I don't know how on Earth the folks at Pixar worked up a script and pre-production and animation and recording and marketing to time the release of their hyper-aggressive, gender-queer rallying-statement movie, "Inside Out", to Bruce/Kaitlyn Jenner's revelation and the destruction of the traditional nuclear family by the recent Supreme Court decision, but, you know, kudos to them on their sorcery to drop this bomb at the worst possible moment, when it will have the greatest effect in support of their bizarre vision of a genderless world where reality means nothing.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
White Supremacy? (Charleston Shooting)
Please bear in mind this is not a political post. The point of this is not to "discuss" (shudder...), particularly collateral issues like gun control or symbols of racism (the Confederate Battle Flag). This is an address to White Supremacists, which the author sincerely doubts one will read. But you never know...
So, White Makes Right? That's the general idea behind White Superiority, ain't it? Whites Are Better!
How? I mean that sincerely.
Physically?
I'm not really sure how that claim can be made. In the United States, it's fairly well understood that if you're talking about top-flight athletes, Blacks tend to fill up the lists of greatest athletes in our traditional sports (sorry, soccer, you're not in that group yet). Are we really going to argue this? Surely not. If you want to be taken seriously, you can't try to point out Larry Bird, or Larry Csonka, or Rocky Marciano or some such outlier in sports that multiple races participate to a meaningful degree (sorry, Ice Hockey).
I mean, to be fair, I think saying one race is physically more gifted than another becomes an exercise in picking and choosing, but if we're going to be troglodytes about it, I think Whites lose on this. And if you're going to point to soccer and Europe, or maybe the Winter Olympics, um...your head is way too far up your butt to have any "discussion" (shudder) or "conversation" (shudder). But that's kinda the point. You're a dumbass.
Additionally, and to be very "real", if you're talking about the United States, Blacks and Whites as a whole appear to be equally fat and on the road to early death from coronary disease. Is "we're less fat" really the argument you want to go with?
Also, I mean, if you're not an amazing specimen, what the hell sense does it make to point out great athletes who share your race that you would be embarrassed to be placed next to? "The Mountain" on Game of Thrones is White. He's 6'9" and nearly 400lbs of terrifying muscle. I'm 6'2" and about 230lbs of jiggly. I'm not even ripping on myself. For an average American, I ain't so bad. But I don't think "I ain't so bad" can be teased out to, "Everyone with my skin pigmentation is better than others whose are different."
If you're a fat, dumpy mess and you're talking up how White athletes are the best, that's kinda like the sad sack 45yo office drone bragging about how "*We* are the champs!" after the team he roots for wins the Super Bowl. He didn't do squat. He just had a loose affiliation. I mean, that happens all the time, but it's idiotic, childish, and, frankly, sad.
Mentally?
I honestly don't get this at all. I happen to believe that a vast majority of all people, regardless of skin color are idiots. And guess what? Nearly everyone of every skin color agrees with that. So then what you're really saying is that White people have the smartest smart people.
For the same reasons I just talked about above, if you're not one of the smartest smart people, that position is idiotic, childish, and sad. If you're really a White Supremecist and want to go that route anyway, you're going to have a hard time, because you don't get to count Einstein or any other Jewish folks, of course. Percentage wise, on the Smartest Smart Folks to General Population ratio, Jews blow Whitey out the water. There are , of course, non-racial superiority reasons for that, but it's just not arguable. And let's not do test scores, particularly for American Whites vs. other races.
It appears that, for the most part, if a human is born with the gift of mega-intellectual ability AND it is nourished by friends, family, and culture, AND he/she pushes him/herself AND he/she catches a break, then any particularly-colored person can vault into the intellectual stratosphere.
Culturally?
Usually, this is really what you're talking about when you say Whites Are Better, right? I mean, the other races are savages, correct? What's the positive, better aspect of the White Culture, though? Surely not that we are less barbaric? I mean, Whites are responsible for the Holocaust (and wiping out the American Indians). That's not great. Whites enslaved blacks (and American Indians, and virtually enslaved Indian Indians for a great many years). Not great.
