Constant Viewer loved Ghost Town. It’s witty, well written, ably directed and skillfully acted. How wonderful, too, to see a leading man who doesn’t look as though he splits his off-screen time between a personal trainer and a plastic surgeon. Ricky Gervais (The Office) may be the least likely romantic lead since Renée Zellweger, but he is brilliant in this role and, but for the fact that Ghost Town is a romantic comedy, would be a worthy Oscar nominee.
Gervais plays Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic dentist who, having been one himself for seven minutes, suddenly sees dead people – and where did CV see this premise before – who roam the Earth still because of unfinished business. Pincus finds himself suddenly besieged to help the dead but not yet departed. Principle among the nagging wraiths is Greg Kinnear as Frank Herlihy, whose widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) lives in Pincus’s apartment building and who Herlihy wants to stop from remarrying. Pincus of course falls for Gwen and your basic romantic comedy formula kicks in at that point, but the inevitable complications here before the happily-ever-after are decidedly better than usual and CV was surprised to find himself both laughing out loud and tearing up far more frequently than usual.
Ghost Town isn’t a blockbuster or an ‘important’ movie and it probably won’t garner much more than average attendance or critical attention. But oh what a lovely movie! See it with your mate or, failing that, with someone you might have in mind to nominate for the role. Failing that, go see it with friends or, what the hell, go see it alone. You’ll be glad you did.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
And Just Where Is The Constitutional Authority For FEMA, Congressman Paul?
My statement back during the time of Katrina, which was a rather risky political statement: why do the people of Arizona have to pay for me to take my risk... less people will be exposed to danger if you don't subsidize risky behavior... I think it's a very serious mistake to think that central economic planning and forcibly transferring wealth from people who don't take risks to people who take risks is a proper way to go. -- Ron Paul, The Charles Goyette Show, March 30, 2007
Herewith, a notice from Congressman Ron Paul's office assuring constituents in the Texas 14th Congressional District, which by the way includes Galveston, that "getting help to everyone affected [by Hurricane Ike] is his utmost priority."
The Congressman’s office is acting as a liaison between Federal agencies and constituents to ensure that available assistance is as accessible as possible, and that FEMA and other government agency activities are appropriate, efficient and helpful to Texans.
You can, of course, make an argument even as a libertarian -- I know this because I make it, myself, from time to time -- that standing on principle is sometimes simply foolish. I, for one, will gladly accept any federal largess that comes my way, too. I'm a libertarian, not an idiot.
Even so, it might be amusing to hear the good congressman explain the differences between federal aid following Katrina and federal aid following Ike.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Anarchy, State and Ignorance - Part II
The whole point of certified public accountancy is the notion that a business cannot be expected or trusted to perform an objective accounting of its performance, at least not sufficiently free of the risk of conflict of interests to satisfy current or potential investors or creditors. The hallmark of a just judiciary is disinterested objectivity. People trust the compliance certification services of Underwriters Laboratories and give greater weight to product reviews and comparisons from Consumer Reports because they understand that the very raison d'être of these organizations is their objectivity and lack of conflicts of interest.
That is not to say that any of these organizations or activities are perfectly or completely bias free. Rather, insofar as the absence of bias is an ideal objective, it is merely the case that they approach it far better, on average, than organizations and institutions that are trusted not only to provide a product or service but also to self-certify the quality of their product or performance.
If you want a diverse, competitive market collectively striving for excellence in education at all levels, separate teaching from testing.
If you want the testing and certifications of academic achievement as free from bias and conflict of interests as possible, separate the testing and certifying function not only from the teaching function, itself, but also from government at all levels.
I doubt I’ll get any serious argument on this blog when I merely assert without arguing that the U.S. Department of Education is a captive regulator to all intents and purposes controlled by the education industry, specifically including state departments of education, university schools of education and, of course, the public teachers’ unions. Similarly, state and local public school systems and individual school PTA’s and such are to all intent and purposes controlled by the very personnel they are supposed to be governing or monitoring. If you want to argue against these assertions, feel free. But I take them as a given.
(It must be said, however, that state departments of education have not always been entirely captive regulators. Indeed, I’m no economist or political scientist but my best guess is that many if not most governmental regulatory agencies, the politics motivating their creation aside, began as relatively disinterested organizations. Corruption typically takes time; however, I believe it eventually, inevitable will occur.)
Anyway, say what you will about the No Child Left Behind program (and I’ll gladly join you in various criticisms), every time I hear a teacher, any teacher (including the good ones) complain about “teaching to the test” I want to jump up and down shouting for joy. Sure, standardized tests have all sorts of problems and, yes, deciding what should constitute the core curriculum in many subjects is a contentious and ultimately subjective matter. I might prefer that every high school graduate read, say, Hamlet and Twelfth Night rather than Macbeth and The Tempest, but I’d sure as hell prefer that they have read one or the other rather than neither.
If we looked not to diplomas and degrees from schools that have, to put it mildly, all sorts of conflicts of interest but to independent testing agencies, different in important ways from and yet similar to the organizations that administer standardized college and professional school exams now, we would go a long way toward creating an entirely different sort of educational system. Such a system would be largely indifferent to how you learned (or how much time you spent learning) algebra or, yes, let’s get it out and be done with it, biology, English literature or conversational Spanish, focusing only on whether you passed whatever standard (and therefore admittedly somewhat arbitrary) benchmark involved. It wouldn’t matter whether you were home schooled, publicly educated or attended the Toniest of upper class prep schools. Oh, and I’ll save the argument for another day, but I’d say roughly the same sort of system should apply to higher education, as well.
I continue to believe in a system of tax funded, voucher supported, primarily privately operated schools, contra what appears to be at least one of my co-bloggers position on the subject. To be sure, we are all here capable of educating our own children or, at least, of paying for someone else to do it, but it isn’t the fault of children born in the inner city or squalid, rural trailer parks or, for that matter, of legal immigrants who will eventually join the middle class or better but whose children need education today. I would no more condemn them to ignorance than deny them food, shelter or medical attention simply because they are unfortunate enough to have parents who cannot or will not provide better.
On the other hand, I also firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of parents want the best education for their children they are capable of receiving and that, given even the minimal required resources to do so, that self-same overwhelming majority are best situated to determine how best to accomplish that. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that many will opt to include rigorous religious education as part of their children’s overall education, nor that I would disagree with much of that religious education, nor that some of it might well conflict with evolutionary theory. You want certification that you have studied introductory biology? Take and pass the test. (Or one of several available tests in a market similar in that sense to the alternative availability of the ACT and SAT.) Potential employers, universities, etc. could and would establish their own standards based on such test results for purposes of employment, admissions, etc. Indeed, employers and schools would have good reason to care about the integrity and independence of the testing agencies and the rigor of their tests and the market pressures to maintain and improve that objectivity and rigor would tend to prevent educators’ inevitable attempts to co-opt the tests.
I may write a third post providing some more detail of the system I envision. By way of shortstopping certain sorts of criticism for now, let me just say that I don’t see this as a panacea but merely as a preferable system to the one we now have There are, no doubt, all sorts of details to be worked out and problems obvious even to me in this alternative approach. Feel free to name them if you wish. What I would be particularly interested in reading, however, is anyone who wishes to argue that the present system, the one we have now, is preferable, and why they believe that is so.
That is not to say that any of these organizations or activities are perfectly or completely bias free. Rather, insofar as the absence of bias is an ideal objective, it is merely the case that they approach it far better, on average, than organizations and institutions that are trusted not only to provide a product or service but also to self-certify the quality of their product or performance.
If you want a diverse, competitive market collectively striving for excellence in education at all levels, separate teaching from testing.
If you want the testing and certifications of academic achievement as free from bias and conflict of interests as possible, separate the testing and certifying function not only from the teaching function, itself, but also from government at all levels.
I doubt I’ll get any serious argument on this blog when I merely assert without arguing that the U.S. Department of Education is a captive regulator to all intents and purposes controlled by the education industry, specifically including state departments of education, university schools of education and, of course, the public teachers’ unions. Similarly, state and local public school systems and individual school PTA’s and such are to all intent and purposes controlled by the very personnel they are supposed to be governing or monitoring. If you want to argue against these assertions, feel free. But I take them as a given.
(It must be said, however, that state departments of education have not always been entirely captive regulators. Indeed, I’m no economist or political scientist but my best guess is that many if not most governmental regulatory agencies, the politics motivating their creation aside, began as relatively disinterested organizations. Corruption typically takes time; however, I believe it eventually, inevitable will occur.)
Anyway, say what you will about the No Child Left Behind program (and I’ll gladly join you in various criticisms), every time I hear a teacher, any teacher (including the good ones) complain about “teaching to the test” I want to jump up and down shouting for joy. Sure, standardized tests have all sorts of problems and, yes, deciding what should constitute the core curriculum in many subjects is a contentious and ultimately subjective matter. I might prefer that every high school graduate read, say, Hamlet and Twelfth Night rather than Macbeth and The Tempest, but I’d sure as hell prefer that they have read one or the other rather than neither.
If we looked not to diplomas and degrees from schools that have, to put it mildly, all sorts of conflicts of interest but to independent testing agencies, different in important ways from and yet similar to the organizations that administer standardized college and professional school exams now, we would go a long way toward creating an entirely different sort of educational system. Such a system would be largely indifferent to how you learned (or how much time you spent learning) algebra or, yes, let’s get it out and be done with it, biology, English literature or conversational Spanish, focusing only on whether you passed whatever standard (and therefore admittedly somewhat arbitrary) benchmark involved. It wouldn’t matter whether you were home schooled, publicly educated or attended the Toniest of upper class prep schools. Oh, and I’ll save the argument for another day, but I’d say roughly the same sort of system should apply to higher education, as well.
I continue to believe in a system of tax funded, voucher supported, primarily privately operated schools, contra what appears to be at least one of my co-bloggers position on the subject. To be sure, we are all here capable of educating our own children or, at least, of paying for someone else to do it, but it isn’t the fault of children born in the inner city or squalid, rural trailer parks or, for that matter, of legal immigrants who will eventually join the middle class or better but whose children need education today. I would no more condemn them to ignorance than deny them food, shelter or medical attention simply because they are unfortunate enough to have parents who cannot or will not provide better.
On the other hand, I also firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of parents want the best education for their children they are capable of receiving and that, given even the minimal required resources to do so, that self-same overwhelming majority are best situated to determine how best to accomplish that. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that many will opt to include rigorous religious education as part of their children’s overall education, nor that I would disagree with much of that religious education, nor that some of it might well conflict with evolutionary theory. You want certification that you have studied introductory biology? Take and pass the test. (Or one of several available tests in a market similar in that sense to the alternative availability of the ACT and SAT.) Potential employers, universities, etc. could and would establish their own standards based on such test results for purposes of employment, admissions, etc. Indeed, employers and schools would have good reason to care about the integrity and independence of the testing agencies and the rigor of their tests and the market pressures to maintain and improve that objectivity and rigor would tend to prevent educators’ inevitable attempts to co-opt the tests.
I may write a third post providing some more detail of the system I envision. By way of shortstopping certain sorts of criticism for now, let me just say that I don’t see this as a panacea but merely as a preferable system to the one we now have There are, no doubt, all sorts of details to be worked out and problems obvious even to me in this alternative approach. Feel free to name them if you wish. What I would be particularly interested in reading, however, is anyone who wishes to argue that the present system, the one we have now, is preferable, and why they believe that is so.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
9/11 Remembered
I have told this story before, but I was in the Pentagon at the time of the attack. As it happens, I was far enough away from the site of the crash that I couldn't say for sure that I actually heard or felt anything at the moment of impact. A few minutes earlier, although there wasn't a television set or radio handy, rumors of the attack at the World Trade Center were already circulating throughout the building and we were trying to get more information through the internet.
What I did finally hear and pay attention to only moments later was the sound of other people rushing down the corridor, heading for the nearest exit. I still didn't know what had happened, but if they all thought leaving the building was a good idea, well, you know. I joined the crowd and literally less than two minutes I was out in the South Parking lot, walking rapidly away from the building.
The South Parking side of the Pentagon is to the south of the Heliport side where the airplane hit. I couldn't see anything over there except a huge and rapidly growing plume of jet black smoke. The most likely inference at that point was a helicopter crash causing a fire, which was what I assumed. As people continued to pour out of the Pentagon, however, it also became clear that it would probably take at least an hour or two before the "all clear" signal was given and the crowd of some 25,000 people could re-enter the building. My car was parked not far away, so I simply kept walking to it and then drove off.
It was only when I turned on the car radio as I pulled out of the parking lot that I discovered what had happened. In fact, as I took the ramp exit to I 395 South / Washington Blvd., I could finally see the burning crater in the side of the Pentagon where the airplane hit. I could hear sirens approaching from every direction as I drove away in the opposite direction.
Not that it would have done me any good, but I didn't have a cell phone on September 11, 2001. (I own one now, at my wife's insistence, and that is frankly one more thing I hold against the terrorists, trivial as that is.) I drove to my wife's office and we decided, since we had no idea how extensive the attacks were or whether there would be more, to pull our children from school and then determine from there whether to leave the immediate Washington, D.C. vicinity. As it happened, we remained at home glued to the television. I would do exactly the same thing if the same situation were to occur again.
Obviously, the situation at the World Trade Centers was vastly worse. Still, I went back to the Pentagon the next day and entered long enough to witness the incredible smoke damage even as far away from the point of attack as I had been the previous morning. While none of the victims were personal friends, a number were people with whom I had done business over the years.
Mine isn't, therefore, a particularly dramatic, let alone tragic story. More like a brush with history, actually. It's worth remembering, though, how much the U.S. has changed since and because of 9/11. Normal is whatever you grow up with or grow used to. America's continuing psychological sense of siege in what increasingly seems not only to be a long but a perpetual war against terrorism feels more and more "normal" all the time. Surely, that is a far greater harm than even the terrible death and destruction of seven years ago.
What I did finally hear and pay attention to only moments later was the sound of other people rushing down the corridor, heading for the nearest exit. I still didn't know what had happened, but if they all thought leaving the building was a good idea, well, you know. I joined the crowd and literally less than two minutes I was out in the South Parking lot, walking rapidly away from the building.
The South Parking side of the Pentagon is to the south of the Heliport side where the airplane hit. I couldn't see anything over there except a huge and rapidly growing plume of jet black smoke. The most likely inference at that point was a helicopter crash causing a fire, which was what I assumed. As people continued to pour out of the Pentagon, however, it also became clear that it would probably take at least an hour or two before the "all clear" signal was given and the crowd of some 25,000 people could re-enter the building. My car was parked not far away, so I simply kept walking to it and then drove off.
It was only when I turned on the car radio as I pulled out of the parking lot that I discovered what had happened. In fact, as I took the ramp exit to I 395 South / Washington Blvd., I could finally see the burning crater in the side of the Pentagon where the airplane hit. I could hear sirens approaching from every direction as I drove away in the opposite direction.
Not that it would have done me any good, but I didn't have a cell phone on September 11, 2001. (I own one now, at my wife's insistence, and that is frankly one more thing I hold against the terrorists, trivial as that is.) I drove to my wife's office and we decided, since we had no idea how extensive the attacks were or whether there would be more, to pull our children from school and then determine from there whether to leave the immediate Washington, D.C. vicinity. As it happened, we remained at home glued to the television. I would do exactly the same thing if the same situation were to occur again.
Obviously, the situation at the World Trade Centers was vastly worse. Still, I went back to the Pentagon the next day and entered long enough to witness the incredible smoke damage even as far away from the point of attack as I had been the previous morning. While none of the victims were personal friends, a number were people with whom I had done business over the years.
Mine isn't, therefore, a particularly dramatic, let alone tragic story. More like a brush with history, actually. It's worth remembering, though, how much the U.S. has changed since and because of 9/11. Normal is whatever you grow up with or grow used to. America's continuing psychological sense of siege in what increasingly seems not only to be a long but a perpetual war against terrorism feels more and more "normal" all the time. Surely, that is a far greater harm than even the terrible death and destruction of seven years ago.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Anarchy, State and Ignorance
Your children are not your property. They’re not mine, either, thank Gawd, and just as important, they’re not the state’s property, either.
One of the problems of framing political theory in terms of fundamental or natural property rights (the naturalist fallacy aside) is that once we begin thinking of a person as having property rights in himself, it’s a small leap to thinking that one person can have some sorts of property rights in someone else. (Yes, I know, there are ways around this, but that doesn’t make it any less a problem, and an entirely avoidable one, at that, if we just abandoned the notion of property existing outside a legal system, itself a function of the ideally minimal state. But that’s another rant for another thread.)
Positive Liberty readers will have noted a certain amount of crankiness lately when it comes to schooling, education, creationism, Intelligent Design theory, Darwinian evolutionary theory, home schooling, etc. People do care about what is taught in schools and people do care about their children’s education and want excellent schools. Tempers flare, intemperate statements are made, feelings get hurt, my jokes get even dumber than usual, and so on.
Of course, when I say “people” I don’t mean everyone. There are many people who really don’t give a damn about excellent schools (we call these people NEA members) and there really are parents who don’t give a damn about their children's education.
There are people who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God not only about matters spiritual but matters historical, too, including natural history. And there are people who believe that with the empirical sciences in one hand and Occam’s straight razor wielded deftly enough in the other they can whittle down language and the reality to which it ideally relates to a tidy little material ontology with a surprisingly handy analytic framework undergirding and making sense of both. We call the first sort fundamentalists and we call the second sort Richard Dawkins. They have much in common, not the least of which is an almost invincible ignorance of each other’s area of interest and expertise. But that’s another rant for another thread.
Back to school. School sucks. And public school sucks in the sort of way that can only happen when you start with something that sucks already and make it a public institution as well. Public schools are much like public prisons, which only makes sense, after all, since they both serve roughly the same sorts of functions; namely, warehousing uncivilized undesirables from the rest of the public and “socializing” them for their eventual release into the general population. In prison we call such socialization, insofar as there is any, rehabilitation. In school, [insert equivalent disclaimer here], we call it education.
Schools, like prisons, are institutions that don’t deal very well with the very best or the very worst of their inmates. Being government institutions, they trend toward the one-size-fits-all model. In reality, however, one size fits almost no one.
No wonder then that some caring parents who not only object to the ideological biases rampant in contemporary pubic schools but properly dubious of those schools' educational capabilities might well opt to home-school their children. I must say that the families of my personal acquaintance who have gone that route are far more as Mr. Babka describes than as Mr. Heath describes. But that almost certainly says more about the sort of home-schooling parents I happen to know than about the sort of home-schooling parents I don’t know. (In that respect, I am logically in exactly the same situation as the woman who was shocked that Ronald Reagan was elected since she didn't know a single person who voted for him.)
Typically, the glib libertarian response to public education’s panoply of woes is to argue for the abolition of public, i.e., state operated schools entirely and to let a market in, say, voucher-funded private schools arise. Yes, the anarcho-capitalists will chime in at this point and start whining about how they shouldn’t have to pay for your and my children’s education, but (1) an educated public is a public good, (2) an uneducated public is a public disaster and (3) children, not being the property of their parents, shouldn’t be victimized by their parents inability to pay for a decent education any more than they should be victimized by the state’s one-size-fits-nearly-nobody excuse for an education.
No, children do not have the right to an education. They do, however, have the right not to be prevented from an education even as they have the right not to be starved by their parents. (Or forced to eat nothing but healthy foods by the nanny state, for that matter.)
The fact is, moreover, that there are altogether too many parents out there who are not at all like Mr. Babka and who don’t give a damn whether their sons and daughters know any biology or math whatsoever, who don’t care whether their children ever read any books at all other than the Bible or Koran or whatever or, worse yet, would prefer they didn’t.
Contemporary society will not permit such parents to raise their children in such a manner and contemporary society is morally right not to do so. You have the moral right to share your religious beliefs with your children. It is less clear whether you have the right to insist that your children abide by those religious beliefs, especially as they grow older, but it is entirely clear that, regardless of whether you are motivated by religious beliefs or not, you have no right to keep your children ignorant. (And, no, I don’t mean the state should require graphically detailed sex education for eight year olds. Let’s keep some perspective here, folks.)
The point of all of this – leaving our anarcho-capitalist friends to wallow in their ideological purity while the adults seek real solutions to real problems – is that while voucher funded private schools would be a significant step toward both solving a certain set of problems with government operated schools (e.g., prayer in school), it remains vulnerable to certain remaining problems. Should, for example, a voucher funded school be permitted to teach exclusively Creationist natural history? Should society permit parents to home-school or send their children to a voucher funded school with no math instruction? No exposure to our larger cultural heritage including literature, history, etc.?
Because if we agree that the answer is no, and I certainly hope that at least most of us will agree to that, then we are stuck with the unavoidable conclusion that that there remains a necessary government role in ensuring certain minimum standards in the education of children.
The trick, I think, is to abandon the (to use Mr. Babka’s term) utopian belief that society can eliminate the role of government in education while devising a system by which its role is kept to a bare minimum consistent with an adequate solution to the problems that would arise in an anarchy that included not only capable, responsible parents like us but incapable and irresponsible parents, too.
But we’ll save that discussion for next time.
One of the problems of framing political theory in terms of fundamental or natural property rights (the naturalist fallacy aside) is that once we begin thinking of a person as having property rights in himself, it’s a small leap to thinking that one person can have some sorts of property rights in someone else. (Yes, I know, there are ways around this, but that doesn’t make it any less a problem, and an entirely avoidable one, at that, if we just abandoned the notion of property existing outside a legal system, itself a function of the ideally minimal state. But that’s another rant for another thread.)
Positive Liberty readers will have noted a certain amount of crankiness lately when it comes to schooling, education, creationism, Intelligent Design theory, Darwinian evolutionary theory, home schooling, etc. People do care about what is taught in schools and people do care about their children’s education and want excellent schools. Tempers flare, intemperate statements are made, feelings get hurt, my jokes get even dumber than usual, and so on.
Of course, when I say “people” I don’t mean everyone. There are many people who really don’t give a damn about excellent schools (we call these people NEA members) and there really are parents who don’t give a damn about their children's education.
There are people who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God not only about matters spiritual but matters historical, too, including natural history. And there are people who believe that with the empirical sciences in one hand and Occam’s straight razor wielded deftly enough in the other they can whittle down language and the reality to which it ideally relates to a tidy little material ontology with a surprisingly handy analytic framework undergirding and making sense of both. We call the first sort fundamentalists and we call the second sort Richard Dawkins. They have much in common, not the least of which is an almost invincible ignorance of each other’s area of interest and expertise. But that’s another rant for another thread.
Back to school. School sucks. And public school sucks in the sort of way that can only happen when you start with something that sucks already and make it a public institution as well. Public schools are much like public prisons, which only makes sense, after all, since they both serve roughly the same sorts of functions; namely, warehousing uncivilized undesirables from the rest of the public and “socializing” them for their eventual release into the general population. In prison we call such socialization, insofar as there is any, rehabilitation. In school, [insert equivalent disclaimer here], we call it education.
Schools, like prisons, are institutions that don’t deal very well with the very best or the very worst of their inmates. Being government institutions, they trend toward the one-size-fits-all model. In reality, however, one size fits almost no one.
No wonder then that some caring parents who not only object to the ideological biases rampant in contemporary pubic schools but properly dubious of those schools' educational capabilities might well opt to home-school their children. I must say that the families of my personal acquaintance who have gone that route are far more as Mr. Babka describes than as Mr. Heath describes. But that almost certainly says more about the sort of home-schooling parents I happen to know than about the sort of home-schooling parents I don’t know. (In that respect, I am logically in exactly the same situation as the woman who was shocked that Ronald Reagan was elected since she didn't know a single person who voted for him.)
Typically, the glib libertarian response to public education’s panoply of woes is to argue for the abolition of public, i.e., state operated schools entirely and to let a market in, say, voucher-funded private schools arise. Yes, the anarcho-capitalists will chime in at this point and start whining about how they shouldn’t have to pay for your and my children’s education, but (1) an educated public is a public good, (2) an uneducated public is a public disaster and (3) children, not being the property of their parents, shouldn’t be victimized by their parents inability to pay for a decent education any more than they should be victimized by the state’s one-size-fits-nearly-nobody excuse for an education.
No, children do not have the right to an education. They do, however, have the right not to be prevented from an education even as they have the right not to be starved by their parents. (Or forced to eat nothing but healthy foods by the nanny state, for that matter.)
The fact is, moreover, that there are altogether too many parents out there who are not at all like Mr. Babka and who don’t give a damn whether their sons and daughters know any biology or math whatsoever, who don’t care whether their children ever read any books at all other than the Bible or Koran or whatever or, worse yet, would prefer they didn’t.
Contemporary society will not permit such parents to raise their children in such a manner and contemporary society is morally right not to do so. You have the moral right to share your religious beliefs with your children. It is less clear whether you have the right to insist that your children abide by those religious beliefs, especially as they grow older, but it is entirely clear that, regardless of whether you are motivated by religious beliefs or not, you have no right to keep your children ignorant. (And, no, I don’t mean the state should require graphically detailed sex education for eight year olds. Let’s keep some perspective here, folks.)
The point of all of this – leaving our anarcho-capitalist friends to wallow in their ideological purity while the adults seek real solutions to real problems – is that while voucher funded private schools would be a significant step toward both solving a certain set of problems with government operated schools (e.g., prayer in school), it remains vulnerable to certain remaining problems. Should, for example, a voucher funded school be permitted to teach exclusively Creationist natural history? Should society permit parents to home-school or send their children to a voucher funded school with no math instruction? No exposure to our larger cultural heritage including literature, history, etc.?
Because if we agree that the answer is no, and I certainly hope that at least most of us will agree to that, then we are stuck with the unavoidable conclusion that that there remains a necessary government role in ensuring certain minimum standards in the education of children.
The trick, I think, is to abandon the (to use Mr. Babka’s term) utopian belief that society can eliminate the role of government in education while devising a system by which its role is kept to a bare minimum consistent with an adequate solution to the problems that would arise in an anarchy that included not only capable, responsible parents like us but incapable and irresponsible parents, too.
But we’ll save that discussion for next time.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Suzanne Scholte Wins Seoul Peace Prize
I’m very pleased to report here that Suzanne Scholte, a friend, fellow William & Mary graduate and the wife of my college roommate, has been chosen as the ninth winner of the biennial Seoul Peace Prize. As the linked article notes, several former winners have subsequently been selected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize as well. My heartfelt congratulations to Suzanne and to her family.
And... They're Off!
Based on what little of the Republican National Infomercial I managed to catch (read: failed to avoid), their message is strong and clear: America needs a president whom only the Republicans can provide – a man who can make America once again safe, secure, prosperous and free after eight years of a disastrous and failed, um, Republican presidency. While not quite rising to the remorseful, tear-soaked morning-after promises thuggish husbands tell their battered wives, there’s nonetheless something that’s almost as thrillingly brazen as it is breathtakingly desperate about this gambit.
And it just might work.
Mind you, as far as I can tell, Barack Obama is an empty vessel with paper-thin qualifications (if any are really necessary, which I doubt) into which voters foolish enough to expect good things from government can pour their hopes and dreams. He’s a smooth talkin’ son-of-a-gun and mighty good lookin’, too. Just the sort of guy for the nation to get its next teenage girl crush on. And just as likely to end in heartbreak as all the others before him, too, but never mind all that! The guy’s a dreamboat!
In fact, Obama’s major qualification as a candidate is precisely that he is (still!) an unknown. (Libertarian Party VP candidate Wayne Allyn Root is the sort of guy who gives the LP the reputation it so richly deserves, but this is both funny and weirdly significant.) Hey, even if it does turn out that there really isn’t that much there there, that to hardly know him is to know him well, well, better the devil you don’t know, sometimes. After all, that’s how we got Bill Clinton and does anyone honestly think he wouldn’t still be in office but for that pesky 22nd Amendment? (My guess is that at this point we'd not only welcome him back but lure him with a lifetime supply of kneeling interns if that's what it took.)
Meanwhile, did anyone even so much as mention George W. Bush at the Republican bash? I don’t know, I really didn’t follow it all that much, but it felt like being at a family reunion where, on the one hand, everyone avoids mentioning Uncle Fred ever since his NAMBLA membership became public knowledge but, on the other, everyone feels a bit of silent relief they no longer have to pretend he really isn’t a pervert. (And let’s not even get started about Vice President "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.")
Back to the Republicans’ message, though: The world is a dangerous place (and McCain intends to see to it that it stays that way), taxes are too high (most Americans are so crippled by their tax burden that they can actually remember how many homes they own, or used to), federal programs are too intrusive and expansive (except maybe when it comes to money pouring into Alaska and restrictions on the funding of political speech), all life is sacred (at least until it’s born), borders should be open to the free flow of goods (but not people) and the rest of the world deserves American style democracy and John McCain is just the sort of guy to see to it that they get it, good and hard.
Meanwhile, I did tune in the other night to watch the rollout of their new 2008 Palin. Okay, o there wasn’t as much research, development or testing, either in the lab or the field, of this new major Republican brand as the federal government would require of something more dangerous than a Vice President like, say, a hair dryer or a child’s toy. But I disagree with some of my co-bloggers here and think the unveiling and initial product pitch went very well.
And then there’s John McCain, himself. The man’s a hero, there’s no question about that. He’s exactly like John Wayne was if only John Wayne really had been a hero and John McCain really could act. (Okay, so John Wayne really couldn’t act, either. But he did the best John Wayne in the business, and that’s pretty close to acting.) And so what if according to every single insider source McCain really does have the fly-off-the-handle temper problem of an abusive husband around staff and just about everyone else when the cameras aren't rolling? It isn’t like either the Republicans or the Democrats in Congress would just roll over and let the president go around, oh, say, invading other nations just because of a handful of bearded guys living in caves, is it?
I have no idea how Sarah Palin will play out over the next two months, but two months isn’t a long time. I remain frankly amazed that McCain hasn’t yet revealed his own darker side, so what do I know? So, too, I’d be among the first to acknowledge that Obama has some (Bill) Clintonesque charm and rhetorical skills that may dazzle come “debate” time. Biden? *shrug* I doubt he’ll help Obama all that much or hurt him much, either. Based on her acceptance speech, however, Palin’s addition to the McCain ticket raises the stakes on the vice presidential debate dramatically. As matters stand today, that might prove to be the pivotal campaign event. *yet another shrug* We’ll see.
And it just might work.
Mind you, as far as I can tell, Barack Obama is an empty vessel with paper-thin qualifications (if any are really necessary, which I doubt) into which voters foolish enough to expect good things from government can pour their hopes and dreams. He’s a smooth talkin’ son-of-a-gun and mighty good lookin’, too. Just the sort of guy for the nation to get its next teenage girl crush on. And just as likely to end in heartbreak as all the others before him, too, but never mind all that! The guy’s a dreamboat!
In fact, Obama’s major qualification as a candidate is precisely that he is (still!) an unknown. (Libertarian Party VP candidate Wayne Allyn Root is the sort of guy who gives the LP the reputation it so richly deserves, but this is both funny and weirdly significant.) Hey, even if it does turn out that there really isn’t that much there there, that to hardly know him is to know him well, well, better the devil you don’t know, sometimes. After all, that’s how we got Bill Clinton and does anyone honestly think he wouldn’t still be in office but for that pesky 22nd Amendment? (My guess is that at this point we'd not only welcome him back but lure him with a lifetime supply of kneeling interns if that's what it took.)
Meanwhile, did anyone even so much as mention George W. Bush at the Republican bash? I don’t know, I really didn’t follow it all that much, but it felt like being at a family reunion where, on the one hand, everyone avoids mentioning Uncle Fred ever since his NAMBLA membership became public knowledge but, on the other, everyone feels a bit of silent relief they no longer have to pretend he really isn’t a pervert. (And let’s not even get started about Vice President "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.")
Back to the Republicans’ message, though: The world is a dangerous place (and McCain intends to see to it that it stays that way), taxes are too high (most Americans are so crippled by their tax burden that they can actually remember how many homes they own, or used to), federal programs are too intrusive and expansive (except maybe when it comes to money pouring into Alaska and restrictions on the funding of political speech), all life is sacred (at least until it’s born), borders should be open to the free flow of goods (but not people) and the rest of the world deserves American style democracy and John McCain is just the sort of guy to see to it that they get it, good and hard.
Meanwhile, I did tune in the other night to watch the rollout of their new 2008 Palin. Okay, o there wasn’t as much research, development or testing, either in the lab or the field, of this new major Republican brand as the federal government would require of something more dangerous than a Vice President like, say, a hair dryer or a child’s toy. But I disagree with some of my co-bloggers here and think the unveiling and initial product pitch went very well.
And then there’s John McCain, himself. The man’s a hero, there’s no question about that. He’s exactly like John Wayne was if only John Wayne really had been a hero and John McCain really could act. (Okay, so John Wayne really couldn’t act, either. But he did the best John Wayne in the business, and that’s pretty close to acting.) And so what if according to every single insider source McCain really does have the fly-off-the-handle temper problem of an abusive husband around staff and just about everyone else when the cameras aren't rolling? It isn’t like either the Republicans or the Democrats in Congress would just roll over and let the president go around, oh, say, invading other nations just because of a handful of bearded guys living in caves, is it?
I have no idea how Sarah Palin will play out over the next two months, but two months isn’t a long time. I remain frankly amazed that McCain hasn’t yet revealed his own darker side, so what do I know? So, too, I’d be among the first to acknowledge that Obama has some (Bill) Clintonesque charm and rhetorical skills that may dazzle come “debate” time. Biden? *shrug* I doubt he’ll help Obama all that much or hurt him much, either. Based on her acceptance speech, however, Palin’s addition to the McCain ticket raises the stakes on the vice presidential debate dramatically. As matters stand today, that might prove to be the pivotal campaign event. *yet another shrug* We’ll see.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Juneau
Todd “First Dude” Palin: Gov, Honey, I think it's best to just tell 'em.
Sarah “The Gov” Palin: I'm Pregnant.
Bristol Palin: Oh, God.
Sarah Palin: But, uh ah, I'm not going to give it up for adoption and I'm certainly not going to get an abortion. After all, I'm only in my mid-forties and the First Dude and I are the perfect couple. Just look at how well you two turned out. Besides, if I play my cards right with the Geezer, pretty soon the federal government will be paying for the medical expenses and everything. And, and in, what, um, 50 or so odd years when your dad and I are both dead you can just pretend that this never happened.
Track Palin: You're pregnant?
Sarah Palin: I'm sorry. I'm sorry... And if it is any consolation I have heartburn that is radiating in my knee caps and I haven't taken a dump since like Wednesday... morning.
Bristol Palin: I didn't even know that you and Dad were still sexually active.
Sarah Palin: I, uh...
Track Palin: Who is the kid?
Sarah Palin: The-the baby? I don't really know much about it other than, I mean, it has fingernails, allegedly.
Bristol Palin: Nails, really?
Sarah Palin: Yeah!
Track Palin: No, I know. I mean what’s its name going to be?
Sarah Palin: Umm... We haven't decided on a boy's name yet, but if it's a girl, it's going to be Juneau Palin
Track Palin: Juneau Palin?
Sarah Palin: What?
Track Palin: God, can’t you people ever come up with, like, a normal name?
Todd “First Dude” Palin: Huh?
Bristol Palin: Anyway, Mom... Dad... while we’re on the topic of shenanigans....
Sarah “The Gov” Palin: I'm Pregnant.
Bristol Palin: Oh, God.
Sarah Palin: But, uh ah, I'm not going to give it up for adoption and I'm certainly not going to get an abortion. After all, I'm only in my mid-forties and the First Dude and I are the perfect couple. Just look at how well you two turned out. Besides, if I play my cards right with the Geezer, pretty soon the federal government will be paying for the medical expenses and everything. And, and in, what, um, 50 or so odd years when your dad and I are both dead you can just pretend that this never happened.
Track Palin: You're pregnant?
Sarah Palin: I'm sorry. I'm sorry... And if it is any consolation I have heartburn that is radiating in my knee caps and I haven't taken a dump since like Wednesday... morning.
Bristol Palin: I didn't even know that you and Dad were still sexually active.
Sarah Palin: I, uh...
Track Palin: Who is the kid?
Sarah Palin: The-the baby? I don't really know much about it other than, I mean, it has fingernails, allegedly.
Bristol Palin: Nails, really?
Sarah Palin: Yeah!
Track Palin: No, I know. I mean what’s its name going to be?
Sarah Palin: Umm... We haven't decided on a boy's name yet, but if it's a girl, it's going to be Juneau Palin
Track Palin: Juneau Palin?
Sarah Palin: What?
Track Palin: God, can’t you people ever come up with, like, a normal name?
Todd “First Dude” Palin: Huh?
Bristol Palin: Anyway, Mom... Dad... while we’re on the topic of shenanigans....
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Constant Viewer: Traitor and Babylon A.D.
Traitor is a slightly better than average suspense thriller with a significantly better than average performance by Don Cheadle in the lead role. Sadly, however, the same cannot be said of his co-star, Guy Pierce, whose American accent isn’t too awful until it is revealed through dialog along the way that he’s supposed to be a Southerner, too. Pierce is a good actor, but we might consider going back to those halcyon days when honest-to-goodness American actors, or at least Canadian ringers, were cast in such roles. Constant Viewer knows all about the wonderfully talented Hugh Laurie in House and all that, but enough is enough.
CV suspects Traitor may slip in and out of your local cineplex before you notice it was there, as it was not produced by one of the major studios and received precious little pre-release advertising. As the contemporary crop of Middle Eastern terrorists versus U.S. intelligence agency films go, Traitor is a perfectly respectable entry. If you like such movies but you waited to see it on DVD, though, you wouldn’t miss much at all.
* * * * * * * * * *
If you waited to see Babylon A.D. on DVD you wouldn’t miss much, either. Then again, that’s equally true if you don’t bother seeing it at all. Vin Diesel turns in an acceptable Vin Diesel performance in this hyperactive but unengaging road movie. The road in question leads from Russia over the Bering Straits, across which Diesel’s character must transport a young woman (Mélanie Thierry) and her governess (Michelle Yeoh) from Mongolia to Manhattan. There are nice performances in comparatively small parts here by Charlotte Rampling and Gérard Depardieu, but the plot is so tissue thin and the directing so uneven and distracting their efforts are largely wasted. As was CV’s time.
CV suspects Traitor may slip in and out of your local cineplex before you notice it was there, as it was not produced by one of the major studios and received precious little pre-release advertising. As the contemporary crop of Middle Eastern terrorists versus U.S. intelligence agency films go, Traitor is a perfectly respectable entry. If you like such movies but you waited to see it on DVD, though, you wouldn’t miss much at all.
* * * * * * * * * *
If you waited to see Babylon A.D. on DVD you wouldn’t miss much, either. Then again, that’s equally true if you don’t bother seeing it at all. Vin Diesel turns in an acceptable Vin Diesel performance in this hyperactive but unengaging road movie. The road in question leads from Russia over the Bering Straits, across which Diesel’s character must transport a young woman (Mélanie Thierry) and her governess (Michelle Yeoh) from Mongolia to Manhattan. There are nice performances in comparatively small parts here by Charlotte Rampling and Gérard Depardieu, but the plot is so tissue thin and the directing so uneven and distracting their efforts are largely wasted. As was CV’s time.
In Muted Defense of Gridlock
In Mr. Babka’s “Why I Don’t Want United Government,” reader Jeff Hebert makes some very interesting comments, including the following excerpt:
I certainly agree with much of Mr. Hebert’s characterization of both the Bush Administration and of John McCain. If we were discussing Obama versus a third Bush term, I'd be more inclined to agree as well with more of Mr. Hebert’s reasoning. As matters stand, however, and subject to change on a daily basis, Democrats are likely to increase their control of both the House and the Senate, so the question becomes not which candidate successfully pursuing his agenda poses the greater threat but which candidate is least likely to successfully push his agenda.
I'm no McCain fan or supporter. The man is an autocrat and, from just about every insider report I've ever heard, one of his many homes is in Cloud Cuckoo Land. The question is whether giving McCain yet another residence, this time on Pennsylvania Avenue is more likely to perpetuate or worsen Bush’s imperial presidency versus what sort and how much damage is likely to occur in an Obama Administration.
I continue to believe that what genuinely troubles the Democratic Party is not the immense and increasing power of the presidency but merely the fact that it’s not currently theirs to use. I agree with Mr. Hebert that there are worse things than socialized medicine. Perpetual war, for example, springs to mind. Furthermore, as offensive as a return of the Fairness Doctrine would be, it isn’t exactly like John McCain is a staunch defender of free speech. But, whining from progressives aside, there is absolutely nothing I know about Obama to lead me to believe he would be cautious in his use of executive power once it was given to him or, frankly, that he would not pursue a far more leftist agenda than he has so far proposed. Like McCain, he is not a man who tosses and turns late at night fretting with self-doubt.
Speaking of which, does Mr. Hebert really like to hear a candidate promise to “overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution”? Feel? Okay, so maybe Obama was speaking somewhat informally or imprecisely. But just how does he plan to go about overturning not merely executive decisions but laws as well? Let's at least hope not by fiat.
The key to winning the presidential election in the U.S. continues to lie in campaigning sufficiently close to whatever the political middle happens to be to wrest away swing state (electoral) votes from your competition. If Obama announced his intention to press for legislation requiring universal “public service” nonmilitary conscription of 18 year olds and a 50% increase in all marginal tax rates, he’d win Massachusetts just the same but he’d lose Virginia for sure and probably Ohio, too. If McCain announced his intention to reinstate the military draft and abolish the Department of Education, he’d still probably win Mississippi and Arizona but lose Virginia and Ohio. Okay, so maybe my examples can be argued, but there are dead certain red states and dead certain blue states and a slowly shifting handful of swing states where the battle will be waged.
But none of that has anything to do with how the winner governs. Politicians all lie. Maybe not all the time but whenever necessary. If McCain really gave a damn about Obama’s lack of experience he sure as hell wouldn’t have picked Palin as his running mate. If Obama really gave a rodent’s hindquarters about change he wouldn’t have picked long-term Washington insider Joe Biden. They’ll both do and say what they believe they need to do and say in order to get elected. Once elected, they’ll do what they bloody well want to do.
Unless another branch of government stops them.
I hesitate to make the next point, but sooner or later it must at least be put on the table. If it is true, and it is, that Obama’s race is a factor in the election, then it is also almost certainly true that Obama’s race would be a factor in Congress’s relationship with his presidency. I don’t know how that would play out and I am not accusing Obama of anything so crass as “playing the race card” either now or should he be elected. I do think, however, that members of Congress will have to weigh one more factor in any decision to oppose or criticize a President Obama and that is whether such criticism or opposition even hints of racial animus.
Perhaps not. Perhaps even raising the issue shows a disconcerting oversensitivity to such matters on my part. Even so, all other factors being equal, I must believe there is a far greater likelihood of a Democratically controlled Congress standing up to a white Republican president than a black Democratic president regardless of the merits of whatever issue is under consideration.
Libertarians aren’t going to get minimal government any time in the foreseeable future, so minimally damaging government is the best they can hope for. Minimally damaging government tends invariably to be government that does the least regardless of how big it already is, so maximal gridlock is the best possible outcome from a libertarian perspective.
But best possible outcomes can be nearly as far removed from ideal outcomes as worst possible outcomes. I haven’t decided to vote for or otherwise support McCain. Far from it, in fact. But I certainly can understand how other libertarians, perhaps reasoning as I have here, might decide that, contra Mr. Hebert’s comments, voting for McCain is the most proactively libertarian thing they can do this time around. Doubtlessly (well, hopefully, anyway), they’ll be holding their noses as they do so.
This much I do know, though. If monopolies and collusive oligopolies really are bad for the general public, then undivided government and political “bipartisanship” ought to be prohibited on antitrust grounds. And that would still be true even if the president and every member of Congress were self-styled “Libertarians.”
I find it very surprising that anyone seriously concerned with libertarian issues would support a Republican President this time around. The Bush Administration has had a sustained, hard push over the last eight years to make the “Unitary Executive” doctrine the de facto law of the land. It’s hard for me to imagine anything worse for our liberties than a chief executive with the powers and privileges of a monarch, and yet that’s exactly what Cheney, Bush, Yoo, and company have been working steadily towards.
John McCain has surrounded himself with people who hold the most extreme neo-conservative views in the party. He’s not just going to be four more years of Bush, he’s going to be four more years of the worst parts of Bush. If the idea of “anything’s legal if the President does it” doesn’t scare you way, way worse than universal health care (plenty of other Western countries have it and yet shockingly their nations have not imploded), expanded union power (ditto), and some changes to the way the FCC works, then I would respectfully suggest that your priorities are way out of whack.
We’ve been witness to a full frontal assault on the concept of separation of powers and the enshrinement of a monarchical executive, largely unnoticed by the vast majority of the country. When asked what he would do with his first 100 days in office, Obama said “I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution.” That’s exactly what I want to hear.
I certainly agree with much of Mr. Hebert’s characterization of both the Bush Administration and of John McCain. If we were discussing Obama versus a third Bush term, I'd be more inclined to agree as well with more of Mr. Hebert’s reasoning. As matters stand, however, and subject to change on a daily basis, Democrats are likely to increase their control of both the House and the Senate, so the question becomes not which candidate successfully pursuing his agenda poses the greater threat but which candidate is least likely to successfully push his agenda.
I'm no McCain fan or supporter. The man is an autocrat and, from just about every insider report I've ever heard, one of his many homes is in Cloud Cuckoo Land. The question is whether giving McCain yet another residence, this time on Pennsylvania Avenue is more likely to perpetuate or worsen Bush’s imperial presidency versus what sort and how much damage is likely to occur in an Obama Administration.
I continue to believe that what genuinely troubles the Democratic Party is not the immense and increasing power of the presidency but merely the fact that it’s not currently theirs to use. I agree with Mr. Hebert that there are worse things than socialized medicine. Perpetual war, for example, springs to mind. Furthermore, as offensive as a return of the Fairness Doctrine would be, it isn’t exactly like John McCain is a staunch defender of free speech. But, whining from progressives aside, there is absolutely nothing I know about Obama to lead me to believe he would be cautious in his use of executive power once it was given to him or, frankly, that he would not pursue a far more leftist agenda than he has so far proposed. Like McCain, he is not a man who tosses and turns late at night fretting with self-doubt.
Speaking of which, does Mr. Hebert really like to hear a candidate promise to “overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution”? Feel? Okay, so maybe Obama was speaking somewhat informally or imprecisely. But just how does he plan to go about overturning not merely executive decisions but laws as well? Let's at least hope not by fiat.
The key to winning the presidential election in the U.S. continues to lie in campaigning sufficiently close to whatever the political middle happens to be to wrest away swing state (electoral) votes from your competition. If Obama announced his intention to press for legislation requiring universal “public service” nonmilitary conscription of 18 year olds and a 50% increase in all marginal tax rates, he’d win Massachusetts just the same but he’d lose Virginia for sure and probably Ohio, too. If McCain announced his intention to reinstate the military draft and abolish the Department of Education, he’d still probably win Mississippi and Arizona but lose Virginia and Ohio. Okay, so maybe my examples can be argued, but there are dead certain red states and dead certain blue states and a slowly shifting handful of swing states where the battle will be waged.
But none of that has anything to do with how the winner governs. Politicians all lie. Maybe not all the time but whenever necessary. If McCain really gave a damn about Obama’s lack of experience he sure as hell wouldn’t have picked Palin as his running mate. If Obama really gave a rodent’s hindquarters about change he wouldn’t have picked long-term Washington insider Joe Biden. They’ll both do and say what they believe they need to do and say in order to get elected. Once elected, they’ll do what they bloody well want to do.
Unless another branch of government stops them.
I hesitate to make the next point, but sooner or later it must at least be put on the table. If it is true, and it is, that Obama’s race is a factor in the election, then it is also almost certainly true that Obama’s race would be a factor in Congress’s relationship with his presidency. I don’t know how that would play out and I am not accusing Obama of anything so crass as “playing the race card” either now or should he be elected. I do think, however, that members of Congress will have to weigh one more factor in any decision to oppose or criticize a President Obama and that is whether such criticism or opposition even hints of racial animus.
