(05-10-2018, 01:59 PM)linus Wrote:(05-06-2018, 01:39 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Could liberals be finding an issue on which to embrace chastity as an ideal? They have excused sex between consenting adults, but not between children, between adults and children, or in which there is no consent. They are even sacrificing some of their political and cultural icons. Nobody gets a pass for being black (Cosby) or having lost parents in the Holocaust (Polanski). Maybe the Hollywood studios and world pop music scene protects someone still useful. Farewell, casting couch -- and good riddance!
I will see more cause to believe that the change is real when I find that a pro athlete loses his job for sexual harassment.
I would guess that nailing an older executive for sexual harassment is a good way to open a spot in a corporate hierarchy.
On your last point, in particular, I think that the whole discussion around diversity - especially at the top - turns on symbolism. As in, it's good to have women, people of color, lgbt people, and others in high profile positions almost as an end in itself. Which, okay, true enough.
Extant elites do not yield power except out of fear. If they are wise they protect something that allows them economic viability (property rights for the white majority in South Africa) in return for giving up political power. So if one uses South Africa as an example -- the white minority could yield power to multiracial democracy so long as the multiracial democracy would leave property rights unchallenged.
Property rights are far easier to enshrine than is bureaucratic power, which may explain why the transition from Communism to democracy was a failure in Russia. Bureaucratic privilege may be just as lucrative as ownership, which explains why executive elites rarely become small-business owners. Starting a small business (professional practices excluded) is usually more characteristic of proles than of educated elites. Property has the defense of formal title as bureaucratic power does not. As with the nomenklatura of the old Soviet Union in which free enterprise was rare but bureaucratic privilege was a dominating reality, bureaucratic privilege tended to be passed down from parent to child when possible. What privleged parent wants his offspring to become 'mere' factory workers or laborers on a collective farm?America's economic elite acts much in parallel, and it is similarly entrenched -- and it is mostly quite reactionary in its politics.
The command of any entrenched elite toward the masses seems to be much the same, whatever the time, stated ideology, or technology, seems much the same:
Suffer for my power, my privilege, and my gain, you expendable peon! That could as easily be a feudal lord, a planter, or a member of the Soviet nomenklatura -- or a member of America's executive elite. Power corrupts, even if it is 'only' economic or bureaucratic power.
Quote:But what's more often missing from this conversation is that it seems to have a self-perpetuating impact. Those people in turn help to elevate other women, poc, lgbt people, etc - in some cases people who might not otherwise have gotten the opportunities.
Women? The offspring of male elites only rarely pass power down to women qua women -- the power goes to women of similar social background. So the 'old boy's club' tolerates an auxiliary. Tell me when miscegenation becomes commonplace among elites... and I do not mean between white people and such 'honorary whites' as East Asians and Hispanics who are much more Caucasoid than anything else.
Creative elites might be less bigoted, but creativity and bureaucracy do not mesh well. Real power in America is still ownership and management. It usually takes a Crisis Era to topple entrenched elites, but should our elites mess up badly enough (as did the big landowners, tycoons, and executives who backed Hitler and similar leaders in central and southeastern Europe) they will be toppled themselves -- dispossessed and divested of power and influence. Or for that matter, the planters of the antebellum South who were stripped of slaves.
Quote:I can speak to some of this stuff from personal experience. I'd always wanted to be a writer, and thought that regardless of whether or not I ever got success in more glam gigs (writing scripts, plays, etc), I should have a more practical fallback. So, for years, I tried to break into technical writing in the streaming media sub-sector of IT. And for years, despite a pretty good portfolio, I didn't get so much as an interview.
Much like the stand-up comedian who does night gigs at the club while keeping his day job as a barber... Barbering is practical for making a living. It may take years to hone the portfolio, including the supposedly-magic 10 thousand hours of laborious preparation that Malcolm Gladwell shows is necessary for achieving the greatness necessary for doing things so well that it looks natural... he seems to hold that there are no 'naturals' in any field of athletic or creative activity. this applies as much to painters as to violinists. Talent is if little significance except to child prodigies who still have much to refine to achieve greatness. In business, the ten thousand hours are necessary drudgery of collecting on delinquent accounts, retaining 'wayward' customers, and prospecting for clients. In the publishing industry, I might guess that many promising writers spend much time in the not-so-creative activity of indexing books. Seventy hours a weak of such drudgery for below-average compensation for three years not only enriches your bosses and organizations but makes you prime 'executive material'. What else could you be doing? Dating? Watching sports or series TV?
Commerce still needs its laborers, clerks, enforcers, and low-level craftsmen. "Don't give up the day job" of an auto-parts clerk, goes the advice of the practical-minded loved one.
Quote:Fast forward to early this year. A script I've been working on gets a little buzz from a certain entertainment-related site, and within a couple months (April Fool's no less - I thought it might be some strange/cruel joke at first), I get an fb message from a Hollywood producer (most recent credit was last year's "Beauty and the Beast"). So, things starting to happen. And I don't think it's a coincidence that he's a part of writer/director Bill Condon's circle (which is one of the few making studio features that includes a substantial number of out gay men, including he and Condon both). Being an out gay man (25 years last year) it doesn't surprise me that (provided it continues to happen) it happened this way. Also, I'm inclined to suspect that if there was any kind of diversity among the gatekeepers of the streaming media outfits in these parts (most of which are mid-sized) I might've gotten an in too.
And once you get things rolling, you can't stop them. Farewell, 'day job that pays the rent, cab fare, and groceries'!
Quote:And I'll say too I don't think this all or at least always fall along political lines. Yes, liberals may be more supportive of civil rights, women's rights, lgbt equality, etc., but it doesn't always mean in practice that more supposedly "woke" organizations are actually that in practice. I care more about who's in the board room and executive suites than what their website and ads and donations to ngos say about their Commitment to Diversity. Heck, there's an out gay male anchor at Fox News (as well as CNN). Et tu, MSNBC?
I'm not naming names about MSNBC. This news anchor can make Trump corruption seem like something out of a novel by Arthur Conan-Doyle or Agatha Christie. It can be addictive. So can be the novels.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.