A little background: Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner, whom some outlets view with some disgust, mix the generic objectification of bling bling hiphop with a couple years worth of messing around with Pro-Tools, and end up sounding like an especially catty Mean Girls extra. They were announced for a full spot on the Vans Warped Tour and the shitstorm was brutal, with “how could you do this” calls to Kevin Lyman from absolutepunk.net especially; but more often than that, Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner was looked down upon and scorned, because of their supposed nefarious effects on the punk scene.

I’m here not because I like the music of Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner, or believe them to have something to say that’s terribly important, but instead because I see a scene that’s not being honest with itself.

The things that Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner perform about are things that punk rock has been doing for years and for whatever reason, the scene is acting shocked when Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner get tons of pre-teens to come to their shows based on a garish, rancid aphrodisiac. (Side note: Frank Sinatra described rock music as a “rancid-smelling aphrodisiac,” one with which he wanted no association.) The recipe appears pretty simple: Money, Sex, Drinking and Objectification, stir with some “beats” – but that’s a story for another time.

Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner is a band that yes, objectifies guys and promotes drinking and having sex. Two out of three of those, a lot of bands on Warped Tour do as well.

Yet that objectification is the sticking point for some listeners. Well, let’s be honest: Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner isn’t the first artist to objectify the opposite sex. Lars Fredricksen and the Bastards wrote Viking (a record where Lars talked about having sex with “every hooker from here to Toledo” and murdering his ex-wife), and they still got on Warped Tour, and on the Main Stage, to boot. Less obvious, but possibly hitting closer to home, how many punk bands have accepted or solicited sexual favors from their fans on this tour (or any tour)? We’re being very selective about Warped history here.

Okay, so objectification isn’t an argument anymore. Deserving a spot on Warped? Nope. Since my guess is Warped Tour selection process is an alchemy of MySpace plays, CD sales and whether Kevin Lyman likes you or not, they’re as deserving as anyone else, based on that criteria. (Speaking of which, any news on that allegation of rape on Warped Tour a couple years back?)

The problem I have with Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner is simple: I view them as insincere carpetbaggers using “punk scene” as a jumping off point and, surprise surprise, Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner were found to be lip-synching their performances. My expectations were rock bottom for this band, so hearing that they’re pretending to perform their own songs only adds credence to my theory. But I don’t think that they’re unique for objectification, or that they’re something beyond the pale of what’s intellectually acceptable at Warped Tour.

• It’s okay to say “I view Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner as insincere artists with little, if anything to do with punk rock. Neither their aesthetic or music holds my attention.”
• It’s okay to say, “I find their presentation to be garish and not my taste.”
• It’s okay to dislike Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner for being dishonest in the presentation of themselves as live performing artists.

But saying Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner is something that cannot be tolerated at Warped Tour is hypocritical and hollow. They’re simply saying things publicly a lot of other artists do privately. I still think they’re insipid, untalented and unworthy of anyone’s time musically, but not evil or pernicious beyond the scope of the affectations of the punk scene.

First, a few facts about the issue: There is no “Obama plan”. Unlike the 1994-94 “Clinton health plan,” which famously turned Hillary Clinton into the caricature the Right loves to hate, President Obama made an early decision to leave the development of the plan’s specifics to Congress. Obama laid out what he wanted in health reform (a public plan, various new regulations on insurers, a new health care “exchange”, etc.), but rather than create a plan for which he would be directly accountable, he gave that responsibility to the House and Senate, many of whom are up for re-election next year. The result of that decision has been two separate bills that are different from each other in a number of ways – and a lot of back-and-forth on the financing and the reforms. The House plan is ready for a floor vote and (as of this blog) the Senate plan is still stuck in the Finance Committee.

On one side of this debate you have the opponents of health care reform. We have all seen them on tv and YouTube this past week, showing up at town hall meetings and turning discussions into rallies against reform. Though it is true that some of these folks are being turned out by the Republican establishment (conservative “tea party groups” and groups funded by insurance companies) most of the anger and fear being expressed at these town halls is genuine. Misinformation is being spread on talk radio, cable tv news shows and the internet; this bad info ranges from the ridiculous notion that the elderly will be forced to choose how to die, to the claim that liberty itself is at stake. Who wouldn’t be afraid of that if you didn’t know any better? With the government taking larger-than-usual steps to handle the financial and economic problems of the last year and getting little return, the public is offering a slimmer-than-usual margin of error on health care reform. Add in some horror stories about big government and “socialized medicine,” and you have a lot of genuine fear.

