I checked out Bill Maher’s show last night to see his interview with Charles Murray. Murray did well, though it was clear that there was an unbridgeable gap between Maher and Murray that wouldn’t be closed in a 9 minute segment. We’re all familiar with Murray’s general argument. The social fabric of America has unraveled over the past 50 years.
Maher embraced the so-called Blue Model – to borrow Walter Russell Mead’s term – though he certainly didn’t go so far as to point out that many illegal immigrants have flooded this country and helped stifle wages and displace native workers. No, according to Maher, society unraveled only because the plutocrats have so much money and economic means. As if their having money and, thus, morals is mutually exclusive to people lower on the socioeconomic spectrum having morals as well.
But Maher’s monologue which preceded Murray’s interview is instructive. In it, he pokes fun at the Mormon Mitt Romney by joking that after a five state sweep earlier in the week, Romney and Co. got together for apple juice and animal crackers and even stayed up until past 9 p.m. to celebrate their victory.
Maher’s suggestion is obvious. Romney is plastic and not cool. But Mormons, and Romney, have been very successful in creating strong communities and economic prosperity. These are seemingly things that Maher and other liberals want for the rest of the country. The difference is that Maher and his group want to achieve that prosperity by not going to bed early and letting loose as much as they want. Now, nobody says that you have to abstain from drink or go to bed early, but if you want to make a certain way for yourself, you might need to do it. And if we want to create a society where people live happy and prosperous lives, such a lifestyle probably shouldn’t be something that draws ridicule. Personally, I may not want to live such a life myself, but I could at least recognize how it might be desirable if my goal is to obtain economic prosperity. The anti work ethic has become the ideal, and we wonder why blue collar people would suffer.
Maher’s is the unconstrained vision. What it gets down to is that this country has undergone a revolution in individualism, but many still expect to achieve the same levels of prosperity that they did when they operated under a more civic-minded model. People want to do what they want in the most complete sense. This means paying less mind to any sort of authority, religious figures, magistrates, teachers, or bosses. And that will naturally have economic costs though this realization is always shrouded behind other excuses.
Maher sucks. Simply put. He pushes the same old shit: indulgence and fun can lead to all the good things in life. Sure you can be lean and muscular while smokin’ grass and eatin’ chips!
People want to deny the reality of opportunity cost. If you make a choice in anything other choices become unavailable to you. If you choose to tattoo your forehead you significantly narrow your career choices. If you drink alcohol and stay stoned all day you’re not going have the physical health or prescence of mind to create or seize opportunity. If you embrace ignorance you will relinquish power to those who shun it.
A lot of Murray’s argument rests on the loss of the Protestant Work Ethic, a la Max Weber. It isn’t surprising that Maher doesn’t get it. Whenever people reference Bill Maher, I always ask them to watch his opus “Pizza Man.” The movie makes his work on “DC Cab” look like genius. The man is neither funny or intelligent.
Charles Murray makes his points softly and gently. Thus Maher and his audience, used to bombast, fail to understand that Murray trumps Maher’s arguments one by one.
Maher stridently calls himself a Fishtown guy, but he seems like a SWPL hipster to me (I could be wrong — never watched him before). Maher may indeed have grown up in Fishtown (+1 SWPL status), but which of Murray’s worlds does he inhabit today?
Maher’s only argument is that the rich have all the money and therefore the poor are scrapping by and don’t have the time/energy to maintain dignified lives. But he completely ignores Murry’s point that there have always been poor people scrapping by, but only since 1960 have poor people departed from the common modes of behavior they had always shared with the rich. What happend starting in the 60′s? Welfare, Civil Rights, and Feminism.
A lot of Murray’s argument is to wishy-washy for me. Most of the rot of Fishtown comes from Gen-Xers at the oldest, and most of them are younger than that. It’s not near-retirees not getting/staying married, being heavily addicted to drugs on top of their alcoholism, and committing crime.
I haven’t read coming apart, and I see he mentioned the disparate purchasing power between 1960 and today, but does he touch on the fact that the underclass of Fishtown is an entire generation of people that will never be able to own a house, or save for retirement or improve the lot of their children in the next generation (and these people are in fact downwardly mobile).
