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Alyssa

Race, Class, And The Greatness Of Lloyd On ‘Entourage’

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Aug 26, 2011 at 5:22 pm

Commenter Carolyn tells me I should keep in mind that “Yes, their lifestyles can be mundane and shallow, but let’s not forget how it started. They left their lives in Queens, NY in order to help Vince become an actor in LA.”

I actually think the show would be a lot more interesting if it was a bit more directly about what it’s like to be not just upwardly mobile but explosively upwardly mobile. There are bits and pieces of their past in there: Vince saying he doesn’t need the toys he has but acknowledging that he likes them and would prefer not to live without them; the constant teasing about whether Eric’s community college experience is worth anything, particularly in comparison to Ari’s Ivy League education; the juxtaposition between Vince and Drama’s mother at home in Queens and her son calling from a radio studio in California to ask her to come to his premiere; Drama’s anxiety as he sees old colleagues working in catering, Party Down from a different perspective. But none of it’s exceptionally well-developed.

Ta-Nehisi wrote, about the main characters’ sexual conquests, that “It’s just that my fantasies don’t usually involve scooping the crumbs off the table from my better looking friends–or having a group of loser friends who would do the same with me. It’s really a buzzkill for the whole “hunter” aspect of male mythology. Indeed it replaces the ‘hunter,’ with the ‘moocher.’ If we’re talking about realism, and not fantasy, then I can get with that. But we aren’t, so I can’t.” But I feel like this is also true of the show’s depiction of upward mobility. Is it really that compelling to float along than to be demonstrably excellent, to have things come easy because you’re skillful not because you’re mooching? Maybe I’m a workaholic, and maybe this would be fun for a year, but it doesn’t seem like much of a fantasy for a life. It’s not as if the core characters escaped some sort of life of toil or crushing poverty. They might have been working-class, but it doesn’t seem like any of them every went dramatically without, and the characters are too young to have their present indolence be a reward for years of misery and debt. This isn’t retirement.

So it’s no mistake, now that I’m in the third season, that my favorite character is Lloyd, whose pep talk to Ari immediately after his boss’s epic defenestration is the single most meaningful thing in the entire show:

I’ve worked 18 hours a day to save up the money to put myself through Stanford Business School. While I was there, I cleaned the cafeteria during the hours I wasn’t studying and still graduated top of my class, only to take a job delivering mail to unappreciative overpaid little cocksuckers. And I finally get the big promotion that would allow me to answer your phones and be both racially and sexually harassed for the next nine months. But I know the end game. And you, Ari God, you are it. So stop your fucking whining…and figure out how you’re going to make both of our lives happen tomorrow.

Lloyd’s compromises are the most interesting thing in Entourage right now, his willingness to trade Ari’s insults based on the fact that he’s Asian and gay for apologies afterwards and the opportunity to continue to rise up in the world, to get to another kind of 18-hour days, and as far away from those cafeterias as possible. That scene hints at lost possibilities. Poor gay Asian guys deserve their fantasies, their dreams of glory, just as much as straight, white, and profligate ones do.

NEWS FLASH

Ensuring A Safe Evacuation For Transgender People | With Hurricane Irene preparing to hit the east coast, the National Center for Transgender Equality has released some simple guidelines to help make shelters safe for transgender people who may be evacuating. NCTE also offers a hurricane preparedness guide with some suggestions for supplies transgender people might want to keep on hand, such as certain medical and legal documents. An effective evacuation process needs to be safe for everyone, including those who depend on public shelters for protection from the storm.

Economy

Rep. Hensarling Says ‘Everything Is On The Table’ For Supercommittee, Even Tax Increases

By Travis Waldron on Aug 26, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the co-chair of the joint supercommittee that will attempt to negotiate a debt deal this fall, told the Dallas Chamber of Commerce today that he will not take any policy options off the table before the committee begins negotiating. That includes new taxes, even though Hensarling personally opposes them, the Dallas Morning News reports:

“If I start to take something off the table, then maybe Senator [Patty] Murray takes something off the table and the talks fail before they even get started,” Hensarling said, referring to the Washington state senator who co-chairs the panel. [...]

