Category Archives: Random Blogging

Defining Chutzpah

Chutzpah is a yiddish term that roughly translates as “gall” or “nerve.” Borscht belt comedians have historically illustrated its meaning with the following example: a young man kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.

The young man in that story looks almost reasonable in comparison with AIG–or more accurately, in comparison with AIG’s former CEO, Maurice Greenberg. Greenberg may go down in history as the ultimate example of chutzpah. As Politico noted, in an introduction to their report,

Remember when AIG took a $182 billion bailout only to turn around and hand out seven-figure bonuses to the same guys who tanked their company? Grab the pitchforks — it gets better.

Politico was talking about the fact that AIG’s current board was meeting to consider whether the company should join a lawsuit brought by Greeenberg and former shareholders of the insurance giant. The suit centers on an allegation that the terms of the bailout that saved the company were unfairly onerous.

Think about that for a minute.

In fact, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say your brother-in-law came to you with a problem; thanks to his own greed and all-too-clever business dealings, his company was on the verge of ruin. Assume he begged for your help–a loan to get him out of the dicey situation he had created. You wouldn’t have given him the loan, but you knew that if you allowed him to go under, other family members–most of whom were innocent of any participation in his folly–would lose money they’d invested in his business. Some would lose their life savings. Your nephews would have to drop out of college, your sister-in-law who had cancer would lose her health insurance…The consequences of his stupidity and venality would be horrible.

So you grudgingly agree. You tell him that you’ll lend him the money, but only on condition that he repay it with interest at an above-market rate and subject to other terms you hope will protect you and his company against further profligate behaviors. He eagerly agrees, since he knows no one else would lend him the money and the higher rate is justified by the greater risk involved. Deal.

Immediately after he gets the money, he takes his management team on an extravagant cruise. And then, when the business stabilizes, he sues you, alleging that the terms of your loan were unfair.

See what Politico meant by the pitchforks reference?

I don’t blame AIG’s current board for going through the motions of deciding whether to join this jaw-dropping lawsuit. They have an obligation to their shareholders to actively consider even bizarre claims, and they decided–quite prudently–against it. But the audacity of the Greenberg lawsuit–the staggering sense of entitlement it displays–is absolutely overwhelming.

It easily displaces other examples of chutzpah. In fact, it may be the most apt definition of the word yet encountered.

It makes me want to ask that famous question: have you no shame, sir?

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Membership Has its Privileges

Yesterday’s blog included a “you aren’t one of us” moment, and it got me thinking about the nature of membership and exclusion.

We all value membership–in a club, a society, a community, a polis. Political thinkers suggest that one of the stabilizing elements of a liberal democratic society is the widespread phenomenon of “cross-cutting” memberships; that is, the fact that we are all members of multiple, different communities. In my case, I’m a member of the Jewish community, the academic community, the downtown community, the legal community, etc. etc. At any given times, some of those ties are stronger or weaker, but the net effect is to embed me into a number of different (i.e. “cross-cutting”) groups. If that were not the case–if each of us belonged only to a single group–the liklihood of competition for power and comparative advantage between groups would cause constant conflict.

The bottom line to this theory is that the more groups in which we claim membership, the wider our perspective and the more inclusive our definition of “we.”

The problem is, in order to define membership, we have to be able to distinguish between those who belong and those who don’t. And therein lies an apparently inescapable problem.

If you think about it, human progress–or at least American progress–has been defined by extending social membership to people who were previously identified as “other.” The Irish, Catholics, Jews…and more recently and incompletely, Asians, Latinos and GLBT folks. Even women.

When people are “other,” when they are not members, not one of “us,” it becomes easy–and acceptable–to generalize about them and to demonize them. The Irish are all drunks, Catholics do the Pope’s bidding, Jews are shifty businesspeople, women are too emotional…Membership definitely has its privileges, and the most significant of those is acceptance into the group and the right to be judged on ones own merits, as an individual.

