My Amazon Review of Ronald Brownstein's "Rock Me on the Water:......."

 

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Movies and too Much Politics

 

Atlantic magazine editor and political writer Ronald Brownstein has written an ode to the creativity surrounding Los Angeles in 1974. Of a sudden Los Angeles was awash in musical, television and motion picture talent with something to say. He highlights Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty for their roles in “Chinatown” and “Shampoo”, respectively. Both movies were written by Robert Towne. With respect to “Chinatown,” Brownstein, in essence, summarizes Sam Wasson’s “The Long Goodbye.” ( See:  Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Sam Wasson's "The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood") Just like Wasson Brownstein views the end of Los Angles’ creative moment with the arrival of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” the following year. He forgets that most people go to the movies to be entertained.

 

With respect to the music, he highlights the careers of singer songwriters Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne along with Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash and the music impresario David Geffen. The way he writes about Ronstadt it seems that he had quite the teenage crush on her. Brownstein was sixteen at the time and likely was not alone.

 

Among the musicians and the actors Brownstein writes of excessive drug use and bed swapping among his leading characters. At times you needed a scorecard to see who was sleeping with who and as the year progressed cocaine use grew to the extent that it eroded their creativity in the years to come.

 

On television Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin made social commentary and had big hit with “All in the Family.” Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, became a caricature of Nixon’s silent majority. But what Brownstein does not understand a good part of the audience was laughing with Archie, not at him. As an aside, I sat next to O’Connor at a wedding and he was far funnier than he was on television. It was also the time of “Maude,” “Mash” and “Mary Tyler Moore.” Brownstein revels in idea that previously untouchable subjects were brought up on television.

 

Where Brownstein goes astray is when he writes about politics of the era. He spends way too much time on Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. I knew both of them. By 1974 the antiwar movement was a spent force. The real activism on the Left was taking place in the nascent environmental movement which was planting the seeds for today’s housing crisis in California, feminism, and gay rights.                        

On the Right activism was on the rise in opposition to feminism, school busing and rising property taxes. Those movements would flower later in the decade and bring on the Reagan revolution. In 1974 Jerry Brown was not the future, Ronald Reagan was, and I say this as someone who knew Brown then and served on his Housing Task Force. Jerry Brown was a far better governor 40 years later in his second go around.

 

Most troubling and not mentioned by Brownstein was that while all of the actors and musicians were partying on, Los Angeles was beset by gas lines, a recession, and the collapse of its manufacturing base. For most people 1974 was a very bad year and what they longed for was escape. It took a while, but Hollywood finally figured it out, just as it did during the Great Depression.

 

I was on the periphery of the events discussed in the book. To me the book stated out very strong then faded. Brownstein preaches too much and he forgets that entertainment is a business, and that business will not succeed if it beats people over the head by telling them how bad all of the social problems of the country are. As Brownstein notes George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame wanted people to feel better after they left the theater than when they first arrived. I go to the movies and listen to music to be entertained. If I want to look at the flaws in American life, I watch the news and read The Atlantic, of which I am a subscriber.

For the full Amazon URL see: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and too Much Politics (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Binyamin Appelbaum's "The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets and the Fracture of Society"

Economists in the Crosshairs

I have to admit at the outset that I am a card carrying financial economist and know or knew several of the economists mentioned in the book. New York Times editorial writer and former economics reporter Binyamin Appelbaum has written a screed blaming the Chicago School of economics for the vast increase in economic inequality since 1973. Trust me he gives them way too much blame/credit because the amorphous forces of globalization and technology have done far more to create the winner take all society we seem to be living with.

He basically argues that the economics profession staged a hostile takeover of Washington politics. The profession rises from the bowels of the Fed to the near stardom of CEA Chairman Walter Heller in the Kennedy White House. It was the heyday of Keynesian economics as the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts engendered the mid-1960s boom. It was the failure of Keynesian economics to predict that inflation and unemployment could exist side-by-side that opened the way for the Chicago School. He specifically signals out Milton Friedman, Arnold Harberger, Richard Posner and Michael Jensen among others as his villains.

Appelbaum really doesn’t understand how the 1970s inflation unhinged society. For most American the economy seemed to be out of control and he doesn’t note that the tight bracket unindexed income tax system confiscated the real wages of the American people. Thus although pre-tax wages rose faster than inflation; after-tax they did not. Thus to me Fed Chairman Paul Volcker was a hero.

His careful research shows up in his discussion of how the draft ended under the impetus of Nixon aide Martin Anderson, the intellectual arguments of Milton Friedman and the strong technical work of Walter Oi. He also discusses the role of dissent in the armed forces by highlighting an anti-war demonstration that took place in Fayetteville, North Carolina adjacent to Fort Bragg where actress Jane Fonda spoke. I attended that demonstration. He showed real diligence in coming with the source for this event in an unpublished Duke Ph.D. dissertation written by air force colonel Scoville Currin.

Appelbaum has mixed feelings about the volunteer army, but I suspect that if the United States had a draft after 9/11 he would be far less ambivalent. In 2001 Appelbaum would have been 23 years old and I just can’t picture him taking mortar fire in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan or being face down in the mud on the banks of the Tigris River in Iraq.

He devotes a chapter to the role of the “Chicago boys” in the 1970s Pinochet dictatorship of Chile. There Chicago trained economists’ orchestrated policy of the regime. To Appelbaum their policies weren’t all that successful, but he stopped the clock in 1990. He doesn’t really speculate on what would have happened if assassinated socialist Chilean president Salvatore Allende remained in power. It could very well turned out be a facsimile of the Chavez/Maduro hell in Venezuela instead of it being the thriving country that it is today.

Appelbaum rightly notes that the Reagan deregulation of the 1980s had its origin under Jimmy Carter. Where under the Senate leadership of Edward Kennedy and with the backing of Ralph Nader both the airline and trucking industries were deregulated. Here the economist in charge was Alfred Kahn. We can thank him for cheaper airfares and the hassles of flying today.

In his obsession to blame economists for inequality Appelbaum also leaves out the massive failure of all too many urban and rural public schools. If anything most economists are on the side of the angels in attempting to improve public education. Further he fails to mention that for all practical purposes the Democratic Party abandoned American workers for the siren calls of identity politics.

Appelbaum has written a very readable book. Unfortunately he way over-states his case. He should have been more modest. By the way that is the same advice I give to my economist colleagues. His personal vignettes about the economists he discusses are terrific and unlike most books, read his footnotes. There are loads of interesting kernels there.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2TASSYK4EXXP4/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv