Clothes Make The Man

The media double standards that disfavor Republicans are so pervasive that they invade the very clothes on our backs. If, say, a Democrat like BJ Clinton or Barak Obama wears jeans, it's a sign of youth and vitality. But, if a GOP politicians dares show up in Iowa in some Levi's, then it's, well, unpresidential:

How do a Harvard-schooled private-equity titan, a Mandarin-speaking former ambassador, a libertarian physician-congressman and the nation's longest-serving governor convince Americans that they are men of the people?

Campaign casual.

Fashion observers say the men in the Republican presidential primary race are setting a new standard for studied sartorial ease. Working the campaign trail in shirt-sleeves and jeans, they're tossing off their neckties—and with them, a century of tradition.

"Good lord, what have we come to?" says Daniel James Cole, professor of fashion history at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. "I read that Mitt Romney's wife bought him Gap skinny jeans…We don't think of jeans as being presidential." The Romney campaign didn't respond to requests for comment.

A Republican former White House aide suggests the 2012 candidates have gone far beyond what he calls the "three F's" rule: A president looks better without a tie only when appearing at a fair, on a factory floor or at the scene of a flood.

Indeed, Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, went tieless when kicking off his candidacy.

Much goofing at the link on Mitt Romney's wife buying him some skinny jeans at the Gap, and then rolling up his sleeves just so.

Giving an informal air to the formal announcement, he wore a roomy shirt in a tattersall pattern—a plaid first used in 18th-century British horse blankets—with sleeves "rolled as if he [had] entered an impromptu hot-dog-eating contest," wrote Kurt Soller, Esquire's style editor. The magazine's Web story was titled, "Mitt Romney's New Strategy: Stop Dressing Well."

Also, Ron Paul has posted pictures on Facebook where he's in a bathing suit. My eyes!

You can't win with this sort of thing because if Romney showed a little more gravitas in his wardrobe, we'd be hearing about how stiff and dull he looks. And, it also ignores the virtual universality of business casual in the upper eschalons of business. Indeed, here is the Bay Area the joke is that the richest guy in the room is usually the one in the rattiest T-shirt. You're more likely to see someone in a tie at the Olive Garden, than you are at some of San Francisco's ritziest restaurants, which threw up their hands years ago at enforcing any kind of dress code beyond "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" for fear of throwing out the next teen-aged internet billionaire. Now, we're supposed to get upset if Rick Perry shows up at a pig farm in a polo shirt? America's fashion enforcers are kindly requested to make up their minds.

The Canon In Remission

The death of the critic - I am picturing 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters producing "literary criticism:" Richard Poirier - A Man of Good Reading

Mr. Poirier’s most important contribution came in his criticism, which tried to convey why the act of reading is — and should be — so difficult. The most powerful works of literature, he insisted, offer “a fairly direct access to pleasure” but become “on longer acquaintance, rather strange and imponderable.” Even as readers try to pin down what a writer means, the best authors try to elude them, using all the resources of sound, rhythm and syntax to defeat any straightforward account of what they are doing.

That is, in a nutshell, why I gave up on stdying literature as a vocation. You literally have to spend your days reeading that sort of BS, rather than read "Romola" for the 10th time. The best literature is remarkably straight forward. If the reader finds a "classic" to be elusive, it is because of the inevitable anachronisms or because the reader finds something in the work he doesn't like (such as a politically incorrect theme) and resists enjoying the work on that basis. But to claim that a work must be read until it is imponderable is to remove all pleasure from what is ultimately meant to be a pleasant diversion.

Lady Cab Driver

Here's a brilliant idea that would never be allowed to work here in the United States: a ladies-only cab company with pink taxis and female drivers: "Girl Taxi" Service Offers haven To Beirut's Women

These days the (Beirut's) transport staple is facing some serious competition from a growing army of female taxi drivers, dressed in stiff-collared white shirts, dark shades, pink ties and small pink flowers tucked into their flawlessly coiffed hair.

All of them drive for Banet Taxi, or "girl taxi" in Arabic. It is Lebanon's first cab service for women, by women. You can't miss the company's signature candy-pink cars.

