Dan Riley's Blog, page 42

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The Big Gooey Center, Part I

My comrades on the bleeding heart left have been having conniption fits about the results of a comprehensive, bipartisan poll conducted for Esquire magazine and NBC News that defines what it calls The New American Center. “Bleeding heart left” is not my characterization, by the way, it is one of the 8 categories the pollsters created, and it’s the one I unsurprisingly fell into when I took the survey. Some of my fellow travelers--playing into the stereotype that lefties are cursed with a Soviet style sense of humor--are offended by the names the pollsters chose to give the various categories. Whateverman (another of the category names)…sticks and stones and all that. There are more serious objections to the poll from the left that are far more troubling if you happen to be of the left as I am, and really want to see the progressive agenda advanced in the future. The most troubling of all is the left’s scorn for the majority center, and here I’m referring to the left 10% the pollsters describe this way: “Highly educated, highly white. They live predominantly in the Northeast and West, and only 9 percent say that religion is important to them.”
You only have to read through the comment threads on the various web sites that have discussed the poll to witness the smug elitism that has long been the Achilles heel of the American progressive movement. The normally estimable Charles Pierce epitomizes the general attitude nicely…or not so nicely…when he writes, “I hate goddamn centrists.” That strikes me to be just a bit too much like writing, “I hate gravity.” And an analogy with natural forces is not far off the mark. Lefties in denial about the significance or moreover the existence of the center are not any different than climate deniers. Here’s Pierce channeling Rep. Paul Broun (R) GA:

There are three kinds of people who claim to be centrists in this country today. There are embarrassed Republicans. There are lazy people. And there are liars. There is no fourth alternative. We have seen vividly the intellectual exhaustion of self-proclaimed centrists in the laughable attempts to blame both sides for the reign of the morons. We have seen vividly the intellectual dishonesty of self-proclaimed centrists demonstrated by the No Labels and Fix The Debt scams, both of which involve little more than selling out the social safety-net. We [have] even seen the intellectual vacuity of self-proclaimed centrists in the results of this poll, in which we see some vague mumbling about the deficit that will eat us in our beds, but a strong desire to raise taxes on the very wealthiest among us, which I guarantee you none of the people who proclaim their centrism the loudest believes is a centrist position.

The last there--“none of the people who proclaim their centrism the loudest”--is the real rub in the leftist critique of the center. If you know any real, living, work-a-day centrists--rather than those who play centrists in the media--you know that they don’t really proclaim their politics loudly. The lefty critique of the center depends upon viewing it as a minstrel show starring such vamps as Evan Bayh, Kathleen Parker, and Harold Ford Jr., all of whom are primarily out to seduce TV bookers and corporate sponsors through exploitation of the center. The thing is, all those faux centrists actually love politics—live it and breathe it—and if there is one fundamental fact you should master before you go about labeling centrists layabouts and liars is that they really hate politics. They don’t love to hate it like lefties do who cannot get enough of political minutia and cable news partisan wrestling no matter how infuriating they find it. Real centrists hate it to the point that they pay as little attention to it as possible. One might argue about what’s the healthier mindset—to indulge in something you hate or ignore something you hate. But the lefty position seems to be “These goddamned centrists are not spending their days getting pissed off watching Hardball and reading Politico, and they’re leaving it all for us to uphold the responsibilities of democracy. Takers! Takers!”
Esquirewrites that “the center is not inconsequential.” Centrist deniers dismiss that observation at grave risk. We bleeding hearts aren’t advancing any progressive agenda, let alone winning any elections, without considerable help from the center. And the good news from the poll is that it shows solid support for a number of liberal causes. Mobilize the center rather than mock it, and the poll shows we can beat the NRA on background checks. Mobilize the center rather than mock it, and the poll shows we can get the extremely rich to make a bigger tax contribution. Mobilize the center rather than mock it, and the poll shows we can put an end to government intrusion into personal choices, like birth control and marriage.
Mobilizing, unfortunately, is the hard part for the white left which expects its political allies to come to their political wisdom naturally…or through court order. Monitoring the response to Republican attempts at voter suppression during the last election was highly instructive. The bleeding heart left pretty much became thebleating heart left, limiting its response to the usual sniping against the far right from blogs and TV panels. Meanwhile every single representative I saw from what the poll identifies as The Gospel Left (“Mostly African-American, female, urban, and older…very religious”) said that they were making a two-pronged counter-attack against the suppression efforts—they were taking things to the courts and they were taking things door-to-door. They knew they had to do this because mobilization was part of their heritage, and they knew enough not to leave their fate to the courts. And despite all the cries about the sky falling from their white “allies” on the sidelines, they overcame the threat and delivered their voters.
The poll oddly enough suggests there is widespread support in the center for voter ID laws. Well, maybe not so oddly…surely not odd to the lefties who see this finding as another excuse to pull out their favorite chew toy: America as a bastion of racism. The fact that the same center elected Barack Obama president twice and holds him in highest regard among all the nation’s public figures in the poll makes no nevermind. Just as the left cannot tell real centrists from the stand-ins who play centrists on TV, it cannot tell the difference between episodic racism and endemic racism. As for those ostensibly troubling poll results, I find them less troubling when viewed through centrist eyes rather than partisan eyes. When asked about voter ID laws, my guess is that actual centrists think, “Why the hell not? You have to show an ID for practically everything else.” I don’t think  actual centrists think, “Oh, good another way to screw minorities.” I feel pretty confident about this interpretation because one of the fundamental findings of the poll is that the centrists are generally fair-minded. If you want to argue that rightwing activists have been able to exploit that fair-mindedness to promote their invidious suppression efforts that’s one thing—but it’s an entirely different thing than accusing a broad swath of the American populace of being racist against substantial evidence to the contrary.
And racist is not the half of it. The commentariat left views the center as dishonest, lazy, selfish, ignorant and just plain silly. Much like Mitt Romney’s disdain for the 47%, this intellectual 10% is highly indignant that it has to share its society with wastrels. And as with Mitt Romney, if the left persists in this contempt, it will ultimately pay a huge price at the polls.
Writing in 1987 about a similar poll of the American center, E.J. Dionne observed:

