Bluebird

When dinner is the opposite of fashionable...

As the sun dips below the canyon here tonight, we're serenaded by the grating drone of a neighbor's nonstop shop-vac. I look out through our postcard of a window wall and try to memorize its heartstopping beauty, however it may prove to be in vain. This makes me rueful, so I look away and pour a glass of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, hoping it coagulates 'good luck' for us from a friendly distance. Somewhat sentimental after more than a few tense-filled past days, I am compelled to sit and soak in the view, if only in search of positivity. To wit:

I am always thankful for De Cecco gnocchi on a night such as this, cause it makes a quick pesto dinner that much easier.

 


And with a passle of fresh tomatoes, how could I avoid the ubiquitous caprese?

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Insalata-Caprese-13232

I know it's the quiche Lorraine of the late last century, but when tomatoes are as good as this, I don't give a fig for trendiness. Topped with basil, mozzerella and some spices before annointing with olive oil...this leaves little room for error. And we need to lubricate our current worries and concerns with good oil and garlic.

The moral here is as usual: oh well, there is always dinner to look forward to...

Eve of 11/11/11

A once-in-a-lifetime time and date: 11:11:11 on 11-11-11

November 10, 2011 | 12:16 pm

You have to admit, it's kind of weird: At some point Friday, the clock will strike 11:11:11 a.m. and the date will be 11-11-11.

There are plenty of ways to celebrate this quirky calendrical coincidence, but two appear to be gaining momentum:

You could go get hitched. The elegant symmetry of all those 1's lined up is driving a wedding boom across the country, especially in Las Vegas: More than 3,500 applications -- and counting -- have been filed for Nov. 11, 2011. Wedding chapels up and down the Strip are also promoting 11-11-11 wedding packages, no doubt because it will make for an anniversary that is awfully hard to forget.

PHOTOS: Eleven 11s: Just in time for 11-11-11

Or, you could note this particular numerological occurrence, which only takes place once every 100 years, in a much darker fashion.

Some people, the Internet assures us, believe that the number 11 possesses dark, mystical powers. Which is why Hollywood is unleashing the new movie "11-11-11" on us. Here's the synopsis, according to the Internet Movie Database: "After the death of his wife and child, an author travels to Barcelona to see his estranged brother and dying father, where he learns that his life is plagued by events that occur on 11/11/11." If you like such things, here's the trailer.

It's worth noting that while 11-11-11 is certainly eye-popping, it's not a singular numerical occurrence. It happened last year with 10-10-10 and future Bridezillas have surely noticed it will also happen next year with 12-12-12. Looks we're having quite the palindromic month, having just turned the calendar on 11020211.

-- Rene Lynch

Be like Africa

Is It a Crisis? Maybe So, if You're a King

By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

Published: November 4, 2011

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — When the earth was discovered to orbit the sun, it was a world in crisis to those invested in the idea that things revolve around us. At the moment in history when power began to flow from kings to the people, it was a world in crisis if you were sitting in a royal court.

But these were not crises so much as paradigm shifts. They were passages from one system, and total way of seeing, to another. And once the new paradigm came, people got over it and went on with making their lives amid new realities.

And so we must ask about the present worldwide blues: What if all this is not, as we keep calling it, a crisis? What if this is a choppy but unavoidable transition between one paradigm — one coherent ball of ideas, power structures, economic theories, values, behaviors — and another?

This thought has stirred of late in moving back and forth between two very different worlds. The first is the world in self-declared crisis, racked by downgrades and bailouts, foreclosures and protests, by polarization and widening inequity, by anxieties that children will be worse off than parents and the future less glorious than the past.

In many places, this narrative indeed feels frightfully true. On the other hand, one also has the privilege of encountering a diffuse global community of naysayers, who refuse this story of crisis and are busily inventing the paradigm they believe we will inhabit before long.

These builders speak about “the crisis” very differently. They see not the end of things — of capitalism, of the West, of the middle class, of liberty — but rather a turning: a comfortable old rug of understandings pulled out from beneath our feet, without convincing understandings to replace it. So here, to make you feel better, are two aspects, among many, of the new paradigm they are weaving.

The first is a shift in the nature of power and influence. It goes by many names and takes many forms. It is open-source software and encyclopedias written by crowds and revolutions seeded on Internet portals. It is the idea of the United States “leading from behind” in Libya rather than fiercely commanding. It is newspapers linking to other newspapers on their Web sites rather than walling everything in. It is Kickstarter, Meetup and Ushahidi and any number of other platforms that allow disparate, diffuse strangers to marshal the kind of influence that once only centralized institutions could.

