The Cruel Economy of Soccernomics: Capital, Players, and Football in the 21st Century

In 2000’s The Many Headed Hydra, historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker explored the transnational revolutionary Atlantic world’s collection of working and enslaved peoples’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Linebaugh and Rediker present numerous examples of this burgeoning Atlantic world proletariat as it struggled against the crushing dominance of a nascent capitalism shedding its mercantilist restraints. The commoditization of labor and peoples, left sailors, slaves, and commoners as physical representations of opposition, providing tangible fervor and ideological depth to various uprisings, revolts, and revolutions from England to the West Indies to the United States. Acting as “nodes of revolution," sailors and slaves carried ideas, plots, and oppositional violence against “the dictates of mercantile and imperial authority” targeting the property of the growing merchant class. (156) In the face of state sponsored violence of the period ranging from slavery to penal colonies to military intervention, revolution through piracy, slave revolt, and riot served as resistance to the formation of new capitalist order.

Strangely, 2009’s Soccernomics represents an interesting correlation to The Many Headed Hydra’s oncoming tsunami of free trade and “open markets.”  No, footballers are not, never have been, and are highly unlikely ever to be “nodes of revolution."  Anyone who has followed recent sex scandals involving prominent players like England’s John Terry (likes 18 year girls and sleeping with his best friend’s former fiancée) or Wayne Rooney (allegedly cried after “performing” with an escort while his wife was in labor with their first child which makes him simultaneously ridiculous and despicable) knows that even getting them to be “nodes of decency” proves challenging. Yet, throughout Soccernomics the three themes seem central to authors Simon Kuper (soccer journalist/writer) and Stefan Szymanski (economist) economically deterministic approach to football:

• the rising dominance of European style/tactics over the past 30 – 40 years (the authors even argue that Brazil has diminished aspects of its “beautiful game” to adopt much of the European approach)

• the role of capital flows in altering the modern game

• Players themselves, most from working class populations (in the rich and developing world (though differences between poverty in France and South Africa remain stark), serving as nodes of both developments.

The best soccer today is Champions League Soccer, western European Soccer. It’s a rapid passing game played by athletes. Rarely does anyone dribble, or keep the ball for a second. You pass instantly. It’s not the beautiful game – dribbles are prettier – but it works best. All good teams everywhere in the world now play this way. Even the Brazilians adopted the Champions League style in the 1990s. They still have more skill than the Europeans, but they now try to play at a European pace. (27)

As the above excerpt illustrates, Europe’s dominance extends from several factors. First, “The Continent” contains the worlds’ top leagues: The English Premiership, Spain’s La Liga, and Italy’s Seria A. Second, FIFA’s headquarters sit squarely in Western Europe dictating international rules and regulations while organizing the world’s most popular soccer tourney, The World Cup. Third, the financial resources of Europe and opening labor markets of the past 20 years have enabled the continent to import labor from Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and North America. Finally, the world’s most prestigious tournament The Champions League and its NIT-like cousin the UEFA League are fundamentally European entities. More recent evidence can be found extracted from the World Cup this past summer. Oft maligned Spain joined the ranks of Brazil with its victory in South Africa becoming only the second national side to have won a World Cup outside their hemisphere. Furthermore, four of the last six world cups were won by European sides.

Now there are many who might take issue with the assertion of European superiority. After all Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina hold multiple cups while South America has consistently produced football giants. Moreover, today Carlos Tevez, Lionel Messi, and Roque Santa Cruz serve as only three examples of dominant South American footballers, though each plays in Europe (which obviously furthers Soccernomics’ European argument). Still, I can think back to a series of soccer documentaries on PBS that covered the rise of international soccer from the 1950s to the current day in which several of the early South American stars, many of whom hailed from this year’s semi-finalist Uruguay commented on the rise of European footballing prominence. One former star in particular seemed incredulous arguing (and I am most certainly paraphrasing here since I can’t remember the player’s name or the documentary’s title) that these clumsy Europeans came and were able to use organization and passing to overcome their lack of individual skill or flair. The speaker’s disregard for this state of affairs came through clearly when he seemed to snarl indignantly through the word organization. Even Soccernomics acknowledges this discrepancy when it describes Brazil’s place within this football nexus above admiring the artistry of the Brazilian approach but privileging the stark replicable system and results of the European style.

If one suggests Soccernomics provides an essentialist view of football one would have to disagree, in short, accusations of Eurocentrism fall flat. Szymanski and Kuper have few Europhile interests to promote as they spend plenty of pages outlining racism and discrimination that course through aspects of the game, examining the role of poverty on national sides (guess what, being a poor country with a low GPD makes it real hard) and devote an entire chapter to England’s “mediocrity” as a football power (for all its “disappointments”, the authors suggest the island nation didn’t underperform but when placed in the proper historical and demographic context rather over performed over the past three decades– more on this in another post). However, they also point out that football’s growth owed some of its expansion to economies of scale, industrialization, and transnational capital/labor flows from imperial reach. Football’s spread correlated not with British official colonization, but instead its “informal empire, the noncolonies: most of Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Here [Brazil], it probably benefited from not being seen as a colonial ruler’s game. Brits in the informal empire were supposedly just businesspeople, even if in practice their commercial clout gave the British prime minister vast influence over many unlikely countries.” (159) In India and Australia official colonization brought administrators emphasizing cricket and rugby.

