Tynan's Anger

In the new decade, I am looking to overcome masking my cynicism and resentment in jokes and contrarianism, and starting to apply my need to stay with the news of the world while not getting aggravated. Contrary to popular assumptions, the depressing state of news doesn't make me so exhausted that I have to lie down; it normally gets me riled up to go marching on the streets for some cause that doesn't really exist. Suffice to say, the nightly ritual of Daily Show/Colbert, the nightly wind-down activity for so many people of my generation and mindset, hasn't worked for me.

Nonetheless, I need that kind of daily summary of the news with the same kind of fothrightness mostly lost in authoritative sources, but less on the cheap stuff and scatalogical. The Rachel Maddow show isn't perfect, but as far as nightly rituals goes, it's probably the best way to wean myself off my nightly irony fix.

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• Jon Stewart: A Decade in Review [Retrospective] (gawker.com)
• A Cheat Sheet for Keeping Resolutions (wsj.com)

Labels: colbert report, daily show, humor, irony, new years resolutions, politics, Rachel Maddow, tv

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

I was very pleased to have encountered your book Letters to a Young Contrarian. I was especially greatful to have encountered it this year, when I am 23, as opposed to 18, when it probably would have been the kind of book to change my life. No doubt, Mr. Hitchens, your views on being a contrarian are well formed by years of experience, dealing with both the social, political, and psychological pressures of being a contrarian. My question to you, Mr. Hitchens, is the following: why?

No doubt, there is significant value to being contrarian in many instances. If Mother Theresa has had some questionable, perhaps horrific political views or effects, it should be pointed out. Considering the social and political assumptions about Mother Theresa's immaculate reputation, it would probably be a full-time, all-consuming task for an individual. My question is this: do you think anyone would naturally want to be the guy who rails against Mother Theresa for a living? And would you want to be in the social company of the guy who rails against Mother Theresa for a living.

Nonetheless, I understand your motivation for doing so. The unspoken, but often forced silence against Mother Theresa's hardline views represents something of an injustice. In an ideal world, those actually effected by Mother Theresa's views, should be able to voice their concerns. While they mat lack the proper voice and advocacy to do so, is it really your job to speak for an entire people you otherwise have no connection to? In that case, doesn't it become less about social injustice and more about your professional reputation?

Nonetheless, your letters to a young contrarian provide an invaluable resource to understanding how contrarianism works when necessary. In particular, I appreciated your juxtaposition of Vaclav Havel's "as if" policy in an oppressive society with E.P. Thompson's "as if" principle in a free one. The fact that your letters were written and published right around 9/11 have only made the comparison more appropriate, and with less restraint than both you and Thompson displayed.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hitchens, not everyone has the luxury you do of being a professional contrarian. In most cases, people stand up for certain principles that they feel they need to be contrarian about. Being a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian is less of a social justice and more of a method of drawing personal attention (which you have accomplished with remarkable success this decade). Nonetheless, the fundamental problem is this: if a mistake is made in the perpetual search for contrarianism—as in, you take a contrarian view to a just policy-it can damage both the personal clout the contrarian has built. Most dangerously, it can lead to the replacement of a just policy with an oppressive-even if, as a proper contrarian, one looks for an unquestioned injustice.

The ultimate problem is this, Mr. Hitchens; not everyone can be a professional contrarian such as yourself. The reason may be less one of means (journalism, political freedoms, economic means, etc.), and more the fact that, as a contrarian, you are forced to speak for a group of people who want nothing to do with you. The fundamental problem is that contrarianism is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. Skepticism is always to be recommended, contrarianism just leads to personal rather than intellectual ends.

Sincerely,
X

Labels: angry young man, christopher hitchens, ep thompson, letters to a young contrarian, mother theresa, politics, radicals, Social justice, tynan's letters, vaclav havel

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?
-Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People"

The Internet, as we've heard thousands of times, is the ultimate form of democracy. It puts the common man on the same ground as the elites, and destroys the gatekeepers and roadblocks to having your voice heard. On the Internet, the opinion of Roger Ebert matters as much as the ordinary film fan with a blog. Sure, internet comments can be awful, but if we like democracy, we have to take the good with the bad.

Labels: athenian democracy, Democracy, fascism, internet comments, new media, politics, Reductio Ad Hitlerum

• Image by abbyladybug via FlickrHow to run a Web 2.0 campaign [Herald-Tribune]
• Maybe it's good we lost in 2004 [Mother Jones]
• What we need for the Obama presidency: more hope, less Keynes [Forbes]
• What will the media do now? Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. [Gawker]
• Satire just became a much harder job [Salon]
• The most eloquent statement on the victory, by Ezra Klein [American Prospect]
  

Labels: barack obama, ezra klein, gawker, john mccain, layoffs, Mother Jones, msm, politics, satire, Web 2.0

So after watching The Office, 30 Rock, and the Daily Show/Colbert Report, I watched this video. I honestly could not tell the difference.

