Lance Mannion

A Reader Writes: Where did the other bullets go?

Posted Monday morning, November 27, 2017.

From the mail bag…

Responding to my post on the mass murder in Sutherland Springs and the gun culture both the killer and the good guy with a gun who shot him grew up in, Give ‘em what-fer, Davy!, Art brings up a point I hadn’t considered: where did all the other bullets the good guy with a gun fired wind up?

I certainly haven't read every piece dealing with the shooting in Sutherland Springs but so far I haven't seen any mention of where the rounds fired by the 'heroes' ended up. Based on multiple accounts it seems the shooter was coming out of the church having expended all his ammunition, something like 450 rounds, when he was shot at. He was hit in the arm and torso, dropped his empty rifle, got into his vehicle, and drove off.

From the account it sounded like the hero fired a dozen, or so, rounds. Two hit the attacker, and I will assume they either stopped in him or lacked enough energy to do any more harm, but what of the other shots? Did they go into the church? Did they hit an innocent? Did they maim or kill anyone not already maimed or dying? Will we ever know? Or do we assume that all shots fired by a righteous shooter to be blameless, if not entirely harmless?

I don't bring this up to get the guy thinking he is doing the right thing prosecuted, or even the feel bad. I bring this up to demonstrate how blunt and indiscriminate firearms are as tools. Being hit by friendly-fire is just as damaging as being shot by someone intending harm. As always, it is the total harm done that counts, not the intentions of those shooting.

Perhaps, one day, there will be a case where a good guy will, against all odds, get the drop on a bad guy with a gun before he can do harm. In the mean time the good guys will be trying to prevent shootings by doing their own shooting and all present will be at risk from both sides.

There is also the problem faced by both good guys and police, how to tell the good guys from the bad. In the old cowboy serials it was simple, good guys were white hats and bad guys wear black hats. If only real life could be so simple.

Responding to the same post, FDChief writes:

As someone who had to use one in his day job, the ammosexual fetish for the AR-15 and its clones really baffles me. The goddamn thing is only fair at its' actual job - being a battle rifle - and for almost every other non-combat rifle use (which are 1) hunting, and 2) target shooting) is a monstrous pain-in-the-ass.

It's full of ridiculously small, fussy parts, for one thing. If you don't have access to ammunition with truly high-grade propellant it tends to foul quickly, and when the gas tube fouls the bolt carrier tends to short-recoil and the action malfunctions, either due to a failure to extract (the spent cartridge case), failure to eject (same), or failure to feed (the next round).

So to ensure proper operation the damn rifle has to be kitchen clean, and that means a ton of time disassembling the bastard, cleaning it, lubricating it, and reassembling it. Like every modern military firearm it knocks down fairly easily, but as mentioned, the parts are irritatingly small and prone to get lost unless you're very meticulous about finding a nice flat spot to lay them out.

And the small round - which is a good thing for a soldier, since it allows you to carry more rounds for the same weight-load - is not particularly good for killing things larger than people. A single .30 caliber round will knock down most large animals if well-placed. A 5.56mm round usually won't. What it will do is tumble and rip up a lot of the meat, or, worse, break up and leave lots of nasty lead bits in the venison.

I've had a lot of fun target-shooting with a Mark III* Short-magazine Lee-Enfield bolt action rifle. It's also a perfectly good hunting rifle.

This bizarre fascination with military-style assault rifles completely baffles me. Like you say; it's a tool. Who the hell wants a fussy, hard-to-maintain tool that isn't much good for what you want to use it for?

Meanwhile, Stewart Dean left this lament on my post on the Republicans’ intent to punish the non-rich with their tax cuts for the rich bill, Remember: They hate us:

The problem with grinding the life out of the middle class is that you're destroying the market for your goods. You maybe be able to bring your widgets to market at lower cost and higher profit, but they'll be no one to buy them. Back when, Henry Ford paid his workers what most capitalists saw as a dangerously high wage (not just to profitability, but to what they'd come to expect as a wage floor), but Ford said, I want my workers to be able to buy what they're making.

And the other problem with grinding the life out of the middle class is that you're destroying the creativity base out of which new ideas and products come from. The poor are just struggling through to the next paycheck, the rich are just playing with toys. The creativity of the middle class was the great gift of the GI Bill.

Here in the Hudson Valley there are grandfathers who were trained by and worked on the first computers at IBM, made magic and retired very well. There are fathers who worked on computers, made magic but saw the benefits whittled down and down and retired a lot less well. Their kids are bagging groceries and IBM is gone from Kingston and Fishkill and Poughkeepsie is a pale shadow. When IBM released a new model in the old days, you could see a bump in the GDP of America. Those days are gone...but the executives has feathered their nests well while gutting the company, the workers and our communities.

And, last one for now. lingin left this comment on President Newt and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to remind us:

There is only one book that is worth reading regarding the Clinton presidency and that is The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, the only journalists I would trust on the subject.

A reader writes: Computers in Ancient Rome?

Posted Sunday morning, November 19, 2017.

I’m glad Ken Muldrew brought this up in his comment on my November 4th post Lance Mannion has come unstuck in time again…and again…and again…. I did make a point of not talking about the Antikythera mehanism, mainly because it’s a fascinating subject and I was afraid it would take me far off topic if I started in on it, but also because I didn’t think I really understood how it might have worked. Here’s Ken’s take:

There's a great irony here but I'm too slow to figure out if you meant to highlight it or not. In talking about visits to the past, with particular notice given to the Antikythera wreck, you seem to make a point of not talking about the most out-of-time (as in, could only come from visits from the future) artifact ever found: the Antikythera mechanism. This was an analog computer used to calculate the movements of celestial bodies. Of course it's not really out-of-time, it's just that the technology seems to have been lost for centuries after this singular device was made. An amateur machinist who embodies the spirit of Sophocles ("One must learn by doing the thing...") is attempting to reconstruct the device using period methods (at least for proof of concept; he uses modern machining techniques for most of the work so that it doesn't take 20 years). He posts regular videos of his progress that are very engaging (though perhaps not for everyone).

His website is: Clickspring: Amateur Clockmaking, Machine Shop…and Other Stuff.

A reader writes: On kingfishers

Posted Sunday morning, November 19, 2017.

One of the things about the blog I’m proud of is all the thoughtful readers who stop by, and one of the things I’m not proud of myself for is how I’ve been neglecting the comment section where so many of them take the time and trouble to leave their thoughts and thus improve the tone and intellectual caliber of the blog. Not to mention you al can write. So I’m going to try to make a weekly feature of posting comments like this one from Doug K who was responding to my October 22nd post on Mary Oliver’s new book of selected poems, "I think this is the prettiest world---so long as you don't mind a little dying", in which I quoted her poem “Kingfisher”:

as a fisherman I often have kingfishers for company, usually don't see them but hear their chattering as they flee me. Last weekend there was a pair that was rattling and screaming around the pond, heard one dive with a splash so large I thought it was a pelican..handsome birds, good company.

On trout streams it is often the ouzel (dipper) that consoles my biophilia. As John Muir wrote [in The Mountains of California]:

He is a singularly joyous and lovable little fellow.. flitting about in the spray, diving in foaming eddies, whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells; ever vigorous and enthusiastic, yet self-contained, and neither seeking nor shunning your company.

A perfect companion, that is..

Make sure you visit Doug’s blog No Longer at Ease.

Popping Charles Murray’s Bubble 2: Thursday Night at the Movies edition

Regular Americans head off to the multiplex for a night out at the movies.

Quick note before I get started on today’s installment. The coverage of the sudden fight over the President’s now several months’ old decision that employers receiving federal money must comply with federal law and offer medical insurance plans that cover contraception is one of the reasons I’m bothering with this silly quiz.

At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent has a post that asks “Is media getting politics of contraception all wrong?” It’s a rhetorical question because Sargent has an answer ready.  “Yes.”  Polls show most Catholics want birth control covered by their insurance.   But the media is covering the issue as if most Catholics are lined up with the bishops.  Sargent doesn’t get into it, but the reason the media is saying it is that Washington insiders think all Catholics are conservatives.  The media doesn’t read polls, except for the latest ones out of the Presidential horseraces and they read those shallowly, looking for evidence that what the boys and girls and the bus are telling each other on the bus, which is usually some version of The Democrats are doomed, is true.  The media believes that all Americans except black Americans are conservative, which is why they keep turning out stories predicting that Jews and Hispanics are about to turn on Democrats en masse.

Generally, the political press corps has no idea who Catholics are or what they think or believe.  They seem to know that a lot of Catholics are Irish, Italian, and Polish, but that only figures into their thinking when there’s a parade.  They don’t seem to know that a lot of Hispanics are Catholic.  On the whole, they lump Catholics in with “Christians” whom they also think are all conservatives, and treat them all as “regular Americans.”

And as it turns out their idea of who count as regular Americans is pretty close to the who the quiz treats as the regular Americans with whom “the elite” is out of touch:  Mostly Southern and Midwestern, suburban-dwelling, middle-aged white men who vote Republican.

The Political Press Corps covers Catholics as if they’re not mostly to be found in cities run by Democrats and in blue states and in the bluer parts of purple states like Ohio and red states like Texas and Arizona  because that’s how they cover “Americans.”

At any rate, it’s not that I don’t think there’s a “regular America.”  It’s that I think the quiz---which is to say the assumptions behind it---is reductive and offers a very limited picture of the American experience.  It’s not a good thing that political journalists accept the same basic assumptions.

The difference is that the quiz is deliberately reductive and the political press’s assumptions are just the result of intellectual laziness and, yes, elitist condescension.

So, on to dissecting today’s question.

3. Have you seen last year’s mega-hit movie, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”?

At first I didn’t get this one at all.  Seemed to me that all a yes answer did here was increase the probability you’re a twelve year old boy.

With lousy tastes in movies.

Also, a yes answer might just mean you’re a film critic and your editor wouldn’t let you get out of it.

I was scratching my head, wondering if the movie had a coded conservative agenda or if one of the blockheaded philistines at Big Hollywood had read one into it.  It filled the seats at multiplexes everywhere, but was it more popular in red states?

But, as loretta has pointed out in comments on my first two bubble bursters, the quiz I linked to is adapted from a slightly longer version that actually appears in Murray’s book and on that quiz the question is:

Which of the following movies have you seen (at a theater or on DVD)?

Iron Man 2, Inception, Despicable Me, Tron Legacy, True Grit, Clash of the Titans, Grown Ups, Little Fockers, The King’s Speech, Shutter Island?

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is not on the book version of the quiz and the question on the version I linked to actually distorts the book’s version as Murray describes those movies as the “ten top grossing movies not principally directed at children or teens.”

Ok, I enjoyed Despicable Me but “not principally directed at children”?  Well, never mind.  Let’s give it to him, for now.

When I read the book’s version I thought, “I get it. This is a gimme.  It’s in there so that nobody scores a 0.”

Then I remembered that the quiz (in both versions) was designed with two political purposes.  The first is to define Regular American-ness with Republican voter.  But the second is to maneuver liberal elitists into revealing themselves as liberal elitists.

The assumption behind the question is that there are people who’d answer none of them, people like Murray’s intellectually pretentious colleagues at Harvard and neighbors in Cambridge, tweedy, white-wine sipping snobs who wouldn’t dream of seeing any movie that didn’t have subtitles or good buzz coming out of Sundance, toffs whose tastes are so refined they’d turn up their noses at Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers.

It’s not that regular Americans go to any particular movies it’s that they’re happy to go see whatever’s playing at the multiplex and willingly rub shoulders with the rest of the hoi polloi in line to buy popcorn.

The question is a locator too.  If you like to go to the movies to see movies with subtitles you have to live in a big city or a university town and no regular Americans live in those places.

Ah, but here’s the thing. My parents have only seen two of these, True Grit and The King’s Speech, and they watched them both on DVD.

