Department Of Wishful Thinking

November 21, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Technology | 1 Comment 

New York Times:

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the [MacArthur Foundation] study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

In order to manage a public identity, practicing say “please,” “thank you,” and “How are you today?” would also work.

If You’re Over 50, Discern Location, And Read Carefully

November 19, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment 

The “Economist“:

People are mostly living longer, but are those extra years healthy ones? Whereas the life expectancy for men aged 50 in European countries varies by some nine years, the years of healthy life differ enormously. In 2005, an Estonian man of 50 could look foward to just over nine years more of good health (defined as having no limits on activity). In contrast a typical Danish man could expect 23.6 years, according to a new study published in the Lancet, a British medical journal. The gap between East and West in both life expectancy and years spent in good health is considerable.

Arts Gratia Obama

November 18, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Media, Presidents, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

John Taylor gets it exactly right (so what else is new?) — the Obama/FDR idea is made for the cartoonist’s deft touch (not the photoshopper’s heavy hand).  To wit: Richard Thompson’s illustration for George Packer’s recent article  —”The New Liberalism”— in The New Yorker.

The magazine achieves illustrative excellence again this week (so what else is new?) with John Ritter’s hommage to James Rosenquist’s iconic “President Elect” (1960-1961)” for Editor David Remnick’s thoughtful “The Joshua Generation,” about race and the Obama campaign.

The Revolution Will Be Animated

November 18, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Manga, literally, means “whimsical pictures.”   But whimsy isn’t the word that comes to mind for the latest incarnation of this historic Japanese form of cartoon and comic illustration.

While the most characteristic contemporary themes have involved sex, violence, and science fiction, the current rise in Communist Party membership has spawned a revival of anti-capitalist literature.  A manga version of Das Kapital will roll off the presses early next month.

As the Telegraph reports today:

The appearance of the famous economic treatise in the form of a comic is the latest sign of a resurgence of leftwing literature in Japan as the world’s second largest economy sinks into recession.

Sales of Kanikosen, the 1929 proletarian tale of factory workers rising up against evil capitalist oppressors, have surged from an annual trickle of 5,000 to more than 507,000 so far this year, as reported in the Telegraph last month.

East Press  the Tokyo-based publishing company which will publish the comic version Das Kapital on December 5  also released a manga version of Kanikosen last year, resulting in sales of more than 200,000.

Manga has long been elevated to an art form in Japan, with its most high-profile fans including the prime minister Taro Aso.

The Republican Wilderness: Four Years - or Forty?

November 13, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Culture, Election 2008, Election 2012, History, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, & Ronald Reagan, has entered the proverbial wilderness. It moves from the box seats to the cheap seats, or better - to mix the metaphor a bit – the backbenches.

How Republicans handle this exile, and just how long the era lasts, will depend largely on what is done with and in the wilderness.

The idea of a wilderness period as a picture of exile is actually much older than American politics, or even anything from our ancestors across the pond. It is a concept dating back to Biblical history and the frustrations and wanderings of the ancient children of Israel. Poised to enter the “Promised Land” of abundance and fulfillment following centuries of bondage and privation, and in the wake of the clearly providential exodus led by Moses, that generation fell tragically short.

They missed their rendezvous with destiny.

Entering the wilderness – a place, but also a process - they lived out a forty-year reminder of what had left been behind, while also grieving the loss of a compelling future. They had allowed short-term frustration to short-circuit long-held principles and dreams.

And the Lord told them in the book of Deuteronomy that the reason for the wilderness was, “to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart.” In other words, the wilderness for them was a divinely ordained “time out” – the kind of thing my dad would do when he sent me to my room to “think about” what I had done (when it was really all my brother’s fault).

The wilderness was a time for purging and preparing. Attitudes, habits, and ambitions had to be dealt with, and priorities revisited and clarified. The duration of the wilderness depended on how well the lessons were learned. In that ancient case, a journey that should have taken no more than a year became a forty-year generational failure.

And something that was lost, forgotten, or just misplaced, desperately needed to be found.

As the Republican Party moves into its own desert of exile for a while, it is time for reflection. It needs to figure out what it really stands for and what it can offer the nation the next time it is called upon to lead. How it manages in the wilderness will determine whether it will come back in four years, or forty - if at all.

