Airfares were in disguise before today, but we can spot bad behavior
It’s a welcome development. As of today, travel vendors are required by the Department of Transportation to include taxes and fuel surcharges right up front when the price of the ticket is quoted. No more will shoppers experience that painful price jump when they click through the final purchase screen. All unavoidable expenses are incorporated from the start.
This change finally makes base price the same as cost. It also makes purchasing travel sensible, like purchasing stuff in Europe: The amount on the price tag is what you pay.
It has always been one of the cornerstones of American hucksterism. Businesses love separating the price from the true cost because it makes a sale more appealing. Never mind the fact it’s a lie. Everyone pays the full cost, not only the base price.
So of course some of the big vendors have been responding to the change to “teaser fares” with some weasel-like email messages. Don’t they know that travelers are thrilled? Why apologize?
Air-hotel packager Go-Today.com explains it this way: “Consumers should be aware that fares have not increased; they simply reflect a difference in how pricing is displayed.” That’s the bottom line, and it’s true. But other companies are editorializing, and that’s where they step in it.
Sleazy Spirit Airlines has made a business out of making the cost of airfare seem lower than it truly is. It has had its wrist slapped by the DOT already for deceptive advertising. (I hope the DOT scrubbed thoroughly afterward.) Unsurprisingly, the airline, which builds out the true costs of travel by charging even for carry-ons, tried to spin the new rule as an erosion of American justice, saying it is being forced “to hide” taxes in your ticket quotes now.
Spirit’s fear-mongering email is typical of the false victimhood that hucksters hide behind these days:
New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares.
This is not consumer-friendly or in your best interest. It’s wrong and you shouldn’t stand for it.
Starting January 24, 2012, fares are distorted.
Why?
Thanks to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest fare rules, Spirit must now HIDE the government’s taxes and fees in your fares.
If the government can hide taxes in your airfares, then they [sic] can carry out their [sic] hidden agenda and quietly increase their [sic] taxes. (Yes, such talks are already underway.)
“They can carry out their hidden agenda”? I’d put on my tinfoil hat, but Spirit would charge me extra to carry it on. You’d think the Boston Tea Party took place on an Airbus. It’s not fooling customers who know the issue is not about taxation but about advertising deceptive prices, a charge that it paid a fine for.
Spirit alleges a federal conspiracy because it can’t pretend airfares cost $9 anymore. California’s Sen. Barbara Boxer is having the company for lunch, and rightfully so. It’s detestable and disingenuous to manipulate customers into believing that their liberties are eroding when the only thing eroding is Spirit’s ability to deceive them with impunity. Since it has built its business model on the old bait-and-switch, of course it’s mad. It also has to pretend that the way it’s been misleading you all this time has been just.
Starting today, January 26, 2012, the Department of Transportation is requiring airlines and online travel agencies to include all mandatory taxes and fees when advertising fares. This is a big win for travelers.
We wanted to alert you to this as it will make flights and vacation packages appear more expensive than you may be used to. In reality, you are simply seeing more of the taxes and fees up front. Base prices themselves are not increasing, and the taxes and fees are the same…
The way Booking Buddy breaks the news makes me wonder: Well, if it’s so great for travelers, then why weren’t all the vendors doing it before today?
Is it because up until today, they didn’t care much about what would be great for travelers?
I give credit to the few third-party booking sites that were adding in mandatory fees to begin with, including Kayak and TripAdvisor. Add those guys to the top of your browser bookmarks because they were being frank with you anyway.
They didn’t need partial or incremental disclosure to make sales more attractive — and didn’t require the wrath of the government to quote costs fully.
Pride in new technology always seems laughably callow later: Thomas Edison bought the “Genius of Electricity” sculpture at the Paris Exposition of 1889 (West Orange, NJ)
Facebook’s ever-changing look, including Timeline, could be called a triumph of simplification, which is to say a train wreck for easy choices. Love it or hate it — and I, for the record, find it a turn-off — we can’t shake the feeling that things are changing rapidly and to such an arcane degree that it’s a waste of time to figure out how to harness it. Here’s some news: Facebook is applying filters across every aspect of its interface for a very good reason
Facebook’s CFO and public relations tap-dancers tell you it’s about giving you personal choice. But that’s not the most important side of the story. No, Facebook is changing mostly because it sells ads when it railroads you into a new system that limits and labels your usage.
Most of the major sites we use now purport to be able to “customize” what they show you based on what you’ve looked at before. But this worrying fascination with personalized content is built on some logical lapses about who we are and what our behavior really exposes about ourselves.
I’ll be quick since I know you have headlines to barely gloss on Twitter, but there are seven essential fallacies that the whippersnappers at Facebook think are true — but aren’t.
1. If you don’t click on a link, you’re not interested.
I can tell this just from my own web stats on this site. While my post about a cool interactive 1924 aerial map of Manhattan had lots of traffic, relatively few people took things further and clicked on the actual source map at NYC.gov. Simply learning about the map was enough for most people. That’s the way it is with links. We read the headlines and we read the lead paragraph. Much like the inverted pyramid of newspaper tradition, we can glean the basics from the leading edge of a story without having to read further. So a click is not representative of interest, but only of a certain kind of interest. Sometimes, it’s merely an indication the headline was confusing and we needed to understand what was going on. Yet Facebook, Google, and most trendy Web media outlets use a click as their measure of us (as I wrote about in my “The Tyranny of the Click” post). It’s a fallacy.
2. You primarily want to hear from the same group of people.
So if we agree that a click doesn’t equate with whether I care or who I am, it stands to reason that my lesser-known acquaintances and friends are of interest to me even if I don’t alway interact with them. That’s why I friended them to begin with. In fact, often I use Facebook to keep tabs on people I don’t know very well yet, but would like to. If there’s one thing Facebook is good for, it’s what I call passive affection. (“Facebook’s Gift to Society: Passive Affection” is a favorite post on this blog.) Yet Facebook’s algorithms decide who is important in your life based on your interactions, and they hide all others until you happen to notice they’re missing.