Adhering to a “Protestant Work Ethic”, or even being civic-minded isn’t wise when it doesn’t actually result in positive outcomes. As much as conservatives want to lament the passing of that work ethic to some nebulous, ill defined cause, the lack of economic opportunity for an entire generation of white people that will never really be able to own homes, save for retirement, or improve the lot of their children’s lives in the next generation (and are in fact downwardly mobile themselves; worse off than their parents) is a huge problem.
I’m sure their parents worked hard, but they mostly worked up to a level that was necessary to conform to community expectations. To maintain the trappings of that middle-class lifestyle that their parents enjoyed requires a type of sacrifice that necessarily prevents conforming to the middle-class lifestyle in the first place, which obviously defeats the purpose and destroys a lot of the motivation to have a solid work ethic. Especially when even a lot of hard work often results in failure, and doubly so when there are alternatives life paths that have ‘better’ results, at least from the perspective of your tiny Fishtown pond.
People are reacting to what is actually going on around them, and making adjustments in their life accordingly. The life of a tattoo’d barroom brawler that lives in a shack is probably objectively better than his neighbor that works 70+ hours a week at 3 dead end jobs, and lives in the same neighborhood in a slightly more upscale shack for all his effort.
Bill Maher, a failed actor. That seems to be the grounds for a “talk” show. I saw Maher in a film once. His hair looked liked he had on a motorcycle helmet.
I frequently hear AEI flacks say that any slight rise in taxes will cause the wealthy to work and invest less. When it comes to how globalization effects lower income people Murray says on the other hand says it is the culture causing men to marry and work less. This not only contradicts the AEI line about marginal tax rates it contradicts what he wrote twenty five years ago blaming the rise in single parenthood on higher welfare benefits causing marriage to be less economically advantageous for poor women.
To talk about the decline of marriage and not mention the rise in women’s income along side the stagnation of male income is pathetic. Women don’t want husbands who earn less. Economics effects culture at least as much as culture effects economics. AEI’s backers like when globalization pummels American male incomes but don’t like that effects of making men less marriageable. Murray says what his paymasters want to hear.
Maher’s swarmy self-identification with Fishtown is completely obnoxious. As if Maher watches NASCAR and WWE, drinks Bud Light and eats McDonald’s, and proudly displays a flag outside his house next to where he parks his pickup truck! Yeah, and Maher listens to Nickelback too, when he’s driving home after shopping at Walmart. Um-hm.
Maher causally repeats a Marxist thesis (in crayon) that cultural phenomena reduce to a class structure that emerges from economic modes of production. This is such an idée fixe among progressives that Maher likely doesn’t realize that his ideas are Marxist — such a vision allows the progressive to signal high status while feeling like they have some sort of mystic union with their inferiors. While Murray admits straight up that proles suck and should act less prolish, which unsettles progressives, who like to get off on feeling guilty about their own success.
Maher sucks. Simply put. He pushes the same old shit: indulgence and fun can lead to all the good things in life. Sure you can be lean and muscular while smokin’ grass and eatin’ chips!
Bill Maher is a health nut, himself. I bet he doesn’t drink much.
Bill Maher’s concept of comedy is one giant pitch in the dirt.
My guess is he doesn’t even smoke much weed, either. Most successful people lead clean lives.
People want to deny the reality of opportunity cost. If you make a choice in anything other choices become unavailable to you. If you choose to tattoo your forehead you significantly narrow your career choices. If you drink alcohol and stay stoned all day you’re not going have the physical health or prescence of mind to create or seize opportunity. If you embrace ignorance you will relinquish power to those who shun it.
Bill Maher used to be a coke-fiend. No idea about his habits now.
A lot of Murray’s argument rests on the loss of the Protestant Work Ethic, a la Max Weber. It isn’t surprising that Maher doesn’t get it. Whenever people reference Bill Maher, I always ask them to watch his opus “Pizza Man.” The movie makes his work on “DC Cab” look like genius. The man is neither funny or intelligent.
Charles Murray makes his points softly and gently. Thus Maher and his audience, used to bombast, fail to understand that Murray trumps Maher’s arguments one by one.
Maher stridently calls himself a Fishtown guy, but he seems like a SWPL hipster to me (I could be wrong — never watched him before). Maher may indeed have grown up in Fishtown (+1 SWPL status), but which of Murray’s worlds does he inhabit today?
