Francis Wilkinson gives a great rundown, Christie’s Bridge Report Is an Embarrassment. The report is even more sordid than the actions imply. It focuses on an alleged affair that Bridget Kelly had with Chris Christie’s campaign manager Bill Stepien. Apparently, they broke up and Kelly went on tilt, closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge for reasons that the report does not explain. Why exactly David Wildstein would go along with this is unclear. But then the whole report seems to be unclear.

The strategy of the investigation seems to have been to simply take Chris Christie’s word for everything. Wilkinson says the best line in the report is, “Governor Christie’s account of these events rings true.” And that does seem to be how the writers of the report see their job: to push the governor’s narrative. Check out this passage which is pure Christie apologetics:

In other words: (1) Wildstein never told that to the governor; and (2) even if he did Christie couldn’t have known what it was all about. But the report doesn’t just exonerate the governor. It also exonerates those around him that have not already been caught:

That’s the report in a nutshell. It can be simply summed up: everything we already know is the whole truth; there is nothing more to it. They found no evidence that would implicate Stepien and Baroni. But then, they found no evidence about anything other than the fact that Kelly and Stepien had had an affair. Really the report is little more than a hit job on Bridget Kelly.

What’s terrible is that this is not a report paid for by Chris Christie to help him in his defense. This is a report paid for the taxpayers of New Jersey. Its intent is clearly not to shed light on the bridge scandal. It is simply to give Christie cover. It is to provide a plausible narrative for him going forward. But that’s Christie, ain’t it? That’s long been the hit on him: he abuses the office for his own personal gain. That’s what the bridge scandal is about. That’s what the “Stronger Than the Storm” ad was about. And that’s the case here where Christie uses the people’s money to further his presidential aspirations.

And it may all be for naught—too little, too soon. The New York Times just reported that, Port Authority Chairman Resigns, Christie Announces. That’s David Samson, Christie’s chief ally, and the guy Christie has repeatedly claimed was absolutely positively not involved in the scandal. I do hope Christie goes down in a big way, just like Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil.

Jonathan Chait is back, Barack Obama vs the Culture of Poverty. It is the fourth article in the debate that he is having with Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I discussed last weekend, White Power and Black Oppression. It discusses the reasons that blacks are doing relatively poorly in our economy. Chait claims that it the history of oppression causing cultural dysfunction in the black community. Coates argues that we shouldn’t be discussing culture and that the issue is nothing but the abuse of white power. Coates is getting the better of the argument.

In Chait’s most recent article, he cedes a lot of ground without admitting it. As usual when one is trying to lose an argument gracefully, he’s splitting hairs. And that’s fine. The truth is that his position is really not that far from Coates’. But he keeps coming back to this idea that Obama ought to be a cheerleader for “Team Negro.” He writes, “I believe Obama can speak to the African-American community as an African-American without any wider cultural damage…” I have a real problem with this.

Let’s go back to Obama’s infamous “Popeyes Chicken” speech. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was speaking to a mostly black audience in Texas. He used the opportunity to chastise the audience about their child rearing. In particular, he said that they shouldn’t feed their kids junk food. “You can’t do that,” Obama said. “Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school.” But here’s the thing: the audience cheered. I think that indicates that the African Americans in that audience did not raise their children on Popeyes Chicken. Racism works on the oppressed as much as it works on the oppressor. They were all imagining a stereotype that, like most stereotypes, had only the thinnest relationship to reality.

When Obama gave that speech, he was feeding the bigots. He wasn’t helping the black community. He was harming it by reinforcing negative stereotypes. When I lived in Richmond, there was a Popeyes right on the edge of town. And it was not terribly busy. I assume that’s because, just like for nice middle class whites, getting fast food is a treat—something that is done now and then. Now that I live in a nice white suburb, I can tell you: there are way more fast food joints than there were in Richmond.

There are cultural problems in the black community. There are cultural problems in the white community. But somehow, we only ever think that cultural problems are what hold back the black community. This is especially ironic since black communities don’t have 200+ years of accumulated capital. We have a screwed up political environment where Republicans are allowed to be racist just as long as they don’t use the n-word. But Democrats are forced to show that they aren’t beholden to the black community by lecturing it on good nutrition. That skewed framing is symbolic of what is holding back the black community.

I just watched Good Night, and Good Luck, and I’ll probably write about it later. But it is especially appropriate because that movie is about the Joseph McCarthy communist witch hunts. They shine such a light on who we are both as a society and as a individuals. And one of the people who got that light shined on him was Budd Schulberg who was born on this day in 1914. He was one of the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood history. But when he was ratted out to the House Un-American Activities Committee, he dutifully came before the committee and sang like a bird. (Note: the HUAC was not McCarthy’s, but it is a major player in the witch hunts.)

One thing that is most sad about the artists who got caught up in all of that is that their interest in equality and nondiscrimination and justice is generally what got them in trouble. So even the “rats” were generally good people with the right instincts. And that was definitely true of Schulberg. His novels What Makes Sammy Run? and The Harder They Fall are filled with humanism. And his screenplays On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd both probe the way that powerful people control the common man. So I think they more than make up for his performance on the HUAC. After all, the problem is us, not him.

