media studies

America and Firearms (Explained to Overseas Readers)

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, History, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

The other day, I am watching the news on TV5, the international French language network. I am doing this to get away from the spectacle of the impending economic disaster in the US where I live. This is shortly after the massacre of school children in Connecticut. One item draws my attention: The cute, airhead French female announcer (or “anchorette”) states that last year about 28,000 people in the US lost their lives to guns.

Here we go again, I think. More half-assed information that is worse than no information at all. I have witnessed European media disseminating misleading information about the US for more than forty years. This time again, I have to intervene to help overseas of observers of the international scene who want to know about reality and who might happen to read this blog.

I can’t tell you how often I have witnessed the following: European commentators making sarcastic, superior comments about some American event or custom, or some American way of doing things and then, their society adopting uncritically the same American event, or custom, or way of doing things ten years later, or even later. Right now, for example, I would bet you anything that one of the novelties on French radio is 1990s American popular music. That would be especially true on the channel that calls itself without batting an eye-lash, “France culture.”

The tendency of Europeans to copycat the United States is so pronounced that it even affects social pathologies, the last thing you should want to imitate. Accordingly, it seems that the French expression for “serial killer” is: “serial killer.” N.S. ! (Would I make this up?) Continue reading →

Autism and National Public Radio

Jacques Delacroix Religion , , , , , , ,

I am obsessed with the question of widespread misinformation and even of stupidity among otherwise intelligent and formally educated people. That’s one big reason why I listen to National Public Radio.

On a recent episode of “Meet the Nation,” there is a far-ranging discussion of autism. The discussion begins well with a report on studies which show differences in frequency of diagnosis of autism according to socioeconomic status (some studies, predictably, with race as a stand-in) and also, according to spatial patterns. The latter, is important. It means that there are geographic clusters of autism. A New York sociologist showed that those patterns are not geographical in a simple physical sense but that they vary according to school district boundaries. Continue reading →

Illegal Immigration: Bad Faith and Mental Confusion

Jacques Delacroix Politics , , , ,

When I have insomnia, I watch the news and news commentaries in a language other than English. Looking at the same object from different angles makes you smarter, I think. So, the less I sleep, the smarter I become, and the smarter you become, indirectly (to a very small extent, I realize).

Early in the morning, there is a long interactive discussion about immigration on Univisión’s “Despierta America “(“Wake up America”) First comes a badly illustrated, falsely descriptive jeremiad by a Hispanic immigration advocate. He is what I called in academia, a “professional Mexican.” I don’t know what he is getting at. He is not doing anything useful. He only perpetuates a sort of 1970s exploitation narrative that does not even make me feel young. The advocate complains bitterly of course, that today or yesterday, several hundred illegal immigrants, presumably all with a rap-sheet, have been gathered nationwide for deportation. The charming and beautiful anchorpersons play along. Everybody refers to “immigration.” No one ever says, “illegal” immigration or even “undocumented” immigrants. Next comes an immigration lawyer. He takes questions on-air from callers who want help to fix their status as people who entered this country illegally, some, several times. Still, there is no reference to illegal immigration in general; the topic is still simply “immigration.” The show remains on “immigration, “ no qualifier. It makes you wonder if there are any people from Spanish-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere who ever entered this country legally.

The confusion between immigrant and illegal immigrant in this largest of Spanish-language television networks in the whole world, Univisión, constitutes a massive exercise in collective bad faith. It’s not going to help in the next political stage. No wonder conservative stay pissed off. No wonder their anger at illegal Hispanic immigrants sometimes comes to resemble anger at Hispanics in general.

Speaking of conservatives and of their distaste for illegal immigration, it does not help that they are confused on several important points. The fact that this country does not seem to be able to control its borders, the fact that its official immigration policies do not serve our interests, that’s all bad enough. We, conservatives, don’t need, in addition, to entertain and to propagate false notions of the burden immigrants, legal and illegal impose of us.

