I know this will sound cryptic, but my child attends a well-regarded high school in a borough of the City of New York, and that is as specific as I am going to get about that subject.
But what I will get specific about is that there was a protest there yesterday.
It was a protest against the school. And it was a protest especially against the school's heretofore not-very-noteworthy (in NY at least) diversity. Apparently there are a great number of Asians, Arabs, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Persians, Hispanics, African-Americans, Albanians, Russians and heaven knows what other New York-ish sub-subcultural representatives prowling the halls of this wonderful school.
And apparently at least one group of outsiders, from somewhere in the great prairies of this nation, believes this is cause for alarm. This cult-like group--I think they are called "the Phelps Clan" or something like that--makes a point of protesting against progressivism in a manner the perversity of which I can only reluctantly begin to understand. For instance, they protested at the funeral of the young gay man who was beaten to death for being gay in Wyoming (they said he was going to hell). They have protested at the funerals of men and women soldiers killed in our current crop of overseas adventures (I have no idea why, but it seems perverse and wrong to do so).
And now they have taken their protests to the streets of the populous, incredibly diverse boroughs here in New York. I am not certain why they picked my child's high school, except that it is well known and as diverse as any in the city, but I think it's because it isn't very far from the synagogue at which they plan to protest on Saturday.
That's right. They are protesting against Jews in New York.
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing that we must all celebrate. However, the meaning of it is often lost. Freedom of speech is attained via laws prohibiting the government from taking action against free speech; in other words, when the government is thereby prohibited from stopping people from saying what they want.
Freedom of speech is not about one individual making certain another individual gets to shoot his or her mouth off until everyone's ears are red.
So, armed with these facts, can we urge ourselves to perhaps find this clan of simpletons where they sleep and, with heavy complements of duct-tape, wrap their heads in it such that they cannot utter a word of protest against diversity?
I am looking for volunteers.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Dear Abby: I'm Upset at my Ailing Old Father
Dear Abby:
I'm upset at my ailing old father.
Stop yelling. Let me explain.
First, the facts: he's in his eighties, is married, lives thousands of miles away from me, is legally blind, until recently did work (at a supermarket), and most recently fell at home and broke his hip. He is out of the hospital with a replacement joint and is convalescing at a rehabilitation center. I have two siblings. One of them is going to visit with him and my mother very shortly. On a recent call, my father, from his sickbed, informed me that he would be needing several hundred dollars a month from me and my siblings (combined)--for me, an affordable sum--because he could no longer work. My mother has not worked in many years though I believe she'd have been able to for most of that time.
Second, my immediate dilemma: should I go visit him? I have pressing business matters right now--no, really, I do. I'm not making that up.
Now, the background--and the reason I am upset. Or the reason I have been upset.
Without belaboring too much my distant past, let's just say that my parents provided a home in the suburbs that was unwelcoming enough for me, who by any stretch of the imagination should have been college-bound at the time, to leave first when I was seventeen and then, after having failed at leaving and a brief Harry-Potteresque residence in an unfinished space under a stairwell in their new home, to leave for good and forever when I had just turned eighteen with less than a thousand dollars to may name for some place I and my girlfriend at the time referred to as "out West".
That all worked out for me I guess. I have a business, a decent income, I am happily married with two wonderful children, one of them is in college, and my paintings are occasionally shown at galleries. My Dad says he is proud of me.
So here is the rub. My parents did little and nothing for me as a teenager. Of course I was difficult. I did things I would never want my teens to do (as who has not?). But they--I feel (and others who know the story agree)--had pretty much abandoned me, except for providing a crash pad and a chance to eat, by the time I was fourteen. (Example: I had a run-in with the cops when I was that age, during which I was victimized by same, and by the next day my parents had not only done nothing at all to address the event, they allowed me to go back out hitch-hiking).
As for the notion of college, there was virtually no conversation about it and certainly no offer of support from them (even at state schools which, as everyone knows, were, in the 1970s, cheap like penny candy).
