Straight Outta Wharton – Trump and Hip Hop Values

November 5, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Jay Z and Beyoncé joined Hillary at a campaign rally, and Donald Trump attacked. (So what else is new?) Criticizing the language in Jay Z’s lyrics, he said. “My lewd language. I tell you what, I've never said what he said in my life.”

It’s the same argument that Trump’s surrogates have been making ever since the Access Hollywood tape became public. Instead of defending Trump, they criticized the critics, accusing them of hypocrisy. Here is Betsy McCaughey on CNN reading some lyrics from Beyoncé’s “Formation.”


McCaughey’s point is that it is hypocritcal for Hillary Clinton to pretend to be offended by Trump’s remarks while at the same time claiming to admire Beyoncé. This same argument echoed rapidly around the right wing media sites, which all, by strange coincidence, used the same Beyoncé lyric. It’s a silly argument. As the others on the panel point out, Beyoncé is not running for president. Do we really want to apply the same criteria for choosing a president that we use for judging the persona of an entertainer? The comparison is ridiculous. Or is it?

In fact, Trump embodies many of the same values as rappers. Most obvious is the narcissism – the constant need for attention, the desire to be above others, to be the biggest, greatest, most successful, wealthiest. If others seem a threat to that status, attack them without regard for the usual norms of the situation. Modesty and non-violence, are decidedly not virtues – not for Trump, not for the rappers.

The corollary of this narcissism is conspicuous consumption. How do you make sure that everyone is aware of your greatness? For both Trump and the rappers, there’s a clear answer – bling. Lamborghinis, gold chains and grilles, Kristal champagne for the rappers. For Trump, a gold-plated motorcycle and helicopter. The National Review (here) describes his NYC home.

A Louis XIV-style Manhattan apartment features marble floors, walls, and columns; ceiling frescos; winged cherubs; and diamond chandeliers. Gold platters, lamps, vases, crown molding, and other 24-karat fittings decorate this ostentatious King Midas’s abode.

Trump owns a yacht and a jet and fancy cars. So does Jay Z. The parallels go further. Jay Z, in “99 Problems,” brags about exploiting legal technicalities for his personal advantage. His first album was “Reasonable Doubt.” Trump brags about his ability to use the law to avoid paying taxes (“That means I’m smart”). He’s got 99 problems, but the tax code ain’t one.

Does the rapper-Trump parallel extend to ideas about women? Yes, but I think there are important differences (I am necessarily oversimplifying here). Neither offers a very evolved attitude, but Trump has at least a fantasy of himself as a romantic. His discourse about women lacks the strand of pure exploitation and violence that runs through some rap lyrics. Rappers distinguish between bitches and hos – a distinction that seems based on the ways that a man can exploit them.  Trump’s view is more unidimensional – a scale of one to ten.

I am not all that familiar with rap lyrics, but this excerpt from Sheek Sheek on Puff Daddy’s “All About the Benjamins” seems to capture the similarities. With only a little rewriting, they might be something Trump could easily have said – except for the line about exploiting the woman financially (she pays for the skiing at Aspen).

But don't knock me for trying to bury Seven zeros over in Rio Di Janeiry [offshoring income for tax purposes] Stash in the buildin’ wit this chick named Alona (uh-huh) / from Daytona, when I was young I wants to bone her (uh-huh) / But now I only hit chicks that win beauty pageants (ahahaha) / Tricking and taking me skiing, at the Aspens

With all these – language, attitudes towards women, narcissism, conspicuous consumption, attitudes towards the law – there are differences between Trump and the median rapper. The question is whether they are differences of kind (as Trump says about language) or differences of degree.

On Not Being Funny At the Al Smith Dinner

October 23, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

I have a modest proposal for the next Al Smith dinner: the writers for each presidential candidate get together beforehand and trade jokes.

Neither Trump nor Hillary is what you would call a master of stand-up.* But it wasn’t just the delivery and timing that brought boos from the audience. It was the nastiness of the jokes. Here’s Trump

I am told Hillary went to confession before tonight’s event, but the priest was having a hard time and he asked her about her sins and she said she could not remember 39 times. Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked off the Watergate commission. How corrupt do you have to be to get kicked off the Watergate commission? Pretty corrupt.

The audience booed.

And here’s Hillary:

Donald wanted me drug-tested before last night's debate. And look, I’ve got to tell you, I am so flattered that Donald thinks I used some sort of performance enhancer. Now, actually, I did. It’s called preparation.

She also used this line, which got booed.

You notice there is no teleprompter here tonight, which is probably smart, because maybe you saw Donald dismantle his own. Maybe it is harder when you are translating from the original Russian.

People, this is not a roast. The awkward silences and audible boos are telling you that nasty jokes are off the menu. Gentle pokes, maybe. But what’s called for – and what previous presidential candidates have provided – is self-deprecation.

These jokes are nasty. And Clinton’s “prepartion” line is the opposite of self-deprecation. It proclaims her own virtue and Trump’s indolence.

Trump’s most successful joke – the only one to get applause – was the one that poked fun at himself. Well almost.

You know, the president told me to stop whining, but I really have to say, the media is even more biased this year than ever before. You want the proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech, and everyone loves it. It’s fantastic. They think she is absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gives the exact same speech and people get on her case. And I don’t get — and I don’t get it. I don’t know why.

OK, it was aimed not at himself but at his wife, but that’s close enough.

Clinton started with a couple of jokes that were about herself, though the first one was really about Trump’s characterization of her.

This is such a special event that I took a break from my rigorous nap schedule to be here. And as you have already heard, it is a treat for all of you, too, because usually I charge a lot for speeches like this.

If Trump had used these lines (“Hillary took a break from her rigorous schedule of naps”), they would have been a disaster. A disaster.

So I suggest that the writers from each side trade the jokes that are more appropriate for a roast and convert them into self-deprecatory humor. Trump’s writers turn over their e-mail joke.

Trump: I was not really sure if Hillary was going to be here tonight, because, I guess, you did not send her an invitation by email, or maybe you did and she just found out about it through the wonder of WikiLeaks. becomes Clinton: I nearly didn’t make it here tonight. The invitation must have been in my e-mail. If it hadn’t been for WikiLeaks, I’d still be in Cleveland.

Of take this Clinton joke

People look at the Statue of Liberty and see a proud symbol of our history as a nation of immigrants, a beacon of hope for people around the world. Donald looks at the Statue of Liberty and sees a 4. Maybe a 5 if she loses the torch and tablet and changes her hair.

Now imagine a Trump version.