Labels: comedy, joe the plumber, politics, presidential election

And so Joe Lieberman, after completing his Harvey Dent to Two-Face transition months ago, is trying to praise Obama again in order to save face after a poisonous McCain endorsement. Which is about as realistic as reconstructing Two-Face's face/soul back to what it was before. Does this make Sarah Palin Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes version, not Maggie Gyllenhaal)?

Labels: batman, joseph lieberman, politics, traitors, two-face

Here's an article I wrote in a moment of inspiration Saturday after reading about the Milton Friedman Institute Protests. This was deemed too hot for the Chicago Maroon!

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I love the University of Chicago as much as any Simpsons-quoting, Durkheim-referencing nerd. One thing I do not miss about the U of C, however, is its hopeless self-absorption, thinly-veiled sense of elitism, and unrepentant collective narcissism when it comes to political protest. Over my 4 years at the U of C, I saw a lot of protests that involved U of C policy. I saw virtually none that involved the world outside of Hyde Park. What made it all the more frustrating was that some of the world’s major issues were filtered into protests that made the U of C into the Great Satan against social justice. If you had listened to STAND in the 2006-2007 school year, the U of C administration would be personally responsible for murdering innocent Sudanese (a joke that made it into the recent Fire Escape Film Carmen: The Movie). If you had listened to the Kick Coke off Campus protesters, you’d think providing Coke in Bartlett (to students who would have bought it at Walgreen’s otherwise) would make the University personally responsible for Colombian farmers starving to death. And now, if you listened to the Milton Friedman Institute protesters, you’d think the name of an economic institute in 2008 is personally responsible for electrocuting the testicles of Argentineans 30 years ago.

The problem is that the issues that actually matter to the lives of college students go virtually ignored. The protests for healthcare, which a significant portion of undergrads will go without once they graduate, were nearly unilaterally attended by 60-year-old men. There have been no major protests against government wiretapping at the same time the NSA has been probably ready and able to look at every Chicago student’s Facebook profile and emails. The War In Iraq, the darling of political protests before the war started in 2002/2003, went completely un-protested from 2004-2008 when I was there, mainly because it was too depressing to contemplate (and also because the U of C probably has a disproportionately low number of undergrads with a sibling or relative fighting in the war).

Along the way came some particularly ironic moments that symbolized the pathetic qualities of the University’s myopia. The protest against the Common Application drew 5 times the number of people who protested weeks later with STAND, symbolizing that U of C’ers place more value in fighting the way applicants fill out pieces of paper than they do in fighting genocide. The same anti-Common App protesters sold shirts saying “I Am Uncommon,” not realizing the irony of having hundreds of students walking around with identical shirts promoting their uniqueness. One of my personal favorites is the website urging the University of Chicago to Kick Coke Off Campus, which leaves the “Background Information” section on the reasoning behind the protest blank. And now, when the current economic climate means most undergrads will struggle to find jobs when they graduate (especially those who chose the U of C to become I-Bankers), the main economic issue drawing ire is naming an institute after a scholar who hasn’t been all that controversial in the past 20 years (unless you’re in the anthropology department). In reality, the brainpower that would occur behind that artificial name can only help the current economic crisis.

The University has a long tradition of being blind to external political issues unless they affected the U of C. Even the student riots of ’68 were only brought on after a radical sociology professor was denied tenure. After when the students took over the administration building, they still went to class. But what bothers me most is how easily distractible the U of C’s political conscience can be, and how in focusing to a ridiculous extent on the school’s own problems, students have largely overlooked the ones that affect the rest of the world, including those who live, you know, a few blocks away, west of Cottage Grove. These are supposedly the brightest intellectual minds in the country, the least gullible to taking any ideology verbatim, and who can use their intelligence to solve the world’s problems.

I’m not sure who can directly address the school’s political self-absorption—it’s too dangerous for Zimmer to address at this point. The main issue is that there’s not a strong enough infrastructure of political organization on campus to do it. What we see instead are certain lunatics who have the least shame (or to some, the most balls), to go all out and eventually dominate the schools political spectrum (and the Maroon’s coverage). It’s time to burst Hyde Park’s collective bubble, as scary and unpredictable as that may sound.

Links:
Faculty Convene Over Friedman (UChiBLOGo)
Tell the University of Chicago to Kick Coke off Campus! (Union Voice)
STAND requests student funds for refugee protest (Chicago Maroon)

Labels: angry young man, chicago maroon, politics, protesting, self-absorption, university of chicago

The argument against Palin on SNL: Lorne Michaels, how could you? You've not only killed your sudden resurgence into the comedy spectrum (what direction do you think the Democrat/Republican ratio of people found Tina Fey funny tilts?), but you've also validated a person who your entire joke was built around invalidating. The joke of Tina Fey's impersonation was as self-referential as it was about Palin; the joke was that Tina Fey was actually a more honest Palin, and that Tina Fey the Sarah Palin impersonator may be just as qualified (or more qualified) for the White House than the real Sarah Palin. Now you've put them on the same plane. Not to mention the fact that you essentially gave Palin a voice to cynically brag about how she's not going to give a press conference. This basically exposes the Tina Fey Palin for what it truly is: a ratings ploy.

