The End Of Radicalism

Now that all of the major Occupy protests have been forcibly removed and Mitt Romney will very likely be the Republican presidential nominee, what happened to all of that promise of the popular masses changing national politics? On the right, freshman legislators elected in 2010 via the Tea Party didn't accomplish much: They may have forced some ugly debates, but in the end, never forced the government to shut down and always compromised. Romney, a Northeastern financier who has historically supported abortion, gay rights and health care access for all, is as liberal and corporate as it gets for his party, even if he tries to disavow his past positions. The Tea Party's cause is increasingly unpopular in national polls, as people learn how such a conservative government behaves. Their bloc generally pushed national politics rightward during the past year, but their politics and policy descend directly from George W. Bush's presidency -- a know-nothing approach to pretty much everything -- when they were supposed to reject it and purify the party.

The Occupy protests have become the litmus test of the left: Are you willing to go so far to support public encampments and a relatively socialist agenda? Sure, President Obama has adopted a more populist tone since September, which was about the same time the protests began. Yet the power base of the Democratic Party has essentially the same composition as before -- Wall Street + unions + the well-educated professional class -- and the party's approach to federal politics hasn't changed much, either. The mayors of big cities, nearly all progressives, also weren't able to cope with peaceful protest camps in their midsts. They chose to clear them, even when they were probably the only group of politicians who could've have gotten away with accommodating and managing them.

I'm not sure I can hurdle over the bar that the Occupy movement set. I was enthused that my generation finally mounted a sustained protest against something (even if I stayed at my desk job each day). We certainly had enough content to merit one, though maybe not quite as much as in the halcyon '60s, when there were the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. But, as Ross Douthat pointed out in a recent column, we could dramatically increase taxes on the 1 percent and/or forgive student loan debt, but ... then what? We'd collect more taxes and not more interest without thinking about the structural changes that are needed to lift the U.S. out of its three-year-old morass. More taxes aren't a good answer if they're simply used to support a status-quo system that isn't thinking about systemic change. What about increasing the capital gains tax, reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, instituting a gasoline tax, creating a more flexible immigration policy, ending public pension systems or increasing the Social Security age, among other possibilities?

Really, the person who benefited the most from the Occupy movement was Jerold Kayden, an urban planning professor at Harvard. Turns out the park Occupy Wall Street chose is a privately owned public space and one of Kayden's academic specialties is New York's privately owned public space. As I listened to his lecture about this last spring, as he told our class about his exhaustive cataloguing of these spaces and the advocacy group that he formed for them, I could only think, This sounds like a bit much, no? (Though I realize academics across all disciplines have made more ado about less before.) Then I saw and heard his name everywhere for a month. Damn.

"More Europe!"

The "More Europe" refrain is trumpeted so often as the solution to save the European Union that I'm no longer sure what this means. Philosophically, sure, it implies binding the continent's monetary union to a political one so that Germany's currency isn't tied to Greece's without the premise that they'll also share fiscal and political decision-making. But practically, does it give the world a physical continent and political entity that's more socially and economically equal, committed to an environmentally sustainable future, and politically liberal? Or does it birth one that's more economically straitjacketed, bound by familiar voting blocs and out-of-balance demographics, and nervous about foreigners, particularly African and Muslim ones, in their midst?

That European countries long ago committed themselves to a thick social safety net isn't the sole reason that so many of them find themselves so desperate. In fact, the governments that are the strongest social democracies -- Scandinavia, minus Iceland -- are doing just fine, thank you very much. The numerous poor business decisions by the continent's banks, from subprime mortgage to subprime sovereign debt, are also very responsible, thus requiring governments to pledge billions of dollars to be the banks' backstops. Then again, governments such as Italy's, Spain's and Hungary's et al don't find themselves in such precarious positions because of global capital forces totally beyond their control.

The historian Tony Judt would often write that Europe's social welfare system was developed in the postwar years to guard against future economic crises creating political catastrophes -- out of the war, new shared identity and mission were born. However, such a moment hasn't yet happened in the post-September 2008 world. This is probably because the contemporary failings were, at least in part, of the personal checkbook. It's much easier to blame your Greek neighbors for living lavishly without earning it than it is to blame a whole country for being ruthlessly ruled by one of world history's most evil collection of men, no? What creates the spark for this needed shared identity is unclear to me, though. That takes much more than bimonthly political summits, no?

All the uttering of "More Europe" most strongly reminds me of the old "More Cowbell" sketch with Will Ferrell on "Saturday Night Live." A clip of it is above.

Play "Rainbow Connection"!

The Muppets' new movie is lots of fun, zany and charming, with a love of slapstick that's carefully done. The more I think of it, the more the movie reminds me of reuniting indie rock bands from the 1980s and 1990s than it does of any other new movie I've seen recently. The movie's plot is essentially a reunion show: Everyone reconvenes for one big gig, to save their museum from falling into the hands of a mean-spirited oil tycoon, while learning about the importance of lifelong friendship. The real-life commercial context is essentially the same: After years of inaction, when Disney apparently was unsure what to do with the characters, the Muppets have come back for a big show, which gets lots of knowing, fourth-wall-breaking winks through the film.

Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy et al return to remind their fans from the early '80s, now all grown, why they mattered so much in the early days and to show the new kids that a lot of what they like these days comes from them. You know, exactly like Pavement, Sebadoh, Pulp et al have done during the past eight years or so. The Muppets play some of their classic material, including "Rainbow Connection," but also branch out just enough, with the help of actor Jason Segel, who spearheaded the revival and wrote much of the movie, so that the material is fresh yet comfortable. You recognize the hits, but there are enough new songs and jokes that the whole purpose isn't simply to repeat the past. And just as once obscure indie rock bands have found financial success now that their once penniless 20-something fans are mid-career professionals and Pitchfork sends their popularity skyward with those professionals' children, the Muppets' movie has proved to be a solid hit.

Let's hope this reunion is more like Mission of Burma's or Dinosaur Jr.'s, where they're inspired to release new records that build on the past, than like the Pixies', who've been performing "Doolittle" live for nearly eight years now -- and nothing but -- without writing new songs. The Muppets deserve it. Above is the video for "Man or Muppet," one of the movie's new songs that I thought was very funny.

Farewell, Jose Reyes

That Jose Reyes has left the Mets isn't all that surprising -- the team is deep financial trouble. Nonetheless, it was still startling to open the sports section one morning last week to see he'd signed a new contract with the Miami Marlins. Reyes had been the team's most exciting player for some time now, most especially after Carlos Beltran aged and David Wright's power dissipated. He's one of baseball's few players whose at-bats are always worth watching and is routinely thrilling on the base paths.

In many professions, including sports and urban planning, there's a constant debate between which approach proves the most transformative: incremental, homegrown accretion or large, high-profile splashes? The Marlins, for the past several years, had opted for the former, accumulating a good if unaccomplished collection of young players, which was largely dictated by financial constraints. Now they've abruptly switched to the latter, with a new stadium, new name, new logo and color scheme, and three new large contracts for free-agents, including Reyes'. (What changed about their financial position to allow this isn't clear to me.) Yet, most successful baseball teams during the past 15 years have grown over time from within. Even when the Yankees were vilified for spending obscenely, their best years came when their core consisted of homegrown talent and shrewd free agent signings.

Reyes and the Marlins will be interesting test cases this year. The former because as wonderful as Reyes is, his contract, at six years and $106 million, may be too handsome. He's been susceptible to injuries his whole career and even after his best year, he's not baseball's best leadoff hitter (that's Jacoby Ellsbury). The latter because the Marlins hope the new contracts will finally make the team relevant -- aside from the two years when they won World Series championships, they never really have been -- but they still haven't addressed a systemic problem of Miami pro sports: Too many Floridians are transplants who root for their former hometowns' teams. Lasting change starts at the bottom with a large group of people who actually believe, not only three people, and the Marlins have missed this important point. They want the quick fix, but often those two words don't fit together.

As for the Mets, it's hard to understand where they sit as a franchise. Three subpar seasons are now fruitless because as bad as those were, they're now worse, and they don't seem to have much of a plan or an opportunity to improve.

Neighborhoods In Reverse

My favorite part about Jamaica Plain so far is what you see when you step out of the Green Street T stop's northwest exit: a park and an apartment building (see the photos to the left). Then, you walk west on Green for 10 minutes and the only buildings on either side -- with one small exception, for a nearly socialist printing press -- are residential. Only after 10 minutes do you reach Centre Street, the neighborhood's commercial district.

JP is a neighborhood in reverse -- the subway stop is surrounded by quiet, attractive residential streets and the business strip is hard to reach. In Boston's historical context this is understandable because the right of way that became the Orange Line and the Southwest Corridor Park above it was originally intended for an elevated highway. No one wanted to build anything there, most especially a business, in the late 1960s, but then Massachusetts' governor at the time, Francis Sargent, did something very innovative in U.S. transportation policy: He listened to intense community opposition, declined to build the highway, stopped building all highways in metro Boston's core, and opted instead to allocate the federal money for mass transit, which was a historical first for such a change. (This is yet another reason why Boston is a very interesting place to work in urban design, development and planning.) Now, JP is one of the city's most desirable places to live.

One of my colleagues joked that JP is Boston's Portland, Ore., aka "the place that young people go to retire." I like to joke that it's a glorified suburb -- so many older couples, families with younger children, and cool 20-somethings at the mediocre Asian restaurant on a Friday night! But if it's a glorified suburb, it's the coolest one there is, with quite the exciting mix of people and a commitment to keep it this way. That a place can accommodate hipsters, well-off stroller-pushers, grizzled gentrifiers circa 1986, and working-class families at the same time -- and function so well -- raises the question: Why can't all suburbs be like this? I think if they all had four T stops, such that you were never more than 15-minute walk from one, they would be.