Perhaps not. Perhaps even raising the issue shows a disconcerting oversensitivity to such matters on my part. Even so, all other factors being equal, I must believe there is a far greater likelihood of a Democratically controlled Congress standing up to a white Republican president than a black Democratic president regardless of the merits of whatever issue is under consideration.
Libertarians aren’t going to get minimal government any time in the foreseeable future, so minimally damaging government is the best they can hope for. Minimally damaging government tends invariably to be government that does the least regardless of how big it already is, so maximal gridlock is the best possible outcome from a libertarian perspective.
But best possible outcomes can be nearly as far removed from ideal outcomes as worst possible outcomes. I haven’t decided to vote for or otherwise support McCain. Far from it, in fact. But I certainly can understand how other libertarians, perhaps reasoning as I have here, might decide that, contra Mr. Hebert’s comments, voting for McCain is the most proactively libertarian thing they can do this time around. Doubtlessly (well, hopefully, anyway), they’ll be holding their noses as they do so.
This much I do know, though. If monopolies and collusive oligopolies really are bad for the general public, then undivided government and political “bipartisanship” ought to be prohibited on antitrust grounds. And that would still be true even if the president and every member of Congress were self-styled “Libertarians.”
Jitters Bugged?
Old joke:
Two Roman Catholic theologians, one a Jesuit and the other one a Dominican, are arguing about prayer and smoking. (Hey, I said it was an old joke. This was before smoking became a secular sin only slightly less heinous than child abuse.)
So, anyway, the Jesuit says there’s nothing wrong with praying and smoking at the same time, while the Dominican is equally adamant that it’s disrespectful to God and thus sinful. The argument goes on and on and finally they decide to submit the question to the Vatican, which they both do.
Months pass as, left to their own devices, months will, and finally the Jesuit and Dominican meet. As they see each other big smiles break out on both their faces. “I told you so!” the Dominican almost shouts. “What are you talking about?” the Jesuit says, “I just got word back from Rome recently that I was right.” “That’s impossible,” the Dominican says. “I just got word back from Rome telling me that I was right.” The two theologians stand there silently and bewildered.
Finally, the Jesuit smiles. “Wait a minute,” he says. “What exactly did you ask?” “I asked exactly what we were arguing about. I asked if it was a sin to smoke while you were praying.” “Ah ha!” the Jesuit exclaimed. “I thought so! That’s the problem. You see, I asked if it was a sin to pray while you were smoking!”
To borrow from Wittgenstein, while we may not constantly be bewitched by language, we are always in danger of being misled by some sort of linguistic stage magic, and this is true even though much of it is unintentional and some is even self inflicted. How we characterize something (e.g., “pro choice” or “pro life”) already inclines us to one sort of judgment versus others.
But that’s not simply to note that words have emotional connotations as well as objective denotations. Wittgenstein, again. “Can one play chess without the queen?” What question is being asked? Certainly not whether one can continue playing chess after one or both queens are captured. What then? Whether one could play a game like chess except without queens? Again, ignoring how good a game it might be, the question fairly obviously is yes. What about whether such a game still ‘really’ was chess or still ‘should’ be called chess? Is that a factual question? One that perhaps still requires more data to resolve or, as is typically true in philosophical disputes, one that calls more for a decision which, in turn, will depend on how we go about weighing this consideration versus that?
So, also, are performance enhancing drugs in athletic competitions per se unfair? Doesn’t it depend on how and why they enhance performance? Philosopher / physician Carl Elliott raises that question in a current Atlantic piece, arguing that, at the very least, what counts as performance affects out answer to that question. Is the ability to perform in public under intense pressure an integral part of the very athletic ability being judged, or should an otherwise gifted athlete’s greater sensitivity to pressure and higher state of anxiety be considered irrelevant?
Beta-blockers (a common class of anti-hypertension drugs), for example, tend to reduce the physiological effects of anxiety. Not the anxiety, itself, mind you, but only of some of its outward effects such as hand tremors. Thus, their use is banned in some competitive sports, but the validity of the rationale for their ban depends on whether we’re talking about smoking while at prayer or praying while having a smoke. Elliott:
I have no dog in this fight. (By way of Truth In Bloggistry disclosure, it happens that I take beta blockers for hypertension, but I’m not inclined to public performance anxiety and, besides, there are no performance enhancers of any sort that would make me an athlete. If instead of Dr. Bruce Banner I’d gotten the gamma rays, the Hulk would have been an overgrown but still uncoordinated doofus.) I don’t care whether either amateur or professional athletes are permitted to take beta blockers or, for that matter, any other performance enhancing drugs. My only point here is that how one answers these sorts of questions depends in large measure on how one frames the questions in the first place.
That settled, feel free to take out your prayer beads now and, oh, yeah, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.
Two Roman Catholic theologians, one a Jesuit and the other one a Dominican, are arguing about prayer and smoking. (Hey, I said it was an old joke. This was before smoking became a secular sin only slightly less heinous than child abuse.)
So, anyway, the Jesuit says there’s nothing wrong with praying and smoking at the same time, while the Dominican is equally adamant that it’s disrespectful to God and thus sinful. The argument goes on and on and finally they decide to submit the question to the Vatican, which they both do.
Months pass as, left to their own devices, months will, and finally the Jesuit and Dominican meet. As they see each other big smiles break out on both their faces. “I told you so!” the Dominican almost shouts. “What are you talking about?” the Jesuit says, “I just got word back from Rome recently that I was right.” “That’s impossible,” the Dominican says. “I just got word back from Rome telling me that I was right.” The two theologians stand there silently and bewildered.
Finally, the Jesuit smiles. “Wait a minute,” he says. “What exactly did you ask?” “I asked exactly what we were arguing about. I asked if it was a sin to smoke while you were praying.” “Ah ha!” the Jesuit exclaimed. “I thought so! That’s the problem. You see, I asked if it was a sin to pray while you were smoking!”
To borrow from Wittgenstein, while we may not constantly be bewitched by language, we are always in danger of being misled by some sort of linguistic stage magic, and this is true even though much of it is unintentional and some is even self inflicted. How we characterize something (e.g., “pro choice” or “pro life”) already inclines us to one sort of judgment versus others.
But that’s not simply to note that words have emotional connotations as well as objective denotations. Wittgenstein, again. “Can one play chess without the queen?” What question is being asked? Certainly not whether one can continue playing chess after one or both queens are captured. What then? Whether one could play a game like chess except without queens? Again, ignoring how good a game it might be, the question fairly obviously is yes. What about whether such a game still ‘really’ was chess or still ‘should’ be called chess? Is that a factual question? One that perhaps still requires more data to resolve or, as is typically true in philosophical disputes, one that calls more for a decision which, in turn, will depend on how we go about weighing this consideration versus that?
So, also, are performance enhancing drugs in athletic competitions per se unfair? Doesn’t it depend on how and why they enhance performance? Philosopher / physician Carl Elliott raises that question in a current Atlantic piece, arguing that, at the very least, what counts as performance affects out answer to that question. Is the ability to perform in public under intense pressure an integral part of the very athletic ability being judged, or should an otherwise gifted athlete’s greater sensitivity to pressure and higher state of anxiety be considered irrelevant?
Beta-blockers (a common class of anti-hypertension drugs), for example, tend to reduce the physiological effects of anxiety. Not the anxiety, itself, mind you, but only of some of its outward effects such as hand tremors. Thus, their use is banned in some competitive sports, but the validity of the rationale for their ban depends on whether we’re talking about smoking while at prayer or praying while having a smoke. Elliott:
Beta blockers are banned in certain sports, like archery and pistol shooting, because they're seen as unfairly improving a user’s skills. But there is another way to see beta blockers—not as improving someone’s skills, but as preventing the effects of anxiety from interfering with their skills. Taking a beta blocker, in other words, won’t turn you into a better violinist, but it will prevent your anxiety from interfering with your public performance. In a music competition, then, a beta blocker can arguably help the best player win..... The question is whether the ability to perform the activity in public is integral to the activity itself.
I have no dog in this fight. (By way of Truth In Bloggistry disclosure, it happens that I take beta blockers for hypertension, but I’m not inclined to public performance anxiety and, besides, there are no performance enhancers of any sort that would make me an athlete. If instead of Dr. Bruce Banner I’d gotten the gamma rays, the Hulk would have been an overgrown but still uncoordinated doofus.) I don’t care whether either amateur or professional athletes are permitted to take beta blockers or, for that matter, any other performance enhancing drugs. My only point here is that how one answers these sorts of questions depends in large measure on how one frames the questions in the first place.
That settled, feel free to take out your prayer beads now and, oh, yeah, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.
Friday, August 29, 2008
♫ Who are those (not so) tall, (not so) dark strangers there? ♫
Okay, so it isn’t quite official yet, but major news outlets are reporting that McCain has picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate.
I admit, between having an African American presidential candidate and a female vice-presidential candidate who isn’t the laughably inept Geraldine Ferarro, this race suddenly looks more interesting than the average TweedleDeemocrat versus RepubliDumbican contest. (In as much fairness as I'm ever likely to grant Ferarro, if Walter Mondale had picked the Pope as his running mate in 1984, he probably wouldn't have carried the Vatican.) Geez, who’d a thunk the Libertarian Party ticket represented the only traditional offering of two middle-aged white guys?
Palin has next to no experience, making even Obama look like a senior statesman by comparison, but both Carter and Ford proved decades ago and George W has since confirmed that there’s no such thing as minimum required qualifications, the Constitution aside, for serving as president.
Meanwhile, I was amused that some accounts claim Palin is also a self-described “maverick.” I hope James Garner is getting royalties for this.
I admit, between having an African American presidential candidate and a female vice-presidential candidate who isn’t the laughably inept Geraldine Ferarro, this race suddenly looks more interesting than the average TweedleDeemocrat versus RepubliDumbican contest. (In as much fairness as I'm ever likely to grant Ferarro, if Walter Mondale had picked the Pope as his running mate in 1984, he probably wouldn't have carried the Vatican.) Geez, who’d a thunk the Libertarian Party ticket represented the only traditional offering of two middle-aged white guys?
Palin has next to no experience, making even Obama look like a senior statesman by comparison, but both Carter and Ford proved decades ago and George W has since confirmed that there’s no such thing as minimum required qualifications, the Constitution aside, for serving as president.
Meanwhile, I was amused that some accounts claim Palin is also a self-described “maverick.” I hope James Garner is getting royalties for this.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Just Wonderin'
Mind you, I don't pay any credence to the rumors over presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, presumptive president, presumptive messiah and just plain presumptive Barack Obama's citizenship qualifications, but if by any stretch of the imagination it turned out after he won that he wasn't constitutionally a natural born citizen, shouldn't that mean the Republicans can run this guy in 2012?
On With The Show!
Wait a minute! You mean I missed the Olympics? (Who won the prenatal gymnastics medal?) Dayum! And here I was so much looking forward to watching people of every gender, race, creed, color, sexual orientation and nationality vie against one another in a bogus spirit of brotherhood and good will!
Oh, that’s right. I can get the same thing watching the Democratic National Convention, another mostly staged event, this week.
I vaguely remember, no, not the beginning of American political parties, but a time in the 50s and 60s when some honest-to-gawd political business other than marketing was conducted at these conventions. Mind you, much of that business was conducted behind closed doors in (ah, the good old days!) smoke-filled rooms and not on the almost equally smoky convention floor. Still, deals were cut, party platform planks (mostly meaningless even then) were bickered over and sometimes even who the candidates were going to be was decided by multiple ballot. Sadly, however, conventions have shifted from political Super Bowls to World Wrestling Federation championship events. Except, of course, that the WWF has the good sense not to tell the viewers in advance who will win.
A Positive Liberty reader recently commented sarcastically on another thread discussing the legacy of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, saying with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek that “1968 was the pivotal moment in all of human history, past and future.” Speaking on behalf of my terminally self-important Baby Boomer generation, I will note only that America’s major political parties did begin to conduct their business differently after 1968. Not so much because of the protests (“Yippie!”) outside the convention center -- after all, it isn’t like a guy named Richard Daley would be mayor of Chicago forever, is it? -- but because of the resulting McGovern-Fraser Commission and the subsequent shift to state primaries as the method of deciding delegates and, thus, selecting candidates.
Another “lesson” from 1968 was the increasing importance of television and therefore the need to control convention and convention related events as much as possible. I don’t think Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968 simply because of the violence in the streets of Chicago during the convention, but it sure as hell didn’t help Humphrey, either.
Needless to say, I won’t be watching either the Democratic or the Republican National Conventions in real time. Any really juicy gaffs or other “must-see” moments will be on YouTube before the evening wrap-up, so I’ll catch Ted Kennedy’s likely swan song, Hillary’s dagger-eyed stares, McCain being reminded how many homes he owns and where he left the keys, etc. in TiVo time.
Oh, that’s right. I can get the same thing watching the Democratic National Convention, another mostly staged event, this week.
I vaguely remember, no, not the beginning of American political parties, but a time in the 50s and 60s when some honest-to-gawd political business other than marketing was conducted at these conventions. Mind you, much of that business was conducted behind closed doors in (ah, the good old days!) smoke-filled rooms and not on the almost equally smoky convention floor. Still, deals were cut, party platform planks (mostly meaningless even then) were bickered over and sometimes even who the candidates were going to be was decided by multiple ballot. Sadly, however, conventions have shifted from political Super Bowls to World Wrestling Federation championship events. Except, of course, that the WWF has the good sense not to tell the viewers in advance who will win.
A Positive Liberty reader recently commented sarcastically on another thread discussing the legacy of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, saying with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek that “1968 was the pivotal moment in all of human history, past and future.” Speaking on behalf of my terminally self-important Baby Boomer generation, I will note only that America’s major political parties did begin to conduct their business differently after 1968. Not so much because of the protests (“Yippie!”) outside the convention center -- after all, it isn’t like a guy named Richard Daley would be mayor of Chicago forever, is it? -- but because of the resulting McGovern-Fraser Commission and the subsequent shift to state primaries as the method of deciding delegates and, thus, selecting candidates.
Another “lesson” from 1968 was the increasing importance of television and therefore the need to control convention and convention related events as much as possible. I don’t think Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968 simply because of the violence in the streets of Chicago during the convention, but it sure as hell didn’t help Humphrey, either.
Needless to say, I won’t be watching either the Democratic or the Republican National Conventions in real time. Any really juicy gaffs or other “must-see” moments will be on YouTube before the evening wrap-up, so I’ll catch Ted Kennedy’s likely swan song, Hillary’s dagger-eyed stares, McCain being reminded how many homes he owns and where he left the keys, etc. in TiVo time.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Selfishness, Egoism and Altruistic Libertarianism
It is a cliché among many psychologists and economists that human beings behave self-interestedly. Moreover, since Adam Smith’s somewhat theological, somewhat anthropomorphic “invisible hand” metaphor, it has been almost an article of faith within the latter discipline that the collective, societal result of individual self-interested behavior is ironically salubrious.
It is a faith to which I also ascribe, although like all but the most zealous of religious fanatics I season that faith with the occasional heresy here and there. Crucially, however, it needs to be noted at the outset that not just any sort of self-interested behavior contributes to the common wealth and greater good. Specialization and trade, voluntary association, bargained-for exchanges, common rules and some sort of enforcement mechanism to address rule breaking are all necessary elements for human society to flourish economically, for the invisible hand to prove, as it were, optimally dexterous.
Most importantly, “self-interested” is not synonymous with “selfish.”
Discussions about selfishness elsewhere on this blog got me thinking about these things. I am no Ayn Rand scholar, nor do I purport to be an Objectivist. Undoubtedly, however, Rand’s followers constitute a significant and vocal segment of the libertarian community. (It’s a non-gated community, after all, noted for its lack of zoning regulations, restrictive covenants or entrance requirements.) Anyway, given that Rand published a collection of essays entitled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, it should be clear just from the title’s use of the word “egoism” that she or Nathanial Brandon, as the case may be, intended to give the word “selfishness” a special, technical meaning in the overall context of Rand’s worldview.
But selfishness and egoism are two separate things, a fact I assume Rand understood perfectly well when she deliberately invoked the apparent contradiction of selfishness as a virtue for its rhetorical impact. Whatever Rand’s standing as an intellectual and participant in the history of political philosophy, she was also certainly a polemicist with a particular political agenda in opposition to what she correctly perceived as the 20th century’s greatest threat to humankind; namely, the threat of collectivism. You simply cannot read Rand fairly without bearing that in mind.
The important point is that selfishness is a common language concept, not a technical term. Anyone fluent in English knows what it means and knows, more importantly, that it entails a negative moral judgment. Selfishness is by definition a bad thing. It’s using up all the hot water in the shower when others are waiting, eating up all the cookies instead of sharing them with friends or family, and so forth. (Except, perhaps, at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, although Ms. Sinclair couldn’t have really been much of an Objectivist since the first thing she did was violate Maggie's pacifier property rights.)
Selfishness moreover logically entails and presupposes that there is some preexisting community to which the individual belongs and some moral commitment to that specific community. I, for example, live with my family in a household where there is a finite supply of hot water and cookies. If I stand in the shower for an hour shoving one increasingly soggy chocolate chip cookie after another into my mouth until both supplies are exhausted, I am acting selfishly relative to my family. It is less clear that I am being selfish when I buy the last package of cookies at the store, thus depriving the next cookie junkie from his or her fix, or when I purchase the big, heavy-duty water heater for my house. It is less clear, still, that it is properly called selfishness to eat any of those cookies or use any of that hot water knowing that many millions of people across the globe have neither cookies to eat nor any hot water to shower with.
To be sure, there are those who claim that the last is selfish, although the overwhelming majority don’t really believe it based on how they, themselves, actually live. The notion that we as individuals have moral obligations to humanity at large is, to put it mildly, very problematic. The point, in any case, is that we wouldn’t be inclined to call all sorts of behavior like eating a cookie selfish simply because every cookie eaten is, necessarily, a cookie no one else can eat. The morality of sharing does not require splitting my cookie into several billion pieces so everyone can have some.
Egoism, by contrast, is not an ordinary language word or concept. Mothers don’t scold their children for being egoists when they selfishly eat the last cookie. Indeed, if you peruse its Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry you will discover that there is not even a single technical sense of the term.
We pause now while I grind a philosophical axe for a moment. There is a critical difference between, on the one hand, the theory of psychological egoism, the theory that claims it is simply a fact that human beings always and under all circumstances behave self-interestedly and, on the other, ethical or rational egoism. These theories contend that morally right behavior or rational behavior, respectively, simply is self-interested behavior.
These latter may be right or wrong and are certainly subject to criticism, but at least they both admit of the possibility of unethical or irrational behavior. That is to say, the ethical egoist acknowledges that people are capable of behaving other than self-interestedly, she simply argues that they shouldn’t. So, too, the rational egoist doesn’t claim that we always act rationally, i.e., self-interestedly, but only that we should or that it is only when we do that our actions deserve the appellation “rational.”
Psychological egoism, by contrast, obliterates the normative force of self-interested behavior, whether for good or bad. Indeed, it obliterates normative considerations in the same way all strong forms of determinism do: if “ought” implies “can” but one cannot act differently than one does then it is absurd to claim that one ought to have acted differently. Moreover, if all behavior is, by definition, self-interested, then it is a fair question to ask of this non-falsifiable metaphysical theory what sort of substantive claim, if any, it really is making.
Axe grinding concluded, I’m reasonably confident that Rand was an egoist in both the ethical and rational egoism senses. In retrospect, however, it is perhaps unfortunate that she chose to use “selfishness” as a rhetorical device to describe her egoism because it opens both Objectivism in particular and libertarianism in general to the sort of prejudicial criticisms Mr. Hanley recently bemoaned.
In fact, Rand aside, there is nothing at all incompatible about libertarianism and altruism. Not, at least, if altruism is understood not as Rand technically used the term but simply as the opposite of mere selfishness. It is hardly altruistic, in the ordinary sense of the term, to coerce other people to behave in supposedly selfless ways in order to achieve your personal vision of the greater collective good even if that greater good is thereby realized. But it is unarguably immoral to coerce others using that rationale when, in fact, it becomes painfully obvious that the exact opposite results.
Indeed, if we’re looking for a single lesson from the history of the 20th century, we could do much worse than conclude that, no matter how noble their advocates’ intentions may have been, collectivist social and economic orders yield disastrous results. Obviously, therefore, noble intentions are no guarantee of success. Libertarianism has never claimed that in a libertarian world order everyone will win and "all must have prizes." In fact, as far as I know, only utopian collectivists and Lewis Carroll's Dodo have made that claim.
But then Carroll, of course, knew he was talking nonsense.
It is a faith to which I also ascribe, although like all but the most zealous of religious fanatics I season that faith with the occasional heresy here and there. Crucially, however, it needs to be noted at the outset that not just any sort of self-interested behavior contributes to the common wealth and greater good. Specialization and trade, voluntary association, bargained-for exchanges, common rules and some sort of enforcement mechanism to address rule breaking are all necessary elements for human society to flourish economically, for the invisible hand to prove, as it were, optimally dexterous.
Most importantly, “self-interested” is not synonymous with “selfish.”
Discussions about selfishness elsewhere on this blog got me thinking about these things. I am no Ayn Rand scholar, nor do I purport to be an Objectivist. Undoubtedly, however, Rand’s followers constitute a significant and vocal segment of the libertarian community. (It’s a non-gated community, after all, noted for its lack of zoning regulations, restrictive covenants or entrance requirements.) Anyway, given that Rand published a collection of essays entitled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, it should be clear just from the title’s use of the word “egoism” that she or Nathanial Brandon, as the case may be, intended to give the word “selfishness” a special, technical meaning in the overall context of Rand’s worldview.
But selfishness and egoism are two separate things, a fact I assume Rand understood perfectly well when she deliberately invoked the apparent contradiction of selfishness as a virtue for its rhetorical impact. Whatever Rand’s standing as an intellectual and participant in the history of political philosophy, she was also certainly a polemicist with a particular political agenda in opposition to what she correctly perceived as the 20th century’s greatest threat to humankind; namely, the threat of collectivism. You simply cannot read Rand fairly without bearing that in mind.
The important point is that selfishness is a common language concept, not a technical term. Anyone fluent in English knows what it means and knows, more importantly, that it entails a negative moral judgment. Selfishness is by definition a bad thing. It’s using up all the hot water in the shower when others are waiting, eating up all the cookies instead of sharing them with friends or family, and so forth. (Except, perhaps, at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, although Ms. Sinclair couldn’t have really been much of an Objectivist since the first thing she did was violate Maggie's pacifier property rights.)
Selfishness moreover logically entails and presupposes that there is some preexisting community to which the individual belongs and some moral commitment to that specific community. I, for example, live with my family in a household where there is a finite supply of hot water and cookies. If I stand in the shower for an hour shoving one increasingly soggy chocolate chip cookie after another into my mouth until both supplies are exhausted, I am acting selfishly relative to my family. It is less clear that I am being selfish when I buy the last package of cookies at the store, thus depriving the next cookie junkie from his or her fix, or when I purchase the big, heavy-duty water heater for my house. It is less clear, still, that it is properly called selfishness to eat any of those cookies or use any of that hot water knowing that many millions of people across the globe have neither cookies to eat nor any hot water to shower with.
To be sure, there are those who claim that the last is selfish, although the overwhelming majority don’t really believe it based on how they, themselves, actually live. The notion that we as individuals have moral obligations to humanity at large is, to put it mildly, very problematic. The point, in any case, is that we wouldn’t be inclined to call all sorts of behavior like eating a cookie selfish simply because every cookie eaten is, necessarily, a cookie no one else can eat. The morality of sharing does not require splitting my cookie into several billion pieces so everyone can have some.
Egoism, by contrast, is not an ordinary language word or concept. Mothers don’t scold their children for being egoists when they selfishly eat the last cookie. Indeed, if you peruse its Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry you will discover that there is not even a single technical sense of the term.
We pause now while I grind a philosophical axe for a moment. There is a critical difference between, on the one hand, the theory of psychological egoism, the theory that claims it is simply a fact that human beings always and under all circumstances behave self-interestedly and, on the other, ethical or rational egoism. These theories contend that morally right behavior or rational behavior, respectively, simply is self-interested behavior.
These latter may be right or wrong and are certainly subject to criticism, but at least they both admit of the possibility of unethical or irrational behavior. That is to say, the ethical egoist acknowledges that people are capable of behaving other than self-interestedly, she simply argues that they shouldn’t. So, too, the rational egoist doesn’t claim that we always act rationally, i.e., self-interestedly, but only that we should or that it is only when we do that our actions deserve the appellation “rational.”
Psychological egoism, by contrast, obliterates the normative force of self-interested behavior, whether for good or bad. Indeed, it obliterates normative considerations in the same way all strong forms of determinism do: if “ought” implies “can” but one cannot act differently than one does then it is absurd to claim that one ought to have acted differently. Moreover, if all behavior is, by definition, self-interested, then it is a fair question to ask of this non-falsifiable metaphysical theory what sort of substantive claim, if any, it really is making.
Axe grinding concluded, I’m reasonably confident that Rand was an egoist in both the ethical and rational egoism senses. In retrospect, however, it is perhaps unfortunate that she chose to use “selfishness” as a rhetorical device to describe her egoism because it opens both Objectivism in particular and libertarianism in general to the sort of prejudicial criticisms Mr. Hanley recently bemoaned.
In fact, Rand aside, there is nothing at all incompatible about libertarianism and altruism. Not, at least, if altruism is understood not as Rand technically used the term but simply as the opposite of mere selfishness. It is hardly altruistic, in the ordinary sense of the term, to coerce other people to behave in supposedly selfless ways in order to achieve your personal vision of the greater collective good even if that greater good is thereby realized. But it is unarguably immoral to coerce others using that rationale when, in fact, it becomes painfully obvious that the exact opposite results.
Indeed, if we’re looking for a single lesson from the history of the 20th century, we could do much worse than conclude that, no matter how noble their advocates’ intentions may have been, collectivist social and economic orders yield disastrous results. Obviously, therefore, noble intentions are no guarantee of success. Libertarianism has never claimed that in a libertarian world order everyone will win and "all must have prizes." In fact, as far as I know, only utopian collectivists and Lewis Carroll's Dodo have made that claim.
But then Carroll, of course, knew he was talking nonsense.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Democratic ’08 Ticket: O.- B., But No GYN
Two or three semi-random thoughts on Obama’s selection of Joe Biden. First, my son’s intelligence (read: information, not I.Q.) from working this summer on a “Blue Dog” Democrat’s re-election campaign turned out to be entirely accurate. (Note to Self: Remember to listen to son occasionally in the future.)
Second, given Biden’s solidly liberal record, Obama has determined that he does not need to position himself to appear closer to the political middle in order to win. (Yes, I know there are even more liberal Democrats Obama might have chosen, but a quick perusal of the infallible, inerrant and entirely trustworthy Wikipedia entry leads me to the conclusion that a “moderate liberal” is someone who purports to oppose the Castro regime in Cuba.) It suggests, also, that Obama thinks (I think correctly) that he is vulnerable regarding foreign affairs and that Biden will provide additional credibility.
Most intriguingly, however, is that Obama chose a man. Hey, black men got the vote before white women did, too, so he’s just being traditional, right? Seriously, though, and aside from ensuring that Hillary Clinton will now work tirelessly, day and night, to see to it that Obama loses in November, does Obama believe that too much demographic “change we can believe in” is a loser in the general election? Does he believe (I suspect correctly) that liberal white women can be taken for granted come November just as black voters have historically been taken for granted by the Democratic Party? Does he believe that there really aren’t any sufficiently qualified women out there? (Hillary included?)
Finally, does he really believe Joe Biden is the best qualified man not merely to help him win the White House but to serve as Vice President? Nah, whatever else is going on, it sure as hell couldn’t be that. Could it?
Second, given Biden’s solidly liberal record, Obama has determined that he does not need to position himself to appear closer to the political middle in order to win. (Yes, I know there are even more liberal Democrats Obama might have chosen, but a quick perusal of the infallible, inerrant and entirely trustworthy Wikipedia entry leads me to the conclusion that a “moderate liberal” is someone who purports to oppose the Castro regime in Cuba.) It suggests, also, that Obama thinks (I think correctly) that he is vulnerable regarding foreign affairs and that Biden will provide additional credibility.
Most intriguingly, however, is that Obama chose a man. Hey, black men got the vote before white women did, too, so he’s just being traditional, right? Seriously, though, and aside from ensuring that Hillary Clinton will now work tirelessly, day and night, to see to it that Obama loses in November, does Obama believe that too much demographic “change we can believe in” is a loser in the general election? Does he believe (I suspect correctly) that liberal white women can be taken for granted come November just as black voters have historically been taken for granted by the Democratic Party? Does he believe that there really aren’t any sufficiently qualified women out there? (Hillary included?)
Finally, does he really believe Joe Biden is the best qualified man not merely to help him win the White House but to serve as Vice President? Nah, whatever else is going on, it sure as hell couldn’t be that. Could it?
Friday, August 22, 2008
Constant Viewer: The House Bunny
Constant Viewer had never seen or at least never noticed Anna Faris before today, and a quick review of her career to date makes it pretty clear why not. CV isn’t exactly part of the target audience for the Scary Movie franchise, after all, and he simply didn’t notice or remember her from Lost In Translation. Apparently, however, she has a loyal and growing fan base, so CV was a bit disappointed today when he saw her performance in The House Bunny. Okay, so the material was predictable, crudely directed and, worst of all, not all that funny for extended periods of time. CV had read, however, that Faris’s performance shines above this otherwise indifferent movie. Perhaps so, but not all that much above and, frankly, that’s damning with very faint praise at best. Comparisons to Reese Witherspoon’s Legally Blond flicks are pretty much unavoidable in any consideration of The House Bunny, and neither Ms Faris nor this new movie fare well in that comparison. Still, CV would very much like to see her in something better than this mostly failed effort, the sort of movie that might, at most, be worth a viewing from one of those supermarket $1 video rental booths.
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ... and miss." *
There shouldn’t be a minimum legal drinking age, although I probably wouldn’t mind too much if it were set at, oh, say, six. If Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the Uber-Nannies out there want to keep pre-schoolers from bellying up to the bar, well, okay. After all, it’s for the children.
Syndicated columnist and (inexplicably) frequent reason contributor, Steve Chapman offers scraps of arguments against a proposal from an advocacy group called Choose Responsibility to lower the legal drinking age to 18. To date, the proposal has been signed by over 120 college presidents, predictably incurring the irrational wrath of MADD and other quasi-professional scolds.
Chapman’s arguments, such as they are, pretty much boil down to the assertion that many people under the age of 21 are too immature to drink and that more of them will drink and suffer problems as a result. As a corollary, if 18 year olds can buy alcohol, those under the age of 18 are more likely to have more ready access to booze because high school seniors will buy it for sophomores and freshmen, etc.
Here, however, is the money quote from Chapman’s lamentable column:
Mr. Chapman, if you don’t think 18 year olds who vote for Republican or Democratic candidates are imperiling innocent bystanders like me, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.
Seriously, though, there’s so much wrong with this mindset it’s hard to know where to begin in rebutting it. Here, however, is the principal objection:
The mere fact that something is dangerous or harmful to some members of a group is never sufficient justification to prohibit all members of a group from using or having access to it. The fact that some members of group X will abuse access such that members of the general population are harmed is equally insufficient to prohibit all members of that group from having access.
I accept the fact that institutional rights and privileges, e.g., voting, driving on public roads, necessarily involve some sometimes arbitrary regulation. Moreover, I certainly accept the fact that libertarianism is, for the most part, an NC-17 rated show. Children do require restrictions on their liberty for their own good. The question, however, is whether the default agent responsible to impose such restrictions should be the state or their parents. Admittedly, some parents sometimes fail in those responsibilities and the state must then intercede. See, however, the immediately prior paragraph as to why that fact alone does not justify depriving all parents of properly parental authority.
Serving your 16 year old daughter a half glass of wine at Thanksgiving or sharing a beer or two with your 17 year old son as you both watch the game or accepting the fact that your 19 year old college student may well get drunk on campus as opposed to driving off into the woods with friends specifically to go binge drinking, thus creating an even more dangerous situation isn’t an abrogation of parental responsibility. Imposing a universal prohibition to reduce abuse by a few and inadvertently but predictably creating such even more dangerous situations is.
Moreover, effectively arguing that it should be easier for the typical high school student to buy illegal drugs (never mind that they should be legal, too) than a six-pack of beer is, at best, a fairly odd case on utilitarian grounds as to why eighteen year olds shouldn't be permitted to drink. If Mr. Chapman doesn't understand these things, I trust the rest of the good folks over at reason do.
(* - Robert Heinlein)
Syndicated columnist and (inexplicably) frequent reason contributor, Steve Chapman offers scraps of arguments against a proposal from an advocacy group called Choose Responsibility to lower the legal drinking age to 18. To date, the proposal has been signed by over 120 college presidents, predictably incurring the irrational wrath of MADD and other quasi-professional scolds.
Chapman’s arguments, such as they are, pretty much boil down to the assertion that many people under the age of 21 are too immature to drink and that more of them will drink and suffer problems as a result. As a corollary, if 18 year olds can buy alcohol, those under the age of 18 are more likely to have more ready access to booze because high school seniors will buy it for sophomores and freshmen, etc.
Here, however, is the money quote from Chapman’s lamentable column:
Why permit 18-year-olds to vote but not drink? Because they have not shown a disproportionate tendency to abuse the franchise, to the peril of innocent bystanders.
Mr. Chapman, if you don’t think 18 year olds who vote for Republican or Democratic candidates are imperiling innocent bystanders like me, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.
Seriously, though, there’s so much wrong with this mindset it’s hard to know where to begin in rebutting it. Here, however, is the principal objection:
The mere fact that something is dangerous or harmful to some members of a group is never sufficient justification to prohibit all members of a group from using or having access to it. The fact that some members of group X will abuse access such that members of the general population are harmed is equally insufficient to prohibit all members of that group from having access.
I accept the fact that institutional rights and privileges, e.g., voting, driving on public roads, necessarily involve some sometimes arbitrary regulation. Moreover, I certainly accept the fact that libertarianism is, for the most part, an NC-17 rated show. Children do require restrictions on their liberty for their own good. The question, however, is whether the default agent responsible to impose such restrictions should be the state or their parents. Admittedly, some parents sometimes fail in those responsibilities and the state must then intercede. See, however, the immediately prior paragraph as to why that fact alone does not justify depriving all parents of properly parental authority.
Serving your 16 year old daughter a half glass of wine at Thanksgiving or sharing a beer or two with your 17 year old son as you both watch the game or accepting the fact that your 19 year old college student may well get drunk on campus as opposed to driving off into the woods with friends specifically to go binge drinking, thus creating an even more dangerous situation isn’t an abrogation of parental responsibility. Imposing a universal prohibition to reduce abuse by a few and inadvertently but predictably creating such even more dangerous situations is.
Moreover, effectively arguing that it should be easier for the typical high school student to buy illegal drugs (never mind that they should be legal, too) than a six-pack of beer is, at best, a fairly odd case on utilitarian grounds as to why eighteen year olds shouldn't be permitted to drink. If Mr. Chapman doesn't understand these things, I trust the rest of the good folks over at reason do.
(* - Robert Heinlein)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Nibble, Nibble, Little Mouse! Who's That Burglaring My House?
Leda Smith heard someone breaking into her home, so she found the revolver kept by her bed, confronted the burglar and forced him at gunpoint to call 911. Then she and the seventeen year old intruder waited until the state police arrived to take him away.
Leda Smith is eighty-five years old.
Leda Smith is eighty-five years old.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Ezra Levant Update
Back in January, I urged readers to check out the blog of Canadian journalist Ezra Levant. Levant was subjected to a year-long investigation by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission following a complaint by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities over his publication in the Western Standard of the Danish Muhammad cartoons that had so many other publishers cringing in fear. I'm happy to report that the complaint has finally been dismissed and, as a friend at a forum site I frequent said, Canadians are at least tentatively embracing free speech.
As can never be noted too often, speech about which we already approve doesn't need legal protection.
More to the point, I would refer readers again to Mr. Levant's web site and specifically to his taping of the complaint hearing interview available here. I will repeat what I said originally: Levant’s responses to the bureaucrat seated across the table from him during the taped hearing is precisely how free people should deal with government officials under such circumstances.
Congratulations, Mr. Levant.
As can never be noted too often, speech about which we already approve doesn't need legal protection.
More to the point, I would refer readers again to Mr. Levant's web site and specifically to his taping of the complaint hearing interview available here. I will repeat what I said originally: Levant’s responses to the bureaucrat seated across the table from him during the taped hearing is precisely how free people should deal with government officials under such circumstances.
Congratulations, Mr. Levant.
"Who Can I Sue?"
Soon, you'll be just a mouse click away from the answer!
I have very conflicted feelings about this sort of thing. Feelings, I might point out, that are not widely shared by my fellow libertarians, the majority of whom I believe fail to appreciate the value in principle of a rigorous and easily accessible civil litigation system.
Still, there is no denying that the system as it is currently structured and operated is in dire need of reform. I have no problem with lawyer advertising (its frequent tackiness aside) or with the actual (and actually harmed) plaintiffs acting as unofficial attorneys-general and, when appropriate, winning punitive damages judgments far in excess of their actual damages. I do have a hard time accepting the plaintiffs' bar (aka, trial lawyers) reaping 40% of those judgments, and don't even bother with arguments about how speculative these lawsuits are and how much risk these law firms undertake. Such firms rarely take clients on a contingent-fee basis unless they have already determined that the likelihood of a settlement or judgment in their client's favor is good.
There's gotta be a better way, though I admit to not knowing what it is. Meanwhile, "Who Can I Sue," websites do not strike me as a step in the right direction.
I have very conflicted feelings about this sort of thing. Feelings, I might point out, that are not widely shared by my fellow libertarians, the majority of whom I believe fail to appreciate the value in principle of a rigorous and easily accessible civil litigation system.
Still, there is no denying that the system as it is currently structured and operated is in dire need of reform. I have no problem with lawyer advertising (its frequent tackiness aside) or with the actual (and actually harmed) plaintiffs acting as unofficial attorneys-general and, when appropriate, winning punitive damages judgments far in excess of their actual damages. I do have a hard time accepting the plaintiffs' bar (aka, trial lawyers) reaping 40% of those judgments, and don't even bother with arguments about how speculative these lawsuits are and how much risk these law firms undertake. Such firms rarely take clients on a contingent-fee basis unless they have already determined that the likelihood of a settlement or judgment in their client's favor is good.
There's gotta be a better way, though I admit to not knowing what it is. Meanwhile, "Who Can I Sue," websites do not strike me as a step in the right direction.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Patent Nonsense
One of the things that distinguishes intellectual property from the more intuitively obvious tangible variety is that the very notion of intellectual property requires a justification in the sense that tangible property almost never does. Utopians of one variety or another have tried, almost always with disastrous consequences, to abolish the institution of private property, but as far as I know there has never been a society that has denied the existence or necessity of property rights of any sort at all. Typically, their alternative has been to assert some sort of collectivist or communitarian ownership; but while it may be that the clan or the tribe “own everything in common” or the “people (collectively) own the means of production,” woe be any rival clan or tribe or people who happen by and start asserting similar property rights in the same stuff. Wars have been known to start that way even in utopia.
The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc.
How human society has gone from the realization that the world is filled with stuff to the notion that some of it is our stuff (or your stuff or, most importantly, my stuff) is an interesting topic, but not one with which I wish to concern myself here in any detail. If you care, I’ll merely note in passing that I reject all “natural right” theories of property, personally, especially including the so-called Lockean “labor + stuff = property” theory.
Still, I constantly run across fellow self-described libertarians who believe in one sort of natural rights theory or another and a fairly large number of them believe that their theory justifies the notion of tangible personal property (whether, forgive the legalism here, real or chattel) but not intellectual property. Intellectual property – by which I mean here the usual unholy trinity of patents, copyrights and trademarks – is on this account the equivalent of a state enforced and, worse yet, state created monopoly. To which I respond:
Yes, that’s true. Exactly like the state-created and state-enforced monopoly any owner of any sort of property whatsoever enjoys versus any non-owner. To be sure, the land would still be there with or without a state enforced legal system, but it wouldn’t be anyone’s property. Not in anything like the sense we mean by property now, that is. All of our philosophical twaddle about what should or shouldn’t or can or can’t be deemed property aside, the ownership of a patent or trademark is no different from the ownership of an automobile or a condominium. They are all creatures of the state or, more specifically, of a state enforced legal system one of the principle justifications for is the sorting out of competing claims over the same resources.
Ah, say my opposition, but land and the stuff we find and trap or kill or take and make new stuff out of on the land (and sea) are quintessential examples of real resources; namely, natural resources. Patents and trademarks and copyrights are mere fictions.
I agree. But they are highly useful fictions, and if my libertarian confrères would get off their pseudo-Kantian high horses about absolute right and wrong and concentrate instead on the far more useful questions of pragmatic good or bad, I think they’d be more inclined to agree with my perspective. Which is as follows:
(1) The state of the law of intellectual property is in need of serious reform, but (2) we would all be better served by, for example, a reformed law of patents than by the entire abolition of patents. For you theorists, I will add (3) there are no serious theoretical reasons, ethical or otherwise, precluding us from, as it were, saving the baby even as we throw out the dirty bathwater here.
By way of giving an example of the sort of unnecessary and counterproductive infanticide I have in mind here, let me quote extensively from a recent Kevin Carson piece over at Art of The Possible. Carson makes his point by quoting a commenter there, and because I am too lazy to edit extensively I will do the same, as follows:
Okay, so let’s clear the air here a bit. In the first place, whatever may be the truth about the claim that “[p]atents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs,” the better question is whether we will have more and better drug research and development with patents or without them regardless of whether those patents go to “big pharma” or to “small start-up firms.” That is, we shouldn’t really care who the incentive of profitable patent rights is spurring on to do research, and that is true whether such research is on cancer drugs or toe fungus drugs.
If Mr. Carson or his commenter believe that there are better ways to encourage such research, they should by all means argue for them. I, however, know of no better incentive than self interest and until I am shown fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, I am not inclined to believe that removing the profit motive from drug research is likely to produce a better, more readily available or affordable pharmacopeia.
Now, that said, no one bothering to read this far should leave thinking I’m an apologist for the pharmaceutical companies. Their successful efforts some years back to retroactively extend the life of patent protection (and similar so-called “reforms” in copyright for the entertainment industry) constitutes nothing more than massive theft and the politicians who voted for such theft should all be horsewhipped. They all created and / or invented whatever they did when the state of the law provided a certain term of proprietary rights and they should enjoy the benefit of that bargain, but nothing more. If the case could be made for patents or copyrights of longer duration, whether for drugs or novels or whatever, fine. But such revised laws should take effect only prospectively. Retroactive extension deprives the public (you and me) of our rightful future expectations with regard to these properties, future expectations we have been paying for throughout the life of the original patents or copyrights. Moreover (okay, go ahead and get back on your Kantian high-horse for a moment here), fair’s fair and a bargain is a bargain.
I don’t deny that the current state of patent law should be extensively reformed (starting with repealing the patent extensions granted “big pharma” in the recent past). It is also true that, to use Mr. Carson’s phrase, patents “distort the market ... [skewing it] toward where the money is.” But, ignoring the emotive connotations of “distort,” it is true of all property schemes that they provide incentives toward certain sorts of behavior and against others.
Perhaps the current system does encourage gaming of sorts which we want to discourage, instead. Perhaps we permit new patents on new drugs that are too closely similar to previously developed drugs. I say perhaps. In fact, I don’t know whether it does or not. The point, however, is that there are all sorts of ways of changing the existing system short of simply abolishing it.
And replacing it with what? The milk of human kindness as a spur to research or, what I fear is the real intended replacement, more massive government control and funding?
Do you want more invention and innovation or less? Do you want more creative works of art or fewer? Those, I think, are the critical questions in any useful discussion of intellectual property. And at the risk of repeating myself, details aside, I know of no better means of getting more of both than by encouraging self-interest through the creation of private property interests in the fruits of such invention and creativity.
Do you?
The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc.
How human society has gone from the realization that the world is filled with stuff to the notion that some of it is our stuff (or your stuff or, most importantly, my stuff) is an interesting topic, but not one with which I wish to concern myself here in any detail. If you care, I’ll merely note in passing that I reject all “natural right” theories of property, personally, especially including the so-called Lockean “labor + stuff = property” theory.
Still, I constantly run across fellow self-described libertarians who believe in one sort of natural rights theory or another and a fairly large number of them believe that their theory justifies the notion of tangible personal property (whether, forgive the legalism here, real or chattel) but not intellectual property. Intellectual property – by which I mean here the usual unholy trinity of patents, copyrights and trademarks – is on this account the equivalent of a state enforced and, worse yet, state created monopoly. To which I respond:
Yes, that’s true. Exactly like the state-created and state-enforced monopoly any owner of any sort of property whatsoever enjoys versus any non-owner. To be sure, the land would still be there with or without a state enforced legal system, but it wouldn’t be anyone’s property. Not in anything like the sense we mean by property now, that is. All of our philosophical twaddle about what should or shouldn’t or can or can’t be deemed property aside, the ownership of a patent or trademark is no different from the ownership of an automobile or a condominium. They are all creatures of the state or, more specifically, of a state enforced legal system one of the principle justifications for is the sorting out of competing claims over the same resources.
Ah, say my opposition, but land and the stuff we find and trap or kill or take and make new stuff out of on the land (and sea) are quintessential examples of real resources; namely, natural resources. Patents and trademarks and copyrights are mere fictions.
I agree. But they are highly useful fictions, and if my libertarian confrères would get off their pseudo-Kantian high horses about absolute right and wrong and concentrate instead on the far more useful questions of pragmatic good or bad, I think they’d be more inclined to agree with my perspective. Which is as follows:
(1) The state of the law of intellectual property is in need of serious reform, but (2) we would all be better served by, for example, a reformed law of patents than by the entire abolition of patents. For you theorists, I will add (3) there are no serious theoretical reasons, ethical or otherwise, precluding us from, as it were, saving the baby even as we throw out the dirty bathwater here.
By way of giving an example of the sort of unnecessary and counterproductive infanticide I have in mind here, let me quote extensively from a recent Kevin Carson piece over at Art of The Possible. Carson makes his point by quoting a commenter there, and because I am too lazy to edit extensively I will do the same, as follows:
2) Eliminate drug patents. Patents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs. But as frequent AoTP commenter quasibill observed, the main source of the expense is not developing the version of the drug that is actually marketed, but gaming the patent system. He challenged the popular misimpression, encouraged by smarmy drug company ads,that what big pharma is researching is cancer meds. It’s not. In the rare instances that big pharma produces and markets such medicines, it has purchased them from small start-ups that themselves are the result normally of a university laboratory’s work. When big pharma cites to billions of research costs, what it is talking about is the process whereby they literally test millions of very closely related compounds to find out if they have a solid therapeutic window. This type of research is directly related to the patent system, as changing one functional group can get you around most patents, eventually. So you like to bulk up your catalogue and patent all closely related compounds, while choosing only the best among them, or, if you’re second to market, one that hasn’t yet been patented.
This work is incredibly data intensive, and requires many Ph.D’s, assistants, and high powered computers and testing equipment to achieve. But it is hardly necessary in the absence of a patent regime. In the absence of patents, (and of course the FDA), you could just focus on finding a sufficient therapeutic window, and cut out the remaining tests.
Patents also grossly distort the market, leading drug companies to focus most of their research on “me too” drugs that tweak an existing formula just enough to enable it to be repatented, and use it to replace the older version that’s about to go generic. Then the drug reps hit the hospitals and clinics, drop off some free samples and pamphlets, and (most M.D.s relying on drug industry handouts for their information on drugs that come out after they leave med school) the “me, too” drug becomes the new standard form of treatment.
The license cartels and drug patents are two examples of essentially the same phenomenon: First, the government creates a honey pot by enforcing a monopoly and making particular forms of service artificially lucrative. Then the market skews toward where the money is, as practitioners adopt the more lucrative business model and crowd out affordable alternatives.