The argument for Palin on SNL: One thing I will give you, Lorne Michaels. By making Sarah Palin only able to utter "Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!," you may have made her accentuate one of her weaknesses without (I believe) her awareness. The Fey Palin constantly makes beauty queen jokes, and essentially depicts her as someone who can only utter catch phrases that pander to whatever base she's speaking to. Having "Live from New York" as her only real line made that criticism all the more apparent. If Palin was aware of that, it was a stupid move on her part, as her ditziness is not a criticism that would be in her best interest to joke about. It even hurts the Joe Sixpack front, as her SNL appearance makes her one of those celebrities that McCain once complained about.

My immediate reaction was the former, than the latter. Now I'm caught in between. Your thoughts, plz.

Labels: impressions, politics, sarah palin, satire, snl, tina fey

I went to the Rangers game tonight because I thought it would be less depressing than the debate. Boy, was I wrong.

In addition to exceedingly sloppy, uninspired hockey, tonight also featured the worst "Potvin Sucks" chanting I've ever heard. The first 30 minutes of the game practically begged for the chant about 90% of the time, but the only time it managed to get chanted was when something actually important was going on. In sum, the whole night just seemed.

Too tired to do a full on blog post on theater, but here are the links that have drawn my eye today:

-Time Out Chicago covers marketing: Elizabethan style. You may Marnie Stern's new album had a long title, but she ain't got nothing on Marlowe.

-Frost/Nixon: not so much, says the L.A. Times. This is particularly depressing, because the main knock on the play crtics had was that it would be better off as a movie.

-CNN Newsanchor says the worst word in the English language—twice!


-Milan Kundera, former Soviet informant (though still not as big of a hypocrite as Gunter Grass).

Labels: bad words, christopher marlowe, cnn, frost/nixon, hockey, los angeles times, marnie stern, milan kundera, new york rangers, politics, potvin sucks, shakespeare

Sarah Silverman's Great Schlep video was the darling of press over the high holidays. It was new media savvy, it featured one of the most recognizable celebrities of the last decade, and it make a point on how crucial the Florida Jewish vote may be in swinging this election. Problem is, it's increasingly looking like less of a contest in the Sunshine State. The supposed Hillary-supporting old Florida Jews are now nearly universally voting for Obama (thank you Sarah Palin). The biggest issue, pointed out by Adam Hanft at the brand spanking new Daily Beast, is that Silverman has created the assumption that old Jews in Florida are right wing bigots, blind to Obama's support of Israel and progressive record. These Jews are ignorant of Jews' history at the helm of the Civil Rights movement, never mind that they were of the generation that voted for JFK and marched for civil rights.

I'm not sure if Hanft was right to put the blame solely on Sarah Silverman. But he does speak to a popular misconception that exists among most Jews. Most large Jewish families have at least one relative who will be voting for McCain because they don't trust Obama on Israel (for the record, my extended family is either Canadian or intermarried, so it doesn't plague me as much). Those are the relatives that infuriate us, the ones we will argue with until our faces turn blue. These are the mythical "bubbes and zaydies" Silverman speaks of. What we tend to ignore, however, is that for every relative voting for McCain because of Israel, there are 9 to 10 other relatives voting for Obama who have the record straight.

What troubles me more about Hanft's article, which is a point that touches on something very true and very dangerous, is the way Jewish humor has changed. Previous generations of Jewish comedians used the ridiculousness of Jewish life as a method of examining the funnier side of life in general. They were respectful of the conventions as a part of their identities, even as they realize how ridiculous Judaism could be. Conversely, Silverman and contemporary Jewish comedians use it for cheap laughs and ironic statements. For the new Jewish comedians, it's an empty vehicle for comedy, as opposed to a branded part of their identities. In addition to Silverman, I've seen this problem in Judd Apatow, Seth Rogan, Jon Stewart (née Leibowitz) and Lewis Black. Last year, I saw Black perform on erev Yom Kippur, where he proceed to repeat his famous routine about how crappy Hannukah is. This year on Yom Kippur, Silverman shot a clip with Katie Couric. During Rosh Hashanah, John Stewart angered many Jews by insulting congressman delaying the economic bailout bill due to the holiday. How far will this trend go?

To be fair, Knocked Up had a scene where a character defended the muscular Judaism in Munich; perhaps the comedians that Hanft and I are criticizing think more seriously about Judaism than they let on. I should note that I generally find these comedians hilarious, and am a huge fan of Sarah Silverman. But if they do think about Judaism in a manner more than as a vehicle for comedy, I'd like them to show it a little more.

