A liberal elitist cuts loose

Many readers will know the TV show Wife Swap. Two mothers from different backgrounds switch families for a period of time.

A recent episode of the American programme features a San Francisco liberal couple. The woman introduces herself as a certified hypnotherapist, life coach and destination coach. She is not a patriot. When asked why she is not a proud American she explains,

Because of the chance that I was born on American soil. I mean that's just the way it was. I had nothing to do with it personally.

I've heard this kind of line before. It relates to the idea that what counts is that we self-determine who we are and what we do. Therefore whatever aspect of our lives is an "accident of birth" is thought not to matter.

It's a position that's difficult to hold to consistently. After all, our IQ and many of our personality traits are influenced by heredity and are therefore an accident of birth, as also is the family upbringing we experience.

So our San Fransico couple should also reject a sense of pride in their own intelligence, education and work ethic as these are a product, to a significant degree, of conditions we are born into. But they don't - they are proud of these qualities to the point of arrogance.

It's actually more logical to recognise the debt we owe to generations past for the positive qualities that we do inherit. Past generations have battled through to recognise and perpetuate ideals in culture and personality. We do rest on these achievements, even if we inherit them rather than creating them for ourselves. So pride in a larger entity does make sense - more so than the belief that we are self-created as individuals.

But I digress. The San Francisco woman might be a bit flaky, and she appears to spend little time with her own children ("If I'm too much with the kids, it doesn't suit my personality"), but she comes across in the clips as a basically nice person.

It is the San Francisco man, Stephen Fowler, who really takes the cake. He is paired with an unsophisticated but decent and well-meaning Midwestern woman. He treats her with absolute contempt and disdain. He calls her a dumb redneck and congratulates her for using big words. He laughs when he tells her she is overweight and undereducated. And he disparages her simply for living in the Midwest.

This arrogant elitism might appear to be a strange double-standard. After all, Stephen Fowler as a liberal is supposed to be strongly into equality. How can you have an egalitarian elitism?

Perhaps the answer lies in what liberals understand by equality. Usually it is thought to mean an equal freedom to follow our own unhindered will. Of course, this doesn't work too well when you're a parent. Stephen Fowler, when watching his young son practise fencing, says proudly to the camera "I'm not going to force him to do it". But it's merely pretence. The son instantly objects "I don't want to do it and you say I have to do it."

Stephen Fowler is a more coercive father than most. He wakes his son up at night because the son forgot to complete some maths sums. The children don't have friends over and live a regimented life.

But it's difficult for a liberal to admit that they are being coercive. After all, liberals hold that we become fully human when we are free to follow our own will unhindered. To coerce others means denying their humanity: their equal human rights.

So it's not surprising that an aggressive liberal like Stephen Fowler should pretend that he is not coercing his son, when that is exactly what he is doing (for better or worse).

Nor is it surprising that, as an aggressive liberal, he should follow through with the logic of his position and disrespect as people those whose lives he believes are unacceptable and worthy of coercion.

(There's a terrific post on this aspect of liberalism, very much worth reading, here.)

Finally, it strikes me watching the YouTube clips that Stephen Fowler believes himself to be highly cultivated and therefore superior. I think it a greater blessing, though, to be fully natured. I would be more impressed by Stephen Fowler feeling a connection and a loyalty to his own tradition, rather than by his university qualifications and his good vocabulary.

The first, and most eye opening, of the YouTube clips is below:



The follow-up is here:

C'mon guys - social construct theory is unscientific

There's a little item in today's Herald Sun which is more politically significant than it might seem.

US scientists have conducted tests which measure neuron activity in the brain; they found that women use both the left and right side of the brain to perceive spatial awareness, but that men only use the right side.

What effect does this have? According to the scientists, men have a more focused spatial awareness, which is described in the article as a "more exact form of mental mapping". This is termed a "co-ordinate" spatial awareness.

Women have a "categorical" spatial awareness in which they are more aware of objects around them even if they are irrelevant to the task at hand.

These scientific findings do seem to fit some typical male and female qualities. Men do seem to focus more intently when it comes to understanding and creating systems, whereas women are often more present in the moment for those around them (yes, these are generalisations which don't hold true in every case).

A psychology professor from the University of Sydney, Dianna Kenny, added that the surface of a man's parietal lobe, which is responsible for spatial ability was 10 per cent bigger than women's and that levels of testosterone also seemed to improve spatial ability (so that women with higher levels of testosterone also have higher spatial ability).

Professor Kenny suggested that the spatial ability of men often made them better at tasks such as putting together module furniture or setting up VCRs and also made men more suited to certain careers such as cartography, engineering, surveying and IT.

Why is all this so politically significant? On the one hand, liberals will dislike the scientific findings. Liberals want us to be autonomous, self-defining individuals. Therefore, they want to believe that our sex, the fact of being born a man or a woman, can be made not to matter. For this reason, they usually prefer to explain sex distinctions between men and women as being artificial social constructs, set up for purposes of domination and oppression.

On the other hand, liberals like to think of themselves as being scientific types. They generally look down on those who don't accept a scientific world view.

So here is the conundrum for liberals. Science is telling them that there are significant hard-wired differences between men and women. If they reject the science, they are joining the ranks of those they have looked down on for so long.

If they accept the science, then they have to admit that the social construct theory wasn't correct - that sex distinctions can't be explained in terms of social influence alone, but that they do have some legitimate basis in human nature.

(I can't find a link to the Herald Sun post yet, but there is a report along similar lines here.)

Patylu

Seguramente ya se habrán enterado de esta "nueva" artista cuyo mercado principal es el público infantil. La pasan todo el dia en los spots de televisa music con su canción "La vaca Tomasa".

