Perspective

All this talk of taxes, patriotism, and how paying taxes is or is not patriotic, Joe the Plumber and socialism this election cycle, brought the below passage from Iacocca (1984) to mind. It details a conversation between Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II, grandson of Henry Ford and then President of the Ford Motor Co. The date’s unclear, but it’s got to be ’60s or ’70s. Lee’s narrating:

His attitude toward the government was not very different from his attitude toward the company.

One day he said to me: “Do you pay any income tax?”

“Are you kidding? I replied. “Of course!” No matter how I sliced it, I was paying 50 percent of everything I earned.

“Well,” he said, “I’m getting worried. This year I’m paying eleven thousand dollars. And that’s the first time in six years that I’m paying anything!”

I was incredulous. “Henry,” I said, “how on earth do you do it?”

“My lawyers take care of it,” he replied.

“Look,” I said, “I’m not against using whatever loopholes the government allows us. But the guys who work in our factories are paying almost as much as you are! Don’t you think you should be paying your way? What about the national defense? What about the Army and the Air Force?

But he didn’t see the point. While I have no reason to believe he was breaking the law, as far as he was concerned, the name of the game was: take the government for all you can.

In all the years we worked together, I never saw him spend a penny of his own money.

Truth in Photoshop

Now, I’ve been to Amsterdam once or twice. And I’m fairly certain there were no rolling mountaintops in the distance. Someone needs to tell American Express.

On Bluntness

The death of literary agent Pat Kavanagh sparked a flurry of reminiscences, including this one by Clive James in the Guardian:

She was beautiful, clever and loved to laugh, but she could also have a blunt way with a fool. Since most writers are fools, especially about money, a new client was likely to find his dreams being set straight quite early in the relationship. I can’t speak for her other clients – she never spoke about them either – but in general I would be surprised if there were any who were spared a close encounter with brute reality when she first explained to them why it would be unwise to start living like Donald Trump on the assumption that the next advance would be as big as the last one.

Such bluntness could be daunting but it was also reassuring because the client guessed, correctly, that his new mentor wouldn’t be pussyfooting with the publishers either.

I get accused of unnecessary bluntness on occasion. But plenty of people admire bluntness but never try it on for themselves because they’re worried it will lose them friends. That’s why testimonies like the one above are compelling. Frankness, even when it pricks one’s ego, can be reassuring because it eliminates guesswork. You rarely have to wonder whether a blunt person is being entirely honest with you. And when someone speaks so frankly to your face, you’re not likely to entertain nightmare scenarios over what they say behind your back.

As American as Bank Mergers

Graffiti artists and “code of conduct” don’t go together in most people’s minds, and it’s not difficult to imagine why, it being illegal and all to spraypaint walls that don’t belong to you. But this piece suggests that some graffiti artists don’t view their work as anti-social, but rather see their role more as that of town crier / sage / zen master / community organizer. I was struck by how it used the word “useful” — this guy stands about as far away from art for art’s sake as you can get. Read the rest of this entry »

Bingo

Well put:

Yes and I think that etiquette is the same as any other set of skills where the guidelines are there not to be mindlessly adhered to, but because you have to know the rules to fully understand the impact of breaking them.

This from a comment thread about Emily Post on Jezebel.

air-breathing land slugs

Ever work with someone who tried to talk you out of your integrity? Say a manager who gave your principled stance the once-over and dismissed it as “naive”?

I’ve been thinking about this managerial feint lately. There’s a species of jerk that tries to mold other people into jerks, so they won’t feel self-conscious about their own jerkiness, because if everyone’s amoral, then hey, no one ever has to think twice. I once imagined you could work successfully with jerks like this, as long as you stayed one step ahead and knew what you were doing. Now I’m not so sure. More on this later.

Nice White Pants on the Guys in the Band

Not exactly career frustration song lyrics, but “Hey Bossa Nova Baby, keep on working, for this ain’t no time to quit,” followed by “Hey Bossa Nova Baby, keep on working, for this ain’t no time to drink” struck a happy chord with me today:

2,470,000 Google hits for elitist Obama

Friday night a friend nearly choked on his Spanky’s BBQ beef brisket as he ranted about how a man who grew up in modest circumstances, and who owns just one house and one car, was getting slapped with the “elitist” tag — relentlessly! — while another man who married a young heiress and now enjoys several houses in several locations doesn’t get smeared that same way. Here’s my How to Be Useful-inspired explanation. I have to number these points because I’ll get lost in the fog otherwise.

