I'm undecided here; I don't know if Mobil was interested so much in creating a Strong Daddy state as they were in abolishing the (mostly imaginary, of course) Giving Mommy state. The constant message of those op-eds was (sometimes literally) "the regulatory state is killing the goose that laid the golden eggs!" But there might have been …
I'm undecided here; I don't know if Mobil was interested so much in creating a Strong Daddy state as they were in abolishing the (mostly imaginary, of course) Giving Mommy state. The constant message of those op-eds was (sometimes literally) "the regulatory state is killing the goose that laid the golden eggs!" But there might have been some recognition that politicians who were friendly to that goal would also generally be helped by a public who was afraid of (at the time) crime and communism. And that maybe a generalized fear of Terrible Things about to happen could play into that, and a disaster show could nudge things that way... And obviously general trends don't always need explicit, top-down commands with a precise long-term goal in mind.
(And if one wanted to dismiss these thoughts, one could point to the old, old pedigree of horror in popular culture, or even "high culture." It was the very radical [for her time] Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who wrote "Frankenstein," after all.)
Yes and, Stephen King is famously liberal. But horror in the arts aims for a laugh, ultimately -- the shudder followed by "Ha! Damn thing got me good!" In other words, no one loves Lovecraft because Cthulhu might be real -- they love him for making it so easy to pretend for 10 pages. Whereas the Havoc show builds horror by showing real fatalities, and though there might be high comedy in its posing as "educational," Havoc is not really funny like, say, Rosemary's Baby, or sexy like Carmilla, or thinky like Frankenstein. It presents death, but doesn't really synthesize that into catharsis. I feel like I am tenting my fingers now I'll shut the fuck up.
1978, when borrowing money could cost you 22% interest, and everyone could still remember Nixon's wage and price controls. When the EPA and the Clean Water/Air Acts were shiny and new, and after the oil shock delivered by OPEC there was serious discussion of nationalizing a couple oil companies.
Not gonna claim Mobil was right, but they did have their reasons.
True, but what struck me was how quickly and easily "We've gone too far regulating our corporations, it's time for the pendulum to swing back" became the new conventional wisdom. I remember that case being made, for example, by Max Lerner, probably the most liberal columnist in the very liberal New York Post. (Not a typo; there must be somebody else who's old enough to remember when the Post editorial page was maybe the left-most in the nation.)
Those reasons are pretty much related to not making as much money as they could and that their only responsibility was to deliver shareholder value -- a primary idea of the idiot Milton Friedman
I'm undecided here; I don't know if Mobil was interested so much in creating a Strong Daddy state as they were in abolishing the (mostly imaginary, of course) Giving Mommy state. The constant message of those op-eds was (sometimes literally) "the regulatory state is killing the goose that laid the golden eggs!" But there might have been some recognition that politicians who were friendly to that goal would also generally be helped by a public who was afraid of (at the time) crime and communism. And that maybe a generalized fear of Terrible Things about to happen could play into that, and a disaster show could nudge things that way... And obviously general trends don't always need explicit, top-down commands with a precise long-term goal in mind.
(And if one wanted to dismiss these thoughts, one could point to the old, old pedigree of horror in popular culture, or even "high culture." It was the very radical [for her time] Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who wrote "Frankenstein," after all.)
Yes and, Stephen King is famously liberal. But horror in the arts aims for a laugh, ultimately -- the shudder followed by "Ha! Damn thing got me good!" In other words, no one loves Lovecraft because Cthulhu might be real -- they love him for making it so easy to pretend for 10 pages. Whereas the Havoc show builds horror by showing real fatalities, and though there might be high comedy in its posing as "educational," Havoc is not really funny like, say, Rosemary's Baby, or sexy like Carmilla, or thinky like Frankenstein. It presents death, but doesn't really synthesize that into catharsis. I feel like I am tenting my fingers now I'll shut the fuck up.
1978, when borrowing money could cost you 22% interest, and everyone could still remember Nixon's wage and price controls. When the EPA and the Clean Water/Air Acts were shiny and new, and after the oil shock delivered by OPEC there was serious discussion of nationalizing a couple oil companies.
Not gonna claim Mobil was right, but they did have their reasons.
True, but what struck me was how quickly and easily "We've gone too far regulating our corporations, it's time for the pendulum to swing back" became the new conventional wisdom. I remember that case being made, for example, by Max Lerner, probably the most liberal columnist in the very liberal New York Post. (Not a typo; there must be somebody else who's old enough to remember when the Post editorial page was maybe the left-most in the nation.)
(Outside of The Village Voice; sorry, Roy.)
Ah yes, the Dorothy Shiff era. BTW, "conventional wisdom" seems to have turned into "eternal wisdom" in their copybooks.
Those reasons are pretty much related to not making as much money as they could and that their only responsibility was to deliver shareholder value -- a primary idea of the idiot Milton Friedman