There's a certain type of rather lazy article that shows up now and then in the conservative or libertarian press in which the writer will identify some swell feature of modern life, step back and say, "See? Behold the fruits of capitalism!" This always struck me as a pretty aggressively pointless, if harmless, enterprise, roughly equivalent to reminding everyone that they should be thankful for (say) the strong force, since without it we'd just be a bunch of sub-sub-atomic particles bouncing around the universe, quite unable to contemplate particle physics.
Today's example is Jerry Weinberger's "America's Food Revolution" in City Journal. We learn that, "The U.S. has revolutionized its culinary culture over the last 40-odd years. No longer is it the developed world’s worst food nation; in fact, it’s perhaps the best. And it’s largely thanks to the (currently disputed) genius of America’s entrepreneurial capitalism." What follows is an exhaustive detailing of Weinberger's favorite restaurants and food trends, along with a brief history of how these were able to rise out of the muck and mire of American foodways.
As a fan of James Lileks's Gallery of Regrettable Food and Gastroanomolies, as well as the owner of several unappetizing post-war cookbooks (as well as the husband of this person), it's the muck and mire that interests me, and Weinberger does an admirable job of bringing it to life. I grew up in the midwest in the 1970s and 1980s, and this passage roused some vividly unpleasant sense memories:
Back then, a gourmet American dinner might have included tomato aspic (gelatin with canned tomato juice), crab casserole (canned crab with canned cream-of-mushroom soup and canned fried onions), and cherries jubilee (canned cherries heated in a chafing dish with brandy and sugar, “flambéed,” and poured over vanilla ice cream). Or maybe the entrée would have been beef Wellington (beef tenderloin and pâté, usually steamed gray in a gooey blanket of dough) or oysters Rockefeller (oysters broiled with melted cheese and bread crumbs). Ethnic food came in two varieties: Americanized Italian (spaghetti with meatballs and red sauce, with grated “Parmesan” cheese from a green cylindrical box) and Americanized Chinese (fried rice and shrimp with lobster sauce). For the everyman, there was steak (well done) and mashed potatoes and canned peas, fried chicken and mashed potatoes and canned peas, and meatloaf and mashed potatoes and canned peas. Or the newfangled but repulsive TV dinner.
This is good, too:
Now, there’s still lots of bad food in America, almost all of it purveyed by the god-awful chains. And boy, do they ever purvey, with such marvels as Olive Garden’s “endless pasta bowl”—a bottomless tub of what tastes like Cream of Wheat with ketchup on top. I once ordered a club sandwich at a chain sports bar, and the monstrosity overlapped a platter as big as a surfboard. Recently, in Michigan, I sat in my car outside a store, Playmakers, which sells expensive running gear. Right next to it was another store, Old Country Buffet, where for under $10, you can eat a mountain of macaroni salad, piles of “spoon tender” pot roast, and acres of “pizza.” Beemer after Beemer disgorged tanned anorexics, striding in search of their essentials for athletic self-torture. Beater after beater disgorged pallid humongoids, sporting steamer-trunk rumps, waddling in search of the latest in cream pies.
But you don't even have to dispute his central claim (and I'm not, in this case) about "capitalism" as the prime mover of all his favorite food innovations to point out that it appears to have been responsible for both the heinous canned slop of the old days as well as the chain restaurants and accompanying "steamer-trunk rumps" of the modern era (not to mention the seemingly endless refinement of tastes resulting in another of his nightmare scenarios: "...perfervid vegans, virtuous vegetarians, persistent pescatarians, lamb-phobics, tongue-phobics, veal-rights advocates, the gluten-intolerant, the lactose-intolerant, the shellfish-intolerant, the peanut-intolerant, the spicy-intolerant, and on and on in an ever-fragmenting array.")!
