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Update: Below, in comments, CHNN correspondent RMP reports live from the AIG hearings.
“The Commercial Republic.” Hmmm. Now, I don’t ordinarily think much about David Brooks, and generally avoid his NYT column, because if I happened to be in the mood for something insultingly elitist, completely irrelevant, and stupefyingly clueless, I have a veritable smorgasbord already with Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and until recently Bill Kristol, all of whom are more entertaining, on that particular page. Of course, while the “liberals,” Friedman and Dowd, are utterly guileless in their scattershot meanderings, and seem to be both too stupid and self-absorbed to have any “agenda” beyond navel gazing and cocktail weinies, the righties are, well, different, and only ignored at one’s peril. That title grabbed me as being something, like a gruesome accident, that compelled my attention, no matter how predictably revolting. I was not disappointed.
Every righty utterance is a carefully woven fabric of meme repetition, historical revisionism, preemptive assault on opponents, and plain old lies, but no one works the loom better than David Brooks. And today’s tapestry is something to behold. He begins, as righties always do, with linking his current obsession with some great historical tradition from an imagined but glorious past that is self-evidently vindicating of his viewpoint, regardless of whether said “tradition” is cherry-picked, distorted, or just plain made up. In this case, Brooks is peddling the idea that, as Calvin Coolidge put it, “the business of America is business,” and all of our progress is owed to avarice, which of course he doesn’t call by its real name, but by ennobling euphemisms like ”energy, ” ambition, and success. He calls forth Horatio Alger, the Carnegies Dale and Andrew, and just because he can, even Donald Trump and Jim Cramer as sterling exemplars of this proud past to which we must surely return as soon as practicable. In the upside-down world of Patio Man, plutocrats and shills are the real heroes and risk takers, and everyone else, well, if not non-existent, at least cheering from the gallery, or ought to be.
Sadly, all of this, which embodies our greatness, is in a heap of trouble now, because a putsch has been conducted by a bunch of danged “lawyers,” and even worse, “academics,” who though they are smarty-pants elitists, of course, shun the “risk” that make businessmen so fascinating and stupendous, and to hear Brooks tell it, are busy making sand candles and having drum circles and poetry slams, because they don’t know any better. You see, (and this is where reading a Brooks column moves from being a grim chore to a laugh riot…) the Obama administration lacks business people, and, swallow whatever you’re drinking before reading further, “self-made entrepreneurs.” (!)
Like whom, Mr. Brooks, Dick Cheney? Bush? His business experience turned out a lot like his Presidency. Well, there’s guys like Joe Allbaugh and any number of hangers-on in Bush world who did quite well for themselves by fleecing the taxpayers, and I do remember one guy who had a pretty good scam going at Target for a while, but the only Bush official who had actual success in business outside of influence-peddling was Paul O’Neill, who was promptly tossed. Seems he got all math-y on them. Everyone in BushWorld knows that “business” and entrepreneurship are religions, and daring to desecrate the Holy with godless, reality-based arithmetic requires immediate excommunication. It’s kind of like having celibate priests dictating everyone else’s sex life; the crazier it sounds, the truer it must be.
So today is, once again, Opposite Day in BoboLand. Of course Bush, Cheney, Condi, Powell, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Rove et al are, in some ways “entrepreneurs,” if only because they have all enriched themselves due to government “service” and corruption, but to call them self-made is worthy only of snorts, guffaws, and howls of laughter. And to call Obama’s people, far too many of them closely tied to the sleazy business practices of the past few years, a bunch of “lawyers and academics” simply beggars belief.
But then again, this is the NYT op/ed page, a place where people just say the darnedest things, and it’s fit to print. I’d much prefer a funnies page, like a proper newspaper, but you take what you can get from the Gray Lady.
Dear Cocktailhag,
Sand candles! Boy does that bring back memories. Great way to sketch in an era.
BTW, glad you chose to have a blog as I enjoy your comments at GG. Now with a blog there’s so much more of you!!
