Monthly Archives: March 2013

Quick Review: The Queen of Versailles

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I recently watched the 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles which details the quest of David and Jacqueline Siegel to built the largest house in the United States. My thoughts on the film:

1. I’ll be honest: I’m disappointed more of the movie isn’t about the house. And, I hope the house is completed just to see what an 85,000 square foot house looks like.

2. The film ends up being a lot more about what happens when a wealthy person/family suddenly sees that money disappears. This is an interesting story in itself. How do they adjust? How much of their behavior really changes? Even if they say they can readjust to a lower income, which is closer to what they grew up with, it appears this is is a really hard process. This reminds me of recent research suggesting people feel losses more strongly compared to equal gains.

3. Jackie is a somewhat sympathetic character but David Siegel is the one to watch here. His mood gets darker and darker as his financial prospects dim. I felt sorry for him; he freely admits at several points that he can’t separate his family and work and it shows in how he lives. Is this what trying to hold on to money looks like? If so, it doesn’t look attractive at all.

4. The film does address at various points who is responsible for the situation the Siegels are in: banks who made money easily available or people who got addicted to this easy money? But, the film doesn’t go far enough in trying to resolve this. It would be interesting to see banks or financial institutions interviewed on this particular case, or even more broadly, to get their side. We see the personal fallout of the problem as the Siegel family tries to recover but the film only hints at the bigger picture.

While this is an interesting story, I wonder: if the outlandishly large house was not involved, how different is this from a number of reality shows or films about wealthy people? In the end, I do think the family is pretty honest about the changes they are experiencing and perhaps it is this authenticity that sets this documentary apart.

(Note: critics like the film. On RottenTomatoes, 98 out of 103 reviews were fresh.)

New findings show Holocaust much more vast than notorious concentration camps

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New findings show the Holocaust was a widespread phenomenon including more than 42,000 sites in Europe:

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington…

The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.)

The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.

Two thoughts related to these new findings:

1. My Social Research class recently read a more detailed account of the Milgram Experiment of the early 1960s. (Milgram’s own book Obedience to Authority gives even more details.) College students are well aware of the Holocaust but often don’t know the lengths Milgram went to in order to verify his findings about how “normal” people might respond when given orders by authorities to hurt others. We also watched a 2009 replication from the BBC – watch here – that had similar results to Milgram. This tends to help make the 50+ year old experiment more real for students.

2. In my Culture, Media, and Society class, I use a chapter from Jeffrey Alexander’s The Meanings of Social Life that discusses how the Holocaust came to be a universal human trauma rather than one just limited to a trauma for Jews. Alexander argues that the United States approached the Holocaust as a moral superior since the act was committed by Germans and the U.S. helped liberate Europe and then emerged as the leader of the free world. But, a series of events, including the Milgram experiment, changed people’s minds about exclusivity of the Holocaust as even countries like the United States came to be seen as perpetrators of great violence. In other words, we are all capable of acting like Nazis under certain conditions.

Why Public Policy Polling (PPP) should not conduct “goofy polls”

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Here is an explanation why the polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) conducts “goofy polls”:

But over the past year, PPP has been regularly releasing goofy, sometimes pointless polls about every other month. In early January, one such survey showed that Congress was less popular than traffic jams, France and used-car salesmen. According to their food-centric surveys released this week, Americans clearly prefer Ronald McDonald over Burger King for President; Democrats are more likely to get their chicken at KFC than Chick-fil-A, and Republicans are more apt to order pancakes than waffles. “We’re obviously doing a lot of polling on the key 2014 races,” says Jensen. “That kind of polling is important. We also like to do some fun polls.”

