Hershey’s Corporate Kiss-Off
This article was originally published in the January-February 2003 issue of “The Socialist.” The recent announcement by the trust that operates the Hershey Industrial School that it was considering selling a large stake in the Hershey Foods Corporation set off waves of protest in the town of Hershey, PA, that eventually sunk the proposal. What kind of company town has effective veto power over its corporate benefactor’s business plans? Clearly, Hershey is a company town like know other. To understand it better, one should place the town’s history in the context of the social reform movement of the turn of the century that formed alternative model communities founded with the aims of conquering the abject poverty and gross inequalities of the era’s great cities. The most identifiable are the socialist cooperatives like Robert Owen’s New Harmony, IN and Job Harriman’s New Llanos, CA, but socialists did not have a monopoly […]
This Is His Testimony: Jon Langford of the Mekons
This is his testimony. In 1991, Jon Langford and his mates from Leeds, the Mekons, had just missed their opportunity as rock-n-roll’s latest last best hope. After almost 15 years of lineup changes, a bunch of classic albums with lousy distribution, countless raucous alcohol-soaked tours and stylistic shifts from punk to country, dance and back, the Mekons were on the verge of saving rock music from big hair and empty heads when fights with A&M Records left their newest record without an outlet in the U.S., just as Nirvana opened up the radio to so-called “alternative rock.” They called that record “The Curse of the Mekons,” but their contract problems and bad luck didn’t piss them off as much as the fall of the Soviet Union and the media’s declaration of the “death of socialism.” “How can something really be dead when it hasn’t even happened,” long-time lefty Langford demands […]
Rise of the Loompa Proletariat
In the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Willy Wonka employs in his factory Oompa Loompas, strange little orange men who seemingly work for free. The Oompa Loompas, who sing while they work, seem to be charged with much manual labor. They mix the chocolate and other confections, carry out Wonka’s orders, manually power his personal yacht and otherwise do his bidding-all at the beck and call of his whistle. After seeing just one minute of the movie with the Oompa Loompas on the screen, one obsesses about this work arangement. Are these Oompa Loompas slaves, or indentured servants? Are they salaried employees? Is this some Stalinist work camp? Wonka answers this question himself early on when several visitors on a tour of his factory raise these troubling issues. The Oompa Loompas, he explains, come from a far off place called “Lumpaland,” where, because of their diminutive size, they […]
We Are Improving to Serve You Better
I’m in the process of switching the blarg from Blosxom software to WordPress, which might involve a radical overhaul of the ancient content on the dot org. To prepare, just in case, I’m posting some older writing on the blarg, so that it can be archived here, instead of as dusty old html. First up is my oft-reproduced Marxist analysis of the film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The article began life as a term paper for my Labor Studies 101 course when I was a wee little snot (I got an A). It was shortly thereafter published in the awesome zine, Lumpen. David Raffin has also published it in Vision?Nary! Please excuse our appearance during renovations. We are still open to the public!
Health Care’s “Death Spiral”
In “Uninsured in America,” Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle attempt to find out “where the bodies are buried” in our health care system where over 45 million people have no insurance. The book is a patchwork of profiles of people who got sick at times when they lacked insurance and the often devastating effects this had on their lives. The authors, who describe this phenomenon as the “death spiral,” don’t find so many bodies buried (although they do find many in jails or on the street) but they do find health problems that are allowed to become critical before state assistance will kick in and doctors actually pay attention, and emergency rooms used as primary care resulting in crippling debts. Without getting bogged down in dry facts and figures, the authors provide a pretty good understanding of how the number of uninsured Americans hides how many Americans are functionally […]
Why No National Health Care?
The United States has the best health care that money can buy, provided one has the money to buy it. Jill Quadagno’s “One Nation Uninsured” answers the question “Why the U.S. has no national health insurance.” It’s a brisk, engaging read that neatly summarizes how 90 years of failed reform efforts have entrenched the powerful interests that profit from the system. The most prominent early opponents of a national health service were the doctors themselves. Their lobby, the American Medical Association, fought against “socialized medicine” out of fear that it would lead doctors to lose their sovereignty to bureaucrats basing decisions on budgetary needs rather than medical needs. Allied with southern politicians who feared that a federal health system would force racial integration of hospitals, these forces successfully kept national health care out of Roosevelt’s original Social Security legislation. They favored market solutions like Blue Cross and commercial insurance. A […]
New (To Me) Record Round-Up
“Enemies Like This.” Radio 4. I root for Radio 4 like I root for the Mets. They’re the home team (if you can call Williamsburg anyone’s home) and they deserve to win. I’m not sure that this is the record that will make them stars, however. The propulsive poly-percussion and Gang of Four-style slashing guitars are still there, but after the first four tracks it all starts to lose steam. “Big Star, Small World.” Various. I’m utterly perplexed that power pop never conquered the world. Infectious pop sensibilities, crunchy guitars: something for everyone, no? Instead, it’s a weird little niche for freaks like me. The grand-daddy of all power pop groups, Big Star, were feted with a tribute record from the little pups who worship them. Released in 2006, goodness knows how long these tapes were sitting on the shelf, as half the bands on “Big Star, Small World” (the […]
The Elusive Third Party of the People
The Green Party failed to regain ballot status in New York on Tuesday. With its superior budget and no threat to the two-party system, the Working Families Party easily retained its ballot line. We have a new, independent socialist Senator in Vermont, although his Progressive Party studiously avoided incurring the wrath of the Democrats by not contesting any major elections. This is a disappointing time for supporters of an independent people’s party. The Green Party is clearly on the wane, with ballot status in a few dozen states and the mighty Nader campaign of 2000 a fading memory. Not to be too pessimistic, but I have been predicting it for six years now. The Greens will join a crowded graveyard of similar efforts to establish a third party, a party of the people, to supplant the Democrats. They come along every few election cycles. There’s Bob LaFollette’s 1920’s Farmer-Labor Party, […]
Cultural Learnings of America
Your honor, it was the beer talking. Not me. It’s a lame excuse coming from Mel Gibson when he’s caught being himself (a sexist, anti-Semite yob), but even lamer when coming from drunken frat boys being drunken frat boys, on camera no less! The unnamed frat boys in question were the ignominious stars of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” I don’t need to tell you that Borat is the brainchild of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, a fake TV journalist from a former Soviet republic who baits Americans to say outrageous things (that they likely believe) with his seeming innocence. On his TV show, he famously got a bar room full of country-western fans to sing along with a song called “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” The movie is savagely funny. It has a fair amount of poop jokes and Jackass-style gross-out humor, […]
Catching Up With Old Friends
I’ve discovered how old men are born. We get time demanding jobs, go to professional school, are subsumed by the demands of life. Our backs ache, our paychecks go to pay off the mortgage. We stop going to three concerts a week and buying a couple of new records every Tuesday. When we do buy a new record or go to a concert, it’s to catch up with an old friend, who’s, arguably (and you’d be arguing with us, comrade!) long past their prime. They don’t make rock-n-roll records like they used to. They never did. I’m spending this evening with two old friends. Morrissey’s solo career turns off many. The solo careers of famous lead singer-songwriters (like Lou Reed and Paul Westerberg) are a fascinating part of the overall narrative of their lives. In Morrissey’s case, musically, this means pursuing his unique brand of classical rock which would have […]