3. You only want to know about things you already like.
In the old days, you’d thumb through a newspaper and even if you didn’t bother to read the articles, you at least were exposed to the headlines so you had a sense for what was going on in the world. Not anymore. Even Google’s search, which we all think of as a raw resource, delivers different results from person to person, which was exposed in Eli Pariser’s depressingly prescient TED talk about “filter bubbles.” Now, two people entering the same simple term in Google will be shown two different results page based on their past usage. This self-selection for the familiar threatens to make us all shallower and more ignorant. I despaired over this same development in “It’s Content You Want to See!“.
4. You want your activities to be turned into ads.
Of course, the reason all of this is happening is Facebook and Google want to be able to tell advertisers what you’re clicking on so they can make more money off you. That’s why they’re doing everything they can to exclude stuff they don’t think you will click on. The need for newspaper advertising was gutted once our consumer economy discovered instant Web search (I wrote about that in “How the Web Destroyed our Economy“), and now advertisers are successfully horning in where they know they’ll find us: on social media. It’s a well-worn argument that most people would rather preserve their privacy than have their activities sold piecemeal. Even setting aside privacy concerns as a matter of transition into a new digital age, the tactic of commodifying our clicks is logically flawed. Because what I click on is not necessarily representative of what I like (see Point #1), most of the time the targeted ads I’m shown are insultingly off-target anyway. I often click on things I have no knowledge about, naturally, because I want to learn about them, so it makes little sense to use that click to market to me later. It’s bad enough that I can’t find what I want in the stores anymore because the modern customer service default is, “Go look online.” Now even my own online life is being used to crowd out the things I do want to see in favor of ads for things I don’t want.
5. You care mostly about today.
This is one good thing about Facebook’s Timeline, which I otherwise hate: It allows you to go back so that stuff you said can be found. Lots of people despise this very fact about it, and it still only gives you the illusion of preservation, since none of it will ever be written down in a certifiably preserved form that isn’t subject to accidental deletion (my concern in “You Are Being Erased“). But Twitter, unlike Timeline, is intentionally temporary. It’s nearly impossible to track down a tweet once it’s a few days old, and even the most powerful programs can’t dredge up a tweet from several years ago unless an outside entity happened to archive it at the time. The result is that we are relentlessly tossing important thoughts on the discard pile simply because the design of our sites knocks them downward, off the table and out of sight. For social media to truly reflect us as humans, it must learn to be about all of us, the before and the after, and not just hook into our prurient interests.
6. Algorithms can predict intangible things about you.
Dating sites boast that their mathematical formulas can pair you with the perfect mate based on questions you have answered. But there is far more that goes into attraction. The echoes of your grade school sweetheart, the reverberation of your upbringing, the whiff of pheromones, the pang of past traumas… none of these can be quantified by a whiz kid programmer. We can’t even predict them ourselves; it’s metaphysical chemistry. We are amalgamations of our experiences. We also, it bears noting, tend to feel “on the spot” when we answer these questionnaires, and we respond with an idealized version of ourselves in mind. So because the questions miss the mark, and because they can’t be answered with the honesty and nuance required anyway, they’re extremely rough. That’s one reason it was so offensive when OKCupid sent me an email saying that from now on, it would show me fewer “ugly” people. How does it know what I find attractive? What we find seductive in others’ faces has many mysterious origins.
7. You love customizing sites.
I’m busy. So are you. I don’t have the energy or the inclination to comb through my Facebook Timeline and select cover images, prune bygone updates and photos, and set subscriptions and visibility levels for all of my friends. After all, the last two, three, and four times I went through the trouble of setting everything the way I liked it, Facebook changed everything overnight, neglected to write instructions, and buried the alert in its privacy notice. Now, nearly every site you use on a regular basis thinks nothing of radically altering its user interface, proclaiming the upheaval an improvement, and then assuming you have the will to think of every possible new privacy violation, cut off every new loophole, and search out every available preference. The people who code these sites assume you will be excited about customizing your usage because they live in a world where computer geeks are overly rewarded, so they assume you are not only tolerant of their endless retroactive patching of blatant weaknesses, but that you admire them for the changes. Your time is their toy.
Such is our era’s technological arrogance. Such are these smug, benighted programmers.
It’s politics season, so people are throwing around the word capitalism (usually as an inoculation against the scary socialism) as if they are invoking the name of a personal deity. So what is capitalism in America today? In my parents’ generation, it meant starting your own business, working hard, and making enough money — sometimes lots. In capitalism, private ownership wins out and thrives.
That was when affordable supply chains and bank loans weren’t shutting almost all of us out. Capitalism once was private and gave us all plenty, but now that the infrastructure is in place, most of us find our labors flowing to others. Just look at your own life if you doubt me.
To us, modern ‘capitalism’ usually means taking a wage from a business that isn’t loyal to you, buying your food from corporations, voting for corporate-sponsored politicians, watching corporate-backed news, buying corporate products from mostly corporate brand stores, and filing the rest of the time with corporate-made entertainment. There is precious little ‘capitalism’ left.
Now, if you’ve got a success story to tell, you’re considered one of the lucky ones who escaped the cycle, and everyone’s envious. It takes a unique person these days to smash through the barriers. The common man, the Moms and Pops among us, rarely can. That’s not a viable system. That’s a lottery.
The few people who are rich enough or creditworthy enough to start their own businesses are squashed by the international and legislative advantage that massive businesses hold.