But just because something is genuine, doesn’t mean that it is legitimate. Let’s face it, health policy is very complicated and most people do not understand the basics of our health care system – not to mention the extent to which government is already involved in the system. This has been illustrated by a scenario which has played out at numerous town halls already – the senior citizen shouting that “the government needs to keep its hands off my Medicare.” (Medicare, of course, is a government insurance program that covers tens of millions of people.) For the members of Congress holding these town halls, it is a difficult challenge – how does one deal with a constituent who clearly does not understand the issue, but do so without coming off as an elitist?

The Republicans and conservative groups understand all this too well and are taking full advantage of it. And they are shameless in their spread of misinformation because the political stakes are so high. They know that if the Democrats win health care reform, it will be yet another nail in the Republican coffin. Though we Americans tend to pride ourselves on our “can do” spirit, deep down inside we want a safety net available for when we need it. Once it is provided, Washington dare not try to take it away. That is why even the most passionate conservative Republican in the House supports keeping Medicare in place – the seniors in their district would vote them out of office in a heartbeat if their Medicare was threatened, let alone taken away. When it comes to health care reform, the same principle holds true, and whichever party solves the health care crisis will enjoy decades of political dividends.

But this is not a war of ideas. The Republican solutions to health care are far out of the mainstream (i.e. weak insurance plans with $5,000+ deductibles and weak consumer protections), so the only thing they can do is drown out the debate with fear and anger, hoping to kill the bills. The same tactic worked for the Democrats and progressive groups back in 2005 when Bush proposed to turn part of Social Security over to Wall Street. The Dems did not have a solution to the Social Security solvency issue, so it made sense to focus on the risks Bush’s plan would create for retirees. Progressive groups – myself included at the time – ran town hall meetings, did district office visits with Congress members and organized press conferences to highlight the fears people had with the proposal. It was just a matter of time before Bush’s plan imploded. No alternative ideas were needed – all you need to do is rile people up, and organize them in a fashion that puts the proponents running for cover. It is a fairly simple concept that happens to work.

On the other side of the health care reform debate, there isn’t so much misinformation – but there is plenty of denial. President Obama is not calling for a Canadian-style single payer system – but he has called for a public plan that would compete with private insurers. Opponents of the public plan say that this is a trojan horse for single-payer -  and they’re correct. I worked for seven years for an organization that supports single-payer, and the public option was always understood to be a way to get your foot in the single payer door. This is supported by recent YouTube video clips of President Obama and Senator Barney Frank admitting that the public plan would eventually lead to the private insurers being forced out of the system and the evolution of a Medicare-style health insurance program that would take over. It is difficult if not impossible to honestly argue that you’re just looking for more “competition” by introducing a public plan in the face of video evidence like that, but yet that’s what the Dems are doing.

Given the failure of private insurance over the decades to make quality coverage affordable (nearly 15,000 people lose their insurance every day), I personally think that real reform cannot happen without a public option of some sort. Health care is so expensive that much of the private coverage is already subsidized in one way or another. Employer-sponsored health insurance would not exist if the government did not help employers by giving them a generous tax break for doing so. “Medicare Advantage” plans (which are private plans) could not offer benefits without relying on taxpayer dollars. Even Mitt Romney’s so-called “free market” health reform in Massachusetts feeds heavily from the public trough. The “free market” people demanding that the “government should stay out of health care” do not know what they are talking about. It is as simple as that.

At the same time, the conservative critics are correct about the state of Medicare funding – it is in horrible shape, and needs to be addressed. Democrats and progressives keep punting the ball because the answer is going to have to involve some combination of raising taxes and cutting benefits, and that is poison even in a non-election year. The Democrats’ hope is to deal with this issue in part by passing health care reform. Include some changes to Medicare and raise some taxes as part of the overall package, and the blowback is muffled by the gains.