A none of the above answer on this question may indicate you’re a snobby elitist but it may also simply mean that you’re getting older and don’t get out as much as you used to and when you do you’re picky about what you go see because movie tickets have gotten expensive, movies have gotten worse---they don’t make ‘em like they used to---and, you know what, rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi in line for popcorn is a lot more annoying than it used to be.

Mom and Pop Mannion won’t go to a movie until they’re sure they’re both going to like it, and by the time they make up their minds it’s often the case that the movie has left the theaters.  Then they have to remember to look out for it when it comes out on DVD.  Which means it’s more or less an accident that they saw True Grit and The King’s Speech and they wouldn’t have to answer no if they took the quiz.

(Old Mother and Old Father Blonde, on the other hand, see everything.  They don’t pay for everything.  But, hey, if the multiplexes didn’t want them going to see two movies for the price of one, they’d hire more ushers to check tickets.)

But here’s another thing.  The regular American movie going experience has been undergoing a sea change.  More and more of us aren’t going to the multiplex and not because we’re heading off to the art houses instead.  We’re staying home because…

Ticket prices are too high, movies are worse---and there’s a reason that undercuts Murray’s question---and standing in line with the hoi polloi for popcorn isn’t a whole lot of fun.

But we’re also staying home because high def, large screen, flat screen TVs are coming down in price and are really, really cool and more and more movies are streaming on Netflix and Amazon.  Then there’s on demand.  And then there’s the fact that while movies have gotten worse, television has gotten not just better but routinely terrific.

Now, here’s why movies have gotten worse and standing in line for popcorn less tolerable.

Transformers.

Well, the audience for Transformers.

Twelve to fifteen year old boys.

Which is the targeted audience for most movies, including half the movies on Murray’s list of movies supposedly not “principally directed at children and teenagers.”

Again, it’s not that I don’t think there’s a regular America somewhere out there.  It’s that it’s a more complicated place than the quiz allows for.  But whatever it is and wherever it is, it’s not to be found at the multiplexes anymore.

Unless regular Americans are defined as teenage boys who haven’t discovered girls yet.

By the way, I’m leaving it up to any of you to explain, using his own qualifiers, leaving Toy Story 3 off his list proves Murray doesn’t have a clue when it comes to movies.

________________

If you want to do some catching up with the rest of regular America:  Shutter Island, True Grit, Tron: Legacy, and Iron Man 2 are available to watch instantly on Netflix.

Work ‘Til You Drop, the graphic adventure

You might remember my post from a couple weeks back, Working Until We Drop: A Fable for Our Times.  Reader Dean Reklaw liked the post, but thought it would be more effective if it was illustrated.  So he took on the job himself and created a graphic version.  Which I love.  But who told him I’m a big fan of Mr Six, the dancing old man from the Six Flags ads?

At any rate, click on the image below to see the whole graphic full size.  It also stars Joan Crawford and William Shatner.

Graphic created by Dean Reklaw.

Letter from a small businessman

Uncle Merlin owns and runs his own business North of Boston, and like all small businessmen and women these days---hard to think of a guy six foot six as a small businessman---he's not feeling all that cheerful about the economy.  He's spent the last few days thinking things over, wondering how we wound up in this mess, and he's come to a few unhappy conclusions. He writes:

Hear the SNAPPING sound all around you?

It’s the sound of wallets and pocket books closing!

Americans aren’t buying and for very good reasons. And no matter what the media reports about Congress’ actions from my poll Americans aren’t buying that either!

We are in the midst of the second biggest SNAFU that the “GreedCats” have brought down on us in 30 years.

I had this friend  back in the 80’s, he was in Economic School and in the ‘80s they were filling his head with the stupid notion that Greed was good for the country. He went to work for a “Service Firm” out of college. He told me how wealthy they were all getting doing this contract work for the Commonwealth.

I shot back the he wasn’t getting wealthy at all and neither was his boss. If you have read or in my case skimmed “An Inquiriy into the Nature and  Causes of the Wealth of Nations”; Adam Smith 1776, (7 Books in all) you discern the sentient fact that the wealth of a people can only be generated in 6 ways : Mineral, Energy Production, Agriculture, Population to produce, Land and Abundant natural resources, Means to Transport.

Anything else is just shuffling money around the economy that was already generated by the 6 primary sources.

It is obvious the “GreedCats” have never read “The Wealth of Nations”.

The GreedCats supplanted the notion of “wealth” with “piling up of money”. This was the first great bait and switch which sold off the Quality of America.

The GreedCats also instructed back then that a Company was “worth” more sold off in pieces than it was whole and producing. Take Stanley Tools and sell it off to the highest bidder.

No one at the time ever thought we needed to make things anymore. We all bought our last washing machines in 1976 and have never needed another one since, right?

They need to heed the lessons of Adam Smith and Peter Drucker.

In an NPR interview Peter Drucker said a company’s most important asset is its Customer because that is where the money comes from. And what he meant was the money comes year after year in a stream, not at the end of the last and final quarter before the sale.

Fast Forward 30 years to the newest SNAFU.

Last nite Brian Williams reported, with not too much of a touch scolding tone, that “Consumers” were shutting their wallets. Especially damaging at the opening of the latest “Christmas Consuming Season”. Worst possible of all scenarios.

Worst for who I ask? The GreedCats at the top of all these piles of money that are dwindling everyday?

The new bait and switch today is we are all called “Consumers”! When I was a kid we were called either : “Wage Earners”, or “Salaried Professionals” or “CUSTOMERS”!

Even Congress calls us CONSUMERS not Citizens. No, we are only called Citizens when they are out vote hunting.

Bait and switch is the same  tactic WalMart pulled off when they supplanted “Quality” for “VALUE” in the minds of “Consumers” their favorite mantra. “Buy Overseas junk for “Value”.”

You start calling yourself a “consumer” then you start acting like one. That is an inescapable human behavior folks. WalMart and the GreedCats already know this.

They need to heed the lessons of Peter Drucker. Customers who earn real wages support your business not stockholders.

So everyone wants us to CONSUME especially NOW and Congress and the Media can’t figure out why we aren’t since all the credit markets are “back to normal”.

That I find humorous.
Here the Federal Government allows the GreedCats free reign to ruin the economy with their expert ignorance about “The Wealth of Nations” and  what real Wealth is and how to generate that.   

AND on the other hand they tell us that to save the Country they are doing us all a favor dolling out Billions which we as good CONSUMERS have to pay for.
We pay REAL money that 90% of us EARNED last year and Congress spends fake money they never EARNED. That’s why it is so easy to spend in big piles.

So the Media Pundits and Congress and, now thank God, the Credit Markets are confused about why we CONSUMERS aren’t spending. Well wake up GreedCats here is your weekly lesson from Uncle Merlin:

Americans it is estimated will have to pay out of pocket $7,000 each for the bailout. EACH!

Now, NO ONE is drawing the real picture that the “CONSUMER” sees.

NEXT YEAR, Dick or Jane average Consumer will have to not only pay the Bailout but also TAXES on Income so each of us is looking at not just $7,000 for the Bailout but on average $7,000 in income tax plus the bailout.
Which translates to $14,000 yanked out of our wallets when Mr.Congress comes around next year for taxes.
NO ONE  is drawing that connection EXCEPT the Customers of America who have to really earn that money.

Would you be spending anything in this climate?? My wallet is slammed shut.
I’m told I voted for all of this so that makes me responsible somehow. Can anyone tell me how?
And the experts can’t figure out why our wallets are closed for business.

Americans are answering with their wallets.

Remember that incident called the Revolutionary War, it started over taxes on Tea.
Again in 1776 and “Wealth of Nations” in 1776, a vary good year!

The GreedCats used to say in the 1970’s that the consumer market was bottomless.

What a way to look at your Customers. Nice relationship!

Well just maybe the GreedCats through their fumbling ignorance have finally taught the “Consumers” how it all really operates.

Take a look at the fall of gas & oil over the last 3 months. “Consumers” have cut back and found that they can cut back, so they are cutting back even more and by magic the prices have not only fallen, they have Crashed.
Why because Consumers have slammed their wallets shut.

Think about this artificiality: 
It took roughly over 100 years for gas to go from 0.05/gallon to $1.85/gallon but only 6 months to go from $1.85 to $4.35/gallon. And this without any major energy crisis, World War or collapse in supply.
Now by magic in another 3 months Consumers shut their wallets and gas is back to $1.99/gallon, the price at my local Mobil yesterday.

‘Consumers” should wake up and realize just how powerful a position you are now in today. As a Customer, You have the “GreedCats” by the “bxxx”- Tails.
Become a Customer again! You have the REAL money Congress wants. Dole it out “s l o w l y”!

If they want to be Pundits then as Customers make them  heed the lessons of Peter Drucker and Adam Smith.

And I need to go read all 7 books of Wealth of Nations!

1776 Was a Very Good Year!

In lieu of posting

I had a couple of long posts planned for today, brilliant posts too, you'd have been amazed, but I did something I should do a lot more often instead---I responded to some comments.

I am lucky in my commenters here.  Lots of smart folks leave long, thoughtful comments.  I wish I had more time to reply.  I wish I was also more diligent about directing folks to those good comments.

At any rate, please check out the comment threads on Pop Culture is dumber than a 5th grader and Just what movies does Quentin Tarantino love?

And chime in if you get the chance.

Make-up game: Boys against the girls

Tom Watson's concerned that I've given up writing about politics to devote this space to obsessing over "every camera angle and lighting trick" on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip just as the fall elections are heating up and we need every voice raised in encouragement and protest to help get out the vote.

I object.

First on the grounds that in all my posts about Studio 60 I never once mentioned camera angles or lighting tricks, although, by the way, the camera work on the latest episode, directed by Timothy Busfield, was pretty darn zippy and brought the show the kind of life the three previous episodes desperately needed.

And second, I hadn't given up writing about politics for Studio 60.  I'd given up writing about everything except Studio 60.

I'm better now.

Actually, although it may have seemed the last couple weeks that this had become a Studio 60 anti-fanzine, I've written about other things.  And one of the posts that got lost in the shuffle is called Boys against the girls and I'm sorry about that because I liked the post myself and because it generated some interesting comments from the handful of people who saw it and read it before the Studio 60 blogging pushed it down the page, out of sight and out of mind.

The post was about the way the girls defer too much to the boys on the ten year old's soccer team and how it makes me wish there was an all-girls division in our league so that they could develop their skills and their talents without having to worry about the boys hogging the ball.

It was also about why, although I'm for sex segregated sports, I'm not a fan of the trend towards sex-segregated education.

You can go back and read the post if you want.  What I'd like you to do is read the following three comments.  Three good comments by three good bloggers.

Bill Altreuter, of Outside Counsel:

I was in the stands today, watching my middle daughter play soccer. She is a high school senior now, and these will probably be the last soccer games I will see her play-- I doubt that she'll even bother with intramural soccer next year, although she might play rugby. It's been a long time with CLA, who just took to the game, and was, for a long time, usually the best player on her team. You know, the one about whom the other parents say, "Whose kid is that? She played co-ed ball a lot longer than any of her friends did, which might have hurt her game, but she enjoyed the physicality of it, and liked playing with boys. When, at 14, she was told she could no longer do it, she went the travel team route, and I think may have been frozen out in the girls team politics that had time to develop in her absence.

Or possibly that's just me, projecting. Certainly her athletic career has, to this point, been more storied than mine was in high school. She is now a dependable sub, good off the bench, a smart ball handler who seldom makes mistakes and who never flinches from contact. She was good today-- she looks lovely on a soccer pitch, if I do say so myself.

My oldest daughter will, at the conclusion of this school year, have completed eight years of single sex education: four years of high school, and four years at a woman's college in Western Massachusetts. While I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, for some girls, and for some women it is exactly the right thing, just as, I think, the "historically black colleges" are also exactly right for some young African Americans. Would I fell that way in a perfect world? Oh, man, I don't even understand the question. What would a place like that be like? My daughter-- the one in Northhamton, actually, might be able to tell us-- she is a Logic major, and apparently her chosen field allows her to speculate mathmatically about possible worlds. In my profession, speculation is a basis for objection, so I seldom indulge. I will say, however, that I like choices, particularly when it comes to my children. I'd have never attended an all male high school, but my friends that did (it is the norm for Catholic schools here in the Queen City of the Lakes) seem to have emerged unscathed. Choice is good.

