My boss’s family is from mainline Philadelphia. His mother’s father was a society doctor and they moved in the orbit reserved for hangers-on to the well-to-do. The family tree she chooses to remember is her mother’s from Virginia.
She was raised to rule, and she and one of her daughters treat our foremen and a few of the workers as "our darkies." They make familiar comments to them about their families or waist lines, that have the unspoken message of control.
But like many one-time southerners, they divide our workers into the equivalent of house slaves and field slaves. At the same time the woman treats the foreman as a family retainer, she harbors the darkest suspicions which usually emerge in facile generalizations about "Mexicans." Just the other day she said the foreman thinks like a Mexican, but that can’t be helped, it’s what he is. Anyway, he has to be watched, or else he’ll lay off all the Anglo workers and hire only Mexicans he can control. He wants to be a padrone.
In her inherited world of privilege, children do not aspire to be employees or bureaucrats or professionals, but entrepreneurs. Her son, my employer, decided he could never become independent as a contractor to the wealthy; his only hope was real estate.
Like many others, he’s been buying middle class homes in a changing neighborhood, then subdividing them into apartments. The local rents are so high, people can only afford them if they double up. So, the tenant of record is essentially forced to convert the apartment into a boarding house. To keep this illegal density hidden, his mother and wife watch that utility bills betray nothing.
He prefers to rent to immigrants because they are hard working and less likely to cause problems or trash the property. They also rarely speak English, which means the foreman must act as a go-between.
My boss converted the garage of one of the houses into an office, and is working to have the lot subdivided. Until that happens, our office is a zoning violation and we cannot have any identifying sign outside without attracting the attention of the building inspector. If we hadn’t tried to renew our business license, he wouldn’t know about us and our name would still be over the door. We’d be illegal, but not harassed.
Recently, we did not receive our checks from our payroll service. This has happened before when someone new at the express delivery company left our packages at the house with our address. The tenants sent their children over with it. This time, school was in session and no package.
My boss’s mother, who manages the office, began to panic. The fact her son was away for training fed her feeling she was in charge and had to act to protect his best interests.
We sent one man who speaks rudimentary Spanish over to the tenants to ask after the package. One unit was empty; a sleepy man answered the door in the other. He probably didn’t recognize our employee and said there was nothing.
The woman decided it was time to act. She called the payroll company and demanded they void the checks and resend new ones.
Meantime she was talking to her other daughter, still in suburban Philadelphia. The woman’s a recovery alcoholic; her daughter’s in the process of divorcing one. The younger woman apparently blames immigrants for some of her woes, especially the fact that the only job she can find is managing a restaurant with higher paid immigrant workers.
The older woman began talking about how "these Mexicans" can’t be trusted and began suggesting they had opened the package and cashed the checks. With all those illegal documents they have, it’d be simple. Who knows what other fantasies formed in her mind. She began to sound like she’d met Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas.
The one idea that didn’t occur to her was that the tenants weren’t likely to jeopardize their apartment by opening something with their landlord’s name on it.
We called the Spanish-speaking foreman who called the woman at work. She told him the package was in the house and we could go in to get it.
Only, we didn’t have a key. In all the manipulations to convert and maintain the apartments at minimal cost, duplicate keys had gotten hopelessly confused.
We took the one key that had the apartment’s label and tried it. We went together because I wanted a witness if I entered someone else’s abode. She wanted company because she was simply afraid. The key didn’t work.
We went back to the office and waited. To fill time she sorted keys until she found another that might fit. By then though, she was too worked up to go over. She spent the remaining hours telling me I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.
She also went over to the offices of the express delivery company and complained. The new route driver came over to apologize, and demonstrate he now knew where we were. She called the man responsible for the lot split demanding action. He didn’t return her calls. She demanded answers when a subcontractor came in who used to have the apartment keys. He finally offered to test things for her on his own time.
She was helpless passing time, waiting for someone to come home, but she had successfully proven she could make other people jump to her bidding.
When the replacement checks arrived she put them in her brief case.
When the foreman returned, late in the afternoon, he called the tenant again and was told the man was on his way home. She fretted, until the foreman finally got the misrouted package. She put it her briefcase and left.
The next day, after 5:30, the foreman and some of the guys were having a beer and talking when one of the men called to say his check had been refused at the bank. The foreman’s wife called to tell him she saw two deposits in their account.
When I called the woman, she refused to let me write replacement checks for anyone but the person who had been refused, and then only because he was going on vacation. She claimed it was just his bank. If he had taken it to the bank that wrote the check everything would be OK. She implied Mexicans just needed to learn how to do things in America.
Her plan was that each person should try to cash his check Saturday morning at the issuing bank and leave a message on the answering machine if they had problems. She would then write only the necessary checks on Monday.
It didn’t occur to her she was demanding that they each risk humiliation or embarrassmet, or that they might prefer their usual bank.
After everyone left, I called her son to let him know I did not know if we had paid his employees or not. He was angry he had not been notified as soon as the package did not appear.
We got lucky. The checks were OK, and only the one employee had a problem. Since I assume he had used that bank before, he must have come upon an employee suspicious of any customer with an accent. The banks posted the voided transactions over the weekend.
The woman has been angry with me ever since for notifying her son, and instead of accepting his requests that she have nothing to do with the company’s finances, has made it clear I’m not to have anything to do with payroll or checks.
She’s also still pressed to show she’s in charge. She relabeled the keys another employee just reorganized, returning them to the chaos only she understands. She’s still asking the subcontractor why he hasn’t tested doors and is calling the surveyor everyday for a progress report. Her son is finding other ways to extricate the company finances.
Life as it’s lived in the demimonde of an aging woman determined to stay useful to her son, the long term consequences of petty slights suffered by children who grow up treating others as servants whose role is to take blame and smile, the hell of alcohol and failed marriages. That day the personal intersected with the grey world created by politicians elected by such people who intimidate managers whose employees then feel free to act on their fears and prejudices to turn the lives of immigrants, legal and otherwise, into an invisible world of humiliation and overcrowding that forces them to have to accept the unacceptable - leaving work on payday not knowing if their checks are good enough to buy groceries.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Language - Part 1 - Science
The fate of scientists like botanists, entomologists and astronomers is sad. They start as children awed by the wonders of nature, and end with methods that never allow them to look out the window.
The first thing they lose is language. Men concerned with precision have not only banished the poetic, but even the coherent. Much of the challenge of introductory college science courses is simply learning vocabulary, and graduate students know they must master arcane rhetoric to be published. I often wonder if they can even put statements into English like
or
The alternative for botanists and entomologists is research in how to kill what it is they loved. Instead of marveling that pigweed and horseweed have mutated to survive the active agent in Round-up, they’re paid to find something that will eradicate the survivors in cotton and soybean fields.
With the systematic separation of science students from their subject, it’s not surprising so much research has moved abroad. Why would someone who cares want to put the years of work into producing what seems inconsequential?
There are few independent seed companies left in the United States. Most have been bought by European conglomerates or chemical companies like Monsato. It’s easy for business students to say they are following the pattern of globalization pioneered by the steel companies.
Along with ownership we disdain anything that’s not immediately pragmatic. Along with the loss of seed companies has been the loss of breeders looking for new varieties. It’s the Japanese who’ve joined the Dutch and Germans as the leading breeders of new varieties of ornamental plants.