Bueno, para empezar no es tan nueva ya que se trata de Patricia Sirvent, una de las Jeans, hija del representante y creador del grupo Jeans, Alejandro Sirvent.

Ya habíamos hablado en este blog sobre la posible desintegración del grupo Jeans, pero ese es otro tema.

La cuestión aquí es analizar los aciertos y errores del concepto de Patylú, que está dirigido principalmente a niños y preadolescentes.

Veamos primero el panorama general. Tenemos 2 hipótesis principales:

a) El mercado infantil está descuidado.
b) El mercado infantil está saturado.

(cabe mencionar que esto no es un ensayo científico ni académico aunque se utilizan algunos elementos para validar este ensayo.)

Bueno, resulta que ambas hipótesis son correctas. Pero debemos desarrollar cada una de ellas para entender la situación de Patylú.

El mercado infantil está descuidado

Efectivamente, en la actualidad hay muy pocos artistas en el mainstream enfocados hacia este mercado. Estamos hablando principalmente de México y otros países de latinoamérica. Es en realidad una grán área de oportunidad y por esta parte, Patylú lo está aprovechando perfectamente.

El mercado infantil está saturado

Esto es también muy cierto. Pero está saturado por artistas y personajes extranjeros. Veamos una pequeña lista:

• Lazy Town
• Backyardigans
• Pocoyó
• Dora la exploradora
• Diego
• Hi5

La cuestión es que ya todo ellos tienen sus respectivos shows en vivo en México (y otros países). Pero aún no llegamos al punto más definitivo.

¿Que tienen en común todos estos personajes?

La primera pista: Es algo que Patylú no tiene.

La segunda pista: Es algo que otros artistas mexicanos enfocados a los niños sí han tenido.

¿Y que es?

Bueno, la respuesta no es tan complicada:

Un programa de televisión

En el caso de México tenemos por ejemplo a Chabelo, Tatiana, las gemelas Ivonne e Iveth, etc.

La diferencia entre el éxito y el fracaso de Patylú estará precisamente en tomar en consideración ese punto. Conseguir un programa de televisión.

A diferencia de otros géneros, en México NO existen estaciones de radio dedicadas al público adolescente y preadolescente, lo cual sería ideal para Patylú. Por el contrario existen muchos canales de televisión dedicados a estos públicos y por lo tanto éste debería ser su curso natural.

En conclusión: si Patylú no se consigue un programa de TV su fracaso es casi seguro, pero si lo consigue tiene casi asegurado el éxtito.

Puntos extras:

-Si se sube un poquito más la minifalda (ya algo corta al momento) podría captar buena parte del público adulto masculino.

-El titulo de la canción "La vaca Tomasa" suena muy parecido a la canción tradicional de "La negra Tomasa". Quizá fue parte de su inspiración, pero quizá también le ayudaría a acercarse más a un público más adulto que al infantil.

The angry woman - my turn

Readers have had their say about Elizabeth Stewart, the angry upper-class Englishwoman who blames men for her stressful life.

Some readers thought that Elizabeth Stewart was almost too much an embodiment of the worst trends in modern society. They wondered if she was simply made up.

Other readers debated whether her life was objectively stressful and needed downshifting, or whether she had it relatively good and was oppressed by her expectations.

I'd like to add a few observations. Back in the early 1990s, it became clear to me that feminists weren't going to make any compromises when it came to career and family. What they expected was that both men and women would work full-time and then share equally the traditionally female role.

It seemed poorly thought out to me. The male career role was demanding enough without suddenly having a very large extra burden placed on top of it. Accepting feminist demands would make everybody worse off.

I couldn't understand why the feminists of the era weren't aware of this. But perhaps there is an explanation.

According to feminist patriarchy theory, society has developed to maximise male autonomy at the expense of women. It is men who are supposed to have the power and privilege to be able to do as they want. For this reason, many feminists believe that men have relatively easy lives.

So perhaps there were feminists who assumed that the proposed arrangement wouldn't be so burdensome after all. In their eyes, the male role was the easy, privileged one, so women who adopted it would be better off even if they still had to do half of the old role.

Did Elizabeth Stewart have false expectations of what a traditionally male role would deliver to her? Reader Liesel suggested in the comments thread that this was the case:

She believes the society has existed to give men whatever they want, sacrifice free. This is not now, and never has been, the case. Based on this false notion, she has decided the world should give women whatever they want, sacrifice free, to make it up to them.

The first mistake, therefore, was to believe that men are a privileged oppressor class with easy lives that women could inherit.

There was, of course, a second major mistake. The original idea was that men would take over half of the traditionally female role. But this assumes that gender roles are simply social constructs which can easily be abandoned. It's true that men have taken up some extra household duties, but it's generally not anywhere near half.

So the expectations of women like Elizabeth Stewart have been twice confounded. The career role isn't the easy, non-sacrificing role that the theory suggested it to be; nor has her husband, despite being sensitive and supportive, taken over half of the mothering/homemaking role.

So she feels strung-out and enraged with her life.

A quick roundup.

Former-And Nothing But The Truth. This Nashville band describes their music as "loud pop", and I can't disagree. High-energy rock/pop that recalls Swirl 360, Steve Bertrand's Avion, and Rob Bonfligio in spots, Former is truly worth checking out. Highlights include "Lies", "I'll Sleep" and "Nobody Knows You". Perfect for those who love the "power" in "power pop".

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

SpreaderCraig-Who I Am. This pop singer/songwriter from Sheffield, England with the strange moniker has given us a charming debut that will appeal to fans of Neil Finn, Glenn Tilbrook and Mitch Linker . Top tracks: "I'm Gonna Make It", "A Million and One Things Unsaid" and "I'm on Top of the World". But be warned - these tracks definitely have a quite high stick-in-your-head factor.

