Bob Schwartz

December 11, 2012

Happy Hanukkah from Matisyahu

Matisyahu
Matisyahu is a Hanukkah miracle.

Not because suburban native Matthew Miller named himself after Mattathias, head of the family that took back the Temple in Jerusalem from the Assyrians, giving us the holiday. Not because he became a Chassidic reggae superstar. Not because last Hanukkah he shaved his beard and announced: “No more Chassidic reggae superstar.” Not because this Hanukkah his latest album Spark Seeker is Number 1 on the Billboard Reggae chart, a position it has held for weeks. Not even because his single Happy Hanukkah  is a joyous and irresistible rap reggae celebration about all that is good about the holiday, from which all proceeds go to Hurricane Sandy relief:

Happy Hanukkah
I wanna give a gift to you
Light up the night, my love shine through
From Mount Zion, this is what we do
Bring love to you

Matisyahu is a miracle because he did and is doing what we are supposed to do. Follow your light where it takes you, wherever it takes you. Wherever that is, when you get there, if you get there, shine a light of your own. It is a chance to make yourself happy and to make other people happy. And even if you are not sure you are there, or even sure where you are, celebrate anyway. It’s Hanukkah.

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December 6, 2012

Republicans and the Heroism of Doing the Right Thing

Sir Walter Raeligh
Most of the time, there are no medals for doing the right thing. Holding open a door for someone whose arms are laden with packages is just a civil idea. Laying down your cloak so that the Queen doesn’t get her feet wet probably earns you some bonus points (and a dirty cloak), but it’s not exactly heroic.

It’s now clear that at this moment, the right thing to do about the fiscal [precipice you can fall from] is to extend tax cuts for all but the highest incomes, and have the just-elected new Congress come back in a month to do the hard work of reaching a long term solution. Who knows? Maybe that Congress will find a way to maintain lower tax rates for incomes above $250,000, along with carefully considered spending cuts and overall tax reform.

Republicans and their leaders find themselves caught between irreconcilable considerations. Among them is not just the past election but the evidence that, more than not, they will be blamed if no agreement is reached. Pulling another direction is an absolutist and ideological demand that anything looking like a tax increase is almost literally profane.

In spite of that, there are reports that at least some Republicans are in the mood to make that tax deal—maybe because of realpolitik, but maybe because it is the right thing. Either way, there seems to be some fear in the party that those Republicans will be seen as weak and capitulating to the President and the Democrats. That is one of the last cards that hardliners will play.

Those sensible Republicans shouldn’t worry. They will be seen as heroes by many Americans. That’s one of the dynamics going on right now. Some Republicans are worried about being on the wrong side of demographics and national electoral politics, and they should be. It’s worse, though it takes a bit more vision, to see that you might be on the wrong side of history.

Somewhere in between is being on the wrong side of heroism. Not being a hero is not equivalent to being a coward. Standing by and letting the wrong, or at least not optimal, thing happen is not universally indictable. But nothing beats being hero. Here’s another chance.

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December 5, 2012

Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck - Time OutJazz legend Dave Brubeck is dead at the age of 91.

There is going to be a lot written, but with musicians, the best way to remember or learn is to listen. There’s plenty of Brubeck on YouTube and elsewhere. Here’s Take Five, from the Time Out album.

Right now, the VEVO Hot This Week includes a Justin Bieber song (100,701,925 views), P!nk (27,490,445) and Lana Del Rey (14,931,653). These are talented musicians, and even with the added attention that comes with passing, Brubeck is unlikely to hit numbers like that.

Take Five, one of the most recognizable jazz recordings ever, was written by Dave Brubeck Quartet saxophonist Paul Desmond and recorded in 1959. It’s still hypnotically appealing and head-noddlingly cool today. Time will tell which of the Bieber, P!nk or Del Rey records are listened to, let alone remembered, in 53 years.

In the meantime…

Dadadadada dada da da, dada da da…

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December 5, 2012

Citizens United Lives: Money Will Still Buy Elections

Thomas Nast
In the aftermath of the election, a certain joyous complacency has set in regarding Citizens United and the impact of Big Money on the electoral process. A derisive attitude of “epic fail” has attached to Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove and all the others who seemingly wasted their billions (or other people’s billions) on influencing the results. Some have wondered out loud about how much real good those billions would have done for a country and world in need.