People look at the Statue of Liberty and see a proud symbol of our history, a beacon of hope for people around the world. So true. But let’s be honest folks. If you’re like me you look at the Statue, and you also see a 4. [pause] Maybe a 5 if she loses the torch and tablet and changes her hair.

It would kill.

Of course, it’s an open question whether Trump would accept a deal that required him to swap retaliation for self-effacing humor.  Hillary, on the other hand, would go for it. . . depending on how the focus groups reacted.
------------------------------                          
* Videos of their performances are here  (Trump) and here (Clinton).

One Question Where Trump Turned Conservatives More Liberal

October 21, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Most people agree that when this election is over, Trump will have changed American politics. Bigly,* perhaps. But one of the more ironic changes may be that he caused the most conservative sectors of the electorate to relax their views on the connection between a politician’s private life and his** fitness for public office.

Call it “motivated morality.” That sounds much better than hypocrisy. It’s like “motivated perception” – unconsciously adjusting your perceptions so that the facts fit with your ideology . But with motivated morality, you change your moral judgments. 
                           
For religious conservatives, Donald Trump presents quite a challenge. It’s the sex,  One of the things that conservatives are conservative about is sex, and Trump’s sexual language and behavior clearly fall on the side of sin. What to do? Conservatives might try for motivated cognition and refuse to believe the women who were the recipients of Trumps kissing, groping, and voyeurism. That’s difficult when Trump himself is on the record claiming to have done all these things, and making those claims using decidedly unChristian language.

Instead, they have changed their judgment about the link between groping and governing. Previously, they had espoused “moral clarity” – a single principle applied unbendingly to all situations. Good is good, evil is evil. If a man is immoral in his private life, he will be immoral or worse as a public official.

Now they favor “situational morality” the situation in this case being the prospect of a Clinton victory. So rather than condemn Trump absolutely, they say that although he is out of line,  they will vote for him and encourage others to do likewise in order to keep Hillary out of the White House. For example, in a USA Today op-ed (here), Diann Catlin, a “Bible-thumping etiquette teacher” says

I like God’s ways .. . . I also know that he wants discerning believers to take part in government. . . .God has always used imperfect people for his glory. God uses people like Trump and like me who are sinners but whose specific issues, such as the life of the unborn child, align with his word.

She includes the “we’re all sinners” trope that’s so popular now among the Trump’s Christian supporters (funny how they never mention that when the topic is Bill Clinton’s infidelities or Hillary’s e-mails).  More important is the implication that even a sinner can make good governmental decisions. That’s an idea that US conservatives used to dismiss as European amorality. In government, they would insist, “character” is everything.

It’s not just professional conservatives (op-ed writers and Jerry Falwell types) who have crossed over to the view that sex and politics are separate spheres and that a person can be sinful in one and yet virtuous in the other. Ordinary conservatives and Evangelicals have also (to use the word of the hour) pivoted. 

Five years ago, the Public Religion Research Institute at Brookings asked people whether someone who had committed immoral acts in their private life could still be effective in their political or professional life. Nationwide, 44% said Yes. PRRI asked the same question this year. The Yes vote had risen to 61%. But the move to compartmentalize sin was most pronounced among those who were most conservative.

(Click on an image for a larger view.)
(In the original of this post, I presented the data in bar graphs. These line graphs 
are much better for showing who changed and how much.)

The unchurched didn’t change much in five years. But White Catholics and mainline Protestants both became more tolerant of private immorality. And among the most religiously conservative, the White evangelical Protestants, that percent more than doubled. They went from being the least accepting to being the most accepting.

As with religion, so with political views.

People of all political stripes became more accepting, but when it came to judging a privately immoral person in public life, Republicans, like White evangelicals, went from least tolerant to most tolerant.

What could have made happened?

There’s no absolute proof that it was the Donald that made the difference. But those White evangelicals support him over Hillary by better than four to one. Those who identify as Republicans favor Trump by an even greater margin. There may be some other explanation, but for now, I’ll settle for the idea that in order to vote for Trump, they had to keep their judgment of him as a politician separate from their judgment of his sexual behavior – a separation they would not have made five years ago.***

----------------------------
* A post at Language Log (here) confirms that what Trump is saying is “big-league.” It attributes the confusion to “the ‘velar pinch’ associated with the final /g/ of big league.”

** Yes, “his.” Their ideas about the importance of a woman’s private sexual life may not have evolved in a similar way.
*** The change may turn out to be only temporary.  The next time a liberal candidate is revealed to have strayed in his private life, religious and political conservatives will revert to their former views.
The PRRI report is here.

Legitimacy in the Headlines

October 19, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

How is Donald Trump doing in his campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the presidency? He has been at it a while. His “birther” campaign – begun in 2008 and still alive – was aimed specifically at the legitimacy of the Obama presidency. Most recently, he has been questioning the legitimacy of the upcoming presidential election and by implications all presidential elections.

If he is successful, if the US will soon face a crisis of legitimacy, that’s a serious problem. Legitimacy requires the consent of the governed. We agree that the government has the right to levy taxes, punish criminals, enforce contracts, regulate all sorts of activities. . .  The list is potentially endless.

Legitimacy is to the government what authority is to the police officer – the agreement of those being policed that the officer has the right to enforce the law. So when the cop says, “Move to the other side of the street,” we move. Without that agreement, without the authority of the badge, the cop has only the power of the gun. Similarly, a government that does not have legitimacy must rule by sheer power. Such governments, even if they are democratically elected, use the power of the state to lock up their political opponents, to harass or imprison journalists, and generally to ensure compliance.

Trump is obviously not alone in his views about legitimacy.  When I see the posters and websites claiming that Obama is a “tyrant” – one who rules by power rather than by legitimate authority; when I see the Trump supporters chanting “Lock Her Up,” I wonder whether it’s all just good political fun and hyperbole or whether the legitimacy of the US government is really at risk.

This morning, I saw this headline at the Washington Post website (here).

Scary. But the content of the story tells a story that is completely the opposite. The first sentence of the story quotes the Post’s own editorial, which says that Trump, with his claims of rigged elections, “poses an unprecedented threat to the peaceful transition of power." The second sentence evaluates this threat.

Here’s the key evidence. Surveys of voters in 2012 and 2016 show no increase in fears of a rigged election. In fact, on the whole people in 2016 were more confident that their vote would be fairly counted.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

The graph on the left shows that even among Republicans, the percent who were “very confident” that their vote would be counted was about the same in 2016 as in 2012. (Technically, one point lower, a difference well within the margin of error.)