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

Mitch Friedman-Game Show Teeth. You may not be able to judge a book by its cover but quite often you can with albums. No better example of that than Mitch Friedman's Game Show Teeth, which is as quirky and goofy as the cover art would indicate. No joke, though, is the fact that XTC's Andy Partridge and Dave Gregory help out with the proceedings, and Friedman is a fine songsmith even if his songwriting is in service of some silly numbers. "This is a Song" is a particular standout, as Friedman mocks, lays bare, and pays homage to the classic pop song structure. Obviously your QTF (quirk tolerance factor) may vary, and you'll know within one or two tracks whether you love it or hate it, but one thing you shouldn't do is ignore it.

CD Baby | Official album site (a hoot) | iTunes

Angry woman open for discussion

Jaz made an interesting suggestion in a recent comment. He thought I should link to the Daily Mail story about an angry upper-class woman and let readers of the site have a go at picking it apart.

So I'll limit myself to a brief summary. Elizabeth Stewart is a wealthy twice-married Englishwoman, with one child at boarding school, another at a nursery and a nanny to help at home. She has a high-status job with an advertising company.

She is living the life modern women are supposed to aspire to, but she admits to feelings of rage rather than content.

Her husband is a supportive, sensitive kind of man, but she is angry at him. She is angry too at her ex-husband. She is angry at men in general, believing that they have things easy. She feels guilty, torn between different roles, without any time for herself, living in a "semi-permanent state of panic".

She writes that she is "filled with a permanent nebulous, undirected rage," but she does direct the rage at men, telling us she wants to throttle them and slap them.

There are plenty of things I'd like to say in response, but I'll hold off for a while. I invite readers to look at the article and to suggest ways to respond politically to what Elizabeth Stewart has written.

Ideas?

A recession is good for men?

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, has declared that there is a positive side to the recession. Men will lose their jobs and this will force them to be liberated from a traditionally masculine role. They will have to "reinvent" themselves and create a new identity, one involving childminding rather than a focus on breadwinning.

And what of women workers? Nick Clegg wants special government action to lessen the effect of the recession on female employment.

But I'll let Nick Clegg speak for himself:

For many [men], full-time work remains the anchor of their identity ... Yet a savage recession, like a war, shakes the traditional identity of men and women. In the Second World War it had a liberating effect of sorts. By 1943 more than 7.25 million women were employed, two million more than before the war ...

As this recession bears down on thousands of communities and families we must again be open to reinventing ourselves. Many men will be forced to let go of their earlier identities and try something new ... And many women may become the only family breadwinner for the first time. For many couples this will be unsettling and deeply disruptive to the settled patterns of life, work and marriage. A new flexibility in which men and women are supported in reinventing themselves will be vital in helping many thousands of families through this recession ...

For women, this means that Government must come down hard on employers who appear to be sacking them more readily than men ... Active support - including free legal advice - must be given to women ...

But some of the biggest changes that still need to take place are in the traditional perceptions of “male” work. Some months ago I suggested that more men should take up jobs in nurseries as childminders. At present, only 1 per cent of childminders are men ...

Rigidity in how parental leave is structured must change too. Mothers can take up to a year, fathers only two weeks ... But this split is out of step with the reality of many modern families, and discourages fathers from making a commitment to the care of their own children ...

The present rules make it almost impossible for young mothers to go back to work early, even if their husbands and partners are ready to stay at home

It is high time we moved into line with other European countries where interchangeable parental leave has long been the norm.

So when it comes to work Nick Clegg wants a gender role reversal. He thinks it is liberating for women to go out to work in traditionally male occupations and for men to either stay home or to work as childminders.

When it comes to parenting, Nick Clegg wants a unisex, interchangeable role in which men are equally likely to be the ones to take time off to mother/parent their children.

Where do such views come from? They stem from liberal autonomy theory. This is the theory that to be fully human we have to be self-determined rather than predetermined. Since our sex is something we don't get to choose it is predetermined and is therefore considered an impediment that individuals must be liberated from. The fact of being born a man or a woman must be made not to matter.

Pamela Kinnear, an Australian researcher, has written a paper called "New Families for Changing Times," in which, like Nick Clegg, she emphasises the idea of self-invention. She writes:

social progressives reject the notion of family breakdown and argue that we must accept the transition to a new diversity of family forms. They regard the idea of family as an evolving social construct.

the social categories of the past (gender, class, race and so on) no longer serve as the framework for individual behaviour or cultural beliefs.

... we are now in the process of re-embedding new ways of life in which individuals must invent and live according to their own biographies ...

In this transition, relationships, including marriage, must be reinvented too. The downside of the 'pure relationship', freed from convention, is some instability as partners continuously re-evaluate their relationship. They ask whether it fits with their own life project to realise self-identity.

Note that traditional marriage is not considered a "pure relationship" by Pamela Kinnear because it is conventional rather than liberated.

What are some possible objections to Nick Clegg's attitude? First, it is based on a theory which itself needs to be critically examined. Is it really true that autonomy is the sole, overriding good in life? Most people in practice sacrifice a degree of autonomy for something they consider to be a greater good, such as love, family or community. Don't we lose too much by putting autonomy above all else?

Nick Clegg's attitude also assumes that human identity is unanchored and can be changed to fit any circumstance. In other words, it assumes that masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and aren't connected to an enduring human nature.

Another problem with Nick Clegg's approach is that it effectively undermines the position of both men and women in the family. If the parental role is an interchangeable unisex one, then the work that men and women do as fathers and mothers is not so important. If Nick Clegg is right, then children don't need their mothers as much as we think; nor for that matter is there a distinct and therefore necessary role for men within the family.