Okay, so let’s clear the air here a bit. In the first place, whatever may be the truth about the claim that “[p]atents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs,” the better question is whether we will have more and better drug research and development with patents or without them regardless of whether those patents go to “big pharma” or to “small start-up firms.” That is, we shouldn’t really care who the incentive of profitable patent rights is spurring on to do research, and that is true whether such research is on cancer drugs or toe fungus drugs.
If Mr. Carson or his commenter believe that there are better ways to encourage such research, they should by all means argue for them. I, however, know of no better incentive than self interest and until I am shown fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, I am not inclined to believe that removing the profit motive from drug research is likely to produce a better, more readily available or affordable pharmacopeia.
Now, that said, no one bothering to read this far should leave thinking I’m an apologist for the pharmaceutical companies. Their successful efforts some years back to retroactively extend the life of patent protection (and similar so-called “reforms” in copyright for the entertainment industry) constitutes nothing more than massive theft and the politicians who voted for such theft should all be horsewhipped. They all created and / or invented whatever they did when the state of the law provided a certain term of proprietary rights and they should enjoy the benefit of that bargain, but nothing more. If the case could be made for patents or copyrights of longer duration, whether for drugs or novels or whatever, fine. But such revised laws should take effect only prospectively. Retroactive extension deprives the public (you and me) of our rightful future expectations with regard to these properties, future expectations we have been paying for throughout the life of the original patents or copyrights. Moreover (okay, go ahead and get back on your Kantian high-horse for a moment here), fair’s fair and a bargain is a bargain.
I don’t deny that the current state of patent law should be extensively reformed (starting with repealing the patent extensions granted “big pharma” in the recent past). It is also true that, to use Mr. Carson’s phrase, patents “distort the market ... [skewing it] toward where the money is.” But, ignoring the emotive connotations of “distort,” it is true of all property schemes that they provide incentives toward certain sorts of behavior and against others.
Perhaps the current system does encourage gaming of sorts which we want to discourage, instead. Perhaps we permit new patents on new drugs that are too closely similar to previously developed drugs. I say perhaps. In fact, I don’t know whether it does or not. The point, however, is that there are all sorts of ways of changing the existing system short of simply abolishing it.
And replacing it with what? The milk of human kindness as a spur to research or, what I fear is the real intended replacement, more massive government control and funding?
Do you want more invention and innovation or less? Do you want more creative works of art or fewer? Those, I think, are the critical questions in any useful discussion of intellectual property. And at the risk of repeating myself, details aside, I know of no better means of getting more of both than by encouraging self-interest through the creation of private property interests in the fruits of such invention and creativity.
Do you?
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Constant Viewer Ponders The Movie Business
Not so very long ago a movie had to gross $100 million to be considered a bona fide summer blockbuster. Today, however, $200 million is the new $100 million and a movie that grosses a mere tenth of a billion doesn’t even hit the top 400 all-time domestic grossing movies. That’s not adjusting for inflation, by the way. Gone With The Wind grossed a mere $198 million dollars, but, hey, they were 1939 dollars and a dollar bought just a teeny bit more back then. (In round inflation adjusted numbers, GWTW grossed around $1.5 billion.)
The summer of 2008 has had its fair share of blockbusters, in any case, even at the new $200 million threshold: Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, the last three having already grossed over $300 million each and several, especially including The Dark Knight, still raking in the box office cash.
The interesting question to Constant Viewer at this point is how far The Dark Knight can go. Obviously, it’s got sprinter’s legs, having beaten Mummy III this weekend and stayed in the #1 slot in its third week out. But, let’s face it, Mummy III is probably the weakest of this summer’s big movies. Still, earning so far just $5 million shy of the $400 million mark, The Dark Knight now ranks 8th all-time in domestic gross, probably marking the first time Warner Brothers has had a film in such rarefied company since Bogart. (Okay, CV just made that up. Basically, however, aside from the Harry Potter franchise, WB hasn’t exactly been a major player for a long, long time. And CV has the handfull of Time-Warner shares to prove it, too!)
This isn’t going anywhere, in case you were wondering. CV simply finds the business of show business, the industry part of the film industry, interesting in and of itself. So when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along (and CV actually plunks down the purchase price of a ticket twice for it!) he wonders just how big it might end up being.
One thing’s for sure. The Dark Knight is not going to come anywhere close to striking range of, oh, say, Titanic. Here’s a Box Office Mojo page devoted to comparing the two, together with Shrek 2 and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace just for good measure. Notice that Titanic (a) didn’t open all that big, but (b) ended up with a domestic gross of over $600 million. That makes it the biggest PG-13 movie and roughly the fifth or sixth highest (inflation adjusted) grossing movie of any sort, period. Why was it so big?
Because it was a romance men didn’t mind going to see. Or it was an action / disaster movie women didn’t mind going to see. Take your pick. But the next huge, history making movie isn’t likely to involve superheroes or animated characters of any sort and it won’t have to be rated PG or G, either. Somewhere in Hollywood someone is studying Titanic and figuring out that romantic adventure, not romantic comedy, is where the money’s at. At least that's Constant Viewer's best guess. Now, if only he could figure out a cleverly tragic, romantic way for the hero to die in front of his lover in the last act of his screenplay!
The summer of 2008 has had its fair share of blockbusters, in any case, even at the new $200 million threshold: Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, the last three having already grossed over $300 million each and several, especially including The Dark Knight, still raking in the box office cash.
The interesting question to Constant Viewer at this point is how far The Dark Knight can go. Obviously, it’s got sprinter’s legs, having beaten Mummy III this weekend and stayed in the #1 slot in its third week out. But, let’s face it, Mummy III is probably the weakest of this summer’s big movies. Still, earning so far just $5 million shy of the $400 million mark, The Dark Knight now ranks 8th all-time in domestic gross, probably marking the first time Warner Brothers has had a film in such rarefied company since Bogart. (Okay, CV just made that up. Basically, however, aside from the Harry Potter franchise, WB hasn’t exactly been a major player for a long, long time. And CV has the handfull of Time-Warner shares to prove it, too!)
This isn’t going anywhere, in case you were wondering. CV simply finds the business of show business, the industry part of the film industry, interesting in and of itself. So when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along (and CV actually plunks down the purchase price of a ticket twice for it!) he wonders just how big it might end up being.
One thing’s for sure. The Dark Knight is not going to come anywhere close to striking range of, oh, say, Titanic. Here’s a Box Office Mojo page devoted to comparing the two, together with Shrek 2 and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace just for good measure. Notice that Titanic (a) didn’t open all that big, but (b) ended up with a domestic gross of over $600 million. That makes it the biggest PG-13 movie and roughly the fifth or sixth highest (inflation adjusted) grossing movie of any sort, period. Why was it so big?
Because it was a romance men didn’t mind going to see. Or it was an action / disaster movie women didn’t mind going to see. Take your pick. But the next huge, history making movie isn’t likely to involve superheroes or animated characters of any sort and it won’t have to be rated PG or G, either. Somewhere in Hollywood someone is studying Titanic and figuring out that romantic adventure, not romantic comedy, is where the money’s at. At least that's Constant Viewer's best guess. Now, if only he could figure out a cleverly tragic, romantic way for the hero to die in front of his lover in the last act of his screenplay!
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Constant Viewer: The Mummy: Curse of the Dragon Emperor
The Mummy: Curse of the Dragon Emperor is not, rest assured, a French movie. In fact, it is in many respects an anti-French movie. It’s dumb and it knows it’s dumb. It may even be a little proud of how dumb it is as it revels in over-the-top action scenes and dazzling special effects. None of its characters have anything like an introspective or existential identity crisis or, for that matter, would know it if they did. There’s never a moment when the viewer has any reason to suspect that the writers or director or cast seriously thought “Oh no! We can’t do that! It would be too preposterous. The audiences will never buy it!” Nope, Mummy III knows it's all about the cheap thrills and delivers them up by the pallet load.
Brendan Fraser is the poor man’s Tom Hanks, assuming Hanks was dumb enough to try his hand as an action hero, eminently likable in large measure precisely because he’s an everyman type and not an action hero type. That he’s made a fairly nice film career playing against that obvious fact only goes to prove, as William Goldman so deftly put it, that in Hollywood nobody knows anything.
Jet Li makes a fine bad guy here and the rest of the cast are likewise as plausible as you’re likely to find in so implausible a movie. It’s all Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Lost Horizons meets every CGI battle scene made in the last ten years meets every zombie movie made in the last 20 years, and if the comedic touches sometimes wander into farce territory at least there’s not a single scene where someone languorously smokes a cigarette wondering what it’s all about.
In passing, you might wonder why on earth Mummy III and so many other movies in the last five or ten years have been centered in or at least had a major scene or two shot in China. There are no Chinese mummies, after all. Are there? Well, whether there are or not, this much is clear. There are a whole hell of a lot more Chinese than Egyptians and nowadays, unlike back in the old Red China days, more and more of them go to the movies or rent or buy DVDs. And here you round-eyed devils thought you were still the target audience!
------
In response to a few comments from CV’s loyal readers about his recent evisceration of French filmmaking, it should be noted that CV’s theory of movie reviews is that it’s just practical emotivism. You find a reviewer whom you discover yells "Boo!" at the same movies you dislike and "Hurray!" at the same movies you like or even vice versa and then you've got a fairly reliable guide to help you pick what to see. Of course, it has to be tarted up a bit, but there's really nothing more to it than that.
There've been several mentions of noir, aka film noir, too, which is of course a French critical invention (film criticism being to movie reviews what prescriptivism is to emotivism). Hollywood just thought it was turning out B-movie gangster stories back then. Then again, Hollywood is almost always oblivious about those rare occasions when it accidentally creates art, too.
The thing about film noir is that it almost entirely contradicts the auteur theory if both are taken seriously. In the first place, these were almost all quintessentially studio movies, not directorial statements of any sort. None of the supposed genre’s directors set out to make a noir movie the way others set out, say, to make a screwball comedy or, for that matter, some socialist or communist writers were in fact trying to promote certain political themes in various post-war movies. (N.B., this isn’t an implicit defense of the notorious Hollywood Blacklist but simply an acknowledgment that some of the writers of that era were, in fact, intentionally polemical.)
These movies were all shot in black and white because, well, duh, just about all cheap movies were shot in black and white in the late 40s and 50s. Their cinematographic technique relied heavily on shadows and skewed camera angles because that was discovered to be a (cheap!) way to build psychological suspense and, frankly, just because it was trendy then in the same way those damned "let's swing the camera around the subject three or four times like an orbiting moon" shots are practically required by law in every movie made today.
Sure, there were a few movies of that era in which the female lead was a conniving vixen leading the poor, gullible protagonist to ruin, but you'd be hard pressed to make that claim about many of the most classic noir movies, e.g., Sunset Boulevard or even The Third Man. Finally, two of the greatest ‘noir’ movies of all time – Blade Runner and Chinatown – fit none of the noir theorists' criteria except the most important one: mood.
The fact is that the film noir genre is a garment that fits few movies of the era very well regardless of how many movies it will more or less badly fit here or there. It is, in the end, a hole that is neither round nor square nor any definite shape at all into which very, very few movie pegs can be fitted easily but just about any drama or movie of suspense can be pounded into with a heavy enough rhetorical hammer. So much for French theory, too.
Brendan Fraser is the poor man’s Tom Hanks, assuming Hanks was dumb enough to try his hand as an action hero, eminently likable in large measure precisely because he’s an everyman type and not an action hero type. That he’s made a fairly nice film career playing against that obvious fact only goes to prove, as William Goldman so deftly put it, that in Hollywood nobody knows anything.
Jet Li makes a fine bad guy here and the rest of the cast are likewise as plausible as you’re likely to find in so implausible a movie. It’s all Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Lost Horizons meets every CGI battle scene made in the last ten years meets every zombie movie made in the last 20 years, and if the comedic touches sometimes wander into farce territory at least there’s not a single scene where someone languorously smokes a cigarette wondering what it’s all about.
In passing, you might wonder why on earth Mummy III and so many other movies in the last five or ten years have been centered in or at least had a major scene or two shot in China. There are no Chinese mummies, after all. Are there? Well, whether there are or not, this much is clear. There are a whole hell of a lot more Chinese than Egyptians and nowadays, unlike back in the old Red China days, more and more of them go to the movies or rent or buy DVDs. And here you round-eyed devils thought you were still the target audience!
------
In response to a few comments from CV’s loyal readers about his recent evisceration of French filmmaking, it should be noted that CV’s theory of movie reviews is that it’s just practical emotivism. You find a reviewer whom you discover yells "Boo!" at the same movies you dislike and "Hurray!" at the same movies you like or even vice versa and then you've got a fairly reliable guide to help you pick what to see. Of course, it has to be tarted up a bit, but there's really nothing more to it than that.
There've been several mentions of noir, aka film noir, too, which is of course a French critical invention (film criticism being to movie reviews what prescriptivism is to emotivism). Hollywood just thought it was turning out B-movie gangster stories back then. Then again, Hollywood is almost always oblivious about those rare occasions when it accidentally creates art, too.
The thing about film noir is that it almost entirely contradicts the auteur theory if both are taken seriously. In the first place, these were almost all quintessentially studio movies, not directorial statements of any sort. None of the supposed genre’s directors set out to make a noir movie the way others set out, say, to make a screwball comedy or, for that matter, some socialist or communist writers were in fact trying to promote certain political themes in various post-war movies. (N.B., this isn’t an implicit defense of the notorious Hollywood Blacklist but simply an acknowledgment that some of the writers of that era were, in fact, intentionally polemical.)
These movies were all shot in black and white because, well, duh, just about all cheap movies were shot in black and white in the late 40s and 50s. Their cinematographic technique relied heavily on shadows and skewed camera angles because that was discovered to be a (cheap!) way to build psychological suspense and, frankly, just because it was trendy then in the same way those damned "let's swing the camera around the subject three or four times like an orbiting moon" shots are practically required by law in every movie made today.
Sure, there were a few movies of that era in which the female lead was a conniving vixen leading the poor, gullible protagonist to ruin, but you'd be hard pressed to make that claim about many of the most classic noir movies, e.g., Sunset Boulevard or even The Third Man. Finally, two of the greatest ‘noir’ movies of all time – Blade Runner and Chinatown – fit none of the noir theorists' criteria except the most important one: mood.
The fact is that the film noir genre is a garment that fits few movies of the era very well regardless of how many movies it will more or less badly fit here or there. It is, in the end, a hole that is neither round nor square nor any definite shape at all into which very, very few movie pegs can be fitted easily but just about any drama or movie of suspense can be pounded into with a heavy enough rhetorical hammer. So much for French theory, too.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Constant Viewer: Tell No One (Ne le dis a personne)
So there Constant Viewer was, standing in front of one of those – gulp! – Art Houses looking for an excuse to eat popcorn. But first, a brief digression.
Lewis Black does a comedy routine about candy corn. You know, the little yellow cones with the orange tips (or is it orange with yellow?) that you still see once in a while in candy dishes among the sort of people who have candy dishes in the Halloween through Thanksgiving season. The routine is, essentially, that candy corn tastes like crap, everyone knows candy corn tastes like crap and yet every year we somehow manage to fool ourselves into believing that maybe this year’s candy corn won’t taste like crap until we taste it and, lo and behold, rediscover that it tastes like crap.
Okay, so an even briefer digression would be Lucy convincing Charlie Brown once again to run and try to kick the football.
Both of which lead CV to the real topic: French movies. Now, you understand that people with university degrees in watching movies would never write “French movies.” They’d write “French cinema” or “French films” or even more pretentiously “French film.” But Constant Viewer couldn’t afford to fritter away his undergraduate years in anything so impractical as film studies. No Siree, Bob! He got his degree in philosophy, by golly!
Anyway, here’s the thing about French movies. They suck. They don’t all suck equally badly, but anyone applying a standard industrial suckometer to any French movie will get a positive reading. Moreover, the reasons why they all suck to one degree or another are fairly obvious.
First, nothing really ever happens in 99% of all French movies except a lot of talking and a little sex. Back in, oh, let’s say the 60s and 70s, this didn’t detract from their popularity in the U.S. In fact, Americans went to French movies specifically to see naked breasts and a bit of simulated sexual intercourse, neither of which were available for viewing in Hollywood movies. This was all because of the law back then which basically read: “French speaking naked sex is art; English speaking naked sex is pornography.” (Spanish speaking naked sex was porn, too, since none of those judges took Spanish classes at Harvard and every real porn movie they ever saw at I Felta Thigh came from Mexico.)
These days, though, it’s hard to find even a Disney movie in which there isn’t a bit of bare-breasted rutting by the end of the second or third reel and, besides, Ivy League schools no more bother nowadays with French than they do with Shakespeare or any of the other trappings of civilization.
Anyway, if you’re still with CV here, the point is that the bottom fell out of the French erotic film business so badly that French movies these days don’t even bother with rutting scenes any more, thus leaving even more time for talk. Worse yet, all of this talking is done in, you guessed it, French.
Still, like Charlie Brown being urged on by Lucy or a man with a sweet tooth eying a chafing dish filled with candy corn, there CV was standing in front of the ticket counter weighing his options among movies which very soon no one outside the NYU and UCLA film studies departments would ever hear about again when he opted to go ahead and see Tell No One (Ne le dis a personne). After all, the average of 26 real-life (read: paid) reviewers as calculated over at MetaCritic had given it a score of 81, and CV knows for a fact that some of them didn’t study French at Harvard, so what the hell?
Okay, here’s the review. It sucked.
And the basic reason it sucked was because everyone talked too much. Way too much. Of course, if they hadn’t talked and talked and talked and then talked some more the movie would have been completely meaningless instead of merely being hopelessly convoluted. True, it was based on a Harlan Coben novel which CV can only suppose is hopelessly convoluted, but that's no excuse.
You want the basic story? Okay, here goes. In Tell No One, a doctor whose wife was apparently murdered eight years ago becomes a suspect again when two bodies are discovered not far from the scene of the wife’s apparent death. Are you picking up on “apparent” here? That’s okay, it isn’t really a spoiler because the doctor then begins getting messages via the Internet (They have the Internet in France? Who knew?) suggesting that his wife is actually still alive and that he must, well, “Tell no one!” Then we learn about a wealthy family whose son abuses poor orphan children (There are poor orphans in France? Who knew?) who come to work at patrician Daddy’s stables – because that’s what orphans need for a better future: experience mucking out stables – where the doctor’s sister works, the sister’s lesbian lawyer partner, a serial murderer whose name in French CV thinks might have been McGuffin, various corrupt or maybe not so corrupt police officials, a street criminal (from les banlieues, of course) with a tattoo of The Godfather logo on one arm, a hemophiliac son and ready access to plasma TV sets, handguns and a Ford SUV, the supposedly dead wife’s parents and, toward the end just to complicate matters further, the doctor’s own, albeit deceased father.
But you see, French filmmakers – I'm talking to you now, and this is important, so please take notes – movies are not books. It will not do to spend the last twenty minutes of a movie of suspense having someone talk you through all the confused and confusing things you saw the first hour and forty minutes as though that makes up for everything. And please don’t throw The Usual Suspects in CV’s face as a counterexample here. France doesn’t have any actors nearly as interesting as Kevin Spacey because if they did those actors would learn English and make movies in Hollywood where the real money is.
Also – you’re still taking notes, right? – movies are not plays. Theater (or Theatre, if you went to one of those Ivy League schools) is all about dialog (or dialogue if, oh, never mind) and that’s why both the English and the French still have excellent theater because, in their respective ways, they speak far better than we loutish Americans do.
Movies, however, are about movement, about action. They are a medium in which the audience primarily perceives visually and not audibly, and this is why “movies” or “motion pictures” are superior to “film” as a way of distinguishing the medium from live theater and literature. And, by the way, that’s not to say that all there is to making a movie is non-stop action, dazzling visual effects, cardboard characters and hackneyed plots. Unless you’re George Lucas, that is.
In fairness to Tell No One, it’s makers actually did spend a few production budget francs, er, euros on a couple of chase scenes and a bit of violence here and there, even including a highway collision. That is to say, this film actually and obviously aspires to being a movie, and that’s a good thing. Its fatal flaw, alas, is that the story it attempts to tell is simply way too complicated to work in a mere two hours without, as already discussed, having to talk its way out of its mare’s nest of plot threads.
CV thinks the many positive reviews were, whether the reviewers knew it or not, really just acknowledgements that writer / director Guillaume Canet and his cast all know what a good motion picture should look like and were really trying to make one. That they came closer by far than the average French film of CV’s experience is, to be sure, praiseworthy. Alas, however, we’re talking movies here, not horseshoes. Close doesn’t count.
Lewis Black does a comedy routine about candy corn. You know, the little yellow cones with the orange tips (or is it orange with yellow?) that you still see once in a while in candy dishes among the sort of people who have candy dishes in the Halloween through Thanksgiving season. The routine is, essentially, that candy corn tastes like crap, everyone knows candy corn tastes like crap and yet every year we somehow manage to fool ourselves into believing that maybe this year’s candy corn won’t taste like crap until we taste it and, lo and behold, rediscover that it tastes like crap.
Okay, so an even briefer digression would be Lucy convincing Charlie Brown once again to run and try to kick the football.
Both of which lead CV to the real topic: French movies. Now, you understand that people with university degrees in watching movies would never write “French movies.” They’d write “French cinema” or “French films” or even more pretentiously “French film.” But Constant Viewer couldn’t afford to fritter away his undergraduate years in anything so impractical as film studies. No Siree, Bob! He got his degree in philosophy, by golly!
Anyway, here’s the thing about French movies. They suck. They don’t all suck equally badly, but anyone applying a standard industrial suckometer to any French movie will get a positive reading. Moreover, the reasons why they all suck to one degree or another are fairly obvious.
First, nothing really ever happens in 99% of all French movies except a lot of talking and a little sex. Back in, oh, let’s say the 60s and 70s, this didn’t detract from their popularity in the U.S. In fact, Americans went to French movies specifically to see naked breasts and a bit of simulated sexual intercourse, neither of which were available for viewing in Hollywood movies. This was all because of the law back then which basically read: “French speaking naked sex is art; English speaking naked sex is pornography.” (Spanish speaking naked sex was porn, too, since none of those judges took Spanish classes at Harvard and every real porn movie they ever saw at I Felta Thigh came from Mexico.)
These days, though, it’s hard to find even a Disney movie in which there isn’t a bit of bare-breasted rutting by the end of the second or third reel and, besides, Ivy League schools no more bother nowadays with French than they do with Shakespeare or any of the other trappings of civilization.
Anyway, if you’re still with CV here, the point is that the bottom fell out of the French erotic film business so badly that French movies these days don’t even bother with rutting scenes any more, thus leaving even more time for talk. Worse yet, all of this talking is done in, you guessed it, French.
Still, like Charlie Brown being urged on by Lucy or a man with a sweet tooth eying a chafing dish filled with candy corn, there CV was standing in front of the ticket counter weighing his options among movies which very soon no one outside the NYU and UCLA film studies departments would ever hear about again when he opted to go ahead and see Tell No One (Ne le dis a personne). After all, the average of 26 real-life (read: paid) reviewers as calculated over at MetaCritic had given it a score of 81, and CV knows for a fact that some of them didn’t study French at Harvard, so what the hell?
Okay, here’s the review. It sucked.
And the basic reason it sucked was because everyone talked too much. Way too much. Of course, if they hadn’t talked and talked and talked and then talked some more the movie would have been completely meaningless instead of merely being hopelessly convoluted. True, it was based on a Harlan Coben novel which CV can only suppose is hopelessly convoluted, but that's no excuse.
You want the basic story? Okay, here goes. In Tell No One, a doctor whose wife was apparently murdered eight years ago becomes a suspect again when two bodies are discovered not far from the scene of the wife’s apparent death. Are you picking up on “apparent” here? That’s okay, it isn’t really a spoiler because the doctor then begins getting messages via the Internet (They have the Internet in France? Who knew?) suggesting that his wife is actually still alive and that he must, well, “Tell no one!” Then we learn about a wealthy family whose son abuses poor orphan children (There are poor orphans in France? Who knew?) who come to work at patrician Daddy’s stables – because that’s what orphans need for a better future: experience mucking out stables – where the doctor’s sister works, the sister’s lesbian lawyer partner, a serial murderer whose name in French CV thinks might have been McGuffin, various corrupt or maybe not so corrupt police officials, a street criminal (from les banlieues, of course) with a tattoo of The Godfather logo on one arm, a hemophiliac son and ready access to plasma TV sets, handguns and a Ford SUV, the supposedly dead wife’s parents and, toward the end just to complicate matters further, the doctor’s own, albeit deceased father.
But you see, French filmmakers – I'm talking to you now, and this is important, so please take notes – movies are not books. It will not do to spend the last twenty minutes of a movie of suspense having someone talk you through all the confused and confusing things you saw the first hour and forty minutes as though that makes up for everything. And please don’t throw The Usual Suspects in CV’s face as a counterexample here. France doesn’t have any actors nearly as interesting as Kevin Spacey because if they did those actors would learn English and make movies in Hollywood where the real money is.
Also – you’re still taking notes, right? – movies are not plays. Theater (or Theatre, if you went to one of those Ivy League schools) is all about dialog (or dialogue if, oh, never mind) and that’s why both the English and the French still have excellent theater because, in their respective ways, they speak far better than we loutish Americans do.
Movies, however, are about movement, about action. They are a medium in which the audience primarily perceives visually and not audibly, and this is why “movies” or “motion pictures” are superior to “film” as a way of distinguishing the medium from live theater and literature. And, by the way, that’s not to say that all there is to making a movie is non-stop action, dazzling visual effects, cardboard characters and hackneyed plots. Unless you’re George Lucas, that is.
In fairness to Tell No One, it’s makers actually did spend a few production budget francs, er, euros on a couple of chase scenes and a bit of violence here and there, even including a highway collision. That is to say, this film actually and obviously aspires to being a movie, and that’s a good thing. Its fatal flaw, alas, is that the story it attempts to tell is simply way too complicated to work in a mere two hours without, as already discussed, having to talk its way out of its mare’s nest of plot threads.
CV thinks the many positive reviews were, whether the reviewers knew it or not, really just acknowledgements that writer / director Guillaume Canet and his cast all know what a good motion picture should look like and were really trying to make one. That they came closer by far than the average French film of CV’s experience is, to be sure, praiseworthy. Alas, however, we’re talking movies here, not horseshoes. Close doesn’t count.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Picky, Picky, Picky!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already in August Mode, a frame of mind common among Washingtonians, New Yorkers and other pretentious pseudo-intellectuals of my ilk during which time unless, let's say, Obama is caught in fishnet stockings chasing a sumo wrestler or McCain is discovered to actually have spent the Viet Nam war in Canada making macramé bongs while his twin brother Skippy was the real POW, I simply don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. Save it for after Labor Day.
So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.
This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.
Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.
By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.
I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.
Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.
Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.
Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.
Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tool over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?
[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]
I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.
So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.
This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.
Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.
By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.
I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.
Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.
Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.
Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.
Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tool over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?
[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]
I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Constant Viewer's Summer Roundup
Constant Viewer is sometimes asked why, since he isn’t paid to do so, he occasionally goes to movies knowing well in advance that they are going to defy the laws of physics and simultaneously suck and blow. Collaterally, CV is asked if there are any such movies so far beneath his contempt that even he won’t stoop to go seeing them.
Good questions. Glad you asked.
In the first place, CV has not ruled out the possibility of one day actually being paid to write his shallow little, myopic and idiosyncratic movie reviews, notwithstanding the fact that no professional journal or periodical that isn’t already in bankruptcy proceedings would venture such a foolish hire. In the second place, being among the idle poor or, as CV prefers to be called, independently lower middle class, CV probably has more free time than those of you who continue to trade what someone else wants you to do for mere money. (Not that there’s anything wrong with mere money. See “In the first place,” supra!) Some of you will be shocked (shocked!) to learn that CV actually sees movies occasionally about which he does not scurry home and knock off one of his little 500 word tantrums. (See infra. Nota bene, also, how CV works those Latin term paper words into his reviews. What a guy!)
In the third place, many of you would be even more astonished at how low Constant Viewer’s contempt is willing to descend on the right occasion. Still, as they say in rehab (or so CV is told), you know you’ve hit your bottom when you can’t lower your standards fast enough to keep up with your behavior. And in that spirit CV is happy to report that there are a number of movies on the Hollywood Horizon to which CV will not be, um, exposing himself.
Brideshead Revisited : CV doesn’t care how talented Michael Gambone, Emma Thompson or any of the rest of the cast are or how wonderful this 135 minute feature film version of Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel may be. It will never, CV repeats, never come close to being nearly as magnificent as the nearly perfect seven hour miniseries version made in the early 1980s.
CV can think of even dumber motion picture remakes. Psycho, for example, not that anyone would be stupid enough to try that! But the only possible saving grace to this movie is if it doesn’t suck so badly it encourages our vast and intentionally illiterate nation, who still wouldn’t read a novel even if Oprah told them to, to find the classic Brideshead DVD set and marvel at how good television can actually be.
The X Files: I Want To Believe: Who the hell green-lighted this thing? Come on, isn’t Chris Carter like the uncle you used to think was so cool back when you were nine or ten only to discover a decade later what a phony jerk the guy was? If there was ever need for more proof of P.T. Barnum’s famous observation about the birthrate of suckers, this hand-me-down David Lynch's ramblings fit the bill even better than LOST.
Hey kids, remember when David Duchovny was going to be a big movie star? For the record, picking up a paycheck as the voice of Tiny Jesus in Queer Duck: The Movie doesn’t count. Meanwhile, ambiguity born of sloppy, aimless writing and unresolved plotting isn’t the same thing as suspense born of tight writing and plotting even if you can convince gullible pre-teens it is for a television series or two.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: George Lucas is the happiest man on earth now that his fondest dream has come true. That dream is, of course, to be rid once and for all of real actors, locations and all those other dreary necessities of live action movies. Let’s face it, the Star Wars money machine was always a cartoon waiting to happen. Well, now it finally has. CV notes, by the way, that according to the IMDb this 90 minute Saturday morning cartoon has been “rated PG for sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking.” Have we become so paranoid, so petrified, so pussified as a people that the mere fleeting image of a cartoon character momentarily smoking is enough to warrant a PG rating? (The answer, sadly enough, appears to be yes, yes we have.)
So, are there any openings left this summer CV is looking forward to seeing? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, there are. First, although CV isn’t a big comedy fan, Tropic Thunder looks quite engaging. Second, although it may not come out in wide release, Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian looks intriguing. And finally, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor looks like a fun popcorn movie.
(Oh, and speaking of, well, actually implicitly referring to, Brendan Fraiser, Journey to the Center of the Earth is also a fun popcorn movie, especially in 3D, and well worth taking the kids to go see. And so, if it’s still playing at an art house near you, is the charming, bittersweet The Visitor.)
See you at the Bijou.
Good questions. Glad you asked.
In the first place, CV has not ruled out the possibility of one day actually being paid to write his shallow little, myopic and idiosyncratic movie reviews, notwithstanding the fact that no professional journal or periodical that isn’t already in bankruptcy proceedings would venture such a foolish hire. In the second place, being among the idle poor or, as CV prefers to be called, independently lower middle class, CV probably has more free time than those of you who continue to trade what someone else wants you to do for mere money. (Not that there’s anything wrong with mere money. See “In the first place,” supra!) Some of you will be shocked (shocked!) to learn that CV actually sees movies occasionally about which he does not scurry home and knock off one of his little 500 word tantrums. (See infra. Nota bene, also, how CV works those Latin term paper words into his reviews. What a guy!)
In the third place, many of you would be even more astonished at how low Constant Viewer’s contempt is willing to descend on the right occasion. Still, as they say in rehab (or so CV is told), you know you’ve hit your bottom when you can’t lower your standards fast enough to keep up with your behavior. And in that spirit CV is happy to report that there are a number of movies on the Hollywood Horizon to which CV will not be, um, exposing himself.
Brideshead Revisited : CV doesn’t care how talented Michael Gambone, Emma Thompson or any of the rest of the cast are or how wonderful this 135 minute feature film version of Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel may be. It will never, CV repeats, never come close to being nearly as magnificent as the nearly perfect seven hour miniseries version made in the early 1980s.
CV can think of even dumber motion picture remakes. Psycho, for example, not that anyone would be stupid enough to try that! But the only possible saving grace to this movie is if it doesn’t suck so badly it encourages our vast and intentionally illiterate nation, who still wouldn’t read a novel even if Oprah told them to, to find the classic Brideshead DVD set and marvel at how good television can actually be.
The X Files: I Want To Believe: Who the hell green-lighted this thing? Come on, isn’t Chris Carter like the uncle you used to think was so cool back when you were nine or ten only to discover a decade later what a phony jerk the guy was? If there was ever need for more proof of P.T. Barnum’s famous observation about the birthrate of suckers, this hand-me-down David Lynch's ramblings fit the bill even better than LOST.
Hey kids, remember when David Duchovny was going to be a big movie star? For the record, picking up a paycheck as the voice of Tiny Jesus in Queer Duck: The Movie doesn’t count. Meanwhile, ambiguity born of sloppy, aimless writing and unresolved plotting isn’t the same thing as suspense born of tight writing and plotting even if you can convince gullible pre-teens it is for a television series or two.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: George Lucas is the happiest man on earth now that his fondest dream has come true. That dream is, of course, to be rid once and for all of real actors, locations and all those other dreary necessities of live action movies. Let’s face it, the Star Wars money machine was always a cartoon waiting to happen. Well, now it finally has. CV notes, by the way, that according to the IMDb this 90 minute Saturday morning cartoon has been “rated PG for sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking.” Have we become so paranoid, so petrified, so pussified as a people that the mere fleeting image of a cartoon character momentarily smoking is enough to warrant a PG rating? (The answer, sadly enough, appears to be yes, yes we have.)
So, are there any openings left this summer CV is looking forward to seeing? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, there are. First, although CV isn’t a big comedy fan, Tropic Thunder looks quite engaging. Second, although it may not come out in wide release, Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian looks intriguing. And finally, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor looks like a fun popcorn movie.
(Oh, and speaking of, well, actually implicitly referring to, Brendan Fraiser, Journey to the Center of the Earth is also a fun popcorn movie, especially in 3D, and well worth taking the kids to go see. And so, if it’s still playing at an art house near you, is the charming, bittersweet The Visitor.)
See you at the Bijou.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Constant Viewer: The Dark Knight
Constant Viewer caught the 12:01 showing of The Dark Knight in a theater nearly filled with some five or six hundred fellow dark knight owls, CV’s 13 year old son included. The theater almost certainly would have been filled but for a second showing some 20 minutes later. CV isn’t venturing any guesses about opening records, especially if you adjust for inflation, but The Dark Knight is a lock for this summer’s blockbuster, no mean feat when you consider the current competition.
Let’s get the accolades out of the way up front here. Christopher Nolan continues to astonish as a director, and no little part of CV’s astonishment is in realizing that The Dark Knight is only his eighth directorial credit. Christian Bale has certainly grown in the part since Batman Begins, a fine movie in which, in CV’s opinion, Bale was its weakest element. CV can’t remember when he didn’t like Michael Caine in anything since the original Alfie and can’t, for that matter, remember anything in which Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t an asset, either. Morgan Freeman has one of the most fun lines in the movie in a truely clever scene of attempted extortion and both Gary Oldman’s James Gordon and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvy Dent manage to impress despite all the stiff competition for attention.
And then there is Heath Ledger. Will his Joker earn the late actor a posthumous Oscar? If the voting were held by, say, Election Day, Ledger’s chances would be excellent. But The Dark Knight is still a summer movie, not a ‘serious’ movie, and the Academy has historically been chary about posthumous awards. Nonetheless, Ledger’s performance is simply breathtaking and, as entertaining as Jack Nicholson’s Joker was in the original Batman, this new Joker has to be considered the gold standard against which both earlier and subsequent super villains must be judged.
Ironically, however, the way Ledger’s presence overpowers everything else in The Dark Knight is, given Ledger’s untimely death, the movie's greatest weakness; for CV couldn’t help but be distracted over and over again by the thought that this bravura performance could never be reprised. Imagine, for example, if Anthony Hopkins had died shortly before the release of The Silence of the Lambs.
Of course, you’re going to go see The Dark Knight no matter what CV says even if your girlfriend drags you to Mamma Mia first. Buy the large popcorn and soda, since you’re going to be there a full 152 minutes after the endless litany of trailers. Well, after all, Nolan is reaching for a movie of epic proportions here. And if he just slightly misses, the audience nonetheless was certainly not bored as the second hour came and went with another half-hour ahead of them. In fact, when the credits finally did roll they applauded. And CV, to his mild surprise, joined in.
Let’s get the accolades out of the way up front here. Christopher Nolan continues to astonish as a director, and no little part of CV’s astonishment is in realizing that The Dark Knight is only his eighth directorial credit. Christian Bale has certainly grown in the part since Batman Begins, a fine movie in which, in CV’s opinion, Bale was its weakest element. CV can’t remember when he didn’t like Michael Caine in anything since the original Alfie and can’t, for that matter, remember anything in which Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t an asset, either. Morgan Freeman has one of the most fun lines in the movie in a truely clever scene of attempted extortion and both Gary Oldman’s James Gordon and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvy Dent manage to impress despite all the stiff competition for attention.
And then there is Heath Ledger. Will his Joker earn the late actor a posthumous Oscar? If the voting were held by, say, Election Day, Ledger’s chances would be excellent. But The Dark Knight is still a summer movie, not a ‘serious’ movie, and the Academy has historically been chary about posthumous awards. Nonetheless, Ledger’s performance is simply breathtaking and, as entertaining as Jack Nicholson’s Joker was in the original Batman, this new Joker has to be considered the gold standard against which both earlier and subsequent super villains must be judged.
Ironically, however, the way Ledger’s presence overpowers everything else in The Dark Knight is, given Ledger’s untimely death, the movie's greatest weakness; for CV couldn’t help but be distracted over and over again by the thought that this bravura performance could never be reprised. Imagine, for example, if Anthony Hopkins had died shortly before the release of The Silence of the Lambs.
Of course, you’re going to go see The Dark Knight no matter what CV says even if your girlfriend drags you to Mamma Mia first. Buy the large popcorn and soda, since you’re going to be there a full 152 minutes after the endless litany of trailers. Well, after all, Nolan is reaching for a movie of epic proportions here. And if he just slightly misses, the audience nonetheless was certainly not bored as the second hour came and went with another half-hour ahead of them. In fact, when the credits finally did roll they applauded. And CV, to his mild surprise, joined in.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Constant Viewer: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Constant Viewer would think lines like “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor” would be a whole lot funnier if it weren’t for the fact that countless young women have been taught to treat their unborn children exactly in that manner. Still, in the context of the Troll Market in Hellboy II: The Golden Army it’s a pretty clever line. It’s a pretty clever movie, for that matter, even if director Guillermo del Toro may have spent just a little too much time playing Rock’em Sock’em Robots as a boy.
Hellboy II is, after all, a boy’s movie based on a boy’s comic book. Okay, so as comic book characters go, Hellboy is on the other side of the comic universe from Nancy and Sluggo if for no other reason than he actually is funny occasionally. As is the movie. Ron Perlman reprises his Son of Satan turned government agency good guy (an oxymoron, CV knows) with plenty of the right sort of attitude, which is to say not too damned seriously. The rest of the principals from the first move are back, too, and CV was disappointed only in Jeffery Tambor’s character not being nearly as bureaucratically smarmy as before. As for new team member Johann Kraus, IMDb lists no fewer than three actors participating in what is essentially Robbie the Robot with a case of magical gas. CV notes for his fans, among whom CV is not to be counted, that the Kraus character voice actor is Seth MacFarlane. This explains the gas, at least.
As for the story line, Hellboy and his Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense teammates are called to the rescue when the prince of an ancient magical kingdom attempts to break a truce with humanity by reassembling a crown that will give him control of “70 times 70” supposedly unstoppableRock’em Sock’em Robots Mechanical Warriors. The prince isn’t such a bad fellow, really; he just feels that human beings have taken over too much of the planet. His father and twin sister oppose breaking the truce and a family squabble of mythical proportions ensues. Oh, and there are a couple of love stories kinda, sorta going on in the background, too.
Del Toro obviously has a flare for fantasy yet keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek here even as he puts the characters through their more or less predictable paces. Hardly a great film, Hellboy II manages to keep from taking itself too seriously well over ninety percent of the time and settles sensibly for being a fun ride in Summer Movieland.
Hellboy II is, after all, a boy’s movie based on a boy’s comic book. Okay, so as comic book characters go, Hellboy is on the other side of the comic universe from Nancy and Sluggo if for no other reason than he actually is funny occasionally. As is the movie. Ron Perlman reprises his Son of Satan turned government agency good guy (an oxymoron, CV knows) with plenty of the right sort of attitude, which is to say not too damned seriously. The rest of the principals from the first move are back, too, and CV was disappointed only in Jeffery Tambor’s character not being nearly as bureaucratically smarmy as before. As for new team member Johann Kraus, IMDb lists no fewer than three actors participating in what is essentially Robbie the Robot with a case of magical gas. CV notes for his fans, among whom CV is not to be counted, that the Kraus character voice actor is Seth MacFarlane. This explains the gas, at least.
As for the story line, Hellboy and his Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense teammates are called to the rescue when the prince of an ancient magical kingdom attempts to break a truce with humanity by reassembling a crown that will give him control of “70 times 70” supposedly unstoppable
Del Toro obviously has a flare for fantasy yet keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek here even as he puts the characters through their more or less predictable paces. Hardly a great film, Hellboy II manages to keep from taking itself too seriously well over ninety percent of the time and settles sensibly for being a fun ride in Summer Movieland.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
May I Misquote You On That?
With a tip of the virtual mortarboard to reason’s Nick Gillespie, we find an interesting report from Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed of a study by J. Scott Armstrong and Malcolm Wright with the remarkable conclusion that all scholarly papers and what they laughingly call 'studies' and 'research' in all academic disciplines are entirely made up – plucked from out of the old nether orifices, as it were, by so-called 'scholars' who certainly never bother to read the citations or made-up quotations they litter their papers with, knowing full well that no one is ever going to bother to check and, besides, those earlier studies and so forth are just as phony and filled with errors and fabrications as the new stuff, so why bother?
Or something like that.
Or something like that.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
What's Black And White And Red-Taped All Over?
When pondering whether politicians are being disingenuous or really are as stupid as they appear, remember that these two are not mutually exclusive. So when Dallas County commissioners squabble over whether the phrase “black hole” includes racist overtones and requires an apology, the mind reels at trying to discern whether this is a case of race bating on the part of the white commissioner, the black commissioner or both.
The context here was the loss or misplacing of files in the Dallas County central collecting office. White commissioner Kenneth Mayfield called the office a “black hole,” black commissioner John Wiley Price “corrected” Mayfield and called it a “white hole” and then “Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.” (Note to the incredulous: judges are elected in Texas.)
A black hole, the Dallas Morning News dutifully reported for its public school educated readership, is "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."
Lest you presume that I, being white, naturally side with Mayfield here, it occurs to me that it may be the case, known to him and his colleagues, that the personnel working at that office are predominantly African Americans, in which case his comment might indeed have been an intentionally elliptical racist innuendo. Of course, that credits the man with significantly more wit and verbal talent than the vast majority of politicians at any level have, but it can’t simply be rejected as a theory. I hasten to add that I know nothing at all about any of these men or about Dallas County’s bureaucracy. I do know something about bureaucratic inefficiency, though, and such knowledge includes the fact that incompetence and indifference are equal opportunity qualities commonly possessed by government employees of all shades. (Wait a minute! When I just said "shade," did I mean... oh, never mind.)
In any case, race bating and posturing, whoever may be at fault here, is a tiresome game. Sadly, however, there must still be a strong market for it among voters, else politicians wouldn’t supply it with such tedious regularity. Personally, I am in favor of politicians acting as idiotically as possible as frequently as possible in public. How else will the public ever come to understand what they (and, perforce, you and I) are paying for?
The context here was the loss or misplacing of files in the Dallas County central collecting office. White commissioner Kenneth Mayfield called the office a “black hole,” black commissioner John Wiley Price “corrected” Mayfield and called it a “white hole” and then “Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.” (Note to the incredulous: judges are elected in Texas.)
A black hole, the Dallas Morning News dutifully reported for its public school educated readership, is "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."
Lest you presume that I, being white, naturally side with Mayfield here, it occurs to me that it may be the case, known to him and his colleagues, that the personnel working at that office are predominantly African Americans, in which case his comment might indeed have been an intentionally elliptical racist innuendo. Of course, that credits the man with significantly more wit and verbal talent than the vast majority of politicians at any level have, but it can’t simply be rejected as a theory. I hasten to add that I know nothing at all about any of these men or about Dallas County’s bureaucracy. I do know something about bureaucratic inefficiency, though, and such knowledge includes the fact that incompetence and indifference are equal opportunity qualities commonly possessed by government employees of all shades. (Wait a minute! When I just said "shade," did I mean... oh, never mind.)
In any case, race bating and posturing, whoever may be at fault here, is a tiresome game. Sadly, however, there must still be a strong market for it among voters, else politicians wouldn’t supply it with such tedious regularity. Personally, I am in favor of politicians acting as idiotically as possible as frequently as possible in public. How else will the public ever come to understand what they (and, perforce, you and I) are paying for?
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Constant Viewer: Mongol
Mongol probably isn’t coming to a theater near you or, if it is or already has, it probably isn’t the sort of movie you’re likely to go see unless you’re already the sort of art house film buff who eschews Hollywood flicks and regularly uses words like "eschew."
But Constant Viewer saw it yesterday and, as Mongolian language movies go, CV would give it a thumbs up (if CV had opposable thumbs like those art house snobs, that is) for beautiful cinematography, excellently choreographed and executed battle scenescomplete replete with splattered blood galore and the sort of epic sweep we don’t see all that much ever since David Lean died.
Mongol tells the story of the early years and rise to power of Genghis Khan and, lest there be any doubt, it is not a remake of The Conqueror, clearly the most grotesquely funny miscasting of John Wayne ever. Besides, Mongol is all about the gentle side of Genghis Khan; Khan the family man, law giver and all around good guy. It’s not The Wrath of Khan; it’s Yes, I Khan! (Now, if only CV could figure out some way to work The 39 Steppes into this review.) Better still, since Mongols are not what you’d call chatty people, this is the rare foreign language movie where there is absolutely zero chance the rare dialog and therefore rare subtitles will distract you.
Mongol is in many respects an old-fashioned movie. There are no surprising twists or turns and no flashy CGI special effects. It is, on the other hand, an entirely craftsman-like film and, as all movies should, it takes you somewhere you’ve almost certainly never been. By contrast, an increasing number of this summer’s movies take you where you’ve already been far, far too often.
But Constant Viewer saw it yesterday and, as Mongolian language movies go, CV would give it a thumbs up (if CV had opposable thumbs like those art house snobs, that is) for beautiful cinematography, excellently choreographed and executed battle scenes
Mongol tells the story of the early years and rise to power of Genghis Khan and, lest there be any doubt, it is not a remake of The Conqueror, clearly the most grotesquely funny miscasting of John Wayne ever. Besides, Mongol is all about the gentle side of Genghis Khan; Khan the family man, law giver and all around good guy. It’s not The Wrath of Khan; it’s Yes, I Khan! (Now, if only CV could figure out some way to work The 39 Steppes into this review.) Better still, since Mongols are not what you’d call chatty people, this is the rare foreign language movie where there is absolutely zero chance the rare dialog and therefore rare subtitles will distract you.
Mongol is in many respects an old-fashioned movie. There are no surprising twists or turns and no flashy CGI special effects. It is, on the other hand, an entirely craftsman-like film and, as all movies should, it takes you somewhere you’ve almost certainly never been. By contrast, an increasing number of this summer’s movies take you where you’ve already been far, far too often.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
New Corn Laws Adam Smith Would Also Dislike*
Diamonds are scarce like every other economic good. Their scarcity, however, is vastly exaggerated by those in the business of marketing them as a luxury. If the cure for cancer were discovered tomorrow, however, and if it somehow required natural, i.e., not man-made diamonds, the demand for diamonds would skyrocket and they would legitimately command an even higher price.
