Regardless of how uncomfortable it makes some people, Michelle Obama and her husband are not going to stop telling kids to put away the video games and get some ambition. White kids, black kids, purple kids, it doesn’t matter. They see video games as a cultural wasteland and harmful time-sink that is ruining people’s health and diverting their energies from more productive endeavors, like reading or getting out of bed. I am in broad sympathy with them on this issue.
As for telling black kids that it’s a better ambition to be a doctor or business leader than an athlete or rapper, the statistics bear that out. Very few athletes actually get paid to compete. And very few rappers sell enough music to make a life-long living.
Every time the Obamas lecture kids, people race out to criticize them. You may want to defend your Call of Duty: Black Ops II habit, but you know you’d rather your kid read a book.
As for telling black kids that it’s a better ambition to be a doctor or business leader than an athlete or rapper, the statistics bear that out.
Business Leader? Why do we want more soulless scumbags in the world? Why not community leader, or some other profession that will make a difference in the community. Also, they do realize that athletics open a lot of doors that otherwise wouldn’t be opened, right? Do they think that Steve Largent or J.C. Watts would have represented various Oklahoma districts in the House if it wasn’t for football?
I know I’ve had enough of corporate overlords…too bad community organizers and teachers aren’t better paying careers.
being a business leader is not necessarily synonymous with being a scumbag.
At least 98% of them are. They’d run over their grandmother if it meant beating Wall Street estimates that quarter.
I work with business leaders on a daily basis. Some of the greatest assholes I’ve ever met are business leaders. But the percentage isn’t anywhere near where you put it.
Some of the generous, evolved and progressive people I have ever met are business leaders. And generally assholeness is a barrier to being at the top of their profession.
I will grant you that some industries (financial services comes to mind) breed more assholes than others.
Sorry, the more time I spend in high tech boardrooms the more I think the percentage is actually almost 100%. I’ve seen managers who at one point in their past had been enlightened and progressive but, as the promotions came, they learned to adopt the same winner-takes-all outlook. If they didn’t, they didn’t get promoted.
And, sadly, I have to include myself in that 100%. It’s kind of like a double life – outside work, away from those I work with, I hold and express progressive views. At work I toe the line. My career has skyrocketed in recent years as I’ve learned to compartmentalize this way. I suppose I might tell myself that some day in the future when I get to a certain level I’ll manage according to my values, but you never actually get that chance. The way modern companies are set up there are always overseers – even for CEOs and the chairmen of the board – to keep the management in line.
Admittedly in some industries – usually smaller companies and outside the VC/IPO space – you can still find real enlightened management. And there are the occasional Googles and Apples – but Google sticks out because it IS so unique, and for Apple you have to trade off some decent decisions regarding employees (which basically is part of their ultra-focus on the customer) against their horrible outsourcing policies.
There was a time, before the Reagan revolution took hold, when CEOs of public companies could and did often act progressively. If I can digress for a long example, consider that in 1974 Jimmy Treybig, founder and first President of Tandem Computers, created a company that in the late 70s and early 80s literally had people lining up for blocks to apply for jobs, not due to recession (though granted that was a factor) but because it was such a legendary place to work. In an interview with WSJ – yes, that WSJ – in 1982, he referred to Tandem as a “socialist company” – and he meant that as a reflection of Tandem’s competitive advantage.
Tandem had incredibly progressive values for employees – it was famous for stuff like 6 week sabbaticals every 4 years (for US employees – in other countries they had other generous policies) and being the first to grant annual 100 share stock options to all employees. But it was more – this attitude carried through to every aspect of the company.
Times change and so did the executives. In 1993 the board told Treybig that his salary was too low – it was way out of whack with what other CEOs (a term that was then coming into vogue) were getting. Here’s the kicker – that year he’d instituted an across-the-board pay cut of 5% and bragged to the WSJ (yes, that paper again) that his salary had been cut too. But when the SEC annual filings were about to be published he had to sheepishly email all employees that in fact his salary had doubled. That, of course, was the year that Tandem-as-a-special-place officially ended.
Many business people would argue that Tandem ultimately declined and was sold off because of their progressive policies. But I argue that Tandem hung around as long as it did relative to others in the same space was the progressive policies.