Much, much more recently, through the twin wonders of social networking and email, I became embroiled in a very ugly exchange of "thoughts and feelings" between my brother, who initiated the episode with a spate of birther-worthy hate-speech, and my parents, whom my brother for no discernable good purpose cc'd during a heated email exchange in which he and I were both quite upset at one another mainly due to political differences. I had referenced some negative things about the family--and I suppose he wanted to wound me and them, and that began the emails between me and my mother and father.
In these emails I was, for the first time in perhaps thirty-five or forty years, very frank with them about my opinion of both their parenting skills and their--for lack of a better phrase I suppose--"belief system", which I hold to have been supported by a quite unwarranted self-satisfaction at how they have operated towards me for several decades. The emails were by turns bitter and defensive on their parts, and unusually frank and unsparing on mine.
We had left it as such until I got a call from my sister (a born-again Christian to whom I never speak) telling me that our father had fallen and was in the hospital.
I have spoken to him a few times. I now have a dilemma. I cannot say I especially want to go see him. But I cannot seem to avoid the very strong notion that, unless I do, I will deeply regret it.
Abby, what should I do?
Stop shouting. I know you're exhorting me to buy tickets. I may. I may, but I'm not sure I shall.
Signed,
Upset
I'm upset at my ailing old father.
Stop yelling. Let me explain.
First, the facts: he's in his eighties, is married, lives thousands of miles away from me, is legally blind, until recently did work (at a supermarket), and most recently fell at home and broke his hip. He is out of the hospital with a replacement joint and is convalescing at a rehabilitation center. I have two siblings. One of them is going to visit with him and my mother very shortly. On a recent call, my father, from his sickbed, informed me that he would be needing several hundred dollars a month from me and my siblings (combined)--for me, an affordable sum--because he could no longer work. My mother has not worked in many years though I believe she'd have been able to for most of that time.
Second, my immediate dilemma: should I go visit him? I have pressing business matters right now--no, really, I do. I'm not making that up.
Now, the background--and the reason I am upset. Or the reason I have been upset.
Without belaboring too much my distant past, let's just say that my parents provided a home in the suburbs that was unwelcoming enough for me, who by any stretch of the imagination should have been college-bound at the time, to leave first when I was seventeen and then, after having failed at leaving and a brief Harry-Potteresque residence in an unfinished space under a stairwell in their new home, to leave for good and forever when I had just turned eighteen with less than a thousand dollars to may name for some place I and my girlfriend at the time referred to as "out West".
That all worked out for me I guess. I have a business, a decent income, I am happily married with two wonderful children, one of them is in college, and my paintings are occasionally shown at galleries. My Dad says he is proud of me.
So here is the rub. My parents did little and nothing for me as a teenager. Of course I was difficult. I did things I would never want my teens to do (as who has not?). But they--I feel (and others who know the story agree)--had pretty much abandoned me, except for providing a crash pad and a chance to eat, by the time I was fourteen. (Example: I had a run-in with the cops when I was that age, during which I was victimized by same, and by the next day my parents had not only done nothing at all to address the event, they allowed me to go back out hitch-hiking).
As for the notion of college, there was virtually no conversation about it and certainly no offer of support from them (even at state schools which, as everyone knows, were, in the 1970s, cheap like penny candy).
Much, much more recently, through the twin wonders of social networking and email, I became embroiled in a very ugly exchange of "thoughts and feelings" between my brother, who initiated the episode with a spate of birther-worthy hate-speech, and my parents, whom my brother for no discernable good purpose cc'd during a heated email exchange in which he and I were both quite upset at one another mainly due to political differences. I had referenced some negative things about the family--and I suppose he wanted to wound me and them, and that began the emails between me and my mother and father.