Americans are simultaneously skeptical of business and skeptical of government; they worry about the power of corporations, and also worry about what would happen if they failed. The trouble with American politics lies in its failure to allow these complicated feelings to express themselves. As a result, substantial numbers of Americans see the political conversation as too polarized, too remote from their concerns, too caught up in the false "consistencies" that are seen only by the political, cultural, and economic elites. As Charles Paul Freund wrote a few years ago in The New Republic: "'Nothing in moderation' has been our unofficial motto for a long time, with libertine and puritan subcultures leapfrogging each other to set the tone for an unstable mainstream." The current revolt against American politics is the mainstream's rebellion against this false polarization.

Dionne titled his book, Why Americans Hate Politics . As both the old and the new polls indicate, the center hates politics with good reason. Like the new hardening right, lefties will damn themselves and their causes to oblivion if they don’t accept and grasp that essential truth. The center is just not that into the boring and maddening political process to the degree that we are. But because the center is open to persuasion on a number of liberal friendly fronts, the left has the option of getting off its high horse and getting down to the business of making its case—clearly, consistently, and most of all respectfully to the people whose support it wants and needs.
You’re either with us or against us is how the other side does business, and that business is going under.
(Next week, in Part II, the Nobby Works goes digging for the ponies buried in the poll results.)

My Impurities

I'm sitting there in front of my TV one recent Sunday. I've got the Patriots on with Direct TV's Sunday Ticket. I've got a homemade grilled sausage sub with peppers and onions on the plate in front of me. And I'm reviewing my retirement stock portfolio. I'm a liberal, so all this does not come without a haunting from Mr. Guilt, who stands over my shoulder, tsk…tsk...tsking. Sausage? The product of the demonstrably inhumane US meat industry? Football? The product of the NFL, the modern day Moloch, feasting on human sacrifice? And the maggot-infested stock market! Jesus must be pounding his sweet, thorn-pierced noggin against a wooden cross that those scoundrels not only wormed their way back into the temple, but into every other human institution that matters. Still, I eat my sausage, appraise my balance sheet, and root for my team without embarrassment. (Check that. I am greatly embarrassed that the Patriots, a perennial offensive juggernaut, can only score three points in the first half.)

So how do I manage to keep Mr. Guilt at bay…behind me rather than standing in front of my big screen with his chastising fly wide open as he whizzes all over my sausage and portfolio? As you may know, I started out in life with ambitions to be a martyr  (a calculated risk for anyone who takes Catholic instruction seriously…or at least it used to be). I was not only eager to mimic Sir Thomas More in my youth, but actually succeeded in ways that managed to cost me, if not my head, my spunk. By the time I was 21 and actively involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, my opportunity for proving my virtue (by going to jail, at least) was upon me. My hero at the time was David Harris, a more moderne and appropriate model than the self-flagellating Man for all Seasons. Harris was about to go to jail to protest the war, and I was eager to follow in his footsteps. I dropped out of the seminary, which had been providing me with comfortable but not exactly conscience-clearing sanctuary, and waited for my confrontation with the draft board. I waited and waited. When my righteous fervor finally got the best of me and I marched down to the draft board for my grand defining moment, I ran into a kindly government bureaucrat who advised me to get back into the seminary quick as a bunny. Otherwise, she promised, they'd have my ass in jail or the rice paddies in six months. It turned out to be a defining moment after all, because it was the first real big compromise of my very young life, and it forced me to develop a tolerable relationship with the fine art of compromise ever since. Harris helped smooth the way. His salutary parting words for those who did not follow him to the jailhouse were these: "I'm in for you and you're out for me."

And so I have been, lo these many years. I have tried to lend moral, financial, editorial, even tactical support to the many causes that prick my conscience. I've even taken to the streets on a few occasions. Mostly, though, my activism is confined to the comfort of my own living room. I once divested my portfolio of a valuable stock that was heavily invested in South African apartheid. I refuse to eat Chick fil a or Papa John's on principle (they are so bad unfortunately that this sacrifice lacks as much in nobility as it does in nutritional value). And I was about to cut Starbuck's off cold turkey when it changed its inane latte & firearms policy. If the NFL announced tomorrow that it was turning to flag football for the health and well-being of its players, in solidarity I'd sign again up for Sunday Ticket. So I'm not a total sell-out. But I do believe rather strongly that if you're going to go all-in on for a cause, you better be aware of where all-in leads and be willing to go there. In truth, if I followed the purity of my heart on many matters of my conscience, I would've had blood on my hands a long time ago.

I started ruminating on this squishy compromising side of my character at the end of last week's blog post when writing about Sen. Ted Cruz's professed willingness to "do anything" to end Obamacare. Part of me says, "Yeah, I'm feelin' you, Ted. I was there when I was about 16." But the curse of maturity has made me realize that being willing to do anything for a cause covers a lot of scary ground. We have only to look at our brethren the suicide bombers and the assassins of abortion doctors to glimpse the bloody landscape such righteousness creates. I call these terrorists brothers without irony. It is a major conceit of this blog--owing to its roots in the works of Norman O. Brown--that we are indeed all one family, and the only way to comprehend the profound complexity of that notion is to admit that the bad in others is not some alien evil, but a reflection of the inherent potential for evil that exists in all of us. Brown writes, "The distinction between self and not self is made by the childish decision to claim all that the ego likes as 'mine,' and to repudiate all that the ego dislikes as 'not mine.'"

