What Are You Reading

[LizzieMaine]

I tend to view the whole "elites" argument with suspicion for one simple reason -- it's a favorite tactic of demagogues, who set themselves up as fake populists and say "It's not us, it's Those Other Ones There who are your enemy." It's so much easier to reject any argument for social change as "Hmph, there go those pointy headed intellectual Elites again," than to confront the actual issues they raise. Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, Spiro Agnew and George Wallace, to name a few played the masses like a fiddle with that tactic at various times in recent history, to the ultimate detriment of those masses.

I disagree that social changes originate with "the elite." Social change has never begun with "the elite" at any time in history. "The elite" may well take up the cause after the fact, when they sense which way the wind is blowing, or they hear the rattle of the tumbrels rolling in their direction, but the pressure for change always originates, and has always originated from within an oppressed class. Women themselves began the Women's Movement." African-Americans themselves began the Civil Rights Movement. LGBT people began the LGBT movement. The labor movement began with the workers themselves. Even Christianity -- which began as much as a social movement as a religious one -- originated among the "offscouring of humanity." And on and on and on. Social change has always begun with the discontent of the oppressed.

To get back to the PC argument, there was nothing "elite" about the group of black comic readers who went to see C. C. Beck in 1945, and I don't see much "elite" in the story of the Miss Saigon incident, not after doing a bit of research and finding that the protests originated with Actors Equity -- about four hundred Asian-American actors within American Equity were in a dispute with British Equity, which had jurisdiction over the London production, over casting issues in the show, It remained an internal matter between the two unions and the producer until David Henry Hwang, the writer of "M. Butterfly," leaked it to the press and it spun into a Big Public Dispute. Disputes sell papers, and naturally, everybody's got their two cents to throw in once it becomes a public dispute. There's nothing particularly "elite" in that. Hwang, for his part, has expressed regret about how he handled the matter, but remains convinced that it did help raise awareness of a real problem that then existed -- and continues to exist -- within the theatre. You could argue that, for those who have no actual stake in the issue to dismiss concerns over such problems as mere "PC" is in itself, if you'll pardon the expression, maybe a bit "elitist."

All that said, I do want to say how much I've appreciated the tone of this discussion. All too often discussion of Pee Cee degenerates into Sour Old White Men whining about how much they hate everything that has changed in society since they were ten years old, but this one has remained on a high plane. You've always kept your discussions on such a plane, and I, for one, very much appreciate that.

 

[Fading Fast]

I alluded to the vagueness about the term "elite," which is why I tried to define it a bit: Op/Ed writers, gov't bureaucrats, school administrators and others - think tanks, private endowments and I'm sure others - as the term "elite" is politically charged and not one I think I understand. But there is some collection of opinion makers and issue drivers that can promote / advance / distort / improve the notice and trajectory of social and cultural ideas and norms.

Also, I don't think any of these issue starts simply with "the elite" or opinion makers or whatever we want to call them, so that the Miss Saigon issue originated with a theater dustup doesn't change that it became a cause celebre picked up by the "elite." I listed several issues - globalization (which has many origins but has been embraced by most of the "intellectuals" as "good for the people" - but is now changing), mass transit, religion and gender equality - which all have routes in real people caring about real things that impact them. But they are then shaped, promulgated, defined and advocated - for better or worse - by some group of opinion makers that drive their own agenda and not necessarily the agenda of those who first raised the issue.

PC has become so political charged that maybe it should just be retired as a term. But I'll stand by my point which is "PC," or "anti-establishment" or "against the man" or "it's just this elites" are all narratives that arise when some segment of the public, at a grass routes level, dislike ideas prompted by this small group of impactful opinion makers. Unfortunately, those terms can also be hijacked by people who don't like where society has gone or don't like established principals of the country and want to present themselves as an aggrieved outsider or, conversely, a defender of tradition values.

Sometimes a rebel is a rebel preventing a lynching, sometimes he's a spoiled college kid who wants to protest "something" to feel good about himself. Sometimes a defender of the traditions of the country sincerely believes that there are natural gender difference that aren't simply "imposed by society" and sometimes they are bigots defending a privilege system that advances their group interests.