If you’re stuck in the old paradigm, these developments could seem like a crisis. You might fret that no one is reading encyclopedias anymore. Or that these kids who resist newspapers are so ignorant. Or that your nation used to lead from the front and now lurks in the back. Or that the government should be “creating” jobs but isn’t.

The builders would ask you to step back, because the “who” and “how” of influence have changed, and it may require many of us to adapt to new roles. As Anne-Marie Slaughter, a political science professor at Princeton University and former U.S. State Department official, puts it, the leader must now become a catalyst, the diplomat a connector and the public-relations agent a convener.

Media outlets might rethink themselves as curators of complex reality rather than purveyors of wholly produced scoops — much as the Al Jazeera English program “The Stream” does, inviting viewers and social-media users to help craft its topics and ask questions of its guests, then reading their feedback live on the air.

Embassies might refocus from addressing governments to addressing local people and institutions directly. Americans might learn to appreciate led-from-behind, drone-enhanced, coalitional wars that provide fewer heroic thrills but also cost less in blood and treasure. Citizens might find ways to increase employment without the government’s help, as the new Starbucks initiative, Create Jobs for USA, is asking them to do with $5 donations to fund small-business loans.

A second shift involves the desertion of the traditional divisions between public and private, the collective and the market.

We still live with language and institutions and rules derived from a world in which people are either doing good or doing well, either solving collective problems or merely pursuing a buck. But already in our midst is a parallel universe, with very different rules, that can be called the impact economy.

As publics around the world argue about the 99 percent and the 1, the impact economy is breaking the trade-off, applying the 1 percent’s methods to the 99 percent’s needs.

It encompasses entrepreneurs in the developing world who obsess over making things like heart surgery, cellphone service and insurance vastly cheaper, so as to make them available to billions, not mere millions.

It includes public-private partnerships as well as investors like the Omidyar Network that are strangely agnostic between earning financial returns and not — pumping money into businesses and charities alike in pursuit of better societies.

It even includes some of the world’s largest corporations, from PepsiCo to Levi Strauss, who have come to recognize the force they exert on the planet’s people and resources and are engaged in unilateral social policy to improve their net effect.

It involves an emerging global cadre of talent who spend careers bouncing among the social, private and public sectors, applying the methods of each to problems in the others, refusing to accept that one of them holds all truth.

Today this impact economy is especially vital outside the West, where the lines between banker types and Occupy types are these days creatively blurred.

As Erik Hersman, a son of American missionaries to Sudan who now runs a startup incubator in Kenya, says: “Instead of thinking of Africa as a place that needs to be more like us, we should think about how we need to be more like Africa

Stormin' Mormon

Op-Ed Columnist

Anne Frank, a Mormon?

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: October 18, 2011

WASHINGTON

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

 

At an appearance at George Washington University here Saturday night, Bill Maher bounded into territory that the news media have been gingerly tiptoeing around.

Magic underwear. Baptizing dead people. Celestial marriages. Private planets. Racism. Polygamy.

“By any standard, Mormonism is more ridiculous than any other religion,” asserted the famously nonbelieving comic who skewered the “fairy tales” of several faiths in his documentary “Religulous.” “It’s a religion founded on the idea of polygamy. They call it The Principle. That sounds like The Prime Directive in ‘Star Trek.’ ”

He said he expects the Romney crowd — fighting back after Robert Jeffress, a Texas Baptist pastor supporting Rick Perry, labeled Mormonism a non-Christian “cult” — to once more “gloss over the differences between Christians and Mormons.”

Maher was not easy on the religion he was raised in either. He referred to the Roman Catholic Church as “an international child sex ring.”

But atheists, like Catholics and evangelical Christians, seem especially wary of Mormons, dubbed the “ultimate shape-shifters” by Maher.

In a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday, people were asked what single word came to mind for Republican candidates. For Herman Cain it was 9-9-9; for Rick Perry, Texas; and for Mitt Romney, Mormon. In the debate Tuesday night, Romney said it was repugnant that “we should choose people based on their religion.”

In The Times on Sunday, Sheryl Gay Stolberg chronicled Romney’s role as a bishop in Boston often giving imperious pastoral guidance on everything from divorce to abortion.

Stolberg reported that Romney, who would later run for Senate as a supporter of abortion rights against Teddy Kennedy and then flip to oppose those rights in Republican presidential primaries, showed up unannounced at a hospital in his role as bishop. He “sternly” warned a married mother of four, who was considering terminating a pregnancy because of a potentially dangerous blood clot, not to go forward.

Another famous nonbeliever, Christopher Hitchens, wrote in Slate on Monday about “the weird and sinister belief system of the LDS,” the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Aside from Joseph Smith, whom Hitchens calls “a fraud and conjurer well known to the authorities in upstate New York,” the writer also wonders about the Mormon practice of amassing archives of the dead and “praying them in” as a way to “retrospectively ‘baptize’ everybody as a convert.”