Ahhh, that’s very kind of you. GG is definitely what got me going on this blog thingy. I thought of how many times people wrote, “Why don’t you talk about” whatever, and found myself saying “get a blog of you own.” Then, being a liberal and thus overly prone to self-examination, I decided I should have one myself. Thanks for reading. It does make the work worthwhile.
Why don’t you ever write about a topic that I want you to write about?
You should write more about legalization of marijuana or stuff like that.
While I’m at it, you aren’t revolutionary enough. Clearly, the tactics you are using to promote change in government are not working and will not work.
You should use my plan.
Love,
Adyesto
And I love you, too. As you’re of course aware already. Actually, I would write more about pot but I keep…. forgetting.
Didn’t you used to have Adnoto with a Che picture and “most annoying” or something? I loved that.
And speaking of Texans, another great self-made entrepreneur from that flat place is Ross Perot, who made his gazillions from government contracts for the most part. Or so I heard.
I recall, when he had the nation’s ear (if not its heart) for a Warholian moment, he wanted to roll up his sleeves, get dirty under the hood, and fix the broken engine of state which sputtered some at the time of his ascendancy. And wasn’t there something about grandma back in the kitchen, plunging the sink?
Well, turns out it was a brief flirtation with Ross, but Americans just need to listen to the right people is all; and that could mean more Texans?
Are you a little slow, hag? What’s the harm in that?
Those Texans are just full of the energy ol’ Dave is pinin’ for.
Dad’ burn it!
And don’t forget Bush’s taxpayer-funded stadium, Messrs. Hunt, Pickens, and sleazeballs going back to Nixon and beyond. I think even Eisenhower said something about that, but I’m too lazy to rummage for the quote.
The closest I ever got to Texas, outside of miscellaneous airports, (Houston’s Bush Intercontinental, with a statue of Bush I and a Fox News concept store, isn’t even the worst…) was when I was going to a fancy spa in Tucson. As the courtesy car barrelled from the airport to the place, the road signs said, “El Paso,” and the very idea of being that close filled me with dread.
Hoover’s false homily “the business of America is business,” got debunked at the outset (of America) — glowering Hoover only said it as a piece of that there ‘historical revisionism.’
The business of business is business.
The business of America is Justice.
Sheesh. Was it Hoover, and not Coolidge? Now I have to do factual research, and I’ve already got my curlers in. One of those righty nincompoops, anyway, but I thought it was Silent Cal, being uncharacteristically audible.
At any rate, you’re absolutely right.. I remember some unpleasantness with The British East India Company that kind of got the ball rolling.
OT I have been listening carefully to AIG CEO Edward Liddy’s House testimony today and once again the M$M, Congress and the Obama Admin have misinformed the American people. First, most people think of the retention bonuses as performance bonuses. There are trade experts who have to be on top of trading every day to wind the account down to the point that it can be closed. The specific expertise for each account can not easily be taken over by someone else. The eleven people who left AIG did so not because of receiving the bonus, but because they completed their job. The others who have not left may finish their account soon or at least by the end of the year. That would mean that what started at 2.7 trillion dollars and is now 1.6 trillion dollars would be down to zero. So many congress critters and M$M want to blame him for the contracts entered in 2007 and 2008 before he was the CEO. He paid the 165 million in retention bonuses because if he lost the trading expertise, the whole company could go down and the taxpayers would lose the 80 million.
Liddy said that the credit swaps and another major area have already been fixed. AIG has not received 160 billion from the American people. AIG owes the American people 80 billion. Liddy is taking one dollar for the thankless job that he is doing that he started six months ago. He is afraid to release the names of those who received the bonuses because of the threats he and AIG have received from outraged citizens. He wants to sell all of the profitable parts of AIG once there are buyers and would hope to pay back taxpayers in 2-3 years depending on what the markets do.
Liddy has asked executives and traders who received the bonuses and some are giving them back mostly because it would be easier to get more money from congress if needed in the future. Liddy says he still has 30 billion that has not been used of the 80 billion.
The biggest news was the fact that the Federal Reserve has been in on every preparation for meetings and every meeting and it was the Fed’s responsibility to keep the Treasury informed. So it sounds like that the Fed’s were the ones who did not keep Geithner and Obama informed of the bonuses. Although somebody should have been listening to earlier congressional testimony and they would have known before they say the were informed.