PPP, which has a left-leaning reputation, releases fun polls in part because they’re entertaining but mostly in an attempt to set themselves apart as an approachable polling company. Questions for polls are sometimes crowd-sourced via Twitter. The outfit does informal on-site surveys about what state they should survey next. And when the results of offbeat polls come out, the tidbits have potential to go viral. “We’re not trying to be the next Gallup or trying to be the next Pew,” Jensen says. “We’re really following a completely different model where we’re known for being willing to poll on stuff other people aren’t willing to poll on.” Like whether Republicans are willing to eat sushi (a solid 64% are certainly not).

Which means polls about “Mexican food favorability” are a publicity stunt on some level. Jensen says PPP, which has about 150 clients, gets more business from silly surveys and the ethos it implies than they do cold-calling. One such client was outspoken liberal Bill Maher, who hired PPP to poll for numbers he could use on his HBO show Real Time. That survey, released during the 2012 Republican primaries, found that Republicans were more likely to vote for a gay candidate than an atheist candidate—and that conservative virgins preferred Mitt Romney, while Republicans with 20 or more sexual partners strongly favored Ron Paul.

Jensen argues that the offbeat polls do provide some useful information. One query from the food survey, for instance, asks respondents whether they consider themselves obese: about 20% of men and women said yes, well under the actual American obesity rate of 35.7%.  Information like that could give health crusaders some fodder for, say, crafting public education PSAs. Still, the vast majority of people are only going to use these polls to procrastinate at work: goodness knows it’s hard to resist a “scientific” analysis of partisans’ favorite pizza toppings (Republicans like olives twice as much!).

Here is my problem with this strategy: it is short-sighted and privileges PPP. While polling firms do need to market themselves as there are a number of organizations that conduct national polls, this strategy can harm the whole field. When the average American sees the results of “goofy polls,” is it likely to improve their view of the polling in general? I argue there is already enough suspicion in America about polls and their validity without throwing in polls that don’t tell us as much. This suspicion contributes to lower response rates across the board, a problem for all survey researchers.

In the end, the scientific nature of polling takes a hit when any firm is willing to reduce polling to marketing.

Michigan to appoint emergency manager for Detroit

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The city of Detroit will soon lose self-governance as Michigan Governor Rick Snyder says an emergency manager will take control:

“I believe it’s important to declare the city of Detroit in financial emergency,” Snyder announced at a midday press conference on Friday, in front of the banner, “Detroit Can’t Wait.” The EM will assume the suspended powers of the mayor and city council, and will take unilateral control of municipal finances, union contracts, pension systems, and more.

The consolidation of power will likely lead to cuts and asset sales that the mayor and city council had sought to avoid, which could include the privatization of most of the city’s water supply or the sale of Belle Isle Park. The EM also has the power to declare the city bankrupt, though that option seems unlikely.

The process has racial and political overtones. Detroit is over 80 percent black and its city government is controlled by Democrats; the Michigan statehouse is largely white and firmly in Republican control. If an EM is appointed in nearby Inkster (pop. 25,000, currently under a “consent agreement” with the state), as Chris Savage has pointed out, more than half of Michigan’s 1.4 million African Americans will be governed by unelected officials.

Snyder’s decision follows last week’s devastating report from a state review team that Detroit is unable to address its long-term financial problems. The Motor City, the investigation found, has $14.9 billion in long-term debt and pension obligations, and its general fund has not shown a surplus since 2004. The review team unanimously recommended state intervention…

Five other cities in Michigan are also under state control. Detroit will be the largest city in the country to lose the ability to govern itself.

It will be interesting to see what goals the emergency manager has. To fix the budget and turn a surplus? To contract the city to a viable size? To try to attract growth? To stem the population loss? To privatize unprofitable utilities? Related to the goals, I’m also curious to know how the state will determine whether the emergency manager is “successful.” What happens if the emergency manager doesn’t work out?

In the long run, the ability to self-govern seems to be a bedrock principle in American life. I wonder how much Governor Snyder really wants to do this versus feeling like it has to be done to turn Detroit around. The political fall-out from such a move may not be pretty and states don’t want to be in long-term positions like these.