In my beginning writing classes, the one idea I spend the most time on is something that’s often called the thesis statement. It isn’t enough that a college essay—or any essay, or any piece of writing, or film, or play, for that matter—have a topic. It has to have a specific thesis within that topic. The thesis statement is like chess or go—it takes a few minutes to learn, and a lifetime to master.

It doesn’t have to be long or complicated, but it does have to be a specific assertion. “My summer vacation” is a topic. “My trip to Disneyworld last summer was the best vacation of my life” is a thesis. (“My summer vacation, the first my husband and I took in our twelve-year marriage, saved our relationship” is an even better one, but we don’t always have as much drama in our lives as a writing class would like!) One sign of a bad thesis, or no thesis, is boredom in the face of crisp prose and strong action—when readers don’t know where the story is going, it’s impossible to keep their interest.

Once you have a thesis, you know just what to write—what to include, and, equally importantly, what to exclude. Unfortunately, a thesis doesn’t always come to us tightly wound, whole, and perfect, like a new ball of soft colorful yarn. And so sometimes we start in, thinking we’re writing about one thing, and it turns out we’re really writing about another. I once heard the writer Liz Braverman say, writing is a product of the struggle “between the words in your head and the words that come off the page.” The path to a thesis sometimes looks like the ball of yarn after the cats have played with it all afternoon.

I tell my students that often you don’t know what an essay is about until the first draft is done. When you read the draft over, think about what the thesis of the actual essay—the essay as it exists on the page—is. Then reread the essay with an eye to what comports with the new thesis and what does not. Every section, every paragraph—and eventually, after the final polishing, every sentence and every word—ought to advance the thesis in some way, so add and subtract accordingly.

Which brings us to Throw Down Your Heart, a documentary film about a trip the musician Béla Fleck made to Africa. It opens today, but I saw it back in November at the American Museum of Natural History’s 2008 Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival.

First, let me say that it was a wonderful evening and a wonderful show to watch. And the film is destined to be popular, and well-liked by anyone who likes Fleck’s kind of music, or just the wonderful sounds that can result when one culture’s symbols are made to clash with another’s. The movie gets an astonishing 8.1 out of 10 on IMDb, though only 15 people have voted, and I notice it won an audience award last month at SXSW, among others listed on the film’s website.

How could one not love a film named for a story that when men from Africa’s interior were brought to a certain coastal port in Tanzania, from which they would be shipped overseas, never to see their families again, they were advised to “throw down their hearts.”

That said, Throw Down Your Heart fails as a film. It fails for the same reason many of my students’ essays fail—the failure to rethink and rewrite the work, after the true thesis emerges from the first draft.

The film’s original idea was apparently to take the instrument Fleck is most closely associated with, the banjo, back to Africa. It was described that way in the promotional material that drew me to the AMNH. It’s described that way in the IMDb blurb: “A film crew follows the well-known banjo player Béla Fleck on his travels to Africa, where he learns about the instrument’s origins.” This thesis is still expressed in the movie’s trailer: “Where the banjo has come from” “A lot of people associate it with white southern music,” “There’s an instrument [in Africa] that may be the original banjo,” etc., and it’s expressed in the first few minutes of the film.

And indeed, throughout, the movie contains vestiges of that thesis, including the intinerary that forms the backbone of the narrative, taking Fleck and the crew through four candidate countries for the origins of the banjo (Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Mali).

In looking for the precursors to today’s banjo, some of which are instruments that are still played in Africa, Fleck encountered extraordinary musicians, some famous, some known only within a single village but of world-class caliber. It was, perhaps, inevitable, that the movie would devolve into a celebration of those musicians, and Fleck’s interactions with them, including a couple of terrific duets and other performances in which Fleck not only plays the banjo with them, but some of the precursor instruments as well. And that’s fine. But that’s a very different movie.

Worse still, there was a third thesis available to director Sascha Paladino, hinted at in the movie, and it is in fact the movie he should have made. The AMNH viewing ended with a Q & A with some of the film’s crew. In the course of describing how hard Fleck worked, we were told that he stayed up far into the night trying to learn new forms of music and getting the hang of those African instruments. Fleck didn’t allow those late-night moments to be shown.

It’s understandable that an eight-time Grammy winner wouldn’t want to be seen making bad music late at night with unfamiliar instruments he had only just been given. But the story of one of the world’s great musicians struggling to master new instruments and new musical forms would have turned a enjoyable music travelogue into an unforgettable musical odyssey.

The New York Post put up a short review of the movie yesterday that unwittingly gets it exactly right. “The movie is at least 20 minutes too long,” the Post wrote—an extraordinary thing for a review of a 97-minute musical film in which the music is called “infectious.” (Karina Longworth, in a generally very favorable review at Spout.com, agreed, calling it “somewhat overlong.”) Boredom is the inevitable consequence of a defective thesis.

The anonymous NY Post reviewer also wrote, “Fleck fails to provide any personal charisma.” Exactly. By withholding Fleck’s failings, the movie withholds its central character. Béla, if only you had thrown down your heart.

The late comedian Richard Jeni had two jokes I always wanted to see come together.

1. On going to war over religion: You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend.

2. The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you’ve got millions of pals out there. Type in, ‘Find people that have sex with goats that are on fire,’ and the computer will say, ‘Specify type of goat.’

Nowadays, the two jokes have hooked up, at the Kinky Sedar, the fourth annual one of which will be this Sunday. According to an excellent article in the Jewish Forward,

When about 100 Jews gather in Brooklyn on April 5 for a pre-Passover Seder, they will pay homage to their enslaved ancestors not with the traditional sinus-clearing horseradish, but by spanking each other with wands of chocolate licorice.

They will recount the story of Passover with a liberal dose of double entendre; they will break from the Haggadah reading to play a grown-up version of show-and-tell, in which guests showcase their “most-treasured kinky item” — be it a restraint, a whip or a pair of spiked heels; and they will sing a sex-positive version of “Dayenu,” with lyrics like, “If she only dressed in leather/Bright and shiny patent leather/If she only dressed in leather/Dayenu.”

There won’t be any goats of course. That’s prohibited by Jewish law—in fact, sex with animals seems to be one of only a few sexual practices prohibited by the Torah. (In his excellent book, Superstition, Robert Park notes that “If the universe was designed for life, it must be said that it is a shockingly inefficient design.” Along the same lines, if the Bible was designed to offer guidance about sexual practices, it’s a shockingly inefficient design.)

In any event, there won’t be any sex at all at the sedar:

Kinky Seder guests, who are encouraged to dress in “fetish attire” — no jeans, no sneakers, please — are likely to be disappointed if they’re expecting an orgy to break out at the Seder. While KinkyJews-sponsored events occasionally involve on-site sexual experimentation, the vast majority do not, members say.

And yet, somehow, the sedar manages to offend almost everyone. It’s even condemned by what must be the leading exponent of Jewish sexuality, a rabbi whose own book, The Kosher Sutra, has surely offended many of his fellow chosen people.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the author of “The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life” (HarperOne), said the notion of a kink-themed Seder is disrespectful to both the sanctity of marital relations and to the Passover holiday.

“Can you imagine the outrage if a group of people decided to commemorate African-American slavery by having an orgy?” Boteach asked. “This wasn’t a joke. Millions of God’s children were sold on the block, and here you are trivializing evil with this vulgar celebration.”

(By the way, rabbi, nice exaggeration on the “millions of God’s children.” There were all of 600,000 Jews in slavery in the first place, or at least, that’s how many were in the Exodus. There were probably only a few million people in all of Egypt, and of course most of them were godless, in your view.)

Anyway, the important thing is that the good rabbi is all for sex. In an article last January in the Jerusalem Post, he wrote:

Judaism, alone among the religions of the world, deeply endorses the passionate sexual interaction between man and woman.

The “alone among religions” is probably an exaggeration as well, but it’s more than atoned for by his wonderful double-entendre, the joy of which is dimmed only be the likelihood that it was unintentional.

Jewish, and in general, religious positions (pun intended, or at least retained intentionally—hey, they’re hard to avoid when writing about sex), seem be all over the place.

In fact, religiously-justified assertions about sex seem to match the very definition of a continuum—for any two ideas about what’s right and wrong, or allowed and forbidden, there’s a third idea held by someone, that falls somewhere in between.