That's a nice thumbnail summary of NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), the Walter White/Ted Cruz affliction. This extreme form of narcissism results from arrested development at that stage in infancy where the individual believes the whole world is at its service. Nobby maintains that healthy development is quite a bit different, that it is in fact an eternal compromise between mine and not mine:

"The dualism of self and external world is built up by a constant process of reciprocal exchange between the two. The self as a stable substance enduring through time, an identity, is maintained by constantly absorbing good parts (or people)  from the outside world and expelling bad parts from the inner world. 'There is a continual unconscious wandering of other personalities into ourselves.' Every person is many persons; a multitude made into one person…"

Small example--at the start of the recent government shutdown, Chris Hayes--the best thing to happen to cable news since the mute button--asked himself on camera if he would be more approving of the shutdown if it were, say, engineered by liberal Democrats trying to stop a war he opposed. He answered, yes, he would be more approving. And now he would have to view the action that so appalled him through a more empathetic lens. It was the kind of self probing, Socratic questioning that we rarely get in our media, and never in our politics. It gave Hayes's subsequent coverage of the shutdown a depth and nuance that was beyond most of his peers because he had asked himself the critical question: Where am I in all this? (which is totally different than the usual media question: What's in all this for me?)

I once had a conversation with someone more versed in NPD than I was, and gasped when I started recognizing some of myself in the description. When I voiced my concern out loud, my mentor on the subject laughed and said, "Well, there you go. A real NPD personality would never question himself like that. So you're fine." And so I am, or so I believe, which may be why over time I came to adopt the clever and resourceful Bugs Bunny as my cartoon hero, rather than that sputtering wacko bird Daffy Duck.

It also may explain why one of my favorite lines in pop music (not written by a man named Bob Dylan) is this one by Jackson Browne from the song in the video above: "Please do not confront me with my failures. I have not forgotten them."

One of the truly awful effects extreme narcissism has had on our society is that far too many people--especially those in positions of power and influence---are far more willing and able to confront others with their failures than reflect on their own.


    

Casting Call

Virtually sign my cast simply by registering for comments, and exercise your voting rights by telling me what should be the color of the new cast I'll be getting in 3 weeks:


White (ho-hum)Black (step back)Red (hey, look at me!)Yellow (I'm just mad about yellow and yellow's mad about me)Green (with envy)Orange (don't waste your vote)Purple again (sometimes I feel like a grape, sometimes I feel like a nut)

Just Say No to Narcissism

Sen. Ted Cruz (R) Texas

Whether the creators of Breaking Bad intended Walter White to be a portrait of the mental condition known to the therapeutic community as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), I do not know. In all the many interviews Vince Gilligan and his writers have given before and after the showing of the last episode, I haven’t heard them mention narcissism once--NPD or not.  Which leaves me no choice but to tread into that danger zone I’ve dared venture into the past in ascribing to artists meanings they may not have intended. But as always in doing this, it’s important to draw consistent evidence from the work of art before assigning meaning to it. In other words, unless you’re a narcissist yourself, you just can’t impose any old meaning on the work.
Though difficult to counter or control, there are, nonetheless, a number of identifiable characteristics of the NPD personality and Walter Walt ticks off all the boxes
__The NPD person idealizes himself—Idealizing his family is probably Walt’s most insidious tactic throughout the five-year run of the series. He justifies all his heinous behavior by claiming he does it for his family: "When we do what we do for good reasons, then we've got nothing to worry about, and there's no better reason than family."__ The NPD person invokes guilt or sympathy by playing the martyr—Walt plays the victim card at will…and skillfully. He has a full deck of victim cards, too--his cancer, his insurance company, his school, his former business partners, a plane that fell from the sky, his wife, his children. (His son prefers to be called Flynn rather than Walt Jr. and this man who calls himself Heisenberg for the most fiendish of reasons has his feelings hurt by this.)__The NPD person is a master of distraction—Walt effortlessly distracts those around him whenever he senses they’re getting close to finding out what he really is. When Walt’s wife Skyler goes into a depression after he confesses his criminality to her, he implies to family that her behavior may be the aftereffects of an affair she had. (And it's a twofer…a distraction and another chance to play victim). __The NPD employs intimidation—Here’s a chilling piece of dialog:

Skyler: "Walt, please, let's both of us stop trying to justify this whole thing and admit you're in danger! 

Walter: "Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see? Do you know how much I make a year? I mean, even if I told you, you wouldn't believe it. Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going into work? A business big enough that it could be listed on the NASDAQ goes belly up. Disappears! It ceases to exist without me. No, you clearly don't know who you're talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that's me? No. I am the one who knocks!"

It becomes all the more chilling when we watch its impact on Skyler, who, rather than running from the man who knocks, opens the door to him and totally embraces his badness.__The NPD person devalues those nearest and dearest—Poor Jesse—even in Walt's humble school teacher mode, before he’s revealed himself as the madman Heisenberg, Walt routinely denigrates Jesse’s intelligence and overall worth. __The NPD person criticizes relentlessly—Walt’s browbeating of Jesse is constant and this piece of dialog from early in the series is indicative of their relationship:

Jesse: Back off man, Jesus. 

Walter: We've got work to do. 

Jesse: No, no. You. You've got work to do. I did my part. 

Walter: You mean that obscenity that I spent the last two hours cleaning up? That is your contribution? 

Jesse: Yo kiss my pink ass man. I didn't ask for any of this. Alright how am I supposed to live here now huh? My whole house smells like toe cheese and dry cleaning. 

Walter: Because you didn't follow my instructions.