That another such time will come is, of course, almost inevitable – not just because of very real concerns about the capacity of recent victors to translate historically flawed policies into real success, but because of the inherent cycles of politics. What happened on November 4th was due nearly as much to the tendency of politics and history to repeat themselves and the public’s tendency to soon tire of anyone on center stage, as it was a mandate for real “yes, we can” change.

Writing in the book, In the Arena: A Memoir of Defeat and Renewal, the late and former president Richard Nixon dedicated a chapter to the phenomenon of the wilderness. He knew a thing or two about the ups and downs and ins and outs of political life. The period between his loss in the governor’s race in 1962 and the winning of the White House in 1968, is a textbook case of how to come back from the kind of defeat that tempts opponents to write someone off permanently.

Nixon mentioned something described by Arnold Toynbee in his, Study of History, described as “the phenomenon of withdrawal…a disengagement and temporary withdrawal of the creative personality from his social milieu and his subsequent return to the same milieu transfigured in a new capacity with new powers.” Throughout history, great leaders demonstrated this. Certainly Nixon did and clearly identified with others who went through deep valleys.

In the 1991 movie, City Slickers, Billy Crystal and his best friends head out west looking for adventure. Crystal’s wife in the film wanted him to, while moving cattle from point A to B, along the way find something. Something he had lost. Something he needed to recover. His smile. The movie ended happily with said smile finding its way back to Billy’s face.

For the Republicans, they do not need to find something as insignificant as a group smile. Rather, they should be looking for something much more vital if they are to have a real shot at coming back from this wilderness.

The key to this is found in another place where the ancient scriptures mention a wilderness. We learn about this from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, when in the 40th chapter of his book we come across the vital phrase, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

No doubt Winston Churchill, another frequent wilderness wanderer, identified with this little phrase during his years as a political has-been in the 1930s. He had no power, no position, and no prospects.

But he found his “voice” – and began to warn his countrymen about Hitler and dangers to come. Later, when he once again found himself in forced exile, having been voted out of office in the Labor sweep just a couple of months after the victory had been won in Europe, he found his “voice” again. This time he did not speak in the House of Commons, but rather in the gymnasium of a small college in the American mid-west. From that unlikely pulpit in the wilderness he cried out about an “iron curtain.”

The Republicans have clearly found the wilderness. Now they need to find their voice.

The GOP needs to figure out what it wants to be if and when it grows back up. Are ideas like limited government, the free market, and at least an interest in understanding the relationship between the morality of personal responsibility and self-discipline and the ills of the larger culture – now officially gone forever?

The word paradigm comes from the Greek language and the word paradeigma. It basically means a perception, or frame of reference – a lens through which to interpret reality. Author Steven Covey in his book, The Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (hint: the eighth habit is “finding your voice”), insists that “if you want to make minor incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior or attitude. But if you want to make significant, quantum improvements, work on paradigms.”

The time for tweaking is past. As the nation readies itself to enter a new era of “bold experimentation” under an activist Obama administration, it is time for the party now finding itself in the political wilderness to find what it has lost. By definition, something lost is not something new – it is something once possessed.

Republicans can find their voice during the wilderness period, but to do so will require a willingness to have the wisdom and humility to make a paradigm shift, one that surely involves a quantum journey back to the future. The must find what once worked – and has been lost.

And if anyone thinks that the idea of going to the past to find something that will resonate in the future is not politically feasible, please remember this: America just elected a guy who advocates policies and programs that failed 75 years ago.

Art Imitates Life

November 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, History, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In honor of Veterans Day, New York Times film critic A. O. Scott devotes this week’s “Critic’s Choice” to Franklin N. Schaffner’s 1970 masterpiece Patton.

The film won seven Academy Awards — including the Best Actor Oscar for George C. Scott.

The canard widespread at the time —and which still exists in benighted quarters today— was that RN saw the film a few, dozens, or scores of times (depending on the credulity, superficiality, and/or bias of the author) and then, puffed up with macho vainglory, invaded Cambodia.

Of course, that reflected, and reflects, the easy and comfortable and totally inaccurate notion that RN was an unsophisticated man of a kind whose simplistic jingoism could be triggered by a movie.

It is true that RN saw the film shortly after it was released at the beginning of April; that he was deeply impressed and moved by it; and that he watched it several times at the White House and Camp David during and after the Cambodian campaign, which began on the 29th (and planning for which had begun long before the film arrived).

