Brad you said:
I think the idea of the "transparent factory" is worth
> thinking about, even if as something we won't be
> able to enjoy in our work life because we
> live in a neocon instead of a social welfare country.
Here is a thought from a neo-con columnist who thought he was being funny
but came pretty close to telling the truth. New York (City anyway) is a
different country. We do think about social welfare and a symmetrical
synergy rather than this unbalanced fundamentalism that has to deny the
world in order to exist.
REH
December 6, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Going Native for 2004
By DAVID BROOKS
o: Tom DeLay
From: A Concerned Conservative
Dear Tom,
This week I read that you have abandoned plans to house Republicans safely
on a cruise ship off the island of Manhattan during the G.O.P. convention in
New York this summer. Have you paused to consider what this will mean?
It will mean that instead of spending time in a secure environment offshore,
kind, decent Republicans will be wandering innocently among packs of
inflamed New York liberals. They'll be subjected to long harangues that rely
heavily on the words "multilateral," "Kyoto" and "John Ashcroft." They'll
get condescending looks when they go into a deli and order a strawberry and
chocolate chip bagel with pineapple cream cheese - a perfectly acceptable
bagel option in most suburbs. They will naïvely pick up The Village Voice,
thinking it contains small-town news.
When the Utah delegation pauses to say grace before dinner at Elaine's, the
cultural dissonance will be so great it will be measurable on the Richter
scale.
Tom, New York is not a place where Republicans can feel at home. New York
has Central Park, which is a large pastoral area without a single putting
green. It is a city with nearly eight million people, none of whom own
riding mowers.
New Yorkers suffer from liberal anhedonia, which is the inability to derive
pleasure from grossly oversized pieces of machinery. So when a Republican
starts a perfectly normal conversation about the glories of his powerboat,
snowmobile, combine or hemi, the liberal is likely to screech out something
about the ozone layer.
New York is a city of strange rituals. The people live in these vertical
gated communities they call apartment buildings, but they don't seem to have
normal family structures. If a Martian landed in a Manhattan playground, he
would conclude that human beings start out small and white, and grow up to
become middle-aged Jamaican women. In Manhattan, when an oldest child turns
12, entire families disappear overnight.
If we are really going to abandon the idea of having a secure cruise ship
offshore, we've got to reduce Republican delegates' vulnerability by giving
them the information and tools they will need to camouflage themselves as
New York liberals. I am willing to work up an instructional video - "How to
Be Ruth Messinger in 12 Easy Steps" - but in the meantime we need to send
out a fact sheet.
We need to tell prospective G.O.P. delegates what sort of clothing they
cannot wear in New York: pastels, pleated pants, khakis, Docksiders and
tassels. If a Republican was seen walking down Riverside Drive wearing his
normal outfit - tasseled loafers, no socks, green pants, a festive plaid
sports jacket and a faded Hawaiian Tommy Bahama shirt - some New Yorker
would come up and ask him if he could bring Paris Hilton out to his home for
a reality series.
We also need to tell them what they will need to blend in: dark, rumpled
clothing, frayed shopping bags from the Strand, logo-less sweatshirts, Yasir
Arafat-style facial hair and those black rectangular glasses that make
everybody look like a Dutch architect.
We're going to have to give them phrases they can use in case they are
called upon to make elevator small talk. We have to give them examples of
sentiments they should avoid ("You're Jewish? Oh, I love your Ariel
Sharon!"), and examples of phrases they should use ("Nice weather we're
having. Too bad about the climate of McCarthyism settling over the land.")
I don't like thinking about Orrin Hatch in a do-rag any more than you do,
but this problem is going to require creative thinking. Liberalism doesn't
just happen. It is a product of a certain environment. I'm afraid if our
stouthearted Republicans find themselves in New York, with its insufficient
closet space and inadequate kitchen counters, they may start turning liberal
themselves.
They may start caring about what happens inside Condé Nast, taking Quentin
Tarantino seriously, practicing therapeutic yoga and fantasizing about
having Al Franken's baby.
What will you do then, when you call up your major donors and they ask you
to phone back after "West Wing" is over? Then you'll rue the day you
canceled that cruise ship idea. But then it'll be too late. By the summer of
2008 we'll be holding the G.O.P. convention in Bridgehampton.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
> Ed Weick wrote:
>
> > One question that this raises is whether what goes on in the decorated
> > shed is going to become more banal or less. Linda Duxbury, who teaches
> > business at Carleton University, argues that with the impending
> > retirement of the baby boom population, employment will become a sellers
> > market - people who are looking for jobs will be scarcer and will have
> > the upper hand. But one wonders if they really will. Perhaps they will
> > be paid a little more, but have to work longer hours and be run off
> > their feet. Some of the work Duxbury is doing on work/life balance
> > suggests that people in managerial positions are already working at the
> > exhaustion level.
>
> Good questions and observations, but a bit diferent from
> some of the points I was trying to make (which is OK...)....
>
> We're going to have a lot of aging persons, and relatively
> few young persons. There probably are different options.
> We could improve productivity and cut waste
> (like advertising and competitive duplication of production...)
>
> The young persons may be made to work longer hours for
> less pay to themselves (more of the product of their labor
> going to support the old people).
>
> The old can be made to work until they are physically
> or mentally unable to work any longer. I.e., retirement
> will for many persons not be an option. This is the
> future I think is going to become reality.
>
> Women can be coerced and/or cajoled to become
> more re-productive so that there will be more
> young persons to provide for the old persons and
> the earth will become even more conjested
> by hyper-population. Some persons like this option.
>
> It's also possible that life will be better in
> Europe than here in the U.S., which, as the
> Chaplin who the army is either prosecuting
> or persecuting said in the pepers yesterday,
> he loves America and wants to live here -> just
> in better times.
>
> I think the idea of the "transparent factory" is worth
> thinking about, even if as something we won't be
> able to enjoy in our work life because we
> live in a neocon instead of a social welfare country.
>
> Cheers!
>
> \brad mccormick
>
> >
> > Ed
> >
> > > Volkswagen is advertising a new factory in Dresden,
> > > with the theme of:
> > >
> > > transparency
> > >
> > > See: http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
> > >
> > > You will probably guess that this idea appeals to me, along
> > > with the location of the factory in Dresden (why couldn't
> > > they have built it in Newark NJ USA, or maybe even
> > > on the site of the former World Trade Center in NYC USA???).
> > >
> > > I have no idea how far VW is going to carry this
> > > theme, but the very words contrast antipodally with the
> > > watchword of postmodern architecture (which, to the
> > > best of my knowledge, is one of America's contributions to
> > > the cultural world of the late 20th century):
> > >
> > > the decorated shed
> > >
> > > A decorated shed, in case you don't know what it refers to,
> > > is a glitzy veneer facade which covers up a banal lifeworld
> > > within.
> > >
> > > Perhaps the heritage of Universalizing Culture in The West
> > > is not so dead in Europe, so that the future may
> > > not belong only to the Chinese after all. As a different
> > > NYT article recently suggested, the United States is
> > > becoming a source of cheap labor for Europe (I posted
> > > a little piece of my own experience here, working for
> > > Grolier Publisher after the French firm Hachett(sp?)
> > > bought the company and in no way provided working
> > > conditions similar to France here).
> > >
> > > As Koffi Anan said about Saddam Husein's Iraq, we need
> > > more "transparency".
> > >
> > > \brad mccormick
> > >
> > > --
> > > Let your light so shine before men,
> > > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
> > >
> > > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
> > >
> > > <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Futurework mailing list
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>
>
> --
> Let your light so shine before men,
> that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
>
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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