So, to review Weinberger's main points: 1) "capitalism" has resulted in a veritable explosion of great food, very good food, acceptable food and wretched food and has uniformly expanded the culinary horizons of Americans everywhere except where it hasn't; 2) when confronted by some variety of social phenomena, always resort to the broadest, most wide-ranging, monolithic explanation.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Barthes on Roiphe
I'm pretty late to this particular party, but I too was struck by certain aspects of Katie Roiphe's hemmed-and-hawed-over "Narcotic Baby" article, in which she rhapsodizes over her bundle of joy and the glorious wreck its made of her life and her writing.
"In the six weeks since my baby was born, I seem to have lost all worldly ambition....I have a class to teach. I have to start writing again. But the idea of talking about ideas in front of students or typing a coherent sentence (i.e. my normal life) seems totally implausible. Even now, the prospect of writing a few paragraphs about this problem seems almost out of reach. Taking care of the baby - physical, draining, exhilarating - is more like farming: following the rhythms of the earth, getting up at dawn, watching the corn flush in the sunrise. Its is not at all like writing."
In the clarification she published on Monday, she claims not to know what all the fuss is about.
"Nowhere in the piece did I tell anyone else how to live. Nowhere did I suggest that my experience of the first days of motherhood was any better, richer, or more interesting than anyone else's....Nowhere in the piece did I attack anyone for having a different viewpoint or experience..."
Well, no, I guess she didn't write the words "You should live like I do," or "My experience of motherhood is better, richer and more interesting than anyone else's," or "Your viewpoint or experience is unworthy." But she did write this account of a conversation with a writer friend:
"[W]e talked about how the women writers we most admired had no children, or have had one child at the absolute most, but never two. (Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen had no children...) My friend looked down at her newborn and her tiny eyelashes. She could entertain the conversation in an academic way, but as she adjusted the baby's hat I could see how far removed it was from anything that mattered to her. here, sitting int he garden, looking at the eyelashes, would you trade the baby for the possibility of writing The House of Mirth? You would not."
It's the "you" that rankles, of course. It would be bad enough if she'd just used it once, and made the penultimate sentence the ultimate one. But in addition to turning her into a "vague, slow, exhausted animal," motherhood has apparently endowed her with psychic powers as well. You'd think most women would know their own priorities, preferences and ideas about what they want in life, eyelashes or no. But, sorry girls, you would not.
Anyway, the only thing I have to contribute to the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth overt this article that's in any way original is to point out that Roiphe should've spent less time with Edith Wharton than with Roland Barthes, whose essay "Novels and Children" (from Mythologies) has a take on motherhood and writing that seems relevant.
"What does it mean? This: to write is a glorious but bold activity; the writer is an 'artist', one recognizes that he is entitled to a little bohemianism. As he is in general entrusted...with giving society reasons for its clear conscience, he must, after all, be paid for his services: one tacitly grants him the right to some individuality. But make no mistake: let no woman believe that they can take advantage of this pact without having first submitted to the eternal statute of womanhood. Women are on the earth to give children to men; let them write as much as they like, let them decorate their condition, but above all, let them not depart from it: let their Biblical fate not be disturbed by the promotion which is conceded to them, and let them pay immediately, by the tribute of their motherhood, for this bohemianism which has a natural link with a writer's life.
"Women, be therefore courageous, free: play at being men, write like them; but never get far from them; live under their gaze, compensate for your books by your children; enjoy a free rein for a while, but quickly come back to your condition. One novel, one child, a little feminism, a little connubiality. Let us tie the adventure of art to the strong pillars of the home: both will profit a great deal from this combination: where myths are concerned, mutual help is always fruitful."
"In the six weeks since my baby was born, I seem to have lost all worldly ambition....I have a class to teach. I have to start writing again. But the idea of talking about ideas in front of students or typing a coherent sentence (i.e. my normal life) seems totally implausible. Even now, the prospect of writing a few paragraphs about this problem seems almost out of reach. Taking care of the baby - physical, draining, exhilarating - is more like farming: following the rhythms of the earth, getting up at dawn, watching the corn flush in the sunrise. Its is not at all like writing."
In the clarification she published on Monday, she claims not to know what all the fuss is about.