Nick Clegg has already proceeded part of the way down this track. He writes that changes to parental leave are required so that men can stay home and make a "commitment to the care of their own children" - as if the efforts men make at work to support their families don't represent a commitment to their children. Nick Clegg doesn't seem to appreciate the traditional role that men have played in the family.

Finally, it's unwise to suggest to men that their efforts at work are harmful to themselves, their families and to society and that they should instead seek to be "liberated" by not working as they do now. Nick Clegg assumes that men will hear this message and will redirect their work ethic toward a traditionally female role. It's just as likely, though, that men will simply lose their work ethic.

If we really have no specifically masculine duties as men, but should just do as we will unimpeded, then why not hang out at the pub with mates or father children with a series of women but not take responsibility for providing for them?

Nick Clegg should take care when he urges men to abandon their traditional contributions to society. He may not get the result he is looking for.

Friday Night Roundup.

Wax Poets-Wax Poets. This Calgary band has come out of left field to become of the more pleasant surprises I've run across lately. They rock - and pop - with a swagger that reminds me of big-name bands like Oasis and Jet. They start auspiciously with opener "Junkstar", complete with fake crowd noise (a la countrymen Sloan) and the rocker "Can't Slow Down", and pull off a couple of fine Beatlesque numbers in "Sgt. Strange" and "Sometimes". Other standouts include the driving (and clever) "Making Conversation" and the melodic midtempo "Vicki". These guys come as a breath of fresh air through your speakers, so make sure to check them out.

CD Baby | MySpace | Listen @CBC Radio | iTunes

The Damwell Betters-Coming In Hot. In 2007, this Illinois band (not to be confused with The Damnwells) had a fine debut in the Wallflowers/Tom Petty vein with Make Love Not Babies, and they've followed up with an album that could almost be rated NC-17 in spots. The title is just one of many double entendres (and in the case of "Your C___ Is Killing Me" and "Dance All Night", single entendres) to be found here in an album that recalls the similarly sex-obsessed Greg Dulli in both Afghan Whigs and the Twilight Singers. The two examples cited above are fine Stonesish rockers, but where the band excels is on the slower numbers like "June", "Just Another Girl" and "Shanghai Lullaby", where they recall Del Amitri and yes, The Damnwells. Quality stuff, but don't play it with the kids in the car (as I quickly learned when "Dance All Night" came on).

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

Solin-Energy Fair. Solin (or Solin, Solin as he's sometimes billed) is a pop veteran who's played John Lennon in off-Brodway Beatlemania, and shared the stage with the likes of Roger McGuinn, Aimee Mann and Jon Brion. The good news is that he has the tunes to match his resume, both in quality and length (18 tracks here). Bruce Brodeen at Not Lame compares him to P.Hux, and I'd concur in that and I'd throw in some Chris von Sneidern and Jeremy Morris as well. There's a lot to choose from here, but for my money the opening 1-2 of "Which Way to Sanity" and "Take it from the Top" are the standouts here. "I Go Ghost" recalls the aforementioned Mr. Brion, and the jangly "Robin" is another treat.

CD Baby | MySpace | Listen @Lala | iTunes

CD of the Day, 2/18/09: Tommy Keene-In the Late Bright

The release of a new Tommy Keene album has been a reason to celebrate in the power pop community since 1984, and remains so in 2009. For the most part, In the Late Bright doesn't deviate significantly from his established sound so you're getting a known quantity here. But there's a darker edge to the proceedings, from the album cover to the song titles ("Nighttime Crime Scene", "Hide Your Eyes") to the lyrics, giving the album a "power pop noir" feel.

Keene announces that he "cannot feel any more" on the brief opening title track, which segues seamlessly into the next track, "A Secret Life of Stories", a perfect example of his trademark gritty power pop that nevertheless throws some "Penny Lane"-style horns (I think they're horns) into the cacophonous mix at the end. "Tomorrow's Gone Tonight" is vintage Keene as well, a jangly number that probably has the most upbeat lyrical content on the disc.

One of the more interesting (yet brief, clocking in at 2:05) tracks is "Goodbye Jane" which manages to come across as a bit of a cross between "Tumbling Dice" and "My Sharona", mixing Exile-era Stones honky tonk piano with an insistent power pop beat. The aforementioned "Nighttime Crime Scene" is next with a bit of an epic feel, complete with a haunting piano hook and a serious dose of melancholy, which then leads in to "Elevated", a 5-minute electric guitar instrumental that serves in a sense to reboot the album as "Realize Your Mind" follows with the energy and buoyancy of an album opener.

All in all, In the Late Bright shapes us as one of Keene's best albums to date, which is saying something given his track record.

Kool Kat (w/10-song bonus disc offer) | MySpace | iTunes

CD of the Day, 2/16/09: Dennis Schocket-The Cinderblock Mansion

Somehow (like just about everyone else in the power pop community, judging by its only recently appearing at the usual suspects), I missed the news that Dennis Schocket had released his solo debut last spring. Which is a shame because it would have easily cracked my top 20. For the uninitiated, Dennis Schocket was last heard from in Starbelly, and he was the driving force behind their brilliant 2002 album Everyday and Then Some, one of my favorite power pop albums of the decade.

Here he gets help from Myracle Brah's Andy Bopp, and while there's an element of Bopp's sound here, the more compelling frame of reference is his former bandmate in the earlier Starbelly days, Cliff Hillis. The opener "Lovesick Blue", however, throws a bit of a curveball as it's a somewhat poppier version of the bluesy Americana the Stones sometimes trade in (cf. Exile on Main Street and Peter Wolf's Jagger/Richards-aided solo 2002 release Sleepless). And the tuneful "About the Girl" follows in a slightly similar laid-back style, making one wonder whether Schocket has gone for something tonally different than Starbelly. But "Another Perfect Breakup Song" arrives, and it's the kind of Beatles-by-way-of-Badfinger midtempo guitar pop that Schocket mastered in Starbelly.

