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Kitchen Call: Saturday means baked beans
Saturday night supper in early New England consisted of bread and beans. The bread dark brown, nothing like modern bakery breads, got its color and name, brown bread, from molasses that flavored the yellow cornmeal. White flour was so rare that colonists made their own version from corn kernels, dried and ground — what we know today as cornmeal. The dough was steamed, rather than baked for hours, like an English plum pudding. The result was dark, sweet and dense.
The beans were common navy or pea beans, dried and stored for months. They needed long cooking, in more molasses, nestled into the coals of the family hearth, from eight to even 12 hours, until tender. The best thing about dried beans is you just can't make the mistake of cooking them too long. They get better the longer they simmer.
On Saturday night, the beans and the bread were served up hot and fragrant. But on Sunday morning, they were cold and congealed, barely enough to hold body and soul together for the full day of sitting on hard benches in a cold wooden church.
By the 19th century, baked beans made the rounds as the sun went down, the country's first take-out food. More colorful than today's pizza delivery, the baker drove up and down the streets in his horse-drawn cart. The fragrance of molasses and spices from his earthenware pots announced his arrival. A bowlful big enough to feed the family cost about 10 cents and always included bits of salt pork.
When the 20th century rolled around, home cooks replaced the salt pork with hot dogs — franks and beans. Beans and bread, cooked up at a shiny modern central plant, were from cans picked up at the grocery store. The fragrance was still unmistakable New England Saturday night when everyone in the neighborhood feasted on the same meal.
Modern cooks often try their hands at recreating the past, starting the dried beans from scratch and sending those aromas through the house on a chilly Saturday. Some shortcut the process and gussy up canned beans with little riffs of their own. While scratch can be nice, most of us agree we can't do better than start with that familiar can from Maine.
Below, two recipes started from the ready-made beans; one in an inventive casserole, the other brown bread transformed as stuffing. Plus a slightly unorthodox scratch version of baked beans. I think they all taste better after a day's rest in the fridge. But I like them heated, never stone cold.
Makes 6 servings
Use this stylish innovation on the familiar as a side dish with baked beans, or as a stuffing folded into a pounded out skinless chicken breasts. Each echoes Saturday night supper of the past.
1-pound can Boston brown bread, cubed
4 cups soft Italian bread, crust removed, cubed
4 ounces bacon, cut crosswise in 1-inch pieces
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup chicken stock or apple juice or mixture of both
Salt, pepper, cinnamon, to taste
Butter an 8-by-11-inch baking dish. Preheat oven to 250 F.
Spread bread cubes in a single layer on two baking sheets; bake about 1-1/2 hours until dried.
Cook bacon until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Pour out all but two tablespoons of the drippings. Add butter to pan; heat and melt. Add onion; cook until tender, about 7 minutes.
Toss cooked onion, salt, pepper and cinnamon with bread. Stir in the chicken stock or juice. Transfer the mixture to the buttered baking dish.
Cover with aluminum foil; bake 30 minutes. Uncover and bake, 20 minutes longer until nicely browned on top.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
Look for dried beans at a store where they sell quickly. Dried beans that are too old will take forever to tenderize. To soak dried beans, first pick them over for pebbles or shriveled beans. Then pour them into a bowl, with enough cold water to cover by 2-inches. I refrigerate them overnight. Refrigeration isn't necessary, but I like to take the precaution.
Cut apples for the crust into a bowl of water to cover, stirring in the juice of a lemon, about 3-4 tablespoons, to keep them from turning brown. Drain when ready to make the crust.
1 pound dried navy beans, picked over, rinsed, and soaked overnight
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2/3 cup dark molasses
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
12-ounces beer
8 ounce chunk salt pork
8 whole cloves
2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled and thinly sliced
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup dark rum
Drain and rinse beans well under gently running water. Place in a pot. Cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil; simmer, uncovered, until beans are just tender, about 45 minutes. Drain well. Preheat oven to 300 F.
Place beans in a 1-quart casserole. Add onion, ginger, tomato paste, vinegar, molasses, dry mustard and salt, stirring to mix all the ingredients. Add beer and additional water to cover the beans by 2 inches. Score the salt pork with a sharp knife to keep it from curling. Stick the cloves into the salt pork, and bury it under the beans.
Cover and bake 5 hours. Every hour, take them out of the oven, stir and add more water to keep them covered.
To make the crust, arrange apple slices in circles over the top. Melt the butter in a saucepan, gently whisking in the brown sugar and rum until smooth. Pour this mixture over the apple slices. Return the casserole to the oven, to bake, uncovered, for one more hour.
Makes 4 to 6 servings
2 medium cans of baked beans
1 pound bacon, cooked and drained, 1 tablespoon of fat reserved
1 pound breakfast sausage, cooked and drained, 1 tablespoon of fat reserved
3 medium green peppers, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
3-ounce can tomato paste
3 tablespoons molasses
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 cups dry red wine
Heat the bacon and sausage drippings in the skillet. Add the onions and pepper. Cook over medium-high heat for 5 minutes until softened.
Stir together bacon, sausage, onions and peppers into a casserole or bean pot, and add the remaining ingredients.
Bake, uncovered for 1 hour. Serve hot, or cool and refrigerate, covered, overnight.
Linda Bassett is the author of "From Apple Pie to Pad Thai: Neighborhood Cooking North of Boston." Reach her by email at firstname.lastname@example.com. Read Linda's blog at LindABCooks.wordpress.com. Follow Linda for quick recipes on Twitter at @Kitchencall.


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Armitage stands in the back, or: Tropes Armitage fans live by
Bizarrely, in so many ways, this is post #1,001. Odd that it would fall today, precisely. As I publish this, I count 896,401 hits and 28,695 comments recording our mutual conversations. To everyone who reads this unusual patchwork text, thanks very much for your patient support of "me + richard armitage" over the last two and a half years, whether through reading, commenting, thinking, linking, writing your own responses elsewhere, agreeing, disagreeing, or praying. The latter is particularly valuable. It would be impossible for me to put in words, tonight, exactly what this blog has meant to me, but its meaning for me has been considerable and will likely grow in the next months. I'm very grateful to all of you for your amazing generosity and understanding.
The cast of The Hobbit on stage with audience members during Ian McKellen's benefit performance for Isaac Theatre Royal, June 23rd, 2012, State Opera House, Wellington, NZ. Richard Armitage is circled in blue. Source: L'Amour, c'est mieux a deux
On the whole question of Richard Armitage's alleged or potentially actual tendency to lurk in the background of publicity, given how many comments I wrote, you'll have guessed that this is a relatively personal question for me, and I had pieces of this post drafted even before he showed up onstage in Wellington last weekend and moved to the side and then the back of the stage. Which actually made me think I should leave it.
I've also written about several aspects of this question before. For example, I've already written about the question of his career trajectory in many different forms: as a comment on the importance of projects with a higher culture component (part 1 and part 2) and also as comment on whether he should appear at fan convention events (so I am glad that the way he's quoted in Total Film suggests that he's taking this prospect with good humor, even if I suspect he's clueless about Hobbit fanboys). I commented favorably on his openness about his conclusion, some time ago, that he needs not to worry about what his fans think. In response to the sudden Internet appearance of a marketer at UA, I've talked about my hopes that he focuses on what's important to him, and tries to ignore the branding issue.
So I thought I had said most everything I had to say. But I thought of a new angle, and it preoccupied me while I was driving from office to office, and it's turning out to be fruitful, because it may allow me to write about a topic I've been trying to broach for almost two years and haven't been able to make myself.
I had actually planned to be writing about something else but there you have it. Maybe "fun" Servetus will come back soon, but I seem to be jinxed in that regard at the moment.
Mr. Reluctant Rented-Tux Red Carpet as was: Richard Armitage at the BAFTA TV Awards, London, England, May 20, 2007. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
Caveats / assumptions. I shortened this section just because Pinup said a lot of things that I essentially agree with already.
- The information we lack for determining anything about Richard Armitage's decisions on the issue of his relationship with putting himself forward for publicity prevents us from drawing any meaningful conclusions with real-world purchase. It's all speculation. No less than what I say below. So I am not willing to say that fans can ever know best, in the conventional sense of that phrase, anyway. We know, at most, what we want best. It's fine to discuss that and disagree — even in public — as long as we acknowledge it's primarily about us and our desires.