Hitchens noted that they “got hold of a list of those put to death by the Nazis’ Final Solution” and “began making these massacred Jews into honorary LDS members as well.” He called it “a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased.”

The Mormons even baptized Anne Frank.

It took Ernest Michel, then chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, three years to get Mormons to agree to stop proxy-baptizing Holocaust victims.

Mormons desisted in 1995 after Michel, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, “discovered that his own mother, father, grandmother and best childhood friend, all from Mannheim, Germany, had been posthumously baptized.”

Michel told the news agency that “I was hurt that my parents, who were killed as Jews in Auschwitz, were being listed as members of the Mormon faith.”

Richard Bushman, a Mormon who is a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, said that after “the Jewish dust-up,” Mormons “backed away” from “going to extravagant lengths to collect the names of every last person who ever lived and baptize them — even George Washington.” Now they will do it for Mormons who bring a relative or ancestor’s name into the temple, he said.

Bushman said that “Mormons believe that Christ is the divine son of God who atoned for our sins, but we don’t believe in the Trinity in the sense that there are three in one. We believe the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are three distinct persons.”

Kent Jackson, the associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, says that while Mormons are Christians, “Mormonism is not part of the Christian family tree.”

It probably won’t comfort skeptical evangelicals and Catholics to know that Mormons think that while other Christians merely “have a portion of the truth, what God revealed to Joseph Smith is the fullness of the truth,” as Jackson says. “We have no qualms about saying evangelicals, Catholics and Protestants can go to heaven, including Pastor Jeffress. We just believe that the highest blessings of heaven come” to Mormons.

As for those planets that devout Mormon couples might get after death, Jackson says that’s a canard. But Bushman says it’s part of “Mormon lore,” and that it’s based on the belief that if humans can become like God, and God has the whole universe, then maybe Mormons will get to run a bit of that universe.

As for the special garment that Mitt wears, “we wouldn’t say ‘magic underwear,’ ” Bushman explains.

It is meant to denote “moral protection,” a sign that they are “a consecrated people like the priests of ancient Israel.”

And it’s not only a one-piece any more. “There’s a two-piece now,” he said.

Republicans are the ones who have made faith part of the presidential test. Now we’ll see if Mitt can pass it.

Lessons in drowning out repugnants

Editorial

Leadership Crisis

Published: September 17, 2011

As the economy faces the risk of another recession, and the 2012 campaign looms, President Obama has been groping for a response to the biggest crisis of his career. All he has to do is listen to the voters.

The Times and CBS News released a new poll on Friday, and once again we were impressed that Americans are a lot smarter than Republican leaders think, more willing to sacrifice for the national good than Democratic leaders give them credit for, and more eager to see the president get tough than Mr. Obama and his conflict-averse team realize.

So long as the politicians keep reinforcing their misconceptions — and listening only to themselves — the country has little chance of getting what the voters want most: jobs and a growing economy.

Despite what the Republicans loudly proclaim, Americans do not buy into economic theories that were disproved 25 years ago. What the new poll and others show is that most do not see the deficit and “big government” as the main problem, and they do not buy the endless calls for slashing spending and reckless deregulation.

A solid majority said creating jobs should be the highest priority for the government now and that payroll taxes should be cut to help with that. A whopping 8 in 10 think building bridges, roads and schools is important, which means — gasp — spending money.

Many Democrats are so gun shy that they don’t dare even to talk about raising taxes on the rich. But 71 percent of those polled said any plan to reduce the budget deficit should include both spending cuts and tax increases. And Americans understand that there are choices to be made; 56 percent said the wealthier should pay higher taxes to reduce the federal deficit.

It bears repeating that this is all entirely rational, and what the Republicans and some Democrats are proposing is absurd. The country has tried reckless deregulation and overly deep tax and spending cuts before. It brought more than one recession in the last century; caused the near collapse of the financial system and another recession in this one; and helped pile up the current deficit.

Mr. Obama has been making many of those points for months. But he has been doing it with speeches that, while eloquent, are often too long and nuanced, and then lack the kind of relentless repetition that is needed to drown out catchy but false Republican talking points.

He has wasted far too much time trying to puzzle out how he can shave policies down far enough to get the Republicans to cooperate. The answer has long been clear: He can’t. Since he was elected, the Republicans have openly said they would not work with him, and a year ago, Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said explicitly that the Republicans’ goal was simply to deny Mr. Obama a second term. The new Times poll showed that Americans do not believe bipartisanship is achievable. Six in 10 Democrats want the president to challenge Republicans more. He should not worry about voters thinking he is being mean. What he should worry about is that he is not showing them that he is fighting all out for their interests.