Too many people seem to think hard work is the same thing as ‘capitalism.’ In truth, almost all of us work hard to put the fruit of our labor in an investor’s pocket. Although most of us are very hard workers, few of us are really ‘capitalists’ the way we think we are, and fewer of us still can afford to be. We confuse toil with capitalism.
Why can’t Americans see their lives for what they really have become?
You don't have to dislike capitalism to notice how our wages flow. (Chicago, 2010)
This video of Badlands National Park in South Dakota is seductive. It’s a nearly four-minute, uninterrupted shot of the driver’s view as he travels east on Badlands Loop Road (240) as it prepares to intersect with 377 near Interior, South Dakota.
Turn up the music and go full-screen and it’s almost like being there. The sunlight is perfect. The colors of the stone and the sky are rich and true.
I should know. I shot it. And it’s a high-def video, so it took me about six hours to upload onto YouTube.
If you want to try this drive at home, here’s where it begins on Google Maps. Then head east.
I love shooting these on-the-fly, you-are-there snippets when I travel. Click here to see one I shot in Tokyo that has more than 1,000,000 views on YouTube now.
I’ve been road tripping a lot this year to research a big project I’m writing. When I got home from one of the most recent trips, I plugged in my digital camera to download my pictures and it stared at me blankly and said, “Pictures? What pictures?”
PhotoRescue took care of most of the problems, still, some of my images turned up corrupted. But my camera is an artist. It didn’t turn my images to snow. It inserted wry counterpoint and beautiful geometric juxtapositions. It found brilliant ways to immaculately bend my own visual commentary. These are true works of art.
Jackson Pollack did not credit gravity as a collaborator of his splatter paintings. So I also claim my camera’s binary hiccups as the fruit of my initial inspiration.
The Treasures of the British Library exhibit is one of my favorite sights in London. Every time I’m there, I see something electrifying, be it Lewis Carroll’s original hand-drawn Through the Looking Glass, the Magna Carta (two copies!), or an 11th-century copy of Beowulf on vellum. And that doesn’t even include the priceless stuff the British stole from other cultures!
One of the things that grabbed me there was a panel where visitors can press a button and listen to the actual voices of famous people who we never realized were recorded in sound. When you suddenly hear the timbre of Florence Nightingale, she becomes flesh-and-blood real. She actually happened!
Many historic recordings have finally migrated online so we can all hear them. Because it’s so energizing to close your eyes and feel these printed names come alive again, I’ve linked a few here. They link to an audio file (usually, at a library). Because of stupid WordPress nonsense, not all of the names are colored as links, but they indeed are, so click on the names.
Edison’s representative in Britain clearly instructed her to speak slowly and clearly. It was, after all, 1890, and if you wanted to be heard all the way in 2012, you had to enunciate. When she refers to Balaclava, she’s talking about raising money for survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854, many of whom were living in poverty 36 years later despite their service to their country. Sound familiar?
When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore. Florence Nightingale.
You’ll never hear 10-dollar words like his in a campaign speech today. People prefer bumper stickers now. But here, after some disarming political foreplay, TR goes for the gusto and advocates for industry regulation, a living wage, work hours reform, and child labor laws. Newt Gingrich would blow a gasket. An industry that was “injurious t the common welfare” was heavily on American minds in 1912, not least because the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which I wrote about in March, happened the year before. (For the record, Roosevelt lost, but it was a messy election with an outcome greatly affected by internal politics in the Republican party. Again, Newt should take note.)
[My favorite bit:] As a people we cannot afford to let any group of citizens or any individual citizen live or labor under conditions which are injurious to the common welfare. Industry, therefore, must submit to such public regulation as will make it a means of life and health, not of death or inefficiency. We must protect the crushable elements at the base of our present industrial structure. We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living–a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit a reasonable saving for old age. Hours are excessive if they fail to afford the worker sufficient time to recuperate and return to his work thoroughly refreshed. We hold that the night labor of women and children is abnormal and should be prohibited; we hold that the employment of women over forty-eight hours per week is abnormal and should be prohibited. We hold that the seven-day working week is abnormal, and we hold that one day of rest in seven should be provided by law. We hold that the continuous industries, operating twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, are abnormal, and where, because of public necessity or for technical reasons (such as molten metal), the twenty-four hours must be divided into two shifts of twelve hours or three shifts of eight, they should by law be divided into three of eight.
Yes, Lenin spoke! But in Russian. He made many gramophone records between 1919 and 1921 to spread the tenets of communism, but in this one, he praises Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, who was instrumental in the revolution of October 1917 and in forming Russia’s communist government, the world’s first. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
[Translation.] All those who worked day after day with Comrade Sverdlov now appreciate fully that it was his exceptional organising talent that ensured for us that of which we have been so proud, and justly proud. He made it possible for us to pursue united, efficient, organised activities worthy of all the proletarian masses, without which we could not have achieved success, and which answered fully the needs of the proletarian revolution. The memory of Comrade Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov will serve not only as a symbol of the revolutionary’s devotion to his cause, not also as the model of how to combine a practical, sober mind, practical ability, the closest contact with the masses and ability to guide them, but also a pledge that ever-growing masses of proletarians will march forward to the complete victory of the communist revolution.
Harry Houdini, like FloNight, was obviously told to enunciate when he recorded this, and the showman delivered. Here, he works up excitement for his most famous trick, the Water Torture Cell. The complicated clauses make it also clear that it was probably scripted, but his pronunciation of “locked up” and “demolishing the glass” give you a sense of his streetwise immigrant roots. Before this natural-born Hungarian’s unnatural death in 1926, he told his wife Bess that he would send a signal from the afterlife if it was at all possible. She tried for 10 years but gave up, heartbroken, after years of silent séances. Hearing this clip makes you wonder if he’d actually already left his message.