And it’s true that Patton, the film and the man, glorified and gloried in some of the aspects and elements of war.  

But the overall tone of the film was one of frustration and melancholy. Indeed, its conclusion is far more likely to lead a viewer to book a spiritual retreat than to order an invasion.   

Patton does, in fact, have some things (not that many, but some) to reveal about RN. But they are, typically, complex and contrary to the conventional wisdom.

I have long suggested to people who say that they want to understand Richard Nixon, that they might start with three things: read Charles DeGaulle’s The Edge of the Sword; listen to the music from the multi-episode award-winning 1952 about the Second World War, Victory at Sea; and watch Patton.

The good news is that The Edge of the Sword is available from Amazon; the bad news is that the prices currently start at $599.94.  So, at least until a new edition is published or you get very lucky in a used book store, you’ll just have to take my word on that one.

A. O. Scott’s video review of Patton in today’s Times online is a good introduction to a really great movie.

RN listened —often late at night in the Lincoln Sitting Room— to the first suite Robert Russell Bennet arranged (from his own arrangements)  Richard Rodgers’ score.

There are fourteen themes that roughly outline the history of the war — from “The Pacific Boils Over” to “Victory at Sea”.  The music is alternately sad, stirring, and inspiring.

Here’s the opening of the series.  The theme under the credits is “The Song of the High Seas.”

Why Gen O Kids Think They’re So Darned Special

November 9, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture | Leave a Comment 

We’ve been telling them all their lives. From “The Christian Century,” via “The Wilson Quarterly”:

Researchers have tracked college students’ scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory test over the past 24 years. They’ve concluded that students are increasingly addicted to self-love throughout the U.S., but not in California. California scores are lower because Asian American students, who account for half of the freshman class on some California campuses, score considerably lower than other groups on measures having to do with individualism and narcissism. The researchers believe that the rise in self-love overall is the result of programs in primary and secondary schools aimed at boosting self-esteem: “‘I am special’ teaches narcissism rather than self-esteem,” they conclude (Wilson Quarterly, Autumn).

The New Day Dawns

November 9, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008, Entertainment, Media, Music, Public Opinion | Leave a Comment 

Polymathic musician, performer, songwriter, entrepreneur, designer, artist, activist, videomaker, etc., and Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am has produced a post-election video of a song he wrote : “It’s A New Day”. It premiered on Oprah’s show (as soon all things will that don’t already) on Friday.

This time the cast of thousands has been winnowed down to a happy few (including Fergie, Kanye West, and Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick).   Presumably that’s a function of availability on short notice; where is Ryan Philippe when you really need him?

His earlier videos — “Yes We Can” and ”We Are The Ones“— played no small part in reaching, inspiring, and activating young voters.  (And the former inspired and inspired parody: ”No, You Can’t“.)

If only on the principle that nothing succeeds like success, the new video demands respect.  And because it’s the shape of things to come it requires attention.

Drenched In Lincoln: Obama’s Victory Speech

November 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Culture | Leave a Comment 

11 p.m. in Chicago: Staging is an anti-Denver statement — just a Sandy Quinn row of American flags and a clunky podium. Smart move. And that gorgeous family.

“…Arc of history, and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day”: Quoting MLK. Both President-elect Obama and Sen. McCain lead with race.

Reciprocal tribute to McCain: “We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader”: In the almost friendly remarks of both these leaders, dare we dream of a true meeting in the great middle ground of American politics?

Checkers moment: Sasha and Malia getting a puppy.

It’s a gracious candidate who so fulsomely thanks his staff: “You made this happen…”

Lincoln quote: A self-consciously American speech.

“Worst financial crisis in a century?” Not quite.

He’s lowering expectations — “there will be setbacks and false starts”; everything not done in first term; “government can’t solve every problem.”

“So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to work harder and pitch in and look after not only ourselves but others.” Ronald Reagan couldn’t have said it better.

Talking now about Republican values; and an “humility and determination to heal the divides.”

Lincoln again: “We are not enemies, but friends…” David Eisenhower, aficionado of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, will be eating this up.

“A new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”

Ann Nixon Cooper?

Mixing “yes we can” with longer, sonorous phrases; Bill Safire will be eating this up.

His best speech; a great American speech; a Republican-quoting speech; a hopeful and healing and uniting speech. He said, “Our union can be perfected.” Indeed — but at the center, sir, not on the left.

