Ross Bleckner’s BS
Ross Bleckner, painter and now UN goodwill ambassador, recently traveled to Gulu district, Uganda, to teach former child soldiers and abductees how to paint.
Using thousands of dollars’ worth of paint, brushes and paper shipped from New York Central Art Supply in the East Village, Mr. Bleckner, 59, worked with a group of 25 children — former abductees and ex-soldiers — for more than a week at a Roman Catholic aid center. The children made 200 paintings that will be sold at a benefit at the United Nations headquarters next month at which Mr. Bleckner will be appointed goodwill ambassador. Several of the luminous paintings are now on view in the front window of the clothing store Moschino in the meatpacking district, whose company is providing money to support the Gulu project.
Fantastic. Use the suffering of children for commercial gain. What a great way to desensitize the masses to the problems in northern Uganda.
“One of the things we realized about a fine artist, a painter, in this role is that the work that emerges from it really needs no translation, no dubbing like a documentary or music — it’s immediately accessible to anyone who sees it,” said Ms. Monasebian, whose office estimates that human trafficking generates $32 billion a year in profits, third only to drug and arms trafficking.
Wow. . . this is unadulterated ignorance. Artistic work actually does, at times, require explanation. J.D. Salinger, for instance, suggested people nowadays are too dumb to understand his subtext. And art, as it relates to painting, is sometimes confusing to laymen. Take Jackson Pollack. Most people do not “get” his work right away — sometimes never. People tend to say “my kid can do that,” but what they fail to grasp is Pollack’s deep understanding of color: you can’t approximate Pollack’s work because you don’t have the color mastery that he had. This knowledge is not intuitive.
In addition, children’s paintings, too, can be abstruse. Sometimes, especially within therapeutic play contexts, a child might draw things that require professional interpretation (for instance, relative size of self compared to others, relative size of genitalia); moreover, remember Columbine and Virginia Tech? These situations all show that we are poor interpreters of obvious attempts to communicate. It is not immediately accessible.
“What this mission accomplished is what I call microcreativity,” Mr. Bleckner wrote in a catalog of the children’s work. “It is a personal interaction which gives someone the tools to create something that they can be proud of, and which can help them on the arduous path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.”
What my mission in Uganda accomplishes is what I call EMPLOYMENT and EDUCATION. It’s a personal interaction which gives people the tools to FEED THEIR FAMILIES and BETTER THEIR LIVES — things they can be proud of, which can help them on the relatively easy path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.
I don’t understand this continuing celebration of mediocrity. It’s as if we’re all too easily fooled by flash and sparkle. It’s like we’ve left intellectualism and probity thrashing in the wake as we sail forward for the sake of sailing forward. Where we are going is uncertain.
I can’t believe it’s not bullshit
The Associated Press is going out on a limb for Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the hapless Somali pirate currently awaiting trial in New York.
It was a steamy day at their crumbling home in central Somalia with no running water or electricity, and the mother’s face glistened with sweat after a morning of selling milk. He looked up from the bowl of rice she had just served him and said: “I am saddened by the way we live,” the mother recalled.
You’ve got to be kidding. Examine the facts:
1. Living ANYWHERE when you’re poor is difficult. The fact that Muse’s family had rice to eat and SO MUCH MILK THEY COULD SELL THE EXCESS does not make me sympathetic. Example: Robert, my manager at Song Industrial, used to sweep the streets of Kamapala for 60 cents a day. He would buy himself a cup of porridge as his only meal of the day, every day. Robert didn’t have rice, he didn’t have milk. But you know what? He never stole from me — ever. And that’s why he’s now my top guy at SI — because he has the guts to make an honest living, irrespective of his circumstances. I HAVE NO SYMPATHY.
2. Note that it states very clearly that Muse’s family has neither water nor electricity. When you put Muse, then, in a temperature-controlled cell with unlimited running water and electricity, YOU ARE NOT PUNISHING HIM.
