{ Monthly Archives }
June 2009
- Ruling - Last summer, while awaiting a scenic lakefront wedding, I found myself recused in a back bedroom watching coverage of the DNC Rules Committee’s deliberations on Michigan and Florida with an old pledge brother and his wife, who intimated that she “love[d] the 24-hour news cycle.” Unfortunately, the much-beloved stream of television news appears to have largely stalled.
The viscosity with which the sentimental and ubiquitous reports on Michael Jackson’s untimely demise have gummed up the works to an extent reminiscent of Eddie Murphy’s old Buckwheat is Dead sketch. Meanwhile, we could be having a grand discussion over whether the Supreme Court’s Ricci ruling strikes a blow in defense of meritocracy or sets the notion of equal opportunity employment back 18 years. Oddly, those opinions might not be mutually exclusive.
In case you haven’t read all the background commentary, you might want to consult Slate’s breakfast table, case. The short version is that Kennedy gave the conservatives a majority, allowing them to rule that discarding the test required for promotion within the firefighting ranks just because none of the black test-takers passed would violate the rights of those who did pass it.
Being no legal scholar, I’m not qualified to pass judgement on the merits of the case. Of course, I’m not an economist, either, but I will proceed to hold forth along those lines.
For starters, as well-intentioned as the “disparate results” clause of Title VII may be, it would seem to incentivize inaction. Any minority group motivated toward sloth could unify and actively fail any advancement metric required of it until the bar for such a metric were low enough to suit their tastes. Keep in mind that this is a hypothetical scenario; I know of no cases in which such actions have actually been undertaken.
Specific to this case, discarding the test would have de-valued the investments litigant Ricci had made to pass it. As one might imagine, George Will is strong on that point. Sure, people get shafted all the time, but this was a guy who put himself out to follow the rules and move up in the world. Regardless of whether or not the test in question revealed an ethnic bias, it’s difficult not to empathize with him. Then again, the question of empathic jurists is one for another time.
- Spoilage - I have a carton of cottage cheese slated to expire today, but the whole thing sounds to me like an empty threat. What’s it really going to do, turn into real cheese?
- Admonition - Repeat after me: I will not capitulate to manufactured corporate synergy.
Seriously, the latest iteration of Disney Pixar’s Ice Age animated feature has become unavoidable for those of us who enjoy low-budget television. First, there was a movie-themed obstacle in the Wipeout qualifier. Then came the Ice Age-themed episode of Food Network Challenge. It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the days when cross-promotion was limited to Happy Meal toys.
- Deceased - Special thanks to music lover and pseudonym enthusiast Matthew Crotchford for bringing the sudden death of pitchman Billy Mays to my attention. Some people might not be inclined to commemorate a man best known for yelling out of the idiot box, but this venue will exploit his passing honor his memory with the following set of links to Mays’ hilarious ads for ESPN360.com: intro, office, college, and on the run.
- Data - Believe it or not, I’ve actually been rather busy this morning, so I haven’t the time to provide baseless bloviation and commentary. Nonetheless, the data from page 6 of this [PDF] paper deserves dissemination, if only to refute any arguments about the value of existing “competition” in the field of health care.
- Obits - A trio of iconic entertainers — Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson — shuffled loose the mortal coil this week, and the corresponding hullaballoo of remembrance must confuse the hell out of anyone under the age of 25. It’s not just that all of these people had been effectively retired for more than a decade. (Out of respect, we’ll pretend Ed McMahon never did a Cash4Gold commercial.) The media environment in which McMahon and Fawcett gained celebrity was so radically different from what began to mature in the late ’90’s that their level of celebrity is inexplicable to the youth of the nation.
Look at Ed McMahon, whose primary gig outside of corporate shillery came as the Jimmie Carter to Johnny Carson’s Fidel Castro: he laughed at the jokes and played along. That doesn’t sound like such a big deal until one realized that the Tonight Show had no direct competition during that period. Letterman didn’t start his show on CBS until his failure to succeed Carson had materialized, and even the Kilborn-hosted Daily Show didn’t begin until 1996. Like it or not, most everyone awake at 11pm was relegated to watching Carson and McMahon.
The fame of Farrah Fawcett is much more enigmatic. These days, striking women come and go from the zeitgeist with the speed of so many hastily downloaded jpegs. Such was not the case in the ’70’s. Apparently, doing a season on Charlie’s Angels and an iconic poster was enough to make a career back then. Seriously, I defy anyone to name 3 roles Farrah Fawcett played after Charlie’s Angels that don’t involve either some version of “guest appearance” or “straight to video.” Nonetheless, she was also the most widely-recognized sex American sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe.
Michael Jackson is a horse of a different color (no pun intended). No one will begrudge the greatness of “Billie Jean”, “Thriller”, or any of the other hits he produced through 3 decades. Unfortunately, along with zombie line dancing and the Moonwalk, he also pioneered short-term child leasing, and that’s the lasting impression for many of us whose eldest enduring memories hail from the 20th century’s last decade.
- Program - Last night, CNBC premiered David Faber’s 2-hour House of Cards special, which one assumes follows the lines drawn by his book of the same name. Faber gets a lot of credit for being more or less the only guy on CNBC who does any actual reporting, but those of you too impatient to wait for its rebroadcast at 9am on July 3rd can garner very similar information by revisiting This American Life’s “Giant Pool of Money” episode.