Tandem certainly wasn’t the only progressive company founded in the 1970s – it was actually something of a fad at the time. Alas, today that kind of company is a thing of the past.
I can’t deny your experience. What I can say is this.
Down the organization, results get rewarded and tactics can be forgiven. As a result ruthless people can be promoted.
But this axiom also holds: What got you here can get you fired. Leaders who don’t evolve and develop non-anxiety under fire and lead outside of themselves will ultimately fail… Even if they get rich by pillaging in the near term.
Certainly there are boards and other leaders who don’t look beyond the next quarterly result. I’d say more so in the last 15 years. Money can be the only metric.
But for those who take a longer view they will and have made more money over the long haul. And boards which are not stacked with CEO cronies interested in simply enriching themselves quickly know this and expect leadership congruent with it.
What angers and frightens me, and what we probably agree on, are guys like Romney who think that they are doing Gods work if they are maximizing profit and in fact think the are going against Gods will if they leave anything on the table. It amounts to divine narcissism and there is no reasoning with it. And they don’t have to be Mormon. Using the almighty dollar as their higher power does the same thing.
I just know first had that they all aren’t that way. For example I’ve worked with one food product company which is tops in their category where performance up and down the organization is evaluated based equally on results and leadership tactics. Make money but do it being an asshole and you’ll get no bonus.
Couple comments.
First, it’s not just an issue with public companies and the quarterly results. The companies owned by PE firms (like Romney’s) push even harder on their vassal company’s management to meet quarterly targets or else – and they have a much tighter reign.
Second, the situation varies at the middle levels, but at the top if you are meeting the money targets it doesn’t matter to your bosses whether you are being an asshole or a sweatheart. When the targets are missed you’d better be seen as being on top of it. The WORST weakness you can show at that point is any hesitancy whatsoever to layoff people or to cut benefits or anything along those lines. Even the slightest intimation that you are dragging your feet on doing those kind of things and you’ve basically capped your career with those people and all they talk to.
The one exception is if you drag your feet regarding a direct report (an SVP or a VP) … everyone at the top understands that you may be loyal to those closest to you, and in fact if you show NO loyalty to those who’ve helped you that actually can create doubt about you in the minds of the investment-level folks.
Of course, the upshot of this that there is a common situation where a bad SVP or VP who hangs on much too long and scores or hundreds of people in his/her org unnecessarily lose their jobs as a result.
In my time I also worked with/under a lot of “business leaders”. Scumbags might not be the word, but asshole isn’t off by much. It exends far beyond financial “services”: advertising, PR, insurance, heavy industry, energy come immediately to mind. Tech tends to be an exception for a while because the people who actually produced something are in charge for a while. Then they’re replaced by professional “leaders” and everything goes to hell — witness HP, for example.
There are a bunch of TV shows where “business leaders” share their wisdom with the small people. One is called CEO Exchange or something. Do you watch any of them? Do the participants impress you as smarter or more knowledgeable than the average small farmer or neighborhood business owner? I sure can’t see it. All I see is some kind of sociopathic personality trait that helps them bully their way to getting attention.
JC. Watts and all those ballers who became civic leaders had to get their education in spite of being athletes.
The point FLOTUS Michelle Obama was making was about kids getting an education as an insurance policy.
Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal all had to get that degree at some point to ease their transition to business entrepreneurship
The NBA has a maximum of 450 players. There are over 41 million black people in America. Planning for a career in the NBA is not planning, it is dreaming. It is also not the only path out of poverty or the best one. Why shouldn’t our children aspire to something better than to spend their adult lives playing a game?
As for being a business leader, why not? How else would you change the culture of the business world than by encouraging people with different life paths to seek those careers. It’s not like we can wash our hands of them; they employ most workers and have a huge impact on everyone’s lives.
You do know that plenty of Americans play basketball in leagues around the world, right? But as I said, it’s not even about the NBA. Sports is an avenue out, for a lot of people. Given the prominence which we give college football and basketball in this country, how many athletes were helped by college sports compared to their standing if they didn’t play?
Sports is an avenue out, for a lot of people.
No, it is an avenue out for a vanishingly tiny number of people.
You might as well advise them to play the lottery.