Dan Quayle’s Vindication

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Ethics, Lifestyle, Media | Leave a Comment 

When former Vice President Dan Quayle has been mentioned in the 2008 campaign, more often than not, it has been to compare the ridicule he suffered during the 1988 race and throughout his term in office to the mockery directed at Sarah Palin.  But this week comes news that a brouhaha which the media portrayed as a major gaffe at the time may have proven him to be far more prescient than anyone realized then.

On May 19, 1992, Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  His remarks decried the increased incidence of mothers choosing to bear children outside marriage.  In this context, he pointed to a storyline in the TV sitcom Murphy Brown in which the title character, portrayed by Candice Bergen, chose not to wed the father of her child-to-be, and said that this set an unfortunate example to younger viewers in particular.

Quayle’s speech attracted considerable controversy, and quite a number of printed and spoken words were devoted to ridiculing the idea that a mere TV show could have such an impact in real life. 

But, although the show itself made fun of Quayle’s argument, years later Ms. Bergen said she thought there was a point to what he said, and this week a study published in the estimable professional journal Pediatrics (which is already the subject of a Washington Post article and coverage in other newspapers) describes the results of a comprehensive survey of unwed and teenage mothers which appears to confirm the idea that adolescents are indeed encouraged to pursue promiscuity by what they see on television. 

So far none of the articles discussing the study have mentioned Quayle’s speech of 16 years ago.  But isn’t it time he got some credit for being right?

My Room’s Full Of Gloom

October 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Music | Leave a Comment 

Just look over your shoulder — I’ll be there

The great Levi Stubbs, 72, lead singer of the Four Tops, died Oct. 17 in Detroit after a long illness. Here’s a good live version of their classic “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” which is consistently ranked as one of the greatest songs of all time. Listen to the superbly arranged and orchestrated studio version here. I first heard it in 1966 in the gym of Detroit’s Miller Junior High School. According to the Nov. 13 “Rolling Stone,” Holland-Dozier-Holland, songwriters who mass-produced hits for Motown, purposely wrote this melody at the top of Stubbs’s range so that he’d sound especially urgent.

The “Stone” obit had this detail:

Stubbs consistently rejected lucrative offers to leave the group. “I often heard people say, ‘Why doesn’t Levi sing by himself?” remembers [Eddie] Holland. “Levi was a loyalist who believed in sticking with the group he grew up with.” And even when he did take an outside gig — as when he voiced the plant Audrey II in the 1986 movie Little Shop Of Horrors — he shared the income with the group.

They called this the “sound of young America,” and for a few precious years, it surely was. Give rest, O Christ, to your servant with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

The Death Of American Journalism

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Kindle, News media | 2 Comments 

Those not desiring an Obama Presidency are by and large not feeling nostalgic about the newspaper business this week. And yet this posting at a very cool website, Lifehacker.com, misses the point of the stunning announcement by one of the nation’s most important papers:

The Christian Science Monitor, a Pulitzer-winning daily newspaper, announced yesterday that it will stop printing daily editions and focus on its web site, as well as use the savings to keep foreign bureaus open. Media pundits have been claiming the End of Print for decades, but the CSM is the first large-scale news operation to really take the plunge. We’re obviously pretty keen on free digital information at Lifehacker, but also wondering if we, and maybe our readers, will some day miss the portability, the lack of battery power or Wi-Fi connections, and the general look and feel of print newspapers. Are you in the same boat, or do you think the writing is on the wall when it comes to news delivery? Would you settle for a half-way solution, like a Kindle-esque news reader or print-on-demand papers?

Keen on free digital information? Me, too! But the content at CSM, NYT, LAT, WP, and AP is the work of highly trained and motivated reporters and editors who devote months or years to becoming experts in what they cover. Many work in expensive-to-maintain bureaus in Washington, London, or Beijing, where really important things happen that are sometimes pretty complicated. Newspapers pay them what are called salaries from revenue generated from subscriptions and advertising. Even TV news professionals, skilled though they may be, depend on newspaper reporting.

As for the free digital information we all love so much, if it’s good, it’s usually being given away on traditional new organizations’ websites, which hope that you’ll look at advertising while visiting. Otherwise, the free information is either gathered from these sources and repackaged or pastiches of opinions, rumors, or lies produced by people sitting in their bedrooms or Starbucks. When the traditional news-gathering organizations atrophy, what will we have left? Right: The crap.