Labels: daily beast, humor, israel, jews, jon stewart, judd apatow, lewis black, politics, sarah silverman, seth rogan

With Tina Fey all freaking over the place, 30 Rock is nowhere to be found. What gives, Ben Silverman?

Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, said, “If we knew then what we know today about how hot Tina was going to be, would we do it differently? Maybe,” he said.

The problem, Mr. Silverman said, was that NBC had committed early to several program moves that were intended to give “30 Rock” the best possible chance to emerge finally as a hit.

Too bad Tina Fey may (but probably won't) be leaving Earth before the second episode of the season airs.

[New York Times]

Labels: 30 rock, ben silverman, nbc, politics, television, tina fey

The Democrats are in an impossible situation with the Sarah Palin mother/grandmother debate. On the one hand, investigating the claim would go against everything they stand for in terms of women's privacy, and even if the claim tuns out to be true it essentially turns the women's body into a public object anyway. And if they're wrong, it'll be open season for the right. On the other hand, with the potential for a crazy, inexperienced, hypocritical moral values Republican in the White House, the Democrats can't really not afford to break the story if it is true. This would an absolute knockout blow against McCain, and save for a nuclear war, there'd really be no way for him to recover.

Yes, the Daily Kos story is based on nothing but conjecture and hearsay. Yes, the odds of having a child with Down's Syndrome goes up ten-fold after the mother turns 40. Yes, while the above picture, taken in March, looks pretty damning, if the rumor was true it would be less likely that the picture would be taken at all. But sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, there's fire where there's smoke. I'm not making any assumptions about the truth of the rumor (or its truthiness, for that matter), but what I am saying is that some independent, or perhaps even conservative watchdog group investigating this more thoroughly would be the best thing to happen to the Dems in this situation. Where's the left's Blackwater when you need it?

Labels: democrats, ethics, feminism, john mccain, moral values, politics, sarah palin

I personally thought it was Christmas for the Obama camp yesterday when McCain picked Palin as VP. Her completely pandering speech afterwards seems to announce that. Now, as The American Prospect's Ann Friedman points out that, in picking an inexperienced woman in hopes of gaining the women vote, the GOP actually showed sexism:

Palin's addition to the ticket takes Republican faux-feminism to a whole new level. As Adam Serwer pointed out on TAPPED, this is in fact a condescending move by the GOP. It plays to the assumption that disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters did not care about her politics -- only her gender. In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them. As Serwer noted, it's akin to choosing Alan Keyes in an attempt to compete with Obama for votes from black Americans.

I certainly see the logic to the argument, and the article didn't even mention how Palin's beauty queen past doesn't exactly promote a progressive attitude. My friend calls her "Government Barbie" for a reason.

Update: This was inevitable.

Labels: feminism, hillary clinton, john mccain, politics, sarah palin

Perhaps the best reason to buy John Oliver: Terrifying Times on DVD comes before you even press a button. Featuring a hilarious, innovative twist on the standard DVD menu, we get John Oliver rambling like a neurotic mess about what options you can select and why you could possibly be watching him talk for so long in a message that goes on… and on… and on… and on. The details of what gets said are too hilarious to repeat, and the thrill of the joke may get lost on repeated views anyway. But you’re less likely to find a better DVD menu on any other disc, or one that makes the purchase worth it even if you’ve seen the special on Comedy Central already.

In fact, if you’ve seen the special, you may realize that the DVD menu could actually be better than the content it precedes. The prospect of John Oliver doing stand-up does not seem natural in theory, and in practice, Oliver is a comic who harps on cliché phrasings too often for comfort. His political ramblings often trend toward the obvious, and while some of his takes are inspired and stark, he simply doesn’t have the same ability to invert a concept comedically as do contemporaries such as Lewis Black, Eddie Izzard, and Albert Brooks. Oliver’s brand of classic irony, such as mentioning that England conquers continents when they get enthusiastic about anything and wondering how cable news would have worked in the 19th century, may have seemed fresh 10 or 20 years ago. Today, however, The Daily Show has long made the sarcastic use of Rove-isms commonplace.

Oliver does much better when he focuses on his own patheticness, an easier subject for comedians, true, but one that speaks to the very nature of comedy. Real human pain can be as funny as comedy gets, and there isn’t a funnier moment in the set than when Oliver presents his preteen self choosing between winning a race and covering up his gradually protruding penis from his torn gym shorts. In Oliver’s words, this moment showed him he was not cut out for athletics, but perhaps had a future in comedy. In terms of stories of when the comic inspiration first took hold, I can think of few others that hit just as, um, hard.