Mr. Obama has done more for the country than many voters realize. The stimulus program so demonized by Republicans was too small, but it saved the economy from a complete collapse. Mr. Obama’s maligned decision to bail out the car companies saved large numbers of jobs. The huge benefits of his health care reform, which Republicans have vowed to repeal, will become clearer to Americans in the years ahead.

That is not enough. The president has done far too little for far too long to help struggling homeowners, and he must do more to put Americans back to work. That is why it is so important and welcome that he has finally begun to take on Congress. His speech to the joint session outlining a significant jobs program was followed by the sound demand that it be paid for with tax revenue increases.

The question is whether he will now fight hard for that program. To get there, he does not need the entire G.O.P. caucus, just a few members, but he also needs to show more strength in leading his own less than courageous caucus. And, win or lose, he needs to stay out of the bargaining backroom and keep making his case to the public.

There is so much noise out there that we are not sure most voters know how much they agree with the president. It is up to Mr. Obama to show them.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on September 18, 2011, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: Leadership Crisis: Americans agree with Mr. Obama on a great deal. Why don’t they know it?.

Dinner not at André's

Dispatch

Talking With ... André Leon Talley

Published: September 17, 2011

ONLY city people think that no one interesting lives in the suburbs. Case in point: André Leon Talley, a contributing editor for Vogue who seems to represent everything urban: stylishly dressed, a force of nature who stands out visually even in a world filled with unceasing competition for the eye. After he’s finished with fashion shows in New York or Paris or Milan, Mr. Talley retreats to a quiet Westchester hamlet. His home there reminds him of his childhood in North Carolina, and happy moments on his grandmother’s front porch.

 

Chad Batka for The New York Times

André Leon Talley spends his work life in fashionable cities, but home is a quiet suburb.

 

Why Westchester?

To me silence is music and I really found it first in Hastings-on-Hudson, where I parked my S.U.V. in the village parking lot near the train and would take the Metro-North in on a regular basis to Vogue. It just seemed like the right fit to discover a way of living that was not expected of me. To be able to leave the glamorous lanes of fashion shows, and fashion seasons, important cultural evenings, or just dinner with friends in the city and find solace in a place that was so removed from what is a challenging yet exciting life in the chiffon trenches of fashion. I loved Hastings-on-Hudson until the owners decided to increase the rent to $3,200 a month. Then I thought, time to invest.

Now I live in Worthington, in a house built in the late 1800s, with four white columns and a circular porch painted a pale pearl gray that I imagined Pauline de Rothschild might have used. It’s from the porch where I can see the yard (I don’t call it a garden), which has become my sanctuary. On one side of the house are redwoods from the ’20s. The previous owners had planted superb Japanese maples. I put in white hydrangea bushes from Rosedale Nurseries last year. There are groupings of rhododendrons and huge shrubs in black regency pots. The centerpiece is a giant copper beech tree, around which I had lights installed to show it off.

The downside of being around all this nature is that twice I have had a bat fly into my bedroom, having slipped in through the cracks of the screened window. I do not wish this experience on anyone. Nothing is more unpleasant than running screaming down the stairs, lying awake until dawn on the sofa, waiting for pest control to show up, only to hear, “Oh, it could be in your blanket or sheets, or behind a mirror.” (Once, a bat was found snoozing in the bathtub.) I’ve spent a small fortune on trying to deter bats from nesting in the cracks of the chimney or setting up house in the attic, and a great deal of time having the arborvitae and holly bushes framing the porch covered with burlap so deer don’t treat them like a buffet. But these are small prices to pay for peace.

 

Did you grow up in a city?

The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother’s front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister’s farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen’s screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse. Up here at night, all is quiet, and you never hear a sound after 10 p.m. A lot of people have dogs. I have no pets. Never had one, and wouldn’t want the responsibility of taking the dog out in the morning.

 

Do you have weekend guests?

Although I’ve collected wonderful china, acquired sterling silver knives and forks from Lena Horne’s estate sale at Doyle this year, and I shop without ceasing actually, I do not entertain in my home. Cupboards are jammed with beautiful porcelain and plates from Paris, napkins, linens, tablecloths, crystal, and I have yet to give my first dinner or luncheon party. When I do entertain, in the summer, which is rare, I receive my guests on the front porch, set up wicker trays found at Pottery Barn, and serve iced beverages. Anytime I do welcome friends, it’s always a tray of canapés or Planters peanuts, jellied candy from Paris, and a good bottle of Sancerre.

And what about food? No takeout?