"I chose pink because the first idea that comes to mind when you see pink is girls," says Nawal Fakhri, 45 years old, founder of Banet Taxi.

It would never be allowed to work in the US because of rampant corruption and cartelization in US cities that keeps the number of taxi medallions artificially low. It would never work because someone would inevitably bring an equal protection claim. And, it would never work because it would turn into a ridiculous "bold 'n' brassy" post-feminist statement, which would not work with the frankly feminine atmosphere that Fakhri tries to maintain in her cabs:

The company is part of a regional trend. Entrepreneurs across the Middle East have recognized the business potential in offering secure transportation options for women. Banet Taxi follows on the heels of successful women-only transportation models in Dubai, Tehran and Cairo.

In Beirut, the growing company is a sign the private sector is succeeding where the politically volatile public sector fails.

"I like being one of the few female taxi drivers in Lebanon," says Maya Buhaidai, 34, as she takes a sharp turn on a windy road in the mountains overlooking Beirut. "And I like the work. It's easy, it's fun and I get to talk and laugh with my passengers."

As the sun sets, Ms. Buhaidai drives passenger Lamia Samaha, 37, from a suburb on the mountain slope to the busy central Beirut district of Hamra. Along the way, they chat about the news, TV shows and children.

"I am at ease because I am accompanied by a woman. I sometimes find men hard to handle," says Ms. Samaha, causing her and her driver to laugh heartily.

At last, a cab safe for girl-talk! Fakhri, by the way has made back her original $200,000 investment and expects to earn at least that much this year. Lebanon may bear the oppressive weight of Syrian occupation and religious fascism, but in Beirut at least there is enough room for women to find their own corner of freedom.

The Kid Is Not My Son

Well, I started this week by snootily declaring that I don't like to write about tawdry gossip, but now I see I have been covering Chris Brown/Rhianna, Mark Sanford, and now the death of Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson Suffers Massive Heart Attack

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince “Blanket” Michael Jackson II.

Jetting around the 'net, I see that the Youtube video almost everyone is linking to is "I Want You Back," whose title and bouncy spirit seem doubly poignant today. Jackson wasn't just consumed by fame. His life charts one of the basic changes in American pop culture from breezy low-budget fun to an over exposed, drug addled "spectacle" dependant on $$, rather than inspiration to survive.

Still, Jackson's legacy is a strong one. I could listen to the rhythm guitars on "Thriller" and never hear better chicken-scratching. And tell me you can walk into a mall, hear the opening beats of "Billie Jean," and not want to reach for your red fedora! Jackson is gone (mercifully for him, I think), but his best music will reasonate for a long time.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Here's a sad story about one of the many young people who came to San Francisco in the Sixties looking for adventure and found much more than they were bargaining for. Idealists Slaying In '71 Still Haunts Today.

Mary Alice Willey arrived in San Francisco in 1969.

She was 21 years old, the product of a conservative Southern California family, newly divorced and ready to experience life in the free-wheeling Haight-Ashbury district.

She rented an attic apartment and enrolled at San Francisco State, where she eagerly participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War sit-ins and demonstrations.

Then Mary Alice discovered the black power movement.

In movies about the Sixties, this is the moment when the soundtrack cues up "I Want To Take You Higher," or, if the rights are avaiable, "What's Going On."

She became a strident devotee of George Jackson, the charismatic but militant San Quentin inmate who had gained international fame for his best-selling prison classic, "Soledad Brother." She wrote letters to Black Panther Johnny Spain, who was also incarcerated at San Quentin.

And she began associating with members of the Black Liberation Army, a violent offshoot of the Black Panthers that would become implicated in the Aug. 29, 1971, killing of a police officer at San Francisco's Ingleside Station. There is reason to believe that Mary Alice may have played a role in the attack and the slaying of Sgt. John V. Young.

That's the problem with the "idealists" beloved of the Sixties' marketers. Their "idealism" could easily turn violent. In Mary's case, she was not just hanging out with Black Panthers, she was also sexually involved with a typical type found in the Haight to this day: the thug who mouths just enough hippie blather to get into as many girls' pants as possible. Ah, innocense! And idealism!