Food, by contrast, is not a luxury but a necessity, at least in its most elementary forms. Moreover, the poorer you are, the more you will spend of whatever your income may be on food and the more vulnerable you will be to any sudden and significant increase in its price. Four dollar a gallon gasoline inconveniences middle-class Americans but a 75% increase in global food prices is catastrophic for poor people around the world.
Which is precisely what an unpublished World Bank study is being reported as claiming.
In the rush to report such things (and, yes, the rush to report such reports), it more often than not occurs that sensational conclusions such as this are not only misleadingly taken out of context but, once the data is actually made available, subsequently shown to be unsubstantiated by that data. That needs to be said here, as well.
Still, whatever the figure may be, whether it is 75% or the laughably and unbelievably small 3% the U.S. government has claimed plant-derived fuels contribute to recent food price increases, it takes no more than common sense (never in large supply, I grant you) and a passing grade in intro economics to realize that a new and large demand for a commodity will at the very least temporarily raise its market price. Moreover, at some point, if that demand continues or, worse yet, continues to grow, suppliers will not be able to meet such increased demand at whatever the former market price may have been.
U.S. energy policy (not unlike U.S. health care policy) is criminally broken. I mean “criminal” in a moral, not a legal sense, and yet the fact that alternative bio-fuels like ethanol are being mandated by our elected weasels in Washington artificially skewing both the energy and the food markets and contributing no end to the misery of the world’s poor probably should be a crime of some sort. It is, in fact, simply a forced redistribution of wealth for nothing more than the ephemeral political advantage of those office holders who temporarily placate their constituencies as a result, never mind the unintended and sometimes tragic consequences others must suffer.
But that is the political reality. Starving people in third world nations don’t vote in U.S. elections, whereas Kansas and Nebraska corn farmers do.
(* Yes, I do in fact know that when Adam Smith first wrote about corn laws the word "corn" was a generic term for grains.)
Food, by contrast, is not a luxury but a necessity, at least in its most elementary forms. Moreover, the poorer you are, the more you will spend of whatever your income may be on food and the more vulnerable you will be to any sudden and significant increase in its price. Four dollar a gallon gasoline inconveniences middle-class Americans but a 75% increase in global food prices is catastrophic for poor people around the world.
Which is precisely what an unpublished World Bank study is being reported as claiming.
In the rush to report such things (and, yes, the rush to report such reports), it more often than not occurs that sensational conclusions such as this are not only misleadingly taken out of context but, once the data is actually made available, subsequently shown to be unsubstantiated by that data. That needs to be said here, as well.
Still, whatever the figure may be, whether it is 75% or the laughably and unbelievably small 3% the U.S. government has claimed plant-derived fuels contribute to recent food price increases, it takes no more than common sense (never in large supply, I grant you) and a passing grade in intro economics to realize that a new and large demand for a commodity will at the very least temporarily raise its market price. Moreover, at some point, if that demand continues or, worse yet, continues to grow, suppliers will not be able to meet such increased demand at whatever the former market price may have been.
U.S. energy policy (not unlike U.S. health care policy) is criminally broken. I mean “criminal” in a moral, not a legal sense, and yet the fact that alternative bio-fuels like ethanol are being mandated by our elected weasels in Washington artificially skewing both the energy and the food markets and contributing no end to the misery of the world’s poor probably should be a crime of some sort. It is, in fact, simply a forced redistribution of wealth for nothing more than the ephemeral political advantage of those office holders who temporarily placate their constituencies as a result, never mind the unintended and sometimes tragic consequences others must suffer.
But that is the political reality. Starving people in third world nations don’t vote in U.S. elections, whereas Kansas and Nebraska corn farmers do.
(* Yes, I do in fact know that when Adam Smith first wrote about corn laws the word "corn" was a generic term for grains.)
Friday, July 4, 2008
Avast, Ye Lubbers! And A Happy 4th To Ye! Yarrrr!
No 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door. But 'tis enough. 'Twill serve. -- Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1.
Today, as my little way of celebrating Independence Day and my impending 57th birthday two days from now, I marched bravely (well, semi-bravely) into a Claire’s at the local mall and paid a young woman $20 to pierce my left ear. This admittedly trivial bit of fashion news -- news in the sense that when word gets out that geezers like me are getting their ears pierced now, piercing and earring sales will soon plummet -- requires a bit of background information.
Long, long before Pirates of the Caribbean and even before straight white guys tentatively began to get their ears pierced back in the late seventies, youngster D.A. Ridgely was especially taken with those 1940s swashbucklers he watched on the old black & white RCA console in the living room, especially including Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk. Truth be told, I didn’t know then and don’t know now how to go about buckling a swash or if Flynn even wore an earring in that movie, but somewhere along the way in my childhood I became enamored with the idea of getting a pirate’s earring.
Well, it was the 1950s and not only were there no straight white men with earrings in my neighborhood, there weren’t any straight black men to be seen anywhere sporting earrings nor any gay black or white men, either. Of course, Arlington, Virginia was still segregated in the 1950s, so I didn’t see too many black men of any sort most of the time and as far as gay men went my family was still in denial about Liberace, never mind Uncle Julius who everyone said was a “perennial bachelor.”
Anyway, the point here is that in the working class neighborhood of my childhood expressing an interest in getting an earring would have resulted in even more beatings than my use of the occasional three syllable word already engendered, so dreams of pirate gold faded or were repressed or some such. The years passed with my decidedly non-Jewish body nonetheless still qualified, should I ever convert, for burial in a Jewish cemetery with nary a tattoo and only the orifices that came as original equipment.
Life goes on, Obla Di Obla Da, and my maturing fashion sense drifted increasingly toward what I’ll call Eternal Preppy: Oxford cloth button-down shirts, Harris tweed jackets, that sort of thing. In terms of sartorial consistency, jewelry of any sort hardly enters the picture here, a wedding band and maybe a college signet ring excepted. Well, that’s pretty much how official and professional Washington, D.C. has always dressed and dresses to this day and that’s where I spent the bulk of my professional years.
But those years are over for me, or at least on hiatus, and so I decided what the hell? But this raised a somewhat delicate point; namely, where the hell should a fifty-six year old (for two more days, thank you very much!) man go to have his ear pierced?
I actually considered doing the deed, myself, but besides the fact that I have a yellow streak where my spine should be, the fact is that I am famously bad at doing anything manually. (God made me a little bit smarter than most people, I am sure, simply so I wouldn’t starve to death as a manual laborer.) The thought of having to go to my doctor or show up at an emergency room with an infected ear thanks to my own ineptitude quickly ruled out the do-it-yourself approach. This left shopping mall stores and strip mall tattoo / piercing parlors.
Now, as it happens, I have a cousin Nancy who does (or did, I haven’t seen her in a few years) tattoos professionally. I suspect she’s quite good at it but I don’t know if she does piercings too, and, besides, we no longer live close to each other.
Worse yet, though, and let me hasten to add that I genuinely like my cousin Nancy but, but, but... well, let’s just say that she fits exactly my image of the sort of person I would expect to find running a tattoo parlor and if I didn’t already know her I wouldn’t let her get within ten feet of me with anything sharp in her hand. Actually, now that I come to think of it, even knowing her I wouldn’t let her get that close.
So there I was this morning at Claire’s, their literally closest competition, the Piercing Pagoda, being closed. If it is true, and it is, that I am not your typical walk-in customer for the local tattoo / piercing parlor, it is equally and perhaps even more true that, by virtue of gender and age, I am far from fitting the demographics Claire's aims for.
Look, I’m not the shyest guy around, but let me put it to you like this. When I was in high school and college I smoked a little pot now and then. Experimented, you might say, as long as it’s understood that we're talking about a longitudinal study. Still, the day came when I stopped smoking pot, and that was in no small measure because buying it was no longer a matter of asking a fellow student whose experimental studies were even more rigorous than my own where I could buy an ounce. When I was very young the adults used to try to scare us with images of old men hanging around the school yard trying to sell us drugs, but I was afraid I would become an old man hanging around the school yard trying to buy drugs, so my longitudinal study finally came to an end.
So, okay, I felt foolish walking into that store. A perfectly charming 20-something young woman didn’t so much as bat an eye at my request. Had I been she and someone like me came in and asked to get his ear pierced I have no doubt words like Alzheimer’s would have been crossing my mind. Moreover, I probably couldn’t have resisted offering me a senior citizen discount, one of the many reasons I would have failed at a retail career.
But no, she was very gracious and matter-of-fact. I picked my starter earring; alas, not the pirate’s gold hoop I plan eventually to get (before September 19th, of course!), but a discreet little gold ball and she had me sign and initial various acknowledgments and waivers while she put on surgical gloves, inserted the earring cartridge into what amounts to a plastic rivet gun and, bingo, it was all over. Well, over except for the aftercare demonstration. I tactfully declined to point out to her that poking open the bottle of formerly sterile solution with her ball point pen rendered it no longer sterile, paid for my purchase and wandered off into the day.
Sadly, but to nobody's surprise, I still don’t look anything like Errol Flynn or Johnny Depp. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I already have buyer’s remorse but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, after I get my hoop in six weeks and wear it a while, I don’t take it out and let the hole heal over. I’m certainly not trying to make a statement and, besides, piercings and tattoos long ago stopped being signs of rebellion and uniqueness -- a status they only enjoyed for a very brief period a long time ago. Today, if anything, they are signs of an almost slavish conformity to mass market fashion.
As I said above, when aging Baby Boomers like me decide to do something of this sort, that is in itself sufficient proof of its complete absence of hipness. (See? We even still use words like “hipness”!) But I’m happy with my decision and additionally happy to note it has annoyed my family. Now, if only I can figure out how to get this swash buckled!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Constant Viewer: Hancock
The first thing that must be said about Hancock is that, its misleading trailer aside, this is not a comedy but a serious summer superhero action movie. Okay, so the phrase “summer superhero action movie” probably shouldn’t ever be qualified by “serious.” Still, Constant Viewer thought he’d be seeing something of a send-up of the genre; the superhero equivalent of Last Action Hero (a much maligned and actually very good movie, by the way).
But no, Hancock has its comic moments but most of them are, in fact, on that disingenuous trailer. What you see when the lights go down is the story of a man whose past has been lost and whose present and future, as a result, are in danger of being lost as well. CV isn’t surprised his fellow reviewers have been all over the map about this movie, he really isn’t sure about it, himself.
This much in favor of Hancock can clearly be said. All three principal players, Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman, turn in strong performances in well written, three dimensional roles. (Okay, okay, 3-D by action movies standards, but hey, you know.) Theron’s part is substantially larger than CV expected, a fact which leads to a plot twist that caught CV entirely by surprise. The special effects are fun and it’s actually refreshing to see the ripple effect, if you will, of the typical superhero’s good deed doing.
On the other hand, CV came away thinking that Hancock is a brilliant concept that has been almost indifferently executed. Surely a malcontented alcoholic superhero is a character worthy of more exposition and exploration than he is given here and CV felt almost rushed through Hancock’s rehabilitation so that the movie’s far more conventional story could get going.
Will Smith is an enormous talent with enormous personal appeal. Among his contemporaries, probably only Tom Hanks is as hot and as personable a star. Smith's string of hits since before Independence Day is a simply amazing streak (never mind that CV thought Wild, Wild West sucked), and he’ll probably carry Hancock securely into financial success just on good will alone. Frankly, however, Hancock didn’t come close to the major movie it could or should have been, and that’s a damned shame.
But no, Hancock has its comic moments but most of them are, in fact, on that disingenuous trailer. What you see when the lights go down is the story of a man whose past has been lost and whose present and future, as a result, are in danger of being lost as well. CV isn’t surprised his fellow reviewers have been all over the map about this movie, he really isn’t sure about it, himself.
This much in favor of Hancock can clearly be said. All three principal players, Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman, turn in strong performances in well written, three dimensional roles. (Okay, okay, 3-D by action movies standards, but hey, you know.) Theron’s part is substantially larger than CV expected, a fact which leads to a plot twist that caught CV entirely by surprise. The special effects are fun and it’s actually refreshing to see the ripple effect, if you will, of the typical superhero’s good deed doing.
On the other hand, CV came away thinking that Hancock is a brilliant concept that has been almost indifferently executed. Surely a malcontented alcoholic superhero is a character worthy of more exposition and exploration than he is given here and CV felt almost rushed through Hancock’s rehabilitation so that the movie’s far more conventional story could get going.
Will Smith is an enormous talent with enormous personal appeal. Among his contemporaries, probably only Tom Hanks is as hot and as personable a star. Smith's string of hits since before Independence Day is a simply amazing streak (never mind that CV thought Wild, Wild West sucked), and he’ll probably carry Hancock securely into financial success just on good will alone. Frankly, however, Hancock didn’t come close to the major movie it could or should have been, and that’s a damned shame.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Torture By Any Other Name
I strongly encourage you to read Christopher Hitchens' first-hand account of the experience of waterboarding in Vanity Fair.
When news first broke that U.S. personnel were using this "enhanced interrogation technique," the ensuing discussions broke into two separate questions: (1) are such techniques torture and (2) regardless, are such techniques ever morally justified.
Much to the dismay of my former co-blogger Thoreau, I have steadfastly remained agnostic on the second question, perhaps to the point where the casual reader might have inferred that I was implicitly sanctioning such behavior in our current, endless War On Terrorism™.
No. I was not. I do not.
Nor have I sanctioned or do I sanction the despicable practice of extraordinary rendition in which the U.S. delivers prisoners into the hands of our less punctilious "allies" to be tortured.
I do not, nonetheless, rule out the occasional, exceptional case where the utilitarian calculus is overwhelmingly in favor of taking the risk torture might work versus the more likely harm to come if it is not attempted. Such scenarios are, ex hypothesi, immune to criticisms that they may not or will not work. Sometimes long shots are all you have.
But, as Thoreau has also pointed out repeatedly, the greatest care must be taken to ensure that the exception does not become the rule, that we do not become beguiled by fear into condoning that which is both rationally and morally beneath us as a people.
Returning to the first point, however, I must confess that in my personal, experiential ignorance of such things I considered it at first an open question whether waterboarding did or should qualify as a torture technique. But whatever initial benefit of the doubt we might once have given officials who either denied waterboarding is torture or attempted to hide behind bureaucratic euphemisms has long since passed. (Such officials, it hardly needs to be added, long ago forfeited any entitlement whatsoever to credibility, anyway.)
I have what I think is, under the circumstances, a modest and reasonable recommendation. Anyone who continues to assert or argue that waterboarding does not constitute torture should immediately be afforded the opportunity to experience it first-hand it as Mr. Hitchens did. If, having done so, he continues to wish to assert that waterboarding is not torture, we should consider his opinion for whatever we believe it is worth.
Otherwise -- that is, should he not avail himself of that opportunity -- he should politely but firmly be told to shut the f*ck up.
When news first broke that U.S. personnel were using this "enhanced interrogation technique," the ensuing discussions broke into two separate questions: (1) are such techniques torture and (2) regardless, are such techniques ever morally justified.
Much to the dismay of my former co-blogger Thoreau, I have steadfastly remained agnostic on the second question, perhaps to the point where the casual reader might have inferred that I was implicitly sanctioning such behavior in our current, endless War On Terrorism™.
No. I was not. I do not.
Nor have I sanctioned or do I sanction the despicable practice of extraordinary rendition in which the U.S. delivers prisoners into the hands of our less punctilious "allies" to be tortured.
I do not, nonetheless, rule out the occasional, exceptional case where the utilitarian calculus is overwhelmingly in favor of taking the risk torture might work versus the more likely harm to come if it is not attempted. Such scenarios are, ex hypothesi, immune to criticisms that they may not or will not work. Sometimes long shots are all you have.
But, as Thoreau has also pointed out repeatedly, the greatest care must be taken to ensure that the exception does not become the rule, that we do not become beguiled by fear into condoning that which is both rationally and morally beneath us as a people.
Returning to the first point, however, I must confess that in my personal, experiential ignorance of such things I considered it at first an open question whether waterboarding did or should qualify as a torture technique. But whatever initial benefit of the doubt we might once have given officials who either denied waterboarding is torture or attempted to hide behind bureaucratic euphemisms has long since passed. (Such officials, it hardly needs to be added, long ago forfeited any entitlement whatsoever to credibility, anyway.)
I have what I think is, under the circumstances, a modest and reasonable recommendation. Anyone who continues to assert or argue that waterboarding does not constitute torture should immediately be afforded the opportunity to experience it first-hand it as Mr. Hitchens did. If, having done so, he continues to wish to assert that waterboarding is not torture, we should consider his opinion for whatever we believe it is worth.
Otherwise -- that is, should he not avail himself of that opportunity -- he should politely but firmly be told to shut the f*ck up.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Constant Viewer: Wanted
Wanted relies on so many dubious premises to advance its plot that it’s a good think it moves so quickly you never have time to think about it. Between Angelina Jolie showcasing her ink covered flesh in various stages of dishabille and bullets whizzing in various stages of stop action camera work through human skulls, it's possible, if unlikely, that the average viewer might not think to himself “Hey, this is pretty damned preposterous!”
But it is. Never mind all the "who’s killing who right now and how and why" business that makes up the slender thread of a story that weaves its way back and forth from homicides to hot tubs, complete with plenty of blood for the former and tomb-like wax coatings for the latter. These tubs, we are told, speed the healing process our poor hero seems to need just about every five minutes, never mind they also give us an opportunity to see a buck naked Jolie! (Albeit from a distance and it’s probably a “stunt rear” anyway.).
No, far more preposterous is the underlying premise of a thousand year old guild of weavers – that’s right, weavers! – whose, yeah sure, discovery of a secret code in their cloth led them to convert the guild into a fraternity of assassins. (“Uthor, look at this!” “What do you mean? Those are just mistakes in the weaving, you dolt!” “No, look! In binary code it spells out “Kill Sir Aldo!” “Ohmygawd! That’s amazing! There’s just one thing, though.” “What’s that?” “What the hell is binary code?”)
Now, in the hands of, say, Umberto Eco this is the sort of idea that could lead to a soporific 1,500 page doorstop littered with twenty or thirty obscure quotes per page in equally obscure, dead or dying languages. In the hands of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, however, it’s as good an excuse as any for a popcorn flick that after the first reel almost literally grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. Okay, so your popcorn might get a little blood on it along the way. It’s a small price to pay for the ride, don’t you think?
Bekmambetov, by the way, also directed the sadly under-viewed but beautiful 2004 Night Watch, a gothic action film well worthy of a rental even if you’re not all that into vampires. Back to Wanted, however, Jolie puts in a satisfyingly sex-drenched performance here and the rest of the casting is very strong and, at least to Constant Viewer, a bit of a surprise. CV’s appreciation of James McAvoy rose appreciably after his work in what was really the best picture of 2007 (the Golden Globe folks were right, the Academy was wrong), Atonement.
But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie. Well, CV was wrong and unlike those wimpy film reviewers you’ll find elsewhere he is man enough to admit it. Rounding out the cast we find Morgan Freeman as the head of the assassin’s guild, Thomas Kretschmann as the rogue assassin, Cross, and the recently omnipresent Terence Stamp in a small but important role towards the end of the film. Not a ringer in the lot of them.
If CV were in the star awarding business, Wanted would come in at somewhere around 7 out of 10 stars. (Speaking of which, did you ever wonder why those previously mentioned wimpy film reviewers set up a 4 or 5 star scale and then go and award half-stars? What the hell is a half-star and why don’t they just double their unit of measurement in the first place?) And, of course, those are summer movie stars, not autumn Oscar contender stars, too. Okay, so there are better movies playing right now. But the audience actually applauded several times at the showing CV attended and, let's face it, there are far, far worse movies out there, too. Hey, by all accounts the worst one out there at the moment isn't even directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
But it is. Never mind all the "who’s killing who right now and how and why" business that makes up the slender thread of a story that weaves its way back and forth from homicides to hot tubs, complete with plenty of blood for the former and tomb-like wax coatings for the latter. These tubs, we are told, speed the healing process our poor hero seems to need just about every five minutes, never mind they also give us an opportunity to see a buck naked Jolie! (Albeit from a distance and it’s probably a “stunt rear” anyway.).
No, far more preposterous is the underlying premise of a thousand year old guild of weavers – that’s right, weavers! – whose, yeah sure, discovery of a secret code in their cloth led them to convert the guild into a fraternity of assassins. (“Uthor, look at this!” “What do you mean? Those are just mistakes in the weaving, you dolt!” “No, look! In binary code it spells out “Kill Sir Aldo!” “Ohmygawd! That’s amazing! There’s just one thing, though.” “What’s that?” “What the hell is binary code?”)
Now, in the hands of, say, Umberto Eco this is the sort of idea that could lead to a soporific 1,500 page doorstop littered with twenty or thirty obscure quotes per page in equally obscure, dead or dying languages. In the hands of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, however, it’s as good an excuse as any for a popcorn flick that after the first reel almost literally grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. Okay, so your popcorn might get a little blood on it along the way. It’s a small price to pay for the ride, don’t you think?
Bekmambetov, by the way, also directed the sadly under-viewed but beautiful 2004 Night Watch, a gothic action film well worthy of a rental even if you’re not all that into vampires. Back to Wanted, however, Jolie puts in a satisfyingly sex-drenched performance here and the rest of the casting is very strong and, at least to Constant Viewer, a bit of a surprise. CV’s appreciation of James McAvoy rose appreciably after his work in what was really the best picture of 2007 (the Golden Globe folks were right, the Academy was wrong), Atonement.
But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie. Well, CV was wrong and unlike those wimpy film reviewers you’ll find elsewhere he is man enough to admit it. Rounding out the cast we find Morgan Freeman as the head of the assassin’s guild, Thomas Kretschmann as the rogue assassin, Cross, and the recently omnipresent Terence Stamp in a small but important role towards the end of the film. Not a ringer in the lot of them.
If CV were in the star awarding business, Wanted would come in at somewhere around 7 out of 10 stars. (Speaking of which, did you ever wonder why those previously mentioned wimpy film reviewers set up a 4 or 5 star scale and then go and award half-stars? What the hell is a half-star and why don’t they just double their unit of measurement in the first place?) And, of course, those are summer movie stars, not autumn Oscar contender stars, too. Okay, so there are better movies playing right now. But the audience actually applauded several times at the showing CV attended and, let's face it, there are far, far worse movies out there, too. Hey, by all accounts the worst one out there at the moment isn't even directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Constant Viewer: WALL-E
Constant Viewer wishes he could share in the general enthusiasm over WALL-E. Sure, the animation is of the highest quality, the characters are sympathetic, the story is interesting and the film overall is beautifully executed, and yet... yet ...
Herewith the basic story: We trashed Earth so badly 700 years ago that we simply built a humongous spaceship to take at least some folks off on what was supposed to be a five year luxury cruise while machines remained behind to clean up and the ecosystem began to restore itself. WALL-E is one such robot, specializing in scrap metal compacting and stacking and somehow or otherit has kept itself running he has kept himself ‘alive’ all those years, still putting in a good day’s work but then repairing to his ‘apartment’ where he collects humanalia and watches an old VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! Meanwhile, EVE is a probe sent from the spaceship back to Earth. WALL-E is smitten and, as one thing leads to another, close encounters of the mechanical kind ensue.
Perhaps it was that damned video tape that spoiled it for CV. The thought of even a robot still watching Barbara Streisand (let alone Tommy Tune!) seven centuries from now is just too much to take. Okay, so WALL-E didn’t exactly have Netflix service and I suppose it could have been worse; say, a Pauly Shore movie or The Love Guru. But a little bit of whimsy goes a long way with CV and WALL-E dishes the stuff out by the tractor-load. Another thing. Sure it’s a cartoon, after all, and you’ve got to suspend disbelief at least as far as anthropomorphized robots go, but are we to believe [Warning: teeny-tiny spoilers!] that there has been technological progress in the past seven centuries accounting for the vastly different capabilities of WALL-E, on the one hand, and EVE, on the other, especially when both passengers and crew of the AXIOM have literally been waited on hand and foot by robots all those centuries? And given both how detached from physical contact and how blubberous we had become in deep space, where the hell did all those kiddies come from?
Finally, as amusing and even action packed as the thrilling conclusion is, it also stretches credulity even by movie, even by animated movie standards. Let’s put it this way to avoid any further spoilers: there better be a whole hell of a lot more of the prized possession that leads the ship’s Captain to return to Earth than we have any evidence for whatsoever until the Happily Ever After end credits begin to roll. Besides that, as romantic comedies go, CV gives EVE and WALL-E exactly zero chance of sharing in that Happily Ever After. Come on! Sure they''re both robots but otherwise they have absolutely nothing in common. I give them two, three centuries at most before they split up and there’s a bitter divorce and custody hearing in Robo-Court.
Go, take the kiddies. It’s a fun ride and you’ll get your money’s worth. But anyone who tells you WALL-E is as good as, say, Ratatouille or Finding Nemo, frankly has a screw loose.
Herewith the basic story: We trashed Earth so badly 700 years ago that we simply built a humongous spaceship to take at least some folks off on what was supposed to be a five year luxury cruise while machines remained behind to clean up and the ecosystem began to restore itself. WALL-E is one such robot, specializing in scrap metal compacting and stacking and somehow or other
Perhaps it was that damned video tape that spoiled it for CV. The thought of even a robot still watching Barbara Streisand (let alone Tommy Tune!) seven centuries from now is just too much to take. Okay, so WALL-E didn’t exactly have Netflix service and I suppose it could have been worse; say, a Pauly Shore movie or The Love Guru. But a little bit of whimsy goes a long way with CV and WALL-E dishes the stuff out by the tractor-load. Another thing. Sure it’s a cartoon, after all, and you’ve got to suspend disbelief at least as far as anthropomorphized robots go, but are we to believe [Warning: teeny-tiny spoilers!] that there has been technological progress in the past seven centuries accounting for the vastly different capabilities of WALL-E, on the one hand, and EVE, on the other, especially when both passengers and crew of the AXIOM have literally been waited on hand and foot by robots all those centuries? And given both how detached from physical contact and how blubberous we had become in deep space, where the hell did all those kiddies come from?
Finally, as amusing and even action packed as the thrilling conclusion is, it also stretches credulity even by movie, even by animated movie standards. Let’s put it this way to avoid any further spoilers: there better be a whole hell of a lot more of the prized possession that leads the ship’s Captain to return to Earth than we have any evidence for whatsoever until the Happily Ever After end credits begin to roll. Besides that, as romantic comedies go, CV gives EVE and WALL-E exactly zero chance of sharing in that Happily Ever After. Come on! Sure they''re both robots but otherwise they have absolutely nothing in common. I give them two, three centuries at most before they split up and there’s a bitter divorce and custody hearing in Robo-Court.
Go, take the kiddies. It’s a fun ride and you’ll get your money’s worth. But anyone who tells you WALL-E is as good as, say, Ratatouille or Finding Nemo, frankly has a screw loose.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Forget “Taxation Without Representation” — New D.C. License Plates to Read “Money, Guns & Lawyers”
If you are an able bodied male resident of the U.S. between the ages of 17 and 45, are either a citizen or have declared an intention to become a citizen and are not already a member of the Armed Services (including the Reserves and the National Guard), Title 10 U.S.C. § 311 says you are, whether you know it or not, a member of the “unorganized militia.”
The unorganized militia doesn’t include any women nor does it exclude gay men unless Congress bought into the “gay men are sissies” (hence not "able bodied") stereotype back in 1903 when it passed the Dick Act. I know, I know!
I, by the way, served honorably in the unorganized militia without so much as a single blot on my escutcheon – and you have no idea how hard it was to keep my escutcheon blotless all those years – and yet I received nary so much as an Honorable Discharge – and you have no idea how boring an honorable discharge can be -- from those ingrates at the Department of Defense!
But to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I didn’t come here to talk about the militia, I came to talk about the Second Amendment. As my co-blogger and famed radio personality Jim Babka has already noted today, the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a landmark ruling in the never-friggin’-ending struggle between individual liberties and state control.
At least one friend of mine who shall remain nameless but whose initials are RFC will probably be spending the rest of the day gloating to his many more "progressive" friends. And, indeed, notwithstanding the long, long litany of legitimate criticisms one can level at George W. Bush, lets not kid ourselves into thinking that the decision in Heller would have been the same if a Gore or Kerry nominee were sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
Of course, the reason I began with the business about the militia is because, for those of you who haven’t already memorized the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
As you can readily see, the Founders seemed to think there was or should be some sort of connection between keeping and bearing arms and a well regulated militia. Then again, they also seemed to think a comma was required after “militia,” so maybe we shouldn’t always defer to what they thought.
Still, much of the palaver over gun rights since roughly 1791 has swirled around whatever the nexus between militias and individual rights is or should be, and now the Supremes have finally stepped up to the plate, or firing range as the case may be, and answered the mail. (If you like that mixed metaphor, I have many others, too!)
Here, however, is where I feel required to make a few turd in the punchbowl comments. First, as I tried valiantly but vainly to explain some years ago to an otherwise extremely bright and knowledgeable Michigan law professor who shall also remain nameless, the Critical Legal Studies boys and girls had it right, not in their actual politics (which almost universally sucks) but in their understanding that the language of the law is almost limitlessly flexible and that just about any legal result desired can be effected by those with the power to do so.
What this essentially means is that, even before Marbury v. Madison, there are no correct Supreme Court decisions, nor are there or have there ever been any wrong ones either, even including, for example, Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. They simply are what they are and the wealth of 5 to 4 decisions over the years amply demonstrate that, over and over again, but for the opinion of one person the law of the land could and would have been vastly different. Argue about the morality or the desirability of this decision or that all you want, but save your breath when it comes to whether it was decided "correctly."
Second, never underestimate the power of the state and those who would use the state to do exactly what they want while telling you what to do and what not to do. Remember that when the largely pyrrhic victory against reverse discrimination in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was first announced, the same statists who had originally latched onto the phrase “affirmative action” to justify racial quotas now latched onto Justice Powell’s probably careless assertion that “diversity” was a legitimate state interest. Thanks to Justice O’Connor’s subsequent “reasoning” in Grutter v. Bollinger, equal rights advocates have only twenty years now to try again.
My point – and, yes, I do have one – is simply that the Supreme Court, just like the federal government taken as a whole, has been and continues to be as much a threat to individual liberties as a protector. If you really want to maximize freedom, minimize government.
The unorganized militia doesn’t include any women nor does it exclude gay men unless Congress bought into the “gay men are sissies” (hence not "able bodied") stereotype back in 1903 when it passed the Dick Act. I know, I know!
I, by the way, served honorably in the unorganized militia without so much as a single blot on my escutcheon – and you have no idea how hard it was to keep my escutcheon blotless all those years – and yet I received nary so much as an Honorable Discharge – and you have no idea how boring an honorable discharge can be -- from those ingrates at the Department of Defense!
But to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I didn’t come here to talk about the militia, I came to talk about the Second Amendment. As my co-blogger and famed radio personality Jim Babka has already noted today, the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a landmark ruling in the never-friggin’-ending struggle between individual liberties and state control.
At least one friend of mine who shall remain nameless but whose initials are RFC will probably be spending the rest of the day gloating to his many more "progressive" friends. And, indeed, notwithstanding the long, long litany of legitimate criticisms one can level at George W. Bush, lets not kid ourselves into thinking that the decision in Heller would have been the same if a Gore or Kerry nominee were sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
Of course, the reason I began with the business about the militia is because, for those of you who haven’t already memorized the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
As you can readily see, the Founders seemed to think there was or should be some sort of connection between keeping and bearing arms and a well regulated militia. Then again, they also seemed to think a comma was required after “militia,” so maybe we shouldn’t always defer to what they thought.
Still, much of the palaver over gun rights since roughly 1791 has swirled around whatever the nexus between militias and individual rights is or should be, and now the Supremes have finally stepped up to the plate, or firing range as the case may be, and answered the mail. (If you like that mixed metaphor, I have many others, too!)
Here, however, is where I feel required to make a few turd in the punchbowl comments. First, as I tried valiantly but vainly to explain some years ago to an otherwise extremely bright and knowledgeable Michigan law professor who shall also remain nameless, the Critical Legal Studies boys and girls had it right, not in their actual politics (which almost universally sucks) but in their understanding that the language of the law is almost limitlessly flexible and that just about any legal result desired can be effected by those with the power to do so.
What this essentially means is that, even before Marbury v. Madison, there are no correct Supreme Court decisions, nor are there or have there ever been any wrong ones either, even including, for example, Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. They simply are what they are and the wealth of 5 to 4 decisions over the years amply demonstrate that, over and over again, but for the opinion of one person the law of the land could and would have been vastly different. Argue about the morality or the desirability of this decision or that all you want, but save your breath when it comes to whether it was decided "correctly."
Second, never underestimate the power of the state and those who would use the state to do exactly what they want while telling you what to do and what not to do. Remember that when the largely pyrrhic victory against reverse discrimination in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was first announced, the same statists who had originally latched onto the phrase “affirmative action” to justify racial quotas now latched onto Justice Powell’s probably careless assertion that “diversity” was a legitimate state interest. Thanks to Justice O’Connor’s subsequent “reasoning” in Grutter v. Bollinger, equal rights advocates have only twenty years now to try again.
My point – and, yes, I do have one – is simply that the Supreme Court, just like the federal government taken as a whole, has been and continues to be as much a threat to individual liberties as a protector. If you really want to maximize freedom, minimize government.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
On The Road Again
The Atlantic recently posted a fascinating article by John Staddon entitled “Distracting Miss Daisy.” Staddon, who grew up in Great Britain, argues that the seemingly ubiquitous presence of stop signs and speed limits on U.S. roads actually distracts drivers’ attention, conditions them into relying more on compliance than concentrating on actual road conditions and leads, as a result, to more accidents.
These are the sorts of arguments that warm the cockles of a libertarian’s heart assuming, of course, that libertarian hearts have cockles. Staddon reminded me also of the perfectly obvious point – obvious once made, that is – that because seat belts and air bags reduce the “cost” of unsafe driving, drivers will on average be more reckless as a result. This is called “risk compensation,” but it is really just another example of the notion that, in general, the quantity demanded of any good will rise as the price of that good decreases. Lowering the driver’s odds of injury in case of an accident makes the prospect of such accidents that much more “affordable.” (Volvo drivers excepted, perhaps. I am convinced that Volvo’s much touted safety history is as significantly the result of safety-obsessed owners and drivers as it is of the car’s engineering. Compare the likely Volvo buyer with the likely Porsche buyer. I rest my case.)
Staddon also makes the passing comment (no pun intended) that the use of stop signs at practically every secondary street intersection and our inexplicably popular 4-way stop intersections, however egalitarian they may be, waste a great deal of energy. I have no idea whether there are any studies out there to demonstrate our increased fuel consumption as a result, but anything that might cause a policy war between environmentalists and traffic safety fanatics (MADD springs to mind here) should certainly be explored.
The article is well worth a read, but I’m a bit dubious about the extent to which Staddon’s argument springs from anecdotal evidence of his experiences driving in the U.S. and in Britain. I don’t know what the actual accident rate comparisons would be, but my anecdotal experience of driving in the U.K. [insert lame joke about driving on wrong side of the road here] is that the British drive far more slowly than Americans do and that, outside London and its other major cities, there is far less traffic in Great Britain in the first place.
Moreover, driving behavior is at least partially influenced by culture. I lived in Italy for several years and can testify to the fact that neither the presence nor the absence of traffic signs has anything more than an aesthetic effect on Italian roads and highways. Whatever their intended purpose, they certainly don't influence Italian drivers in the slightest. In Germany, where I also lived, there are only two driving speeds throughout the entire nation: too damned fast and too damned slow. Germans are also indifferent to whether traffic signs are posted or not, having had the rules of the road drilled into them with a ruthless efficiency as part of the drivers’ licensing process. Besides, there’s very little crime in Germany, anyway, because ... wait for it ... it’s against the law.
I will pick one semi-major nit with Staddon’s article. He begins with an example from, of all places, my home town, as follows:
Later in the article he continues:
Now, in the first place, I’ve been taking that curve at closer to 50 mph all my life. More to the point, I’ve spent the bulk of my life residing in the People’s Republic of Arlington. I guarantee that, whatever dubious and quite possibly cooked statistics Arlington’sbureaucratic weasels traffic authorities may have dished up, the fact is that those speed limits are set as they are because the “more cautious residents” in one of Arlington’s most affluent neighborhoods simply wanted to dissuade teenage drivers from racing near their million dollar plus homes. Not that Arlington’s totalitarian nanny state Democrats aren’t safety fanatics, mind you. If just two more speed bumps were added to the typical neighborhood street it would become perfectly flat again.
But I digress. Further proof, I suppose, that I shouldn’t drive and type on my laptop at the same time.
These are the sorts of arguments that warm the cockles of a libertarian’s heart assuming, of course, that libertarian hearts have cockles. Staddon reminded me also of the perfectly obvious point – obvious once made, that is – that because seat belts and air bags reduce the “cost” of unsafe driving, drivers will on average be more reckless as a result. This is called “risk compensation,” but it is really just another example of the notion that, in general, the quantity demanded of any good will rise as the price of that good decreases. Lowering the driver’s odds of injury in case of an accident makes the prospect of such accidents that much more “affordable.” (Volvo drivers excepted, perhaps. I am convinced that Volvo’s much touted safety history is as significantly the result of safety-obsessed owners and drivers as it is of the car’s engineering. Compare the likely Volvo buyer with the likely Porsche buyer. I rest my case.)
Staddon also makes the passing comment (no pun intended) that the use of stop signs at practically every secondary street intersection and our inexplicably popular 4-way stop intersections, however egalitarian they may be, waste a great deal of energy. I have no idea whether there are any studies out there to demonstrate our increased fuel consumption as a result, but anything that might cause a policy war between environmentalists and traffic safety fanatics (MADD springs to mind here) should certainly be explored.
The article is well worth a read, but I’m a bit dubious about the extent to which Staddon’s argument springs from anecdotal evidence of his experiences driving in the U.S. and in Britain. I don’t know what the actual accident rate comparisons would be, but my anecdotal experience of driving in the U.K. [insert lame joke about driving on wrong side of the road here] is that the British drive far more slowly than Americans do and that, outside London and its other major cities, there is far less traffic in Great Britain in the first place.
Moreover, driving behavior is at least partially influenced by culture. I lived in Italy for several years and can testify to the fact that neither the presence nor the absence of traffic signs has anything more than an aesthetic effect on Italian roads and highways. Whatever their intended purpose, they certainly don't influence Italian drivers in the slightest. In Germany, where I also lived, there are only two driving speeds throughout the entire nation: too damned fast and too damned slow. Germans are also indifferent to whether traffic signs are posted or not, having had the rules of the road drilled into them with a ruthless efficiency as part of the drivers’ licensing process. Besides, there’s very little crime in Germany, anyway, because ... wait for it ... it’s against the law.
I will pick one semi-major nit with Staddon’s article. He begins with an example from, of all places, my home town, as follows:
There is a stretch of North Glebe Road, in Arlington, Virginia, that epitomizes the American approach to road safety. It’s a sloping curve, beginning on a four-lane divided highway and running down to Chain Bridge, on the Potomac River. Most drivers, absent a speed limit, would probably take the curve at 30 or 35 mph in good weather. But it has a 25-mph speed limit, vigorously enforced. As you approach the curve, a sign with flashing lights suggests slowing further, to 15 mph. A little later, another sign makes the same suggestion. Great! the neighborhood’s more cautious residents might think.
Later in the article he continues:
Which brings me back to North Glebe Road in Arlington. It turns out that the speed signs do perform an important safety function: in wet weather, many drivers had taken the curve too fast; traffic authorities have substantially reduced accidents on the curve by adding the 15-mph warning sign, and they would be foolish to remove it, absent larger changes in American traffic policy.
Now, in the first place, I’ve been taking that curve at closer to 50 mph all my life. More to the point, I’ve spent the bulk of my life residing in the People’s Republic of Arlington. I guarantee that, whatever dubious and quite possibly cooked statistics Arlington’s
But I digress. Further proof, I suppose, that I shouldn’t drive and type on my laptop at the same time.
Monday, June 23, 2008
George Carlin, 1937-2008
It is said of a man that you cannot know how far he has come unless you know where he began. Perhaps on the occasion of George Carlin’s death this might be said as well about American comedy in the last half century and so also of America, itself.
Carlin’s 1972 Class Clown was the first comedy album I ever bought. It was dedicated “to Leonard Schneider for taking all the risks." But like Schneider, aka Lenny Bruce, Carlin was himself arrested for obscenity, ironically for doing his best known bit from that album, “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” (As far as I can tell, at least when it comes to broadcast television, the list is still valid.)
I remember earlier appearances of Carlin, clean-shaven, dressed in suit and tie and more wacky than cutting-edge, doing guest appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, his Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman, cracking Johnny up rattling off a meteorological jargon packed weather report only to end with “But our radar has also just picked up hundreds of ICBMs heading our way, so I wouldn’t sweat the cold front.”
Carlin changed with the times over the course of the sixties and early seventies and, it could also be said, helped in his own small way to change them. The sort of comedy we tolerate, let alone laugh at, says something about us. Carlin was funnier than Bruce, his “observational” eye for the absurd or the merely comical, especially in matters of language, was much sharper than Seinfeld’s and his “transgressiveness” was far more authentic than 99% of the comics that came along after him.
I don’t think it would be too unfair to describe Carlin’s politics as left-libertarian, though the leftist bent often got the better of his libertarian inclinations whenever the two came into conflict. But it is probably more fair to say that Carlin’s comedy was a study in equal opportunity misanthropy, notwithstanding the fact that some targets are just richer than others. Regardless, his was a unique talent. In any ranking of 20th century comedy genius, a pantheon that would include, for example, Groucho Marx and Richard Pryor, George Carlin would almost certainly make the Top Ten.
Herewith, a 2005 Carlin interview with the Onion A.V. Club.
Carlin’s 1972 Class Clown was the first comedy album I ever bought. It was dedicated “to Leonard Schneider for taking all the risks." But like Schneider, aka Lenny Bruce, Carlin was himself arrested for obscenity, ironically for doing his best known bit from that album, “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” (As far as I can tell, at least when it comes to broadcast television, the list is still valid.)
I remember earlier appearances of Carlin, clean-shaven, dressed in suit and tie and more wacky than cutting-edge, doing guest appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, his Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman, cracking Johnny up rattling off a meteorological jargon packed weather report only to end with “But our radar has also just picked up hundreds of ICBMs heading our way, so I wouldn’t sweat the cold front.”
Carlin changed with the times over the course of the sixties and early seventies and, it could also be said, helped in his own small way to change them. The sort of comedy we tolerate, let alone laugh at, says something about us. Carlin was funnier than Bruce, his “observational” eye for the absurd or the merely comical, especially in matters of language, was much sharper than Seinfeld’s and his “transgressiveness” was far more authentic than 99% of the comics that came along after him.
I don’t think it would be too unfair to describe Carlin’s politics as left-libertarian, though the leftist bent often got the better of his libertarian inclinations whenever the two came into conflict. But it is probably more fair to say that Carlin’s comedy was a study in equal opportunity misanthropy, notwithstanding the fact that some targets are just richer than others. Regardless, his was a unique talent. In any ranking of 20th century comedy genius, a pantheon that would include, for example, Groucho Marx and Richard Pryor, George Carlin would almost certainly make the Top Ten.
Herewith, a 2005 Carlin interview with the Onion A.V. Club.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Constant Viewer: Get Smart
Say what you will about the Cold War, it was fertile soil for entertainment ranging from the literary spy novels of John le Carré to the merely literate but vastly more popular spy novels of Ian Fleming. Back when Sean Connery wasn’t just the best James Bond but the only James Bond and Constant Viewer was trying to trick out a cheap attaché case with concealed “throwing knife” letter openers, television ruthless stole paid homage to the Bond phenomenon with shows that also varied in their artistic quality, ranging from I Spy to The Man From U.N.C.L.E and, of course, Get Smart.
For those of CV’s generation who remember the original show, this weekend’s Get Smart movie includes ample allusions to its roots, especially including a scene toward the end where Agent 86, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) pilfers some needed clothing and transportation from a curiously convenient Smithsonian Institution display. For those a little younger who could care less about shoe phones, there are plenty of laughs. Truth be told, the movie is far funnier than the television show ever was.
Which is a shame, especially considering that two of the genuine comic geniuses of the 1960s and ‘70s, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, were co-creators of the TV series. But television was a far more timid institution back then, and creative talent had significantly less creative control. Still, Don Adams’ original bumbling secret agent with his high pitched voice and running jokes (“Would you believe...?” “Missed it by that much!”) was an iconic bit of ‘60s television. (Younger audiences know the voice, if nothing else, from Adams' later Inspector Gadget.)
Get Smart finds Maxwell Smart as an intelligence analyst for the ultra-secret CONTROL. He wants to be a field agent, of course, like glamorous Agent 23 (Dwayne “I ain’t payin’ to be called the Rock any longer!” Johnson) and Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). But the Chief (Alan Arkin) needs Max’s analytic skills more until CHAOS’s current mastermind, Sigfried (Terrence Stamp) attacks CONTROL headquarters. Sigfried intends to extort billions from the U.S. or else sell nuclear weapons to terrorists and unstable nations, so Max is paired with Agent 99 to thwart the plot and off they go from Washington to Los Angeles by way of Moscow to destroy the weapons cache and then rescue the President.
Of course the plot is merely the vehicle for the funny stuff, of which there is plenty, the romance, of which there is a little, and the action scenes, which are satisfyingly robust for what is, after all, still basically a spoof. Successfully combining such disparate elements into a single movie is no small feat, and CV gives both the writers and director Peter Segal (The Longest Yard) kudos for pulling it off.
Get Smart isn’t a blockbuster-type movie (which is not a prediction of how much business it will actually do) and it certainly isn’t a movie with any pretensions of artistic seriousness, but it’s a damned fine comedy that just about everybody should enjoy.
For those of CV’s generation who remember the original show, this weekend’s Get Smart movie includes ample allusions to its roots, especially including a scene toward the end where Agent 86, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) pilfers some needed clothing and transportation from a curiously convenient Smithsonian Institution display. For those a little younger who could care less about shoe phones, there are plenty of laughs. Truth be told, the movie is far funnier than the television show ever was.
Which is a shame, especially considering that two of the genuine comic geniuses of the 1960s and ‘70s, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, were co-creators of the TV series. But television was a far more timid institution back then, and creative talent had significantly less creative control. Still, Don Adams’ original bumbling secret agent with his high pitched voice and running jokes (“Would you believe...?” “Missed it by that much!”) was an iconic bit of ‘60s television. (Younger audiences know the voice, if nothing else, from Adams' later Inspector Gadget.)
Get Smart finds Maxwell Smart as an intelligence analyst for the ultra-secret CONTROL. He wants to be a field agent, of course, like glamorous Agent 23 (Dwayne “I ain’t payin’ to be called the Rock any longer!” Johnson) and Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). But the Chief (Alan Arkin) needs Max’s analytic skills more until CHAOS’s current mastermind, Sigfried (Terrence Stamp) attacks CONTROL headquarters. Sigfried intends to extort billions from the U.S. or else sell nuclear weapons to terrorists and unstable nations, so Max is paired with Agent 99 to thwart the plot and off they go from Washington to Los Angeles by way of Moscow to destroy the weapons cache and then rescue the President.
Of course the plot is merely the vehicle for the funny stuff, of which there is plenty, the romance, of which there is a little, and the action scenes, which are satisfyingly robust for what is, after all, still basically a spoof. Successfully combining such disparate elements into a single movie is no small feat, and CV gives both the writers and director Peter Segal (The Longest Yard) kudos for pulling it off.
Get Smart isn’t a blockbuster-type movie (which is not a prediction of how much business it will actually do) and it certainly isn’t a movie with any pretensions of artistic seriousness, but it’s a damned fine comedy that just about everybody should enjoy.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Constant Viewer: The Incredible Hulk
Question: Can Constant Viewer resist writing “It isn’t easy being green” in a review of The Incredible Hulk?
Answer: No, but at least we got it out of the way early.
The Incredible Hulk is a vastly better movie than the incredibly bad Hulk , Hollywood’s attempt a mere five years ago to bring Marvel’s not so Jolly Green Giant (There! Got rid of another one!) to the big screen. Put it this way: no movie in which one of the very few highlights was a cameo by Lou Ferrigno, the man who played the Hulk in the late 1970s television series, is destined for cinematic fame. Ferrigno, by the way, and to the obvious appreciation of the audience, reprises his security guard cameo in this later and far better outing. (And, yes, the ubiquitous Stan Lee gets his walk-on, too.)