College sports drains money that could be better spent on education. My alma mater’s sports brings in enough money that it’s self-sustaining, but it’s not true for overwhelmingly most of the colleges in this country. Moreover, though it pays for itself, they just built a mega-basketball practice facility, for a basketball team that hasn’t gone anywhere since I was a freshmen; meanwhile, the library continues to face cuts, and tuition continues to go up.
College sports are a cancer on our educational facilities.
I thought about that comment and your knee-jerk reaction to it. I think the best way to reform the corporate mentality is to promote progressive business principles. We need progressives in the corporate world to do this and I suspect it would be a whole lot more effective than imposing change from the political side.
We need to be able to leverage the business community, which we’ve largely ceded to conservatives, without sacrificing principles. Liberals have been successful to some degree with business and gay rights. I think this requires us having some strategic vision and goals for what the workplace should like and the responsibilities of business owners and executives to their employees and not only their shareholders.
I would love to see minorities, or anybody for that matter, who champion returning industries and jobs to the inner city. How can you live in a black and white world about business when jobs = providing for your family = happiness?
They could have recommended combining computer game playing with left of center blogging in the overall scope of what youngsters do with their free time. And since sociologists and psychologists have concluded that adolesence now extends into one’s forties, we’re all suspect. So, why not integrate the two? You know, shoot down with laser power weapon the trollish comments on Dailykos or something like that. Pew pew pew pew….down goes another paid for pronuclear activist troll on Big Orange. Whooomp! Take that responsible gun ownership NRA mole (hit with a CGI wooden mallet instead of a bullet..you see the irony there.)
And since sociologists and psychologists have concluded that adolesence now extends into one’s forties, we’re all suspect.
I hadn’t heard that, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I realize that’s probably a modern re-evaluation of the current generation as compared to anything 30-40 years ago, but it’s interesting to note that the Romans considered one “Juvenile” until something like the age of 45, iirc.
Also, I don’t see anything wrong with that Alyssa Rosenberg said in that linked piece. How many kids, period, would never go to college if it wasn’t for college athletics? Also, it doesn’t address the other structural reasons why people can’t afford it. How are kids going to afford the tuition to become a doctor, or to get an MBA? And this isn’t just a problem with the First Lady. It’s a problem with almost the whole political/pundit class in this country. They have little clue how the 99% actually lives.
Well,
You watched the NCAA final four games right? You saw Kevin Ware break his leg, right. He was one of my students. He may or may not be able to play basketball again. Without an education that kid won’t cut it.
All the FLOTUS is saying is for kids to have perspective regardless of what their passions are.
My feeling is, ‘Fuck you, super-wealthy, super-lucky, super-talented, super-ambitious, super-set-for-life-down-the-next-four-generations Obamas. You have no fucking idea what it’s like raising kids in the actual world, assholes.’ And I -like- them.
But of course that doesn’t really address the content of the argument. It just gets up my nose. It’s like George Clooney telling me I’m not getting laid enough. Yeah, thanks.
Do you seriously think the Obamas, both of whom grew up in middle/lower middle class circumstances have no idea what it’s like to raise children outside of their world? That they never get a glimpse of life outside the White House despite all they time the spend with children and the events they host for DC children including some of the poorest in the country?
And you like them?
Do you seriously think the Obamas, both of whom grew up in middle/lower middle class circumstances have no idea what it’s like to raise children outside of their world?
Maybe 30 years ago, certainly not now. Why? Because of Obama’s own words. As he, himself, said in one of his books(paraphrasing): “The more I hang out with the Bob Rubin’s of the world, the more I see myself becoming just like them.” He was talking about hanging out with the Bob Rubin’s and Penny Pritzker’s of the world and hitting them up for campaign cash. Has he gone to Chicago lately and seen what a mess his former CoS(Rahmbo) has made in Chicago? Or seen yesterday, why thousands of school children walked out of class in Philadelphia? So now, he has no idea.
I seriously do. They have never not raised children from an incredibly privileged place. I’m not sure how old the older daughter is, but certainly both parents were lawyers when she was very young, yes? And soon thereafter, one was a senator. And then president.
