FunctionalAmbivalent

As Best As I Can Piece the Story Together

According to this, in India there is a tradition of men going to liquor stores to drink in gardens called "ahaataa." Occasionally, however, the men's wives object, leading to incidents like this:

One fine evening they surrounded the liquor shop and the ahaataa, placards in hand demanding its closure. All the men inside were beaten with footwear. In many cases the wife/sister of the man being beaten was cheering the crowd to do a more thorough job. The police watched as spectators, only ensuring that the beating did not cross limits.

OK, so far, so good. Men drink, women get pissed and beat them with shoes, and the beatings are all in good fun. That's pretty much a typical Saturday night around my house. No biggie.

Until, that is, the women -- previously occupied with kitchen and child-rearing tasks -- start going to college and getting engineering degrees. Then, as active members of the rising Indian middle class, they start stopping off at the liquor stores on the way home from the office to knock back a few with the girls.

Seeing women propped up on bar stools, wondering what they're talking about as they whisper, point, and giggle, at least some Indian men started to think that maybe women drinking in public was a serious threat to Indian society. In reaction, upward rose the socially conservative Sri Ram Sene group, which is sort of the Moral Majority of India. Sri Ram Sene, which also objects to Valentine's Day and condemns shopping malls as "havens of hand-holding," started breaking up women's happy hours by, among other things, physically manhandling the women the way Indian women had traditionally manhandled the men.

Whatever the logical merits of Sri Ram Sene's what's-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander argument, beating up women on the streets of an increasingly modern India didn't go over. The media coverage was unfriendly and the women, rather than giving up drinking and going home to cook dinner, seemed to get even more belligerent. In fact, they formed an organization to fight for their right (to party), which they called the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose & Forward Women (CPLFW). Besides being an organization that I, personally, would pay a lot join, the CPLFW has something of a gift for political theatrics. (Here's their FaceBook page.) It called upon it's members and their sympathizers across India to mail pink panties (called chaddis) to Pramod Muthalik, who's kind of the Jerry Falwell of Sri Ram Sene.

In sending chaddis to the Ram Sene, the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women has found an interesting way to stay within the Gandhian chalk-circle of non-violent protest. It may appear pointless to send women’s chaddis to an obscure obscurantist but then Muthalik is himself leading a pointless campaign.

With a population of over 1 billion, only a tiny percentage of Indians needed to participate in the protest to make a huge impression. Confronted with thousands upon thousands of actual women's underthings, Muthalik and his followers reacted with horror. As the wispy, terrifying chaddis piled-up, Sri Ran Sere sympathizers started to complain that they, rather than the women, were the victims:

Pramod Muthalik, its leader, has gone on record as apologizing for the rough handling of women and has said they never intended to beat up any woman. Muthalik has apologized, while the women of S Farm feel proud of themselves...The public display of panties (as symbols of love) that CPLFW has indulged in is obscene by every cultural standard. It is sad and unfortunate that Indian academic, intellectual and political establishments have not reprimanded them in the most severe terms.

Instead of being outraged, academic, intellectual and political people around the world (for example, me) laughed. And as we laugh, a good many of us (not me) are also sending pretty pink chaddis to Muthalik. It's fun, after all, to poke fun at ridiculous old prigs.

There is, however, a more serious side to all of this. Along with mailing underthings, the CPLFW is calling attention to the increasingly violent and anti-woman culture war in India. And Indian columnist Devangshu Datta reminds us what's really important about that the CPLFW does:

But as with all the other social movements that have been associated with clothes, the clothes are just symbolic. Nor does the CPLFW have much to do with anybody wanting to go to pubs.

This campaign is really about the right of any citizen to do what he or she wants with his or her spare time and money. There is an old Indian saying that translates: “If it’s not your father’s money, who are you to tell me how to spend it?” That is the tradition that the CPLFW embodies. That is really the only tradition that matters in this discourse — don’t miss it for the chaddis.

A lesson, perhaps, for us all.

I Just Can't Imagine How Much It Must Suck To Be a Serious Republican These Days

They'll figure it out, eventually. They'll put the loonies out on the street and start listening again to the grown-ups. But for now, it's pure entertainment.

The mayor of a California city says he will resign after being criticized for sharing an e-mail picture depicting the White House lawn planted with watermelons under the title "No Easter egg hunt this year."

Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose issued a statement Thursday saying he is sorry and will step down as mayor at Monday's City Council meeting.

The only question is, how deep runs the well of madness?