I’m not ridiculing the scientists I quoted. They are involved in things that matter. The agent in crownbeard that kills sheep and inhibits the growth of food crops like radishes is galegine, which has been synthesized into a treatment for type 2 diabetes. It may sound silly to learn sheep who die are ones who eat sweet things instead of nutritious ones, but the consequences of knowing a glucose chemical was involved could not have been anticipated by the researchers.
And those doing the various kinds of DNA research aren’t just looking for miracle cures. They’re also deepening our understanding of evolution. Morning glories happen to be interesting because new varieties are not hybrids, but spontaneous mutations. All the Heavenly Blues we see today probably came from one plant noticed by an amateur named Clarke in Colorado.
The chasm between passion and procedures is not unique to science. Many English professors have felt the same loss when their love of literature is channeled into formal literary criticism. Historians may want to know why and how something happened, but they’re forced to use statistics or other standard methods that deliberately eliminate the special so they write without biases.
Amateurs have options. They buy popular historians or read historical fiction or watch documentaries. People who love novels or poetry don’t even know professors write books. But for those of us interested in natural history, the barriers are greater. There are no ways to surmount the language barrier except by trying to comprehend the technical.
Perhaps the rigors of professionalism have had the unintended consequence of making outsourcing technology easier, for when people cannot read or write about things they care about the formative culture that produces innovation is destroyed. When that’s gone, outsourcing is only a cosmetic term for having to buy what we once created.
Sources:
Description of research at Division of Gene Expression and Regulation I, headed by Shigeru Iida, on internet .
Inderjit, Chikako Asakawa and K. M. M. Dakshini, "Allelopathic Potential of Verbesina Encelioides Root Leachate in Soil," Canadian Journal of Botany 7:1419–1424:1999, abstract on internet.
Keeler R.F., D. C. Baker, and K. E. Panter, "Concentration of Galegine in Verbesina Encelioides and Galega Officinalis and the Toxic and Pathologic Effects Induced by the Plants," Journal of Environmental Pathology Toxicology and Oncology, 11:11-7:1992, abstract on internet.
The first thing they lose is language. Men concerned with precision have not only banished the poetic, but even the coherent. Much of the challenge of introductory college science courses is simply learning vocabulary, and graduate students know they must master arcane rhetoric to be published. I often wonder if they can even put statements into English like
Affected animals necropsied at time of death presented with hydrothorax with as much as 2 to 3 L of straw-colored thoracic fluid.
or
We also investigated the influence of different levels of N fertilization (1, 5, and 10 mM) on the modification of the allelopathic potential of amended soils, in terms of their effect on soil total phenolics and radish seedling growth.Once scientists have their advanced degrees, many follow research into laboratories where machines do the looking and they do the writing. Genetics and DNA are answering important questions, but still you wonder if people despair when they spend months of their lives reducing morning glories to
The mutable allele is caused by an intragenic tandem duplication of 3.3 kb within a gene for transcriptional activator containing a bHLH DNA-binding motif.
The alternative for botanists and entomologists is research in how to kill what it is they loved. Instead of marveling that pigweed and horseweed have mutated to survive the active agent in Round-up, they’re paid to find something that will eradicate the survivors in cotton and soybean fields.
With the systematic separation of science students from their subject, it’s not surprising so much research has moved abroad. Why would someone who cares want to put the years of work into producing what seems inconsequential?
There are few independent seed companies left in the United States. Most have been bought by European conglomerates or chemical companies like Monsato. It’s easy for business students to say they are following the pattern of globalization pioneered by the steel companies.
Along with ownership we disdain anything that’s not immediately pragmatic. Along with the loss of seed companies has been the loss of breeders looking for new varieties. It’s the Japanese who’ve joined the Dutch and Germans as the leading breeders of new varieties of ornamental plants.
I’m not ridiculing the scientists I quoted. They are involved in things that matter. The agent in crownbeard that kills sheep and inhibits the growth of food crops like radishes is galegine, which has been synthesized into a treatment for type 2 diabetes. It may sound silly to learn sheep who die are ones who eat sweet things instead of nutritious ones, but the consequences of knowing a glucose chemical was involved could not have been anticipated by the researchers.
And those doing the various kinds of DNA research aren’t just looking for miracle cures. They’re also deepening our understanding of evolution. Morning glories happen to be interesting because new varieties are not hybrids, but spontaneous mutations. All the Heavenly Blues we see today probably came from one plant noticed by an amateur named Clarke in Colorado.
The chasm between passion and procedures is not unique to science. Many English professors have felt the same loss when their love of literature is channeled into formal literary criticism. Historians may want to know why and how something happened, but they’re forced to use statistics or other standard methods that deliberately eliminate the special so they write without biases.
Amateurs have options. They buy popular historians or read historical fiction or watch documentaries. People who love novels or poetry don’t even know professors write books. But for those of us interested in natural history, the barriers are greater. There are no ways to surmount the language barrier except by trying to comprehend the technical.
Perhaps the rigors of professionalism have had the unintended consequence of making outsourcing technology easier, for when people cannot read or write about things they care about the formative culture that produces innovation is destroyed. When that’s gone, outsourcing is only a cosmetic term for having to buy what we once created.
Sources:
Description of research at Division of Gene Expression and Regulation I, headed by Shigeru Iida, on internet .
Inderjit, Chikako Asakawa and K. M. M. Dakshini, "Allelopathic Potential of Verbesina Encelioides Root Leachate in Soil," Canadian Journal of Botany 7:1419–1424:1999, abstract on internet.
Keeler R.F., D. C. Baker, and K. E. Panter, "Concentration of Galegine in Verbesina Encelioides and Galega Officinalis and the Toxic and Pathologic Effects Induced by the Plants," Journal of Environmental Pathology Toxicology and Oncology, 11:11-7:1992, abstract on internet.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Competition - Part 1 - Brand X Telephone
My telephone company just changed hands, and it looks like things are going to stay bad. I had hope a few years ago when the company that owned our company got bought by a major utility that we might finally get some genuine service. But, as part of the deal, they sold us off, to maintain competition.
What competition? A group of men in Texas formed a company for the purpose of buying the "had to be solds" and kept them long enough to make a profit reselling (I assume). They didn’t develop a company, they didn’t invest in one. They were playing the markets.
Meantime, we remained mired in the rural poverty of the early twentieth century when small companies developed to serve areas the major utilities disdained.
I’ve had private companies or cooperatives in three areas I’ve lived. The service has always been more expensive and the equipment more antiquated than the big name competitors. In Ohio and Texas, the customer service was better.
But here, it’s been one long tale of poor service.
When my line needed repair, the service man dug it up, spliced the cut wire, and left the wire in the gaping ditch. I was told a different crew filled in the hole. If I wanted it filled, it would cost additional.
Another time when my line was out, I called and they checked the switch in their main building. A number of people were having the same problem, but instead of running some diagnostic tests on their equipment, they simply waited until each person called and fixed individual lines.
Their reactive service got so bad, the electric company blamed them by name for making a storm worse for all of us. A large area had lost its power on a holiday, and the telephone company had no one working to field calls that needed to be made. The power company couldn’t even call all its personnel because the telephone company wouldn’t bring any of its people in for an emergency.
