happen to wear, so art critics naturally pay attention to prominent people. But in a society where class is equated with wealth and the wealthy often lack class (ie. the gilded parachute), perhaps we could let Michelle be Michelle, enjoy her individuality and focus on the good work she wants to do.

Thanks for writing,
Susan


photo Craig ONeal (cc-by-sa-2.0)

To my family, the morning after

Indian summer, from a bare back porch.

This morning, I did two things. Clean the house. Ride my bike.

While I cleaned, I thought of the family I came from and grew into. Our diverse ideas. The choices we make. I considered how the events of the past 24 hours would be met by each of us.

I was moved by John McCain's concession speech, especially his call to come together for the sake of the country.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited... I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.
-- John McCain 11.4.08

Like a good family. Like my family, where love is stronger than differences. But I wonder if Senator McCain was calling for more than live-and-let-live. He seems to consider the problems of our time too big for only half a population to manage.

Then I rode my bike to Forest Hills Park, the wild old Rockefeller estate on a bluff overlooking Cleveland. I never know whose path I'll cross over there. Strangers by foot, by bike, with and without dogs, with and without companions, accents, ipods, canes. Just about always with smile. A goodly number of geese surround a small lake I can picture the Rockefeller family picnicking by on a day like this. Now it's here for the common folk, clearing our minds the day after the first black family is invited to live in the great white house.

I want to do my part to mend what's broken in the world. I don't know what this will mean, but I thank John and Barack for taking the high road last night. I think this is the one we'll need to take now. I thank them for the leadership. And you, for inspiration.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
-- Barack Obama 3.18.08

photo acaben (cc-by-sa-2.0)

Web 3.0 mandate: time = life

Time is money. So the saying goes. But this one's aging fast.

A body's alloted time is finite and therefore rather precious. Until we come up with anti-death serum, this part won’t change. But when it comes to equating time with money, much has changed already.

Old think

Remember Titanic? That film took a lot of time to make. People time, coordinated by the director, James Cameron. We used to equate the hours of human life consumed in the making of an epic film with great value. We forked over money (earned with hours of our lives) to see Titanic, told our friends to spend their time-money on it and, in some cases, repeated the cycle until we decided to spend our riches elsewhere. A simple formula, really: human life (in hours) it takes to make Titanic translates into human life (hours devoted to getting the paycheck) consumers are willing to give up to have it.

New think

Enter Web 2.0 with media-rich social networking. It’s all about time. Post a video of your baby laughing on YouTube and the time you put into it (relatively speaking, zilch) can yield high viewing time by YouTube fans. Except for the cost of web access, money is irrelevant here. Lots of time is spent in a lopsided spiral. You spend a pittance of your finite life on your baby’s video debut. Millions of baby lovers and laugh addicts spend their finite life hours to see and spread it.

Looks like time doesn’t always equal money anymore. Now small time investment can translate into big time return and every PR guru is out to figure what meme will stick and how to nurture the knack of predicting the next viral spiral.

Artists are not immune from old-think or new-think. We of little money can be smugly proud of using precious ‘time’ making unique masterpieces while our materialistic friends spend their ‘time’ getting all that money which must be spent on useless toys that weigh down the tree-lawns on garbage day. But (secretly) we might like to find an easy way to take the Zeitgeist by storm whereby zillions of appreciative time-owners line up to purchase our humble creation with time-extravagant ready cash, and tell their friends to send us even more money.

Ah, how very hypocritical of us. We claim time is more precious than money, but don’t care to share this gift of time. Consumer money would save us time. We could spend less time scrounging around, more time creating masterpieces. In the end, artists can be just as fond of the idea of time=money as anyone else and welcome the internet’s promise to get us both.

Newer think

Web 3.0 is coming and, politics willing, hope is on the move. We’ll live to see the hive of social mediacs move too. One thing we’ve established is that as long as we’re peering at a bunch of pixels, we’re not grazing the isles of big box emporiums that fill our time and space with junk. It doesn’t appear too likely we'll up and abstain from the wonders of the web, addicted as we are to its virtues. But all is not well. The internet is a great place to put your nonrenewable time stamp unless you happen to derive pleasure from all your senses, including a sense of responsibility for a life well lived. Observers decry the multiple screen sucking ploys that steal our precious time.