Happy birthday Budd Schulberg!

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Paul Ryan’s Racist Dog Whistle. This was about his contention that poverty was the result of lazy inner city men. Despite much contention to the contrary, it was pure racist dog whistle politics. Since then, Paul Ryan has gone around trying to prove that he isn’t racist. And it was in the service of that goal that he ended up on Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor Tuesday night.

The appearance was mostly notable because Bill O’Reilly used the opportunity to get his racist hate on. But Joan Walsh noticed some really interesting things in her article, Paul Ryan’s Endless “I Am Not a racist” Tour. Ryan used fellow Representative Barbara Lee from nearby Oakland to claim he wasn’t a racist. “She knows me well,” he said. “And she knows that I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” You know the drill. It’s the modern version of, “Some of my best friends are black!” The nice black lady says he ain’t racist so he ain’t.

But as Walsh points out, after using Barbara Lee for political cover, he stood by while Bill O’Reilly savaged her, calling her a “race hustler.” Conservatives like Paul Ryan are in a tough place. They know that it is no longer okay to be explicitly racist. But their ideological appeal still depends upon racism. I don’t know where Walsh stands on the issue, but to me it is very simple: Paul Ryan is a racist. People seem to miss the fact that outward signs of racism change over time. Just because Ryan isn’t a fire breathing bigot who uses the n-word doesn’t mean that he isn’t racist. As I wrote when I first covered the issue:

This all comes from to Lee Atwater’s infamous “nigger, nigger, nigger” quote. It doesn’t really matter what’s going on inside Paul Ryan’s pea brain. He can be nice to every black man he meets on the street. The fact is that the policies he pushes harm the poor and enrich the wealthy. And given that our society is already racist and so blacks are more likely to be poor, his policies primarily hurt them. Or as Lee Atwater would put it, all the policies Paul Ryan is “talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is: blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

It doesn’t really matter how he got to those policies. And notice: you could have said the same thing about poll taxes. You could have said the same thing about “literacy” tests. The people who push them always claim that they aren’t about race. But when we look back on them we see that of course they were about race. And that will be true in 40 years when people look back on Paul Ryan’s “culture of dependency” argument.

The standard conservative line is that governments are bureaucratic and unresponsive while privately held companies are innovative and responsive. There was never any theory to explain why that would be. And in my experience, it isn’t true. It’s just a tired talking point of right wingers who hate the government.

I grew up in small businesses. My parents pretty much never had regular jobs. And it is a freewheeling lifestyle. And a stressful one. So I have a certain fondness for people who choose that path in life. They are often quite innovative in their ways. As a result, I was really interested to read Martin Longman a couple of weeks ago, Franchisees Should Unionize to Raise Wages. It tells the story of the “typical franchisor/franchisee relationship.” And it ain’t pretty.

People who own a McDonald’s franchise, for example, have very little control over costs. They can’t find a cheaper supplier of English muffins, for example. They are required by law (Court ruling!) to buy them from McDonald’s. What’s more, they have almost no control on what they charge for food. So if employees got a raise, the money would come only out of their profits. They are forbidden to “innovate.”

What really stands out to me in this story is just how bureaucratic the franchise corporations are. The reason is that according to conservatives, there are two worlds: the world of the bureaucratic government and the world of the innovative private sector. But the truth is far more murky. The government is very often incredibly innovative. It still boggles my mind how much the DMV has changed from the early 1970s to today. But for conservatives, it is always the early 1970s. You would think they’d never had to register a new car.

On the flip side of things is that the corporate world is filled with bureaucracy. We have the example of the franchises above. But my personal favorite example is my interaction with the phone company. At the end of the calls, the tech people are forced to recite the tired, “We’re glad you have chosen AT&T…” Regardless of how personable or rude the agent was, they always turn into a corporate automaton at the end of the call. That’s corporate think for you.

Now I know that there are reasons for all this. In the McDonald’s case, the company wants customers to have the same experience at a restaurant in San Francisco as they do in Lovett. And AT&T is trying to push an image of themselves in their support calls. In both cases, it’s about branding. But it’s a rigid form of branding. Certainly third party vendors could provide exactly the right kind of muffins for the franchisees. Support personnel could push the company line in a way that was specific to them rather than reading a prepared statement.

Institutions of all kinds have to balance the power of individual initiative with the desire to provide a unified customer experience. There is nothing that stops the government from doing this well. And there is nothing that dictates the private companies will do it well. Actual experience shows this. But conservatives continue to push this tired line that the private sector is always innovating. If there’s one thing the last four decades have shown, it is that as companies get bigger and customers have fewer choices, they become far more bureaucratic and less accountable than government agencies.

On this day in 1911, the great playwright Tennessee Williams was born. He is most known for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. What has always bugged me is how Hollywood just loved Williams. But they glossed over the homosexual themes there. That was true of both Cat and The Night of the Iguana, which don’t make any real sense unless you divine it. Of course, the plays kind of had the same problem. I do tend to think that Williams would have written better plays had he not been writing during such a tender time.

