Down On The Farm

Continuing a thought from the last entry's comment thread, my opinions on political issues, on macroeconomics, on global warming, on a whole bunch of stuff, aren't based on much knowledge but rather based on whom I've decided to believe; in effect I've farmed out the ideas to others, owing to lack of time. And the result is that my opinions are the ones that Someone Like Me would have — I vote my hairstyle — and often the people who disagree with me on these issues are the ones who make me the most wary; and so these issues, the ones that I don't understand, are where my own views are most resistant to change. That's because the views are based on my social identity not on my knowledge, and people opposing them represent a potential threat of deep social conflict: conflict between types of people. Someone not believing in global warming somehow represents to me the possibility of my being killed in a civil war or a genocide, even if the particular person I'm disagreeing with happens to be sweet and kind, and even though I hardly know the science or the evidence for global warming.*

Not to say that the ideas I do think my way to and through have nothing to do with my social identity or that people's reflected-upon and well-worked ideas don't nonetheless cluster by social type, since they usually do. But at least I've got a sense of the uncertainties as well as the certainties, and of where potential counterarguments and counterevidence might be coming from.

*Of course, if I did know the science, the person who disbelieved in global warming might nonetheless represent the exact same threat. Whereas if we both knew the science, while this is no guarantee we wouldn't feel the social threat, we might not be arguing from the depths of our insecure social selves. [And yeah, I know that People Who Are Like Me don't think it's possible for someone to both know the science and disbelieve in man-made global warming; but as I said, I don't know the science, so I don't know this.]

Lindsay Lohan

[Wrote this for Left Hip a whole bunch of court appearances ago, but the mag had a change of format and couldn't run it.]

In Herbie: Fully Loaded Lindsay wavers between hesitancy and purpose as she plays a character who isn't sure she has a right to her own talent and destiny. So it's a shock after the end credits when the video to "First" rolls in and there she is being needy and demanding Lindsay Lohan. The song was written by others, and it too may be just an act, but it's the one I fall for and the one that defines her for me. She's got a thin singing voice but it doesn't feel thin, with her command and charisma always front and center.

For "Confessions Of A Broken Heart" she sent Kara DioGuardi emails about missing the attention of her absent dad, and she and Kara worked those emails into lyrics. On the alb, Lindsay wants us to want her, does so more convincingly than Cheap Trick ever did. She splashes around hilariously in "Who Loves You?" and she lives for the day when we'll be desperate and dying inside. She's got two masterpieces, "I Live For The Day" and "Nobody 'Til You," all centered on her vortex of need, the only girl in the room. But now she's caught in the criminal justice system, and once you're in you gotta do what the judges and POs say, gotta show up for court dates and classes, and you can't cut it close or function without a plan b, 'cause bad luck's not an excuse, and you gotta listen to them but they don't have to listen to you.

Watch on YouTube

"Nobody 'Til You" written by John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi