General Motors has entered a new phase, and Detroit pundits are wondering how old veterans of the wars like Fritz Henderson and Bob Lutz can change its hidebound culture. When I recall the recent obituaries for two former automotive company heads, George Romney and Robert MacNamara, I realize the cultural problems have been there since World War II and are more characteristic of institutions in general than GM in particular.
Automobile companies have always grappled with the tension between creative engineers who design and produce new models and bureaucrats responsible for ensuring their creativity doesn’t lead to bankruptcy. Romney was the one who foresaw the market for small, inexpensive cars when American Motors introduced the Rambler in 1955.
On July 23, 1967, when the Detroit riots erupted, he was governor of Michigan with aspirations to be president. When it took the president, Lyndon Johnson, a day to find a way to send the military to the city without forcing the state to declare a state of insurrection, Romney suspected politics was more important than legality or civil welfare.
That experience with the failure of an institution to react to a serious crisis probably contributed to his growing concerns with the war in Viet Nam. Five weeks later, on August 31, he told a Detroit television interviewer that, when he had visited the war zone in 1965, the generals had misled him, and admitted he no longer accepted the necessity for fighting communism in southeastern Asia.
His political career was over. Those who believed in the war attacked him as personally unfit because he said he’d been brainwashed. Those who opposed the war attacked him for placing the realization of cultural failure beyond his normal experience by ridiculing him for his pipeline to God.
MacNamara rose through the bureaucratic side of Ford where he was always the brilliant implementer of other people’s ideas. Tex Thornton’s the one who told Ford’s grandson, Henry II, he needed to modernize the organization in 1945. MacNamara’s immediate predecessor, Arjay Miller, is the one who went on to spread the gospel of modern management at Stanford after he was fired by Ford.
MacNamara considers his biggest achievement at Ford to have been opposing the Edsel from conception, and finally killing it in 1959. When he realized he was headed for the same kinds of confrontations that led to Miller’s dismissal, he put his resume in the mail and moved on to the defense department.
MacNamara probably understood less about the dynamics of the military than he did the way engineers operate, but he also believed all he needed to do was apply the administrative procedures he’d been taught. Like the engineers at Ford, the generals would handle the rest.
When he began to doubt the success of the efforts in Viet Nam and realized in November of 1967 that he couldn’t influence Johnson he didn’t risk a public confession like Romney. Instead, he put his resume in the mail and moved on to the World Bank.
Again, he saw his job as applying the procedures of others, in this case those of the Chicago School of Economics. When he was judged by the consequences of his actions for the poor of South America, he dismissed his critics as uninformed, and continued the policies prudence and his peers told him were correct.
It’s their lives after Viet Nam that reveal how each man responds to events that threaten all a culture gives him, his world view and self-esteem. Romney became head of HUD during the period Detroit was razed after the riots. He probably didn’t develop the policies that left blocks of vacant land and forced people to move from the city, precipitating more white flight. Still, when you drive through the areas that were once Detroit’s most vital Black neighborhoods, it looks like he permitted revenge by again not questioning the reports of others. He then retired to devote his time to the Mormon church.
MacNamara spent his later years trying to justify his actions in Viet Nam, never, ever recognizing there was any possible link between his actions and the lives of people in Asia or South America. He admitted he couldn’t discern the moral difference between burning people in Tokyo in World War II, and killing them in Viet Nam in the 1960's, not to condemn both, but to justify them.
The difference between the men, I think, is that Romney was comfortable around the creative people at American Motors, while MacNamara was suspicious at Ford. When Romney realized everything he’d been taught was leading to catastrophe, he had the courage to speak out, as a creative person might. When he was punished, he retreated to the familiar. MacNamara always look for the best way to minimize the disaster for himself as a careerist would and never ventured beyond the familiar.
It wasn’t simply that one was altruistic and the other narcissistic. More fundamentally, Romney had the ability to occasionally see familiar things anew. He may have initially been embittered by the reactions of others, but he had enough confidence to know he could find a new life. MacNamara may have been bright, but he never was able to distance himself enough to fully understand the depth of the cultural challenges he faced, and so died genuinely puzzled why he was still so reviled when his intentions had been so culturally accepted
The fundamental difference between the two that determined who could change and who could not was that the one had more imagination, more comfort with creativity than the other, and ultimately less fear of the consequences of crisis, confrontation and change.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Michael Jackson and Creativity
It was bad luck for Gale Storm and Billy Mays to die the weekend everyone’s attention was focused on Michael Jackson. Buried in the June 27 edition of the New York Times was a notice that an important diamond cutter had passed on the 15th.
