Who killed the Electric Car?

I just saw Who Killed the Electric Car? tonight and the infuriating foolishness and shortsightedness of car companies, politicians, big oil, and consumers is alarming. In the film, someone rightly points out that, based on driving statistics, an electric car with a range of 120 miles would suit the driving needs of 90% of the population. Nonetheless, in the 1990s, SUVs were the car of choice; a classic case of Americans buying more than they need. More irritating -- if only for its outright bullheadedness -- was the footage of Ronald Reagan taking down the solar panels good ol' Jimmy Carter had installed (by himself?) on the White House roof. By far the most aggravating moment of the movie came when General Motors took the remaining EV1s to be crushed in spite of the protesters offering them a check to buy all 78 of them*.

While the effect of our "addiction to oil" on the environment (and more significantly, our ability to live in it) was clearly the most important message of the film, I found another point striking. Car companies made several efforts to repeal the California legislation that forced the production of electric cars. Ultimately, they were successful in doing so in 2004 when the White House joined GM and Chrysler in suing the California Air Resources Board. However, one of the tactics taken along the way was to set up a dummy "grassroots" consumer advocacy group to push for the repeal of the policy. This group purported to be standing up against wasteful use of land (for power up stations) and for social justice (the $250/mo lease was well out of the price range of many Californians). It quickly came out that the group was backed by a trade organization called the American Automobile Manufacturing Association (formerly headed by GWB's Chief of Staff, Andy Card). Furthermore, no members (i.e., actual consumers) of the "consumer advocacy group" actually existed.

My good friend, Ed Walker (formerly of Violent Society fame), is doing his dissertation research on the firms that offer services necessary to create this kind of "astroturf" group. While these firms also provide services to legitimate grassroots organizations, the majority of the clients buying a range of social movement tactics (e.g., letterwriting campaigns, petition creation, etc.) are trade organizations and businesses. Read more about Ed's research here.

*GM claims that the breakthrough in battery technology that would have extended the range of the EV1 to meet the needs of most consumers never arrived and, therefore, the program was cancelled. That does not explain why they wouldn't let the 78 consumers who had been driving the EV1s for eight years just buy the damned cars. Moreover, some of the leasees of the car had rigged their own battery systems that successfully extended the range to 300 miles per charge.

The Howard Dean Eat-off

I apologize in advance for this weird observation, but I have to put it out there:
Every single day I get some e-mail message from MoveOn.org (increasingly asking me for money). Occasionally, the message will be endorsed by a politician.

Today's said, "Will you accept Barack Obama's challenge?" Before I actually read it, I thought over the possibilities of what Barack was going to challenge me to do. Foot race across the National Mall? Eat half a Chicago pizza without a beverage? See how many times I can say the word "bombardier" in the Capitol before being knocked flat by the Secret Service? Actually, all B-Rock wanted was for me to call unsuspecting folks in swing states and talk to them about clean energy.

Primeval Majesty

A great post on attacks on the academy over at Crooked Timber. Here's how author Henry describes a Weekly Standard criticism of Swathmore syllabi:

This displays in its primeval majesty the boneheaded stupidity of a common genre of opinion article ... on the Evils of Left Wing Indocrination and Pandering to Lazy Students in the Modern University.

More evidence of my puritanism

This translation of an article (courtesy of The Week) from a German magazine called Stern is the perfect epitomy of the American stereotype of Europeans as well as the European stereotype of Americans (for those of you who prefer the original German, click here). I'm not going to try to draw macropolitical conclusions from a stupid article, but this does illustrate two important facts. First, European-American culture gap is widening and both sides are getting a bit resentful. Second, the media glorifies the frivilous worldwide.

Where a man can strut his stuff
By Milan Obradovic
Stern
Americans are such prudes, said Milan Obradovic in the German magazine Stern. As a German expatriate living in Los Angeles, I go to the beach regularly. But God forbid I should wear a normal men’s bathing suit. In the U.S., any garment tight enough “to show the faintest outline of male genitalia” is completely unacceptable. Men wear knee-length trunks lined with an extra panty to make doubly sure that their manhood is suitably restrained and camouflaged. The get-up “appears to be neither comfortable nor hygienic, not to mention utterly uncool.” But it’s a requirement in this “puritanical” country. Even women have to cover up. Going topless “can be punished with a steep fine or even arrest.” The prohibition is particularly odd when you consider that, in obesity-plagued America, many men have breasts just as large as women’s, yet those ugly saggers are on proud display while the women’s must be hidden. To a European, the “moral standards of the American majority” are a mystery—and a pity.

Tenured Radicals

A review of Michael Bérubé's new book, "What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?" showed up in the NY Times Book Review this Sunday. I have not read it, but have seen Bérubé, a fellow Penn Stater, speak and read his blog fairly regularly, so I think I understand his schpeel. Alan Wolfe's treatment is not bad and he correctly focuses in on a crucial point:

Conservatives control all three branches of government and have their own newspapers and television stations. Still they complain [Left-leaning professors] because "they can't believe that there are still so many annoying liberals out there with a substantial presence in an institution that does not allow for a rapid rate of turnover or takeover." Conservatism's political victories, Bérubé points out, may not be as impressive as they first seem, not in a culture in which gay people kiss on multiplex screens and young people share few of the moral certitudes of their elders. Without the university, and its ability to influence the minds of young adults, conservative success is transient, and conservatives know it.