The delightful "Parachutes" follows in the same vein, with one of those choruses that see out the song and stick in the cranium. "Breathe" chimes in with some Girlfriend-era Matthew Sweet goodness, and the late-period Beatle-y "Tangerine Scene" is as fruitful as its name would imply. Finally, "Girl of the Year" completes one of the best 5-song in-album runs you'll hear, a nice bookend to "Another Pefect Breakup Song". This is not to imply the remainder of the disc is somehow lacking, though. Schocket goes nearly straight-up country with the affecting "This Forgiving Heart", "Ghost" is some mighty fine paisley pop, and "Willow" is as good as anything on the disc, reminding me of Hillis' "Elevator" from last year's The Long Now. "Unified" and "As You Said" close things out, and they serve the laudable purpose of insuring that there isn't a bad track on the disc.

Albums like this (and a few other recent ones I've reviewed) are driving me toward compiling a supplemental best of 2008 list, because to go back and see this one not listed just isn't right.

Not Lame | Kool Kat | MySpace (no solo tracks streaming, but some great Starbelly stuff)

Ending the gap debate?

From the Mail Online:

Men in their 20s no longer earn more than women, an official analysis of the 'pay gap' declared.

It found that the difference between the earnings of men and women twenty-somethings is 'non-existent'.

Women who choose to stay single are likely to earn more than single men throughout their lives, it said.

This has been known for some time. Women are not paid less than men until they have children and decide to scale back their work commitments. I've seen this many times at work myself: women with strong feminist beliefs who are very ambitious at work until a few years after the birth of their first child, at which point they change their life priorities.

The research findings prompted this comment:

Ruth Lea, adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group, said: 'It is a matter of choice. People earn the same until they get together, and then they make choices about work, family and lifestyle. That is what adults are expected to do - make decisions.

'I suspect that in reality the pay advantage lies with women and I think the whole pay gap debate should stop now.'

I doubt, though, that the debate will stop. In part, this is because there are many in the political class who believe that women are less autonomous than men, and are therefore unequal, and that careers are the way for women to get the same autonomy as men. People with this idea won't easily accept an arrangement in which men redouble their efforts at work to support their families, whilst women scale back to care for their young children.

This approach to equality is wrong on a number of grounds. First, it doesn't make much sense to think of the money earned by a husband as a "male" wage existing in competition with a "female" wage. Most of what the husband earns will go straight into family expenses - with much of it being spent by the wife. In reality, what husbands earn is a family wage, spent for the benefit of the family.

Second, it's debatable that careers provide a greater level of autonomy than spending time with family. The men in their 40s who finally do earn more on average than women have a great part of their time and energies committed to work duties. They don't get to choose to do whatever they want whenever they want; on the contrary, their lives are closely regulated by their work. Women too at this time of life are likely to be busy, but they do have a little more flexibility in choosing how to arrange their lives.

Even more importantly, why should autonomy be chosen as the overriding good? Why shouldn't people think it important to do what's best for their children and for their family?

There's one other possible objection to women choosing to scale back their work commitments: it means that the family is playing a significant role in how people organise their lives.

We can't assume that everyone in the political class approves of this. If your aim is to establish a system in which everyone is treated the same along universal, centralised, rational lines, then the continuing relevance of the family in providing support for women to care for their children won't be so easily accepted.

In other words, there is a conflict between those who envisage social organisation in terms of the client individual and the state, and those who accept the family as a natural, non-bureaucratic unit of society.

Encontrando el amor en un 14 de Febrero

Me pasó. Hace 2 dias (el 14 de febrero). Seguramente le ha pasado a mucha gente, pero lo interesante no es la "historia de amor", sino la "historia de desamor" que venía como "dato adjunto" (attachment).

No, no me rechazó, al contrario. Estuvimos coqueteando con la mirada por varios minutos (quizá más de 10 o 15, no lo sé, todo pasó tan rápido y tan lento). Cada instante que podía volteaba y me lanzaba una mirada coqueta que yo respondía de la misma forma. Fue "amor a primera vista". No podía quitar mi vista de su rostro perfecto, su hermoso cabello, cuando me di cuenta de que me estaba viendo desde antes. Incluso inmediatamente ví como su acompañante (o acompañanta?) lo notó y me miró también, pero con una mirada medio crítica, intuyendo ya lo que involucraba nuestra implícita coquetería. Luego fue obvio ke le hizo algunos comentarios al respecto al "amor de mi vida". Definitivamente no le hizo ningún comentario negativo ya que continuó el coqueteo con miradas. Seguía volteando a verme en cada oportunidad que tenía.

Hacía años que no sentía esas mariposas en el estómago. Y claro, la inseguridad y el cuestionamiento de que si yo tambien le gustaba.

Pero como ya dije, después de tanto ritual de coqueteo visual ya no tenía duda alguna. Detuve mi caminar para continuar con el ritual. Estaba a menos de 10 metros de mi. Regresó por donde venía, y estaba a menos de 2 metros de mí. En cuanto superó los 3 metros volteó nuevamente con su hermosa mirada, perfecta, lo que siempre había soñado.

Es como cuando ves a alguien y sabes que es el amor de tu vida y hasta te casarías con esa persona (hasta que la muerte los separe) aún sin haber siquiera escuchado su voz. Y no, no era una cuestión emocional inducida por el mentado 14 de feberero. Es más, ni siquiera me pasó por la menta dicha fecha en todo el transcurso de ese coqueteo. Yo iba saliendo de una clase de la escuela y seguía pensando en lo estúpida que era la maestra y en eso que me encuentro con la persona que tantas veces había soñado. ¡Y encima que dicha persona me respondía positivamente a todas las señales! Es más, ¡no caí en cuenta de la fecha hasta varias horas despues!