Show Proposal For Our Times

With the price of real estate going through the floor, perhaps it will mean the end of those reality/game shows that give people houses. Seriously: right now, who wants one?

In fact, maybe someone will come up with a game show where, if you win, the show buys your house from you at its 2007 value. Call it Cash Out and imagine the deep-voiced announcer:

You missed the top of the market and now you're stuck. No matter how much you lower your asking price, no one is interested. You're screwed.

Or you were, until Cash Out.

On Cash Out, people just like you answer general knowledge questions in an exciting format, hoping to turn back the hands of time...

It could work.

Masters of the Irrelevant

Senate Republicans refused to consider the serious issue of ending the District of Columbia's taxation without representation until the Senate had voted on the decidedly un-serious issue of banning the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine, of course, is not something the FCC or Congress was seriously considering, and in any case it was opposed by President Obama.

The amendment passed 87-11 after limited debate consisting primarily of befuddled Senators asking what the hell was going on.

There is apparently no truth to the rumor that Republicans will next demand that the Senate ban monsters under the bed.

Bunning In a Nutshell -- Which, Come to Think of It, Is Where He Belongs

Patrick Ruffini:

(Kentucky Senator Jim) Bunning's errors are not ones of principle or ethics -- but of something even more basic and easily understood: buffoonery.

Six years ago, Bunning persevered (barely) by insinuating that his  Democratic challenger was gay.

As I've Been Saying...

New York Times columnist Gail Collins says this about Governor Bobby Jindal's objection to government spending:

Louisiana has gotten $130 billion in post-Katrina aid. How is it that the stars of the Republican austerity movement come from the states that suck up the most federal money? Taxpayers in New York send way more to Washington than they get back so more can go to places like Alaska and Louisiana. Which is fine, as long as we don’t have to hear their governors bragging about how the folks who elected them want to keep their tax money to themselves. Of course they do! That’s because they’re living off ours.

Louisiana, for example, gets $1.78 for every dollar in federal tax it pays.

The reason these conservative utopias get so much money from the federal government is that they're generally poorer, less educated, and more prone to social pathologies like out-of-wedlock births and divorce.

And they want the rest of us to be more like them!

Caught In the Middle of a Thought Process, I Post a Highly Disjointed Sketch of Thoughts To Come

As we all contemplate how far down "down" is in our economy, I find myself thinking about one of the things I marvel at in American life: how few of the things that most of us consider the necessities of life are really necessities. I think these deep thoughts as someone who just ate a $3 bran muffin.

When I left my job at the end of the year, my wife and I cut back our spending -- the entirely natural thing to do, and exactly the thing everyone is doing that is contributing so mightily to our economic death spiral. We're all cutting back, even those of us still gainfully employed, because there's no telling what the future may bring.

After a month we took stock. I looked at our checking account and said: "Man, when we cut, we can cut a lot." And we did. We cut expedient, I'm-too-tired-to-cook carry-out meals. We stopped buying books and re-introduced ourselves to the library. I stopped buying wine. We skipped a couple of trips to nice restaurants and cut down on the recreational trips to shopping malls. Little things, big things, in between things: we cut them all -- except, apparently, $3 bran muffins. The result was a balance sheet that, despite my career predicament, was holding its own.

Anyway, the point of this is not that we're such fabulous financial managers; we're not. The point is that if my own little micro-economy is any indicator, the macro-economy may be in for a long slide. If Americans cut back to even a laughably opulent version of "the essentials" (I'm not giving up my $3 bran muffins!) that translates into huge changes in life as we know it, because so much of our economy is built on things that most of us now are considering primarily as ballast that can potentially be thrown overboard. 

I believe, personally, that we could do with less self indulgence. I have believed for a long time that materialism is a cancer on our society and that we are literally killing ourselves in a quest for things that ultimately don't matter. I don't know why childless couples want 5,000 square foot houses, or why people need new cars every couple of years, or why dinner at the casual dining concept-of-the-moment once a week is mandatory for people's sense of well-being. I don't get big screen TVs as something worth going into debt for and I don't think the ability to spend $500 a day at Disneyland should be part of anything called "standard of living."

My underlying personal belief in simple frugality, of course, doesn't extend as far as good wine (or $3 bran muffins) and I'm sure that there are plenty of big-screen TV owners who think spending $50 on a solid Chateauneuf du Pape as the height of decadence. I seriously don't intend to hold myself up as any kind of example and do not for a minute imagine myself some kind of neo-Thoreau living in my own private Walden.