Lifehacker seems to think news is all about the medium instead of the content. Both the NYT, still the greatest newspaper in the world, and the LAT, which used to be great, are bleeding pages and personnel. What happens when they have to close their Beijing bureaus? Who’s going to tell us what’s going on in the next superpower — the Xinhua News Agency? The State Department? Wonkette?

The protection of freedom depends on well-informed populaces, which depend on professional journalism, which runs on money. That’s why the Kindle is such a miracle. It’s cool and green, and its users pay for content. Get one today and help news organizations save democracy by developing a new financial model. Because there’s no such thing as free digital journalism that’s worth a damn.

We Won’t Vote If You Guys Don’t!

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

The Original Sin Of Resentment

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008, Hackosphere | Leave a Comment 

Dan Gardner in the Ottawa Citizen:

Palin “may be the first conservative politician since Nixon to experience resentment so authentically,” writes Noam Scheiber in The New Republic. “For her, it’s not so much a political tool as a motivating principle. A trip through Palin’s past reveals that almost every step of her career can be understood as a reaction to elitist condescension — much of it in her own mind.”

With defeat looming, Republican rallies and the conservative blogosphere are dripping with bitterness and resentment. If the Republicans are blown out next week, the bile will rise and Sarah Palin — mocked and dismissed by “the elites” — will be embraced all the more passionately. “Palin 2012″ T-shirts and bumper stickers will be on sale before the last ballots are counted.

While it’s hard to disagree that a politician shouldn’t be all about his or her resentments, figuring out whose resentments came first can be as difficult as identifying the source of original sin. Some say Eve, because she gave in to temptation; others Adam, because he acquiesced. Some (including my Hebrew Testament professor) said it was Cain, the first in the Bible to commit murder. Still others say original sin is an artifice bespeaking the church’s obsession with scapegoats at the expense of love and redemption.

At least as uneven as organized religion when it comes to promoting love and redemption, politics has fully mastered scapegoats. In Nixonland, Rick Perlstein popularized the unfair idea that Richard Nixon systematized the politics of resentment. RN would’ve said the original resenters in his political life came from the left, because he defeated two of its conservative-fearing darlings, Jerry Vorhis and Helen Gaghan Douglas, and got the goods on Soviet spy Alger Hiss.

And so the wheel of pointing fingers goes around. Remember that one person’s defense of a principle is often another’s fear-mongering. For everyone who says Gov. Palin is an angry resenter, there will be someone pointing to scary Planned Parenthood e-blasts about her abortion views or the career-killing (so it was hoped) lie about Trig’s parentage that was manufactured by bloggers and mainlined by Andrew Sullivan on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site before he checked the facts.

And when people say that Republicans perfected the politics of identity disparagement, remember Sullivan saying he hoped for a computerized Palin with

even more massive boobs, longer legs, towering porn-style pumps, redder lipstick…

Teaching, Not Preaching

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, History | Leave a Comment 

From Ann Fisher, a fascinating account of how a teacher brought history and politics to life in the classroom. Key to the magic: The teacher grasping that his personal opinions didn’t matter.

Sarah Palin Hung In Effigy

October 28, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

The LA Times has the details. The level of outrage is underwhelming. Good for Keith Olbermann.

Yeah, Right

October 28, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture | Leave a Comment 

Prepare to be lectured by children, or by whomever wrote their script at an outfit called www.gen-we.org, which obviously believes it’s the first to discover generational narcissism and exceptionalism. The people they seem to be angriest at are the baby boomers, who of course were the last generation to make a point of talking exactly like this about how incredibly enlightened they were.

The young readers say they’re tired of partisan politics. Those endorsing the organization include Arianna Huffington, Norman Lear, Harry Reid, and Tom Daschle. Dick Morris says he’s intrigued by it as well. Main issue seems to be clean energy.  Closest thing to a mission statement I could find on the site:

Generation We, due to their vast numbers and their shared values, can sweep away the extremists and unite around a new approach to national politics.

Gen-we’ll see!

