Cover Controversy
The new issue of “The Socialist” magazine is out in the mail, and, to my utter befuddlement, its cover is provoking some controversy.
Apparently, some comrades take exception to linking Rosa Parks’ image and legacy with a stupid teevee show, no matter the ironic effect intended. The party’s female Co-Chair thinks that linking Parks with “Desperate Housewives” is “historically inaccurate, belittling to her as an individual, and demeaning to the Civil Rights movement.” Our young, white male Co-Vice Chair denounces the cover as “controversial in the eyes of women or people of color,” and Wayne Rossi dismisses it as “a smarmy, self-satisfied pop-culture reference…that sets a bad tone for the enterprise.”
I produce each issue of the magazine in collaboration with an Editorial Board, and I am always sure to direct their attention to items that I think might spur controversy (for example, I was awfully worried about the response to pinkocommiebastard’s investment advice). I never in a million years thought this cover would provoke any controversy. I was proud of it, thought the graphic was terrific, and was worried that – if anything – the “Desperate Housewives” allusion would be perceived as cliched or boring. No one on the Editorial Board thought it controversial, either.
When the inimitable Quinn Brisben submitted his article on Rosa Parks, I was excited to publish it. It is a typically breezy, yet gripping, account of the backstage planning and maneuvering of the Montgomery bus boycott, as well as the years of planning that went into it, and the spontaneous civil disobedience that started it. It is scholarly and funny, full of well-researched history, anecdotes and personal remembrances.
It was not intended to be the cover story until Steven Baumann, responding to a request for an illustration of Parks’ mug shot, submitted the stark and lovely graphic that now graces the cover. His Rosa Parks looks saintly and simultaneously dangerous. I took one look at it, and that phrase that is being bandied about in our media immediately came to mind: desperate housewife.
Here was a woman in a truly desperate situation: a second-class (well, third-class, as a woman) citizen who is daily spat upon by those on top in society, who trains and studies to overcome it and finally engages in a brave and noble act that puts her life, her livelihood and her reputation in peril.
Contrast that with a teevee soap opera about bored women in the affluent suburbs plotting adultery and mayhem and figure out what we are making fun of with the cover.
Please, let me know what you think.
New Advice from Pinkocommiebastard
Dear pinkocommiebastard,
My parents got totally freaked out by Bush’s recent efforts to gut Social Security. They keep nagging me to open some kind of retirement savings account, but I don’t want to be a sell-out. I’m afraid that if I become invested in the system, I will lose my appetite for revolution. But I don’t think I will ever develop an appetite for dog food, which the ‘rents warn will be my daily diet without any kind of old age savings. Maybe I can make some kind of “socially responsible” investments. What do you recommend?
– Concerned About Savings’ Harm
Dear CASH,
First of all, so-called “socially responsible” investments are hogwash. Any kind of investment is a deal with the devil. If you open a simple bank account, your puny savings are lent overnight to the Federal Reserve, who, in turn, lend them to private enterprises, big and small. Your money will make its way to environmentally-destructive shrimp farming in Thailand, to sweatshops in China, to war profiteering in Africa, to factory closings right here in the U.S. We strongly recommend our comrade Barbara Garsons excellent book, “Money Makes the World Go Around” (Viking, 2001) in which she invested her publishers advance and followed her money around the world to see how we are all invested in global capitalism, whether we like it or not.
Although, we’d like to think that the revolution is only weeks away, it will probably take slightly longer. So, what do you do, put your savings in your mattress? Fine while the capitalists invest their savings and end up with money to donate to the Republicans. That’s no way to further the revolution. The movement does not need activists who are so racked by poverty and starvation that they have no time or energy to fight the good fight. Garson’s advice is to focus on your activism, not your investments. That is our advice as well.
