Hot Love is the Dearest, No Money Can Buy:
November 17th, 1998

For those of you...

...still boycotting Time magazine after the Rimm job, I'll summarize the Special Report from November 9th, 1998 :

Many companies in the United States are getting heavy tax breaks and government handouts to encourage them to stay where they are and get bigger, or move somewhere else and get bigger. This money pretty much comes right out of the pocket of the American taxpayer. Some of this money goes to Time magazine.

...not up on the latest trends in moral philosophy, I'll summarize an article from Free Inquiry magazine, volume 18, #4:

A real code of ethics tells you what's right and what isn't, all the time. Subjective ethics say you're right all the time and cultural relativism says your culture is right all the time. These are not real codes of ethics and should not be mistaken for 'em.

...who skipped a few English classes in high school, I'll summarize The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

If you go after what you want in such an ugly manner that people get hurt and killed along the way, you will end up face down in a swimming pool, and your funeral will not so much require a caterer as a trip to the corner store for some beer and perhaps a potato chip. One'll do.

The difference between Gatsby and Time is that one is intended to provoke a response in the reader, and the other... How's that again?

No, the difference between Gatsby and Time is that Fitzgerald believed in his work enough that he kept on even after the Gatsby royalties totaled around twelve bucks... which is about a hundred and twenty bucks in 1998 dollars. Not much compensation for as much work as he put into it.

As Raymond Chandler put it to Alfred Hitchcock, "it is impossible to be adequately paid for wasting one's time." Or is that wasting one's Time? Either way, this Time corporate welfare issue strikes me as about as useful as an ethical philosophy that doesn't tell you whether you should run red lights when you're pregnant. Sure, it was interesting to read the ugly details of how much sexier you are, in the eyes of the government, when you're a multi-million dollar company. And to read about what an ethical system isn't. But what does it mean? Where's the charm? Where's the compulsion? What do we do about it?

Do those poor bastards over at Time really believe in what they reported? Or is it a calculatedly cynical penis-wave of how much milk they drain from the government tit every year? And even if they do believe it, even if they honestly hoped to educate the dumb of America, will it actually make a difference? Or, like Spab, is everyone just going to shrug and say "So fucking what?"

The problem is two-pronged and there are many tines on each sliver of the fork. There's an argument to be made that writers-and-or-journalists have no ethical imperative to make their work accessible to an increasingly inattentive public. There's another argument, made by Douglas Hofstadter, that concern with accessibility often turns into pandering kitsch. And finally, when one does dumb down, one runs the risk of making people expect to be talked to like they're idiots, breeding either resentment or acceptance that they are too dumb to grab the larger issues.

On the other side of the alligator we have applicability. There is no point in simply exposing the truth if it makes no practical difference. Yes yes, I know that journalists-and-or-writers are supposed to make people aware of what down and dirty evil is happening so that they can make their own enlightened decisions. However, this high and lonely philosophy was coined at a time when educated men made the decisions -- either you were educated and had power, or you weren't and didn't.

I'd argue that Time's exposè is solidly stuck on both shivs. Regardless of motivation, the information is being presented to an audience already primed for intellectual effetery, as opposed to mass-cast (regardless of Time's circulation) in a way that Joe Average -- the person most likely to be nailed by tax breaks for corporations coming from his pocket -- can get at. They ain't communicating meaningfully at him about what they assert is important to him. They ain't never communicated meaningfully at him -- or this situation never would've happened in the first place.

For that matter, if ethical theory was grounded in practical reality instead of intellectual posturing, maybe corporations would be a little more self-conscious about all the pie on their faces.

And after all my own intellectual bombast, coming to the end of this article, what've I really given you that you needed? Having shot down the attempts, however valiant or cynical or detached, made by intellectuals and journalists alike, what alternative am I offering that will suddenly kick-start your existence into something better than what Jay Gatz lusted after? Can I offer any assurance that if you embrace life, and scream for what you love, that you will emerge victorious, and evil will suck the pipe?

Another man said it better than I did.

Definition: HUMAN BEING
You're one. At least, if you aren't, you know you're a Martian or a trained dolphin or Shalmaneser. (If you want me to tell you more than that, you're out of luck. There's nothing more anybody can tell you.)