Articles by john-ostrander
Thu Nov 29, 2007 — by John Ostrander
Medium Rare, by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #42
You can learn the damnedest things in the most unexpected places
I was paging through last week’s Entertainment Weekly, the one where they anoint their entertainers of the year, and came across four women – Glenn Close, Mary Louise Parker, Kyra Sedgewick, and Holly Hunter – all grouped together by the fact that they are over 40, that they are starring in their own TV shows on cable channels, and all had a uniting reason for doing so: the work simply wasn’t out there in movies for them.
Okay, that’s not news. And that’s what wrong. Pop culture is a reflection of our society and the way that it chooses to show certain demographics of people – including sometimes their omission – says a great deal about our society and what and who we value. While the article made me think of older women, the same point can be made for other minorities. We’re talking not only of movies and television but comic books and other entertainments as well. It is not only the portrayal of these groups – to which there is some increased sensitivity – but their omission that reveals how our society sees itself.
Thu Nov 22, 2007 — by John Ostrander
Persons of story, by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #41
Today is Thanksgiving and a hearty Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
As it turns out, it’s also the birthday of my late wife, Kimberly Ann Yale, who would have been 54 today. This is a day for stopping and giving thanks for the good things in your life and so I’ll ask your indulgence while I remember one of the best things in mine, which was Kim.
For those who don’t know her, never met her, how do I describe her to you? My god, where do I begin? Physically – heart shaped face, megawatt smile, big blue eyes. Champagne blonde hair which, in her later years, she decided should be red. That decision was pure Kimmie. She looked good, too, but she also looked good bald. More on that in a few moments. She was buxom and damn proud of it. Referred to her breasts as “the girls” and was fond of showing them off. She was about 5’8” so that when she was in heels we were about the same height. Basically had an hourglass figure although sometimes there were a few more seconds packed into that hourglass than maybe there should have been. We both fought weight problems and I still do.
All that, however, is mere physical description. Photographs could tell you as much and more and still tell you so little about Kim. Not who she was. Kim was an extrovert to the point of being an exhibitionist. She was flamboyant sometimes; I have described her at times as the world’s most innocent narcissist. She loved the spotlight but with the delight of a child. Yet, she also loved nothing better than to be in the corner of a tea shoppe or coffee house, drinking her cuppa, writing in her journal, totally absorbed into herself and the moment.
Thu Nov 15, 2007 — by John Ostrander
The Golden Compass and the Golden Rule, by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #40
Well, the film adaptation of the novel The Golden Compass hasn’t even opened yet and the Christian right-wing is already foaming at the mouth about it. The book is the first in a children’s fantasy trilogy called His Dark Materials by British author Phillip Pullman. Pullman is an agnostic/atheist (depending on the article that you read) and has said he is promoting his views through books to children, much as C.S. Lewis did promoting Christianity with The Chronicles of Narnia.
You’ve probably already seen the previews and commercials for The Golden Compass at the movies or on the TV. It’s got Nicole Kidman and a pretty cool looking armored polar bear (which may disturb Stephen Colbert even more than the atheist slant – assuming the writer’s strike ends in a timely fashion for him to comment on it). It’s also got Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, upset. That’s another point in its favor, insofar as I’m concerned, since I really dislike Donohue.
A note or two about the League and Donohue. The League’s full name is The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights. From their own website: “Founded in 1973 by the late Father Virgil C. Blum, S.J., the Catholic League defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination.” The League’s office is located in the headquarters of the New York archdiocese. Donohue is its main and some say virtually only employee. The site claims "The league wishes to be neither left nor right, liberal or conservative, revolutionary or reactionary.” Donohue, however, is an adjunct scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation and his frequently bombastic statements link him with the blowhards on the Right.
