Balkinization: “This Is No Picnic for Me Either, Buster”: Obama and Outliers

“This Is No Picnic for Me Either, Buster”: Obama and Outliers

Ian Ayres

My favorite Obama quotation is not one of his most poetic:

My mother [would] … wake me up at 4:30 in the morning, and we’d sit there and go through my lessons. And I used to complain and grumble. And she’d say, “Well this is no picnic for me either, buster.”

He had me at “buster.” I love these words because they seem so clearly not to be his voice. He is letting his mom’s voice be heard. Even now, I find myself crying when I watch this clip:

Maybe part of my emotional reaction is that, like Obama’s mother, I have forced my kids to get up at ungodly hours to study in the morning. We have been doing “daddy school” in the morning and during the summer for years. When my 7-year-old daughter said she desperately wanted a dog, I told her (in a twist on another Obama story) she could have one if she published an article in a peer-reviewed journal. And then we worked together on a family statistical project for more than two years to make it happen. Our dog is named Cheby (Shev) in honor of a statistician.

Obama’s “buster” story came back to me as I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent new book, Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell writes beautifully, and I like this book even more than Blink or The Tipping Point.

In story after story, he destroys the simplicity of the raw-genius explanations for personal success that we love to tell. Gladwell insists that there are always background conditions of opportunity and good luck that are equally, if not more, important. Many of these opportunities come from parents, but some come from cultural advantages. For example, he tells about the linguistic advantage that Chinese speakers have in math. Fourteen and 23 are hard to add in English (because linguistically, 4 comes before 10 in 14, but 3 comes after 20 in 23). But in contrast, Chinese has a much less idiosyncratic linguistic system, as Gladwell explains in the book:

Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. (p. 229)

Gladwell also argues that the crushing difficulty of maintaining successful rice paddies has tended to make hard work a more central part of Chinese culture than many Western cultures. He points to this Chinese proverb:

No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich. (p. 238)

What scares me a bit about the book (and myself) is the normative gloss that Gladwell puts on the hard-work ethic. He doesn’t renounce the 360-day proverb; he seems to embrace it. He openly extols the Bronx KIPP Academy, where school starts early and goes half the day on Saturdays, and for several weeks in the summer. (KIPP’s plan actually sounds a lot like my “daddy school,” which I wrap around my kids’ traditional school day.)

Gladwell wants society to open up opportunities to work hard — with programs like KIPP — so that many more people have the chance to succeed. To be clear, the book is about the many different contextual elements that are prerequisites to success — and practicing some skill for 10,000 hours is only one of them. In the very last sentence of the book, harkening back to the factors that led to his mom’s rise from poverty in Jamaica, Gladwell poetically asks:

[I]f the resources of that grocer, the fruits of those riots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would live a life of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill? (p. 285)

For Gladwell, the answer is pretty clearly “A lot more.”

But the book, in hinting at this normative thesis, fails to consider the wisdom of Robert Frank. In The Winner-Take-All Society, Frank and coauthor Philip Cook argue that changes in the productive technology in many fields have concentrated the benefits from success in a smaller and smaller set of winners. When you can listen to a Kathleen Battle CD, why would you buy any other soprano’s recording? Frank would argue that if we subsidize the opportunities for a million more people to study voice, we would probabilistically produce a better winner. But most of the gains would still go to the winner. We would still just have one beautiful house on the hill.

I’m taking such an active part in my kids’ education mostly because I want to imprint on them my idea of the good life, but partly because (even before reading Outliers) I have bought into Gladwell’s thesis that opportunities are crucially important.

What gives me pause, though, is that I also accept Frank’s thesis that there are a limited number of houses on the hill. I selfishly want to increase my kids’ chances of success. But a less selfish part of me is attracted to Frank’s idea that society should do just the opposite of what Gladwell wants and dampen the rat-race incentives to get up before dawn 360 days a year.