"Nowhere in the piece did I tell anyone else how to live. Nowhere did I suggest that my experience of the first days of motherhood was any better, richer, or more interesting than anyone else's....Nowhere in the piece did I attack anyone for having a different viewpoint or experience..."
Well, no, I guess she didn't write the words "You should live like I do," or "My experience of motherhood is better, richer and more interesting than anyone else's," or "Your viewpoint or experience is unworthy." But she did write this account of a conversation with a writer friend:
"[W]e talked about how the women writers we most admired had no children, or have had one child at the absolute most, but never two. (Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen had no children...) My friend looked down at her newborn and her tiny eyelashes. She could entertain the conversation in an academic way, but as she adjusted the baby's hat I could see how far removed it was from anything that mattered to her. here, sitting int he garden, looking at the eyelashes, would you trade the baby for the possibility of writing The House of Mirth? You would not."
It's the "you" that rankles, of course. It would be bad enough if she'd just used it once, and made the penultimate sentence the ultimate one. But in addition to turning her into a "vague, slow, exhausted animal," motherhood has apparently endowed her with psychic powers as well. You'd think most women would know their own priorities, preferences and ideas about what they want in life, eyelashes or no. But, sorry girls, you would not.
Anyway, the only thing I have to contribute to the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth overt this article that's in any way original is to point out that Roiphe should've spent less time with Edith Wharton than with Roland Barthes, whose essay "Novels and Children" (from Mythologies) has a take on motherhood and writing that seems relevant.
"What does it mean? This: to write is a glorious but bold activity; the writer is an 'artist', one recognizes that he is entitled to a little bohemianism. As he is in general entrusted...with giving society reasons for its clear conscience, he must, after all, be paid for his services: one tacitly grants him the right to some individuality. But make no mistake: let no woman believe that they can take advantage of this pact without having first submitted to the eternal statute of womanhood. Women are on the earth to give children to men; let them write as much as they like, let them decorate their condition, but above all, let them not depart from it: let their Biblical fate not be disturbed by the promotion which is conceded to them, and let them pay immediately, by the tribute of their motherhood, for this bohemianism which has a natural link with a writer's life.
"Women, be therefore courageous, free: play at being men, write like them; but never get far from them; live under their gaze, compensate for your books by your children; enjoy a free rein for a while, but quickly come back to your condition. One novel, one child, a little feminism, a little connubiality. Let us tie the adventure of art to the strong pillars of the home: both will profit a great deal from this combination: where myths are concerned, mutual help is always fruitful."
Friday, November 7, 2008
Derb is the Word
I swear I don't get all my information from Andrew Sullivan, but I thought it worth highlighting his irritation at John Derbyshire's invocation of the zeks, particularly in light of my earlier comments. It is pretty stupid (Derbyshire's invocation, not Sullivan's irritation (let alone my ealier comments!)), and Derb does himself no favors by linking to a Wikipedia entry on the matter, in which we learn that "the working conditions at the BBK Camp were brutal. The mortality was about 20%. Still more became sick and disabled." There are many solid, perfectly reasonable libertarian objections to Obama's "America Serves" program, but its embarrassing for Derbyshire to carry on as though he'd never heard of Robert Conquest.
Shame, too, since he was doing so well earlier this week. The very day after the election, he was able to keep his head when all about him were losing theirs:
Not that our president-elect is going to roar through the U.S. economy nationalizing the means of production, distribution, and exchange. (The current administration has that well in hand, in any case.) Nor, I am pretty sure, will he incite a violent class war, with the losers hustled off to labor camps or driven into exile with the family jewelry sewn into their petticoats. We are long past the point where classical Marxism has any application. Obama can’t incite the workers to seize control of the factories: the factories are all in China. He can’t consolidate peasant small-holdings into communal farms, because there aren’t any peasant small-holdings; and if he tried anyway, no one would notice, farming being the occupation of less than half of one percent of us.