- The evidence we have is problematic. I try to understand data I have about Armitage in good faith. But: Richard Armitage gets asked a question; he thinks about the actual answer; he negotiates in his mind what he can / should / must say; he tries to communicate the result of that negotiation to the interviewer; the interviewer writes about his answer; the interview is edited; I read it and you read it; you read what I'm saying about it. What a game of telephone. Humans misunderstand as much as we understand — sometimes accidentally (failure to consider certain perspectives may exist — hence my encouragement to would-be analysts to turn their perspectives inside out), sometimes on purpose (refusal to acknowledge that the world could differ from our perceptions). We have no choice but to reason via approximation, but while there are better or worse approximations of any evidence, all of them are inexact, including those we make about ourselves. (Think how often you've thought, "I can't express exactly how I'm feeling" or made a statement that's imprecise, but appropriate to a situation.) Certain of his behaviors and speech patterns look particularly recognizable to me — and some of those make up a big part of my attraction to him, frankly — but this recognition pertains to my frameworks, not about his behavior.
- Richard Armitage has some choices available to him about publicity but not all potential options. He can possibly say no to a particular venue but not determine which offers will be made to him. I would love to see him interviewed in the New York Review of Books about his reading habits, for instance, but that's not likely. Mr. Armitage chooses from among options he has, whether these are offered or he works to make them available.
- Since his minor role in Captain America: The First Avenger garnered him two lengthy interviews in The Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph, there's no reason to think that his options are not likely to continue to expand and improve.
- Right now, the publicity machine for The Hobbit makes most of Richard Armitage's decisions about interviews, not Richard Armitage himself, and barring the announcement of a new major role for him with its own promotion apparatus, that will likely continue to be the case for quite a while. His past ongoing presence on British television meant that he had to be visible to remind potential audience members to tune in. The PR team for The Hobbit obviously has a different strategy. I expect Richard Armitage to continue to fulfill his contractual obligations in this regard, particular as regards any information embargoes that may be in force (see message of May 29, 2011).
Deer in the flashbulbs? Richard Armitage leaves the Old Vic Theatre, London, England, after the 24 Hour Plays Celebrity Gala, November 21, 2010. Screencap from this cell phone video.
The place where Pinup started on this theme had to do with materials that appeared on Richard Armitage Confessions about Armitage being crowded out by other actors and or not getting something he deserves from his work The Hobbit, or being less lucky than other actors with his publicity team. And that issue — the statements we make about Armitage's retiring nature — has interested me for a long time. I imagine that most of this discussion has emerged in response to the "drought dynamic" we're experiencing and from which some fans have been suffering intensely. In the place of data, our imaginations naturally jump in — unsurprisingly — to fill in the blanks. What's interesting to me is that this particular discussion fills this particular blank — that in a situation where little to no publicity is appearing, one response is to discuss the possibility that Armitage is being accidentally or purposefully damaged by himself or others.
Of course, that conclusion is one reading of the evidence. The explanations that emerge to explain Armitage's apparent reticence tend to follow relatively predictable patterns or tropes (topoi) that we use to describe Mr. Armitage. All of these tropes have evidential arguments available both for and against them, and because the evidence for them is so broad, they can be made to serve many purposes. We encounter a few of them quite regularly. The boundaries between them are not entirely clear, and they are not mutually exclusive, but they are all fascinating. In what I say below, while I link to evidentiary justifications for the tropes, I'm not linking to examples of the tropes as they appear among fans, because the point of this piece is emphatically not anything that might appear to be personal criticism, and I'm just as guilty of filling in the blanks following my own tastes and worries as anyone else. In short, if you recognize your own attitudes in some of what I write: I am not throwing stones. Rather, I want to explore the tropes and talk about why they appeal or don't appeal and what that says about all of us as fans involved in the fascinating but futile project of trying to figure out who Mr. Armitage really is.
Richard Armitage, publicity photo, 2009. Source: Русскоязычный Cайт Pичардa Армитиджa
"I want to be [let] alone Armitage"
One possible explanation is that Mr. Armitage is actively staying out of publicity or avoiding public appearances for reasons of personality. This hypothesis relies on the assumption that Armitage is almost painfully personally shy or (in extreme readings) would prefer, in the best of all possible worlds, never to have to encounter fans or publicists. The latter reading relies heavily on evidence like newspaper reports that note his ambivalence about fan adoration, as well as, I assume, on an early message in which he mentioned liking Keane's "Hamburg Song," with its chorus, "I don't want to be adored" (July 24, 2006). A variant reading that I occasionally encounter is the sentiment that at the beginning of his career he liked his fans, but has changed his mind about them either out of bad experiences referenced in his messages (e.g., 29 April 2007; 22 April 2008) or simply out of greater awareness that he can't have an open level of involvement with us (or out of frustration with the press coverage and the career problems it generates — see below). Never having met him, I have no context for judging his personal behaviors, but it seems to me rational to conclude on the basis of statements made by interviewers in the press and reports of fan encounters that while it is sensible to preserve a space between oneself and fans, and while he is perhaps innately modest (or was socialized to be), mild-mannered, and / or introverted, he is not abnormally aversive of other humans, including fans who appear in appropriate venues and behave themselves. If we look at this report of a fan encounter last weekend, while Armitage was not shoving himself in people's faces, there's no indication that he was running away from attention, either, or consciously avoiding fans. He was there to aid in a fund-raising effort and did what was asked of him without exhibiting noticeable personal tics that indicated fear or distaste for the people around him. He regularly poses for pictures with fans and we see them and he never looks uncomfortable (or if he is, he hides it successfully for the purposes of the picture). Consequently, I admit that I've never been convinced that Richard Armitage is actually or consciously hiding from the limelight.
"Bloody Internet!" Richard Armitage as Lucas North in Spooks 8.2. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
"Press-Hater Armitage"
Another possibility is that Armitage actively avoids publicity because of distaste he feels for the press and / or reading opinions about himself. This position is supported by a statement about how he stopped reading his press because a single negative comment would stay with him. A frequent corollary of this position that emerges occasionally in discussions among fans (although he has never made this request, despite occasional comments on the honesty of his fans in evaluating his work) is that we shouldn't say anything that risks offending him anywhere where he could read it, because it would hurt him. We also have speculated more than once that he hates answering certain questions over and over again ("the circus"; "the pants"), although his demeanor doesn't strongly indicate impatience on his part (apart from one interview in which the impression of frustration was as much created by the reporter's editorializing as it could be extrapolated from his own statements). If in fact he hates the press, however, it seems unlikely that he would have accepted quite so many interviews in the last eight years. He certainly had professional obligations to talk about his participation in certain projects, but he's been interviewed beyond those demands. Transcripts of complete interviews don't seem to indicate undue discomfort or hostility to members of the press when topics range beyond the immediate question of the project he's promoting (example: David A Stephenson interview).
That Armitage fell into the purview of the press, initially, was due entirely to his fans of the first hour after North & South, who crashed the BBC message board and then created their own venues — a development that gave him a sudden visibility as a sort of seven-day wonder — an actor so amazing that he threatens the stability of the Internet! This phenomenon spurred at least one report on him before he'd done any other projects, merely because of an event that was a relative oddity at the time but would no longer surprise us in the least. Speaking from a media history perspective, he was in the right place at the right time to capitalize on that particular performance; but this means that a vital piece of his media presence was constituted by the very dynamic that we have speculated he might be frustrated about — the influence on the creation of his career by fans — a state of affairs that would reasonably foster a very bifurcated reaction. So I can imagine that, just as his relationship with fans has changed over its history and in light of various interactions he's had, his attitude toward press as he went from being an actor who'd never had a press review before North & South to being able to read about himself regularly if he wants to remains a developing one. I can only guess what the elements of the development of his attitude toward press might be: curiosity, gratitude, appreciation, disgust, fear, fatigue, annoyance, self-doubt, rage, joy, anticipation? I don't know. But in any interpretation, it's hard for me to exclude his relatively early awareness that the press could do him good, as in a message of 11th September 2006, where he acknowledges the role of the press and that he's going to have to figure out how to deal with it. That message included both an apology for apparent indiscretion on his part reflected in statements a newspaper reporter quoted about his sexual history in a press interview, and the intriguing comment: "the arena which I work in trades with this kind of information currency, I intend to be a spendthrift in future."