Blog on the Run's Lex Alexander:

Our local league is same-sex down to the 5-year-olds, and I suspect that's a good thing. My daughter, now 8, has been the shortest girl on her team four years running; she has enough problems without having to deal with Y-chromosome blindness as well. (She also has the rep of being the toughest on the team, and drama queen/hypochondriac though she can be the other 167 hours of the week, during the game it's absolutely true. She takes shots to the face at point-blank range and complains about nothing except her glasses getting bent. I should have been half so tough at her age.)

But even same-sex teams don't solve all problems. I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article about UNC women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance in which, among other things, Dorrance talked about the psychology of coaching women and dealing with things like, "I don't want to pass it to her." "Why not?" "She's a bitch." What I found interesting about his description of the exchange, even though it plays into some unflattering stereotypes, is that he didn't pass judgment on it; he simply treated it as one more coaching obstacle to overcome. Put another way, he seemed to be saying that he just accepted his team members as they were and proceeded from there.

And grasshopper from Diary of a Heretic:

Third or fourth grade is the best time to separate the boys and girls into separate soccer leagues. But life is NEVER going to be fair, Lance. Every once in a while, a girl develops into such a strong player, the boy's coach will recruit her. And the girl is generally thrilled (her father certainly is), because to play on the boys' team, she really needs to be conspicuously better than most of the boys. The argument circulates that she would present unfair competition to all the other girls playing because she's light years ahead of everyone. That's how some people are. But right away, then, the other girls realize that the girls team is basically a "B" team. And rather than be relugated to that division, they decide it might be fun to try ballet lessons this semester...

Many times communities knock themselves out trying to level the playing field for girls. These communities go to significant lengths to make sure the girls get the same attention and encouragement in science and math. But life continues to be unfair. Prejudice against females pervades our lives so thoroughly we can not see half of it, or maybe more--ever. My younger sister was reared in a time and at a place where the parents worked strenuously to ignore any and all differences between male and female. Boys and girls wore the same overalls. They sported the same haircuts. Even by sixth and seventh grade they were expected to be the same playmates they were in Kindergarten. And you know what happened? The girls still turned into women and the boys into men, and life was still grossly unfair...

This does not mean I'm a defeatist. Some things are better. More women are doctors now than a couple of generations ago. Many unspoken subterranean prejudices have long since been rooted out. My point is merely how unfair everything is for everyone all the time. Male or female, some people are born with talents and assets and all the love anyone needs. And some must live without any of those advantages. And if we're so busy spooning up equal amounts of sugar for every child, if we don't acknowledge how different (as well as similar) we all are, we'll learn to live with graditude, or begin to recognize the unique beauty in everyone who crosses our path.

I've got nothing to add right now, but I hope you do.

By the way, the ten year old's team has lost two more games in the meantime.  They were tough, close games, and in the first of the two the girls were in the thick of things the whole way and the boys were passing to them and letting them take the ball and we scored some goals.

Second game, though, things reverted.  The girls flinched and shied.  The boys passed to each other.  The coach steamed.  The final score was 0-2.

Dear (fill in the blank)...

I'm way behind in my correspondence.  My email debts are mounting by the gigabyte and old snail mail is towering over my head from the inbox as I type, swaying ominously in the breeze---if you don't hear from me again it's because I've been swept away in the avalanche of greeting cards and personal stationery.

I would like to apologize to all my friends, family, and blogging colleagues to whom I owe mail, but I can't think of a good excuse.  Fortunately, I learn from Ron Powers' new biography, Mark Twain wrote a good excuse for me a hundred years ago or so.  Nice of him to foresee my lack of consideration and desperate need to duck blame and deflect resentments:

Twain was often obsessed with his daily page-count. His pages had only 70-80 words. A newly discovered letter ... reads in part: "You see, I write on an average, 400 pages of manuscript per working month — to do this, one must make it a rigid duty to refrain from writing family letters — there isn’t any other way. I can’t write one before work, for then I should go to work with depleted fuel; I can’t write one after work, for that would waste me like sickness.... [W]hen I do write one, I don’t do any work that day."

So, you understand now, folks, don't you?  It's my duty as a blogger with a post to write to continue to ignore you, at least for one more day.

(Quote borrowed without permission from the I'm sure understanding Maud Newton who now knows she shouldn't be holding her breath waiting for the email I owe her.)

Uncle Merlin stays up late alone on Brokeback Mountain

Uncle Merlin saw Brokeback Mountain the other night.  It affected him deeply.  He sat up late thinking about it and deep in the middle of the night he wrote to me about his feelings, giving me permission to publish them here:

It’'s 3 am, and I can'’t sleep.  I’'m not tired.  I am wide awake not unlike a kid before Christmas morning which I find odd since Christmas was 2 weeks ago. Brokeback Mountain is a living moment for me. It is alive. I see scenes flow up in my mind.  And then I see scenes from my life and I can'’t stop looking back over my life. 

Staring up at the sky with the clouds scudding overhead under a silver Moon I know they have come from the west, maybe even from Brokeback Mountain itself. I often wonder why I am alone now and why I am not out in the bars or out making whoopee and I always think it'’s my age yet I know in my gut I am not old.

After the movie tonight, the friends I saw it with were regaling me with their sexual escapades in New York last week. I think it'’s a language I don'’t speak anymore, communicating with strangers through sex. I am told over and over there is something wrong with me. Gay men don'’t really live like this. “Are you really gay?” I get that all the time. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

I look at those two boys Ennis and Jack in the story and I live in them.  I see my life in them.  I have had two loves like that in my life and they are long over.  And for that I wonder if I am wasting my life now.  If I am being a sucker or if I have just lost my confidence to even try again from a double rejection.

It's 4 am.  I try to get back to sleep.  But the clouds outside my window are calling me, they glow with moonlight. I am there in those clouds.  I am not here, not really, and yet my dog Al snores and suddenly I am back in my bedroom again.

I lay down again and it is then that it hits me, no matter where I am today or who I am not with –I always offered my best, I always did my best for them.  And though I no longer see those two men for very different reasons I know I left behind my very best.  I also know from Brokeback Mountain I would rather be here tonight than to be speaking a language I don’'t understand anymore.  But that’'s just me.

I think I'’ll try to go find a quiet cowboy.

Sunday Talk Show---Monday Morning Edition

Heard lately around the bar here at Lance's Olde Towne Tavern...

Let's start with mamayaga who sees historical continuity in Americans' feelings on Empire in End of history:

W is not Clinton, but the American people are still the American people. We really haven't undergone any sea change in the last 15 years. I am reminded of this every time I start to feel the appropriate moral revulsion about our preemptive invasion of Iraq, and remember our preemptive invasions of Panama and Grenada (not to mention many other episodes of American gunboat diplomacy). In moral terms, what is the difference among those examples? In every case the American government ginned up an excuse to take out the legitimate government of another country that did not and could not have threatened us. The big difference is that Panama and Grenada were successful (that is, successful as colonial enterprises in that we pacified the locals fairly quickly and very few Americans died). Do we agonize over Panama and Grenada the way we do about Vietnam, and the way we will for the next 40 years over Iraq? No? Why not? Because the American people are all for imperialistic adventures that succeed, and only punish failure. This is one current of our river that has not changed, from the War of 1812 to now (one could say really from the war of conquest of the native people). When we as a people gain the moral maturity to forestall this kind of adventure before it happens, then I will believe that we have moved forward.

Ted Raicer, however, wants to focus on the here and now:

W. doesn't represent simply a continuation of the past, but a break with the past. That's because W. is the first time the far-Right has had complete control of the US government.

While I'm sure a moral revolution would be a very good thing, I neither expect one or believe it a requirement for progress. For myself, I'll settle for getting the GOP out of office.

ajay takes issue with me on If you're gonna steal, steal from the best:

[Lance wrote:]"I'm not sure I believe that Clinton just happened to know what towns Charlie's army unit captured in World War II."

Why not? I did. If someone had told me "this old guy was in Normandy with the US Ninth Division" I would have known a)that they went ashore on Utah Beach b) not on D-Day but shortly thereafter and c) some of the towns they probably took. And I'm neither a historian nor an American, nor as bright as Clinton.

The alternative is that he knew in advance that Charlie would be there, checked his service background, and then went away and studied up on the war history of the Ninth Division, solely in order to be able to talk, apparently spontaneously, for a quarter of an hour to someone he would never meet again. And I think that speaks even better of him than if he just happened to know.

In Brainiac twists slowly, slowly in the wind I wrote that there were two insights behind Karl Rove's "genius": some people love a winner no matter how he wins and a lot of other people can't believe anyone can be as brazen a cheat as Rove has been.  Anne Laurie thinks there is one more.  Some people, she says, just admire meanness:

I think you missed a third strand in the braid that is Karl Rove's much-proclaimed "genius", and that is his grasp of the ugly fact that many people just love Mean. Taking candy from babies, torturing smaller kids, hurting people who can't fight back -- once young Rove realized that quite a few people enjoyed watching such ugliness happen (even if they didn't have the guts, or the lack of shame, to commit Ugly themselves), he had a blueprint for his entire political career. I'd argue that a good chunk of Rove's fan base, both inside and out of the Beltway Mindmeld, are the people who've made Quentin Tarantino movies blockbusters and the amped-up explicitness of the CSI-type victim-in-jeopardy series into "must-see tv". Remember, the schoolyard bully always has a coterie of followers, coat-holders, and cheerleaders. Of course, those followers are quick to desert their Fearless Leader once the grownups catch him in action -- and I fully expect Rove's least inhibited cheerleaders, the drunken College Republicans & the wingnut trolls, to evaporate just as soon as Fitzgerald and the grand jury shine the light on some of Rove's extra-legal "genius".

Aaron Esposito sees my point, apropos TIME's list of 100 great novels which I wrote about in Gone With the Wind, my eye!, that an honest list of the 100 greatest books might have only a few authors represented, because great authors tend to write several great books, and goes me one better:

Your comment about Bellow, Roth, Atwood etc filling a potential list with a good deal of their work might point to a more interesting project than these perennial lists. Which novelists' worlds sketched out over a career of novels hold the most value for readers? The authors listed, Faulkner as the best example, created such important characters and settings that any one of the body of work surpasses lesser artists' best one-offs. More importantly, the artistic visions were made more robust by re-visiting similar places and themes. I think that's why I always feel like my favorite Bellow book, for example, is the last one I read. It's harder to separate the greats' works out because their projects sort of bleed together. I like thinking about created worlds too because it let's you compare authors with novelists you usually wouldn't. For example, Flannery O'Connor, whose Wiseblood I also love, feels even more weighty if you can include her short stories in an evaluation. Her project fits her in with all the other demiurges.

Tricia wrote that like Charlie in Charlie meets Bill she has met Bill too.  Bill Clinton, that is:

I met Bill once, on the night before the gubernatorial election in 2002. He was stumping for my candidate, Bill Curry (who actually worked for Bill in the White House in an advisory position during his first term). Anyway, I was just a volunteer who liked to shoot film, so I was the amateur backup photographer at events, including this one. I got to go "backstage" where Bill met the big donors, shook hands, and yes, chatted with each one. We were all kind of floating around, pinching ourselves that we were in the same small room with HIM, the Big Guy, easily the most charismatic person I've ever met. The real photographer had a momentary glitch with his equipment, so Bill turned to me and said, "Go ahead, you're the backup, right?" or something like that, with a reassuring smile. For the next few minutes, he shook hands and chatted with each person in line, then turned to me with those compelling eyes and a big smile. It's a wonder those photos didn't come out all blurry from my hands shaking.