First, let me repeat that immigrants earn slightly more money on the average than the native-born. In our economic system, this means straightforwardly that immigrants contribute more, on the average than the native-born. Second, there is a widespread idea that illegal immigrants (illegal) consume government services while they don’t pay taxes. However common this belief, it does not withstand the most superficial examination. Here is why: It’s probably true that illegals avoid paying the federal income tax and also what state income taxes there are. That would be because they fear that filing government paper entails a risk of detection and of deportation. They routinely exaggerate the risk but it’s understandable.

Illegal immigrants however cannot avoid any indirect taxes or most other taxes, be they property taxes (that support schools), sale taxes, or excise taxes, including both federal and state tax on fuels. You might think that’s not much until you remember that 46 or 47 % of Americans do not pay any federal income tax. It’s likely that the % of Americans not paying state income tax is identical or, even higher. Thus, only illegal immigrants who situate themselves somewhere near the top 50% income bracket or within it would have to pay income tax at all if they filed. How many can that be? Think it through, don’t dismiss the thought out of hand.

What am I telling you?

It’s likely that illegal immigrant pay something close to their normal share of all taxes. I mean of the taxes they would have to pay if they were legal immigrants or US citizens. Not worth getting into a tizzy over, I say!

I know I have not dealt with payroll taxes, including taxes that support Social Security and Medicare. It’s likely that, by and large, illegal immigrants don’t pay those either. Reason is fear of detection again (see above). I know what you mean. I am with you. I wish they would pay those, right now, or at least, tomorrow. Please, follow through with this thought also. You will be amazed.

Bad faith, intellectual dishonesty on the one side; utter confusion fed by angry indignation on the other. It does not look good unless some conservatives will come to their senses. (Hint: The Wall Street Journal does a good job on the topic of immigration but it’s doing it so quietly hardly anyone is paying attention.)

PLEASE, THINK OF FORWARDING TO YOUR CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS.

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 5

Jacques Delacroix Economics , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here]

The Virtuous Global Effects of American Motion Pictures Hegemony

If one concedes the possibility that screen products generate or encourage violence, one must also accepts the possibility that they may affect behavior in socially desirable ways. (One can’t have it both ways: Television and, by extension, the cinema are either impotent or they may exercise a virtuous influence, as well as a pernicious one.) Thus, Curtin (1999) argues that satellite television circulates globally beneficently subversive (i.e. non-traditional), images of femininity, and therefore, alternative ways of being a woman. A moving testimony comes from the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadaré (1999): During the long night of Albanian communism (Albania was the most isolated country on Earth for forty years. Its paranoiac regime ended up cutting off relations with all countries except North Korea), Kadaré comments at length on how frequent exposure to garden–variety Western television courtroom drama ultimately induced among Albanians a distaste for personal blood feuds as old- fashioned or un-modern.

So, I pose the question: What virtuous influence may the ubiquitous American movies have on the rest of the world and, in particular, on the poor and on the downtrodden everywhere?

Even if one subscribes to the idea that movies don’t do much directly to alter either the values or the behavior of viewers, they inadvertently carry factual information, in their settings, as well as in the mundane aspects of their plots. I don’t see how some of that information cannot cumulatively have a liberating effect on those who live under less fortunate circumstances. American movies are shot mostly in the US (sometimes in Canada).They are directed mostly by American directors (or by Americanized Brits). Although Hollywood is one of the world centers of political correctness and of left-wing piousness, Hollywood films cannot help but convey to global audiences important realities of American life (and generic features of life in Western, secular, democratic, capitalist societies, in general). Among these: Continue reading →

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 4

Jacques Delacroix Economics, Liberty , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here]