A disguise Richard Armitage is thought to be using to hide from public view. Source: Me, My Thoughts, and Richard Armitage
"Furtive Armitage"
The evidence already cited above suggests that Richard Armitage is neither an extrovert, an attention-seeker, nor a publicity hound. We've never had any indication that even once people started to know who he was, he ever exploited their awareness of him to appear in the spotlight, which suggests that he never sought to become a celebrity as opposed to an actor. So another question that we could ask ourselves is whether there's something Richard Armitage doesn't wish people to know about him. My impression is that the fans in my circles don't raise this possibility, or at most rarely, not least because it conflicts with a very popular trope discussed below. Now, almost inevitably, the answer to this question is yes, in that we all have things we'd rather people didn't know about us for any number of reasons; it's almost a part of the human condition. (Servetus references her own admission that she's done things that would have prevented her from being elected president, were they known, and her refusal to state what said actions were.) At the same time, however, given the wide range of things we've learned about him in interviews over the years — including things we'd never have had to have known, and which he has potentially regretted disclosing (the names of his parents and of his nephew, perhaps, or the neighborhood where he lives) — it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Armitage is actually rather willing to be talkative for whatever reason. He probably has the standard number of things to hide, as we all do, but it's difficult to argue, particularly given the profession in which he works, that he's unusually private. And in fact, the two things are not mutually exclusive. One can say a lot and still omit decisive information without necessarily having misrepresented oneself. Anyone who teaches for very long realizes this — one way to create connection with student audiences lies in the judicious release of harmless personal information.
Richard Armitage among the dwarfs in some kind of warm-up or preparation exercise for filming The Hobbit. Screencap from The Hobbit pre-production vlog #3. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
"Virtuous Armitage"
This reading of Mr. Armitage suggests that the reason he doesn't push for publicity and moves to the back of the stage, both figuratively and literally, relates to his fundamental virtues. These virtues are read both as professional (after appearing on stage at least since he was a teenager, he knows that the tall man has to stand in the back row — an impression sustained by his discussion of his early stage training, which emphasized discipline) and personal (see, for example, the Zen poem he shared with fans on 29 April 2007; or his regular suggestions that fans should donate to charity rather than sending him gifts, or the reports of how extremely hard he works to prepare for roles, going so far as to be waterboarded to learn what it was like; or the univocal agreement of co-stars that it is a pleasure to work with him). When we see pictures of him preparing (as in The Hobbit vlogs, or the Hood Academy extras) he always appears to be working so hard. He stands on the set himself for lighting tests. Now, I personally like this reading a great deal and I also think there's a great deal of evidence to support it — which always gratifies me when I read it. I like to be the fan of a class act. And long-time readers are familiar with my own positive relationship with work. I'm also leery of saying too much critical about this issue, because it's a facet of the identity question that I broached two summers ago and which generated my first experience with trolling, but I'll try and hint, without saying that Armitage is not virtuous, that just like vice, virtue is also a performance — it's just one that some of us, presumably Richard Armitage among them, can live with more easily. I'm also not entirely convinced by depictions of Armitage as a "real artist" when they rely on comparisons to people who seek the public eye primarily for celebrity. Presumably most good to great actors put a lot of work into their performances — all acting is a team effort, and there's not much room in an expensive production, where every minute of filming has to be apportioned carefully, for regularly clowning around. Finally, I want to ask the obvious question here about the possibility of false consequence — does he retreat to the rear of the stage because he is virtuous, or do we read him as virtuous because he retreats to the rear of the stage?
Richard Armitage, in his role in the powhiri to start off filming of The Hobbit, moves his left hand in a gesture frequently seen among singers, sometimes used to facilitate breathing and flow in nervous situations. Screencap from The Hobbit preproduction vlog #1. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
"Stage-Frightened Armitage"
This trope would suggest that even if Armitage is not personally shy, fan-averse, or press- or publicity-averse, he may still experience stage fright or some sort of nervousness or performance anxiety when he appears on a live stage. This reading relies on his own statements in the press about wanting to perform as a teenager, but not wanting to be watched, about being worried that anyone who saw him would think he wasn't very good (I'm thinking this statement was in an old Sunday Times article that's now behind a pay wall?). I would argue that it is potentially also a consequence of statements he's made about loving a rush while skiing, seeking loss of control even as he fears it, and the exhilaration of appearances on stage, insofar as all of these statements involve a component of relationship to one's fears or exploitation of anxiety in particular kinds of situations. And we occasionally see behaviors or tics that may point at nervousness, such as the rocking back and forth on his legs in Wellington last weekend. I don't want to apply that this state of affairs is either / or: most performers realize that a certain amount of adrenaline in the system affects a performance, and that the key to a good performance is putting oneself in the position to get the right amount of it. If we discard this reading, it tends to be on the grounds of implausibility; just as some people believe that a shy performer is a contradiction in terms, they may conclude that stage fright alone would not condition this kind of consistent behavior. As a final though, perhaps the acceptance of such a trope is contingent on the belief that Armitage is somehow being damaged by his own activities. This is the next trope.
Ian Macalwain (Richard Armitage) after being assassinated by his own team in Ultimate Force 2.6. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
"Armitage as victim"
So, as noted above, my reactions to the re-appearance of this trope in the discussions on Richard Armitage Confessions, as discussed by Pinup, was really the reason for this post. (So why did it take me 3,000 words to get here? I'm just trying to give equal time to the entire theme.)
"Armitage as victim" is prevalent enough as a feeling among some fans that its manifestations started to intrigue me some time ago, and I even created a category for it (see category cloud at right). It's a really powerful sentiment at times, and I think the trope may gain power in his particular case because it so effectively combines a number of the ideas above, so that he can alternatively — depending on the reading — be victimized by almost anyone to whom he stands in professional relationship. The press (too much coverage of Armitage as male totty); his fans (we're so crazy we make him want to avoid us — keyword — panties); script writers on the projects he works on (he starts off in a reasonably scripted series and then everything goes haywire, forestalling any criticisms we might find to make about his performances); actresses with insufficient charisma (so that if a screen love affair doesn't strike our heart strings, we blame it on his co-star); his own good nature / virtue (he's so modest that he steps on his own feet — a neat example being his response to the question in his red carpet interview at the Captain America premiere, that what he wanted people to know about the film concerned Chris Evans — but see "virtuous Armitage," above) or, in, the specific case that prompted this post, his management or the management of other actors (his management misses opportunities for him; the management of other actors pushes those individuals to the front and doesn't give Armitage the "credit" he deserves). Another reason we may like this trope is that it serves well the needs of fan-on-fan behavior policing ("if only you behave according to my standards, Mr. Armitage will be more forthcoming in his relationship to fans"), which involves an active-aggressive stance against other fans and a passive-aggressive one with regard to Armitage himself. In a situation where Armitage is supposed to have the control to give or withhold information or contact, fans disciplining each other becomes a (futile) way to attempt to exert influence over Mr. Armitage. It also takes the blame both off the policer and away from Armitage — it would not be the case that he would want to retreat from fans unless fans were being impossible, i.e., we were victimizing him.
[At left: The gently or not-so-gently bemused "why are you staring at me?" look: Richard Armitage on the red carpet for the Varekai Gala, January 5, 2010, London, England. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com]
The frequency of complaints about Armitage's victimization at the hands of poor management is clear, although I've never felt like he suffered for work or exposure. I tend to read such complaints as reflecting unease over the fact that his rise to prominence after North & South was not immediate in the way that some fans felt he deserved — so that espousals of this trope serve as a function of particularly intense faith in Armitage's merits. But on the whole, I don't think that eight years to the sort of prominence he has now is an unduly long time, and indications are that he doesn't either, given statements that he feels like he's on a roller coaster already. That he may occasionally be or have been professionally naive is supported by his own statements about the development of his capacity to understand what was happening in his career when he was struggling early on, particularly his concession that he has perhaps been a late bloomer and that he still feels younger than he is. (We could probably create a sub-division of this trope and call it "boyish Armitage," but this post is already getting too long.) What's interesting to me about "Armitage as victim" is that it is not heavily supported by press reports — except in its permutation as victimization by fans (and we all know that the press loves to make fun of us already and never eager to point an accusatory finger at itself, always justifying any of its own excesses in terms of people's desires or rights to know).