Later, after the event, our candidate lined up all of us  volunteers and campaign staff for a photo with Bill, and he actually stood next to me and put his arm around me, the way you do when you're all crowding in to get your picture taken. Needless to say, I will remember that day till I die.

Greg expressed the joy of White Sox fans on Shoeless Joe Who?:

I was 8 when the Sox were last in a World Series. When they clinched the pennant in 1959, the Fire Commissioner set off the air-raid sirens in the city, scaring the bejesus out of most people. This was around the time that most school kids were practicing hiding under their desks in case of a nuclear attack by the Russians.

I knew after Spring training that the Sox could win the AL Central due to a weakened Twins infield and too-thin Cleveland pitching. The question marks were sPod and Iguchi.

After a great April, I knew the WOULD win the division. The rest of the season was spent enjoying thrilling baseball, but know this:

It was never "smart" ball, "small" ball, or anything other than "team" ball. There was nobody in the lineup that took selfish at-bats or cared about his own stats more than he cared about the team. There were numerous examples, but the best one was probably Mark Buehrle:

He had some ungodly number of consecutive starts in which he pitched at least 6 innings. He was cruising along one game when a Sox batter was hit by a pitch, apparently intentionally. Both benches were officially warned, but Buehrle, one out from continuing his streak, hit an opposing batter in retaliation/defense/support of his teammate. He knew he'd be ejected and lose his chance at a record, but it was TEAM FIRST.

Now that the season is finally over, I don't have words to describe how I feel. Relief, joy, awe, and shock come to mind. But I suspect it'll take the entire winter for this to sink in.

res wouldn't have any problem choosing a new Chinese restaurant.  As he explains on Dilemma with dumplings and shrimp fried rice, as long as the pot stickers are good, he's there:

I'd kill my mom for good dumplings. Fortunately, there's a decent place close enough that they actually deliver to my apartments. Lucky mom.

And Nash shared one of his poems, on Mornings like this...

Wheatfield

Sky steps into cornflower
and sun glides in a nimbus
of browns and blues, soaped in
day at sky water edges.

Wheat froths lean before
freezes of green, breezes
of yellow. See how she reads
like a child, quiet, absorbed

in such a chaos of crows
as this.  She pushes hair
from her face again, unaware
of these bubbles of wheat and wind

that I keep writing around her.
She harvests words as day
gathers her. Rejoined
in the open book, all hues

unite on her face, married
in white, out of the sun,
flowing field and a school
of black birds, leaping upstream.

Bobbleheads Beware---Another Sunday Talk Show

Most bloggers love their regular commenters.  Best thing about blogging, they'll tell you.  And it's true.  When analog media types deign to notice us, which they always do with a sniff, a sneer, or the wrinkled-faced disgust of a busboy taking away a plate with a cigarette stubbed out in the remains of a fried egg, they tend to judge us by the standards---supposed standards---of their own medium and thereby miss the point by a country mile.

The biggest difference between us and them is the interactivity.  We're holding a conversation here.  That's why mistakes, digressions, dead-ends, and 180 degree changes of course are the order of business.  We're all trying to figure it out as we go.  It being life, the universe, and everything as well as how to fix it.  We're not like pundits, delivering unto the lowly at the foot of the mountain the proper way to think about an issue.  (I see the pundits coming down from the mountain like Moses carrying the tablets and discovering us all dancing naked around the statue of the golden calf named BLOG.)   We're trying to think, out loud, in public, and with help, lots and lots of help---from each other, and from our commenters.

If you're a regular reader of these humble pages, you're probably familiar with the names of some of the regulars.  Many of them have blogs of their own and I appreciate their spending time and energy and talent they should be devoting to their own pages to making mine more interesting and entertaining.  Anne Laurie, mac magilicuddy, and Exiled in NJ don't have blogs, but their contributions here amount to a set of mini-blogs.   But I'm also lucky in the people who jump in and out leaving comments only now and then or even only once or twice.

Here's a small sampling from the last couple months, starting with one of the most moving:

Grishaxxx left this one on my first post about Joshua Wolf Shenk's Atlantic article on Lincoln's Melancholy:

Like ice cream, depression comes in an amazing variety of flavors (some quite exotic), and your friend's perception that, because he's not feeling chocolate or vanilla, he's not clinical is denying just how hungry the Maw of Melancholy can be. It can lick you around the edges now, but one day it will develop a real taste for you, and then it will suck, big time.

Unfortunately, depression seems to be progressive - untreated, it's worse as you get older. I suspect I was having episodes as early as 9, and they would pass, and I thought that this was how everyone felt. Never sat in a corner, staring at the walls; within limits (the safety perimeter contracts when you are down) I could enjoy - even tell - a joke. Tackling a Big Book could tide me over (I'm pretty sure that Proust and Anthony Powell and David Foster Wallace have done their bit, thrown me a rope and drawn me back at various times).

Someday, however, none of that is going to work. No trigger is necessary, and suddenly you are in the perfect depressive storm and all your strategies fail, and by failing draw you deeper. It's not romantic (though, as my prescribing shrink said to me, it can be interesting, if you're self-aware enough to get that far), but it is an agony and a weight on your life.

I was really afraid of medications, afraid of losing my acuity, even the kind of melancholy concentration you describe as Lincoln's in the post. Scared the shit out me, and after I got a prescription (in tandem with talk therapy), it still took me a couple of months to fill it. No specifics here about meds, but I was relieved to find that mine didn't dull me out. As I've described it to friends, the effect was to push back the edge of the jungle to a more manageable distance - the beasts were still there, just not so near, and while I could see them clearly, they were less threatening.

I hope your friend, at the very least, talks to a pro about this - the inventories are very simple - before he must do it. I've been out of therapy and off meds for, yeah, about 3 years now, but the second I heard that great sucking sound again, I'd be right back on. No regrets, not one.

On my second post on Shenk and Lincoln, in which I quoted the results of an experiment that showed depressives as being clear-thinking than nondepressives, Porlock Junior raised this objection:

Great posting as to GWB; great comment from Anne Laurie.

But has no one noticed the appalling logic of the experiment that proves that depressives are more perceptive?

Here's the big news according to Shenk: In the experiment with the clever machine, depressives took a less optimistic view of the situation, perceiving that they had no control over the outcomes. (Hint: Wow, what a revelation!) "Normals" thought they had some control if they got good results. The less optimistic view was right. Therefore, depressives understand their own capabilities better!

Now let's try it the other way around, where the Right Answer is the more optimistic, positive one (e.g., the subject really does have some control over the outcome). Eeyore will perceive this more accurately than Rabbit, right? No. Wrong.

The basic problem in this experiment as reported is that it was done by psychologists. A scientist doing such an experiment would use controls, do reciprocal experiments, and all that.

BTW, maybe the original paper did get it right; I haven't seen the original paper. But Shenk is talking nonsense here.

Assuming that Shenk is reporting accurately, the experiment could be taken to show why people with depression should not be given positions of power and responsibility. Sure, delusions of control can lead to all kinds of bad outcomes, but feelings of helplessness tend not to be conducive to taking action on those occasions when action is needed. Or, one could dismiss the entire line of argument as irrelevant to human individuals.

I'd replace Rabbit with Pooh in Porlock's analogy, Rabbit is not an optimist, to say the least, but I had similar questions about the experiment and the conclusions Shenk drew from it, but I am still waiting for his book to come in.  I expect that Shenk abridged himself a bit too much in the article on this point.

Last week the blonde and I finished up watching the first season of Deadwood on DVD and when we were done I had one question, "Does Al Swearengen want Seth Bullock to clean up the camp?" 

Neddie Jingo, who regards the show's creator David Milch as our Shakespeare, answered:

Deadwood is a town outside the United States. It is, in the most literal sense, Lawless -- meaning that Al can spring any hustle he can dream up, with impunity -- unless someone else of equal or greater strength forces him not to. The only possessor of such equal or greater strength, in Al's mind, in the United States Government -- not because of its moral authority, which it's clear it doesn't possess in the slightest degree, but because its corruption and hunger for graft is so great that Al can't even dream of equaling it. If Deadwood becomes part of the Dakota Territory, the Big Boys will come to town and Al will suddenly become a tiny little fish in a huge pond, instead of the town's mightiest grifter.

That's Al at the beginning of Season One. Over the arc of the season, we learn much more about him, about his childhood of abuse (during that incredible scene -- "Now-you-can-go-faster!") and about how he's bought his whores away from the very same orphanage where his own mother abandoned him, and even brought along the dead-weight Jewel, who can't make any money for him. It's plain he actually rescued the women from a life far worse than the one he's given them...

So he's slowly revealed as protective, paternal, tender (oh, how tenderly he delivers Rev. Smith from his suffering!). Criminality is what pays the bills in Deadwood, and protecting his hustle is at first blush why he imposes Order. But as time goes on, for reasons both selfish and selfless, he becomes a subtlely nuanced practitioner of the Golden Rule -- the foundation of all Law.

The peaches at town meetings is a perfect little illustration of the power of civic ritual to impose Order. In the absence of Law, the whole town is doing nothing more than making it up as they go along, and whatever rituals they can muster can only help. Remember the funny bit with Merrick, walking with Bullock and Starr after dinner, suggesting they should form a club for post-prandial walks? "The Ambulators!" he suggests wistfully, yearning for, yes, Order.

Does Al Swearengen want Bullock to clean up the camp?

He wants Bullock to bring Order to the camp.

Couple weeks ago I posted a passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the entry in the Guide in which it is shown that the Babel Fish, by being such a sublimely improbable creature that it couldn't possibly have been the result of chance evolution and that proves God does not exist.  burritoboy begged to differ and offered a plausible evolutionary explanation for the Babel Fish, showing that it could have been the accidental result of natural selection, which I guess means then that God does exist:

Actually, the Babel Fish is not so bizarrely improbable. We assume that the Babel Fish is some sort of parasite (I don't believe there is any mention of anyone actually feeding their Babel Fish), drawing nutrition from the host's body (ok, brainwaves from the sentient beings near the host). The hosts of the Babel Fish take great care to protect their Babel Fish, and presumably there are large Babel Fish fish farms somewhere. This is only so because the Babel Fish provides such unique benefits to the host, such that the host readily provides food, shelter and massively increased breeding opportunities to the Babel Fish species. Otherwise, in a universe with many planets and wildly divergent environments, Babel Fish would be unlikely to spread much beyond their home world. As it is, the Babel Fish hosts intentionally spread the species to many different worlds, again an evolutionary benefit.

While it seems strange to evolve such translation abilities, what better way is there to convince your hosts to allow you to lodge in their ears (surely one of the safest locations around)? Those early Babel Fish ancestors who didn't have translation abilities were quickly removed by the hosts, while those with greater abilities were highly prized and recieved much increased breeding opportunities.

Back in the middle of August I noticed signs of the coming fall sneaking in under summer's radar and I asked if anyone else had seen any in their necks of the woods and what they looked for to tell them that summer was done with and autumn had arrived. Lots of nice comments on that one.   An Angry Old Broad said she looked for fall within the boundries of her garden:

This may sound odd,but I can detect a different smell and feel in the air when the seasons begin hinting at change.As summer wanes,the air at night is light(as opposed to muggy),crisper,and the stars even seem to be sharper(probably because the haze dries up)and more in focus.I also have naturally curly hair,when I can go out without it expanding to twice it's normal size,lol,I know the GA summer is on it's way out.

The hummingbirds make fewer appearances outside my office window once fall is on the way too.The leaves on the maples will begin to yellow on the inside branches,some will even begin dropping(if the past is any indicator,this will start in about 3 weeks)when the wind kicks up or it rains.

The moonflowers and morning glories also have good sized seed pods going just about the time the evenings begin cooling off as summer fades.My green beans and bell peppers begin looking really tired at that point too.If you pay attention,you also can see some of the birds doing their winter prep too.