Perhaps Oliver’s lack of confidence in his stand-up routine got the best of him, as a DVD bonus clip of him testing out some raw material shows a lot of hilarious lost gems that Oliver deemed not ready for the stage. Including probably the only Wynton Marsalis joke you’ll ever see on television, along with shots at the British press and further jabs at his own self-confidence, the bonus stand-up material shows a comic who, while hit or miss, can frequently imagine some hilarious scenarios. He relies on old BBC4 chum Andy Zaltzman a bit too much for one’s liking in his own stand-up, and another DVD extra shows a radio discussion between the two that is much more self-congratulatory than the actual humor merited. Could it be that in between the insecurity and success is more than a little ego?

In terms of DVD extras, we are rounded out with some of the classic Oliver clips on The Daily Show, and in terms of all-around comedy, these clips are the strongest moments on the DVD. It seems that when he has a bastion of writers who can play to his strengths as a bit performer, Oliver is at his most comfortable. Oliver may eventually develop into a more complete stand-up, but for now, his correspondent status on the Daily Show seems to be his peak.

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This review was originally featured on Blogcritics.

Labels: dvd menus, john oliver, jon stewart, politics, stand-up comedy, the daily show

John Heilemann has an article in New York on how race is an unspoken factor in the opposition to Barack Obama. Fair enough, but I'm almost positive he's worried far too much and coming from a skewed perspective. Take the following quote:

In a number of key swing states, the percentage of voters who backed Clinton and who said that “the race of the candidates” was “important” in their decision was alarmingly high: in New Jersey, 9; in Ohio and Pennsylvania, more than 11.

9% is alarmingly high? Tell that to any American in 1962. That number seems quite low, considering how controversial race still is today. And how many that 9-11% would be voting for a Democrat under any circumstances?

I don't understand how pundits worried about Obama not having a 20-percentage point lead see this as proof he can't win. (For the record, Heilemann has never believed Obama could win).

Why Barack Obama Isn't Doing Better In The Polls [New York]

Labels: barack obama, john heilemann, new york magazine, politics

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics)

The only mark against John Zogby’s career as a pollster has been his tendency to let his mouth get the best of him. He’s yet to have a poll prove blatantly incorrect, but in 2004, Zogby would tell anyone who would listen on Election Day that Kerry would win by a comfortable margin. His final poll showed Bush winning by a percentage point. The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, Zogby’s first book for a popular audience, gives him a vehicle to explain his line of work, his views on the nature of polling, and, somewhat more spuriously, where his polls show America to be going. It’s clear that he’s had 20 years of opinions stored up that he can’t wait to let out. For better or worse, The Way We’ll Be lets Zogby’s mouth run wild.

The Way We’ll Be is a relentlessly optimistic book. He sees a future that’s shaped by an adult population with no memory of World War II, the Cold War, or increasingly, the turbulence of the 1960s. Today’s 18-29 year olds are the backbone of a rising wave of tolerance, global consciousness, and environmental friendliness. While Zogby declares from the start that he’s “no Pollyanna,” he treads dangerously close to apologist territory with his positive outlook. It may be true that that today’s youth are more tolerant than older generations, and that the opinions of 18-29 year olds are the key to measuring future attitudes of the American public. But as the Bush presidency winds down, optimism is a bitter pill to swallow.

Backing Zogby’s case is a plethora of tables, percentages, majorities and plurarities to dissect. At some points, the numbers become so overwhelming that it seems your best bet is to trust the conclusions of the expert. Of course, this is not a statistical report, but a work of popular nonfiction. Zogby clearly has some ideas in place that are more normative than descriptive. Just witness his section on “champs and chumps” of recent advertising campaigns in the book’s penultimate chapter. Instead of focusing on which ads were the most effective at selling a product and which failed, he focuses on which ads “get it,” “it” being his argument that advertisers should be more honest. This leads to passages as painfully sophomoric as his description of the “What Happens in Vegas” ad campaign:

So it’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, carouse; get stinking drunk; marry a total stranger one night and divorce the same stranger the next night; and gamble away the kids’ college money because in good old tight-lipped Las Vegas no one ever whispers a word? Give me a break. What planet are these people living on?

This is not exactly a careful analysis of empirical data, nor is his listing of “just about every political campaign" as a “chump” despite admitting they can often be effective. This passage taints an entire chapter of data that very tenuously shows a generational development of a “bullshit detector.”

It would be easy to take passages like the preceding and dismiss The Way We’ll Be outright. Many of Zogby’s theses depend on percentage-points differences that are barely above the margin of error. But to dismiss Zogby’s entire book would ignore some of the more compelling points that he makes. One of the more fascinating is his argument that the best ways to measure voting tendencies are by consumption habits. It seems that many of our commonly held stereotypes are actually crucial statistical predictors: Wal-Mart shoppers and NASCAR lovers primarily vote Republican, while Target shoppers and fans of Richard Pryor vote Democrat. This use of statistical examination to address commonly held assumptions is exactly what a pollster should be doing, and Zogby has admittedly used unconventional methodology to come up with some particularly striking results.