People seem to just make up what they think the rules are. Tthat seems to be true of religious law in general, but all the more so when it comes to sex. (I know people who are strictly kosher at home, with the four sets of plates and everything, but will eat anything in a restaurant. Similarly, consider evangelical Christian willingness to lie in bed with Dick Cheney, despite his support for his lesbian daughter, when lesbianism is one of the few sexual practices that the Bible might unequivocally condemn.)

We have a name for specify-type-of-goat people: libertine. And we have a name for people like Rabbi Boteach: hypocrite.

NewYork Times
September 6, 2008

STEEP JOB LOSSES
 ADD TO PRESSURE
   FOR U.S. STIMULUS
   
     533,000 ARE CUT

….
The nation’s employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

No, actually, that’s not what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Here’s what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Employment Situation Summary

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: NOVEMBER 2008

Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply (-533,000) in November, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. November’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 403,000 in September and 320,000 in October, as revised. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors in November.

If the NY Times headline were correct, not a single person was hired in November, and 533,000 were cut from their jobs. Of course, that’s not what happened. Some unknown number, N, of people were hired, and N+533,000 people lost their jobs. The article was written by Louis Uchitelle, one of the smartest financial reporters the Times has. One can only imagine that an editor without a whit of financial acumen or common sense edited the article into nonsensicality.

By the way, the headline in the online edition was rather different and far more factual (”U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974″) but the quoted paragraph remained unchanged.

Needless to say, the details of the BLS report were grim. Employment in auto dealerships alone dropped by 24,000. In the long run, that’s good – the existing dealership programs suck a lot of profit out of making cars that could be going to the car companies themselves. The car companies have been trying to change the dealership deal for decades, but are prevented by state laws, the kinds of laws that Republicans rail against but continue to vote for because the dealerships are great lobbyists and campaign contributors.

Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 533,000 in November, bringing losses to 1. 9 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.
Two-thirds of these losses occurred in the last 3 months.

The Times pointed out that even if Obama’s stimulus package should increase employment by its promised 2.5 million, that would barely break us even for the past year. And some big shoes have yet to drop. The auto companies have promised to shed more workers (indeed, they’re likely to be obligated to do so by the terms of the bailouts they’re getting), and “employment in financial activities” declined by only 32,000. We’re expecting more than that here in New York City alone.

In addition to the increase in the official jobless rate, from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the economic pain includes the underemployed, and discouraged workers.

Over the month, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) continued to increase, reaching 7.3 million. The number of such workers rose by 2.8 million over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.

Persons Not in the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)

About 1.9 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in November, 584,000 more than 12 months earlier. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 608,000 discouraged workers in November, up by 259,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work specifically because they believe no jobs are available for them. The other 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in November had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.

The Times, for some reason, didn’t report these additional stats, though the official unemployment number is such a limited statistic I don’t see how you can understand the job situation without them. Then again, I don’t see how you can report a net job loss as so many jobs “cut.”

There’s a lot of debate about whether to throw money at the big-three Detroit automakers or just let them go down the drain. I think we can do neither, and still solve two problems at once.

Suppose instead of giving the automakers bailout money or loans, or buying bonds from them, we took on their health benefits obligations. This would dramatically lower their per-car cost of production, going a long way toward making them competitive in U.S. markets and plenty of overseas ones.

As it happens, Obama proposed legislation that would do that back in April 2007.

The Health Care for Hybrids Act would address the unique challenges of the U.S. auto industry and reduce our country’s dependence on foreign oil at the same time. This bill would set up a voluntary program in which domestic automakers could choose to receive federal financial assistance to cover 10% of their annual legacy health care costs through 2017. The companies that participate in the program would be required to invest at least 50% of their health care savings into manufacturing fuel efficient cars, such as hybrids and advanced diesel vehicles in the United States, or helping domestic parts suppliers retool their manufacturing plants to produce advanced parts.

To me, that seems like an enormous step in mostly the right direction, though awfully convoluted. If we want to decrease gas consumption and increase fuel efficiency, we already have laws to do that. We already have the CAFE standard, just increase the number. (Step #0: include SUVs.)