But, of course, far from thinking those are negatives, you think those are the primary example of how Whites Are Better, because when Whites went up against other races, they came out ahead. I'm not sure that's really "culture" of course.
That was numbers (in the case of the Jews and American Indians) or technology (in the case of the Indian Indians and American Indians and others). Race really doesn't have much to do with that. Genghis Khan and the Mongol Hordes had better technology and annihilated everyone of every race they came up against for a very long time.
Even among whites, when one group has a numbers advantage and equal technology, or smaller numbers and better technology, that group wins. Then you have to start talking about which white people are better than other white people and you start saying very strange things like, "the Irish aren't really white".
But, anyway, a lot of the argument will attempt to point out how "less developed" the other races are.
Let's look at this little White Supremacist Chicken@#$! who just murdered nine people in my hometown.
Was he a great warrior/athlete? No. He's a scrawny little jackass who used a gun to murder people, including women, who could not fight back. He also told a survivor he was going to commit suicide and then didn't have the balls to go through with it. Real impressive there, yeah...
Was he a genius? I guarantee he wasn't smarter than most, if not any, in that church that he murdered. Every picture posted of him seems to have the annoyed/vacant look of the perpetually, intentionally, proudly ignorant.
Was he more accomplished? It doesn't sound like he had a job. Reports are, he mostly played video games.
Was he more sophisticated or more developed culturally? HE WENT INTO A CHURCH, A PLACE OF WORSHIP, WHERE HE WAS WELCOMED IN, AND THEN MURDERED UNARMED PEOPLE. The argument for White Superiority used to be the "Truth" of the Christian Religion. Whitey had it, and the other races didn't, so that's what made us better and God Was/Is On Our Side. The little dippoop pretty much vacated that argument, agreed?
I've met a number of white supremacists in my day. I have yet to meet one who not only isn't smarter, more accomplished, or more of a warrior than I am/was (not trying to toot my own horn, just saying for the point of this because I'm mega-super-duper-phenomenally white), but isn't really mostly a spoiled, narcissistic moron. Far from being exemplars proving whites are better, every white supremacist I've ever met makes whites look dumb and inferior.
So, White Makes Right? That's the general idea behind White Superiority, ain't it? Whites Are Better!
How? I mean that sincerely.
Physically?
I'm not really sure how that claim can be made. In the United States, it's fairly well understood that if you're talking about top-flight athletes, Blacks tend to fill up the lists of greatest athletes in our traditional sports (sorry, soccer, you're not in that group yet). Are we really going to argue this? Surely not. If you want to be taken seriously, you can't try to point out Larry Bird, or Larry Csonka, or Rocky Marciano or some such outlier in sports that multiple races participate to a meaningful degree (sorry, Ice Hockey).
I mean, to be fair, I think saying one race is physically more gifted than another becomes an exercise in picking and choosing, but if we're going to be troglodytes about it, I think Whites lose on this. And if you're going to point to soccer and Europe, or maybe the Winter Olympics, um...your head is way too far up your butt to have any "discussion" (shudder) or "conversation" (shudder). But that's kinda the point. You're a dumbass.
Additionally, and to be very "real", if you're talking about the United States, Blacks and Whites as a whole appear to be equally fat and on the road to early death from coronary disease. Is "we're less fat" really the argument you want to go with?
Also, I mean, if you're not an amazing specimen, what the hell sense does it make to point out great athletes who share your race that you would be embarrassed to be placed next to? "The Mountain" on Game of Thrones is White. He's 6'9" and nearly 400lbs of terrifying muscle. I'm 6'2" and about 230lbs of jiggly. I'm not even ripping on myself. For an average American, I ain't so bad. But I don't think "I ain't so bad" can be teased out to, "Everyone with my skin pigmentation is better than others whose are different."
If you're a fat, dumpy mess and you're talking up how White athletes are the best, that's kinda like the sad sack 45yo office drone bragging about how "*We* are the champs!" after the team he roots for wins the Super Bowl. He didn't do squat. He just had a loose affiliation. I mean, that happens all the time, but it's idiotic, childish, and, frankly, sad.
Mentally?
