Pleasure - Danger or Distinction?

July 7, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

This 1960s poster (“L’Art de Boire” by Martin) in a neighborhood French restaurant reminded me again of the different ways of thinking about pleasure. 

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

In puritanical cultures, pleasure is a temptation to be resisted. In both the religious version, where pleasure leads to sin, and the secular version, pleasure is dangerous because it means excess and a loss of control. What is sin, after all, but too much of a good thing? The puritan approach to pleasure assumes that even one taste can crack the rigid structure of control.  If you don’t have total control, you have total lack of control. 

The hard-boiled detective story provides a classic example.  Any sex in these stories is always dangerous, usually with temptress trying to seduce the private eye away from his pursuit of justice, or worse, luring him into the hands of the bad guys, who beat him up, threaten him, or try to kill him.  Alcohol too sabotages the hero’s self-control, and he often winds up drinking too much since he’s drinking for all the wrong reasons. 

American comedies, too, may revolve around a similar theme of pleasure as an occasion for guilt and repentance (my earlier post on guilty pleasures in Judd Apatow films is here).  These films are not too far from the lite beer commercials, where pretty girls and alcohol, like the temptations of Circe, turn men into oafish creatures of swine-like mentality.*  The main difference from the noir take on this is that the audience is supposed to view this loss of control with good-natured affection.

The French, as illustrated in the poster, have a different message about pleasure. It is to be sought, not avoided. But it is not something you get just by letting your guard down or jettisoning your inhibitions. You must learn pleasure. You don’t just drink. You mindfully follow a sequence of steps – sniff the cork, note the color, inhale the aroma, taste the wine – each designed to maximize pleasure from the senses. Drinking is not an abandonment to desire, it is an art. The goal is not satiation but, as the last frame of the poster says, appreciation.

Of course, that idea of pleasure goes against the egalitarian American grain, for it implies that some pleasures are of a higher order than others, requiring greater sophistication, discernment, and distinction. 

The 1987 movie “Babette’s Feast,” set in a Danish coastal town in the 1870s,  is entirely about the contrast of these two views of pleasure. Babette, fleeing the bloody aftermath of the Paris Commune, arrives in town and finds work as a housekeeper for two elderly sisters who are members of an austere Christian sect.

The dinner of the title is the film’s climax – a sensuous multi-course meal of the finest French dishes and wines that Babette prepares for the dour sisters and others.

Hesitantly and with suspicion, they eat and drink and finally come to experience what they had been so leery of and had deliberately lived without. Nor, as the sherry and champagne and burgundy and brandy are drunk, do they fall into drunkenness or debauchery, just pleasure. 

The entire film is available on YouTube.  It’s worth watching.

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* In a TV show of some years ago, perhaps on “My So-Called Life,” a high school class is discussing the Circe episode in The Odyssey.  “Turning men into pigs,” says one girl dismissively, “Some magic.”

Mom (Hold the Apple Pie)

July 2, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

As we come up on the Fourth of July, it’s time to reflect on Mom and Apple Pie.  We love them both, we Americans.  The apple pie part is easy, as easy as  . . . well, never mind.  But motherhood involves two political and economic elements – child birth and child care – that seem to give us more trouble.

Conservatives in the US still insist that in all nearly matters, private enterprise is far superior to a “government takeover.” They also believe, as do most Americans, that we are unsurpassed in our love of family and children. 

It’s hard to maintain these beliefs when we compare ourselves with other wealthy countries.  They may not eat as much apple pie.  But on measures like maternity (and paternity) leave, day care, and early education, and the general well-being of the kids, they eat our lunch. 

Compared to the scope of and level of support offered by family policies of France, Germany and Italy, the US appears to have a low level of political commitment to the well-being of families, lacking even the guarantee of unpaid leave to all workers.  (Source here.)

In these family matters, we mostly leave things up to individuals and the private sector. If your employer wants to give you paid or even unpaid maternity leave, you’re in luck.  If not, too bad.  If you want child care, find it and pay for it.  Government support comes in the form of income tax breaks, which are of little use to people with low incomes. 

As for the medical side of having children, the US is number one, at least when it comes to costs.  According to the story in Monday’s New York Times, pregnant middle-class moms are in for sticker shock, though it’s not always easy to find the sticker.

When she became pregnant, Ms. Martin called her local hospital inquiring about the price of maternity care; the finance office at first said it did not know, and then gave her a range of $4,000 to $45,000. “It was unreal,” Ms. Martin said. “I was like, How could you not know this? You’re a hospital.”

The average out-of-pocket cost for women with insurance is $3,400, far higher than in other wealthy countries.  And that’s for women lucky enough to have coverage.  Many non employer health plans (62%) do not cover maternity. 

Nor are we are not getting more for our money.

And though maternity care costs far less in other developed countries than it does in the United States, studies show that their citizens do not have less access to care or to high-tech care during pregnancy than Americans.

From 2004 to 2010, the prices that insurers paid for childbirth — one of the most universal medical encounters — rose 49 percent for vaginal births and 41 percent for Caesarean sections in the United States, with average out-of-pocket costs rising fourfold.           

Two decades ago, women typically paid nothing other than a small fee if they opted for a private hospital room or television.

This is hardly ringing support for the idea that the private sector drives down costs and brings us better service at lower prices.  Maybe that’s because the private sector runs on the profit motive; the more stuff you sell, the greater the profit.

“I feel like I’m in a used-car lot,” said Ms. Martin.
 She fought for a deep discount on a $935 bill for an ultrasound, arguing that she had already paid a radiologist $256 to read the scan, which took only 20 minutes of a technician’s time using a machine that had been bought years ago. She ended up paying $655.