____The NPD person sends purposefully mixed messages designed to confuse and entrap. Fearing Andrea’s child will identify him as the man who tried to poison him, Walt diabolically manipulates Jesse to break up with his girlfriend by telling Jesse he has to fess up to Andrea about their meth cooking or the relationship can’t go on. "I know you'll make the right call," Walt says. "If she loves you, she'll understand."__The NPD person projects his wickedness onto others. When Walt comes upon wife Skyler smoking a cigarette to calm herself after all the bad she’s learned about him, he tells her, "This is so unlike you." Whether it's Jesse or Skyler or all the very bad guys he encounters, in his mind faults lie in them, not him. As long as he can maintain cognitive dissonance between what others do and what he does, he’s good with himself.
In my admittedly superficial reading on NPD, the science suggests that the two most common paths victims of NPD behavior take are flight or submission. Skyler tries both. She takes the kids and runs at one point. And at another she gives in completely to Walt’s madness and basically becomes his accomplice. In the end, though, she takes the hardest but best approach and draws a line…in this case, it’s the line she draws in blood with a kitchen knife across Walt’s hand. Even that might not have been enough to curtail Walt’s demonic behavior had not Walt, Jr. been there to call 911 on his father, signaling once and for all that this desperate fear Walt has had of being cut off from his family had finally come to pass…and all because of him, not them. When Junior yells at Walt, "Why are you still alive? Why don't you just die already?" he echoes the voice the NPD person has been fearing in his head since infancy.Since I’m so far out on a limb with this, why don’t I scootch myself a little closer to the end by trying to draw a political connection? Linking individual dysfunction to movement dysfunction is always dicey business. Groups are made up of multiple personalities, and to assign a neurosis observable in one person to many people is really extrapolating without a net. So I’ll resist the temptation to argue that the Tea Party is made up at the top of NPD personalities and at the bottom of people peculiarly susceptible to the wiles of the NPD personality.

Instead I’ll focus my amateur psychoanalytic skills here on Sen. Ted Cuz of Texas, who in recent months has made a major play at becoming the head of the Tea Party. Without benefit of having the man stretched out on my couch for a session, Cruz strikes me as a perfect embodiment of NPD. He is not unique because American society seems to be a hotbed for NPD, but his potential for causing the kind of damage the NPD character is prone to inflict is enormous and was on full display during the recent crisis over the government shutdown and possible default.
Like most politicians, Cruz is possessed of a flourishing vanity and a dazzling disregard for the truth. But these traits alone do not make for the NPD personality. Like Walter White’s idealization of his family, Cruz idealizes an America that exists only among his Twitter followers and the ideologues who attend his highly partisan events. Like Walter, too, he plays the martyr, cynically accusing Senate leaders of trying to silence him in the midst of a 21-hour speech before an open mic the leadership had granted him. Like Walter White, he purposely sends mixed messages in order to confuse and entrap, as he did in inciting Republicans in the House to defund Obamacare, knowing they could not count on the Senate to support them. Like Walter White, he continually berates the Republican leadership for not being as strong and pure as he is. And like Walter White, he projects his dark motivations on others. "This body should be not be granting special rules, special favors for the ruling class, for those with power and privilege. We should be fighting for those who are struggling…,” he pontificates with his Princeton and Harvard pedigree. And this from a man who boasts that one of his proudest moments came in arguing before the Supreme Court against health care for poor children.
At a time in our history when our nation’s attaction to NPD personalities has cursed us with a truly loathsome cast of politicians, Cruz may be the worst we’ve had since Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. McCarthy’s lies and manipulations were not the standard issue for politicians. They were of a kind to make even politicians cower and blush. They were lies directly aimed at ruining lives, enflaming hatreds, and pushing America into a deep paranoia. McCarthy was the most vile American politician of the 20thcentury. We are barely 1/10th into this new century, and Cruz has already made claim as the most vile of the 21st century. Cruz has said he “will continue to do anything I can to stop Obamacare.”  Minimally it seems that it’s up to the American media to get some hard, cold clarity on just what he means by that--and in the process perhaps, expose the utter exhibitionism in it--by asking Cruz a series of questions, such as: “Does that mean you would again risk bringing down the world economy? Does that mean you would preach armed insurrection against the US government? Does that mean you be willing to walk into the Democratic caucus with an explosive devise strapped to yourself and blow up all the pro-Obamacare forces? Does that mean you would be willing to kill the president? Just what do you mean by anything?”

Ideally, of course, the Skylers and Walt Juniors in the Republican Party--the ones watching up close as their party and their country are being destroyed by this Heisenberg of American politics--will draw the line at last, and shout “No!” They are, after all, the party of Just Say No.

Misery Loves Company. Welcome.

Last Memorial Day I was engaging in that distinctive San Diego sport Over the Line softball, when I broke for what would have been the last out of the game and heard something snap in my ankle. I immediately fell to the ground and haven't been much the same since. My GP misdiagnosed it as mere broken blood vessels and sent me off on our summer hiking trip to Switzerland with his assurances that I would be as good as new as soon as I stepped either foot on the Jura Mountains. Wrong!

I never got to hike those mountains, nor did I get to take my regular hikes on the little hills around our house again. In fact, by the end of summer, I had completely fallen out of my exercise regime, developed a nasty limp with consequent back problems, and put on 15 pounds. Clearly my doc's prognosis for a 3-week recovery needed a serious course correction. And that would not be done without some fancy footwork with my insurance company...which, contrary to growing American  mythology, always comes between you and your doctor. Finally I got to see an orthopedic specialist who told me I had a torn Achilles tendon...just like the injuries the big guys get. (And now you know how I went to Switzerland and came back mostly talking about the toilets.)

Yesterday I had surgery on it, and last night I spent the second most painfully excruciating night of my life. (The nadir? A sub-freezing camp-out in the snow at the Grand Canyon without a sleeping bag. That one reduced me to prayer for only the second time in my adult life. So, yeah, that one was the worst.)