“I have an open mind, but it is not an empty mind,” Hensarling said before addressing the Dallas Regional Chamber.”

In prior negotiations, the GOP held steadfast to its no taxes pledge, a stance that is not only opposed by a majority of Americans but also played a significant role in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating earlier this month. Republican representatives who stonewalled every attempt to raise revenue, even as corporations and the wealthy pay low taxes and oil companies continue to benefit from huge government subsidies, have come under fire during the August recess as voters slam them for signing nonsensical tax pledges instead of listening to their constituents.

The fact that Hensarling isn’t immediately discarding the possibility of new revenues is progress, but the chance that he or the GOP have had a major change of heart on revenues is likely slim. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-MD) has urged his colleagues to ignore the implications of Standard & Poor’s downgrade report, falsely claiming that it did not smack Republicans for refusing any and all forms of revenue. More likely, Hensarling, who supports the GOP’s radical Balanced Budget Amendment and wants the supercommittee to revise the Affordable Care Act, is just positioning himself at the bargaining table before the supercommittee convenes for the first time.

Yglesias

America’s Tourism Surplus

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 26, 2011 at 4:45 pm

Mark Doms reports that while the US may not be much of a net exporter, we are a net recipient of travel spending with much more money being spent by foreigners coming to our fair shores than we send abroad:

This seems to have been really squeezed at the height of the recession, with American spending on foreign travel falling and foreigners’ spending on American travel falling much faster. Doms also notes that “we’ve seen our spending increase abroad at the same time that the number of U.S. citizens traveling overseas has declined – actually, it has fallen for three straight years.” The weaker dollar means the smaller number of American travelers are spending more.

LGBT

Why Lower Income Gays And Lesbians Are Unlikely To Marry

By Igor Volsky on Aug 26, 2011 at 4:30 pm

Rutgers sociology professor Arlene Stein reminds us that while many middle-class gay and lesbian couples in New Jersey may be celebrating the spread of marriage equality just across the Hudson (or entering into civil unions in the Garden State), lower-income community members are far less interested about joining the institution:

Several years ago, Mayor Cory Booker appointed a commission to deal with the concerns of Newark’s gay/lesbian communities. And a local group is collecting the stories of gay Newarkers in preparation for a conference at Rutgers in November. But the right to marry is not high on their list of priorities. As of last month, eight times as many Maplewood couples had obtained civil unions as those in Newark — though the population of Newark is 12 times larger.

The comparison of Maplewood and Newark raises questions about whether same-sex marriage is a one-size-fits-all solution. For those who wish to publicly affirm their relationships, and establish legal and economic bonds — like middle-class families in Maplewood — marriage is a no-brainer.

But those in the lowest ranks of the workforce, the bulk of Newark’s population, are less likely to have jobs with benefits and are more likely to be coupled with people who don’t either. And since they’re also less likely to own property, they’re unlikely to be very concerned with questions of inheritance. Gays and lesbians in Newark are also more likely to be embedded in family networks, less likely to move away from their families of origin in order to act on their homosexuality, and consequently they are less likely to construct identities in which sexuality is primary — and they have less incentive to marry.

Indeed, as its first priority, Booker’s LGBT Commission seeks to bring “an end to harassment, bullying, discrimination, economic and health care disparities, whether in the workplace, public, educational and/or healthcare setting and promote education, social and institutional sensitivity.” The right to marry is nowhere to be found.

NEWS FLASH

The GOP Presidential Candidates On Health Care | The Kaiser Family Foundation has put together an invaluable table showing where all of the GOP presidential candidates stand on health care issues like Medicare, the insurance marketplace, health reform philosophy and Medicaid. Click over here for more, but suffice it to say, the party is looking to repeal the Affordable Care Act, deregulate the health industry, and shift more of the cost and risk of Medicare and Medicaid from the federal government and onto individuals and states.