Just another National Specialization

The massive asymmetry in films exports between the US and the rest of the world may be the result of any number of factors. The fact that foreign movies occasionally do well in the US market ( in recent years, “Life is Beautiful”, from Italy, “Amélie”, from France. The first, 1999, Pokemon cartoon from Japan grossed US$85.7 , million, according to WSJ 7/19/02:w11, and, as forecasted by same – “Read my Lips”, also from France, will do well) suggests that public preference, and possibly language barriers, are more likely to be issues than American distribution superiority, for example. Yet, language barriers may be less significant than one would guess. Luc Besson’s “Jeanne d’Arc” (“The Messenger”) released in 1999, purportedly produced in English to make it accessible to the polyglot EU markets and to the US market, registered 3.07 million admissions in the European Union in that year, against, 40 million for American-made “ Star Wars Episode 1”, 23 million for “Tarzan”, almost 21 million for “The Matrix” , and 7.4 million for “American Pie”. Even the obscure, American-made “Patch Adams” did better ( EAO 2001: 100). “The Messenger” flopped so badly in the American market that admissions and revenue figures are hard to find. For 1999 also, only one British production and two UK-US co-productions, all in English of course, figure among the top worldwide 50 admission getters. In Belgium where practically the whole population understands French , French-made movies obtain usually less than 10% market share, against an 80% share for American-made movies. (EAO 2001: 96). Finally, the foreign successes of Indian movies, almost all in languages understood hardly anywhere outside India and not everywhere in India, suggest again that language may be a small constraint. Continue reading →

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 3

Jacques Delacroix Economics, History , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here]

Broken Promises

Harm to the poor on a considerable scale occurs when rich countries suddenly violate the principles of free trade they publicly support, on the main. The US government and those of other post-industrial countries will periodically make a show of vaunting the merits of free trade on stages (such as the World Trade Organization) that guarantee worldwide publicity. These actions must encourage at least some of the most enterprising poor in poor countries to produce for distant markets they are not in a position to understand.

When the governments of rich and large entities, such as the US, Japan and the European Union, suddenly inhibit the free movement of products, those enterprising poor people in poor countries suffer, and suffer disproportionately. Thus, the recent passing of new American farm subsidies legislation (in 2002) makes it difficult or impossible for small farmers in the Sahel area of Africa to compete on the world ‘s cotton markets with American growers (Thurow and Kilman, 2002)(6). The steel tariffs erected by the Bush administration – with the full complicity of Congress – must have similar effect on steelworkers in some of the Third World and Eastern European steel-producing countries.

Neither of these policies nor the broken promises they imply, can be easily defended on moral or rational grounds. Directly, it can probably be shown that the economic actors of poor countries who embraced free trade end up worse off than they would be if they had toed to a more parochial (“autarkic”) line. Indirectly, such breaches of faith by powerful rich countries contribute to the stagnation of the Third World by seeming to prove wrong those who adopted a stance leading most surely to economic development: embracers of production for worldwide markets. (In my experience, well-educated defenders of national economic ”self-sufficiency” rarely care to argue against free trade in principle; instead, they rely on evidence that there is no real free trade but a poisonous international game where the dice are loaded against the poor in poor countries. Sometimes, they have a point.)

The American Motion Pictures Industry’s Hegemony Continue reading →

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 1

Jacques Delacroix Economics , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here.]

The word “globalization” is often used as shorthand to suggest that the world as recently shrunk for many purposes (Friedman, 1999). At first blush, this would seem to be good news, facilitating the spread of literacy, the diffusion of useful technologies, and socioeconomic progress, in general. However, a large segment of public opinion, in this country and, apparently, a larger segment in Europe and certain other countries (such as India), takes a jaundiced view of this shrinkage. This view is propagated by numerous websites as well as by professional intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky (who is often heard on National Public Radio). It contains a large anti-American component (Menand, 2002). It is widespread – at various levels of sophistication – in American universities. (1) In recent years, it has been dramatically acted out by rioters in Seattle, Quebec and Genoa, among other places. For left-wing opinion, “globalization” seems to imply that there is something radically new under the sun that is also economically nefarious for the poor and for the weak. For the same left-wing opinion, the word often suggests a sinister plot implicating in turn, “big corporations”, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and other organizations little understood by the general public. (For a broad, business-oriented and mildly liberal classification of the many sins the word “globalization” covers, see Eden and Lenway, 2001.) That new something entails a clandestine hegemony, or hegemonies, of some sort, dedicated to the further “exploitation” of the already poor and weak by the already rich and powerful. In this presentation, I develop the idea that there is little that is both radically new and nefarious,
and that what is new is likely to have largely beneficial effects. I rest my argumentation on readily available, public evidence.