The future I see is this. Artist-geeksters reinvent what’s possible online, underscore the finitude of hours, emphasize the sensual breadth of experience and keep in mind the worth of time. In short, we celebrate time as the new wealth. CEOs cease to duke it out over the biggest wad of cash; their reputation will rise and fall on how much they enhance stakeholder time. We’ll see this attitude reflected on the ticker tape, replacing the blingfest. Hey, once the roof’s sound, the body’s whole, and the kids are OK, what’s the point of the gilded life?

Time is the new currency. Though some are slow to notice, money’s lost its luster.


public domain painting Willy Stöwer

Wallstreet smirk

When regulators took over mortgage finance Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this month, they eliminated $12.59 million in exit payments for executives Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac. The executives will now get a combined $9.43 million upon their exit.

The Washington Post with its giant DC circulation may be able to slide mention of this monetary peccadillo into the beltway news without fanfare, but how does it play in Peoria? Tales of yet another incredulous stunt by the mega moneyed do not the happy rustbelter make.

But if we could take a moment and reflect upon the stress of Freddie and Fannie ex-execs who, between them, have nearly thirteen million dollars less to retire upon than they had planned upon, perhaps we'll feel less put upon. For all we know, as we sputter on about small oil sticker shock, Mr. Fannie may be auctioning his condo in Tahiti as Sir Freddie maxes out his credit cards to fuel the yacht.


public domain painting Paul Gauguin ~ Deux Tahitiennes, 1899, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Palin pales

The liberal mainstream media set me up. I tuned in to hear a speech by a spitfire self-starter with maverick creds surpassed by none. Instead, I heard talking points dressed in hocky ma shucks.

It was embarrassing, as a woman, to see her squander her talents by pandering to a mean spirited conservatism. She lied about the Democrats' middle class tax cut.

"How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?"

She lied about the Democrats' renewable energy policies.

"America needs more energy. Our opponent is against producing it."

She insulted citizens who take responsibility for their communities.

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

She ignored her party's distension of the national debt and generous tax cuts to the well-to-do.

I was led to believe 'maverick McCain' would rattle the cages of his grand old party with a young, vibrant, new-thinking dynamo running-mate. Come to find out, with the glibness of Guliani and the vainglory of her new elitist friends, Miss Congeniality only finds it necessary to embrace the protectors of their own narrow perspectives and swollen purses.

Let the vetting begin.


Image uploaded to Commons by Ranveig licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Wisdom of insecurity

If we must be nationalists and have a sovereign state, we cannot also expect to have world peace.

If we want to get everything at the least possible cost, we cannot expect to get the best possible quality, the balance between the two being mediocrity.

If we make it an ideal to be morally superior, we cannot at the same time avoid self-righteousness.

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

-- Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (1951)

Hmmm....

They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
-- Barrack Obama

Pessl re Dylan

'Artist' can’t make even the briefest public appearance without extensive baggage. The next time you’re at a party and someone asks what you do for a living, boldly say artist, then sit back and watch the jolting effect that little word has upon a conversation. Above 14th Street, you’ll be offered money, food, some tips on where to find free lodging. Below 14th Street, the person will smirk, dutifully ask “What kind?” or appear to start swallowing an egg, which is a disguised yawn. You’ll get a hug in the Midwest. In Santa Monica, you’ll get “sweet” and an invitation to go Rollerblading. In certain parts of the country you’ll get tied up and thrown into the back of a pickup truck, and no one will ever hear from you again. But every now and then, the word perfectly explains a certain person.
-- Marisha Pessl

Ms. Pessl's piece about “Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series,” must have cost her a gold mine of focused attention. She shares her savory perceptions like a spread at a lavish party.

Observations about Bob Dylan are hardly rare. He's an intriguing being.

From the beginning, he’s been a mixed medium artist. He’s never been a straight linear person. He’s had a whole lot of miscellany.
-- Christopher Ricks

There's the bard himself in all his glorious miscellany. Then, the legions who honor his every word, sound, brushstroke. Witnessing his effect on these observers and their works about him, you begin to glimpse the power of a single person capable of silencing every naysayer within and without for the sake of his salient virtue.


photo Walt Campbell