I eat most of my meals at City Limits in White Plains, where I always sit at the bar, even for breakfast or lunch. It is my canteen, and I love the turkey chili, the wonderful steamed veggies, and on weekends, the best country breakfast, with multi-grain toast.

What really gives me great joy is there is a young toddler, who saw me on television in Tyra Banks’ “America’s Next Top Model.” When he comes in on a Saturday morning for breakfast, he always says “Hi André!”

Do you shop up there?

My biggest and favorite store near The Westchester mall is The Container Store. It’s the best place for my new modern luggage, nylon-padded suitcases on three wheels. I also buy lots of storage bins for my at-home office, and at Christmas I splurge on special fancy paper, to wrap Whoopi Goldberg’s presents. I have, for the last two years, spent Christmas at her home in New Jersey.

 

You don’t decorate the house for holidays and have friends over?

It’s a sanctuary and I want it to be my own personal Ali Baba cave of delight.

Jane Lynch on Sue Sylvester

September 2011 Q+LA Jane Lynch

Glee’s undisputed queen of mean on Sue Sylvester’s underbelly, the benefits of being a yea-sayer—and what she’s really good at by ERIC ESTRIN

PHOTO: MARTIN SCHOELLER

The young Jane Lynch’s quest to be an actress wasn’t some childish fantasy so much as a deep-seated hunger to soothe the gnawing inside. Growing up outside Chicago, Lynch writes in her memoir, Happy Accidents, she never felt right in her body—or in the world.

So the validation-starved middle child wrote fan letters and called in to radio talk shows seeking advice. Sometimes the emptiness would envelop her—and yet when her parents brought her to church theatrical events, she felt an elation she could hardly contain.

Slowly, the validation came. Now 51, Lynch is on top of the world both professionally and personally. Happily married to Dr. Lara Embry, a clinical psychologist she met in 2009 at a lesbian-rights gala, she is helping to raise Embry’s nine-year-old daughter, as well as three cats and a dog. A critics’ favorite for scene-stealing performances in comic films from the likes of Christopher Guest and Judd Apatow, she just completed a role in the Farrelly brothers’ upcoming Three Stooges—and of course, there’s Fox’s megahit Glee.

Lynch is deaf in her right ear—most likely, she says, as a result of a severe childhood fever—but the six-foot Second City alum is hearing nothing but raves for her role as Glee’s Sue Sylvester, the tracksuit-wearing, hypercompetitive shrew she’s turned into the finest TV character viewers love to hate since J.R. Ewing.

She is up for her second Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy this month—and will host the ceremony as well, only the third woman in TV Academy history to land that solo role. Fox hopes her presence on the broadcast will attract hordes of Gleeks, the devout young followers who embrace the show’s message of inclusion, theatrical pizzazz and winning cast. Speaking in machine-gun bursts, Lynch says it’s a message she herself longed to hear growing up.

Your Sue Sylvester has to be the meanest character on television. How do you keep her from being a caricature?
There’s a real anger and tenderness at the same time—a real dark shadow. I think artisti-cally my work became a little more “profound,” if you will, once I started to look at the shadow. You dig right into that to get the best stuff. But you gotta have a sense of humor, so Sue is a perfect role for me.

Have you thought about what Sue would be like off camera?
You know, it’s funny, I don’t so much—I kind of dive into the feelings and emotions first. But when they created Sue’s condo, it was like an episode of Hoarders—trophies and accolades all over the place. I learned so much about her in that condo.

If she weren’t running the high school cheer squad, what would she be doing?
Probably be a drill sergeant in the army. But even if she worked at the hardware store, she’d be running it like she runs the cheers—like she’s at war.

Do you think your physical appearance helped you establish yourself as a comic actress?
I wonder. Deep down, I always felt it was a detriment: Oh, I’m taller than all the guys. It was a time when being a sort of a tall, butchy person was...well, you didn’t see that many of me around. I wasn’t even that butchy back then. I was kind of wearing Peter Pan collars, working the preppy thing as best I could.

You did a lot of TV.
I always thought I would be in theater. I thought the repertory life was for me. I ended up falling into the comedy world via Second City when I was cast in the touring company. The smartest thing I did, if I can give myself credit, is to say yes to everything.

But sometimes that can get you in trouble.
Well, you don’t say yes to porn—you draw the line there. But what it means is you show up to do crappy shows sometimes, and you still do your best. The alternative of not doing something was never acceptable to me. But it wasn’t like I was walking into dark studios for a calendar shoot.

As I recall, you played a former porn star in A Mighty Wind.
Yes, I did. It was so much fun. She sure said yes to everything.