Given how things are going, what is likely to happen is that either health care reform will die a very public death or the public option is going to be dropped from the final bill. It currently does not exist within the Senate bill, and it is so controversial in the House that, if it were put to a vote today, it wouldn’t pass. But even if the public option is dropped it would still be an uphill battle for Democrats and other proponents, as the misinformation campaign of the Right has branded everything and all things “health care reform” as poison. Reform may be damaged goods at this point; and if entertainers like that idiot Glen Beck could convince people that the House plan mandated euthanasia for the elderly, then they can convince them of just about anything. Until the bill is finally dead.

There’s no dignified way to say this: I was looking down Sandra Malak’s corset.

A bit of background, you say? Here we go. (Here we go! Here we go!) I was watching the World/Inferno Friendship Society (Check episode 20. Does this feel like a comic book yet?) perform in the Pittsburgh area (Millvale) earlier in 2009. Jack Terricloth and Co. were very clearly having a lot of fun, as the venue (Mr. Smalls) afforded them a rather sizable stage. About a third of the way through, I noticed, that the bassist (Mrs? Ms? Etc? Malak) of the nattily-dressed ensemble (guitarist Lucky Strano, excepted, who is contractually obligated to have a Disfear shirt on) was wearing a corset.

This is the World/Inferno Friendship Society, a raucously anachronistic band. Not a surprise, given that the men were wearing suits and ties. (And I mean real suits and ties, not a “punked out” skinny black tie.) But the problem first started when Malak was leaning down to yell the words back at the audience and my eyes slipped.

I looked down her corset.

My first reaction, aside from the neurological wiring, was “Hey, that’s a rather nice view.”

My second reaction was “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

(If now, you’re thinking, James, this is a World/Inferno show, you’re probably thinking too hard about this, which at an Inferno show, means you’re dangerously close to missing the point, you’re probably right. But, on the off chance I’m not thinking too hard, I continue.)

Here, now is the issue of identity politics.

Of course, I wasn’t thinking in academic terms at the time. I wasn’t that coherent or lucid.

The voices in my head went like this:

My first question was: Am I respecting her as a member of World/Inferno and as a performer? She’s playing, right now, music I like, in a band I’m pretty fond of. Choosing to look down her corset and I use that word carefully, since I had control of my body and my mind, does the performer a disservice. My gut check was swift and decisive. Really? A disservice? This is a grown-ass woman in a band whose major themes tend to revolve around debauchery, alcoholism, drug abuse, dancing and chasing girls. The band is not Escape The Fate, by any means, but let’s be honest: ambiguity, allure and intrigue are three of the cards World/Inferno has been playing for a long time. This kind of thing has to go with the territory.

Okay, okay, but what the hell does drug use and alcoholism have to do with the possible objectification you may have engaged yourself in, I thought. Also, what about the themes of solidarity, status quo subversion and dissent generally? Those don’t fit as easily into your casting of World/Inferno as a quote unquote crazy rock band.

The counter argument came pretty naturally. Point taken, but… objectification? You peeked down her corset maybe five times over the course of an hour and a half, which she wore onstage, in a public place, where she knew she was going to be viewed. (This is distinct from the “she was asking for it” argument.) She’s older than you, so odds are pretty good this is something she’s thought about before, so saying she wouldn’t know theoretically insults her intelligence. Also, you tended to avoid looking at her as soon as you realized what was up. Saying that you objectified her is hard to sustain on that basis. More to the point, do “serious” performers have to be without attractive hooks? Must performers be viewed outside sexual appeal? That’s a pretty white/Protestant view of musicians and performers, isn’t it?

Touche. Jack was making a big show out of the slit that broke his pants, terribly close to his crotch. And I acknowledge that viewing a performer as an entity outside of epistemic location reinforces that status quo of viewing performers “correctly” in the male/female/queer context. (Guys in punk bands post-Black Flag are supposed to be belligerent.) But, consider your epistemic position. You’re a young white person watching a female onstage for pleasure. You, of all people, need to pay attention to those boundaries.