Ladies and gentlemen, in introducing my original invention, the Water Torture Cell, although there is nothing supernatural about it, I am willing to forfeit the sum of $1,000 to anyone who can prove that it is possible to obtain air inside of the Torture Cell when I’m locked up in it in the regulation manner after it has been filled with water. Should anything go wrong when I am locked up, one of my assistants watches through the curtain ready to rush in, demolishing the glass, allowing the water to flow out in order to save my life. Harry Houdini, October the 29th, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen, Flatbush, New York.
The party puppet anoints some purple prose by one of his more talented speechwriters with the lustless pallor that typified his career. This snippet from his “Americanism” message is adapted from an address delivered at the Waldorf Hotel for the Ohio Society of New York, which was packed with big contributors to whom he doled out prime posts. Hotels played a huge role in Harding’s corrupt presidency. Not only was he a notorious philanderer, but he got his biggest job in a hotel. Despite being at the back of the pack of Republican presidential candidates, party bosses forced him as the Republican nominee in a “smoke-filled room” at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel. It’s where the phrase, synonymous with backroom deals overriding the will of the people, comes from. You can still rent that room if you want, although I’ve been and it has a dull Renaissance Hotel décor now. Harding also died, still holding office, in a hotel: In 1923, he was rendered nearly as lifeless as in this clip in a bathtub of a suite at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. Some people say his wife poisoned him.
[After invoking the Constitution, he intones this nugget:] In simple truth, there was no thought of nationality in the revolution for American independence. The colonists were resisting a wrong and freedom was their solace. Once it was achieved, nationality was the only agency suited to its preservation.
In the 1870s and 1880s, everyone was racing to come up with the most practical way to record voices, but Edison had the advantage of employing an army of some of the country’s sharpest minds, all of them helping him come up with inventions that he could patent and get rich off of. Sometimes he succeeded in coming up with ideas, but most of his grand business ventures flopped. Here, an elderly Edison recreates one success: his 1877 proof-of-concept recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (that recording no longer survives). At the turn of the century, he was recording the biggest entertainers of the day in an effort to make his proprietary version of sound recording the most attractive to the American market. The recording studio was directly upstairs from his study and library in West Orange, New Jersey, and you can visit it today at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park. It’s just as he left it.
Fresh back from his Nimrod (mis)adventures at the South Pole, Shackleton, who was knighted for his efforts, retells a hint of a snippet of the hardship he and his heroic men endured. (If you’ve never learned about what he went through, don’t let Shackleton’s chilly storytelling skills deter you. It’s incredible.) Incidentally, he left some crates of whisky behind in Antarctica in 1909, and they were discovered last year, the recipes are being duplicated. You can buy Shackleton’s whiskey soon.
At Bryan’s Nebraska home, Edison recorded an argument against too much federal control of the railroads. As ever, the politician hinges his point on the matter of states’ rights. Some things never change. Bryan was so very nearly America’s president (he ran three times and was running when this recording was laid down on the cylinder), and figures so powerfully in the national goings-on of his era, that it boggles the mind he isn’t better known today. He certains sounds like the folksy leader his followers purported him to be.
Taft was Bryan’s opponent in the 1908 election. Labor rights were a huge issue in the day because America had so few of them and the vulnerable classes were being exploited so outrageously. To us today, Taft’s definition of what a labor strike should be permitted to do sounds like the very definition of a strike, but at the time, worker actions were a very scary thing, and they degraded into violence far more frequently than happens nowadays. So his prescription must have seemed soothing — and as civilized as what came to pass and we now take for granted. Taft won.
DLG was the then-future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the reason for this recording is as pertinent today. The early 20th-century British people, disgusted by how rampant industry had stained their cities and poisoned their people, realized it was for the greater good if they took care of the poorest among them. As groups such as the Fabian Society stirred popular empathy, they began taxing the rich to make sure the least fortunate of society were kept healthier. DLG was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and this was his pitch to make that happen.
I am one of the children of the people. I was brought up amongst them and I know their trials and their troubles. I therefore determined in framing the budget to add nothing to the anxieties of their lot, but to do something towards lightening those they already bear with such patience and fortitude. No necessity of life will be dearer or more difficult to get owing to the budget. On the other hand, out of the money raised by taking superfluity, funds will be established to secure honourable sustenance for the deserving old and to assist our great benefit societies in making adequate provision for sickness and infirmity and against a poverty which comes to the widows and orphans of those who fall in the battle of industry. This is the plan, this the purpose of this government. We mean to achieve these aims whoever stands in the way. David Lloyd George.
The daughter of Emmaline Pankhurst was equally badass. Right after being released from prison for her pro-suffrage demonstrations, she repeats this eloquent ultimatum to the government: Give us the vote or else.
The militant suffragettes who form the Women’s Social and Political Union are engaged in the attempt to win the parliamentary vote for the women of this country. Their claim is that those women who pay rates and taxes and fulfil the same qualifications as men voters shall be placed upon the parliamentary register. The reasons why women should have the vote are obvious to every fair-minded person. The British constitution provides that taxation and representation shall go together. Therefore, women taxpayers are entitled to vote. Parliament deals with questions of vital interest to women, such as the education, housing and employment questions, and upon such matters women wish to express their opinions at the ballot box. The honour and safety of the country are in the hands of Parliament. Therefore, every patriotic and public-spirited woman wishes to take part in controlling the actions of our legislature. For forty years this reasonable claim has been laid before Parliament in a quiet and patient manner. Meetings have been held and petitions signed in favour of votes for women, but failure has been the result. The reason of this failure is that women have not been able to bring pressure to bear upon the government and government moves only in response to pressure. Men got the vote not by persuading, but by alarming the legislature. Similar vigorous measures must be adopted by women. The excesses of men must be avoided, yet great determination must be shown. The militant methods of the women of today are clearly thought out and vigorously pursued. They consist in protesting at public meetings and in marching to the House of Commons in procession. Repressive legislation makes protests at public meetings an offence, but imprisonment will not deter women from asking to vote. Deputations to Parliament involve arrest and imprisonment, yet more deputations will go to the House of Commons. The present Liberal government profess to believe in democratic government, yet they refuse to carry out their principles in the case of women. They must be compelled by a united and determined women’s movement to do justice in this matter. Next session we demand the enactment of a women’s enfranchisement measure. We have waited too long for political justice. We refuse to wait any longer. The present government is approaching the end of its career. Therefore, time presses if women are to vote before the next general election. We are resolved that 1909 must, and shall, see the political enfranchisement of British women.