I honestly don't get this at all. I happen to believe that a vast majority of all people, regardless of skin color are idiots. And guess what? Nearly everyone of every skin color agrees with that. So then what you're really saying is that White people have the smartest smart people.
For the same reasons I just talked about above, if you're not one of the smartest smart people, that position is idiotic, childish, and sad. If you're really a White Supremecist and want to go that route anyway, you're going to have a hard time, because you don't get to count Einstein or any other Jewish folks, of course. Percentage wise, on the Smartest Smart Folks to General Population ratio, Jews blow Whitey out the water. There are , of course, non-racial superiority reasons for that, but it's just not arguable. And let's not do test scores, particularly for American Whites vs. other races.
It appears that, for the most part, if a human is born with the gift of mega-intellectual ability AND it is nourished by friends, family, and culture, AND he/she pushes him/herself AND he/she catches a break, then any particularly-colored person can vault into the intellectual stratosphere.
Culturally?
Usually, this is really what you're talking about when you say Whites Are Better, right? I mean, the other races are savages, correct? What's the positive, better aspect of the White Culture, though? Surely not that we are less barbaric? I mean, Whites are responsible for the Holocaust (and wiping out the American Indians). That's not great. Whites enslaved blacks (and American Indians, and virtually enslaved Indian Indians for a great many years). Not great.
But, of course, far from thinking those are negatives, you think those are the primary example of how Whites Are Better, because when Whites went up against other races, they came out ahead. I'm not sure that's really "culture" of course.
That was numbers (in the case of the Jews and American Indians) or technology (in the case of the Indian Indians and American Indians and others). Race really doesn't have much to do with that. Genghis Khan and the Mongol Hordes had better technology and annihilated everyone of every race they came up against for a very long time.
Even among whites, when one group has a numbers advantage and equal technology, or smaller numbers and better technology, that group wins. Then you have to start talking about which white people are better than other white people and you start saying very strange things like, "the Irish aren't really white".
But, anyway, a lot of the argument will attempt to point out how "less developed" the other races are.
Let's look at this little White Supremacist Chicken@#$! who just murdered nine people in my hometown.
Was he a great warrior/athlete? No. He's a scrawny little jackass who used a gun to murder people, including women, who could not fight back. He also told a survivor he was going to commit suicide and then didn't have the balls to go through with it. Real impressive there, yeah...
Was he a genius? I guarantee he wasn't smarter than most, if not any, in that church that he murdered. Every picture posted of him seems to have the annoyed/vacant look of the perpetually, intentionally, proudly ignorant.
Was he more accomplished? It doesn't sound like he had a job. Reports are, he mostly played video games.
Was he more sophisticated or more developed culturally? HE WENT INTO A CHURCH, A PLACE OF WORSHIP, WHERE HE WAS WELCOMED IN, AND THEN MURDERED UNARMED PEOPLE. The argument for White Superiority used to be the "Truth" of the Christian Religion. Whitey had it, and the other races didn't, so that's what made us better and God Was/Is On Our Side. The little dippoop pretty much vacated that argument, agreed?
I've met a number of white supremacists in my day. I have yet to meet one who not only isn't smarter, more accomplished, or more of a warrior than I am/was (not trying to toot my own horn, just saying for the point of this because I'm mega-super-duper-phenomenally white), but isn't really mostly a spoiled, narcissistic moron. Far from being exemplars proving whites are better, every white supremacist I've ever met makes whites look dumb and inferior.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
The Conversation
He hadn't been out with that group in a number of months. She was on the opposite side of the long table, at the other end. Everyone was talking and it was loud, so when he made eye contact with her, he nodded, half-smiled (nearly a smirk), and lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave. She did much the same. It wasn't til the end of the evening, when everyone had gotten up and was saying their goodbyes that she came over to him. Nobody else paid any attention to them.
She (S): Where've you been?
He (H): You know how life gets, just been busy.
S: Really? I was starting to think you've been avoiding me.
H: Um...I mean, not to make things awkward, but kinda.
She (S): Where've you been?
He (H): You know how life gets, just been busy.
S: Really? I was starting to think you've been avoiding me.
