Midrange Weekly Dec 7
YOUR ROUND UP OF WHAT’S GOT THE MIDRANGE STAFF’S ATTENTION THIS WEEK
Midrange Staff @midrangeyvr
Welcome back to Midrange Weekly, your round up of the events from the world- or failing that, from the internet- that has the Midrange staff’s attention. As Joe Biden wins the election for the 38th time since Nov 3 we’ve moved on from our obsessive neurosis from the existential fate of the world. Kidding of course, everything is still terrible. Here’s what’s grinding our gears or tickling our fancy lately.
Let’s stop pretending Obama is god’s gift to liberal progressivism
He’s not. He never was and was always just a politician with ambitions strictly calibrated along the lines of polling audited rhetoric that skewed moderately left of centre. I’m more than willing to praise Obama for his efforts at pulling America and therefore the world out of the Great Recession and his passage- flawed as it was- of the Affordable Health Care Act. I’ll gladly acquiesce to the argument that both of those were far more anemic than they should have been largely due to congressional obstructionism and the manifest cynicism of Mitch McConnel. Unlike Bush (Katrina) and Trump (Covid), he proved once again that democratic presidents- as in those from the party that actually acknowledge the necessary role of government in macro scale events- are simply better equipped to administer the myriad executive roles of federal government in times of duress. The federal deficit went down under Obama, which is something that actually only staunch conservatives care about, and only when they are out of power and don’t get to piss away the budget on ruinous foreign adventurism or subsidize their own vulture capitalism.
But he’s not a liberal hero and we need to stop deluding ourselves with this fantasy simply because he’s an, admittedly, brilliant orator. First of all, pretty words in a salient and inspiring manner mean precisely dick all in the era of hyper and negative partisanship. All of his brilliant speeches got him nowhere in the face of an antagonist senate that prided themselves on being where legislation goes to die. This isn’t an Aaron Sorkin show, and we pretend it is to our own determent. Obama helped codify gay marriage into America’s legal fabric at a federal level, but by no means because of his personal convictions. Obama stated repeatedly in his run up to his presidency and early in his term that he subscribed to the draconian world view of marriage being restricted to the confines of the man/woman combo. He then tip toed around the topic with milquetoast statements along the lines of his views evolving on the subject. Notice that these views evolving into advocacy for the matter did so in tandem with polling on the matter moving steadily towards supporting gay marriage. In other words, he only got behind it when it was politically safe and expeditious to do so. I have no problem conceding that as mater of personal conviction he always supported gay marrige, but rather than move the Overton window himself with the considerable power of his office, he simply sat on it until others did the work and proved the value of the matter to the nation.
The world reeled in horror, rightly so, at Trump’s astonishing evil as his administration actively sought to kidnap immigrant children from their families as a punitive and deterrent measure against boarder crossing. There’s no facsimile in modern American history for that level of virulent animus, but Obama had a problematic track record as well. Deportations under Obama from 2009-2015 were a staggering 2.5 million people, earning him the derisive nickname ‘Deporter in chief’. That was more than any previous president. While his polices were not expressly targeted towards families, the side effects of such sweeping nets led to family separations of their own under his auspices. The cages that held all of the divided families in the summer of 2018 were already there before Trump was inaugurated.
Speaking of Trump, as we spent the last several years reeling at horror at the unrelenting fuckery of his administration, where was Obama? Writing a book. Just like any another politician of at least middling narcissism, he penned a self aggrandizing and sanitized version of his time in office, as if inoculated from the damage his successor was doing to the country he loved with rapid, if bumbling, efficiency. The most we’ve heard from Obama as this cycle draws to a close is his insulting dismissal of the defund the police movement. Reductively consigning it to a mere catch phrase with no analogous policy proposals, he claimed it was divisive and tactless catch phrase that would turn off moderates. Moderates didn’t flip Georgia for the first time in many of our life times. It was activists and minority voters. This is the rhetoric that people used to argue against civil rights in the 60s. Moderates insulated by wealth and racists that dominated political discourse pre Civil War said the same thing of abolition. A vapid catch phrase that can go on a sign, but with no workable integration into the American economy or cultural organization. The fact that this is coming from Obama and not some right wing troll is hurtful. Policy goals relating to defunding the police have been clearly articulated and budgeted out in many states by activists and representatives. Shifting some of police resources to other first responders with a more specific skill set and for more specific situations is a model that is easily implemented and scalable- and has been successfully done so in other parts of the world. And yet this is where Obama puts his two cents after being mostly MIA during the election, campaigning once or twice only in Florida (where Biden lost). Hope and change though.
