In lime-green doubleknit polyester! With a four-button jacket! OK, maybe it's just that they're industrial leisure…
- First, a few contrasting, if somewhat bizarre, intrusions from the world of copyright and IP exploitation merit consideration — together. In yet another case demonstrating that influence and Progress in the useful Arts1 is more than a bit difficult to separate from infringement, British songwriter Ed Sheeran has beaten back a copyright-infringement claim. One might well ponder the contrast with publishers — not the author's estate, however tangled — that authorize continuation novels a la Jason Bourne (n.b. presented as an example of the kind of work, without regard to literary merit; I do not have specific knowledge concerning the estate in question). But at least it's not yet another attempt to make the 'net Special… or otherwise mix media and sources and inspiration and damned near everything else.
- The contrast of the preceding sausage-with-too-many-flavors with foundations of scholarship leads directly to intellectual indigestion — thus justifying a place on this platter for each!
- Also from the Department of It's Money That Matters, there is finally some pressure in Europe to end "golden passports" — maybe. It'll be just as successful as any such movement in the US regarding certain visas for certain residents of "friendly" nations… neglecting the lovely assurance and implications, buried in coded language deep in the officialese, that "labor certifications are not required."
- Or you could just set up your own country, I suppose. A while back, I sarcastically remarked that the head of a certain (anti)social media operation wanted to be his own country, and really needed only his own currency to lend his reign some sense of legitimacy. Looks like he's taking my "advice" on that.
- We really don't do a very good job of honoring veterans in this country, especially not since implementation of the all-volunteer force. We do an even worse job of fulfilling our promises to them, but that's not exactly new (and that damned statue is still at the entrance to the training grounds).
- The NFL's institutionalized racism, sexism, and other bigotry (of all kinds) has to go. Of course, it's not just the NFL; one of the reasons I won't be watching or paying any attention whatsoever to Tiger Woods this weekend is where he's trying a comeback from injury, and it's not just that venue. When a white-guy eligible-for-Social-Security coach calls out the hiring practices of the league's owners (black/nonwhite players in 2021: 58%/70%; black/nonwhite head coaches as of this posting: 9%/16%; black/nonwhite ownership as of this posting: 0%/<5%) and it's almost immediately buried by just-barely-journalistically-neutral accounts of discrimination lawsuits against the league (and this is one of the less-incredulous reports), you know that there's a communication problem. Not to mention an entitlement problem.
It's no better in the rest of the entertainment industry. Quickly: Name a nonwhite head of a major H'wood studio (<SARCASM> "excluding" the Jews who supposedly control everything with their New York senses of humor2 — that's "race" only when it's convenient to call it so </SARCASM>). Ever. The "film academy" is not really any better and won't get better until the most-racism-entrenched branch — the marketing and publicity branch, filled with and run by the people who make all of those never-in-writing comments about how white audiences won't go to a film led by an unknown black actor and influence hiring decisions throughout the industry — gets blown up… or better yet excluded because with the exception of those never-in-writing comments they don't actually influence the making of films. How about commercial publishing, and the subtleties of risk-taking? Or "general-audience" (that is, not specifically ethnically marketed) recorded music? Or the major gaming companies? Or (anti)social media platforms?
For all the progress made at the ballot box since 1964 — and there's been a lot, but there's a lot more to go — it seems that the cable box needs even more attention in the C-suite (and throughout management). We're not actually striving for a more-perfect union when we grudgingly allow access to the ballot box while less so to the ballot; and the same when we grudgingly allow access to the title page while less so to the job title.
- This is about the only context in which you'll ever see me citing that academic with approval — the theoretical framework. His anti-science attitude and frequently bigoted work in the "lab" of literary analysis are Explicitly Disapproved, in particular regarding the pro-Establishment "serious trade nonfiction" for which he's best known outside of literary circles. I'm not even going to give him a namecheck; not even as much, or as frequently, as I namecheck Ezra Pound, James Baldwin, and certain others because doing so makes those who haven't actually looked at the data (read the works in question) so bloody uncomfortable. It's even more worthwhile contemplating the populaity of Pat Boone…
- See, e.g., untitled pilot/Season 1, Episode 1, The West Wing (22 Sep 1999) (during the all-white-and/or-Jewish politicotheological throwdown). But I'm not from Connecticut.