Posted 10:15 AM by Ian Ayres [link]

Comments:

Ian:

Obama was lying when this commercial claimed his "grandfather fought in Patton's Army," a lie he repeated in at least one campaign speech. There is no record that Gramps saw any combat, a fact Obama admitted in his autobiography, but apparently forgot when he made up this story.

Obama also lied about his Great Uncle liberating Auschwitz, unless his Uncle was in the Red Army. The Obama campaign had to correct this after the GOP caught him in the lie.

Finally, Obama lied about his mother being a Christian, when she was a quite open atheist.

Thus, while it may tug on your heartstrings as was intended, there is no particular reason to believe Obama's story concerning his mom going over his lessons at 4 a.m. given his other repeated fabrications concerning his family history, not to mention his circle of friends.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 2:13 PM

Bart, it's Michelle's father who was in Patton's army. And Obama's uncle helped liberate Buchenwald -- he got the name of the camp wrong.

Sure, he could be making up the story about getting up early with his mother. Politicians often make stories up. (Just ask Bobby Jindal about his recent Katrina anecdote.) But getting some details wrong about family apocrypha isn't proof of anything. Most people don't fact-check their grandparents' stories like that, even politicians.

# posted by

Benjamin : 4:42 PM

Anger

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:05 PM

As Bart demonstrates, if you look for lies and dishonesty, you'll likely find it. Personally, I find his comment uninspiring, but maybe that's just me. If Obama actually believed the stories the elder generation told, he may be a bit credulous, but I find that forgivable -- especially since, now that I'm a member of the elder generation, nobody believes my stories.

Based on many years of experience with teaching, and nearly as many as a scientific consultant, I would suggest that it's the expectation you set and the role model you provide that are overwhelmingly more important than anything else. In fact, an excessively rigorous and structured environment may end up producing a person only suited to find "success" in a highly structured environment.

I was inspired by my mother as well. One day in my senior year of high school, she said "you are going away to college, aren't you?" This solidified my intentions, and the rest is history. While I didn't go to Harvard Law School (I'd rather be a ditch-digger than a lawyer, sorry) most people I know tell me that they're a little surprised, given where I come from, that I turned out as well as I did.

They might be just being kind, of course, but even that says that they find me intimidating and not to be trivially dismissed. Success, after a fashion.

# posted by

C2H50H : 5:09 PM

I think Bart's comment is almost sociopathic. Why would anyone WANT to piss on this story? It's one thing when we are talking about sob stories used to pass legislation, or advance political arguments. But here's the President just talking about the virtues of hard work and dedication in parenting (virtues that probably helped lead to the President's success in life) and Bart can't let go an opportunity to call the guy a liar.

Really Bart, have you no sense of decency, at long last?

# posted by

Dilan : 5:29 PM

Really Bart, have you no sense of decency, at long last?

You said a mouthful, Dilan.

# posted by

mattski : 8:54 PM

Dilan said...

I think Bart's comment is almost sociopathic. Why would anyone WANT to piss on this story?

I cannot abide liars, especially those who lie to manipulate others like Ian and you.

I expect a level of dishonesty in most politicians, but Mr. Obama has a higher level than most.

If you disagree that Obama was a serial liar during his campaign, you are welcome to explain this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

We won't even get into Obama's trail of broken promises only a month into his administration.

Obama's demonstrated history as a serial liar is why I do not believe this adorable and self serving commercial.

Now tell me why you believe this story?

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 11:08 PM

Yeah, when it's unequivocally documented that his uncle liberated a concentration camp, branding Obama as a liar for getting the name of the camp wrong is pure derangement. Hard to call it anything else.

# posted by

Steve M : 12:37 AM

Bart Depalma said:

I cannot abide liars

It must be pretty hard looking in the mirror every day then.

# posted by

Hank Gillette : 12:49 AM

I cannot abide liars

You are the worst liar I have ever encountered.

# posted by

Bartbuster : 1:20 AM

This ain't no picnic.

# posted by

Dick Durata : 1:51 AM

Little Lisa's bro's backpack is a virtual cornucopia of lies. A good title for his bio would be "OUT-AND-OUT-LIARS."