1. Americans love the idea that we live in a classless society. In other words, that class distinctions don’t matter much here.*

2. Right alongside this belief is a yen for meritocracy. A meritocratic system fast-tracks its smartest and most talented citizens to the top, where they run both government and business.

3. As much as we like the idea of meritocracy, we shy away from its uglier implications. Say you think the U.S.A. is wonderfully meritocratic, and yet you’re struggling financially. Does this mean you’re not that bright? And if your I.Q. is low, does that mean you deserve to be poor? That you’ve earned your low-status…well, because you’re just not good enough? The notion that a meritocracy was going to be tough on the majority of people’s self-esteem was embedded in the concept from the beginning.*

4. For someone staring at a tall stack of credit card bills, it’s an uncomfortable thought. How can you reconcile your lack of power and money (grating enough as is) with the (even more painful) doctrine that the people at the top are “the best and the brightest”?

5. It’s a dilemma. Someone like Obama — he’s smart! he stayed up late, working hard! and now he’s on the road to the White House! — is unsettling. No one (except maybe Geraldine Ferraro) can claim he got lucky, or was born on third base. He really did hit a triple.

6. Strangely enough, this is why many people feel more comfortable with high-class folks who aren’t, frankly, the sharpest knife in the drawer. Witness George W. Bush. Born a member of the nation’s social and economic elite, and yet…it doesn’t seem he would have made it on his own. This, given the competitive pressures people feel, actually comes as a relief. They suspect that if there were a level playing field, W. wouldn’t be much competition.

7. In this jumble of ambivalence, the worst thing you can be is Al Gore. Born into the elite (indeed, with a background much like Bush’s) but also an overachiever. That’s just obnoxious.

8. So when people pull out the “elitist” smear, they’re really talking in code. They’re talking elite in the Jeffersonian “natural elite” sense. Here’s the thought process: “Gosh, Obama’s got talent. And he seems to think that’s worth something.” And to those for whom hard work has not paid off nearly as well, it adds insult to injury.

9. Bottom line is, if you believe we live in a classless society, and you believe at the same time that we’ve a fully functioning meritocracy, you’ve erected a big, big psychological obstacle for yourself. Unless you happen to be doing very, very well.

10. As someone who’s experienced not doing very, very well, I can suggest…when the Spanky’s waitress asks if you want to take your uneaten black-eyed peas and candied sweet potatoes home with you, say yes. Leave a big tip. Then, on the way home, admit to yourself that class matters, this is not a perfect meritocracy we live in, and that’s o.k. You’ll figure something out.

*Pop sociologist Vance Packard wrote about this in the late 1950s, and he traced the “classlessness” idea to a U.S. production boom that began in the early 1940s. Thanks to the G.I. bill and a strong manufacturing sector, middle class ranks swelled. Widespread prosperity was such a happy change from the Great Depression — still very much on people’s minds — that it was easy to believe that social class distinctions were withering away. Advertising helped this along, Packard claims in The Status Seekers: “…the director of a market-research organization announced his discovery that America was becoming ‘one vast middle class.’ Meanwhile, a corporation in paid advertisements was assuring us that ‘there are more opportunities in this country than ever before.’ Whatever else we are, we certainly are the world’s most self-proclaimed equalitarian people.”

**The phrase comes from a 1958 book called The Rise of the Meritocracy. Written by British Labour minister Michael Young, it was actually intended as a cautionary tale. Young wanted to show how, “if the rich and powerful were encouraged by the general culture to believe that they fully deserved all they had, how arrogant they could become, and, if they were convinced it was all for the common good, how ruthless in pursuing their own advantage.” And likewise, how ordinary people who “have less worldly goods and less worldly power than a select minority” can, if they subscribe to the notion of a meritocracy, “can be damaged in their own self-esteem, and generally demoralized.”