The Obama have absolutely zero clue what it feels like to have a five year old, or a ten year old, or a whatever-ages-the-girls-are-now, and not know, on a deep, visceral level, if they can provide for them. They cannot know what that feels like. I’m sure they feel all sorts of sympathy, and I’m sure they have all sorts of intellectual understanding. Sympathy + intellectual understand = patronizing condescension.
My self-doubt about providing for my kids into the future is pretty much the only feeling in my life: it’s what motivates everything I do. And I long for the day that I forget what that feels like, for the day when if I tell other people how to raise their kids I’ll be the one without a single fucking clue. Oh, I’ll still think I know, I’ll still think I’ll remember the dread, but I won’t. That’s not how humans work.
I am not sure what you are saying. It seems like you believe that nobody who isn’t currently raising children in impoverished circumstances has anything to offer or anything of value to say. And I just reject out of hand the equating of sympathy and intellectual understanding with patronizing condescension.
So basically, it seems, the Obamas, living as they do in the White House, have nothing to offer anyone (other than Bushes, the Clintons, the Carters and perhaps a few world leaders) and they should just STFU.
I’ll concede that George is right. I’m not getting laid enough. I should get off the computer and into bed!
When the Obama’s recommend that people limit video game activity, and ask that parents have their children read books instead, while our Reich-wingers may or may not have their kids stop playing video games, they WILL collect all of their books, burn then, and then turn their TV’s to FOX ‘n Sucks News, and tell their kids to watch THAT if they want to learn something and make something of themselves.
Watch FOX ‘n Sucks, and pray, or course.
You can’t get anywhere without praying to Jesus.
“And you want to be just like hateful, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and/or homophobic, Christian Mommy and Daddy, don’t you?”
Well, I can’t tell where the “outrage” is coming from. If from the braindead Right, then one can only laugh at the comedy of cultural conservatives defending video games over books as child rearing tools—it really is the case that “conservatives” will denounce whatever the Obamas say, and will cut off their own “conservative” noses to spite their faces.
Of course, American “conservatives” loved it when Cosby made his frequent disparaging observations about black youth culture back in the day.
Well look, here is the full statement that Rosenberg is complaining about:
I’d say the part about sitting on couches undermines most of what she’s saying. The word “fantasizing” is important too. In other words, Obama is not talking kids who are staying up all night practicing their free throws, or working on their rhymes. She is talking about kids who are sitting on their asses.
did you even read the entire speech she gave?
most people that criticize the First Couple rarely do read the entire speeches that they give
To me, this whole Obama theme about ambition and “getting ahead” is a distasteful regurgitation of the rightwing crap about why there should be no welfare, unemployment comp, or any other social services for the welfare queens, video addicts, dopers, etc. The kind of finger-wagging we expect from those who got lucky (and Obama enjoyed a near-miraculous string of good luck to get where he is) or sacrificed everything to ambition, were at the right place, right time to give their ideas a chance in the world, or those who simply prospered from a life of crime..
He shows a dispiriting historical/social shallowness when he turns on the ones who apparently didn’t try as hard as he and Michelle did, to say nothing of the kind of “leaders” he now hangs with. He betrays the same blindered vision with his constant call for more help for future scientists and engineers, without a thought that just maybe, in the long run, historians, artists, writers and poets, and the rest of the folks who found something more worthy to do than getting rich and powerful. He joins the worst of economic propagandists in admiring most those who willingly turn themselves into fungible commodities. There is a better side to him, but it seems to be a struggle for him to give up on the Horatio Alger crap.
How come when someone Black has prepared themselves to take advantage of possible opportunities, they become LUCKY?
Just askin’.
Very few, if any, of those that are considered highly successful achieved that without a string of good luck. Opportunities that come one’s way is good luck. Being in a position to take advantage of opportunities is good luck. Timing — right place at the right time — is good luck.
Then of course there is privilege, talent, and diligence — but those are separate matters.
Because those opportunities are largely a matter of good luck. It has nothing to do with complexion. Obama brought outstanding talent and ambition to his rise and took full advantage of his luck along the way. I don’t know why you want to bring race into it. AFAIC luck is a large part of any big-time “success”, as in Romney, Trump, Hank Greenberg, and on and on. What I’m objecting to is Obama’s parroting of the rightwing mantra about the unworthy not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Not to mention that video games cheapen human life and lead to things like Newtown.