When I wanted to get my internet connection, I called the telephone company to ask what it would cost. They told me they couldn’t tell me without an engineering work order, and they wouldn’t write one until I agreed to pay for a year’s undefined service at some unknown price. When I asked the service rep how I could compare my options, he snickered.
I found a local DSL provider, and still have to pay that telephone company for the privilege of not using their service. They alone provide the modem at their price. When I was scheduled to be connected their service rep called to say the connection was made. When I asked her to hold while I checked, she said she didn’t have time to verify the line, and besides, if it wasn’t installed properly, that was another work order.
I called by local internet provider and let them deal with it. They earn their monthly fee. The technician told me it was a tossup which was worse, the brand X company I had or the major company they had in the city.
While the records were being transferred from one telephone company to another, my bills got confused. They gave me a credit several months ago that probably was a mistake. They sent me a bill due August 8 that still had a credit, and a few days later the new company sent me a cancellation notice for an unpaid amount that was not related to the original credit.
Since I had been getting so much advertising related to the transition I didn’t open the cancellation notice until I paid my bills yesterday. There were two more letters from them . Simultaneously they sent a bill that showed the credit being removed and a letter telling me they were suspending the service they had already disconnected even though I still had time to pay the bill I’d just received
They tell me I’m stuck with this company to maintain competition in the industry.
Where’s the competition for the customers?
Many have bought cell phones as a way to circumvent brand X. When I bought one, I happened to be in the next town, twenty miles away. It turned out the cell phone company was using the same service definitions as the old cooperative, and it was still long distance to call twenty miles away. Or, in my case, every time I used it in my home, it was long distance.
I know the government concern for monopoly goes back to the 1930s when utilities, especially power companies, were consolidating networks and using their size to gouge consumers and drive competitors out of business. They were as predatory as railroads in the nineteenth century, or cable companies and Enron today.
The cost of infrastructure creates utility monopolies, not greed. Competition comes from different technologies that can provide similar services. Regulation should exist to prevent the abuses that inevitably come from monopoly, not ensure the existence of multiple monopolies.
The defining element has always been the company’s purpose. In the years of regulation, corporations at least gave lip service to the importance of products and services. When I lived in Texas, the serviceman knocked down my neighbor’s mailbox when he was installing my phone. He was back the next day, unasked, to repair the post. In between, he had been setting up chairs for the annual cooperative meeting.
Since deregulation, money has been the only legitimate purpose for many companies. Instead of a technician who repairs his messes, we’re left with open ditches and exposed utility lines. For them, customer service is another work order.
What competition? A group of men in Texas formed a company for the purpose of buying the "had to be solds" and kept them long enough to make a profit reselling (I assume). They didn’t develop a company, they didn’t invest in one. They were playing the markets.
Meantime, we remained mired in the rural poverty of the early twentieth century when small companies developed to serve areas the major utilities disdained.
I’ve had private companies or cooperatives in three areas I’ve lived. The service has always been more expensive and the equipment more antiquated than the big name competitors. In Ohio and Texas, the customer service was better.
But here, it’s been one long tale of poor service.
When my line needed repair, the service man dug it up, spliced the cut wire, and left the wire in the gaping ditch. I was told a different crew filled in the hole. If I wanted it filled, it would cost additional.
Another time when my line was out, I called and they checked the switch in their main building. A number of people were having the same problem, but instead of running some diagnostic tests on their equipment, they simply waited until each person called and fixed individual lines.
Their reactive service got so bad, the electric company blamed them by name for making a storm worse for all of us. A large area had lost its power on a holiday, and the telephone company had no one working to field calls that needed to be made. The power company couldn’t even call all its personnel because the telephone company wouldn’t bring any of its people in for an emergency.
When I wanted to get my internet connection, I called the telephone company to ask what it would cost. They told me they couldn’t tell me without an engineering work order, and they wouldn’t write one until I agreed to pay for a year’s undefined service at some unknown price. When I asked the service rep how I could compare my options, he snickered.
I found a local DSL provider, and still have to pay that telephone company for the privilege of not using their service. They alone provide the modem at their price. When I was scheduled to be connected their service rep called to say the connection was made. When I asked her to hold while I checked, she said she didn’t have time to verify the line, and besides, if it wasn’t installed properly, that was another work order.
I called by local internet provider and let them deal with it. They earn their monthly fee. The technician told me it was a tossup which was worse, the brand X company I had or the major company they had in the city.
While the records were being transferred from one telephone company to another, my bills got confused. They gave me a credit several months ago that probably was a mistake. They sent me a bill due August 8 that still had a credit, and a few days later the new company sent me a cancellation notice for an unpaid amount that was not related to the original credit.
Since I had been getting so much advertising related to the transition I didn’t open the cancellation notice until I paid my bills yesterday. There were two more letters from them . Simultaneously they sent a bill that showed the credit being removed and a letter telling me they were suspending the service they had already disconnected even though I still had time to pay the bill I’d just received
They tell me I’m stuck with this company to maintain competition in the industry.
Where’s the competition for the customers?
Many have bought cell phones as a way to circumvent brand X. When I bought one, I happened to be in the next town, twenty miles away. It turned out the cell phone company was using the same service definitions as the old cooperative, and it was still long distance to call twenty miles away. Or, in my case, every time I used it in my home, it was long distance.
I know the government concern for monopoly goes back to the 1930s when utilities, especially power companies, were consolidating networks and using their size to gouge consumers and drive competitors out of business. They were as predatory as railroads in the nineteenth century, or cable companies and Enron today.
The cost of infrastructure creates utility monopolies, not greed. Competition comes from different technologies that can provide similar services. Regulation should exist to prevent the abuses that inevitably come from monopoly, not ensure the existence of multiple monopolies.
The defining element has always been the company’s purpose. In the years of regulation, corporations at least gave lip service to the importance of products and services. When I lived in Texas, the serviceman knocked down my neighbor’s mailbox when he was installing my phone. He was back the next day, unasked, to repair the post. In between, he had been setting up chairs for the annual cooperative meeting.
Since deregulation, money has been the only legitimate purpose for many companies. Instead of a technician who repairs his messes, we’re left with open ditches and exposed utility lines. For them, customer service is another work order.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Tolerance - Part 1 - Dell Shannon
Liberals constantly face the Skokie conundrum, what to do when one’s belief in tolerance requires allowing people so intolerant to exist they would rewrite the constitution if they could. At what point is it necessary to become intolerant to preserve an environment of tolerance? Or in that 1977 case, how does one separate the right of a group to request a parade permit through a Jewish neighborhood, from their right to receive that permit?
Liberals flock to the cause of an artist like Robert Mapplethorpe who’s shows are censored by people who dislike the subjects. But what does one do with a writer like Louis-Ferdinand Céline who’s accused of supporting the Nazis in France in world war II?
Elizabeth Linington poses such a problem. At the same time she wrote mystery stories under the name Dell Shannon that glamorized the Los Angeles police force, she also supported the John Birch Society.
At the time I wondered if I bought one of her books, was I was making a contribution. My immediate solution was to buy books from used book dealers. Unfortunately, that meant enjoying her work without paying her for her effort.
Her anomalous position became more obvious when O. J. Simpson’s lawyer dramatized general incompetence and brutality of her force. She was often accused of not knowing much about police procedures, so did she deliberately romanticize the authority figures as ideology?