Margalit Fox’s notice was that rare obituary that not only told you the usual information about Antonio Bianco’s survivors, but also described what made him special in his trade. She first needed to explain how diamond molecules react to being violated, before it was clear why it took several months to cut particularly large stones without permanently marring their internal structure.
I sent the notice to a friend of mine who’s drawn to the mystery of what’s inside externally drab rocks she finds in her neighborhood. Her return comment was "He must have made a lot of money."
She was a great Michael Jackson fan and we had spent part of Saturday talking about him and what his death meant. No one would just say, "he made a lot of money," although there are those who wonder who will inherit and what will be left after the debts are settled.
I used to wonder what people meant by materialism, because I was raised to respect work well done and to acknowledge the greatness of artists and artisans. I’m still shocked when, regardless of what people feel, they can only express their reaction in monetary terms.
It’s that simple equation that truncates artistic creativity. Someone is always afraid of the cost - the dependent family, the record companies, the concert promoters. As soon as large sums appear on bank statements, representatives of capitalism fear the kind of risks that create wealth in the first place.
No one minds if famous performers spend their money on useless possessions or self-destructive substances. After all, each purchase creates wealth for someone, as do any medical consequences. In their uselessness such transactions are materialism at its purest.
However, none of those petty traders of human frailty can step back at the end of a day and take pleasure in a well-cut stone or a new combination. Obituaries don’t yet record what people made, but what they did. Tombstones still have dates, not dollar signs.
Margalit Fox’s notice was that rare obituary that not only told you the usual information about Antonio Bianco’s survivors, but also described what made him special in his trade. She first needed to explain how diamond molecules react to being violated, before it was clear why it took several months to cut particularly large stones without permanently marring their internal structure.
I sent the notice to a friend of mine who’s drawn to the mystery of what’s inside externally drab rocks she finds in her neighborhood. Her return comment was "He must have made a lot of money."
She was a great Michael Jackson fan and we had spent part of Saturday talking about him and what his death meant. No one would just say, "he made a lot of money," although there are those who wonder who will inherit and what will be left after the debts are settled.
I used to wonder what people meant by materialism, because I was raised to respect work well done and to acknowledge the greatness of artists and artisans. I’m still shocked when, regardless of what people feel, they can only express their reaction in monetary terms.
It’s that simple equation that truncates artistic creativity. Someone is always afraid of the cost - the dependent family, the record companies, the concert promoters. As soon as large sums appear on bank statements, representatives of capitalism fear the kind of risks that create wealth in the first place.
No one minds if famous performers spend their money on useless possessions or self-destructive substances. After all, each purchase creates wealth for someone, as do any medical consequences. In their uselessness such transactions are materialism at its purest.
However, none of those petty traders of human frailty can step back at the end of a day and take pleasure in a well-cut stone or a new combination. Obituaries don’t yet record what people made, but what they did. Tombstones still have dates, not dollar signs.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Robert MacNamara - Part 1
Robert MacNamara, former head of Ford Motor, died July 6th, the same day the Detroit papers reported a judge in New York had agreed to General Motor’s accelerated bankruptcy plan.
The juxtaposition of the two stories reminded me of the last time the two were news. On July 23, 1967, a vice squad team raided the after-hours United Community League for Civic Action in Detroit and discovered it filled with people celebrating the return of two men from Viet Nam. They arrested 82, and five days of raw, undefined anger ensued.
George Romney, retired head of American Motors, was Michigan’s governor and he called in the National Guard. The next day, Lyndon Johnson sent army paratroopers from forces under the control of then Secretary of Defense MacNamara.
At the time, racism was identified as the underlying cause, and there was plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. However, I’ve always thought two other trends crossed that night at the corner of Twelfth and Clairmount.
The United States had always been a manufacturing country without enough labor. Engineers looked for ways to increase productivity with better machine tools, at the same time medicine made it possible for men to retire later. The two forces meant that, not only was the economy not producing as many new jobs, but it was opening existing opportunities at a slower rate.
At the same time corporations continued their efforts to reduce labor, baby boomers began entering the job market. The first wave, those born in 1944 and 1945 would have started looking for those shrinking jobs around 1962. If all the economy had to deal with was the miracle child born towards the end of the war, it might eventually have been able to absorb the surge.