But then again, socialists are notorious for doing very well at investing, maybe because we’ve learned to distrust the system. An older comrade whom we consulted put $25,000 into a middle-of-the-road “no-load” (no broker commissions) mutual fund in 1982, and left it alone to accumulate, and by 2000 it exceeded $600,000 and is still growing, and permits him to be a major contributor to the cause. His advice:
“Forget about brokers and their commissions. Use socialist common sense. Diversify by buying shares in mutual funds directly from the mutual-fund companies. Go to the huge companies, like Vanguard and Fidelity, that have proven track records and reputations to preserve. They offer dozens of funds, but stay away from the fad funds. And once you’ve bought some shares, LEAVE THEM ALONE! The stock market is bound to go belly-up now and then, and your fund will pay little or nothing. But in another year or so it will soar; thats what stock markets do.”
We asked another comrade, who makes his living as a financial advisor, to provide some advice to our readers. Unfortunately, his company would not allow him to publish advice under his own name, if it was accompanied by an imprudent acknowledgment of how lousy this rotten capitalist system is. These poor capitalists desperately need the liberation of socialism, so they can pursuer their true calling: comedy. Nevertheless, here’s Comrade MBA X’s advice:
“Investments in the market are long-term. Human nature tells us to buy an investment when it is going up in price and to sell when it goes down. Following human nature is not the best way to manage your retirement plan. One dollar invested in small company stocks in 1925 grew to $7,860 in 2001.
It also went down to 18 cents at the bottom of the Great Depression in 1932, only seven years later. One dollar invested in Treasury Bills at the same time only grew to $17 dollars by 2001. Inflation took away ten dollars of that.
Remember that prior performance doesnt guarantee future returns. And do not put all your eggs all in one basket. Invest in a number of asset classes, allocated according to your risk tolerance (how much can you bear your investment dropping in price without panicking).
Beware. Once the investment has been made (unless it is ongoing) the commission sales person has almost no way to profit. So it is to his advantage to select high earning investments in order to convince you to sell the investment that he recommended last year and buy something new this year so that he can make another commission.
Retirement savings are made in a few, basic forms. A 401(k) plan is set up by your employer to enable you to put money aside from your paycheck before taxes are deducted reducing your taxable income and the amount of taxes that you pay for the year. Sometimes the employer will match part or all of your contributions. Take advantage of the employer matching whenever it is available.
If your employer doesn’t set up a plan, you set up your own by opening an individual retirement account. A traditional IRA usually provides a similar tax deduction as a 401(k). Like the 401(k), you will pay taxes when you withdraw the money to pay for your retirement. There can be penalties if you withdraw money before you turn 60 years of age.
A Roth IRA does not provide a tax deduction. But if you wait until you turn 60 to withdraw any money to fund your retirement, you will pay no taxes on your earnings. Another advantage of the Roth is that you can take out your investments without penalty or tax, no matter your age or time in the plan, so long as you dont withdraw any of the interest.”
It’s a helluva way to run a country, but those are your options. Good luck, CASH!
Feeling pressure? The Man got you down? Politically frustrated? Sexually frustrated? Pinkocommiebastards got the advice thats right for you.
Send your questions to pinkocommiebastard@ypsl.org.
January-February 2006 Socialist Magazine
Socialist Party Supports TWU 100
The Socialist Party of New York City strongly supports the right of transit workers to free speech, free assembly and free labor.
We denounce, in the strongest possible terms, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s callous disregard of the safety and health of transit workers, as well as their unending demands for for wage and benefit cutbacks. We are sickened by the slave plantation politics of Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki and Attorney General Spitzer, who would fine union members from two days’ wages up to a quarter of a million dollars each for the nerve of refusing to work without a contract.
As commuters, we recognize and appreciate the hard work and dedication of New York’s transit workers. As citizens, we voted in large numbers in favor of the state’s transportation bond act – expecting that some of the money we approved would go to fair and equitable pay increases for the workers who keep New York moving. As workers, we insist that if our brothers and sisters in TWU 100 go on strike, then we too will not go to work, or if we do WE WILL WALK.