Desafortunadamente, mientras todo esto pasaba mi cerebro tuvo que funcionar. No, sé que no es nada poético. Pero desafortunadamente entendí que era algo que no podía ser. (Si, puede sonar a tragedia griega, pero decidí evitar el proceso trágico ya que si todo hubiera continuado, pues igual sabía que el final no era muy positivo, ni para mi, ni para este amor de mi vida, asi que no tenía mucho sentido.)

Finalmente esperé que volteara a verme por última vez, y lo hizo. Lancé mi última señal para que supiera que, efectivamente, me gustaba y mucho y me respondió de la misma manera. Entonces me marché. Hacia mi soledad eterna, deseándole todo lo mejor para su futuro, segurmente con alguien más, pero no importaba ya que prefería su felicidad al lado de alguien más, a su desdicha a mi lado.

(Perdón, pero no puedo dar muchos detalles. La historia de desamor estaba escrita décadas atrás y por tanto no depende de mi el modificarla. Me siento como Haruki Murakami [ver cuento completo en: http://sininstrucciones.blogspot.com/2008/05/al-ver-la-chica-100-perfecta-una-bella.html ; ver video-resumen en: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=39757126 ]).

The Clique

La novela

Es una novela dirigida a adolescentes y preadolescentes, principalmente mujeres, de la cual ya se hizo también una película (sólo para DVD). También se han escrito varias otras novelas después de la original (creo que a este momento hay mas de 15) convirtiéndose en una exitosa serie con varios best-sellers.

La novela trata de unas chicas de alrededor de los 12 y 13 años (7th grade) de una escuela privada en Nueva York. La "Clique" es el grupo de chicas más populares de ese grado escolar, pero el mundo se altera cuando una chica de menos recursos llega a la ciudad, se hospeda en la casa de huespedes de la líder (justo detrás de su casa) y encima debe ir a la escuela con ella y sus demás amigas.

El tono es bastante superficial, muy al estilo de "Chicas Pesadas" (Mean Girls con Lindsey Lohan), pero la historia es buena y cautivante. Maneja buenos niveles de tensión durante toda la trama.

Personalmente me gustó mucho. No podía dejar de leerla. Me tomó como 2 o 3 dias. Además no tiene la clásica "moraleja" que suelen tener las novelas para adolescentes y preadolescentes. Está bastante recomendable (a menos que pienses que todos los libros deben tener una moraleja).

La película

Contrario a lo que esperaba, me gustó mucho ya que es bastante fiel a la novela (dentro de los posible, claro, digo, pasar una novela de 200 paginas a 90 min de película no se puede hacer sin una gran cantidad de omisiones). Digo, era obvio ke en película no podían aparecer varias escenas, como cuando Claire se baja la parte inferior del bikini mostrando sus nalgas y moviendolas para llamar la atención, especialmente considerando la edad de las protagonistas.

De cualquier manera, es muy cool y muy fashion todo el show a pesar de la corta edad de las chicas. La vestimenta muy acorde, desde bikinis hasta micro-minis y micro-shorts, como podemos ver en la siguiente imagen (click para verla más grande):


En fin, la película es bastante buena, desafortunadamente no pudo llegar a los cines por el público al que va dirigida. Y es que, a diferencia de otras películas similares, ésta iba dirigida a un público muy específico: chicas de los 11 a los 15 años principalmente. Esta es una edad a la que ya pueden ir solas al cine (a diferencia de la pelicula de las Bratz dirigida a un público de menor edad por lo que requerian ir con sus padres) y por su gran enfoque al mercado femenino, tampoco era fácil que fueran con el novio, y es por eso que se decidió sacarla en DVD.

Cómo conseguirla

-La novela
Salió una versión en español publicada por Alfaguara, de cualquier forma es muy difícil encontrarla en las librerías (a pesar de ser best seller en inglés). Comprarla por internet suele ser la opción más viable.

-El DVD
Al igual que la novela, es muy difícil encontrarla fuera de Estados Unidos. No suelo estar a favor de la piratería, pero creo que la mejor opción para lograr verla sería descargarla por torrent y luego bajar los subtitulos.

New Damnwells album - Free!

I've always enjoyed The Damnwells and their mix of pop and Americana, so I was quite thrilled to see that their new disc One Last Century is being made available for free through Paste Magazine. The only thing asked for is your email to join The Damnwells mailing list.

Link for download

And although this isn't on the new album, it's one of my favorite songs of the last several years and from their previous release Air Stereo:

CD of the Day, 2/11/09: The Naomi Star-Through the Eyes

Here's another late 2008 release that finally found its way before my ears after the calendar turned, and one that would have warranted placement on my year-end list. This is the third disc from The Naomi Star, a band from Connecticut that seems to get better with each disc. Whereas their first two releases were more straight-ahead pop, Through the Eyes finds them branching out, adding country and folk elements to their already pleasing pop palette.

This becomes apparent off the bat with the Band-influenced "Karma", which in a just world would make these guys big money as the new theme for the TV show "My Name Is Earl". The down-homey "Where are You Going" is Exhibit "B" for their new sound, similar in feel to many of the songs on the new Ben Kweller (another popper gone country-inflected) disc, and the winsome "She Told Me" completes the opening trilogy of their new country-pop sound.

Things return to familiar ground with "Moneyman", a rocker in the style of Patrick Pentland's offerings in Sloan, and "Powerpop Nugget" is just that - a 2 1/2-point track about a powerpop track that went straight to the "top of the charts". Elsewhere, the title track and "A Better Place" are dreamy pop treats, "Anjoulie" is another country-influenced stomper, and "Slowing Down" finds the golden mean between pop and country with a Jayhawks-like grace. Great stuff.