It's funny the stuff you notice and figure out when you work in a garden on a particular piece of land year after year.

And reaching farther back, in July PZ Myers and Michael Berube both had to deal with fallen tree limbs in their backyards.  Neither one of them was particularly enthusiastic about the idea of using a chain saw to clean up, a timidity with which I sympathized.  Reader Jim, though, came along with a solution that totally chain saw free but yet still manly:

As any real man brought up in the southern shadow of a city built on a mound on the west bank of the Mississippi just south of the confluence with the Missouri river would know, the first step in dealing with all three scenarios doesn't involve a power tool at all (you don't want to overkill the situation). This problem screams for a logging chain, a rear axle and a case of beer (this is the manly brute-force phase of solving the problem).

Once the limb is removed to where nobody's gonna immediately fall over it you then move immediately to the second phase - adequate study. And any manly man worth his salt knows that adequate study takes time (this is the intellectual phase)....and more beer....and perhaps BBQed pork steaks and brats....and perhaps the formation of a regular sunday afternoon research group involving more beer, more pork steaks and more brats. After what seems like an adequate period of study, maybe three or four years, you'll be tempted to prepare a report of findings. Caution - do not rush into this phase. Time is your ally.

There are at least three advantages to this approach: 1) no one gets hurt due to haste or exploding chainsaws*, 2) a new problem is likely to come along which will completely make the old problem moot, and 3) it's ecologically sound.

*however, there might be some danger in the logging-chain phase (this is also refered to as the "interesting" phase) - I suggest video taping for enjoyment during phase II.

I showed Jim's suggestion to the blonde and, amazingly, she was less agreeable to the idea of my buying a pick up than she was to the purchase of a chain saw.  Women.

Ok, that's plenty for now.  Lots more good stuff where those came from.  Just visit the old archives.  (And always, please remember to Support Your Local Sheriff whenever you visit.  The wanted posters on the Sheriff's office wall are different on every page.  Makes for some interesting clicking.)  There's a very interesting thread developing on yesterday's post.  Stop in, say hi, and put in your two cents worth.

 

No bobblehead zone

(It's my morning over at The American Street.  Meanwhile:)

Forget the Sunday morning talk shows.  We've got informed commentary right here.

Interesting threads developed on a number of recent posts and because a lot of readers skip the comments or don't go back to old posts here's a sampling of some of the commentary.

Responding to my post on John Tierney's NYT column declaring old age an outdated idea and retirement a form of welfare fraud, When I grow too old to dream, Exiled in NJ exploded:

I'm 62, work for myself consulting to others who work for "the man". I had one of those Cadillac policies, fee for service they are called. Cost me 1450 a month in 2001 when wife left this earth; as a single man it cost 1075 this year. Tierney would shake my hand I am sure.

I'd like to punch him in the mouth. Been doing my work for 35 years now and in that time I've seen how the Tierneys of the world have shifted so many burdens onto those who work, while telling them how great the ownership society is. The 401K, 201Ks to many who were working when the market fell apart, took the place of employer pensions. The cafeteria plans took the place of employer paid health care and other benefits....they disguise it by making it 'tax free' but there is no 100% tax bracket, meaning the worker is still paying at least 65% of the cost. Now they want the workers to take on 'high deductible' health plans; next they will be charging for the parking space at the office or plant. Been half expecting some client to tell me the boss has installed coin slots in the stalls in the shithouse. Forgot to mention the other 'benefit' of early retirement: the company hires the worker back as a consultant, after making him or her form a corporation or LLC, and then pays them via 1099 Form, shifting the cost of matching Social Security.

Where is our Dickens to chronicle this age?

And Dutchie said:

Sure, Tierney wants to work until 80 and so do I!

Well, in theory anyway and why shouldn't we? Both of us write for a living and get paid pretty well (but I don't even come close to what celebrity pundits for big media outlets do) we work indoors and largely on our own schedule and enjoy what we do and the influence we have in our respective spheres.

The difference between me and Tierney? I know what it is to work at physical and/or soul crushing work. I don't have to do it anymore but that doesn't mean that I don't recall what it is like and what it does to you or that many other people are still in that particular grind when I am doing interesting work of my heart and meeting with people they see on tv or whose books they read.

Sure, Tierney and I can work until we die but our jobs won't kill us physically or emotionally. We are privileged. The difference between he and I is that I'm not a vicious but vacuous asshat.

In They're still big.  It's the pictures that got small, I asked where have all the moive stars gone.  Matt thought of one who's right here in front of our eyes, George Clooney.

I immediately thought of Clooney when I read this post. If you're looking for a recent movie star moment, I would suggest that you can do no better than the hotel-bar scene in Soderberg's Out of Sight, which serves as a prelude to a Lopez-Clooney romp in the sheets. The scene is lit and shot beautifully--it's one of the most gorgeous pieces of recent film that I can think of.

The film is also germane to your discussion here because it takes place at a pivotal moment in Jennifer Lopez's career. I think the film provides evidence that she could have been a movie star--if only she hadn't followed the performace by hiring herself out "to lend the cachet of [her] celebrity to the product being sold" -- which, in her case, turned out to be the cultural commodity known as JLo.

Now, as far as Clooney giving up, it seems to me that in recent years, Clooney has resisted glamorized parts in favor of slightly more risky fare like "Solaris," 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" I find it hard to criticize a movie star, in this day and age, for taking on projects that don't have the commercial cachet of the latest Star Wars flick.

And I wonder how much trends like cinema verite and the 70's cinematic fascination with anti-heroes hastened the demise of the prototypical movie star. Breathless is one example of that; Chinatown is another: a movie shot with old school glamor, though this time the hero gets his nose broke real good.

Mrs Norman Maine's favorite is Julia Roberts, and she explained what makes Roberts a star:

Movie stars need to possess a warmth, a willingness to let us in... That's why I wonder if it could be true that Angelina Jolie is the next big thing. She is intriguing, and certainly a great beauty, but it seems to me her calling card is her bad-ass attitude, and I'm not sure that equals true movie stardom. 

Julia Roberts has it and Nicole Kidman has it, though we tend to think of the latter as a cool beauty off the screen. Yet she softens, somehow, on film.

I don't agree that George Clooney has given up, and think that the Cary Grant comparisons are quite apt. I think Jude Law has something, although I'd rather see a film starring his friend, Ewan McGregor, but that's a personal quirk.

As you said (I think) probably the best personal definition of a movie star is someone whose movie you would go see without needing to know anything else about the flick.

For example, I admire Renee Z. in general, but I'd need to be interested in the film she's in before shelling out the money for a ticket. On the other hand, I'd schedule my day around a Cary Grant movie if I saw it in the TV listings. I have a fatal weakness for Julia Roberts, and would suffer through most things in order to see that quivery smile.

Elayne Riggs didn't like being lectured to by Steve Gilliard on the business of blogging. (No soup for you!)  In fact, she objects to the whole idea of blogging as a business:

This is one reason why so many bloggers are against the idea of running ads on one's blog, or trying to Make Money Fast by begging your readers to support your hobby after, like Steve Gilliard, you decide to quit your well-paying job and devote yourself to blogging full-time insisting that other people give you money for it. Strange things happen to bloggers once they start taking money for their hobby. Certain blinders crop up whenever their penchant for hyper-capitalism is called into question. And their readers find out things they wish they hadn't, such as Kos' repeated tendency to dismiss the legitimate concerns of half the population.

I've been blogging for almost three years, and I have NEVER SPENT A SINGLE PENNY to blog. Blogger is free. Haloscan is free. Buzzet (to which I post pictures) is free. Nobody needs to spend money to blog; therefore, nobody has any right to ask others for monetary support for their blog.

The two posts I did on the wonks vs. the writers, here and here, inspired many comments.  Here's Anne Laurie on A little jello wrestling, a little cheesecake, and, voila!  Problem solved:

In my personal experience, for a lot of guys, and especially for a lot of POLITICAL guys, there's a "politics" box and a "women stuff" box, and they don't even consider the possiblity that using those boxes is interfering with the way they think.  Try using the phrase "the personal is political" around a policy wonk & watch him turn puce.  For a lot of policy wonks, Politics seems to be a way to NOT talk about personal stuff... personal stuff not being something that policy wonks have gotten much enjoyment from... thus the considerable intersection between neocons & rotisserie baseball & Star Wars (the Lucas, not the Teller mythology, err, *also* the Lucas version).  Telling a policy wonk of this stripe that he should talk more about his "real life" just irks him with the fear that he should actually HAVE one.  Telling him that women should get credit for talking about THEIR real lives only reminds him that women all seem to get "real lives" automatically, which irks him & also reminds him that one of the things he hates about women is this "real life" issue (probably invented by women because they couldn't memorize baseball statistics with their smaller brains!)...

Usually nobody comments on my Scrapbook posts, the quotes from famous writers I post sometimes, but Ratty had something to say on a quote from Emerson in which RWE urged writers to get themselves out into the street to learn their trade (I'm not a man exquisitely made):

Got my ass into the public square today as quickly and for as long as I could (I'd missed two weeks' opportunity from sheer fatigue), and there is nothing so tonic.  Guarding and managing your own coop may be your job, but to live and eat with other men - even for a few hours - must remind you that other people are moving house, mourning parents, changing jobs, nursing sick pets, sustaining injuries and smiling.  You (and your wards) benefit from that direct knowledge; you are not as alone as you might have thought.

And Samuel, who was also refering to my post Local authors, reminisced:

Reading all these quotes pains me as I lost my notebook which was full of Emerson quotes. I was 17 when I first read Emerson in my Uncle's home and I had to cajole, plead, beg and indulge in a bit of emotional blackmail to get his 'Essays' book when I left India to come here. The three things I took care to pack were The Bible, my notebook with the quotes and Emerson's Essays.

The sad part is I lost both the book and the notebook while moving inside America. I cannot keep any kind of quote in mind, be it from the Bible or any book, and I envy you for being able to remember all this.

...reading your Emerson posts have made me open a new notebook to start again.

Most real good this blog o'mine has done.

The post We can have our fear or we can have our lives caused a lot of discussion, not surprisingly.  Lots of excellent comments and you really should go read the whole thread.  But here are a couple of good ones:

Molly, NYC reports she attended a Memorial Day rally at which the veterans attending had a reaction to the Iraq War that makes perfect sense to any one who cares about the lives of our soldiers and marines:

I went to the observance at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument...It was mostly what you'd expect: Some local politicians, a couple of incomprehensible clergymen, the American Legion and VFW, a lot of seniors (many looking quite sharp in their old uniforms), a surprising number of homeless guys I recognized from the neighborhood. Speaker after speaker got up and talked about the soldiers they remembered: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf . . .

Then a VFW guy got up and talked about making the rounds of politicians to keep the local VA services from shrinking. Not much satisfaction from them, and he ended by suggesting that if they were going to close the hospital, they should end this war.

And the crowd went wild! Hoots, cheers, applause. Sitting people stood. And thereafter, the speakers took their stands--mostly against the war.

Not to say there weren't any "my country right or wrong" types, and okay, this is the sapphire-blue Upper West Side, not Tulsa. But these folks take their patriotism very seriously and no one (including me) came for anything besides a plain, vanilla Memorial Day service. If this crowd is pissed off about the war, I can only imagine the rest of the country's disgust.

Nola, however, felt that in that post I unfairly classified all New Yorkers as liberals and accused all conservatives and Red Staters of living in fear, and in a couple of comments she took me to task for my prejudice:

I live in NYC and can say with some authority that liberals are not the only people in town who go to museums, Central Park, etc.

"Freedom from fear" certainly doesn't belong to the left. Take a look at the nuts who turn up at moveon.org events or to demontrate at the Republican Convention. You think these people are free from fear? People who buy "Bush scares me" bumper stickers are not my idea of brave, and some of the loonies in this forum must have soiled a few diapers while tapping out their paranoid posts.