In contrast, America’s own “informal empire” failed to inculcate a love of American football or baseball in the same way soccer expanded. For the authors, despite receiving the keys to the imperialist car in 1947, “the American empire was much less ambitious. It barely spread Americanism. Football the American empire’s most popular sport, still hardly exists.” (158) Though one might argue basketball and baseball have gained adherents abroad, American football has served as the national past time for many years now. American football has not enjoyed much international popularity. Though one might take pause at the conclusions drawn by the authors namely that “Victorian Britons were instinctive colonists where today’s Americans are not”, the fact of the matter remains soccer’s reach occurred in large part to the existence of informal empire. The importance of economics on who dominated soccer proved equally instructive when looking at the various cups and tournaments won in the 1970 to 2000 period note the authors, “the six founding members [Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, West Germany, Netherlands, and France] of the European Economic Community dominated soccer thinking and won almost all the game’s prizes.” (292)

If sailors, slaves, and commoners of the eighteenth century nurtured ideas of opposition and freedom throughout the Atlantic world, acting as nodes of revolution, modern day players like Didier Drogba accomplish similar feats in spreading European football superiority. Absorbing the game initially as an unforeseen after effect of the capital flows of informal empire, Drogba, Tevez, and countless others absorb the tactics, style, and underlying logic of the European method. Playing within the professional leagues of Western Europe further facilitates this process. Coaches like the wandering Guus Hiddink contribute to this development as Szymanski/Kuper argue “he has been the world’s leading exporter of soccer know how from Western Europe to the margins of the Earth.” (292 – to be sure some readers might take issue with the metropole/periphery paradigm that the writers have employed, but for our purposes we’ll simply acknowledge this lens as potentially problematic). According to Soccernomics, Hiddink and other European coaches have brought the fast, physical, collective style of European sides to Korea, Japan, Greece, Turkey, and Australia, essentially slitting the throat of powers like Holland and England who the authors argue will no longer be able to compete with these new developing national sides.

Some might argue that the spread of Euro styles and tactics have flattened the game to reflect the same kind of social/political/economic leveling of globalization where once distinct cultural and regional identities are reshaped to fit into more cookie cutter like models. The authors express this clearly when discussing Turkey’s recent international successes, “in short, globalization saved Turkish soccer. Turks came to the realization that every marginal county needs: there is only one way to play good soccer – you combine Italian defending with German work ethic and Dutch passing into the European style. (‘Industrial soccer’ some Turks sulkily call it.)” (299) The football playing world of Soccernomics places little to no faith in the power of culture in terms of successful football sides, “national styles don’t work … in soccer ‘culture’ doesn’t matter much.” (299) Instead, the “industrial” approach provides the most tangible successes. For Szymanski and Kuper, the strength of Turkey, Greece, and Portugal was their ability to “jettison [their] traditional soccer culture,” which Soccernomics described as “dysfunctional indigenous styles.” (299)

One might suppose the question that remains involves the teleology of the argument that Symanski and Kuper promote. Granted, one should not feign surprise when a book title Soccernomics adopts an economically deterministic viewpoint. Yet, the book treats soccer style/tactics as complete, no new developments in the works, European dominance secured. Moreover, considering the clear influence of capital flows, imperialism (whether formal or informal), and globalizing entities like the EC or EU, the authors might have tempered some of their somewhat positivistic logic. While the European leagues draw talent from the world’s “four corners” (wherever they may be), it fails to give much agency to international players like Drogba. They appear to be empty vessels whose indigenous styles are to be corrected and filled with starry ideas of European organization and attack. No negotiation occurs, no Hegelian tropes of dominance/resistance. If these largely working class footballers operate as nodes of anything, its capitalism. National styles have been carved down to an archetype that is perfected, reducing redundancies and inefficiencies, while finding export through grizzled European coaches who carry this new “industrial style” to Korea, China, and elsewhere. Sound familiar? One of the questions that emerges regarding “industrial football”is this: is it truly more efficient or simply benefiting from institutional and financial advantages that make it seem more successful?

Soccernomics is a great read. Informative, well written and thought provoking, but for all its focus on Europe, powers like Brazil and Argentina often seem secondary. How would they explain Argentine successes? As one fellow writer related in a recent email, “Perhaps Argentina is the most European of Latin American nations?” Second, writes like Arjun Appadurai (Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization) have cautioned academics and others about how they view progress in the non European world imploring anthropologists, sociologists and historians to avoid imposing western historical models of capital development or democracy, noting that these new developments require more flexible and insightful analysis, since the growth of such concepts need not occur identically to European or American examples. Furthermore, Appadurai’s discussion of labor flows sounds eerily reminiscent of European footballs magnetism for players in the developing world as Appadurai argues globalization brings laboring populations into the lower-class sectors and spaces of relatively wealthy societies, while sometimes creating exaggerated and intensified senses of criticism or attachment to politics in the home state.” This generates alienation (in Marx's sense) twice intensified, for its social sense is now compounded by a complicated spatial dynamic that is increasingly global.” (42) Certainly, Drogba and others, once ascending to the professional ranks probably don’t seclude themselves in low income communities of their fellow immigrants, yet, as Szymanski and Kuper detail, most clubs spend very little on relocation services for non Europeans leading to culture shock and sometimes poor play from imported footballers. The authors argue the dearth of Brazilian players in the English Premiership or the failure of temperamental Nicolus Anelka at Real Madrid were due in large part to failed relocation efforts by Europe’s top clubs, “The challenge of moving from Rio de Janeiro to Manchester involves cultural adjustments that just don’t compare with moving from Springfield, Missouri to Springfield, Ohio. Yet, European clubs that pay millions of dollars for foreign players are often unwilling to spend a few thousand more to help the players settle in their new homes.” (59)

In the end, there can be no doubt that the logic of capital influences global football, how its played, who plays it, and what it means for the future of the game. Soccernomics provides a valuable service in exploring this dynamic, but readers should reserve some skepticism when thinking about how specific styles and methods come to dominate. It remains a frighteningly complex transnational process, one mitigated in large part by burgeoning globalization and Western capital flows, but a process that will certainly change in ways that observers cannot always predict. Sometimes past performances on the pitch and in the markets are just that past performances, ones that fail to necessarily dictate the future.