In these emails I was, for the first time in perhaps thirty-five or forty years, very frank with them about my opinion of both their parenting skills and their--for lack of a better phrase I suppose--"belief system", which I hold to have been supported by a quite unwarranted self-satisfaction at how they have operated towards me for several decades. The emails were by turns bitter and defensive on their parts, and unusually frank and unsparing on mine.
We had left it as such until I got a call from my sister (a born-again Christian to whom I never speak) telling me that our father had fallen and was in the hospital.
I have spoken to him a few times. I now have a dilemma. I cannot say I especially want to go see him. But I cannot seem to avoid the very strong notion that, unless I do, I will deeply regret it.
Abby, what should I do?
Stop shouting. I know you're exhorting me to buy tickets. I may. I may, but I'm not sure I shall.
Signed,
Upset
Thursday, September 17, 2009
How Can Ya Be So Stupid?
I am talking about the so-called "working class" in this country. More narrowly, the white, self-identified "working stiffs" who probably don't belong to a union. Many are blue collar, some are gray collar, some certainly work in cubicles like girls at their sewing machines a century ago, very few are college educated, and nearly all have seen their economic prospects eroded--no, washed away--in a dam-burst of corporate exaltation and profit since the days when their first insidious hero, the now-underestimated Tricky Dick Nixon first bestrode them with a so-called "Southern Policy" that made the Republican party a manipulator of souls.
This post is inspired in part by Timothy Egan's "Working Class Zero" article in the NY Times today. But I have blogged of this working-class disconnect (or mis-connect) before.
My premise is that the American working class is easily in competition for the dumbest in the world, if "dumb" indicates an unquenchable thirst for doing what is diametrically opposed to one's self interest.
For instance, these sad Tea-Party buffoons that showed up in Washington last week: what was their purpose? Waving placards the collective sentiments of which ran the gamut from hate to contempt and back again to hate, they prompted me to ask myself if they had any clue what their actual message was, or if they knew what any coherent message might be. Did any of them seem to have a notion about what in public policy might in practice make their own lives better? Not a one, it seems. Much of the rhetoric was overtly racist (and many thanks to the Man from Plains for being plain-spoken about a very deeply shameful fact that even Obama wants to shrink from: that millions of American loathe him and his beautiful family because of the color of their skin). Race-hate seemed to be the message that got the most attention, whether the Tea-Baggers wanted it to or not. This alone makes my skin crawl, but let's not get too hung up on that just yet.
I imagine that astute observers around the world, especially those who've striven for "workers" over the long decades, including unionists, non-American centrists from large, industrial nations, socialists, and perhaps, if there are any who aren't thinking about nuking their neighbors due to their own brand of moronism, Communists, must be marveling at the overwhelming success the ruling class (roughly speaking) has had in dividing and conquering the peasants and serfs in the United States.
Where else are people who desperately need government regulation to keep themselves from being preyed on by giant conglomerates, instead spewing hate at "big government" and waving the flag for Capital? Where else are people who struggle to pay bills on the family Caravan deluded into thinking their taxation-policy should be in line with the taxation-policies that benefit those who pay with pocket change for their Bentley? Where else are people first robbed and cheated by a rapacious health-care industry literally from the cradle until the grave, then found crowding the airwaves with screeching-points written for them by the public relations experts employed by that very industry? Where else are people proudly betting their livelihoods and the livelihoods of their children on policies touting "self-reliance" and "faith" and "freedom" when what they are handed, once the race is run, a ticket worth little but an insecure, dead-end job in which they are totally dependent on plutocratic whimsy, not a nickel's worth of real assistance from their ermine-coated clergy, and a way of life constricted by prejudice, gun-violence, lack of access to facts, and only the mobility to traverse the lonely highways looking for the next town and the next job and the next mortgage?
For now, I will leave-off any discussion of the toxic form of Christianity that has taken hold of so many of these folks, for that is a subject both too deep and too complex to share space with any other. It is also a most wearying subject, and thinking about that plus the racist idiocy of the Tea-Baggers has left me in need of either a good strong drink or a restful nap.