However, two findings from the research suggest a qualification to the idea that legitimacy has not been threatened. First, only 45% of the voters are “very confident” that their votes will be counted. That’s less than half. The Post does not say what percent were “somewhat confident” (or whatever the other choices were), and surely these would have pushed the confident tally well above 50%.

Second, fears about rigged elections conform to the “elsewhere effect” – the perception that things may be OK where I am, but in the nation at large, things are bad and getting worse. Perceptions of Congressional representatives, race relations, and marriage follow this pattern (see this previous post). The graph on the left shows that 45% were very confident that their own vote would be counted. In the graph on the right, only 28% were very confident that votes nationwide would get a similarly fair treatment.

These numbers do not seem like a strong vote of confidence (or a strong confidence in voting). Perhaps the best we can say is that if there is any change in the last four years, it is in the direction of legitimacy.

The Trump Phenomenon Cracked Open

October 14, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

The best social/cultural/political explanation that I have read of the continued support for Trump is at Cracked. Yes, Cracked. By David Wong.

Here’s the opening.

(Click for a larger view.)

It’s long for a blog post – two full screens – but worth reading.

[HT: Melanie Allen]

The Genuine Article

October 12, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Donald Trump has a tell – an unconscious tic that divulges genuine ideas and feelings that are different from the views he consciously wants to convey. His tell is the word “the.”

“I will be phenomenal to the women, I mean I'lI want to help women,” said Donald Trump back in August of 2015, when he was one of many Republicans campaigning for the party’s nomination. John Dickerson on “Face the Nation” had asked him why women should vote for him.

I bring this up not because women voters reject Trump’s own self-assessment, though reject it they do.  Here is Nate Silver’s estimate of what the election would look like if only women voted.

What struck me was Trump’s use of the definite article. “Phenomenal to the women,” rather than just “phenomenal to women.” On the surface, Trump was saying that when it came to women voters, he was on their side. But the definite article subtly the contradicted that assertion. As I blogged at the time (here),

when you add “the” to a demographic group and speak of “the women” or “the Blacks,” you are separating them from the rest of society.. . . turning them into separate, distinct groups that are not part of a unified whole.

Linguist Lynne Murphy (here) heard something similar during the most recent debate, regarding not women but minorities.

One of the littlest words in the English language gives the biggest clue about where Donald Trump’s head is at: his use of the word “the.” Trump promised, “I’m going to help the African-Americans. I’m going to help the Latinos, Hispanics. I am going to help the inner cities. [Clinton has] done a terrible job for the African-Americans.”

By using the definite article, says Murphy, the speaker builds a wall between himself and the group he is talking about. “The” turns them into the “other.”

“The” makes the group seem like it’s a large, uniform mass, rather than a diverse group of individuals. This is the key to “othering:” treating people from another group as less human than one’s own group.

Nate Silver has not offered maps showing what the election would look like if only Blacks, Hispanics, and inner-cities voted, but I suspect they would resemble that of the women.

Murphy, a “reader” in linguistics at the University of Sussex, notes a similar “the” othering among her fellow UK linguists. This same tell reveals how they feel about those of us on this side of the Atlantic. Are we “Americans,” or are we “the Americans”?

British writers’ views on American English are a good predictor of whether they’ll write “Americans say it that way” or “The Americans say it that way.” Those who feel that American English threatens British English use “the” to hold Americans at arm’s length (possibly while holding their noses).

Hypocrisy – Public Virtue, Private Vice

October 8, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

“What’s the deal with hypocrisy anyway?” asks my inner Seinfeld. The answer comes from La Rochefoucauld four centuries ago: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

I was never sure what this meant. But politicians’ reactions to Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” remarks offer a perfect of example.

Mitch McConnell says that Trump’s comments are “repugnant and unacceptable.” Paul Ryan was “sickened” by what he heard. Reince Priebus gave the official GOP response:  “No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.”

I am not privy to the private conversations that take place among the men who are our political leaders. But I would bet a lot of money that Ryan, McConnell, and all the other guys on both sides of the aisle hear this kind of talk regularly. Poor Paul Ryan must be sick a lot. I would also bet that even those who thought that what they heard was sickening or repugnant ever said so at the time or called their colleague out on his sexism. Ever.

For them now to claim that they are shocked, shocked that the nominee of their party used such language and expressed sexist attitudes towards women – that’s hypocrisy.  It is also vice (holding or condoning degrading views of women) paying tribute to virtue (treating women decently and speaking about them decently).

Still, I wonder if La Rochefoucauld would join the Republicans who are now saying that they will not vote for Trump? (As Dylan Matthews points out, these politicians are also saying by implication that they were fine with all of Trump’s other statements and attitudes – the ones about Megyn Kelly, Rosie O’Donnell, John McCain, et al.) Or would La Rochefoucauld say that the public world of politics is distinct from that of private life, and that personal virtue has little to do with the ability to govern?.

American politics seems to be unique in its demand for a perfect congruency of private and public personas. I would guess this demand is a legacy of our Puritan origins. These Puritan ideas still have a place in the public sphere, but their power is slowly waning. The publication of Trump’s privately expressed views about women will probably ensure and augment Hillary’s victory. But, like Bill Clinton’s surviving the Monica Lewinsky scandal, it may be yet another sign that America is loosening the constraints of the Protestant Ethic. In the meantime, we’ll just have to get used to hypocrisy.

Still Standing By

October 1, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

An op-ed in the Times framed the first debate, and by implication the entire presidential election, as “The Minivan vs. the Maserat.” I preferred David Plotz’s take – Bart vs. Lisa.

Like Bart, Trump is often the impish devil, the bad boy. He does things his supporters would like to do were it not for the stultifying forces of political correctness. He doesn’t care about being offensive. He lives to offend. He mocks and insults those who would try to inhibit him. He pranks the smugly superior. And he never apologizes.

This persona plays well to White working-class men. An ABC News poll from Sept. 22 shows that support growing.

If White working-class men were the only voters, Trump would be a shoo-in. Nothing can alienate them. As Trump himself said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.” Well, he wouldn’t lose any of that core demographic.

But what about White working-class women? The ABC News poll shows them favoring Trump 52% - 40%, still pretty strong, but that poll was taken before the first debate. I have not found any post-debate data about those women, but I wonder how they will respond to Trump’s latest – defending his fat-shaming of Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe, then tossing some slut-shaming on top of that.

Will the Wal*Mart women appreciate Trump’s views on a woman carrying few extra pounds? Or will they sympathize with Ms. Machado? Might they see this as Trump’s version of political correctness? In both cases, working-class people are being measured against the standards of some cultural elite, and they resent it. If men resent having their attitudes characterized as “racist,” maybe women will resent having their bodies characterized as “disgusting” (one of Trump’s favorite adjectives).   