In fact, there are any number of mini-homages paid to the television series including a brief television clip of the late Bill Bixby who played Dr. David Bruce Banner, a score that includes, if only momentarily, the haunting solo piano theme from the old series and a nicely revised use of the signature tag line, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like ....” Admittedly, none of this has anything to do with whether the film is good or not, but it shows CV that considerable thought and care was taken this time around.
As does the rest of the movie. The original ‘roid rage berserker, the Hulk / Banner (Edward Norton) has gone to ground in Brazil, working as a day laborer and searching for an antidote to his gamma ray created split personality. That part of the origin story is simply assumed this time around, and the movie is better for it. (Between radioactive spiders and gamma rays and whatnot, Marvel is either scaring off future scientists by the droves or encouraging them to play fast and loose with their sciency gismos, anyway.) Meanwhile, evil Army Lt. Gen. Thaddeus “Thunderbold” Ross (William Hurt) searches the globe for Banner, seeking to weaponize the Hulk. He recruits Lt. Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) to capture Banner while his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler), Banner’s pre-Hulk sweetheart, reconnects with the big lug and, as love is wont to do, brings out the best in him just in the nick of time. CV finds fault only with Hurt here, finding his Gen. Ross a less than credible bad guy even by popcorn movie standards.
And a popcorn movie The Incredible Hulk surely is. As with Iron Man’s Iron Monger, the Hulk must have his worthy opponent, so Blonsky drinks the kool-aid, as it were, and turns into the Abomination. (See, kids! Don’t take drugs! At least not drugs the Army gives you!) Combat ensues, oddly enough in front of Harlem’s Apollo Theater. (Perhaps because of the otherwise scarcity of black folks?) Anyway, you know what happens after that and if you don’t CV certainly isn’t going to spoil it for you.
My sons are convinced the groundwork is being laid for an eventual Avengers film, but even in the comic books the Hulk wasn’t exactly much of a team player. At least this weekend he made an excellent excuse not to go see The Happening. As though you needed one.
Answer: No, but at least we got it out of the way early.
The Incredible Hulk is a vastly better movie than the incredibly bad Hulk , Hollywood’s attempt a mere five years ago to bring Marvel’s not so Jolly Green Giant (There! Got rid of another one!) to the big screen. Put it this way: no movie in which one of the very few highlights was a cameo by Lou Ferrigno, the man who played the Hulk in the late 1970s television series, is destined for cinematic fame. Ferrigno, by the way, and to the obvious appreciation of the audience, reprises his security guard cameo in this later and far better outing. (And, yes, the ubiquitous Stan Lee gets his walk-on, too.)
In fact, there are any number of mini-homages paid to the television series including a brief television clip of the late Bill Bixby who played Dr. David Bruce Banner, a score that includes, if only momentarily, the haunting solo piano theme from the old series and a nicely revised use of the signature tag line, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like ....” Admittedly, none of this has anything to do with whether the film is good or not, but it shows CV that considerable thought and care was taken this time around.
As does the rest of the movie. The original ‘roid rage berserker, the Hulk / Banner (Edward Norton) has gone to ground in Brazil, working as a day laborer and searching for an antidote to his gamma ray created split personality. That part of the origin story is simply assumed this time around, and the movie is better for it. (Between radioactive spiders and gamma rays and whatnot, Marvel is either scaring off future scientists by the droves or encouraging them to play fast and loose with their sciency gismos, anyway.) Meanwhile, evil Army Lt. Gen. Thaddeus “Thunderbold” Ross (William Hurt) searches the globe for Banner, seeking to weaponize the Hulk. He recruits Lt. Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) to capture Banner while his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler), Banner’s pre-Hulk sweetheart, reconnects with the big lug and, as love is wont to do, brings out the best in him just in the nick of time. CV finds fault only with Hurt here, finding his Gen. Ross a less than credible bad guy even by popcorn movie standards.
And a popcorn movie The Incredible Hulk surely is. As with Iron Man’s Iron Monger, the Hulk must have his worthy opponent, so Blonsky drinks the kool-aid, as it were, and turns into the Abomination. (See, kids! Don’t take drugs! At least not drugs the Army gives you!) Combat ensues, oddly enough in front of Harlem’s Apollo Theater. (Perhaps because of the otherwise scarcity of black folks?) Anyway, you know what happens after that and if you don’t CV certainly isn’t going to spoil it for you.
My sons are convinced the groundwork is being laid for an eventual Avengers film, but even in the comic books the Hulk wasn’t exactly much of a team player. At least this weekend he made an excellent excuse not to go see The Happening. As though you needed one.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
It's a Bug and a Feature!
Today's (UK) TimesOnline reports "Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol." The scientists in question are the Silicon Valley variety and the bugs in question are the genetically engineered variety. The report goes on:
So it is, or will be. How soon, however, is another question and another month is, to put it mildly, a tad optimistic.
But who knows? That's the thing about technological revolutions. While they do, indeed, build on what has been discovered or invented before, there really are "Eureka!" moments that change everything forever, too. I have little doubt that as physics, engineering, electronics and computer science were the motive forces of 20th century technology, genetic engineering and genetic medicine will be the big stories of the 21st century, certainly revolutionizing medicine and quite possibly revolutionizing energy production, too.
Meanwhile, no word so far on whether scientists have had any luck bioengineering bugs who eat politicians and excrete productive people.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
So it is, or will be. How soon, however, is another question and another month is, to put it mildly, a tad optimistic.
But who knows? That's the thing about technological revolutions. While they do, indeed, build on what has been discovered or invented before, there really are "Eureka!" moments that change everything forever, too. I have little doubt that as physics, engineering, electronics and computer science were the motive forces of 20th century technology, genetic engineering and genetic medicine will be the big stories of the 21st century, certainly revolutionizing medicine and quite possibly revolutionizing energy production, too.
Meanwhile, no word so far on whether scientists have had any luck bioengineering bugs who eat politicians and excrete productive people.
Some Notes on the Social Institution of Marriage
Some of the more vociferous recent discussion over at Positive Liberty – by which I mean at the blog, not in my threads where I largely concern myself with talking pandas and such – surrounds what counts as marriage and what, therefore, counts as an argument for or against marriages of any sort and marriages of every sort. As always, I take a vaguely Wittgensteinian approach to these sorts of questions, which is to say several things.
First, like any other word that did not begin its linguistic life and remain that way as a technically defined term (like, say, “quark”), the way we use that word is going to vary over time and from place to place.
Second, the ways the uses of a word vary will more likely suggest that what these different uses nonetheless have in common is more a matter of ‘family resemblances’ than of some essential core definition. Generally, the more philosophically interesting an ordinary word like “marriage” is, the more likely it is to include within its ambit some ‘second and third cousins’ whose resemblance to each other is vague at best. Moreover, it is likely to be ambiguous (see, e.g., William Empson on ambiguity) in ways that cause a great deal of conceptual confusion.
Third, we have it in our power to give any word a new use. But, that said, we are foolish if we don’t expect that doing so will have consequences and we are prudent to try to think through what those consequences may be.
Moving from Wittgenstein to the more prosaic ways arguments get confused, let’s remember (or at least pretend) that there is a vast difference between the normative and the positive. What I mean is this. If the hypothetical State of Homotopia affords a legal status to some long term homosexual unions that it does not make available to heterosexual unions and it calls those unions marriages, then it is true that homosexual marriage exists in Homotopia but heterosexual marriages do not as a matter of law. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is an entirely different sort of question.
Moreover, what we might want to say about heterosexual unions in Homotopia that, but for the different legal status, act as though they were legally married is up for grabs, too. We can call them marriages-in-fact or quasi-marriages or nonlegal marriages or just plain marriages. But we need to be clear when we say that Henry and Frank and Betty have a family resemblance that Henry and Betty have similar ears, while Betty and Frank’s eyes look similar, etc. We owe it to ourselves and to those who disagree with us to try to be painstaking about that. Otherwise, we end up just spinning our wheels conceptually.
Now, let’s return to that prehistoric, stateless ‘state of nature’ that Rousseau so loved and Hobbes so loathed and movie makers like to stock with dinosaurs and towering black obelisks. Those dioramas at the Smithsonian and all those Indiana Jones movies, aside, we really don’t know how prehistoric people lived because – duh! – they’re prehistorical. Sure, we’ve got the archeological and paleoentological evidence and so forth, but all they add up to are grist for some likely stories.
And here is roughly the story we tell ourselves outside of Vacation Bible School where a different story might be told. Primitive men (and primitive women, too!) were probably hunters / gatherers at first, and the men probably did most of the hunting while the women did most of the gathering. This is because it is easier to care for small children while gathering than while hunting and, besides, testosterone poisoned males had to run off all that steroid induced energy somehow while estrogen enhanced females pondered such things as what sort of ‘treatment’ would dress up the cave opening.
There were, luckily for us, at least enough heterosexual primitive men and women in those early days to make a go of things, species-wise. (This is why heterosexuals enjoy the honorific among some in the gay community of “breeders.”) As the evolutionary biologists tell us, homo sapiens are just like every other species when it comes to being nothing more than a DNA replicating mechanism, so both males and females were hard-wired from even before they were a separate species (or from the very instant God’s intelligent design made them that way, it really doesn’t matter for this particular story) not only to desire sex but to want to see to it that their resulting progeny survived.
But this is a problem for human beings. We have a long gestation period as a species, at least the last part of which would make the independent survival of women doubtful. So would the years and years of care and attention human offspring require in order to survive. You can care for an infant or you can go hunt and gather, but you probably can’t do both at the same time very successfully. Besides, prehistoric women really were attracted to those big handsome lugs walking around yelling “Yabba Dabba Do” and bringing home today’s catch. But Fred, who, let’s face it, was probably doing Betty on the side when Barney wasn’t around, needed to know that Pebbles was really his daughter, so he needed to come to some kind of accommodation with Wilma a bit more permanent than the old clubbing / one night stand scene.
So men and women “naturally” pair-bonded and probably many of them discovered that there were all sorts of unexpected benefits (and detriments) to the arrangement. Did they call it marriage? No, probably not, if only because what we call marriage today is a far more complex and, having gathered millennia of historical baggage, ambiguous concept. But we can meaningfully call what they had marriages if we want to as long as we recognize that what we’re talking about is how our distant cousin Rufus still looks a bit like the rest of the family.
Were there homosexual prehistoric people who pair-bonded for some of those other benefits? Who knows? As Hobbes would have us believe, life was nasty, dull, brutish and short, so even heterosexual relationships probably fell rather short of the contemporary lip service given to concepts like “Till death do we part.” But it is certainly more likely than not that whatever prehistoric homosexual activity occurred did not contribute significantly to the way primitive notions of marriage and family developed into tribes and clans and so forth along the social ‘evolutionary’ ladder to the modern nation state.
Now, unless you ascribe to notions of historical inevitability, which I certainly do not, we can probably agree that the civil, social institution of marriage, its subsequent historical religious context aside, could have developed other than it did or, at the very least, that it could now be structured differently than it is without dire social consequences.
So, for example, I have harped fairly consistently that the notion of marriage as status, derived as so much of contemporary western culture does from feudal society, is a remnant of that feudalism and should be replaced with the notion of marriage as contract. (In a nutshell, a legal status differs from the private legal relationship arising by contract in that, typically, the parties involved cannot rescind or revise the legal relationship except, if at all, with state permission. Citizenship is a status. Unfortunately, so occasionally and for some purposes are what the Supreme Court has sometimes called the suspect classifications of race and, increasingly, gender. It’s a complicated topic better left for now to a more full discussion elsewhere.)
But replacing status marriage with contract marriage, regardless of its historical baggage, need not and should not change the legal status of parent and child as a general and sociologically normative rule. (By which I mean the rebuttable but strong presupposition should be that those who sire and bear children are responsible to raise them and should be accorded the requisite legal authority to do so. A legal authority, I hasten to add, to which there must be limits to protect the legitimate interests of children whose parents significantly neglect or abuse them. And, yes, what counts as significant neglect or abuse is open to debate. Yes, too, we can and do make categorical exceptions such as that sperm bank donors have neither rights nor responsibilities regarding their subsequent progeny.)
It should be noted that, as a practical matter in an age of heterosexual serial monogamy and “blended families,” we have already significantly divorced or uncoupled (puns intended) our notions of marriage from our notions of parenthood. Whether Heather has a mommy and a daddy, two mommies, one daddy or a Hillaresque village raising her really has nothing to do with the matrimonial status of any of Heather’s custodial care providers.
* * * * *
I close this with a few observations regarding Mr. Kuznicki’s concerns regarding what he took to be Jennifer Roback Morse’s argument on homosexual marriage. Note that I do not address or much care what her actual argument is but only his responses. As discussed above, I think that it is almost certainly true that marriage grew up “organically” around childbirth and parenting, “whether children are a part of any individual marriage or not.”
Mr. Kuznicki continues:
First, what is that clear element of risk? That people will stop having or raising children? Put me in the skeptical column. As he mentions, there is a long history of marriage of infertile heterosexual couples with no significant if any adverse consequences. Moreover, among the some more than 90% heterosexual population – I’m not wedded to that percentage; plug in your own number if you wish. – we have quite a bit of evidence of children being “grafted” onto or into heterosexual families by virtue of adoption and blended marriages.
The quintessentially libertarian position, in any case, is that the burden must fall on the state not before it permits some exercise of individual freedom but before it prohibits it. It is, by contrast, the quintessentially conservative position (of the Burkean variety) that tampering with long established traditions and institutions is so inherently risky that we must apply the social equivalent of the precautionary principle before proceeding.
Nonsense. In fact, what history (and biology) teaches is that human society is remarkably resilient and adaptable. (Besides, as the standard objection to Burke and Wm. F Buckley. Jr. goes, wherever it is one decides to stand athwart the world yelling "Stop!" is ultimately entirely arbitrary.)
As to “the usual PC nonsense that we’d all be better off without,” however, I can only add “Hear, hear!”
I end with an admission and a question. The hardly surprising admission is that I am predisposed to intense skepticism regarding those nether regions of academia known as [Insert Your Demographic Grievance Here] Studies departments. I wonder, however, whether there has been much sharing between the Women’s Studies people and the Gay Studies people over the extent to which gay and lesbian sexual behavior (which I have been told is rather different as between gay men and lesbians), as it relates or compares to heterosexual sexual behavior, is better explained in terms of sex or sexual orientation. I think the very likely answer is sex, not sexual orientation, and that, if so, that fact is highly significant to these sorts of discussions.
First, like any other word that did not begin its linguistic life and remain that way as a technically defined term (like, say, “quark”), the way we use that word is going to vary over time and from place to place.
Second, the ways the uses of a word vary will more likely suggest that what these different uses nonetheless have in common is more a matter of ‘family resemblances’ than of some essential core definition. Generally, the more philosophically interesting an ordinary word like “marriage” is, the more likely it is to include within its ambit some ‘second and third cousins’ whose resemblance to each other is vague at best. Moreover, it is likely to be ambiguous (see, e.g., William Empson on ambiguity) in ways that cause a great deal of conceptual confusion.
Third, we have it in our power to give any word a new use. But, that said, we are foolish if we don’t expect that doing so will have consequences and we are prudent to try to think through what those consequences may be.
Moving from Wittgenstein to the more prosaic ways arguments get confused, let’s remember (or at least pretend) that there is a vast difference between the normative and the positive. What I mean is this. If the hypothetical State of Homotopia affords a legal status to some long term homosexual unions that it does not make available to heterosexual unions and it calls those unions marriages, then it is true that homosexual marriage exists in Homotopia but heterosexual marriages do not as a matter of law. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is an entirely different sort of question.
Moreover, what we might want to say about heterosexual unions in Homotopia that, but for the different legal status, act as though they were legally married is up for grabs, too. We can call them marriages-in-fact or quasi-marriages or nonlegal marriages or just plain marriages. But we need to be clear when we say that Henry and Frank and Betty have a family resemblance that Henry and Betty have similar ears, while Betty and Frank’s eyes look similar, etc. We owe it to ourselves and to those who disagree with us to try to be painstaking about that. Otherwise, we end up just spinning our wheels conceptually.
Now, let’s return to that prehistoric, stateless ‘state of nature’ that Rousseau so loved and Hobbes so loathed and movie makers like to stock with dinosaurs and towering black obelisks. Those dioramas at the Smithsonian and all those Indiana Jones movies, aside, we really don’t know how prehistoric people lived because – duh! – they’re prehistorical. Sure, we’ve got the archeological and paleoentological evidence and so forth, but all they add up to are grist for some likely stories.
And here is roughly the story we tell ourselves outside of Vacation Bible School where a different story might be told. Primitive men (and primitive women, too!) were probably hunters / gatherers at first, and the men probably did most of the hunting while the women did most of the gathering. This is because it is easier to care for small children while gathering than while hunting and, besides, testosterone poisoned males had to run off all that steroid induced energy somehow while estrogen enhanced females pondered such things as what sort of ‘treatment’ would dress up the cave opening.
There were, luckily for us, at least enough heterosexual primitive men and women in those early days to make a go of things, species-wise. (This is why heterosexuals enjoy the honorific among some in the gay community of “breeders.”) As the evolutionary biologists tell us, homo sapiens are just like every other species when it comes to being nothing more than a DNA replicating mechanism, so both males and females were hard-wired from even before they were a separate species (or from the very instant God’s intelligent design made them that way, it really doesn’t matter for this particular story) not only to desire sex but to want to see to it that their resulting progeny survived.
But this is a problem for human beings. We have a long gestation period as a species, at least the last part of which would make the independent survival of women doubtful. So would the years and years of care and attention human offspring require in order to survive. You can care for an infant or you can go hunt and gather, but you probably can’t do both at the same time very successfully. Besides, prehistoric women really were attracted to those big handsome lugs walking around yelling “Yabba Dabba Do” and bringing home today’s catch. But Fred, who, let’s face it, was probably doing Betty on the side when Barney wasn’t around, needed to know that Pebbles was really his daughter, so he needed to come to some kind of accommodation with Wilma a bit more permanent than the old clubbing / one night stand scene.
So men and women “naturally” pair-bonded and probably many of them discovered that there were all sorts of unexpected benefits (and detriments) to the arrangement. Did they call it marriage? No, probably not, if only because what we call marriage today is a far more complex and, having gathered millennia of historical baggage, ambiguous concept. But we can meaningfully call what they had marriages if we want to as long as we recognize that what we’re talking about is how our distant cousin Rufus still looks a bit like the rest of the family.
Were there homosexual prehistoric people who pair-bonded for some of those other benefits? Who knows? As Hobbes would have us believe, life was nasty, dull, brutish and short, so even heterosexual relationships probably fell rather short of the contemporary lip service given to concepts like “Till death do we part.” But it is certainly more likely than not that whatever prehistoric homosexual activity occurred did not contribute significantly to the way primitive notions of marriage and family developed into tribes and clans and so forth along the social ‘evolutionary’ ladder to the modern nation state.
Now, unless you ascribe to notions of historical inevitability, which I certainly do not, we can probably agree that the civil, social institution of marriage, its subsequent historical religious context aside, could have developed other than it did or, at the very least, that it could now be structured differently than it is without dire social consequences.
So, for example, I have harped fairly consistently that the notion of marriage as status, derived as so much of contemporary western culture does from feudal society, is a remnant of that feudalism and should be replaced with the notion of marriage as contract. (In a nutshell, a legal status differs from the private legal relationship arising by contract in that, typically, the parties involved cannot rescind or revise the legal relationship except, if at all, with state permission. Citizenship is a status. Unfortunately, so occasionally and for some purposes are what the Supreme Court has sometimes called the suspect classifications of race and, increasingly, gender. It’s a complicated topic better left for now to a more full discussion elsewhere.)
But replacing status marriage with contract marriage, regardless of its historical baggage, need not and should not change the legal status of parent and child as a general and sociologically normative rule. (By which I mean the rebuttable but strong presupposition should be that those who sire and bear children are responsible to raise them and should be accorded the requisite legal authority to do so. A legal authority, I hasten to add, to which there must be limits to protect the legitimate interests of children whose parents significantly neglect or abuse them. And, yes, what counts as significant neglect or abuse is open to debate. Yes, too, we can and do make categorical exceptions such as that sperm bank donors have neither rights nor responsibilities regarding their subsequent progeny.)
It should be noted that, as a practical matter in an age of heterosexual serial monogamy and “blended families,” we have already significantly divorced or uncoupled (puns intended) our notions of marriage from our notions of parenthood. Whether Heather has a mommy and a daddy, two mommies, one daddy or a Hillaresque village raising her really has nothing to do with the matrimonial status of any of Heather’s custodial care providers.
* * * * *
I close this with a few observations regarding Mr. Kuznicki’s concerns regarding what he took to be Jennifer Roback Morse’s argument on homosexual marriage. Note that I do not address or much care what her actual argument is but only his responses. As discussed above, I think that it is almost certainly true that marriage grew up “organically” around childbirth and parenting, “whether children are a part of any individual marriage or not.”
Mr. Kuznicki continues:
Others presumably are welcome to the institution, but there’s a clear element of risk to allowing just anyone in: The long history of allowing infertile heterosexual couples to form marriages is all the evidence we need to continue doing as we’ve always done, and letting them get married. The same can’t be said for same-sex couples.
Homosexual marriage, of course, does not grow up around having children. Children have to be grafted onto a same-sex pairing — by the state — and this in itself is an indication that the government is trying very hard to make equal two things that simply wouldn’t be equal in any other case.
And then there are the thought-police issues, which bother me even more. It’s far from clear to me that the state “must” protect homosexual unions if they are ever to work. But this is indeed how it’s turning out in practice. Much of this protection is just the usual PC nonsense that we’d all be better off without, as in the Canadian case. Yet this sort of protection is supposedly extraneous to any proper marriage contract itself — isn’t it?
First, what is that clear element of risk? That people will stop having or raising children? Put me in the skeptical column. As he mentions, there is a long history of marriage of infertile heterosexual couples with no significant if any adverse consequences. Moreover, among the some more than 90% heterosexual population – I’m not wedded to that percentage; plug in your own number if you wish. – we have quite a bit of evidence of children being “grafted” onto or into heterosexual families by virtue of adoption and blended marriages.
The quintessentially libertarian position, in any case, is that the burden must fall on the state not before it permits some exercise of individual freedom but before it prohibits it. It is, by contrast, the quintessentially conservative position (of the Burkean variety) that tampering with long established traditions and institutions is so inherently risky that we must apply the social equivalent of the precautionary principle before proceeding.
Nonsense. In fact, what history (and biology) teaches is that human society is remarkably resilient and adaptable. (Besides, as the standard objection to Burke and Wm. F Buckley. Jr. goes, wherever it is one decides to stand athwart the world yelling "Stop!" is ultimately entirely arbitrary.)
As to “the usual PC nonsense that we’d all be better off without,” however, I can only add “Hear, hear!”
I end with an admission and a question. The hardly surprising admission is that I am predisposed to intense skepticism regarding those nether regions of academia known as [Insert Your Demographic Grievance Here] Studies departments. I wonder, however, whether there has been much sharing between the Women’s Studies people and the Gay Studies people over the extent to which gay and lesbian sexual behavior (which I have been told is rather different as between gay men and lesbians), as it relates or compares to heterosexual sexual behavior, is better explained in terms of sex or sexual orientation. I think the very likely answer is sex, not sexual orientation, and that, if so, that fact is highly significant to these sorts of discussions.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Constant Viewer: Kung Fu Panda
If you’ve got kids, you’ve probably already seen Kung Fu Panda, but if you haven’t – seen it, that is; Constant Viewer doesn’t care if you have kids -- you could do a lot worse at the bijou this weekend. Its got a star studded voice cast (CV has a hard time thinking of Jack Black as a star, but there it is), humor and pathos (Black strikes CV as a much more sympathetic character as a panda), excellent animation just a step or two short of Pixar’s (which is as good as DreamWorks’ animation is ever going to get), wonderfully choreographed martial arts action sequences (which is to say they’ve stolen from the very best live action kung fu films) and even a decent story. What’s not to like?
Okay, so the story is a little, um, shopworn. Po (Black), the heir apparent of a noodle pushcart business, dreams of being a great warrior. Through dumb luck – or is it fate?!? – he ends up getting picked as the Dragon Warrior over the “more worthy” Furious Five, different animals supposedly representing different martial arts styles. Their teacher, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), must train Po to defeat his former greatest student, now gone bad, the snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane). Wacky antics ensue and, what’s more, just like in an afternoon special, we all learn something about being true to ourselves in the end. Yeah, it’s hokum, but it’s fun hokum and a harmless and very entertaining movie for older children and ‘tweens that adults won't mind watching, either.
Okay, so the story is a little, um, shopworn. Po (Black), the heir apparent of a noodle pushcart business, dreams of being a great warrior. Through dumb luck – or is it fate?!? – he ends up getting picked as the Dragon Warrior over the “more worthy” Furious Five, different animals supposedly representing different martial arts styles. Their teacher, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), must train Po to defeat his former greatest student, now gone bad, the snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane). Wacky antics ensue and, what’s more, just like in an afternoon special, we all learn something about being true to ourselves in the end. Yeah, it’s hokum, but it’s fun hokum and a harmless and very entertaining movie for older children and ‘tweens that adults won't mind watching, either.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Constant Viewer: The Happening
Let this much be said at the outset. In the heretofore consistently downhill career of M. Night Shyamalan, it has finally proven beyond even his uncanny knack for making a worse movie every time out when the last movie in question happens to be Lady in the Water.
Of course, you might be saying to yourself right now that Constant Viewer isn’t being fair here. Lady in the Water barely even qualifies as a movie. It is, at best, the cinematic equivalent of a fairy tale written not for a very young child but by a very young child. And an unusually untalented child, at that. Point taken. Still, it must be admitted that The Happening is not nearly as bad a movie as The Lady in the Water.
Not that The Happening is a good movie, mind you. Like every single one of Shyamalan’s movies after The Sixth Sense (and, okay, maybe Unbreakable), it sucks. In fact, it sucks almost exactly as badly as The Village sucked – CV is the proud possessor of a calibrated suckometer – which raises an interesting question. If we graphically plotted the degree of suckatude of each one of Shymalan’s movies, would we get a parabola? That would mean his next film would suck only as badly as Signs and the next two might actually be watchable and then even good!
The Happening tells the story of a science teacher and his wife who, together with the daughter of a friend and an ever shrinking group of strangers, try to escape from a deadly and rapidly spreading phenomenon. Beginning without warning or explanation in New York City’s Central Park, people suddenly, well, let’s just say they volunteer to become the sort of people Haley Joel Osment’s character could see in The Sixth Sense. Those who do not succumb try to escape.
The movie features comically over-the-top performances by Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel as the troubled young couple and a barely less broad performance by John Leguizamo as the young girl’s father. Of all the principal characters, only the daughter, played by Ashlyn Sanchez, isn’t preposterous.
CV isn’t a huge fan of any of the principal actors here, but this is a writing and directing problem, pure and simple. Laurence Olivier would have come across as a buffoon given the dialog Shyamalan has handed to Wahlberg & Co. Sadly, if consistently, the camera work only adds to the film’s many problems by, for example, trying to build tension with extreme close-ups that come across instead as simply goofy. In fact, this is the sloppiest movie from a purely technical point of view Shyamalan has made yet.
The Happening has its moments of intentional comedy, as well, intended of course to relieve the very little tension that builds as the movie plods along. David Letterman (whose audience is a bit larger than CV’s readership) let it be known the other night that whenever people started to walk backwards in The Happening, “Watch out!” The extent to which you will be shocked when this happens, however, pretty much depends on whether you’ve ever seen any horror picture made in the last 25 years. The movie is rated R, but CV can’t tell you why. There is certainly no sex, precious little profanity and, although there is a fair amount of overt violence, very little of it is gruesome and none is all that gory.
When it’s all over – the happening, that is, not The Happening – those who survive try to figure out what did, in fact, happen. (In that regard, they are not unlike the movie’s hopefully few and far between viewers, who may be wondering, for example, how just about everyone living in Philadelphia committed suicide but the city is repopulated and humming along as though nothing happened a mere three months later?) Could it have been terrorists? A government experiment gone wrong? Or perhaps “nature” has suddenly evolved a new “defense” against it’s “greatest enemy”? And we all know who that enemy would be, don’t we, Captain Planet fans? Either because it’s suppose to be more mysterious and disquieting that way or, CV's bet, because an interesting and plausible explanation would have required more talented writing, The Happening pretty much leaves the viewer guessing. Assuming, that is, that the viewer gives a rodent’s hindquarters by that point.
But wait! There’s (a little bit) more! Is there any good reason to go see The Happening? Well, if you happen to share CV’s view that France is without question the most ungrateful nation on earth, at least the movie ends on a positive note.
Of course, you might be saying to yourself right now that Constant Viewer isn’t being fair here. Lady in the Water barely even qualifies as a movie. It is, at best, the cinematic equivalent of a fairy tale written not for a very young child but by a very young child. And an unusually untalented child, at that. Point taken. Still, it must be admitted that The Happening is not nearly as bad a movie as The Lady in the Water.
Not that The Happening is a good movie, mind you. Like every single one of Shyamalan’s movies after The Sixth Sense (and, okay, maybe Unbreakable), it sucks. In fact, it sucks almost exactly as badly as The Village sucked – CV is the proud possessor of a calibrated suckometer – which raises an interesting question. If we graphically plotted the degree of suckatude of each one of Shymalan’s movies, would we get a parabola? That would mean his next film would suck only as badly as Signs and the next two might actually be watchable and then even good!
The Happening tells the story of a science teacher and his wife who, together with the daughter of a friend and an ever shrinking group of strangers, try to escape from a deadly and rapidly spreading phenomenon. Beginning without warning or explanation in New York City’s Central Park, people suddenly, well, let’s just say they volunteer to become the sort of people Haley Joel Osment’s character could see in The Sixth Sense. Those who do not succumb try to escape.
The movie features comically over-the-top performances by Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel as the troubled young couple and a barely less broad performance by John Leguizamo as the young girl’s father. Of all the principal characters, only the daughter, played by Ashlyn Sanchez, isn’t preposterous.
CV isn’t a huge fan of any of the principal actors here, but this is a writing and directing problem, pure and simple. Laurence Olivier would have come across as a buffoon given the dialog Shyamalan has handed to Wahlberg & Co. Sadly, if consistently, the camera work only adds to the film’s many problems by, for example, trying to build tension with extreme close-ups that come across instead as simply goofy. In fact, this is the sloppiest movie from a purely technical point of view Shyamalan has made yet.
The Happening has its moments of intentional comedy, as well, intended of course to relieve the very little tension that builds as the movie plods along. David Letterman (whose audience is a bit larger than CV’s readership) let it be known the other night that whenever people started to walk backwards in The Happening, “Watch out!” The extent to which you will be shocked when this happens, however, pretty much depends on whether you’ve ever seen any horror picture made in the last 25 years. The movie is rated R, but CV can’t tell you why. There is certainly no sex, precious little profanity and, although there is a fair amount of overt violence, very little of it is gruesome and none is all that gory.
When it’s all over – the happening, that is, not The Happening – those who survive try to figure out what did, in fact, happen. (In that regard, they are not unlike the movie’s hopefully few and far between viewers, who may be wondering, for example, how just about everyone living in Philadelphia committed suicide but the city is repopulated and humming along as though nothing happened a mere three months later?) Could it have been terrorists? A government experiment gone wrong? Or perhaps “nature” has suddenly evolved a new “defense” against it’s “greatest enemy”? And we all know who that enemy would be, don’t we, Captain Planet fans? Either because it’s suppose to be more mysterious and disquieting that way or, CV's bet, because an interesting and plausible explanation would have required more talented writing, The Happening pretty much leaves the viewer guessing. Assuming, that is, that the viewer gives a rodent’s hindquarters by that point.
But wait! There’s (a little bit) more! Is there any good reason to go see The Happening? Well, if you happen to share CV’s view that France is without question the most ungrateful nation on earth, at least the movie ends on a positive note.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Father & Son
At the risk (more like the certainty, actually) of embarrassing him, I write today on the occasion of my older son’s twenty-first birthday.
On June 11, 1987 his mother and I lived in Leesburg, Virginia but, for what now seem obscure reasons, the obstetrics practice my wife was using was at Alexandria Hospital, nearly 50 miles away. My wife, an impatient woman who in her ninth month had taken to skipping up and down the streets of Leesburg to hasten our child’s arrival, woke me shortly before dawn exactly 21 years ago, saying “I think it’s time.”
My response, “Wake me again when you’re sure,” was not well received and I was not permitted to return to sleep. We trundled into the car and made our way to the hospital, my wife obstinately insisting that I, though still quite groggy, do the driving. Once under way, I remember toying with the idea of driving just a bit recklessly: speeding, driving on the shoulder to pass the growing rush hour traffic, that sort of thing.
My plan, born of similar TV and movie scenes, was to yell out to any cop who tried to pull me over, “My wife’s getting ready to deliver, Officer!” He would then, of course, yell back “Follow me,” turn on his siren and escort us to the hospital. Alas, as my wife pointed out, while a policeman might actually provide such escort to the nearest hospital, a 50 mile, high speed escort was pretty much out of the question.
We arrived at the hospital somewhere around 7 a.m. to what they called the “birthing suite.” It was, far and away, the nicest hospital room I’d ever seen and, but for all the medical gear tucked away here and there, it could have passed for a decent room at the Hilton. It cost roughly the same, assuming the Hilton in question was in Tahiti and air fare was included. At this point all sorts of hospital personnel, all women, began to come and go from the room, not talking of Michaelangelo but introducing themselves to my wife, arranging things, hooking up monitors, taking vital signs, rearranging things and pretending that I was not only welcome but somehow useful.
We had, after all, taken the Lamaze classes where I learned that breathing was very important even during childbirth and that I should encourage my wife to continue breathing just in case, in all the excitement, she should forget. There was even a special sort of breathing (in and out, I think) that was supposed to facilitate delivery and minimize labor pains. My wife had, of course, opted for “natural childbirth,” meaning she wanted none of the pain relieving drugs I wished someone there would have offered me.
An hour later, I noticed that among the cadre of scrubs-clad health care providers who traipsed in and out of the room the one sort that had not made an appearance was an obstetrician or, indeed, anyone with an M.D. after her name. If the doctor didn’t think her presence was necessary yet, I wasn’t sure mine was either, especially given the fact that my wife’s labor pains had increased. All that Lamaze nonsense was quickly abandoned and her preferred method of distracting herself from the pain focused on, for example, questioning my parents’ marital status. Worse yet, the staff seemed unanimous in their attitude that I was only getting what was coming to me, after all, and that I should remain in the room as the target of my wife’s increasingly vociferous scorn. This, apparently, was my usefulness.
Shortly before 10 a.m., nature took its course – yes, easy for me to say – and as our son’s head crowned the obstetrician magically appeared, nodded general approval at the state of affairs and, beckoning me to join her, squatted before my wife like a baseball catcher. Only a few moments later, Edward Townsend Ridgely first saw the light of day.
Many of our friends had no idea my wife was even pregnant and were nonplussed at the announcement of Edward’s birth. As mentioned, we were living some 50 miles from where many of our friends lived inside the Capital Beltway. It is hardly our fault more of them didn’t come to visit us more often and we were not hiding the fact so much as simply not sharing it with them. This for a reason requiring a brief digression.
Several years earlier we were all at a large house party. We had been to dozens if not hundreds of such parties before, but something was suddenly very different. As the men gathered in groups to discuss politics and sports and tell embarrassing stories about each other, all the women were talking about children: being pregnant, wanting to be pregnant, having a child, wanting to have a child. It was eerie. It was, I swear to you, the biological equivalent of Pink Floyd’s “Time” resounding throughout the entire distaff half of the gathering.
Flash back now to the spring of 1987. We have removed to Leesburg while many in our cohort have begun to raise a family and, as a result, to spend far less time socializing with old friends. This became a matter of great irritation to a friend who shall remain nameless but whose name rhymes with “con all daily,” which would, as it happens, make a pretty amusing nickname for a journalist. Oblivious to the fairly apparent fact that my spouse was already in her third trimester, he looked at us both and exclaimed “At least you two aren’t spawning!” At that point, of course, it became a game. Several months later, when we presented our son as a fait accompli to him and others, many of them at first refused to believe he was not adopted.
We have a picture of Edward taken only moments after birth. No one looking at that photo would infer he was happy. If anything, he resembled a very, very old man with a very, very bad case of constipation. The latter, I soon discovered, was not far from the truth, but the more important truth was that he was, indeed, a grumpy and willful baby from the moment of his birth. We have often told our second son, seven years younger and the most placid baby imaginable, that we’d have had him much sooner had we known he was going to be so little like his brother. As an infant, Edward almost never took naps and cried himself to sleep nearly ever night. He viewed his crib and any playpen (understandably, to be sure) as a cage to be escaped. For a while there we thought we’d given birth to the reincarnation of Steve McQueen and I had visions of Edward astride his Big Wheels sailing over the child gate, making a break for freedom.
I won’t embarrass him with any more childhood stories. I will say that the ensuing 21 years have been, on balance, richly rewarding. His mother and I love him dearly – which, of course, one is obligated to say and then further obligated to add “as we do all our other children as well!” – but we are also inordinately proud of him. Inordinately in the slightly misused sense of unjustifiably, and unjustifiably in the sense that we can take little credit. Make no mistake, parents are capable of doing great harm to their children, but their ability to improve them is far smaller than they would like to believe. In the perennial nature versus nurture debate, parents of multiple children know that nature often thwarts their best efforts.
Even so, the whole point of civilization is to defeat the uglier aspects of nature and the whole point of parenthood is to civilize; that is, to make one’s children ready to live in civil society. Even though our son does show a disquietingly abysmal lack of practical knowledge, he’ll be fine.
Children really are the only people on earth you genuinely want to do better in life than yourself. Then again, what counts as good, better or best varies more that a little from person to person. When I was, myself, still shy of 21 someone asked me, oddly enough, if I was proud of my father. The question had never occurred to me before.
My father never finished 4th grade and worked at various poorly paying manual and low skill jobs most of his life. We were on the poor side of our working class neighborhood and there were few luxuries of any sort in my childhood. Dad loved my mother without qualification, but she died of cancer when I was fourteen and he was left to raise me alone.
Which he did, remaining in the old neighborhood five more years so I could finish school there and then selling my childhood home (which, unlike almost all of our neighbors, he owned mortgage free) for money to send me to college. I never saw him read a book but I also never saw him break his word, and when he died in his eighties he not only left money in the bank but dozens of people (especially women!) who genuinely loved him and mourned his passing. Yes, I was and am and will always be enormously proud of my father.
The parent / child relationship is asymmetrical: you cannot understand what it is to be a parent merely by having been a child. I want all my children to be healthy and happy and harmless people who are loved and share love freely. Beyond that I am mostly indifferent about the particulars of how they choose to spend their lives and even less concerned about how they make a living.
Not so my suddenly adult son. Aside from rejoicing that he is today old enough to drink and buy firearms, always a salubriously combination, I fear he is too captivated by a prodigious but unfocused ambition. There are worse fates than Alexander the Great’s, but there are better ones, too. Not the least of which is to realize that even if you do manage to win the rat race, all that makes you is the lead rat. Life is not a business.
My father understood that. The very day after I graduated from high school he boarded a jet for Florida and, living on a small disability pension, spent the next twenty years as a widower in a sea of widows who vied for his company. He was a very, very happy man and his name was Edward.
Happy Birthday, Son.
On June 11, 1987 his mother and I lived in Leesburg, Virginia but, for what now seem obscure reasons, the obstetrics practice my wife was using was at Alexandria Hospital, nearly 50 miles away. My wife, an impatient woman who in her ninth month had taken to skipping up and down the streets of Leesburg to hasten our child’s arrival, woke me shortly before dawn exactly 21 years ago, saying “I think it’s time.”
My response, “Wake me again when you’re sure,” was not well received and I was not permitted to return to sleep. We trundled into the car and made our way to the hospital, my wife obstinately insisting that I, though still quite groggy, do the driving. Once under way, I remember toying with the idea of driving just a bit recklessly: speeding, driving on the shoulder to pass the growing rush hour traffic, that sort of thing.
My plan, born of similar TV and movie scenes, was to yell out to any cop who tried to pull me over, “My wife’s getting ready to deliver, Officer!” He would then, of course, yell back “Follow me,” turn on his siren and escort us to the hospital. Alas, as my wife pointed out, while a policeman might actually provide such escort to the nearest hospital, a 50 mile, high speed escort was pretty much out of the question.
We arrived at the hospital somewhere around 7 a.m. to what they called the “birthing suite.” It was, far and away, the nicest hospital room I’d ever seen and, but for all the medical gear tucked away here and there, it could have passed for a decent room at the Hilton. It cost roughly the same, assuming the Hilton in question was in Tahiti and air fare was included. At this point all sorts of hospital personnel, all women, began to come and go from the room, not talking of Michaelangelo but introducing themselves to my wife, arranging things, hooking up monitors, taking vital signs, rearranging things and pretending that I was not only welcome but somehow useful.
We had, after all, taken the Lamaze classes where I learned that breathing was very important even during childbirth and that I should encourage my wife to continue breathing just in case, in all the excitement, she should forget. There was even a special sort of breathing (in and out, I think) that was supposed to facilitate delivery and minimize labor pains. My wife had, of course, opted for “natural childbirth,” meaning she wanted none of the pain relieving drugs I wished someone there would have offered me.
An hour later, I noticed that among the cadre of scrubs-clad health care providers who traipsed in and out of the room the one sort that had not made an appearance was an obstetrician or, indeed, anyone with an M.D. after her name. If the doctor didn’t think her presence was necessary yet, I wasn’t sure mine was either, especially given the fact that my wife’s labor pains had increased. All that Lamaze nonsense was quickly abandoned and her preferred method of distracting herself from the pain focused on, for example, questioning my parents’ marital status. Worse yet, the staff seemed unanimous in their attitude that I was only getting what was coming to me, after all, and that I should remain in the room as the target of my wife’s increasingly vociferous scorn. This, apparently, was my usefulness.
Shortly before 10 a.m., nature took its course – yes, easy for me to say – and as our son’s head crowned the obstetrician magically appeared, nodded general approval at the state of affairs and, beckoning me to join her, squatted before my wife like a baseball catcher. Only a few moments later, Edward Townsend Ridgely first saw the light of day.
Many of our friends had no idea my wife was even pregnant and were nonplussed at the announcement of Edward’s birth. As mentioned, we were living some 50 miles from where many of our friends lived inside the Capital Beltway. It is hardly our fault more of them didn’t come to visit us more often and we were not hiding the fact so much as simply not sharing it with them. This for a reason requiring a brief digression.
Several years earlier we were all at a large house party. We had been to dozens if not hundreds of such parties before, but something was suddenly very different. As the men gathered in groups to discuss politics and sports and tell embarrassing stories about each other, all the women were talking about children: being pregnant, wanting to be pregnant, having a child, wanting to have a child. It was eerie. It was, I swear to you, the biological equivalent of Pink Floyd’s “Time” resounding throughout the entire distaff half of the gathering.
Flash back now to the spring of 1987. We have removed to Leesburg while many in our cohort have begun to raise a family and, as a result, to spend far less time socializing with old friends. This became a matter of great irritation to a friend who shall remain nameless but whose name rhymes with “con all daily,” which would, as it happens, make a pretty amusing nickname for a journalist. Oblivious to the fairly apparent fact that my spouse was already in her third trimester, he looked at us both and exclaimed “At least you two aren’t spawning!” At that point, of course, it became a game. Several months later, when we presented our son as a fait accompli to him and others, many of them at first refused to believe he was not adopted.
We have a picture of Edward taken only moments after birth. No one looking at that photo would infer he was happy. If anything, he resembled a very, very old man with a very, very bad case of constipation. The latter, I soon discovered, was not far from the truth, but the more important truth was that he was, indeed, a grumpy and willful baby from the moment of his birth. We have often told our second son, seven years younger and the most placid baby imaginable, that we’d have had him much sooner had we known he was going to be so little like his brother. As an infant, Edward almost never took naps and cried himself to sleep nearly ever night. He viewed his crib and any playpen (understandably, to be sure) as a cage to be escaped. For a while there we thought we’d given birth to the reincarnation of Steve McQueen and I had visions of Edward astride his Big Wheels sailing over the child gate, making a break for freedom.
I won’t embarrass him with any more childhood stories. I will say that the ensuing 21 years have been, on balance, richly rewarding. His mother and I love him dearly – which, of course, one is obligated to say and then further obligated to add “as we do all our other children as well!” – but we are also inordinately proud of him. Inordinately in the slightly misused sense of unjustifiably, and unjustifiably in the sense that we can take little credit. Make no mistake, parents are capable of doing great harm to their children, but their ability to improve them is far smaller than they would like to believe. In the perennial nature versus nurture debate, parents of multiple children know that nature often thwarts their best efforts.
Even so, the whole point of civilization is to defeat the uglier aspects of nature and the whole point of parenthood is to civilize; that is, to make one’s children ready to live in civil society. Even though our son does show a disquietingly abysmal lack of practical knowledge, he’ll be fine.
Children really are the only people on earth you genuinely want to do better in life than yourself. Then again, what counts as good, better or best varies more that a little from person to person. When I was, myself, still shy of 21 someone asked me, oddly enough, if I was proud of my father. The question had never occurred to me before.
My father never finished 4th grade and worked at various poorly paying manual and low skill jobs most of his life. We were on the poor side of our working class neighborhood and there were few luxuries of any sort in my childhood. Dad loved my mother without qualification, but she died of cancer when I was fourteen and he was left to raise me alone.
Which he did, remaining in the old neighborhood five more years so I could finish school there and then selling my childhood home (which, unlike almost all of our neighbors, he owned mortgage free) for money to send me to college. I never saw him read a book but I also never saw him break his word, and when he died in his eighties he not only left money in the bank but dozens of people (especially women!) who genuinely loved him and mourned his passing. Yes, I was and am and will always be enormously proud of my father.
The parent / child relationship is asymmetrical: you cannot understand what it is to be a parent merely by having been a child. I want all my children to be healthy and happy and harmless people who are loved and share love freely. Beyond that I am mostly indifferent about the particulars of how they choose to spend their lives and even less concerned about how they make a living.
Not so my suddenly adult son. Aside from rejoicing that he is today old enough to drink and buy firearms, always a salubriously combination, I fear he is too captivated by a prodigious but unfocused ambition. There are worse fates than Alexander the Great’s, but there are better ones, too. Not the least of which is to realize that even if you do manage to win the rat race, all that makes you is the lead rat. Life is not a business.
My father understood that. The very day after I graduated from high school he boarded a jet for Florida and, living on a small disability pension, spent the next twenty years as a widower in a sea of widows who vied for his company. He was a very, very happy man and his name was Edward.
Happy Birthday, Son.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
The Ethics of Public Health and Safety Officials
Today’s (UK) Independent Online runs a story entitled "Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits." While noting that the now over 25 year old disease continues to kill “more than all wars and conflicts,” the far more newsworthy (in the sense of new and unusual) part of the story is as follows:
This is a delicate topic. When the “pink disease” was first detected among a handful of homosexual men in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, this originally named Gay Related Immune Deficiency began to attract serious general public attention in the U.S. only after cases of heterosexuals contracting the disease (e.g., female sexual partners of AIDS patients and blood transfusion recipients) were documented. I speak here purely anecdotally, but my impression in the early to mid 1980s was that the U.S. shifted rapidly from a state of almost complete indifference over the plight of homosexuals and IV drug users to a state of panic over their own risk.
Of course, the medical community was mostly ignorant of the nature of HIV/Aids, itself, in the 1980s. But a decade later we had a much better understanding of the retrovirus and, thankfully, much better available treatments. Most relevant here, however, we also had ample epidemiological evidence leading to an almost overwhelmingly obvious conclusion: white, heterosexual male, non-IV drug users -- in other words, the demographic group who wielded the most power in the U.S. and, indeed, in the world – faced just about the smallest real risk of contracting HIV/Aids possible.