But, couples didn’t stop with one or two children. In my neighborhood, probably a third of families had three and four. That increase would have been hitting the employment offices by 1967. Whenever scarcity is temporarily replaced with a surplus, men feel free to exercise secondary reasons in hiring. Latent bigotry resurfaced when men jockied for the remaining jobs.
The draft was one factor that delayed an awareness of the changing nature of the labor market. At that time, all young men were required to register, and many volunteered for two years in peace-time Germany or Korea. Those who were returning in July, 1967, were the ones who had enlisted just after Johnson had officially started the Viet Nam war escalation on January 31,
1965, but before the nature of that change was known. By 1967, opposition to MacNamara’s draft was increasing, and many were criticizing college deferments as unfair taxes on the poor.
We’ve spent a great deal of time and energy since 1967 trying to deal with problems of prejudice and manning the military, but no time wondering how a nation can survive with more people than it can employ. Even now, some still think that because General Motors and the other auto makers have eliminated so many union jobs, all they have to do is sell more cars, and the drag on the economy will disappear. They still refuse to recognize that going from a world of labor scarcity to one of superfluous people is a major cultural change.
The juxtaposition of the two stories reminded me of the last time the two were news. On July 23, 1967, a vice squad team raided the after-hours United Community League for Civic Action in Detroit and discovered it filled with people celebrating the return of two men from Viet Nam. They arrested 82, and five days of raw, undefined anger ensued.
George Romney, retired head of American Motors, was Michigan’s governor and he called in the National Guard. The next day, Lyndon Johnson sent army paratroopers from forces under the control of then Secretary of Defense MacNamara.
At the time, racism was identified as the underlying cause, and there was plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. However, I’ve always thought two other trends crossed that night at the corner of Twelfth and Clairmount.
The United States had always been a manufacturing country without enough labor. Engineers looked for ways to increase productivity with better machine tools, at the same time medicine made it possible for men to retire later. The two forces meant that, not only was the economy not producing as many new jobs, but it was opening existing opportunities at a slower rate.
At the same time corporations continued their efforts to reduce labor, baby boomers began entering the job market. The first wave, those born in 1944 and 1945 would have started looking for those shrinking jobs around 1962. If all the economy had to deal with was the miracle child born towards the end of the war, it might eventually have been able to absorb the surge.
But, couples didn’t stop with one or two children. In my neighborhood, probably a third of families had three and four. That increase would have been hitting the employment offices by 1967. Whenever scarcity is temporarily replaced with a surplus, men feel free to exercise secondary reasons in hiring. Latent bigotry resurfaced when men jockied for the remaining jobs.
The draft was one factor that delayed an awareness of the changing nature of the labor market. At that time, all young men were required to register, and many volunteered for two years in peace-time Germany or Korea. Those who were returning in July, 1967, were the ones who had enlisted just after Johnson had officially started the Viet Nam war escalation on January 31,
1965, but before the nature of that change was known. By 1967, opposition to MacNamara’s draft was increasing, and many were criticizing college deferments as unfair taxes on the poor.
We’ve spent a great deal of time and energy since 1967 trying to deal with problems of prejudice and manning the military, but no time wondering how a nation can survive with more people than it can employ. Even now, some still think that because General Motors and the other auto makers have eliminated so many union jobs, all they have to do is sell more cars, and the drag on the economy will disappear. They still refuse to recognize that going from a world of labor scarcity to one of superfluous people is a major cultural change.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
How Long Can It Take?
When Michael Jackson died we were told it would take several weeks for lab results to tell us the cause of death. When my friend got the plague she was told it would be several weeks before they knew if any of the animals in her area were infected. When the body of a five-year-old girl was found in Monroe, Michigan, her family was told it would be several weeks before tests would tell them if she was the missing Nevaeh Buchanan.
Fortunately, I have limited experience with lab tests. Some had a day’s delay caused by the need to air express samples out of state. In the cases of Jackson, Buchanan, and my friend the tests were done by state laboratories that could be reached quickly by a car. With Jackson and Buchanan, the transporting cruisers would have been justified if they used sirens.
Tests I’ve had done to detect bacteria took time because the samples needed to sit in conditions that would accelerate the growth of the small organisms. It took a week before they could tell my friend only her dog had traces of the plague in his blood and that none of the wild animal’s they trapped had been infected. The source of the fleas is still unknown.