I would like to say our nation can continue like this, with about forty percent of the country's populace living on a moonlet untethered to fact or any semblance of enlightened self-interest, but I don't think it can. The smart people won't always have an Obama to elect (and even he's got troubles in this environment); and it is in the cards that somehow, some way, a demagogue pandering to these Tea-Baggers will get put in the White House, and then heaven help us all.
Oh, wait. That already happened. I forgot, for a second, that George W. Bush had been President for eight most regrettable years. I guess I am afraid the next time it will be worse.
This post is inspired in part by Timothy Egan's "Working Class Zero" article in the NY Times today. But I have blogged of this working-class disconnect (or mis-connect) before.
My premise is that the American working class is easily in competition for the dumbest in the world, if "dumb" indicates an unquenchable thirst for doing what is diametrically opposed to one's self interest.
For instance, these sad Tea-Party buffoons that showed up in Washington last week: what was their purpose? Waving placards the collective sentiments of which ran the gamut from hate to contempt and back again to hate, they prompted me to ask myself if they had any clue what their actual message was, or if they knew what any coherent message might be. Did any of them seem to have a notion about what in public policy might in practice make their own lives better? Not a one, it seems. Much of the rhetoric was overtly racist (and many thanks to the Man from Plains for being plain-spoken about a very deeply shameful fact that even Obama wants to shrink from: that millions of American loathe him and his beautiful family because of the color of their skin). Race-hate seemed to be the message that got the most attention, whether the Tea-Baggers wanted it to or not. This alone makes my skin crawl, but let's not get too hung up on that just yet.
I imagine that astute observers around the world, especially those who've striven for "workers" over the long decades, including unionists, non-American centrists from large, industrial nations, socialists, and perhaps, if there are any who aren't thinking about nuking their neighbors due to their own brand of moronism, Communists, must be marveling at the overwhelming success the ruling class (roughly speaking) has had in dividing and conquering the peasants and serfs in the United States.
Where else are people who desperately need government regulation to keep themselves from being preyed on by giant conglomerates, instead spewing hate at "big government" and waving the flag for Capital? Where else are people who struggle to pay bills on the family Caravan deluded into thinking their taxation-policy should be in line with the taxation-policies that benefit those who pay with pocket change for their Bentley? Where else are people first robbed and cheated by a rapacious health-care industry literally from the cradle until the grave, then found crowding the airwaves with screeching-points written for them by the public relations experts employed by that very industry? Where else are people proudly betting their livelihoods and the livelihoods of their children on policies touting "self-reliance" and "faith" and "freedom" when what they are handed, once the race is run, a ticket worth little but an insecure, dead-end job in which they are totally dependent on plutocratic whimsy, not a nickel's worth of real assistance from their ermine-coated clergy, and a way of life constricted by prejudice, gun-violence, lack of access to facts, and only the mobility to traverse the lonely highways looking for the next town and the next job and the next mortgage?
For now, I will leave-off any discussion of the toxic form of Christianity that has taken hold of so many of these folks, for that is a subject both too deep and too complex to share space with any other. It is also a most wearying subject, and thinking about that plus the racist idiocy of the Tea-Baggers has left me in need of either a good strong drink or a restful nap.
I would like to say our nation can continue like this, with about forty percent of the country's populace living on a moonlet untethered to fact or any semblance of enlightened self-interest, but I don't think it can. The smart people won't always have an Obama to elect (and even he's got troubles in this environment); and it is in the cards that somehow, some way, a demagogue pandering to these Tea-Baggers will get put in the White House, and then heaven help us all.
Oh, wait. That already happened. I forgot, for a second, that George W. Bush had been President for eight most regrettable years. I guess I am afraid the next time it will be worse.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
That Lady that Drove the Wrong Way on the Parkway
For those of you who live either far away from the Hudson Valley or have been sailing 'round the world in a one-person craft the past couple of months, I am talking about the woman who got onto the Taconic State Parkway going in the wrong direction with a carload full of kids, drove several miles in the wrong direction (in the fast lane of oncoming traffic), then crashed and killed everybody in the car including herself and a couple of others in an oncoming car.