How was I looking at her, I thought? I was looking at her as the bass player in World/Inferno Friendship Society (a band who’se four studio full lengths I own, 3 on CD, 1 on vinyl) who made a choice in her wardrobe which possibly affords audience members a view of her cleavage, which may be more or less important to particular people in the crowd. Male gaze aside, this is a band that pays very close attention to how they look. It’s reasonable for me to look, given they want that attention and that’s a large part of their strategies, gig in and gig out, to get it. It’s likely part of an exaggerated, but calculated onstage persona, which, odds are, loosely match their offstage personalities. How they look is a huge part of their presentation. She’s also a woman in a rock band, who wants have fun making music and make money. I’m a male fan. Do the math. That entire band plays up how they dress as part of their act, which – *gasp* – can be usefully monetized.

That said, I’m not sure I can prove any of that.

I can’t find a quote on the internet where she or someone from the band says, “Yeah we dress up because it’s fun for us, it’s a neat little shtick and it makes money.” I haven’t looked, so let’s say no. But, I don’t think the point can be usefully avoided. I’m at a concert, situated as a white male, watching a group of performers who are like me and it’s reasonable to ask, I think, to what extent physical attractiveness plays a role in that performance. Dan Yemin (episode 18) takes off his shirt at Paint it Black shows, Trent Reznor has a fondness for tight black tshirts and (much love and respect for both bands) while I’m not quite the target audience, if I don’t mind it there, why should I mind it here?

That said, I’m not sure those are equivocal. There’s a power imbalance that you’re not taking into account.

Bullshit and yeah, there’s a power imbalance, it’s not just that she appears to be female and I appear to be male, but that I’m a fan and she’s a part of the band. Not everything can be reduced simply to white male dominance and a gaze from the relative safety of the crowd. It goes with the territory. It’s more complicated and more nuanced than that, I think. Are we being used?

No, we’re not being used, in that she’s probably not thinking or vocalizing, “You know, I want the fans to pay attention to my breasts so they’ll buy more tshirts.” That doesn’t make it okay and by suggesting you’re impugning her integrity without evidence to support it. Also, it’s not like she was bending over to give people a better view, she was engaging in the time honored tradition of performers in punk bands who aren’t the singer engaging with the audience, despite a barrier or stage. Yes, its showmanship (showpersonship, maybe?) but not in the way you think. The moment was entirely innocent (as if a moment can be) but it was without guile, I’d be willing to bet. It’s about that connection with the audience, and probably, yes, it is part of that “look at me look at me look at me” performance variety that Franz Nicolay lovingly touched on in an interview.

Okay. But more than that, am I over-thinking this? Could I just be looking at an attractive woman onstage, that being the end of it and making the preceding pages an exercise in pretense and intellectual masturbation, like the smarmy male character in Propagandhi’s Ladies Nite In Loserville?

Uhhhhhhhh…well…I…hadn’t thought of…Hey! Look over there! There’s a cute girl 20 feet to our left. They’re playing Brother Of the Mayor Of Bridgewater. We ought to dance with her.

Yes, we should.

And really, I got to feel uncomfortable around a different girl and that settled the argument for that night. But looking back on it, that doesn’t end this questioning in my head. I don’t have any answers, but maybe a couple provisional suggestions. (I find it kind of silly to be attempting to offer answers to the question it took me a couple pages to even get to and is still consuming me.) If any female performers see this and want to share their perspective, let me know. I doubt Ronen is going to mind.

1) Don’t gawk.
2) Don’t be a dick.
3) Really. That’s all I’ve got.

Don’t gawk is pretty obvious. That part really is about respect. Don’t be a dick is a related point, which means consider the feelings and perspectives of the people you’re looking at. My thoughts really come down to respect and being contrite. If I’m right, or at least looking in the right direction, then the “answer” is thinking of other people and looking beyond yourself, which is one of the big important lessons I should have internalized from punk years ago.

I guess there’s still more learning to do.

In 2008 and into 2009, large banking institutions looked to the government  to take a step further, and insure economic stability by providing direct government support to banks, insurance companies and financial institutions; all of this in order to avoid what was widely believed would be a complete economic meltdown. Government assistance extended beyond these institutions to large corporations, which received direct subsidies from the United States Government.

