Jamison Foser

Heads in the Sand

A couple of weeks ago, I noted a CNNMoney.com survey of economists who expect that unemployment will remain above 9 percent through 2011, and above 8 percent through Election Day 2012, which CNN described as a “rosier” long-term outlook. At the time, I noted that if those forecasts are accurate, by the end of 2012, we’ll have had more consecutive months with the unemployment rate above 8 percent since the beginning of 2009 than we had total months at that level in the 61 years from 1948 through 2008, and concluded that the DC political-media complex seems not to get how bad the economic situation is.

Here’s how bad it is: This chart shows the total number of months in which the unemployment rate was at least 8 (and 9) percent over two time periods: The 61 years from 1948-2008 and the two years from 2009-2010. (I went ahead and assumed unemployment will remain above 9 percent for November and December.)
        
From 1948 through the end of 2008, there were a total of twenty months in which the unemployment rate was at least 9 percent. By the end of this year, we’ll be at twenty consecutive months since early 2009, and counting.

This week, the Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters released a similarly grim assessment: “Unemployment is projected to be an annual average of 9.7 percent in 2010, before falling to 9.3 percent in 2011, 8.7 percent in 2012, and 7.9 percent in 2013. These estimates are higher than the projections in the last survey.”

And yet the political and media classes seem more concerned about the deficit than on the prospect of five consecutive years of unemployment in the 8-10 percent range -- despite the rather obvious fact that a lousy economy with high unemployment contributes to deficits, and a strong economy with low unemployment goes a long way towards cutting them.

But it isn’t just the budget deficit that seems to get more attention than a remarkably bad economy: So does whatever insane conspiracy theory Glenn Beck is promoting, and Sarah Palin’s insane tweets, and earmarks and ... let’s stop right there. Eliminating earmarks will do approximately nothing to fix the economy, and approximately nothing to reduce the deficit. Running up massive deficits by giving tax cuts to the wealthy, presiding over economic collapse, and waging multiple wars, then promising to eliminate earmarks, is like a teenager blowing his tuition money on hookers and cocaine, then saying he’ll cut down on bubble-gum purchases.

During White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ press gaggle on Wednesday, he got nine straight questions about congressional Republicans blowing off a meeting at the White House (Sample: “Do you think they’re showing disrespect to the President? ... Were you with the President when he found out that it was being postponed? ... Do you know how he responded when he found out?”) And then several more questions later in the gaggle. Total number of questions using the words “economy” “job” or “unemployment”? Zero.

Now, that’s just one press gaggle, but it’s representative of how neither the political establishment nor the media establishment seems all that concerned about the economy. As David Roberts and Duncan Black noted this week, this simply is not sane:

        

        

It is insane, but it is not surprising. The rapid acceptance by the political/media class of extraordinary circumstances is one of the key developments of the past ten years. Remember when people only seemed to talk about the two wars we were fighting when they wanted to send more people to fight in them? How the media had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to cover evidence that one of those wars was based on a series of lies? Remember how each new aspect of the Bush administration’s expansion of executive power -- complete with warrantless wiretapping of Americans, indefinite detention, torture, etc -- got an initial flurry of attention, then everyone just kind of moved on? One of the defining characteristics of the past decade has been the tendency of both pols and journalists to pay scant attention to things that should be huge stories. We’re fighting simultaneous wars? We torture people? Spy on Americans without court permission? Eh. That’s just how things are now.

So it really isn’t surprising that a catastrophically bad economy has been accepted as the new normal, too.

Now, let’s revisit that chart I posted above -- but this time, extend it through the end of 2012, based on the CNNMoney.com and Philly Fed survey of forecasters. Based on those forecasts, the chart below assumes that unemployment will remain above 9 percent through the end of 2011, and will be between 8 and 9 percent through the end of 2012.
        
If the economic forecasts are right, we’re going to have more months of the unemployment rate higher than 8 percent (and 9 percent) in four years than we did in the previous 61. From 1948-1968, a 7 percent unemployment rate was pretty bad -- it happened in less than 20 percent of those 732 months. Now we’re looking at four consecutive years above 8 percent unemployment; nearly three straight above 9. And it often seems politicians and the media would rather focus on anything else.

In the Darkness on the Edge of Town

Every few years, I get around to listening to an album that I had long overlooked and find myself so blown away by how great it is that I immediately regret all the time I had previously wasted on lesser works (and get annoyed at various people who should have, but didn’t, make me listen to it sooner.) Jeff Buckley’s Grace had that effect on me several years ago. This summer, it was The Replacements’ Let It Be. What the hell was I doing not listening to that album all those years?

To this day, after countless listens, Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town hits me that way every time I hear it. Every time.

