"The History of the Standard Oil Company" is published
in 1904. The author is Ida Tarbell, whose negative exposé of John D. Rockefeller's business practices is a contributing factor in the U.S. government's antitrust legal actions against the massive petroleum conglomerate in 1911.
They say it's always darkest just before the dawn, don't they. Don't they?
Is anyone else feeling the littlest bit deja vu? Of course one of the reasons I enjoy the year 1904 is for that very reason -- the sense that we've been here before, that we're right on the verge of it all -- the fin de siecle, the calm before the storm, the pause before the end of the world as we know it. It's that undercurrent of almost delirious but precious despair you feel in "Peter Pan," and "The Cherry Orchard," and "The Golden Bowl," as I've mentioned before.
In a way it's the "liberal despair" the NYT critic finds in as innocuous a subject as Wes Anderson's films -- he calls "The Darjeeling Limited's" story of three inexplicably wealthy brothers "The Twee Stooges" -- but I rather suspect the despair he sees beneath the surface has deep roots for the filmmaker's generation and his fans.
Think of it for a moment if you will from the perspective of [the analogy of] those born in 1904. They were children for WWI, in their twenties for the Great Depression, and then when they're pushing forty they're up to their necks in WWII.
So, like Wes, imagine you're thirty-eight years old, and the president starts talking WWIII. Oh man, you think. Then you're like, oh sure, fine, screw it up now, thanks alot -- hey Mom and Dad, how'd that mad-cap prosperity of you Boomers -- how'd that all work out for you guys, huh? (Fictionally speaking here, of course. Tennenbaum fictional. Adjust your facts accordingly). Perhaps at this point you reflect on the current situation and you remember way back when to the time before we invaded Iraq and somebody said, "When they say it isn't about the sex, you know it's about the sex. And when they say it's not about the oil? It's about the oil." Now you smile ruefully at the wisdom contained therein. It was pretty funny, then. But now -- WTF man they were right, it wasn't that lame mushroom cloud thing, it was about the oil. This is bad. Can we all agree that this is bad?
But then you look at it from another perspective, the perspective of there being eighteen trillion barrels of oil under Iraq, so that, dude, hello? even if the war has cost us, like what, a trillion dollars, we're still ahead. So like, smoke that, Liberal Losers. We still end up with the eighteen trillion barrels of oil, okay? Do the math.
And things end up looking pretty sweet and rosy on the horizon again, even with the war with Iran, or WWIII, or whatever, right? What? Why the long face? Why the despair? Come on.
Oh BTW Dr. Sanjay Gupta totally corrected me last night -- it was a teen in Virginia with the superbug, not Long Island, and they closed the school but then they reopened it (Scary? Not scary?), and there was also a little kid swimming in Arizona's Lake Havasu who got an amoeba in his brain and died, and as Anderson Cooper said, frowning and looking hot but concerned and being an "Active Listener" with Dr. G, "That's bad, right?" And Sanja grimaced and said, yeah, the amoeba thing and the superbug thing are both pretty bad, and it's scary -- don't miss their Planet in Peril program! -- but in the meantime, that Britany/Lindsay/Larry Craig is totally off the hook but Anderson is keeping them honest, so it's okay, look at this bright shiny thing over here! Don't be Scared!
A friend of mine calls CNN the Children's News Network. And everyone thinks I should change my homepage. I'm taking suggestions.
They say it's always darkest just before the dawn, don't they. Don't they?
Is anyone else feeling the littlest bit deja vu? Of course one of the reasons I enjoy the year 1904 is for that very reason -- the sense that we've been here before, that we're right on the verge of it all -- the fin de siecle, the calm before the storm, the pause before the end of the world as we know it. It's that undercurrent of almost delirious but precious despair you feel in "Peter Pan," and "The Cherry Orchard," and "The Golden Bowl," as I've mentioned before.
In a way it's the "liberal despair" the NYT critic finds in as innocuous a subject as Wes Anderson's films -- he calls "The Darjeeling Limited's" story of three inexplicably wealthy brothers "The Twee Stooges" -- but I rather suspect the despair he sees beneath the surface has deep roots for the filmmaker's generation and his fans.
Think of it for a moment if you will from the perspective of [the analogy of] those born in 1904. They were children for WWI, in their twenties for the Great Depression, and then when they're pushing forty they're up to their necks in WWII.
So, like Wes, imagine you're thirty-eight years old, and the president starts talking WWIII. Oh man, you think. Then you're like, oh sure, fine, screw it up now, thanks alot -- hey Mom and Dad, how'd that mad-cap prosperity of you Boomers -- how'd that all work out for you guys, huh? (Fictionally speaking here, of course. Tennenbaum fictional. Adjust your facts accordingly). Perhaps at this point you reflect on the current situation and you remember way back when to the time before we invaded Iraq and somebody said, "When they say it isn't about the sex, you know it's about the sex. And when they say it's not about the oil? It's about the oil." Now you smile ruefully at the wisdom contained therein. It was pretty funny, then. But now -- WTF man they were right, it wasn't that lame mushroom cloud thing, it was about the oil. This is bad. Can we all agree that this is bad?
But then you look at it from another perspective, the perspective of there being eighteen trillion barrels of oil under Iraq, so that, dude, hello? even if the war has cost us, like what, a trillion dollars, we're still ahead. So like, smoke that, Liberal Losers. We still end up with the eighteen trillion barrels of oil, okay? Do the math.
And things end up looking pretty sweet and rosy on the horizon again, even with the war with Iran, or WWIII, or whatever, right? What? Why the long face? Why the despair? Come on.
Oh BTW Dr. Sanjay Gupta totally corrected me last night -- it was a teen in Virginia with the superbug, not Long Island, and they closed the school but then they reopened it (Scary? Not scary?), and there was also a little kid swimming in Arizona's Lake Havasu who got an amoeba in his brain and died, and as Anderson Cooper said, frowning and looking hot but concerned and being an "Active Listener" with Dr. G, "That's bad, right?" And Sanja grimaced and said, yeah, the amoeba thing and the superbug thing are both pretty bad, and it's scary -- don't miss their Planet in Peril program! -- but in the meantime, that Britany/Lindsay/Larry Craig is totally off the hook but Anderson is keeping them honest, so it's okay, look at this bright shiny thing over here! Don't be Scared!
A friend of mine calls CNN the Children's News Network. And everyone thinks I should change my homepage. I'm taking suggestions.
It's all about the oil, though. Just so you know.
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