Not Fishtown.
Maher’s only argument is that the rich have all the money and therefore the poor are scrapping by and don’t have the time/energy to maintain dignified lives. But he completely ignores Murry’s point that there have always been poor people scrapping by, but only since 1960 have poor people departed from the common modes of behavior they had always shared with the rich. What happend starting in the 60′s? Welfare, Civil Rights, and Feminism.
A lot of Murray’s argument is to wishy-washy for me. Most of the rot of Fishtown comes from Gen-Xers at the oldest, and most of them are younger than that. It’s not near-retirees not getting/staying married, being heavily addicted to drugs on top of their alcoholism, and committing crime.
I haven’t read coming apart, and I see he mentioned the disparate purchasing power between 1960 and today, but does he touch on the fact that the underclass of Fishtown is an entire generation of people that will never be able to own a house, or save for retirement or improve the lot of their children in the next generation (and these people are in fact downwardly mobile).
Adhering to a “Protestant Work Ethic”, or even being civic-minded isn’t wise when it doesn’t actually result in positive outcomes. As much as conservatives want to lament the passing of that work ethic to some nebulous, ill defined cause, the lack of economic opportunity for an entire generation of white people that will never really be able to own homes, save for retirement, or improve the lot of their children’s lives in the next generation (and are in fact downwardly mobile themselves; worse off than their parents) is a huge problem.
I’m sure their parents worked hard, but they mostly worked up to a level that was necessary to conform to community expectations. To maintain the trappings of that middle-class lifestyle that their parents enjoyed requires a type of sacrifice that necessarily prevents conforming to the middle-class lifestyle in the first place, which obviously defeats the purpose and destroys a lot of the motivation to have a solid work ethic. Especially when even a lot of hard work often results in failure, and doubly so when there are alternatives life paths that have ‘better’ results, at least from the perspective of your tiny Fishtown pond.
People are reacting to what is actually going on around them, and making adjustments in their life accordingly. The life of a tattoo’d barroom brawler that lives in a shack is probably objectively better than his neighbor that works 70+ hours a week at 3 dead end jobs, and lives in the same neighborhood in a slightly more upscale shack for all his effort.
Lara 04/28/2012 at 2:59 pm
My guess is he doesn’t even smoke much weed, either. Most successful people lead clean lives.
You would guess wrong. Maher is and always has been a major pot head. I think he told Adam Carolla he smokes pot every day.
As for success, all he does is sit in a chair and talk or stand up and tell jokes his large, long time team of writers wrote for him.
He’s not training for the Olympics or combat.
Bill Maher, a failed actor. That seems to be the grounds for a “talk” show. I saw Maher in a film once. His hair looked liked he had on a motorcycle helmet.
I frequently hear AEI flacks say that any slight rise in taxes will cause the wealthy to work and invest less. When it comes to how globalization effects lower income people Murray says on the other hand says it is the culture causing men to marry and work less. This not only contradicts the AEI line about marginal tax rates it contradicts what he wrote twenty five years ago blaming the rise in single parenthood on higher welfare benefits causing marriage to be less economically advantageous for poor women.
To talk about the decline of marriage and not mention the rise in women’s income along side the stagnation of male income is pathetic. Women don’t want husbands who earn less. Economics effects culture at least as much as culture effects economics. AEI’s backers like when globalization pummels American male incomes but don’t like that effects of making men less marriageable. Murray says what his paymasters want to hear.
Maher’s swarmy self-identification with Fishtown is completely obnoxious. As if Maher watches NASCAR and WWE, drinks Bud Light and eats McDonald’s, and proudly displays a flag outside his house next to where he parks his pickup truck! Yeah, and Maher listens to Nickelback too, when he’s driving home after shopping at Walmart. Um-hm.
Maher causally repeats a Marxist thesis (in crayon) that cultural phenomena reduce to a class structure that emerges from economic modes of production. This is such an idée fixe among progressives that Maher likely doesn’t realize that his ideas are Marxist — such a vision allows the progressive to signal high status while feeling like they have some sort of mystic union with their inferiors. While Murray admits straight up that proles suck and should act less prolish, which unsettles progressives, who like to get off on feeling guilty about their own success.
dammit, can’t correct mistakes…