CD Baby | MySpace

A curious debate

Should the liberal state permit the existence of non-liberal communities? There has been a debate amongst academics in recent years on this issue.

One curious feature of this debate is the concept that the liberal academics have of themselves. They usually take themselves to be free, autonomous individuals leading self-directing and self-chosen lives in contrast to the unreflective, non-liberal individuals in traditional communities.

One academic has described the way the debate is framed as follows:

The philosophical issue centers on the questions of who is entitled to freedom, and what sorts of lives they are entitled to create with their freedom.

Are all persons entitled to have their choices respected and their lives left alone? Are persons as we find them in the world — culturally and socially influenced, holding many beliefs heteronomously and only because they were raised to believe them — already suited for liberty?

Or is the moral case for freedom dependent on people having some level of autonomy or intellectual attainment? To put it another way: If persons are living lives into which they have been socialized, if they are making decisions solely on the basis of what tradition demands, or if they are unreflective about their choices, can they really be said to be living freely?

And if their choices are not free to begin with, can one make a moral demand that these choices be respected by the state? We do not think that children, the insane, or the brainwashed are free in a morally desirable sense if they are simply left alone to follow their whims. Why, then, should we consider as free those who hold a religious belief simply because it was instilled in them while they were young?

(The quote is from an article by Professor Jacob T. Levy who is not endorsing the above view but describing a commonly held position amongst his fellow liberal academics.)

To summarise, the question being asked is whether the liberal state should respect the choices made by those people, such as those raised within a religious tradition, who are not autonomous and therefore not free.

What is the problem with putting things this way? Well, one considerable problem for liberal academics is that they themselves are condemned by the very principle they are putting forward.

Who is really the most unreflective in the adoption of their values? The liberal academic or the church-goer? These days it would have to be the liberal academic. A Westerner who makes a serious commitment to a church is acting against the stream and will usually be making an individual choice. Liberal academics, on the other hand, are simply falling in with a reigning orthodoxy.

Another major problem with the framing of the debate is the assumption that what really counts is that I have autonomously chosen a life path rather than being influenced by culture or tradition.

There is a denial here that what really matters are real goods that can be known to individuals and to communities. If, say, we recognise courage and honour in a man as a real good, then we would think it a positive thing if a culture and tradition encouraged these qualities. What would matter would be getting to the particular good.

In the liberal view, though, the priorities change. The liberal is less concerned that a man is honourable and courageous and more interested in the fact of self-direction. If I self-direct against honour and courage I have satisfied the liberal principle.

The end result is not a society of independent free-thinkers. Nearly everyone in the political class today follows the same unexamined first principles. Nor have human vistas been opened up. All the talk about life projects, life plans and so on usually boil down to nothing more than selecting a career for ourselves.

This is the bland side to liberalism: it is what is left when the individual is removed from culture and community and the goods embedded within a tradition.

Hush Now freebie!

A few months back, I reviewed the fine debut disc from The Hush Now, and as part of a promotion of their upcoming CD release party, they're making the disc available for a free download here. Grab it while you can!

Sunday Night Roundup.

Stephen Lawrenson-Somewhere Else. Paisley Pop's Pennsylvanian power popper Stephen Lawrenson broke through in 2004 with Home, a fine disc that mixed the sound of Jeff Lynne with Crowded House, and he's finally released the followup, Somewhere Else. After the baroque instrumental "Theme from Somewhere Else", Lawrenson adds some punch to his power pop with "Let's Go", which has a Tommy Keene/Steven Wright-Mark sound, and "Home to Me" is a midtempo gem. Other standouts include the Harrisonesque "Anybody Else", the jangly "Faith in You" and the psychedelic "Truth". A recommended disc, and here's hoping we don't have to wait another 4-5 years for the next one.

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

Greg Lato-Monday Morning Breakdown. For those craving some "poppier pop", Providence, Rhode Island's Greg Lato is your man. This 8-track mini-album is slick top 40 pop in the vein of acts like Mika, The Feeling, Jack McManus & others. "Beautiful Woman" is the prize here, an upbeat tune with a great melody and all the top 40-type bells & whistles, including strings. The piano-based title track is another treat with harmonies that bring to mind First Class' 1974 hit "Beach Baby", and "Last Girl" is another song you'll love in spite of yourself. Although the whole genre of power pop could be considered a guilty pleasure, this one's a guilty pleasure for power poppers.

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

Beautiful Woman - Greg Lato

Wild Bores-Wild Bores. Last April, we told you about the teaser EP for this disc, and with the turn of the year, the full-length is now out. Wild Bores is Nashville-via-Chicago's John Whildin, and the sound here captures a mix of both of those cities: roots rock with a midwestern feel. "Whatever Makes You Happy" opens the disc and captures the essence of Whildin's sound - kind of a lighter Jayhaws/Wilco/Gin Blossoms mix. "My Home Town" has a Jeff-Tweedy-circa-Being-There feel, and "Lovely Place" is sweetly melodic. Anyone who enjoyed the recent Leave disc will enjoy this as well, as of course anyone who picked up the EP last year.

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

CD of the Day, 2/5/09: Jeff Litman-Postscript

Trained in classical guitar and jazz, NYC's Jeff Litman might seem like an unlikely popster. But those genres' loss are our gain, as Litman has crafted an excellent singer/songwriter debut that fans of smart power poppers like Jon Brion, solo Rhett Miller and (perhaps most of all) Jim Boggia should be all over.