I went into my first night of recovery well armed, or so I thought. They set me up with a Breaking Bad supply of the legendary Vicodin. I had my remote controls for the TV.  And I had a big red plastic bucket beside my bed. Due to the sophisticated nature of this blog, I will not detail the uses of the bucket, except to say that it is saving Lorna so much dirty work, I expect her to be serenading it before all this ends. The TV remote became an immediate source of anxiety because Direct TV started flashing me a message that our dish receiver from back in the Seinfeld era was now obsolete and would cease to function any day unless we called to order a replacement. Cease to function any day...like Saturday, perhaps, as Jon Lester is about to throw the first pitch at Fenway Park in the ALCS (and careful readers of this blog might recall that at the beginning of the baseball season, I was boasting how I had become indifferent to the fate of my team. Ha! All part of the plan to deke out the baseball gods...Fools!)

And then came the sadly overrated Vicodin. If it is supposed to be a painkiller, my miserable night led me to conclude that it was the Freddo Corleone of painkillers. It was getting me 45-90 minutes of relief...tops. And since it was prescribed for me to take every four hours, that left a lot of time on the clock for some Dick Cheney-style torture. Fortunately, around 1 a.m. I discovered my free left hand. Using it to massage the pain in my left leg yielded pleasures more precious than rubies. I named it Breslow. Red Sox fans will understand (as the guys in the broadcast booth like to say, it can beat you in so many ways).

Tonight looks more promising. The doc doubled the Vicodin dose, and Lorna put on her IT hat to install the new receiver. Still there is pressure mounting from the women folk in these parts for me to save myself such agony in the future by giving up softball. But that is not going to happen. I believe fully in going down doing what you like to do until you absolutely, positively can't do it anymore. I had a friend/employer some years ago who died of a heart-attack while working on a story in South Africa. John Hummel liked to pose as an effete dabbler in French literature, but the man was of the warrior class, a class sorely depleted in progressive circles nowadays. Loss that it was, I  couldn't help envying John's exit.

And speaking of baseball, watching the Pirates in the post season last night for the first time in decades reminded me of my youth when they were my National League team and I skipped school three days in 1960 to watch their wild World Series win over the New York Yankees (actually I was a fan back then of any National League team that might beat the Yankees). The great Clemente was part of that team. Twelve years later he died in an airplane crash delivering aid to victims of a Nicaraguan earthquake. That was just three months after getting his historic 3,000th hit. Interesting philosophical question for Roberto: If he could've controlled when he died, would it have been right after his big hit or during his rescue mission? I think I'll pass the question on to the  blog's afterlife correspondent, Christopher Hitchens, and perhaps he can run it by Clemente one day when they're out shagging fly balls together.

Anyway, I'm relatively confident Lorna's not going to go all Kathy Bates on my ankles. If she were so inclined, I believe she would have done it before I went wild dancing the night away on our anniversary...

Six Degrees of Narcissism

Pope Francis recently jumped on the anti-narcissism bandwagon in an interview with La Repubblica where he said:

"I don't like the word narcissism; it indicates an excessive love for oneself and this is not good, it can produce serious damage not only to the soul of those affected but also in relationship with others, with the society in which one lives. The real trouble is that those most affected by this  -  which is actually a kind of mental disorder  -  are people who have a lot of power. Often bosses are narcissists." 

I will resist the temptation to mock that observation, coming as it does from a virtual boss of bosses whose job description actually includes infallibility. Besides, given the recent predilection of this new pope to speak against orthodoxy, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to hear him come out one day against the doctrine of papal infallibility…which will open this interesting conundrum for the world’s Catholics: Do they then accept that there is no such thing as papal infallibility because the Pope says so, or do they reject it because the Pope is fallible? An interesting discussion for another time perhaps.
For this time, let’s stick with the topic of narcissism, which is showing up more in public discourse. The word was on everybody’s tongue when Miley Cyrus recently put her tongue, ass, and crotch on full display at the VMA awards. Shortly thereafter we were treated to the spectacle of Senator Ted Cruz making an ass of himself with his tongue for 21 hours on the Senate floor delivering a filibuster of his own imagining to an audience of Red State crotch grabbers. And just this weekend, we had Bill O’Reilly sitting supremely confident in his own divinity before the 60 Minutes cameras and declaring that God came to him in the middle of the night and told him to write his new book, Killing Jesus, which prompted Stephen Colbert (10/2/13, "Blood in the Water") to warn, “Bill, don’t tell people about the voices you hear in the middle of the night because they’ll think you’re a crazy narcissist.”
Of course O’Reilly is a crazy narcissist. He may in fact be the preeminent narcissist of our society, which is awash in narcissism. We are all narcissists to one degree or another, and narcissism seems particular to the modern age. It was repressed impulses that gave birth to Freudian psychoanalysis, but it is unleashed impulses, as manifest in narcissism, that have come to be the neurotic hallmark of our time. Famed psychoanalyst Sheldon Bach has observed, “You used to see people coming in with hand-washing compulsions, phobias, and familiar neuroses. Now you see mostly narcissists.” 
Bach is talking about clinical narcissists, which reputedly present the therapeutic community with its most complex challenge. So many of them, like Bill O’Reilly, are highly successful, which only serves to reinforce their inflated self-image. Our culture seems to have been custom-made to accommodate the internal sense of emptiness and consequent external sense of rage that make narcissism such a defining force. In his disturbing book on the subject, The Culture of Narcissism , Christopher Lasch wrote:

“For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs to validate his self-esteem…The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in politics and business where performance now counts for less than ‘visibility,’ ‘momentum,’ and a winning record.” 