Continue reading The Golden Compass and the Golden Rule, by John Ostrander ›
Thu Nov 8, 2007 — by John Ostrander
Mix Picks Chicks Flix, by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #39
Generally speaking, I’m a guy. When I get dressed, I’m usually not worried about the ensemble, just about whether it’s relatively clean. I’m not concerned about my “looks,” considering that at my age I haven’t got many looks left to consider. My sweetie Mary likes how I look and that’s good enough for me.
Thing is – I’m not really a “guy’s guy.” I don’t follow sports all that closely but that’s because I’m mostly interested in my home teams. Because I’m at heart a Chicago boy, that means that – with the exception of certain comparatively rare periods of time – following sports is an exercise in masochism, especially as I am a Northsider, which makes me a Cubs’ fan.
I’m not into the whole “alpha male” thing, either. Never was, never will be. If “winning” is that big a deal to the other guy and it’s not over anything important to me – fine, I don’t care. He wins. If the jerk in the other car HAS to zoom around me, cut me off, and gain 2.5 seconds – okay. I continue on, generally catch up at the next stoplight, pull in behind him and then mime laughing at him, pointing at his car, so he can see me in the rear view mirror. I never said I wasn’t petty.
I also don’t always give in. People who assume that get a surprise when it’s on something that matters to me – or I’m just feeling contrary and cranky.
Thu Nov 1, 2007 — by John Ostrander
Getting Good and Scared, by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #38
Have a nice Hallowe’en? Was the Great Pumpkin good to you? Did you grab a few treats, pull a few tricks? Watched a nice scary movie or two? Seen a few Saws? Are you ready to get back to the real world?
The real world has gotten a lot scarier than anything Stephen King is putting out or that Hollywood is dreaming up. Crude oil is hitting record highs. Drinking water is drying up on both a national and an international level. The American housing market is in the toilet and likely to remain there. About a year from now we’ll be electing a new president and a new Congress, which means that we’re about to hit the hardcore election season during which little or nothing of substance will be done in Washington.
“Old news,” right? Heard it all before. Maybe we should summarize what it all means quickly and simply, the way Americans like it. Unless there are drastic changes made, America is going into its decline. Unless you’re in that upper small percentile of Americans that are really rich, the quality of your life is going to decline as well and not get better.
Fact? Not yet. By the time it’s a fact, it’ll be way too late to change. No, this is a projection based on facts. When I was a teacher at the Joe Kubert School, teaching writing to artists (an interesting task), one exercise I would give teams of students was to create a future based on facts derived from the research. The scenario had to be a reasonable extrapolation from existing facts or events and they had to explain the reasoning.
Continue reading Getting Good and Scared, by John Ostrander ›
Thu Oct 25, 2007 — by John Ostrander
Whose Story Is It, Anyway? by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #37
In any given story, one of the primary questions that must be answered by the writer is – whose story is it? For example – in any Batman/Joker story, we assume that the story is going to be about Batman. He is the title character, after all. However, the story can be about the Joker – taken from his perspective, with the Joker as the protagonist and the Batman as his antagonist. A protagonist, after all, is not always a hero.
Sometimes, when I’m having problems with a story, I’ll go back to that simple, basic question – whose story is it? The answer sometimes surprises me. When I was writing my historical western for DC, The Kents, I assumed for a long time that the story was about Nate Kent, who was the direct ancestor of Pa Kent, Clark’s adoptive father. It was only when I was deep into the story that it occurred to me that the story was actually about Nate’s younger brother Jeb, who takes a wrong road, shoots his brother in the back at one point, becomes an outlaw, and eventually has to make things right.
The story may not always be about a person. When I wrote Gotham Nights, the focus of the story was the city itself, and the city was comprised not only of its buildings and roadways but, more importantly, the people who lived there, of whom I tried to give a cross-sampling. Batman was a part of all that because he is a part of Gotham City but the miniseries didn’t focus on him. It was Gotham City’s story.