Since I didn’t remember a strong streak of propaganda in her books, I decided to read some to see. By now, of course, they’re only available from used book dealers and she’s been dead since 1988.
First, let me say she’s a decent story teller with an ability to pace her narrative. She usually has one major plot that alternates between a number of minor tales, some resolved, some not. Her aim is to dramatize the work flow in a large organization.
Most of the minor plots are the humdrum of daily police life, the routine accidental homicides and thefts. Some accuse her of lifting them from police blotters. It’s probably what she meant when she said she did extensive research.
She also tries to portray a functioning bureaucracy with a number of people working on multiple problems, able to still concentrate on a few, but realizing many simply must be ignored. The idea of a functioning civil service is anathema to many conservatives today, but was not necessarily a tenant of the John Birch group.
Her selection of crimes and creation of undifferentiated policemen represents the realism in her work. There’s nothing about the view criminals are either stupid or ordinary people that is characteristic of a conservative ideology.
Her weaknesses as a writer leave her more vulnerable to political criticism. She has no ear for dialogue. When she portrays confrontations between suspects and police, she has them mouth polite euphemisms, especially for black cops. When the police are looking for suspects, they call them fags.
The one represents isolation, the other homophobia. Neither are representative of the John Birch society, but may be reasons one would not read her book.
She also has no ability to develop characters. Her black, hispanic and white cops, suspects and victims are interchangeable. When she tries to characterize individuals, she falls into stereotypes. The black policeman, Jason, is the son of a doctor who is an expert at everything. Lieutenant Mendoza inherited money from his grandfather and plays poker without being a gambler.
While there’s no malice in her limited imagination and writing skills, there’s a more subtle class bias. The policemen are all working class men with families, who worry about mortgages. Luis Mendoza doesn’t need his salary, has married an artist and lives in a renovated hacienda with horses and sheep. No alcoholics, no divorces, no wild bachelors.
Mendoza falls into the tradition created by Dorothy Sayers with Peter Wimsey and Ngaio Marsh with Roderick Alleyn. Unlike many of her contemporaries who also create well-to-do, intelligent heroes, she does try to provide the more realistic background of the typical police force.
Readers of genre fiction accept a number of conventions in exchange for a realistic portrayal of problem solving. However, her uneducated portrayal of the Los Angeles police force could not survive the reality of the O. J. Simpson case, when no one showed the skills and tolerance of her most minor police inspector.
She’s also been done in by advances in technology. Her books were written before DNA testing and computerized databases. The best she can do is match blood types and fingerprints. With no ability to gather evidence, she can only solve many of her crimes with suspects willing to confess as soon as policemen ask the correct questions.
Her estate and publisher don’t mention her political interests, probably because they don’t want to alienate potential readers. Her most ideological comments in the books I recently read occur in The Motive on Record (1982) when Mendoza’s wife visits travel agencies and is upset when they offer the newly available tours of eastern Europe. She constantly frets, why would anyone want to support a communist country with tourist dollars.
I wonder what a John Birch mystery would be. Someone who wanted to use fiction to spread a message would be more likely to choose the genre of Ian Fleming and John LeCarre. Within the context of a city police department it’s impossible to have authority figures who are always right.
The kind of policing we hear about with helicopters patrolling the slums of LA would not be used by burglary-homicide, despite the example of Simpson. The closest she comes is an interrogation in Death by Inches (1965) that inadvertently shows the fine the line between questioning and torture.
If the police can’t be John Birch heroes, then the villains must be communists. Starting her career in 1962, she would have needed murders in labor unions or anti-war groups, either communist infiltrators of legitimate groups or agent provocateurs in Marxist groups. Instead of religious zealots who kill infidel children, they would kill them when they became college atheists.
Those aren’t her plots. They don’t fit her vision of the daily routine of a city police force.
Without the plots, villains, heroes, or political vision she is simply a limited writer with an interesting vision of solving murders, hampered by her gentility. One can boycott her works for economic reasons, but there’s no reason to keep them away from innocent children who might be corrupted by her propaganda. She tries to dramatize a kind of tolerance with her diverse police force, and her writing requires readers exercise the same tolerance.
Disliking or liking them for aesthetic or emotional reasons is altogether another matter.
Liberals flock to the cause of an artist like Robert Mapplethorpe who’s shows are censored by people who dislike the subjects. But what does one do with a writer like Louis-Ferdinand Céline who’s accused of supporting the Nazis in France in world war II?
Elizabeth Linington poses such a problem. At the same time she wrote mystery stories under the name Dell Shannon that glamorized the Los Angeles police force, she also supported the John Birch Society.
At the time I wondered if I bought one of her books, was I was making a contribution. My immediate solution was to buy books from used book dealers. Unfortunately, that meant enjoying her work without paying her for her effort.
Her anomalous position became more obvious when O. J. Simpson’s lawyer dramatized general incompetence and brutality of her force. She was often accused of not knowing much about police procedures, so did she deliberately romanticize the authority figures as ideology?
Since I didn’t remember a strong streak of propaganda in her books, I decided to read some to see. By now, of course, they’re only available from used book dealers and she’s been dead since 1988.
First, let me say she’s a decent story teller with an ability to pace her narrative. She usually has one major plot that alternates between a number of minor tales, some resolved, some not. Her aim is to dramatize the work flow in a large organization.
Most of the minor plots are the humdrum of daily police life, the routine accidental homicides and thefts. Some accuse her of lifting them from police blotters. It’s probably what she meant when she said she did extensive research.
She also tries to portray a functioning bureaucracy with a number of people working on multiple problems, able to still concentrate on a few, but realizing many simply must be ignored. The idea of a functioning civil service is anathema to many conservatives today, but was not necessarily a tenant of the John Birch group.
Her selection of crimes and creation of undifferentiated policemen represents the realism in her work. There’s nothing about the view criminals are either stupid or ordinary people that is characteristic of a conservative ideology.
Her weaknesses as a writer leave her more vulnerable to political criticism. She has no ear for dialogue. When she portrays confrontations between suspects and police, she has them mouth polite euphemisms, especially for black cops. When the police are looking for suspects, they call them fags.
The one represents isolation, the other homophobia. Neither are representative of the John Birch society, but may be reasons one would not read her book.
She also has no ability to develop characters. Her black, hispanic and white cops, suspects and victims are interchangeable. When she tries to characterize individuals, she falls into stereotypes. The black policeman, Jason, is the son of a doctor who is an expert at everything. Lieutenant Mendoza inherited money from his grandfather and plays poker without being a gambler.
While there’s no malice in her limited imagination and writing skills, there’s a more subtle class bias. The policemen are all working class men with families, who worry about mortgages. Luis Mendoza doesn’t need his salary, has married an artist and lives in a renovated hacienda with horses and sheep. No alcoholics, no divorces, no wild bachelors.
Mendoza falls into the tradition created by Dorothy Sayers with Peter Wimsey and Ngaio Marsh with Roderick Alleyn. Unlike many of her contemporaries who also create well-to-do, intelligent heroes, she does try to provide the more realistic background of the typical police force.
Readers of genre fiction accept a number of conventions in exchange for a realistic portrayal of problem solving. However, her uneducated portrayal of the Los Angeles police force could not survive the reality of the O. J. Simpson case, when no one showed the skills and tolerance of her most minor police inspector.