In fact, the money was merely mismanaged, channeled into outdated and ineffective strategies, and thereby wasted. But that will not last. There are plenty of talented operatives and strategists out there, even now working on better ways to address electoral problems using modern means. Yes, they are outnumbered by old school consultants relying on some combination of charm, reputation and useless technique, but like the blind squirrels, even Big Money will find the acorns sometimes.

And when the billionaires do find the operatives working on the cutting edge of 21st century electoral influence, what many feared would happen in the 2012 election—but didn’t—will eventually happen. Elections will be bought, even on behalf of those candidates who appear to some as unqualified and even clownish.

It’s time to stop laughing at Karl Rove’s misfortunes and start doubling up on the efforts to neutralize the impact of Citizens United. Proposals are out there, ranging from enhanced disclosure to a constitutional amendment. Whatever the approach, pursue it now. It’s the only way to avoid the Wednesday morning in November we didn’t have, the one where we wake up shaking our heads and asking: How in the world did that happen?

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December 5, 2012

I Did Not Know That

Rabindranath Tagore
The Nobel Prize-winning poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.”

There is a corollary: If you think you know it all, truth will be shut out.

Smart people are busy people. They gather knowledge for a lot of reasons—to help complete projects they are working on, to help solve puzzles that perplex them, or sometimes, simply because they are curious and interested in people and the world. But busyness demands a sort of instant knowledge filtering, where information is quickly classified as something not helpful or, frequently, something already known.

That last one is a funny thing. It may seem that what you hear or read is knowledge you already have, and easy to dismiss. But maybe there’s a small spin, a tiny different take, a detail that sheds surprising light on something you thought you knew. No matter how smart you are—or think you are—it can happen.

That’s why, as far as practical, one of the more enlightening ways to go about is ignorant, assuming you know little or nothing. Of course you know things, some very complex things, and that helps you get through your days and your life. You want to build on your knowledge base, and with limited time, you can’t spend it hearing about what you already know.

And yet…that person or thought you are tuning out, because it is something you think you already know, something you can’t waste your valuable time hearing, might be just the thing to advance your work, to solve that puzzle. Think about it. All you had to believe and say is this: I did not know that.

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December 2, 2012

Do Republicans Have A Death Wish?

Sigmund Freud
In the first episode of Mad Men, psychologist Dr. Greta Guttman explains how the health dangers of cigarettes might be used to the advertiser’s advantage:

“I believe my most recent surveys have provided a solution. We can still suggest that cigarettes are “part of American life,” or “Too good to give up,” and most appealing “an assertion of independence”….Before the war, when I studied with Adler in Vienna, we postulated that what Freud called “the Death Wish” is as powerful a drive as those for sexual reproduction and physical sustenance.”

Even though this seems preposterous, account executive Pete Campbell tries it out later at a client meeting:

“At Sterling Cooper, we’ve been pioneering the burgeoning field of research. And our analysis shows that the health risks associated with your products is not the end of the world. People get in their cars everyday to go to work, and some of them die. Cars are dangerous. There’s nothing you can do about it. You still have to get where you’re going. Cigarettes are exactly the same. Why don’t we simply say, “So what if cigarettes are dangerous?” You’re a man. The world is dangerous. Smoke your cigarette—You still have to get where you’re going.”

To which the patriarch of the tobacco company replies:

“Is that your slogan? “You’re going to die anyway. Die with us.””

The Republican Party does not, as far as we know, have a psychoanalyst. And Freud’s so-called “death drive” remains one of his most controversial principles.

But there is no question that individuals and institutions exhibit behavior that surpasses our understanding of what is rational and adaptive. From the outside, it looks like a path that leads nowhere good. Sometimes it is our own shortcoming in not being able to see the complex and sophisticated strategy underneath. Sometimes people are too clever for their own good. And sometimes, there is no conclusion left other than a Freudian one, that there is an instinct not just to fail or epic fail, but to go all the way down. “You’re going to die anyway. Die with us.”

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November 24, 2012

Have Morsy Morsi Mursi

 


It is Gadhafi, Qaddafi, Kadafi, Gaddafi, Gadafy all over again. Except that the former Prime Minister of Libya is dead, while the President of neighboring Egypt is very much alive and at the center of global affairs.

The English version of the official Egyptian information website lists the President as Mohammad Mohamed Morsy al-Ayat. That is the way they are writing the name in the Latin alphabet. And therein lies a problem.

Egypt, Libya and most other countries in the region are Arabic-speaking and Arabic-writing. As with Hebrew—another important language in the region, though with far fewer speakers—transliterating the words into English spelling and vocalization is an adventure, and sometimes a pretty imprecise task.

