Articles 2024
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Want to Be the Next Apple? Lose the Bafflegab
Bloomberg View, August 17, 2011
Everybody, it seems, wants to be like Apple Inc. Google Inc. is buying Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., many observers say, so it can integrate hardware and software to be like Apple (and to enlarge its patent pool).Last week, Joel Ewanick, the global chief marketing officer at General Motors, declared that “it’s time to clearly differentiate our brand and align closer to a true global brand like Apple.” Translation: We want to be like Apple.
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Obama’s Glamour Can’t Fix His Charisma Deficit
Bloomberg View, August 03, 2011
One thing is clear in the aftermath of the debt-limit debate: U.S. President Barack Obama has lost his glamour. The alluring icon of hope and change has become just another pol, derided by his supporters as well as his opponents. As one headline succinctly put it: “Obama succumbs to the ways of Washington.”
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Branding Medici-Style, No Need for Tiger
Bloomberg View, July 20, 2011
Florentine authorities and residents were appalled when the cast of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” invaded the Tuscan capital for the show’s fourth season, which will debut Aug. 4. What were Snooki and The Situation doing associating themselves with the refined city of Dante and Botticelli (not to mention Ferragamo)? Even New Jersey won’t claim these louts.
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Too Many Public Works Built on Rosy Scenarios
Bloomberg View, July 06, 2011
“Infrastructure” may be one of the least glamorous words in the English language, but with the right touch the concrete and steel of roads, bridges, tunnels, dams and railroads can look as alluring as a movie star. Witness the sleekly seductive illustrations produced for today’s California High-Speed Rail Authority or the midcentury pictures of effortlessly flowing superhighways, a genre that reached its apotheosis in Walt Disney’s “Magic Highway U.S.A.” in 1958.
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Hollywood Auction Ends Myth of Zaftig Marilyn
Bloomberg View, June 22, 2011
We should never again hear anyone declare that Marilyn Monroe was a size 12, a size 14 or any other stand-in for full-figured, zaftig or plump. Fifteen thousand people have now seen dramatic evidence to the contrary. Monroe was, in fact, teeny-tiny.
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Need a Light Bulb? Uncle Sam Gets to Choose
Bloomberg View, June 08, 2011
If you want to know why so many Americans feel alienated from their government, you need only go to Target and check out the light bulb aisle. Instead of the cheap commodities of yesteryear, you’ll find what looks like evidence of a flourishing, technology-driven economy.
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Oprah, American Girls and Other Binge Dreamers
Bloomberg View, May 25, 2011
In her 25 years hosting her eponymous show, Oprah Winfrey changed lives, most notably her own, but she did not change American culture. Rather, she revived and extended an old American phenomenon: the tradition of middlebrow self-improvement that many observers assumed had died in the anti-authority turmoil of the 1960s. While anything but radical, this achievement was nonetheless remarkable.
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The Fantasy of Survivalism
Without trade, every day would be like the aftermath of disaster
The Wall Street Journal, "Commerce & Culture", April 09, 2011
After a distant disaster like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, people have two reactions, both rooted in identification with the victims. The first is, How can I help? The second is, How can I keep this from happening to me?
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"Mommy Track" Without Shame
A notorious article urging flexibility is proven right
The Wall Street Journal, "Commerce & Culture", March 26, 2011
Motherhood, it seems, is the Middle East of social controversy. Alliances may shift, new dogmas and leaders may arise, tactics may change, but the fundamental conflict resists resolution. Despite the efforts of would-be peacemakers, impassioned partisans continue battling to claim all the territory as their own. My way, they declare, is the one right way to be a good mother, a real woman, a fulfilled human being.
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Why We Prize That Magical Mystery Pad
Apple is bragging that owners haven't the foggiest notion how the iPad works.
The Wall Street Journal, "Commerce & Culture", March 12, 2011
When Apple introduced the iPad last year, it added a new buzzword to technology marketing. The device, it declared, was not just "revolutionary," a tech-hype cliché, but "magical." Skeptics rolled their eyes, and one Apple fan even started an online petition against such superstitious language.