Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Media Criticism, Social Commentary

Murderous Businessmen

19 Comments

Jonah is wondering why Hollywood types always imagine big businessmen knocking off their enemies, when this seems to happen so rarely (if ever) in real life.

I know I’ve blogged about this before, but a diligent search doesn’t turn up the post, so I’ll just repeat it.

Here’s my theory. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of Hollywood writers tend to be leftist, some of them may actually have personal reasons to hate “big business” and think it venal. For them, it often is.

First of all–they work in Hollywood, for those well-known paragons of probity and above-board accounting, television and film studios, and production companies. And horror stories about them abound. One could easily see why, if that was the only experience one had with the business world, one would have a pretty jaundiced view toward business and businessmen.

But there’s another part that is less obvious. People tend (rightly) to write what they know. And when screen writers are between screen-writing gigs, who do they work for?

Well, here’s a clue. What is one of the most common businesses to be depicted in television and movies? Think, for example, “Bewitched.” Or “Thirty Something.”

That’s right. Ad agencies. I haven’t done the research (it would be a good thesis project), but I’ll bet that television and film characters work at ad agencies vastly out of proportion to the number of people who do so in the real world.

After all, it’s a natural fit for a creative writer.

But it’s also (based on a lot of stories I’ve heard from people who have done it) one of the most vicious, back-stabbing industries in the nation, dominated by creative types rather than rational businessmen and good managers.

So, it only makes sense that if your only employment experience with business, big or otherwise, is working for the entertainment industry or the ad business, you’re not going to have much appreciation for how a real business, where you have to actually develop and manufacture things that people go out and willingly buy, and has to be run by people with a talent for business (not murder and skullduggery), actually works. It’s actually quite similar to the reason that life in the military is rarely depicted accurately. They have no real-life experience.

Administrative, General, Social Commentary

Heading Back South

Which in Florida, really means that I’m heading north, culturally. I’ll be back down in Boca from Orlando this afternoon, God willing and if the creek (in this case, the St. Johns River) don’t rise.

Though I’m not a believer in God.

And actually (did you know this?) the expression isn’t referring to a trickling and burbling body of water, temporarily making its glass more than half full but, rather, an Indian tribe that was given to the occasional uprising, with a tendency to hinder travel, either temporarily or permanently. So I guess the word should have been capitalized. But that would have given away the game.

Or is it really just about flooding? Who knows? What would we do without the Intertubes?

Anyway, enough philosophy for now. See y’all later (I can still say that while I’m up south).

[Afternoon update]

Back in Boca, but busy (he alliterated).

History, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Back To The Drawing Board

2 Comments

Lileks:

I just remembered that I called the Bob Davis show this morning to talk about the new theory re: Moses and the Ten Commandments: dude was high. Apparently a professor somewhere has suggested that the entire experience was the result of a mushroom or some such ceremonial intoxicant. I called to say I didn’t believe it, because if Moses was tripping we wouldn’t have ten commandments. We would have three. The first would make sense, more or less; the second, written half an hour later, would command profound respect for lizards who sit on stones and look at you, because they’re freaking incredible when you think about it, and the third would be gibberish. Never mind the problem of getting the tablets down the mountain – anyone who has experience of watching stoners try to assemble pizza money when the doorbell rings doubts that Moses could have hauled stone tablets all the way down.

Economics, Humor, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Idiot Alert

Over at Reason, the sad tale of a free-loader wannabe:

The group was now “out of food, hadn’t slept in days and were really cold,” and decided, in a grubby version of Dunkirk, to abandon the mission and head back to England. Boyles is disappointed-but not deterred. He is, the BBC reports, planning “to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year.” At which point the cycle begins anew, when, upon reaching Baden-Baden, the poor lad will realize that he should have also studied German.

As Wilde said in another context, one would have to have a heart of stone to read this and not laugh out loud.

Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

What’s The Point?

7 Comments

Sarah Pullman is very unhappy with Facebook’s privacy policy.

OK, I got a Facebook account last fall, at the urging of several people, who told me that I simply had to have one (though they could never actually explain why). I’ve yet to figure it out myself. I’ve gotten no discernible benefit from it (of course, I haven’t invested much time in it, either). Can anyone explain to me what the big deal is, and what I’m missing out on if I don’t have an account, or don’t use the one I have?

[Update late morning]

While we’re on the subject, here’s an article on which is better for business: Facebook or LinkedIn?

Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

What’s The Point?

Sarah Pullman is very unhappy with Facebook’s privacy policy.

OK, I got a Facebook account last fall, at the urging of several people, who told me that I simply had to have one (though they could never actually explain why). I’ve yet to figure it out myself. I’ve gotten no discernible benefit from it (of course, I haven’t invested much time in it, either). Can anyone explain to me what the big deal is, and what I’m missing out on if I don’t have an account, or don’t use the one I have?

[Update late morning]

While we’re on the subject, here’s an article on which is better for business: Facebook or LinkedIn?

Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

What’s The Point?

Sarah Pullman is very unhappy with Facebook’s privacy policy.

OK, I got a Facebook account last fall, at the urging of several people, who told me that I simply had to have one (though they could never actually explain why). I’ve yet to figure it out myself. I’ve gotten no discernible benefit from it (of course, I haven’t invested much time in it, either). Can anyone explain to me what the big deal is, and what I’m missing out on if I don’t have an account, or don’t use the one I have?

[Update late morning]

While we’re on the subject, here’s an article on which is better for business: Facebook or LinkedIn?

History, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Confused

11 Comments

Selena Zito writes that all of the remaining presidential candidates are Scots-Irish.

Really? This is the first I’d heard that Hillary! was of Scots-Irish descent. I’d always assumed that she was from Puritan stock. That’s the way she’s always acted. And Obama is obviously, at best, only half Scots-Irish.

Zito doesn’t seem to quite get the concept, either:

How can there be such scant understanding of a 30 million-strong ethnic group that has produced so many leaders and swung most elections?

Perhaps because political academics and pollsters parse the Scottish half off with the WASP vote and define the Irish-Catholic half as blue-collar Democrats. They are neither.

There is no “Irish-Catholic half” of the Scots-Irish. Scots-Irish aren’t Irish at all. Neither are they Scottish. They were mostly Anglo-Saxon, not Celtic. They were also a violent people with an honor culture, mercenaries from the border area between England and Scotland. As the article notes, they were sent by the English to colonize Ulster, to get them out of Britain after the war between England and Scotland was settled and they had no more need for them. The ones too violent for Ulster were shipped off to America, so they’re a double distillation of the most violent culture that the British Isles produced. After they fought (mostly for the South) in the Civil War, many of them headed out west.

People who think that America is too violent blame it on the proliferation of guns. But they confuse cause and effect. We have a lot of guns because we have a lot of Scots-Irish (aka rednecks). But it comes in pretty handy during war time.