It didn’t. It took nearly another decade. She even had to flee to France to avoid being arrested for her pull-no-punches convictions. She hated DLG but was forced to ally with him for politics’ sake. In the 1920s, fed up with British chauvinism and war hunger, she moved to California. She’s buried in Santa Monica.
In 1929, descendants of Samuel Morse gave London’s Science Museuma wax coated cardboard cylinder, saying it had been used with a graphophone that was demonstrated to Queen Victoria. There was no way to play the tube and no way of verifying the donor’s story. But a half century later, a researcher found mention of an 1888 letter that said Morse had indeed visited HMQ and shown her the new invention. It’s possible that this is her faint voice on this primitive equipment, fumbling for something to say into the cone: “Greetings… the answer must be… I have never forgotten.” But we have.
That day, I was sick as a dog. I should have been in bed. But how often am I in Tokyo?
So I walked everywhere I could. I was in the neighborhood of Shibuya, crossing in an overpass, when I saw something that astonished me.
I whipped out my junky little Canon Powershot A95 (with the swivel screen) and waited for it to happen again. This is what I recorded and uploaded to my non-personal YouTube account. It has now racked up 1,011,000 views, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
This simple little YouTube video of wonderment — sarcasm-free, no trendy jump cuts — still astonishes me. And so does the fact that it thrills so many people across the world.
Over the weekend, I noticed that people began finding my website using a brand new phrase. It’s not a phrase people have ever used before to find me, and what’s more, it wasn’t a fluke. Multiple people successfully got to this website using it.
The phrase is “jason cochran porn.”
At first, I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted that my adoring public was thinking of me that way. Then, I had a sinking feeling that maybe I did something at last year’s Christmas party that slipped my memory.
But when I plugged the same search into Google, I found my answer. It turn out that I have a newly minted namesake. Here he is. Grab some blue!
So that should give my life some future fodder for Three’s Company-style miscommunications.
Welcome to the Web, Jason, and thanks for the clicks! Shame about your clothes. But I truly hope your erotica-craving fans enjoy my recent post on how dirty Oklahoma! is.
It has not escaped my notice that there are a lot of incoming Cochrans these days. This guy is John Cochran, known simply as “Cochran” from CBS’s Survivor. Cochran also takes his clothes off on camera:
Cochran the diabolical mastermind. Well, the other one.
I’d make some amusingly crass crack now, but Cochran attends Harvard Law, so I have to be careful. He also probably endured the same witless grammar school Cochran puns that I did (“It ran? Where did it go?”), and besides, I like the guy. So maybe I should just ask him to write a stern lawyerly letter to the porno Jason Cochran to demand he stop using my name, although Jason Cochran Two’s guns certainly give me credit.
The only person that should be allowed to use my name on screen is me. And besides, in this economy, I need to keep all options open.
I have a few other namesakes on the web. One is an aspiring racecar driver. One is in Arizona real estate. But as far as I can tell, most Cochrans do their jobs clothed.
Hard-core capitalists and campaigning Republicans love to tell us that the free market does for America what is best. Given time and the protection of a velvet rope, competition will mollify inadequacy and the blessings will trickle down upon us all.
It’s bullshit, of course. That’s not the way it works in America anymore. Anyone who has been to a movie in the past 15 years — and sat through 10 minutes of unwelcome TV-style commercials before the show — will tell you that the movie-going experience was better before we had to do that, and that ticket prices did not come down as a result. The product got worse.
The truth is competition will not equalize squat if a business can do one thing: lower the expectations of the consumer. Because all the cinemas across the country shoehorned commercials into the bill at the same time — just as the cell phone providers are capping speeds together and the airlines implemented baggage fees together — consumer expectations were suppressed.
Once you’ve got the expectations low, you can do a few things to make sure your competition can’t end-run you now that you have cheapened things. One is to snag exclusivity with another big partner. But that can backfire. Everyone knows that if AT&T, which diligently bricks some 36 million bricked smartphones nationwide, didn’t have the benefit of years of exclusivity for the iPhone, it would have hemorrhaged customers.
Exclusivity can be expensive, too, since it dings your potential market. After all, if Pepperidge Farm licenses the recipe to the intergalactically awesome Australian cookie Tim Tam , but it only sells them through Target and refers all customers to Target to buy them, then everyone in Manhattan, where there is no Target, will suffer without Tim Tams. This makes bearded travel writers extraordinarily testy, so as you can see, exclusivity can backfire on you.
But there is a second, more lucrative thing you can do once you have subtly gotten Americans to accept your downsized, diminished, flimsified product. That magic money-maker: the add-on fee that makes it whole again.
Take Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. Traditionally, cruises were all-inclusive. But in 2008, it had the bizarre notion of charging customers $15 if they wanted a steak. At the time, it spun the surcharge by saying the meat would be “all natural,” hence the cost.
Which should have begged a big, loud question in the travel press (but didn’t): Does that mean Royal Caribbean is admitting that its regular meals are artificial?
When businesses charge customers more for the “good” variety of their product, they are admitting their core product is substandard. In fact, to make more money, they need it to be.