She’s also been done in by advances in technology. Her books were written before DNA testing and computerized databases. The best she can do is match blood types and fingerprints. With no ability to gather evidence, she can only solve many of her crimes with suspects willing to confess as soon as policemen ask the correct questions.
Her estate and publisher don’t mention her political interests, probably because they don’t want to alienate potential readers. Her most ideological comments in the books I recently read occur in The Motive on Record (1982) when Mendoza’s wife visits travel agencies and is upset when they offer the newly available tours of eastern Europe. She constantly frets, why would anyone want to support a communist country with tourist dollars.
I wonder what a John Birch mystery would be. Someone who wanted to use fiction to spread a message would be more likely to choose the genre of Ian Fleming and John LeCarre. Within the context of a city police department it’s impossible to have authority figures who are always right.
The kind of policing we hear about with helicopters patrolling the slums of LA would not be used by burglary-homicide, despite the example of Simpson. The closest she comes is an interrogation in Death by Inches (1965) that inadvertently shows the fine the line between questioning and torture.
If the police can’t be John Birch heroes, then the villains must be communists. Starting her career in 1962, she would have needed murders in labor unions or anti-war groups, either communist infiltrators of legitimate groups or agent provocateurs in Marxist groups. Instead of religious zealots who kill infidel children, they would kill them when they became college atheists.
Those aren’t her plots. They don’t fit her vision of the daily routine of a city police force.
Without the plots, villains, heroes, or political vision she is simply a limited writer with an interesting vision of solving murders, hampered by her gentility. One can boycott her works for economic reasons, but there’s no reason to keep them away from innocent children who might be corrupted by her propaganda. She tries to dramatize a kind of tolerance with her diverse police force, and her writing requires readers exercise the same tolerance.
Disliking or liking them for aesthetic or emotional reasons is altogether another matter.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Religion - Part 5 - Elmer Gantry
I finally read Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry, promoted as "the greatest, most vital and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since Voltaire." It was a hard slog, with the depth of a case study rather than a novel, marred by predictable plotting and undeveloped characters.
As I read, I kept wondering, why were people so angry when it was published in 1927? Gantry was more a man with ambitions and some charisma limited by poor education and small town upbringing than a dangerous demagogue. He certainly is no where near as interesting as Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, and had none of their influence.
Billy Graham’s career is closer to Gantry’s. Both were associated early with women with greater credentials in evangelism than they. Graham married Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China. Gantry toured with a woman modeled on Aimee Simple McPherson. She died early, leaving the reader to wonder if his life would have been different had she lived.
Both changed churches. Gantry began as a Baptist, but was expelled for seducing a woman, then refusing to marry her. He joined the Methodists when they offered him new opportunities, but he continued to be haunted by the doubts of salvation planted by his mother’s church. Graham was born a Presbyterian, but changed to the Southern Baptist Convention. While he maintained that affiliation, his children were baptized as Presbyterians.
Most important, both mixed religion and politics as the pawns of more powerful men. Gantry discovered the value of politics when he supported an underdog mayoral candidate. He became friends with the movers and shakers of his community, and asked one for help when a woman tried to blackmail him. Lewis treats the relationship as one that normally arises in a small town, and only faults Gantry for his ambition when he conspires to lead the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.
Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst promoted Graham’s first revival in New York as a deliberate attempt to scare people into anticommunist crusades. With fame, came prestige which politicians exploited by appearing with him. With time, Graham himself became seduced by them, and slowly became their spokesman. Most see him less as a grasping Gantry, than as a tragic figure caught in the consequences of his own successes.
So, what is it that separates these men, makes Graham a hero, condemns the others as hypocrites?
The obvious answer is sex. For Swaggart, sex was central to religious experience. It represented the devil that must constantly be wrestled with: sometimes faith triumphs; sometimes man weakens and must reestablished his link with God through begging for forgiveness and repentance. The struggle is as constant as breathing.
Jim Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, dramatized the choices for women born since Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner who wanted sexual freedom within the shelter of the Assemblies of God that fostered Swaggart. Unfortunately for her, Bakker’s interest could not be sustained, and her struggle for faith degenerated into progressively more ludicrous make-up.
Elmer Gantry didn’t treat women as either sirens or sources of pleasure. He preferred women who doted on him. Unlike Swaggart who frequented prostitutes, Gantry maintained long time relationships with his mistresses. He broke with them for the same reason he tired of his wife; when his social world improved, they could not change, and no longer glorified his ego.
Lewis made a mistake when he introduced infidelity into his plot if he wanted to show a truly dangerous man like his religious contemporaries, Robert Shuler and J. Frank Norris who were broadcasting racism, nativism and homophobia in Los Angeles and Dallas. Lewis wasn’t interested enough in sex to create a sensual man. But his readers were interested enough to read more into his circumspect account of adultery, and looked no deeper into Elmer’s character.
It’s also possible sex was easier for them to discuss than the fact Gantry never met a single admirable clergyman among the Baptists and Methodists who ordained him. Those with genuine faith were ineffective. Most condemned evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, but less from belief than as received wisdom of their seminary training. Most voiced platitudes without understanding, and certainly none, but the marginal, ever had doubts.
In one scene, Gantry hosts a luncheon for the clergymen of Zenith to promote a united crusade against prostitution. As the men chat, Lewis shows each refusing to join, not because posse justice was wrong, but because each was too jealous of the potential success of Gantry.
Greed or the lust for power that characterized Gantry and many of his fellow clergymen still provokes many of the biggest church scandals. A woman set out to blackmail Gantry. Methodists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attacked Bakker and took over his ministry when Jessica Hahn accused him of adultery. Another revivalist, Marvin Gorman, hired detectives to spy on Swaggart.
People are not interested in recognizing an institution has failed. When they are confronted with wide scale duplicity, they search for the one person who can redeem their faith in institutions, who can reassure them a bad person does not contaminate all they’ve lived by. Billy Graham’s website recounts the downfalls of Swaggart, Bakker, and Falwell, then trumpets his compassion when it lets us know he visited in Bakker in prison. It goes further and tells us "Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message."
Lewis wants us to think Elmer Gantry has that ability when he asks his parishoners if they believe in the "fiendishness of my accusers," then promises to lead them in a crusade "for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land."
Lewis put too many characteristics of powerful ministers into one person to show the dangers of ambition alluded to with the luncheon. Gantry combines the weakness of Jimmy Swaggart and the fecklessness of Tammy Faye, who divorced her jailed husband, with the charisma of Graham and the media savvy of Jim Bakker. He has the opportunism of Norris and Shuler, but lacks the discipline to become Charles Coughlin.
When confronted with would-be heroes, people search for evidence of human frailty, and once that is exposed, no longer care. In real life, that concern destroys the power of men like Swaggart and Bakker. In the novel, it limits the dramatic impact to tawdry affairs. The truly dangerous man either disciplines himself to overcome his urges or sublimates them into his ambitions. One simply doesn’t worry at the end when Gantry is poised to take over napap, because one knows he’ll destroy himself.
Sources:
Graham, Billy. "Televangelist Scandals," at
unctv.org/ruthandbillygraham.
Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry, 1927; cover blurb from Literary Review on cover of 1958 Dell paperback edition.
