Where We Are This Week 01/13/23
Jeff Beck, M.I.A., egg freezing, and the gas stove conflagration.
This is going to be uncomfortable. I’ve never enjoyed self-promotion or solicitation. In fact, they are traits I find totally tolerable in other people but deplorable in myself. It’s not a consequence of a lack of self-worth, it’s just that I irrationally - but irrefutably - view the act as gauche and embarrassing. But here I am.
I’m working hard to improve my newsletter so that it has value to you. I look forward to putting it together each week so that we can check in on one another and I hope to continue to grow and enhance my publication. So, here’s the ask. Would you, dear reader, consider sharing my work? I have a modest goal of reaching 100 subscribers this year, and I would be indebted (platonically, not financially) to you if you could help me with my goal.
I believe in the power of the people, and I believe in strengthening our community. It’s easy to not engage in discourse in our age, but I hope I can provide a place where we can broach even the most contentious of topics. So please, do me a favor and help me grow our community. Share my work if you’re enjoying it, and let me know how I can be better.
It’s evident if you’re paying attention, that each person has something unique to themselves that they are able to contribute to the common good if they so choose. I can only pray that’s what I’m doing.
Life’s A Gas
In what appears to be either a genius ploy by Big Kitchen to drive business this month or yet another ill-conceived plan from state authorities, a ban on gas ranges could be on the cards in the near future.
Richard Trumka Jr., a US Consumer Product Safety commissioner, told Bloomberg earlier this week that gas stoves may contain a “hidden hazard” to consumers and might consider banning them altogether. Trumka went on to confirm with CNN that “everything’s on the table” regarding the future of the appliance. To clarify, only new sales of gas stoves will be proscribed and there appear to be no plans to round up pre-existing gas stoves by some sort of Kitchen Stasi. That is, not yet anyway.
The recent push to eighty-six the appliance is linked to several studies in the last couple of years that show that gas stoves may be bad for your health. The problem is the studies that make these claims are likely bogus. First of all, the institutions that are purporting that an overwhelming dataset reveals significant health risks, predominantly asthma, linked to gas stoves are ignoring the largest study on the topic. Why? The researchers from the omitted study concluded in their findings that they “detected no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”
Furthermore, a 2022 Stanford study revealed high levels of methane were being exposed to members of a household where a gas stove is used. The test environment for this particular research was an airtight kitchen sealed in plastic sheets. They failed to mention that the cook in that particular setting would likely die of asphyxiation before they ever finished preparing their meal. But, sure, they did confirm that maybe it isn’t the best idea to have a gas range in the International Space Station. Vital research, indeed.
Ever adept at anticipating the whims of the federal government, both California and New York have already proposed the prohibition of gas stoves.
It’s never really about science or the truth. It’s about control. One of the greatest conspiracies ever told was that any government actually has the best interests of its people in mind. Joan Didion has an exceptionally telling essay in her 1979 collection The White Album entitled “Bureaucrats” that I once read aloud to my parents in their living room where she details this perfectly.
You can read the article via Google, or buy it online, but I think you should buy it here.
Didion describes the California Department of Transportation’s 1976 implementation of the “Diamond Lane” - the carpool lane that would effectively eliminate an entire lane from use by the average commuter. Through her interviews with the authorities at Caltrans, she revealed that the agency wasn’t interested in improving the lives of their fellow Californians but, instead, was aiming at advancing their political interests. At a press conference, a Caltrans director said as much. “We are prepared to endure considerable public outcry in order to pry John Q. Public out of his car…I would emphasize that this is a political decision, and one that can be reversed if the public gets sufficiently enraged to throw us rascals out,” he stated. Yes, because removing policy once it has been instated has always been such a facile task.
The trial was a complete failure. The department reported that during the first six weeks of the diamond lane, accidents on the Santa Monica, which normally numbered between 49 and 72 during a period of that length, had increased to 206. Didion ends the piece by saying that Caltrans had subsequently unveiled plans to expand the diamond lane to other California freeways at a cost of $42,500,000. Read the essay. It’s perhaps the best account of government at work I’ve ever read.
Missing In Action
Being politically independent and advocating for freedom used to make you an icon - see Young, Sly, Dylan, Lennon, etc. - now, all it does is get your festival slot canceled.
According to M.I.A., she had agreed to perform at London’s Field Day festival this year but representatives from the music festival pulled the plug on her appearance citing her ‘online comments’.
M.I.A., who goes by Maya, has consistently sought to hold the governing bodies of the world responsible for their actions; from the treatment of Julian Assange to global imperialism to vaccine mandates. She’s continually an advocate for marginalized people in the world, particularly the Tamils of Sri Lanka from which she derives.