An elite (some small group of opinion makers) promulgates ideas that are sometimes morally right and forward thinking and sometime aren't which will, overtime, be embraced by the public or rejected. During that process, those ideas create battle lines that play out with the regular people on the left and right opposing or supporting these issues. All the teams - PC, the man, etc. - can reflect a fair assessment of this battle or be a distorted picture to advance an adumbrated agenda. Where one sees political correctness another sees great social change and others see an establishment - the man - oppressing the people (globalization has been characterized in all three ways by different and meaningful parts of our society) - everyone coops the terms for their own use. The terms are all valid and invalid depending the facts an circumstances of their use.

 

[LizzieMaine]

PC has become so political charged that maybe it should just be retired as a term. But I'll stand by my point which is "PC," or "anti-establishment" or "against the man" or "it's just this elites" are all narratives that arise when some segment of the public, at a grass routes level, dislike ideas prompted by this small group of impactful opinion makers. Unfortunately, those terms can also be hijacked by people who don't like where society has gone or don't like established principals of the country and want to present themselves as an aggrieved outsider or, conversely, a defender of tradition values.

On much of this point, we absolutely agree. "Politically Correct" is actually a term which originated within the various Communist movements of the pre-war era, and indicated a published article or an essay that was in basic harmony with the party line. It was usually used in a critical sense to point out the difference between theoretical and practical application of a fact or a principle -- "Although Comrade Foster's remarks are politically correct, he errs in his application of these points in practice..."

In other words,the phrase meant "he's right in theory but wrong in application." It has nothing whatsoever to do with calling a person who fights fires a "firefighter" instead of a "fireman," and the phrase's co-option since the 1990s by the self-proclaimed Defenders of Tradition would be laughable if it wasn't so ridiculous. I suspect its use in the current sense could be traced back to the Birchers, who aped CPUSA organizational structure and tactics religiously during the 1950s and 1960s, and are in every way the intellectual ancestors of the modern populist right.

As for impactful opinion makers, they have always existed, and they haven't always been Elite. Certainly the "Founding Fathers" were "elites" in that sense, but I don't think you can argue that the Revolution wouldn't have happened without them. It might have been quite a bit more French in its execution, if you get my drift, but it would have happened regardless of their presence, thanks to the wide influence of non-Elite "rabble rousers" like Thomas Paine. And I think you can argue that in the Era a pronounced "non-Elite" like Walter Winchell -- a loudmouthed grade-school dropout ex-vaudeville hoofer with a newspaper column and a radio show -- had far, far more impact on mass opinion than a well-educated, well-groomed "Elite" like Walter Lippmann, whose influence was confined largely to the kind of people who ate marmalade with their toast while reading the Herald Tribune. If anything I think the rise of mass media over the last hundred years has greatly diminished the impact and influence of "the Elite" rather than furthered it. And significantly, I suggest that it's that loss of that specific type of "Elite" influence that a lot of the bemoaners of Pee Cee are really bemoaning.

 

[Fading Fast]

And with that - phew, my wrists were starting to hurt - we'll return to our regularly scheduled program. I recently picked up a copy of "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles who wrote "Rules of Civility" a few years back. I enjoyed ROC, but also thought it was a bit of dressed-up fluff - a pedestrian Flapper-era story with some well written prose. I have higher expectations for AGIM based on early reviews.

Has anyone else read either?

 

[AmateisGal]

I've started yet another book - that means I have three or four going at the moment. Why do I do this to myself????

Anyway! I received the late Holocaust historian, David Cesarni's last book, The Final Solution: 1933-1939. It's huge, but I really, really want to get through the whole thing. I've read some good and bad reviews of it. I am not a Holocaust historian, so there's a lot of historiography that I have not read (A LOT), so I contacted my grad school advisor, who IS a Holocaust historian, to get his take on it. From what I can tell, Cesarni's thesis is that there wasn't a master architect of the Final Solution, that it was far more haphazard and not clearly thought out. Instead, he believes that the extermination of the Jews was created because of the military failure of the German army. In fact, he argues that the Germans' original position was Jewish emigration instead of extermination and that it only became a policy of extermination later. This challenges a lot of previous scholarship on the subject.