RR

[Editor's Note: For those of you interested in football more generally check out http://cultfootball.com/)

Economist Folly

As recent T of M posts reveal, a favorite publication of several contributors is the English periodical the Economist. Though liberal on many social issues -- the magazine promotes gay marriage, increased aid to developing nations, and even endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 -- for some the magazine exudes a business-friendly, pro-development ethos that strikes them as Pollyannaish. Generally the magazine views unions as part of the problem rather than the solution.

In its October 2, 2010 leader “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”, the Economist summarized the recent documentary Waiting for Superman – a movie that essentially chronicles the work of former D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee.  The magazine questioned the role of unions in education reform, promoted charter schools, and advocated for new measures to determine student progress and teacher effectiveness.  Despite Waiting for Superman’s depressing ending and the “bleakness of its title,” the Economist says, the movie also suggests that good schools and good teachers do exist.  The key is to adopt their methods and pedagogy:

That truth, recognized by anyone who has spent even a few hours in say, a KIPP charter school, is an inconvenient one to the teachers’ unions, which the film rightly identifies as a big chunk of kryptonite standing in the way of a dramatic rescue for the children of America.

The teachers’ unions have resolutely opposed efforts to pay good teachers more than mediocre ones, to fire the worst performers, and to shut down schools that consistently fail to deliver a decent education. This, coupled with underfunding in poor areas, has resulted in a shortage of good schools; so the few that are worth getting into are hugely oversubscribed with places allocated by the public lotteries which provide the grim climax to the movie... the fact is teachers’ unions are the primary obstacle to reform…

T of M contributor Shane Updike took issue with some of the Economist’s arguments. Mr. Updike’s protestations were published in this week’s issue in its letters to the editor section. His letter is reprinted below. T of M didn't check with anyone from the magazine but we’re pretty sure the Economist couldn’t care less about us.

RR

Schooling in America

SIR – It is true that teachers’ unions protect bad teachers from being fired and that reform is needed (“Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”, October 2nd). However, unions also protect effective teachers from arbitrary punishment by school administrators who may be opposed to innovative ideas that come from the teaching staff. Furthermore charter schools are not the panacea that you and some school reformers claim. Charter schools such as KIPP and the Harlem Children’s Zone do a wonderful job of educating poor children in rough areas, but the vast majority are no more effective than a typical public school. And one of the best charter-school companies, Green Dot, which runs schools in Los Angeles and New York City, has a teaching staff that is fully unionised. American schools are in desperate need of improvement, but the assertion that unions are uniformly bad and non-unionized charter schools are always good is too simplistic.

Shane Updike
Seattle

Currently working for the Highline School District near Seattle doing data analysis and administering the district's Title 1 program, Mr. Updike completed eight years of distinguished teaching in the New York City High Schools and holds MA degrees in Social Studies Education (NYU) and Public Administration (University of Washington).

The Persistence of the Donkey

Polls show a surprising resilience for Democrats in an incredibly adverse environment, not a catastrophic collapse. But are the polls right?

This is not exactly dancing in the end zone, but things should be going much worse for the Democratic Party. With spineless leadership, paralysis in Congress, a terrible economy, and an onslaught of increasingly vile and racist attacks from the Right, Obama’s approval rating should be about 15%, and a Republican takeover of Congress ought to be a sure thing. That the election is even in contention is a surprise to me.

First, consider that a party almost always loses seats in the first midterm election after its own president takes office. Bill Clinton famously endured catastrophic losses in 1994, ending decades of Democratic dominance in the legislative branch; voters punished Ronald Reagan in 1982, as a grinding recession much like today’s continued to afflict the country. (Ronaldus Magnus went on to enjoy one of the most crushing reelection victories in US history two years later.) George W. Bush was only able to interrupt this pattern by goading the country into a patriotic and paranoid fervor over “weapons of mass destruction” in the 2002 run-up to the Iraq War.

On top of this, the Democrats enjoyed so many improbable political upsets in the last two elections – for example, a Senate seat in Alaska, and a House seat in upstate New York that hadn’t gone Democratic since the Civil War – that Republicans were bound to make up some ground that they had lost. Almost regardless of what is going on in the country, the pendulum was going to swing back at least a little.

So history suggests that the Dems would lose seats in 2010 no matter what. Then you add in a brutal employment rate that has only been muted by Obama’s best efforts – the stimulus and a smattering of tax breaks for small business that Republicans allowed to be voted on in the Senate. People are in a foul mood, and rightly so. Things are not good. When voters ask why more has not been done about jobs, Democratic leaders mumble something about the filibuster and the motion to recommit. This is not inspiring leadership.

That 30% of the electorate is energized and ready to vote is not surprising – conservative white voters no longer have the millstone of George Bush hanging around their necks, and they don’t care for Obama for one bit. The dispirited GOP of 2008 is no more.  We've seen this show when Democrats have taken power before, with the right-wing hysteria that followed Bill Clinton's election, and the John Birch Society's conspiracy theories about John F. Kennedy.  With Obama in office, conservatives have once again rediscovered the beauty of dissent. And Republicans have been more than happy to cater to this paranoid and self-pitying constituency with plenty of red meat – scary illegal immigrants! Muslim takeover! Viagra for sex offenders!

To top it all off, the Supreme Court’s awful Citizens United decision has lifted many restrictions on how corporations and rich people can spend to influence elections. 2010 will be the first election in which we get to see what happens when companies like Target and Exxon have free rein to drop massive amounts of negative advertising on Democrats, in their tireless pursuit of low wages, low taxes, and no regulation.

If this shitstorm is really happening, why is Obama’s approval rating stubbornly close to 50%? Although polls show a consistent lead for Congressional Republicans, the Dems are running close and have pulled even in a few surveys. Although there are some very depressing pieces of news – liberal stalwart Russ Feingold is in deep trouble in Wisconsin, and the popular governor of West Virginia might actually lose Robert Byrd’s old seat to a no-name Republican – Democrats have still clung on much more tenaciously than anyone might reasonably have expected.