After the mess of his chapter on authenticity, we get a concluding chapter that utilizes some of his strongest and most convincing data. Rather than divide American generations into the standard Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, and Generations X and Y, he divides America into “Privates,” “Woodstockers,” “Nikes,” and “First Globals.” This division overcomes some commonly held misconceptions. Generation X, for instance, may be more cynical and apathetic towards politics, but they also represent a sea change of devotion of the individual to one’s own family and personal convictions. The Baby Boomers did make a breakthrough with radical politics, but they’ve also become decadent whiners who are primed for a political reinvention.

It’s unclear how much of the differences of opinions between these generations are due to the natural process of maturing or the product of something specific to this particular period in American history. What’s more compelling than Zogby’s analysis of general beliefs, however, is his data on specific issues. Across the board, adults under the age of 40 are consistently on the more progressive side of a controversial issue. They’re more likely to be tolerant of stem cell research, more in favor of net neutrality, more concerned with carbon emissions, and more open to multinational negotiations in the Middle East. More so than any larger intellectual change in American values (or what Zogby calls the rise of “Secular Spiritualism”), these specific results are the most telling signs of what the future holds in America’s political landscape. Zogby has his numbers right, but in The Way We’ll Be, once more, he lets his mouth get the best of him.

Labels: book review, john zogby, politics, the way we'll be

Geoff Schumacher at the Las Vegas Review Journal suddenly realizes that Americans are anti-intellectual. Welcome to Andrew Jackson's America, Geoff.

Labels: anti-intellectualism, elitism, history, politics, richard hofstadter, vegas

If he was, he would be the Batman and Robin version of Batman (though seeing Bush's nipples in a rubber suit may make me vomit). Apologies to Fire Joe Morgan, but I must use their style to call out Andrew Klavan of the Wall Street Journal for his Republican wet dream. Trying to milk The Dark Knight for his own political purposes, Klavan has drawn a comparison (for which there could be "no question") between Chris Nolan's Batman and Dick Cheney's President Bush.

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

Yes, because when Bob Kane and Billy Finger created Batman in 1939, they actually had superhuman future predicting powers, and could predict the middle name of their President/superhero 69 years later. Additionally, God must have been a Bush supporter 50 million years ago when he designed the bone structure of bats to coincide with the development of the Roman alphabet around Jesus time and the middle name of the President today. God is on Bush's side after all.

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.

Yes, there's no question that everyone loves Batman because of they also love Bush. The 27% of the population that approves of Bush, and the part of the world population that doesn't want him imprisoned for war crimes (or dead), accounted for all $200 million+ the film has made worldwide. Also, Chris Nolan, an Englishman, is secretly a right wing American stooge. Just like Obama is a secret Muslim Manchurian Candidate.

Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Um, in case you have forgotten, Klavan, Batman doesn't kill anyone. And since 9/11, there hasn't been an active threat in America on the same level of bombing hospitals, blowing up ferries, and murdering mayors, cops, judges, and police commissioners. The civil liberties violations have occurred well after the emergency has past. I'm also pretty sure Batman is against waterboarding, which is probably worse than breaking people's ankles by throwing them off a second story fire escape. Furthermore, Bush hasn't only sometimes pushed boundaries; he's violated fundamental human rights and human dignity at all times whether or not it's been helpful to fighting terrorism. Batman's actually accountable for his actions, and also takes the blame for crimes he hasn't committed for the good of Gotham. Compare that to "we don't torture people."

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

Except Batman doesn't kill people. The Joker does. And if there's no moral equivalence, how come Batman is seriously disturbed and insane? Did you even see Batman Begin? I guess that would kill the mood of the wet dream.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Therefore, you are full of shit. You're saying that 300, a nearly panel-by-panel adaptation of a comic book published in 1998, and The Dark Knight, a move directed by and starring Brits, are both Bush propaganda pieces. Really? Maybe Bush can't articulate it because he isn't as hot as Gerard Butler or Christian Bale.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

Yes, because liberal Hollywood—wheat grass-drinking, hybrid-driving Hollywood, requires you to be a Bush propagandist in order to get a movie financed. Never mind that 27% approval rating, or the fact that just about everyone wants us out of Iraq immediately. We all know that Bush is right, but can only realize it in an allegorical form. So basically, the only way Bush would be right is if Batman, Spider-Man, and Narnia were real.

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of "The Dark Knight" itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

Or, you know, that real life is not a comic book. If soldiers could get killed in Iraq and then hit restart again like it was Halo, then yes, maybe the war wouldn't be so bad. If we could die as many times as Superman or Captain America, then it wouldn't be that bad. But then again, Jesus came back to life, so why can't we all? I guess it's liberals fault we can't all be Jesus.