I'm also reading a new-to-me genre, a futuristic novel about a society that has reverted back to the days of the French Revolution; technology is the enemy and apparently generations before this, humankind became too reliant on technology, so the technology had to go. Now the govt in England (known as The Commonwealth) has control of the printing press as it, too, is a technology and cannot be left in the hands of the people, and in Paris, now known as the Sunken City, there is a revolution going on that goes after all the rich people who are trying to get technology back into society. Or something. I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but the writing is very good and I'm already engaged with the story. It's called Rook and it's by Sharon Cameron.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ If you can, please post after your grad school advisor gets back to you as I'd love to hear what he thinks. My absolutely not professional impression / memory form what I've read is that right after coming to power, before the Nazis were fully confident and bold / before they had fully consolidated power into a dictatorship, they encouraged Jewish emigration as they wanted the Jews out of Germany any way they could. It was later in the '30s, when they had absolute power and were fully embolden, that the horror of the Final Solution was put into place.

My impression is also that the policy (hard to use a benign word for it) was never completely uniform, in part, because it was almost never committed to on paper or even honestly spoken about in public (which has always said to me that they knew, knew in what ever conscience they had left, that it was horribly, horribly wrong - otherwise, why not just make it official and publicly stated policy?).

Hence, Cesarni's ideas seem, IMH (and, again, not professional) O, consistent with the overall narrative I carry around in my small head of what happened. That said, there were high-level Nazi officials who wanted to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth, but to say they translated that into a official, uniform policy might not technically be correct, but to many, I can see that being viewed as a distinction without a difference.

 

[Harp]

I'm also reading a new-to-me genre, a futuristic novel about a society that has reverted back to the days of the French Revolution; technology is the enemy and apparently generations before this, humankind became too reliant on technology....

de Tocqueville's tract, The Old Regime and The Revolution is considerably more tame.
A very perceptive look inside the aristocratic/proletarian issues therein.

 

[AmateisGal]

⇧ If you can, please post after your grad school advisor gets back to you as I'd love to hear what he thinks. My absolutely not professional impression / memory form what I've read is that right after coming to power, before the Nazis were fully confident and bold / before they had fully consolidated power into a dictatorship, they encouraged Jewish emigration as they wanted the Jews out of Germany any way they could. It was later in the '30s, when they had absolute power and were fully embolden, that the horror of the Final Solution was put into place.

My impression is also that the policy (hard to use a benign word for it) was never completely uniform, in part, because it was almost never committed to on paper or even honestly spoken about in public (which has always said to me that they knew, knew in what ever conscience they had left, that it was horribly, horribly wrong - otherwise, why not just make it official and publicly stated policy?).

Hence, Cesarni's ideas seem, IMH (and, again, not professional) O, consistent with the overall narrative I carry around in my small head of what happened. That said, there were high-level Nazi officials who wanted to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth, but to say they translated that into a official, uniform policy might not technically be correct, but to many, I can see that being viewed as a distinction without a difference.

My advisor has not yet read it, but ironically, Cesarni spoke at the Holocaust Center where my advisor is the director (it's at the University of Vermont) a few years ago; he sent me a transcript of his talk. I can PM it to you or email it to you if you'd like. I haven't read through it yet but plan to soon.

 

[Fading Fast]

My advisor has not yet read it, but ironically, Cesarni spoke at the Holocaust Center where my advisor is the director (it's at the University of Vermont) a few years ago; he sent me a transcript of his talk. I can PM it to you or email it to you if you'd like. I haven't read through it yet but plan to soon.

If it's no trouble - that would be great.