As for supporting hybrids, respectfully, I ask, why? I mean, they’re a great set of technologies right now, and maybe the way to go, but why have the government pick the winning technology in advance? This seems like a great area for letting the market decide. The only real example we have of the government picking an alternative energy has been ethanol, a politically-driven disaster of a choice. (And frankly, the U.S. automakers are years behind with their hybrids. We should pray they come up with something better.)

The car companies claim that each and every car “contains $1,500 in health costs that their Japanese competitors don’t face,” according to the libertarians at the Reason Foundation. Another way of looking at it – and the numbers here derive from some at the Labor Research Association, a labor advocacy organization – is that health-care amounts to about 8-9% of the wages+benefits that autoworkers get. So taking on health care would be the same as letting Detroit slash autoworker salaries by that amount, without having to make the slightest dent in autoworker paychecks.

As I say, Obama’s 2007 legislation seems overly complicated. Why don’t we simply put them into the Government Employees Health Association, the same health insurance that millions of federal workers, including Congress itself, has?

It would cost the government something like $6 billion a year, which is in the range of the lump-sum $25-50 billion being contemplated for a bailout (with a smaller up-front cost). Most importantly, it would offer Detroit real relief, helping them compete in the marketplace, while not impeding the forces of market destruction and renewal that ought to be operating here. In other words, if the car companies still fail, so be it. And one thing we won’t have to worry about is a million autoworkers suddenly losing their health benefits.

Finally, it would use the current crisis to jumpstart a process that needs to take place anyway – getting all Americans covered by some form of health care. The problem with Obama’s campaign proposals for health care is the same as the problem with his Health Care for Hybrids Act. Each makes too many concessions to the status quo – they’re not radical enough.

The Health Care for Hybrids Act locks us into hybrid technologies. Similarly, Obama’s health care proposals just lock us further into the absurd system of making employers responsible for health care. Doing so universalizes the very problem that the automakers have – adding the cost of health care to a business’s costs of production, when its foreign competitors don’t have comparable production costs.

Ironically, this problem started in Detroit, so it would be sweet irony to solve it there. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote a couple of years ago in The New Yorker (The Risk Pool), back in 1950, the president of General Motors, Charles E. Wilson,

“was in contract talks with Walter Reuther, the national president of the U.A.W. The two men had already agreed on a cost-of-living allowance. Now Wilson went one step further, and, for the first time, offered every G.M. employee health-care benefits and a pension.

Reuther had his doubts. He lived in a northwest Detroit bungalow, and drove a 1940 Chevrolet. His salary was ten thousand dollars a year. He was the son of a Debsian Socialist, worked for the Socialist Party during his college days, and went to the Soviet Union in the nineteen-thirties to teach peasants how to be auto machinists. His inclination was to fight for changes that benefited every worker, not just those lucky enough to be employed by General Motors. In the nineteen-thirties, unions had launched a number of health-care plans, many of which cut across individual company and industry lines. In the nineteen-forties, they argued for expanding Social Security. In 1945, when President Truman first proposed national health insurance, they cheered. In 1947, when Ford offered its workers a pension, the union voted it down. The labor movement believed that the safest and most efficient way to provide insurance against ill health or old age was to spread the costs and risks of benefits over the biggest and most diverse group possible. Walter Reuther, as Nelson Lichtenstein argues in his definitive biography, believed that risk ought to be broadly collectivized. Charlie Wilson, on the other hand, felt … that collectivization was a threat to the free market and to the autonomy of business owners. In his view, companies themselves ought to assume the risks of providing insurance.

Pension systems throughout the U.S. are in bad shape as well. Back in 2006, Gladwell noted

America’s private pension system is now in crisis. Over the past few years, American taxpayers have been put at risk of assuming tens of billions of dollars of pension liabilities from once profitable companies. Hundreds of thousands of retired steelworkers and airline employees have seen health-care benefits that were promised to them by their employers vanish. General Motors, the country’s largest automaker, is between forty and fifty billion dollars behind in the money it needs to fulfill its health-care and pension promises.

If GM’s health and pension obligations were at least mostly funded two years ago, we can only imagine how they’re doing in a stock market that’s lost nearly half its value since then.