Continue reading Whose Story Is It, Anyway? by John Ostrander ›
Thu Oct 18, 2007 — by John Ostrander
Writing Under the Influence, by John Ostrander
Tales From The O-zone #36
Nothing is created in a vacuum. Though the artist may like to think that the work springs forth Zeus-like full blown from their brow, the truth is any number of different other works influence your own. The works that move and affect us as artists also teach and guide us in our own expression.
We prize originality but it is said there’s only x amount of plots when you boil them all down (the number has varied according to who is defining it, but it’s usually low) and they were all created by the Greeks. The greatest writer in the English language – William Shakespeare – rarely came up with original plots, most usually re-working older plays or tales from history. What is original often is how you combine the elements.
Imitation is the starting point for what you eventually become. In writing, you become influenced by certain writers because of the types of stories they tell, or their command of language, or the depth of their themes and thought or even just their success or all of it together. It is through imitation, I think, that we truly learn such things as structure. With writing, you can take all the classes and read all the books but, ultimately, you really only learn how to write by writing. Hopefully, as you grow older and wiser – better – you discard the overt forms that you imitate to find your own voice, your own style. What starts out as something that you borrow has to become something that you own.
GrimJack began that way. As a writer, I very much fall into the camp of wanting to write because of the pleasure I’ve had in reading, especially certain writers. I’ve noted elsewhere that GrimJack was created as a cross between hard-boiled detectives and sword-and-sorcery heroes (making him what I sometimes laughingly refer to as a “hard-boiled barbarian”) but I haven’t talked about which sword-and-sorcery heroes went into the mix. Some might assume Robert E. Howard’s Conan but I’ve always been more drawn to Solomon Kane, Howard’s Puritan wanderer/adventurer. Conan as a character isn’t very reflective; Kane was, even though he was driven by a wanderlust that he couldn’t explain.
Continue reading Writing Under the Influence, by John Ostrander ›
Thu Oct 11, 2007 — by John Ostrander
John Ostrander: Obit the Living
Tales From The O-zone #35
Obits – obituaries – are tough things to write. Their purpose is to commemorate the life of someone recently deceased, to list their accomplishments and achievements, to take note that someone has passed out of our lives. A last fanfare to the life of someone who is gone. Generally speaking, they are valedictory and complimentary.
Why do we wait until after a person has passed away to stand up and say these things? Okay, it might embarrass the person we’re talking about to hear the nice things we might say – and mean – about them but they’ll get over it. And they might like to hear them.
All of which is prelude to the fact that I am about to embarrass someone – a fellow member of ComicMix. Ladies and germs, let’s talk about Mr. Dennis O’Neil.
ComicMix readers tend to be a pretty knowledgeable lot, I’ve discovered. Unlike some comic book fans, they know their comic book history and know it extends prior to Marvel’s Civil War or DC’s Infinite Crisis. If you already know most of what I’m about to tell you, sorry – but I’m speaking for the record and for people who may not know Denny as well as they might or should.
Thu Oct 4, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: Genius and Barbecue
Tales from the O-zone #34
There are ways of getting ComicMix E-I-C Mike Gold to do what you want. Most of them involve barbeque. It has to be good barbeque, mind you, and we’re talking beef rather than pork. Smoky brisket, a sharp sauce, maybe some hushpuppies (forget the cole slaw), fries, and a coke – get these into him and he becomes remarkably malleable.
Another really good way is talent. Mike is seduced by talent. I’m not talking big names; Mike knows plenty of people who are “names” and it’s no big deal. I’m talking about talent. He loves being a part of what happens when talented people do things; hell, Mike’s plenty talented in his own right. But he really enjoys how creative minds work.
It’s how I got him to originally go for Munden’s Bar. The character that Tim Truman and I created, GrimJack, had proven such a hit in the back of Starslayer that he was being promoted into his own book. Given the page count of comics at the time, it meant we needed an eight page back-up feature. I wanted GrimJack to be all set in the pandimensional city of Cynosure where the main feature itself was set so I proposed that we do an anthology series of eight page stories set in Munden’s, the bar that GrimJack owned and used as his office. Each story would be complete unto itself, each could have a different artist, and maybe I’d even let another writer in. Occasionally. Maybe.