At the same time, however, the response to this point about victimization is obvious. Armitage has worked in "show business" since he was seventeen, he has some idea of how the industry works, what the consequences of his decisions might be, and what he might have to do to get what he wants. A seventeen-year-old who takes a job in Budapest to get an Equity card is no shrinking violet personality. If he's dissatisfied with his publicity profile or the roles he's gotten, he's forty years old and adult enough to fire whoever's in charge of these things and engage someone else to work on his behalf! (Though I would concede that these decisions are complex. If I think about the people I've employed to work for me in the past, it's always been a balancing act as one person does multiple tasks at which he may be more or less effective. So maybe he's overly loyal to a management that stuck with him through some thin years — see "virtuous Armitage" above.) Mr. Armitage has also displayed evidence in the past that he has the capacity to change his behavior when he's not getting what he wants, as regards the decision to go to his audition for Sparkhouse in character.
[At right: naive Armitage? A Cats-era photo. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com]
So it's hard for me to imagine that this trope bears much on actual circumstances now, if it ever did. It seems to me just as likely that — if indeed he has been a victim — he could have been the victim of fate, something over which no one can express any control, though I would be hard put to apply the adjective "unlucky" to Armitage, and so, it would seem, would he be. So the final sense in which I tend to read this trope as powerful lies in the realm of what it does for how we evaluate his career and how those evaluations relate to our choices. If Armitage didn't get as much career energy from North & South as he should have, this reading goes, that's not because of anything he did, but because of poor choices that were made outside of his control. Maybe good roles were being saved for actors with better-connected management. If roles were not immediately forthcoming, that scarcity did not stem from anything innate to Armitage. And finally — and I think this is really key for understanding this trope — if Armitage is the victim of poor management, then we are not crazy for cultivating an intense love of an actor who may not end up being the premiere actor of his generation. Thus "Armitage as victim" excuses not only any potential failures by Armitage — it also excuses us of any failures of taste for setting our fan bets on Armitage as opposed to any one of a group of talented actors who are poised at potentially joining the Hollywood A-list.
[At left: Authoritative Armitage? Richard Armitage at the NYC premiere of Captain America: The First Avenger, July 2011. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com]
However, despite the strength of the case against "Armitage as victim," I need to concede that for various reasons I am heavily invested in the notion of Armitage as adult as opposed to as victim. If I fall regularly into the "virtuous Armitage" trope, I admit that one of the things I admire most about him is that I've never read him blame anyone but himself (or fate) in any evaluative statement he's made about his career. Men who take personal responsibility are hot. And I need badly, right now, to believe in the possibility of adult men. Additionally, insofar as I sympathize with the problem of too much work and limited energy, as well as the pressures of being someone for someone both professionally and personally, I resonate deeply with his statements about not wanting to appear as Richard Armitage on a reality show. He's an actor, which involves pretending to be someone else for audiences — not being Richard Armitage for audiences, which is probably somewhat more difficult. In a situation where he does an incredibly physically and emotionally demanding job, as with the role he has right now, I conclude that he's mostly focused on what he's doing on a day-to-day basis. He probably focuses the limited time and energy he has available at present for future planning on auditions and role offers rather than doing interviews. And this prioritization, too, is a sign of adult decisionmaking and professional acumen that I admire.
Marching to the beat of his own drummer? Richard Armitage on the night before the Old Vic gala, London, England. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
"Autotelic Armitage"
So, in the absence of other knowledge, the surface reading of his allegedly publicity-light behavior that I prefer — whether it's accurate or not, no one knows, see earlier caveats — is one that's consonant with my own reading of his personality. This is the final trope to be discussed. I read Mr. Armitage as a strongly autotelic personality. (I am one, too, which underlines my point about how these tropes are all about us and only superficially about Richard Armitage.) Autotelic people are innerly-directed and focused primarily on their own, individual, independent definitions of quality, success, and reward. The reward for doing The Hobbit for him, I suspect, is going be having done The Hobbit, even more than the other career steps it might facilitate. This is the sense in which I understand his statement that he'd be satisfied if this were the last piece of work he'd ever do (a remark that I suspect is a potentially less accurate approximation of the intensity of his feelings about actually continuing to work, which he seems eager to do no matter what the work).
Signs of this attitude — that fulfilling the demands his inner life makes on him is the justification for his work — can be found throughout his work. His statements that the roots of his acting lie in his reading and in the imaginative world of a solitary child would substantiate this viewpoint, as would his move from a relatively successful career in the corps of musical theatre to drama school and into journeyman years in the background of Royal Shakespeare Company productions. His insistence that audience attraction to him is really about Mr. Thornton, for example, is usually read by interviewers as modesty (or as a way to embarrass fans, who are read as misunderstanding the actual relationship of actor to role), but the wording is interesting: "It's a bit embarrassing because you don't plan for that when you prepare for the part. I didn't realise there would be an emotional reaction, or whatever that reaction is — a physical reaction? I value it, but at the same time, it's only a character." We could also understand this to mean — the reaction of the audience is secondary to my assumption of the character; I determine for myself what the successful creation of a character involves, and so ecstatic fan reaction is embarrassing not (only) because it means unsought adoration, but because it's beside the point. And his point that working front of house in a period where he wasn't getting roles also tends to go in this direction — he's not looking at a performance primarily in terms of its effect (even if that is what others are looking at it for) but in terms of the character he becomes when he does it. (A similar divide can frequently be made, incidentally, between orchestra musicians who enjoy listening to orchestras, and those who primarily enjoy playing in them. I was the latter.) Getting to have the experience of rush as the endpoint of the process of working to come someone else, I would argue, is what's at stake for him here — and why he thinks he may think about Thorin Oakenshield long after he's done playing the role.
It's hard to live with autotelic personalities. They want what they want and their motivations are thus not always legible to others because they occasionally read as irrational. So the objections to this viewpoint are manifested in questions like: "How could you not want the level of success we think you deserve?" or "how can you not see that doing the kind of publicity we demand is essential to you getting future roles of the kind you want?" or even "how could you be satisfied with roles that are below your caliber of artistry?" What's confusing, on this view, is simply that being autotelic can look an awful lot like being ambitious — and a strong, openly displayed ambitious streak would interfere with the "virtuous Armitage" trope, if it were present. But critics of the autotelic trope must ask: Doesn't wanting to do well in terms of one's own goals require an important measure of ambition, and doesn't ambition require certain sorts of compromises (publicity!) to fuel a career?
The answer is, of course, yes — but it also requires standards, and in Armitage's case we might easily conclude, based on the roles he's played, that these standards are inner (delivering a good performance) as opposed to outer (independent definitions of the value of art). But to demonstrate this point about being autotelic, we might consider that an appropriate subtitle for episode 2 of North & South could be "Mr. Thornton's autotelic personality." On this view, Mr. Armitage knows what he wants, works hard to get it, and does what he thinks he needs to get it — but the "what" is determined solely by him and not by anyone else, even if can use the help of others (management, fans, studio publicity machines) on his way there. If Armitage is giving himself credit himself for what he does, then it's hard for me to share the worries on Richard Armitage Confessions about Armitage being crowded out by other actors and or not getting something he deserves from his work The Hobbit. I'm a firm subscriber to the "enough is as good as a feast" philosophy, and accept that my enough is probably different from his. If what Richard Armitage determines is the goal of his work is fulfilled — and I suspect that this is going to be the execution of the role to the best of his ability, as opposed to the achievement of the next role — then he's going to use publicity mainly to that end, and not either as an end in itself or a means to an end that is not his.
And finally we get to the question of what the autotelic trope may do for those who embrace it. I would argue that, as it appears in dialectic with the "victim" trope, it serves a similar function. That is, if Armitage's career does not ever reach the heights that an independent standard of high art might wish for it, this disappointment can be attributed to his personal standards. The autotelic Armitage trope says: he was always better than all that publicity.
OK. There would be a lot more to be said about this theme, including a lengthy discussion of why I personally am so invested in defending his right to make his decisions and skip publicity if that were his desire, but I'm at about 6,300 words. So I'll leave that stuff for later posts, sometime. For now: Which tropes are you invested in, and why? What does the picture of Armitage tell you about your own preoccupations?