I also wonder how they will react to the new anti-Clinton strategy Trump just announced.  “She’s nasty, but I can be nastier than she ever can be.” What is he going to be nasty about?

Will White working-class women appreciate nastiness the way men might? And will they support nastiness directed at a woman because her husband strays? Trump thinks so.

Trump defended his choice to bring up Bill Clinton's sexual infidelities by speculating it would steal away female voters from his opponent. (NY Times)

I have absolutely no poll data on how Trump-supporting women feel about other women whose husbands cheat. But I did find this document – a song that spent three weeks at #1 on the country charts and rose to #19 on the pop charts (behind, among others, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Build Me Up Buttercup”). That was in 1969, but in the song had many subsequent covers. I am referring, of course, to Tammy Wynette’s classic “Stand By Your Man.”

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman Giving all your love to just one man You'll have bad times, and he'll have good times, Doin’ things that you don’t understand. But if you love him, you’ll forgive him Even though he’s hard to understand. And if you love him, oh be proud of him ’Cause after all he’s just a man. Stand by your man, give him two arms to cling to And something warm to come to When nights are cold and lonely. Stand by your man, and show the world you love him Keep giving all the love you can. Stand by your man.

Here is a very recent performance – Kellie Pickler at the Grand Old Opry last year.

Gone is the Tammy Wynette big hair and big mascara of nearly 50 years ago. But the sincerity of the performance and the reaction of the audience suggest that the underlying sentiment still resonates, especially in Trumpland.* Will Trump win votes by reminding women that Hillary stood by her man?

----------------------------------
*The song is such an emblematic cultural artifact that I have used it before in this blog here) and here.)

Risk, Politics, and Group Alignment

September 24, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

How do we assess the different risks in our lives?

Her name was Paige,* but New Yorkers in the 1980s knew her as “the sign-the-petition lady.” She would set up at her anti-pornography display at various locations around Manhattan and chant endlessly, “Sign the petition. Sign the petition.”

In her right hand was some  offensive image from a porn mag (often, the meat-grinder cover from Larry Flynt’s magazine Hustler). Her other hand invariably held a lit cigarette. I was always tempted to say to her, “You know, you’re at greater risk from what’s in your left hand than what’s in your right.” But I never did.

Photo © richardgreene 2015
(Click to enlarge. The cigarette in her left hand will still not be clearly visible, but I’m sure it’s there.)

The recent bomb explosion in New York again raised the specter of terrorism and with it the question: how great is my risk from terrorist attacks? For some people, mostly on the right, the message was, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Donald Trump said, “ “We better get very tough, folks. We better get very, very tough,” though he did not specify what form this toughness would take.

By contrast, the mayor of New York insisted that “New Yorkers will not be intimidated. We are not going to let anyone change who we are or how we go about our lives.” He’s probably right. New Yorkers would find it difficult to change their daily lives. They could, for example, lower their risk by avoiding crowded places, but that’s where most of them work every day. The mayor’s comment makes sense because the risk of a terrorist attack is very low compared with other dangers, even bomb-like explosion.  We’ve had a few of them in the last decade, some of them fatal, but they were from gas mains.  And in that same period, at least 1000 people have died just walking the streets, the victims of automobiles.

In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, trying to estimate our risk from terrorism repeats the statistic from The Economist “the risk of an American being killed by terrorism in the decade after 9/11 and up to 2013 was one in fifty-six million.” He then asks, “Why [do] we develop such a high level of fright about such a low-level probability. Why are so many still so easily panicked?”

Gopnik gives two reasons – politicians and human psychology. The political angle is obvious. If a politician can get people to fear some thing and then present himself as the person best able to fight that thing, he’ll get a lot of votes. So some politicians  like  try to amp up our perception of the risk, taking their cue from Prof. Harold Hill in “The Music Man.” (See this post from a year or so ago.)

Gopnik’s  second factor is “the eternal human propensity to overstate and overimagine risks and loss and underimagine and understate gains and benefits.”

Maybe.  But Gopnik misses the moral angle. People react on the basis of moral judgment, not just rational risk calculation. Causes of harm that are immoral inflate our perception of their probability. We think we have more to fear from bad people – people who do want to do us harm – than from bad drivers, who do not want to do us harm. This moral judgment also draws a line between Us and Them – and we perceive Them as dangerous to Us. Bad drivers do not constitute a Them. Neither do apartment owners who install illegal gas lines. They are not some group we are at war with.

This moral Us/Them basis of risk assessment may also figure in the Black Lives Matter response when someone points out that Black people are more at risk from Black civilians (Black-on-Black crime) than from White cops. That’s irrelevant to their issue, which is that They (cops) target Us (Black people).

In the same way, anti-Muslim politicians and their supporters dismiss statistics about risk. In fact, my impression is that people who live in low-risk places but who are more militantly anti-Muslim are more concerned about the risk of terrorism and more likely to demand anti-Muslim measures than are those who live in places most likely to be terrorist targets – cities like New York or Los Angeles.

And in the same way, the sign-the-petition lady would have dismissed my  suggestion that she had less to fear from Larry Flynt than from Philip Morris. **

------------------------------------

* Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York has more about her. A streetcorner very near where I live was one of her locations, so I often saw and heard her. But I never once saw anyone stop to sign the petition. According to one of the comments on the Vanishing New York blog, she used the petition mostly to get the names and phone numbers of women she could then hit on.

** There is an extensive literature in psychology on perceptions of risk which I am leaving out.

Ten Years a Blog

September 20, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Many years ago, I saw Penn and Teller’s off-Broadway show in a small theater on West 43rd St.  Before his fire-eating routine, Penn explained that it wasn’t a trick. It was more of a skill. The performer really is putting a flaming torch in his mouth, and if he lets his mouth get at all dry, he can get burnt. It happens. It hurts. “So the next time you see someone eating fire” Penn said, “the question to ask is not how. It’s why.

The same might be said for keeping a blog going for a decade. Ten years, 1572 posts. My answer to Penn’s question is the answer Teller, if asked, would give on stage. But I will follow my custom of culling a handful of posts that I liked from the last year.

