One thing I don’t want the media doing, any of the media, is yapping about whether or not the president’s speech, news conference, whatever is or is not entertaining enough. It’s a press conference to convey information and take questions about policy, not a variety show (and Cramer, for the record, The Daily Show isn’t a variety show either). The economy is a big, boring, complex, and scary thing and I don’t need to be entertained when I’m hearing what the guy is doing to fix it. Isn’t that what got CNBC in Stewart’s cross hairs to begin with? Focusing more on entertaining than informing their audience? I need information so I can go to the White House web site and ask my own questions that address my concerns.
I had a very good argument with a conservative friend of mine the other weekend and the one thing we could agree on totally was that it was time for the American people to sit up and pay attention. Now she and I definitely have different ideas about what conclusions should be drawn by this newfound attention, but in all, I think most people can agree is that the majority hasn’t been paying attention to the overall economy for a long time. As long as the Dow kept going up and people had their latest bling, no one cared how the country overall was getting their. That our supposed wealth was based on unsustainable bubbles, speculation, and financial trading, not on actual durable goods and services. I’m no economist, but I do recall when I was buying a house six years ago how hard everyone tried to get us to do exotic crazy mortgages even when we were demanding a 30 year fixed. That I even had to argue with anyone about the sensibility of doing a 20% down 30-year fixed mortgage made me sit up and take notice of what was going on. And if I could sit back on my arrogant laurels and be justifiably proud that I didn’t play in that mess and be confident that rest of the country crashing down around me wasn’t going to affect me, I would. But I can’t. Because despite making all the sensible decisions, I still will have a hard time getting credit, finding a job, selling my home (if I wished to), or paying for a medical catastrophe if my fiancé were to (gods forbid) lose his job.
See, the way capitalism is supposed to work is that only those who fail pay the price. All those new devotees to Ayn Rand that I’m hearing about should read her very carefully. In her idealized capitalistic good vs. evil world, no one pays the price without conscience choice and the good guys get to fly off to Galt’s Gulch and let all the bad and weak people (even those ideologically loyal to Dagny herself) to a world destroyed. Well, if I could book a ticket to Galt’s Gulch maybe I would. Even if the whole idea is undermined by the fact that every last one of them in some way was subsidized by Franisco D’Ancona’s fortune.
I’ve been studying Ayn Rand since I first picked up her books in 1986. I’ve read every book she’s ever written and while I love them the way I love a fairy tale, I don’t turn a blind eye to what she conveniently ignores. But now I hear conservatives all over (including a conservative guest on Bill Maher) touting gleefully that Ayn Rand is “flying off the shelves” and is the biggest seller on Amazon. When I hear those same people argue to continue her entire philosophy throughout all aspects of culture, maybe I’ll take them seriously. But I doubt they’ve read The Virtue of Selfishness and have only highlighted those sentences in Atlas Shrugged they can roll out at cocktail parties and in blog comments. If anyone tries to quote Ayn Rand to me, they’d better get the reference of this post’s title first (without Googling).
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s been a few years since I pulled her off the shelves. Maybe I’ll reread one, just so I can keep up at cocktail parties.
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