Posts here will continue to be intermittent until a few personal and professional bottlenecks clear.

Years ago, when I was living in Barcelona and trying very hard to immerse myself into being a fully authentic FC Barcelona fan, I couldn’t help but idolize Puyol. He had none of Ronaldinho’s sultry gloss, nor was he one of the blaugrana’s vaunted tiki-taka midfielders. He wasn’t great with the ball at his feet — as much a sin at Barça then as it is now—and he had terrible hair (which happens to resemble mine). When my girlfriend visited me in Catalunya, she was a wee bit disappointed that I’d bought the jersey of “the ugliest guy on the team, except for Ronaldinho.”

The other day I was listening to a Ron Paul supporter bash “federal regulators,” and then it hit me: “Regulate” would be perfect for a conservative Super PAC attack ad. Throw it in the background, add some coded racist language that will activate suburban nervousness when it comes to hiphop, and you’re pretty much set.

“Big-state, big-spend liberals like Mr. Obama think that America should regulate its way to SOCIALISM. Did you know that major Jay-Z fan Barack Hussein Obama believes that you should pay for health care for the poor? etc…Paid for by ‘Dark Regulatory Clouds Over Our Freedom Super Pac.’”

And yes, it would work, but now I’m wondering if I’ve got it backwards. After all, the regulators are the track’s heroes! Run that track back again, and imagine an ad with these adjustments to the lyrics at the end:

“If you know like I know,
You don’t wanna step to this,
It’s the EPA,
Cleanin’ up energy markets.
If your factory blows smoke,
Then you’re fined like every day,
And if your car’s a gas-guzzler,
The EPA will regulate…”

“Paid for by Environmentalists United for Rolling on Punk Fools.”

Sorry GOP. Don’t worry, though—I’ve already addressed your “hip hop makeover” in an earlier post.

All of the resulting fluidity often prompts complaints about the transfer market’s lack of fairness. These come from fans of big and small clubs alike, for we are all democrats now. We need parity and table mobility and we need financial fair play. It’s a familiar, egalitarian complaint—why should Chelsea or Manchester United or Real Madrid or AC Milan or Sporting [Your Club’s Rich Rival] be permitted to purchase a nearly impregnable hold on success? Why should their floor be everyone else’s ceiling? We are suspicious of entrenched privilege. If the on-pitch rules impose a measure of equality upon all participants, it seems odd that we allow the off-pitch rules to privilege the wealthy. What, after all, should bank accounts have to do with determining the result of an athletic contest? We want to measure athletic prowess, not business acumen. That’s why we lionize the players—rather than the administrators who orchestrated their arrival.

But what if these aren’t the only relevant questions? What if the pursuit of parity threatens to sunder the goods of nobility?

Posts forthcoming in the next few days. Stay tuned.

–
* Clarification: I haven’t been kicked out of school. I’ve just, well, gotta work.

We shouldn’t be bothered that so many kids these days are artsy and think like actors. We should be bothered by the fact that we’ve guided them into a system where your talents and proclivities are frowned on unless they’re credentialized. We expect our kids to get degrees in whatever they care about most — and then to get whatever jobs those degrees qualify them for. This is a recipe for embarrassing, ridiculous case studies like the underemployed Occupy guy with the bachelor’s in puppetry. This guy’s problem isn’t that he’s underemployed. It’s that he hasn’t created his own job…the skill he needs most is entrepreneurship. And if there’s one thing college doesn’t teach you…

A caveat: despite my own advanced degree(s) in esoteric, non-quantitative stuff, my skepticism scorn for all things hipster is well-established. Around 2008, I spent a few months drinking Schlitz after finding it at a liquor store in my neighborhood. I told myself it was purely an economic decision—basic grad school survival calculus—but it eventually converted into a showy display of ironic pride. I have solid bona fides on all sides of the debate. Just saying.

Now for the fun: James’ post is brave and compassionate, for the hipsters are an unloved crowd…but it has a lurking definitional problem.

See, James wants to lean on the STEM vs. puppetry major debate as a sorting standard for “who the hipsters are,” though this is pretty obviously not the relevant distinction. Hipsters are not simply those Americans who act and do art and conduct experiments-in-living (see below more on who they ACTUALLY are). Indeed, he approaches this position at the end, where he insists that America’s problem is that we’re no longer “creating our own jobs” or—to borrow Nietzschean language—willing ourselves into the world. He claims that our trouble isn’t exclusively with the artists—since their nerdy STEM-credentialed neighbors are doomed to be merely technicians, cogs in a bloated and soulless system. We are all the puppeteer. We are all hipsters now. So don’t blame the artists, puppeteers, or Oppression Studies Majors: blame flaccid American individuals! Blame weak American wills. Also—shhh—if you have your John Galt decoder ring locked and loaded, you can actually blame the nanny state for surreptitiously eviscerating American individualism. 

VP of Stylish Lifestyle Choices Projection

Fine. Accept some version of that claim as a premise (for now). But that move takes all of the steam out of James’ defense of actors and artists and esoteric dabblers/gutter punks/Brooklyn winery developers/etc. If we locate the problem in individual wills, rather than in the content of individual expertise, that gives us no new resources to defend artistic expertise. It buries James’ opening distinction. Why care about art, if our artists are every bit as weak-willed as our scientists, and vice versa?