• A 30-second video epitomizes several elements of the Southern culture of honor. Honor and Politics at the RNC
• If you think Instagram selfies and complimentary comments are signs of narcissistic youth, think again. The Presentation of Selfies in Everyday High School
• Is the demonstration violent? Perceptions shaped by ideology. Political Ideas, Political Tactics
• Attirubtion theory in action. A classroom exercise works.  Who’s Smarter?
• When Prophecy Fails for a young, Black, gay Trump supporter. A Dream Disconfirmed   
• The old canard that our poor are really well off.  Back to the Future
• Things are terrible in general, but here, everything’s OK. The Elsewhere Effect         

The Philosophy of the Gun in Trumpland

September 17, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

It seems odd for a politician to boast that many of his supporters are potential murderers, terrorists, and assassins. But then much about the Trump campaign is strange and odd.

Trump acknowledges that his supporters believe in what I once called (here) “The Philosophy of the Gun.” Here’s the gist of that post from seven years ago.

The philosophy of the gun is simple: if someone does something you don’t like, shoot them. If you can’t shoot that person, shoot someone like them. If you don’t like abortions, shoot an abortion doctor . If you don’t like an anti-abortion protester , shoot him. If you feel wronged by people at work, go postal. If a woman has rejected you, shoot her. If you can’t find a woman who actually rejected you, shoot several women. Don’t like the kids in your school? Shoot them. Feel you’ve been dissed by someone from another gang, shoot them. Gun advocates put this in terms of self-defense. If you have gun, you can defend yourself, your property, and your loved ones from people who are doing something you don’t like. Which is just another way of saying that if you don’t like what the person is doing, shoot them. The only difference is that such shootings might be legal.

My blog usually gets few comments, but on this one, the gunslingers descended en masse,* though as I said in a post the next day (here), they mostly agreed with my basic point; they just didn’t like the way I put it.

Now Donald Trump has joined me. A few weeks ago, he hinted that if gunlovers (“Second Amendment people”) didn’t like a judge, they would take aim and assassinate the judge (or perhaps the president who appointed the judge).  Yesterday, he suggested that they would shoot Hillary Clinton. No mention of policies or judicial appointments. They would shoot her just because they don’t like her – if they could get away with it.

I think they [Clinton’s Secret Service detail] should disarm immediately. Take their guns away, she doesn't want guns. Take their— and let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away. OK, it would be very dangerous.

Very dangerous. Trump is talking about people who adhere to the philosophy of the gun, and apparently he counts many of these people among his supporters. He is saying essentially that they will shoot the Democratic nominee for US president. He merely adds the caveat, if they can be successful, i.e., if the Secret Service cannot shoot them first.

When Clinton said that half of Trump supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, the Trump campaign and supporters took umbrage. When Trump himself suggests that many of them are potential terrorists and assassins, they seem to take it as a compliment. 

----------------------------------
* Peter Moskos, whose blog Cop in the Hood is well worth reading, once told me that sometimes when he’s feeling neglected and lonely, he’ll put up a post about guns. And very soon, he’s got lots of company.

Has Trust Gone Bust?

September 16, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

David Brooks was preaching again this week. His Tuesday column (here) was a jeremiad on the ills that “an avalanche of distrust” is bringing to US society.  (The phrase “avalanche of distrust” came probably from the headline writer, not Brooks. Brooks refers to “an avalanche of calumny.” Either way, the country’s being buried under a lot of bad snow.)

A generation ago about half of all Americans felt they could trust the people around them, but now less than a third think other people are trustworthy. Young people are the most distrustful of all; only about 19 percent of millennials believe other people can be trusted. But across all age groups there is a rising culture of paranoia and conspiracy-mongering.

Brooks is partly right, partly misleading. He seems to be referring to the General Social Survey, which, since 1972, has asked regularly about trust.  The GSS has three items that pertain to trust.

• TRUST – Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in life?
• HELPFUL – Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?
• FAIR – Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?

The GSS data does show some decline in all these since 1990 – i.e., a generation ago.

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

               
Of the three variables, TRUST has declined the most. The percentage of people saying that most people could be trusted fell from 39% to 30%, Brooks’s statement about “half of all Americans” a generation ago being trusting is a bit misleading as it implies that 50% was standard year in year out. In fact, in only one year, 1984, did the percentage reach that level. As for the other variables relevant to the “culture of paranoia,” perceptions of other people’s helpfulness also declined; perceptions of their fairness changed little.

What about the age differences Brooks notes?  I extracted GSS data on the Trust variable at three different periods – 1972-1976, 1989-1991, and the most recent years that we have data for.

In every period, the young are the least trusting, but the difference between them and people in older age groups is much greater now than it was 25 or 40 years ago. That’s because millennials, as Brooks correctly notes, are much less trusting than were their 18-30 year old counterparts in the 1970s.

But what about the rest of us? According to Brooks, “across all age groups there is a rising culture of paranoia.”  In the 1972-76 period, in the youngest group, 38% were trusting. In 1990, those people would be in their early 40s to early 50s. In that year, that age group was somewhat more trusting than they had been 25 years earlier. And 20 years later, when they were in their late 50s and up, they were still as trusting as they had been before. The same is true of the people who were 30 and up in the 1970s. Similarly, the youngest group in 1990 had the same level of trust twenty years later – about 30%.

Trust seems to be remarkably resilient – impervious to the vicissitudes of aging or of social and political changes. The Watergate era, the Reagan years, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the recent recession – none of these seems to have made much difference in each cohort’s level of trust.  Go figure.

Brooks’s sermon then turns from the aggregate data to the effect on people’s souls.

The true thing about distrust, in politics and in life generally, is that it is self-destructive. Distrustful people end up isolating themselves, alienating others and corroding their inner natures. Over the past few decades, the decline in social trust has correlated to an epidemic of loneliness. In 1985, 10 percent of Americans said they had no close friend with whom they could discuss important matters. By 2004, 25 percent had no such friend.

That finding, which made headlines a decade ago, has since been questioned if not debunked.The GSS data it’s based on contained a coding error, and other surveys have found no such drastic increase in friendlessness. Claude Fischer has an excellent blog post about this issue (here). He includes this graph based on results from the Gallup poll.

Brooks obviously is not interested in these corrections. He is, after all, crying “avalanche” in a crowded political theater. But it tuns out there’s not all that much snow. The change to worry about is that over the last 25 years, each new cohort is less trusting, and this is one time when hand-wringing about what’s wrong with kids today might be appropriate. Those attitudes, once formed, are little effected even by major changes in the society and government.

Trump Unrestricted

September 15, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Commas are important. Sometimes.

• I waved to the young man who was wearing a gray suit.

“Who was wearing a gray suit” is a restrcitive clause. It’s called that because it limits the subject. There could have been a lot of other young men, but I waved to the one in the gray suit.

• I waved to the young man, who was wearing a gray suit.

