Thursday Night Video – The Maccabeats’ Hanukkah songs
December 22, 2011 Leave a comment
The Maccabeats (from Yeshiva University) have a new Hanukkah song this year, entitled “Miracle.”
But I still prefer last year’s “Candlelight.”
Louis CK update
December 22, 2011 1 Comment
Last night Louis C.K. told Jimmy Fallon how he would donate about $280,00 of the money he made from selling his Live at the Beacon Theater concert online. The interview starts out as fairly standard mainstream sit-down late night stuff, and becomes interesting once Louis starts talking about how he started the Beacon show straight from the street. No warm-up act, no big lights up moment.
Louis talks about the sales process in Part 2. You get a hint of his cutting edge when he starts talking about the money he gave away, because he jokes about the plight of the people to whom he donated the money.
Jimmy interviews Louis, Part 1
Jimmy interviews Louis, Part 2
Boehner Bails
December 22, 2011 1 Comment
Speaker of the House John Boehner has reversed course and agreed to the two month extension of the payroll tax cut. Moral of the Story: when Democrats stand up for policies that are solid in substance and strong in popularity, good things happen.
Banking on Bigotry
December 22, 2011 Leave a comment
Talking Points Memo reports on how Countrywide (now part of Bank of America) systematically discriminated against African American and Latino borrowers, who:
“were more than twice as likely to be placed in subprime loans than non-Hispanic White wholesale borrowers who had similar credit qualifications.”
It’s something to keep in mind when people argue that we should focus on class to the exclusion of race. (Both are important, of course.)
This case was blatant, impacting over 200,000 borrowers. How many other discriminatory practices continue, perhaps on a smaller scale? And what are the ripple effects?
Russell Peters and the Download Effect
December 22, 2011 Leave a comment
On Monday’s episode of Marc Maron’s podcast WTF, Russell Peters noted how his latest DVD (The Green Card Tour) isn’t selling as well much he hoped, and how he is upset with potential downloaders. The irony of the situation stems from this comment arriving after approximately 40 minutes discussing how his worldwide success came after people shared his 2004 Comedy Now! special on YouTube. That’s right, Peters has internet pirates to thank for his ability to show up to this interview in a Rolls Royce.
Gender Gap
December 22, 2011 Leave a comment
Last week the New York Times ran an article entitled They Call It the Reverse Gender Gap. The idea is that there is a growing number of heterosexual women earning more than their romantic partner. According to the Times,
Women are ahead of men in education (last year, 55 percent of U.S. college graduates were female). And a study shows that in most U.S. cities, single, childless women under 30 are making an average of 8 percent more money than their male counterparts, with Atlanta and Miami in the lead at 20 percent.
Although that study of 2,000 communities was done only in the United States, it points to a global trend.
I wonder whether this rise (or slower decline?) in female wages is connected to the overall stagnation in wages for the middle class. I’m also suspicious when any dent in a long-standing imbalance is portrayed as the equivalent of the original imbalance. What they describe may be a new-found reversal of the gender gap, but it is not the reverse (or mirror image) of the traditional gender gap, which has had a few thousand years to make an impact.
I’m with Matt Damon
December 22, 2011 2 Comments
The Huffington Post had an article yesterday on Matt Damon’s frustration with Barack Obama. I’m not against celebrity involvement in politics because I think it’s silly and potentially dangerous to think that the huge money and huge influence of entertainment is somehow apolitical. But most stars aren’t this articulate:
Referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Damon continued: “If the Democrats think that they didn’t have a mandate — people are literally without any focus or leadership, just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they are so pissed off … Imagine if they had a leader.”