Counter-factual arguments being what they are, there is no way of telling whether public support and, more to the point, public funding for HIV/Aids research would have been nearly as extensive in the past quarter century if the general public had known that claims of the universal risk of contracting HIV/Aids were, although true, highly misleading.
Certainly, however, it is at least not unreasonable to suspect that support and funding would not have been as extensive, and perhaps not nearly as extensive, which raises the following interesting ethical question: Is misinforming or misleading the public ever ethically justified on grounds of public health and safety?
By way of addressing this issue somewhat obliquely, let’s ignore for now concerns about giving undeserved ammunition to homophobes and drug warriors whose worldview continues to include the belief that HIV/Aids is God’s punishment for being gay or using drugs. (In passing, I have yet to hear from those who hold that view how it is that God is so piss-poor at punishing junkies and queers that all He can manage to do is put them in a higher risk category?!?) Let’s consider Africa, instead.
A month or so ago, the Onion ran an almost throw away one-liner in the crawl below one of their Onion News Network videos. It read:
Of course, you’d be hard pressed to come up with ways in which sub-Saharan Africa isn’t a basket case, and even if you could magically eliminate HIV/Aids from the continent, Africa’s public health record would still be abysmal. But, no doubt about it, HIV/Aids has been epidemic in Africa’s general population to an extent unlike everywhere else. Why?
Dr. de Cock (I know, I know!) says:
Which is to say that there are not only political and economic differences but also social differences in much of African culture which make the spread of HIV/Aids that much more intractable.
Here is the reality, though. As terrible as HIV/Aids is, it is only one of the terrible ways people die needlessly in Africa or, for that matter, around the world. As reason’s Ronald Bailey recently wrote in a report on the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus Conference, “[T]he number 1 priority identified by the experts in the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus was combating HIV/AIDS. That dropped to number 19 in the 2008 ranking."
Ceteris paribus, the same must be said of the U.S., as well.
There are, to be sure, all sorts of objections that can be raised in good faith to that perspective. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the medical research focusing on a cure for HIV/Aids didn’t yield important findings for other diseases and disorders. I suspect that the rise of HIV/Aids in the U.S. actually contributed positively to the struggle for gay civil and human rights, ironically enough. Whether disingenuous or not, suggesting that the entire population was similarly at risk for HIV/Aids diminished the stigma unfairly attached to those who, for whatever reason, contracted it. These are certainly collateral benefits to the emphasis in HIV/Aids research and public health policy in the past twenty-five or so years.
But every benefit has a cost, and every tradeoff is susceptible to the reasonable question, was that a good deal? Put differently, only progressives – and not very bright progressives, at that – whine at this point “Well, it shouldn’t be a case of ‘Either / Or.’ We should be able to support HIV/Aids research and treatment and address all those other health and safety problems, too. You’re arguing a false dilemma.”
It may be a false “dilemma,” but it is a very real tradeoff. A dollar spent on X is necessarily not a dollar spent on Y.
So, too, with our most recent insanity, the War OnPeople Living In Caves Terrorism and its most strikingly absurd manifestation in commercial air travel. Randomly searching the luggage and persons of geriatric Lutheran women from Minnesota will not increase air safety any more than police All Points Bulletins advising to be on the lookout for suspects “of no particular demographic characteristics” will help apprehend the bad guys. To all intent and purposes, such women are the statistical equivalents of the white, heterosexual male, non-IV drug users in the case of HIV/Aids.
Yes, there’s a real and vitally important difference between describing someone who has actually committed a crime and targeting people simply because there is a statistically significant correlation between their demographic characteristics and the commission of a potential crime. (And, yes, police engage in the sort of racial profiling that no court can prohibit because, for better or worse, it’s the same sort Jesse Jackson and Chris Rock engage in. And, yes, it’s a bad thing and one of the reasons why, comparatively speaking, being black in America still sucks.)
And there’s “always the possibility,” the ever incompetently vigilant TSA will tell you, that Osama Bin Laden could recruit some Prairie Home Companion grandmother to pack some C-4 up her, well, you know to blow up that puddle jumper from Omaha to Ft. Worth, too. Absolutely true. Here are some other possible occurrences: invasion by space aliens, commercially viable cold fusion energy using ordinary household products, George W. Bush winning the Nobel Peace Prize, my wife finally unpacking and sorting the stuff in the garage (Ouch! Sorry, dear!), a Pauly Shore movie not sucking, and, well, you get the picture.
Exaggerating the risk from or to Group A while discounting the risk from or to Group B always has attendant costs, costs that could otherwise be used to address some of those other perhaps even more important health and safety issues. In some cases, those attendant costs have been unconsciously, obscenely high.
So I return to the original question. Is misinforming or misleading the public ever ethically justified on grounds of public health and safety? When public support for a policy objective, any policy objective depends on deliberately misinforming the public, part of the non-economic attendant costs of that lie must surely be harm to the very core of popular sovereignty.
It remains to be seen whether we will abandon the rewards and risks of genuine popular sovereignty for the promise of health, safety and happiness from our paternalistic nannies. Reality is always a mixed bag, but many recent trends suggest we are well down the road toward making a very bad tradeoff.
In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organizations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalized epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.This is, to be sure, not good news for homosexuals or Africans; but it is, that sad fact notwithstanding, well past time the epidemiological realities of HIV/Aids risk were acknowledged. Just in case there is an outbreak of candor going on among public officials (yes, I know), perhaps someone could say the same thing about resources misspent through the generalized screening for possible terrorist suspects to avoid profiling.
This is a delicate topic. When the “pink disease” was first detected among a handful of homosexual men in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, this originally named Gay Related Immune Deficiency began to attract serious general public attention in the U.S. only after cases of heterosexuals contracting the disease (e.g., female sexual partners of AIDS patients and blood transfusion recipients) were documented. I speak here purely anecdotally, but my impression in the early to mid 1980s was that the U.S. shifted rapidly from a state of almost complete indifference over the plight of homosexuals and IV drug users to a state of panic over their own risk.
Of course, the medical community was mostly ignorant of the nature of HIV/Aids, itself, in the 1980s. But a decade later we had a much better understanding of the retrovirus and, thankfully, much better available treatments. Most relevant here, however, we also had ample epidemiological evidence leading to an almost overwhelmingly obvious conclusion: white, heterosexual male, non-IV drug users -- in other words, the demographic group who wielded the most power in the U.S. and, indeed, in the world – faced just about the smallest real risk of contracting HIV/Aids possible.
Counter-factual arguments being what they are, there is no way of telling whether public support and, more to the point, public funding for HIV/Aids research would have been nearly as extensive in the past quarter century if the general public had known that claims of the universal risk of contracting HIV/Aids were, although true, highly misleading.
Certainly, however, it is at least not unreasonable to suspect that support and funding would not have been as extensive, and perhaps not nearly as extensive, which raises the following interesting ethical question: Is misinforming or misleading the public ever ethically justified on grounds of public health and safety?
By way of addressing this issue somewhat obliquely, let’s ignore for now concerns about giving undeserved ammunition to homophobes and drug warriors whose worldview continues to include the belief that HIV/Aids is God’s punishment for being gay or using drugs. (In passing, I have yet to hear from those who hold that view how it is that God is so piss-poor at punishing junkies and queers that all He can manage to do is put them in a higher risk category?!?) Let’s consider Africa, instead.
A month or so ago, the Onion ran an almost throw away one-liner in the crawl below one of their Onion News Network videos. It read:
ABC cancels new reality show Who Wants To Save Africa? after second episode.Indeed. (And, yeah, it’s so painfully true that it is funny.)
Of course, you’d be hard pressed to come up with ways in which sub-Saharan Africa isn’t a basket case, and even if you could magically eliminate HIV/Aids from the continent, Africa’s public health record would still be abysmal. But, no doubt about it, HIV/Aids has been epidemic in Africa’s general population to an extent unlike everywhere else. Why?
Dr. de Cock (I know, I know!) says:
It is the question we are asked most often – why is the situation so bad in sub-Saharan Africa? It is a combination of factors – more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships.
Sexual behavior is obviously important but it doesn't seem to explain [all] the differences between populations. Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency of overlapping sexual partnerships creating sexual networks that, from an epidemiological point of view, are more efficient at spreading infection.
Which is to say that there are not only political and economic differences but also social differences in much of African culture which make the spread of HIV/Aids that much more intractable.
Here is the reality, though. As terrible as HIV/Aids is, it is only one of the terrible ways people die needlessly in Africa or, for that matter, around the world. As reason’s Ronald Bailey recently wrote in a report on the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus Conference, “[T]he number 1 priority identified by the experts in the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus was combating HIV/AIDS. That dropped to number 19 in the 2008 ranking."
Ceteris paribus, the same must be said of the U.S., as well.
There are, to be sure, all sorts of objections that can be raised in good faith to that perspective. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the medical research focusing on a cure for HIV/Aids didn’t yield important findings for other diseases and disorders. I suspect that the rise of HIV/Aids in the U.S. actually contributed positively to the struggle for gay civil and human rights, ironically enough. Whether disingenuous or not, suggesting that the entire population was similarly at risk for HIV/Aids diminished the stigma unfairly attached to those who, for whatever reason, contracted it. These are certainly collateral benefits to the emphasis in HIV/Aids research and public health policy in the past twenty-five or so years.
But every benefit has a cost, and every tradeoff is susceptible to the reasonable question, was that a good deal? Put differently, only progressives – and not very bright progressives, at that – whine at this point “Well, it shouldn’t be a case of ‘Either / Or.’ We should be able to support HIV/Aids research and treatment and address all those other health and safety problems, too. You’re arguing a false dilemma.”
It may be a false “dilemma,” but it is a very real tradeoff. A dollar spent on X is necessarily not a dollar spent on Y.
So, too, with our most recent insanity, the War On
Yes, there’s a real and vitally important difference between describing someone who has actually committed a crime and targeting people simply because there is a statistically significant correlation between their demographic characteristics and the commission of a potential crime. (And, yes, police engage in the sort of racial profiling that no court can prohibit because, for better or worse, it’s the same sort Jesse Jackson and Chris Rock engage in. And, yes, it’s a bad thing and one of the reasons why, comparatively speaking, being black in America still sucks.)
And there’s “always the possibility,” the ever incompetently vigilant TSA will tell you, that Osama Bin Laden could recruit some Prairie Home Companion grandmother to pack some C-4 up her, well, you know to blow up that puddle jumper from Omaha to Ft. Worth, too. Absolutely true. Here are some other possible occurrences: invasion by space aliens, commercially viable cold fusion energy using ordinary household products, George W. Bush winning the Nobel Peace Prize, my wife finally unpacking and sorting the stuff in the garage (Ouch! Sorry, dear!), a Pauly Shore movie not sucking, and, well, you get the picture.
Exaggerating the risk from or to Group A while discounting the risk from or to Group B always has attendant costs, costs that could otherwise be used to address some of those other perhaps even more important health and safety issues. In some cases, those attendant costs have been unconsciously, obscenely high.
So I return to the original question. Is misinforming or misleading the public ever ethically justified on grounds of public health and safety? When public support for a policy objective, any policy objective depends on deliberately misinforming the public, part of the non-economic attendant costs of that lie must surely be harm to the very core of popular sovereignty.
It remains to be seen whether we will abandon the rewards and risks of genuine popular sovereignty for the promise of health, safety and happiness from our paternalistic nannies. Reality is always a mixed bag, but many recent trends suggest we are well down the road toward making a very bad tradeoff.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
"Clinton to Publicly Withdraw, Support Obama"
So, anyway, reads the headline in today's Washington Post coverage.
Move a comma and replace one word, however, and they could just as informatively written:
"Clinton to Privately Withdraw Support, Obama"
Move a comma and replace one word, however, and they could just as informatively written:
"Clinton to Privately Withdraw Support, Obama"
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
I Ponder Again How To Cast My (Meaningless) Vote
Even ignoring the fact that John McCain is barking dog mad, I probably owe my support to Barack Obama. Obama did, after all, manage to wrest the Democratic nomination from its presumptive heiress, a woman who has been working tirelessly to return to the White House even while her husband was facing an eviction notice. I am on record (somewhere) that I’d sooner vote for Osama Bin Laden for President than for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and not only because he looks more fetching in a pantsuit.
People decry big money contributions to political campaigns, and the abomination that is McCain-Feinberg aside, it’s silly to argue that free speech isn’t more valuable to those who can afford to buy more of it. And yet, as reason's Matt Welch recently nailed it:
Make no mistake, folks. Obama would pocket the 37 cents, too. (And, yes, so would McCain.) Still, Obama has done what, let’s be candid, no white male candidate could have done and kept America, at least for now, from the clutches of that harridan from Hell. Surely, the only person in America today who hates Barack Obama more than Hillary Clinton is Bill, who knows first-hand how little time presidents have to keep track of their spouses.
Obama now faces the vexing decision whether to invite Hillary onto the Democratic ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate. This should be a no-brainer: better to have Hillary plotting your defeat for four months than your incapacitation for four years. Don’t kid yourself, if Obama doesn’t give the VP slot to Hillary she will (continue to) work behind the scenes to ensure his defeat. If he cuts her loose now, her rabid supporters will temporarily feel betrayed, but most of them will come back come November unless McCain somehow manages between now and then to morph into a black woman. Specifically, one named Oprah.
That’s no knock on Obama. I don’t personally see him as a token candidate. But many of those who worship at the altar of superficial diversity will surely not pass up the opportunity to vote for an otherwise more-or-less acceptable candidate who is also “a historic first.” Besides, in the cold light of dawn, Hillary’s supporters will swallow hard and realize that, if nothing else, from their point of view Obama is the lesser of two (male) evils.
Which, given how Bush will be leaving the nation after eight painful years, he is. McCain is the Anti-Kant, the candidate of Perpetual War, and a man whose legendary anger (even greater than Hillary’s!) and occasionally aberrant behavior should be raising psychological flags all over the place. Still, the notion of Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress is at least as frightening as Republican control. Maybe, just maybe, even more so.
Look, ceteris paribus, if the government is going to piss away trillions anyway, it might as well piss them away on domestic programs. And Lord knows the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been an abysmal policy failure at the cost not only of trillions of dollars but of far too high a butcher’s bill paid in blood and death. But wars do come to an end and armies of occupation are eventually brought home.
Not so the ever ratcheting advance of the welfare state and the intrusion of the federal government into every nook and cranny of domestic life. The worst thing about the way George Bush has expanded the raw power of the presidency isn’t how he has used that power, bad as that is; it is that no one who follows him in office will relinquish such power willingly. Governments, or more precisely those who at any given point happen to be governing, don’t cede power. No Democratic Congress, so long out of veto-proof power, is likely to even consider the need to “rein in” an Obama Administration. (That is, by the way, about the only really good thing I can think of about a Hillary Clinton Administration – she’d be absolutely guaranteed to alienate even a 100% Democratic Congress within the first 100 days.)
I fear that my only hope at this point is that the Republicans, despite themselves, manage to control one house of Congress next year. It isn’t likely, but otherwise I have to hope we replace an imbecile with a maniac in the Oval Office. Some choice!
People decry big money contributions to political campaigns, and the abomination that is McCain-Feinberg aside, it’s silly to argue that free speech isn’t more valuable to those who can afford to buy more of it. And yet, as reason's Matt Welch recently nailed it:
[Is] there a political tic more nauseating, more unintentionally telling, than a stump speecher [sic] wowing the crowd with heartwarming tales about how some poor Iraq vet, or three-job-having pensioner, or one-armed child eating Puppy Chow straight from the bag, pooled together enough pennies with their last usable fingers to donate to a fucking millionaire's political campaign? If any of these stories are remotely true, it says something mildly worrying about the priorities of certain po' folk, but something straight-out monstrous about the egos of politicians who'd rather pocket the 37 cents (and the infinitely more valuable anecdote) than fold the copper back into the helping hand and say "You know what? I've got enough, thanks. Anything I can help you with?"
Make no mistake, folks. Obama would pocket the 37 cents, too. (And, yes, so would McCain.) Still, Obama has done what, let’s be candid, no white male candidate could have done and kept America, at least for now, from the clutches of that harridan from Hell. Surely, the only person in America today who hates Barack Obama more than Hillary Clinton is Bill, who knows first-hand how little time presidents have to keep track of their spouses.
Obama now faces the vexing decision whether to invite Hillary onto the Democratic ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate. This should be a no-brainer: better to have Hillary plotting your defeat for four months than your incapacitation for four years. Don’t kid yourself, if Obama doesn’t give the VP slot to Hillary she will (continue to) work behind the scenes to ensure his defeat. If he cuts her loose now, her rabid supporters will temporarily feel betrayed, but most of them will come back come November unless McCain somehow manages between now and then to morph into a black woman. Specifically, one named Oprah.
That’s no knock on Obama. I don’t personally see him as a token candidate. But many of those who worship at the altar of superficial diversity will surely not pass up the opportunity to vote for an otherwise more-or-less acceptable candidate who is also “a historic first.” Besides, in the cold light of dawn, Hillary’s supporters will swallow hard and realize that, if nothing else, from their point of view Obama is the lesser of two (male) evils.
Which, given how Bush will be leaving the nation after eight painful years, he is. McCain is the Anti-Kant, the candidate of Perpetual War, and a man whose legendary anger (even greater than Hillary’s!) and occasionally aberrant behavior should be raising psychological flags all over the place. Still, the notion of Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress is at least as frightening as Republican control. Maybe, just maybe, even more so.
Look, ceteris paribus, if the government is going to piss away trillions anyway, it might as well piss them away on domestic programs. And Lord knows the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been an abysmal policy failure at the cost not only of trillions of dollars but of far too high a butcher’s bill paid in blood and death. But wars do come to an end and armies of occupation are eventually brought home.
Not so the ever ratcheting advance of the welfare state and the intrusion of the federal government into every nook and cranny of domestic life. The worst thing about the way George Bush has expanded the raw power of the presidency isn’t how he has used that power, bad as that is; it is that no one who follows him in office will relinquish such power willingly. Governments, or more precisely those who at any given point happen to be governing, don’t cede power. No Democratic Congress, so long out of veto-proof power, is likely to even consider the need to “rein in” an Obama Administration. (That is, by the way, about the only really good thing I can think of about a Hillary Clinton Administration – she’d be absolutely guaranteed to alienate even a 100% Democratic Congress within the first 100 days.)
I fear that my only hope at this point is that the Republicans, despite themselves, manage to control one house of Congress next year. It isn’t likely, but otherwise I have to hope we replace an imbecile with a maniac in the Oval Office. Some choice!
Sunday, June 1, 2008
"Ron Paul? Wasn't He Famous Once?"
NEWSWEEK's Daniel Stone recently interviewed Ron Paul, who has dropped off the event horizon lately. Well, it's understandable, what with all the worldwide hoopla over the Libertarian Party's nomination of Bob Barr and, let's face it, the far more entertaining mini-series of the Democratic Party's determination to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. (Speaking of which, let me take this opportunity to say there's no truth whatsoever to the rumor Hillary Clinton will soon argue that, for the sake of constitutional historicity, Barack Obama's African American delegates' should only count 3/5ths each.)
Meanwhile, the "presumptive nominee," John Barking Mad McCain is busying himself interviewing prospective lackeys, taking advice on how best to avoid mentioning either President Bush or the fact that they belong to the same party during the actual campaign and tending to variouscoronation nomination details. Not much of a story there. Oh sure, he got in a bit of trouble with an former minister, too, but it couldn't really hurt him because no one seriously thinks John McCain believes in any power greater than himself.
My guess is that, viewing the Republican National Convention in purely entertainment terms -- and how could you not? -- Paul and his zany minions will provide most of the interesting sidebar stories. Aside from implicitly denying that unspent campaign money will be used on hookers and blow, other news from the interview includes the fact that Paul plans a major rally at some point during the convention to "present views and try to … get in on the committees to vote on platforms" and that he won't endorse another candidate.
Paul has always been a mixed bag as far as being libertarianism's poster boy goes, but that would necessarily be true of any flesh-and-blood national candidate. On balance, he's been a positive force in what has otherwise been and continues to be an abysmally depressing election cycle. Better still, we haven't heard the last of him yet.
Meanwhile, the "presumptive nominee," John Barking Mad McCain is busying himself interviewing prospective lackeys, taking advice on how best to avoid mentioning either President Bush or the fact that they belong to the same party during the actual campaign and tending to various
My guess is that, viewing the Republican National Convention in purely entertainment terms -- and how could you not? -- Paul and his zany minions will provide most of the interesting sidebar stories. Aside from implicitly denying that unspent campaign money will be used on hookers and blow, other news from the interview includes the fact that Paul plans a major rally at some point during the convention to "present views and try to … get in on the committees to vote on platforms" and that he won't endorse another candidate.
Paul has always been a mixed bag as far as being libertarianism's poster boy goes, but that would necessarily be true of any flesh-and-blood national candidate. On balance, he's been a positive force in what has otherwise been and continues to be an abysmally depressing election cycle. Better still, we haven't heard the last of him yet.
Gas Rationing ... (wait for it... ) In Iran?
I don’t know about the ‘Arab Street,’ but according to Azadeh Moaveni, the ‘Iranian Bus’ thinks a U.S. Invasion might not be such a bad thing. Of course, the woman on the bus doesn't really mean it, but what U.S. citizen these days hasn’t wistfully imagined some Deus Ex Machina could magically cure us of our incompetent leadership? (As opposed, let’s be clear, to merely replacing it with new lying weasels next January.) Why should Iran be any different?
Look, I’m no Sharon Stone or anything like that, but maybe it’s karma that we get not only the government we deserve but the enemies we deserve, as well. How else to explain, for example, that the Iranian government controls bread loaf prices but not loaf sizes? Now there’s brilliant economic policy for you. Then, too, how else to explain their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, possibly the only foreign leader George Bush might actually beat fair and square in a game of Trivial Pursuit, even the International Edition.
Anyway, the Moaveni piece is well worth a read. We are more than a generation away now from the fall of the Shah. Most Iranians today have no memories of the Pahlavis on the Peacock Throne or their SAVAK enforcers, but plenty of bad memories of life under the Ayatollahs. Maybe if we just left these people alone ....
Look, I’m no Sharon Stone or anything like that, but maybe it’s karma that we get not only the government we deserve but the enemies we deserve, as well. How else to explain, for example, that the Iranian government controls bread loaf prices but not loaf sizes? Now there’s brilliant economic policy for you. Then, too, how else to explain their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, possibly the only foreign leader George Bush might actually beat fair and square in a game of Trivial Pursuit, even the International Edition.
Anyway, the Moaveni piece is well worth a read. We are more than a generation away now from the fall of the Shah. Most Iranians today have no memories of the Pahlavis on the Peacock Throne or their SAVAK enforcers, but plenty of bad memories of life under the Ayatollahs. Maybe if we just left these people alone ....
Thursday, May 29, 2008
This Gives "Extra-Vehicular Activity" A Whole New Meaning
You think you have a hard time getting a plumber when you need one? Pity the poor astronauts awaiting a spare part to fix the toilet on the international space station. "Okay, that'll be $37.50 for the pump, $150 labor and $2,000,000 for the service call." (I admit it. I don't know how much each flight of the the space shuttle Discovery actually costs and just pulled a figure from my... well, never mind that.)
But my favorite quote from the story is as follows:
But my favorite quote from the story is as follows:
The space station's Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.
Top 10 Surprises in McClellan White House Book
From the home office at the Crawfish Ranch, the Top Ten surprises in Scott McClellan's new White House exposé, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, are:
10. Cabinet meetings scheduled in president’s calendar as “keggers”
9. George Stephanopoulos’s secret stash of hair grooming products left behind podium includes "industrial strength mousse"
8. Flight jacket worn during “Mission Accomplished” speech borrowed from Indiana Jones
7. Karl Rove quit in disgust when polls showed public thought Cheney more evil
6. After hunting accident, Vice President Cheney’s wife Lynne heard to comment “His gun still fires? News to me.”
5. No one on White House staff has ever seen vice president between dawn and sundown
4. President overjoyed that The Hottie & The Nottie finally released on DVD
3. Staff panicked when president rehearsed Axis of Evil speech and kept saying “Iraq, Iran and North Dakota”
2. Secret Service code name for Vice President? “Mr. Burns”
And the number one surprise in Scott McClellan’s new White House “Tell All”:
1. President still pondering last minute third term run
10. Cabinet meetings scheduled in president’s calendar as “keggers”
9. George Stephanopoulos’s secret stash of hair grooming products left behind podium includes "industrial strength mousse"
8. Flight jacket worn during “Mission Accomplished” speech borrowed from Indiana Jones
7. Karl Rove quit in disgust when polls showed public thought Cheney more evil
6. After hunting accident, Vice President Cheney’s wife Lynne heard to comment “His gun still fires? News to me.”
5. No one on White House staff has ever seen vice president between dawn and sundown
4. President overjoyed that The Hottie & The Nottie finally released on DVD
3. Staff panicked when president rehearsed Axis of Evil speech and kept saying “Iraq, Iran and North Dakota”
2. Secret Service code name for Vice President? “Mr. Burns”
And the number one surprise in Scott McClellan’s new White House “Tell All”:
1. President still pondering last minute third term run
Friday, May 23, 2008
Far From The Madding Crowd: A Libertarian Convention Non-Report
My preferred on-the-spot reporter would have been Triumph the Insult Comic or, failing that, Yakov Smirnoff (“In former Soviet Union, people actually give rat’s ass about Libertarian Party!”) Still, Reason’s David Weigel is doing a workmanlike job covering the 2008 Libertarian Convention, and you might want to check out Reason’s coverage if you, unlike me, care.
Picking the next Libertarian Party candidate is like being a battered wife fresh from the shelter walking into a pool room and flirting with the guy with the most prison tats and the fewest teeth. Forgive me if I don’t swoon at the prospect of Bob Barr, Mike Gravel or any of the other candidates carrying the tattered banner of libertarianism into the certain obscurity that yet again awaits it.
I will say, however, that if the ideological zealots who make up actual LP activists hand the nomination to a political careerist and opportunist like Barr because they think it will give the party added exposure, both sides to that bargain will have gotten exactly what they deserve. Barr will never again be taken as seriously as he once was (a good thing) and the LP will (correctly) be perceived as the political equivalent of a Star Trek convention. Not a good thing but not so bad, either. Hey, is that Penn Jillette over there? Oh, never mind, it's just Drew Carey again.
Picking the next Libertarian Party candidate is like being a battered wife fresh from the shelter walking into a pool room and flirting with the guy with the most prison tats and the fewest teeth. Forgive me if I don’t swoon at the prospect of Bob Barr, Mike Gravel or any of the other candidates carrying the tattered banner of libertarianism into the certain obscurity that yet again awaits it.
I will say, however, that if the ideological zealots who make up actual LP activists hand the nomination to a political careerist and opportunist like Barr because they think it will give the party added exposure, both sides to that bargain will have gotten exactly what they deserve. Barr will never again be taken as seriously as he once was (a good thing) and the LP will (correctly) be perceived as the political equivalent of a Star Trek convention. Not a good thing but not so bad, either. Hey, is that Penn Jillette over there? Oh, never mind, it's just Drew Carey again.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Constant Viewer: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the first movie of 2008 Constant Viewer intends to go back and see again. We are, just in case you haven’t noticed, in a period in the movies where the woolly mammoths of yesteryear are making one last charge before, well, you know about woolly mammoths, don’t you?. We saw it with Bruce Willis and (twice, no less) with Sylvester Stallone and we are seeing it now with Harrison Ford, reprising the role that really made him a major star (no, children, it wasn’t playing Han Solo that made Ford a star) for the first time in nearly two decades.
Stallone did a far better job than CV expected, mostly by not actually embarrassing himself in Rocky Balboa, while Willis delivered one of the best action pictures of his career in Live Free or Die Hard. With a George Lucas story and Steven Spielberg behind the camera, so, amazingly, does Ford. This is one of the few movies in quite a while CV just plain had fun watching, almost from beginning to end.
Almost. Rumored claims that Ford did much of his stunt work are clearly preposterous. Judging from the amount of footage in the first several reels where Indy is running in a medium shot with his face hidden in shadows, CV seriously doubts Ford did anything strenuous or dangerous, and the movie gets off to a slow start. By the time he takes refuge in the refrigerator in a suspiciously life-sized doll house on a military reservation, though, you know you’re in the hands of masters who carry you on a thrill ride for the next hour and a half with just enough comic relief and inside jokes along the way to let you catch your breath and enjoy the entire ride. The movie deserves its PG-13 rating (not that this will keep idiot parents from bringing their toddlers) but anyone old enough to ride an adult roller coaster should go see it.
There is an entire generation of moviegoers who have never seen an Indiana Jones movie on the big screen before. Nowadays, CGI makes any screen image possible and thereby makes none of them magical any longer, and it’s hard to describe how audiences felt when the first Star Wars movie was released in 1977 or when Raiders Of The Lost Ark was released in 1981. In fact, in terms of film history, Raiders really only updated the black and white Saturday afternoon “cliffhanger” serials of the 40s and 50s, but then that’s like saying modern medicine has only updated the practices of leeching and bleeding patients. What Lucas and Spielberg and Ford managed to create in the late 70s and early 80s truly was magical. Best of all, they haven’t forgotten how.
Stallone did a far better job than CV expected, mostly by not actually embarrassing himself in Rocky Balboa, while Willis delivered one of the best action pictures of his career in Live Free or Die Hard. With a George Lucas story and Steven Spielberg behind the camera, so, amazingly, does Ford. This is one of the few movies in quite a while CV just plain had fun watching, almost from beginning to end.
Almost. Rumored claims that Ford did much of his stunt work are clearly preposterous. Judging from the amount of footage in the first several reels where Indy is running in a medium shot with his face hidden in shadows, CV seriously doubts Ford did anything strenuous or dangerous, and the movie gets off to a slow start. By the time he takes refuge in the refrigerator in a suspiciously life-sized doll house on a military reservation, though, you know you’re in the hands of masters who carry you on a thrill ride for the next hour and a half with just enough comic relief and inside jokes along the way to let you catch your breath and enjoy the entire ride. The movie deserves its PG-13 rating (not that this will keep idiot parents from bringing their toddlers) but anyone old enough to ride an adult roller coaster should go see it.
There is an entire generation of moviegoers who have never seen an Indiana Jones movie on the big screen before. Nowadays, CGI makes any screen image possible and thereby makes none of them magical any longer, and it’s hard to describe how audiences felt when the first Star Wars movie was released in 1977 or when Raiders Of The Lost Ark was released in 1981. In fact, in terms of film history, Raiders really only updated the black and white Saturday afternoon “cliffhanger” serials of the 40s and 50s, but then that’s like saying modern medicine has only updated the practices of leeching and bleeding patients. What Lucas and Spielberg and Ford managed to create in the late 70s and early 80s truly was magical. Best of all, they haven’t forgotten how.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Constant Viewer: Prince Caspian
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian continues C.S. Lewis’s well known series of Christian apologetics thinly veiled as children’s literature and it does so neither better nor worse than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which Constant Viewer also didn't like. Constant Viewer finds it difficult to be objective about the merits of these films because he frankly loathed the books when he (tried to) read (some of) them as a youth. Then again, sentimental drivel of a vaguely Christian nature abounded in Constant Viewer’s youth back when every television series trotted out some sort of saccharine Holiday Special in late December. (And the holiday in question wasn’t Hanukkah, either, Bubala.) These days, by contrast, religious ignorance in America is so rampant that one of CV’s friend's teenage children had never heard the story of Noah and the Ark. It’s gotten so bad that homophobes yelling “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” have to stop and explain who Adam and Eve were.
Sorry. CV ‘went away’ there for a moment, but he’s back now. Where were we? Oh yes, Prince Caspian. There’s certainly no reason not to take the kiddies to see Prince Caspian. The battle scenes aren’t gory -- they aren’t all that exciting, either, sadly enough -- and even the scene in the tomb when the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) tries to escape probably isn’t frightening enough to scare the little ones. Unlike the original books, the movie doesn’t flog the Christian mythos and symbolism incessantly. On the other hand, for all the supposedly magical mystery of Narnia, Prince Caspian is a surprisingly lifeless and nearly joyless affair, three parts medieval warfare to one part talking animals. Worse yet, what few interesting special effects there are seem almost gratuitously trotted out at the end, making the trailer a bit of a ‘bait and switch’ ploy in CV’s opinion. Aslan the Great Lion of Narnia (voice acted by Liam Neeson) has little more than a cameo at the finale, mostly just to summon the walking trees and water giant in the nick of time to vanquish the human army’s catapults. Frankly, there isn’t enough here to sustain nearly two and a half hours and CV wished he had a catapult to hop on, better to flee the theater, Iron Man like, as quickly as possible no matter how painful the landing.
Sorry. CV ‘went away’ there for a moment, but he’s back now. Where were we? Oh yes, Prince Caspian. There’s certainly no reason not to take the kiddies to see Prince Caspian. The battle scenes aren’t gory -- they aren’t all that exciting, either, sadly enough -- and even the scene in the tomb when the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) tries to escape probably isn’t frightening enough to scare the little ones. Unlike the original books, the movie doesn’t flog the Christian mythos and symbolism incessantly. On the other hand, for all the supposedly magical mystery of Narnia, Prince Caspian is a surprisingly lifeless and nearly joyless affair, three parts medieval warfare to one part talking animals. Worse yet, what few interesting special effects there are seem almost gratuitously trotted out at the end, making the trailer a bit of a ‘bait and switch’ ploy in CV’s opinion. Aslan the Great Lion of Narnia (voice acted by Liam Neeson) has little more than a cameo at the finale, mostly just to summon the walking trees and water giant in the nick of time to vanquish the human army’s catapults. Frankly, there isn’t enough here to sustain nearly two and a half hours and CV wished he had a catapult to hop on, better to flee the theater, Iron Man like, as quickly as possible no matter how painful the landing.
Pssst! Hey, Can You Keep A Secret?
What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination:
1. George W. Bush is an idiot.
2. As controlled unclassified information goes, #1 isn't much of a secret. Still, try not to let it slip out beyond, oh, say, our solar system lest galactic embarrassment ensue.
3. "Controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination" sounds simultaneously pompous and stupid, like Dean Wormer's "double secret probation" except it's even more like how Otter would explain to Flounder where the emergency beer keg was hidden.
4. Reading any biography of the young George W. Bush makes points #1 through #3 not only obvious but unnecessary. That is all. Over and out.
1. George W. Bush is an idiot.
2. As controlled unclassified information goes, #1 isn't much of a secret. Still, try not to let it slip out beyond, oh, say, our solar system lest galactic embarrassment ensue.
3. "Controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination" sounds simultaneously pompous and stupid, like Dean Wormer's "double secret probation" except it's even more like how Otter would explain to Flounder where the emergency beer keg was hidden.
4. Reading any biography of the young George W. Bush makes points #1 through #3 not only obvious but unnecessary. That is all. Over and out.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Forget Money, Guns and Lawyers; Send Credit Cards, XBox and Hookers!
And speaking of promising political careers, I give you 13 year old Ralph Hardy who ordered a duplicate credit card on his father's account and used it for a $30,000 spree with friends that ended in a Texas hotel room with $1,000 hookers playing Halo on XBox.
What separates Ralph and his friends from your run-of-the-mill juvenile thieves, you ask? When the prostitutes balked because he and his friends seemed so young, they told the women they were "people of restricted growth" and that refusing them would be illegal discrimination against the disabled!
I am in awe.
What separates Ralph and his friends from your run-of-the-mill juvenile thieves, you ask? When the prostitutes balked because he and his friends seemed so young, they told the women they were "people of restricted growth" and that refusing them would be illegal discrimination against the disabled!
I am in awe.
"Come on, try it! Hey, the first grant's free!"
Bravo to Chardon Township, Ohio for turning down $10,000 in disaster aid from FEMA following a March snowstorm. Township Trustee Chuck Strazinsky explained it was a typical snowstorm unworthy of federal aid and that the money should be reserved for true emergencies, whereas Township Trustee Steve Borowski disagreed, saying help from the federal government shouldn't be turned down. Alas, Mr. Borowski probably has the far more promising political career.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Clinton Endorses Obama?
No, not really.
For now, just file under Stories That Wouldn't Surprise Us:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today in a surprise announcement just hours before the Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin, former President William Jefferson Clinton declared his total and enthusiastic support for Barack Obama to become the Democratic Party nominee for president, effectively becoming the last significant member of the Democratic Party aside from Hillary herself to endorse Obama.
“You know I love Hillary,” Clinton explained, “and short of remaining faithful to her sexually I’d do just about anything for her; but politics is the art of the possible and, quite frankly, that bitch just won’t hunt, if you know what I mean.”
In a brief question and answer period following his announcement, Clinton said he thought poor white voters would vote for Obama over McCain in November. “After all, they voted for me twice, so this time all they have to do is vote for a black president who’s, you know, actually black.”
Clinton also said the chances of Hillary being offered or accepting the Vice Presidential nomination were “about as likely as me giving Kenneth Starr ‘a Monica,’” and he flatly denied rumors that his endorsement came at the price of Obama naming him for the first Supreme Court vacancy. When asked as he was leaving the stage why then there were numerous recent reports of him interviewing female law students “for possible clerkship openings,” Clinton simply smiled and declined comment.
For now, just file under Stories That Wouldn't Surprise Us:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today in a surprise announcement just hours before the Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin, former President William Jefferson Clinton declared his total and enthusiastic support for Barack Obama to become the Democratic Party nominee for president, effectively becoming the last significant member of the Democratic Party aside from Hillary herself to endorse Obama.
“You know I love Hillary,” Clinton explained, “and short of remaining faithful to her sexually I’d do just about anything for her; but politics is the art of the possible and, quite frankly, that bitch just won’t hunt, if you know what I mean.”
In a brief question and answer period following his announcement, Clinton said he thought poor white voters would vote for Obama over McCain in November. “After all, they voted for me twice, so this time all they have to do is vote for a black president who’s, you know, actually black.”
Clinton also said the chances of Hillary being offered or accepting the Vice Presidential nomination were “about as likely as me giving Kenneth Starr ‘a Monica,’” and he flatly denied rumors that his endorsement came at the price of Obama naming him for the first Supreme Court vacancy. When asked as he was leaving the stage why then there were numerous recent reports of him interviewing female law students “for possible clerkship openings,” Clinton simply smiled and declined comment.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Nothing But Net (Gain)?
I'm still waiting to hear a valid negative (against) a kid accepting a scholarship, free education, at an early point in his life. – Howard Avery, whose 8th grade son Michael committed to the University of Kentucky’s basketball program this month.
The obvious “valid negative” here, Mr. Avery, is that neither you nor your son knows what the fair market price of his talents really are. You might, after all, be selling (out) way too low.
Child athletes, be they gymnasts, tennis players or whatever, pose a special problem for our culture, especially given how much we pretend that much of our interference in each other’s lives is “for the children.” Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. There have probably been few cultures that have hated children more than ours does, going out of its way to regulate and micromanage their every activity, forcing them to spend over a decade in penal-like
But I digress. So what if professional athletes and prostitutes both ruin their bodies for the amusement of total strangers? We do still outlaw child prostitution, quaintly enough, but child athletics are not only encouraged, they are actively promoted. What better way to get your kid into Princeton or Stanford on a free ride than to find some niche sport you can start them in at around three or four in hopes of having them recruited for the varsity team? And if the kid shows enough talent for a possible pro career? Hey, who wants to waste years grooming a kid to go to Johns Hopkins Med School when the NBA draft is right around the corner? And nobody ever sued a starting point guard for malpractice, either. (Point shaving, on the other hand, well, you know.)
Children pose a special problem for libertarians. Put a bit more amusingly, a friend of mine says that libertarianism is an adults-only activity. On the one hand, children are not and cannot be regarded as their parents’ property. On the other hand, the only viable recourse against child neglect and abuse is the state. Obviously, reasonable people can disagree as to what exactly should count as actionable abuse or neglect. So, for that matter, can unreasonable people, people who contend a mere spanking or letting kids eat junk food are sufficiently egregious to warrant state intervention. But surely even the most adamantly purist libertarian would admit that, for example, children are entitled to the same level of police protection against assault that adults are and that it shouldn’t matter in such cases that the assailant is a parent. (Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, might have a problem with child free-riders, here, but I digress again.)
I have little concern whether Michael Avery goes on to play for Kentucky someday though I do hope the kid manages to get some good advice from a sports attorney between now and then, too. I hope he doesn’t get injured along the way or that he manages to get someone to pay for some heavy insurance against such an accident keeping him from a lucrative pro career. I don’t even know if such insurance is possible, but if it is I hope he gets it. And maybe, just maybe all this is not only what the kid really wants but, far more unlikely, he is sufficiently mature to be making these sorts of decisions. In any case, I wish him well.
As for the Kentuckys and the sports fathers of the world, it would be nice if I could wave a magic wand and forever prohibit any of them from contending that what they were doing was really “for the children.”
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Gene R. Nichol at William & Mary
I’ve said before that the values of the College are not for sale. Neither are ours. – College of William & Mary former president Gene R. Nichol
I rarely post specific biographical information on the internet, but I will make an exception today and note that I am one of the less distinguished graduates of the College of William & Mary in Virginia. I was therefore a recipient this morning of a lengthy and, in my opinion, typically self-serving letter from its now former President Gene R. Nichol. Mr. Nichol's contract the Board of Visitors has declined to renew and who has therefore resigned, effective immediately.
Along with many others, I actively opposed renewal of Mr. Nichol’s contract. I would probably have just silently applauded the BOV’s decision but for certain assertions in his resignation letter. As Mr. Nichol seeks even now to portray himself as a righteous martyr to the forces of troglodyte conservativism, I think it is necessary that some of us who opposed his continued tenure to respond to that portrayal. Mr. Nichol contends his ouster resulted from “four decisions, or sets of decisions,” as follows:
1) His removal of the cross from the Wren Chapel;
2) His refusal to prohibit a “Sex Workers’ Art Show” at the College;
3) His efforts to increase funding to attract lower income students; and
4) His efforts to “increase diversity” at the College.
Taking these in reverse order and obviously speaking only for myself, I will say first that I am largely unaware of whatever efforts Mr. Nichol actually made to “increase diversity” at William & Mary, but if it involved any sort of affirmative action style preferential hiring policy for faculty or staff, then I would have opposed it. I share to some extent Mr. Nichol’s dismay at seeing that among “35 senior administrators of the College [there were] no persons of color.” But the only morally proper solution to such situations is the removal of legal barriers which will then lead to greater diversity occurring as a matter of course over time. In any case, I am also unaware whether whatever he did or tried in this regard stirred much controversy. As far as I know, such efforts didn’t receive much coverage in the press or internet and they certainly didn’t have anything to do one way or the other with my opposition to his presidency.
I frankly applaud anything Mr. Nichol did to increase scholarship funding for low income students. I suspect that his real motives for those efforts were, as they so obviously are in so many other institutions of higher education, merely the attempted end-run around increasing legal barriers to the reverse discrimination of affirmative action. Even so, I believe it is entirely proper that the College seek out on a colorblind basis and provide adequate funding to permit academically worthy, low income students the opportunity to attend.
As for Mr. Nichol’s “[refusal], now on two occasions, to ban from the campus a program funded by our student-fee-based, and student-governed, speaker series,” good for him. If Nichol were being let go simply because of his defense of the students’ right to spend their own student activity fee money on the Sex Workers’ Art Show, I would rise to his defense. As I understand it, the show in question, pornographic or not, is political in nature and thus unquestionably worthy of First Amendment protection. But for all I care, W&M students could have Tijuana style donkey shows on campus. Hell, they could hold the shows in the Wren Chapel -- just please remove the cross first! -- and I’d support their right to do so just as readily. (I recognize, of course, that I'm almost certainly in the minority among Nichol's opponents on this point.)
Finally, in his own words, President Nichol:
altered the way a Christian cross was displayed in a public facility, on a public university campus, in a chapel used regularly for secular College events -- both voluntary and mandatory -- in order to help Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious minorities feel more meaningfully included as members of our broad community. And it was certainly motivated by the desire to extend the College’s welcome more generously to all. We are charged, as state actors, to respect and accommodate all religions, and to endorse none. The decision did no more.
Well, no. In the first place, the (oddly third person) sentence “The decision was likely required by any effective notion of separation of church and state,” is a fine bit of legal weasel-wording. "Likely required"? "Any effective notion"? No one prior to Nichol ever raised a legal challenge in the entire hundred year history of this 300 year old university’s state control. In the second place, if the existence of the cross constituted “endorsement” of Christianity, then why doesn’t the altar, itself? Whatever others may think about a Christian cross sitting on a (still consecrated) Christian altar in what was once a private university, there is scant evidence that non-Christian students somehow felt... what? That they were only meaninglessly included until Gene Nichol came along? In fact, the cross was routinely removed whenever any secular or non-Christian activity took place in the Chapel, anyway, and had been from as long as I, at least, can remember.
There were other highly questionable decisions and actions in his thankfully brief tenure, not the least being his silly and, I believe, hypocritical battle to try to preserve the school’s athletic logo (an Indian feather) and the decision to place an English professor as temporary chair of the philosophy department. Regarding the former, Mr. Nichol apparently was insufficiently concerned about the extent to which this Indian feather logo, far more prominently displayed throughout the College than the Wren cross, might make Native American students feel less than "meaningfully" included.
But it wasn’t Mr. Nichol’s substantive decision regarding the Wren Chapel cross or any particular one of his other such decisions, per se, that led me to oppose his continued tenure as president of the College. Instead, it was Mr. Nichol's leadership style and, more troubling, his character, at least as evidenced by his behavior throughout these controversies. He unilaterally had the cross removed almost literally in the dead of night without so much as a thought for those who might be troubled by his decision, let alone the manner of its accomplishment. No doubt he genuinely did not expect nearly the reaction he got. In any case, his behavior afterwards, especially including his subsequent, highly questionable account of his knowledge regarding the impact of that decision on a pending gift to the College made it more and more clear to me that Mr. Nichol was not the sort of person best suited to lead the first college in the nation to institute an honor code of conduct for students.
Moreover, it became clear that Mr. Nichol came to William & Mary apparently convinced that he and those who agreed entirely with him were in sole possession of the moral high ground against any and all opposition. At least that is the strong impression he gave to this alumnus. Here is one final example of that mindset, a paragraph from his resignation letter:
I add only that, on Sunday, the Board of Visitors offered both my wife and me substantial economic incentives if we would agree “not to characterize [the non-renewal decision] as based on ideological grounds” or make any other statement about my departure without their approval. Some members may have intended this as a gesture of generosity to ease my transition. But the stipulation of censorship made it seem like something else entirely. We, of course, rejected the offer. It would have required that I make statements I believe to be untrue and that I believe most would find non-credible. I’ve said before that the values of the College are not for sale. Neither are ours.
Stipulation of censorship? Apparently, this law professor would have us believe he does not understand the substantive legal (never mind moral) differences between a contractual quid pro quo, one that occurs in litigation settlements all the time, and censorship.
Apparently, also, Mr. Nichol believes that the BOVs decision was “based on ideological grounds.” And perhaps it was. Not being privy to their deliberations, I could not say. I’m not so naïve as to think that some, perhaps many of Nichol’s opponents are not, in fact, paleoconservatives of the first order or that some delegates in Virginia’s state legislature didn’t make untoward threats, veiled or otherwise, to the Board of Visitors. In a just world, the Commonwealth would have approximately 20% say in William & Mary’s affairs, as that is roughly the current percentage of state support. But this isn’t a just world and Nichol, who is no stranger to politics, knows it isn’t.
One more point needs to be made. Both Gene Nichol and his family were subjected to entirely unwarranted and utterly irrelevant personal attacks (e.g., crude and cruel comments about Mr. Nichol’s weight) throughout the course of his controversial administration. Such attacks and those who made them are despicable.
Parts of the blogosphere are already chattering about this turn of events and, as usual, both the Right and the Left are grossly oversimplifying the situation. Suffice it to say here that for at least some of his critics, the controversy that dogged Gene Nichol was not so much about crosses or feathers or diversity or sex workers or any of those specific issues but finally about the man, himself. It is far too facile to frame the controversy exclusively in terms of liberal or conservative politics or policies.
