Davos Newbies

I’m regularly agog at surveys that purport to judge where expatriates have the best quality of life. Swissmiss proudly points to the latest Mercer survey which has a Swiss-tinged top ten:

1. Zurich
= 2. Vienna
= 2. Geneva
4. Vancouver
5. Auckland
6. Dusseldorf
= 7. Munich
= 7. Frankfurt
9. Bern
10. Sydney

Felix Salmon does a great job of dissecting research like this. I’m not going to pay $390 to analyze Mercer’s report in detail. But quality of life? As the great Inigo Montoya would say, “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”

Mercer’s ranking puts a premium on safety, medical care and environment. Those are all well and good, but they aren’t what attracts a vibrant creative class, in Richard Florida’s terms. Only a handful of the top ten cities on Mercer’s list, to my judgment, have the quality of life that would attract the kind of people I’m interested in (Vancouver, Munich and Sydney).

But I fear the problem isn’t Mercer’s methodology, so much as the tastes of the classical expatriate. These are people who are middle-of-the-road in everything. There was an annual tussle, when I was involved in Davos, with the voices of safe mediocrity. “Let’s invite Phil Collins” was the worst of it. One of the reasons why I think Richard Florida’s work strikes a chord for so many forward-thinking policymakers is that he has identified the characteristics of the new world that is aborning. The old world, reflected by Mercer’s “quality of life” rankings, persists. But I know where I’m placing my bets for the years to come, and it’s not in Zurich, Vienna and Geneva.

David Warsh:

You thought it was a big deal when the first Chicago economist took a seat on the Council of Economic Advisers (William Niskanen in 1981)? The chances are that the United States is about to get a president from Chicago’s Hyde Park – and learn something in the process about the difference between a liberal and a libertarian.

Well worth reading the whole thing if you want a sophisticated view of the economic issues and philosophies at play in the election.

Kevin Drum:

And as long as I’m making grand pronouncements that quite possibly might make me look like an idiot in the near future, here’s another one: among the states Bush won in 2004, I think Obama will win Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and maybe even Arkansas. That’s even accounting for the fact that he’ll lose a few points in some of those states for purely racial reasons. This might officially make me the most optimistic Obama supporter in the world, but there you have it.

I’m not sure about Arkansas, but I feel pretty good about Missouri and I wouldn’t rule out Florida.

If you want to get a sense of what Obama might mean for the rest of the world, rather than read offensive nonsense from Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post, read Dominique Moisi in the Financial Times. After noting that if the election were held in France, Obama would win in a landslide (here, too, Dominique), he writes:

Whatever the result of this November’s US presidential election – and it is impossible to predict today – one thing is certain: America, thanks to Mr Obama, has returned to be the emotional centre of gravity of the world, and this time not only in tragic terms as it was after September 11 2001, or in negative terms as during most of the George W. Bush years.

Over the weekend I went to an Obama nomination celebration in the Berkeley hills. A decent crowd showed up to revel in completing the first giant step in a historic, transformative campaign. During the toasts to Obama’s coming victory, I was very moved to hear a series of stories about people met during the campaign so far, who have been seized with the conviction that, as Obama frequently says in his speeches, “we are the ones we have been waiting for”.

My only regret on the day is that my parents aren’t around to see it. My mother and father were long-standing fighters for social justice and progressive politics on many levels: against fascism in the ’30s and ’40s, for workers’ rights, for civil rights, against the war in Vietnam from the earliest moments (standing vigil in front of the Winnetka post office – the local “symbol” of the federal government – every Saturday morning for years and years), against apartheid, and on and on.

It’s almost impossible to imagine how galvanized and emotional they would have been this week. November 4 is going to be even better, I’m confident.

Thanks to Scott Hanson for pointing me to the German coverage of Die Tageszeitung’s astoundingly ill-judged headline. Here’s some of the Der Spiegel reporting (Die Tageszeitung is apparently known as Taz):

The headline refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which has become controversial due to its perceived stereotyping of African-Americans. The novel led to the expression “Uncle Tom” being used to pejoratively refer to an African-American who is subservient to whites.