I like Obama. I think all things considered he was a better a president than most. With a position so challenging and of conflicting multitudes it’s entirely possible to argue America has never actually had a good president. Being one of the least offensive ones does not make you a liberal or progressive hero. Stop imagining him as you wish he was and start acknowledging the (very recent) past. -Tristan
Pornhub And Turning A Blind Eye
Let’s play a game here.
I want you to read the following statements from a recent NYT article. While you do, I’d like you to ask yourself how far down you’ll go before your conscience stops you. (emphasis mine)
Ready?
Let’s begin.
The red wine I love to drink is delicious. My friends and I indulge in a bottle or two each Tuesday night. It’s become our thing to get wild and talk gossip. Best yet, the wine we drink is only $17 dollars. The wine in question is from California. It’s harvested by Mexicans. They receive no breaks, time off or holiday pay. They are paid minimum wage and work sometimes 15+ hours a day, 7 days a week. Constellation Brands is one of America's largest beer, wine and spirits companies. It’s valued at 6 Billion and has a stock price of over $200. The wine they drink come from Constellation.
Each morning I wake up and dream of my first sip. The smell of fresh coffee stirs me straight. I cannot wait to taste that delicious hot cup. It’s one life’s joys all should engage in. The coffee I love comes from Guatemala. It’s sweet with a medium to full body and lots of chocolate flavor notes. The coffee in question is called Java Planet. It’s harvested by small family run farms in poor rural communities. Daily quotas are pushed upon the farmers, often forcing children to help with the harvest to meet targets and deadlines. Coffee farmers receive anywhere from 7–10% of the retail price of coffee sold in supermarkets. Sometimes this number can be as low as 1–3%. If children are employed, they are not subject to labour standards. Exploitation is on the rise.
If there’s a phone I want, it’s the iPhone. Easy to use and beautiful to look at, this marvel of technology is with me everywhere. I cannot live with out it. When books titled Dying for an iPhone are written about your product, then you know you have a problem. “The authors’ multiyear research began when a spate of Chinese iPhone workers’ suicides in 2010 placed a spotlight on their working conditions. Well-documented in the media and by labor rights groups, those conditions include exhausting work, disciplinary management style, and increasing pressure to produce in short time frames, all for meager wages. Workers experience broken marriages, are separated from family, and are forced to leave their children behind in home towns. Life is monotonous. This is the dormitory labor regime that Pun Ngai described in her earlier works.”
I’ve always watched porn. I’ve never much once given a thought as to its industry outside of having seen Boogie Nights. I mean, who doesn’t watch porn? We all do. We’re sexual beings. It all started when I was in high school. I’d rummage through my Dad’s closet to find his hidden stash of Penthouse. I’d masturbate to those endlessly. Then as I got older, nightly searches on the web fuelled my desires. I’ve never been one to explore the crazy and deviant side of porn, but I’ve been known to type in a few naughty searches from time to time. More out of curiosity than anything. It’s crazy what you can find on here.
Number four strikes at the damning column I read this week. Titled The Children of Pornhub, in it, author Nicholas Kristof takes us through the exploitative layer of underage girls found on Pornhub, the world’s largest porn site. There was so much in this story I did not know.
That Pornhub attracts over 3.5 Billion visits per month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon.
One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th-most-visited website in the world.
Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos.
Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. So even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it may already be too late: The video lives on as it is shared with others or uploaded again and again.
I’m not trying to chastise anyone for loving wine, coffee, their iPhone or for watching porn. All are fine in my books. It’s just that as we enjoy these luxuries, it cannot be lost on us to know how they came to be. Whether we’re okay with their origins and if by knowing more, we might look at them differently. It’s up to you to decide where you land. However, wherever you do, the hardest part of coming to grips with the numbers and the column I’ve presented for you here is the sheer size of these issues. As humans we’re limited when it comes to the amount of compassion we can exhibit. We can’t help it. Once a number gets too large, we turn off. There’s even a term for this type of behaviour. It’s called psychic numbing. Leading behavioural psychologist Paul Slovik has been working in this field and he gave excellent interview to Brian Resnick of Vox back in 2017.
If you can do anything today, please read this piece. It’ll help give you insight into why we turn a blind eye.