As I read, I kept wondering, why were people so angry when it was published in 1927? Gantry was more a man with ambitions and some charisma limited by poor education and small town upbringing than a dangerous demagogue. He certainly is no where near as interesting as Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, and had none of their influence.
Billy Graham’s career is closer to Gantry’s. Both were associated early with women with greater credentials in evangelism than they. Graham married Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China. Gantry toured with a woman modeled on Aimee Simple McPherson. She died early, leaving the reader to wonder if his life would have been different had she lived.
Both changed churches. Gantry began as a Baptist, but was expelled for seducing a woman, then refusing to marry her. He joined the Methodists when they offered him new opportunities, but he continued to be haunted by the doubts of salvation planted by his mother’s church. Graham was born a Presbyterian, but changed to the Southern Baptist Convention. While he maintained that affiliation, his children were baptized as Presbyterians.
Most important, both mixed religion and politics as the pawns of more powerful men. Gantry discovered the value of politics when he supported an underdog mayoral candidate. He became friends with the movers and shakers of his community, and asked one for help when a woman tried to blackmail him. Lewis treats the relationship as one that normally arises in a small town, and only faults Gantry for his ambition when he conspires to lead the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.
Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst promoted Graham’s first revival in New York as a deliberate attempt to scare people into anticommunist crusades. With fame, came prestige which politicians exploited by appearing with him. With time, Graham himself became seduced by them, and slowly became their spokesman. Most see him less as a grasping Gantry, than as a tragic figure caught in the consequences of his own successes.
So, what is it that separates these men, makes Graham a hero, condemns the others as hypocrites?
The obvious answer is sex. For Swaggart, sex was central to religious experience. It represented the devil that must constantly be wrestled with: sometimes faith triumphs; sometimes man weakens and must reestablished his link with God through begging for forgiveness and repentance. The struggle is as constant as breathing.
Jim Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, dramatized the choices for women born since Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner who wanted sexual freedom within the shelter of the Assemblies of God that fostered Swaggart. Unfortunately for her, Bakker’s interest could not be sustained, and her struggle for faith degenerated into progressively more ludicrous make-up.
Elmer Gantry didn’t treat women as either sirens or sources of pleasure. He preferred women who doted on him. Unlike Swaggart who frequented prostitutes, Gantry maintained long time relationships with his mistresses. He broke with them for the same reason he tired of his wife; when his social world improved, they could not change, and no longer glorified his ego.
Lewis made a mistake when he introduced infidelity into his plot if he wanted to show a truly dangerous man like his religious contemporaries, Robert Shuler and J. Frank Norris who were broadcasting racism, nativism and homophobia in Los Angeles and Dallas. Lewis wasn’t interested enough in sex to create a sensual man. But his readers were interested enough to read more into his circumspect account of adultery, and looked no deeper into Elmer’s character.
It’s also possible sex was easier for them to discuss than the fact Gantry never met a single admirable clergyman among the Baptists and Methodists who ordained him. Those with genuine faith were ineffective. Most condemned evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, but less from belief than as received wisdom of their seminary training. Most voiced platitudes without understanding, and certainly none, but the marginal, ever had doubts.
In one scene, Gantry hosts a luncheon for the clergymen of Zenith to promote a united crusade against prostitution. As the men chat, Lewis shows each refusing to join, not because posse justice was wrong, but because each was too jealous of the potential success of Gantry.
Greed or the lust for power that characterized Gantry and many of his fellow clergymen still provokes many of the biggest church scandals. A woman set out to blackmail Gantry. Methodists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attacked Bakker and took over his ministry when Jessica Hahn accused him of adultery. Another revivalist, Marvin Gorman, hired detectives to spy on Swaggart.
People are not interested in recognizing an institution has failed. When they are confronted with wide scale duplicity, they search for the one person who can redeem their faith in institutions, who can reassure them a bad person does not contaminate all they’ve lived by. Billy Graham’s website recounts the downfalls of Swaggart, Bakker, and Falwell, then trumpets his compassion when it lets us know he visited in Bakker in prison. It goes further and tells us "Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message."
Lewis wants us to think Elmer Gantry has that ability when he asks his parishoners if they believe in the "fiendishness of my accusers," then promises to lead them in a crusade "for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land."
Lewis put too many characteristics of powerful ministers into one person to show the dangers of ambition alluded to with the luncheon. Gantry combines the weakness of Jimmy Swaggart and the fecklessness of Tammy Faye, who divorced her jailed husband, with the charisma of Graham and the media savvy of Jim Bakker. He has the opportunism of Norris and Shuler, but lacks the discipline to become Charles Coughlin.
When confronted with would-be heroes, people search for evidence of human frailty, and once that is exposed, no longer care. In real life, that concern destroys the power of men like Swaggart and Bakker. In the novel, it limits the dramatic impact to tawdry affairs. The truly dangerous man either disciplines himself to overcome his urges or sublimates them into his ambitions. One simply doesn’t worry at the end when Gantry is poised to take over napap, because one knows he’ll destroy himself.
Sources:
Graham, Billy. "Televangelist Scandals," at
unctv.org/ruthandbillygraham.
Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry, 1927; cover blurb from Literary Review on cover of 1958 Dell paperback edition.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Religion - Part 4 - Doubt
Some religions admit doubt while others deny it exists. Calvinists argued God’s grace was absolute, but no man could know if he was among the elect. Doubt drove searches for evidence of God’s favor.
Later Protestants argued from the evidence backwards. If you spoke in tongues, if you had a conversion experience, then you were in a state of grace. Good works, public service, wealth all became tokens of sanctification.
At every crisis in our past, we’ve taken the absolute over the unknown. Within a generation, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony abandoned their requirements for membership and adopted the half-way covenant that allowed children of church members to join without proof of grace. Election was transformed from personal experience to a collective family legacy that could be inherited.
Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were both schooled in southern religion, but the one was raised a Baptist, the other converted to Methodism. The first historically divided into warring sects while Methods hewed to central authority. The one group constantly argues theology, the other debates social issues. Both divided over slavery, but only the one still has northern and southern conventions; the other united its conferences in 1939.
Doubt survives among Carter’s Baptists, but not among Bush’s Methodists. One of the earliest, popular country songs illustrates the difference. Ada Ruth Habersohn, who worked with Methodist gospel musician Ira Sankey, wrote "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" around 1908.
In 1935, A. P. Carter rewrote the lyrics for the Carter Family as "Can the Circle Be Unbroken." The reason for the change was probably quite simple: record companies wanted artists to avoid copyright payments by writing their own songs, and artist obliged.
The nature of the change is speculation. It could be as simple as the preference for the sound of the hard consonants (can the circle) over the internal rhyme of the vowels (will the circle). Or, it could reflect the more Calvinistic theology of the south. A. P. was raised in a Methodist community, while his sister-in-law, Maybelle, was from a Baptist communion in southwestern Virginia.
Will, with it’s implied allusion to free will, assumes ascension to heaven, and the only issue is if an individual has taken the actions necessary to ensure a family reunion. Can invites speculation about what’s possible, introduces doubt.
Since outsiders started listening to the Carter Family, their descendants changed the keyword back to "will," probably because they were told they had made a silly error and should correct themselves. It certainly isn’t the only case where they changed one of their songs to fit the expectations of different audiences.
Still, "can" is the version that people with little money bought in the 1930s, and "will" is what the mainstream expects today.