Following up, she said:

I've spent many years in both Red and Blue states. Yes, there are people in Red States who hate New York. But I've seen far hostility towards Red Staters while living in NY than I ever saw towards Blue Staters while living in the Deep South. It is an interesting topic for discussion, given the fact that so many NYers come from Red States. But the narrow-minded arrogance I've found in NY tops all.

My friends in the South, regardless of their political leanings, did not traffic in the ugly stereotypes of NYers, while so many people in NY are open in their disdain for people and places they know little about. The funny thing is that this snobbery is most rarely encountered among cops, firemen, bus drivers, etc. - people who voted for Bush. Make of that what you will.

The fact that I, or any other NYer, have decided to live in the city and enjoy it without fear does not make our political opinions any more valuable than someone in Minnesota who - gasp - shops in a mall. And bloggers are entitled to take a favorable view of our current foreign policy whether or not they live near prime targets for terrorism. Living in fear and fearing another attack are certainly not the same things.

Nola and I still have a couple of points to contend, but we agree about one thing.  Neither of us likes the mall-ization of the City.  Nola grumped:

These days the stores in NYC are often the same ones you find in malls. Of course there are lots of exceptions but you have to seek them out, at least if you live in my neck of the woods. Just stay away from Chuck E. Cheese (no Lileks jokes, please).

I think newyorker says it all about New Yorkers, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, Molly and Nola:

As someone who has gone to school, lived, worked and raised a family in NYC over the last 40 years I offer these observations re: New Yorkers.

a) Fearless: If you are afraid you wont be able to cross the street. The cabbies smell fear and will run you over if you allow it.

b) Careful: Stand back from the edge of the subway platform. There could be a nut standing behind you.

c) Rude: Who you calling sucker, sucker?

d) Self reliant: Everybody you run into is trying to make a living. There are 8 million stories in the naked city.

e) Cynical: No, I do not want to buy a bridge. I dont care that it will take me to Brooklyn and back.

f) Entrepeneural: Walk Canal St from 6th Av to the Manhattan Bridge. Chinese, Africans, Middle Easterners, Greeks, Cubans, Eastern Europeans, South Americans, Asians, etal. All selling something. All trying to make a living.

g) Helpful: Take the "A" or the "E" train to Chambers St. Ground Zero is right upstairs.

h) Brave: Over 200 firemen died on 9/11. They ran IN when everyone else was running OUT.

I cried like a baby on 9/11 knowing that those evil SOB's (Al Quaeda) targeted New York because it is the Greatest City in the World. Their victims were of every race, religion, or economic status that make up New York.

I still tear up when I think about all the victims and their families. People who set out to make a living, but ended up dead.

We wanted our leaders to hunt down Al Quaeda and kill them. But instead we are off on GW's excellent adventure in Iraq, while Bin Laden cannot be found.

Soon however, like most New Yorkers, I realized that "ain't nothin' happening but the rent".

Life goes on. New York City will always be a magnet to the rest of the world. We will always build and re-build.

So, if you are fearful, New York City is not the place for you.

When we were in Boston I posted about how having to share living quarters with a couple of cats was threatening to ruin the vacation for me.  Cats are evil, I wrote, and the proof is that they love me.  They know I'm allergic and the seek me out to inflict suffering while pretending to be giving affection. Jill Bryant explained that I'm wrong about this.  The cats really did want to be nice to me.

I feel I must speak up for cats.

Cats sense illness and distress and will try to comfort you through it. They interpret the dislike of cats as distress and so will come to you to help out. They probably sensed Lance's and went for him and as he's been getting worse they've really seen their work is cut out for them. Okay - I don't know if it is true or not - can't even remember where I read it - but I liked the interpretation. 'Course, it doesn't help Lance one bit.

She was right.  It didn't help.  Didn't convince me either.  Cats are evil.

Back in May I wrote a post, Perspective, about a little boy I met who could barely contain his excitement about going to see Revenge of the Sith that night.  I finished the post with a quote from Peter Pan.  "How do you get to that galaxy that's a long time ago and far?  Second star on the right and straight on to morning."

Here's Ratty again:

Heartless little bastard, Peter - and those final passages can squeeze you like a sponge if you're over 18.  Barrie was a true weasel when it came to tapping sentimentality about childhood.  It should be resisted.

What's thrilling to me about the 4th grader's excitement is that it's so full of awe before an aesthetic (not to put too fancy a label on it) experience.  He's all hope that it will be great (and, George, don't you let him down!) - but even if it's only up to decent in his later memory, he should hold on to that wide-openness.  Expectation is not preconception, and nothing kills clear sight, honest judgment or joy faster than carting second-hand attitudes and opinions along with you.  For him as a movie-goer (or reader, or whatever...), I say Keep Hope Alive.

One last thing.  I was serious about my cheesecake and beefcake calendars idea, Women of Blogging and Men of Blogging, but so far, although there have been promises made, no pictures have shown up in my email.  Kathy Flake says that cheesecake shots are for her a meterologically limited possibility:

Swimsuits? Do you realize I live on the 51st parallel? The best I can do is a light jacket and gloves.

But PZ Myers is not one to be daunted by a little bad weather when it comes to showing off his Minnesotan manliness and he left this link to some Land of a Thousand Lakes studliness.

That's enough for now.  Not a quarter of all the interesting and insightful comments that have been posted lately.  You should go read the rest on your own.  Much more fun than the Sunday talk shows and more honest and knowing than the New York Times has been.

Sunday morning talk show

Don't bother with the bobbleheads on the Sunday talk shows this morning.  They're just going to recite the DC CW.   John Paul II was really a Right Wing Republican and this justifies everything George W. has done and proves Liberals still secretly admire Stalin.   The Democrats forced the Terri Schiavo mess on us and proved once again how out of the mainstream they are and they'd better figure out how to get more votes from religious lunatics and white Southern racists.  Tom DeLay is a bad guy but he's a rogue Republican and has nothing to do with the GOP rank and file and once the Congressional Republicans cut him loose they'll come back stronger than ever and the Democrats will be sorry to see DeLay go.  That Schiavo memo was real, but it doesn't mean anything, and the Democrats are just proving how desperate they are harping on it.  It's truly spring now and the Democrats' predictions that there would still be snow on the ground in Florida in April proves once again how week they are on foreign policy.

You don't need to hear any of that, again.  If you want commentary, we've got commentary for you right here, round the clock, on WLNC Action News Live!

One of the best things about having a webpage is the comments.  (And that remark proves that I don't get much comment spam or many trolls.  In fact, I've never had a single troll show up.  Some conservatives have stopped by, but they've all been decent folks and have left interesting comments, and I wish they'd stop by and write more often.)  I can tell from Typepad's stats and referers page that most of our radio audience doesn't look at the comments.  This is why I've finally activated the Recent Comments feature over on the right.

In addition, I'm going to make a regular habit of devoting a post to commentary.  Starting today.  This isn't a greatest hits exercise or a way to show favoritism.  It's just a random sampling of all the interesting voices that have sounded off in the comments section over the last couple of months.  Some of these folks have blogs of their own and I recommend you check them out.  Just click on the links.

OK, if you're ready, I'm ready.  Let's go to work.

In my post on long ago Dodger great Gil Hodges, It's Fiddler Crab Season, I mentioned that his teammate Pee Wee Reese liked to say that Hodges' hands were so big he didn't need a glove to play.  Bill Altreuter came through with the perfect quote:

Gil was my gradfather's favorite, too.  In my family the Dodgers departure was viewed as base betrayal-- I don't know anyone that stayed a fan after they left.  But about Gil, big guy.  Peewee Reese said of him, "Gil just wears a glove at first base because it is fashionable."

Jill Bryant reacted to my observation in Eloise Lives! that Americans have a talent or losing and regaining their innocence:

I wonder whose innocence is always being proclaimed?  Perhaps it's our Administration's. That way there is a great excuse for having ignored all the signs leading up to 9/11 - along with saying the U.S. was no longer going to participate in the peace process for the Middle East - and even ignoring any hopes of a treaty to keep North Korea from producing nuclear weapons.   

I guess they didn't know how bad the bad guys really were.  They thought they could concentrate on syphoning off as much money as possible while picking and choosing which enemy we wanted to pay attention to (would it be too cynical to say - which one we could get the most money out of?  Maybe that wasn't it - let's cling to THAT innocence.)

Of course, once they found out, that meant the U.S. could throw out the rules of the Geneva Convention or, heck, the Constitution.  I wonder what kind of enemy we were supposed to be facing before 9/11.  As you said, we don't have to look far to see what man is capable of, Pogo.  But where is the surprise in those we've fought?  I heard of kamikaze fliers long before suicide bombers, "The Rape of Nanking" portrays a pretty brutal enemy, I know the Germans were very sterile about it but they seemed to have broken a lot of rules of humanity to me - and that's just WWII.  To our shame we ignored the war in Rwanda but after reading about a father willing to make an example of his sons by killing them because they were half Tutsi, well, that genocide could take all shreds of anyone's innocence away...And yet, there are still the lines of Anne Frank's "despite everything...I still believe in the inner goodness of man." 

I'm sorry - I think I am going way off topic on a rant you inspired....

So, along with the absurdity of the comments you mentioned, what about the destruction of children's innocence after school shootings like Columbine?  When they can't even feel safe in their school hanging out with other students?  If that's how it works, it seems like that would finish off some childhood fantasy figures pretty quickly on its own.

Writing about the "dearth" of conservative college professors in Whatsamatta U., I suggested that one reason that there aren't a lot of conservatives in faculty dining rooms is that professors are bookish folk and conservatives tend not to be bookish.  To which Alex, usually identifying himself as burritoboy in his comments, took issue:

Well, actually, I would say you're wrong.  It's not that (real) conservatives aren't bookish.  It's that American "conservatives" aren't really conservatives.

Real conservatives, that is, the royalists and aristocrats opposed to the French Revolution and their intellectual descendants over the following century or so, were just as literary (if not more so) than the folks on the left side of the aisle in that converted tennis court.  Baudelaire. TS Eliot. Flaubert. Matthew Arnold. Rimbaud. Celine. HP Lovecraft. Nietzsche.  Mishima.

However, there essentially hasn't been a single American conservative, except maybe for Henry Adams (who certainly doesn't fit into any concievable mainstream of American conservatism), who fits in with this crowd (T.S. Eliot and HP Lovecraft pretended to be Englishmen).  There just isn't much "conservative" in America to defend.  Where's the aristocracy, where are the old ruined monasteries, where are the faded barons of the old nobility?  Instead, you have "conservatives" defending Eli Lilly and Halliburton and the suburbs of Houston and shitty country music, the precise things real conservatives hated more than anyone.

Maybe Russell Kirk.  That's the best I can suggest.

By the way, you should check out burritoboy and Blue Girl's dialogue on What makes a movie star cool in All things end.

My post on Terri Schiavo, There is no Terri to save, brought in a lot of impassioned comments, which probably doesn't surprise you.  For example, here's Aunt Deb:

I don't know if people sympathize with the Schindlers or with "the cause".  For example:  here in Delaware, the Sussex County council passed a resolution "in support" of the Schindlers.  Now, what can this possibly mean?  There are a number of rather vital matters which need to be addressed in Sussex County and only the county council can address them; nevertheless, the council took the time to think up, discuss, and vote on this resolution.  Is this "sympathy" or something simply pathological?

And it isn't just Catholic priests who are using this poor woman's plight.  The Presbyterian minister here  in my town gave an Easter sermon which included a comparison of Terri to Jesus.

