The Day That Lehman Died

This past week marked not only a September 11 anniversary, but also the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse and the beginning of the subsequent fall out on Wall Street and across the US. It seemed like every news organization ran some kind of feature, including one by the New York Times “Where-are-they-now” feature that tried to humanize Lehman employees.

In a different spirit, the BBC created a dark radio play, “The Day That Lehman Died.” You can listen to the whole thing here. The idea of radio plays usually conjures up Orson Welles and aliens for me. In the way that his dramatic reading of a fictional account convinced people that the earth was being invaded by Martians, the BBC play convinces listeners that the financial world is basically a vast conspiracy.

The one-hour play takes place over the September weekend last year that decided Lehman’s fate. It is supposed to take us inside the rooms where the decisions not to bail out Lehman and the decision for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch occurred. The leaders of major US banks are each played by a deep-voiced actor or another. The show is most successful in its role of mapping out what happened over that weekend to non-finance people like me who got tired of following the news last fall. For example, the show explained that the British government ultimately prevented Barclays from purchasing Lehman.

The show is less effective as drama since it doesn’t identify any good guys or bad guys, so there’s no one to sympathize with. Everyone is portrayed as a greedy, power-hungry, or conniving banker. But this also makes for some great comments that reflect the Wall Street culture: One nameless banker to another on Lehman: “Your CEO is a risk machine.” Bart McDade addressing a roomful of bankers: “Confidence…The entire banking system…the free market…the whole thing works because of confidence…The death of Lehman will destroy that confidence. There will be turmoil.”

Definitely good company on the way to work!

A Gate at the Stairs

In the eight years since the World Trade Center towers fell, writers have creatively — and sometimes profoundly — woven the event’s existence into their novels. Most of these are set in New York and often use the events of 9/11 to highlight one of two themes: the ridiculous wastefulness of the late nineties, or the isolation of the modern world. Two successful examples include The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud and Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. Both are set in New York and use 9/11 as an event that immediately forces its characters to reflect and change.

In contrast, Lorrie Moore’s new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, opens a few months after September 11. Tassie Keltjin is a freshman at a liberal arts college in Troy, Wisconsin. She remarks that 9/11 was something that people occasionally talked about, but that the chatter was quickly replaced by the excitement of new classes and new ideas. This comment alerts the reader that this is going to be a novel that recognizes September 11th, without it being a 9/11 novel.

If any genre, A Gate at the Stairs belongs to the category of coming of age novels. Moore fits Tassie in the role of the naïve farm girl off to college perfectly without resorting to clichés. Though Tassie becomes a nanny in the first chapter of the novel, her nannying experience is neither a tell-all of harrowing parenting skills nor a sordid tale of an affair between nanny and husband. Instead, it’s a contemplative look at both recent liberal pretentions and timeless loss of innocence.

Tassie’s charge is an adopted, quarter African-American girl named Mary-Emma or “Emmie.” Her parents, Sarah Brink and Edward Thornwood, are white. Sarah owns an upscale restaurant that uses Tassie’s family’s local, organic potatoes; Edward is a cancer researcher. In other words, this is a model liberal couple, making the model, liberal move of adopting a “colored” child. Sarah even creates a support group for families with colored children. They sit around in her living room as Tassie watches the kids in the attic. They chat about identifiably liberal ideas. Moore lets these chatter wash over us like the way they wash over Tassie in sections like this:

“’Postracial is a white idea…’” This again. It had all begin to sound to be like a spiritually gated community of liberal chat.
‘A lot of ideas are white ideas.’
‘It’s like postfeminist or postmodern. The word post is put forward by people who have grown bored of the conversation…’
‘If you reject religion, you reject blackness.’
‘Black culture here is just southern culture moved north, that’s all.’”

Of course, these meetings don’t really accomplish anything. Through Tassie, we see the ridiculousness. “"This was the sort of snobbery I noticed even amongst the most compassionate Democrats,” she thinks at one point.

In a clever move, Moore ties together her message about the limits of liberalism and the pain of growing up when Tassie discovers Sarah and Edward’s real reason for adopting a child while in their mid-Forties. Tassie realizes that nothing she thought to be true is actually true. Even after this revelation, Moore still restrains herself by not overwriting Tassie’s character. She doesn’t become a different person over night, but just someone with newly gained perspective.