Throughout her multi-decade career, M.I.A. has routinely oscillated from hero to villain depending upon which partisan stance you’re observing. These are the pitfalls of heterodoxy. According to her assessment, it was an appearance on the Daily Wire’s Candace Owens’ show that was the last straw for Broadwick Live, the festival’s parent company, and its corporate sponsor AEG.
We operate with the highest degree of integrity and uphold values of respect and inclusivity. We do not cut corners or burn bridges; we find creative and ethical ways to deal with challenging situations. We embrace expectations and are grown up enough to give and take tough feedback with humility and an open mind. More than anything we value authenticity, positive energy and fact-based optimism.
These are the words emblazoned on Broadwick Live’s website. Not only does it seem like they didn’t apply their values when dealing with this issue, but actively attempted to undermine them when they brought the vaudeville hook out before M.I.A. ever took the stage.
Personally, Owens aggravates me on several fronts, but if her pedantic conservative punditry is considered the font of controversy, then we’ve already lost the plot. But, the artist who once flipped off the entire nation during the Super Bowl halftime show is now being painted as a right-wing figure, so there you have it.
Full disclosure, I’m a fan of M.I.A, and while I certainly don’t agree with all of her opinions, I’d rather her continue to speak out unabashedly than begin to censor herself. Art and artists are supposed to challenge the status quo; if that’s no longer desirable, then why bother, the whole enterprise will rapidly devolve into flatulent self-congratulatory posturing that vaguely resembles art.
Eggs On Ice
This isn’t exactly last week’s news per se, but you know, it’s my newsletter.
Most companies in America offer some sort of maternity benefits, though it’s certainly not all. It’s not mandated that they offer them to women though it could be debated that a requirement would be an improvement. In addition to the typical motherly accoutrements, many corporations offer financial assistance with egg freezing for the female cohort of their workforce.
Actually, not just ‘many’, 1 out of 5, 19%, of American corporations provide egg-freezing benefits for their employees. In 2015, it was only 6%. That’s an astounding increase - at least for me, it was - until I thought a little more about it. Of course, the companies that have the financial fortitude to do so would include the benefit to women. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a clever tactic to keep women in the workforce while signaling that they’re supportive of women’s rights.
Not only that, according to a small 2017 study, as much as 94% of women, for various reasons, fail to go back and actually use the aforementioned frozen eggs. 6% doesn’t represent that big of a risk for companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon when it means keeping their employees where they belong.
Similarly, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, a spate of left-leaning corporations began to offer reimbursement for any travel costs they might incur while seeking an abortion. Companies like Disney, Starbucks, Meta, JP Morgan, and Amazon all have such policies on the books. It must be convenient that the option that boosts their social credit is also the cheapest. They would much rather pay for a cheap hotel, and gas than an extended maternity leave.
Not unlike the gas stove controversy, this, too, is about control. Not about ‘rights’. The origins of the coffee break are thought to be along the same lines. Employers found that giving workers short, caffeine-laden breaks during work hours led to higher productivity in the proceeding work window. The tradition wouldn’t have stuck if it hadn’t been profitable for corporations.
They say that no good deed goes unpunished, but in corporate America, it’s worth remembering that no good deed is without an ulterior motive. It’s about extracting the utmost out of their resource without spoiling it; it’s Chomsky’s Manufacturing of Consent. See Dave Chappelle’s Equanimity and The Bird Revelation.
Beck-Ola
Jeff Beck died suddenly this week. I played Blow By Blow in its entirety when I started writing this week’s edition of Where We Are. I remember listening to the record as a kid with my dad, laughing at the song names (i.e. Constipated Duck), and thumbing through his thick booklet of CDs.
I love listening to things I liked as a kid. Some things I’ve grown out of, but others I’ve only grown into more. It’s hard to put my finger on why I would have had any interest in that particular record when I was younger - I had neither the intellect nor the musical lexicon to make heads nor tells what Beck was demonstrating. Now, convinced I do possess both of those things - perhaps erroneously - the nine-track album sounds better than ever.
In the early days of my band, I was writing kind of classic rhythm and blues tunes that would - a little too predictably - break down into half-time refrains during the choruses. One day, I was listening to The Jeff Beck Group’s 1969 Beck-Ola, the Rod Stewart-fronted ensemble, and noticed they did the exact same thing.
Excited, I went to tell my bandmates what I had discovered, and that, to me, it meant we were following the right, well-trodden path. Our bass player, missing the point, turned to me and said, “Right. You’re not saying you’re Jeff Beck, though, are you?”
I certainly didn’t have the hubris to claim that I was comparing myself to the legendary guitarist - at least not aloud. Though I may have once entertained delusions that I could have been like him, I now realize I never could be. And that’s perfectly alright. Jeff Beck occupied a space all of his own.
Thanks, Jeff, for everything. Thanks for Constipated Duck and the heaviest version of Jailhouse Rock I’ve ever heard.
See you next week.
Cheers,
~FDA