3. It is highly likely that the punishment for any kind of stealing (hell, we’ll lump piracy into this) in Somalia is death. Hence, PRISON IS NOT A PUNISHMENT.
4. How do you hope to rehabilitate Muse in an American prison? You will teach him how to eat our food and live in our society and wear our clothes and follow our rules. Then you’ll send him back to Somalia, where none of that applies. Yeah… very clever.
They waited and only one of the other sailors came out of hiding. Muse was told that the others were afraid to surrender as long as the pirates were armed — and so the teen put down his gun. He then took off with a flashlight to explore the ship, at one point shining his light on one of the crew members who was hiding in a darkened engine room.
During a struggle that ensued, Reza stabbed Muse in the hand with a knife. They were able to overpower Muse, tying his hands, according to the complaint. They then took him to the safe room.
Just kill this guy. Just drop him back into the ocean. YOU PUT DOWN YOUR GUN? You don’t deserve to live.
Muse’s mother sold milk in the local market, earning just enough to pay $15 in rent for her single-room house and her son’s school fees. The house has no running water, and once a week Hassan scrimped to pay for three jerry cans full of water, hauled into town on the backs of donkeys. It was enough to cook — but not enough to bathe, and she said she could only afford to allow her children to wash themselves once every two weeks.
“How can we wash ourselves every day? There is no such thing,” Hassan said. “I don’t own any sheep, or goats. I don’t even have enough money to own my own chicken.”
She said her son attended a private school where he studied English. Crew members say that on the Alabama, he was the only one of the pirates who spoke English — and perhaps for that reason, he took the lead, giving out orders.
Note the facts: Muse comes from a good family. They put school ahead of basic needs, and I admire that. However, Muse committed a crime. And the punishment for that crime must be just that — punishment. If you did not let Muse wash every day, took away his access to running water and power, and gave him one or two small meals a day, that would not be cruel; that would be “meeting his needs.” Yes, that makes me sound harsh, but THOSE ARE THE FACTS.
“His plan was to make lots of money,” said 17-year-old Mohamed Warsame, who used to play soccer with him. “He wanted to marry a beautiful girl and he thought that a marriage could only be successful if the man had lots of money. His plan was to make his family rich. He always talked about his family’s poverty.”
Making lots of money should not involve piracy. What else can I say here? Everyone wants to make lots of money and marry well and take care of Mom and Dad. That does not justify crime.
Mahat Dore, a Somali who acted as a middleman in several ransom negotiations, said the pirates are not seen as criminals but as businessmen. “It’s obvious that piracy has now become the only lucrative job available in Somalia,” he said.
Bullshit. Skilled Somalis are employed by international companies (including airlines). Yes, pirates like Muse are hired and paid; however, when the C.I.A. recruits and trains field operatives, they too are hired and paid. Claiming piracy is a job is like saying spying is “just a weekend gig, you know, until my band gets that record deal.”
His court-appointed lawyers say Muse is completely bewildered. He does not understand the American legal system and only knows a world where justice is dispensed with brutality.
He had no contact with the outside world until his lawyers met him Friday at the courthouse. They encountered a teenager who looked very lost.
“Imagine yourself in Somalia,” said lawyer Philip Weinstein. “Imagine how overwhelmed you’d be.”
This is such bullshit! “Imagine yourself in prison,” said non-lawyer David Hasselhoff. “Imagine how overwhelmed you’d be.” Criminals generally do not presume they will be caught — that is why they commit crimes; hence, when criminals are apprehended, they are naturally overwhelmed. Sure, being Somali doesn’t help, but remember this photo of Nick Nolte? Does he not seriously overwhelmed? Does he not look very lost?
Look, these are the facts: Muse is a prisoner and the US people are seeking punishment for him. All I’m asking is that we actually punish the guy, so that, at the very least, when the movie they make about him (you know, after the book deal and all) comes out, it’ll be just a teeny-weeny-bit interesting.
Pretty please?