This crisis is sometimes portrayed as the result of corporate America’s excessive generosity in making promises to its workers. But when it comes to retirement, health, disability, and unemployment benefits there is nothing exceptional about the United States: it is average among industrialized countries—more generous than Australia, Canada, Ireland, and Italy, just behind Finland and the United Kingdom, and on a par with the Netherlands and Denmark. The difference is that in most countries the government, or large groups of companies, provides pensions and health insurance. The United States, by contrast, has over the past fifty years followed the lead of Charlie Wilson … and made individual companies responsible for the care of their retirees. It is this fact, as much as any other, that explains the current crisis. In 1950, Charlie Wilson was wrong, and Walter Reuther was right.

We could kill another two birds with one stone by fixing and expanding Social Security and folding in all these failing – and soon to be failing – pension plans and 401Ks. But let’s take on only one pair of crises at a time.

I came across an interesting description recently. Does it sound like our soon-to-be-ex president?

* Glibness and Superficial Charm

* Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

* Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”

* Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

* Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

* Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

* Incapacity for Love

* Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.

* Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

* Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.

* Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet “gets by” by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.

* Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

* Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.

* Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

* Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

It’s from a page called Profile of the Sociopath.

A consumer-led recession is upon us, and it
promises to be a serious one.
  — Josh Shapiro, chief economist at MFR,
   a global consulting firm

I’ve been listening to Planet Money, NPR’s daily podcast follow-up to their two wildly, and deservedly successful This American Life episodes devoted to the world financial meltdown. (If you’re one of the three people on earth who missed them, they’re The Giant Pool of Money and “Another Frightening Show About the Economy”.)

There’s a weird thing going on at Planet Money, where they call in expert economists, analysts, and investment gurus to explain what’s going on. To a person, they say, “buy more stuff.” The NPR staffers themselves also continually exhort us to buy more stuff.

If people stop buying, the economy will crash, jobs will be lost, and people won’t have the money to buy anything. So the creepy idea, which they acknowledge, is that the common good dictates we all engage in a behavior that, everyone seems to understand, is individually risky and arguably incredibly stupid, which is to stop saving money for a rainy day when you can already see the lighning and hear the thunder.

That people have stopped spending is undeniable.

The economy as a whole is already off by 0.3% in the last quarter, led by a killer 3.1% decline in consumer spending. Bloomberg reports that that’s “the first drop since 1991 and the biggest since 1980, after President Jimmy Carter imposed credit controls.”

Online spending is also sharply down, according to Comscore. On a monthly basis, online consumer spending growth has declined for five consecutive months. September’s 5 percent growth rate was the smallest increase since comScore starting tracking e-commerce sales in 2001.

And the reasons people have stopped spending seem pretty obvious. People are terrified they will lose their jobs, or their spouses will lose their jobs, or their aging parents will lose their jobs, or their kids just entering the workforce will have to move back home because they lost their jobs or never got one in the first place. A story yesterday asks, quite plausibly, Will US Unemployment Hit 10%? The most recent figure is 6.1% and, as the article notes, will certainly have risen to about 6.3% when the October numbers come out. And that’s taking the government’s bogus numbers at face value. A government-certified 10% would of course be as much as twice that in real life.

The obvious next question, which people haven’t yet really started to ask, is, If people are not spending money in general, what about the Christmas shopping season? If holiday spending falls off a cliff, might that not be enough to push us from recession to depression (if we’re not already headed there anyway)?

An article in today’s NY Times notes, almost parenthetically, that a bunch of big retailers are already in bankruptcy, including Mervyn’s and Linens ’n Things. The focus of the article, Debt Linked to Buyouts Tightens the Economic Vise is that

Private equity firms embarked on one of the biggest spending sprees in corporate history for nearly three years, using borrowed money to gobble up huge swaths of industries and some of the biggest names — Neiman Marcus, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Toys “R” Us.

The new owners then saddled the companies with the billions of dollars of debt used to buy them. But now many of the loans and bonds sold to finance the deals are about to come due at the worst possible time.

That comes in the face of news that Circuit City plans to close 155 of its 700 stores, which broke later today, and some truly grim auto sales figures, led by GM’s “incredible 45 percent decline in its sales.” Even Toyota and Honda were off by about 25%.

Of course, GM’s financing arm, GMAC, is owned by private equity, so there’s a double-whammy all its own. Speaking of which, private equity firm Apollo Management, which owns Linen’s ‘n Things, also owns Century 21, which surely would be in trouble anyway with the real estate market in a deep freeze.