H: Um...I mean, not to make things awkward, but kinda.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Crazy Woman
I am taking my chunky butt to the gym (first time in my life I've joined one) because I got FAT this fall.
Picture the moment:
I'm groggy. I'm walking from my warm car, through a bitter, biting wind in 39 degree darkness with a hint of damp, to what I consider to be a glorified self-torture chamber. My bed-head hair is all over the place because it's 5:30am and whothehellcaresorisgonnanotice
And as I get near the door, a blonde woman bursts outside and accosts me. I don't know what's happening. I nearly reach for my wallet, thinking I'm being mugged. The mental fog clears and I realize it's my cousin's wife, Laura. She's perky and PUMPED about being at the gym. We walk in together as I mumble responses to her enthusiasm. She teases me for working out in dress shoes. Then she runs off back to the treadmill. Dammit. I left my gym shoes in the car. I trudge back out.
Thirty minutes later, I'm huffing and puffing, attempting a meager, nay pathetic, amount of sit-ups. I open my eyes and Laura's standing over me. PUMPED. "COME TO SPIN CLASS!!!!! C'MON!" No way, I explain. "C'MON!!!" Uh-uh. "YOU'RE COMING TO ONE NEXT TIME. YOU CAN BE IN THE BACK AND DO YOUR OWN THING!" The best I can give her is a blank stare. No one, let alone a mother of infants, should be this excited before 6am. She runs off to spin class. I resolve to be a gym ninja, unseen and in the shadows, from that point forward.
You will not motivate me, woman! You hear me! You will NOT!
Thursday, December 25, 2014
The Great Split: Women's and Men's Holidays
On Christmas and Thanksgiving, for each one, there are two holidays happening at the
same time, because men and women do very different things. In women's
minds, family and specifically the kids are the focus. Women holidays
are about expressing love and kindness and pleasure in your family's
company. There's awful, sentimental music and sappy-ass movies. And
everyone's supposed to be polite and comment on how much they enjoy each
side dish.
And then next to that, we have to shoehorn in the men holidays, where where we get to set things on fire, feast on a dead animal in no conversation other than grunting and roars, and there's excessive drinking and wanting to murder people at the table.
But we're starting to split them up.
I used to think that moving Black Friday to Thanksgiving was awful. But now I think it's brilliant. It separates the man and woman holidays. Everyone wins. We gets to get away from the extended family and it's a tailgate, basically. If we're at the walmart parking lot in the middle of the night with a grill, a flat-screen and satellite dish, and a case of beer, how is that not a) a tailgate, and b) awesome?
I mean, there are trade-offs because the man has to shop, but really, it's perfect. The women and kids get to stay home and be lame together and the men get to be misanthropic. If you teach men that shopping is a full-contact-sport, they will totally do it. That's why people die at these things now. "Outta my way, @#$!!!! that vacuum cleaner is MINE!" I mean, get in, get out, win, and then celebrate our victory at the tailgate. "Hell, no, I'm not coming home. The games are on and I got everything I need here. Well, not everything. I need to buy a portajohn. Thank god I'm at the walmart already."
We just have to figure out a reason to be at walmart on christmas to make this complete, but I'm sure they're figuring that out as we speak.
And then next to that, we have to shoehorn in the men holidays, where where we get to set things on fire, feast on a dead animal in no conversation other than grunting and roars, and there's excessive drinking and wanting to murder people at the table.
But we're starting to split them up.
I used to think that moving Black Friday to Thanksgiving was awful. But now I think it's brilliant. It separates the man and woman holidays. Everyone wins. We gets to get away from the extended family and it's a tailgate, basically. If we're at the walmart parking lot in the middle of the night with a grill, a flat-screen and satellite dish, and a case of beer, how is that not a) a tailgate, and b) awesome?
I mean, there are trade-offs because the man has to shop, but really, it's perfect. The women and kids get to stay home and be lame together and the men get to be misanthropic. If you teach men that shopping is a full-contact-sport, they will totally do it. That's why people die at these things now. "Outta my way, @#$!!!! that vacuum cleaner is MINE!" I mean, get in, get out, win, and then celebrate our victory at the tailgate. "Hell, no, I'm not coming home. The games are on and I got everything I need here. Well, not everything. I need to buy a portajohn. Thank god I'm at the walmart already."