The Sexualized Attacks On Sarah Palin

October 27, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Hackosphere, News media, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

The comments of former “Ms.” editor Elaine Lafferty about the “sexualized new ways” Gov. Palin has been attacked by her critics and enemies bring to mind recent comments by Andrew Sullivan, who helped make the Palin family a national soap opera by republishing the false story of a massive conspiracy by Palin and her minor daughter regarding Trig’s birth. One of the false accounts that Sullivan republished via a link on his Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site made a point to say that photos showed that the 16-year-old was thrusting her breasts forward to obscure her pregnancy. For his part, Sullivan says he hopes for a computerized Palin with

even more massive boobs, longer legs, towering porn-style pumps, redder lipstick…

The Revolution Will Be Televised

October 27, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

Bernard-Henri Levy spreads sweetness and light in “The New Republic”:

Is man a predator of man? Does the fear of this predator slumber within us? An anxiety, formerly concealed by a poorly applied varnish of civilization, about a state of nature that is re-emerging? Consider the princes of finance, once so polite, so complicit, so civilized, who have been facing each other at the edge of the abyss, waiting to see who will be the next to fall; consider that dance of wolves, the ferocious ballet of battered predators sniffing at each other, detecting the scent of death on their neighbors, coveting their remains; consider the tango of white-hot hate that has been discreetly called the “drying up of interbank credit.”

The scent of execution and of collective suicide has been circulating in the middle of the pack.

It is as though we have been watching a deadly dance around a fire, where those same people who, through their irresponsibility, devastating egoism and, it must be said, intelligence, turned mad and led the financial world toward implosion, thinking that they could pull themselves out of the furnace by pushing the others in first.

And the result has been, for all of us, a suspended apocalypse, in which it is easy to lay out the implacable chain of consequences, but also a situation in which no one knows how to defuse the mechanism. How to respond if account holders attempt to withdraw cash that the banks no longer have? How should we react if electrical and gas utilities default on payment to their employees? What will happen when an angry mob of ruined savers, mainstream borrowers harassed by those who pressured them to go into debt in the first place, and the desperate and unemployed erupt in protest and–according to a scenario that we in France know too well–shout their rage beneath the windows of the speculators, loan sharks and others with golden parachutes?

Oh, Obama!

October 26, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Some have been saying that a key to Gov. Palin’s success is her physical attractiveness. Rick McGinnis says the chemistry issue cuts both ways:

In a commentary piece in Friday’s Los Angeles Times, the paper’s TV critic, Mary McNamara, compares that debate to the third and final presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. “Obama looked so calm, cool and collected you half expected him to break into the opening strains of Summer Wind,” writes McNamara, with the sort of partisan fervor that’s set the tone for this campaign. “Meanwhile, McCain spluttered, blinked and twitched, possessed by a cacophony of physical tics that were, by turns, frightening and laughable.”

Still, McNamara has to admit that, in the hours after the debate, pundits and blogs were conceding that McCain did well, but that the polls taken in the subsequent week gave Obama the clear victory. McNamara’s point is that Obama is the more telegenic candidate – “He is tall and slim, which means he looks good in a suit. He is one of the few heterosexual American men who can appear comfortable while sitting on a stool. He has the wide, bright smile we demand of our movie stars…”

It might be a fair assessment, but it still reads like it was written with hearts dotting the I’s, and “Mary Obama, Mrs. Mary Obama, Mrs. Barack Obama” in the margins.

The Black Helicopters Are Coming Again

October 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Congress, Culture, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

David Frum, who argues that the GOP should stop trying to win the White House and shift resources to preventing massive losses in the Senate and House. Why? Preservation of our freedom of speech, for one thing:

[T]he political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC’s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.

Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named “fairness doctrine”; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.

The Case For Same-Species Marriage

October 24, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Episcopal Church | Leave a Comment 

Moon, Sky, And Water

October 17, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment 

Twentynine Palms Inn, Twentynine Palms, California

He’s Thinking About You, Too, Frank

October 15, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

As “Frost/Nixon” opens London, Frank Langella on the power of the character he portrays:

Langella, who plays the former commander-in-chief, said Nixon continued to figure in his thoughts long after the cameras were turned off. “I do not think I will ever say goodbye to him. I think about him every day,” he said.

Stone And The Shakespeare Thing Again

October 9, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Culture | 1 Comment 

Putting on airs, director Oliver Stone says of his latest hit piece, “W,” in “Huffington Post”:

It’s not a political film, but a Shakespearean one.

And The (Literature) Nobel Goes To….