Mike wasn’t sold. His objections were that anthologies could be a lot more work, they didn’t always sell very well, the company liked to use back-ups as launching pads for new series which Munden’s Bar was unlikely to do, and the idea with backups was to have something separate from the main feature that would draw in a crowd perhaps on its own, as GrimJack had done for Starslayer.
These were all reasonable objections. I couldn’t really dispute any of them so instead I fought dirty and appealed to Mike’s love of talent.
I told him I thought I could get Del Close to co-write some of them with me.
Let me tell you about Del. He was an actor, a teacher, and most of all he was the director at Second City in Chicago for twenty-plus years. He was teacher and mentor to some of the biggest names who came out of Second City and later founded, with Charna Halpern, ImprovOlypics – out of which came more students who became important people in comedy. Like who? John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, John Candy, Betty Thomas, Stephen Colbert, Mike Meyers, Steve Carell, and so many others that I could spend the rest of the column just listing them.
Simply put – Del Close is one of the greatest influences on late twentieth century comedy and humor in America and, thus, the world. He influenced his students and they in turn are influencing others. Del shaped the sensibility of Second City for two decades. Without it, there is no Saturday Night Live, no SCTV (Del created the format for that show), none of the other improv groups that have also fed American humor in all its forms.
Hyperbole? If anything, I think I’m understating it. Del is perhaps the only individual I have ever personally met whom I would call a genius. It’s not just a matter of intellect although Del had a considerable brain; it wasn’t just a matter of knowledge – Del was enormously well read on a multitude of different subjects. It was perception; he knew how it worked because he saw the patterns. I think Einstein knew what the answers were; he had to then find the proof. Same thing with Del.
Thu Sep 27, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: Devil’s Advocate – Iraq
Tales From The O-zone #33
I’ve got something nibbling at my mind and perhaps the only way for me to sort it out is to put it into words. It has to do with our adventure in nation-building, a.k.a. the Iraq debacle.
I’ll start by saying that I was for the invasion of Afghanistan. Then and now, it seemed to me the necessary response to 9/11. Al Quaeda appeared responsible; they had their camps in Afghanistan with the full knowledge and support of the Afghan government, the Taliban. You get hit, you hit back at the ones who hit you. Hard. As Al Capone said, “That’s the Chicago way.”
On the other hand, I was not for the invasion of Iraq from the beginning and I said so. I didn’t buy the “imminent danger” from the “weapons of mass destruction,” especially since there were UN weapons inspection teams on the ground inside the country. The fact that the Bush Administration was so stridently insistent made me ask “What else is going on here?” At first I thought it was about the oil (and now Alan Greenspan says it was); I came to believe that it was a NeoCon vision of transforming the MidEast by creating a functioning democracy in the middle of it. Now I think it’s about the oil, about the NeoCon vision, and certain select Bush-friendly companies making a bucket of money there.
I believe that the NeoCons thought that the Iraqis in exile would just step in, set up a new government, we would be hailed as liberators, and it would all be done in six months. I believe it was on the agenda to do before 9/11 happened; that tragedy just enabled the Bushies to push the plan through without thinking it through. The only plan the current administration seems to have for dealing with the mess is to leave it for the next administration to clean up. Instead of nation building, we seem to have created a geographical area of chaos. It’s a constant drain on both our military and our national finances; Iraq seems like an open wound.
My disgust with all of this is long standing. We had no business going into Iraq in the first place. The WMDs were a lie and the Administration knew it or, at very least, should have known it. The Dems were elected to Congress on the promise to end the war and the low low low approval rating of Congress at the moment stems on their failure to even staunch the flow. Since I didn’t believe we should be there in the first place, it stands to reason that I think we should get out at first opportunity.
BUT. . .