Litman demonstrates his chops right away with the bouncy "Anna". Vocally, he resembles Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies, and one could be forgiven for mistaking "Anna" as a lost BnL track. The piano-driven "Complicate" is another winner and the jangly midtempo pop gem "Everything You're Not" brings to mind Nick Pipitone, both solo and with The Rip Off Artists. These three tracks would be good enough to anchor most discs, but there's more to be had. The rocking yet charming "Detroit Layover" and "Knock Me Down" are where the solo Rhett Miller comparisons come in, and the sweet pop of "Open Arms" (not a Journey cover) recalls The Goldbergs.

Litman also proves masterful on the slower numbers. The title track is a particular delight in this regard - its lilting melody and tasteful strings would fit right in on the new David Mead album, and the closing number "It Wasn't Me" is gorgeous as well. Without a doubt this is the best singer/songwriter debut I've come across in many months, and 2009 has another early best-of contender. This is one Postscript that deserves to be in the main body of the message.

CD Baby | MySpace | Stream @official site (click on "listen here" on the left) | iTunes

A shaky foundation

Here's a comment left at this site a while ago by Apashiol, a supporter of liberal modernism:

I will try to be clear on what I actually think.

For me the proposition of a "highest good" has no meaning ... I see absolutely no evidence that we have been created with a purpose or goal ... Humans must create their own meaning.

I believe in the ideals of secular democracy. I believe in individual liberty and equality. Nobody has a god-given right to coerce or otherwise define what the meaning of life should be for anyone else.

Individual liberty and equality are not ends in themselves, but necessary preconditions from which people can endeavour to discover what is good in life and create their own meaning.

All people are entitled to the same basic rights. They are not entitled due to belonging to a privileged race, class, gender, sexuality or whatever kind of category can be created to contain them.

All human beings should be judged on their character. Not on any incidental attribute.

It's an argument which fails at the very beginning.

For Apashiol there is no natural created order through which human life gains meaning and status. Instead, individuals must each create their own meaning.

It's not a very solid basis for a new philosophy of life. Is meaning really something that we create for ourselves? If so, is meaning all that meaningful?

And what does it boil down to in practice? How do individuals set out to self-create meaning? What are they supposed to do? Pursue career success? Prove their reproductive fitness? Achieve social status?

It's all left vague and unspoken. All that we are really left with is the picture of millions of individuals striving through their life efforts to create their own unique life meaning.

Once you accept this background, then the rest follows on. In particular, you are likely to endorse the liberal understanding of freedom and equality.

Apashiol wrote that freedom isn't an end in itself, but is necessary for people to self-define and self-create their own lives. So freedom will be understood as a liberation from impediments to the self-defining, self-creating individual.

What are such impediments? Whatever is predetermined, which includes aspects of life which are given to us as part of our tradition or as part of our given nature. Logically, then, liberals will attempt, in the name of freedom, to make our sex not matter, to make our ethnicity not matter, to make conventional forms of family life not matter and so on.

It's much the same with equality. If an individual is held back or handicapped in any way in the pursuit of their unique, individual life meaning, then a major injustice will be thought to have occurred - perhaps the very meaning of their existence will have been compromised.

So equality will be linked to a concept of social justice. The rule will be that individuals must not be handicapped, in the sense of being limited in their possible life choices, by circumstances beyond their immediate control. Class barriers, cycles of poverty, discrimination on the grounds of gender or ethnicity - these will be thought to place limitations on some individuals, which might then destroy their chances to create life meaning.

You can understand why liberals would be so upset by the thought that some groups of people were better at some things than others. This would inject a kind of cruel hoax into the Apashiolian world view: it would mean that efforts to self-create our unique life meaning as individuals might be thwarted by some sort of "incidental attributes".

You can understand too why liberals think so poorly of those who resist modernity. In their eyes, life is about the pursuit of individual life meaning; therefore, it is a question of those who are privileged in this pursuit (by not being held back or handicapped by inherited social factors) and those who are not. Therefore, race, class, gender and sexuality will be thought of in terms of privilege, discrimination and inequality: those who defend the "privileged" categories will be thought to be denying the full humanity - the equal opportunity - of others: something which will be explained in terms of supremacy or hatred or bigotry or prejudice.

Of course, if we take away Apashiol's life philosophy, things change radically. The categories referred to above might then be seen positively as sources of self-identity and as aspects of a natural and meaningful order of existence.

CD of the Day, 2/2/09: The Tomorrows-Jupiter Optimus Maximus

Old school power pop fans will no doubt remember the 1996 self-titled release of the Vancouver band The Roswells as one of the better releases of that decade, and it was included in Top 200 Power Pop Albums of all-time as compiled by John Barack in his Shake Some Action! tome. In recent years however, they've been shrouded in almost as much mystery as the town from which they took their name. Wonder no more, as The Roswells' primary singer/songwriters Marc Stewart and Scott Fletcher have returned to form The Tomorrows, and their debut album Jupiter Optimus Maximus is out this week on Kool Kat.

Stewart and Fletcher take the Roswells template and build it on with a more expansive, crunchier sound without sacrificing the melodies that drove that band. "Effortless Lee" opens the disc and clocks in at just over five minutes - not a problem, though, as its a Big Star/Raspberries-style mashup that never wears out its welcome. "Love is Dead" throws a bit of Queen into the mix, and the necessarily spacey title track recalls countrymen The High Dials. Elsewhere, "Don't Worry About Me" channels Velvet Crush, "Such a Shame" demonstrates their facility with midtempo janglers, and the geek-rock of "Anime" is endearing. Closing things is the 6-minute epic "Remember", which fits the spirit of the album.

With the first great power pop disc of 2009, R.I.P. The Roswells, and long live The Tomorrows! Grab it from Kool Kat and they'll send you a 4-track bonus disc that includes a cover of "And Your Bird Can Sing".

CD Baby | Kool Kat | MySpace