I can only think of a few reasons for this endurance. One is obvious from the polls. The Republican Party has done nothing to distinguish itself and is actually less popular than the Democrats. The GOP had not controlled Congress for years when they took over in 1994, and they enjoyed a 52% approval rating before the election. Now only 24% approve of Congressional Republicans, while 33% view Congressional Dems favorably. Public sentiment may be for “Throw the bums out,” but Republicans have not given much reason for voters to believe they are any better.

Voters may vaguely remember that the Republicans were running the country right before things fell apart, and the shameless fear-mongering that candidates like Sharron Angle have indulged in has not endeared them to voters. Indeed, Muslims and Latinos may recall for years to come that they were television stars in a hate rally staged by Republicans in 2010.

Second, the liberal base that got organized and involved between 2004 and 2008 has not completely tuned out. Organizational and media structures remain in place, whether it is ActBlue fundraising and Obama’s Organizing for America or DailyKos and Rachel Maddow. This infrastructure has helped Dems hold on to several special elections in the last two years that they could easily have lost. A counter-narrative persists, despite the gloom and doom from the mainstream media. Liberal voters may be depressed but they have not disappeared.

Last, there is a more speculative possibility. Perhaps support for the policies that people thought they were voting for in 2008 has not collapsed. The Democratic Congress has actually done stuff – things that are far more important than they have been portrayed as in a media culture that focuses on horse races and name-calling. Bill Clinton was severely punished for coming into office and squandering a Democratic majority, as healthcare reform died and the president folded on gay rights and many other issues. Obama, in contrast, has pushed ahead on reforming student loans, insurance (no more “pre-existing conditions”), equal pay for equal work, clean energy, and many other issues.

The Democrats will probably get their asses kicked in November, and we will probably see two years of scorched-earth partisan warfare leading up to the 2012 election. Both parties have nothing to gain by working together, and everything to lose. But I doubt the Dems will lose everything. Catastrophic Democratic losses this year appear to be what historians like to call “over-determined,” and the fact that Dems are still in the fight (and may hold on to the Senate) is a testament to the resilience of a progressive base in the electorate.

AC

Ghost in the Machine: The Invisibility of Richard M. Daley's New Political Base

The announcement that Richard M. Daley would not seek reelection as Chicago’s mayor surprised few people. A Midwestern institution, a Daley has occupied the top seat in city hall for over 50 years, yet the current Daley, not unlike his father Richard J., had begun to look thread worn. The late great Chicago columnist Mike Royko savaged the elder Daley in Boss but also acknowledged that there was something uniquely Chicago about the old man, “Maybe he couldn’t have been a father figure in Berkeley, California; Princeton, New Jersey; or even Skokie Illinois. But in Chicago there was nothing unusual about a father who worked long hours, meant shut up when he said shut up, and backed it up with a jolt to the head. Daley was as believable a father figure as anybody’s old man.” (1) If Richard J. Daley’s better qualities such as hard work, physical and mental strength, and big “Texas boastful” ambitions reflected many aspects of Chicago (remember Daniel Burnham’s famous proclamation “make no small plans”), he also clearly represented its negatives as well as the aforementioned Royko noted, “in other ways he was this city at its worst – arrogant, crude, conniving, ruthless , suspicious, intolerant.” (2)

In significant ways, the current Daley incarnation differs from his father. Blacks and Latinos (who under the first Daley lacked the demographic and electoral presence to influence elections) have made gains ,though as University of Illinois-Chicago political scientist and former alderman Dick Simpson has noted Latinos have enjoyed a gradual increase in terms of contracts and city employment while African Americans have watched their gains remain static, even diminishing in recent years. (3) Additionally, his embrace of the city's gay community certainly distinguishes him from his father. While Richard M. lacks the same precinct and ward level organization that his father enjoyed, the current Chicago mayor has crafted a new neoliberal alliance that exerts nearly just as much influence as his father’s old ethnic palm greasing. Chicago’s rise as a “global city” has helped Daley secure financing and power, as the city’s public/private partnerships celebrate neoliberal economic policies while obscuring the beneficiaries and policy implications implicit from such an arrangement.

Not Your Father’s Machine

Throughout the aughts, Dick Simpson produced several studies on the new Daley machine and its economic and political results. Like his father, Richard M. Daley constructed an economic base among unions, construction interests, and the broader regional business community. Recently, The New York Times spoke to democratic strategist Kitty Kurth who pointed out Daley’s support among business donors was based on familiarity (“they knew him”) and intimidation, “quite honestly because they were threatened a little bit.” (4) None of this would be out of place with his father, yet new economies, globalization, and the influence of neoliberal public/private partnerships have enabled the younger Daley to craft a new “pinstripe patronage” club.

If one buys Saskia Sassen’s arguments regarding the development of global cities as sites of producer service (accounting, business law services, law firms, finance, etc) agglomerations, (who in turn wield increasing economic, political, and social influence on municipal governments), Daley’s regime recognized early on the power of these economic actors. The “New Daley Machine” depends in part on traditional economic sectors long incorporated under Daley’s father, but in addition, banking, legal, and transnational manufacturers have increasingly joined the party. Moreover, as Dick Simpson argues tourism, conventions, and “major public works … have been taken out of the usual political process and turned over to the private sector and special independent quasi-governmental agencies appointed by the mayor and the governor. Taken together, these trends have meant a lessening of democracy and the centralizing of power in a new machine, which while continuing the old machine perfected under Mayor Richard J. Daley, differs in a number of specific ways.” (5) Simpson further suggested that Chicago’s shift possibly represented developments that were not unique to Chicago by pointing to studies by Timothy Krebs which suggested that “the ‘new economy’ associated with globalization . . . figured heavily in campaign contributions to Mayor James Hahn and city council candidates in the 2001 Los Angeles election.” Krebs claimed that “68% of all itemized contributions” to Hahn came from campaigns, individuals, and corporations associated with the above “new economy” sectors. Simpson points to New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg's financing of his 2001 campaign as another prominent example. (6)