They said at first she had been "disoriented" and had called her brother (not her husband) and he had told her to stay off the road. She didn't listen.
Then they said she drank a half-gallon of vodka, smoked several joints and was as wild as a polecat when she got on the highway.
In either case, the result was a near-incredible tragedy the horror of which one struggles to contemplate.
Me, I am not buying the drunk-as-a-skunk business. I know we'll probably never know, but there's got to be more going on (a stroke?) when you are observed getting into a car sober (full of kids), then make a call that you're not feeling well, then commit a colossal and fatal error (or not!) that seems to have bordered on the far fringe of madness.
Can I picture the Long Island mom with her and her neighbor's kids in the car, chugging the hard stuff and smoking like Bob Marley somewhere between the exit for Poughkeepsie and the one for Garrison? Frankly I cannot. It doesn't "feel" plausible--that's all I can say about it.
I think the cops wanted to "solve the mystery" in a big hurry and so they did. I'm not saying there might not have been alcohol in her and I'm not saying there might not have been THC in her. I'm saying I can't imagine how she could have gotten that drunk and stoned that fast, and that this made her drive the wrong way on a parkway for several miles until dead.
They should probably exhume the poor woman and get some further testing done. And my heart goes out to all those who lost someone in this epochal automobile tragedy.
They said at first she had been "disoriented" and had called her brother (not her husband) and he had told her to stay off the road. She didn't listen.
Then they said she drank a half-gallon of vodka, smoked several joints and was as wild as a polecat when she got on the highway.
In either case, the result was a near-incredible tragedy the horror of which one struggles to contemplate.
Me, I am not buying the drunk-as-a-skunk business. I know we'll probably never know, but there's got to be more going on (a stroke?) when you are observed getting into a car sober (full of kids), then make a call that you're not feeling well, then commit a colossal and fatal error (or not!) that seems to have bordered on the far fringe of madness.
Can I picture the Long Island mom with her and her neighbor's kids in the car, chugging the hard stuff and smoking like Bob Marley somewhere between the exit for Poughkeepsie and the one for Garrison? Frankly I cannot. It doesn't "feel" plausible--that's all I can say about it.
I think the cops wanted to "solve the mystery" in a big hurry and so they did. I'm not saying there might not have been alcohol in her and I'm not saying there might not have been THC in her. I'm saying I can't imagine how she could have gotten that drunk and stoned that fast, and that this made her drive the wrong way on a parkway for several miles until dead.
They should probably exhume the poor woman and get some further testing done. And my heart goes out to all those who lost someone in this epochal automobile tragedy.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Yesterday I Saw an Orange Leaf
A friend of mine who grew up in the Midwest says that after living here in the Northeast for several years, he observes that on September 1, the light changes, the air changes, and everything about summer begins to wane rapidly.
I still keep trying to tell myself it's psychological conditioning (back to school--all that stuff); but there is always, for me, a wistful quality to early September and I believe my friend's insight about the angle of light, coupled with the onset of no-longer-deniably shorter days, has something to do with it.
I have already blogged about how winter excites in me a seething hate bordering on that of the birthers for Obama. I have unfortunately allowed that hate to overflow into a near-dislike of everyone's favorite season (fall) on grounds that it is simply an early phase of winter and harbinger of much worse to come (weatherwise).
Now that we have been handed a summer generally so wet it might have been able to confuse the Creature from the Black Lagoon into relaxing on my front porch thinking he was still underwater, I feel like I must fight to deny fall any toehold--the better to forestall the onset of the great unhappy freeze that reduces the Northeast to a soggy, sad excuse for staying indoors and looking at art and watching movies instead of, say, roasting kielbasa over a propane fire.