Derbyshire is one of the very few* National Review-affiliated writers worth checking in with now and again; he at least seems to understand why communism and socialism are different from the garden-variety 'redistribution' schemes favored by President-elect Obama, Senator McCain, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and every other significant figure in American government from WWII to the present day. He has an interest in science, knows how to recite poetry and is often very funny, sometimes even intentionally. He even once admitted an affection for MAD magazine! So I can't help but overlook the odd rhetorical overzealousness; I'd hate for the next four years of Obama-directed mash notes to be too well-mannered.
*Well, we can't forget Florence King, can we? And, uh, lets' see...Andrew Stuttaford has occasionally made sense in the past (I think I'm thinking about Andrew Stuttaford; its someone named Andrew, and it sure isn't Andrew McCarthy). David Frum has his moments, I guess. They may be others, but I can't be bothered to check right now...
Shame, too, since he was doing so well earlier this week. The very day after the election, he was able to keep his head when all about him were losing theirs:
Not that our president-elect is going to roar through the U.S. economy nationalizing the means of production, distribution, and exchange. (The current administration has that well in hand, in any case.) Nor, I am pretty sure, will he incite a violent class war, with the losers hustled off to labor camps or driven into exile with the family jewelry sewn into their petticoats. We are long past the point where classical Marxism has any application. Obama can’t incite the workers to seize control of the factories: the factories are all in China. He can’t consolidate peasant small-holdings into communal farms, because there aren’t any peasant small-holdings; and if he tried anyway, no one would notice, farming being the occupation of less than half of one percent of us.
Derbyshire is one of the very few* National Review-affiliated writers worth checking in with now and again; he at least seems to understand why communism and socialism are different from the garden-variety 'redistribution' schemes favored by President-elect Obama, Senator McCain, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and every other significant figure in American government from WWII to the present day. He has an interest in science, knows how to recite poetry and is often very funny, sometimes even intentionally. He even once admitted an affection for MAD magazine! So I can't help but overlook the odd rhetorical overzealousness; I'd hate for the next four years of Obama-directed mash notes to be too well-mannered.
*Well, we can't forget Florence King, can we? And, uh, lets' see...Andrew Stuttaford has occasionally made sense in the past (I think I'm thinking about Andrew Stuttaford; its someone named Andrew, and it sure isn't Andrew McCarthy). David Frum has his moments, I guess. They may be others, but I can't be bothered to check right now...
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Hard Times
I've never felt the effects of booms or busts, at least not directly. I still send my bills out one-at-a-time, just to make sure that all my checks don't come due all at once; this is what I've done for the last ten years, no matter how much money is being made or lost at any one time by assorted plutocrats, capitalists and masters of the universe. This state of affairs has everything to do with my own choices, priorities and disposition. Others, in the US and elsewhere, find themselves in much more dire straits and with far fewer options.
The only change I've noticed in my life as a result of the current economic 'crisis' has been a proliferation of news and feature stories detailing the sudden immiseration of the of those (formerly) employed in the banking and financial industries. I mean, how can we dare to call ourselves civilized when we read of indignities such as these (from the 11/3/08 issue of New York):
Shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Stan, an equities trader at a midsize Wall Street firm, realized that he was going to have to break some bad news to his wife: They'd need to put off remodeling the kitchen of their 100-year-old Westchester Colonial until the financial crisis passes. "Tell her before you leave the office," one of Stan's co-workers advised him. "That way she can get her crying done while you are on the train."
In the end, Stan ignoed his colleague's advice and told Amy the bad news about the kitchen face-to-face. "Well, I broke down in tears," she says....
"You get to the point where you almost don't want to go home," Stan says at a softball game at the New York Athletic Club in Westchester. "You're always bringing bad news. You start looking for things you need to cut back on. But you know that every cut is a cut into the life that your wife is used to living."
Amy agrees. "I'm always afraid of what I'm going to hear when he comes home," she says. "There are plenty of examples of scaling back that I can think of."
The only change I've noticed in my life as a result of the current economic 'crisis' has been a proliferation of news and feature stories detailing the sudden immiseration of the of those (formerly) employed in the banking and financial industries. I mean, how can we dare to call ourselves civilized when we read of indignities such as these (from the 11/3/08 issue of New York):
Shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Stan, an equities trader at a midsize Wall Street firm, realized that he was going to have to break some bad news to his wife: They'd need to put off remodeling the kitchen of their 100-year-old Westchester Colonial until the financial crisis passes. "Tell her before you leave the office," one of Stan's co-workers advised him. "That way she can get her crying done while you are on the train."