Our public Protestant tradition continues to edge towards the moral certainty that prefers "will" to "can," and eventually recasts all received texts. Once I was told God tested Job to the point Job despaired of God. Some time in the late-1980s, I heard a radio preacher say that was wrong, that God would never toy with a believer. Instead, Job was in the hands of the devil, and his error was not recognizing the wiles of Satan.
As a child, I was also told David defeated Goliath, with the implication that the weak can prevail, that brains can triumph over physical bullies. A few months ago, a woman told me her minister had given her new insight into the story. Goliath lost because he doubted God.
When the woman started to retell the story she almost said Goliath denied his savior, but then realized that didn’t sound quite right. She kept rewording it until she could retain that interpretation with words that fitted the Old Testament.
New interpretations of traditional stories signal changing values. Voters who accept doubt will have different expectations for leaders, for novels or films than those who want absolutes. The trials of Job speak to a different audience than the travails of Goliath. The Godfather and The Sopranos are different narratives.
When we were faced with difficulties raised by racism, poverty, dependence on petroleum, many found austere Goliath more comfortable than tormented Job or complex David. Since Jimmy Carter was president, men who have been willing to negotiate, the peacemakers blessed of old, have been ridiculed as weaklings.
The cultural preference for uniformity that spreads change from a country song to the entire Bible, leads vocal shareholders to eliminate unknowns and demand boards replace CEOs who still believe they should work with their employees and political leaders in communities where they have plants. The same absolutism informs commentators who criticize parents who share child rearing responsibilities, because two decision makers in a family introduces an element of chance.
Self-help consultants tell people, when in doubt, do something, anything. A leader always acts. We’re told Goliath would never form a committee. Job does not grapple with a crisis in faith, he dithers. Even the Southern Baptist convention today seeks the hegemony of Methodists, the theological purity of Presbyterians.
Later Protestants argued from the evidence backwards. If you spoke in tongues, if you had a conversion experience, then you were in a state of grace. Good works, public service, wealth all became tokens of sanctification.
At every crisis in our past, we’ve taken the absolute over the unknown. Within a generation, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony abandoned their requirements for membership and adopted the half-way covenant that allowed children of church members to join without proof of grace. Election was transformed from personal experience to a collective family legacy that could be inherited.
Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were both schooled in southern religion, but the one was raised a Baptist, the other converted to Methodism. The first historically divided into warring sects while Methods hewed to central authority. The one group constantly argues theology, the other debates social issues. Both divided over slavery, but only the one still has northern and southern conventions; the other united its conferences in 1939.
Doubt survives among Carter’s Baptists, but not among Bush’s Methodists. One of the earliest, popular country songs illustrates the difference. Ada Ruth Habersohn, who worked with Methodist gospel musician Ira Sankey, wrote "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" around 1908.
In 1935, A. P. Carter rewrote the lyrics for the Carter Family as "Can the Circle Be Unbroken." The reason for the change was probably quite simple: record companies wanted artists to avoid copyright payments by writing their own songs, and artist obliged.
The nature of the change is speculation. It could be as simple as the preference for the sound of the hard consonants (can the circle) over the internal rhyme of the vowels (will the circle). Or, it could reflect the more Calvinistic theology of the south. A. P. was raised in a Methodist community, while his sister-in-law, Maybelle, was from a Baptist communion in southwestern Virginia.
Will, with it’s implied allusion to free will, assumes ascension to heaven, and the only issue is if an individual has taken the actions necessary to ensure a family reunion. Can invites speculation about what’s possible, introduces doubt.
Since outsiders started listening to the Carter Family, their descendants changed the keyword back to "will," probably because they were told they had made a silly error and should correct themselves. It certainly isn’t the only case where they changed one of their songs to fit the expectations of different audiences.
Still, "can" is the version that people with little money bought in the 1930s, and "will" is what the mainstream expects today.
Our public Protestant tradition continues to edge towards the moral certainty that prefers "will" to "can," and eventually recasts all received texts. Once I was told God tested Job to the point Job despaired of God. Some time in the late-1980s, I heard a radio preacher say that was wrong, that God would never toy with a believer. Instead, Job was in the hands of the devil, and his error was not recognizing the wiles of Satan.
As a child, I was also told David defeated Goliath, with the implication that the weak can prevail, that brains can triumph over physical bullies. A few months ago, a woman told me her minister had given her new insight into the story. Goliath lost because he doubted God.
When the woman started to retell the story she almost said Goliath denied his savior, but then realized that didn’t sound quite right. She kept rewording it until she could retain that interpretation with words that fitted the Old Testament.
New interpretations of traditional stories signal changing values. Voters who accept doubt will have different expectations for leaders, for novels or films than those who want absolutes. The trials of Job speak to a different audience than the travails of Goliath. The Godfather and The Sopranos are different narratives.
When we were faced with difficulties raised by racism, poverty, dependence on petroleum, many found austere Goliath more comfortable than tormented Job or complex David. Since Jimmy Carter was president, men who have been willing to negotiate, the peacemakers blessed of old, have been ridiculed as weaklings.
The cultural preference for uniformity that spreads change from a country song to the entire Bible, leads vocal shareholders to eliminate unknowns and demand boards replace CEOs who still believe they should work with their employees and political leaders in communities where they have plants. The same absolutism informs commentators who criticize parents who share child rearing responsibilities, because two decision makers in a family introduces an element of chance.
Self-help consultants tell people, when in doubt, do something, anything. A leader always acts. We’re told Goliath would never form a committee. Job does not grapple with a crisis in faith, he dithers. Even the Southern Baptist convention today seeks the hegemony of Methodists, the theological purity of Presbyterians.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Takeover - Part 4 - Count Down
Almost exactly one year has passed since the crisis first brewed where I last work, and things continue to deteriorate. There were 15 people in the accounting department then, and 15 people have quit, been fired or laid off since. Two clerks remain from the contract turnover, and one other was there last summer.
The customer began to raise problems about a month before its contract with the government expired, and another company was scheduled to assume the business. It needed a hard financial close, and the people responsible were not comfortable with what they thought was going on.
One member of their financial group met with the subcontractor CFO and his assistant comptroller late one week. When she didn’t hear the answers she needed, someone apparently talked to the CEO. On Monday, the two men were fired.
That left the department with one remaining assistant comptroller and a new GL manager who had been hired to replace the one demoted back to her last assignment. Rumors say the new woman aligned herself with one of the budget analysts who had not been hired for the assistant comptroller’s job, and they spent more time undermining their acting boss than doing their jobs.
Just before the customer’s deadline, the man who handled the reports sent to the customer sent his significant other in with his resignation. He finally decided what to do after 28 years: he put his health and aging parents first.
Now there was no one left who had ever reported to the customer at fiscal year end. The customer had to send back the whistle blower it had saved in December, and instructed him to do what it took. He booked a $14 million dollar loss.
As soon as the close was complete, the last assistant comptroller walked out.
Two months later, the woman who always handled the subcontractor’s invoices at the customer’s has a new job, and her supervisor has transferred elsewhere with their new employer. Neither wish to deal with my old company anymore. The CFO may have disparaged her because she was a woman, but she was the only person who understood how to retrieve the necessary financial information from the customer’s databases to do any kind of cost tracking or reconciliation.