 

[greatestescaper]

I've recently finished my annual Tolkien reread, which normally consists of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Not sure what to read next I found myself picking up my old copy of The Thin Man. I remember struggling to keep with it during my first read through many years ago. I reckon that is because I'd just come off from The Maltese Falcon and was looking for more Sam Spade, and also because the writing is different in The Thin Man. Either way a great read, and something to keep me reading while I figure out what is next. Which reminds me, my wife and I have been watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and I was wondering if perhaps anyone here had read the novels that inspired the show?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Relaxing after work with the May 1936 issue of Consumers Union Reports. This was Volume 1, Number 1 of the leading magazine of the consumers' rights movement, a publication still around to this day, but it's a lot more two-fisted than the modern watered-down "Consumer Reports." The very first article in the very first issue is an expose of the breakfast cereal racket, which even then was a field day for the Boys From Marketing. The article pulls no punches, but the most dramatic point is made in a photo at the top of the first page, demonstrating that it takes a full five and two-thirds boxes of Quaker Puffed Wheat to equal the contents of one box of Quick Quaker Oats -- even though the Puffed Wheat box is substantially larger than that of the oatmeal. Tsk tsk tsk.

Another article punctures the then-flamboyant advertising claims of that ever-popular home remedy Alka Seltzer. This product is marketed today solely as an antacid/pain reliever, but in the thirties the Boys pushed it as a cure for the common cold, constipation, hangovers, and "the blahs." The article produces scientific evidence that Alka Seltzer is not one iota more than a simple antacid mixed with aspirin that might settle your upset stomach and ease a headache, but it will do nothing more for anyone ever, and that its advertising claims otherwise are as substantial as its fizz.

Next comes the results of laboratory tests on various inexpensive brands of women's hosiery, ranking the "Siren" brand sold at S. S. Kress dime stores as the Best Buy, and the DeLuxe Quality brand from Woolworth's as the worst.
A sidebar offers practical advice on how to judge the overall quality of stockings, based on elasticity, accuracy of sizing, and strength of weave, along with magnified photos of common manufacturing defects and how to recognize them.

Next, a warning about Lead Hazards in children's toys is tempered by the statement that tests on a large sampling of cheap toys purchased from leading 5-and-10-cent chain stores revealed no use of lead paint on any of the items. But the article warns very strongly that small die-cast metal toys like soldiers, cars and airplanes were nearly always made with alloyed metal containing a large percentage of lead, and pose a serious hazard to children even from the act of handling the bare metal surfaces. The only such toys to be found to be completely free of lead were those sold under the "Tootsietoy" label.

Next, there's an exposure of the common system for grading milk, which demonstrates that Grade A and Grade B milk are in all meaningful respects identical. The article warns against the consumption of raw milk due to bacterial contamination, and warns it shouldn't be consumed unless first boiled to ensure its safety.

Brands of soap are next on the test bench, with the five-cent cake of "Gondola" white floating soap from Woolworths testing as the Best Buy, and the widely advertised Lifebuoy and Woodbury's brands condemned as Not Acceptable due to false advertising claims. Also unacceptable is Rexall Medicated Soap due to the presence of mercuric chloride, a known poison "which has no place in soap."

Next follows a succinct discussion of "How To Select A Toothbrush," with photos showing the various styles of brushes available and point out the need to ignore advertising which promotes brushes under the name of "Dr. So-and-so," or because of their "scientific " design. Your best buy is the Supreme Quality brush sold for 19 cents by Montgomery Ward.

A brief discussion of "The High Cost of Octanes" warns against the widely advertised "ethyl" or "premium" gasolines, which are never necessary to make your car run well unless the spark is out of adjustment or you have a poorly-designed engine.

Finally, a roundup of "Consumer Goods Makers Unfair To Labor," in which various abuses of workers are considered. All of the "big five" cigarette brands -- Camel, Chesterfield, Old Gold, Lucky Strike, and Philip Morris -- are condemned on this list for unfair working conditions, and Borden's Milk is condemned for unfair treatment of its route drivers.

"Consumers Union Reports" is one of the most fascinating magazines you can find from the Era -- and a welcome counterpoint to the colorful codswallop you find in the advertising sections of the popular glossies of the time. I grab every copy I can find.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ did Ivory soap even get a mention? I thought - with nothing that I can't point to as to why I think that way - that Ivory was one of the leading brands back then?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ivory rates fourth on the "Also Acceptable" list -- good, but overpriced.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Nietzsche, mixed aphorisms.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Nicotine On The Air: A Brief Broadcast," by "I. C. Smoke."