You can just imagine what effect that news will have onconsumer sentiment which is already badly shaken.

The Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumers sentiment dropped from 70.3 in September to 57.6 in October. The measure, in which the larger the number. the greater the confidence, averaged 85.6 last year.

In a further dose of gloomy economic news, the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago reported that its index — a gauge of employment and demand — fell from 56.7 in September to 37.8 in October.

The stories in the news right now are about stores preparing to woo customers for the holidays.

Stores work to attract holiday shoppers

Shoppers To Spend 1.9% More This Holiday, Compare Prices on Internet

U.S. Retailers Use More Creative Techniques In Attracting Holiday Bargainer Hunters (buried within this one is this little tidbit: “Home Depot and Sears Holdings expect an 8 percent reduction in their holiday sales this year.”)

Office Depot and Chase to Help Shoppers Boost Their Spending Power This Holiday Season with the Worklife Rewards Visa Card

But with consumer confidence already at an all-time low and surely headed lower, can’t we just cut to the chase and picture businesses going out of business left and right this winter?

Because the fact is, Christmas spending is about more than just gifts, people buy stuff for themselves, not least because end-of-year bonus checks go both ways. As Paul Krugman pointed out the other day, buried within the steep 3.1% decline in consumer spending is a plummet in spending on big-ticket items: “real spending on durable goods (stuff like cars and TVs) fell at an annual rate of 14 percent.”

To appreciate the significance of these numbers, you need to know that American consumers almost never cut spending. Consumer demand kept rising right through the 2001 recession; the last time it fell even for a single quarter was in 1991, and there hasn’t been a decline this steep since 1980, when the economy was suffering from a severe recession combined with double-digit inflation.

Also, these numbers are from the third quarter — the months of July, August, and September. So these data are basically telling us what happened before confidence collapsed after the fall of Lehman Brothers in mid-September, not to mention before the Dow plunged below 10,000. Nor do the data show the full effects of the sharp cutback in the availability of consumer credit, which is still under way.

So this looks like the beginning of a very big change in consumer behavior. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Is anyone in the media capable of reporting a story that has numbers in it?

Study: Media coverage has favored Obama campaign

John McCain supporters who believe they haven’t gotten a fair shake from the media during the Republican’s candidacy against Barack Obama have a new study to point to.

Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

ABC’s “World News” had more balance than NBC’s “Nightly News” or the “CBS Evening News,” the group said.

Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns. The center didn’t evaluate programs on CNN or MSNBC.

Let’s look at the numbers.

The center analyzed 979 separate news stories shown between Aug. 23 and Oct. 24, and excluded evaluations based on the campaign horse race, including mention of how the candidates were doing in polls. For instance, when a voter was interviewed on CBS Oct. 14 saying he thought Obama brought a freshness to Washington, that was chalked up as a pro-Obama comment.

When NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported Oct. 1 that some conservatives say that Sarah Palin is not ready for prime-time, that’s marked in the negative column for McCain.

ABC recorded 57 percent favorable comments toward the Democrats, and 42 percent positive for the Republicans. NBC had 56 percent positive for the Democrats, 16 percent for the Republicans. CBS had 73 percent positive (Obama), versus 31 percent (McCain).

Hume’s telecast had 39 percent favorable comments for McCain and 28 percent positive for the Democratic ticket.

So by this account, Hume is objective, while ABC, though better than the other networks, is partisan. Yet by the very numbers being reported, the tilt on Hume’s show is 1.39:1, while, that of ABC is 1.36:1.

But the study doesn’t even say that the media reporting is biased, just that Obama-Biden has come off better. That’s surely true, and should come as no surprise.

If the Obama campaign had lots of good things happen, such as good poll results, or major endorsements (eg, Colin Powell’s), and the press reports it, those are going to count as favorable mentions. And if bad things happen to the McCain campaign, they’re going to lead to reports that get counted as unfavorable. But that’s just reporting on what happens.

The “nonpartisan” Center for Media and Public Affairs is affiliated with the strongly conservative George Mason University, by the way.