With the comma added, the clause becomes nonrestrictive. The young man is the only possible one, and he was wearing a gray suit.

Today we have this statement from Donald Trump’s doctors.

We are pleased to disclose all of the test results which show that Mr. Trump is in excellent health, and has the stamina to endure — uninterrupted — the rigors of a punishing and unprecedented presidential campaign and, more importantly, the singularly demanding job of President of the United States.

With no comma, the clause “which show that Mr. Trump is in excellent health” becomes restrictive. It implies that there may other test results which do not show Trump to be in excellent health. Was the copy editor being cagey or merely careless?

Today’s statement is a bit more specific than the previous medical records released by a Trump doctor — “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” which sounds almost as if the Donald himself could have written it.

Of course Mr. Trump is in great health, the best – believe me. I know his doctors, the finest really. I admire them, and they say his stamina is great. I can’t believe that people are complaining about a comma. Don’t get me wrong. I love commas. China – by the way, a very great country – China doesn’t have commas, and we’ve let them get away with that. China is incredible in many ways. I eat Chinese food. I mean, my Chinese chef is tremendous, tremendous. But many people say that there are no commas on the menus. No commas at all. Sad.

All In the Family

September 11, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

“God must love the common man,” goes the quote usually attributed to Lincoln, “He made so many of them.”

Greg Mankiw must love the rich. He writes so many articles promoting policies that help them. In today’s installment in the NY Times Business section (here), he writes about the estate tax.*

Mankiw probably didn’t write that headline, and it’s slightly misleading. It suggests that Mankiw wants to get rid of all inheritance taxes without making any other changes. In fact, he proposes other ways to “make sure those at the top pay their fair share.” But the headline captures the takeaway – or at least what rich people and their advocates take away.

Not taxing inheritances is what happened when Mankiw was, as he reminds us, chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush. Bush phased out the estate tax entirely. Presumably Mankiw raised no strong objections. It’s possible that Mankiw recommended to Bush the alternate taxes he mentions in today’s Times. We don’t know. But if he did, the only item in his advice package that Bush and the Congressional Republicans paid attention to was the call to just get rid of this pesky tax on the heirs of the wealthy.

In writing against the estate tax, Mankiw pulls the same switcheroo that other opponents of the tax use. He writes about it as though the people who pay the tax are those who accumulated the fortune. They aren’t. Calling the inheritance tax the “death tax” makes it seem as though the dead are being taxed for dying. They aren’t. If you leave an estate to your heirs, you have departed this mortal plane and are safely beyond the reach of the IRS.

The people who would pay the tax are those who inherit the money. If they had gotten this money the old fashioned way, by earning it, they would pay tax on it – and nobody objects on principle to taxing the money people get by working. But money they get because someone gave it to them gets preferable treatment. Mankiw dodges this issue by talking about “families,” as though the family were still the same as it was before the death of the one who made the money – as though the money hadn’t really changed hands.

The same logic would shield income in the paychecks that someone got by working in the family business. And who knows? Maybe Republicans will propose making income from the family business tax-free. The Trump kids would get a free ride. After all, if we don’t want a death tax, why would we allow a parenthood tax?


-------------------
*Another post on Mankiw and taxes is here. Other posts about Mankiw in this blog are here and here.

(A day after I posted this, Matt Levine made basically the same criticisms of the Mankiw piece. Levine writes for Bloomberg, so his post probably had a few more readers.)

Trigger Warnings

September 10, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

I posted a trigger warning last week, the first one I have ever used.

I begin the semester contrasting individual facts with social facts, and the example I use is Durkheim’s study of suicide – suicide rates and social integration as social facts. In each of the past two semesters, a student has told me weeks later that he or she (one of each) had recently experienced the suicide of someone they were close to, and the topic still upset them. I had had no idea that I was tromping around on someone else’s understandably sensitive toes. For the remainder of the course, in selecting examples to illustrate sociological ideas in the remainder of the course, I tried to avoid suicide.

This semester, before the first class meeting, I posted an announcement on Canvas (or “course management system”):

(Click for a larger view.)

The University of Chicago does not approve. In a now-famous letter sent to incoming students last month, the Chicago Dean of Students Jay Ellison said

Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called ‘trigger warnings.’

I’m not sure why the Dean thinks it’s a good idea to spring disturbing material upon students without any advance notice. Maybe when it comes to movies he doesn’t like the MPAA warnings either. I do.

One evening long ago when I was a student, I went with some friends to see a new movie that they said had gotten good reviews and was by an important director.  Back then, before DVD, VHS, HBO, etc., if you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to the theater before the movie finished its run.
The movie was “Straw Dogs.” It’s another version of the adolescent boy’s fantasy that used to grace the inside covers of comic books.

(Click for a larger view.)

In “Straw Dogs,” instead of the bully kicking sand in the boy’s face while the girlfriend watches, the bullies rape the girl. And instead of merely returning to punch out one bully, the hero dispatches a septet of baddies using variously a fire poker, a shotgun, boiling oil, a nail gun, and a bear trap.

Immediately after seeing the movie, I was upset – angry at the movie, even angry at my friends. It was not the stupidity of the movie that disturbed me.  I’d seen the basic plot not just in comic book ads but in many American films. We American guys just loves us some justifiable revenge violence. What upset me was that the violence was viscerally arousing. The movie was rated R, but I had seen plenty of R movies. I just hadn’t seen any that put violence on the screen so effectively.* My reaction, I realized later, was probably like some people’s reaction to sex in the movies – it’s arousing in a way that they don’t want to be aroused, at least not by a movie. (They don’t want others to be aroused by it either, but that’s a separate issue.)

If someone had told me beforehand what to expect, my reaction to and against the film would not have been as strong, nor would I have been as pissed off at my friends for selecting the film. Maybe when film classes at Chicago show “Straw Dogs,” they remove the R rating and generally keep students in the dark. Apparently Dean Ellison would prefer it that way. Me, I’d warn the students in advance and risk being scoffed at as politically correct.

-------------------------------
* Making violence arousing is something that Peckinpah is very good at. Pauline Kael famously said of “Straw Dogs” that it was “a fascist work of art.”     

Labor Day - Unions on Film

September 5, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

A guy I know who hates teachers unions equates them with the corrupt and violent Longshoremen’s union portrayed in “On the Waterfront.” True, the union comes off badly in this movie. When Brando, having testified against union boss Johnny Friendly says, “I’m glad what I done to you, Johnny Friendly,” the audience is glad too. But what about other films?

Hollywood is much more likely to give us business executives than workers. The corporate biggies are usually corrupt and evil, but at least they’re up there on the screen. Workers, not so much.