Gary Smith, executive director of the American Academy in Berlin, a private center which promotes trans-Atlantic relations, told SPIEGEL ONLINE Thursday that the cover left him “speechless.” “‘Uncle Tom’ is a racial slur, and the Taz editors clearly sacrificed substance and principle for an unreflected laugh,” he said. “A journalism that prides itself on treating stereotypes with irreverence needs to think harder about its own deployment of stereotypes and racial allusions. There are countless ways to address the issue of race in this year’s election more intelligently.”

Editors at Taz defended their decision to run the headline on Thursday. “The headline is intended to be satirical,” deputy editor-in-chief Reiner Metzger told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is a book that all Germans know and which they associate with issues of racism. The headline is supposed to make people think about these stereotypes. It works on many levels.”

He said that the issue of race surrounds Obama in the presidential election campaign. “The fact that he is African-American plays a constant role in the campaign, but no one talks about it explicitly. One can play with that fact.”

Metzger said that the Taz is famous for not being politically correct and is well-known for its ironic and cheeky cover headlines. “I’m sure 99 percent of our readers would understand it correctly. As for the rest, well, tough luck. You can’t please everybody.”

But many were clearly displeased by the Taz’s cover choice — including representatives of Germany’s black community, who reacted with indignation. “I find the Taz cover very problematic,” said Yonis Ayeh, a board member at the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD). The ISD represents the interests of black Germans, who are estimated to number up to 500,000 within Germany’s population of 82 million.

“The newspaper is comparing Obama with Uncle Tom, a subservient slave,” Ayeh said. “I’m sure Obama doesn’t see himself like that. It transmits an image of black people as submissive, uneducated people, which is simply not true.”

Ayeh was not surprised that an insensitive headline could come from a left-leaning newspaper. “There is also acute racism within the left-wing scene in Germany,” he said. “They are no angels, and the Taz contributes to that when it commits such gaffes.”

Apropos of newspaper front pages (see previous post), I want a daily paper that looks as great as Portugal’s Público.

The Newseum in Washington offers a great service of today’s front pages from around the world. I had a scan today of how Europe’s newspapers covered Obama’s clinching the Democratic nomination and one oddity leaped out. Berlin’s Die Tageszeitung, which is a left-of-center daily, has the huge headline: Onkel Baracks Hütte. Did they really mean to associate Barack Obama with Uncle Tom? I thought German education was better than that. I’m astounded.

Update Looking at the various front pages, I like that Il Corriere della Sera (not my favorite Italian paper, that’s La Repubblica) majored on Barack and Michelle Obama giving dap (and I wanted to use the word dap, which I only learned today):

Foreign Policy points to an article in Le Monde bemoaning that Barack Obama “doesn’t speak any foreign languages (except Indonesian)”. What that really means is Barack Obama doesn’t speak French. Not only is Le Monde wrong, because Obama does speak some Spanish, but the seeming belittlement of Indonesian is very misplaced.

Here’s how languages rank in terms of native speakers according to the very sober, conservative estimates of Ethnologue:

1. Mandarin (873 million)
2. Spanish (322 million)
3. English (309 million)
4. Hindi/Urdu (242 million)
5. Arabic (206 million)
13. Javanese/Indonesian  (75 million)
19. French (65 million)

So ya boo sucks to all those snooty people who don’t know any foreign languages (except French).

One of the things that gets my synapses firing is the frequent unlikely juxtaposition of items in my news reader. Because I’m looking at the feeds chronologically, in a river of news style, there are collisions that set off new ideas.

Today it was the close proximity of Geoff Manaugh’s Bldgblog on China’s dust bowl (amazing and frightening photos) with The Run of Play’s musings on Jose Mourinho’s move to Inter. Both blogs have consistently excellent writing. What struck me today, however, is that both were about dreamscapes in unlikely places.

I don’t claim any great significance for this – particularly in the week when we’re finally going to get the transformative Democratic candidate I’ve been waiting for – but it’s those interesting juxtapositions that keep my mind healthy.

Incidentally, for political junkie river of news fans, Dave Winer’s latest venture is essential reading. NewsJunk doesn’t create my favored unlikely clashes, but it is a way to immerse yourself in the stream of political news and analysis.