The whistle blower is telling her replacement and his new boss he doesn’t want anything more to do with his old employer. He noted in his last visit they had changed so many things he no longer could act effectively. So far, everyone promises to honor his request and let him get on with his new job.
That leaves the contractor department responsible for releasing work to the subcontractor to deal with the now 17 million dollar loss. They know the contract requires them to make up the difference, so they’re cutting back spending to hoard enough money.
So far I haven’t heard of any layoffs among the skilled crafts. More likely, the decrease in business means less overtime and fewer men hired for the summer. The lost take home pay has now spread from the accountants who caused the problem or were the first victims, to the men who generate the revenue to cover everyone’s paychecks.
The CEO is well aware of the problems. He’s gotten rid of the man he replaced, and the man who was the contract liaison last year. The head of human resources has also been demoted and the engineering manager left. The contract has devolved back to the man who handled it before the takeover and no one has taken over the day to day operations from the previous engineering manager he fired last winter.
The CEO’s apparently made it clear to whoever is left in accounting they will be fired if they don’t find the 17 million before the end of the fiscal year. No one yet knows where the 3 million went last year, and many people have spent hours trying to find it.
The new accounting team is headed by the treacherous GL manager who’s now the acting finance manager. The equally untrustworthy budget analyst is now the GL manager. She considers it a demotion because the person who had the job a year ago didn’t have any formal training in accounting, indeed didn’t have a four-year degree. Apparently, she still thinks she should be at least an assistant comptroller, even though she didn’t meet the minimum requirement that she be a CPA.
They’re aided by the woman who’s been responsible for developing rates. She demanded she be considered for the GL manager when it opened, on the grounds she at least had a four-year degree in business and knew something about the company. The fired assistant comptroller refused to take her seriously, and hired a women who had been in the military and was working for a bank.
They’re in the phase when they’ve found no simple answers and are begging for help. The whistle blower and the man who left in May have refused. The demoted GL manager is very unhappy because her boss has sent her back and expects her to help them and continue her existing job.
The only one who has accepted an invitation is the man who may have set this all in motion years ago when he developed financial reports so complicated no one with standard accounting experience could understand them. He’s now a paid consultant helping develop the rates.
At this point it no longer matters very much what happens. If the customer finally decides the cost of covering the subcontractor losses more than offsets the costs of cancelling the contract, the hunt for the lost funds will continue. The customer is still quibbling with the previous subcontractor over their final settlement with far fewer dollars in dispute.
If the customer cancels the contract, most employees will be absorbed and the work will continue for the crafts. If the men who pulled political strings to get the contract and subcontract in the first place pull some more strings, maybe someone in Washington will sidetrack the final search. After all, in the world of lost money in Iraq, what’s 17 million dollars?
But until they either find the money or the hunt is called off, people will search, and people will worry about getting fired, will continue to get sick or see their personal relationships suffer. It’s down to the tedious work that needs to be done, with no reward, only punishment for those who’ve survived. Only the fired CFO still received his bonus.
The customer began to raise problems about a month before its contract with the government expired, and another company was scheduled to assume the business. It needed a hard financial close, and the people responsible were not comfortable with what they thought was going on.
One member of their financial group met with the subcontractor CFO and his assistant comptroller late one week. When she didn’t hear the answers she needed, someone apparently talked to the CEO. On Monday, the two men were fired.
That left the department with one remaining assistant comptroller and a new GL manager who had been hired to replace the one demoted back to her last assignment. Rumors say the new woman aligned herself with one of the budget analysts who had not been hired for the assistant comptroller’s job, and they spent more time undermining their acting boss than doing their jobs.
Just before the customer’s deadline, the man who handled the reports sent to the customer sent his significant other in with his resignation. He finally decided what to do after 28 years: he put his health and aging parents first.
Now there was no one left who had ever reported to the customer at fiscal year end. The customer had to send back the whistle blower it had saved in December, and instructed him to do what it took. He booked a $14 million dollar loss.
As soon as the close was complete, the last assistant comptroller walked out.
Two months later, the woman who always handled the subcontractor’s invoices at the customer’s has a new job, and her supervisor has transferred elsewhere with their new employer. Neither wish to deal with my old company anymore. The CFO may have disparaged her because she was a woman, but she was the only person who understood how to retrieve the necessary financial information from the customer’s databases to do any kind of cost tracking or reconciliation.
The whistle blower is telling her replacement and his new boss he doesn’t want anything more to do with his old employer. He noted in his last visit they had changed so many things he no longer could act effectively. So far, everyone promises to honor his request and let him get on with his new job.
That leaves the contractor department responsible for releasing work to the subcontractor to deal with the now 17 million dollar loss. They know the contract requires them to make up the difference, so they’re cutting back spending to hoard enough money.
So far I haven’t heard of any layoffs among the skilled crafts. More likely, the decrease in business means less overtime and fewer men hired for the summer. The lost take home pay has now spread from the accountants who caused the problem or were the first victims, to the men who generate the revenue to cover everyone’s paychecks.
The CEO is well aware of the problems. He’s gotten rid of the man he replaced, and the man who was the contract liaison last year. The head of human resources has also been demoted and the engineering manager left. The contract has devolved back to the man who handled it before the takeover and no one has taken over the day to day operations from the previous engineering manager he fired last winter.
The CEO’s apparently made it clear to whoever is left in accounting they will be fired if they don’t find the 17 million before the end of the fiscal year. No one yet knows where the 3 million went last year, and many people have spent hours trying to find it.
The new accounting team is headed by the treacherous GL manager who’s now the acting finance manager. The equally untrustworthy budget analyst is now the GL manager. She considers it a demotion because the person who had the job a year ago didn’t have any formal training in accounting, indeed didn’t have a four-year degree. Apparently, she still thinks she should be at least an assistant comptroller, even though she didn’t meet the minimum requirement that she be a CPA.
They’re aided by the woman who’s been responsible for developing rates. She demanded she be considered for the GL manager when it opened, on the grounds she at least had a four-year degree in business and knew something about the company. The fired assistant comptroller refused to take her seriously, and hired a women who had been in the military and was working for a bank.
They’re in the phase when they’ve found no simple answers and are begging for help. The whistle blower and the man who left in May have refused. The demoted GL manager is very unhappy because her boss has sent her back and expects her to help them and continue her existing job.
The only one who has accepted an invitation is the man who may have set this all in motion years ago when he developed financial reports so complicated no one with standard accounting experience could understand them. He’s now a paid consultant helping develop the rates.
At this point it no longer matters very much what happens. If the customer finally decides the cost of covering the subcontractor losses more than offsets the costs of cancelling the contract, the hunt for the lost funds will continue. The customer is still quibbling with the previous subcontractor over their final settlement with far fewer dollars in dispute.
If the customer cancels the contract, most employees will be absorbed and the work will continue for the crafts. If the men who pulled political strings to get the contract and subcontract in the first place pull some more strings, maybe someone in Washington will sidetrack the final search. After all, in the world of lost money in Iraq, what’s 17 million dollars?
But until they either find the money or the hunt is called off, people will search, and people will worry about getting fired, will continue to get sick or see their personal relationships suffer. It’s down to the tedious work that needs to be done, with no reward, only punishment for those who’ve survived. Only the fired CFO still received his bonus.
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