Neoliberalism Neoliberalism Neoliberalism

Writing only three years after Simpson, Jason Hackworth drew similar conclusions to that of Professor Simpson and his co-authors. Hackworth’s book The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism details many of the developments Simpson points out. For Hackworth and others city governance has been deeply affected by shifts away from more managerial economic systems like Keynesianism toward the deregulated privatization of neoliberal regimes. Urban municipalities bent to such influences to the extent neoliberalim became “naturalized”. For city leaders, good government came to mean how well they “function like the corporate community.” (7) This shift toward neoliberal ideals results in fewer public subsidies and regulation. Public services become privatized, business/real estate development interests promoted. Hackworth suggests that this economic development has not emerged as a response to capital flight so much as a “result of an institutionally regulated (and policed) disciplining of localities”. Finance capital operates under a set of “ideological constraints.” (8)

If the IMF and World Bank police international institutions, determining which countries and their metropolitan regions receive their financial attention, in first world cities, bond rating agencies exert the most direct influence, “localities can be summarily redlined from credit if bond rating agencies judge them fiscally or economically separate from the governments they evaluate and thus more immune than, say, the IMF to state based political pressure.” (9) The ever present fear of capital flight, whether it be popular discourse or institutionally, find reinforcement internally and externally to the extent that urban governments fail to function autonomously. Increasingly cities took on non-referendum approved debt through revenue bonds . In recent years, these bonds have outnumbered general obligation bonds, which in contrast require approval of local voters. Nationally, this has meant as cities have received fewer federal dollars, dependence on municipal lending increased. However, lending in the neoliberal era fails to resemble that of the past. Changing demographics and the ascendency of wealth generation through finance capital, pension funds, money market funds, and insurance firms account for larger segments of the securities industry. Moreover, if commercial banks provided stable and secure lending/investment in previous decades, direct lending illustrates greater volatility. This leaves “remaining investors (households and funds)” more dependent on “professional assessments” (like bond agencies) whereas commercial banks exerted greater independence. The senior Daley passed away just as these shifts began to develop. His son however, quickly positioned himself to take advantage of the new “corporatist” governing structures. As Simpson points out, Daley adapted well to Chicago’s place as “global city” situated squarely in the center of transnational capital flows. One might even argue, as Professor Simpson does, Daley’s regime has attempted to provide the urban accoutrements that international white collar workers and tourists demand, “The expansion of McCormick Place; the rehabilitation of Navy Pier; the long-awaited opening of Millennium Park; the reconstruction of Soldier Field; the continuation of cultural amenities like the Museum Campus, the Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera, and art galleries; flower planters and trees along boulevards; and the razing of ugly public housing projects – all of which have occurred under Mayor Daley’s regime – fit the needs and desires of his global economic contributors.”(10) That these improvements also please Chicago’s middle class residents only serves as icing on Daley’s proverbial cake.

The Deification of the New Daley Machine

The September 16, 2010 Economist briefly reviewed the Daley regime. A center left business oriented publication, the Economist often promotes deregulation, public/private partnerships, and lower government expenditures. With this focus in mind, Mayor Daley receives generally positive reviews. Acknowledging his various accomplishments including taking over the city schools (something his father would have NEVER done), beautifying the city through the creation of various green spaces and the monumental Millenium Park, and his metropolitan approach to governance, the British publication chose a rather different aspect of his rule to champion, “His most interesting legacy, however, may be not what he gave to Chicago, but what he sold off. Mr. Daley’s city has become an exemplar of a new strategy: where appropriate, privatize. The mayor hopes to save money by privatizing services, but also has a more lucrative plan: the lease of huge public assets.” (11) The inability of many urban areas to raise taxes have left cities more dependent on revenue streams that arise from user fees, “About 40% of [Chicago’s] revenue now comes from user fees, an area in which the private sector is expert. Leasing an asset such as a toll road allows a private entity to charge market rates and invest in improvements over time. The government, meanwhile, gets a large sum to invest in other infrastructure or to build reserves.” (12) In 2005 Daley completed a deal that established a 99 year lease for the Chicago Skyway that placed over 1.8 billion in city coffers. Similar deals were struck regarding the city’s parking garages (99 year lease at 563 million, 2006) and parking meters (99 years for 1.15 billion, 2008).

To be fair, the Economist also acknowledged problems. The parking meter agreement drew derision from Chicagoans who resented higher rates. Many meters around the city found themselves inundated with glue from angry residents. Moreover, critics claimed that the deal never endured the proper debate for such an arrangement resulting in the city getting shortchanged by 1 billion dollars. Even worse, Daley dipped into the funds from the parking meter fiasco to pay for operation costs which the Economist noted meant less for future rainy days, “But by 2011 Chicago will have gobbled up nearly 75% of the proceeds from the 75-year lease. Last month Fitch, a ratings agency, downgraded Chicago’s bond rating, in part because the city had used money from the meter-lease to pay for operations.” (13) However, these developments represent only one aspect of Daley’s neoliberal embrace. A more local and tangible example can be found in many of the cities aldermanic wards.

TIF for Tat

Tax incremental financing (TIF) has been an economic tool of development in Illinois for decades. TIFs are created by the City Council. When a TIF is created taxes are capped on the property for a number of years usually between 10 and 20, sometimes more. The revenue that normally would have been created by taxes to fund schools, local infrastructure and the like go into a “district fund controlled by the city, for a specific purpose.” (14) Essentially, a tax revenue limit is set for 10-20 years. All revenue collected from property taxes that exceed this limit are then placed into a TIF fund. The fund’s purposes range from “community infrastructure enhancement, building improvements, residential or business construction, or other public benefits such as parks.” (15) Theoretically, TIFs enable municipalities to channel funding for public works in lower income or struggling communities. However, in Chicago they often seem to fuel real estate speculation and housing that some local communities cannot afford. Alderman and Mayor Daley love TIFs because they provide each with an accessible supply of money.