We just have to figure out a reason to be at walmart on christmas to make this complete, but I'm sure they're figuring that out as we speak.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Inequality Exists. Pick a Good Example, Not an Eye-Catching Bad One
Soooo..... there's been the Sony hacking story. And while the prominent angle is about the ramifications of "The Interview" and there's been some talk about racist joking between industry insiders, another aspect of the story is about how gender pay gaps are alive and well and thriving in Hollywood.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/17/stop-denying-the-gender-pay-gap-exists-even-jennifer-lawrence-was-shortchanged/
As the friend of mine who posted that link on Facebook wrote above it: "Srsly y'all. If JLaw with staff still doesn't get equal pay, what shot do the rest of us have?"
With all due respect...for %$#!'s sake!
I think there are absolutely cases where women get shorted for same work. But so too do I think that the pay scales of American Hustle are flat-out wrong examples of unfairness in pay towards women.
Oh, I mean, if you just looked at the bottom line, sure. But you'd be a mouth-breather who gets their news from buzzfeed....or in this case THE WASHINGTON POST(!!!) (Where the hell is the editor?) Because Sweet Christ. But, hey, I'll give you the mouth-breather version, and then I'll give you the real world version that is more complicated (as well it should be).
The mouth-breather version: "Men and women were in the same film, but the women got less than the men! And, OMG, like, Jennifer Lawrence, who is like, totally, the biggest star in the world right now, got the least! Gross old Christian Bale got a deal of 9% of the back end profits on the movie. So did weird-eye Bradley Cooper. And so did ugh(!) Jeremy Renner! But then Amy Adams, who's been nominated for like, a billion oscars, only got 7% and JLaw (JLAW!!!) only got 5%! I mean, JLaw's later got raised to 7%, but Men are assholes, executives are chauvinist bastards, and women get screwed over yet again, like they have for all of history!!!!"
Screen Time
Per Fandor.com,
Lead Actor Christian Bale was onscreen for 60 minutes (46% of total screening time).
(http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscar-2014-video-evidence-lead-actor)
Lead Actress Amy Adams was onscreen for 46 minutes (35% of total screening time). (http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscar-2014-video-evidence-lead-actress)
Supporting Actor Bradley Cooper was onscreen for 41 minutes (32% of total screening time). (http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscar-2014-video-evidence-supporting-actor)
Supporting Actress Jennifer Lawrence was onscreen for 20 minutes (15% of total screening time). (http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscars-2014-video-evidence-best-supporting-actress)
Supporting Jeremy Renner was on for an unknown amount of time but less than Cooper or Adams and (probably) more than Jennifer Lawrence. He didn't get nominated and I haven't found where someone was bored enough to time his screen time. For this it doesn't really matter. Let's guess and say 30 minutes.
Per boxofficemojo.com, the budget was $40 million dollars (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=davido2013.htm)
There's no way the five actors took up the whole budget so you can't simply say they all should have been paid 8 million each. I'd actually bet that they didn't make up half of the budget (because, holy crap, movies are expensive, and it's not like prima-donna director David O. Russell was going to make it for free), but for the sake of this we will say that they did. 20 million dollars for all five actors and actresses. Well, there are leads and supportings, so off the bat, there's no paying them the same because THAT'S NOT FAIR. IT'S UNFAIR TO PAY PEOPLE THE SAME PAY FOR DIFFERING AMOUNTS OF WORK. So far as I know, there's no knowledge of what their front-end, up-front salaries were.
But we can talk about those back-end numbers. The movie made $150.1 million domestic and another $101 million international for a total of $251 million dollars. However, it's not so simple as subtracting the $40 million budget from $251 million because we don't know what the post-production and marketing costs were. Regardless, for ease and to make my point, let's just say that (improbably) the profits for the film were a cool $100 million. Easy peasy.