And thanks, as always, perhaps tonight more than ever, for reading.
70 Responses to "Armitage stands in the back, or: Tropes Armitage fans live by"
Great post,Servetus! Thanks!:)
My heart would want to see him as a victim but reason suggests a different scenario;)….in any case he is a decent guy…for sure!:)
I chose autotelic, but (and you may think this very generic) that he may be a combination of all, with varying degrees of each. My gut says that he became an actor because he wanted to be an actor, not a celebrity or be famous. And being an actor (especially a more well known one) requires doing publicity, and so does it. But like you said, I don't know what goes on in his head.
Another scrumptiously prepared and deliciously executed post that I can't wait to savor and consume at my leisure later! Thank you so much for sharing your natural talents and training in case presentation (with supporting evidence) with the rest of us!!
Note: I've only scrolled through the post to alert myself that I have something to look forward to later – but I noticed the poll at the end with the enticing question of, "Which tropes are you invested in, and why?" That's my kind of blog poll (!) – as you already know.
Of the choices listed, I most recognize myself in "Furtive Armitage" – as I suppose everything about me is furtive as soon as I leave my door in the mornings (much more so in London as I can't just get into my own car to preserve a protective enclosure of 'UK Expat space').
I don't know that I am invested in Armitage being so (and please note, I haven't read through the defense of each position) but I can simply observe that this is a dominant trait I hold within myself. 🙂
A lot of food for thought and I don't really know where to start. I think at this point it is impossible to come to any conclusion, so much depends on what happens during the next months (or next two years, until the Hobbit is history), what we learn about him when media interest increases and on the turn his career takes. To date we have no idea how much and which kind of publicity he intends to do, which kind of work he intends to accept and which dark secrets he's trying to conceal might be revealed.
I may add, I don't buy the "Armitage as a victim" trope. I think he is fully responsible for what happens to him and for how he is perceived. It is his choice whom he employs (and I don't agree an actor who is with a reputable agency and shares an agent with Kate Winslet should think about getting an new management) but more importantly, it is his choice which roles he accepts and to which projects he sticks for how long and why and what it takes to leave a project.
My own personal trope is "Armitage as a TV/movie worker". Someone who has a strong work ethic, always does his best, even does more than required (I'm always thinking of Higgins and his unpaid overtime, because "work wasn't finished"). Someone who fulfils his contracts and would never publicly say anything critical about his projects. But also someone for whom having steady and reasonably well-paid work come high on the list and makes him accept and stick to projects he knows are not ideal. At least until something that is much better on many levels comes along. I'm not sure if I fully understand what autotelic means, but it may overlap. He's following his own goals and own priorities and those goals may not be what some fans (including myself) think what they should be.
If "autotelic" covers most of the tropae, my vote is there, excepting victim. This is a person who has been in the business, professionally for more than twenty years. Nothing we read indicates that he is unintelligent. He has had sufficient experience since the initial success of N&S to have a glimmer of the way publicity and fandom work. As in his acting, he learns as he goes. He has been dedicated
to a demanding profession from at least his early teens. The profession appears to be his lodestar, to which he has, and does, dedicate his entire mental and physical energy. Is he shy? Is he humble? Perhaps.Perhaps he has been finding a public persona with which he is comfortable, and which works with his own personality. (and appeals to fans and to the media machine) Perhaps those tags are simply a bit of the whole. Perhaps he is far more intent on the profession. Acting. Not celeb. We will, of course, interpret according to our own dreams, hopes, needs? and analyse every detail from that perspective.
Personally, I see/read RA as a functional (socially adapted, people-pleasing, work oriented) eccentric (phobic/fearful yet coping, geek with control issues) with a great sense of humour. Oxymoronic creature, that is. No need to remind me, Servetus, from mirror mirror on the wall something similar lurks at me, I suppose.
What you do incessantly remind us in this blog, and I tend to adore it, is that RA of our obsessions is a projection of a certain image (precisely, images – not necessarily congruent) – made up out of various roles he played (enhanced by various interpretations and evaluations of critics and general public) and messages he sends about himself through interviews and public appearances. And then, all that is open to interpretation because it is fragmentary in a high degree, missing crucial parts we need to constitute "round" human-like character. What we are dealing with is similar to a literary character – we infer a coherent personality out of remarks, signals, suggestions or allusions we get from various "texts". And, obviously, we do it according to our deep-structure needs and desires…
Evidently, we do almost the same with real people around us, but there we have immediateness, possibility of direct contact, as well as all the imperfections of communication – living and evolving, but frequently defective and fallible.
Finally, not to forget: observed entities tend to change their normal, sui generis behaviours – in the worlds of physics as well as in the worlds of show business.
Re the point of his real or perceived publicity shyness: I remember very early on, I think it was when he did The Impressionists, he mentioned in a message that he will do "some well chosen publicity, nothing too flashy" and that seems to be his premise till this day. I also remember that a few years ago (during RH) there was a female radio presenter who had a bit of a crush on him, mentioned him frequently and wanted him on her show, but he declined through his agents, saying he wouldn't do interviews if he hadn't a new project to promote. It doesn't surprise me that he sticks to that as well and until Hobbit PR starts, he has no other project to promote. He never did interviews or public appearances just to promote himself, if interviews didn't coincided with the start of a new series it surely was the finale or the release of the DVD. And he never once attended an event as a mere guest, hoping to be seen and photographed, always as a presenter and ambassador of the show he's currently in. He once was on the guest list for a film premier and didn't turn up. He is also on the record as hating red carpet event and being a very happy man if he never had to attend one again.
BTW: RAonline has the disappeared Times interview you mentioned, it is quite interesting with regards to his shyness: http://richardarmitageonline.com/articles/TheTimes-20081018.html
There are various degrees of shyness and I think he is one of those who are perfectly capable to talk to strangers or small groups of strangers when meeting fans or journalists, but may have problems in situations when he is observed, like on a red carped or a stage as himself. I found it fascinating that he said he developed techniques to make himself invisible through body language because he doesn't like being observed in the street.
Voted for autotelic! He's definitely his own person and I really like that about him. And, as Angie-Fedoralady put it once on TAE, I want for Richard what Richard wants for Richard! 🙂 Btw., so THAT's the Burberry coat (pic.#3)!!! 🙂
Another fascinating post, servetus. Interesting that quite a few people chose "autotelic." I chose it too. (And I enjoyed learning a new word!)
I remember that he said, speaking of his former teacher Miss Pat, that he started out in her school being afraid to disappoint her, and by the end he was concerned about disappointing himself. Isn't that autotelic?
Also, seems to me that being in the public eye could be seriously disorienting to one's value system, and the only way to stay focused would be to become autotelic.
I didn't vote because I think there's an intertwining of all the tropes when it comes to RA — except for the victim bit. I don't seem him as a victim at all. I identify with a lot of what I see/read about RA and that's how I interpret his persona. Because I would stand in the back of a crowd, I understand why someone else would stand in the back. Of course that doesn't mean I'm right about my perceptions. Belizec's comment about him being a functional eccentric was interesting because I've wondered about that at times.
I think he was naïve in the beginning and was overwhelmed by his fans reactions. If he's the shy and unassuming person I this he is, he probably never imagined that he would have such a large and loyal fan base. It took him awhile to adjust to the reality and he's learned (or been coached) to interact differently since then.
Is there a confusion with victim vs the fact that he brings out that maternal "feeling"? There are times when it's like …. do I want to make him homemade chicken noodle soup or take him to bed? He does bring out that tendancy in me at least. There is a vulnerability but I wouldn't say victim. Unless I am missing something…
I agree that he tends to bring out the maternal instinct. Even though he's one of the more virile actors around today, there is still something about him that retains a boyishness. It's something of an innocence that other actors don't seem to have…maybe something to do with that late bloomer in him. Or it could just be that I'm older than him and not usually attracted to men younger than me.
Having read this quote today from the scan of the EW article that Jas provided, I'm wondering how it fits in, if at all, with what's been discussed.
"It's nice to be cut off from that- (the intense scrutiny) otherwise you become self-conscious…. I envy that original cast of Lord of the Rings. They didn't know what they were involved in."
To me it sounds like he has been quite comfortable with the insularity the film production has provided so far, and isn't looking forward to the hype that is to follow.