Supporters argue TIFs ignite economic development which “in turn increases the property tax revenue that feed them.” (16) Chicago’s dependence on TIF financing has only grown under Richard M. By 2006, nearly one third of the city fell under TIF designation, accounting for one third of the entire city’s property tax income, equaling $329.5 million in 2005. (17) Critics contend that lack of oversight plagues TIFs. Residents wanting to see how their local TIF money is spent must go to city hall to request the document. Depaul Professor of Urban Geography Winifred Curran remarked that even when one gains access to TIF reports, the accounting is often “arbitrary”. (18)

Chicago is divided into fifty wards. Each one is overseen by an elected alderman. Alderman essentially create TIFs. Within the Chicago City Council approval is more or less automatic. Many aldermen owe their political careers to Mayor Daley, thus, alderman promote TIFs, both to curry favor with Mr. Daley and to create a pool of money with which they have discretion. A tacit understanding exists between aldermen regarding the passage of TIF zoning in the City Council This understanding amounts to a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” attitude. Community groups around the city accuse developers of making campaign contributions to alderman, then soon after, are awarded TIF zoning. Daley’s promotion of TIFs stem from a need to gain control over a tax base previously off limits and a desire to develop the city into a middle class paradise. The need or desire to accumulate a “pot of public money” has led the city to fully embrace TIFs along with the sale of public property like the previously discussed Chicago Skyway, a one time lump sum payment that produces city wealth immediately but may cost the city future revenues that have would have been produced from the properties.

Loopholes allow for TIF monies to be spent in contiguous areas not specifically TIF designated, meaning one community TIF district can fund improvements in adjacent neighborhoods. Moreover, though Mayor Daley frequently touts the city’s fairly stable property taxes, in recent years the proliferation of TIFs have driven property taxes assessments up blanketing the city with higher levels of fees and taxation. Such increases began on the city’s north side as one homeowner lamented, “My taxes were at $4000 when I bought my home nine years ago . . . that’s what, a $16000 increase in ten years? This isn’t some abstract . . . debate. This is real.” (19) Andersonville, a trendy North Side neighborhood reported property tax increases of 70%. Local entrepreneurs bemoaned that TIFs were going to destroy their businesses. (20) According to Chicago Reader journalist Ben Jovarsky, TIFs have eaten up $1 billion in property taxes from 2003-6. (21) Additionally, the assessments that have plagued mostly white middle and upper middle class neighborhoods are now set to affect communities like Pilsen (Mexican/Mexican-American) and Bronzeville (African American). Professor Curran concurred, “absolutely . . . that is an urban issue that has to do not just with gentrification . . . in terms of all the TIFs . . . all this money is being siphoned off from the city and you have got to remake it somehow.” (22)

Now there’s an argument that says the Daley way works. Chicago survived deindustrialization as the Daley’s helped remake the city into a transnational node in the heart of America. Of course, this view ignores the crucial role Harold Washington played in his brief tenure. Washington’s reforms regarding minority contracting, ethics and dampening the racial unrest plaguing the city, enabled Richard M. Daley to institutionalize his predecessor’s reforms while pursuing his own agenda However, the neoliberal shift that Hackworth describes and Daley embodies, obscures the disproportionate influence exerted by real estate and development interests. Perhaps if Chicago’s municipal government had a reputation for probity, diminishing the public’s roll might make sense, but it doesn’t. Even the elder Daley suffered bond referendum defeats, yet, his son need not resort to such measures. Financial innovations like revenue bonds and TIFs, allow governments to bypass even the slightest measure of oversight. Since 1971, 21 aldermen have served jail time as result of corruption convictions. This fails to account for numerous others guilty of conflict of interest and ethics violations. Do these conditions merit less supervision? TIFS inevitably drive gentrification which may be a boon to some but a problem for others. Parts of Chicago’s traditionally Mexican neighborhoods endured rapid gentrification due to TIF funded housing. Similar developments unfolded in many of the city’s black communities. Cities need economic development, but municipalities need to control this growth rather than profit from it. With an upcoming mayoral election that appears, for the first time in a long time, to be an open race, it remains doubtful that the new mayor will abandon the same moneyed networks Daley so carefully exploited.

RR

Something Is Rotten in the State of Wisconsin: Hamlet Goes to the Dogs

There are two reasons I would never read David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the first being the Oprah mark-of-shame tattooed on the back cover. Yes, I am one of those people too hip for Oprah. In all seriousness, I generally have no interest in her selections for reasons both aesthetic (I despise the ‘dis-enfranchised hero overcomes trauma and is all the wiser for it’ subgenre of literature that Oprah dotes on) and political. I know, it’s all very tedious and pretentious but I am merely describing a knee-jerk reaction and not a way of life. The second reason is that the book lifts its structure from Hamlet and as a shameless English major, that whole scene has been done to death, resurrected, and then done back to death. It was Stephen King’s gushing praise for Wroblewski that persuaded my hipster prejudices to ‘get over it.’ Uncle Stevie has never steered me wrong. Thanks to him, I discovered Dan Simmons and Jack Ketchum in a single trip to the library. And so, I began The Story of Edgar Sawtelle one afternoon in a local mega store.

The pace, while dreamy, is tight and fast. The novel follows the Sawtelle family and their ongoing efforts at maintaining a legacy of dog breeding. This is one of the more fascinating aspects of the book, as Wroblewski goes to great lengths to chronicle the Sawtelle’s unique and meticulous methods of selection and breeding. The family’s young Edgar is born without the ability to speak, and the role of companionship and communication in training the Sawtelle dogs become that much more significant. Almondine, one of the dogs, discovers she alone can hear baby Edgar’s cries in a passage that is touching and beautifully written. Wroblewski’s portrayal of Almondine rides that sweet line of being tear-jerking without veering into sentiment, and somehow avoids anthropomorphizing the animal. It is a voice complicated, wise, and yet utterly inhuman. The beasts surrounding Edgar are as magnificent and inspiring as I have ever read. I want a Sawtelle dog. I want twelve of them. The best writers create something completely fictional with a vision and skill that make their stories utterly real in the eyes of the reader. The Sawtelle dogs are real to me.

