you say potato...

North Korea nukes;

Hugh Hefner;

NFL - concussions;

NFL - protests

-------------- It's possible that I've focused more attention on the NFL in the past six days than I had previously in the past 31 years or so...

Friday it was a New York Times article about concussions -- by Sunday night, it was protests expressed by kneeling or arm-linking or strategic absence from the field...


Now it's --

Hugh Hefner was a trailblazer!

Hugh Hefner was a sleazy pornographer!

Shut off Trump's Twitter account, he's going to provoke Crazy North Korea to cause a nuclear holocaust!

----------------------

I'm gettin' tired...

________________

People who comment on Hugh Hefner seem to fall into three separate but sometimes overlapping "camps" --

1) readers who have happy and romantic memories of using Playboy magazine to learn about sex -- some who grew up in the 1950s and 60s say they had no other access to this info

2) people who strongly criticize the objectification of women -- this camp blames Hefner for opening floodgates to harsh and graphic and by now somewhat ubiquitous forms of -- umh -- (smut)?...  and

3) people who objected to Playboy and similar publications because it seemed to encourage immoral behavior.

----------------------------
Jay Amberg in Neptune, New Jersey Commented:  "Looking back, as a baby boomer, I think three things had a profound effect on my adolescence, Playboy, the Vietnam War and Woodstock, though not necessarily in that order."

Susan in Staten Island wrote in, "I'll honor him lounging around in my pajamas....all day."


DRS in Toronto said, "I dunno.  Hard to see him as a hero.  More like a male madam with piles of good books on the bordello bedside tables.  And as good for women as fundamentalists who insist on covering them from head to toe.  Bunny-tailed and scantily dressed is equally non-liberating."


CA Meyer, Montclair, New Jersey:  "Someone so reviled by both the Christian right and the PC left couldn't have been all bad."


Matthew B, Lakewood, Ohio -- "I looked at Playboy because I wanted to see naked girls, but I discovered a world hidden from me in middle America.  I heard black voices, gay voices, meek voices, braggadocio voices, bigoted voices and free thinking voices.  I thank you sir...."


Wrote Michael in Denver, Colorado, "I'm just reading this for the article.  RIP Hef."

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[last part of Guardian editorial begun here yesterday] --

The symptoms of the malaise are clear and Mr Corbyn's bold claim is to have the cure.  The medicine prescribed by the Labour leader is uncontroversial elsewhere.  Rent controls for housing are coming into force in Scotland to deflate ballooning rents.  Public ownership of utilities is a mainstream view in western Europe.  

Labour's reversal of corporation tax cuts would merely return the rate to its 2011 level and still leave companies shouldering a lighter burden than they do in bigger European economies.  The party should be congratulated for debunking the idea that decreasing corporate taxes is the only way to increase investment.


What is fascinating about Mr Corbyn's speech is its hidden depths, most notably on possible "alternative models" to capitalism.  The Labour party sees in the future not just the rise of robots, which might entrench economic feudalism, but also the worry that too many people will remain trapped in drudgery-filled, low-productivity jobs.  

Although Mr Corbyn did not spell this out, he referenced a little-publicised party report that fleshes out Labour's view of the new economy.  This states that accelerating automation is a key political project.  

Labour's goal, the report argued, should be to accelerate into this more automated future "while building new institutions where technological change is shaped by the common good".  Mr Corbyn's socialism is evidently more intellectually bracing than previously countenanced.


Oratory is not shallow or frivolous -- it is at the centre of our political process.  Mr Corbyn has inspired the faithful by telling party members what they want to hear.  His plans are premised on the idea that "there is a new common sense emerging about how the country should be run".  

This "common sense", a phrase significant in any attempt at political and social transformation, challenges the idea that the truths of society can be found only in markets.  In proving electorally successful, Mr Corbyn can lay claim to have expanded the epistemic range of public debate.  Ideas once thought unsayable have become acceptable.  


This year was when the crisis in economics caught up with the crisis in politics.  But the future contains the biggest issue to face Britain since the end of the second world war.  Mr Corbyn's gnomic utterances on Britain's long-term relationship with Europe were telling.  

Labour's muddled thinking is obscured by the shambolic approach of a ruling Tory party fractured over Brexit.  The Labour leader has proved he can lead a congregation.  But he will need a broader message to convert the masses.
[end]

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