In other words, if our problem is that many of us—regardless of our areas of expertise—are incapable of shaping our world, it’s nonsense to insist that American salvation might come from hipsters tilling the world of ”fashion, art, fame, and novelty.” It’s one thing to insist that artists are not a national epidemic, and quite another to insist that they’re America’s last best hope. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so tough on artists, but that doesn’t necessarily tell us much about what actual hipsters mean for the US economy. 

So let’s try another definition. To do this, though, we’ll have to put James’ Nietzsche references down and take up their true intellectual forebear: Rousseau. Hipsters aren’t defined by their area of expertise. They’re defined by the aforementioned flaccidity. They’re not just-as-weak as the rest of us…they’re uniquely, embarrassingly so. Why? Like Rousseau, they’re defined by a damned, doomed quest to be authentic to their core souls while simultaneously displaying their ironic disinterest in what it is they do. Ever wonder why hipsters love angsty music so dearly? Because their ontological wager, their mode of being, is specifically geared to keep them unhappy about trivial things. In his Confessions, Rousseau tacks back and forth between wanting to be admired, understood, and ignored. Come to think of it, I’d be willing to claim that he’s the first to open the intellectual space for what eventually becomes hipsterism.

That’s why James’ definition is so problematic, and also why his solution isn’t actually what he thinks it is. At then end he shines up the stars in his eyes and promises “a vanguard of savvy, self-actualized hipsters, as competent at starting and running businesses as they are at navigating the leading edge of stylishness.” Those folks sound great—but “hipsters” they are not. They’re stylish, capable, driven, practical people. They succeed in business not because they live out art-house-movie-grade ironic/authentic fantasies in their boardrooms. No! They succeed in business because they take themselves and their projects seriously-in-themselves—not as projects to self-display. These folks don’t sound like hipsters…they sound like adults. They sound like (gasp!) yuppies.

–
Q: Why are there only two serious political parties?
A: Think of any athletic contest. There are two categories: winners and losers. Here in the USA, the former are called “Republicans,” and the latter are called “Democrats.” Fun fact: in North Dakota, it’s actually considered hate speech to call someone a Democrat.

Q: Speaking of parties, why are the Republicans sometimes referred to as “the GOP?”
A: It’s an acronym for “Grumpy Old People.” Have you ever seen a video feed from their party conventions?

Q: Who or what determines the order in which states hold their primaries? Where are the states that the rest of the world likes? California? New York? Some of these early states are made up, right?
A: The order is determined each year by a complex formula which takes into account each state’s population, per capita obesity, and its contestant’s placement in last year’s Miss America Pageant.

Q: What is a caucus?
A: I’d rather not talk about it. It’s kinda an adult conversation. Ask your father when you’re older.

Q: Why are some state contests called “straw polls?”
A: In the first case, it’s in honor of the famed “Straw Man” protest strategy. In 1980, a bunch of farmers banded together and threw the Iowa caucuses to a scarecrow. The GOP was mortified, and decided to conduct an arm wrestling contest to supersede the caucus results. As you no doubt remember, it was won by a handsome, strapping lad named Ronald.

Q: Ok, but why are others called “beauty contests?”
A: The beauty contests are primaries where states ask voters to evaluate candidates’ hairstyles and sartorial sense in addition to casting traditional ballots. These states adopted this voting model in response to Richard Nixon’s years in office.

Q: What happens in the event of a tie in one of the primaries?
A: Rules differ from state to state. In Texas, there’s an arcane process entitled “The Wearing of the Boots,” where the candidates go head-to-head to see who can fit into the smallest pair of rattlesnake cowboy boots without complaining. In Maine, the electoral “logjam” is resolved by a race through an actual logjam. Candidates canoe through a river crowded with lumber to settle the contest. Finally, in Kentucky, the winning candidate is the one who conclusively demonstrates that he or she knows less about Canada than his or her rivals.

Q: “His or her?” Whatever happened to that Palin woman who seemed so promising back in 2008?
A: Who?

Q: You know, that Alaskan with the extraordinary intercontinental vision?
A: Doesn’t ring a bell. Never heard of her.

Q: Is it really true that one of the major American political parties dismisses the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change?
A: Ha! No! Don’t be ridiculous. Back in the 1990s, a number of prominent Republicans were serious about addressing climate change. They’ve just been staging an elaborate performance art piece in the years since (Bill Clinton dared them to in 2000).

Q: What are the minimum requirements to be an American candidate for president?
A: The Constitution requires that all candidates be fluent in English and one of our regional dialects. These aren’t just a legal requirement—they’re good political strategy. Just as politicians in the UK need working knowledge of Welsh, Cornish, and so forth, American politicians need to be capable of speaking either Texan, Midwestern, Pacificano, New Dutch, or one of the others.

Q: What’s the difference between “Real America” and the rest?
A: “Real America” consists of Native American reservations, certain parts of New York City, and Gary, Indiana. The rest is the illusory bit.

Q: Who eventually casts these so-called “electoral votes?”
A: The members of last year’s World-Series-winning baseball team.

Q: This all seems unduly complicated. Why not have a national plebiscite to nominate candidates?
A: Shut up, socialist.

Photo Courtesy of Julie Sterling Photography

Here he is—thanks to Julie Sterling! Someone call Gerber and start contract negotiations.