Unsurprisingly for a novel whose main focus is not 9/11, the sections most related to the terrorist attacks and the ensuing war are the least effective. Towards the end of the novel, Moore throws in some plot twists involving local recruiting and the Iraq War which only force Tassie to reconsider the life she knew more deeply. Though this last part is unnecessary, the book’s overall effect is powerful.

Oh, the Taxpayer March

Something seemed to be up when, on my run this morning, I passed many a smiling middle-aged person carrying "Hands off my Body," and "Don't Tread on me Signs." It wasn't until later when the bf and I went to The National Gallery of Art to go poster shopping that it became clear that the few people I had seen earlier were actually part of a much larger rally on The Mall.

The gathering, dubbed the "Taxpayer March," is supposed to be a conservative protest against Obama, health care, big government, and the like based on the left's own tactics. The clever slogans--"Bury Obamacare with Kennedy," ballsy t-shirts, and images of Obama with a Joker were definitely analogous to the loud signs, slogans, and Devil-horn Bush images of the Iraq War protests.

However, this protest looked like a meek imitation. Instead of lots of young people angrily storming the streets, there were many middle-aged people ambling down the road, occasionally stopping for a hot dog from a street vendor. From far away, the taxpaying marchers could have been mistaken for tourists; only their politically incorrect t-shirts gave them away.

But a few key differences between the this rally and the anti-war ones of the Bush era left me queasy. First, it struck me as odd that so many people looked the same in terms of age (hello AARP), accent (Southern), style (trucker), and--most obviously--race (white). I struggled to find one Asian or Hispanic protester. This demographic, coupled with the relatively small size of the protest, seemed to reflect the interests of a small group of people. Secondly, the protest was also ambiguous. With anti-war protests, you know that the goal is to end the war. Today, it was sometimes to end health care reform, sometimes to end taxes. Third, I saw lots of people wearing the same sort of gear, which struck me as very well organized. As in so well organized it might have been by a third, corporately-tied party.

Perhaps I was most unnerved by my own prejudices, by how different the protesters were from people I work and go to school with. But more than that, I am worried that this feeling of difference is what moves these protesters to rally in DC. They are from a demographic that's almost as far from President Obama as they can be, on the surface in terms of race and income. I worry that this separation now obscures deeper similarities: the hard-working background, the support of civil liberties, and--above all--the strong belief in The United State of America.

Feeling Like a Sell-Out

I moved to DC three weeks ago to work at a higher education consulting firm. Since then, my conversations with friends have gone like this:
Friend: Welcome to DC! How's work?
Me: Good, thanks.
Friend (half-kidding): Can't believe you're the one selling out!

There's a slight variation with strangers:
Stranger: So, what do you do?
Me: I work at a higher ed consulting firm down by Georgetown. What about you?
Stranger: The Hill/liberal non-profit/liberal news organization/grad school/public school teacher.
Me: (Thinks maybe next time I should change my answer to "I work in higher ed"). Oh, well, my work's a consulting firm for non-profits, and I tried for a long time to find a job in journalism first, but you know with the economy...here I am.

Yes; that is a touch of defensiveness in my tone.

Indeed, I looked for a job in DC after finishing my undergrad thesis in April precisely to put both my public policy degree and my bleeding heart to work. I had my eyes set on some federal internships and left-wing think tanks. But as it turned out, none of them responded as quickly as the corporation where I now work.

Though the work I do as a researcher is essentially the same one that I'd do at a think tank or in the government, it feels odd to be in DC for a job that can be done elsewhere. There's nothing uniquely DC about higher education--and my firm doesn't lobby either.

At the same time, it's still great to be here amongst tons of recent college grads with intellectual interests. We'll see if my defensiveness wears off after awhile.

Introduction (About Me)

Hello World/My small circle of friends,

My home on the internet, www.cindyhong.com unexpectedly disappeared this week so I have decided to start this other home here at Blogspot until I learn some better html skills and get another domain name.

As you might remember, the other blog was called "Freelance Intellectual," a name that the site designer came up with to mock/encourage me. I've decided to keep the name, but add a twist. Since I just moved to DC, what's better than Freelance in DC? (Freelance here works as more of a noun than an adjective, btw).

I will promise to post more frequently than with my last blog. The arrival of my new laptop should help this goal along. In the meantime, I'm going to develop an archive of any old posts I dig up.

Stay tuned...