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One of Springsteen’s great gifts is his ability chronicle the dignity in everyday life. His songs celebrate the nobility of firefighters who lost their lives on September 11, but they also illustrate the quiet daily struggle of raising children and getting up every morning and going to work each day -- and recognize that there’s something admirable in those things, too. We save the superlatives for extraordinary acts, but Springsteen reminds us that working two jobs to scrape together the money to send a kid to college is a heroic feat, too.

Ah, but there’s pain, too -- and not just the Charles Starkweather kind. The kind that comes from the soul-crushing monotony of getting up every morning and going to work each day. The kind that comes from the ever-present understanding that things didn’t turn out the way you planned. The kind that comes from being betrayed -- and from betraying yourself.

That pain is all over Darkness on the Edge of Town. Best known for the fist-pumping stadium anthems Badlands and The Promised Land, Darkness is a gut-wrenching album, filled with some of the bleakest imagery of Springsteen’s catalogue. Something In The Night, for example; “When we found the things we loved/They were crushed and dying in the dirt.” Or the woman in Racing In The Street who “cries herself to sleep at night” and “stares off alone into the night/With the eyes of one who hates for just being born.” (The Promise, which didn’t make the cut but lends its name to the box set out today, concludes: “When the promise was broken I was far away from home/Sleepin' in the back seat of a borrowed car.” That just about says it all.)

That isn’t to say it’s a hopeless album: The lead track’s narrator still has enough fight left in him to “spit in the face of these badlands”; Racing is sung by a man who makes a point of contrasting himself with those who “give up living/And start dying little by little, piece by piece.” Rather, it’s an album about relentless, crushing pain and frustration and anger and about finding ways to survive in the face of relentless, crushing pain and frustration and anger. About coming home from work, washing up, and going racing in the street.

Of course, it isn’t as easy as that. Maybe, if you’re feeling unkind, it’s that easy on Born to Run -- but not on Darkness. Survival takes more than a fast car, as Springsteen makes clear on the most overtly upbeat song on the album. The Promised Land’s most-quoted line is probably the last half of its defiant chorus: “Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man/And I believe in a promised land.” But to me, the song’s key passage has always been these lines from the final verse:

I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm Gonna be a twister to blow everything down That ain't got the faith to stand its ground

Anyway: I don’t want you to finally get around to discovering Darkness five years from now, only to get annoyed with me for not insisting you listen to it sooner, so do us both a favor and give it a shot.

Further reading:

Dave Marsh’s 1978 review for Rolling Stone is probably the best essay about Darkness that I’ve ever read. Or it was, before Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski came along.

Philebrity’s review of last year’s performance of the album in Philadelphia (part of an extraordinary few weeks in which I saw a half-dozen of the best concerts I’ve ever seen) contained a more succinct assessment:

If you’ve by some chance never heard it, or haven’t listened to it all the way through in years, Darkness On The Edge Of Town is an absolute motherfucker of an album.

Yeah. That’s pretty much what I was trying to say.

Come on out, Elvis.

One year ago last night, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performed The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle in its entirety during a concert at Madison Square Garden.

Casual fans may be familiar with WIESS, if at all, as the album that contains Rosalita (Come Out Tonight). It contains no hits, and didn’t sell much upon initial release in 1973. For me, however, it is sacred. It features Incident on 57th Street, a song I do not know how to praise except that it is the most moving work of art I have ever encountered. Then there’s the magnificent New York City Serenade and The E Street Shuffle and 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy). Oh, and Rosie, of course. (Wild Billy’s Circus Story is perfectly adequate, but largely serves as a five-minute opportunity to prepare myself for Incident.) And Kitty’s Back, a wonderful, sprawling jazz-rock fusion that displays the E Street Band’s musical talents like no other. Not only did I name my cat after the song’s protagonist, Catlong, I was persuaded to get a cat in the first place by the realization that if I did so I could give it that name.

I’ve never thought of The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle as my favorite Springsteen album (a title I’ve decided is futile to hand out, but which was held by Darkness on the Edge of Town for quite a while.) But when Springsteen’s camp announced in 2009 that upcoming shows would include full performances of various albums, I did two things: I cringed at the concept, of which I was deeply (and, as it turns out, wrongly) skeptical, and I began dreaming of the opportunity to see WIESS.

Such an opportunity seemed unlikely, however, as the album performances were Born in The USA and Born to Run, both of which I saw a couple of times, and, less frequently, Darkness, which I saw once, and which blew away sky-high expectations.

So when worded dribbled out on, I believe, a Tuesday that Saturday night’s MSG show would feature WIESS, I spent about half an hour staring at my laptop in disbelief, followed by a couple of hours contemplating the irresponsibility of dropping everything and shoe-horning another show into the already-strained concert budget. But it didn’t take long to realize that I am not disciplined enough to decline a guaranteed Incident -- and with Serenade and everything else thrown in, there was no chance.