[…] to a "D" reading (see caveats about the chain of evidence in print interviews here [second bullet point]), simply because everything we read reflects the impulses of the interviewer to couch information. […]
[…] that it also relies on a tropic intervention, albeit a more broadly popular one among fans: "virtuous Armitage." For various reasons I've articulated in different places on blog and won't […]
[…] someone said recently, the incessant topic around which this blog turns with regard to Richard Armitage is the evaluation o…. We don't know him personally, we don't spend time with him, we have snippets of […]
[…] part IV of this series and in the "Armitage barbatus" series and in the "tropes" post, all of which I still want to pursue and complete. But I realized recently that this […]
Fabulous analysis! I found this from your RA biography link. For me, RA standing in the back would be "other". I just keep thinking of how they would line us up for choir performances in school–by height–mixing males and females, and vocal parts to create a stereo kind of sound.
So as the tall guy, I'm guessing that RA might have been asked to stand in the back a lot for shots in school and such. And maybe he is unconsciously continuing that early training by standing in the back of Hobbit promo shots. Ha!
[…] a judgment of someone's intelligence based on the kind of evidence accessibly to us — interviews that are like a game of telephone most of the time — I'd have to meet him to evaluate that. But I emphatically agree with the rest of that […]
[…] shy Armitage head duck. A feature of the "modest Armitage" and the "bashful Armitage" tropes, […]
[…] my view of tropes in understanding and explaining Richard Armitage, see here. I simply insert the term below without […]
[…] and provided evidence for it, the legitimacy of my own introversion falls into jeopardy. We embrace patterns of Armitage behaviors based on our impressions and our identities — indeed, the reason why we're fans is that […]
[…] a fundamentally important piece of our perception of Armitage for most fans; that is, the "virtuous Armitage" trope that is so popular among fans. There was someone else there, too, the guy who made […]
[…] coming up with headcanon, something a lot of us do, the headcanon(s) we build about Armitage (via tropes) fascinate me. Who is Richard Armitage for me, for you? One of the most obscure parts of […]
[…] Before July 2012, many fewer candid photos of Richard Armitage with fans circulated for general consumption on the web than afterwards because determining when and where he could be met wasn't easy. The location of the Robin Hood set was known, and a few images of Armitage with fans visiting the set surfaced during that period, although I've been told that fans at the time debated vociferously whether it was acceptable to plan to try to meet him in this way. Fan meetings and pictures with Armitage continued to remain an isolated pleasure in proportion to the number of people who might have liked to have them. If I understand correctly, one of the first mass opportunities to see Armitage at work or meet him was the taping of the studio portions of Vicar of Dibley late in 2006, but with the exception those with tickets, most fans who came did not succeed in doing so. A bevy of staffers collected items brought with hopes of obtaining his signature in garbage bags to pass on to him. After that, fans in London sometimes found out where Spooks was filming, or stumbled across it accidentally, and obtained photos; a fan or two who had a friend who worked on set smuggled her in. Armitage indicated at least once (while filming at Wandsworth for Spooks 9) that if he knew fans had been waiting a long time in hope, he would go out to meet them. The most likely opportunities to meet Armitage and get the treasured photo were probably the BAFTA red carpets at which Armitage appeared in 2007, 2009, and 2010, where he chatted with fans in the waiting areas and signed books, drawings, pictures and other items and leaned into pictures. Other possibilities were offered by scheduled media interviews, with fans awaiting at arrival and departure points outside of studios to catch a glimpse and hopefully an autograph or photo. A few other chances followed — such as the Old Vic 24 Hour Plays in 2010, where one could purchase a ticket to an after party for cast and patrons of the event — and the Captain America premieres in Los Angeles and New York in July, 2011, where he showed himself as very friendly to fans whether encountered on the red carpet or off it. Though Armitage never showed any sign of reluctance or anger in regard to these meetings or other more spontaneous ones that made it into Armitageworld, some fans insisted as late as the summer of 2012 that Armitage wanted to avoid such encounters, a trope that I called "I want to be left alone Armitage." […]
[…] Armitage in light of statements in the spaces between statements he made — is, in fact, how the Richard Armitage tropes developed. Hence the angst and frustration and arguments that often appear right after a new […]
[…] a few years ago, I came up with a name for the action of praising Armitage for being a good guy: the trope of "virtuous Armitage." It's never been my favorite trope for describing him, mostly because even the kindest […]
[…] conversion experiences. We've got a theology and rules about behavior, and we've got traditions about the Armitage. We see in him some traditional virtues. We've got relics. We've gone on […]
[…] Now — Armitage has periodically referenced what he sees as his struggles with his career or dealing with his career himself. I typically accepted what British fans said about these statements — that they reflected a culturally typical modesty or self-deprecation. Some of them have been honest or disarming, as when he told greendragon that auditioning was awful and he'd had to play a mental game with himself to get through it. Sometimes that seemed to fit well, as when he stated that when he had to drive his car to the Spooks set, he'd get there early so as not to seem to be bragging. At other times, it didn't fit well. I'm thinking of the times in 2010/11 when he was quoted as saying that he was trying to get through his career with the least amount of talent possible, something UK fans at the time told me was extreme, even taken as self-deprecation. Or the uncut version of the interview with David Stephenson, which includes remarks about him taking roles that Rupert Penry-Jones didn't want, to the point that the interview ends up reassuring him slightly. Or the rather sardonic remarks at the end of 2016, when asked perhaps one too many questions about possible roles, stating he was there if JK Rowling wanted to call. I don't deny that we fans invest these things with meanings — but that's always the case. No trope works universally, even if things like "standing in back" seem obvious. […]

subset: commoncrawl


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When the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl, John Harbaugh said the win "wasn't pretty, but it was us." Now, the CEO and founder of Dell, Inc. is facing the same sort of scenario as he's looking to take Dell private—it's going to be ugly and very much in the character of Michael Dell.
Dell is planning on paying stockholders $13.65 a share to take the company private—a price that has the feel of a Ray Lewis sack to some investors. And that has Dell's biggest stockholder calling for a personal foul.
The investment firm Southeastern Asset Management, which owns 8.5 percent of Dell's outstanding shares, has sent a letter to Dell's management today expressing its outrage, saying that the firm will vote against the deal. "We are writing to express our extreme disappointment regarding the proposed go private transaction," the letter said, "which we believe grossly undervalues the company. We will not vote in favor of the proposed transaction as currently structured." The firm also promised a proxy fight, lawsuits, and any other means available under Delaware law and regulations to stop the deal cold in its tracks.
Southeastern would have supported the deal, the firm said in its letter, if it "would have provided full and fair value to Dell's public shareholders." And the number the firm puts on fair is at least $24 a share—a price that would require Dell to come up with $17 billion more to make happen.
As we reported, Dell's board of directors approved a plan to take the company private for roughly $20 billion, funded by a patchwork of cash, stocks, and debt that amounts to 22 times the company's net income in 2012. Dell submitted the details of its planned leveraged buyout to the Securities Exchange Commission on February 5, and they reveal the real winners in the deal: Michael Dell, the bankers, and Microsoft. It's not clear that Dell as a company gets anything more out of the deal than allowing it to tell investors to shut up.
The thug life
Michael Dell has a long-running reputation of playing hardball (to put it generously). He has also earned a reputation for being a less-than-ethical capitalist in the way he has run both Dell and his personal investment firm, MSD Capital. When he returned to his eponymous computer hardware company in 2007, he became the sixth-highest paid CEO in America, earning more than $153 million in overall annual compensation as he laid off thousands of employees and shut down US manufacturing.
In October, the company forced employees to sell many of their shares back to the company at $9.55 a share because of a policy that set the maximum amount of shares any employee could hold in their 401k plan—this, as the company was in the midst of negotiating a buyout deal.
If shareholders approve the deal, Dell the company will end up in the hands of Denali Holding Inc. (a Delaware corporation), a collection of Denali paper subsidiaries created for the express purpose of the buyout formed by Michael Dell, the investment firm Silver Lake, and other investors on January 31. But the company's destiny will be at least partially in the hands of the banks holding Dell's debt: Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse AG, and Royal Bank of Canada.