At a lunchtime discussion of the impending election, I mentioned that while of course I was excited by the prospect of a Democratic administration, and thrilled by the idea of a black president, I didn’t have much enthusiasm for the candidate himself. I’ll try to write more about that this weekend.

I’m also concerned by the prospect of the Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress. (Wow, as he dizzily floats through a sea of red herrings, McCain stumbled into a real issue.) What are they going to do about the military budget, for example?

A special report in the new issue of my magazine, “What’s Wrong With Weapons Acquisitions?”, by Bob Charette, couldn’t present the scary question of military procurement more starkly.

The report’s thesis is that while the acquisitions process has been troubled for decades, it is now reaching a crisis point. The amount of money being wasted is staggering: the Pentagon spends $21 million every hour to develop and procure new weapons. The U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2009 is $488 billion, the largest in real terms since World War II and 6% higher than this year’s. And that doesn’t cover combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are presented separately in the federal budge.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the vast majority of major acquisition programs in the pipeline are either enormously over-budget or well behind schedule — or both. Even if we weren’t in the middle of a global economic meltdown, throwing away many billions of taxpayers’ dollars would be unacceptable, stupid, and now, completely unsustainable.

As the report notes, with a new administration coming to office in January, we may finally have the chance to make much-needed changes. “Reform will have to come,” Charette writes. “Each day that the acquisition process continues to operate ineffectively and inefficiently is another day that the troops are not getting what they need, the country is less secure, and much-needed programs, both civilian and military, don’t get funded.”

Bob Charette spent two years putting this report together. He interviewed dozens of current and former acquisitions experts at the Pentagon as well as defense analysts, historians, and academics. He read scores of books, hundreds of reports, and countless newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. His extensive research and depth of understanding really show in his writing. Bob’s report is comprehensive, compelling, and a good read.

The question is, will the new Obama administration read it? And will they act on it? We’ve seen the Democrats in Congress feast off the fat underbelly of the budgetary hog with the same gusto as the Republicans. They all have military contractors in their districts, other companies whose projects can be funded through the trading of porkbarrel chits, and hungry reelection mouths to feed.

We’ve already been given a taste of Obama the Realist, whose not-nearly-universal medical care proposal doesn’t redesign the healthcare system but rather shores up a few of its most obvious weaknesses. One is reminded of the Army Corps of Engineers doing touch-up work on the New Orleans levee system in the early 2000s. If Obama can’t really take on Aetna and Cigna, how will he he fare against the combined forces of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Halliburton, BAE, SAIC, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the entire VFW?

We’ve seen, for better and for worse, presidents pulled across the political divide, their very weaknesses turning into strengths, their strengths needing to be shored up as if they were weaknesses. A Texan integrated the South, red-baiter Nixon went to China, Carter sent out helicopters on fool’s errands in Iran, Clinton yielded to the DMCA. And it was a five-star general who warned us about the military-industrial complex. Can Obama, already afraid to appear weak on defense, be strong on the question of procurement? The need, as Charette eloquently shows, is dire.

THE BRANDING
OF A RESTAURANT
POWERHOUSE

When Triarc Companies Inc., the parent company of sandwich chain Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc. acquired Wendy’s International, the move created the third largest fast-food company. The company was renamed as Wendy’s/Arby’s Group and required a new brand identity to embody the innovative spirit of both restaurant brands. The new brand identity also needed to illustrate the collective strength of the organization to its employees, franchisees and shareholders.

Wendy’s and Arby’s merged?

KCSA Strategic Communications worked closely with Wendy’s/Arby’s Group management to define the shared, core brand values of both Wendy’s and Arby’s, and articulate the company’s unique value proposition and intangible qualities that surround the Wendy’s/Arby’s name.

“Value proposition” – heh.

“Intangible qualities” – heh-heh.

“Each company’s brand is a valuable strategic asset,” said Joshua Altman, Managing Director at KCSA. “The challenge in this type of situation is to develop a symbolic, clear new brand language that creates new meaning to audiences without losing the tradition, legacy, and the already important values established by the previously separate entities.”

Tradition? Legacy? This is fast food we’re talking about, right?