But if Gene Nichol now becomes a poster child for liberalism, then it is liberalism that has been most poorly served.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Oh, There He Is Over There!
Sigh....
In yet another example of ego triumphing over prudence, I have accepted a kind invitation from Jason Kuznicki to join him and his colleagues over at Positive Liberty. Accordingly, I expect to post one or two pieces a week there until either (1) I find even that schedule too demanding or (2) more likely, my newfound colleagues decide to un-invite me.
In any case,gluttons for punishment my loyal readers -- rumored to number well into the low double digits -- are similarly invited to join us.
In yet another example of ego triumphing over prudence, I have accepted a kind invitation from Jason Kuznicki to join him and his colleagues over at Positive Liberty. Accordingly, I expect to post one or two pieces a week there until either (1) I find even that schedule too demanding or (2) more likely, my newfound colleagues decide to un-invite me.
In any case,
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Where's Ridgely?
“That’s not writing, that’s just typing.” Truman Capote (on Jack Kerouac)
Thanks to readers who took notice of my continued absence and inquired as to my health. All is well, as far as that goes. The simple fact is, however, that the blog was eating up an enormous amount of my time, a fact I didn’t fully appreciate until I took a break this August. Since going cold turkey from the blogosphere, I’ve found that the increase in my time, e.g., reading books (remember books?) rose dramatically, as has the time I’ve devoted to more, um, careful and considered writing.
Specifically, and as I predicted in my first blog entry here, “the extent to which I labor to fill this virtual space is inversely proportional to the extent I write anything in return for which I might ever see, as P.G. Wodehouse would say, ‘the necessary.’” Something has to give and I’m afraid it has to be the blog. While I would be happy to consider returning to blogging in a group effort such that I did not feel compelled to churn out new material on a daily basis, I am unwilling for the present to continue in a solo capacity, especially since I am now convinced that the trade-off between the quantity and quality of my efforts was sacrificing too much of the latter for the former.
I will leave this site up for another month or so. Thanks, again, to well wishers and, for that matter, to my silent readers.
- DAR
Thanks to readers who took notice of my continued absence and inquired as to my health. All is well, as far as that goes. The simple fact is, however, that the blog was eating up an enormous amount of my time, a fact I didn’t fully appreciate until I took a break this August. Since going cold turkey from the blogosphere, I’ve found that the increase in my time, e.g., reading books (remember books?) rose dramatically, as has the time I’ve devoted to more, um, careful and considered writing.
Specifically, and as I predicted in my first blog entry here, “the extent to which I labor to fill this virtual space is inversely proportional to the extent I write anything in return for which I might ever see, as P.G. Wodehouse would say, ‘the necessary.’” Something has to give and I’m afraid it has to be the blog. While I would be happy to consider returning to blogging in a group effort such that I did not feel compelled to churn out new material on a daily basis, I am unwilling for the present to continue in a solo capacity, especially since I am now convinced that the trade-off between the quantity and quality of my efforts was sacrificing too much of the latter for the former.
I will leave this site up for another month or so. Thanks, again, to well wishers and, for that matter, to my silent readers.
- DAR
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Housekeeping - July 2008
Throughout most of August, I shall either be on the road or on the beach, though in neither case at all like Jack Kerouac's nor, I pray, Nevil Shute's characters. Neither beach vacations nor road trips lend themselves to blogging, but little goes on in August, anyway, as politicians and journalists alike pay homage to one of the three great French contributions to Western civilization; namely, taking a full month off from what are largely phoney-baloney jobs, anyway. (The other two contributions, by the way, are baguettes and Pepe Le Peu.) It would be churlish of me not to follow suit, so new postings here will be few and far between until, at long last, schools re-open and the NFL season begins. See you then.
______
Retired Header ‘Quotes’:
March 2007 – “Pay no attention to that man behind the veil!” – the Wizard of Rawls
April 2007 – “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one may still post on the internet.” – Ludwig Blogenstein
May 2007 - “Don't follow leaders, watch the blog hit meters!" - Blog Dylan
June 2007 - "Thanks to minoxidil, Russell is a damned liar!" - the present King of France
______
Retired Header ‘Quotes’:
March 2007 – “Pay no attention to that man behind the veil!” – the Wizard of Rawls
April 2007 – “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one may still post on the internet.” – Ludwig Blogenstein
May 2007 - “Don't follow leaders, watch the blog hit meters!" - Blog Dylan
June 2007 - "Thanks to minoxidil, Russell is a damned liar!" - the present King of France
Monday, July 23, 2007
Jobs Immigrants Won't Do
Planning a family road trip from Delaware to Texas this August, my wife and I were researching various cities and other attractions along the way we might want to check out with the kids. We've never been to Little Rock, Arkansas, for example, but then we read on one web sit that among the Top Ten things to see there was Murry's Dinner Theater (located at the corner of Asher and University in the K-Mart Shopping Center; dinner at 6, the show starts at 7:45.) So much for Little Rock.
Dollywood looks promising, both because I have faith that Dolly Parton ("You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!") would never lend her name to anything shoddy and also because, hey, I mean, it's Dollywood, fergawdsakes! Tickets are a bit pricey though, no doubt due to the high cost of living in in Pigeon Forge, TN, so we're still pondering that option.
My wife suggested a day or two in Memphis, which frankly surprised me. Neither of us are, to put it mildly, Elvis fans and a trip to Graceland based on its astronomically high kitsch/camp/cheese factor would be lost on the kids. While I'm sure Memphis (and, yes, even Little Rock) has many family attractions worth seeing, the only thing other than Elvis that comes to my mind is Beale Street which, like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, is best seen late at night and definitely without the kiddies.
Doing a bit of web surfing this morning, however, I did chance on at least one other Memphis attraction hitherto unknown to me. It seems Memphis is the first city in America to offer lawn mowing and other gardening services by bikini clad women! Actually, Tiger Time Lawn Care's Bikini Cut service appears to be in very good taste as this sort of thing goes.
But it struck me that this clever marketing stunt also belies the old canard about immigrants doing jobs like gardening that Americans won't do any longer. Judging from the company's photos, I deduce two conclusions. First, it is clear that these are jobs native born Americans definitely will still do if the price is right. Second, and I believe I am on very safe ground here, it is almost inconceivable that first generation Latina women would don bikinis to mow lawns for a living. Then again, something tells me that when their affluent grandchildren own their own suburban McMansions they won't let their husbands hire bikini clad Anglo gals to mow the lawn, either.
Dollywood looks promising, both because I have faith that Dolly Parton ("You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!") would never lend her name to anything shoddy and also because, hey, I mean, it's Dollywood, fergawdsakes! Tickets are a bit pricey though, no doubt due to the high cost of living in in Pigeon Forge, TN, so we're still pondering that option.
My wife suggested a day or two in Memphis, which frankly surprised me. Neither of us are, to put it mildly, Elvis fans and a trip to Graceland based on its astronomically high kitsch/camp/cheese factor would be lost on the kids. While I'm sure Memphis (and, yes, even Little Rock) has many family attractions worth seeing, the only thing other than Elvis that comes to my mind is Beale Street which, like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, is best seen late at night and definitely without the kiddies.
Doing a bit of web surfing this morning, however, I did chance on at least one other Memphis attraction hitherto unknown to me. It seems Memphis is the first city in America to offer lawn mowing and other gardening services by bikini clad women! Actually, Tiger Time Lawn Care's Bikini Cut service appears to be in very good taste as this sort of thing goes.
But it struck me that this clever marketing stunt also belies the old canard about immigrants doing jobs like gardening that Americans won't do any longer. Judging from the company's photos, I deduce two conclusions. First, it is clear that these are jobs native born Americans definitely will still do if the price is right. Second, and I believe I am on very safe ground here, it is almost inconceivable that first generation Latina women would don bikinis to mow lawns for a living. Then again, something tells me that when their affluent grandchildren own their own suburban McMansions they won't let their husbands hire bikini clad Anglo gals to mow the lawn, either.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Voldemort!
J.K Rowling has again cast her Novelus Blockbusterus spell on most of the English speaking, or at least the English reading world with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. There probably follows a two to three day plummet in the demand for electricity, as televisions and game systems are temporarily abandoned for the unpracticed pleasures of reading. Woe be it, also, to the author whose publisher thought so little of him as to release his book for sale this week, as both display and shelf space in bookstores will have been slavishly devoted to Pottermania to the exclusion of virtually everything else.
I'm not wild about Harry, having read and enjoyed the first book because of its clever inventiveness and charmingly offbeat characters but grown, well, disenchanted with each newer, longer, darker and more convoluted offering. I gave up somewhere around the fourth or fifth book, I honestly can't remember which, and my interest in Harry's fate or that of his friends isn't particularly keen. My guess, though, is that Rowling isn't nearly big enough of a goose to kill the wizard that laid the golden royalty check and that Harry will survive his "final confrontation" with He-who-must-find -a-good-plastic-surgeon just in case she decides, say, ten years from now that she misses the attention or is down to her last billion pounds.
In any case, Megan McArdle has written an interesting column in the (U.K.) Guardian, complaining about Rowling's muddled sense of economics in the Potter novels. I'm not sure McArdle, herself, is a economics wizard (her use of the term "opportunity cost" is a bit wierd), but she's definitely on to something amiss about the magical world Rowling has wrought. Why, for example, are the Weasleys poor? Why would any even semi-accomplished wizard want for material goods when they learn how to change inanimate boxes into mice and such in elementary school? Can changing lead to gold be that much harder? For that matter, why on earth would gold, itself, be valuable to such people, unless of course they were using it to buy goods from ordinary people, which apparently they do not. It seems they have their own self-contained demimonde society with shopkeepers and such. It is one thing, after all, if only a few people possess magical skills or such magic is clearly limited in its power. But in Rowling's world everyone has enough magical power to live in the style to which Rowling, herself, has since become accustomed.
McArdle's larger point is that there is no satisfactory explanation of the distribution of magical powers or their limitations in the books. There is no internal consistency, either. Rowling is forever inventing new gizmos and spells to resolve otherwise impossible situations. To paraphrase McArdle, Rowling can't get by with the occasional deus ex machina; she needs an Olympian pantheon of such plot rescuers time and again. On any sort of close scrutiny, the world she has created simply isn't believable, not because of the existence of magic but because of the sort of world the widespread prevalence of magic has supposedly created. It has, at best, a sort of ad hoc dream logic about it, so little wonder the dream turns so easily into a nightmare.
In a sense, therefore, one can understand Voldemort's perspective. What good is magic, after all, if the end product is no more than some sort of quaintly absurd pseudo-Victorian society where the economy makes no more sense than the officious but otherwise useless bureaucracy? What better way to put magic to use in such a world than to acquire power over such a dimwitted lot who, by the way, seem not at all troubled by their own effective enslavement of a different sentient species? Voldemort's ambitions may be ignoble, but at least they make sense.
I'm not wild about Harry, having read and enjoyed the first book because of its clever inventiveness and charmingly offbeat characters but grown, well, disenchanted with each newer, longer, darker and more convoluted offering. I gave up somewhere around the fourth or fifth book, I honestly can't remember which, and my interest in Harry's fate or that of his friends isn't particularly keen. My guess, though, is that Rowling isn't nearly big enough of a goose to kill the wizard that laid the golden royalty check and that Harry will survive his "final confrontation" with He-who-must-find -a-good-plastic-surgeon just in case she decides, say, ten years from now that she misses the attention or is down to her last billion pounds.
In any case, Megan McArdle has written an interesting column in the (U.K.) Guardian, complaining about Rowling's muddled sense of economics in the Potter novels. I'm not sure McArdle, herself, is a economics wizard (her use of the term "opportunity cost" is a bit wierd), but she's definitely on to something amiss about the magical world Rowling has wrought. Why, for example, are the Weasleys poor? Why would any even semi-accomplished wizard want for material goods when they learn how to change inanimate boxes into mice and such in elementary school? Can changing lead to gold be that much harder? For that matter, why on earth would gold, itself, be valuable to such people, unless of course they were using it to buy goods from ordinary people, which apparently they do not. It seems they have their own self-contained demimonde society with shopkeepers and such. It is one thing, after all, if only a few people possess magical skills or such magic is clearly limited in its power. But in Rowling's world everyone has enough magical power to live in the style to which Rowling, herself, has since become accustomed.
McArdle's larger point is that there is no satisfactory explanation of the distribution of magical powers or their limitations in the books. There is no internal consistency, either. Rowling is forever inventing new gizmos and spells to resolve otherwise impossible situations. To paraphrase McArdle, Rowling can't get by with the occasional deus ex machina; she needs an Olympian pantheon of such plot rescuers time and again. On any sort of close scrutiny, the world she has created simply isn't believable, not because of the existence of magic but because of the sort of world the widespread prevalence of magic has supposedly created. It has, at best, a sort of ad hoc dream logic about it, so little wonder the dream turns so easily into a nightmare.
In a sense, therefore, one can understand Voldemort's perspective. What good is magic, after all, if the end product is no more than some sort of quaintly absurd pseudo-Victorian society where the economy makes no more sense than the officious but otherwise useless bureaucracy? What better way to put magic to use in such a world than to acquire power over such a dimwitted lot who, by the way, seem not at all troubled by their own effective enslavement of a different sentient species? Voldemort's ambitions may be ignoble, but at least they make sense.
Friday, July 20, 2007
... or would Jason vs. Freddie be more apt?
Let's take a break from consideration of Emperor George's sweeping new antepenultimate claim of Executive Privilege. (The penultimate claim will be that even if Bush were impeached and convicted, actual ouster from the White House would require executive branch personnel whom, as a matter of Executive Privilege, the President can order to disregard the impeachment. The ultimate claim will be indefinite suspension of elections, "lest the terrorists win.") Let's look instead at something slightly less trivial than fired U.S. Attorneys like, oh, say, the war in Iraq.
Admittedly, taking sides in a p*ssing contest between the Bush Administration and Hillary Rodham Clinton is a bit like taking sides in Alien vs. Predator. To quote the movie's tag line: Whoever wins... We lose. Still, the contratemp between the Department of Defense and Hillary in her occasional capacity as a U.S. senator is worth a quick look. The story thus far is that Clinton wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates requesting information regarding current DoD contingency plans for troop withdrawal from Iraq or, if such plans did not exist, an explanation why.
Now, let's not kid ourselves, boys and girls. The letter was almost certain a political ploy from the start. Clinton knows that the Defense Department has contingency plans tucked away somewhere for just about every scenario imaginable probably including invasion by Vatican City. (That's not to say such plans have been approved at any high level, but only that they exist.) She also knows full well how Congress goes about seeking and securing information from the Defense Department and therefore how to make a 'request' designed to be rebuked, however politely and respectfully.
Be that as it may, all hell broke loose when recess appointee Eric S. Edelman, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, sent Clinton a reply, the verbatim second page of which (as opposed to the snippets commonly excerpted by the press and blogosphere) is as follows:
Courtesy of TPM Cafe, here is Sen. Clinton's reply:
Okay, it is a fair reading of Edelman's letter that all public discussion of troop withdrawal is harmful to what he blithely calls "our mission in Iraq," but it is at least equally fair to read the entire letter as the Department of Defense, itself, declining to engage in such public discussion for fear of the consequences. Moreover, only an idiot could deny any plausibility to the concerns Edelman raises. That's certainly not to say that the American people or Congress shouldn't discuss withdrawal; but a blanket denial or disregard for those concerns is, from a strategic and tactical point of view, simply insane.
I don't have access to Clinton's original request and it seems to me impossible to pick a side in this dust up without that verbatim request. Given the administration's track record to date, the outrageous conclusions Clinton reads from the letter can't be dismissed out of hand. Given Clinton's ambitions and known political ruthlessness, however, one cannot dismiss out of hand that her original request wasn't specifically designed to generate controversy for political mileage, either.
It does seem likely to me, however, that there is more spin than substance on both sides here and that Sen. Clinton's personal outrage should be taken with at least a grain or two of suspicion.
Admittedly, taking sides in a p*ssing contest between the Bush Administration and Hillary Rodham Clinton is a bit like taking sides in Alien vs. Predator. To quote the movie's tag line: Whoever wins... We lose. Still, the contratemp between the Department of Defense and Hillary in her occasional capacity as a U.S. senator is worth a quick look. The story thus far is that Clinton wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates requesting information regarding current DoD contingency plans for troop withdrawal from Iraq or, if such plans did not exist, an explanation why.
Now, let's not kid ourselves, boys and girls. The letter was almost certain a political ploy from the start. Clinton knows that the Defense Department has contingency plans tucked away somewhere for just about every scenario imaginable probably including invasion by Vatican City. (That's not to say such plans have been approved at any high level, but only that they exist.) She also knows full well how Congress goes about seeking and securing information from the Defense Department and therefore how to make a 'request' designed to be rebuked, however politely and respectfully.
Be that as it may, all hell broke loose when recess appointee Eric S. Edelman, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, sent Clinton a reply, the verbatim second page of which (as opposed to the snippets commonly excerpted by the press and blogosphere) is as follows:
Although we share our commanders' belief in ours and the Iraqi Security Forces' ability to establish security in Baghdad, this is only a precondition for further political and economic progress, not a guarantee of it. Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in order to achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqi constitution, and other contentious issues. Fear of a precipitate U.S. withdrawal also exacerbates sectarian trends in Iraqi politics as sectarian factions become more concerned with achieving short-term tactical advantages rather than reaching the long-term agreements necessary for a stable and secure Iraq.
I assure you, however, that as with other plans, we are always evaluating and planning for possible contingencies. As you know, it is long-standing departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the department.
I appreciate your interest in our mission in Iraq and would be happy to answer any further questions.
Courtesy of TPM Cafe, here is Sen. Clinton's reply:
July 19, 2007
The Honorable Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
The United States Department of Defense
The Pentagon
Suite 319
Washington, D.C. 20301
Dear Mr. Secretary:
On May 22, 2007, I wrote to you to request that you provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress – including the Senate Armed Services Committee – with briefings on what current contingency plans exist for the future withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq. Alternatively, if no such plans exist, I asked for an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning.
I am in receipt of a letter from Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who wrote that he was responding on your behalf. Under Secretary Edelman's response did not address the issues raised in my letter and instead made spurious arguments to avoid addressing contingency planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
As I noted in my original letter, "the seeds of many problems that continue to plague our troops and mission in Iraq were planted in the failure to adequately plan for the conflict and properly equip our men and women in uniform. Congress must be sure that we are prepared to withdraw our forces without any unnecessary danger."
Rather than offer to brief the congressional oversight committees on this critical issue, Under Secretary Edelman – writing on your behalf – instead claims that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies. Under Secretary Edelman has his priorities backward. Open and honest debate and congressional oversight strengthens our nation and supports our military. His suggestion to the contrary is outrageous and dangerous. Indeed, you acknowledged the importance of Congress in our Iraq policy at a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee in March, when you stated, "I believe that the debate here on the Hill and the issues that have been raised have been helpful in bringing pressure to bear on the Maliki government and on the Iraqis in knowing that there is a very real limit to American patience in this entire enterprise."
Redeploying out of Iraq will be difficult and requires careful planning. I continue to call on the Bush Administration to immediately provide a redeployment strategy that will keep our brave men and women safe as they leave Iraq – instead of adhering to a political strategy to attack those who rightfully question their competence and preparedness after years of mistakes and misjudgments.
Other members of this Administration have not engaged in political attacks when the prospect of withdrawal planning has been raised. At the June 7 Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, I asked General Lute "what level of planning has taken place" and "whether the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs have been briefed about the level of planning." I also asked General Lute to determine "what kind of timeline would exist if a decision for either military or political reasons were taken to begin withdrawal" and if he considered this kind of planning to be part of his responsibilities.
General Lute replied, "Thank you Senator. I do think such an adaptation, if the conditions on the ground call for it, will be part of this position."
I renew my request for a briefing, classified if necessary, on current plans for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning. I also renew my concern that our troops will be placed in unnecessary danger if the Bush Administration fails to plan for the withdrawal of U.S. Forces. Finally, I request that you describe whether Under Secretary Edelman's letter accurately characterizes your views as Secretary of Defense.
I would appreciate the courtesy of a prompt response directly from you. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Okay, it is a fair reading of Edelman's letter that all public discussion of troop withdrawal is harmful to what he blithely calls "our mission in Iraq," but it is at least equally fair to read the entire letter as the Department of Defense, itself, declining to engage in such public discussion for fear of the consequences. Moreover, only an idiot could deny any plausibility to the concerns Edelman raises. That's certainly not to say that the American people or Congress shouldn't discuss withdrawal; but a blanket denial or disregard for those concerns is, from a strategic and tactical point of view, simply insane.
I don't have access to Clinton's original request and it seems to me impossible to pick a side in this dust up without that verbatim request. Given the administration's track record to date, the outrageous conclusions Clinton reads from the letter can't be dismissed out of hand. Given Clinton's ambitions and known political ruthlessness, however, one cannot dismiss out of hand that her original request wasn't specifically designed to generate controversy for political mileage, either.
It does seem likely to me, however, that there is more spin than substance on both sides here and that Sen. Clinton's personal outrage should be taken with at least a grain or two of suspicion.
"... the whole warmth business..."
Hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily, Slate's Bonnie Goldstein publishes an 11 page Richard Nixon memorandum (pdf) to H.R. Haldeman (remember him?) addressing the need to get the public to know and appreciate the kinder, gentler Nixon. You know, the guy who made telephone calls "to people when they are sick, even though they no longer mean anything to anybody," and the guy who treated subordinates "like dignified human beings, and not like dirt under my feet." Ah, the common touch!
Dick Cheney was a White House intern back in those days (no, not that sort of intern) and a staff member working for Donald Rumsfeld. Maybe that's where Cheney learned to project the warm, cuddly image we all know and love him for today.
Dick Cheney was a White House intern back in those days (no, not that sort of intern) and a staff member working for Donald Rumsfeld. Maybe that's where Cheney learned to project the warm, cuddly image we all know and love him for today.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Barnett on Libertarianism, the War and Ron Paul
Today's online FOX Wall Street OpinionJournal includes a column by Georgetown Law professor Randy E. Barnett entitled Libertarians and the War. He is especially keen to make the point that Ron Paul's opposition to the Iraq War is not the 'official' libertarian position and that one can be, as many libertarians were and some still are, supportive of the war without grave violation to what they hold to be the essence of libertarianism.
This is certainly true, though not entirely for the reasons Mr. Barnett articulates, and the key word is "entirely." There simply is no single set of libertarian principles shared by all who define their political views as such, so Barnett's unqualified claim that "libertarians believe in robust rights of private property, freedom of contract, and restitution to victims of crime ... that ... define true 'liberty'" is not, strictly speaking, true. Some do, some don't, and that is a point at least worth making as his point that Dr. Paul does not speak for all libertarians.
There is something structurally odd about that quoted assertion (the literal text of which I have edited but the sense of which remains intact) and it is his unqualified assertion of certain rights as definitional of (the oddly scare-quoted) liberty. The strong implication here is that libertarianism rests on some sort of natural rights theory, which indeed it does for many but does not for others, and that such view is the only (possible?) theoretical foundation of libertarianism. That is certainly wrong, and for several important reasons.
First, it is always important to distinguish moral claims of rights from legal rights. Legal rights exist, if at all, by operation of government including a legal system established to enforce such rights. I may or may not have a moral right to hold you to your promise to pay me for painting your house, but it is my legal right under the law of contracts that makes commerce possible. (Whether the mechanisms of legal rights enforcement must be governmental or can be privatized is a matter of dispute among libertarians but is irrelevant here.) So, too, whatever Lockean or other natural rights in property one might argue in philosophical debate, it is the law of property, essentially a creature of the state, that gives the contemporary concept of property most of its useful substance.
Natural rights theories have been out of fashion among academic philosophers for some time now. It is true that academic philosophers have a long and notorious history of changing their minds but being wrong both before and after, but that is not to deny that they have analyzed natural rights theories down to the subatomic level and found them wanting for good and serious reasons. My own view is that any theory of natural rights weak enough to be conceptually defensible is unlikely to be sufficiently robust to get most libertarianism where they want to go. That said, I also think that if any natural rights do "exist" (I trust my use of scare-quotes makes sense here), they include the moral right under most circumstances to be left the hell alone. (That is, I take individual autonomy to be presumptively legitimate and the moral burden on those who would violate it, but that does not quite equate to a theory of natural rights.)
In any case, while one can attempt to defend libertarianism in terms of rights and duties (to use the philosophical jargon, on deontological grounds), many prefer a purely consequentialist, usually utilitarian, approach. They argue, in effect, that libertarianism, by maximizing individual liberty, results in or at least affords the greatest good for the greatest number or at least the greatest opportunity for the greatest good or some such. Barnett inches toward that justification in the same paragraph, claiming that his rights defined concept of liberty:
This formulation, interestingly enough, is a "virtue ethics" approach; that is, an ethical justification that goes to the goal of individual self-actualization or flourishing in the Aristotelian sense rather than the objective of collective good that tends to be the focus of most political theory.
It isn't so much that I disagree with what I think is Barnett's rather muddled one paragraph justification of libertarianism (it is, after all, only one paragraph and in an opinion column at that), as that it needs to be said that libertarianism as a living political movement is more about its generally shared conclusions than its specific theoretical justifications. That said, it is certainly true that Ron Paul's current fifteen minutes of fame could well misrepresent libertarianism in general and Barnett is correct to point that out. I might add that Paul's position on abortion, which I largely share, is even less widely held by libertarians.
Finally, I suspect Barnett is mistaken in his implied belief that most of the Americans who have taken note of Paul identify him as a libertarian. Whether they do or not, the presence of an elected official and major party presidential candidate voicing libertarian themes and receiving even modestly positive reactions among the public at large is surely of greater value than the loss of any prospective converts to libertarianism because of Paul's anti-war position. On that point he happens to be in the majority at the moment, a fact that augurs well for the prospects of liberty in post-Bush America.
This is certainly true, though not entirely for the reasons Mr. Barnett articulates, and the key word is "entirely." There simply is no single set of libertarian principles shared by all who define their political views as such, so Barnett's unqualified claim that "libertarians believe in robust rights of private property, freedom of contract, and restitution to victims of crime ... that ... define true 'liberty'" is not, strictly speaking, true. Some do, some don't, and that is a point at least worth making as his point that Dr. Paul does not speak for all libertarians.
There is something structurally odd about that quoted assertion (the literal text of which I have edited but the sense of which remains intact) and it is his unqualified assertion of certain rights as definitional of (the oddly scare-quoted) liberty. The strong implication here is that libertarianism rests on some sort of natural rights theory, which indeed it does for many but does not for others, and that such view is the only (possible?) theoretical foundation of libertarianism. That is certainly wrong, and for several important reasons.
First, it is always important to distinguish moral claims of rights from legal rights. Legal rights exist, if at all, by operation of government including a legal system established to enforce such rights. I may or may not have a moral right to hold you to your promise to pay me for painting your house, but it is my legal right under the law of contracts that makes commerce possible. (Whether the mechanisms of legal rights enforcement must be governmental or can be privatized is a matter of dispute among libertarians but is irrelevant here.) So, too, whatever Lockean or other natural rights in property one might argue in philosophical debate, it is the law of property, essentially a creature of the state, that gives the contemporary concept of property most of its useful substance.
Natural rights theories have been out of fashion among academic philosophers for some time now. It is true that academic philosophers have a long and notorious history of changing their minds but being wrong both before and after, but that is not to deny that they have analyzed natural rights theories down to the subatomic level and found them wanting for good and serious reasons. My own view is that any theory of natural rights weak enough to be conceptually defensible is unlikely to be sufficiently robust to get most libertarianism where they want to go. That said, I also think that if any natural rights do "exist" (I trust my use of scare-quotes makes sense here), they include the moral right under most circumstances to be left the hell alone. (That is, I take individual autonomy to be presumptively legitimate and the moral burden on those who would violate it, but that does not quite equate to a theory of natural rights.)
In any case, while one can attempt to defend libertarianism in terms of rights and duties (to use the philosophical jargon, on deontological grounds), many prefer a purely consequentialist, usually utilitarian, approach. They argue, in effect, that libertarianism, by maximizing individual liberty, results in or at least affords the greatest good for the greatest number or at least the greatest opportunity for the greatest good or some such. Barnett inches toward that justification in the same paragraph, claiming that his rights defined concept of liberty:
... provide[s] the boundaries within which individuals may pursue happiness by making their own free choices while living in close proximity to each other. Within these boundaries, individuals can actualize their potential while minimizing their interference with the pursuit of happiness by others.
This formulation, interestingly enough, is a "virtue ethics" approach; that is, an ethical justification that goes to the goal of individual self-actualization or flourishing in the Aristotelian sense rather than the objective of collective good that tends to be the focus of most political theory.
It isn't so much that I disagree with what I think is Barnett's rather muddled one paragraph justification of libertarianism (it is, after all, only one paragraph and in an opinion column at that), as that it needs to be said that libertarianism as a living political movement is more about its generally shared conclusions than its specific theoretical justifications. That said, it is certainly true that Ron Paul's current fifteen minutes of fame could well misrepresent libertarianism in general and Barnett is correct to point that out. I might add that Paul's position on abortion, which I largely share, is even less widely held by libertarians.
Finally, I suspect Barnett is mistaken in his implied belief that most of the Americans who have taken note of Paul identify him as a libertarian. Whether they do or not, the presence of an elected official and major party presidential candidate voicing libertarian themes and receiving even modestly positive reactions among the public at large is surely of greater value than the loss of any prospective converts to libertarianism because of Paul's anti-war position. On that point he happens to be in the majority at the moment, a fact that augurs well for the prospects of liberty in post-Bush America.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Two-Fer's
Via memeorandum, I happened upon a Boston Herold column by Margery Eagan that articulates something telling about Hillary Clinton. When her husband first ran for president and suggested the nation would get, in effect, a "two-fer" if he was elected, reaction was swiftly and strongly negative. While Hillary does not, of course, use the phrase now, there is no doubt that but for her husband she would never have been elected to the Senate, let alone the front runner now for the Democratic presidential nomination. Indeed, Bill's slowly increasing visibility in Hillary's campaign strongly suggests their probably correct belief that she cannot win unless the nation now does believe it would, in effect, be getting a two-fer.
Most career politicians are neither very intelligent nor very honest. Intelligence (as opposed to cunning) is not a particularly useful political trait and can be a serious handicap. Voters say but do not really believe they want leaders much smarter than they are and most voters are not very smart. Honesty, on the other hand, is a fatal quality in a politician, as the art of politics is essentially the art of self-interested lying. What a career politician really needs most is likability of the game show host variety (think Pat Sajak, not Alex Trebek).
Neither of the Clintons lack intelligence, though neither is nearly as smart as claimed, either; and, of course, neither has ever been hampered in the slightest by even the most occasional outburst of honesty. But what makes Bill Clinton sui generis among contemporary politicians is his almost superhuman ability to make people who don't know him like him and trust him. Okay, maybe not with their wives or girlfriends, but with something less important like the presidency.
And therein lies Hillary's major political liability: her own uncanny ability to make strangers dislike her is almost as keen. Whatever she may be like in person behind closed doors when her public persona is not in jeopardy and no matter how hard she tries to improve that public persona, Hillary Clinton has a Nixon-like offensiveness about her. Simply put, she lacks the common touch. In spades.
Whether Bill Clinton's presidency, blemished as it was, is ultimately deemed a success (and I believe it will be), the fact that he ever became president was as much an accident of fate as the result of his lifelong will to power. George H.W. Bush's popularity had scared away the likely Democratic candidates, opening an opportunity for an obscure governor to have a shot at the nomination when conventional wisdom unanimously believed Bush would easily win a second term. So much for conventional wisdom.
The Clintons could not, of course, make any of that happen. They could only be ready and willing to run when it did, and they were. They have been planning a comeback ever since, believing correctly that 2004 would have been too soon for Hillary and 2012 might be too late. And now yet another failed Bush presidency may be handing them the keys to the White House yet again, for no Republican candidate likely to win the nomination can or will distance himself far enough away from Bush to escape partial blame for the damage Bush and his willing accomplices in Congress have done to the party and to the nation in the last six and a half years.
The only thing really standing in their way is Hillary, herself, who must now hope the country is at last ready for a two-fer.
Most career politicians are neither very intelligent nor very honest. Intelligence (as opposed to cunning) is not a particularly useful political trait and can be a serious handicap. Voters say but do not really believe they want leaders much smarter than they are and most voters are not very smart. Honesty, on the other hand, is a fatal quality in a politician, as the art of politics is essentially the art of self-interested lying. What a career politician really needs most is likability of the game show host variety (think Pat Sajak, not Alex Trebek).
Neither of the Clintons lack intelligence, though neither is nearly as smart as claimed, either; and, of course, neither has ever been hampered in the slightest by even the most occasional outburst of honesty. But what makes Bill Clinton sui generis among contemporary politicians is his almost superhuman ability to make people who don't know him like him and trust him. Okay, maybe not with their wives or girlfriends, but with something less important like the presidency.
And therein lies Hillary's major political liability: her own uncanny ability to make strangers dislike her is almost as keen. Whatever she may be like in person behind closed doors when her public persona is not in jeopardy and no matter how hard she tries to improve that public persona, Hillary Clinton has a Nixon-like offensiveness about her. Simply put, she lacks the common touch. In spades.
Whether Bill Clinton's presidency, blemished as it was, is ultimately deemed a success (and I believe it will be), the fact that he ever became president was as much an accident of fate as the result of his lifelong will to power. George H.W. Bush's popularity had scared away the likely Democratic candidates, opening an opportunity for an obscure governor to have a shot at the nomination when conventional wisdom unanimously believed Bush would easily win a second term. So much for conventional wisdom.
The Clintons could not, of course, make any of that happen. They could only be ready and willing to run when it did, and they were. They have been planning a comeback ever since, believing correctly that 2004 would have been too soon for Hillary and 2012 might be too late. And now yet another failed Bush presidency may be handing them the keys to the White House yet again, for no Republican candidate likely to win the nomination can or will distance himself far enough away from Bush to escape partial blame for the damage Bush and his willing accomplices in Congress have done to the party and to the nation in the last six and a half years.
The only thing really standing in their way is Hillary, herself, who must now hope the country is at last ready for a two-fer.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Kristol Finds Whole Herd of Ponies!
NeoCon extraordinaire and Editor-über-alles of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol whirls like a dervish in today's Washington Post to gin up support for his claim that "George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one."
Those who neither debated in high school or college nor suffered the subsequent tortures of a legal education may be left agog at the brazen audacity of Kristol's argument, falling as it does into the category of destroying the village to save it or begging the court's mercy for the fellow who, having murdered his parents, is now an orphan.
His opening gambit here is breathtaking in its audacity. Let's simply pay no attention, he asserts, tothat man behind the curtain, er, Bush's "unnecessary mistakes and ... self-inflicted wounds." And you have to admit it, if we willfully ignore his unnecessary mistakes, that is, the overwhelming majority of them, Bush doesn't end up looking nearly so bad after all. Also, focusing on Bush's self-inflicted wounds distracts attention from the more numerous and serious wounds he has inflicted elsewhere; so that's a nice piece of misdirection on Kristol's part, too.
So, what accomplishments do Kristol tout to support his claimed successful Bush presidency? Why, (1) the absence of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, (2) the strong economy and -- wait for it -- (3) the war in Iraq! Oh, and a couple of conservatives on the Supreme Court, an almost throw-away point for Kristol but probably the only thing I might agree was both Bush's doing and, on balance, a good thing.
Not that the absence of terrorist attacks here or a strong U.S. economy are bad things. Only there's precious little reason to believe that Bush can take much responsibility for the latter and little tangible evidence that he is responsible for the former. Tax cuts are presumptively good, though not nearly as good as tax cuts combined with cuts in government spending, and we all know the administration's record on that point. In any case, Kristol's blithe causal connection between tax cuts alone and the state of the economy over the past five years is tenuous at best. Then again, Kristol's claim that Bush's prescription drug benefit Medicare expansion has "gone ... smoothly ... under projected costs" studiously ignores the elephant in the living room that is the looming, long-term cost of my Baby Boomer generation as we only now start to reach Medicare eligibility age. I guess economics wasn't Leo Strauss's strong point.
Shrouded in greaterparanoia secrecy than any other administration in my lifetime, the Bush Administration has consistently refused to offer any serious or credible evidence of its purported success in staving off post-9/11 attacks. Perhaps it has, perhaps it hasn't. Without such evidence, what neither Bush nor his fawning supporters can claim is that we should simply take the mere absence of such attacks as proof. The time has long since passed where Bush is entitled to even a presumption of honesty with the American people. While I do personally believe that the war in Iraq has drawn the attention of would-be U.S. attackers to more easily reached Middle Eastern and European targets, most of the plots discovered world-wide since 9/11 have shown far less grandiose ambition than 9/11. Meanwhile, America and Americans have lived as though under a constant state of siege with, if Bush and Kristol have their way, no end in sight.
Finally, amazingly, Kristol touts the war and hangs his hopes on General Petraeus, this year's -- let's be candid -- Great White Hope for the remaining supporters of this absurd and tragic misadventure. Of course, had we not attacked Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, doing, um, well, we really don't know what. Neither does Kristol, but he assumes the worst because at this point it is only such counter-factual speculation that could possibly support the claim that America, never mind Iraq, is better off for having ousted Hussein in 2003.
Kristol concludes with a bit more wishful thinking about how the prospect of Democratic control of both the White House and Congress is so frightening that one of the lackluster or worse Republican presidential candidates may actually win next year, thus somehow vindicating Bush. Yeah, sure. His bottom line?
"If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president."
And if we had some bacon, we could have bacon and eggs for breakfast.
If we had some eggs.
Those who neither debated in high school or college nor suffered the subsequent tortures of a legal education may be left agog at the brazen audacity of Kristol's argument, falling as it does into the category of destroying the village to save it or begging the court's mercy for the fellow who, having murdered his parents, is now an orphan.
His opening gambit here is breathtaking in its audacity. Let's simply pay no attention, he asserts, to
So, what accomplishments do Kristol tout to support his claimed successful Bush presidency? Why, (1) the absence of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, (2) the strong economy and -- wait for it -- (3) the war in Iraq! Oh, and a couple of conservatives on the Supreme Court, an almost throw-away point for Kristol but probably the only thing I might agree was both Bush's doing and, on balance, a good thing.
Not that the absence of terrorist attacks here or a strong U.S. economy are bad things. Only there's precious little reason to believe that Bush can take much responsibility for the latter and little tangible evidence that he is responsible for the former. Tax cuts are presumptively good, though not nearly as good as tax cuts combined with cuts in government spending, and we all know the administration's record on that point. In any case, Kristol's blithe causal connection between tax cuts alone and the state of the economy over the past five years is tenuous at best. Then again, Kristol's claim that Bush's prescription drug benefit Medicare expansion has "gone ... smoothly ... under projected costs" studiously ignores the elephant in the living room that is the looming, long-term cost of my Baby Boomer generation as we only now start to reach Medicare eligibility age. I guess economics wasn't Leo Strauss's strong point.
Shrouded in greater
Finally, amazingly, Kristol touts the war and hangs his hopes on General Petraeus, this year's -- let's be candid -- Great White Hope for the remaining supporters of this absurd and tragic misadventure. Of course, had we not attacked Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, doing, um, well, we really don't know what. Neither does Kristol, but he assumes the worst because at this point it is only such counter-factual speculation that could possibly support the claim that America, never mind Iraq, is better off for having ousted Hussein in 2003.
Kristol concludes with a bit more wishful thinking about how the prospect of Democratic control of both the White House and Congress is so frightening that one of the lackluster or worse Republican presidential candidates may actually win next year, thus somehow vindicating Bush. Yeah, sure. His bottom line?
"If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president."
And if we had some bacon, we could have bacon and eggs for breakfast.
If we had some eggs.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Iranians Arrest 14 Squirrels for Spying
"Islamic Republic's intelligence agents allege rodents were carrying advanced Western spy gear."
The picture isn't part of the story, but this is (so far) being reported as true. I can't make this stuff up, folks; but, yeah, I have a sneaking suspicion in this case that someone did.
The picture isn't part of the story, but this is (so far) being reported as true. I can't make this stuff up, folks; but, yeah, I have a sneaking suspicion in this case that someone did.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Constant Viewer: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is not a good movie to take the kiddies to see. Whether it is a good movie, on the other hand, depends on one's criteria.
Constant Viewer can't imagine many first-time viewers for this film -- that is, folks who somehow managed to avoid all four of the previous movie versions of J.K Rowling's fabulously successful books -- so CV won't bother setting the stage or, for that matter, describing the plot or characters. Everyone and just about everything from Potter-ville is back; indeed much of the first hour feels a bit like the first Star Trek movie where half the film was taken up reintroducing characters we already knew as well as friends or family back from a long trip abroad. Depending on how one feels about one's friends or family, this could be a good or a bad thing.
From a purely filmic point of view, however, Order of the Phoenix works quite well as an entertaining and more or less self-contained movie. The plot, though complicated, makes sense and proceeds to its logical conclusion, the special effects are appropriately dazzling, and the adult cast of A-list British acting royalty all turn in splendid performances. More importantly (since, after all, we have two more films to look forward to), Daniel Radcliffe has developed into a competent actor whose post-Potter film career looks increasingly promising. Special mention must be made of Imelda Staunton, whose bravura performance as Ministry of Magic hack and Hogwarts' new sadistic teacher Dolores Umbridge should forever leave viewers feeling repulsed by pink Angora. CV heartily approves of this result.
No review of Order of the Phoenix can avoid using the word "dark," so let's get to it. Yes, the film is dark, symbolically and literally, so much so that damned little of its two hour and eighteen minute running time takes place in daylight. Rowling's essentially Manichean universe is peopled with good guys and bad guys and Order of the Phoenix is definitely a tale from the dark side even though, of course, the good guys manage to prevail. Speaking of the "dark side," CV had to start laughing toward the end during Dumbledore's battle with one of Voldemort's henchmen for the -- let's be charitable -- homage director David Yates pays to a certain well-known George Lucas franchise. Well, what the heck, Lucas swiped the scene from just about every Errol Flynn swashbuckler ever made, so let's just call it a set piece.
CV cannot vouch personally for how well Order of the Phoenix tracks the novel, having given up on the Potter series somewhere around page 2,347 of that fifth book. CV's two sons, however, found little to object to on that score. Frankly, once the novelty of Rowling's initially charming and wondrous universe has faded, one pretty much has to be a die-hard fan to keep slogging through the books or the films. CV admits he is only mildly curious about how the final book will conclude.
The film-makers in particular have to give the movie audiences something worth returning for when there are, after all, next to no surprises awaiting them. Order of the Phoenix fills that need by showing us a Harry Potter who, childhood innocence having long ago been taken from him, is now on the verge of becoming a man. That's a story worth watching, magic or no.
Constant Viewer can't imagine many first-time viewers for this film -- that is, folks who somehow managed to avoid all four of the previous movie versions of J.K Rowling's fabulously successful books -- so CV won't bother setting the stage or, for that matter, describing the plot or characters. Everyone and just about everything from Potter-ville is back; indeed much of the first hour feels a bit like the first Star Trek movie where half the film was taken up reintroducing characters we already knew as well as friends or family back from a long trip abroad. Depending on how one feels about one's friends or family, this could be a good or a bad thing.
From a purely filmic point of view, however, Order of the Phoenix works quite well as an entertaining and more or less self-contained movie. The plot, though complicated, makes sense and proceeds to its logical conclusion, the special effects are appropriately dazzling, and the adult cast of A-list British acting royalty all turn in splendid performances. More importantly (since, after all, we have two more films to look forward to), Daniel Radcliffe has developed into a competent actor whose post-Potter film career looks increasingly promising. Special mention must be made of Imelda Staunton, whose bravura performance as Ministry of Magic hack and Hogwarts' new sadistic teacher Dolores Umbridge should forever leave viewers feeling repulsed by pink Angora. CV heartily approves of this result.
No review of Order of the Phoenix can avoid using the word "dark," so let's get to it. Yes, the film is dark, symbolically and literally, so much so that damned little of its two hour and eighteen minute running time takes place in daylight. Rowling's essentially Manichean universe is peopled with good guys and bad guys and Order of the Phoenix is definitely a tale from the dark side even though, of course, the good guys manage to prevail. Speaking of the "dark side," CV had to start laughing toward the end during Dumbledore's battle with one of Voldemort's henchmen for the -- let's be charitable -- homage director David Yates pays to a certain well-known George Lucas franchise. Well, what the heck, Lucas swiped the scene from just about every Errol Flynn swashbuckler ever made, so let's just call it a set piece.
CV cannot vouch personally for how well Order of the Phoenix tracks the novel, having given up on the Potter series somewhere around page 2,347 of that fifth book. CV's two sons, however, found little to object to on that score. Frankly, once the novelty of Rowling's initially charming and wondrous universe has faded, one pretty much has to be a die-hard fan to keep slogging through the books or the films. CV admits he is only mildly curious about how the final book will conclude.
The film-makers in particular have to give the movie audiences something worth returning for when there are, after all, next to no surprises awaiting them. Order of the Phoenix fills that need by showing us a Harry Potter who, childhood innocence having long ago been taken from him, is now on the verge of becoming a man. That's a story worth watching, magic or no.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Rags to Riches ...
... or at least to more widespread literacy. (Not to mention -- hold your britches! -- a 13th century case of recycling that made sense.)
How Not To Honor Our Honored Dead
Where's Jack Kevorkian when the nation really needs him? I sometimes think I'd rather see the 1st Amendment put out of its misery quickly than witness its lingering, painful death at the hands of contemporary politicians, regardless of their motives. In the case of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain–Feingold), of course, the motive is entirely self-serving. "Bipartisan" is the tipoff here and the objective is simply to further entrench the two-party system and make it that much easier (read: cheaper) for current incumbents to retain office.
Not every attempted rape of the 1st Amendment is self-serving, however. Occasionally, benighted legislators act out of genuine, if misguided, concern for some competing interest other than their own. Several states have already passed (and other states are considering) legislation banning the sale of the t-shirt shown below, the fine print being a Vietnam Memorial style listing of U.S. personnel who have thus far died in Iraq. The other side of the shirt reads "BUSH LIED" with the same background.
In Congress, Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla) introduced H.R. 269, the proposed Soldiers Targeted by Offensive Profiteering Act of 2007 (STOP Act), which includes the following language:
That said, let us also acknowledge that the primary rationale for the 1st Amendment is the protection of free political speech. (See, e.g., various commentaries here.) As such, whatever other dubious exceptions the Supreme Court has carved out to the amendment's apodictic prohibition against any federal "law ... abridging the freedom of speech," even the High Court has given special deference (except, alas, in the case of McCain-Feingold) to political speech.
Some state legislatures, at least dimly aware of this fact, have attempted to construe the t-shirt and its printing as "commercial speech." Ordinarily, commercial speech is understood by the Court to mean "expression related solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience," so I rather seriously doubt these state laws will withstand constitutional scrutiny if and when they are challenged in court. Here, in any case, is the current prevailing test under Central Hudson Gas & Elec. v. Public Serv. Comm'n for regulation of commercial speech. Commercial speech may be regulated if:
Similarly, I serious doubt that congressional attempts to justify such restrictions on both the allegedly commercial nature of the speech and creation of, in effect, new property rights for the deceased and their family members as "protected persons" can withstand both these and other constitutional concerns, e.g., the fairly glaring viewpoint discrimination involved.
I suspect Boren and others genuinely believe they are doing, or at least trying to do the right thing here. But they're not. If anything, and however unintentionally, these laws do a disservice to our war dead. If the American men and women who have died in Iraq did not give their lives to preserve the very freedoms some claim our enemies hate us for, why on earth did they die?
(Hat tip to Reason's Radley Balko.)
Not every attempted rape of the 1st Amendment is self-serving, however. Occasionally, benighted legislators act out of genuine, if misguided, concern for some competing interest other than their own. Several states have already passed (and other states are considering) legislation banning the sale of the t-shirt shown below, the fine print being a Vietnam Memorial style listing of U.S. personnel who have thus far died in Iraq. The other side of the shirt reads "BUSH LIED" with the same background.