The online Times asked readers to contribute their own stories of childbirth in foreign lands.  Here are three shorter ones:

• I'm an American living in Canada. Total paid for each pregnancy, (one caesarean, one vaginal birth): $15. For parking at the hospital.
• One expense, Royal Hospital for Women, Paddington, New South Wales, 1985: $5 for a phone in my room.
• I gave birth in Germany where I had a voluntary C-section (which is free for women over 35). I stayed in the hospital 3 days following the birth. I had to pay 10Euro a day for each day in the hospital. Total bill for the birth 30Euro (approx. 50$) Also all prenatal tests were free of charge.

 Obamacare is hardly a government takeover – compromise with conservatives killed the modest “public option” – but some aspects of it may help decelerate of even lower the cost of giving birth.

The Effect of Voter ID Laws – Evidence for the Obvious

July 1, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

Immediately following the Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, some states rushed to enact voter ID laws. The states had previously been unable to get pre-clearance for these laws because of their likely disproportionate suppression of racial-ethnic minority voting. 

A comment on the previous post questioned that conclusion and asked if there were evidence.  Admittedly, this is a little like asking for evidence on the sylvan location of ursine defecation or the religious preference of the bishop of Rome. 

But yes, there is evidence.  A couple of years ago Gabriel R. Sanchez, Stephen A. Nuño, and Matt A. Barreto surveyed registered and likely voters in the great state of Texas.  Their findings showed that the more stringent the requirements for valid ID, the greater the disparity between Blacks and Whites.  Those requirements include these criteria

• Up to date
• Matching Name – the name must exactly match the voter registration (too bad if you got married and changed your name on one but not the other)
• Matching Address – the address must match exactly the voter registration

Their graph shows clearly what most people would have expected.

As the authors concluded a year before the recent decision:

a sizable segment of Latino, Asian, and African American voters will need to overcome additional hurdles if the courts uphold the Texas photo-ID law. For example, those lacking the required identification may need to purchase a copy of their birth certificate to obtain a valid state issued identification card. Furthermore, the time costs required to go to a state department to obtain a state issued ID, or a driver’s license office for a new driver’s license.

As I said in that previous post, a gap of even three percentage points can swing a close election.  The 13-point gap between Blacks and Whites can have much greater consequences.

Sanchez’s blog post with more information and links to the original research is here.

Free At Last – To Do What?

June 28, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

I haven’t read most of the reactions to Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court decision that eviscerates the Voting Rights Act.  But I would guess that for pure offensiveness, adding insult to injury, it would be hard to top the WSJ op-ed by Abigail Thernstrom.

What Shelby was all about was the ability of Republican-controlled states to ensure Republican dominance by making it harder for poor and minority citizens, who lean to the Democratic party, to vote.*  In case that wasn’t clear, immediately following the decision, six states reintroduced voter restrictions that VRA pre-clearance had previously not allowed.  Texas moved ahead with redistricting designed to reduce the number of minority and Democratic districts. 

Democrats and especially Black politicians and commentators were dismayed by the Court’s decision. But Thernstrom assures them that the ruling “will benefit black America.”  Here’s how. In a state with sharp racial divisions, the only way a Black politician can get elected is to have a district where Blacks are in the majority.  If a state divides those Black voters up among two or three other districts, they will be minority in all districts and thus have no office holders. 

But such dilution of voting strength is a good thing, says Thernstrom

The black candidates who ran in such enclaves [i.e., Black-majority districts] never acquired the skills to venture into the world of competitive politics in majority-white settings . . . . In this sense, the law [that prevented that dilution] became a brake on minority political aspirations.”**

Like Chief Justice Roberts and Steven Colbert, Thernstrom doesn’t see race.  We are in the era of post-racial politics.  Poll taxes and literacy tests – that’s all history.  Even the impulses that gave rise to them have long since disappeared.  “Times have changed,” says Thernstrom, “and whites now vote for black candidates at every level of government.”  That’s right.  In Alabama, Obama did get the votes of some White people.  Unfortunately, neither of them would speak on the record.  (I exaggerate.  There were more than two.  In fact, a whopping 16% of Whites in Alabama voted for Obama, which is more than in Mississippi, 11%.) **

The message of Thernstrom’s piece is patronizing in the extreme.  Basically, she is saying, “Oh you ignorant Black people. You don’t know what’s good for you. The five Republicans on the Supreme Court (four White men plus the unfailingly loyal Justice Thomas) do know what’s good for you.  That’s why they’re giving the White Republicans in the South free rein to rewrite their voting laws.  You’ll be so much better off now. Trust me.”

As if that weren’t enough, she says that the decision to make the VRA nearly unenforceable “is a celebration of the Voting Rights Act.” 

And the crowning insult: 

With the court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the “covered” jurisdictions (mostly in the South) are free at last to exercise their constitutional prerogative to regulate their own elections.

That “free at last” bit surely was no accident.  Does anyone really wonder what the Republicans in Alabamac Georgia, etc. will do their with new-found freedom, or what effect that prerogative will have on minority representation?  And does anyone really wonder which side of Shelby would have had the support of Rev. King?

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* They legislators never come right out and say this.  Well, hardly ever.  There was that GOP leader in Pennsylvania, who crowed about “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state.”
   
**I wonder how Thernstrom and the SCOTUS majority would react if the colors were reversed – if Whites were a minority, and Blacks were making the voting laws.

*** I do not have data on Whites voting for Black candidates in state and local elections in Alabama and the other states designated by the VRA.  Thernstrom, needless to say, does not provide any data.