In order to take Dell private and pay $13.65 per share to reclaim the 1.4 billion outstanding shares of Dell stock not held by Michael Dell's MD Investors private investment fund, the company has commitments from four banks and their affiliate organizations to provide seven different loans and revolving credit instruments totaling just under $14 billion. There's also a $2 billion loan from Microsoft. The 8-K report filed by Dell doesn't discuss what the interest rates on these loans and revolving credit instruments are.
The remainder of the cash required to pay off stockholders will come from Michael Dell and a group of investors supporting him, his MSD Capital personal hedge fund, and investment firm Silver Lake—as well as roughly $2 to $3 billion from Dell's cash on hand.
There's also a small matter of Dell's existing public debt. The company can't drop off the SEC's radar entirely unless it also liquidates the bonds that it has sold as investments. Dell may end up paying off much of its short-term bond debt as part of the deal, but it's not going to be completely off the hook for things like SEC reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance as long as it still has long-term bondholders to answer to.
So what exactly is Dell getting out of this other than blowing $2 to $3 billion of the company's cash on hand (at a minimum) and taking on $16 billion in debt?
Taking the ball and going home
Although going private while still having public debt doesn't make its compliance problems go away—which means the company will still have some serious accounting overhead—the deal does give Michael Dell more control over the company he started out of his dorm room. And if he has his way, it won't be anything like that company he started in his dorm room ever again.
I spoke with Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa, who tracks Dell's PC business, about the potential impact of going private. While she hesitated to make any major projections, she said that it seems likely Dell will do what it has been positioning to do for the past few years—exit the consumer PC business to focus on business customers.
In order for Dell to survive in the larger PC market, Kitagawa said, it would require "a lot of investment in different areas, and I don't know that they want to do that." No other major PC manufacturer is privately held, and almost all of them are dependent in part on the relative liquidity of being public to allow them to make those sorts of investments—acquisitions, in particular—without spending real cash.
Getting rid of the consumer business is freeing to Dell in many ways. For one thing, it frees Dell from having to cater to consumer aesthetics for the high end or trying to cut costs for the low end of those markets. By focusing on business, Dell can still sell PCs and other client hardware as part of all-inclusive deals (or at least try) without having to worry so much about whether its notebooks and other devices are objects of desire or cheap enough to justify not buying an Asus or Acer.
So it's possible that in order to invest in the ways Dell will need to in order to compete with Hewlett-Packard and IBM in the enterprise space as a full-service, Dell-Consultants-at-your-deskside sort of provider, the company will sell off the consumer PC business once the leveraged buyout dust settles.
But Dell has already essentially eliminated its consumer group, at least from an organizational standpoint. On January 10, the company filed a report with the SEC that it would be changing its reporting structure, eliminating reporting by customer segment (Large Enterprise, Public, Small and Medium Business, and Consumer), and replacing that with functional group reporting (End User Computing, Enterprise Solutions Group, Dell Services, and Dell Software Group). So it may just stop making consumer hardware—or at least stop trying to make its hardware appeal to consumers.
Hedging bets, thrown for losses
Microsoft's loan to Dell is an interesting piece of the puzzle. It gives Microsoft a guarantee of some sort of ongoing revenue out of Dell as long as the company remains solvent, and it also gives Microsoft some influence over the direction Dell takes as it bails on the consumer market. By backing Dell, Microsoft is ensuring that a major original equipment manufacturer is selling systems with Windows licenses, but it's also keeping them out of the way of Microsoft's own consumer ambitions with Surface.
The banks win because, no matter what, they've made a big up-front (at least on paper) profit from lending Dell money just from the associated fees that come with the loans, and the banks are guaranteed to make significant interest income as long as Dell doesn't fall on its sword. If Dell ends up selling off pieces to recapitalize, it will still come out ahead of everyone else—including bondholders who hold Dell's long-term debt. Enterprise customers of Dell may end up happier, in some respects, because as a smaller, privately owned company, Dell could be more responsive (in theory) to its big customers' needs while management could ignore the whims of the market. HP even wins, because it will lose its biggest competitor in the consumer PC space.
Consumers who own Dell hardware may find their product supported by someone else, or not at all, depending on what happens to that line of business. But the big losers are the people who have been betting on Dell by investing in the company over the past five or six years—and possibly a number of Dell employees who could be shed in the coming reorg.
So it's no surprise that at least one major Dell investor is planning a goal-line stand to block the plan. The only question is whether it can pull together enough resistance to Silver Lake and Dell's offensive line. And boy, is it offensive.
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August 23rd, 2012
Conservative Christians rally around Akin in face of GOP criticism
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
(CNN) - Even as the official Republican Party continues to try to derail Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin over his remarks about "legitimate rape," a powerful force within the GOP has begun rallying to the candidate's side: the party's socially conservative base.
Powerful Christian activists in the GOP have begun pushing back against party leadership, alleging it has gone too far in trying to thwart Akin and that it is attempting to sideline issues that social conservatives care about, such as abortion.
The criticism is creating major tensions between the mainstream Republican Party and a key part of its base days before the GOP's convention is set to open in Tampa, Florida.
"Following the pounding of Todd Akin by the GOP kings and lieutenants in the last 36 hours, I've come to the conclusion that the real issue is the soul of America," wrote David Lane, an evangelical activist who's influential in the Republican Party, in an e-mail to fellow activists Thursday morning.
Top Catholic to close GOP convention
"The swift knee-jerk reaction to throw Akin, a strong conservative pro-life, pro-family born again Christian under the bus by some in the Republican Party is shining the light on their actual agenda," Lane continued.
"We haven't seen anything this vicious since some of the same operatives did this to (Sarah) Palin."
While many conservative Christian groups have criticized Akin over his "legitimate rape" comment and for claiming that women's bodies can prevent conception in such cases, the groups have also emphasized that they stand with Akin in opposing abortion, even in instances of rape.
Not all conservative Christian activists are taking Akin's side against the GOP.
"I think it splits the social conservative movement," says Richard Land, who heads public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention. "Some people say, 'Look he is our guy, we are going to stand with him.'
"And some people are saying the odds are this is a fatal blow at least in this election cycle," Land says. "For the good of the movement, for the good of the pro-life cause ... he needs to do what's best for the cause and throw himself on his shield."
Land, who was in Tampa on Thursday attending meetings around the convention, said he thinks Akin should drop out.
Many Republican leaders, from presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, also have called on Akin to get out of the race.
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The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the American Crossroads super PAC that backs GOP candidates both announced that they will stop spending money on the Missouri Senate race. Even tea party groups that have backed Akin in the past said he should step aside for the good of the party and the conservative cause.
The Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the social conservative criticisms of the party on Thursday.
Akin, who won a tough primary battle this month, has apologized for his comments but also defied pressure to get out of the election.
Republican officials have told CNN on condition of not being identified that the Akin controversy hurts on several fronts. It decreases the chances of capturing Missouri's Senate seat, which is crucial to GOP hopes of winning control of the chamber, they said.
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And the brouhaha shifts the national discussion to divisive social issues that could repel swing voters rather than economic ones that could attract them in a climate of high unemployment and stumbling recovery, the GOP officials said.
Akin has bowed to Republican pressure to skip the Republican convention next week. But the Senate candidate was in Tampa on Wednesday night to meet with a powerful group of religious conservatives, according to a source familiar with the trip.
In a note to supporters Wednesday night, conservative Family Research Council President Tony Perkins heaped criticism on the GOP for abandoning Akin.
"Todd Akin has a long and distinguished record of defending women, children, and families - and unlike the GOP establishment, I refuse to throw him under the bus over one inarticulate comment for which he has apologized," wrote Perkins, who is in Tampa attending events leading up the convention.
"As for the GOP, it has no rational basis for deserting Akin when it has stood by moderate Republicans who've done worse," Perkins continued. "Singling out Todd suggests a double standard, designed to drive out social conservatives."
CNN's Tom Cohen and Peter Hamby contributed to this report.
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About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.


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For a long time, the cure for diabetes type 1 and type 2 has relied on agonizing insulin shots for patients or insulin infusion via mechanical pumps. Regarding this, experts have been creating artificial pancreatic beta cells with the he…
In 2019, the market size of TETRA Land Mobile Radio is million US$ and it will reach million US$ in 2025, growing at a CAGR of from 2019; while in China, the market size is valued at xx million US$ and will increase to xx million US$ in 2025, with a CAGR of xx% during forecast period.