In a lot of your work, there’s often been a strong sexual component. Why is that?
I don’t know. I think I’m fascinated with sexual entitlement. [Laughs.] I’m fascinated with entitlement in general, actually. I had very, very little of it—I didn’t think I deserved anything. I thought I was gonna have to fight and scratch for every-thing. I never felt attractive the way Laurie Bohner in A Mighty Wind feels. She walks into a room and thinks every-one wants to pork her. She just assumes it, and she loves it. And that cracks me up. Same thing with the woman [I played] in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Of course Steve Carell would want to lose his virginity with me. It’s a gift I’m offering him.

That movie introduced you to a whole new audience.
Absolutely. Ensemble comedies were all fresh and new. We shot in that store over several weeks, and we all came in every day, even if we weren’t in any of the scenes that were designated to shoot that day, ’cause Judd [Apatow] might say, “Jane, get in there,” or, “Paul [Rudd], get in there.” It was like sitting on the bench in the basketball game, and you’d get called in.

So, a lot was improvised?
All of it. That’s why I say in the book that my agent didn’t want me to take it. It was a horrible script. It was really just kind of stupid and sophomoric. [Laughs.] The film wasn’t stupid and sophomoric—it was done in an artful way. But yeah, it’s all improvised.

Did the title of that film ring a bell with you? You were a bit of a late bloomer yourself.
Yeah, it did. I wasn’t a 40-year-old virgin, I’ll have you know. But it was about coming toward something late in life. I was watching Steve’s character get to find love at 40, and I was a little jealous. I was wondering when it was gonna happen for me. I got married at 49, actually, so I almost ended up being a 50-year-old virgin.

But not literally, right?
No, let’s put “virgin” as a metaphor. That would be really sad. But I was a relationship virgin, that’s for sure.

Was it worth waiting for?
It sure was, yeah, absolutely. And I’m good at it—who would have thought? I’m really good in a relationship.

What was it like doing Bill Maher’s show when you and he read those text messages between [former Rep.] Anthony Weiner and his girlfriend?
Well, you know what—we’re all horny. We’ve just gotta be careful where we do it. And you know, I love Anthony Weiner. You probably don’t figure that because I engaged in that skit, but I think you’ve got to find the irony in everything. I’m sorry he’s gone. I really do wish he had hung in there, and I miss him. He should still run for mayor of New York.

In the back of your mind, do you hope something goes wrong on the live Emmy broadcast so you can have fun with it?
[Laughs.] No, you don’t want things going wrong, even if that’s where the good stuff comes from. You can’t consciously hope things go wrong.

Last year Stephen Colbert handed you the Supporting Actress Emmy. Did you know him?
Yes, he’s a Second City guy. It was lovely to have him give that to me. It would be great to hand him one this year. He is something else—he has really made a difference. He’s deaf in one ear, too.

Oh, really? So between the two of you—
We have perfect hearing!

ERIC ESTRIN has written for television and film. He edits the review site Movie Smackdown!

Darwinian collision

Postal Service Struggles to Stay Solvent, and Relevant

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: September 4, 2011

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.

Enlarge This Image

The New York Times

 

“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.

The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.

As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.

At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the agency’s predicament on Tuesday. So far, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress, still smarting from the brawl over the federal debt ceiling, have failed to agree on any solutions. It doesn’t help that many of the options for saving the postal service are politically unpalatable.

“The situation is dire,” said Thomas R. Carper, the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the postal service. “If we do nothing, if we don’t react in a smart, appropriate way, the postal service could literally close later this year. That’s not the kind of development we need to inject into a weak, uneven economic recovery.”

Missing the $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30, intended to finance retirees’ future health care, won’t cause immediate disaster. But sometime early next year, the agency will run out of money to pay its employees and gas up its trucks, officials warn, forcing it to stop delivering the roughly three billion pieces of mail it handles weekly.

The causes of the crisis are well known and immensely difficult to overcome.

Mail volume has plummeted with the rise of e-mail, electronic bill-paying and a Web that makes everything from fashion catalogs to news instantly available. The system will handle an estimated 167 billion pieces of mail this fiscal year, down 22 percent from five years ago.

It’s difficult to imagine that trend reversing, and pessimistic projections suggest that volume could plunge to 118 billion pieces by 2020. The law also prevents the post office from raising postage fees faster than inflation.

Meanwhile, the agency has had a tough time cutting its costs to match the revenue drop, with a history of labor contracts offering good health and pension benefits, underused post offices, and laws that restrict its ability to make basic business decisions, like reducing the frequency of deliveries.

Congress is considering numerous emergency proposals — most notably, allowing the post office to recover billions of dollars that management says it overpaid to its employees’ pension funds. That fix would help the agency get through the short-term crisis, but would delay the day of reckoning on bigger issues.

The agency’s leaders acknowledge that they must find a way to increase revenue, something that will prove far harder than simply slicing costs.