Here's Cate: 

Karen Quinlan's parents, after an almost equally long time, eventually accepted the fact that their daughter was not experiencing any enjoyment of life (and quite possibly, the opposite) and would never improve. An understandable parental hesitance to let go, perhaps abhorrence at even the thought of giving up, eventually gave way to scientific knowledge of the day, to wit, quiet, contemporary reason. Dealing with the ultimate heartbreak of losing a child is rough enough. If you combine this with a call to any other parental instinct, such as here the Schindler's belief that they are their daughter's sole protector against a man they blame in part for Terri's current condition, it becomes easier to understand why they won't give up. They have never had a chance to grieve. They have been in a defensive posture for so long, they know no other. This is, at its base Homo Sapien Sapien level, about human nature, not faith.  To allow this situation to be characterized in moral, ethical, scientific, and religious terms without first understanding that no matter what era, country, or planet we are on, the father would square off against the interloper to protect his brood, cedes ground to the circus. I guess what I am trying to say is that if I did not have an opportunity to grieve because my energies were completely focused on the front line, I would never hesitate to embrace any circus to win the war.  Once you understand that about me, i.e., my intense level of desparation, you may be more skeptical of my methods and my armaments.

And here's Nance:

To be sure, there are those -- and Amy is one of them -- who argue it doesn't matter if Terri can recover or not, who aren't pushing the miracle myth, who see her as a severely disabled person who deserves food and water at the least. I can respect those folks. I only wish they'd point out that this happens every single day in this country, not just in Florida.

But that's not really my point. I was struck by what you said about the idiot priest. As you know, I tried to fan the dying embers of faith in my soul when my daughter was born, figuring church would do her good at some level. Unfortunately, at some point I ran across a parish run by a young conservative, who gave the most simple-minded homilies I have ever heard. He brought up birth control every week, at one point comparing it to "a drug you could take that would stop your heart." He mentioned the apparitions of Fatima, or whatever it was -- the visions that supposedly predicted Nazism and that guy shooting the Pope. He even ranted about people who wouldn't take their shopping carts back to the cart corral at the supermarket parking lot. I finally did what you did -- got up to stretch my legs. Only I took my kid with me and never went back.

Is this supposed to inspire people? Marian visions and Jesus on a tortilla? I was embarrassed to be in the same room with him.

On a lighter note.  As commenter Mrs Norman Maine has commented, I think way too much about things like Star Trek and Star Wars and Stargate, and I tackled them all at once in a post called, cleverly, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargate.

Matthew Hutchinson is a fan of Stargate and a disillusioned fan of George Lucas:

I remember watching an interview with Harrison [Ford] several years ago.  He was asked to describe Lucas as a director.  He recalled making Star Wars.  Despite it being a fun shoot, one of his minor gripes was that Lucas was never very communicative about what he wanted out of their performances.

He described shooting the final escape aboard the Millenium Falcon, after rescuing the Princess, as an example.  Take after take, the only feedback Lucas seemed to be able or want to offer was, "Like that, only better."

Star Wars was a fluke.  We got lucky with episodes V and VI because he didn't direct them.  Unfortunately, we've gotten nothing but celluloid crap with Lucas behind the reigns on episodes I and II.  As good as the trailer for EPIII looks, I don't have high hopes for its success.

As for Stargate, I have to admit I was not a fan at first.  In fact, I hated the last hour of the movie, starting the moment we learned that Abidos was a desert planet.  I was hoping to see a world who's sky was brilliant with cascading colors and a vast, alien landscape.

I didn't start watching the series until after I caught a few episodes of season 4.  With nothing else of interest on during that time slot, I simply left the channel on and watched.  My interest quickly intensified, and then I decided to catch up on the series.  My friend then decided to buy the series DVDs.  We were finally up-to-date by the start of the 6th season, and I've been hooked ever since.

One of the things I love most about the show is that the science is explained in such a way that is both entertaining and makes sense.

Funny thing is, even though I can record both it and Atlantis using my DVR, I consider both time slots "holy hour".

hehehe

One of the items in Evening Gazette, all arts edition linked to a post by Michael Berube in which Michael demystified the mystery that is Elton John, a post that burst Blue Girl's bubble:

M. Berube's essay has forever tarnished a loved song, "Grey Seal" -- now I'm always going to think about it sounding like a 'motivational corporate video' :) (ok, it kinda does) -- Also, everyone slammed "Bennie and the Jets" -- I still play it really loud when it comes on the radio!  Everyone pretty much slammed Elton all the way....maybe that's why he comes across so pompous and defensive when I see him interviewed. 

I once read a Billy Joel interview where he was SO sad over how the critics never gave him any credit. He is what he is. I felt bad for him. If I would've written "Vienna" -- I would proud of it!

My son just turned 13 on Saturday -- and suddenly, within the last few months, he's asking me all about The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Clapton, The Ramones, Rolling Stones, etc.

So, now his walls are covered in their posters and their music's blaring from his new stereo.

And I had to laugh a little when we got into a *little* argument last night over how long his hair is!

In the Cheers-inspired Eons of Biology, on my way to insulting Liberals and risking the wrath of some feminists I took a casual and not particularly smart swipe at conservatives.  Jeff called me on it:

I've read your blog for a long time and enjoy it, so it is with all due respect for what you've written in the past when I say that what you said about conservatives and nature was unsurpassingly stupid and utterly unworthy of you, and I'm speaking not as a conservative (which I am), but as someone who actually knows what conservatives think.  Read any serious conservative (or simply think about what you've heard them say) and what do they talk about? Tradition, education, religion, civilization, etc. and they are drearily stuffy about it, and all of which have to be taught and learned. Conservatives talk about restraint, duty, obligation, etc., all of which require people to act against their nature. What was the biggest Republican domestic initiative of the last I don't know how many years now? Welfare reform. The theory was that the welfare system as it was then encouraged self-destructive behavior and should be replaced with a system that would do the opposite. They did and it worked, to an extent. That is, nurture triumphed over (or perhaps even changed) nature. I think what you are confusing conservatives with is not that they believe nature is all-powerful, but that there is an eternal human nature that has to be dealt with as it is, not as, say Pol Pot wish it were, but this is a very different thing. Also, no matter how mistaken they may be on the matter, opponents of homosexual marriage base their arguments far more on the affects it will have on society than as to whether homosexuality is chosen or innate. As I said, I think you have a great blog, but you are way wrong on this one.

I replied:

Jeff, I'm glad you've been enjoying the page, but as a long time reader you know that I can't get through a post without saying something stupid.

But I think you didn't catch me here being so much stupid as lazy.  I was in a hurry to get to my Cheers quote and, incidentally, take a swipe at a certain type of liberal. (I actually expected more complaints from the left side of the aisle on this one.) I didn't have time or the inclination to take on the conservative postion or to even define who I meant when I used the term, so I should just have left it out. 

Your comment is a good one and raises good points and I think I should address it in a post all its own.  However,just off the cuff:  I think you've actually done the job of arguing that the conservative position is that it's all about nature.

Your argument posits that individuals have an ineffable nature that they must control themselves.  (I agree with this, by the way.) Tradition, custom, laws, etc. are ways for society to give individuals the tools necessary to direct their own behaviors.  The target for improvement is individuals not society itself or its institutions or culture.

Welfare reform is a good example.  The problem as conservatives see it is that poverty is a result of individuals bringing it on themselves with bad behavior that they must be encouraged to reform.  Liberals tend to see the bad behavior as resulting from the pressures of poverty.  So conservatives think the problem is nature and liberals think it's cultural.

And Jeff came back with a totally unnecessary apology, which was nice of him, and a further elucidation of his views, which was also nice of him:

I have to apologize about that "stupid" crack. When I was writing it seemed arch  (I love arch!) and slightly satiric, but when I saw it on the commments section, I thought, "You know what, maybe arch isn't as easy as I think it is. Maybe I'll read a little Dorothy Parker first next time."  So, sorry about that; it was rude. As far as the good points other people make, please remember the only point I was making is that conservatives do not believe in nature exclusively, although they do believe in an internal human nature. In light of the great amount of work done on the biological roots of human nature (remember that Stalin persecuted Darwinist and promoted Lysenkoism), I don't think too many poeple would disagree with this right now...

I think your take on the conservatives is incomplete. True, they  saw the problem as being behavioral (Nature), but that was because the welfare recipients were caught in a counterproductive system (Nurture) that rewarded this behavior. The question, in fact, probably the real question we're probably discussing here is, does the change in Nurture change the Nature, or is the Nature unchanging and reacts to different Nurtures in a way that is predictable and unchanging? Is it possible for Nature to change? And even if it seems to change, is it really changing in a way that is only exposing a different aspect of it that is only appearing because of the change in Nurture, while the Nature itself remains unchanging? As a great philosopher once said, Ay Caramba.

Back when Congress was getting ready to tackle Major League Baseball's "Steroid Scandal!!!!" I wrote, in The cream and the clear, that I thought there was a scandal and because MLB wouldn't police itself, it had invited Congressional intervention.  Congress intervened and made a collective horse's patoot of itself, as Domoni could have told me would happen:

There have been MLB players and trainers using and pushing "performance enhancement supplements and drugs" for at least 40 years. Probably longer. In that time some players used and some didn't.

This isn't the first drug crisis MLB has faced. When I was a teen ballplayer I knew some pros used pills. There were players my age who believed they would do the same. Where was Congress then? Why hasn't MLB been "cleaned up" before now?

When steroids became available some used and some didn't. Why not find out how some succeed without steroids? Is education the difference?

Those "youngest" players are adults. I taught my children that no career is worth losing your principles. Or your life. I can't attest to how other parents taught their children.

For the players who come to believe they can not succeed without steroids: If your talent and hard work alone aren't enough to take you to the majors then maybe baseball isn't your career.

Also, I understand you have enough proof regarding the minor leagues and steroids. I need corroboration about the minor leagues. Who else has reported the systemic pushing of steroids?

And, finally, reaching way back into February---in my post My brief career as a pornographer, writing about Boink, a magazine being published by a journalism major at my old school Boston University, I said that I thought the "students" posing naked for the mag were "students" the way the "real live co-eds" dancing at strip clubs are really coeds.  Rambler reminded me I should never be so quick to judge:

You should not dismiss so readily the claim of strip clubs that dancers are "real live co-eds."  My significant other used to dance, indeed did so for several years until she became a cosmetologist.  She danced because she was from another country and had no education to speak of since her country was consumed by civil war during her childhood.  But most of her friends from those days were, in fact, paying for school dancing.  Not Harvard or Yale, but community college or business college or something like that.  Most dancers are women facing difficult monetary problems, but the vast majority know they have a plan to get out.

There, that was much more fun and enlightening than Tim Russert, wasn't it?

Plenty more where those came from.  Besides our panel of regulars, including stalwarts Mac Magillicuddy, RatBoy, Denis DeKat, and the Linkmeister, an occasional guest star shows up.  Nancy Nall, of course, is an old and loyal pal, but Trish Wilson, Roy Edroso, PZ Myers, Neddie Jingo, Shakespeare's Sister, Tom Watson, Jack Shannon, Susie the Suburban Guerrilla, and Scott Lemieux and Rob Farley from Lawyers, Guns and Money have all been known to drop by for a quick one, as well.  We've even had a couple of visits from the brilliant but enigmatic Kip Manley.  Keep your eyes peeled and check out all the comments whenever you get the chance.

The man who shot "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

Last week James Wolcott and I had a bit of a back and forth and back again over the question of just how conservative the director John Ford was.  It's a tricky question, because it's as hard to use the word conservative these days without meaning the rightwing authoritarianism that's going by that name in Washington as it is to use the word communism to mean anything other than what happened in the old Soviet Union.

Ford was staunchly anti-communist and he could blow off hats and lift skirts with the breezes raised by his all too energetic flag waving, but 60 and 70 years ago those qualities did not disqualify you from being a Democrat or even a liberal.

This is only important as an issue of memory for me.  I'm convinced that I read that Ford was actually more of a conservative Democrat than he was something we'd identify nowadays as a conservative. I've been re-reading Garry Wills' John Wayne's America to try to answer the question for myself and prove I'm not growing senile. So far I haven't concluded anything about Ford's politics.  But I am sick to death of him as a character.  Wolcott called him a conservative coot.  The emphasis should fall on coot.  But coot is too friendly a word for him.  Ford comes across in Wills' book as a twisted little imp, as sadistic, mysogynistic, bad-tempered, and cruelly mischievous as Rumplestiltskin.