Colin Powell is purported to have said to Bush about Iraq before the invasion that “If you break it, you’ve bought it.” And there’s my problem. I think there’s truth to that. Before we invaded, Iraq was a functioning country: it had electricity, people had jobs. Yes, it also had a murderous dictator in charge; lots of places around the globe do and we don’t seem to have bothered ourselves about them.
So now what have we got? Sect fights sect and sects fight internally and they all hate us. It’s chaos and we brought it. We, the People. This country. You, an individual, may have, like me, been against the whole misbegotten enterprise from the start but I’m talking about the collective We. The We that elected not only the President but the members of Congress that sustained him, as well as the Democratic Party that has no spine.
Continue reading JOHN OSTRANDER: Devil’s Advocate – Iraq ›
Thu Sep 20, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: The Way I Were
Tales From The O-zone #32
For me, it seemed like this week was all about returning home. The news about GrimJack appearing here on ComicMix was broken… well, here on ComicMix. And DC published the first issue of my new Suicide Squad miniseries (Elayne also has a stake in this since her husband, Robin Riggs, is providing wonderful inks over Javi Pina’s pencils for the series). This is my first new issue of Squad in – well, in a long long time.
It’s interesting coming back to a series after a lengthy absence. When I began scripting GrimJack: Killer Instinct a while back, my concern was – would I get Gaunt’s voice right after so long? Not to worry – it was right there – as was Amanda Waller’s over on Squad.
I’ll be writing more about GrimJack as we get closer to the publication date. (October 2, if you’ve forgotten and, by the way, you’ll be able to see it here on ComicMix for free. Always bears repeating.) Today I’m going to talk instead about one other book with which I was closely connected and which, after a lot of thought, I don’t think I’d want to return to on a regular basis.
The Spectre.
Tom Mandrake and I had a longish run on that series which some people at the time said couldn’t be done. For those of you who don’t know the character, he was created in the late 1930s by Jerry Siegel – co-creator of Superman – and Bernard Baily. Jim Steranko once said the Spectre had the toughest origin in comics – he had to die to get his powers. The Spectre was also the strongest character in the DCU – perhaps in all comics. Only God was stronger and He?She had better be eating His/Her Wheaties.
The concept: the Spectre was Plainclothes Police Detective Jim Corrigan who ran afoul of some gangsters and was dumped into an oil can of cement and dumped in the river. At the gates of Heaven, Corrigan just can’t let it go. The Voice (aka God) lets Corrigan return as a crime fighting ghost who can take an almost human form. His powers were magical – almost divine – and he meted out big time justice. Never more so in a series of stories by Mike Fleischer and Jim Aparo. The vengeance meted out was often horrific.
The Spectre then went through a bunch of different permutations depending on who was writing him when Tom Mandrake and I got him. We had just come off a stint on Firestorm together and were looking for another project and both of us loved the potential of the Spectre. We had very clear ideas of what we should and should not do with him.
Thu Sep 13, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: Salt In the Wound
Tales From The O-zone #31
It’s the odd little news story that tends to grab my eye and we got an interesting one this week. Not only the story itself, but how it is being told.
I found the story initially through the Associated Press version on msnbc.com. The story comes to us from Atlanta, Georgia, and tells how a police officer – one Wendell Adams – arrested a cook at McDonalds, one Kendra Bull, who sold him an overly salty hamburger. Bull admitted that she accidentally knocked the saltshaker onto the burgers she was making; on the advice of a co-worker and the manager, she tried “thumbing” the extra salt off but made the burgers anyway. Officer Fife – excuse me, Officer Adams – ate about half of it before it made him sick. Adams came back, took Bull outside and questioned her, and then arrested her. She was in jail overnight and released on a $1000.00 bond.
I’m going to use two quotes from the story itself because I cannot improve on them: 1) “Police sent samples of the burger to the state crime lab for tests” and 2) “City public information officer George Louth said Bull was charged because she served the burger ‘without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it.’”