In some countries, post offices double as banks or sell insurance or cellphones. In the United States, the postal service is barred from entering many areas. Still, the agency is considering ideas, like gaining the right to deliver wine and beer, allowing commercial advertisements on postal trucks and in post offices, doing more “last-mile” deliveries for FedEx and U.P.S. and offering special hand-delivery services for correspondence and transactions for which e-mail is not considered secure enough.

Bang the gong

Chant of 'tax the rich' growing louder in nation

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

San Francisco Chronicle September 1, 2011 04:00 AM

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Billionaire Warren Buffett may not seem to have much in common with angry laborers at town hall meetings or armies of California nurses protesting in the streets.

But these days, the executive celebrity in his boardroom and working folks on the front lines have found a common mantra as the economy continues to sputter and the 2012 election approaches: "Tax the rich."

They are joining Democratic politicians, such as U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who pounded the issue of making "millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share" nearly a dozen times at a recent event in Oakland.

The calls have become louder as President Obama plans to unveil his jobs plan next Thursday in a highly anticipated speech that they hope will provide a counterpoint to conservative grassroots GOP groups pressing lawmakers to slash government programs to stimulate the economy - without raising taxes.

Also driving the debate is the looming work of the bipartisan 12-member congressional "super committee" on deficit reduction set to begin its work this month in Washington.

'Stop Coddling the Rich'

At the same time, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org has launched a "Stop Coddling the Rich" campaign to underscore what it says is a growing disparity between American income classes at a time of growing economic uncertainty.

Today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and the powerful National Nurses United union will take the message one step further with one of their trademark protests - this time opening a symbolic "soup kitchen."

The nationwide protests are expected to involve about 10,000 participants in street-theater events in more than four dozen cities and other locations around the country.

Millions are suffering

"What's happened is that the unemployed and the uninsured, the underinsured and the homeless have become invisible in our culture," says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses' union, which has 170,000 members nationally and 75,000 in California, where it's also known as California Nurses Association.

DeMoro said she hears daily from her union members upset by the millions of Americans who are suffering while Wall Street financiers are making substantial amounts of money.

"In this country, the working people pay and pay and pay and the wealthy don't - and they get bonuses and bailouts," widening the gap between rich and poor, said DeMoro.

Gulf between parties

With the 2012 election approaching and Republicans at state and local levels drawing a line in the sand against new taxes, the "tax the rich" movement underscores a growing gulf between the parties.

"The Republican Tea Party is trying to hold the country hostage," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has held job fairs around the country the past few weeks with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. "The only way you're going to create jobs is a direct investment (from the federal government) in job creation and repealing the Bush tax cuts."

Activists such as DeMoro say that members of the congressional super committee from both political parties appear more interested in cutting social programs "to funnel more resources to Wall Street and foreign banks and investors."

Buffett, in a widely read opinion piece last month in the New York Times, kicked off the latest debate, saying, "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

Executive pay

A survey released Wednesday by the Institute of Policy Studies, a liberal think tank in Washington, appeared to confirm some of his views, finding that 25 of the highest paid CEOs earned more last year than their firms paid in income tax, and that several of those firms paid more to lobbyists than they did in taxes.

Even conservative Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), a self-made millionaire and one of the richest members of Congress, issued a statement on the survey, saying that it's time to examine "the extent to which the problems in CEO compensation that led to the economic crisis continue to exist today."

But some Democrats, including California Gov. Jerry Brown, have acknowledged the political quicksand present in such a discussion. In comments circulated on Twitter, Brown suggested that Republicans view new taxes as something akin to "a sexually transmitted disease."

Liberals such as Lee are warning Obama not to call for more tax cuts in his jobs speech next week.

"You can't keep giving tax cuts because tax cuts do nothing but drain money from our economy," Lee said, arguing that 40 percent of the $787 billion federal stimulus package in 2009 were tax cuts that "didn't do anything."

$500 billion for jobs

She wants at least $500 billion in direct federal investment in job creation and training, to be paid for by closing the Bush tax cuts. She also would like unemployment benefits extended for 14 weeks.

"If there are 14 million people unemployed, we want to see a targeted approach to everyone who is unemployed," Lee said. "This is a national emergency. I want to hear the president say that."

 

Chronicle staff writer Joe Garofoli contributed to this report. E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/31/MNOB1KTSHP.DTL#ixzz1WiVfCbIV

Call me an idealist, but what if...

Way of the World

Remaking Government in a Wiki Age

By CHRYSTIA FREELAND | REUTERS

Published: August 18, 2011

Maybe we are all thinking too much like Bolsheviks and not enough like Googlers. For Lenin and the Russian revolutionaries, the big question was “Kto kogo?” — essentially, “Who has the upper hand?”