Climate Progress

How Global Warming Is Making Hurricane Irene Worse

By Brad Johnson on Aug 26, 2011 at 4:12 pm

Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the Outer Banks of North Carolina as a Category Two storm, and is expected to track a path of destruction up the densely populated Atlantic coast, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordering the first-ever mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas of the city. As the U.S. government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the US” summarized in 2009, warming of the oceans is causing Atlantic hurricanes to become more intense and dangerous:

The destructive potential of Atlantic hurricanes has increased since 1970, correlated with an increase in sea surface temperature. An increase in average summer wave heights along the U.S. Atlantic coastline since 1975 has been attributed to a progressive increase in hurricane power. The intensity of Atlantic hurricanes is likely to increase during this century with higher peak wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge height and strength. Even with no increase in hurricane intensity, coastal inundation and shoreline retreat would increase as sea-level rise accelerates, which is one of the most certain and most costly consequences of a warming climate.

Below, ThinkProgress Green explores in more detail how Hurricane Irene has been made more destructive by the combustion of hundreds of billions of tons of fossil fuels.

Oceanic Warming. Greenhouse pollution is causing the world’s oceans to warm. Sea surface temperatures in the region where Hurricane Irene formed and along its track are around 0.5°C warmer than they were about 30 years ago. “This rise is simulated pretty well by climate models forced by anthropogenic changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols, implicating these as the probable cause,” Dr. Doug Smith, the climate scientist who leads the Met Office Decadal Climate Prediction System tells ThinkProgress. This increased heat adds about 10 to 20 miles to the top potential speed of the hurricane’s winds. Storm surge increases proportionally to the square of the wind speed, meaning a 10 percent increase in hurricane wind speed means a 20 percent increase in storm surge. Climate scientists are debating how global warming and natural variability are interacting to change the intensity of Atlantic storms overall.

Sea Level Rise. Greenhouse pollution is causing the world’s oceans to rise, both because of warming of the ocean water and because of the melting of Greenland and Antarctica. Sea levels have been rapidly rising along the East Coast of the United States. Because of a combination of the global sea level rise and because of subsidence, Boston’s relative sea level has increased 11.8 inches since 1990, and sea level at Norfolk, VA has steadily risen 14.5 inches over the past 80 years. The one-foot rise in sea level means that damage from Hurricane Irene’s storm surge will be about 50 percent greater than it would have been otherwise.

More Atmospheric Vapor. Because the world’s oceans have warmed, the amount of atmospheric water vapor has increased by about 4 percent. Rainfall rates due to hurricanes appeart to have increased by 6 to 8 percent since about 1970 in association with increased water vapor in the atmosphere and warming. “This is because of the dominant reliance of storms on the resident moisture in the atmosphere and the moisture convergence for precipitation and latent heating in storms,” Dr. Kevin Trenberth wrote in 2007. “These warm ocean temperatures will also make Irene a much wetter hurricane than is typical, since much more water vapor can evaporate into the air from record-warm ocean surfaces,” tropical meteorologist Jeff Masters explains at Wunderground.com. “The latest precipitation forecast from NOAA’s Hydrological prediction center shows that Irene could dump over eight inches of rain over coastal New England.”

Increased Extreme Precipitation. Because of greenhouse pollution, heavy rains in the United States have increased 14 percent over the 20th century, much greater than the increase in overall precipitation. This has been one of the wettest years in history for the Northeast, directly in the path of Hurricane Irene. Hurricane Irene’s wind and rain will more easily topple trees in the loose, saturated soil and flood rivers, reservoirs, and drains.

Millions of people and billions of dollars of property are at risk from this one storm, in this year of billion-dollar climate disasters. Global warming pollution is far from the only reason that Hurricane Irene shouldn’t be thought of as a “natural” disaster. Much of the devastating potential of Hurricane Irene will be a consequence of past decisions about land use, construction and coastal preservation, mitigated by the brave work of public servants under attack by Tea Party conservatives. Even as we have polluted the climate to increase the threat from Atlantic storms, we have overbuilt the increasingly vulnerable coasts. Although Irene is being described as a “once in a lifetime” threat, the weight of the evidence indicates that this storm is merely a harbinger of our dangerous future.

