How well laid were “the best laid plans….?” An enormous chasm has opened between Obama’s election promises and their fulfillment. His waffling has created a yawning gap in the Democrat’s hopes for the off-year election and for 2012. The absurd health care “reform:” bill that is before the Senate is a “lose-lose” situation for Obama. If it is passed he will forever be known as the president who “caved.” If it is rejected, he will be known as the President who couldn’t control his own party. All of this because ideology trumps pragmatism, and expediency trumps necessity. His attempts to assuage the anger of the opposition have led him into a swamp.
Never mind the health care mess, how about the promise to introduce new controls on the financial system? How about the reality that having bailed out the banks with the “TARP” system, and watching those same banks return to improving their profits by investing in the very financial instruments that brought them down in the first place. Under the president, there has been nothing but empty threats about bonuses and salaries in the financial world, empty promises to reform the system from its continuing state of casino-gambling style derivatives.
The President can say “The banks just don’t get it,” all he likes. But his strength now seems to be speech-making. Ruefully I remember that his opposition said that it took more than eloquence to make a leader. Is it happening? Sadly, yes.
I am spurred to write this with the news that the French Finance Minister has announced a 50% tax on bank earnings that exceed a certain amount, she also is expected to levy the same tax on bankers whose personal income from stock options, and bonuses rises above a certain figure. In the U.K. there have already been moves made in the same direction. But not in the U.S. – where the “Free Market” rules and the whole word has inherited the fallout from the policies of an economist who is a big fan of Ayn Rand and her insidious brand of libertarianism. Right, Alan Greenspan, who admitted he had been wrong, that the marketplace did not automatically react and solve its own problems – is an Ayn Rand devotee! Talk about chaos.
Can you imagine what would happen if Obama and his Wall-street-centred finance people decide actually to take action against abuses? We have seen how powerful Big Insurance is in the face of a threat to their profits. It is beyond imagining what Big Finance would do if suddenly all those promises for reform were to turn into action.
The irony is that when financial ruin was hovering like a hungry albatross, banks took billions to save themselves. Now, in typical free market Wall Street fashion, they are buying their way out by selling enormous new stock issues, which are being snapped up by investment houses also on the route to quick and easy profits. The fact is that, not only do the bankers “not get it,” but the President had no idea how powerful the forces arrayed against him were and still are.
There is no reason for Canadians to sit smugly with our own Health Care system, or our well-run banks, or a government that, surprisingly for real Tories, actually thinks we can spend our way out of recession. How novel. How Keynsian.
But the U.S. trudges along in its own unchanging rut. The Securities Exchange Commission has still not moved to demand disclosure on the running of derivatives and hedge funds. No one has even thought of indicting the rating companies (Moody’s and S&P) for their part in declaring mortgage backed securities a triple A investment.
It is enough to turn a thinking man into a Socialist. At least then the preposterous claims by the “tea-baggers would gain some credibility.
Finally, I feel sorry for the man who started out in the bright sunshine of hope and has disappeared into the gloom of defeat. I feel most sorry for the millions of Americans who still believe that change is possible.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
CELEBRITY FOR HIRE
I think it should be an axiom: never marry a celebrity! Why? You’re immediately in competition with thousands of other wannabes.
Of course,” marrying for love” is real, at least it appears to be for those who are smitten, besotted, or otherwise failing to control or understand their emotions. Like in A Chorus Line, “What I did for love,” is often self-destructive. There is an air about celebrity that attracts interest like honey attracts flies. Does anyone still wonder who the “groupies” are? Does anyone still not understand that for both the seducer and the seducee, there is a lot of endorphin at work? The one who attracts the groupies (or you can call them wannabes – as in “I wannabe in bed with a star”) is only partly to blame. There are more than enough truisms to go around, like “fame is an aphrodisiac.” For those who have the fame their sense of entitlement is enormous. For those who covet proximity to that fame, the urge is compelling.