Kto kogo remains the paradigm at the center of the fiscal battles roiling the Western world: young vs. old; rich taxpayers vs. poor welfare beneficiaries; public sector workers vs. private sector ones; wealthy Northern Europe vs. bankrupt Southern Europe; small government conservatives vs. big government liberals.

But a few people — writers, activists, even politicians — are examining the current woes of the Western state through a very different prism. You could call it the Government 2.0 approach, and its fundamental thesis is that the biggest question is not how much to spend and how much to tax, it is how to adapt the state to the information age.

One of the first thinkers to articulate this view was the best-selling author Don Tapscott. Mr. Tapscott, who has been arguing for decades that the knowledge economy requires a new style of government, thinks the time for his idea may have finally come.

“If you look at the current crisis, we have the irresistible force for reducing the cost of government meeting up with the immovable rock of public expectation that government should be better, not worse,” Mr. Tapscott told me. “Tinkering with this will not work. When you are talking about cutting trillions of dollars, that’s not trimming fat, that is tearing out organs, and we don’t need to do that, and we don’t want to do that.”

“We need to fundamentally rethink how we orchestrate and create government value,” he said. “And now we have a burning platform, which could help us do it.”

Mr. Tapscott’s latest book, “Macrowikinomics,” co-written with Anthony D. Williams, suggests some ways to do that. One of his favorites is releasing government data. That information, he said, can then “become a platform on which private companies, civil society, other government organizations and, crucially, individuals, can self-organize to create value.”

As an example, Mr. Tapscott cited a recent conversation with the chief executive of Melbourne. He suggested to her that one way to apply his open-government approach would be to make public all of the city’s information on bicycle accidents and where they happen.

“I said to her, ‘If you release all that data, within 24 hours someone will do a mash-up and you will be saving lives within weeks, and it won’t cost you a penny,”’ Mr. Tapscott said.

Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America, a two-year-old not-for-profit group that gives technologists the chance to work in local government around the United States, shares Mr. Tapscott’s view. She believes the rising generation of digitally native twentysomethings is creating both a demand for and the tools for transforming how government works.

“There is a certain generation who have grown up being able to mash up, to tinker with, every system they’ve ever encountered,” she said, speaking on the phone from her Bay Area office. “So they are meeting their relationship with government in a new way, with a new assumption: We can fix it. It really signals a new relationship between government and the technology community, but it is also about the government being useful to you in your daily life and engaging you in your daily life.”

Code for America’s fellows — 362 people applied for 20 places last year — bring “user-centered design and agile technology methods” to city governments accustomed to more top-down and more bureaucratic ways of approaching civic jobs.

Like Mr. Tapscott, Ms. Pahlka believes the key to Government 2.0 is creating data platforms that people can build on — as well as use. It is a redefinition of the relationship between citizen and government that mirrors the way many technology companies have changed the relationship between business and consumer: Just as much of Facebook’s or FourSquare’s value comes from content that users generate, proponents of Government 2.0 want us to participate in creating the government services we use.

“I think there is a big disjuncture between what we are served up as consumers and what we are served up as citizens,” Ms. Pahlka said. “As a society, we haven’t spent as much time building the citizen Internet.”

Ms. Pahlka’s focus is on citizens and finding ways to help government serve us better. For political leaders, Government 2.0 offers a further benefit: Citizens who are more deeply engaged in how government works are more willing to pay for it.

That has been the experience of Naheed Nenshi, mayor of the western Canadian city of Calgary, traditionally the most politically conservative metropolis in the country. Mr. Nenshi has been called the Canadian Obama — he was a political outsider elected on a wave of grass-roots Internet activism — and he has brought that enthusiasm for social media into City Hall.

One example is the city’s budget, which Mr. Nenshi built from the bottom up, asking Calgarians what they wanted to spend their money on before coming up with his plan.

“I still have a job, I’m not creating a budget by plebiscite,” Mr. Nenshi told me. “But I need to have the best possible data, and that includes the best possible data on the preferences of Calgarians.” He added, “Most people in Calgary said: ‘Maintain my taxes, or increase them, but keep my services.”’

Mr. Nenshi said his enthusiasm for crowd-sourcing and for data-driven decision-making had frustrated some of his city’s journalists, who preferred simpler black-and-white narratives of one political ideology clashing with another.

Which brings us back to the debate between the Bolsheviks and the Googlers. The technorati can take things too far: Even in the age of crowd-sourcing and monster databases, vested interests still exist, and so do ideological differences. But if we could figure out how to make government as effective as Google, those differences and those disputes would matter a lot less.

Chrystia Freeland is global editor at large at Reuters.