Don’t you think that Six Flags is more likely to convince you to splash out another $80 for its line-jumping Flash Pass if its makes its queues as Purgatorial as possible? Isn’t it in Apple’s interest to confound consumers to the point where they either buy AppleCare or lay out $49 for a pay-per-incident consultation with customer service? Why replace the old padding on the coach seats if it prods your ass into buying a paid upgrade?
Nearly every major cruise ship also has several additional restaurants that compete with the non-fee meals served in the main dining room. These supplemental restaurants charge extra fees because the food is deemed to be (and often is) gourmet, and those meals are talking points among passengers on every cruise you’ll ever take.
That begged the other question no one in the press seemed to ask: “Why isn’t your main dining room as good?” It’s hard to come up with an answer that doesn’t make excuses for the vendor or patronize the consumer.
And if they’re going to assume passengers are going to crave that better meal, why do people at the cruise lines get so agitated when I write that their food is substandard? They want it to be substandard — so I feel obligated to spend more money in the supplemental restaurant. They just want it to be subtly so.
At the Apple Store, the shelves are stocked with software that, if you squint, exists because there’s a failure of some kind in the boilerplate system software. Why else would I need to buy a program that cleans up my iTunes songs or makes my iPhoto images easy to edit? If the standard Apple product was as splendid as the fanboys say it is, then you wouldn’t need to embellish it by buying more stuff to plug its holes. There wouldn’t be any.
The airlines have learned to turn this concealment of incompetence into a profit model. It will sell you a seat, yes, but if you want a good seat — not one in the middle, or one in the back — then you have to pay more. US Airways’ Choice Seats fees are levied on windows and aisles toward the front of the plane.
For decades, the airlines spent millions on TV ads proclaiming how comfortable their seats and service were. They drummed it relentlessly into our ears. Now, though, the airlines need you to be dissatisfied with their standard service. They need you to upgrade. Their stock prices depend on it.
So you will only hear airlines praise their first class service now.
Even the TSA has gotten in on the add-on bonanza. If you have the cash, you can buy yourself some faster screening. That’s the function of Clear, which enables richer Americans and corporate expense account holders to pay for better access to a government function. Hey, only the little guys wait in line anymore.
The net effect of all these fees is that classism is now oozing into many of the American industries that used to be rather democratic.
Apologists for these add-ons, like the companies themselves, twist things around to rhapsodize that you don’t have to pay them. They will tell you that they provide the option of comfort only for those who demand it. This, to me, is sophistry, and it ignores the historic and unmistakable fact that companies have intentionally eroded their core products to the point where an optional upgrade is nearly necessary, and they have done it under our noses.
The basic product is intentionally designed to be not good enough. It was never like that before.
So how do you persuade consumers that your basic product is basically unworthy without exposing yourself to outright scorn? Simple. You do it by covering your flanks with those two important defenses: exclusivity agreements, like AT&T did, or passionate brand loyalty, like Apple.
Fire down below: Laurey and Curly reach the climax
You may think the musical Oklahoma! is a sweet little show about friendly farmers and cowmen, but I’ve got an arousing awakening for you. Oklahoma! is drenched in sexual innuendo, rape metaphor, and bestiality references. After all, the whole plot revolves around who gets to take Laurey to the “box social” — a coded consummation metaphor if ever there was one.
Many years ago, I wrote this (don’t worry, it’s pretty short and it moves fast) about the 1955 Fred Zinnemann movie version of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s 1943 Broadway musical Oklahoma!. As I decode this assumed G-rated masterpiece for torrid subtext, I guarantee that you will never look at that chestnut the same way ever again.
I wrote this for a film studies course at Northwestern University. It’s a little-known fact that the history and writing of the American musical is a special discipline of mine. I don’t talk about it much, but it’s true. I even have an MFA in music theatre from New York University, a lot of good may it do me.
I wrote this mostly as a lark to see what I could get away with, but it holds up. May my perspective make this old snoozer recharged with sexual energy for you.
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Much has been written about the significance of Oklahoma! in the history of American musical theatre. Most historians place it as the milestone in the integration of the musical’s construction in conveying themes, plot and character. Its reputation among laymen is one of a simpleminded, quaint musical. What both factions ignore in their analyses, however, is that Oklahoma! is full of subtle but rough-hewn sexual and violent undertones that in fact contradict its reputation as mere mild entertainment.
Oklahoma! was released in 1955 after the New York and touring companies had closed and introduced the new wide-screen process called Todd-AO. It was re-released in 1956 by 20th Century Fox in CinemaScope. It tells story of Curly McLain (Gordon MacRae) and Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones), who, in a fit of coquettish spite, accepts an invitation to a social from the brute farmhand Jud Fry (Rod Steiger). Laurey’s ensuing self-torment plus the tension between Jud and Curly drives the plot from that point on. True to the Rodgers and Hammerstein style, there is also a contrasting subcouple in the form of Will Parker (Gene Nelson) and Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), who pines for any man with a seductive intent, including the peddler Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert).
Oklahoma! has reached the status of an enduring classic, thanks mostly to its mainstream proliferation through the Fred Zinnemann film. While its bumpkin characters seem homey and charming in light of modern musical works, the film itself remains fresh and entertaining. The songs and dancing are in part responsible for that, but one might argue that its nearly perverse subthemes of sexual desire and violence help the film maintain a gripping, if subconscious, appeal.