In the end, Stan ignoed his colleague's advice and told Amy the bad news about the kitchen face-to-face. "Well, I broke down in tears," she says....
"You get to the point where you almost don't want to go home," Stan says at a softball game at the New York Athletic Club in Westchester. "You're always bringing bad news. You start looking for things you need to cut back on. But you know that every cut is a cut into the life that your wife is used to living."
Amy agrees. "I'm always afraid of what I'm going to hear when he comes home," she says. "There are plenty of examples of scaling back that I can think of."
Night Of The Long Knives
I laughed - actually laughed - at my wife for believing in the early-September hearsay regarding young Trig Palin's parentage. Rumor had it that his mom wasn't the Governor of Alaska, but rather her eldest (unwed) daughter; Grandma was merely stepping in to protect the family honor. None of this was ever proven (but, as both Mrs. Choker and Andrew Sullivan are quick to point out, it hasn't been disproved either!), and it all immediately seemed to me to be far too good to be true.
So consider that a hedge; if the latest allegations of certain, ah, gaps in Gov. Palin's knowledge - among them the names of the countries in NAFTA and Africa's status as a continent, not a country - turn out to be overblown or even outright bullcrap, let it be known that I didn't fall for every rumor about this weird woman. As it stands, this one feels about right. Even before this news hit, I didn't think that it strained credibility to suggest that Sara-cuda was a bit of a knucklehead. I don't get the impression that she lacks ability to broaden her horizons, expand her mind or learn about the world - clearly, there's at least a light in the attic. But I do sense that she doesn't see any particular reason to do this, nor does she think its a particularly admirable habit for others to take up. That was always part of her appeal, anyway. A Michelle Malkin commentator makes my point very nicely:
I’ve heard it was Romney’s ex-aides who were doing this because they want him to run again in 2012, not Palin.
Anyway, I’ve decided I am not watching any news channels, including FOX for one year. I will get my news from reliable blogs, which are more accurate than any news channel anyway. Screw the MSM.
That'll show 'em! I was promised that my vote for Obama would buy me some internecine GOP strife, and it looks like I won't be disappointed. As you can see, Malkin and her bunch are very upset (best comment so far belongs not to the above-quoted dingbat, but to someone known (ironically) as 'Just a Thought', who not only stands up to be counted ("Let me just go on record here saying that Sarah Palin has my vote for ANY ELECTED POSITION SHE CHOOSES! If I can legally vote for her, she doesn’t need to ask, she has my vote"), but manfully offers to protect the Palin family from all enemies foreign and domestic ("Oh, Todd, if you feel like you need any help keeping your family safe, I’m there. Your wife is way too precious an asset to the world to chance anything bad happening to her.") Wotta guy!), and RedState has announced 'Operation Leper' ("We're tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others...It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers." Get it?), which will likely have just as much impact as every other 'Operation' carried out by someone other than the military. In terms of value-for-your-vote, this beats a free cup of coffee with a bat.
For eight years I was a real spoilsport about Bush=Hitler rhetoric, primly informing anyone who, say, compared 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire that, not only were they an ignoramus, but they were more than a little disrespectful of the victims of a real authoritarian regime (you'd think conservatives - who usually had my back in that case - might remember that next time they think about calling Obama a 'communist', but I guess now's not the time to expect consistancy). But what better way to celebrate a new administration (not to mention a new AC/DC album!) than to indulge myself at last. It may be a new day for some, but a long night for others.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Stay Classy, San Diego
The goons over at NRO are trying to hold it together, but they just can't help themselves. What say you, Mark Levin?
John McCain just gave a classy concession speech. If McCain had won, we were told of possible riots.
John McCain just gave a classy concession speech. If McCain had won, we were told of possible riots.
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