This idyllic life (say it with me kids, this kingdom) is altered by the arrival of Edgar Sr.’s younger brother Claude, an alcoholic charmer with a shady past who has his own talent when handling dogs. His arrival destroys the Sawtelle family and Edgar finds himself on the run in the wilds of Wisconsin with three yearling pups. This is Wroblewski’s venture into the magical and supernatural, employing a ghost to propel his protagonist. It is in the wilds that Edgar comes into manhood (via The Jungle Book). He and the dogs must recalibrate notions of morality and survival, while back home Claude guides Trudy in selling the Sawtelle legacy to a catalogue company. Anyone familiar with Hamlet knows Edgar’s return yields more tragedy than happiness, but by the time such events occur, I admit I had lost all thoughts and concerns about the melancholic Dane. I was completely invested in the world of Edgar Sawtelle. If sections of this book do not move you to sentiment, then it is entirely possible you have no soul. 

Friends and neighbors, I read lots of books; good books, trashy books, bad books, and ‘great American novels’. I have been trained to read with a critical eye, to pick apart a theme, dissect structure, analyze pacing, just like a skilled physician can discern the slightest malady when examining a patient. So understand my full meaning when I tell you that I utterly fell out of my chair and into the wilds of northern Wisconsin when I read this book, leaving all of life and my own education and prejudices behind. This can’t be Wroblewski’s first novel; the rich narrative and deeply immersive descriptions rivals anything I’ve read in years. The story is Hamlet retold (a mother named Trudy, a shady uncle named Claude), but after the first hundred pages this is an ancillary fact. The pillaging of the literary canon for pop-culture fodder has yielded large profits in recent years, from movies (10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless) to pop-genre fiction (Pride and Prejudice and zombies, Abe Lincoln the vampire hunter). To place this novel among the fun but trite ilk is to discount the wholly original American tale that is Edgar Sawtelle. Hamlet is only a template Wroblewski uses to tap into a tale of universal human struggle. The story is so richly immersing that all parallels are lost as the reader follows young Edgar from the trials and challenges. Anyone sly enough to pick up on knowing nods to Shakespeare’s most famous creation will nonetheless be at a loss to predict any thing. Edgar and his dogs face a world without form and meaning in the wake of incalculable loss and compromised re-definition. In this sense, the novel transcends the current Weird Al Yankovic level of pop art pillaging of literature’s greatest works. Instead, it takes torch from the masters of the past and forms an original and compelling tale in its own right. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle achieves its own triumph, swimming in the waters of Hamlet while guiding the reader to toss his predispositions of such classic forms and conventions aside. The novel is a journey of personal growth and loss without any sense of irony or referential “winks” to the omniscient fourth wall. It is a rare work that can start on one of literature’s most well trod paths and in the process keep one utterly flummoxed as to where the next bend ends.

If I seem to gush, well then, I gush. This book sucked me in from the start, and I checked my critic’s eye at the door. I couldn’t help it. Highest recommendations.


Amy Heishman received an MA in contemporary American fiction from NC State University and teaches at Durham Tech Community College.   She spends her time immersed in cultural studies in the hopes that she may one day subvert her very own third world nation. Her hobbies include the arts, baseball, and schadenfreude.

Mutual Not-Curiosity Society

 

"The Unexpected: A young woman peers curiously at a Ku Klux Klansman in red robes, who attended a City Council hearing on open housing in Durham, N.C.  Klansman Lloyd Jacobs left the hearing shortly after it got under way."

God Don't Make No Junk? Todd Solondz's Palindromes

I have generally tried to stay away from Todd Solondz’s films, for much the same reason that I haven’t seen anything by Lars von Trier.  I prefer to get my depression from the news.

 I finally caved and watched Palindromes the other day.  I have been intrigued by the 2004 film ever since friends reported seeing angry viewers stream out of a showing at a theatre in Durham, NC.  Knowing of Solondz’s fondness for themes of sexual violence and perversity, I was not surprised by the unfavorable reaction.  Following the quasi-success of Todd Haynes’s kaleidoscopic Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There – which some critics alleged was patterned after Palindromes – my interest only grew.

 The film turns out to be a searing attack on sanctimony of all kinds, left and right.  Having been made and released during the high tide of the Bush presidency, it might have been interpreted simply as an indictment of the Moral Majority and its sexual politics.  Certainly, it condemns right-wing extremism through its portrayal of Christian conservatives who plot the murder of an abortion doctor.

But what is far more provocative is its exploration of abortion itself – a theme that is infrequently touched upon in film, and even less so in television.  Films like Juno have treated the topic gingerly, presenting the choice to continue a pregnancy as a noble deed.  The reality that many women choose not to have a child, for personal, medical or financial reasons, is virtually never represented on the screen.

Solondz’s response to this reality is, perhaps predictably, not to create a sympathetic portrayal of woman exercising her right to choose not to be a mother, in the face of resistance from a misunderstanding community.  Quite the opposite.  The film begins with Aviva, the main character, as a four year old reacting to the suicide of her cousin Dawn Weiner (the protagonist of Solondz’s indie hit Welcome to the Dollhouse).  Aviva tells her mother Joyce that she wants to have lots of babies when she grows up, so she will always have someone to love and to love her.  Ellen Barkin stands out as Aviva’s self-absorbed, manipulative mom, who is nonetheless heartened by the adorable things her daughter has to say about reproduction.