But to me, Williams will always mean just one thing: The Glass Menagerie, his breakthrough play. I rather liked the play when I was young; I think I was 13 when I first read it. But I didn’t really get it. So about a year ago, I read it again. Now, of course, the play makes far more sense to me. And I feel like I understand all the characters. They are all so wonderful, most especially because of their flaws. And like real people, what’s good about them is also what’s bad about them.

Here is what is probably the best filmed version of the play. It has an amazing cast: Katharine Hepburn, Sam Waterston, Joanna Miles, and Michael Moriarty. It is directed without too much reverence by Anthony Harvey, who directed one of my favorite films, They Might Be Giants. It is very close to the play:

What I didn’t know about the play was that it was quite autobiographical. That’s most especially true of the mentally fragile sister Laura, who is the heart of the play. She was based upon Williams’ older sister Rose. In fact, the “gentleman caller” in the play has nicknamed Laura “Blue Roses.” Rose apparently suffered from schizophrenia. She and Williams were very close growing up. But while Williams was working in New York, Rose was given a lobotomy. As was always the case with those, the only question was just how much harm they would do. In Rose’s case, she was left incapacitated for the rest of her life.

Williams was devastated and it is speculated that his heavy use of drugs and alcohol were related to this. In addition to taking care of her over the yeas, he left the bulk of his estate for her care. Even in her state, she outlived him by 13 years. It’s extremely sad, but I prefer to think of her like this:

Happy birthday Tennessee Williams!

I was introduced to a very interesting book by Henry Farrell, a political science professor at George Washington University. This last term, he has had a reading group with seven female seniors and most recently, they read Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. The book looks at how the party culture works for affluent people, because they don’t need hard majors with good GPAs. Their social connections and financial resources will land them in a good place after college. But poorer kids end up being pulled into the party culture where they end up without bankable skills and often without even a degree. And they are usually saddled with debt. Meritocracy rules!

Farrell’s group affirms the book’s findings on the micro-scale. And there is much more to the book on that level. Much of it is terribly troubling, including how the party culture puts women much more in threat of sexual assault. What’s more, the college administrations seem to either be unaware of the problem or disinterested. And you can see why. If they wanted to do something about the problem, they would have to sit the poorer students down and tell them: you aren’t equal to the rich kids; you can’t act like them. And that is anathema to the mythology of America.

I’m more interested in the book on the macro-scale. According to conservatives, income inequality is all about education. If the poor would just get educated, everything would be fine. Now, it turns out this is not true. Education is a small part of the problem, but that’s all. Paying for the Party illustrates this.

Inequality in this country is best thought of the same way that institutional racism is—of course, they are very often one and the same thing. The best case scenario based upon the book is that we will get our poorer students to work really hard and get good grades in engineering and pre-med programs. But that in itself says, “America is not an meritocratic country!” All we see is that if the poor are very bright and very hard working and very lucky, they may do as well as the stupid and lazy and unlucky children of the rich do.

I’m quite willing to admit that an American ideal is that people should be able to work hard and get rich. Where I differ from conservatives is that I don’t think that having rich parents should tilt the playing field entirely in your favor. And note: these rich kids who do well despite sliding through college with easy majors and bad grades (think: George Bush the Younger) already had enormous advantages before they got to school. Those advantages helped before they were even born, with better prenatal care. It extended to better nutrition growing up, better schools, better social exposure, you know: better lives.

So the question is, are we as Americans going to continue to accept living in an aristocracy but still hold up the ideal of meritocracy? Because it is more than just unpleasant for the poor; it is wrong. At least in an honest aristocracy, the poor aren’t blamed for not being rich and powerful. Here it is the worst of all worlds. The poor have lives that suck and they are told that it is their own fault. Six out of ten of the wealthiest people in America inherited their wealth. And it is only getting worse. So it is either time to change that or to stop pretending. But we won’t do either. Because the facts and the myth flatter the power elite.

On this day in 1881, the great composer Bela Bartok was born. When I a music major in college, a lot of people were really into Bartok. I never got it. It always seemed to me that there were more interesting modern composers like Elliott Carter. But now I get it. Bartok is kind of like Schoenberg without the rigidity. He didn’t worry about traditional tonality. But he wasn’t out to protest it either. And as a result, his music is surprisingly melodic. And it has wonderfully complex but non-traditional harmonies and classical counterpoint.

To me, most of his music sounds distinction impressionistic. But while people like Debussy were very modal in their music, Bartok went his own way. As a result, one doesn’t really hear people who sound like him. His is work is idiosyncratic. I found the following very interesting quote from Milton Babbitt, “Bartok’s solution was a specific one, it cannot be duplicated.” He meant this as an insult, but I think it is the greatest compliment. Bartok’s work was very different from one composition to another. Why should he write the same thing over and over again? He was a composer, not a theorist.

To get a good idea of what Bartok is all about, you should really listen to his Second Violin Concerto. But it is difficult. So here is the much easier Concerto For Orchestra, which was one of the last things he ever wrote:

Happy birthday Bela Bartok!