All you people out there who love to boast at the tops of your voices about not having owned a TV in ___ years: You’re not nearly as “special” as you think you are.

The film version of (part of) Atlas Shrugged has come to and mostly gone from America’s cinemas. (Around here, it’s still playing at one multiplex in Bellevue.)

All progressively-minded film critics and political pundits have used this apparently mediocre movie to make big snarky laffs at the expense of the story’s original author, the eminently and deservedly mockable Ayn Rand.

As is usually the case, Roger Ebert expressed this conventional wisdom better than anybody. (Though Paul Constant at the Stranger gave it a good try.)

So why am I writing about it this late in the game?

Because there’s something ironic, and not in a cute/funny way, about art-world people calling Rand and her followers arrogant elitists.

There’s an outfit in Italy called the Manifesto Project. It gathered short essays on graphic design and commercial art (in English) from 24 leading designers around the world.

One of these is by the eminent American magazine, book and poster designer Milton Glaser. During a passage about how “doubt is better than certainty,” Glaser starts discussing why so many designers can’t embrace either doubt or collaboration:

There is a significant sense of self–righteousness in both the art and design world. Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.

Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of compromise. You just have to know what to compromise. Blind pursuit of your own ends which excludes the possibility that others may be right does not allow for the fact that in design we are always dealing with a triad—the client, the audience and you.

Ideally, making everyone win through acts of accommodation is desirable. But self–righteousness is often the enemy. Self–righteousness and narcissism generally come out of some sort of childhood trauma, which we do not have to go into. It is a consistently difficult thing in human affairs. Some years ago I read a most remarkable thing about love, that also applies to the nature of co–existing with others. It was a quotation from Iris Murdoch in her obituary. It read “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” Isn’t that fantastic! The best insight on the subject of love that one can imagine.

I’ve ranted umpteen times in the past about “alt” culture’s silly tendencies toward us-vs.-them nonsense. All the anti-“mainstream” pomposity. The brutal stereotypes against anyone who can be sufficiently categorized (suburbanites, sports fans, meat eaters).

The real purpose of art and culture isn’t to show off how awesome you are. It’s to communicate something to somebody else, to strengthen the bonds that tie all of this mongrel species together.

When we fail at this, are we no better than Atlas Shrugged’s cocktail-downin’ snobs (only with hipper clothes)?

A few days late but always more than welcome, it’s the yummy return of the annual MISCmedia In/Out List.

As always, this listing denotes what will become hot or not-so-hot during the next year, not necessarily what’s hot or not-so-hot now. If you believe everything big now will just keep getting bigger, I can get you a Hummer dealership really cheap.

I know a LOT of people who are spending this day and upcoming night wishing a good riddance to this epic fail of a year we’ve had.

The economy in much of the world (for non-zillionaires) just continued to sluggishly sputter and cough. Thousands more lost jobs, homes, 401Ks, etc.

The implosion of the national Republican Party organization cleared the way (though not in this state) for a wave of pseudo-populist demagogue candidates who only appeared in right-wing media, because those were the only places where their nonsensical worldviews made pseudo-sense. Enough of these candidates made enough of a stir to take control of the US House of Reps., which they have already turned back over to their mega-corporate masters.

And we had the BP spill, continuing mideast/Afghan turmoils, violent drug-turf wars in several countries, floods in Pakistan, a bad quake in Haiti, the deaths of a lot of good people, and a hundred channels of stupid “reality” shows.

Locally, a number of ballot measures were introduced to at least stem the state’s horrid tax unfairness, while staving off the worst public-service budget cuts. They all failed.

And the South Park bridge was removed without a clear replacement schedule, the Deeply Boring Tunnel project continued apace, the Seattle Times got ever crankier (though it stopped getting thinner), and our major men’s sports teams were mediocre as ever. Seattle Center bosses chose to replace a populist for-profit concession (the Fun Forest) with an upscale-kitsch for-profit concession (Chihuly).

