Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
August 10, 2010
In This Issue . . .
1. Go Away, Levi
2. Bad News If You Sent Your Resume to Bogen Communications
3. Not Trusting Ordinary Americans Is What These Guys Are All About!
4. Addenda
Here's today's morning Jolt!
Enjoy,
Jim
1. Go Away, Levi
I have a grand idea.
In English soccer/football, at the end of each season, the worst teams get kicked down to the minor leagues, and the best teams of that lower tier get to advance to the highest level. I wish to establish a similar system for our popular culture, culling the herd and bringing back old favorites who were ditched before their time, because the current system of determining what is top-tier and what is lower-tier doesn't make sense anymore.
Exhibit A: Levi Johnston getting a new reality show: "Levi Johnston is setting his sights on the dysfunctional family business. Johnston will run for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska -- yes, the same job that propelled Sarah Palin to governor of that state (and later, the vice presidential nomination) -- in a new reality project being pitched by Stone and Co. 'Loving Levi: The Road to the Mayor's Office' will center on Johnston's newfound fame as the baby daddy to Palin's grandson, Tripp. Johnston will trade on that notoriety to make his run for Wasilla City Hall -- when he's not pursuing a career in Hollywood, of course."
I can't help but notice that no one on Earth thinks this is a good idea, least of all Levi Johnston: "Johnston admitted that he wasn't thrilled at first about the mayoral campaign concept, which was pitched to him by Stone's Scott Stone and David Weintraub."
Where to begin? Well, I'll leave part of it to Ace: "[The] guy knows like two things -- attacking Sarah Palin and knocking up and abandoning teenaged girls. I guess we should be thankful the show's about the first one. . . . What the hell does this guy think he can do? Given his, er, skill-set, what did he think he could do other than this Palin-baiting stunt nonsense?"
But who -- no, really, who -- is itching to watch this? I get that Palin-haters have kept "Ricky Hollywood" on his level of sorta-fame for about two years now, but are they really going to sit down and watch a reality series about him? Sure, they'll tune in for about five minutes of "Yuk yuk, can you believe he knocked up Palin's daughter?" but I can't imagine they're all that interested in Levi for the sake of Levi.
Variety gives us no sense of which network would actually air the series, which makes me wonder if this is less of a show announcement than a cry for help. We know there's no second season coming. It's not even clear there's a first season coming. Instead of, say, finishing his high-school diploma, Johnston is mucking around Hollywood, trying to put off that appointment with the real world. The show's producers pledge the product "will give us a real inside look into who he is as a father." Right now, with no steady employment (at least that we know of), we're watching a boy who refuses to grow up and fulfill the commitments he's made.
Anyway, as I was saying, it's time for some promotions and demotions in our popular culture. Besides Levi Johnston, here are the current pop-culture icons who would be sent down to the minor leagues: Snooki, sparkly vampires, any VH1 show featuring an NFL wide receiver, the Justin Bieber biopic, and any self-proclaimed "Real Housewives" from anywhere.
Retired pop-culture icons making a comeback: Firefly, Twin Peaks, Max Headroom, the tone of Saturday Night Live from 1986-1990 (more satire, less silliness), a show that dealt with the same topics as Thirtysomething but without all the yuppie whining, and Tales of the Gold Monkey. I'm sure you have your own lost treasures.
(You ever notice how Hollywood keeps remaking things, but never the stuff you really wanted to see?)
2. Bad News If You Sent Your Resume to Bogen Communications
Why aren't businesses hiring? Michael P. Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc. in Ramsey, N.J., takes to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to explain why, using the example of "Sally," a typical employee:
My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest -- $9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.
Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers' comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally's Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.
When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year.
Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation. With government spending and deficits growing as fast as they have been, you know that more tax increases are coming -- for my company, and even for Sally too.
Michael W., writing at Questions and Observations, looks at it all and concludes: "When the government continually raises the costs of doing business in the first place (or threatens to do so), the only ones who really survive are either the politically connected or the very wealthy (yes, they are often the same thing). That doesn't have anything to do with building a better mousetrap, as it were, or growing the economy. And it certainly doesn't do anything to raise everyone's standard of living. Instead, all it does is reward those closest to the rule-makers, thus creating more competition to be closest to the King rather than satisfying the marketplace. It is exactly the sort of crony-capitalism we claim to detest."
I liked Logan Penza's take: "It's those Evil, Greedy Corporations. That's the simple explanation most of the talking heads have for the continuing high unemployment numbers. Those Evil, Greedy Corporations ho[a]rd their money and refuse to hire anyone. When they do hire someone, they don't pay them enough, don't offer them enough benefits, don't pay enough taxes, pollute the planet, steal candy from babies, kick puppies, and make obscene gestures at your auntie. Evil, Greedy Corporations are offered up as cartoon villains, detestable and vile and without any redeeming value. The trouble with cartoon villains is that they are fictional."
James Joyner isn't convinced, though: "I'm sympathetic to this argument, although not so much to lumping together the cost of government and the cost of providing health insurance, which are only tangentially related. If each new employee adds extensive marginal overhead costs -- much less push the firm over a threshold where they become subject to additional government mandates -- then it's very difficult to get the marginal gain in productivity necessary to justify to hire. But, presumably, his competitors face exactly the same pressures. And, surely, there has to come a point when additional hiring pays off despite the marginal costs?"
3. Not Trusting Ordinary Americans Is What These Guys Are All About!
I like that Bill McGurn is writing this in today's Journal, but I doubt it will do much to change the current tone: "Cut to today, where moralizing about the ugly motives of the American people has become common. Whether it's a federal judge declaring there exists no rational opposition to same-sex marriage, a mayor railing against those who would like a mosque moved a few blocks from Ground Zero, a Speaker of the House effectively likening the majority of her countrymen who did not want her health-care bill to Nazis, or a State Department official who brings up the Arizona law on immigration in a human-rights discussion with a Chinese delegation, the chorus is the same: You can't trust ordinary Americans. . . . As the controversy over the planned Islamic Center near Ground Zero escalates, we have had many secular sermons on the need to recognize that the vast majority of Muslims should not be confused with the terrorists. No argument there. But how much more fruitful our own debates might be if the Judge Walkers, Mayor Bloombergs and Speaker Pelosis could extend that same presumption of decency to the American people."
I think McGurn expects them to do something they're not quite capable of doing. The elites in question don't choose not to extend the presumption of decency; their uncharity -- believing that non-elite Californians are homophobic, that Arizonans are xenophobic, that New Yorkers are bigots, that health-care opponents are Nazis, etc. -- is at the heart of their worldview. If the masses could make their own good judgments, they wouldn't need the elites to steer them.
4. Addenda
Greg Gutfeld and Red Eye humor aren't for everyone -- I think I have a new career goal, to appear with the asylum that is Fox News Channel's 3 a.m. hit -- but you're about to hear a lot more about Gutfeld, who you can meet on this year's NR Post-Election Cruise.
Gutfeld's news: "I'm announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space. This is not a joke. I've already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance. As you know, the Muslim faith doesn't look kindly upon homosexuality, which is why I'm building this bar. It is an effort to break down barriers and reduce deadly homophobia in the Islamic world."
Last night, Twitter was aflame with potential names for the new establishment. |