“Dad, the first step, you don’t have to solve every problem that you point to; the first step is to create a wider awareness of the problem, to get more people to recognize that we have to be on guard against numbing and all those feelings of inefficacy and so forth.”
If I can’t solve it, I should try to get more people involved [in] trying to solve it. — Paul Slovek
-Jamie
With A New Album Out, Some Thoughts On The Smashing Pumpkins
This picture is priceless.
The Smashing Pumpkins released a new album last week. The record is called Cyr and it’s a far cry from their earlier work. I took the week to listen to it.
Final analysis?
It’s boring.
I mean the title track Cyr is catchy but nothing to cry home about. Synth-pop dominates its ethos, which is something I’m not a huge fan of. Nonetheless, new record or not, listening to Billy sing did bring back plenty of memories. With that, I have one thought I’d like to run through.
Full disclosure: I’ve been a Smashing Pumpkins fan since 1993, the year Siamese Dream came out. It’s still my favourite record.
Are the Smashing Pumpkins overrated, properly rated or underrated?
I ask this because I know of few who actually listen to them. The only person who might is my brother Dave and I doubt he does on the regular. I find this strange.
Societally we revisit Led Zeppelin all the time. David Bowie much the same. If I went over to any of my friends apartments and flipped through their vinyl catalogues, I no doubt would find something from one or both of these acts. It’s understandable why I would. Both dominated their respective eras/genres. Great music transcends and stays relevant forever.
But, when you consider the 90s, the Smashing Pumpkins have to emerge as one of its defining acts no?
I mean, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was massive!
Originally released October 24, 1995, MELLON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS would debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified 9x platinum by the RIAA. It yielded major hits like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”–the band’s unlikely first Top 40 hit–the exquisite “1979” and epic “Tonight, Tonight” as well as a thoroughly inspired series of videos. Produced by BILLY CORGAN, Flood and Alan Moulder, the album would also earn a Grammy Award (1996 Best Hard Rock Performance for “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”) as well as seven nominations. Beyond the more obvious hits, though, MELLON COLLIE is a song cycle of unusual depth and considerable range. It is a collection of stunningly beautiful moments when everything lined up — a moment in time that’s still here to be treasured. — Emi
In 1996 the Smashing Pumpkins were the biggest touring band in the world outside of the Spice Girls. 1979 has to be on the short list of the decade’s most enduring songs, right up there with Smells Like Teen Spirit and Baby One More Time.
Side note: Say what you will about Baby One More Time. It’s garbage in my books. But it was huge nonetheless. That song singlehandedly ushered in all the crap that came after it. Can’t deny its relevance.
(ed note from Tristan- Baby One More Time is in a excellent song, I love it and you should too)
In told, the Smashing Pumpkins have sold over 30 millions records.
So why the lack of love?
Is it because Billy Corgan can be a dick?
Meh, I reject this assumption to a point. From what I’ve read, he’s no less controlling than any lead in a band. This text exchange between himself and bassist D’arcy Wretzky from 2018 showcases his perfectionist streak more than anything. It isn’t as galling as the title will have you believe, but it does demonstrate how much he cares how he and the band are perceived.
This to me is where Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins differ from their grunge counterparts, in that he coveted fame while they all didn’t. Billy wanted Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness to be as revered as Pink Floyd’s The Wall. In a way, it kinda should be. But that’s another story all together.
If you look back on the grunge era of the early 90s, it was fuelled primarily by pushing back against conventional stardom and capitalistic greed. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain struggled mightily with fame. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder much the same. Billy wanted it more than anything. This desire could be why their place within the zeitgeist of relevance has them lacking a strong foothold — it’s never been cool to root for a guy who wants to be liked.
Nirvana brought grunge into the fold. Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and The Stone Temple Pilots cemented its place. The Smashing Pumpkins never quite fit in, even though what they produced was just as singular and poignant in defining the Gen X era. The lead track off their first album Gish, I Am One is as alternative a song as you can find. Swap out Billy’s vocals for Eddie’s or Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell’s and you’ll be hard pressed to not think it couldn’t land on a Pearl Jam or Soundgarden record.
The talent was there as evidenced by the sheer brilliance of their sophomore and third records, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie, with both having multiple top singles. These two albums alone should rank them high on the “I’ve just purchased a record player, these are the first 20 records I’d like to buy” scale. But for some reason it hasn’t and I can’t help but wonder why?