Alleviating factors: (Most) American troops are out of Iraq. Something approximating health care reform, and something approximating the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, both passed. Conan O’Brien resurfaced; Jon and Stephen worked to restore sanity and/or fear. The Storm won another title. The football Huskies had a triumphant last hurrah; the Seahawks might get the same. Cool thingamajigs like the iPad and Kinect showed up. Seattle has emerged as the fulcrum of the ebook industry, America’s fastest growing media genre. The Boeing 787’s continued hangups have proven some technologies just can’t be outsourced.

My personal resolution in 1/1/11 and days beyond: To find myself a post-freelance, post-journalism career.

Katie Baker had a great essay topic: “How to Talk to a Woman Without Being Rude, Creepy or Scary.”

Unfortunately, her essay never gets around to actually saying how.

Instead, she talks about wolf whistles and catcalls as evidence of men hating women.

She doesn’t quite get that, to some extent, these men might be liking women, or at least thinking they are.

Which raises an even better premise: “How to tell a woman you like her, without her thinking you hate her.”

Any suggestions? (Proactive, positive suggestions, that is. Don’t tell what NOT to do, tell what TO do.)

Hey, would be would-be book banners: Go take a Soma pill and chill out.

At AlterNet, Clarisse Thorn asks the musical question, “Why do we demonize men who are honest about their sexual needs?”

Her answer: Because many women see men, particularly straight men, particularly unfamiliar men, as potential threats. It’s one thing to disdain a woman as a “slut.” It’s vastly more dehumanizing to dismiss a man as a “creep.”

At my sometime stomping grounds of  Seattle PostGlobe, Eric Ruthford writes about a potential PR campaign to curb demand for child prostitutes.

He writes of such campaigns in other cities, campaigns based on shaming the “John,” or on stern lectures about criminal penalties.

He also quotes Debra Boyer, a local anthropologist who’s studied child prostitution:

“We need to somehow educate people so that they can see what harm they’re doing,” she said. “How do we create empathy in people who have objectified women?”

You’re not going to persuade these men by using words like “objectifying.”

And you’re sure not going to persuade these men by objectifying or stereotyping them.

Instead appeal to pride, to dignity even.

Say “Your sex drive can bring life. It can bring joy. It can even bring love. Or it can contribute to a living horror.”

Say “You really want to give your money to a pimp, so you can contribute to a child’s hell?”

Say “You’re better than that.”

Say “Make love, not hurt.”

As part of the big megaproject to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the City wants to redevelop the pedestrian areas of Seattle’s central waterfront. Four competing proposals for this will be publicly unveiled this week.

My onetime housemate Steve “Fnarf” Thornton hasn’t seen all these proposals yet, but he suspects he’ll hate them all.

In an essay at the Seattle Transit Blog, he persuasively explains what downtown doesn’t need—more windswept plazas and cavernous boulevards.

And he delineates what downtown does need—more places like the Pike Place Market, places alive with the cacophony of commerce and the bustling mix of human activities.

In the case of the waterfront, this means more piers, more stuff going on on the piers, more vendors and food carts, and (in a big duh) more boats. The waterfront’s original purpose, Thornton knows, will never be reclaimed in an age of containerized cargo. But other water-based uses wait to be put in there.

I agree with most everything in Thornton’s premise.

To paraphrase an old slogan for a sea-originated product, we don’t need a waterfront with good taste.

We need a waterfront that tastes good.

Could recent college students actually be more narcissistic than their baby-boomer forbearers? Is this even possible?

It’s a few days late, but CBS.com has finally posted the Letterman segment with author Bill McKibben. (Fast forward to the last 10 minutes of the video.)

Since I am probably the only McKibben reader who continues to own and use a TV set, I got to see this segment on its original air date. He forcefully argues that not only do we have to act to save the planet, but that we can.

US socialist historian Lance Selfa asks, “Is America a right-wing country?”

His answer: Not really.