This all leads to a conundrum. With membership we also have exclusion and its negative consequences. Without membership, however, we lose cohesion. With no “we,” society becomes atomized, a collection of self-serving “I’s.” Exclusively nationalistic “we’s” can lead to fascism (defined as the identification of the individual with the state) or authoritarianism.

The trick is to find the proper balance–enough community within enough communities to give us comfort and generate mutual support, enough individualism to facilitate the exploration of our human distinctiveness. The Greeks called it “The Golden Mean.”

We have a way to go.

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Pretty Brutal….

A couple of weeks ago, NYTimes columnist Gail Collins cited a poll in which ten percent of Americans self-reported a favorable view of communism, while only nine percent had a favorable view of Congress.

Lest you think she was making that up, here’s a graph displaying the results of a similar poll, with equally dismal results for our legislators.

When people have a higher opinion of head lice than they do to our elected Representatives, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve reached a high (or low) water mark of sorts. What was that theory about electoral politics and accountability?

Calling the Founding Fathers….

Revisiting…Everything

Random thoughts for a Sunday morning….

The Sunday morning interview shows are focused on the GOP’s “identity crisis.” The New York Times has an article by the Public Editor about a not-dissimilar debate occurring within journalism over the meaning and possibility of “objectivity.” An academic listserv I participate in has a recurring discussion about the advisability of holding a new Constitutional Convention, or at least seriously considering significant constitutional changes. Various religious denominations are grappling with challenges to settled theological positions, including their beliefs about the role of women, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Educators are struggling to redefine both ends and means. Technology is changing everything from how we live to how we define friendship.

I could go on, but you get the picture. We live in an era when–as the poet put it– “the center will not hold.”

The existential question, of course, is: what will emerge from all this confusion and change? Will we take this opportunity to think about the “big” questions–what kind of society do we want to inhabit? What would a more just system look like? Aristotle was among the first to suggest that an ideal society would facilitate human flourishing; what would such a society look like?

Unfortunately, there’s not much evidence that these “big” questions are being asked. Instead, we seem to be surrounded by quarrelsome adolescents, desperately trying to game the system and retain–or obtain–relative advantage.

I wonder what it would take to change the conversation?

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Sometimes You Have to Eat a *** Sandwich

Pat McCarthy is a very thoughtful commenter to this blog, and he made an important point yesterday about compromise–a point that deserves consideration. What, exactly, do we mean by these repeated calls for political compromise? Should progressives “compromise” our insistence that GLBT citizens are entitled to the same civil rights as the rest of us? Can we really expect–or demand–that conservatives “compromise” deeply-held religious beliefs?

I think there are two different, albeit compatible, answers to that question.

The easy answer–the facile answer–is that honorable people don’t compromise on matters of moral behavior; we don’t sell out our gay citizens, act in ways that violate our consciences. The caveat here is that few political battles really involve such choices. Votes on tax rates, minimum wage, health care, the social safety net and the like may have moral underpinnings, may implicate our beliefs about social justice, but rarely present us with stark decisions about Good and Evil. (Note caps.) You’d have to be morally obtuse to characterize the recent, shameful mud-wrestling over the fiscal cliff negotiations as a fight for first principles.

Which brings us to the more honest–and arguably more difficult–definition of political compromise:  prudence, a recognition that few votes are “all or nothing” and a willingness to accept less than everything in order to get something, in order to move, however incrementally, toward one’s goal.

One of the more memorable quotes in the wake of the fiscal cliff vote was Senator Bob Corker’s glum conclusion that sometimes, it is necessary to “Eat a *** sandwich.” The difference between a passionate advocate and a zealot is that the advocate will be willing to “suck it up” on occasion in order to achieve broader goals, willing to do what is necessary in order to advance his cause over the long term. The zealot is the “all or nothing” guy, and generally, what zealots get is nothing. As someone once said, politics ain’t beanbag. Or as Kenny Rogers might put it, people who actually get things done know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.

There aren’t bright lines when principles are at stake. We’ve all seen people selling out their principles and justifying that transaction on prudential grounds. But when zealots insist that every s**t sandwich is a betrayal, we all lose.

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