Even if you factor in their downfall these past twenty years, you still can’t dismiss their top flight achievements. Ironically, there’s no clear cut measure for me to quantify these questions or to place a barometer on where I feel the band lands with regards to their standing in society. Artistic perception is often best kept a personal affair.
Nevertheless, for the indulgences of this silly column and my own curiosity, I believe the Smashing Pumpkins land more on the underrated swing of history than anything else. Their first three albums are illustrious, with Pisces Iscariot and Adore both coming up closely behind as standout fare in their own right. The track Obscured is still one of my favourites and a completely under appreciated gem.
Check out Cyr if you’r curious or maybe give some of their previous best a revisit. And if you choose not too, I hope you’ve at least had a chuckle at the title photo I used. Good lord. -Jamie
Flux Five
One of the unfortunate side effects of 2020 for the Midrange team was the dissolving of Mick’s weekly radio-cast Flux. Maybe it was getting cancelled by the Spotify copy-write algorithm, maybe it was the crushing anxiety of not having a job. Or maybe it just wasn’t very good. No way fuck that it totally was good! So here is a new iteration, paying homage the the experimental, abstract, beautiful and sometimes strange side of music.
Thie Week:
El Michels Affair “A Swift Nap”
Bochum Welt “At Dawn”
John Cameron “Liquid Sunshine”
Lemon Quartet “Dry Pot Dream
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman “Dedicated to you”
Enjoy! - Mick
What’s Happening in India Right Now
This is usually a space for editorial content on our part, but considering the protests in Vancouver over the week it seems instructive to shed some light on the developments in India lately. The Indian agricultural sector has been in a state of upheaval since September as Prime Minster Modi announced a massive overhaul to the structural relationships between farmers, federal government, and non government purchasers. At the heart of the matter is the deregulation of prices for key agricultural grains and other staples. Up until now such products had been purchased by the governement at set prices, assuring to an extent a certain amount of business and income for local farmers. Deregulating the prices for grain will allow third party corporations to make purchases at whatever the unruly hand of the market dictates. Farmers fear the pernicious impact of this as large corporations will be able to leverage their capital dominance and steer the market towards lower and lower prices. This will have a precipitous effect, farmers argue and price many of them out of business.
As evidenced by the Indian community protesting these measures by Modi in Vancouver, this is of paramount importance to the majority of Indians. Farmers in New Delhi have blocked several high ways and key points of infrastructure in protest over the last week as well. 60% of the local population of India are farmers or affiliated with the agricultural industry, one that has already been plagued by mass suicides in recent years as the industry entrenches further into recession. It’s this recession, Modi argues, that portended the need to make drastic changes. Despite the massive human effort in Indian agriculture, its contribution to GDP is only around 15%. Such a input/output ratio is not sustainable without massive subsidies. The hope is that deregulating prices and involving private firms will bring innovation and market derived advancements to the industry. The problem with this assessment may be that the private sector merely exploits and bleeds the farmers dry as a stop gap while the country struggles to transition away from farming and into manufacturing. With Covid shrinking the Indian economy across the board, the fear is that everyone is at risk regardless of their context, thus tensions are high. The protesters at New Delhi have vowed to remain until grain prices are set into law, and the community in Vancouver will likely continue to protest in solidarity for some time. It may seem hard at times to partition and more and more moral support across an ever expanding spectrum of global injustices, but at the very least it’s important to acknowledge their circumstances. -Tristan
Things From The Internet We Liked
An Explainer on the Armenia and Azerbaijan War
Vox has a great explainer on the central asian conflict. This is extremely well done. Shed’s some stuff on a matters that don’t really penetrate our discourse in these parts.
Drew Talbert gets Restaurants Better Than Any Comic
Forget that movie Waiting, forget the GTFOH series. Ok actually there isn’t a ton in the medium or otherwise about restaurant humour, but oh wow does Drew Talbert nail it. Playing the roles of the chef, the cooks, the servers, the hostess, and all manner of terrible guests, the LA comedian captures the exquisite and demeaning horror of working in restaurants. To all of us working FOH or BOH you should absolutely follow this guy.
It’s Not Just Trump: Conservatism Isn’t Designed For Managing A Crisis
Over at Talking Points Memo, Michael Linden and Sammi Aibinder have a vital editorial about what conservatism is and isn’t. In excavating its foundational ideological tenets they articulate how it’s a woefully inadequate world view for our current times. Highly recommend you read.