Unjustified link. We don’t know what role, if any, videogames had on the Newtown shooter. Yes, I’m aware that some people think that because he frequently changed magazines that he was mimicking videogames. But that’s far from certain.
What we do know is there are a whole lot of mass shooters who are known to have played very few videogames or not played videogames at all. The guy at Virginia Tech, the guy at Aurora, Colorado, the guy who shot Gabby Giffords, the list goes on.
And as the videogame industry has grown, the crime rate has gone down.
We don’t know what role anyone or anything had on the Newtown shooter. The authorities aren’t talking and neither are those that knew the family.
Didn’t he have a spreadsheet of former mass murders? My impression is that he didn’t know what to do with himself, so he decided to make a name for himself by getting on the high end of people killed in a mass murder, and being original by going for first graders instead of college or high school students.
In other words, he was a copycat killer. Massacres are part of US gun culture. You don’t need video games when revenge targets of ex-girlfriends get sold. But I agree that the authorities probably know more than they have told us.
We’re a nation of copycats. Fortunately not many choose to follow the lead of mass killers. And fewer still have access to a parent’s arsenal.
Oh yes, and we are so sure that the mere presence of a firearm drove him to commit mass murder and not days spent vicariously killing in a darkened room.
Your ignorance is showing. Just for starters, most videogames aren’t played in a darkened room any more than most TV is watched in a darkened room.
But we can take it even further. No study has ever demonstrated a link between videogame playing and anti-social behavior. If anything, there seems to be the opposite relationship.
Heck, why am I responding when you didn’t even address any of my points? It seems like you’re more determined to bash videogames and paint all gamers with a broad brush than you are in actually using facts and data to try to get at the truth. I actually don’t mind Obama telling kids to put down the videogames because it’s generally good advice. But trying to claim that videogames will turn people into murderers? That’s just engaging in the latest “Media is corrupting our youth!” panic.
The Newtown killer obsessively played violent video games in a blacked out room. That’s what I’m talking about. If you don’t know that than your ignorance is showing. And if you giggle at shooting an imaginary kid or hostage in a video game, shame on you.
You do understand that we don’t know what drove the Newtown killer to do what he did and that videogames may have been completely irrelevant to it, don’t you? I’m not the one trying to draw a link where there’s absolutely no evidence to back it up.
Xantar, I don’t know one way or the other what your position was. Many, if not most, on this blog jumped to the conclusion that possession of an assault rifle caused him to use it on schoolkids. If you weren’t one, then the comment was not aimed at you. However, I stand by the assumption that someone who saturates himself in fantasy killing to the extent that they blacken rooms and get a large screen to make it seem more real is a sociopathic ticking bomb, like Laurie Dann, which no one here will admit.
Ha, I didn’t know about Laurie Dann. So not all mass murderers are male…
I don’t deny that video games played a role in the “development” of the Sandy Hook killer. But I do suppose that it is a liberal shibboleth, which I mostly share, that violent entertainment does not by itself lead to violent behavior. My understanding is that Japanese men read a lot of comics portraying rape, but the incidence of rape in Japan is relatively low.
Reported rape is rare. My understanding is that it’s a minor misdemeanor.
Do you know how many people play videogames on large screens in darkened rooms to make it more real? And do you know how many of them go out and kill people? For that matter, do you know how many of them play in bright spaces?
Hey, I’ll bet the Newtown killer enjoyed hamburgers too. Maybe his love of chopped up meat led him to shoot up a school. Yes, that’s ridiculous. But statistical studies say that playing videogames has as much to do with a propensity for violence as eating hamburgers. I direct you again to my original reply in which I pointed out that it is known that many mass killers actually did NOT play any videogames. There. Is. No. Link. I’m sorry but the more you harp on the “fantasy killing” of videogames without producing any actual EVIDENCE to back yourself up, the more ignorant you make yourself seem.
Correlation is not causation. As the Republican Party turned increasingly conservative, the crime rate has gone down. As consumption of high fructose corn syrup has gone up, the crime rate has gone down. etc. etc.
Exactly. There’s no evidence linking videogames to violence whatsoever.
Bloomberg is a bit more practical and realistic:
But plumbers don’t get multi-million dollar bonuses regularly like executives.