Hence my denial of all signs of the arrival of a season not called summer but that inevitably seems to follow it in the seasonal cycle. Perhaps perversely, I have therefore grown keen-eyed in my scan of the summerscape, looking for signs of decay. For several days into September I saw no change. Even a patch of new grass seed I had recently laid had sprung and grew thick and yet wispy like the hair of a green young angel. Even until today there has still been no thought of needing a thing called "jacket".
But yesterday, on my way back from the County Fair up in the Hudson Valley, I spotted, quite suddenly and in a place it had certainly not been noticed the day before, a tree with leaves beginning to turn orange. I caught my breath. Summer was beginning to fail me--faithless, green summer now beginning its long swoon to the crackling ice and black sucking mud and the dark, unforgiving days of winter. In summer, people can picnic in the woods. In winter, people who are stuck in the woods freeze to death. Freeze to death! Winter is an indignity not to be borne without strong resentment.
And now we are on our way. The leaves have (in the Hudson Valley anyway) begun to turn. Before we know it, we'll be trying to keep our ears warm (a ridiculous notion!).
I am determined to remain in denial for at least several more days. I think I can last until the twentieth of the month. Then, kicking orange leaves with my boot, I will have to think about raking them and piling them and to begin counting the long days until spring.
--Renaissance
I still keep trying to tell myself it's psychological conditioning (back to school--all that stuff); but there is always, for me, a wistful quality to early September and I believe my friend's insight about the angle of light, coupled with the onset of no-longer-deniably shorter days, has something to do with it.
I have already blogged about how winter excites in me a seething hate bordering on that of the birthers for Obama. I have unfortunately allowed that hate to overflow into a near-dislike of everyone's favorite season (fall) on grounds that it is simply an early phase of winter and harbinger of much worse to come (weatherwise).
Now that we have been handed a summer generally so wet it might have been able to confuse the Creature from the Black Lagoon into relaxing on my front porch thinking he was still underwater, I feel like I must fight to deny fall any toehold--the better to forestall the onset of the great unhappy freeze that reduces the Northeast to a soggy, sad excuse for staying indoors and looking at art and watching movies instead of, say, roasting kielbasa over a propane fire.
Hence my denial of all signs of the arrival of a season not called summer but that inevitably seems to follow it in the seasonal cycle. Perhaps perversely, I have therefore grown keen-eyed in my scan of the summerscape, looking for signs of decay. For several days into September I saw no change. Even a patch of new grass seed I had recently laid had sprung and grew thick and yet wispy like the hair of a green young angel. Even until today there has still been no thought of needing a thing called "jacket".
But yesterday, on my way back from the County Fair up in the Hudson Valley, I spotted, quite suddenly and in a place it had certainly not been noticed the day before, a tree with leaves beginning to turn orange. I caught my breath. Summer was beginning to fail me--faithless, green summer now beginning its long swoon to the crackling ice and black sucking mud and the dark, unforgiving days of winter. In summer, people can picnic in the woods. In winter, people who are stuck in the woods freeze to death. Freeze to death! Winter is an indignity not to be borne without strong resentment.
And now we are on our way. The leaves have (in the Hudson Valley anyway) begun to turn. Before we know it, we'll be trying to keep our ears warm (a ridiculous notion!).
I am determined to remain in denial for at least several more days. I think I can last until the twentieth of the month. Then, kicking orange leaves with my boot, I will have to think about raking them and piling them and to begin counting the long days until spring.
--Renaissance
Where is the California Car Genius?
Or genii as I am pretty sure the plural is written.
It has long been evident (to me at least) that part of the reason the American car industry has crashed like a Mastodon on thin ice is because it looks for its creative spark in, of all places, Detroit.