Note: If you don’t think such a perspective on globalization exists, or you believe it’s inconsequential, you may want to stop reading. It is very difficult to find anywhere assertions about globalization displaying at once the following features: Continue reading →

Francophonie: encore de la connerie. (Version revue et corrigée)

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , ,

Une version precedente comportait quelques erreurs et des lacunes dont je m’excuse.

Je regarde un documentaire français sur TV 5, la chaine francophone internationale, “Gharjuwa, épouse de la vallée.”  C’est sur une ethnie népalaise qui pratique la polyandrie: une femme, plusieurs maris. Le sujet est intrinsèquementintéressant, Et puis, le fait que la femme polygame ait le gros sourire aux lèvrestout le long de l’interview confirme pas mal de mes à-priori sur ce qui rend les femmes heureuses, en fin de compte! (Ce n’est pas sorcier.) Et puis, le tout se passe dans un environnement montagneux magnifique. Comme c’est le cas pour la plupart des documentaires français que je connais, la photo est excellente.

L’une des tâches de la femme polygame est de preparer la bière. Une voix masculine dit le commentaire en Français. Soyons francs: je ne sais pas si c’est le commentateur qui a rédigé les texte. En tous cas, il nous avise de ce qu’ au Népal, la bière ménagère se prépare en faisant “cuire ensemble” une céréale (ou plusieurs;maïs ou blé noir, ou les deux, je ne suis pas sûr) et de la levure. Je fais un retour en arrière mental. C’est bien ce qu’il a dit. La levure, c’est ce qui transforme les sucres des céréales en alcool et en CO2. Mais la levure se compose d’organisme vivants qui meurent vite à la chaleur. Pas question de la faire cuire avant qu’elle ait fait son travail. La description qu’on nous donne  est soit absurde soit fausse

A priori, selon son accent et sa diction, le commentateur est français ou belge. Il vient donc d’un pays célébré dans le monde entier pour ses vins et aussi pour sesbières, ou alors, massivement, seulement pour ses bières. Des pays aussi respectéspour leur pain et pour leurs pâtisseries levées. Vins, bières, pains, pâtisserie levéeesexigent la maîtrise de l’emploi des levures. Comment peut-on être aussi ignorant d’une partie aussi importante de sa culture séculaire? Et puis, je sais bien qu’en principe, l’ignorance et la connerie sont des choses différentes. Pourtant, il y a des cas ou il est difficile de distinguer l’une de l’autre. Comment peut-on avoir étéélevé dans la culture française ou belge et être aussi profondément mal informé, àmoins d’être également bête? Continue reading →

Thanks A Lot America!

Jacques Delacroix Economics ,

My wife and I sit on the living room couch watching television while eating a simple lunch. She is an immigrant like me, born and reared in India. She is a woman of tremendous intelligence and of impressively bad taste. We are watching “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

One white, white-trash woman is having a mean argument with her friend, a black white-trash woman. Both are spilling out of the top of their blouses. The air appears to me to be filled with the smell of acrid estrogen. (I can’t be sure; this is taking place on-screen.) The topic of the argument is who of the two is the greatest ho. It seems to me it’s a matter of fine gradations but I am not expert. It’s all quite wonderful.

The thought strikes me: If I had stayed in France instead of emigrating, I would now be watching a replay of a visit of an obscure part of the the Louvre, about some obscure aspect of obscure Etruscan culture. The visit would be commented for French television by a retired lady professor at the Sorbonne, with very short hair plastered to her skull.

Another reason to love America!