Buchanan required DNA testing; Jackson chemical tests. Neither have the time constraints that organic tests have.
When they finally identified Buchanan’s body, the state police said they placed her tests ahead of "others backlogged for months - hundreds of them homicides." It still took four days for a family whose child had been missing sixteen days.
Michigan, of course, has had budget problems for years, and probably long ago cut forensic staffs. One can only guess what’s going on in California as the state careens towards bankruptcy, and the Los Angeles police department has done little to improve its credibility since it arrested O. J. Simpson.
The promise of Sherlock Holmes that tests could provide positive evidence has disappeared in a cultural refusal to support science and a willingness to accept the consequences. In Buchanan’s case, three known sex offenders were arrested because they knew her mother, and two are still in protective custody waiting to be punished for knowing the woman. They may have committed no other crime, but in the anxious waiting period when nothing was known people needed assurance their children were safe and demanded the police show some sign of action.
If Detroit is frequently listed as the murder capital on the country, it isn’t simply the city that’s responsible, but all those taxpayers who are willing to let hundreds of cases languish in understaffed facilities where samples can be lost or deteriorate if it means they can have a few more dollars to spend on themselves. Too many people learn early there is no connection between actions and consequences.
No doubt some of the best lab technicians left for other jobs when the state work load became so large there was no hope of ever actually solving problems. Every year Michigan watches many of its college graduates leave the state because they know the remaining opportunities are not desirable. They still believe in a connection between behavior and reward, and realize they can only benefit from their years of education if they leave. Those who remain either burn out or never rise above mediocrity.
When a society separates actions from consequences, the very act of dissociation has predicable consequences. When those who deny science also deny the value of any social unit beyond the nuclear family, then the outlaw culture that develops is one that reinforces their expectations. It’s the rest of us, with expectations for improvement, who are punished.
Notes:
Hunt, Amber. "Nevaeh’s Case Becomes Top Priority for Crime Lab," Detroit Free Press, 9 June 2009.
Fortunately, I have limited experience with lab tests. Some had a day’s delay caused by the need to air express samples out of state. In the cases of Jackson, Buchanan, and my friend the tests were done by state laboratories that could be reached quickly by a car. With Jackson and Buchanan, the transporting cruisers would have been justified if they used sirens.
Tests I’ve had done to detect bacteria took time because the samples needed to sit in conditions that would accelerate the growth of the small organisms. It took a week before they could tell my friend only her dog had traces of the plague in his blood and that none of the wild animal’s they trapped had been infected. The source of the fleas is still unknown.
Buchanan required DNA testing; Jackson chemical tests. Neither have the time constraints that organic tests have.
When they finally identified Buchanan’s body, the state police said they placed her tests ahead of "others backlogged for months - hundreds of them homicides." It still took four days for a family whose child had been missing sixteen days.
Michigan, of course, has had budget problems for years, and probably long ago cut forensic staffs. One can only guess what’s going on in California as the state careens towards bankruptcy, and the Los Angeles police department has done little to improve its credibility since it arrested O. J. Simpson.
The promise of Sherlock Holmes that tests could provide positive evidence has disappeared in a cultural refusal to support science and a willingness to accept the consequences. In Buchanan’s case, three known sex offenders were arrested because they knew her mother, and two are still in protective custody waiting to be punished for knowing the woman. They may have committed no other crime, but in the anxious waiting period when nothing was known people needed assurance their children were safe and demanded the police show some sign of action.
If Detroit is frequently listed as the murder capital on the country, it isn’t simply the city that’s responsible, but all those taxpayers who are willing to let hundreds of cases languish in understaffed facilities where samples can be lost or deteriorate if it means they can have a few more dollars to spend on themselves. Too many people learn early there is no connection between actions and consequences.
No doubt some of the best lab technicians left for other jobs when the state work load became so large there was no hope of ever actually solving problems. Every year Michigan watches many of its college graduates leave the state because they know the remaining opportunities are not desirable. They still believe in a connection between behavior and reward, and realize they can only benefit from their years of education if they leave. Those who remain either burn out or never rise above mediocrity.
When a society separates actions from consequences, the very act of dissociation has predicable consequences. When those who deny science also deny the value of any social unit beyond the nuclear family, then the outlaw culture that develops is one that reinforces their expectations. It’s the rest of us, with expectations for improvement, who are punished.