Update

Other good reads on global warming’s influence on the threat of Hurricane Irene:

– Michael Lemonick at Climate Central: “Irene’s Potential for Destruction Made Worse by Global Warming, Sea Level Rise”

– Joe Romm at Climate Progress: “How Does Global Warming Make Hurricanes Like Irene More Destructive?”

– Justin Gillis at New York Times: “Seeing Irene as Harbinger of a Change in Climate“

NEWS FLASH

New Orleans Rep. Hits Cantor On Disaster Relief Offsets | As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), whose New Orleans district was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, criticized House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) stance on disaster relief. Without mentioning him by name, the comments clearly seem directed at Cantor, who has said disaster spending should be offset with cuts so as not to grow the deficit. “If that was the policy after Hurricane Katrina we would have been waiting for months or even years for the assistance we needed to get New Orleans up and running again,” Richmond said in a statement:

“I’m asking House GOP leadership to commit to a swift response — one that doesn’t require politically charged cuts to hurting Americans before helping Americans in need. Americans need to know that if a hurricane knocks down your house through no fault of your own, we’re going to be there to help you.”

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Aug 26, 2011 at 4:10 pm

Alyssa

Diane Keaton’s Stillborn Feminist Show

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Aug 26, 2011 at 4:07 pm

I was sorry that Diane Keaton’s show Tilda, in which she was set to play a Nikki Finke-like blogger terrorizing Hollywood, never went forward at HBO, and now that I’m watching Entourage, I’m even more sorry that we’re not getting an insider-y looking entertainment industry story from a woman’s perspective.

But I regret even more that this show, written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Marti Noxon, where Keaton was supposed to play “an old-guard feminist leader who tries to give new spark to the cause by starting a sexually frank women’s magazine,” never happened. It would have been the most explicitly feminist show since Maude, right? And even more so since it’s about doing the work of feminism, not simply living by and advocating its tenets. It’s one thing to air a documentary about Gloria Steinem and her role in the second-wave feminist movement and to treat it like history, and another to do a show that acknowledges that the work of that movement is far from finished, and that dives straight into the challenges of the transition from the second wave to the third wave.

I’m not remotely shocked that this show didn’t happen. But I am sort of depressed by the fact that it counts as a good thing that HBO actually considered it.

Yglesias

Steve Jobs’ Modest Fortune

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 26, 2011 at 3:59 pm

Steve Jobs is clearly a very wealthy man. But looking at the Forbes 400 list I was struck by the relative modesty of his $6.1 billion nest egg. These days Apple’s market capitalization dwarfs Microsoft‘s, but Forbes has Bill Gates at $54 billion, Steve Ballmer at $13.1 billion, and Paul Allen at $12.7 billion. Google’s market cap is even smaller than Microsoft’s, but Sergey Brin and Larry Page both check in at $15 billion.

It’s not so hard to figure out what’s going on here, but it is a reminder of a lot of the vagaries of life. In any commonsense way, Steve Jobs is a “better” businessman and tech entrepreneur than Paul Allen, but clearly the dollars and cents say otherwise. And by the same token, looking at these divergent fortunes I think you’d be hard-pressed to say that financial incentives at the margin are explaining much of anything. It’s quite plausible to imagine that it pisses Jobs off that Brin & Page have over twice as much money as he does, but if that’s true it would be purely about positioning. People like to appear higher-ranked on lists rather than lower-ranked. Nobody has $6 billion and thinks to himself “man, I need more money.” Yet by the same token, nobody expects Brin & Page to say “we’ve got plenty of money together, who cares if our company is successful.” The incentives to succeed are all there, and all clear enough, but can’t have much of anything to do with cold hard cash.

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