And don’t go all supercilious on me, silly woman. I watch the History Channel too. I could give you a list of its mistakes that would make your hair stand on end. I have read all the books you have read and many you haven’t. I have read books the titles of which you can’t even pronounce. I have even published a couple of books and a number of articles myself. That’s not even counting my short stories. I make established scholars at prestigious universities tear up. You can’t even begin to diss me. American television is great!

Thank you America!

Stupid Fundamentalists; Obstinate Ignorance.

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , ,

Stupid fundamentalist Protestants in Florida burn a Koran publicly because it’s their constitutional right. Stupid Muslims in New York, who say they are not fundamentalists, insist on their right to build a mosque near Ground Zero because it’s their constitutional right.

It all sounds very malicious and moronic but fair.

Speaking of morons, I catch a bit of the far-left show “Democracy Today” on the radio. Some guy whose name I did not catch sermonizes the West about the lack of clean water access for millions of people in the underdeveloped world. He intones that one week of the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be enough to provide clean water wells to most of those who lack them.

The speaker does not seem to know the basic facts of life: In places like Afghanistan, in most of the underdeveloped world, if you give the government money to dig wells in the countryside, it ends up in Switzerland or on the French Riviera. The solution, of course is to entrust the money to NGOs (voluntary non-government organizations). Oops, NGO workers are targeted for assassination in places like Afghanistan! The assassins are the very people our military are trying to control. There are very mean people who are mean to their own people. Deuh!

Money is not the issue. If his figures are right (they might be), the costs, technical, constructions cost, of providing clean water to nearly everyone could be covered by voluntary subscription in the US and in a handful of other developed countries in one week. We are not selfish or stingy, you left-lib moron!

I keep wondering how an adult man can have the shamelessness to preach on the radio in full ignorance of such basic facts, of facts everyone can ascertain. Oh, well, the President does it all the time.

Obstinate ignorance and the insanity of the sane: Two topics that interest me endlessly. They tend to merge into each other.

Contraception and Perversions: Dr D’s Brutal Reminders

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , , ,

Warning: Some parts of this essay may be considered pornographic. (I sure hope so because I need another source of income.) It is mostly addressed to adult women but you should feel free to read it whatever your sex, or sexual orientation, or sexual orientations. If a young girl happens to read it, I am persuaded that it will do her more good than harm in the long run.

The leftist media have a new battle-horse: Republicans are waging “war on women,” they say. They claim that the Republican Party is using contraception denial to undermine women’s freedom. The other morning, I am laboring on the elliptical at the gym maintaining my three-pack. I am watching MSNBC (no choice, I live in Santa Cruz) when comes on an elegant, attractive Professor of Political Science. I don’t know from what university she is and I don’t care. It’s obvious she was invited because of her telegenic appeal. She is a light-skinned African-American woman, quite pretty, with an extremely neat hairdo of a hundred tight little tails. (What do you call those again?) Perfect!

The telegenic professor asserts calmly that the Republican Party is deliberately trying to limit the progress of women into the professions by denying them contraception.

Got it? “Copulate without protection. Become pregnant. Kiss law school good-bye! One less ho in a position of power or influence!”

I wouldn’t believe this enormous absurdity happened on television if I had not heard it myself. We are all more or less guilty for letting this kind of stuff be said without booing. Yes, I think booing is a moral obligation. Continue reading →

This Is What A Dissident Looks Like

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , ,

I am anti-war, but I take a great interest in the affairs of other peoples, especially ones who live under dictatorships. I am frequently in touch with many activists around the world and believe wholeheartedly into putting my meager resources to good work when it comes to delegitimizing regimes.

Below is a Facebook message a friend sent to me after I asked him to write for an arts and culture webzine I edit: Continue reading →

Media Idiocy Elsewhere: Some Encouraging Observations

Jacques Delacroix Culture, Current Events , ,

Whenever I despair, or more likely, when I become annoyed, because of the lack of criticality our mass media exhibit, I watch something in French or in Spanish. Then, I come out feeling better about criticality and attentiveness in America. In brief, others routinely do worse.