I'm an avid collector of iconoclastic literature from the 1930s, especially pamphlets that attack The Boys From Marketing, and this one's a pip. Published in 1938, and written in the form of a radio broadcast by "Nicotine" itself, it's a hard-hitting attack on the tobacco industry's sales and advertising practices, and specifically the ways in which Big Tobacco pushes its product to children and teenagers. Written in fact by John Webb Irwin of Columbus, Ohio, a publisher and distributor of health-ed materials for high schools, it personifies "Nicotine" as a pointy-eared, pointy-headed goblin with a greasy salesman's smile and an ingratiatingly chummy personality, who tells his story in a matter-of-fact "what are you going to do about it?" manner:

"Over a period of time I can and probably will do you plenty of injury if you use me in cigarettes, and I'll discuss that later. The immediate, pressing idea that I want to leave with you young folks is that commerical advertising is strenuously trying to make you pay a high price for a useless habit. In order to prosper, my friends, the cigarette manufacturers, must make millions of young folks a slave to me. Figure such advertising out for yourself. Don't be an easy mark. Don't swap money and health just to make my friends prosperous. If you cultivate my friendship, I'll make you my slave. And my slaves must pay and pay and pay."

He goes on to peel a few layers of gloss off the various tobacco campaigns then current in the Better Magazines and on the radio, and comments that his friends really only tell half the story:

"Why don't they show you some of the countless hungry, poorly-clad wretches picking cigarette butts from the gutter? A few pictures like that would really show my power, and they could be taken from actual photographs in any village or city. I get a shameful sense of power when I see young boys and girls hunting cigarette stubs in the filth of a city street, but thus far I have been unable to get my advertising friends to tell that side of their story in their pictures."

This booklet seems to have been distributed to quite a few school systems during the late thirties, and Irwin himself published quite a number other booklets under his own name for distribution thru guidance offices well into the 1950s. Although it was an uphill fight he lived long enough to see public opinion finally catch up with him.

 

[1mach1]

"Naked Lunch" by Burroughs.
Its been a few decades since I read this one. Interesting what 20 + years will do to your perception.

 

[Harp]

Nietzsche, mixed aphorisms.

Sanity unfortunately fled N, a tragic figure in Philosophy if ever there was.

 

[greatestescaper]

Finishing a reread of The Thin Man, and also a reread of the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1. And, sitting at the bedside next on my list if The Continental Op, which I've actually not ever read before. I reckon too, that because of the season, I'll probably pick up Dracula and Frankenstein for a reread each as well. And, my wife and I were considering a trip to the local bookstore for some H. G. Wells.

 

[Hercule]

I've got a few in various stages of being read:

Among the headhunters : an extraordinary World War II story of survival in the Burmese jungle / Robert Lyman.

America's deadliest twister : the tri-state tornado of 1925 / Geoff Partlow

The bitter taste of victory : life, love, and art in the ruins of the Reich / Lara Feigel

Dietrich & Riefenstahl : Hollywood, Berlin, and a century in two lives / Karin Wieland ; translated by Shelley Frisch

The Feigel book seems to be the only one talking to me at the moment. The trouble is that I've been distracted of late doing some background research for a project that my son is involved in, so I can help guide him in his own research. So I've been up to my ears in Ukrainian Jewish partisans from 1943. Quite frankly, the cyrillic has been a a major aggravation. But it's the one primary source that's downright killing me - its in yiddish/hebrew!

 

[Benzadmiral]

Finishing a reread of The Thin Man, and also a reread of the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1. And, sitting at the bedside next on my list if The Continental Op, which I've actually not ever read before. I reckon too, that because of the season, I'll probably pick up Dracula and Frankenstein for a reread each as well. And, my wife and I were considering a trip to the local bookstore for some H. G. Wells.

The Op stories are quite neatly done. The Op is not your glamorous TV private eye by any means. In one story he tells a woman criminal, "You've been thinking you're a woman and I'm a man. That's wrong. I'm a hunter and you're just something that's been running in front of me."

Oh, and I'm rereading Stephen King's Pet Sematary. My copy is a first edition w/ dust jacket that I bought at an SF convention in 1983, where King was the guest of honor. (Someone asked him at a panel what he thought of Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining. His reply: "I consider I gave Stanley Kubrick a live hand grenade . . . and he heroically threw his body on top of it.")