The primary sexual themes of Oklahoma! play themselves out in its characters. There is Laurey, the virginal girl coming of sexual age; Curly, the suave, sexy charmer clearly obsessed with bedding Laurey; Ado Annie, the girl, recently come of sexual age and unable to control her sexual impulses — a victim of her own Freudian id; Jud Fry, who represents an unfettered, unchivalrous sexual carnality that contrasts the cultural expectations of Claremore; Ali Hakim, also a victim of his own id but, unlike Annie, quite aware of his manipulatory manner of obtaining gratification; Will Parker, who is like Laurey in his virginal, wide-eyed view of sex; and Aunt Eller, the matriarch-cum-madam of Claremore, wise in the ways of sex and lust and engrossed with matchmaking her Laurey with a suitable sexual partner — the handsome Curly.
It is Aunt Eller who carries out the first sexual act, which, like everything else in Oklahoma!, is disguised with a down-home flavor. She is seen daydreaming and churning butter (a subliminally phallic gesture), no doubt dreaming of her younger, sexual days. When Curly chats with her, she keeps her eyes focused on him, surveying him and continuing her phallic strokes. The first thing she says to him also indicates her sexual desire for the virile Curly: “If I wasn’t an ole woman, and if you wasn’t so young and smart-alecky, why, I’d marry you and git you to set around at night and sing to me [i.e. be intimate with me]” Aunt Eller’s churning halts when Curly mentions Laurey, her niece. Although Aunt Eller wears a smile as he mentions her, she promptly stops her action and opens up the churn — in essence, castrating Curly in any hopes of making love to such an “ole woman.” In a moment, she’s scooping out globs of butter and saying “you young ‘uns!” (The dairy product metaphor for sex is repeated during “I Cain’t Say No”: “S’posin’ ‘at he says ‘at you’re sweeter’n cream/ And he’s gotta have cream er die?” And later, women’s home-cooked meals are auctioned to their suitors at the Skidmore Ranch.)
The butter metaphor is by no means the only sexual undertheme perpetrated by Aunt Eller. In fact, throughout the film, Aunt Eller is the only person in Claremore who seems to be wise to the ways of sex and appreciates fully the sexual goals of the courtship ritual. Her primary function is that of matchmaker for the girls, helping them obtain a suitable sexual partner.
Nice basket: Curly is obsessed with getting into Laurey's hamper
For example, she opens her home to all the couples on the way to the Skidmore Ranch. Once inside, the ladies undress and primp themselves in preparation for their evenings with the menfolk. Not only is the “Many a New Day” scene voyeuristic on behalf of the viewers, but it is a depiction of how Claremore girls pride themselves on catching a man. The number itself represents contradiction — it’s a feminist stance yet sung while in underwear. Although Laurey may deny the idea that her world centers around a man, we also discover the shallowness of her decree when she nearly breaks down at song’s end. During the song, there are a number of sexual issues: girls try to outdo each other with attractiveness and showiness, women tie their corsets with thrusting, rhythmic pulses and two pubescent girls become frustrated with their own lack of expertise. While the girls primp and preen inside, comparing undergarments and discussing sexuality, the men are outside, dipping their heads in a horse trough. The statement of who’s luring who is more than implicit.
Aunt Eller in essence affects the whole plot. She uses Jud to make Curly jealous enough to try harder for Laurey but when Jud’s obsession becomes apparent, she gets worried.
Aunt Eller also endorses the men in their own pursuit of more vigorous sexual satisfaction. In the “Kansas City” scene, she reacts to the assumed pornography inside the “Little Wonder” first with the expected, gender-ascribed disdain (“The hussy!”) but then gives the men approval from the other side of the sexual fence of experience when she says “How do you turn the thing to see the other pitcher?” Plus, underneath her grey dress she wears a flaming red petticoat, which she flashes along with her legs to the camera in “Kansas City.” Later in the number, Will Parker chooses Aunt Eller over the two adolescent girls, presumably because of her knowledge in sexual matters. The lyric of the song depicts sexual awakening (i.e. the stripper in Kansas City) and sure enough, soon the two adolescent girls are petting Will and sheepishly trying to get him to notice them. At the point when he does embarrassedly notice the two girls, Aunt Eller vanishes off the left of the screen into the train office. It’s almost as if she was making herself scarce to matchmake Will with the young ladies.
She matchmakes at other times, too, stressing physical contact over romantic courtship: (“Why don’t you grab her and kiss her when she gets that way, Curly?”) When Laurey and Curly finally do wed, she protects their intimacy within the house by halting the shivoree crowd at the stoop.
Aunt Eller seems to be very much in control of the townspeople and supervises their mating. During “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” she is shown as the only object in the Todd-AO vista, gazing intently at Curly and Laurey. In “Kansas City,” she escorts the ensemble to the far end of the train platform with outstretched arms, as if pushing them. In “The Farmer and the Cowman,” she whips out a pistol and forces everyone to dance. Also, even though Curly is about to be killed by the “Little Wonder,” Hakim wastes time in telling Aunt Eller about the hidden knife, and she is the one to save Curly’s life; the matchmaking must go on, and by her hand. She even literally auctions off the girls at the social like a whorehouse madam. Yet, however in control she may be, as when she threatens Ali Hakim with an eggbeater down his windpipe, she retains her sexuality, getting a pair of garters in the bargain.
Violence is hardly scarce in Oklahoma! as far as sex goes. In fact, Oklahoma seems to be teeming with an undercurrent of unfulfilled sexual desire and violence waiting to emerge, be it between farmer and cowman or two eligible ladies. Each man seems willing to kill to obtain his love. Curly tries to convince Jud to commit suicide. Jud tries to kill Curly twice (once with a sexual toy). Will tells Ali he would kill him for Annie. Gertie Cummings has fights with both Annie and Laurey (rolling on the ground, of course).
The community structure of Claremore revolves around obtaining sex through appropriate societal channels. Marriage is usually the way to get that sex. When a marriage proposal (and thus the promise of sex) arrives, it is monumental. When Annie is engaged to Ali, she promptly goes to report it to the other girls in the community. Laurey and Curly’s marriage is also a community spectacle.