Bale gets 9 million, Cooper gets 9 million, and Renner gets 9 million. Adams gets 7 million and Lawrence was only supposed to get 5 million, but they bumped it up to 7 million [that's important to note, because usually when contracts are signed, they stay as negotiated. But in this case she ends up with a (40%!!!!!!) raise because they recognized her star-power even though they didn't have to do so! The chauvinist bastards!].
Per minute then (rounded to nearest thousand),
Bale: $150k
Cooper: $220k
Renner: $300k (again, that's going off a pure guess of his being in the movie 30 minutes)
Adams: $152k
Lawrence: $350k
So, the guy on screen most (per-minute-wise) got the LEAST back-end money and the woman on screen least got (per-minute-wise) MOST. The other actress also got more money per-minute-wise than the guy on screen most. PAY INEQUALITY EXISTS, PEOPLE!!! Seriously, this is the sorta thing that makes me wanna punch people in the face.
But let's continue, shall we.
Prior History
Per boxofficemojo.com,
Christian Bale's lifetime gross at the box office prior to Hustle was $2.1 billion over the course of 33 movies ($64 million average gross). However, he was also, coincidentally, the lead in a little movie series called, um, you know, BATMAN, which very recently had made, approximately a kajillion dollars. He also was recently in a big-budget Terminator movie and he won an Academy Award recently for The Fighter. His worldwide grosses are 4.1 billion, btw.
Bradley Cooper's lifetime gross prior to Hustle was also $1.8 billion over the course of 19 movies ($93 million average gross). However, his main successes, the Hangover series, were ensemble movies so his biggest lead movie was Silver Linings Playbook which made $132 million. He had been nominated for an Academy Award for that movie. His worldwide grosses are 3.4 billion.
Jeremy Renner's lifetime gross prior to Hustle was $1.4 billion over the course of 18 movies ($87.5 million average gross). However, he was the lead in the Bourne series franchise reboot and was being groomed to take over the Mission Impossible series from Tom Cruise. Additionally, he's an Avenger. He has some critical acclaim, but his big draw is that he's in massive money making franchises. So far, his grosses worldwide are $3.5 billion.
Amy Adams' lifetime gross prior to Hustle was $1.6 billion over 23 movies ($74 million average gross). Her largest solo lead to that point was Enchanted at $128 million. Enchanted was a 2007 movie. Since then, she's played the lead actress in much smaller movies or been in ensemble casts. She has gotten numerous Academy Award nominations, but not big money franchises. Her worldwide grosses are $3.1 billion.
Jennifer Lawrence's lifetime gross prior to Hustle was $1.3 billion over the course of 11 movies ($120 million average gross), but it's not quite fair to look at it that way because $424 million of that came from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire which had only come out three weeks prior. It certainly looked to be a behemoth since the first one did over $400 million, but the takeaway point was that she certainly had the smallest track record (though very impressive since she had a franchise and an Academy Award from the previous year). Her worldwide grosses were $2.2 billion.
Negotiation
Principle photography started on March 8, 2013, so contracts were most likely negotiated before then. As these are contracts for employment and not standard salaries, you can't simply say "every one gets the same." For people who follow sports, this is more than easy to understand. Each performer's contract has to be understood in the context in which it was negotiated. The best young player in baseball, universally, is Mike Trout. He just won a MVP award. He just signed a long extension for $144 million. However, a (slightly) older player, Giancarlo Stanton, just signed a contract for over $300 million. He has never won a MVP award. One had significant leverage in negotiations, the other less so. Barry Zito got a $120 million dollar contract and Jay Cutler is the highest paid offensive player in the NFL right now. The non-sports fan has no idea who those two are. The market has fluctuations and people get paid what their circumstances dictate. To not understand that is to be a bit of a fool.
Also, I mean, this is not like getting a job at Burger King where they tell you what they're going to pay you and you just take it. These performers have agents. The agents have other clients. Agents do not simply let their clients get shafted on pay because, you know, vaginas. That hurts their bottom lines since they get percentages of their clients' deals. Since the agents who represent the stars tend to represent multiple stars, they have a good idea of the right amounts and percentages to fight for. That's the whole reason those agencies get high-profile clients.