October 9, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment 

…..Jean Marie Gustave Le Clezio.

Which means that, after the respite of the award last year to Doris Lessing (who was a best-selling writer in the US in the ’70s), American readers are again asking: Who? To ask the question this year is somewhat embarrassing because it turns out that J.M.G. Le Clezio (as he signs his books) has lived part-time in Albuquerque for years, and has taught at several American schools, Boston University and the University of Texas among them.

Le Clezio, a native of Nice in southeastern France, first began writing (not one but two books, and a list of forthcoming works as well) at the age of eight, during a month-long boat trip to Nigeria to join his physician father who was practicing there.  His first book, Le proces-verbal (translated into English as The Interrogation) won the Prix Renaudot, one of the top French awards, when he was 23, and immediately made him a celebrity at that nation.  The fact that he was nearly as handsome as Alain Delon didn’t hinder his rise to fame.

Until the mid-1970s, nearly all Le Clezio’s books - mostly novels of a rather austere and experimental tone - were published in the United States by Atheneum.  It was at that time that Le Clezio started to move toward a more accessible style and to diversify his subject matter to reflect his ceaseless traveling around the world, with a particular affinity toward primitive cultures in the Americas and Asia.  However, this did not result in increased interest from the English-speaking world.  35 or his 50-odd books have been published in the last three decades, but only a half-dozen of these have appeared in English, mostly from university presses.

Time magazine’s site has an informative article.  One notable aspect of Le Clezio’s career is that, unlike some recent Nobel laureates for literature, he has not been known for making rabidly anti-American remarks.

Stone Shamed Into A Better W.?

October 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Culture, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Richard L. Berke thinks Oliver Stone was chastened by widespread criticism “Nixon” and “JFK”:

For all of his fascination with what he calls Bush’s demons, Stone has demons of his own. After “JFK” and “Nixon” he was ridiculed by historians, journalists and partisans for, as he put it, “brainwashing the young.” Maybe now he is chastened, not wanting critics to dismiss the movie as another hatchet job that would scare off audiences.

Anthony Who?

October 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture | 1 Comment 

Nobody’s seen “Frost/Nixon” yet (well, not nobody, but you know what I mean), and yet Frank Langella’s an early favorite for best actor next year. I wonder if there was similar buzz about Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s fictional work “Nixon” before it tanked at the box office in 1995 (and so was overlooked at the ‘96 Oscars).

Class Warfare Artists, Take Your Marks

October 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Faith | Leave a Comment 

A useful primer in “Newsweek” about why the financial meltdown isn’t solely the fault of Carter-era policies to encourage lending to poorer people. While we’re on the subject of class warfare, it’s also not the fault of a group of executives from the solvent parts of AIG staying at a nice hotel.

At the risk of igniting the ire of Bill Maher, a reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Assigning blame has to do with who wins the election, I realize. It’s part of an honest, necessary argument about the policies we’ll pursue to avoid future calamities, some of which would be a lot better than others. But our tribal instincts don’t always make for good politics. In a crisis, our DNA says to blame others for our troubles. Our more discerning (if I may, divine) mind eschews pinpointing the other person’s accountability in favor of understanding and admitting our own. Thus may we find our way (haphazardly but continually) to a conception of the common good.

We’re All Leninists Now

October 6, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Election 2008, News media | 1 Comment 

In his article in the Oct. 16 issue of “Rolling Stone” about Karl Rove’s newfound influence on the McCain campaign, Matti Taibbi writes, “The actual evidence of Rove’s newfound influence on the McCain campaign is…scant at best.”

That doesn’t slow down Taibbi for a minute. He says that Rove is “totally and completely immoral” and that Sen. McCain has signed on with “Nazi-hearted smear merchants.” Because CBS’s Katie Couric acknowledged that Gov. Palin is under attack from the left, he calls Couric “stupid and desperate.” And he writes:

Rove is trying to finish the work of Nixon and Bush: to achieve the supremacy of a peculiarly American form of Leninism….Not to sound too alarmist, but Election Day now becomes a referendum on democracy itself.

Taibbi’s waffling aside — is McCain Hitler or Lenin? He just can’t decide — he has provided important information for those who will study the 2008 election. Scholars will now have no doubt about who was really behind the politics of hate and fear.

The Relative Goodness Of William Ayers

October 6, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Democratic Party, Election 2008, News media,