She served a burger – a McDonalds’ burger – without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it. Ummmmm – isn’t that one of the things about fast food in general? That we all know it’s not really any good for us but that we eat it anyway? If that’s the standard, why would any fast food joint be open in Atlanta?
And they sent a sample of the burger to the state crime lab for tests? Oh, that’s the case I want to see on CSI!
I was wondering if this case might work as a “torn from the headlines” case for Law and Order but I’m beginning to think it’s better suited for the sense of absurd comedy you find on Boston Legal.
Digging further, I discovered that the hamburger in question was free. A perk for being a cop. Georgia’s not the only place that this happens. Free soda/coffee for cops on beat happens in a lot of places and I guess a Happy Meal comes under that heading.
I also discovered at Kevin Underhill’s Lowering the Bar site – a fine and interesting place – that a healthy adult would need more than a bit of over-salting to cause the sort of vomiting that Officer Krumpke – excuse me, Officer Adams – says he endured. Which might explain sending the hamburger to the Crime Lab for further analysis.
Thu Sep 6, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: Bourne To Run
Tales From The O-zone #30
Spoiler Alert: This week I’m discussing the three Jason Bourne movies and I may wind up revealing plot points, especially of the most recent film out, The Bourne Ultimatum. If you’re planning to see the movie, go see it first. More fun that way.
Just recently I got around to seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, the third in the Jason Bourne series of films starring Matt Damon. All are supposedly based on novels by the late Robert Ludlum – at least, to the degree that the James Bond films were based on the Ian Fleming novels, which meant they basically used the title and one or two elements, if that.
Which is one of its problems for the Ludlum fans. From what I understand, they also don’t like Matt Damon, saying that he’s too young or not right. While I haven’t read the Bourne novels, I have read one or two other Ludlum books and enjoyed them well enough. And I do have sympathy for their position. I complained about the SciFi Network’s version of The Dresden Files because they had so little to do with the actual series of books, which are wonderful. The TV series wasn’t. I sometimes wonder why H’weird buys up properties and then makes wholesale changes in them to the point that they have very little to do with the original concept. The current Flash Gordon series which both I and ComicMix EIC Mike Gold loathe (Mike, you lasted an episode more than I did) is a case in point.
All that said – I’m a big fan of the Bourne movies and more so after the third. I stumbled on the three by accident. (For the record, the three films are The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.) I happened to come across the Supremacy while I was channel surfing one evening, coming in after it started and found myself hooked. When the movie was on again, the lovely and talented Mary joined me and was also drawn in. We kept on missing the opening and it took about three viewings before we finally saw the film all the way through. We then got a hold of the first film and now have the first two on DVD. Supremacy, in particular, has become one of our favorite films.
A quick general summary is in order. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac Black Ops agent working for a super-secret program within the CIA called The Treadstone Project. He’s created to be a human weapon, a master assassin, with mad skills and an ability to improvise. When The Bourne Identity begins, the man known as Jason Bourne is hauled out of the sea by some Mediterranean fishermen. He’s been shot and he has amnesia. Numbers tattooed on his hip turn out to be a Swiss banking account. In a safety deposit box he finds passports and lots of money.
Thu Aug 30, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: Fighting Words
Tales From The O-zone #29
Well, crap.
Just when I think there’s nothing more coming from the Mess in Iraq that can appall me, they find a new spoonful of shit to shove down my throat. Here. Go read this link from MSNBC.
Blood boiling yet? Quick summary for those of you who didn’t click the link: those people, the whistleblowers, who have spoken up about the corruption and the fraud, the outright diversion and theft of funds going into Iraq – our tax dollars! – are being vilified, harassed, fired, detained, tortured and, in general, getting their lives ruined. And our government – surprise! – is a big part of it.
There’s a purpose to all this: discourage anyone else who might think about speaking out. What makes the folks perpetrating this travesty think they can get away with it? The fact that they are getting away with it! Small companies to large and by large, I do mean Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR which got the lion’s share of money going to Iraq to “rebuild” it.
