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NoJo
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Humperdinck, Lennon as Adjectives
In March 1967 the Beatles’ double A-side Penny lane/Strawberry Fields forever made pop music history by not reaching number one in the charts in Britain. For millions of young people this was a shocking reminder that the winds of change could drop as suddenly as they began. Englebert Humperdinck, the crooner responsible for Release Me, symbolized the reactionary elements of society: In those days that meant men with short hair, people concerned with careers and money, those who sided with the military or the police, or with the government, or with anyone else claiming authority.
It was all pretty clear-cut:
If you bought, sold and smoked pot regularly, you weren’t Humperdinck. Hair length, your tie or lack thereof, your job, your attitude to sex, were all additional factors that helped partition the world into Lennon and Humperdinck.
There were a number of deceivers:
The Monkees sang and looked Lennon. Maybe they even purchased the odd Lid of weed on occasion. But they were all Humperdinck, except maybe Mike Nesmith. Their music was written by Neil Diamond and other Brill building laureates, who, though mega-talented, were by-and-large all Humperdinck. Because being Lennon wasn’t about writing great songs. Even Burt B******ch(*) was Humperdinck. It was about subversion of, versus collusion in, the authoritarian aspects of society.
Elvis was Humperdinck. Maybe he’d been Lennon once, but that was long ago, before the army.
Sonny and Cher were Humperdinck. He had the hair, she had the hippy-chick look, but they didn’t fool anyone. Not anyone Lennon, anyway.
As the sixties gave way to the seventies, a great Lennon – Humperdinck shift began. You could see it round the eyes of Mick Jagger, and Marc Bolan. Of course aging generally has a Humperdincking effect on people. One by one they fell, until the Sex Pistols reclassified themselves as Lennon, and they redefined John Lennon as Humperdinck.
This reclassification is similar to what John Lennon did to Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Jazz in general. Miles and Ellington were more Lennon than Lennon ever was. Yet he brutally Humperdincked them.
Since then, pretenders, liars and cheats have abounded. The talentless self-promoter Madonna was, up till recently, pure Humperdinck. Bland and commercial, suitable for airport lounges, shopping malls and other places of complacent consumption. I say up till recently, because as a fifty-year-old, she has the potential to become a figure of fun, a Batty Old British Eccentric, which would make her somewhat Lennon. True Eccentricity has always been respected and admired by the Lennon people.
Robbie Williams has a good Humperdinck pedigree, being an alumnus of a popular Boy Band. Superficially akin to the very Lennon (in all senses) Brit-pop musicians, he gives himself away as Humperdinck by trying too hard to be all Lennon. Madonna does this too. Swearing etc. That’s a dead giveaway. Paul Weller and Suggs are always polite, confident in their Lennonhood.
Yes I know the latter advertises Birds-eye fish fingers. But fish fingers are not Humperdinck. They are one of the most Lennon foods you can eat.
* He, The writer of "Walk On By", must not be named in vBulletin. Try it yourself. Try to post his name and see the censorship.
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NoJo
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We're all Socialists Now
The author of the below article is a internationally renowned economist. During her time at the World Bank, she was instrumental in the setting up of Russia's Stock exchange , and was a senior adviser to the Russian government on its privatisation programme.
From New Statesman, 23rd October
We are witnessing the death of a paradigm. As is usual at moments of mourning, the new reality is being met by denial, resistance and anger from the initiators and defenders of the old faith.
It would be parochial to think recent events expose only flaws in the banking sector - micro-flaws - and the outcome will be a mere tinkering with the financial system. The dominant economic theory of the past 20 years - a theory that put liberty before equality, gave markets more power than states, and saw risk as a public good that shouldn't be restrained - is now defunct. The laissez-faire capitalism embraced by the US and the UK some 20 years ago and foisted on the poorest countries of the world by the World Bank and IMF has had its day.
This does not mean all versions of capitalism are now redundant. But that the Anglo-American version, which actively decoupled the economy from social justice, must be buried; and the public will not tolerate its resuscitation.
Now that the cracks are so evident, jobs are in peril and household wealth is collapsing, the public is angry - and not just at bankers. We are beginning to see a fundamental outrage at the whole interconnected mess of a system: at energy companies who record massive profits, yet allow pensioners to struggle to stay warm in winter; at CEOs who can earn up to a 1,000 times the salary of their average worker; and soon, any day now, at those politicians who allowed this to happen.
The public recognises it has the moral right and authority to condemn the ideology that resulted in this. It is a fundamental change.
Smart politicians will recognise that this is a tectonic shift - a change in the balance of power from high finance and big corporations to the people - and will seek to build political capital from it. We are all socialists now, it seems. John McCain, David Cameron and Gordon Brown attack bankers' irresponsible behaviour and salaries, and call for state intervention in the financial markets.
But these calls will not get them elected or re-elected if they are addressed only to the banking sector. The financial crisis was a manifestation of a fundamentally flawed way of thinking that will hurt real people as the world enters a global recession. It will hurt not only those in the countries that preached the paradigm, but also those in countries that did not. The poorest nations will experience the double whammy of having had to deregulate, privatise and open up their markets to be eligible for aid money, and now see the pledges not met. This is the first full crisis of globalisation, a recognition that in a tightly interconnected world, one country's troubles become each and every one's. It is the first collective "lose lose".