In light of that, it's easier to see how Bale got 9% ("He's Batman!") and Renner got 9% ("He's trying to be in everything!"). Cooper presents a bit of a question mark for his 9%, but perhaps there was some sort of reward happening for his prior work in Silver Linings Playbook or the role was written for him and if he backed out, others couldn't play it as well. He might have taken pennies up front. Dunno. Admittedly, he's the weak link on contract reasoning.
Adams is a great actress but not one that puts butts in seats. This is a business. She's never been in anything as large as Batman, The Hangover, The Avengers, or Mission Impossible. She did end up being in Man of Steel, but that movie came out after she would have negotiated her contract, and while she's a lead, you don't think of her when you think of that movie.
If anything, JLaw did very well for herself. She hit the perfect storm of landing a mega-franchise and then the sequel blowing the doors off 2013 right as Silver Linings Playbook was coming out. I bet the reason they upped her deal to 7% when they didn't have to was to get her to do promotion and marketing for the film because they realized she puts butts in the seats. It is a business after all.
And it worked!
American Hustle ended up being David O. Russell's largest grossing movie.
Conclusion
While I'm sure that the gender gap exists in regards to men and women's pay, please pick a better example, because this one is flat-out wrong. Shame on the Washington Post for legitimizing mouth-breathing by publishing such inane drivel. Spend some time investigating and presenting an actual gender pay-gap disparity, which surely exists. All that happens when you put forth pablum like this is that you get disregarded as a legitimate news source and appropriately ignored.
Friday, November 21, 2014
My Issue With Immigration Reform Isn't With Immigrants...
...it's with us.
And to be perfectly clear up front, I mean Latin American immigrants. Which is its own can of worms because it's really jacked up they're the only immigrants that come to mind for most people, but I'll briefly touch on that in a bit.
Anyway, regarding Latin American immigrants, I'm not angry at them or consider them lawbreakers who need to go back to their own damn country. I've met a good number of them and seen a good deal more all across the country. Mostly they're poor people trying to work hard to have something in life. I'd be a major ass-hat to be pissed about that or angry with them.
No, the issue really, for me, is...why is it okay for us to have a servant class of foreign brown people?
Because that's really what we're saying when we say "they do the jobs Americans don't want to do or simply won't do."
They work construction or migrant farming jobs for the most part, right? They're manual labor at a minimum. And so what we're saying is, well, we know we need this stuff done and they'll do it.
But why won't Americans do these jobs? Because they don't pay well at all and require backbreaking labor.
Sharecropping wasn't a whole lot different.
But we need those services!
Then shouldn't we pay for them?
And, if we do, then doesn't that negate the need for the Latin American immigrants?
Or, if we grant amnesty or give them a path to being citizens or getting legal immigrant status, aren't we then required to make sure they get paid a minimum wage (and paid overtime) and have labor laws apply then?
But that'll make our stuff cost more. And we can't have that.
I mean, there's a story that the workers in China who were putting together iPhones were committing suicide by jumping off the top of the factory. They were committing suicide to protest unfair work conditions. How was this handled? Did the Chinese government force the Chinese manufacturer or Apple to improve the conditions? Nope. Of course not. The manufacturer installed nets to catch people so they couldn't commit suicide (that way).
I don't know if that story's true. And it doesn't need to be. It goes back to the same thing. We can't have our stuff costing more. That iPhone or iPad better not double in price.
But to get back to the Latin American immigrants. I hate that they're having to uproot and come to a foreign country to do crappy labor for crap pay. But I don't see how getting them legalized solves a problem, because then the people who hired them when they were cheap(er) and illegal don't have the incentive to hire them anymore. My immigration reform would involve hammering the people that hire illegal immigrants and enforcing labor laws (minimum wage and overtime, etc).
And guess what? If the enticement of minimum wage and overtime didn't get Americans to do those jobs, those jobs would have to offer more than minimum wage and minimum benefits until Americans would do them.
But that would cost more money. And we can't have that.
Now, there's a whole other aspect of why we're getting Latin American immigrants, that being that their countries are wildly dangerous and corrupt, and so they're coming to America for safety. I'm not going to address that because this would spiral out of control, but, I do need to bring up a side issue regardless...