So the Pope was right (damn near infallible), when he said, “Often bosses are narcissists.” They are indeed, but narcissism is not exclusive to bosses. Since so many of us in the modern age seem to be afflicted with narcissism, it stands to reason that there are degrees of narcissism. The Nobby Works plans on returning to the subject often in coming posts because one of the key tenets of this blog is that the way we are wired as individuals has more to say about how we function as a society than the superficialities our media obsesses over. In the interest of paving the way for those future discussions, I want to delineate what I see as six degrees of narcissism.Mythic Narcissism. The condition comes to us from the Greek myth of Narcissus, the far too handsome lad who falls so in love with his reflection in the water that he’s helpless to do anything but stare at it until he dies doing so. In Lasch’s book he points out an important, but often overlooked distinction in this myth that leads to the confusion between narcissism and vanity. With vanity, one simply fusses over one’s reflection; with narcissism one obsesses over one’s reflection to the exclusion of all else.    Clinical Narcissism. The condition is like walking into a funhouse of mirrors. “Often these patients …complain of a sense of inner emptiness,” writes Lasch. “At the same time they entertain fantasies of omnipotence and a strong belief in their right to exploit others and be gratified.” By definition, a narcissist is unlikely to seek help…doesn’t think it’s necessary. If forced to do so by a significant other or dire circumstances, the narcissist will often go into the therapy determined to prove the world wrong. Because they are such adept manipulators as well as being smart and articulate, they not only can cause amateurs to doubt their own sanity but make professionals feel in over their heads.Normal Narcissism. The condition most of us have…occasional flashes of narcissism that don’t mark our personalities as a whole, but throw dark shadows over some of our words and actions. As an example, last week I had a Facebook commenter lash out against Linda Ronstadt’s attempt to bring compassion to her difficult experience with Catholic school nuns of her childhood. The commenter wrote: "Ms. Ronstadt 'grew up' (softened her view), but I did not. And will not. They were sadists…And to soften it up by blaming it all on the culture in which they were socialized, bullshit. That defense didn't work at Nuremburg, and it doesn't work here. If a few had nervous breakdowns as a result of their choices, well, karma's a non-denominational bitch, ain't she? Fuck. Them. All.” And just to be fair and balanced here, another Facebook commenter from the other side of the political spectrum wrote this in regards to the government shutdown: “I have a problem with people saying America voted for the health care act so get over it. I did not vote for the health care act, plain and simple, and I'm America!” Over time, I’ve read enough from both of these people not to accuse either of being a congenital narcissist, but the narcissism implied in both those statements is undeniable. It rears its ugly little head in all our pretty little heads now and then. Someone has a perspective that does not conform to your view? Well, how dare they? The urge to crown yourself Master of the Universe is sometimes irresistible. Totally irrational, but irresistible.  Professional Narcissism. The condition comes from a career choice. I’d say Miley Cyrus’s notorious performance falls into this category. It comes from knowing that there’s a large audience out there with an unhealthy appetite for narcissistic behavior, and then giving them what they want. Stephen Colbert has made a brilliant career of satirizing this kind of narcissism. Unlike the chronic narcissist, the pro can see the act, take off the mask, and laugh at it all.   Walking Narcissism. The condition never comes to the attention of the therapeutic community, though it could and probably should. O’Reilly is such a narcissist. His behavior is no act. Watch his recent 60 Minutes interview and behold a creature devoid of one ounce of Christian humility. Watch this famous meltdown on YouTube and behold a man full of dangerous rage. His money, power, and celebrity spare him from undergoing treatment…and thus the great paradox of narcissism…it can indeed arm its victims with all the defenses required to stave off the help they need. Pathological Narcissism. This is the condition of narcissists who do not have the support system of a Bill O’Reilly to save us (and them) from them. Breaking Bad’s Walter White is a prime illustration of this most dangerous strain of narcissism. This is O’Reilly without the infrastructure of Fox News-- its audience, paychecks, medical insurance, and phalanx of paid lackeys. When a walking narcissist is forced to go it alone, the result is Walter White. The intelligence is there, the resourcefulness, the manipulative powers, yet it all exists on the fringe of society rather than in primetime.  I think this is the great growth area in narcissism, which is why Breaking Bad was both an important show...and a popular one. Some time ago I wrote here about a critical line of Breaking Bad dialog. The most significant piece of dialog since then was Walt’s admission to his wife in the last episode that all the bad he had done, he had done for himself. After five years of spinning bullshit about how he had done it all for his family, he finally breaks true: "I did it for me. I was good at it. And I was really — I was alive." The simplest cure to a nasty case of narcissism may be looking yourself in the mirror and just saying those few words. Unfortunately the odds of getting to that point before doing immeasurable harm to those around you are not very good. 

Continuous Improvement

The Nobby Works of course is a firm believer in continuous improvement. In that regard, we have taken criticism of the quality of the site's videos to heart and endeavored to improve them. Videos accompanying the following posts should stream better than they did originally. The second half of these are of just passing interest or of interest only to those who know me personally. The top half however, especially the first, have attracted extensive and persistent page views, and the Nob hopes this quality enhancement will elevate the viewing experience.

Tipping Point?

Muslim Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

On Wisconsin

Standing in the Doorway
September 7, 2013

The Swiss
Summerwind
We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming
Johnny Cash vs Florenza Calogero

Blackballed?

There is a point in Tavis Smiley’s recent, outstanding 2-part interview with Linda Ronstadt on PBS that he asks her to talk about her experience as a Catholic school girl, and Linda replies:

Well, we had a really tough time. I’ve got to say, in compassion for those women, they were very, very unfairly trained. They were trained to not have any emotional support. They weren’t allowed to make friends, even within the order. 

They’ve changed the way they train them now, but those poor women were very, very disturbed in that there were – in the eight years that I was in that school, I think three of them had nervous breakdowns, complete nervous breakdowns. One of them right in front of the class – we watched her come unglued 

They were wearing these black wool habits. They were made out of black wool serge. Do you know how hot it is in Tucson? It’s so hot, and you’d get in the full sun and it’s like being – it’s like wearing a solar collector. Those black habits are like solar collectors. 

Meantime now the priests were wearing cotton shirts, short-sleeved shirts, and they could smoke and drink and do whatever they want. Not the nuns. They wouldn’t let them change their habits, even for white ones. 

So they were just – they must have been miserable, and it was hard. They were taught to be very disciplined, be strict disciplinarians with us. There were large class sizes, and they were beating the children. 

They really would have gone to jail for some of the things that they did to us. It was very frightening. So I was sorry, but there are a lot of nuns right now, like the nuns on the bus, the Liberation Theology nuns, they’re my heroes.

One guesses that if Linda were asked to comment on the cabal of rock “critics” who have successfully excluded her from her rightful place in The Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame since she became eligible almost 20 years ago, her response would be just equanimous and graceful. That is who she is. As Chris Willman wrote in a review of her new memoir, "Simple Dreams is nothing if not gracious. Ronstadt was too classy to ever fully embrace the role of rocker chick….”And that refusal probably more than anything has put her at the top of the list of egregious oversights that has turned one of Cleveland’s few genuine claims to fame into yet another “mistake by the lake.” Dedicated Ronstadt fans, among whom I proudly count myself, have been both mystified and infuriated for years as the elective body of the hall chose to ignore the qualifications of one of rock’s most accomplished women. David Speranza, writing at Popshifter, effectively lays out the case for Ronstadt’s inclusion in the rock hall. But the Linda agnostics have their rebuttals on boilerplate. Mention Linda's enormous commercial success in record sales and concert appearances and they'll say, "Yeah, if commercial appeal mattered, David Cassidy would be in the hall of fame." Mention the wonderful new songwriters, like Warren Zevon and Karla Bonhoff, she introduced to her mass audience and they'll say, "Yeah, because she couldn't write her own material." Mention that she also introduced a generation of classic rockers--Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison--to a new generation, and they'll snarl back at you, "Buddy Holly didn't need no stinkin' girl singer." Mention that she made The Eagles and all of country rock possible and her hipper that thou critics will smugly proclaim, "We rest our case."For some time, I've been a member of the Linda Ronstadt Should be in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Facebook page. But now I'm beginning to wonder. It's not that the naysayers have gotten to me...at least not in that way. But I'm really beginning to wonder if The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is worthy of Linda Ronstadt. Judging from her words and demeanor in the Tavis Smiley interview, Linda doesn’t seem as exercised by the outrageous R ‘n R hall snub as I and millions of her fans are. Because of her Parkinson’s disease, she would now never have that moment to sing on stage with Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, The Eagles, and her other musical compatriots in celebration of her induction even in the unlikely event it happened. I don’t think it would bother her anywhere near as much as it bothers her to go home and not be able to sing with her family. But, still, as a detective story, why has her election become so unlikely? Inspired by the Smiley interview, I went time traveling through the Internet for the answer, and I think I found it. John Rockwell, who was the New York Times pop music critic during Linda’s rock heyday, wrote a deft, exhaustive essay for an anthology entitled Stranded—Rock and Roll for a Desert Island in 1978. Even though the date was 14 years before Ronstadt was even eligible for the hall, Rockwell’s piece seems to foretell the difficulty she would encounter with his peers in the world of music criticism. The thrust of the essay was actually directed at them and their failure to appreciate her exquisite talents. Before embarking on his penetrating brief for her, Rockwell writes:

“…her reputation among rock critics is not very grand. In Britain especially, she is widely regarded as a mindless puppet in the hands of her producer, Peter Asher…. A typical passing crack about Ronstadt in the British rock press comes from a recent Melody Maker, in which Michael Oldfield grumbles that ‘it's ridiculous that the most successful female rock singer is Linda Ronstadt, whose voice is nothing special, but who has made it through ruining other people's songs.’ And the British attitude, or at least something approaching it, is shared by many of the best-known American rock critics….”  

If there's one thing that comes through in the Smiley interviews it is that this woman is hardly mindless and was never anyone's puppet. If I had to distill the main anti-Ronstadt arguments that Rockwell’s 16,000 words address, these would be the bullet points:Her voice was too pure, and rock critics disdain vocal purity as contrary to their notions of what rock ‘n roll should be.The production values on her albums likewise were too close to the perfectionist standards of classical records rather than the rough and raw ideal of the most revered classic rock.Her approach to most of her material, especially black music, was too uptight and exposed her more as a musical dilettante than a gifted interpreter.That she overtly used her looks to sell her music, most evident in her airbrushed album covers.That she didn’t comprehend the songs she sang, especially the more complex ones.Rockwell patiently and pointedly makes his case against each of these arguments, conceding where they have some validity along the way. But it’s against the last charge that he’s most persuasive. He directly takes on a gang of critics who expressed contempt for Linda’s handling of Warren Zevon’s Mohammed’s Radio. Like a pop Clarence Darrow, he rises to present a mighty defense of Ronstadt’s version:

Some critics find hints of a mordant irony on Zevon's part in "Mohammed's Radio" that make the passionate directness of Ronstadt's performance seem misconceived--above all his very use of the word "alas." For me, though, whatever irony Zevon may possibly have intended seems decidedly secondary, and in any event is in no way denied by Linda's interpretation. Besides, Zevon's voice and singing style, while effective enough for emphatic rockers, are far too limited to suggest much subtlety…
The real secret to the song lies in contemplating the words in conjunction with the music, and not in the abstract, as I think too many rock critics are prone to do. The music here is not rock and roll in the ordinary sense, even with the refrain of "Don't it make you want to rock and roll/All night long." Instead it's a dirgelike anthem, a rolling, inexorable attestation to the darker, more passionate side of life. It is this passion, power, and even rage Linda and her band capture so perfectly…It is a performance in which the vocalism illuminates the material, transforming it in a way that its creator could never himself achieve. As such it reaffirms the place of interpretation in contemporary popular music, and provides an experience of enormous emotional import for any listener able to open up and respond to the glory of great singing.