I tried to think of American movies (non-documentary) where a union or even the idea of a union had an important role. The list I came up with on the spur of the moment was very short

• Norma Rae (1979)
• The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Putting the question out to my Facebook friends brought only a few more to the list (ht: Philip Cohen).

• Matewan (1987)
• Hoffa (1992)
• Salt of the Earth (1954)

Googling “movies about unions” added

• The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)                                   
• F.I.S.T. (1978)
• Bread and Roses (2000)
• Blue Collar (1978)
• Won’t Back Down (2012)
• The Garment Jungle (1957)
• Black Fury (1935)

Given the Hollywood depiction of corporated bosses as bad guys, I expected that movies would also portray unions as  virtuous organizations helping virtuous workers.  That’s sort of true of 40s and 50s, though obviously “Waterfront” is an exception.* But in “Hoffa,” “F.I.S.T.,” “Blue Collar,” and “Won’t Back Down,” unions don’t come off so well.  Of movies from the last 30 years, only “Matewan” is unambiguously pro-union, and it was a low-budget indie. So much for the idea that Hollywood is dominated by leftists and liberals.

My favorite nomination – one ignored even by Google – came from my cousin, who wasn’t even born till about twenty years after the movie came out: “The Pajama Game” (1957).

------------------------------
* The point of “Waterfront” was to make a virtue out of testifying to the government against the team you used to be on. Both the writer and the director, Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan, respectively, had testified before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and had ratted out other Hollywood people – naming names and ruining careers. Kazan acknowledged the parallel – he was glad what he done to his former associates. But Schulberg denied that the movie had anything to do with HUAC investigations.

Take My Rug – Please

August 31, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Two couples at dinner. The check comes.
“We’ll get it,” says one man.
“OK, thanks,” says the other.

Of course, that’s not what happens. The other person is supposed to protest, to make the same offer to pick up the whole tab. Then comes the negotiation.

I’m not concerned here with how these things get resolved or the basis of the moves and countermoves. My point is just that we’re not supposed to take that first offer at face value. It might be sincere, or it might not. That’s what’s to be discovered in the subsequent negotiation.

When it comes to this generosity gambit, Iranian culture is way ahead of us. In Farsi, it’s known as tarof. I first heard about it on a 2011 episode of “This American Life.” An Iranian-American woman, Nazanin Rafsanjani, explains.

It’s basically this social custom of never saying what you want and offering things to people that you may or may not really want to give them. . . An uncomfortable thing that would often happen to me growing up is that I’d have all these American friends coming over to our house, and it always makes me slightly uncomfortable when someone’s at my parents’ house and they compliment my parents on something. Because the custom is, if you go to my parents’ house and you say, like, “That’s a beautiful painting on the wall,” they’ll offer it to you. They’ll just be like, “Take it. It’s yours. It’s not good here anyway. It would look better in your house. Take it. It’s not worth anything to us. It’s much more important that you have it.”

Which brings me to the “Modern Love” column in the Styles section of the New York Times Sundays ago. It’s by Sharon Harrigan, presumably not Iranian. She begins:

The nicest thing I own is the first thing you see when you walk into my house: a red handmade rug bought in Tehran, haggled over in Farsi and delivered, in person, to the Brooklyn apartment of the man who would become my husband. Back then, James told me the woman who gave him the rug, a woman he had recently dated, was by then “just a friend.”

I’ll skip the friends-become-lovers-become-married story (you can read it here) and jump cut to the next appearance of the rug, later in the narrative but earlier in chronology, when the author first sees it.

Weeks later, he buzzed me up to his apartment. The door opened to reveal the most beautiful rug I had ever seen, so finely woven it was more like a tapestry. The kind of precious object that could be ruined by a few stray Cheerios crumbs. “It’s a gift from a friend,” he said. “She bought it when she visited her family in Iran.” “She’s trying to get you back,” I said. “What? She’s just being kind. Don’t you love it?”

It’s possible that she’s right – that the old girlfriend is trying to get him back. It’s possible that he’s right – that the old girfriend was just being kind. But – and I’m just guessing here, and I could be very mistaken – it’s also possible that the Iranian girlfriend, the one who haggled over the rug in Farsi, was tarof-ing her ex.  And he, not knowing any better, accepted the offer.

In the “This American Life” episode, the American producer does ask Nazanin Rafsanjani what happens if someone does just accept the offer. Rafsanjani answers: “I don't know. I mean, that just never happens.” But she means that it never happens between Iranians. They know how the game is played. But if the other person is a tarof-ignorant American, maybe an Iranian woman winds up losing her beautiful rug.*

------------------------------------

* In the episode, which you should really listen to (here) or read the transcript of (here), Rafsanjani describes how tarof happens even in retail sales. The storekeeper offers the merchandise for free.  “Take it” etc. The customer of course refuses and insists to know how much it costs. At some point in this negotiation, the storekeeper names a price. Now the sides switch, for the storekeeper, who had been saying that the goods were nearly worthless and that the customer should take them, asks a price which is invariably far more than the goods are worth, and the customer must haggle the price down.

Trickle-down Culture – As American As Pad Thai

August 26, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Resentment against cultural elitists holds a prominent place in the populist energy driving Trump supporters. Mainstream conservatives have been playing this card since way back in the game with playground taunts like “brie-eating, chardonnay-drinking liberals.” In fact, this animus against elite culture may be what divides the pro-Trump and never-Trump conservatives, at least those who babble publicly in the media. Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity imagine themselves to be one with what another Trump supporter, Sarah Palin, called “the Real America” united against the cultural snobs.

But as Paul Krugman (here) points out, we’re all cultural elitists now. Or rather, what was once elite culture has gone mainstream.

But most of all, this kind of punditry, while ostensibly praising the Real America, is in fact marked by deep condescension. One pats the simple folk on the head, praising their lack of exposure to quinoa or Thai food — both of which can be found in food courts all across the country. Sorry, but there are no country bumpkins in modern America.

Even as recently as the early 2000s, part of the liberal stereotype mocked by conservatives was “latte-sipping.” Now NASCAR dads might well have a chai latte or venti in the cup holder of their pick-up. That didn’t just happen. Starbucks spent a lot of money opening outlets and spreading the word.

The same is true of Thai food. Americans didn’t wake up one morning with a cravings for pad thai and green curry. Matt Yglesias links to an article in The Economist.