I have written before about this French documentary series I watch often. It’s called “Thalassa.” It’s about the ocean, in a broad sense, including tropical islands, exotic and ingenuous fishing techniques, and beautiful corners of Europe, even of France, that few know about. Thalassa is served in installments that are two hours long and it’s been on about forty weeks each year since 1975 (1975, not a typo). Both the facts of the long duration of each show and of the long duration of the series itself are evidence of success, I think. I mean success by French television standards. As usual, I want to protect myself against the accusation of taking milk from kindergartners.

Well, the last time, I watched Thalassa, the series,  it included twin reports about China-Taiwan and mainland China, the latter technically know as the People’s Republic of China. To explain the split between the two Chinas, the narrative declared that the Chinese Communists had “won the election” in 1949. Correspondingly, according to Thalassa, the official name of mainland China is “The Popular Republic of China.” Yep, I guess it’s popular enough! If you don’t find it popular and you say so, you end up in jail.

The writer of the narrative and the narrator are both idiots. This could happen here, though I think it’s less likely. What I believe is that a successful, important American television series would be edited by responsible people with an ounce of general knowledge, that it would not be left to children or to high-school dropouts. (Here, I am exercising the benefit of doubt. If one checked the French narrators’ and writers ‘ credentials, it might well turn out that they are all graduates of he best French institutes of higher education.) Continue reading →

Communist Dinosaurs

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

I watch a French two-and-a-half-hour weekly television show that’s pretty good in most respects. It mixes no- hold-barred interviews of politicians with talks with movie directors, authors and artists, including singers.  There is a presidential election beginning in France too. It relies on an an incomplete primary system. To make a long story short, anyone with a grievance or an idea who can get 500 signatures of I don’t know whom can run. That makes for a lively and exotic first round of  balloting. In the second round, things get serious. In any case, this time, there is an explicitly “communist” candidate (Trotskyst branch). She runs for an organization that calls itself “Workers’ Struggle” (Lutte ouvriere).

It’s not clear what her party considers as “workers” but from the candidate’s choice of examples of struggle in her interview last night, there is a strong preference for conventional blue-collar and pink-collar workers. Of course, manufacturing jobs are vanishing from France as they have been doing here. People employed in manufacturing are becoming accordingly scarcer. Bad strategic bet that, defining yourself as a workers’ party when you also define workers that way, (going away, going away, gone!).

The “communist” candidate discourse is loud as it is transparent. Let me summarize: Continue reading →

Teacher Sex and President Sentences Terror Suspects to Rape?

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , ,

WARNING: THERE IS A BAD ARABIC TRANSLATION OF THIS POSTING IN EXISTENCE SOMEWHERE. I  DID  NOT REQUEST IT, I DID NOT AUTHORIZE IT, AND I DID NOT APPROVE IT. I AM ONLY RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT I WRITE IN ENGLISH, IN FRENCH AND, RARELY, IN SPANISH.

There are days, rare days, when I feel completely French, after more than forty years. One such occasion is whenever anyone criticizes foie gras, its consumption, its presentation, or its production. (Go ahead, Google it; it’s all true.)

The other times my French culture of origin soars up within me is when I hear from the media that yet another Florida school teacher is accused of having her way with one of her young male students. It seems to happen mostly in Florida, somehow. Don’t ask me why. It must be the enervating climate. Anyway, there was a such an announcement in the news yesterday.

I am sorry, I can’t quite get my indignation up. In fact, the news brightened my day to an extent. “Double standard,” you say. Sure thing! It’s mostly Mother Nature’s decision. Facts matter: First, boys can’t be raped by women. You can’t repeat it often enough. Second, boys don’t get pregnant. Sorry to give you the obvious but the politically correct media seem to have forgotten it. Third, there is a part of me that is in synch with thousands of years of popular sentiment: I suspect that sex is emotionally more important to females than to males. Continue reading →