Selfa proposes, and I agree, that today’s pseudo-populist right is a marketing gimmick devised and/or exploited by big corporate funders. The object: To channel some traditionalists’ fear of social change into a rage against “government,” which would lead to weaker governance all around, especially toward corporate regulation/taxation.

A deeper look, Selfa argues, would see a nation steadily adopting more progressive views on health care reform, gay rights, race/gender issues, et al.

So why do leftists buy into the far right fringe’s claims to universal popularity—when they KNOW those dorks are LYING about everything else?

I’ve always guessed it’s because defeatism can be so comfortable. It’s so easy to just retreat into your boho tribes and exchange sneers against Evil Mainstream America.

Actually persuading people to your point of view is harder.

Actually organizing a movement is harder.

Actually organizing a movement for positive change, instead of merely protesting, is harder still.

But we saw in ’08 that it could be done.

Our task, in this midterm election and beyond, is not to retrieve that spirit but to move beyond it, to make working for change an everyday thing. To evolve from an ecstatic affair with activism into a marriage.

On this Labor Day, a lot of folks are thinking about what ever happened to labor.

Where did those unions go?

And more immediately, where did those jobs go?

The two might be more connected than you might think.

E.J. Dionne Jr. writes that “When unions mattered, prosperity was shared.” We had less of what one notorious Citibank memo referred to as “plutonomy,” a concentration of wealth among the few at the top. Working families got to share in the material bounty they’d created.

This wasn’t just given. It was fought for, in decades of organizing and struggle.

But it created the consumer power that drove the US economy to new heights.

If you believe a Harris poll published in Forbes (and there’s no reason why you should), Seattle now ranks #3 on a list of “America’s Coolest Cities”. Only NYC and Vegas outdo us in the pollsters’ matrix of arts & entertainment, recreational opportunities, and economic confidence.

It’s been a couple of months since I read it, but I continue to be impressed or haunted (I’m not sure) by Seattle author David Sheilds’ Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.

Parts of it are like an essay anthology, even if they were written expressly to be in the book. I’m particularly thinking of the part where he tells other authors what their books are really about.

Other parts fit more closely into the “manifesto” concept.

And it’s all written in a short and breezy fashion, like Marshall McLuhan’s better known works.

Now if you know my work here, you know I believe there’s absolutely nothing inferior about aphoristic writing, despite four or more decades’ worth of hi-brow ranting against it. Long, cumbersome prose is not inherently insightful. Short, pithy, precision writing is not necessarily dumbed down writing.

In this case, Shields has thoroughly whittled and sanded down his arguments to a fine point.

His main premise: North American white suburban life has become so plasticized, so sanitized, that humans have developed an insatiable craving for “reality.” Even if it’s virtual reality, or faked reality, or fictional narratives disguised as reality.

Hence, we get “reality” TV series. We get the protagonists of these series treated as “celebrities,” splashed over the covers of gossip magazines.

We get first-person novels falsely and deliberately promoted as the real-life memoirs of young drug addicts and street orphans.

We get radio and cable “news” pundits who don’t relay information so much as they spin narratives, creating overarching explanations of how the world works—even if, in some cases, they fudge the facts or just plain lie to make their worldviews fit together.

We get fantasy entertainments (movies, video games) executed in highly hyper-realistic fashions, complete with ultra-detailed 3D computer graphics.

So far, Shields’ argument makes perfect sense.

Now for the “yeah, but” part:

In the past two or three years, most non-billionaire Americans and Canadians have been forced to face a lot of reality; a lot of unpleasant reality at that. Some of us have had all too much reality.

“Reality” entertainment can be seen as just another style of escapism. An escapism that promises total immersion. An escapism that promises, however falsely, to offer an alternate reality, one that’s more dramatic or more comprehensible than the audience’s “real” reality could ever be.

This doesn’t mean Shields’ main premise is wrong.

Millions of people could, indeed, be desperate for more “real” lives.

But they won’t find it in the highly edited and curated “reality” entertainments.

They’ll only get a scratch that makes the itch worse.