Celebrities usually make bad spouses. They are carried away by their own celebrity and will forever be hunting for that next challenge – sexual, vocational – whatever. When a celebrity marries a celebrity, unless one of them is prepared to retire from celebrity, there will be competition. The stories about what we now call “Brangela” (or something like that) describe a somewhat preposterous alliance between two narcissists, each bathing in the splendour and bright light of their own celebrity. They are not to be relied upon for intelligent or thoughtful decisions. When they become parents they do it for reasons that escape ordinary would-be parents. I get the sense that with Angelina or Madonna, they are not parenting as much as they are “accessorizing” They are embellishing their lives and their personae the way they would embellish their wardrobe with a new silk scarf.
I am not going to state flatly that Elin married Tiger because she coveted celebrity. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, we could say that she truly adored him, notwithstanding the fact that he would be a “trophy” husband.
That’s it! Struggling through this essay on celebrity, I finally stumble on the cliché: “trophy.” It describes perfectly the attraction, often hidden by the endorphin reaction, which a celebrity has. Celebrity carries an aura and the supplicant wants to bathe in it.
Tiger is not alone. He has been a philanderer, and that is not supposed to be acceptable. Acceptable it is not – inevitable it almost always is.
There is still a lot to be said for the “boy/girl next door.” If it is happiness you are looking for, stay out of the spotlight of celebrity if you can. Marry into it at your peril.
Even a moderate amount of fame attracts interest. I know. I’ve been there. The salvation has been that my time in the bright sunlight has faded and I can be what I always should have been: a hard-working, caring husband and loving father.
Tiger is not there yet. The senators from North Carolina and Nevada are not there yet. The governor of South Carolina is not there yet. Only the wreckage remains.
Of course,” marrying for love” is real, at least it appears to be for those who are smitten, besotted, or otherwise failing to control or understand their emotions. Like in A Chorus Line, “What I did for love,” is often self-destructive. There is an air about celebrity that attracts interest like honey attracts flies. Does anyone still wonder who the “groupies” are? Does anyone still not understand that for both the seducer and the seducee, there is a lot of endorphin at work? The one who attracts the groupies (or you can call them wannabes – as in “I wannabe in bed with a star”) is only partly to blame. There are more than enough truisms to go around, like “fame is an aphrodisiac.” For those who have the fame their sense of entitlement is enormous. For those who covet proximity to that fame, the urge is compelling.
Celebrities usually make bad spouses. They are carried away by their own celebrity and will forever be hunting for that next challenge – sexual, vocational – whatever. When a celebrity marries a celebrity, unless one of them is prepared to retire from celebrity, there will be competition. The stories about what we now call “Brangela” (or something like that) describe a somewhat preposterous alliance between two narcissists, each bathing in the splendour and bright light of their own celebrity. They are not to be relied upon for intelligent or thoughtful decisions. When they become parents they do it for reasons that escape ordinary would-be parents. I get the sense that with Angelina or Madonna, they are not parenting as much as they are “accessorizing” They are embellishing their lives and their personae the way they would embellish their wardrobe with a new silk scarf.
I am not going to state flatly that Elin married Tiger because she coveted celebrity. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, we could say that she truly adored him, notwithstanding the fact that he would be a “trophy” husband.
That’s it! Struggling through this essay on celebrity, I finally stumble on the cliché: “trophy.” It describes perfectly the attraction, often hidden by the endorphin reaction, which a celebrity has. Celebrity carries an aura and the supplicant wants to bathe in it.
Tiger is not alone. He has been a philanderer, and that is not supposed to be acceptable. Acceptable it is not – inevitable it almost always is.
There is still a lot to be said for the “boy/girl next door.” If it is happiness you are looking for, stay out of the spotlight of celebrity if you can. Marry into it at your peril.
Even a moderate amount of fame attracts interest. I know. I’ve been there. The salvation has been that my time in the bright sunlight has faded and I can be what I always should have been: a hard-working, caring husband and loving father.
Tiger is not there yet. The senators from North Carolina and Nevada are not there yet. The governor of South Carolina is not there yet. Only the wreckage remains.
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