Thinking about money has never been my thing. One of my constant goals in life has always been to not have to think about money and I've been largely successful in that department by not wanting much that would require lots of it. The ongoing global financial crisis has changed that, however, by making sure everything would cost lots of money now.
What's frustrating about this global financial crisis - apart from the fact that it affects everyone - is that it's a very boring problem to try to understand. I have absolutely no patience with arguments that involve the words "credit", "solvency", or "Nasdaq". Even the "Occupy Wall Street" movement feels less inspired and more contrived to me, which of course doesn't help the fact that it makes very little sense. (Occupy what? How? And what do you plan to do upon "occupation", again?)
Anyway, what I really would rather think about this time of year is what would happen to Don Draper next, who the New York Knicks should get, how Mad Men can cleverly circumvent the impending Summer of Love and stay Mad Men-y, who my first pick should be in our NBA fantasy draft, how great last week's episode of Mad Men was, and how excited I am for the their next episode. These are the fake and sublime things that have kept me occupied for years as I try to not think about my very real and and gradual descent into inevitable poverty. But now, two of my favorite things in this crappy world have been erased from the face of the Earth by the very fucking thing they've been helping me ignore.
* * *
Both Mad Men and the NBA have been shelved this year due to labor issues that stem from money problems. That sentence you just read is a perfect example of how something really bad can ruin something really heavenly. It's like if someone said: "Natalie Portman - that lovely, down-to-Earth, smart, and sweet actress you fell in love with dating back from her iconic role in 'Beautiful Girls' - just got knocked up by some oily, faggy French dancer." (Wait a minute, that did happen)
Last season's Mad Men was perhaps the series' best; hell it's one of the best seasons of any TV series in history. "The Suitcase", "Blowing Smoke", and "Tomorrowland" weren't merely series episodes; they were veritable works of art, unparalleled in the history of television. Season 4 of Mad Men was so fucking brilliant that I want to be physically transported inside the TV screen every time I rewatch one of its episodes a-la "Pleasantville". I don't care if they were all racists then, I can work as a janitor for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and gladly absorb Roger Sterling's racial insuslts all day.
The NBA, on the other hand, just had its most transcendent season since the years of Michael Jordan. An overdose of media finally gave us real sports villains in the Miami Heat, my New York Knicks finally became relevant again - twice in the same season, in fact - with the acquisition of Amar'e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, likeable young stars Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant made their inevitable leaps to greatness, Blake Griffin finally gave this youtube era its long-deserved Shawn Kemp, and the NBA's erstwhile whipping boys and choke artists - The Dallas Mavericks - somehow overcame the odds and defeated the world's most hated sports team. The recently concluded playoffs were filled with so many classic games and so many classic moments that anyone with half a brain can create 500 hours worth of documentaries out of it (just gave you an idea for lockout programming, ESPN).
Exciting, infinitely fascinating and absolute masterpieces. And we're not seeing them again this year because of boring contract negotiations and bland talks about BRIs and shit. I'm really beyond pissed right now, I feel like "occupying" something.
The fan hatred over the current NBA lockout and the "Occupy Wall Street" thing share the same message: "this is all your fault, you greedy, rich assholes!" My under-informed brain tells me that there's some truth in that and that these "rich assholes" are operating in some sort of unethical manner. My heart that misses Mad Men and the NBA so badly tells me that these people need to stop being selfish and start giving us what we want. But my logical side tells me that this rhetoric makes us sound like a bunch of whiny 13-year-olds.
Capitalism, by definition, is supposed to be about greed. It may sound crass and Michael Douglas-y, but it's actually an objective and un-emotional way of describing its very core principle, which is profit. It "won" the idealogical war during the Industrial Revolution by increasing production, expanding services, and encouraging consumption. This philosophy even persisted in the 20th century, as depicted deftly in Mad Men. Capitalism was never about: "woah, let's slow down here, I think we have enough." In fact, the idea of "enough" is totally anathema in the world of business and finance.
What made greed "okay" then, and therefore virtually invisible, was the largely fulfilled promise that all that profit would somehow trickle down to all of us. That is what gave Capitalism the real-life charm that Socialism theoretically had. But now the trickling has stopped. Something in the system has been clogged somewhere. Our response has been to blame the greed of all those capitalists. The flaw in this response, however sad and "unjust", is that we are complaining about the same thing that made the system work in the first place.
I love Mad Men and the NBA so much. And this love creates this romantic notion that I have some sort of relationship with the people who are responsible for these products (which is the same reason why so many people mourned the death of Steve Jobs). I somehow feel as if David Stern, Derek Fisher, and Matthew Weiner owe me something. But in the end of the day, they are capitalists. They are driving a machine that has existed for over a hundred years. And for as long as that machine works on the fuel that is profit, these capitalists will always be motivated by fair compensation, or at least their definition of it. They will not care about what we feel because Capitalism, unlike Marxism, is not a utopian concept. And because it is not utopian, it is real and happening right now and has been happening for more than a century.
Stern, Fisher, and Weiner will always expect profit and "fair" compensation in the same way I will always expect to be given my share of the trickle in the form of a new TV season and new basketball games. After all, expecting things you "deserve" is a very capitalist thing do.
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