Premarital sex is often alluded to, however, particularly through the lusty characters of Annie and Ali, who would be termed “sexual addicts” in today’s America. Says Will: “I’m goin’ t’marry her!” Ali: “On purpose?,” implying the famous Oklahoma shotgun marriage. Obviously, any moral code isn’t apparent to Ali. He wants to bed Annie in the Claremore Hotel. He also suggests that he, Laurey and Annie engage in a menage a trois by skinny dipping together. He’s been “feeling up” Annie behind the haystack (his confession that results in his shotgun engagement to Annie). At the end, he’s caught in illicit (by Claremore standards) sex and forced by shotgun to marry Gertie Cummings. Finally, he sells garters and bloomers and other forbidden delights like drugs (the Egyptian smelling salts).
In Oklahoma!, women obtain sexual fulfillment when in a semi-drugged state. “Laurey’s Dream” is the most obvious example. Ado Annie, too, seems ever-comatose and virtually unresponsive, doggedly singing her number “I Cain’t Say No.”
This is how movies audiences knew Gloria Grahame before she played Ado Annie: As a sex addict of another kind
Also, the sexuality of women is related to beasts in Oklahoma! During “Kansas City,” as Will describes the round shape of the burlesque queen, the non-diagetic sound of a horse whinny is mixed in. Later in the number, he sings to his horse as one of the pubescent, sexually-unready girls faintly tries to grab his attention. Before the reprise of “I Cain’t Say No,” Annie compliments Will’s manner of roping horses in between his sexual advances. He also tells Annie that roping steers all day makes him think of her. The connection between beasts and sex is obvious. Later, after “All ‘Er Nothin’,” he pens Annie in with a farmyard fence like a common hog before kissing her. Even Ali Hakim joins in, describing Annie’s “soft, round tail.” At first glance, these allusions seem rustic and apropos for the midwestern setting, but in actuality they are blatant objectifications.
As in other film musicals, dance implies sex. In “Kansas City,” Will tries to teach the young girls how to dance — i.e. how to become sexually mature enough to capture his attention. In her dream, dancing with Jud symbolizes Laurey’s moral decay and at the social, she reels in disgust at the prospect of dancing with Jud. Also at the social, Annie and Will go from dancing together to immediately and furtively sneaking away for hanky-panky — the natural progression. Also, Annie laments Will’s own fidelity after he dances with the two pubescent girls.
Unlike other film musicals, however, blatant objectification of sex is not used much. It is cloaked instead under the character and custom of the Oklahomans. Lusty observation of the opposite sex is frowned upon. Jud peeps on Laurey twice in the film but that act is in no way presented as positive or does it instill desire in the audience. The only time the women are put on pedestals for the men in the town is during the hamper auction. Although the metaphor of the woman’s sexuality as a scrumptious meal for her suitor is striking (and it is repeated when Will compares Ado’s mouth to ripe berries in the reprise of “I Cain’t Say No”), it is hardly as blatant as, say, a Ziegfeld girl, showing legs and bosom with come-hither glee. Like all sexuality in Oklahoma!, the sexuality of the girls is obscured by the charm of local custom. As an audience unused to such coding, we see the custom but not the actual sexuality itself, mistaking it for chivalry.
Each character fits into this chivalric custom. Jud is ostracized not for his sexual desires (even Will owns the “Little Wonder”) but mostly for his selfish and coarse refusal to cooperate with the chivalric code. Curly is attractive because he tries to turn its tables and have the women proposition him. Romance comes when we sense his intense desire to abandon egocentricity and conform to the code, which he eventually does when he proposes humbly to Laurey. Annie’s sexual drive is not reprehensible because she is unaware of her indiscretions and is instead fulfilled by them. Furthermore, she obeys the chivalric code and promptly responds to all gentlemanly advances. Laurey is the perfect ingenue — virginal and a victim of a man’s romantic system, resorting to dreams for her sexual fulfillment. Will, intent on obeying the code at the cost of $100 total, is just discovering the wonders of romance and thus excusable from his reckless tendency to woo every available female. Ali Hakim is a rascal for his shrewd manner of circumventing the code, and also forgivable because of his pure wheedling, con-man ability.
Oklahoma! is not without out-and-out innuendo, however. Take, for example, Will’s “Oklahoma Hello,” in which Annie is straddled (like a horse — the woman as a beast theme) about the groin. Later, at film’s end, a disheveled Will and Annie have clearly been screwing around behind the house: “You missed all the excitement!” someone says. Annie responds, dazed: “No, we didn’t. Hello, Will,” and Will giggles. Did they engage in sex during the trial scene? The audience must guess, but given Annie’s insatiable appetite and Will’s hankering for Annie, we imagine they have.
Naturally, such open-ended presentations and cultural cloaking was the only way that Oklahoma! could appeal both to New York’s sly but conservative audiences and later slip by the film’s censors. Like Cole Porter’s famous double-entendres, Hammerstein’s suggestive script (which was adapted almost word for word by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig for the film) managed to carry off dozens of sexual themes under the pretense of a simple, enigmatic culture.
There’s a storehouse of sexual activity swarming in Oklahoma! and enough to fill several ten-page papers. In overview, however, it suffices to note the several main themes in the film: the cloaking of continual sexual pursuit beneath local custom and chivalry, the dependency of each character on that custom, the matriarchal presence of the madam Aunt Eller and the existence of other major themes such as the sexual linkage of beasts and dancing as they relate to Oklahoma!‘s setting and genre. In those themes alone there is enough to give any Rodgers and Hammerstein fan pause as she or he considers Oklahoma!‘s innate sexuality and perversity.
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Gertie Cummings? Really?
College is hot.
It's not "Porky's." It's R&H: Laurey bathes in front of Ado Annie