The ill-fated Weiner

In this first scene, Aviva is played by a young African American actress, despite the fact that the rest of her family is white.  The character takes the form of a series of actresses (and one actor) in subsequent scenes, reflecting Aviva’s changing personality or, perhaps, the way she thinks that others see her.  Whether skinny or chubby, black or white, young or old, her determination to have a child is unwavering.

At her first apparent chance, Aviva has about 20 seconds of awkward sex with the son of family friends.  The result is pregnancy, much to the horror of her parents, since Aviva is only 13 at the time.  Joyce decides that Aviva absolutely will terminate the pregnancy, despite Aviva’s quiet insistence that she wants to keep the child.  “It’s mine,” she tells her mom, who is not listening.

One of the centerpieces of the film is Ellen Barkin’s cringe-inducing monologue, in which her character twists liberal homilies about self-fulfillment and choice into a grotesque form of materialism.  Joyce outlines the pragmatic reasons for an abortion, listing all the fun things she’s going to get to do if she gets rid of the fetus (which is really “just a tumor,” if you think about it).  She’ll get to have boyfriends. “I don’t want boyfriends!” Aviva says.  What about college?  Parties?  A career?  Nice cars?  How could she not want these things?

Joyce then turns to a more insidious line of argument, describing how she got pregnant when Aviva was three or four, and Dad convinced her that it was financially unwise to have another child.  Think of all the treats we were able to get you because “Henry,” Aviva’s would-be younger brother, was never born, she says.

 Pop-pop gets a treat?

As upper middle class New Jerseyans with a Volvo station wagon and a big house, the family seems to be in little danger of financial discomfort.  Essentially, Joyce tries to bribe (and guilt) Aviva into ending the pregnancy by portraying her potential child as just a line on a budget – a tumor that could be cost-effectively excised before it grows into full-blown cancer.  Aviva, of course, is the cancer in bloom.  It is little wonder that she wants something to love, and to love her in return, in the icy and acquisitive atmosphere of her family home.

Solondz swerves very close to endorsing pro-life arguments about Roe v. Wade resulting in a legal holocaust, as it devalued life to the point that human cells or bodies are just property or assets.  (Hence George W. Bush’s invocation of the Dred Scott decision in the 2004 presidential campaign.)  It is possible that this is what the director believes, but he seems more interested in caricaturing liberal hypocrisy.  After Mom fails in her campaign of manipulation, Dad comes along and asks to be let in to Aviva’s room for a talk.  As he becomes increasingly agitated, his stock liberalisms sound more and more absurd; he nearly breaks down the door as he demands that a terrified Aviva be reasonable and talk it over with him like a mature adult.  Neither he nor his wife is interested in dialogue, though reasoned discourse is their prized fig leaf.  They only want to force Aviva to make what they see as the only acceptable and pragmatic choice.  That way, they won’t have to deal with another mewling money pit coming into the world (and their home).

The film takes some awful and occasionally melodramatic turns from this point, which need not be recounted here.  Suffice to say Aviva runs away from home some time later, now in the form of an obese African American adult.  She happens upon a cheery clan of Christian ultra-conservatives, who adopt abused and disabled children and induct them into a fairly ludicrous gospel pop act.  Blind, albino, limbless – these children find love and acceptance with the Sunshine family, encouraged to see themselves as capable and worthwhile.  “Jesus made me this way,” one of their Backstreet Boys-esque songs says.  “He doesn’t make mistakes.”

The scenes with Mama Sunshine and her brood have a surreal, dream-like quality.  It is as if Aviva landed on the Island of Misfit Toys, except here it is the Island of Unaborted Babies.  Some might say Solondz is exploiting the disabled individuals who play these roles, but I suspect he wants viewers to confront their own uneasiness with disability.  The Sunshine children are not filmed in a lurid or sensationalized way; if anything, they represent a bright contrast to the brittle ideal of perfection (physical, financial, cultural) that Aviva’s profit-maximizing parents uphold.

The Sunshines, of course, have some dark secrets, and Aviva eventually makes it back home through a bizarre and violent series of events, morphing into yet another white form.  Jennifer Jason Leigh portrays Aviva with her characteristic weariness and cynicism, creating a stark contrast between Leigh (a jaded adult in teenage clothes) and Barkin, who worries about whether her mothering is sufficient according to some kind of competitive metric.  Aviva encounters her cousin Mark, Dawn’s brother, who appears to have been wrongfully accused of child abuse by a relative and is now shunned as a monster by his entire family – except for the empathetic Aviva.

Given his tragic experiences, it is not surprising that Mark is a fatalist, but he insists that society is not to blame.  He was always this way; everyone is always the way they are, he says, and their basic nature never changes, like a palindrome that can be read backwards or forwards.  He is an atheist and a pessimist, brushing away Aviva’s questions about the possibility of hope or the existence of God.  If anything, one assumes that Mark’s perspective is the closest to Solondz’s own views.  The director’s incredibly dim take on humans as vain, selfish, brutal creatures does not seem to comport with the merry, everyone-has-value belief system of the Sunshine family – and yet Mama Sunshine is one of the only characters to show compassion in the entire film.  So what is he trying to say here?

Perhaps Solondz suggests that, whatever guise Aviva appeared in, she was always the same.  Her yearning to love was no more going to change than Mark’s resentment of the world around him.  At the risk of a false equivalency, the moral failings of Aviva’s own family and the Christian extremists were both violent and inhuman – in spite of the fact that both would claim they value human life in their own ways.  Could it be that Solondz’s reputation as a bitter misanthrope masks a deeper humanism?  Palindromes ridicules the hedonistic materialism of Aviva’s parents, which led them to disregard her desires and deny her the “choice” that her liberal mother supposedly believes in.  It also blasts Christian conservatives who embrace “life,” but only on their own terms, and with glaring limitations.  There seems to be hope in Aviva’s own capacity to love, although consider yourself warned – the last moment of the film threatens to smother this green shoot of optimism with bitter irony.

AC