So I took a bus through four states, broke my rule against paying more than face value for a concert ticket -- then broke it again right before the show by buying a second ticket in case the first turned out to be a fake. I know: It sounds ridiculous. It was ridiculous. And I’d do it again. I was not going to miss that show. I felt bad about holding an extra ticket as I saw hundreds of people out on the street, hoping for a drop or an extra or a scalper. I’ve been in their position, and I still feel bad for anyone who didn’t get in. That’s the one big negative on my Springsteen fan community karma ledger, though, and I like to think it is outweighed by some solid positives.

Now: If you’ve seen Bruce Springsteen a few dozen times, you’ve probably gotten spoiled a little. You’ve seen enough incredible things that you start to dare to expect the incredible. So as I made my way to my (solid but unspectacular) seat, I began focusing on how a full performance of WIESS, itself barely imaginable just a week earlier, could be even better. And that meant one thing: A full horn section. See, Kitty’s Back with just Clarence’s sax is wonderful. Kitty’s Back with Clarence’s sax and Curt Ramm on trumpet is twice as good. And Kitty’s Back with a full horn section ... well, I’d never seen it before, but I’d heard on bootlegs, and wow.

So when I got to my seat, the very first thing I noticed was the little row of chairs up on the riser between Roy’s piano and Max’s drum kit. Those chairs aren’t usually there. Horn section! (I didn’t notice the chairs set up on a riser on the other side of the stage until much later.)

And then they came out and opened with Thundercrack, the ultra-obscure early-70s outtake that had long topped my list of extraordinarily-improbable-songs-I’d-like-to-see, and which I was now seeing for an even more improbable fourth time. Like I said: expect the incredible. Nobody agrees with me on this, but I’m prone to arguing, somewhat seriously, that Thundercrack is a better live song than Rosalita. So it’s a pretty great way to start a show.

The performance of the album itself could not have been better. A full horn section was, in fact, present for The E Street Shuffle and Kitty’s Back. Roy playing Danny’s accordion part in Sandy ... that either means something to you, or it doesn’t, and I can’t do it justice. Incident on 57th Street lost maybe two percent of its impact by virtue of knowing it was coming. (The first few piano notes of an out-of-the-blue Incident are as close as I’ve ever come to the feeling I would imagine lottery winners experience.) And those chairs on the other side of the stage? They were for the eight-piece string section that came out for a sublime album-closing New York City Serenade.

So: Thundercrack, Incident, Serenade, a full horn section for Kitty’s Back -- this show hit a lot of my highest hopes for a Springsteen show. An unreasonable number, actually. But there was one more to come. I had been wanting to see Springsteen and Elvis Costello play together for years. I know: That’s a pretty specific and unlikely hope. But once you’ve seen Bob Dylan and Gary U.S. Bonds show up on Bruce’s stage on the same rain-soaked night at Shea Stadium, you stop ruling things out as impossible.

And so somehow the words “Come on out, Elvis” didn’t shock me as much as they should have. Elvis Costello joining in on a show-closing Higher and Higher is really the only way this show could have ended.

What’s really incredible, though, is that in a span of about six weeks last fall, I saw four other shows that were in the same league as this one.

So: For anyone who has ever accompanied me to an objectively great Springsteen show that I’ve classified as “good, but not extraordinary” (those are the kind we tend to get in DC) now you know why. Because I’ve seen shows that open with Thundercrack, include Kitty’s Back with horns, Incident, Serenade with strings, and end with Elvis Fucking Costello.

Defining “Rosy” Down

Under the header “Will the economy save Obama’s job?,” CNN reports:

Unemployment currently stands at 9.6%, just a pinch below the 10.1% peak hit last October. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney.com expect unemployment will still be barely over 9% a year from now. But the long-term outlook is rosier -- overall, they forecast unemployment to drop to about 8.1% on Election Day 2012, with some predicting it’ll drop as low as 7% by then.

Welcome to the new normal: The jobs situation has been so lousy for so long that the media portrays two more years of the unemployment rate exceeding 8 percent as a “rosy” outlook.

From 1948 through 2008, there were a total of 40 months in which the unemployment rate was 8 percent or higher. Forty months, total, in sixty years. The longest streak of 8+ percent unemployment was 27 consecutive months from November 1981 to January 1984.

Under the “rosier” long-term outlook CNN’s economists forecast for the next two years, by Election Day 2012, the unemployment rate will have been at 8.0 or higher for 46 consecutive months. That’s more than the total number of months the unemployment rate was that high from 1948-2008.

I’m not sure people in DC -- reporters or pols -- get how bad that is.