In Congress, Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla) introduced H.R. 269, the proposed Soldiers Targeted by Offensive Profiteering Act of 2007 (STOP Act), which includes the following language:
Except with the permission of the individual or individuals designated under subsection (d), no person may knowingly use the name or image of a protected individual in connection with any merchandise, retail product, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to connect the protected individual with that individual's service in the armed forces.Let us acknowledge at the onset that many, perhaps most, perhaps even all of the U.S. casualties of the Iraq War believed in the cause they were fighting for and that many of their survivors continue to do so or, at the very least, are emotionally harmed by the use of their loved ones' names in this manner. The Defense Department made similar arguments about photographs of the caskets of such casualties and I freely acknowledge that at least part of the rationale for the objection was and is a legitimate concern for the feelings of the survivors and a moral, if not legal, right of privacy on the part of the deceased.
That said, let us also acknowledge that the primary rationale for the 1st Amendment is the protection of free political speech. (See, e.g., various commentaries here.) As such, whatever other dubious exceptions the Supreme Court has carved out to the amendment's apodictic prohibition against any federal "law ... abridging the freedom of speech," even the High Court has given special deference (except, alas, in the case of McCain-Feingold) to political speech.
Some state legislatures, at least dimly aware of this fact, have attempted to construe the t-shirt and its printing as "commercial speech." Ordinarily, commercial speech is understood by the Court to mean "expression related solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience," so I rather seriously doubt these state laws will withstand constitutional scrutiny if and when they are challenged in court. Here, in any case, is the current prevailing test under Central Hudson Gas & Elec. v. Public Serv. Comm'n for regulation of commercial speech. Commercial speech may be regulated if:
1. The regulated speech concerns an illegal activity,I simply cannot imagine how any state legislatures have managed to convince themselves that their prohibitions can meet this test. Then again, one should never underestimate the capacity of legislators either to delude themselves or to engage in a bit of grandstanding when it comes to such emotionally sensitive issues as properly honoring our war dead. (A phrase I want to make completely clear I do not mean at all ironically. Those men and women unquestionably do deserve to be honored for their sacrifice.)
2. The speech is misleading, or
3. The government's interest in restricting the speech is substantial, the regulation in question directly advances the government's interest, and the regulation is no more extensive than necessary to serve the government's interest.
Similarly, I serious doubt that congressional attempts to justify such restrictions on both the allegedly commercial nature of the speech and creation of, in effect, new property rights for the deceased and their family members as "protected persons" can withstand both these and other constitutional concerns, e.g., the fairly glaring viewpoint discrimination involved.
I suspect Boren and others genuinely believe they are doing, or at least trying to do the right thing here. But they're not. If anything, and however unintentionally, these laws do a disservice to our war dead. If the American men and women who have died in Iraq did not give their lives to preserve the very freedoms some claim our enemies hate us for, why on earth did they die?
(Hat tip to Reason's Radley Balko.)
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Location, Location, Location
That's the mantra of every real estate agent I've ever encountered, their way of saying, in effect, that the price of real estate is a function of, well duh!, supply and demand. Pack millions of people into an island roughly 23 square miles in size like, oh, say, Manhattan and it's little wonder that supply and demand makes for a healthy seller's market. So it is that the New York Times reports on the sale of condominium parking spaces in Manhattan with a going price of $225,000 apiece.
However outrageous such prices may seem to many of us, the fact is, at least according to Steven E. Landsburg, what is really outrageous is how underpriced parking is in most cities and how significantly that contributes to the problem of urban congestion.
Food for thought the next time you complain about feeding the meter.
However outrageous such prices may seem to many of us, the fact is, at least according to Steven E. Landsburg, what is really outrageous is how underpriced parking is in most cities and how significantly that contributes to the problem of urban congestion.
Food for thought the next time you complain about feeding the meter.
Not What The Doctor Ordered
Today's New York Times is running a fairly scathing report of Administration attempts "to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations" during Dr. Richard H. Carmona's four year tenure as Surgeon General.
According to the Times, those reports included such topics as embryonic stem cell research and "a landmark report on secondhand smoke [that] concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm."
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the moral status of human embryos. As such, that issue, itself, is a legitimate policy matter for the Bush Administration. What is not a legitimate policy matter but a purely scientific question is whether or to what extent embryonic stem cells are essential or vitally important in medical research. Again, one might hold that human embryos being persons, no medical advances would justify their intentional destruction, but we should at least know as best we can what the likely payoff of such research would be and what, if any, alternatives exist.
So, too, many have questioned the scientific validity of the aforementioned study on secondhand smoke. I haven't read the study or the criticism, so I won't offer an opinion beyond acknowledging skepticism about the sweeping nature of some of the claims reported in the press. Be that as it may, scientific research needs to be made available precisely so it can be challenged scientifically. Ethical and policy concerns remain, but we should at least have the benefit of a full examination on the scientific merits of such studies first.
Beyond that, though, it seems clear to me that if the nation is going to have a Surgeon General at all, the office must be accorded greater independence from both political branches of government. As matters stand, the office falls under the Department of Health and Human Services which is, frankly, a prime target for political manipulation regardless of the party controlling the White House.
Conversely, we could simply eliminate the office or relegate it to its primary function as head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and create some independent medical advisory authority in its place. Science and health policy is properly the responsibility of policy makers, not of scientists and physicians, themselves. But it is equally true that the soundness of the scientific or medical research required to make those policy decisions must remain in the unfettered province of the scientific and medical community, itself.
Oh, and for goodness sakes, drop the silly uniforms.
According to the Times, those reports included such topics as embryonic stem cell research and "a landmark report on secondhand smoke [that] concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm."
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the moral status of human embryos. As such, that issue, itself, is a legitimate policy matter for the Bush Administration. What is not a legitimate policy matter but a purely scientific question is whether or to what extent embryonic stem cells are essential or vitally important in medical research. Again, one might hold that human embryos being persons, no medical advances would justify their intentional destruction, but we should at least know as best we can what the likely payoff of such research would be and what, if any, alternatives exist.
So, too, many have questioned the scientific validity of the aforementioned study on secondhand smoke. I haven't read the study or the criticism, so I won't offer an opinion beyond acknowledging skepticism about the sweeping nature of some of the claims reported in the press. Be that as it may, scientific research needs to be made available precisely so it can be challenged scientifically. Ethical and policy concerns remain, but we should at least have the benefit of a full examination on the scientific merits of such studies first.
Beyond that, though, it seems clear to me that if the nation is going to have a Surgeon General at all, the office must be accorded greater independence from both political branches of government. As matters stand, the office falls under the Department of Health and Human Services which is, frankly, a prime target for political manipulation regardless of the party controlling the White House.
Conversely, we could simply eliminate the office or relegate it to its primary function as head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and create some independent medical advisory authority in its place. Science and health policy is properly the responsibility of policy makers, not of scientists and physicians, themselves. But it is equally true that the soundness of the scientific or medical research required to make those policy decisions must remain in the unfettered province of the scientific and medical community, itself.
Oh, and for goodness sakes, drop the silly uniforms.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Security Clearances, the Supply and Demand of Them
The Hill reports today that the Pentagon is seeking "repeal of the department’s [seven year old] restriction on granting security clearances to ex-convicts, drug addicts and the mentally incompetent."
Good.
Lest the casual reader think the Pentagon has lost its wits entirely and seeks to share nuclear technology secrets with drug addled criminal psychopaths, the reality here is that lower level security clearances up to and including a "Secret" clearance are required simply to work in any capacity at all in many government installations. The laws of supply and demand, especially given the rapid growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the need for both federal and contractor personnel in other civilian agencies, for which the restrictions do not apply, have created a tremendous backlog of applicants seeking clearances for DoD jobs and artificially high (dare I say windfall profit level?) salary demands from those already possessing high level clearances. (Oh, by the way, did you know that the background checks for security clearances has, for the most part, been contracted out?)
Moreover, classified materials are not left strewn about the Pentagon or elsewhere in DoD facilities like so many FBI records cluttering the halls of the Rose Law Firm. The mere possession of a clearance does not entitle its holder to access to classified materials, one must also have a legitimate need for such access on a case by case basis.
I'll refrain from making the too obvious jokes about mental incompetence and elected officials, and note that the particular crime a felon has been convicted of may be entirely irrelevant to whether he is an acceptable security risk. More important in terms of sheer numbers of applicants, once again our idiotic War on Drugs is providing further evidence of the mental incompetence of its advocates. (Okay, so I couldn't resist.) One can certainly make the case that a prospective employee with an ongoing addiction to drugs or alcohol is not an acceptable risk. The notion that anyone ever convicted of mere possession of marijuana is an unacceptable risk is, by contrast, simply absurd.
The article ends with a bit of ax-grinding about whether repeal of the restrictions would permit recently convicted felon I. Lewis Libby to obtain a security clearance. The better question, I think, is whether the current restrictions would have prevented an even higher level official with a documented history of alcohol abuse to have ever gotten a security clearance in the first place. Of course, that would be an argument in favor of their retention. Never mind.
Good.
Lest the casual reader think the Pentagon has lost its wits entirely and seeks to share nuclear technology secrets with drug addled criminal psychopaths, the reality here is that lower level security clearances up to and including a "Secret" clearance are required simply to work in any capacity at all in many government installations. The laws of supply and demand, especially given the rapid growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the need for both federal and contractor personnel in other civilian agencies, for which the restrictions do not apply, have created a tremendous backlog of applicants seeking clearances for DoD jobs and artificially high (dare I say windfall profit level?) salary demands from those already possessing high level clearances. (Oh, by the way, did you know that the background checks for security clearances has, for the most part, been contracted out?)
Moreover, classified materials are not left strewn about the Pentagon or elsewhere in DoD facilities like so many FBI records cluttering the halls of the Rose Law Firm. The mere possession of a clearance does not entitle its holder to access to classified materials, one must also have a legitimate need for such access on a case by case basis.
I'll refrain from making the too obvious jokes about mental incompetence and elected officials, and note that the particular crime a felon has been convicted of may be entirely irrelevant to whether he is an acceptable security risk. More important in terms of sheer numbers of applicants, once again our idiotic War on Drugs is providing further evidence of the mental incompetence of its advocates. (Okay, so I couldn't resist.) One can certainly make the case that a prospective employee with an ongoing addiction to drugs or alcohol is not an acceptable risk. The notion that anyone ever convicted of mere possession of marijuana is an unacceptable risk is, by contrast, simply absurd.
The article ends with a bit of ax-grinding about whether repeal of the restrictions would permit recently convicted felon I. Lewis Libby to obtain a security clearance. The better question, I think, is whether the current restrictions would have prevented an even higher level official with a documented history of alcohol abuse to have ever gotten a security clearance in the first place. Of course, that would be an argument in favor of their retention. Never mind.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Live Earth D.O.A.
Ho-hum.
The predictable disease of stardom, whether of the Hollywood variety or among musicians, is egotism ranging from fragile narcissism to full blown monomania. Little wonder, then, that the Gore-Fest better known as Saturday's Live Earth concert was so much sound and fury punctuated by hot air. Or, as the (U.K.) Daily Mail reports, a foul-mouthed flop.
Gore now qualifies, of course, as one of the Hollywood crowd, having picked up his Oscar en route to becoming Bono with a better tailor. The concerts did nothing to raise public awareness of global warming, as the affluent segment of humanity has already heard all about it and the rest of humanity have more pressing concerns on their minds. The fate of the earth a century from now is of only modest interest to someone suffering from malaria or dysentery or trying to feed her children or find shelter or potable water. Only rock stars and their ilk could possibly convince themselves that jetting across the world to leave mountains of garbage in their wake could be a net contribution to stopping global warming.
Charity rock concerts, whether to raise money or public awareness, have a checkered history. George Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was at best a mixed and controversial success. However noble Harrison's intentions or those of the many who (myself included) bought the subsequent album to support victims of the 1970 Bhola cyclone (think Katrina, only much worse), ineptitude and corruption both took their toll on the final results. At least, however, it was a humane attempt at responding to a genuine catastrophe.
Then again, as far as the motives of the attendees go, massive rock concerts "to change the world" have always been, to put it mildly, a mixed bag. Sure, some of the hundreds of thousands who went to Woodstock were bona fide "hippies." Most, however, were just there for the sex and drugs and rock & roll.
The predictable disease of stardom, whether of the Hollywood variety or among musicians, is egotism ranging from fragile narcissism to full blown monomania. Little wonder, then, that the Gore-Fest better known as Saturday's Live Earth concert was so much sound and fury punctuated by hot air. Or, as the (U.K.) Daily Mail reports, a foul-mouthed flop.
Gore now qualifies, of course, as one of the Hollywood crowd, having picked up his Oscar en route to becoming Bono with a better tailor. The concerts did nothing to raise public awareness of global warming, as the affluent segment of humanity has already heard all about it and the rest of humanity have more pressing concerns on their minds. The fate of the earth a century from now is of only modest interest to someone suffering from malaria or dysentery or trying to feed her children or find shelter or potable water. Only rock stars and their ilk could possibly convince themselves that jetting across the world to leave mountains of garbage in their wake could be a net contribution to stopping global warming.
Charity rock concerts, whether to raise money or public awareness, have a checkered history. George Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was at best a mixed and controversial success. However noble Harrison's intentions or those of the many who (myself included) bought the subsequent album to support victims of the 1970 Bhola cyclone (think Katrina, only much worse), ineptitude and corruption both took their toll on the final results. At least, however, it was a humane attempt at responding to a genuine catastrophe.
Then again, as far as the motives of the attendees go, massive rock concerts "to change the world" have always been, to put it mildly, a mixed bag. Sure, some of the hundreds of thousands who went to Woodstock were bona fide "hippies." Most, however, were just there for the sex and drugs and rock & roll.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Ali
Forty years ago, back when Americans enjoyed due process of law even if they were Muslim Americans, in fact, even if they were Black Muslim Americans, Muhammad Ali was convicted on June 20, 1967 in federal court for refusing induction into the United States armed forces. America was, after all, at war, defending itself from encroaching world-wide communist domination and, we were told, if the North Vietnamese won it would have a Domino Effect throughout Asia.
Three years earlier, in the same year he first won the World Heavyweight Boxing championship from Sonny Liston and became a member of the Nation of Islam, Ali had failed to pass the Armed Forces qualifying examination. In 1966, however, the test was revised -- the laws of supply and demand being what they were even then -- and Ali was reclassified 1-A, draft eligible. Ali claimed but was denied conscientious objector status, famously declaring, “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me a nigger.” After refusing induction, Ali was tried and sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. The conviction was upheld by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals but in 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction.
In the interim, however, Ali was stripped of his title and banned from boxing during what boxing experts believe would have been his prime boxing years. Also in his prime, George Carlin described the situation (roughly, and with apologies to Carlin because I couldn’t find the exact quote) as follows:
Muhammad Ali has a strange job - beating people up – but the government wanted to give him a new job – they wanted him to go to Viet Nam and kill people – but Ali said, “No... that’s where I draw the line. I’ll beat ‘em up but I don’t want to kill ‘em" – and the government said, “If you won’t kill ‘em, we won’t let you beat ‘em up!”
Boxing, it must be said, is a brutal, barbaric sport; the only sport still legal where the primary objective is to injure one’s opponent to unconsciousness. But for Muhammad Ali, I would never have become a fan of boxing at all. After Ali, I quickly lost interest. But Ali became, and remains, the only athlete who ever came close to being a hero to me. It was impossible, for me at least, not to be astonished and delighted by his athleticism, his great speed and agility; impossible also not to admire his uncompromising integrity.
That is, of course, not to say I agree with or approve of everything Ali has done in his life. I’m not about to argue the merits of the Nation of Islam (Ali converted to Sunni Islam in 1975) or whether, on legal or moral grounds, he was entitled to conscientious objector status, nor would I claim that his personal life – he has been married four times – is exemplary.
Most significantly, he fought too many times and took too many blows to the head especially in his later career, resulting in his chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or Parkinson’s Syndrome). Once, and perhaps still, the most famous and beloved man alive, Ali deprived both himself and his literally billions of fans the pleasure of each other’s company after his final fight in 1981, some six years after his last great fight against Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. Ironically, both that fight and his decision to continue boxing afterwards, whatever the reasons at the time, probably cost him tens of millions of dollars if not more, as the public demand for him remains largely unabated even after all these years and in his unfortunate condition today. Last month, for example, in one of his now rare public appearances Ali was given an honorary doctorate by Princeton.
Trite though it is to mention, no one who did not live through the 1960’s can fully appreciate what that decade was like. We speak too easily today about how polarized America has become in the last twenty years, but the truth is that America was far more polarized by both the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement than it is today. It is worth remembering that Muhammad Ali was reviled and despised by much of white America forty years ago, perhaps as much for his refusal to accept control by the white-dominated boxing establishment as for his refusal to serve in what he believed was the white establishment’s war in Southeast Asia. Undaunted, he stood his ground like a true champion and, more importantly, like a man.
Three years earlier, in the same year he first won the World Heavyweight Boxing championship from Sonny Liston and became a member of the Nation of Islam, Ali had failed to pass the Armed Forces qualifying examination. In 1966, however, the test was revised -- the laws of supply and demand being what they were even then -- and Ali was reclassified 1-A, draft eligible. Ali claimed but was denied conscientious objector status, famously declaring, “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me a nigger.” After refusing induction, Ali was tried and sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. The conviction was upheld by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals but in 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction.
In the interim, however, Ali was stripped of his title and banned from boxing during what boxing experts believe would have been his prime boxing years. Also in his prime, George Carlin described the situation (roughly, and with apologies to Carlin because I couldn’t find the exact quote) as follows:
Muhammad Ali has a strange job - beating people up – but the government wanted to give him a new job – they wanted him to go to Viet Nam and kill people – but Ali said, “No... that’s where I draw the line. I’ll beat ‘em up but I don’t want to kill ‘em" – and the government said, “If you won’t kill ‘em, we won’t let you beat ‘em up!”
Boxing, it must be said, is a brutal, barbaric sport; the only sport still legal where the primary objective is to injure one’s opponent to unconsciousness. But for Muhammad Ali, I would never have become a fan of boxing at all. After Ali, I quickly lost interest. But Ali became, and remains, the only athlete who ever came close to being a hero to me. It was impossible, for me at least, not to be astonished and delighted by his athleticism, his great speed and agility; impossible also not to admire his uncompromising integrity.
That is, of course, not to say I agree with or approve of everything Ali has done in his life. I’m not about to argue the merits of the Nation of Islam (Ali converted to Sunni Islam in 1975) or whether, on legal or moral grounds, he was entitled to conscientious objector status, nor would I claim that his personal life – he has been married four times – is exemplary.
Most significantly, he fought too many times and took too many blows to the head especially in his later career, resulting in his chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or Parkinson’s Syndrome). Once, and perhaps still, the most famous and beloved man alive, Ali deprived both himself and his literally billions of fans the pleasure of each other’s company after his final fight in 1981, some six years after his last great fight against Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. Ironically, both that fight and his decision to continue boxing afterwards, whatever the reasons at the time, probably cost him tens of millions of dollars if not more, as the public demand for him remains largely unabated even after all these years and in his unfortunate condition today. Last month, for example, in one of his now rare public appearances Ali was given an honorary doctorate by Princeton.
Trite though it is to mention, no one who did not live through the 1960’s can fully appreciate what that decade was like. We speak too easily today about how polarized America has become in the last twenty years, but the truth is that America was far more polarized by both the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement than it is today. It is worth remembering that Muhammad Ali was reviled and despised by much of white America forty years ago, perhaps as much for his refusal to accept control by the white-dominated boxing establishment as for his refusal to serve in what he believed was the white establishment’s war in Southeast Asia. Undaunted, he stood his ground like a true champion and, more importantly, like a man.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Ellen Goodman's Race Problem
Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize winner and current resident of Brookline, Massachusetts (Estimated 2005 median house / condo value: $1,115,200. Estimated black population: 2.7%), has a race problem. Try as she might to understand Clarence Thomas as a man (and, truth be told, she doesn't try very hard), all she can see is a black man.
Goodman opens her column gladdened "that [the Supreme Court] won't do any more damage until the first week in October" and closes it by dredging up Anita Hill (remember her?) and implying that Thomas is a "rigid ideologue." In between, we find her serving up a few buckets of psycho-babble about how Thomas's Court opinions are really little more than rebellion against the sort of "black stereotypes" one suspects nicely characterize the majority of Goodman's (no doubt numerous) black friends.
It's all about race for Goodman, you see. Thomas can't really be independently conservative; that is, he can't possibly be the Court's "most predictable member of the conservative camp" because he honestly and rationally believes that nonsense. He can't possibly have rationally come to view racial discrimination of any sort as wrong despite having personally benefited from it. Could he? No, of course not. It's all about his resentments, the ingrate!
Poor Ellen, you see, didn't get a black liberal "successor to Thurgood Marshall." In Goodman's ideal world there should be a black liberal on the Court and a Jewish liberal and a female liberal, etc. That's diversity! She is outraged that Justice Thomas might seriously doubt whether forced racial integration has been the unqualified success she believes it to be.
What nonsense. And racist nonsense, at that.
I often don't agree with Thomas's opinions. But I have listened to liberals denigrate his intelligence and competence and -- Gasp! -- his blackness ever since he was appointed and I have yet to find any evidence at all of the first two claims. As to the last, I'm not a black man and do not, therefore, know what his experiences as a black man in America have been. Neither, it should be obvious, does Goodman. Then again, we will never understand Clarence Thomas or anyone else in this world if we can't ever get past the color of his skin.
Goodman opens her column gladdened "that [the Supreme Court] won't do any more damage until the first week in October" and closes it by dredging up Anita Hill (remember her?) and implying that Thomas is a "rigid ideologue." In between, we find her serving up a few buckets of psycho-babble about how Thomas's Court opinions are really little more than rebellion against the sort of "black stereotypes" one suspects nicely characterize the majority of Goodman's (no doubt numerous) black friends.
It's all about race for Goodman, you see. Thomas can't really be independently conservative; that is, he can't possibly be the Court's "most predictable member of the conservative camp" because he honestly and rationally believes that nonsense. He can't possibly have rationally come to view racial discrimination of any sort as wrong despite having personally benefited from it. Could he? No, of course not. It's all about his resentments, the ingrate!
Poor Ellen, you see, didn't get a black liberal "successor to Thurgood Marshall." In Goodman's ideal world there should be a black liberal on the Court and a Jewish liberal and a female liberal, etc. That's diversity! She is outraged that Justice Thomas might seriously doubt whether forced racial integration has been the unqualified success she believes it to be.
What nonsense. And racist nonsense, at that.
I often don't agree with Thomas's opinions. But I have listened to liberals denigrate his intelligence and competence and -- Gasp! -- his blackness ever since he was appointed and I have yet to find any evidence at all of the first two claims. As to the last, I'm not a black man and do not, therefore, know what his experiences as a black man in America have been. Neither, it should be obvious, does Goodman. Then again, we will never understand Clarence Thomas or anyone else in this world if we can't ever get past the color of his skin.
The Democrats' Shakespearian 'Fool'
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously claimed there are no second acts in American lives and spent the rest of his life proving it. Politicians, on the other hand, are occasionally capable of reanimation, horror movie style, after a dormant period long enough for the American memory, not our strongest faculty, to fade.
Thus, once upon a time, we saw the “new Nixon” arise from the politically dead and these days we are witnessing the re-branding of the “new and improved” Hillary Clinton. In Hillary’s case, of course, we knew the monster hadn’t been completely destroyed at the end of the first movie. Merely exiled to the Senate after eight years in the White House, the Clinton’s had learned well from their Hollywood pals about setting up a sequel in the final reel.
When lesser luminaries than headliners like Nixon and Clinton suddenly see the spotlight once again, it is usually because of the vicissitudes of fate. Take, for example, Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Gravel.
Gravel is to the Democrats what Ron Paul is to the Republicans, the Shakespearian fool providing both comic relief and almost zen-like insight into the true folly of our two-party presidential marathon. Gravel represented Alaska in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, and first came to light back in the Viet Nam war era as a key figure in brokering an end to the military draft and in the public release of the infamous Pentagon Papers. Thanks for the most part to the war in Iraq, he's back on stage, however briefly.
A populist at heart, Gravel’s positions range from immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq to elimination of the IRS and institution of a “progressive” national sales tax to universal health care vouchers to decriminalization of minor drug offenses. Unlike all of the other candidates except for Ron Paul, Gravel no doubt believes in every single stand he is taking, oblivious to the pollsters and spin doctors who tailor the other candidates’ campaigns. As a predictable result, and as with Paul, there is something for everyone to like about Gravel’s platform, and something to dislike, too.
Of course, it doesn’t matter. Gravel’s chances of securing the Democratic nomination are infinitesimal. Not even Shakespeare could pull off a final act where the fool gets the crown, let alone a tragedy where everyone lives happily ever after.
Thus, once upon a time, we saw the “new Nixon” arise from the politically dead and these days we are witnessing the re-branding of the “new and improved” Hillary Clinton. In Hillary’s case, of course, we knew the monster hadn’t been completely destroyed at the end of the first movie. Merely exiled to the Senate after eight years in the White House, the Clinton’s had learned well from their Hollywood pals about setting up a sequel in the final reel.
When lesser luminaries than headliners like Nixon and Clinton suddenly see the spotlight once again, it is usually because of the vicissitudes of fate. Take, for example, Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Gravel.
Gravel is to the Democrats what Ron Paul is to the Republicans, the Shakespearian fool providing both comic relief and almost zen-like insight into the true folly of our two-party presidential marathon. Gravel represented Alaska in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, and first came to light back in the Viet Nam war era as a key figure in brokering an end to the military draft and in the public release of the infamous Pentagon Papers. Thanks for the most part to the war in Iraq, he's back on stage, however briefly.
A populist at heart, Gravel’s positions range from immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq to elimination of the IRS and institution of a “progressive” national sales tax to universal health care vouchers to decriminalization of minor drug offenses. Unlike all of the other candidates except for Ron Paul, Gravel no doubt believes in every single stand he is taking, oblivious to the pollsters and spin doctors who tailor the other candidates’ campaigns. As a predictable result, and as with Paul, there is something for everyone to like about Gravel’s platform, and something to dislike, too.
Of course, it doesn’t matter. Gravel’s chances of securing the Democratic nomination are infinitesimal. Not even Shakespeare could pull off a final act where the fool gets the crown, let alone a tragedy where everyone lives happily ever after.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
The Protectionist Price of Patriotism
The price for American flags will rise in Minnesota when, as the (U.K.) TimesOnline reports, a new law goes into effect requiring "all US flags sold in the state to be of American manufacture. Violations of the law, which comes into force at the end of the year, will be punished by a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail."
The man behind the law, Democratic state congressman Tom Rukavina, reasons as follows:
Several things, elected officials high among them, embarrass me far more than Chinese plastic flags, but we'll let that ride.
I don't know if Minnesota ever had any extensive textile manufacturing, but if it did I rather doubt it wasn't lost years ago to cheaper Southern textile manufacturers who, in turn, lost to cheaper foreign concerns. But who knows? Apparently the Flag Manufacturers’ Association of America is behind the legislation (surprise, surprise!), and perhaps they have offered to keep or build in Minnesota a flag plant to supply the state's new "Made in the U.S.A." needs.
Of course, the state government can impose any restrictions on itself it wants and if taxpayers have to pay a fraction of a penny more in state taxes because their flags have just tripled or quadrupled in price, well, that's just another case of concentrated and visible benefits and diffuse and invisible costs.
Whether Minnesota can, let alone should, keep it's own citizens from buying U.S. flags made in China is another matter entirely. Even if the law is a constitutionally permissible restriction on interstate commerce, which I doubt, its practical effect will be to drive "unpatriotic" Minnesota flag buyers to make their purchases via mail-order or online. Of course, I have no idea what the size of the market for flags in Minnesota is, but the law might even end up reducing the state's net number of jobs. If so, let's hope state congressman Rukavina is among the first to be let go.
The man behind the law, Democratic state congressman Tom Rukavina, reasons as follows:
The biggest honor that you can give the flag is that it be made by American workers in the United States of America.... Nothing is more embarrassing to me than a plastic flag made in China. This replica of freedom we so respect should be made in this country.... I think this Bill is about jobs, jobs for Americans.
Several things, elected officials high among them, embarrass me far more than Chinese plastic flags, but we'll let that ride.
I don't know if Minnesota ever had any extensive textile manufacturing, but if it did I rather doubt it wasn't lost years ago to cheaper Southern textile manufacturers who, in turn, lost to cheaper foreign concerns. But who knows? Apparently the Flag Manufacturers’ Association of America is behind the legislation (surprise, surprise!), and perhaps they have offered to keep or build in Minnesota a flag plant to supply the state's new "Made in the U.S.A." needs.
Of course, the state government can impose any restrictions on itself it wants and if taxpayers have to pay a fraction of a penny more in state taxes because their flags have just tripled or quadrupled in price, well, that's just another case of concentrated and visible benefits and diffuse and invisible costs.
Whether Minnesota can, let alone should, keep it's own citizens from buying U.S. flags made in China is another matter entirely. Even if the law is a constitutionally permissible restriction on interstate commerce, which I doubt, its practical effect will be to drive "unpatriotic" Minnesota flag buyers to make their purchases via mail-order or online. Of course, I have no idea what the size of the market for flags in Minnesota is, but the law might even end up reducing the state's net number of jobs. If so, let's hope state congressman Rukavina is among the first to be let go.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Fourth of July Memories
Some twenty-five years ago my wife and I and a couple dozen friends, mostly from college, met every 4th of July down at the National Mall to make a day of the festivities. In those days glass bottles were prohibited but cans were permitted and one could still take coolers filled with beer (oh, and food) and stake out some territory by the Washington Monument for a perfect overhead view of the fireworks.
We were all in our 20's or early 30's at most, in the final days of the first stage of our adult lives, still mostly childless and still early in our careers, mostly as doctors or lawyers -- lots of lawyers! -- with an odd journalist or bureaucrat or two as well. After all, we are talking about Washington, D.C. here. People played Frisbee and shot off illegal bottle rockets and ate and drank and burned in the hot July sun. Even then, the most casual look at the tens of thousands of people who had gathered on the Mall made it obvious beyond question that we are both a nation of immigrants and a single people.
These were the early days of the Reagan Administration, and in 1981 and 1982 that most quintessentially American band, the Beach Boys, played their most quintessentially innocent and joyful music at the big concert stage down by the Monument. The National Symphony also played pop and light classical music at the Capitol steps, but that was at the other end of the Mall and, besides, even today I'd opt for "Fun, Fun, Fun" over Tchaikovsky in a heartbeat.
But 1983 was far and away my favorite year, for it was then that Interior Secretary James Watt decided the Beach Boys were, well, attracting the wrong element to the Mall and booked Wayne Newton instead. Perhaps Watt was a secret fan of Lenny Bruce, who once observed that there was no place in America more American than Las Vegas. In any case, Wayne brought all the trappings of his Vegas act with him, complete with dozens of feather-headdress wearing, scantily clad but sequin festooned showgirls. It doesn't get any more American than that, except perhaps at the Folies-Bergere in Paris.
Getting close to the stage was much harder than when the Beach Boys played because it was already heavily surrounded by a mosh pit of silver-blue haired women. Fortunately, their average height was only around 5'4", so I didn't have to elbow my way through little old ladies to see the stage clearly. It was, to put it mildly, quite a show. Newton sang his hits as the showgirls shook their, well, you know, and concluded appropriately enough with "America the Beautiful." But then he came back to do a Vegas style encore, probably "Danke Schoen" though I don't recall exactly, and it was at that exact moment that I grasped the genius of Watt's decision. Alas, Nancy Reagan liked the Beach Boys better and they were back the next year, another government program that, once started, refused to go away.
The fate of the United States, indeed, of the Earth was still very much in jeopardy in those days from the Cold War's Mutually Assured Destruction. Thank God, it never happened, but we lived with that terrible risk as we now seem incapable of living with the risk of a small number of fanatical enemies who, even in our most nightmarish scenarios, don't pose a tenth of a percent of that decades-long threatened nuclear holocaust. Our biggest complaints about air travel were that it was uncomfortable, boring, expensive and too often delayed. We were spending a vast fortune on defense, but at least we were defending ourselves against a credible threat. Accusations of an imperial presidency focused more on Nancy's White House china patterns than on jackbooted thugs hauling U.S. citizens off to prison without so much as a hint of due process.
Of course, both the world and America have changed in many ways for the better in the past quarter-century. Many, but not all. I have no idea what sort of controlled environment or enhanced security the National Park Service is imposing on the crowds today down at the Mall, but I know I want no part of it. And I'm not at all nostalgic for the 1980s, however much this comes across that way. Sure, I'd like my youth back, but that doesn't mean I'd like to be living in 1983 again.
I merely note, like Joni Mitchell, that the passage of time involves loss as well as gain. Some things, like youth, we cannot help but lose. Whether we lose other things, like the courage to demand free lives and accountable government, is up to us, as is our relationship with the rest of the world. I, for one, would prefer the world to think of us as a people willing to risk a bottle rocket or two with a can of beer in our hands singing along to "Fun, Fun, Fun," than for the nationalistic bombast of the 1812 Overture, especially when you consider how the Battle of Borodino turned out.
We were all in our 20's or early 30's at most, in the final days of the first stage of our adult lives, still mostly childless and still early in our careers, mostly as doctors or lawyers -- lots of lawyers! -- with an odd journalist or bureaucrat or two as well. After all, we are talking about Washington, D.C. here. People played Frisbee and shot off illegal bottle rockets and ate and drank and burned in the hot July sun. Even then, the most casual look at the tens of thousands of people who had gathered on the Mall made it obvious beyond question that we are both a nation of immigrants and a single people.
These were the early days of the Reagan Administration, and in 1981 and 1982 that most quintessentially American band, the Beach Boys, played their most quintessentially innocent and joyful music at the big concert stage down by the Monument. The National Symphony also played pop and light classical music at the Capitol steps, but that was at the other end of the Mall and, besides, even today I'd opt for "Fun, Fun, Fun" over Tchaikovsky in a heartbeat.
But 1983 was far and away my favorite year, for it was then that Interior Secretary James Watt decided the Beach Boys were, well, attracting the wrong element to the Mall and booked Wayne Newton instead. Perhaps Watt was a secret fan of Lenny Bruce, who once observed that there was no place in America more American than Las Vegas. In any case, Wayne brought all the trappings of his Vegas act with him, complete with dozens of feather-headdress wearing, scantily clad but sequin festooned showgirls. It doesn't get any more American than that, except perhaps at the Folies-Bergere in Paris.
Getting close to the stage was much harder than when the Beach Boys played because it was already heavily surrounded by a mosh pit of silver-blue haired women. Fortunately, their average height was only around 5'4", so I didn't have to elbow my way through little old ladies to see the stage clearly. It was, to put it mildly, quite a show. Newton sang his hits as the showgirls shook their, well, you know, and concluded appropriately enough with "America the Beautiful." But then he came back to do a Vegas style encore, probably "Danke Schoen" though I don't recall exactly, and it was at that exact moment that I grasped the genius of Watt's decision. Alas, Nancy Reagan liked the Beach Boys better and they were back the next year, another government program that, once started, refused to go away.
The fate of the United States, indeed, of the Earth was still very much in jeopardy in those days from the Cold War's Mutually Assured Destruction. Thank God, it never happened, but we lived with that terrible risk as we now seem incapable of living with the risk of a small number of fanatical enemies who, even in our most nightmarish scenarios, don't pose a tenth of a percent of that decades-long threatened nuclear holocaust. Our biggest complaints about air travel were that it was uncomfortable, boring, expensive and too often delayed. We were spending a vast fortune on defense, but at least we were defending ourselves against a credible threat. Accusations of an imperial presidency focused more on Nancy's White House china patterns than on jackbooted thugs hauling U.S. citizens off to prison without so much as a hint of due process.
Of course, both the world and America have changed in many ways for the better in the past quarter-century. Many, but not all. I have no idea what sort of controlled environment or enhanced security the National Park Service is imposing on the crowds today down at the Mall, but I know I want no part of it. And I'm not at all nostalgic for the 1980s, however much this comes across that way. Sure, I'd like my youth back, but that doesn't mean I'd like to be living in 1983 again.
I merely note, like Joni Mitchell, that the passage of time involves loss as well as gain. Some things, like youth, we cannot help but lose. Whether we lose other things, like the courage to demand free lives and accountable government, is up to us, as is our relationship with the rest of the world. I, for one, would prefer the world to think of us as a people willing to risk a bottle rocket or two with a can of beer in our hands singing along to "Fun, Fun, Fun," than for the nationalistic bombast of the 1812 Overture, especially when you consider how the Battle of Borodino turned out.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence (Updated)
The Washington Post reports that President Bush has commuted Lewis Libby's prison sentence. Here are the concluding paragraphs of the President's statement announcing the decision:
In other words, for political reasons the remaining pardon will have to wait until the closing weeks of the Bush presidency.
For the record, I continue to believe that the Libby prosecution was little more that raw partisan politics by other means. For that matter, I agree with Bush that the sentence was harsh. More to the point, I am inclined to think Libby should have been permitted to remain free on bail pending his appeal.
No, that isn't exactly par for the course, but damned little about this trial has been, anyway. Bush's decision will immediately be judged either as yet more arrogant abuse of power or as an act of courageous and politically dangerous loyalty. I should think by now it is well understood that any support I ever gave, however grudgingly, to Bush has long since vanished. However, I can't help but think that, on balance, he's done the right thing here.
UPDATE: Well, I never thought I'd live to see the day, but here's a post by Alan Dershowitz with which I agree almost entirely.
I'll also cross-post some (slightly edited) remarks I made at Hit & Run earlier. I think Libby lied under oath trying to shield his boss and, yeah, I think Fitzgerald pursued Libby as opposed to the others hoping to flip him to get to Cheney. I don't think Fitzgerald, himself, was politically motivated, but when you consider the context in which he was appointed as a special prosecutor, the years he spent and the indictments (or lack thereof) he finally sought, I continue to believe that the heart of the matter was partisan politics. YMMV.
Subtract the political context and what are you left with? Misleading investigators and twice making false statements under oath to a grand jury. Serious, but not 2.5 years incarceration serious when you consider the rest of the consequences that have befallen Libby.
(Here, BTW, is the indictment against Libby for anyone wishing to sort out the facts as alleged and apparently accepted as true by the jury.]
Okay, so life is unfair and lots of other people get screwed in the criminal justice system and don't get presidential clemency and blah, blah, blah. All true. Still, the most apt comparison here is to Sandy Berger.
Berger took five copies of the same classified document with him and cut up three of those documents. (Apparently he only needed one extra copy to check to see if the first one was correct. The others went to, what, classified ransom notes?) So we have an underlying case of a breach of national security, a statutory offense. Berger eventually copped to a misdemeanor, an option probably not offered Libby but which (yes, for purely partisan political reasons) Libby was not in a position to accept anyway since the price would have been to roll on Cheney.
Anyway, Berger was fined $50k, got two years probation, did 100 hours of community service and relinquished his law license. (This sentence was, btw, more severe than the recommended sentence.)
Again, I'm saying these are only roughly analogous and if you want to argue Berger should have served time, too, okay. Bearing in mind, however, the original purpose of the special prosecutor's appointment and the end results of his investigation, I'd say sending Libby to prison because Fitzgerald couldn't make his case against Cheney or Rove, etc. is unreasonable.
I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.
My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.
The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby's case is an appropriate exercise of this power.
In other words, for political reasons the remaining pardon will have to wait until the closing weeks of the Bush presidency.
For the record, I continue to believe that the Libby prosecution was little more that raw partisan politics by other means. For that matter, I agree with Bush that the sentence was harsh. More to the point, I am inclined to think Libby should have been permitted to remain free on bail pending his appeal.
No, that isn't exactly par for the course, but damned little about this trial has been, anyway. Bush's decision will immediately be judged either as yet more arrogant abuse of power or as an act of courageous and politically dangerous loyalty. I should think by now it is well understood that any support I ever gave, however grudgingly, to Bush has long since vanished. However, I can't help but think that, on balance, he's done the right thing here.
UPDATE: Well, I never thought I'd live to see the day, but here's a post by Alan Dershowitz with which I agree almost entirely.
I'll also cross-post some (slightly edited) remarks I made at Hit & Run earlier. I think Libby lied under oath trying to shield his boss and, yeah, I think Fitzgerald pursued Libby as opposed to the others hoping to flip him to get to Cheney. I don't think Fitzgerald, himself, was politically motivated, but when you consider the context in which he was appointed as a special prosecutor, the years he spent and the indictments (or lack thereof) he finally sought, I continue to believe that the heart of the matter was partisan politics. YMMV.
Subtract the political context and what are you left with? Misleading investigators and twice making false statements under oath to a grand jury. Serious, but not 2.5 years incarceration serious when you consider the rest of the consequences that have befallen Libby.
(Here, BTW, is the indictment against Libby for anyone wishing to sort out the facts as alleged and apparently accepted as true by the jury.]
Okay, so life is unfair and lots of other people get screwed in the criminal justice system and don't get presidential clemency and blah, blah, blah. All true. Still, the most apt comparison here is to Sandy Berger.
Berger took five copies of the same classified document with him and cut up three of those documents. (Apparently he only needed one extra copy to check to see if the first one was correct. The others went to, what, classified ransom notes?) So we have an underlying case of a breach of national security, a statutory offense. Berger eventually copped to a misdemeanor, an option probably not offered Libby but which (yes, for purely partisan political reasons) Libby was not in a position to accept anyway since the price would have been to roll on Cheney.
Anyway, Berger was fined $50k, got two years probation, did 100 hours of community service and relinquished his law license. (This sentence was, btw, more severe than the recommended sentence.)
Again, I'm saying these are only roughly analogous and if you want to argue Berger should have served time, too, okay. Bearing in mind, however, the original purpose of the special prosecutor's appointment and the end results of his investigation, I'd say sending Libby to prison because Fitzgerald couldn't make his case against Cheney or Rove, etc. is unreasonable.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Freeman Dyson's Optimistic Biotech Future
Freeman Dyson is the sort of intellectual one must take seriously even when writing what may amount to little more than a review of his own book and, along the way, a tribute to microbiologist Carl Woese. Those of us who have not read The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (and that would include me) might well find their appetite whetted by this New York Review of Books article from one of the best minds of the 20th century.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Houskeeping - June 2007
As the summer season begins, site hits have begun to slack off, indicating either that readers have better things to do during the summer than read blogs or that readers are wising up to me and finding better things to do than read this blog regardless of the season. I'm going with "either" for the time being and will do a bit of sluffing off, myself, in July and August, what with family vacations and what not.
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Retired Header ‘Quotes’:
March 2007 – “Pay no attention to that man behind the veil!” – the Wizard of Rawls
April 2007 – “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one may still post on the internet.” – Ludwig Blogenstein
May 2007 - “Don't follow leaders, watch the blog hit meters!" - Blog Dylan
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Retired Header ‘Quotes’:
March 2007 – “Pay no attention to that man behind the veil!” – the Wizard of Rawls
April 2007 – “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one may still post on the internet.” – Ludwig Blogenstein
May 2007 - “Don't follow leaders, watch the blog hit meters!" - Blog Dylan
Constant Viewer: Ratatouille
Nothing Constant Viewer says about Ratatouille will make any difference to you, Dear Reader, especially if you have children young enough that you look forward to any G Rated movie you think you might actually be able to suffer through, yourself. Rest assured, however, you won't suffer at all through Ratatouille -- you'll enjoy it as much as your kids will. If you don't have kids, go see it anyway.
We are living in a Golden Age of animation, a fact you'd never discover watching Cartoon Network or any of the current Saturday morning nonsense. The reason, quite simply, is Pixar, which has almost single-handedly raised the bar to where the best animated features today are as beautiful as classic Disney features, as funny as classic Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and as sophisticated as classic Max Fleischer cartoons. While Disney has had tremendous commercial success with such PC dreck as The Lion King and Pocahontas, only DreamWorks has given Pixar a serious run for its money in terms of quality, hence the House the Mouse Built serves chiefly as a distributor these days for Pixar's creative genius. With serious kudos to writer / director Brad Bird, Ratatouille is no exception. It's a gem.
Ratatouille tells the story of a rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who yearns to be a great cook forming a symbiotic relationship with a young man named Linguini (Lou Romano) in a famous Parisian restaurant fallen on hard times since its master chef died. Remy's family, suspicious of humans, the scheming new chef trying to capitalize on the restaurant's fading reputation and a deliciously malevolent food critic (wonderfully voiced by Peter O'Toole) provide all the required plot complications.
But the plot here is truly little more than a vehicle for a moving story about family loyalties, friendships, ambitions and dreams. It's accessible enough for small children and sophisticated enough for adults and it's carried all the while with great comic timing and a brilliant sense of how animation at its best works where a CGI effect in a live movie would look absurd.
Before the feature begins, Lifted, a new Pixar short adds to the fun. CV's only criticism is that, counting the previews and the short, Ratatouille runs a bit long for the attention span of pre-schoolers, several of whom were figgeting behind CV for most of the last hour. If Constant Viewer had his way, pre-schoolers wouldn't be taken to the movies at all; but he doesn't, so beware of your neighbors.
A few days ago, Constant Viewer wrote in a review of Live Free or Die Hard that if a better summer movie awaited us, it would be one hell of a summer. Of course, the two movies are apples and oranges; nonetheless, it's official: it's one hell of a summer at the movies.
We are living in a Golden Age of animation, a fact you'd never discover watching Cartoon Network or any of the current Saturday morning nonsense. The reason, quite simply, is Pixar, which has almost single-handedly raised the bar to where the best animated features today are as beautiful as classic Disney features, as funny as classic Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and as sophisticated as classic Max Fleischer cartoons. While Disney has had tremendous commercial success with such PC dreck as The Lion King and Pocahontas, only DreamWorks has given Pixar a serious run for its money in terms of quality, hence the House the Mouse Built serves chiefly as a distributor these days for Pixar's creative genius. With serious kudos to writer / director Brad Bird, Ratatouille is no exception. It's a gem.
Ratatouille tells the story of a rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who yearns to be a great cook forming a symbiotic relationship with a young man named Linguini (Lou Romano) in a famous Parisian restaurant fallen on hard times since its master chef died. Remy's family, suspicious of humans, the scheming new chef trying to capitalize on the restaurant's fading reputation and a deliciously malevolent food critic (wonderfully voiced by Peter O'Toole) provide all the required plot complications.
But the plot here is truly little more than a vehicle for a moving story about family loyalties, friendships, ambitions and dreams. It's accessible enough for small children and sophisticated enough for adults and it's carried all the while with great comic timing and a brilliant sense of how animation at its best works where a CGI effect in a live movie would look absurd.
Before the feature begins, Lifted, a new Pixar short adds to the fun. CV's only criticism is that, counting the previews and the short, Ratatouille runs a bit long for the attention span of pre-schoolers, several of whom were figgeting behind CV for most of the last hour. If Constant Viewer had his way, pre-schoolers wouldn't be taken to the movies at all; but he doesn't, so beware of your neighbors.
A few days ago, Constant Viewer wrote in a review of Live Free or Die Hard that if a better summer movie awaited us, it would be one hell of a summer. Of course, the two movies are apples and oranges; nonetheless, it's official: it's one hell of a summer at the movies.
Classic TV Finales, Palestinian Style
Farfour is dead. In the final Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa TV episode, the Mickey Mouse knockoff who preached Islamic domination was, wait for it... beaten to death by an Israeli Jew.
This whole "beaten to death by Jews" idea for TV series finales could save Hollywood a whole lot of needless time and trouble. Just think, for example, how much easier it would have been to write the final episode of The Sopranos if, by long standing tradition, audiences understood that Tony and his two families would be beaten to death in the end by Hyman Roth's avenging descendants. Of course, su
This whole "beaten to death by Jews" idea for TV series finales could save Hollywood a whole lot of needless time and trouble. Just think, for example, how much easier it would have been to write the final episode of The Sopranos if, by long standing tradition, audiences understood that Tony and his two families would be beaten to death in the end by Hyman Roth's avenging descendants. Of course, su