In this report, 2018 has been considered as the base year and 2019 to 2025 as the forecast period to estimate the market size for TETRA Land Mobile Radio.
This report studies the global market size of TETRA Land Mobile Radio, especially focuses on the key regions like United States, European Union, China, and other regions (Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia).
This study presents the TETRA Land Mobile Radio production, revenue, market share and growth rate for each key company, and also covers the breakdown data (production, consumption, revenue and market share) by regions, type and applications. history breakdown data from 2014 to 2019, and forecast to 2025.
For top companies in United States, European Union and China, this report investigates and analyzes the production, value, price, market share and growth rate for the top manufacturers, key data from 2014 to 2019.
In global market, the following companies are covered:
- Motorola Solutions
- Airbus DS
- Kenwood Corporation
- Codan Radio
- Icom
- Hytera
- Simoco
- Harris Corporation
- Sepura (PowerTrunk)
- Tait Communications
- Selex ES
- Neolink
Market Segment by Product Type
- Analog TETRA Land Mobile Radio
- Digital TETRA Land Mobile Radio
Market Segment by Application
- Public Safety
- Public Utilities
- Commerce & Industry
Key Regions split in this report: breakdown data for each region.
- United States
- China
- European Union
- Rest of World (Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)
The study objectives are:
- To analyze and research the TETRA Land Mobile Radio status and future forecast in United States, European Union and China, involving sales, value (revenue), growth rate (CAGR), market share, historical and forecast.
- To present the key TETRA Land Mobile Radio manufacturers, presenting the sales, revenue, market share, and recent development for key players.
- To split the breakdown data by regions, type, companies and applications
- To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.
- To identify significant trends, drivers, influence factors in global and regions
- To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market
In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of TETRA Land Mobile Radio are as follows:
- History Year: 2014-2018
- Base Year: 2018
- Estimated Year: 2019
- Forecast Year 2019 to 2025


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Three days ago, Apple was ordered to pay $368.2 million for infringing domain name security and virtual private network patents for its FaceTime service. Now, it turns out the same company that beat Apple in that case—VirnetX—filed a new lawsuit against the iPhone maker on the very same day.
The suit, filed Tuesday in US District Court in Eastern Texas (PDF), repeats the same allegations but updates them to target Apple's latest products. Those include the iPhone 5, fifth generation iPod Touch, fourth generation iPad, iPad mini, and all Macs using OS X Mountain Lion. FaceTime, iMessage, and Apple's use of VPN On Demand technology are the culprits, VirnetX says. The plaintiff is demanding monetary damages and a permanent injunction preventing Apple from continuing to infringe its patents.
VirnetX says it is building a secure domain name registry based on its patented technology, but makes its money today by licensing patents and filing lawsuits. VirnetX says Apple "refused to pay fair value" for patent licenses, and has also targeted Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, and Siemens, with a trial against the latter three scheduled for March 2013. The company won a $200 million settlement from Microsoft in 2010; in addition to Microsoft, VirnetX has struck licensing agreements with Aastra, Mitel Networks, and NEC.
As noted in our story on the $368.2 million judgment, the VirnetX patents asserted against Apple include ones for an "Agile network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability"; "Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names" another patent of the same title; and "Establishment of a secure communication link based on a domain name service (DNS) request."
The brand-new lawsuit asserts these same patents that Apple has already been found to infringe. Apple is likely to appeal that ruling, but if the company can't get it overturned, Apple may just have to pay the damages or strike a licensing deal of its own with VirnetX.


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About this item
One of the most sought after designer brands to exist, we are pleased to open up our infamous Chanel Vault to add to the Vintage Chains Shop. All our Vintage Chanel Jewelry has been hand purveyed from our travels around the globe. We have assembled the most exclusive Vintage Chanel archive to exist. All of our Chanel products were made in the 1970's to 1990's by the famous house. We are pleased to bring you this diverse Chanel Fashion Archive for the first time in Vintage Frames Company History.
All of our Vintage Jewelry product sales are final, and non refundable. Please look at the exact condition of the product in the picture as it will be the exact product you will be receiving. Due to the age and nature of the products, there could be some wear. We are not responsible for how a product reacts with different skin types, nor the aging with usage. We are not the producers of these products. They are original designer vintage jewelry that we have put together from international travels. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask. We are available 24 hours a day to answer any questions.


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Former Bain employees say a super PAC misquoted them in a film about Mitt Romney's record. Anderson Cooper is Keeping Them Honest.
Post by: Anderson Cooper
Filed under: 2012 Election • Keeping Them Honest
Fraud in Newt's PAC ad? Why am I not surprised. I cannot understand why Newt can keep on running when his baggage clearly demonstrates he is not the type of person the US needs in the Executive Office.
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Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
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Welfare check sparks inquiry
ROCKFORD — Internal and outside investigations are underway involving the actions of several Rockford police officers, including Chief Chet Epperson.
Igniting the firestorm of controversy is a simple welfare check Oct. 30 at the home of Lloyd Johnston Jr., president of the local NAACP chapter.
At issue are allegations of obstructing justice and leaking a police report to the media.
Johnston's ex-wife, Tonya Eboigde, a New York resident, called Rockford police asking for a welfare check on their 24-year-old son, Lloyd Quincy Johnston III, who lives with Johnston and his current wife.
According to a Rockford police report summary, Eboigde told a 911 dispatcher she heard a struggle over the phone while speaking with her son, then the phone went dead.
The dispatcher asked Eboigde for Johnston's phone number and dialed it. The call went to voicemail.
A trio of officers — D'Evyron Boone, Mark Castronovo and Adam Dreger — were dispatched to Johnston's house on Warwick Way. The front door was open but the screen door was closed.
The officers announced their presence a couple of times before Johnston emerged from a rear room.
The officers asked Johnston for permission to come inside. Johnston refused, so Boone said he explained they were there to check on the welfare of his son, Quincy.
Johnston told the officers he did not know whether Quincy was home and asked the officer if Quincy was wanted on a warrant.
Police told Johnston they did not know, telling Johnston again that they were there on the welfare check.
Boone told Johnston he and the other officers were acting as "community caretakers," and they could not leave until they verified that Quincy was OK and would "kick the door in" if necessary.
Johnston told the officers they could not enter his house unless they had a warrant. At that point, Castronovo requested a supervisor at the scene.
Meanwhile, Johnston called Epperson on his cellphone and conducted their conversation via speakerphone for the officers to hear.
Johnston informed Epperson the police were at his residence and wanted to come inside but he did not know why.
The officers recognized the chief's voice.
Boone wrote in his report that the chief told Johnston: "Don't let them in the house and tell them to leave," and a supervisor would be sent to the house.
Johnston has since told the Register Star that the chief did not instruct him to tell the officers to leave.
Sgt. Eddie Torrance arrived, explained to Johnston why the officers needed to enter his home, and the officers verified the wellbeing of Johnston's son. No arrests were made.
"I reasonably believed Quincy or any other occupant in the residence could have been injured or need help," Boone wrote in his report, based on a string of circumstances, such as a report of sounds of fighting over the phone, an alleged "history of physical domestics," the front door being wide open, someone inside the house looking out the window at the officers but not immediately coming to the door, and "hostility" toward police acting in a caretaking manner.
A copy of the report detailing the matter was obtained and aired by veteran WNTA radio host Ken DeCoster.
The Register Star filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the report; the Police Department had not made one available as of Wednesday, but DeCoster shared his copy.
On Wednesday, union labor representative Doug Block said the three officers were questioned individually Nov. 7 by a shift commander about the events at the Johnston residence.
He said their accounts of the events were the same.
Union President Terry Peterson, who has had a contentious relationship with the chief, said officers have an obligation to investigate every welfare-check request and questioned why the chief told Johnston to not let the officers inside.
"For the chief of police to obstruct justice like that, that can't happen."
Epperson declined to comment on the matter Tuesday, referring all inquiries to HR Director Julia Scott-Valdez, who acknowledged the internal investigation.
Mayor Larry Morrissey could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Meanwhile, union attorney Tim O'Neal is also gathering information.
"I have concerns about the three officers being called in and interrogated about what they wrote in their reports," he said. "If the chief was on the phone telling officers not to check on the well-being of someone, I have serious concerns about that."
Chris Green: 815-987-1241; email@example.com; @chrisfgreen