What I do mean to say is that, with rare exception, each of us is undergoing our own belt-tightening, confronting our worst-case scenarios, being forced to prioritize in a way we haven't in a couple of decades, at least. We're each acquiring our own economic scar tissue, whether from opening our 401(k) statements or going through foreclosure.

I just find myself wondering: when this is over, where will be our new equilibrium? How will our expectations have changed? What will be our new definition of The Good Life? How will we have changed, and will it be for the better?

So here are some predictions:

• Financial stability will be the new status symbol. Forget the big house, the boat, the expensive car; sexy is money in the bank and the monthly statements to prove it.
• Jobs will be seen more as jobs and less as vehicles to self-fulfillment.
• Several professional sports franchises will fold or be sold under financial duress -- hopefully hockey, but you never know.
• Society's tolerance for ridiculous bullshit of all kinds will decrease. Marihuana will be legalized, gay marriage will be recognized, and schools will stop teaching self-esteem, just to name three.
• People you know will take jobs in China.
• Plans for the George W. Bush library will be scaled back until it is exactly one square foot bigger than his father's.
• No one will buy $3 bran muffins.

Feel free to add your own.

The Gingrich Manifesto: Aiming Low

Newt Gingrich, the big thinker behind the Contract for America, is out with his conservative recovery plan. His theory is that conservatives should embrace 80/20 issues in a non-ideological way. That is, issues that poll at 80% approval rates or higher. (Ironic, for a party that routinely denigrates its opponents for polling everything.) Newt's 80/20 issues, packaged as The Platform of the American People, are:

1. English should be the official language of government. (87 to 11)
2. We want our elected leaders in Washington to focus on increasing the energy supplies of the United States and lowering the cost of gasoline and electricity. (71 to 18)
3. The option of a single-rate system should give taxpayers the convenience of filing their taxes with just a single sheet of paper. (82 to 15)
4. Every worker should continue to have the right to federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union. (79 to 12)
5. Keeping the reference to "One Nation Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is very important. (88 to 11)
6. Congress should make it a crime to advocate acts of terrorism, violent conduct, or the killing of innocent people in the United States. (83 to 12)
7. We should dramatically increase our investment in math and science education. (91 to 8)
8. We believe that if research indicates we could build clean coal plants in the United States with no carbon emissions, it would be important to build such plants as rapidly as possible. (71 to 8)
9. Illegal immigrants who commit felonies should be deported. (88 to 10)
10. We support giving a large financial prize to the first company or individual who invents a new, safer way to dispose of nuclear waste products. (79 to 16)

For reference, the Contract with America was built on what Gingrich called "60 percent issues," issues that enjoyed 60% support in the electorate. The Contract itself was significantly longer than The Platform, with specific legislation attached. The Platform, instead, goes with poll-tested maxims that leave a great deal yet to be decided. If the Contract was the political equivalent of "Go West, Young Man," the Platform seems a more meager cry to maybe go, you know, someplace over that way.

But give Gingrich some credit: he's at least trying to revive substantive thought processes in a Republican Party that seems left, post Bush, with little but snide irrelevancies. In picking issues with overwhelming popular support (at least, depending on the way the poll questions are phrased) he has limited the range of what he can advocate, but he's at least tugging Republicans away from the losing issues that define today's party. (For example, abortion.)

Let's look down the list and see what we've got, rating each initiative on a one-to-ten scale for both policy impact and political value:

