Smart – and Successful – People

April 13, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Smart People” is not a great movie, but if you’re an academic, I guess you have to see it if only for Dennis Quaid as a paunchy, pompous, florid, self-absorbed, dyspeptic, ill-groomed, and thoroughly unlikeable English professor at Carnegie Mellon. (If they can do this to Dennis Quaid, is anybody safe?) It’s not like looking in the mirror (I hope), but it might be like looking around the Faculty Senate meeting.

The movie is full of improbabilities. How could such a man ever have attracted a woman pretty as the wife, now deceased, whose pictures we see and whose memory he clings to, Adrian Monk style? And what could Sarah Jessica Parker, an emergency room doctor, now see in him?

The substance of the movie is in the characters – how they are revealed to us, how they interact, how they come to some self-awareness, and how they even change. But then why inject the element of career success into everything? American movies have a concern with success that borders on obsession or compulsion. About a year ago, I noted that “Music and Lyrics” a romantic comedy, pretended to be about love but was really about success.

The people who made “Smart People” felt compelled to make it about success, not just for the professor, but even for two supporting characters. (Sarah Jessica Parker is already a success.) I don’t want to give the plot away, so I’ll just say that in the case of the professor and his son, the success is both improbable and not at all necessary for the story. (The same improbable, unnecessary success haunts Steve Martin’s “Shopgirl,” which starts off being about very ordinary people, as the title implies, but eventually even the secondary characters become stars.) Only Thomas Haden Church, as Quaid’s ne’er-do-well adoptive brother, remains resolutely unsuccessful. (And what’s with Ellen Page in yet another film about an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy carried to term? I guess she’s not going to be NARAL’s woman of the year.)

Give the professor a less successful, less pretty love interest, give him a more modest bit of success, take away the improbable accidental pregnancy and let the relationship develop on character rather than circumstance, and you’d have a better movie. Of course, such changes might be downright unAmerican.

Faber (not the pencil)

April 12, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed reviews Betrayal by Houston Baker. Baker’s book is a less than persuasive rant (in McLemee’s view) against other black intellectuals. Here’s the gotcha that McLemee uses to drive the stake through the heart of Betrayal.

Baker points out that in the 1940s, Irving Kristol, the founding father of that neoconservatism, abandoned the constricted world of left-wing politics “in search of a more expansive field of intellectual and associational commerce (one in which he would be ‘permitted’ to read Max Faber)....”

That parenthetical reference stopped me cold. I have a certain familiarity with the history of Kristol and his cohort, but somehow the role of Max Faber in their bildung had escaped my notice. Indeed, the name itself was totally unfamiliar. And having been informed that this book was “the product of “a rigorous, scholarly reading practice” — one “seasoned with wit,” mind you, and published by Columbia University Press — I felt quite embarrassed by this gap in my knowledge.

Off to the library, then, to unearth the works of Max Faber! And then the little light bulb went off.

Anybody who’s ever taken Intro Soc will know what the little light bulb was illuminating. If you haven’t already caught on, I’ll add some spoiler space before printing the next sentence of the review

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Baker (who assures us that he is a capable judge of social-scientific discussions of African-American life) was actually referring to Max Weber.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

April 11, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

The orgheads may correct me, but I think that in principle and practice, it’s usually a bad idea for the top people in an organization to insulate themselves from contradictory or unpleasant facts and opinions.

Ed Koch, when he was mayor, used stop New Yorkers in the street and ask, “How’m I doing?” He may even have listened to the responses. It was sort of like the king in the fairy tale who disguises himself as a commoner to walk among the people to find out what they really think of him.

That’s not George W. Bush. His “public” appearances have been before audiences selected for their favorable views. So for a moment, when a substantial number of the crowd at National’s Park booed him as he walked to the mound to throw out the first ball of the season, he seemed truly puzzled and upset, almost petulant and sulking. I’m no Paul Ekman, but I think you can see what I mean about 57 seconds into this video.



There’s a lesson in sampling here too. Whether you heard more boos or cheers depended on where you were sitting. The above clip is from the broadcast feed, and the boos are clearly audible. But a few people who had camcorders and recorded the moment have posted their videos to YouTube. If your seats were in the less expensive outfield sections, you heard a higher ratio of boos to applause. But one of the YouTube clips was posted under the title “Bush CHEERED at Nationals opener, throws first pitch.” Sure enough, the sound in this clip is almost all cheers. And what kind of tickets did this citizen-videographer have? The third base boxes.

Of course, it’s significant that the jeerers were so numerous that there was even any question, especially since the announcer did not speak the name Bush but referred only to the majesty of office: “the President of the United States.” Even to me, it seemed not quite right to have the president booed on a ceremonial occasion, rituals being moments of solidarity, not conflict. And for better or worse, our political head of state is also our ceremonial figurehead. In fact, in one of the videos, taken from deep center field, you can hear the guy with the camera comment, “I’ve never heard anything like this.”

Better Off?

April 9, 2008

Posted by Jay Livingston

American middle-class optimism seems to have taken a hit lately. For several years, leftish economists have shown that even though something called “the economy” may be doing better, most people – all but those at the top – are running hard just to stay in place. The data are now reflected in subjective feelings.

The Pew Center just issued a report on the middle class, and it begins with Gallup Poll data on Ronald Reagan’s famous question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” (OK, Gallup uses five years, not four, but who’s counting?)

When Reagan asked this question in the 1980 presidential debates, most people, according to Gallup felt that yes, they were better off – 52% vs. 25% who felt they were worse off. That’s puzzling, considering the apparent success of Reagan’s question – he won the election handily.

The interesting result from the Gallup numbers is that when Reagan left office – after the “Reagan recovery” cherished by anti-tax, anti-regulation conservatives – the numbers were identical. If you look at actual changes in median family income, you see a slight decline in the Carter years and an increase in the Reagan years. But these changes aren’t reflected in how people felt, at least not as measured by Gallup.

This year’s numbers show optimism at its lowest ebb since Gallup started asking the question in 1964. “Better off” still tops “worse off,” but by only 41% to 31%. Even more surprising to me was the proportion of these self-identified middle-class Americans who rate their quality of life as low (five or less on a ten-point scale). That contrasts with the results on job satisfaction – 89% of these middle-class people say they are “completely” or “mostly” satisfied with their jobs.

How do you rate your present quality of life?

The report is full of other interesting data, and it’s worth a look.