working poor

Why I Can Never Make Up My Mind: John Edwards

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“Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America – middle-class America – whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America – narrow-interest America – whose every wish is Washington’s command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a president.” – John Edwards, 2004

Poverty – particularly among the working poor – has really only started to become a headline-worthy issue in the last four or five years when a significant number of people who had perhaps been just on the edge of poverty fell into it thanks to the economic collapse of 2008. At various points in history, of course, poverty and welfare have appeared on the mass media radar, and occasionally escaped from the lips of politicians. Mostly it has been all talk or has been negative, “shaming” talk (much like the 1980s rhetoric of Ronald Reagan demonizing the mythical “welfare queen”).

John Edwards, in focusing on poverty and inequality in America, may have been well ahead of the curve by focusing with laser-like intensity and precision – at the risk of his own political rise. Of course his penis and lies about what he was doing with it unzipped and undid him faster than his dedication to poverty-related issues, which is a shame when you look back on his rhetoric and ideas about America. He has been, as this article in The Atlantic described, been whitewashed from the Democratic Party, despite the fact that the platform the party stands on today is one he essentially built himself. I acknowledge that. It’s easy to gloss over the good Edwards did and would have tried to do given the mess he made of his personal life.

Who among us does not make a mess of our personal life? Most of us screw up – sometimes on a grand scale – but most of us are not in the public eye and won’t suffer serious consequences – like becoming a national joke, destroying whatever is left of our very public marriage, sacrificing any and all chance of holding political office. Unfortunately, Edwards’s fight against economic inequality will always be overshadowed by his personal choices and lies.

Edwards championed those who can rarely speak for themselves and highlighted hard truths about class and economic divisions in America (that many Americans, struggling or not, do not like to admit about America. But it is still hard to make my mind about him – I suppose my approach can be as complex as who Edwards actually is. It is not as though by making very poor decisions and very public mistakes (more than once) negates his role as a thought leader, activist or intelligent man. I suppose it just means that he was perhaps not that well-suited to become president.

Harbingers of Techie Doom – Skipping Humanity

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Circulating on the web is an article called “Young Techies – Know Your Place” by Bryan Goldberg. He contends that it’s a great piece of satire (a point that has been lambasted, in particular by Andrew Leonard at Salon and Jason Calacanis).

It’s hard to sum up concisely all the things that are wrong with the so-called “satire”.

It reminds me a lot of debates about whether athletes should finish school before they go pro – or grab the opportunity when they have it. In those cases, the window and scope of opportunity (and probability of getting injured) indicates that young athletes should probably seize the chance while they have it. You have all your life to go back to school later.

The same could be said of young techies – and we could all embrace the idea that formal education can be had any time (granted, it gets harder to fit into your life as you get older and have more responsibilities, but at the same time, many new high school grads really are not mature enough to invest the kind of money in college that they do and end up wasting a lot of money and dropping out or spending a lot of money and still coming out without a clue about what they want to do). If a person has the tech skills needed and in-demand and can gain valuable work experience – well-paid or not – that’s great. I don’t think anyone is saying that that should not be a personal choice.

However, Calacanis succinctly pointed out the insensitivity and lack of humanity in Goldberg’s argument: “polarization of wealth & unemployment are important issues of our time–not something to be a smug about”.

It is not as though people are not routinely priced out of living in certain cities (this has always been a problem, to varying degrees, in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris). But to laud the ability to drive prices up (rather artificially) not only sounds smug but points out clearly what these young techies may be missing in their makeup: humanity and compassion.

Humanity and compassion cannot be taught in school or in a menial job, but so much of what happens at university, as an example, is sociological learning, analysis, learning to think and process new kinds of information, emotional maturity, character building. A lot of what happens when you work in “menial 8-dollar-an-hour” jobs is a kind of learning how to live a grounded, down-to-earth life. That’s not to say everyone has to do that to understand. It is just that “jumping to the front of the line” and being smug about it – and not at all considering the larger-scale repercussions for all people – of any “revolution” (in this case a geographically restricted tech revolution that is upending real-estate/housing stability) – denies the idea that poverty or becoming one of the working poor is something that could happen to anyone. While it is not particularly likely for many of the young techies, there is something about lacking well-roundedness or lacking the connectedness to a community, that is alarming. Or, maybe it is not their disconnectedness – as much as it seems to be the disconnectedness of the guy writing on their behalf – satirically, as he claims.

Migraine films

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Tossing and turning and trying to sleep, a massive headache crept in. Since I could not get rid of the headache or fall asleep, I watched a bunch of films, such as:

  • The Governess: not new – I avoided it at the time of its release because I was irrationally against Minnie Driver – about whom I have since changed my mind. Bonus – Tom Wilkinson is in The Governess.
  • War Witch (Rebelle): Pretty devastating film about a girl whose village is destroyed by rebel soldiers. She is kidnapped to become a child soldier. The film is not set somewhere specific but was filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On a sort of unrelated note, the soundtrack was spectacular.
  • Starbuck: A French-Canadian thing about a guy whose prolific sperm donations spawned 500+ offspring, of which more than 100 have formed a class-action lawsuit to force the adoption agency to release their biological father’s identity. His pseudonym through this process is “Starbuck”. Starbuck is a hapless, middle-aged guy, in debt up to his eyeballs and working for the family business, seemingly stuck in a rut he’ll never get out of. Once he knows he is the father of all these people, he begins intervening in some of their lives, and his small acts of kindness start to change his life. All in all, not a bad movie, and it is perfect evidence of how strange French Canadian sounds if you’re used to French French. People say French French is nasal, but this is nasal and whiny somehow.
  • Upstream Color: Unusual film, non-linear narrative. Not even sure how to describe it, and not sure whether I liked it or not.
  • About Sunny: Remembering Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under, it is interesting to see her evolve into this challenging portrayal of a single mother who is neither all good nor all bad – but in her struggle as one of America’s working poor, she is always one step away from a disaster.
  • Arcadia: John Hawkes can be counted on for wide-eyed likeability. He is much less sympathetic in Arcadia, as a man taking his three children across the country to California. By the end of the film, you do gain some sympathy for what the character has gone through – but he’s not the same character we’ve seen in his portrayals of the hapless shoe salesman in Me and You and Everyone We Know or Sol Star in HBO’s Deadwood. Of course Hawkes has a great range. There is actually a balance among all his roles – sometimes he acts in a sleazy, slimy way; sometimes he is a lovable, likeable guy. (Other notable performances include Winter’s Bone and The Sessions).
  • Zodiac: A long docu-drama about the Zodiac killer, who terrorized California in the late 60s and 70s. Great to see Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. and tons of other great actors.
  • Talhotblond: Documentary about people talking — and lying about who they are – online, ending up in one person’s death. It seems crazy – I remember being about 12 or 13 and lying elaborately about my age in order to talk to older people – and to escape the daily reality of my life at the time (this was the pre-internet age). Of course I was 12. Not that that makes it excusable, but I think a kid does not realize the impact these actions might result in. People in the film are adults with life experience and should know better. The people in this documentary are in their 40s. It is quite similar to another documentary I saw (Catfish), which tells almost the same kind of story – without any lethal outcomes.