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

Yes, and Christians are better than Muslims (and Jews), liberals are worse than conservatives, and Bush is a better president than a sack of doorknobs. 27% of Americans can't be wrong! Wait, what does this have to do with Batman again?

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

So basically, as Tom Lehrer said, there are some people who don't embrace tolerance, and we should hate people like that. Or else Batman will kick their asses?

When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, "He has to run away -- because we have to chase him."

Doesn't this sound like it should be read by Don LaFontaine? So I guess the soldier who kills civilians and the waterboarder is basically the equivalent of the loose cannon cop called out by the chief of police. But dammit, he gets the job done. Except when he doesn't. As in real life.

That's real moral complexity.

Lethal Weapon is morally complex?

And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.

Yes, Bush is in the shadows. That's why his torturing, wiretapping, and War are still firmly imprinted in America's mind. And keep in mind that Batman confessed to a crime as a cover up for Harvey Dent. He didn't actually do anything wrong. Does that make Dick Cheney Two-Face? That would assume Cheney was ever once a crusader for good. So I guess what he's saying is that we'll be sorry when Bush is gone. Maybe, but with a country more likely to have another building blown up after Al Quaeda has gone unchecked, with a country more likely to go underwater because of global warming (or just another hurricane Bush would ignore), a country that has innocent people tortured and guilty people giving false testimonies under torture, we'll be sorry alright. But for a different reason.

This makes me never want to watch 24 ever again.

Labels: andrew klavan, batman, politics, presient bush, stupid, the dark knight, the wall st. journal

(This review was originally featured on Blogcritics.)

Stain feels like what would happen if Vincent Gallo wrote a play and didn’t have a disciplined editor at his disposal. It takes a lot to politically offend me, and Stain is the first play that has done so in quite a long time. The play has not-too-obvious right-wing leanings, a racist dad who would be comical if he weren’t so repulsive, and misogyny that rivals Strindberg's. I’m fine with offensive politics and dialogue if there’s an interesting story, as well as believable, if not sympathetic characters, and true human struggle. But rather than inject some creativity and careful thought into Stain, playwright Tony Glazer has instead given the play a hopeless string of cliché’s and confused character motivations. The result is a play where the harshness cannot be justified.

Allow me to list the number of supposedly controversial themes addressed in Stain: abuse, racism, rape, molestation, teen parenthood and confusion over biological parents, incest, divorce, drugs, unprotected sex, and legal manipulation. Glazer left murder out of an otherwise complete set, but his casual assumption that abortion is murder has it there by proxy.

Playing with a glut of themes along these lines is not necessarily doomed to failure—in fact, this year Pulitzer winner, August: Osage County, also featured a seemingly endless string of similar catastrophes. But where August offered real human struggle, black humor, and broken human lives, Stain instead offers stunning plot twists for the sake of stunning plot twists. Glazer mentioned in a recent interview that he wanted to address the repercussions of not being honest with your family, and that point is certainly jammed down our throats repeatedly. But with such confused character motivations and dubious melodrama, there’s not enough else going for the play to overcome the clichés, other than a handful of witty lines.

The play centers around how a bunch of adults have been wholly unfair to one extremely unlucky fifteen-year-old named Thomas (Tobias Segal). In addition to Arthur, the said racist, borderline-alcoholic dad (Jim O’Connor), Thomas has a repressive, manipulative mother, Julia (Summer Crockett Moore), a botox-using, saintly (if Republican) grandma Theresa (Joanna Bayless), and a pot-smoking, insult-trading buddy George (Peter Brensinger). There’s obviously a secret everyone is keeping from Thomas about his parents’ divorce, and he spends most of the first act asking for it. We also learn that he’s knocked up a 32-year-old Puerto Rican lawyer, Carla (Karina Arroyave), who, rather than facing statutory rape charges, plans to raise the baby on her own and ignore Thomas altogether while still demanding child support once Thomas turns eighteen.

The play struggles with consistency and believability throughout. How can Thomas, so wiry and awkward, have convinced an educated women that he was of the age of consent, much less be smooth enough to convince her to sleep with him? How could Theresa, at once batty and immensely grounded, have been so oblivious to the true history of Thomas’ birth? How could anyone not think of calling the cops on Carla, despite her legalese?

Perhaps most offensive, however, is Glazer’s brazen sweep over the question of abortion. Thomas’s situation seems like the kind of case Roe v. Wade was made for, but rather than at least seriously considering all possibilities, the issue is shot down by both Carla and, less believably, Thomas’ family. When Carla mentions she’s not having an abortion, Theresa casually declares, “We’re Republicans.” When your fifteen-year-old son’s future is on the line, you simply cannot shoot down the possibility so easily because of a political conviction, even by a family that believes “liberal” and “welfare” are appropriate crossword puzzle solutions to the description “destructive.” At the very least, you could consult a lawyer much more quickly.