In a plan ambitiously called Global Thai, the government aims to boost the number to 8,000 by 2003. This, it is argued, will not only introduce deliciously spicy Thai food to thousands of new tummies and persuade more people to visit Thailand, but it could subtly help to deepen relations with other countries. In the United States at least, . . .  the number of Thai restaurants has grown from 500 in 1990 to more than 2,000 now [i.e., 2002]  . . .  More modestly, the Thai government aims to make it easier for foreign restaurants to import Thai foods, to help them to hire Thai cooks and sometimes to benefit from soft loans. It has been much encouraged that Tommy Tang, a Thai chef working in the United States, has said that he plans to open 200-300 Thai restaurants there during the next five years

Sometimes popular tastes change seemingly without anyone with a vested interest pushing things along, as when names like Barbara and Ashley go out of fashion, and Olivia and Ava become all the rage. In other areas, an entire industry – clothing for example – depends on its ability to convince people to follow the latest fashion. With food, there’s a complicated interaction between person-to-person influence within the population and a strong push from the outside by players who have a stake in the outcome. I don’t know about quinoa, but thanks in part to the efforts of the government of Thailand, Thai food may be on its way to becoming as American as pizza.*

*As a food becomes more popular, restaurateurs in the US who want more customers will find ways to make it more palatable to Americans, probably by toning down the spices and ramping up the sweetness. That’s the cue for elitists to look down on The Olive Garden and other “inauthentic” foods. (Pad Thai is to thai cuisine roughly what chop suey is to Chinese.) The politically correct will decry the cultural appropriation in Hawaiian pizza or a college food court version of banh mi. I know: cultural propriation, bad; Asian fusion, good. But sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

Lenny and Me

August 25, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston
(No sociology, just –  to borrow Chris Uggen’s term –  self-indulgery.)

Leonard Bernstein was born on this day in 1918.

Earlier this summer, I was walking around Tanglewood on a weekday. The Koussevitsky music shed - the open-air concert venue – was deserted, so I walked up onto the stage and stood on the conductor’s podium where decades earlier I had seen Bernstein stand and conduct. (I’ll spare you the photo. I was not wearing my tux.) But that was not the first time our paths – Lenny and mine – had crossed.

In the early 1950s, Bernstein was a visiting professor at Brandeis. No doubt he felt at home in a department that was eager to go beyond the bounds of what traditional music departments did.

Some years later, when I was a sophomore at Brandeis, I had a campus job in the music building. A few days a week, at 5 p.m., I would play records (this was long before Spotify, long before CDs) for the students in the Opera course. I mean, I would play the records if any students came to the classroom in the music building, which they rarely did. I think a couple may have come when the topic was Don Giovanni; that’s the only reason I can think of that I have some familiarity with “Madamina.” We never got beyond Act I.

The classroom had a piano at the front for the instructor to use – a Baldwin baby grand – and sometoimes I would sit there and do my inept version of playing piano. I’d never had a lesson, and I played a sort of jazz by ear. (I recall that Horace Silver’s “St. Vitus Dance” was one of the tunes I was trying at the time.) One day late in the semester, I noticed a small metal plate, about 2" x 3" attached at the right edge of the piano above the keyboard. I read it. It said something like, “This is the piano that Leonard Bernstein learned to play on as a child, and is donated by his parents. . . .” I played that piano more frequently for the rest of the semester.

Here’s the Bill Evans solo version of “Lucky to Be Me,” from “On the Town” (1944 – i.e., when Lenny was 26). Evans takes some liberties – modulating the last eight bars to A♭instead of F the first time through. But Bernstein’s own chord changes on the bridge are incredible as is the melody – very chromatic and hence not easy for singers.

Soundtrack of the Zeitgeist

August 22, 2016
Posted by Jay Livingston

Yesterday’s post was skeptical about a link between pop culture and the Zeitgeist. I questioned whether the a change in the content of fiction or film or other products of the imagination reflected important social change. Still, when done well, Zeitgeist explanations often sound plausible.

Chris Molanphy knows a lot about popular music. He has  a feature at Slate called “Why Is This Song No. 1?” where he would give a super-hit of the day a full physical exam. The performer, the producer, the studio, the way the song evolved musically, the market, the audience, the distribution – all the elements internal to the music business and the creation of songs come under his stethescope. (See his take on “Love Yourself” or Drake (“One Dance” and “Hotline Bling”) or any of his other pieces here)

Molanphy also appears in a regular segment on The Gist, where he and host Mike Pesca turn back the pop-music calendar to a single year. Historical hindsight allows them to align the hits with forces outside of the music itself – politics, the economy, the general spirit of the time. When you’re looking backwards, the temptation to go full-out Zeitgeist is irresistible.

Here they are discussing 1999.

PESCA: What’s the case for its importance, what’s the case for its artistic value, what’s the case for 1999? MOLANPHY: The case for 1999 is that this is American-led pop at its absolute apex. This is the height of the Clinton era writ large in pop music. It’s empire America at its peak, very candy colored, very Total Request Live, very Britney Spears “Baby One More Time” even. . . and surprisingly a lot of artists who were hits in this TRL era of pop have proved quite enduring. Britney Spears . . . Back Street Boys . . . Christina Aguilera . . . Nsync. If the first half of the nineties was all about rather grim-faced music – it was about grunge, it was about gangsta rap – this is the candy colored half of the 1990s. PESCA: This is the Clinton expanded economy, the Internet, this is the years of peace and prosperity, this is the pre-9/11, pre-wakeup-call, good time. MOLANPHY: If you watch that year’s VMAs. . .  All of the artists that you see on this list of number ones are there. Britney Spears is there, Christina Aguilera is there, the Back Street Boys are there, and all the Latin Pop stars. Ricky Martin is there. . . You see a culture that feels like the good times are going to last forever. The dot-com era is at its height, Clinton’s in the White House, unemployment’s at five percent, everybody’s got money to burn, and the good times are here again. We know what happened two years later, but we know that 1999 is a very neon colored bright and shiny year, and for that I have an odd sort of nostalgia. [Emphasis added. Listen to the entire episode here].

Pesca even implies that the “good time” Zeitgeist of 1999 somehow knows what will happen two years later when it will give way to a bad times mood descending upon the country. “This is the pre-9/11, pre-wakeup-call, good time.” To paraphrase Yogi Berra, prediction is easy, especially about the past.”

Sometimes the producers of pop culture do try to come up with songs or movies or TV shows that align with the Zeitgeist as they perceive it. Usually, that means copying the most recent big success.  So we get a wave of superhero movies or doctor TV shows. (There are probably equivalents in music; I just don’t know them.) Sometimes it works; often it flops. As the screenwriter William Goldman famously said, “Nobody knows anything.” Including culture analysts who write about the Zeitgeist.