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06 Nov

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Ten years ago, the world's five largest companies by market capitalization were Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup, Shell Oil, and Microsoft. Today only Microsoft remains in the top five, where it has been joined by Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet (the parent company of Google). Yep, all tech companies, each dominating its corner of the industry. Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger own 77 percent of mobile social traffic. And Google has a whopping 88 percent market share in search advertising. Welcome back to the early 20th Century, when the great jurist and later Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis argued for the necessity of ending monopolies, because he knew that in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power was dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people. We witnessed this ourselves in the behavior of...

30 Oct

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

So I was thinking about the difference between authority figures and authoritarian figures. Well, for starters, authoritarian figures live in constant fear of not getting, having, keeping, or of losing authority. Their validity has to come from outside, requiring cooperation—willingly or fearfully—from those who are subservient. Authority figures, on the other hand, derive their validity from elements of themselves, their character, knowledge, expertise and skills, their choice of how, when, where, and on whose behalf to exercise that authority. Their validity must come from within themselves to be authentically actionable. We’ve been told repeatedly that we have three grownups on watch, circling the madness that stalks the White House corridors these days. But all along we were uneasy about so many powerful positions traditionally held by civilians suddenly being held by generals, some of whom are even still on active duty. The Framers intended civilians to control the military—not the reverse....

23 Oct

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
If this week’s blog post reads as a bit disjointed, blame the pace of news and my quixotic, rather quaint desire for these words to be as relevant and timely as possible. Fits of laughter.

16 Oct

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

You might as well settle back. This may take me a while. Because, oh my god, this has already taken too long a while. Too many tipping points. I think it was around 1974 that Ms. magazine ran the first cover story on sexual harassment, which was already an issue in the women's movement. Almost 20 years later in 1990, Anita Hill's courageous truth-telling before Congress galvanized American women–yet Clarence Thomas, the perpetrator of criminal sexual harassment against her, still sits on the United States Supreme Court. In the mid-1990s, feminists were divided over whether Bill Clinton's semen stains on Monica Lewinsky's dress were "consensual": yes, she had told friends that she planned to go to the White House carrying kneepads in hopes of just such an encounter; and yes, many of his policies were good for women; and yes, there was a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get him...

25 Sep

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
The genuine article. I've been thinking again (always a dangerous pastime) about what passes for real in our current fun-house mirror of a country that's not so much fun.

18 Sep

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Last week, just as I was finishing the blog, I learned Kate Millett had died in Paris at age 82. It was possible to rush in a mention. But a mention about the loss of an old friend was unthinkable. So I've waited until now, remembering . . .

11 Sep

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
I hope you had a good August, despite various miseries visited on us by Trump, Kim Jong-un, climate change, and American Nazis.

24 Jul

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
This will be my last blog post until September—I think. I can't guarantee that some news development won't send me leaping to my keyboard, however, so those of you who subscribe to this blog might be surprised.