The smartest politicians at President Bush's economic summit will be those who are not only willing to differentiate themselves from the laissez-faire past, but willing to hijack the meeting and turn it into a transparent exchange of ideas about what kind of world we want. They will be those who are not looking for a quick fix, but are capable of dismantling their prior assumptions about which ideas and theories to embrace and which to reject.
The smartest politicians will be those who understand that when the facts stop fitting the world-view, they must remake the world-view, not recreate the facts. In that process, they must draw lessons from the past 20 years. No more "one size fits all" economic prescriptions. Countries have to have the freedom to determine their economic policies to meet their own needs. And the myth that "a rising tide lifts all boats" must be jettisoned. It was never true. Social mobility in the UK has barely improved in 40 years. In the US, a quarter of the wealth is in the hands of just 14,000 families.
The next phase of capitalism will combine policies of localisation with an understanding that there are problems we share - such as carbon-dioxide emissions - that cannot be tackled alone. And it will actively seek to redefine what is valuable, so children growing up today do not make the mistakes of this generation in confusing success with the ability to purchase another pair of Nikes or a Gucci bag.
Noreena Hertz is an academic and author of "The Silent Takeover" (Arrow, £9.99)
We're All Socialists Now
The author of the below article is a internationally renowned economist. During her time at the World Bank, she was instrumental in the setting up of Russia's Stock exchange , and was a senior adviser to the Russian government on its privatisation programme.
From New Statesman, 23rd October
We are witnessing the death of a paradigm. As is usual at moments of mourning, the new reality is being met by denial, resistance and anger from the initiators and defenders of the old faith.
It would be parochial to think recent events expose only flaws in the banking sector - micro-flaws - and the outcome will be a mere tinkering with the financial system. The dominant economic theory of the past 20 years - a theory that put liberty before equality, gave markets more power than states, and saw risk as a public good that shouldn't be restrained - is now defunct. The laissez-faire capitalism embraced by the US and the UK some 20 years ago and foisted on the poorest countries of the world by the World Bank and IMF has had its day.
This does not mean all versions of capitalism are now redundant. But that the Anglo-American version, which actively decoupled the economy from social justice, must be buried; and the public will not tolerate its resuscitation.
Now that the cracks are so evident, jobs are in peril and household wealth is collapsing, the public is angry - and not just at bankers. We are beginning to see a fundamental outrage at the whole interconnected mess of a system: at energy companies who record massive profits, yet allow pensioners to struggle to stay warm in winter; at CEOs who can earn up to a 1,000 times the salary of their average worker; and soon, any day now, at those politicians who allowed this to happen.
The public recognises it has the moral right and authority to condemn the ideology that resulted in this. It is a fundamental change.
Smart politicians will recognise that this is a tectonic shift - a change in the balance of power from high finance and big corporations to the people - and will seek to build political capital from it. We are all socialists now, it seems. John McCain, David Cameron and Gordon Brown attack bankers' irresponsible behaviour and salaries, and call for state intervention in the financial markets.
But these calls will not get them elected or re-elected if they are addressed only to the banking sector. The financial crisis was a manifestation of a fundamentally flawed way of thinking that will hurt real people as the world enters a global recession. It will hurt not only those in the countries that preached the paradigm, but also those in countries that did not. The poorest nations will experience the double whammy of having had to deregulate, privatise and open up their markets to be eligible for aid money, and now see the pledges not met. This is the first full crisis of globalisation, a recognition that in a tightly interconnected world, one country's troubles become each and every one's. It is the first collective "lose lose".
The smartest politicians at President Bush's economic summit will be those who are not only willing to differentiate themselves from the laissez-faire past, but willing to hijack the meeting and turn it into a transparent exchange of ideas about what kind of world we want. They will be those who are not looking for a quick fix, but are capable of dismantling their prior assumptions about which ideas and theories to embrace and which to reject.
The smartest politicians will be those who understand that when the facts stop fitting the world-view, they must remake the world-view, not recreate the facts. In that process, they must draw lessons from the past 20 years. No more "one size fits all" economic prescriptions. Countries have to have the freedom to determine their economic policies to meet their own needs. And the myth that "a rising tide lifts all boats" must be jettisoned. It was never true. Social mobility in the UK has barely improved in 40 years. In the US, a quarter of the wealth is in the hands of just 14,000 families.
The next phase of capitalism will combine policies of localisation with an understanding that there are problems we share - such as carbon-dioxide emissions - that cannot be tackled alone. And it will actively seek to redefine what is valuable, so children growing up today do not make the mistakes of this generation in confusing success with the ability to purchase another pair of Nikes or a Gucci bag.
Noreena Hertz is an academic and author of "The Silent Takeover" (Arrow, £9.99)
AllardChardon
Literotica Guru
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Great article, Joe. Thanks for posting it. I intend to share it with a few friends.
xssve
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Not entirely true, free market economics does tend to lift all boats, we just don't try it very often, cause it's scary.
"Free market", BTW, means the freedom to compete in fair competition, not freedom from regulation, which is typically required in praxis precisely in order to maintain as level a playing field as possible - that's how the invisible hand works.
Few people seem to understand this anymore, and I've been warning conservatives for years that the fastest route to socialism is deregulation.
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shereads
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Finally.