1. English as the official language of government -- This is, I think, a crafty retreat from standard "English only" orthodoxy, in that it leaves the private sector and perhaps even the schools to decide for themselves how they're going to approach the multi-lingual world. I'm guessing this is an attempt to moderate the party's stand while keeping the English-only people on board. Political value: 8. Policy impact: 2, since English is already the official language of American government.
2. Domestic energy/lowering the cost of gasoline and electricity -- Again, this seems purposefully vague, since "increasing the energy supplies" could mean anything from drilling in ANWAR to building wind farms in South Dakota. Still, it continues Republican orthodoxy of thinking entirely of increasing production and ignoring the huge gains that can be made in conservation. As for lowering gas prices, that is entirely a function of the world market. Cheaper electricity would be nice, though. Political value: 5, though lower now with low gas prices, it'll go up as the world economy recovers and demand for petroleum rises. Policy impact: 0, since everything in this is dependent on the specifics.
3. Single-rate tax system: The flat tax has been the conservative Holy Grail for a long time, pursued in fits and starts by both Democrats and Republicans. The popularity of a flat tax is entirely dependent on how the poll question is phrased. Talk fairness and simplicity, and people love it. Talk raising lower- and middle-income tax rates in order to cut the taxes of the wealthy, and the issue becomes less popular. Political value: 3. Policy impact: 10.
4. Secret ballot on unionization -- This particular Conservative talking point enjoys overwhelming support but is important to almost no one. Political value: 3. Policy impact: 0.
5. One Nation Under God -- You've got to throw the cultural conservatives something, so throw them this, since there's no one on the other side who cares even a little bit. Political value: 6. Policy impact: 0.
6. Make advocating terrorism a crime -- Um, OK. Planning to commit terrorism or violence is already a crime, but banning the advocacy of something is problematic from a First Amendment standpoint. Is this a significant issue? Political value: 3, perhaps more important with certain segments of the Republican base. Policy impact: 2, but I'm only giving it that much because I'm tired of writing "0".
7. Math and science education -- Part of the value of a manifesto is differentiation. Show of hands: who's in favor of spending less on math and science education. Anyone? Anyone at all? Of course not. So this doesn't differentiate at all. It also ducks the big issues of education, one of which is the conservative panacea of vouchers and choice. And, come to think of it, it's kind of a leap from the traditional conservative antipathy to involving the federal government in education. Political value: 4. Policy impact: 5, because it might provide some common ground with Dems to do something productive.
8. Clean coal -- Am I reading this right? Is Gingrich really saying that clean coal plants should only be built if the meet a zero-carbon standard? Newt the Green? Pardon me if I'm suspicious that there's some kind of clever double-cross lurking in the language of this particular Platform plank. On it's face, though, it seems a major move to the middle. Political value: 6. Policy impact: 3, because I'm guessing zero-carbon coal is an economic non-starter, particularly if government is already set on lowering the price of petroleum and electricity.
9. Deporting felonious illegal immigrants -- Don't we do that now? Why, yes, we do. We also deport illegal immigrants for committing misdemeanors, including the simple act of being an illegal immigrant. Political value: 6. Policy impact: 0.
10. Prize for making nuke waste less horrible -- Make it a billion dollars. Make it 10 billion. Who cares? What Newt should be calling for is the development of more nuclear plants. Lots of them. The disposal of nuclear waste is a political, not a scientific, problem. We need to tell Nevada to shut-up and get out of the way. Political value: 0. Policy impact: 0.

This is, all in all, pretty weak tea. Newt's on to something in general, which is that Republicans need to find some issues that align with both their deeply held beliefs and the public's idea of where this country needs to go. But he needs to find stronger issues, or to attack the issues he has found more directly.

What this is is a re-wrap of the Republican Party's greatest hits, with some of the rough edges filed down. The brilliance of the Contract With America is that it was a set of specific policies that a Republican Congress would put into place immediately upon taking office, if elected. So we elected tham. This, on the other hand, is largely a document of tendency, of the things we think we might like to do maybe a little.

Back to the drawing board, Newt. But at least you go tthe conversation started.

What Size Cup Would You Like?

I'm spending a lot of time in coffee shops lately. I take my laptop and background materials, find a nice table and generate billable hours. I like coffee shops, even though I generally drink iced tea rather than coffee. I like the background noise and gentle pace, and it gets me out of the house.

Which is why I was interested in this particular entrepreneurial innovation: the topless coffee shop.

Eight customers -- all men -- stopped by the coffee shop between 10 and 11:15 a.m. Tuesday. Staff members estimated they had between 50 and 60 customers on Monday, despite a snowstorm; of those customers, about eight were women, they said.

As I am wont to do when matters of this sort come up, I imagined myself a customer of the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, sitting at a table along the wall, my laptop plugged in and stuff spread out over the table as I worked. And it occurred to me that it would take about five minutes for the toplessness of the waitresses to become a non-issue, or even kind of depressing. Thinking about a slow afternoon, the staff just kind of killing time and a couple of slackers like me hanging out: there's really nothing sexy about it.

I did get a kick out of a couple of things about the story, though. First, one of the waitresses is 43 years old. And, second, the local community activist against public nudity is named Paula Furbush. I smiled when I read that.

Real-Time Feedback Via Social Media

Amy Sullivan:

Within an hour of the speech, a Google search for "jindal kenneth 30 rock" yielded almost 75,000 hits.

When something breaks through into the public consciousness, there's no way to spin it.