The state of the profession.

I may be crazy, but it seems there are fewer English jobs out there this year than last year on the old JIL. Maybe people just don't need to read books and analyze texts anymore. An increasing number of job listings also are calling for "new media" specialists and despite the fact that most major universities force their graduate students into "American" or "British" tracks, many jobs are specifically asking for "transnational" or "transatlantic" or "cross cultural" approaches.

I'm not saying these are bad developments; after all, it's silly to think that American authors were influenced solely by American literary developments or American society. Despite the wailings of the right wing who would most likely decry the "leftist assault on our national identity" should universities stop insisting on nationalist study tracks, the authors themselves rarely gave half of a rat's ass about where their peers were from. Most of the American authors we still care about from the 1920's were hanging out in Europe with their European buddies.

Which is not to say that the study of national literatures doesn't have its place, but the reading public (whatever that may be when you finally get down to trying to analyze it) by and large does not distinguish between American and British in its consumption. Most of the individuals who compose that group are just trying to read things that interest them, that they think they're "supposed to read" to be cultured, or that are current best-sellers. Or that Oprah told them to read.

What is the reading public anyway?

You can't handle the truth...

Looks like Republicans are up to their old tricks again, employing the classic dirtball tactics that have helped empty shells like George Bush defeat far more qualified opponents (Seriously, though, can you imagine what the right-wing media would be yacking about if Kerry were President during this economic debacle? And don't tell me there wouldn't have been one, because the Democrats on economic issues especially are way too ideologically close to the Republicans).

It seems Republican operatives -- knowing that it's near to impossible to absolutely pin it on the McCain campaign or the official party -- are conducting fake polls in swing states that try to link Barack Obama to Hamas and the PLO. This report from the Guardian (UK):

"They said; 'Are you Jewish?' and I said 'Yeh'. Then they said 'if you knew Barack Obama was supported by Hamas, would it change your vote? Would it change your vote if you knew his church had made antisemitic statements?'. All the hot button issues on Israel." She said she will vote for Obama as planned.

In Key West, Florida, another swing state, Joelna Marcus, 71, a retired professor, had a similar experience. She was asked if she would be influenced if she learned that Obama had donated money to the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

If you can't beat 'em, smear 'em. As the Guardian points out, the tactic was fundamental in George Bush's overcoming John McCain's double-digit leads in the 2000 primary...double-digit leads that began evaporating when "pollsters" started asking racist Republican voters about McCain's "Black love child."

I'm willing to bet the Democrats are no angels in this category, either; however, it always seems like the Republicans are far better at it. And the risk of getting caught is almost negligible, given how pathetic political coverage is in the US media (outside of the Daily Show), because seriously, how much of the US electorate reads left-leaning British papers?

Shortening of Days

Autumn comes crisp,
a silver edge on the grass,
dappled with the uncollected
offerings of trees, their branches
growing barer by the day.

And against the cold stone stacked
to parcel this from that,
leaves gathered in corners
tremble with every chilled breath
that mocks their makeshift shelters
and troubles their thinning husks.

Those that were young and green,
that danced with each insistent gust,
that reveled in the wind’s warm rush
across their bright clean faces,
now huddle fragile,
twisted and brittle
against the dying earth.

I die a little death each time a bookstore closes.

Olsson's has finally succumbed to the Big Box and teh Internets.

I remember their Georgetown store, long gone now, but what a wonderful quirky joint it was, with shelves stacked high and bare floorboards creaking.

How long do any of these places have? How long to do books have?

After libraries, small bookstores were great repositories of knowledge and new ideas. Book warehouses like Borders and Barnes and Noble may have the selection, but much of the staff would be useless without computers.

Who's your daddy?

The boys on Wall Street are slobbering over the tantalizing piece of meat being offered by our administration, most of whom were amazingly hard-core free marketeers until the failure of that "philosophy" bit them hard in the ass. So after yesterday's historic selloff of nearly 800 points -- brought on by the traders realizing they weren't going to get that hunk of free money just yet -- they regained their confidence that good old government would come to their rescue and rode the bull up nearly 500 points.

After watching this bullshit, is there anyone out there who still believes the market has anything to do with real value?

Are the corrupt companies that ran riot over regulations worth any more today than yesterday?

I suppose the answer comes from how you look at things. If you expect Big Daddy to show up and supply the ransom money to get your sorry ass out of hock, then sure, the company's worth more for the main reason that it's still around. The free market simply isn't free, my friends. It's a myth. A joke. An ideological construct. Lack of regulation doesn't lead to greater good, though it may lead temporarily to greater profits -- lack of regulation leads inevitably to thievery and negligence.

In sports, if you are corrupt and violate basic principles -- such as betting on your own team -- you are banned for life. In some sports (although not the big money makers) if you are caught cheating, you are banned for considerable periods, if not life. If you are a casino operator and you are caught chumming it up with the mob, you are banned from casinos.