Maureen O'Hara plays the princess who learns his name.  In a comment on my post, The Moviegoer, SFMike recommends O'Hara's autobiography, 'Tis Herself.

Even though it's (poorly) ghostwritten and confused as heck about all kinds of things, the book is fascinating. Her accounts of  "Pappy" John Ford, who was her mentor, tormentor, friend and abuser are worth the price of admission, and the settling of scores throughout the book is quite amusing, beginning with the nasty nuns who tried to break her spirit in Dublin. It turns out that Ford was not only a great visual artist, but also a gay closet case and an evil binge drinker who loved destroying other people.

This is not to even mention her anecdotes about Walt Disney (from "The Parent Trap" days) raising himself out of his deathbed at the hospital to point at Maureen and croak out, "That bitch." Plus, her final husband was aviation pioneer Charles Blair who was probably killed by the CIA in a phony plane accident after ten years of their marriage. Or her anecdotes about the "charming" Che Guevara when she was filming "Our Man in Havana." Highly recommended, though very weird.

I think I'll check it out.  And I'll keep reading Wills' book.  Meantime, others have had some interesting things to say on the question, starting with George at A Girl and A Gun.

I think the essence of Ford’s art is in his style and not in his politics, which are conventionally patriotic and mostly unquestioning of received opinion about “what made this country great.” He believed, or was willing to support the position, that the US cavalry played a heroic role in westward expansion and that its original inhabitants were, at bottom, noble savages. Wolcott calls Ford “a classicist,” and I think he’s exactly right. Ford was formalist in his vision, dedicated to composition and structure. He adhered to enduring institutions like the Catholic church precisely because they endured and were therefore honorable and worthy of respect. He was formulaic, resorting to pre-established set pieces like his Irish sentimentalism and male rough-housing and corny old songs (“My Darling Clementine,” “Red River Valley”) the way that Homer resorted to “the wine-dark sea” and “rosy-fingered dawn” to help fill narrative space. He also went to the well a bit too often, and some of his later efforts—The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan’s Reef (1963) to name only a few that come to mind—were just about unwatchable. But in the great westerns, from 1939 (Stagecoach) to 1956 (The Searchers), he organized space and movement within it in a way the western never outgrew, at least for me. In later years, whether I was watching movies by Sergio Leone or Clint Eastwood, Ford’s way of seeing that time and place was in my head, and it’s probably never getting out.

You should read George's whole post.

In a comment to my post on Ford, Phil Nugent makes the case that though Ford was a conservative his politics didn't trump his character:

Ford WAS a conservative, but he deserves but be remembered as someone different from the people who've taken over that label, stretched it and pitted it out and degraded its meaning, and claimed it for their own. He was a man formed by experience who had some strongly held beliefs but wasn't looking for a crowd of nodding heads to join. One of the most famous stories about Ford is about how he shot down the attempt by Cecil B. de Mille to institute some kind of Red Scare blacklist inside the Directors' Guild by attending the meeting de Mille had called and making a simple speech, acknowledging all that de Mille had done for Hollywood but ending, "But I don't like you, C.B., and I don't like what you're trying to do here." Wayne was more a prototype modern chicken hawk. As you say, he never actually served in military combat, but --like Ronald Reagan--he seemed to think that he had. Ford, a mean bastard who liked to test people, was said to have treated them increasingly contemptously throughout the years of their association, and Wayne made sure the abuse would continue by never standing his ground or speaking back. Yet he was a much pettier bully with those he thought he could afford to push around, bragging in a Playboy interview about having run the screenwriter Carl Foreman "out of the country" in the HUAC days.

Rob Farley of Lawyers, Guns and Money dropped a line to point out that Ford was indeed an ultra-conservative, a reactionary in fact, but that, interestingly, that's what gave Ford's westerns their grandness:

It's truly remarkable that Confederate nostalgia and reactionary politics can be wedded so fruitfully to an outstanding directorial eye and grasp of character and narrative.  More than that; the best chracters in Ford appreciate their own anachronism.  Indeed, I don't think that any but a reactionary director combined with reactionary actor could bring a character like [The Searchers'] Ethan Edwards to life.  The ambiguity and conflict in his character seems genuine because it is genuine; we appreciate that different impulses are tearing him apart, and we believe all of them.  Same thing with Tom Doniphon [Wayne's character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance].

But back in my comments section, Robert Anderson resists pasting the conservative label on Ford:

The statement that John Ford was in the conservative camp during the Blacklist era is dead wrong. The blacklisting disgusted him ("John Ford" by Tag Gallagher, p. 340). He is famous for saying "Send the commie bastard to me, I'll hire him." He had his military order condemn the HUAC hearings as witchhunts. In 1950, Cecil DeMille, proposed that the Director's Guild require a loyalty oath for its members, in what amounted to a requirement for directing movies. After a famous intense four hour debate, Ford stood up and said: " My name is John Ford, I direct westerns." He then condemned the oath and moved for DeMille's resignation and an endorsement of Joseph Mankowitz, Guild president and a left-winger. Moved by Ford's eloquent speech, the Guild passed his motion.

You have to be careful with Ford, he's a complex guy. He hated racism, but he loved the Cavalry. In 1967 in his old age, he called himself a "liberal democrat and a rebel."

I think all this circles us back to Wolcott's original point.  Wolcott was responding to the outrage some wingnuts were expressing over the sight of Mel Gibson and Michael Moore admiring each other's work. 

What cultural-rube Hollywood haters don't understand is that there is a fraternal order among filmmakers, whatever their political stripes. That's why a nihilist and Nixon-hater like Sam Peckinpah could pay homage to a conservative coot and classicist like John Ford. Why a Republican like Clint Eastwood has no problem compunction working with lefties like Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. Talented people respect talent. They have larger spirits than the political pundits that glom on to them.

Sunday morning update:  And forth again.  Wolcott gives a nice shout out to Mike, George, Phil, Rob, Robert and all the rest of you who've left comments on this post and The Moviegoer.  I get the traffic but you get the credit.  You did all the heavy lifting.  Thanks, folks.

In his post, Mr W praises the westerns Jimmy Stewart made with Anthony Mann, to which I say, Boys and girls, listen to the man.   Wolcott's favorite is Winchester '73, a real good one, but I'm kind of partial to The Far Country---Ruth Roman in technicolor.  And The Naked Spur is intense, and very unsettling if you're used to thinking of Stewart as George Bailey or Elwood P. Dowd. Stewart plays the ostensible hero, and Robert Ryan's the villain, but Stewart and Ryan have a contest going to see who can play it the most menacing and unsypathetic.  Ryan wins, but only because Janet Leigh chooses Stewart and you figure she must know something we don't.

____________________________________

In related news:  That post of mine, The Moviemaker, is fast moving down the page.  In case you haven't seen it, it's basically a riff around a link to a fun list of 100 Great Films.  If you haven't looked at either the list or my post, I wish you would take a gander at both.  In the comments, some folks have left lists of their favorites on the list and movies they would add to it.  There are some interesting recommendations.  Please check it out, and leave some recommendations of your own.  Thank you for your support.

The Club for Growth of a Democratic Majority

Loyal reader Mack is still waiting for an answer to his question below about the possibility of an impending metal shortage.

Meanwhile he sends along this news.  The ultra conservative and ultra-rolling in it PAC, The Club for Growth has a bold new plan for putting the Democrats back in control of Congress.

Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, says his organization's goal is to punish moderate Republicans and make them an endangered species.

"The problem with the moderates in Congress is that they basically water down the Republican message and what you get is something that infuriates the Republican base," Moore says.

"They will learn to conform to our agenda or they will be driven from our party," he says simply.

I like this idea.

Drive as many moderates out of the Republican Party as you can, sir.  They'll have a place to go.  Sen. Jim Jeffords' door is wide open.  A sizeable contingent of Independents  would become the Obi wan Kenobis of Congress.  "If you strike me down, Darth, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

Both the Republicans and the Democrats would crawl on their knees through the snow for their votes.  And you can bet the Democrats, as the new majority party, would come bearing the better gifts, like committee chairmanships that didn't require groveling, cringing, and a total abandonment of principle and every last ounce of self-respect.  The Independents would have so much more clout that I can't believe the moderates haven't all defected already.   I read the papers every morning expecting to find that they've climbed over the wall en masse in the night.

Presumably, Moore means that the moderates will be driven from office, by Club-financed right wingers challenging them in party primary races.

This would also be good for the Democrats.  It would save us the trouble of having to defeat a bunch of incumbants.  Somebody will probably point out to Moore that a lot of these moderates he wants to see gone are from Blue States and he'll tone it down before the moderates' Kerry-voting constituents get wind of what he's planning.

The Congressional district that surrounds Ithaca, New York, home of Cornell University, is represented by Sherwood Boehlert, who is what passes for a moderate Republican these days.  If Boehlert goes down in a primary, what are the odds that those granola-eating, Volvo-driving, yoga-practicing, gay marriage supporting Ithacans are going to send the right winger to represent them in Washington?

The only reason Pennsylvania is still represented by two Republican senators is that Arlen Specter managed to beat back a right wing challenger in a primary.  Pennsylvanians who voted for John Kerry and Specter and are now watching Specter's humiliation at the hands of the radical right are probably wondering why they bothered.  They can't take back their votes but they can take out their anger on Rick Santorum when he comes up for re-election in 2006.

Boehlert, by the way, knows out how to grovel with the best of them.   He supports the DeLay Rule.   He wasn't there to vote for it, but he woulda if he coulda, so please don't hurt him, Mr DeLay, sir.  Another supposed moderate from upstate New York, my former congressman, Jim Walsh, stepped right up to to drop right down to kiss Tom DeLay's ring.  Walsh hasn't really been a moderate since 1994 when he handed over his integrity and his manhood to Newt Gingrich in exchange for some supposed clout that has never materialized.  I don't understand why the people in his district, who went for Clinton, Gore, and Kerry, keep sending him back to Washington, since he clearly no longer represents them.   He is like far too many of the moderates, no longer R-Your District Here.  They are R-DeLay.   Habit and a lack of a strong Democratic challenger, I guess.  Boehlert benefits from the same inertia.

Perhaps Moore has the right idea.  It's time for the moderates to be driven from office.  The Democratic Party should join with the Club for Growth to get rid of them. The trouble with them, though, is the opposite of what Moore thinks it is.  It's not that they water down the Republican message.  It's that they don't do anything at all anymore to dilute it.   

A reader writes

Loyal reader Mack writes:

Dear Lance,

Why isn't there a metal shortage? Of course we all hear about oil shortages, water shortages, and melting polar ice caps, but why isn't there a metal shortage? Look at all the things that are made of metal. It's astonishing: cars, for starters. Also, guardrails on the cars' roads. Not to mention the rebar in the Jersey barriers. Buildings have lots of metal in them -- the frames, as well as the outer shells in many cases. The elevators inside those buildings ride on metal guiderails, and they are pulled up and down by steel cables. Elevator doors are, in most cases, also metal. The button panels inside the elevator cars are metal. Your toaster is metal. As are most of your appliances (well, I have a plastic coffee maker, and a plastic blender, but they have metal parts in them). Metal comes from ore. It has to be mined. Someone is doing the mining, and they have to do down deep into the earth to do it. How can there possibly be this much metal in the earth? Why isn't there a metal shortage?

Some of you may remember.  I used to know everything.  I was like Dan Aykroyd's caricature of Jimmy Carter.  I could tell you how to repair your computer, talk you down from an acid trip, or walk into a nuclear reactor in meltdown and fix it.  I could have told Mack what he wants to know.

I'm not so smart anymore.

I don't know the answer to Mack's question.  If any of you do, please deposit your answer in the comments section.  Mack's got a 7 year old son who is prone to asking him probing questions about the acrane and esoteric workings of the world and Mack needs ammunition.  He thanks you for your support.