The Old Yorker has been called many things in our long history from “well-nigh perfect” to “the essential toolkit for intellectual literacy” to “Ritalin for restless minds.” As a result of our stature in our field, new subscribers often wonder why we have not “extended our brand” and created, for example, an Old Yorker board game or a line of amusing cocktail napkins. The reason is very simple. We share Iago’s view:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
Inevitably, the pursuit of any “brand extension” activities would come at the expense of the great work we do here at The Old Yorker. Our sole purpose was, is, and always will be creating meaningful content that changes lives for the better — not coming up with clever cocktail napkins.
Thus, we are enormously thrilled to be able to announce the inaugural semester of Old Yorker University, our new distance learning enterprise which will use our articles as a teaching mechanism. Starting today, our subscribers can simply continue to enjoy our content in a casual fashion or, if they prefer, they can become students of it by engaging in a more rigorous close reading. Our intention is to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees in our various departments including “New and Improved Quotations,” “The Mirth of the Mead-Hall,” and “Dirty Limericks about George Bush.” Although O.Y.U. is not currently accredited, we anticipate being properly certified by the various licensing bodies in time for graduation in the spring.
Just as our content will become our courses, our courses will become content. To that end, we proudly present the first of our lectures on Basic Photojournalism to both our students and our readers.
No doubt you’ve heard the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words.” A good news photo can enhance a story by illustrating the countless nuances which surround events of the day. However, some stories are more easily illustrated than others. News of a plane crash should be accompanied by a picture of the crashed plane; a story about Barack Obama’s campaign should show Obama campaigning.
But news of a more abstract nature, such as the financial crisis currently gripping the nation, presents a challenge. How do you put a human face on a number or a mood?
The answer most frequently given by our news media is to show a small fry participant in the markets for capital: a broker, say, or a trader, sitting or standing on the floor of the Stock Exchange in a posture of evident distress, usually with his head in his hands.
Here are some examples:
And yet it is reasonable to ask what a picture of someone with his head in his hands teaches us about the state of the economy. Do traders only put their heads in their hands when the market goes down? What if they are having a frustrating conversation with an employee of a rental car company who works in an overseas call center in Bangalore about the fuel surcharge on a recent bill? That kind of thing can drive the strongest of us to put our heads in our hands even on days when the market goes up by 300 points.
Furthermore, on days when the Dow Jones does indeed go up, that news is rarely accompanied by shots of Wall Streeters doing the opposite of putting their heads in their hands by leaping in the air and chest bumping one another or jubilantly calling their dealers to double their normal nightly order of cocaine.
Clearly, the vernacular for illustrating economic news has lapsed into cliche. And with so much economic news, the need for a new common language to describe the Markets’ vicissitudes is abundantly clear.
This, then, is your first homework assignment. Choose a photograph, either one you take yourself or one you find elsewhere, that communicates the current economic state of the nation without showing a person with their head in their hands.
As a guide, here is a photograph we have been using in some of our scholarly writing about the financial crisis. It shows a once-grand mansion fallen into picturesque but forlorn desuetude. The mansion in the picture asks, “what will become of me? Will a new owner restore me to my former glory or will I be swept away and replaced with something more magnificent still or a mere palimpsest?”
Good luck!
The Old Yorker 
Alaska: The Un-American State
Less than a minute after Rudy Giuliani finished tanning himself in the spotlight in St. Paul, Sarah Palin took the stage Wednesday night in the most eagerly anticipated Republican debut since Brenda Frazier made her curtsies before polite society back in ’38, (Actually, that’s not really fair. For all I know, Brenda may have been a Democrat. Or a Nazi.)
Although the expectations in Brenda’s case were rather higher, due to the fact that the Great Depression was at it’s peak and war loomed in Europe, our current economic difficulties and military entanglements gave a certain moment to Sarah’s appearance. Perhaps she would enlighten, inspire, or distract us (as Brenda did), any one of which would be most welcome.
Can we be honest about a few things at the outset? Palin seemed personable and reasonably (though not wildly, as some would have it) attractive. She spoke clearly and professionally. And the crowd at the RNC is much less freakish and alarming in close-up than the delegates — or whoever those people are — at the DNC. Can we admit that? We can’t? Okay. Well, at least we’re being honest about what we can’t be honest about.
Like her running mate John McCain, she’s a candidate with a story, not a platform. Politicians have their choice of three types of slender reed to grasp along the steeper parts of the campaign trail: personal sagas, slogans, or solid facts wrought into detailed plans. Since no one’s ever gotten anywhere on the last, winners tend to stick with the first two. McCain-Palin are currently about 83% personal stories and 17% slogans by volume, whereas the other guys are closer to half-and-half, thanks to all that “change and hope” stuff.