In October 2008 Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich stated what many were thinking about the manner in which these billions of dollars in government funds were being allocated:

“We have socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else.“

But as the large corporations apply for government aid to survive, the nation’s attitude towards so-called “socialism” has begun to change. Less than a generation ago, the idea of universal government healthcare was opposed by many who called it “socialized medicine.” They cited concerns about the quality of care, the availability of treatment options, and the costs of funding a first-payer government funded health care system. When this ideology – publicly funded by professional doctors organizations and large pharmaceutical companies – won, Americans suffered.

Now, every 30 seconds a person in America goes into bankruptcy due to their inability to pay heath care costs. In almost every European country as well as Canada, Japan, Cuba and Iraq – where health care is subsidized by the government – no one is ever forced to make a decision choosing between bankruptcy and lifesaving medical treatment. Here, medical problems are estimated to cause over 60% of all personal bankruptcies.

78% of those people had medical insurance at the start of their illness or medical issue. Even more surprising is that most of these people were living a middle-class lifestyle before their lives were changed by medical bills; over 60% were people that owned homes and had college educations.  Laissez-faire Reganomics and the selective politics of personal responsibility – for the struggling working and middle classes only with bailouts for the rich – have literally had a crushing effect.

The prospects of the next generation re-growing the middle class are dim.  People who are now in their twenties who bought into the myth of middle class prosperity by borrowing student loans from educational funding services, with high interest rates and impossible demands, face an unfavorable job market and with no health insurance and mountains of debt that their parents and grandparents can only imagine.

Young students who attempt college come away with student loans the size of home mortgages.  A whole generation of former students, saddled with a capitalist system of education, have come away owing the prior generations who created and endorsed the system – and will pat with years of salary from their early working lives.  The Republicans endorsed this system, actively looking the other way while the student loan industry was rife with corruption.  As early as 2001, the incoming Bush Administration was warned that lenders were trying to improperly influence college financial aid offices.

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers’ Barmak Nassirian put it this way:

“The day Bush was elected was the beginning of the gilded age for the loan industry.”

After years of the financial services industry donating heavily to the campaigns of Republican members of the House Committee on Education and Labor – including leading donor Sallie Mae – who donated a staggering but not surprising three-quarters of its campaign contributions to Republicans.  Ohio Republican Congressman John Boehner – who served as a chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor – has received over $170,000 in combined campaign contributions between direct donations and donations to his “leadership” PAC.  While buying a home can’t be a 10-year goal for young people who are already saddled with repayment of enormous loans, Boehner told a group of Sallie Mae executives a 2004 fundraiser to “Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands.”

The net result is an entire generation that has only known war and debt, and is ready to accept the virtues of a government-provided health care system.  For every Meghan McCain living on a cloud, spouting rhetoric but never having to worry about money, responsibility or going without, there are thousands of young people who are well educated but who have nothing else – including the prospect of one day living without debt. For many, it will have been more profitable to be less educated and less burdened with high interest loans. Average Americans who are not heiresses now have a financial incentive to avoid being educated or educating their children. That’s the capitalist form of education.

They are living in another world, or living in denial. In the same Rasmussen Poll where 20% of those polled said that socialism was superior to capitalism, adults younger than 30 were essentially evenly divided between socialism and capitalism.

As of 2007, the economic inequality in Atlanta, New Orleans Washington and Miami is similar to that of Nairobi, Kenya and Ivory Coast. The “civil unrest alert line” is used by the United Nations to warn governments when economic inequality is likely to have a “destabilizing effect on societies.”

Republican policy, Reganomics, and Bush-Era Deregulation – which fought against government intervention, and for the financial industry, big business and the rich who got richer – has locked America’s children into debt. Not just the debt that the teabag-swinging screamers echo through the Republican party, but personal debt in a way that the wealthy among us will never understand; and which those who claim concern for the debt load on young people have completely and totally ignored.