The Federal Reserve just made two big announcements today of putting 1.1 trillion dollars into helping break the credit freeze and lower the cost for mortgage loans.
I expect that the M$M and congress will not report what I have reported and keep putting out the false info that has been reported so far.
Good stuff, rmp. You should be on CNBC.
I put you in as an update, RMP. Whenever you have a hot, new story like that, feel free to post it as an author. I’ve been laying tile this week, and got a bit lazy… I don’t feel qualified to analyze the financial/legal stuff, and at any rate can’t get access to c-span at work.
I’ll need instructions on how to post as an author. The hearing was carried by CNN and MSNBC so you didn’t need C-Span. Soon both networks are carrying Obama’s town hall meeting in CA.
BTW, all of the AIG Financial Products execs were fired so those that are left are not the decision makers, just the executors of leadership’s directives. Thus all that crap that we are giving bonuses to those who created the losses is just another falsehood that will stay alive because hardly any congress critter appeared to listen at all to what Liddy told them. They like their distortions and are sticking to them because that is what their constituents want to hear.
Well, as I recall, those in the London unit were booking 87% profits, and hell, a secretary would think that was fishy. But it is good to hear the inside poop. I’ll dig in to site admin to add you; last time you weren’t in there with a file to update. But then, all you have to do is log in, go to site admin, and hit “add post.”
PS… I have a new, brief one up about NBC.
Maybe I don’t have a Hag mentality. I can’t figure out how to log in so I can go to site admin.
RMP… I added you as an author, and gave you rmp as a username and your full name as a password, without caps, spaces, or punctuation. You should be able to post any time.
Hmmm. Obviously, I see a different screen that you do. Is there, beneath the blogroll, a section called, “Meta?” Or, at the bottom of a post, a place that says “edit?” Or, back in the right column, does it ask you to log in? Clicking on any of those might work. Also, refresh the page, since I just added you.
I’ll check with my web guy about this.
Please check with him because I don’t see anything other than your picture and the five choices that are at the top of this page.
I just watched Olbermann on Leno and he was probably taping this while Liddy was giving testimony. Olbermann was wrong if Liddy is right. So far I haven’t found any “journalist” who really seemed to listen to Liddy. It is also Liddy’s fault because the mistakes the M$M had to be dragged out of him and he should have led with those points in his opening statement.
To read or hear for yourself what Liddy said this afternoon here are two links:
(If you want to understand what AIG CEO Liddy told congress today instead of having it interpreted by the M$M, see this blow-by-blow description from WaPo http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/watching-the-aig-hearing-on-the-hill/ . Even as Liddy gave the testimony it was obvious that the congress critters wanted to stick to their script rather than listen and learn. Or, you can watch the 4 hours of testimony on c-span http://c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-R-16464
“I’ve been laying tile this week, and got a bit lazy.” — sayeth teh Hag
What’s the last name of this tile person? I laid a gal named Judy Tile in Dallas once (or maybe twice) and we may be related?
Cousins in law, or something like that.
“Now, I don’t ordinarily think much about David Brooks, and generally avoid his NYT column, because if I happened to be in the mood for something insultingly elitist, completely irrelevant, and stupefyingly clueless, I have a veritable smorgasbord already with Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and until recently Bill Kristol, all of whom are more entertaining, on that particular page.”
Lord, CH, but that mirrors my own views. I’m puzzled, really, by the out-to-lunchedness of this crowd. I don’t think they fully appreciate the nature of this economic illness. They seem to believe simply that it’s more of the same game that’s been played lo these many years.
Here we are, like the ancients, awaiting a cool, calm prediction by the oracle at Delphi to lead us on the right path.
Too bad none of it’s true and that we need to solve these problems on our own.
Yes, whatever the qualifications are for hogging a quarter of that page every few days, they do escape me. That is, unless they involve being a dumbass, while acting like a smarty. (In MoDo’s case, it’s probably fear of a menopausal rampage that keeps the Sulzbergers cutting her checks…)