Alas, Rockwell’s brilliant treatise on Ronstadt’s brilliance was not enough to redeem her in the eyes of the critics who rejected her way back then and continue to reject her with every shameful round of hall of fame votes. And her fate with them was probably sealed for good with a Rolling Stone article published in 1983, entitled Snow White in South Africa. In the article, Linda is pretty thoroughly trashed for appearing in concert at Sun City, the make-believe showcase of racial harmony created by the South African government to deflect international condemnation of its racist apartheid policies. Oddly, the writer of the article, Aaron Latham, attended the same high school as Linda back about the same time, but that didn’t stop him from portraying her as a dithering airhead on the subject of racial injustice. He pivots off Linda’s casual remark that she would one day like to play Snow White to paint her as cuteness corrupted by the poison apple of apartheid money. And if the Snow White metaphor seems too opaque, he takes it one step further when he writes: 

A black cook in a white uniform and a great billowing white chef's hat knelt over a campfire, frying up eggs and sausages, and bacon. A platoon of black waiters in livery conveyed the hot dishes to the table. And poured fresh coffee. And generally hovered. I realized that Margaret Mitchell was wrong. The way of life she immortalized had not gone with the wind. It lives on in South Africa. And today, Linda Ronstadt, with blacks handing her food and pouring her drink, was cast as Scarlett.

The piece is filled with so many cheap shots like that I'm surprised Latham didn't bag a rhino on the safari he went on with Linda. Critics might with age get a little shaky on their aesthetic judgments, especially as maturity and experience reveal to them how much they really don't get about the artists they judge. But give them a righteous political issue to bite into and they have a dog chew for life. There were other artists who ignored the UN ban against artists performing in Sun City and that has not prevented them from getting voted into The Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame—Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon (twice!). But none of those artists ever called out the frat house ethos that dominated rock the way way Linda did. And a hardcore of rock insiders have never forgiven for her for speaking a simple but uncomfortable truth about them: Boys will be boys. To bring things here full circle, there’s another line from Latham’s article that bears quoting. It’s from Linda herself. When Latham asked her about her Catholic school days, she replied, “These nuns were ignorant. Nuns are the worst fascists."It’s not at all the charitable tone she took when Tavis Smiley asked her a similar question just the other night. And there’s a good reason for that. Linda Ronstadt, unlike her critics, grew up. 

The Emperor's Newer Clothes

So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes! Don’t they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!” Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. “But he hasn’t got anything on,” said a little child. “Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” asked its father. And then one person whispered to another what the child had said, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.” “But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

Someone far wiser than I recently wrote that, “The Emperor’s New Clothes may be the greatest story in children’s literature because it so sharply cuts to a dilemma at the heart of a very serious and perplexing adult situation. That is, what to do when you perceive something’s going wrong at a station or two above you? Do you, as they say, 'know your place' and keep your mouth shut, or do you declaim for moral, legal or practical reasons your dissent from the conventional wisdom?"
This dilemma is much in the news these days with the spate of whistleblower stories blowing in the wind. Indeed one of the raging controversies is whether these people who are motivated to call attention to questionable behaviors or policies by their employers and/or superiors are dangerous malcontents or heroes. The debate is not likely to yield one conclusive answer any time soon. As the saying goes, it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
If the revelations served up by the whistleblower benefit your health, safety, or livelihood, you’re likely to see the act as heroic. If the revelations risk your wealth, position, or grand design, you’re likely to see the act as betrayal. And although it may seem like I tipped the scales there by balancing wealth, position and grand design against health, safety,  and livelihood,  I think whistleblowing requires at least the presumption of confronting power with truth. I also think for an act to qualify as real whistleblowing, rather than mere snitching, bitching, or smearing, the stakes have to be high enough and clear enough so that there is evident cost to the whistleblower and evident benefit to others. Whistleblowing must, in the end, be an altruistic act, regardless of whatever vainglory accrues to the whistleblower as byproduct.
The hero of the Emperor's New Clothes, of course, is just a child, subject to no such analysis. The child is unaware of any consequences to himself or others in pointing out that the emperor’s new clothes are a hoax perpetrated on the emperor by the scheming tailors, and in turn by the emperor on the people. The child acts out of innocence more than altruism or heroism. The child sees what is there, unlike the adults in the crowd who only see what they want to see…or worse, what they’re told to see.  The story echoes the famous biblical line from Isaiah "and a little child shall lead them."

The child has not yet developed either of those two depressing afflictions of adulthood: an inclination toward sycophancy or an aversion to courage. Thus the child is more open to the truth. The adults surrounding the child, who learned as they “matured” to avoid the truth, are shocked into it. Now bolstered by crowd courage, they dare to acknowledge the truth themselves.
These simple stories endure because they say so much about human character and interplay. We can walk into any business meeting, political gathering, or social setting and detect the posturing emperor and the docile herd. In those moments of clarity, objectivity, critical thought each of us is the child who sees the truth of things. But those moments generally pass because, as in the Brothers Grimm story, we’ve learned that nothing comes of bursting out the truth. As the story concludes:

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

For a children’s story, that’s a pretty grim ending…no pun intended. The child is not rewarded, the emperor learns no lesson, the crowd’s momentary courage is not reinforced…and certainly no price will be extracted from the scam artists in the fitting room. It is a sadly contemporary ending. Almost every such modern day drama comes to just such an unfulfilling ending. We’ve become accustomed to these letdowns.All of which makes today’s news from our friend Employee X. rather remarkable. It seems WE, the company he wrote about in his book—Look Before You Lean: How a Lean Transformation Goes Bad—A Cautionary Tale, has decided to stop parading around in the fabrication it draped itself in more than two years ago. It looks to have acknowledged the naked truth it has seen of itself in the mirror. And despite its tremendous investment of company time, talent, money, and reputation in a chimera has determined to refashion for itself a new and brighter future. It’s a rare and welcome act of corporate wisdom and courage that’s  enough to restore one’s faith in fairy tale endings.