13 | December | 2011

Eating Your Way to the Top

December 13, 2011 by Matthew Leave a comment

The latest Harper’s also contains a finding that “Those who feel powerless attempt to gain prestige by eating larger portions.” Hey, I can identify with that on a personal level…but is that what’s going on in the United States as well? It’s long appeared that we have a portion control issue in this country because we have enough state and corporate power to provide copious amounts of food, but is it actually a double-edged sword? Do we also eat because many of us still feel powerless regardless of the system providing the food?

Filed under Entertainment Tagged with food

Greenwald on Obama’s 60 Minutes Interview

December 13, 2011 by Matthew Leave a comment

In his latest article, Glenn Greenwald points out how Obama has been perfectly willing in the past to signal whether or not he believes the Department of Justice should prosecute certain cases. So why, in his 60 Minutes interview over the weekend, did Obama decline to give his opinion on whether the DOJ should holding Wall Street accountable for prosecutable fraud?

Greenwald for Salon.com:

Does this sound like a President who actually believes that it’s improper for him to “comment on the decisions about particular prosecutions” to ensure “there’s no political influence on decisions made by professional prosecutors”? Or does this sound like a President who applies exactly that kind of political pressure on the DOJ when it suits him, and is now cynically invoking this excuse to avoid having to take responsibility for the virtually full-scale immunity given to the financial-crisis-causing Wall Street criminals under his watch?

Filed under Obama, Politics Tagged with 60 Minutes, glenn greenwald

In Defense of Mad Men

December 13, 2011 by Matthew Leave a comment

This month’s Harper’s (January 2012) has an article by Jenny Diski titled “Unfaithful: The false nostalgia of Mad Men” in which the most accurate statement she makes is “I have to admit, I don’t get it.” Putting aside the question of whether nostalgia can avoiding being false, for Diski, Mad Men is a sham copy of a copy. She slams Mad Men for being a remake of the “movies of the time it is portraying” and yet isn’t that much of the point? We’re living in a time in which we are remaking much of the media of the past. To ignore that would be to ignore our current reality.

Instead, Mad Men consciously grapples with that issue of authenticity. And Diski actually winds up getting it, despite her denial, when she writes:

Are the clever writers of the series slyly dramatizing, to the tune of the 1960s, much of what still goes on and wrong in the world of work and gender relations?

Diski wants the reader to say no, but I gotta say um, yeah.