Notes:
Hunt, Amber. "Nevaeh’s Case Becomes Top Priority for Crime Lab," Detroit Free Press, 9 June 2009.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Sarah Palin
I’ve always thought Sarah Palin represented the first generation that believed celebrity was the same as the effort that created fame. For an aspiring journalist in the 1980's, it didn’t matter if one were Robert Redford playing Bob Woodword or Woodword himself - the work of acting and reporting were insignificant beside the reality of appearing on television.
I don’t think Palin really understood the difference between being herself or Tina Fey playing her, so long as her face was on Saturday Night Live. When she was invited to appear as a guest, the doubling that tantalized the audience meant little to her because the only thing she understood was the reality of being there.
Perhaps this is why she reserves her bitterest comments for people in the media who destroy her pleasure in finally achieving her goal. For Palin being on Katie Couric’s show was all that mattered. When she was criticized for not doing something she was genuinely confused. The appearance was the achievement.
When she placed second in the Miss Alaska pageant the lesson she learned was that she hadn’t been savvy enough to garner more media attention. It never seriously occurred to her the winner might have been the more attractive candidate or that she needed to work on the skills required to be a beauty queen like those successful winners from places like Texas. In the future she focused on being the center of attention.
Since she announced her planned resignation as governor of Alaska many have speculated on her attacks on those who filed ethical complaints against her. When she was campaigning with John McCain she got her first exposure to the adulation of large crowds, as well as an opportunity to observe the gilded life of the media and to wear expensive clothes.
Now that she’s back in Alaska, her out-of-state public appearances bring complaints of dereliction of duty. Her book contract raises concerns that it violates state limits on an elected official’s secondary activities. If political office is not a step to higher office, but to greater celebrity, then one can understand why she chaffs at bureaucratic restraints when she’s so close to achieving her goal.
She is like the child who spent her time in front of a mirror with a toy mike practicing her acceptance speech rather than doing the same dance step or musical passage over and over like Michael Jackson did. She doesn’t know fame is not an end in itself, but the reward given by people who appreciate the effortless efforts of the talented or something undefinably unique.
I don’t think Palin really understood the difference between being herself or Tina Fey playing her, so long as her face was on Saturday Night Live. When she was invited to appear as a guest, the doubling that tantalized the audience meant little to her because the only thing she understood was the reality of being there.
Perhaps this is why she reserves her bitterest comments for people in the media who destroy her pleasure in finally achieving her goal. For Palin being on Katie Couric’s show was all that mattered. When she was criticized for not doing something she was genuinely confused. The appearance was the achievement.
When she placed second in the Miss Alaska pageant the lesson she learned was that she hadn’t been savvy enough to garner more media attention. It never seriously occurred to her the winner might have been the more attractive candidate or that she needed to work on the skills required to be a beauty queen like those successful winners from places like Texas. In the future she focused on being the center of attention.
Since she announced her planned resignation as governor of Alaska many have speculated on her attacks on those who filed ethical complaints against her. When she was campaigning with John McCain she got her first exposure to the adulation of large crowds, as well as an opportunity to observe the gilded life of the media and to wear expensive clothes.
Now that she’s back in Alaska, her out-of-state public appearances bring complaints of dereliction of duty. Her book contract raises concerns that it violates state limits on an elected official’s secondary activities. If political office is not a step to higher office, but to greater celebrity, then one can understand why she chaffs at bureaucratic restraints when she’s so close to achieving her goal.
She is like the child who spent her time in front of a mirror with a toy mike practicing her acceptance speech rather than doing the same dance step or musical passage over and over like Michael Jackson did. She doesn’t know fame is not an end in itself, but the reward given by people who appreciate the effortless efforts of the talented or something undefinably unique.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Point of No Return
I recently read J. P. Marquand’s Point of No Return. The thwarted tale of Charles Gray, a small town boy from a family just below the elite who became engaged to the daughter of that elite, was predictable for anyone who’s lived in such a town. The matter-of-fact style borrowed from Middletown only underlined the familiarity.
While I was reading about Clyde, Massachusetts, General Motors was filing bankruptcy papers in New York, raising once again questions about why its culture chose failure when confronted with serious challenges to its survival.
Marquand’s 1949 novel suggests that GM had not just marketed to the Clydes of the country, but had absorbed the small town social structure with its rigid hierarchy that dictated Cadillac would always be better than Chevy, and both were ordained to always be better than any other division in the company and all better than any possible competitor.