How on earth is it fair to all other prospective immigrants, you know, the rest of the world who doesn't have the ability to run across the border, who are oceans away, that they're blocked and we allow others to get in willy-nilly (well, not quite, but you get what I mean)? Nope, sorry Zimbabwean(?), Kazakh, Estonian, etc. You have to go through the official channels and the official channels are bureaucratic nightmares that last forever. We require/filter for other immigrants because of course we do.
So it's fair we do that for the rest of the world's immigrants but not Latin American immigrants?
Anyway, my issue isn't with the immigrants, be they Latin American or from the rest of the world. It's with us. We need to pony up for the goods and services that the poorest of them are doing for us. We need to open up more for the best and brilliant of the rest so they can come here and contribute.
But that would cost more money. And we can't have that.
And to be perfectly clear up front, I mean Latin American immigrants. Which is its own can of worms because it's really jacked up they're the only immigrants that come to mind for most people, but I'll briefly touch on that in a bit.
Anyway, regarding Latin American immigrants, I'm not angry at them or consider them lawbreakers who need to go back to their own damn country. I've met a good number of them and seen a good deal more all across the country. Mostly they're poor people trying to work hard to have something in life. I'd be a major ass-hat to be pissed about that or angry with them.
No, the issue really, for me, is...why is it okay for us to have a servant class of foreign brown people?
Because that's really what we're saying when we say "they do the jobs Americans don't want to do or simply won't do."
They work construction or migrant farming jobs for the most part, right? They're manual labor at a minimum. And so what we're saying is, well, we know we need this stuff done and they'll do it.
But why won't Americans do these jobs? Because they don't pay well at all and require backbreaking labor.
Sharecropping wasn't a whole lot different.
But we need those services!
Then shouldn't we pay for them?
And, if we do, then doesn't that negate the need for the Latin American immigrants?
Or, if we grant amnesty or give them a path to being citizens or getting legal immigrant status, aren't we then required to make sure they get paid a minimum wage (and paid overtime) and have labor laws apply then?
But that'll make our stuff cost more. And we can't have that.
I mean, there's a story that the workers in China who were putting together iPhones were committing suicide by jumping off the top of the factory. They were committing suicide to protest unfair work conditions. How was this handled? Did the Chinese government force the Chinese manufacturer or Apple to improve the conditions? Nope. Of course not. The manufacturer installed nets to catch people so they couldn't commit suicide (that way).
I don't know if that story's true. And it doesn't need to be. It goes back to the same thing. We can't have our stuff costing more. That iPhone or iPad better not double in price.
But to get back to the Latin American immigrants. I hate that they're having to uproot and come to a foreign country to do crappy labor for crap pay. But I don't see how getting them legalized solves a problem, because then the people who hired them when they were cheap(er) and illegal don't have the incentive to hire them anymore. My immigration reform would involve hammering the people that hire illegal immigrants and enforcing labor laws (minimum wage and overtime, etc).
And guess what? If the enticement of minimum wage and overtime didn't get Americans to do those jobs, those jobs would have to offer more than minimum wage and minimum benefits until Americans would do them.
But that would cost more money. And we can't have that.
Now, there's a whole other aspect of why we're getting Latin American immigrants, that being that their countries are wildly dangerous and corrupt, and so they're coming to America for safety. I'm not going to address that because this would spiral out of control, but, I do need to bring up a side issue regardless...
How on earth is it fair to all other prospective immigrants, you know, the rest of the world who doesn't have the ability to run across the border, who are oceans away, that they're blocked and we allow others to get in willy-nilly (well, not quite, but you get what I mean)? Nope, sorry Zimbabwean(?), Kazakh, Estonian, etc. You have to go through the official channels and the official channels are bureaucratic nightmares that last forever. We require/filter for other immigrants because of course we do.
So it's fair we do that for the rest of the world's immigrants but not Latin American immigrants?
Anyway, my issue isn't with the immigrants, be they Latin American or from the rest of the world. It's with us. We need to pony up for the goods and services that the poorest of them are doing for us. We need to open up more for the best and brilliant of the rest so they can come here and contribute.
But that would cost more money. And we can't have that.
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