News organizations seem to have settled on a consensus for the spelling of his first name as Mohamed—though as one of the most popular names in the world, it has naturally led to variants including Mohammad, Muhammad, Muhamme, Mohamed, Mohammed.

(For language junkies, other common Arabic names share the three-consonant root of  H-M-D, meaning “praise.” This is at the base of many commonly-heard names beside Mohamed, including Hamid, Ahmed, Mahmud, and others that are often in the news.)

What news organizations can’t seem to agree on is how to spell the President’s last name. As mentioned, the official Egyptian site says “Morsy,” so CNN, Time and a few others are going that way. The BBC and Reuters have decided on “Mursi” (it must be a Brit thing, some special privilege left over from colonial days, though the BBC has taken the extra step of adding an “m” to his first name: Mohammed).

By and large though, according to the New York Times and most others, the President of Egypt is Mohamed Morsi.

Does it matter? How we deal with him and his country matters much more in this dynamic time than how we spell his name in English, just as it is more important to act wisely than to spell correctly when dealing with China or any of the other countries that don’t speak English and don’t even bother to use our alphabet. It’s just a nice lesson in globalism, about how what we know is small compared to what we have to learn.

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November 23, 2012

Black Friday

The shopping day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday is so named because for retailers, it can mean the difference between loss and profit–being in the black.

Like it or not, the Christmas shopping season is an important contributor to this consumer economy. But the term is an overwhelmingly bleak one, particularly in relation to Christmas. In all other contexts, Black Friday is historically associated with financial crises, weather disasters, fires, military attacks and massacres. Rather than concerning Christmas and the birth of Jesus, the death of Jesus is marked by what is called Good Friday–also known as Black Friday.

And then there is the 1940 horror movie (see above)…

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November 19, 2012

The Rubicon and the Pillar: If We Pass This Little Bridge

 


The Lives of the Twelve Caesars
By Suetonius

XXXI.

…The lights going out, he [Julius Caesar] lost his way, and wandered about a long time, until at length, by the help of a guide, whom he found towards daybreak, he proceeded on foot through some narrow paths, and again reached the road. Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him, and said: “We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms.”

XXXII.

While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person remarkable for his noble mien and graceful aspect, appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. When, not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also flocked from their posts to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed, “Let us go whither the omens of the Gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is now cast.”

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November 15, 2012

More Proof That Baseball Is Better Than Politics


The political polling analyst Nate Silver is something of a hero, both for his accurate predictions and for his amazingly clear explanation of the statistics that lead to his seemingly prescient conclusions. To paraphrase Barack Obama talking about Bill Clinton’s ability to make complex budget math simple, Nate Silver should be the Secretary of Explaining Things statistical.

Those of us who have followed Nate’s career, even before the New York Times made him and his Five Thirty Eight blog a must-read fixture, know that his roots are not in politics but in the art and science of baseball stats. That’s why it was wonderful to see him switch gears yesterday from the election to the most contentious baseball argument of the moment: who should be this year’s American League Most Valuable Player, an award voted on by the Baseball Writers of America?

To make this basic for non-baseball fans, two players in the league had historic, exceptional seasons. Miguel Cabrera, playing for the pennant-winning but World Series-losing Detroit Tigers, was the first player in forty-five years to win the Triple Crown, leading the league in Batting Average, Runs Batted In and Home Runs. Twenty-year-old Los Angeles Angels rookie Mike Trout not only had one of the best first seasons ever (unanimously winning Rookie of the Year award), he had one of the best seasons period. Of the so-called five tools (hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning, throwing and fielding), few players of his age have ever exhibited such an array of gifts.

Yesterday, the Major League Baseball Network convened a conclave of baseball experts for a one-hour debate on the matter; that’s how significant it is (at least to lovers of the game). And yesterday Nate posted The Statistical Case Against Cabrera for M.V.P.

The point here is neither Nate’s argument nor the merits of the debate (Cabrera will most likely win, though the best outcome, given how micrometer-close it is, would be for a shared award). The point is that soon after the blog post, hundreds of comments arrived. Not just a few interesting comments mixed with uninformed, borderline psychotic rants, as we’ve come to expect from political posts. This was an amazing collection of intelligent, articulate, deeply researched responses, offering perspectives that even the most attentive fan might not have considered.

That’s why we are happy that Nate returned, at least for the moment, to baseball. And that’s why baseball is, inarguably, better than politics.

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