Segal’s performance as Thomas may be the most redeeming element of Stain. A recent Drama Desk nominee, Segal is ironically the most mature and professional actor in the cast, effortlessly gliding through Thomas’ range of emotions while never dropping his overwhelmingly adolescent glaze. Hopelessly clumsy, he looks to have outgrown his body. Through pure charm, he almost allows you to forgive Glazer’s poorly thought-out decision to make Thomas a drug user and lawyer-seducer. Bayless’ Theresa would have given the other noteworthy performance as the capricious grandmother, who seems to be on more drugs than botox. Unfortunately, Bayless struggles with her lines too often for her performance to really shine.

Stain is a willfully obnoxious play, one that doesn’t try to make its audience happy or play to viewers' political sympathies. In a way, we should be seeing a lot more of this kind of attitude in the New York theater scene. But without a proper play to back up that attitude, the obnoxiousness translates to something more sophomoric than productive.

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Through August 23. Stain, written by Tony Glazer. Directed by Scott D. Embler. Scenic Design by Eddy Trotter. Costume Design by Cully Long. Lighting Design by Nick Kolin. Sound Design/Original Music by Andrew Eisiele. Photos by Orlando Behar.

Starring Tobias Segal (Thomas), Jim O'Conner (Arthur), Peter Brensinger (George), Summer Crockett Moore (Julia), Joanna Bayless (Theresa), and Karina Arroyave (Carla).

Labels: abortion, new york, politics, republicans, stain, theater review, theater row, tobias segal, tony glazer

Zogby has posted an electoral college map using their state-by-state poll predictions, and even with 105 electoral college votes too close to call, Obama has over 270 electoral college votes. The more conservative map at 270towin.com has Obama up 185-174, but this is still a clear indication that Obama is the prohibitive favorite at this point. He'd have to try really hard to fuck this up, or have Michelle say "whitey" sans rickroll.

Labels: barack obama, electoral college, politics

The fact that he doesn't tee off against the paparazzi should help alleviate the bad temper rumors.

Labels: jim webb, politics, tmz

This was by no means a bad opening weekend for You Don't Mess With The Zohan (Adam Sandler is like the Cal Ripken of the box office). Kung Fu Panda just did even better (and also had better reviews). Still, I fully expect someone to pen a column about how no one wants to see politics in movies out of this weekend's box office results, because, you know, columnists will take any excuse they can to write that column. If I don't find it, please email it to me. You can definitely expect some Fire Joe Morgan-esque mockery.

Labels: box office, kung fu panda, politics, you don't mess with the zohan

I suppose I should address David Mamet's diatribe in The Village Voice on his newfound aversion to the left wing. He is, after all, arguably the most influential American playwright of the last 25 years, and I'd argue that an introduction to his work is bound to fuck up the styling of most young playwrights for at least a few years (Oleanna pretty much permanently castigated me to critical aspirations). Still, I feel immensely unqualified to write about it, as I did not see Boston Marriage, Romance, or November. I would feel worse about this, if I didn't hear such nearly universally terrible things about the former two. The latter play had all the indications of closing the store on Mamet's career, but I think I was not the only one surprised when it got a glowing review from John Lahr and did exceptionally well at the box office (perhaps the result, as Ben Brantley put it, of being a "David Mamet play for people who don't like David Mamet.") But because I haven't seen these plays, I'll focus more on the politics and past cases of lefty playwrights gone right.

Mamet's long had indications of his right-wing leanings, even in his earliest work, which had a frank honesty towards the brutality of dog-eat-dog capitalism, be it real estate (Glengarry Glen Ross) or Hollywood (Speed-the-Plow). He also fiercely criticized political correctness in my personal favorite of his, the aforementioned Oleanna. Even when his plays were scathing critiques of the culture of capitalism, there was a sort of acceptance of capitalism's logic behind it all. The biggest indication of late, of course, has been his right-wing Israel book The Wicked Son and his rant on Hollywood in Bambi vs. Godzila. He hasn't just been a contrarian, he's been an outright reactionary. It's arguably what we've loved most about him. Now we just have direct evidence of the fact.

Michael Billington raises the absolutely worthy consideration that his dogmatic conservatism may be making him a worse playwright, as he loses the moral nuance that characterized his earlier work. He cites Kingsley Amis and John Osborne as playwrights who suffered after there newfound conservatism. As an Osborne devotee, I must raise a red flag here, because as John Heilpern pointed out in his recent biography, Osborne was always more contrarian than conservative, and he certainly never had a political mantra as direct as what Mamet has provided here. So, I guess to sum up, I'm dissappointed by Mamet, though not particularly surprised, and I don't particularly expect all that much from his later career. It was nice while it lasted.

Labels: ben brantley, david mamet, john heilpern, john lahr, john osborne, kingsley amis, michael billington, november, politics