Most girls, of course, survive their run-ins with the world's Bad Boys, allowing for a lifetime of rueful smiles while lunching with their friends. But, Mary found a darker end:

But less than two weeks after the attack on Ingleside Station, Mary Alice disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Thirty-seven years would pass before an investigator with the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department would determine that an unidentified body found floating in a canal near Modesto on Sept. 11, 1971, was Mary Alice.

She had been stabbed 65 times. Ten of the wounds were fatal, the rest defensive. Her body had been buried in the Patterson District Cemetery. Atop her grave was a beige stone that said, simply, "Jane Doe."

There's an old saying that God takes care of drunks, young children, and pretty girls, but it doesn't often work that way.

The Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll Revolution in Sixties-era San Francisco may well be one of the most overwritten pieces of history in modern times, yet the truth of its effects has never been adequately explored. People love to talk about the "idealism" of middle class kids traveling to SF to hang-out with thugs masquerading as revolutionaries. It's rare to hear a negative word about the overdoses, the homelessness, the rapes, the occasional murders, and the disease that were part of the "San Francisco experience" back then. Even a story like that of the murder of Mary Alice Wiley comes couched in the BS language of Sixties hagiogaphy - "idealists," "die-hard militants," the treatment of criminals like George Jackson as noble revolutionaries. Please. The Black Panthers and their ilk killed a lot of people - many of them naive white progressives who supported their "cause," whatever that was. They also ripped off a lot of people, both in terms of money and politics. And yet to raise these issues, and to try to prosecute these murderers is to invite scandal and opprobrium. There are plenty of prominent people in the Bay Area - Ron Dellums and Barbara Lee come to mind - who carry a lot of secrets, and yet maintain the silence of Left-Wing Omerta.

The continued reverence for the "revolutionary" Sixties tells you everything you need to know about the Left's values and intentions.

De-Centralized Organizing

Glenn Reynolds looks at the "Tea Party" phenomenon, which seems to have spread virally among grumpy middle class types who are unimpressed with the endless bailouts and rescues they have been asked to underwrite. It all has a whiff of the Ross Perot moment in 1992. Maybe, this time, the politician who grabs this tiger won't flame out so spectacularly. Tax Day Becomes Protest Day

So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing "flash crowds" -- groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don't know each other.

In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves.

Meanwhile, Thomas Frank is no longer mocking  the Tea Parties - he actually attended one - and seems persuaded that it's not a Rovian-Fox News driven plot. But he wants you to know that there is some kind of BS GOP angle to all of this: Here Come the Plastic Pitchforks

But how could anyone be surprised? The populist style -- in which average people square off against self-important snobs -- has been with us for decades. It saturates the culture. It fills our advertising, our management books, even our personal finance guides. It defines the language of our politics.

The question is how to direct those "mindless" populist sentiments to more productive ends.

The fashion industry has been doing it for years by identifying itself with trendy leftish heroes and causes. It was ready for the downturn -- just look at the new ad campaign from designer Kenneth Cole that seeks to move nondescript threads with phrases like "In tough times screw the banks" and "Our back's against the Wall St."

The conservative movement, too, has long been a master of this maneuver. From the days of Richard Nixon to those of Sarah Palin it has described itself as a rebellion of Middle America against elitist liberals; as a nation of Joe the Plumbers rising against interfering bureaucrats.

What Nixon has to do with this, or Sarah Palin, is beyond me, but Republicans are being discussed so Nixon must be lurking somewhere. 

The Riot of the Female Id

Young women desperate for a glimmer of tinsel and fame on "America's Top Model" ran riot in NYC. The National Enquirer provides breathless coverage, including amazing video:TOP MODEL RIOT IN NY

The NY Times provides more sober-sided coverage, but still manages to capture the tragi-comic aftermath of a cute mob gone mad: 3 Arrests in Melee at ‘America’s Next Top Model’ Casting Call

By 6 p.m. Saturday, West 55th Street was littered with the wreckage of the day: torn sleeping bags where aspiring contestants had spent the night, police barricades, shoes and clothes in the gutter. More than a hundred women still waited on the sidewalk, hoping to get into the Park Central.

Never, ever get in the way of a young woman grasping for her brass ring. How long before we start asking, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

Where the Girls Are

Back in the Eighties, PJ O'Rourke once made this perceptive comment about beautiful women and American social trends: 

"It's not that looks matter per se. It's just that beautiful women are always on the cutting edge of social trends. Remember how many beautiful women were in the anti-war movement 20 years ago? In the yoga classes 15 years ago? At the discos 10 years ago? On Wall Street 5 years ago? Where the beautiful women are is where the country is headed."

Well, these days the beautiful woman are going into ... debt collections!

Brenda Edwards is one of DCM (a debt collection law firm)'s top collectors: 

Melanie Ellston works at DCM processing claims:

Kathy Wolfe makes recordings for robo-calls to delinquent debtors: 

And, so does Orla Johannes: 

Pretty soon you won't be gettin' any lovin' unless you are a repo-man or a foreclosure auctioneer. If you are an out of work "Master of the Universe," you are now looking at a grinding life of involuntary celibacy. Where the women are, the men will follow. 

Take That Running Dogs!

I don't care what you think of the Communist Chinese. This is pretty awesome.

A Chinese man’s assertion that he sabotaged the auction of two Qing dynasty
bronzes at Christie’s in Paris last week handed Beijing a wry public-relations coup on Monday after it battled for months to block the sale.

The man, Cai Mingchao, a collector and auctioneer, said at a news conference in Beijing that he had submitted the two winning $18 million bids for the bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit on Wednesday, but that he had no intention of paying for them. He described himself as a consultant for a nongovernmental group that seeks to bring looted artifacts back to China, and said he had acted out of patriotic duty.

The artifacts are part of the auction of Yves St. Laurent's art collection, which has been setting off shivers of excitement among the glitterati. St. Laurent's "partner" is looking for his payday after his years of loyal service. Nice work if you can get it.

The two bronzes, which date from 1750, were part of a 12-animal water-clock
fountain configured around the Chinese zodiac in the imperial gardens of the
Summer Palace outside Beijing. In 1860 the palace was sacked by British and
French forces during the Opium Wars. Around that time, the heads disappeared.

Mr. Bergé suggested Monday that the Chinese government was behind the
apparent collapse of the deal. Speaking on French radio, he said he was “not
very surprised” by the latest twist, Agence France-Presse reported.
“The Chinese for a long time would have done anything to recover these pieces,” he
said. “They didn’t recover them, so I imagine they pressured a potential buyer
not to buy them.”

I'm sure that St. Laurent bought this stuff from what he considered to be legitimate sources. However, the question of looting national treasures is an on-going sore point for the third world, and for good reason. Many such objects were simply stolen during periods of conquest or colonial control without any hint of a willing buyer and seller.

It's an added bonus that the sort of sophisticated baronial types who buy these looted goods are also the sort of people who undoubtedly look down on hick Americans and their "bad" taste in art. The truth is the Vanity Fair set is as grasping and materialist as any nouveau riche' in a rented Ferrari.

Begun, the Clone Wars Have

Looks like Senator Palpatine is on another one of his foreign junkets.

Miami-Dade

Reaching for Escape in Miami Beach, where people are drinking vodka, instead of champagne, and life goes on in its essence:

Mr. Chefetz described what is known locally as “the polar bear walk.”

“You see men in Ferraris getting out of the cars slowly, like a bear coming out of hibernation,” he said. “There will be a lot of needless engine revving, and it will take them a while to stand up. They want to be sure that when they do, you see the beautiful girl at their side.”

“It’s all part of the show,” he said. “People coming from other areas of the country, that’s what they want to see.”

Only, it's just as likely that the Ferrari's rented, the guy makes $50K a year selling air conditioning systems, and the girl works behind the Chanel counter at Saks.

A Question I Had Never Thought To Ask

What’s The Matter With Vogue?