Having endured a lefty snarkfest about her family, Palin properly waved them in our faces, daring the haters to hurl the first stone at adorable Trig, startlingly bosomed Bristol, or her menfolk, husband Todd, jarheaded Track, and soon-to-be-son-in-law Psycho, who looked like they had had to have their neckties tied for them and been shaved with a chainsaw just before showtime. I had hoped we might get a chance to meet the Palin family pets as well, especially Mr. Squeaky, the guinea pig we’ve all heard so much about. How cute would it have been to see him sitting in a chair wearing a tiny credential made from construction paper contentedly munching away at a piece of Romaine lettuce?
The generation before Sarah Palin’s, the “Not-the-Greatest Generation,” as it’s known, often spoke of where someone was “coming from” as a metaphor for understanding what that person thought or meant, as in “until he pulled out the gun and stole my drugs, I didn’t really get where he was coming from.”
In their (okay, our) parlance, last night was a chance to find out where Sarah Palin is coming from: what she thinks, wants, and feels. And what she knows for sure and what she believes on faith. Some of that information is indeed there in the speech, along with that business about selling the governor’s plane on eBay, which is too good to bother checking out.
But still we need to know more (and, thanks, Rudy, for pre-empting Palin’s introductory and no doubt highly informative video.) Fortunately, there is another way to find out where Sarah Palin is “coming from” and that’s to learn more about where she actually is coming from: Alaska.
Being governor of Alaska is not exactly like being governor of, say, Arkansas or Texas. Or, for that matter, New York, where the rising star of Governor Eliot Spitzer fell to earth when the balancing act that is familiar to every working mother between work and kids (in his case young prostitutes) proved too much for him. No, being governor of Alaska is a little like being the Sultan of Dubai in that a major task is to come up with new ways to hand out oil money to residents, a little like being prime minister of Sweden in that you preside over a lavishly-funded welfare state where no shame attaches to government handouts, and a little like being the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq because there is no limit to your claim on federal largesse. Sarah Palin hasn’t traveled much overseas but she doesn’t have to. She’s already the governor of the most foreign of the 50 states.
Alaska’s heterodox state finances have been much discussed and the details are probably known to anyone who has read this far. In summary, each resident will receive almost $3300 this year in dividends from oil and gas revenues and, when they spend that money, they will pay no state sales taxes. (A personal disclaimer: my recent decision to move myself and my family to Alaska was made long before I heard that they give you money just for living there.) Thrift and saving for a rainy day are not virtues that Alaskans demand of their government; a drunken sailor mentality prevails. When asked by her constituents, “Can I have my allowance early, Mom?” Sarah Palin has always answered yes and thus became the most popular mom in America. Although the frontier closed a century and a half ago in the lower 48, Alaska still takes a certain amount of pride in its reputation as an untamed outlaw outpost despite the fact that it nurses more greedily at the federal teat than any other state, including the broke ones without any energy revenues.
(Again, in the interest of fairness, I’d like to point out that the Bridge to Nowhere actually did go to an island. It didn’t drop the cars off in the middle of the Bering Sea as the name might suggest.)
Sarah Palin rules (and, thanks to an unusual consolidation of power in the governor’s office, she really does rule) as viceroy over a vast demesne larger in area than all but 18 other countries but, with a mere 680,000 residents, smaller in population than all but three states. From this we might conclude that she will be more effective at dealing with forest fires than she will in coming up with a solution to the health care crisis. Duh, right?
But there are unique details to the Alaska experience from which further-ranging conclusions about what a Palin vice-presidency might bring us can be drawn. For one thing, she is the only governor with extensive experience in governing active volcanoes. There are dozens in Alaska, as opposed to three in Hawaii, and a measly one in California. Throughout her term in office, Palin has been wary, respectful, and non-confrontational in dealing with the volcanoes. We can expect the same in her posture regarding a resurgent Russia and volatile Iran.
Also, Alaska borders a foreign country, Canada, not other states. I would expect Sarah Palin to take no nonsense from the Canadians. While the Russians may bluster, it’s those conniving self-effacing Canucks that Palin knows can never be fully trusted.
Despite the ardent faith of its governor, Alaskans are among the least religious people in the country. Sarah Palin has learned to admire the state’s 3,000 Jews, who, at least, believe in the “Judeo” part of Judeo-Christian and not the Great Spirit or whatever it is exactly that Mormons believe. I predict strong support for Israel.
Because of Alaska’s poorly developed highway system, flying is the norm for all but the most local journeys and railways are extensively used for transport. Vice President Palin is very likely to be receptive to suggestions for commemorative stamps that feature either planes or trains.
And finally there is the small town character of so much of Alaskan life that Gov. Palin mentioned in her speech last night. Her values are those of Wasilla, Soldotna, and Homer not the heartless big city bustle of Fairbanks, Juneau, or Eagle River. Even in higher office, her concerns can be expected to mirror those of small town Americans with expanding movie showtimes and the building of skateboard parks in order to keep young people from moving away expected to be high priorities.
Oh, and the Alaskan custom of an alcohol-induced midwinter “hibernation” through the dark days of the winter solstice is an idea from outside-the-Beltway that Palin has promised to introduce to Washington.
- Old Yorker Commentaries
on September 4, 2008 at 12:55 pm Leave a CommentTags: Alaska, whale penis