E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

There were three extremely disturbing stories in the news this morning, and none had anything to do with Libya, or Obama, or deficits (at least fiscal ones) or our disfunctional Congress. What they had a lot more to do with was the End of Civilization as we know it. To wit: the Philadelphia Orchestra is bankrupt. That is huge, and utterly inexcusable to be allowed to happen in any society that still imagines itself to be advanced. On a lesser scale, but equally significant, here in Seattle two similar cultural decisions have been reached: to close down the Intiman Theater, arguably the finest repertory company on the West Coast; and on a smaller, but perhaps even more significant scale, Nordstroms is firing all its piano players. No, not because they are too costly, or not gifted enough, or destract shoppers from their mission. No, it's because today's shoppers, it turns out, pefer canned pop music to live piano. So I think it wouldn't be too much of a reach to say that to...

I heard two strikingly contradictory, and yet somehow related stories on NPR, the past two days. The first was about Barbie. It seems Mattell is closing its Barbie factory in China. This was not the usual factory American corporations like to operate out of China. This one was special. This one had been intended for the express purpose of selling Barbie Dolls in China itself: to the growing market of pre-teen Chinese girls in the growing Chinese middle class, already some 300 millino strong when I was there (must be closer to half a million by now, which is a lot of girls). Unfortunately for Mattel, it turns out the Chinese didn't take to Barbie after all (even though my stepdaughter, with whom, along with her mother, I successfully absonded from the PRC per several chapters in my book, was a huge Barbie fan). Could this national failure on the part of the Chinese possibly have anything at all to do with the fact that Barbie, at least during my three year tunure from '04 to ...

As has been noted and reported repeatedly over the past year, America is not just on a war footing now. We have never not been on a war footing, or actively fighting on at least one front since I was born, since the first Boomer was born, and for most of the 20th Century before then, not to mention much of the 19th Century, and a fair chunk of the one before that, even a hundred years prior to our Independence (all those Indian wars, remember? Or maybe we'd rather not). Meanwhile, the Military Industrial Complex and the right-wing pundits who currently dominate the media landscape in the U.S.A. just now are agitating, slavering, and creaming in their dress uniforms over the incredibly profitable prospects of the biggest war ever yet to come: the war with China. Yes, Hu Jintao is a typical conservative political hack, the perfect Chinese equivalent to John Boehmer except in a bigger House. His and his party's policies on human rights, among other issues, still suck. But the cur...