What Wolfe does less well is to explain fully Bérubé's argument on how the (undeniable) Left-bent does little to indoctrinate. Bérubé argues that very few faculty go on propagandistic rants and are regularly evaluated by students on their "willingness to let students express themselves" as well as their "respect for students as individuals." Further, adjunct faculty are so insecure and desperate for tenure that they're hardly willing to be off-putting to students.

The more important question to me is the whether professors can really influence students. As someone recently commented, if "tenured radicals" could really affect students that much, all students would be reading all the text and writing multiple drafts of papers. That said, from my own experience teaching, I do think the emphasis faculty place in classes can make a difference. In a recent Political Sociology course, we reviewed major conceptions of power: pluralist, Marxist, elitist, corporatist, etc. (Full Disclosure: I don't particularly see any of the views as completely correct, but I encourage students to critique all of the theories, especially the vernacular pluralist view most Americans hold). To represent the corporatist model of power, I showed the documentary, The Corporation. While I thought all of my lectures were exciting and engaging, apparently, the movie was far more effective than I am because for the rest of the semester a majority of the students were convinced that corporations wield all the power in our society. Now, I think it's more accurate to see society as organized by corporations than constructed by individuals with equal access to power, but there's certainly more to it than that. Despite my attempts to get them to critique that view or consider views that envision certain people or non-corporate institutions (e.g., the state) as having power, they really liked the idea of corporate rule. All of that is a longwinded way of saying that the content of courses do have some effect on students' thinking, but instructors often don't have much control over what content will speak to them.

Multiples of 5

What's the obsession with multiples of five?

The fifth anniversary of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 was yesterday and remembrances abounded. Every media outlet featured something emphasizing that we're "five years out." If this wasn't obvious from the weeklong transformation of the History Channel from WWII TV to 9/11 24/7 or from the stupid controversy over ABC's stupid 9/11 mini-series or from President Bush's 17 minute (!) address, it became abundantly clear to me when I visited ESPN.com yesterday and found in their "Spotlight" section a feature on 9/11. Here are two of the story descriptions:

Gene Wojciechowski was ready for some football. But his heart just wasn't into MNF. It's still at the corner of Vesey and Church. (a.k.a. Ground Zero).

The nightmares still return. The acrid smell, too. Mark Dodge was at the Pentagon on 9/11, and the Aggie football player's life is shaped by it.

I understand the need for a remembrance, an assessment of the ramifications of 9/11, maybe an update on our safety for nervous Moms and Dads, but why is Five so much more significant than, say, the fourth or sixth anniversary? If anything, the fourth anniversary has a more immediate connection. Why should half a decade be more significant than the other anniversaries? I assume that we'll see 9/11 anniversary coverage decline for the next four years and then have an unimaginably big spectacle for the 10th anniversary.

But why should this be the case? Why do multiples of 5 of such symbolic significance in our culture? We see this phenomenon with birthdays, too. Your 25th and 30th birthdays are surprise party birthdays, but the 26th and 31th are dinner out with a few friends birthdays.

I assume that the centrality of the number five stems from the fact that we have five fingers on each hand. Of course, the more commonly occurring number of any given body part is two (e.g., two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears, etc.). And I seem to remember from Sunday school that seven is a particularly central number in the Bible. Given that Bush is a Christian and that the seventh anniversary of 9/11 will fall in his last year in office (an presidential election year), maybe we should be expecting an extra special anniversary in 2008. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the scope of the remembrance followed to a two -- not five -- year pattern from here on out.

The Little Things

The reason for the failure of humankind to reach its full potential can be summed up by this. Thanks to Crooked Timber for the heads up.

Hollywood is a little creepy

At the risk of sounding like Jerry Seinfeld (or maybe with the hope), what iiiiiiiis the deal with all the child sexuality in movies recently?

"Little Miss Sunshine," "You, Me, and Everyone We Know," "Squid and the Whale," and, most disturbingly, "Happiness," all have some depiction (ranging from suggestive, but cute to horrifying) of child sexuality. I'm not sure how to react to it because it pits my American prudish Puritanism and general concern for child welfare against my liberal desire to protect people's right to express sexuality in a manner of their choosing.

On the one hand, social norms concerning childhood sexuality vary widely between cultures with some cultures viewing sexual interaction between adults and young children as normal, whereas our own society strong adheres to the cult of the Innocent Child. So, I'm not going to deny that our ideas regarding children and sex are socially constructed. Moreover, there's hardly complete consensus in our own society about this issue. Philip Jenkins argues in Decade of Nightmares that one current of the Gay Rights Movement in the late 1970s was men pushing for the expansion of their "rights" to engage in sexual acts with boys. (I'm not familar enough with the history to endorse or reject this view, but do know that he's a very serious conservative with strong anti-child sexuality values as seen in his book, Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet). Likewise, the oft-satired folks at NAMBLA view themselves as sexually oppressed by wider society. I am totally not into oppression.

On the other hand, sex with kids is way fucked up coming from my cultural background. I doubt the ability of children to knowledgeably consent to sexual activity. Like anyone who has seen Law & Order SVU, I'm also aware that childhood sexual activity can be emotionally and physically debilitating.

So, what's child sexuality in all these movies? Perhaps it's because the contemporary generation of filmmakers grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, a era of oppression and reaction to the Free Love of the 1960s. Maybe through their movies, they are simply expressing the sexual confusion of their youths. Or maybe, as a society, we're simply recovering from a period in which we glorified the innocence of the child. We do have an incredibly child-centric culture and perhaps these filmmakers are in the vanguard of its critique.

What do you think?