The Wendy’s/Arby’s Group brand identity references identifiable visual characteristics from both Wendy’s and Arby’s, structured as a form reflective of the “W” and “A” in Wendy’s/Arby’s Group. The icon and the tagline, “Serving Fresh Ideas Daily”, support Wendy’s/Arby’s Group’s commitment to innovation and high level of quality.

Wendy’s has a new logo?

“The Wendy’s/Arby’s Group brand identity is designed not only as an acronym, but as a spiral continuum, maintaining the idea of continuous, flexible movement forward,” said Margaret Wiatrowski, Creative Director at KCSA. “The overall visual direction remains neutral by introducing entirely new elements to the combined entity, both formalistically and typographically. Symbolically, the two entities are combined through a mutual sense of innovation, authenticity and tradition.”

Innovation? Authenticity? Tradition (again!)? This is fast food we’re talking about, right?

Wendy’s/Arby’s Group unveiled its new brand to key stakeholders the first week of October, 2008.

Oh, it will have a new logo.

To learn more about this project or how we may serve you, please contact Joshua Altman at jaltman@kcsa.com.

Who wouldn’t want to learn more about this “project?

KCSA, a public-relations firms I’ve worked with, is better than this. Is there anything more inauthentic than saying that you have authenticity?

It’s time to return to the words of the master.

Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basis, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader.

– George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

“Key stakeholders,” “valuable strategic asset,” “overall visual direction,” “formalistically,” “value proposition,” “intangible qualities,” “innovation,” “tradition,” and “legacy” are all words that are used to dress up simple statements, give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments, and, as the master would be quick to say, are almost completely lacking in meaning.

Since only “key stakeholders” have seen the changes, it’s too soon to say whether this rebranding effort will be a success or a failure. And there’s no denying that brands are important. GM is trying to sell its Hummer brand, and according to today’s N.Y. Times, hopes to get a few billion for it. Since, in a era of $4/gallon gas, no one is buying Hummers (or cars at all; GM’s and Ford’s stocks jumped out the window yesterday, and even Toyota is going the zero-percent financing route), Hummer’s entire value is that it’s a name that is universally recognized (albeit often mocked).

What KCSA needs to remember, though, is that rebranding isn’t a sexy runway show. Rebranding is a little bit of backoffice sketching, and a lot of sweatshop work – cutting, sewing, ironing, fitting, and resewing. It can’t be dressed up with meaningless words. In fact, for a PR agency to talk of value propositions and strategic assets is like the designer showing up at the runway in a bathrobe.

Come on guys, you’re better than this.

It’s impossible to understand John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin in political terms, so we’re forced to turn to psychology – just as we are when trying to understand the presidency of George Bush.

If you think about it, in traditional gender-role terms, the vice presidency is a kind of feminized version of the presidency – its external functions are largely ceremonial, while its only power is internal and domestic – almost literally inside the House. For a misogynist like John McCain, Sarah Palin is the perfect personification of this role – as was Al Gore, who, with his concern for the environment was never manly enough for the American voter; as was the castrated Bush 41, who was bullied into endorsing Reagonomics soon after calling it “voodoo economics”; as was Bush’s own tow-haired boy-toy, Dan Quayle. (One of Dukakis’s many, many problems was that Lloyd Bensen was far more presidential – more masculine – than he was.)

The current Bush’s main failings – the events for which he will go down in history as America’s worst president ever – stem from his own late-to-light feminine submissiveness. In Freudian terms, Bush, like most men, was forced to symbolically kill his father in order to complete his own maturation. He did so only imperfectly, however, in the process replacing Pere Bush with other powerful men who mentored him. These are the men who bailed Bush out of one bad business after another, set him up at the Texas Rangers and then stuffed money into his pockets by subsequently overpaying him for his share. Dick Cheney – the most powerful vice president in history and the most atypical one ever – is the latest in a long line of older, powerful men to whom Bush cannot say no.

Is it a coincidence that Carol McCain is a former model, Cindy McCain a former rodeo queen, and Sarah Palin is a former beauty pageant contestant? It’s a commonplace that womanizers are misogynists, and McCain the womanizer – a man who could dump his first wife, saying that after her car accident she was no longer the woman he had married, a man who could call Wife # 2 a cunt – would obviously feel most comfortable with a vice president modeled after the feminine women he has surrounded himself with his whole life.