I would humbly suggest that the bailout package be reworked to include a ban on top-level executives ever working again in the industry. CEOs of these companies, whose quasicriminal behavior led to this meltdown, banned for life. Boards of Directors, whose rank negligence could cost this country trillions of dollars and our position in the world economy, banned for life.

And please, please, please, could we perhaps have the common sense as American voters to dump the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Neocon free marketeer ideology out on its ass for the forseeable future?

It's good to be Queen.

When will DC Council get it through their heads that when you are Queen, you don't answer summons from the commoners?

I seriously don't understand where DC Council gets off trying to have Chancellor Rhee or Victor Reinoso appear in front of them. They ceded authority when they handed over control of the schools to the mayor, despite all evidence that the mayor and his team (chiefly Victor Reinoso) couldn't even put together their own plan for running a school system. If there's one thing I make sure my freshmen composition students know how to do, it's cite sources, because plagiarism is simply wrong.

This is the same city council that approved the hire of an individual with three years of classroom experience and no education degree to run one of the more high-profile and disfunctional school systems in the country.

Here's Rhee, in her own words, talking to Fast Company, a magazine that was born and should have died extolling the "rule-changing" tech boom:

Rhee has been outspoken about the low value she places on appearing before the council. In the September issue of Fast Company magazine, she described watching council hearings on television: "There's this crazy dynamic where every agency head is kowtowing. They sit there and get beat down. I'm not going to sit on public TV and take a beating I don't deserve. I don't take that crap."

The arrogance is astonishing, but Rhee has taken a calculated gamble that this city council will roll over for her, and so far she's been correct. Her most intense opposition comes from Councilmember Barry, and she correctly dismisses that as non-threatening, since his own credibility is severely compromised in this town. Who will step up and put his or her political capital on the line to stop her?

Vincent Gray? Hmm...does it advance his political aspirations to appear annoyed but in the end not seriously challenge Rhee's lunacy? A: Yes.
Jim Graham? Please...
Kwame Brown? Mr. Brown likes to talk, but that's about it.
Jack Evans? Sure...The Developer's Best Friend has two reasons to let Rhee run amok: her failure reflects poorly on Fenty, therefore increasing his own influence AND his developer backers are dying to get their hands on public property that DCPS controls.
David Catania? No. DCPS and DC's children can all die quietly in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Carol Schwartz? (because she will beat that right-wing Republican as an independent) Possibly, but doubtful.

OK, I'll stop. It's too ludicrous to go into the remaining members (Mendelson, Bowser, Cheh, Alexander, Thomas, Wells). OK, maybe Mendelson, because he has a habit of putting obstacles in the way of steamrollers, but like Barry, he would have trouble garnering support or public interest in his opposition.

This is not a pipe.

I always knew Ron Paul was a crackpot, the sort of guy who dreams of those utopian days of free-market capitalism that haven't existed since...well, since ever, but especially since we decided that sweatshops and child labor and completely expendable workers' lives were no longer in fashion, but he confirmed it with a commentary on cnn.com. According to Paul, our current fiscal crisis is a problem of too much government regulation as opposed to too little, basically proving that he's been out to lunch for much of the last thirty years.

Paul is correct in arguing that the proposed Paulson bailout rewards idiotic behavior, but his opposition to it stems from entirely incorrect assumptions that the so-called free market isn't free enough. Here's a little sampling of Representative Paul's theory:

The solution to the problem is to end government meddling in the market. Government intervention leads to distortions in the market, and government reacts to each distortion by enacting new laws and regulations, which create their own distortions, and so on ad infinitum.
It is time this process is put to an end. But the government cannot just sit back idly and let the bust occur.
It must actively roll back stifling laws and regulations that allowed the boom to form in the first place.
The government must divorce itself of the albatross of Fannie and Freddie, balance and drastically decrease the size of the federal budget, and reduce onerous regulations on banks and credit unions that lead to structural rigidity in the financial sector.
Until the big-government apologists realize the error of their ways, and until vocal
free-market advocates act in a manner which buttresses their rhetoric, I am afraid we are headed for a rough ride.

Umm, it was the lack of "stifling laws and regulations" that allowed the false boom to form, not the presence of them. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's, the government removed many of the regulations that prevented financial institutions from overextending themselves and exposing themselves to massive speculative debt. "Vocal free-market advocates" have had their way ever since Reagan rode into town, and the chickens are coming home to roost. These "distortions" in the market that Paul tries to lay at the feet of government were created and sustained through the prevalent free market practice of speculation; a quick primer on the history of capitalist economics could show you that the cycle of boom and bust -- a cycle not absent but decidedly much more extreme during the heady days of unregulated markets -- has been leveled and controlled through regulation.

Over in the corner, Ron Paul's been watching the deregulation gang kicking the supports out and as the roof collapses he's shouting that the few remaining beams are the cause of the collapse.