I don't have anything against Detroit. I wish it were a better place. It happens to be a bad place--one of the worst cities in the United States. Does anyone with world-class creative juices, connections, or even just iPod-like coolness live there, or want to live there? I know I am going to sound parochial by saying it, but I suspect the answer is "no". Or if they do live there, they are hurting to leave (didn't Madonna grow up near Detroit--and scrammed as a youth for a flophouse in the junkiest part of Manhattan?). You will argue that it produced tailfins and huge engines and large success for many years. I will say I agree, but that the Pinto and the Aspen and the Suburban have long buried that glory in a mound of disgraceful and now very disfavored automotive junk.
So we are expecting a city with a wretched recent history, zero creativity and all the verve of a bag full of jello and marshmallows to come up with the next great automotive idea? Don't bet the house on that. Don't bet a nickel. They may be able to build them there--but they sure as heck don't seem much able to design them there.
That's where the Golden State comes in. After all, where would Detroit be without Los Angeles to buy Cobalts and Magnums and Azteks by the boatload? How many cars do Californians buy a year? I don't know--but it is a sick number I am certain. So why don't the folks up along Sand Hill Road recruit the next Bid Daddy Roth and come up with some butt-kicking car ideas and ramp up a company kind of the way they did with software? Kind of like the dreamers in Hollywood came up with Titanic and Coraline and the cinematic version of Chicago? How about combining the best of California--entrepreneurship, a taste for the greener choices in life (and I don't mean just money) plus the old razzle-dazzle--and putting that considerable energy and money and brainpower behind a new automotive industry?
Do I think it can happen overnight? No. Do I think that in twenty years we'd be driving 150mpg cars that look like Excellence on Wheels, and for which the world will clamor (the way it does for software and movies)? I do.
I know California's not exactly in great shape these days either. But on its worst day, it's got about a thousand percent better chance of coming up with a winner than the Glyptodonts in Michigan who've spent the last forty years lying and dying and losing and snoozing.
--Renaissance
It has long been evident (to me at least) that part of the reason the American car industry has crashed like a Mastodon on thin ice is because it looks for its creative spark in, of all places, Detroit.
I don't have anything against Detroit. I wish it were a better place. It happens to be a bad place--one of the worst cities in the United States. Does anyone with world-class creative juices, connections, or even just iPod-like coolness live there, or want to live there? I know I am going to sound parochial by saying it, but I suspect the answer is "no". Or if they do live there, they are hurting to leave (didn't Madonna grow up near Detroit--and scrammed as a youth for a flophouse in the junkiest part of Manhattan?). You will argue that it produced tailfins and huge engines and large success for many years. I will say I agree, but that the Pinto and the Aspen and the Suburban have long buried that glory in a mound of disgraceful and now very disfavored automotive junk.
So we are expecting a city with a wretched recent history, zero creativity and all the verve of a bag full of jello and marshmallows to come up with the next great automotive idea? Don't bet the house on that. Don't bet a nickel. They may be able to build them there--but they sure as heck don't seem much able to design them there.
That's where the Golden State comes in. After all, where would Detroit be without Los Angeles to buy Cobalts and Magnums and Azteks by the boatload? How many cars do Californians buy a year? I don't know--but it is a sick number I am certain. So why don't the folks up along Sand Hill Road recruit the next Bid Daddy Roth and come up with some butt-kicking car ideas and ramp up a company kind of the way they did with software? Kind of like the dreamers in Hollywood came up with Titanic and Coraline and the cinematic version of Chicago? How about combining the best of California--entrepreneurship, a taste for the greener choices in life (and I don't mean just money) plus the old razzle-dazzle--and putting that considerable energy and money and brainpower behind a new automotive industry?
Do I think it can happen overnight? No. Do I think that in twenty years we'd be driving 150mpg cars that look like Excellence on Wheels, and for which the world will clamor (the way it does for software and movies)? I do.
I know California's not exactly in great shape these days either. But on its worst day, it's got about a thousand percent better chance of coming up with a winner than the Glyptodonts in Michigan who've spent the last forty years lying and dying and losing and snoozing.
--Renaissance
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