You remember Halliburton – the corporation Dick Cheney headed before going into public service as President – whoops, Vice-President. It’s no longer an American company; it’s now a United Arab Emirates company. I thought you weren’t supposed to be working for the government if you’re also going to be a company’s lobbyist but either I’m misinformed or Cheney is uninformed on this point. The amount of no competition contracts Halliburton or its KBR subsidiary received for the rebuilding on Iraq is staggering as was the price gouging and corruption. Here follows the testimony of one whistleblower:
“Julie McBride testified last year that as a ‘morale, welfare and recreation coordinator’ at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.
“She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.” -- Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties,” Associated Press Aug 25, 2007
That last bit was just crooked, petty, and arrogant. Done because they could. Why could they? Because one political party controlled both the White House and both houses of Congress. I don’t care if it’s Republican or Democrat – to me, that’s just looking for trouble. And this Administration has worked hand in glove with certain Big Business to the point we’ve become a government Of the Corporation, By the Corporation, and For the Corporation.
What has happened to Ms. McBride? Let her tell it. “After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country [Iraq].”
Thu Aug 23, 2007 — by John Ostrander
JOHN OSTRANDER: Widgets
Tales From The O-zone #28
Theories are great. I love theories. Usually they’re a wonderful conflation of thought and imagination. We all have our own pet theories on things and we teach them to do tricks or rub their tummies and have fun with them. For example, my sweetie, Mary, on a regular basis comes up with new theories of how the universe was created. They’re different each time and always fun. Sometimes they stumble near quantum theory and that gets a little spooky but, all in all, I enjoy them almost as much as she does.
My problem with theories is when they become ossified into dogma. This happens not just in religion but in all walks of life, including economics and business. Communism is a good example of an economic theory gone to dogma. One of its charming hypotheses was that, once communism had spread around the globe – as Karl Marx felt it inevitably would – all government would evaporate because we would have achieved the workers’ paradise. That theory, unfortunately, is not based on any human trait I’ve ever seen. Capitalism, on the other hand, being based on human greed, is and that’s one of the reasons it has survived and communism has not.
Capitalism and business, especially in recent years, have had their own bits of theories that are endlessly repeated like mantras until they too have become dogma. They’re applied whether they fit the situation or not, sometimes out of stupidity and other times from cupidity.
One of my least favorite bits of economic dogma is “They’re all widgets.” The word “widget” was coined, I believed, by playwright George S. Kaufman for his 1924 play Beggar On Horseback in which the protagonist must choose between his work as a composer and a steady but soul draining job in a “widget” factory. Since it was never defined, a “widget” – in the economic sense – is a synonym for “product” or, when dealing with a creative artist, the term “talent” is used. What it comes down to is that it doesn’t matter what the widget is, certain business and selling rules will apply. Soap, beef, talent, cars, drugs, beer, games, comic books, movies, TV shows – they’re all widgets. One theory fits all.
Except it doesn’t always do that. In 1989, Marvel was bought by Ron Perelman’s MacAndrews and Forbes; at the time, Marvel had maybe 70% of the sales of a very healthy direct sale market. Before Perelman’s little junket was done, Marvel was in bankruptcy and the market was in tatters. Why? Because they decided they were selling widgets. They didn’t need to know anything about comics or the market; they were going to apply sound business principles and make comics respond accordingly. (I had plenty of friends on the inside keeping me abreast of the latest theory.) Nobody could tell these guys nothing. Their business model was not simply Disney but McDonald’s which not only sells hamburgers but own the bakeries that makes the buns, the cattle ranches that supply the beef and so on.
Marvel started to bring its licenses inside the company with the idea that they would supply the product. Since trading cards were so popular, they would buy the trading card companies. They bought the companies after the interest in trading cards had already crested. Perelman’s suits were consistently behind the curve.