Like Laurence Lovell, a father who would refuse his daughter’s suitor because he and Gray’s father had once disagreed, GM executives believed they could ignore upstarts like Pontiac and Saturn where new ideas actually existed that challenged their world view that the best product was the one with the greatest profit margin. The company felt vindicated when they chased away John DeLorean and Roger Smith, fought off Ralph Nader and Ross Perot, battled Walter Reuther and Roger Penske to a draw, in the same way Lovell was happy when young Gray abandoned any hopes for his daughter, Jessica.
The cultural insularity was partly the product of the company decision to use its own training school, General Motors Institute. The corporation came to prefer men who came up through an organization as rigid as that of the bank described by Marquand where the talented could not be promoted if they’d attended the wrong prep school, joined the wrong fraternity at the wrong college, married the wrong woman, or joined the wrong golf club. Once Gray’s co-worker, Roger Blakesley, was perceived to entertain inappropriate ambitions, he was asked to resign.
Small towns have been dying for a long time because entrepreneurs simply no longer are willing to put up with slights like those Lovell cast on Francis Stanley, the man who bought the local brass works and not only employed most of the men in town, but brought in talented men from outside like the engineer Elbridge Sterne. Sterne married Gray’s sister, Dorothea, and took the relics of her family back to Kansas when he was offered a better job after her father died.
It wasn’t just southern towns willing to lure foreign companies with tax incentives and promises of labor that could be pacified without unions that threatened the economic existence of small towns. Every small company that located in a more open-minded area, where achievement was more important than ascribed status, represented a lost opportunity.
In the end, Jessica Lovell found no one suitable to marry and had to settle for the only single man left from her generation, one who had endured the town, forever conscious of conforming to the rules for advancement. Her now much older father continued to call her fiancé Charles years after he had vanquished that threat. The new man simply remained invisible.
The people who are most angry with GM right now are the dealers in the small Clydes across the country who now are being cut off for not being urban enough. They recognize the irony of being left behind by a company that would prefer to remain more provincial than they.
While I was reading about Clyde, Massachusetts, General Motors was filing bankruptcy papers in New York, raising once again questions about why its culture chose failure when confronted with serious challenges to its survival.
Marquand’s 1949 novel suggests that GM had not just marketed to the Clydes of the country, but had absorbed the small town social structure with its rigid hierarchy that dictated Cadillac would always be better than Chevy, and both were ordained to always be better than any other division in the company and all better than any possible competitor.
Like Laurence Lovell, a father who would refuse his daughter’s suitor because he and Gray’s father had once disagreed, GM executives believed they could ignore upstarts like Pontiac and Saturn where new ideas actually existed that challenged their world view that the best product was the one with the greatest profit margin. The company felt vindicated when they chased away John DeLorean and Roger Smith, fought off Ralph Nader and Ross Perot, battled Walter Reuther and Roger Penske to a draw, in the same way Lovell was happy when young Gray abandoned any hopes for his daughter, Jessica.
The cultural insularity was partly the product of the company decision to use its own training school, General Motors Institute. The corporation came to prefer men who came up through an organization as rigid as that of the bank described by Marquand where the talented could not be promoted if they’d attended the wrong prep school, joined the wrong fraternity at the wrong college, married the wrong woman, or joined the wrong golf club. Once Gray’s co-worker, Roger Blakesley, was perceived to entertain inappropriate ambitions, he was asked to resign.
Small towns have been dying for a long time because entrepreneurs simply no longer are willing to put up with slights like those Lovell cast on Francis Stanley, the man who bought the local brass works and not only employed most of the men in town, but brought in talented men from outside like the engineer Elbridge Sterne. Sterne married Gray’s sister, Dorothea, and took the relics of her family back to Kansas when he was offered a better job after her father died.
It wasn’t just southern towns willing to lure foreign companies with tax incentives and promises of labor that could be pacified without unions that threatened the economic existence of small towns. Every small company that located in a more open-minded area, where achievement was more important than ascribed status, represented a lost opportunity.
In the end, Jessica Lovell found no one suitable to marry and had to settle for the only single man left from her generation, one who had endured the town, forever conscious of conforming to the rules for advancement. Her now much older father continued to call her fiancé Charles years after he had vanquished that threat. The new man simply remained invisible.
The people who are most angry with GM right now are the dealers in the small Clydes across the country who now are being cut off for not being urban enough. They recognize the irony of being left behind by a company that would prefer to remain more provincial than they.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Michael Jackson
The deaths of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson provoke shared moments of cultural shock. We abandoned television for more intimate, interactive media like the internet and Twitter for news updates. Such collective moments of unmediated emotion beg us to ask why.