Growing Up Goldman
I just came back from an event at Goldman Sachs’ London office, and boy do I feel itchy. The Harvard Club of London, together with Goldman, hosted a talk by Jack Meyer, former caretaker of Harvard’s endowment. While I was intrigued by his perspective on risk management, which took up the first 20 minutes of the talk, Meyer spent the rest of the time trying to sell a really bad idea.
Briefly, Meyer’s involved with the Asian University for Women, and tonight’s talk was really an AUW fund-raiser. I’m fine with that — I’ve been to Tupperware parties before — but I was disappointed by the lack of foresight on this project. Specifically, Meyer is talking about setting up a world-class university in Bangladesh to serve the needs of women (presumably) from disadvantaged Asian communities. Here are the problems:
1. Why a university? If you have to go through the trouble of recruiting applicants throughout Asia, why not just institute a scholarship program that utilizes existing resources? Just develop a course curriculum at an American university and send your selected scholars there.
2. AUW states that the minimum criteria for acceptance, for their undergraduate program, are:
- Age: 17-26 years
- Education: 10+2, a total of 12 years’ education
- 65% or above marks in Secondary School Certificate (SSC)/10th Grade/equivalent and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC)/12th Grade/equivalent result
- 70% marks in English of HSC/Year 12/equivalent (If your medium of instruction was NOT English)
- Experience and aspiration to lead and contribute for own country and society
The problem with these criteria is that they select for females who have access to 12 years of education — something extraordinarily difficult to come by and NOT A FUNCTION OF MERIT. Being able to access education in developing countries is largely a function of money: you have money, you go to school; you don’t have money, you go to work. Worse still is that (presumably) you’re asked to get first-class marks in English IN COUNTRIES WHERE ENGLISH IS POORLY TAUGHT.
3. Why put the university in Chittagong, Bangladesh?
I understand the desire to locate the institution in a hotspot, but doing so unfairly disadvantages the students. Being in Chitta-middle-of-nowhere means that you make it unnecessarily difficult to retain talented faculty, unreasonably cumbersome to maintain world-class facilities, and, hell, do you even have consistent electricity in Bangladesh?
I think it’s another irrational idea being sold by otherwise rational people. (Jesus! Why is it so difficult to find financing for good ideas? Like building a waste-management infrastructure that generates almost no waste and employs hundreds of disadvantaged people? Ahem.)
As an aside, I wasn’t surprised by how many douche-bags showed up at the event. I think the guy from one of the earlier (season 2?) Apprentice shows was there too. What really gets me is how some of these people never learned social-savvy. For instance, one of the women there approached me at the elevator and tried to start a conversation by asking if I thought the room was too hot. I replied with the obvious: “oh, that’s just me. I have that effect on people.” Which subsequently paralyzed her with nervous giddiness — the same feeling you get when a crush calls you out for dropping a pen to look up her dress. And that’s when it hit me: these may be the Masters of the Universe, but, in a way, they’re still just kids.
UPDATE (April 24th): O.K. I concede. It’s frame control, actually.
Solomon’s Digging Tools
Solomon is one of my employees. His job is to support night operations and attend the gate after the sun comes up so the day crew doesn’t have to get into scuffles with the thugs at 7th Street. Recently, Solomon had the fingers on his right hand cut off because Jeremiah was screwing around and turned on the grinding machine while it was being cleaned. (There goes that law career . . .)
I found the following safety video on Buzzfeed. Sadly, it doesn’t quite do the job I need it to do (I just don’t want to be shooting and editing industrial video footage all summer), but it’s good for a laugh.
Not Alone…
I have long wondered whether anyone else grasps the concept of social profitability (it is, on its surface, unintuitive). The NY Times reveals I’m not as alone as I sometimes feel:
Because of the difficulty of defining these social ventures, it is hard to gauge the exact number of them, but there are indications that there is increasing interest in the idea of using business to tackle the world’s big problems (NY Times, March 4, 2009).