Beyond the bankruptcies; beyond the alienated and ignored youth; in America, where over 10% of the population (more than 40 million people) have no medical insurance -  that 10% contains absurdly disproportionate numbers of minorities. That number also ignores the 12 million undocumented people within the U.S. who face real fear of deportation and open hostility should they seek care at a hospital. For uninsured people, every preventable illness or accidental injury represents a potential economic life sentence to poverty.

20% of African Americans and 30% of Hispanics in America have no health insurance. Both of these groups comprise the fastest growing demographics of the American population despite the fact that the life expectancy of African American people in the United States is roughly equal to the rates in much poorer countries where premium health care services are not available – places like China, and certain states in India.

American minority women have higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, AIDS and obesity, and in general are more likely to be in fair or poor health.

If Census Bureau projections are correct, by 2050 the number of Hispanics in the United States will double proportionally to the rest of the population.  Where Latinos comprise 15% of the population now, that number will grow to 30%. In two generations, as the population of Hispanics and other minorities, including African-Americans, grows, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority.

As these demographics change, an educated and hopelessly indebted class emerges. And widespread dissatisfaction with the quality and availability of medical care in the U.S. has already soured the country to arguments advanced by doctors and insurance companies that “socialized medicine” will not work.  This dissatisfaction is well founded when the United States’ ranking in areas like infant mortality is 29th in the world in 2008 – well below Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, France, and Canada where medical care is provided by the government.

It is clear that “for profit” medical treatment has not kept the country healthy.  Strong lobbying groups funded by doctors, insurance companies and multinational pharmaceutical corporations are less concerned with the overall health of the nation and patient care than they are with the health of profits. The very idea that insurance companies which exist because of capitalism are relied on to provide the basic human necessity of medical treatment for an entire country is untenable. Not only is it untenable, it is irresponsible. Medical care should not be subjected to a capitalist model, where the rich can afford the best care, and the poor rely on minimal emergency care or treatments which plunge them into debt and bankruptcy.

When 10% of the country has no medical insurance coverage, the emergency treatment centers bear the brunt of unpaid services. Hospitals around the country are closing, leaving fewer options for people in need of care; this weighs most heavily upon those neighborhoods of poor who receive their medical care solely from emergency rooms. The net result is an increase in unemployed and uninsured people who must rely on emergency rooms for all of treatment they receive.

From a pragmatic standpoint, it would seem that the best way to keep one’s massive wealth would be to protect it by sacrificing some wealth to promote widespread growth, economic equality and social stability rather than by hoarding wealth and promoting civil unrest.  While the UN understands that high levels of inequality lead to “negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilizing effect on societies,” they do not see this.

Even in difficult times they see growth through inequality, the consolidation of massive wealth, and the continued growth of massive corporate institutions.  The rich get richer, get education, get health care and get access to congressmen to have a say in how the government administers the social programs and regulations for everyone else.  They fight against raising the minimum wage, expanding the availability of healthcare and creating restrictions on the maximum rate that credit card companies can charge.  They believe they deserve this control because their hard work is more valuable than the hard work of everyone else.  It should not be surprising that their response to calls for “change” has been paternalistic vitriol damning any solution incorporating economic balance as “utopian delusions”.

The real delusion is held by a group of people who believe that, by clinging to “values” which are on the verge of extinction, they can revive the influence of failed and outdated ideas. The real delusion is believing that the public call for change represents a “shift,” rather than what it really is: social and political evolution.

Twitter and Facebook take a lot of shit from old-timers who don’t like or want to understand the new ways in which people communicate. I once taught with a “senior” teacher who berated a seventh grader for wanting to go into the video game industry when he grew up. In her antiquated disgust, she blabbered about how the kids these days just waste their time with video games. No future, etc. Little did this old gas-bag know that the video game industry had already been growing faster than the film industry for a few years.

Technology is a language. It also defines the way the people of Earth look at and understand their surroundings. If we want to be able to communicate in ways other than speaking, yelling, whispering or singing to anyone close enough to hear, we need technology. A feather dipped in ink. A woodcut ink-press. A typewriter. A fax. A blog. And most recently, text messsages, Twitter, and social networks.

The guys who invent these cool internet gadgets must be pretty blown away. I’ll bet they never imagined that their ideas could affect the outcome of world events. Congrats to them.