Superficially the two men were similar. Both were uniquely gifted synthesizers of swirling cultural currents in music, and each expanded the language of the acceptable in popular forms.
Both reached a point where they could do no more without alienating some of their fans. I’ve seen artists as diverse as Harry Belefonte and the Osborne Brothers who try variations on songs they’ve been forced to repeat for years greeted with disapproval by audiences who’ve so internalized their music that deviation could not be tolerated.
Yet, audiences want to see more, want to see something different, and so each could only evolve as performers. The Elvis of Vegas and the Jackson of the tin soldier suits are not the artists we were drawn to, but the products of our demands for new sensations within the confines of the claustrophobically familiar.
We can’t imagine either of them married watching their children play soccer. The hyper-sexuality of the one and the ultra-androgyny of the other could not be domesticated. Our perceptions built cages they couldn’t leave without risking our wrath.
We cut off creative individuals, used to working hard, from either pursing innovation in music or seeking normal domestic lives. To evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald, what possible second act did we permit them?
In the past, religion would have provided a model. But that avenue was closed to these two. Both were raised in strong evangelizing traditions, the Assembly of God and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and already had influenced more people everywhere in the world than any conventional missionary. Presley was perhaps luckier because he could maintain his ties to his past through gospel music.
The secular alternative pioneered by Ezra Cornell to devote one’s second life to philanthropy has been attacked by conservative politicians angered by the social changes supported by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Both instead used late songs instead like "In the Ghetto" and "We Are the World" to do things aggressively outspoken critics would not otherwise permit.
We put them at the pinnacle of our success pyramid with no place to go. All we allowed was what we could imagine, the excesses of materialism. When they die and we see the consequences, we’re shocked because the emptiness we discover is the emptiness of our closed culture which has no options.
By chance, Presley died when we were struggling with economic problems under Jimmy Carter which we denied by following a less talented performer who could metamorphose into a politician. Jackson died in our current recession caused by the very kinds of excesses we condemned him to live.
What we intuit in their deaths is the failure of our shared world view to function when it is most needed. They become transformed into the canaries of our cultural crises that none of us can escape.
Superficially the two men were similar. Both were uniquely gifted synthesizers of swirling cultural currents in music, and each expanded the language of the acceptable in popular forms.
Both reached a point where they could do no more without alienating some of their fans. I’ve seen artists as diverse as Harry Belefonte and the Osborne Brothers who try variations on songs they’ve been forced to repeat for years greeted with disapproval by audiences who’ve so internalized their music that deviation could not be tolerated.
Yet, audiences want to see more, want to see something different, and so each could only evolve as performers. The Elvis of Vegas and the Jackson of the tin soldier suits are not the artists we were drawn to, but the products of our demands for new sensations within the confines of the claustrophobically familiar.
We can’t imagine either of them married watching their children play soccer. The hyper-sexuality of the one and the ultra-androgyny of the other could not be domesticated. Our perceptions built cages they couldn’t leave without risking our wrath.
We cut off creative individuals, used to working hard, from either pursing innovation in music or seeking normal domestic lives. To evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald, what possible second act did we permit them?
In the past, religion would have provided a model. But that avenue was closed to these two. Both were raised in strong evangelizing traditions, the Assembly of God and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and already had influenced more people everywhere in the world than any conventional missionary. Presley was perhaps luckier because he could maintain his ties to his past through gospel music.
The secular alternative pioneered by Ezra Cornell to devote one’s second life to philanthropy has been attacked by conservative politicians angered by the social changes supported by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Both instead used late songs instead like "In the Ghetto" and "We Are the World" to do things aggressively outspoken critics would not otherwise permit.
We put them at the pinnacle of our success pyramid with no place to go. All we allowed was what we could imagine, the excesses of materialism. When they die and we see the consequences, we’re shocked because the emptiness we discover is the emptiness of our closed culture which has no options.
By chance, Presley died when we were struggling with economic problems under Jimmy Carter which we denied by following a less talented performer who could metamorphose into a politician. Jackson died in our current recession caused by the very kinds of excesses we condemned him to live.
What we intuit in their deaths is the failure of our shared world view to function when it is most needed. They become transformed into the canaries of our cultural crises that none of us can escape.
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