The images from ‘(TO THE HEART AND MIND) IGNORANCE IS KIND' are looking good and are now up on the website! Check the out >>>here<<<
Something that’s been getting on our nerves recently is the blatant patriotism in the American podcasts we like to listen to; Radio Lab, Freakonomics, This American Life and even Artsy are all waving the starry, striped flag. The first instance we were exposed to was the Freakonomics episode titled ‘No Tipping-Point’’ (listen >>>here<<<). They also did a previous episode on tipping titled ‘Should Tipping be Banned’ which was as always a very thought provoking and engaging listen. There was also It was looking at why we tip, which factors affect the amount, and whether tipping should perhaps be eliminated altogether. An obvious but particularly pertinent piece of research shows that African-American servers earn smaller tips than white servers, so there’s an argument to be made that the practice is discriminatory. Returning to ‘No Tipping-Point’, the episode was about a crazy restaurant owned by New York restaurant maverick Danny Meyer (I hope you’re reading this with a healthy scoop of sarcasm). In this restaurant he has eliminated tipping and instead has raised menu prices, and redistribute the extra money to the people who work in there. Sound familiar? Well that’s probably because that’s literally how the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD DO IT! They celebrate Meyer for being this forward thinking American genius for paying people properly instead of making them butter up customers to do it for him. To be fair to him, credit where credit’s due, this is a good thing for him to have done but there’s no mention of the fact that this isn’t a new thing. We lived in New York for nearly half a year and had to combat this issue constantly which is probably why it annoyed us so much.
Another example we wanted to bring up was Artsy. Voting for Brexit definitely didn’t do wonders for the art market but the way in which they would mention it felt as if you could barely hear them for how high up their horses were. It was as if good old America would never do something so stupid as to isolate themselves from trade, travel and all the other benefits of being a part of the EU. Their tune noticeably changed after the presidential election and suddenly it was much more sombre when politics came up and it felt well over due. Even someone as level headed as Philip DeFranco admitted that the viral video of a woman pissing on an American flag made him angry. Oscare Wilde said it best ‘patriotism is the virtue of the vicious’. However, we don’t want to be reductive, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a patriot, people sometimes abuse that notion, and use the banner of patriotism to justify some heinous things. People like to feel justified to the point of finding means to make it happen; I don’t know anyone who likes an unsettled conscience for long.
