Category Archives: Books

There Will Be Tedium

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Lewis

Do you ever feel you’ve been had, or at least put-upon, by what some will urge upon you as ART?

Tonight I finished, after three highly tedious sessions over as many nights and lots of fast-forwarding, trying to watch "There Will Be Blood." I kept thinking it would get better. Some of the ways in which it was off-putting at the start reminded me of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" — the same sort of heavy-handed atmosphere that seems designed to rub into your head the notion that "the West in olden times was really weird, and not at all like a Gene Autrey movie" — and that one got better. I even enjoyed it by the end.

But this did not. Yes, Daniel Day-Lewis acted up a storm, but that’s all there was to it — an actor showing off, really getting into a character that I was sick of by the second reel, a character not worth getting into. So he’s done various American archetypes now — the raw nativist of "Gangs of New York," the effeminate dandy of "The Age of Innocence," and now the rapaciously driven oil man — but frankly, I think he’s repeating himself. In fact, I felt like, having seen his "Bill the Butcher," I’ve already seen the character he did in "There Will Be Blood." And the first version was much, much more interesting, even though "Gangs" is probably tied with "Innocence" in my mind for least-appealing Scorcese movie.

Anyway, it’s presented me with a tough decision. On Netflix, should I give it two stars for "didn’t like it," or the rare one star for "hated it?"

Maybe two stars. Now that I’ve griped to y’all about it, I’m not as ticked as I was about the time I wasted. I need to save the one-star rating for awfulness that is truly inspired, truly worth hating, like Lynch’s "Dune."

NOW you tell me…

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Several people have now pointed out to me the fact that the NRDC backed down on its previous assertion about S.C. beaches being so dirty.

Yeah, I know. I saw the news story. It ran the day I was packing up to leave the beach. So thanks a lot for the heads-up there, you environmental hammerheads. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

And to add insult, in that very day’s paper, as I’m heading back home to the Midlands, I’m greeted by this news:

With temperatures approaching 100 degrees today and Sunday, hundreds of
people would normally flock to the Saluda rapids at Riverbanks Zoo to
cool off.

Bad idea this weekend.

A
combination of high runoff pollution and a sewage leak from an upstream
treatment plant have caused state health officials to continue urging
people against swimming, wading or tubing at “the rocks,” as the area
is known.

“Stay out of the water at that area,” said Adam Myrick,
spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
“And keep your pets out of the water and keep them from drinking the
water.”

Great. All of this goes to back up that the best thing to do on vacation is sit in the house and read a good book. I spent a great deal of my time last week finishing this book and starting this one. It seems appropriate at this point to consider the opening passage of the latter:

Standing at the frigate’s taffrail, and indeed leaning upon it, Jack
Aubrey considered her wake, stretching away neither very far nor
emphatically over the smooth pure green-blue sea: a creditable furrow,
however, in these light airs. She had just come about, with her
larboard tacks aboard, and as he expected her wake showed that curious
nick where, when the sheets were hauled aft, tallied and belayed, she
made a little wanton gripe whatever the helmsman might do….

Fortunately for Capt. Aubrey, he didn’t have to worry about the ocean being to polluted to sail through — at least, not unless she were becalmed, and floating in her own waste…

Obama as Mr. Darcy

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Darcy

For tomorrow’s op-ed page I chose a Maureen Dowd column because I appreciated her insight that Barack Obama, in terms of his relationship with many American voters (particularly diehard female supporters of Hillary) is very much like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

This is dead-on, and it speaks to a truth that certainly should be universally acknowledged: Despite all the chatter about the deep meaning of Obama as the "first black candidate," there is nothing black about his image or persona. Can you think of a black man in literature or popular culture of whom Obama reminds you? Maybe Sidney Poitier in "To Sir With Love," if you stretch the point.

But when Ms. Dowd invokes the archetypically white, Anglo, rich, Establishment Fitzwilliam Darcy, I think, "Exactly."

Mind you, I like Mr. Darcy. When I saw the series that Bridget Jones went gaga over, I identified with him — with his negative aspects that is: his social awkwardness, his aversion to dancing, his refusal to be pleased, etc. (I am, I assure you, no Mr. Bingley.) My daughters identify me — far more accurately, in terms of the way they see me — with a different character altogether: Mr. Bennet. Perhaps if, like that gentleman, I had a study to retreat to, I would be unaware of both Mr. Darcy and Miss Jones. As it is, with so many daughters (and now, granddaughters) in the house, my life is richer. My DVD shelf includes both the definitive 1995 "Pride" and the inimitable 1968 "Where Eagles Dare," with the entire canon of "Firefly" thrown in to bridge the gap. How more well-rounded can a gentleman be, indeed?

But when Maureen tried to stretch the point and cast John McCain in "Pride" terms, her analogy broke down. She compared him to Mr. Wickham, which is not only a gross insult but has no ring of truth whatsoever. Mr. Wickham was what military men of his day would have called a "scrub." He would have garnered no respect in the gunroom of any ship in the Royal Navy in those days, for instance — yet that is precisely the sort of place where Mr. McCain would be most at home back then.

Basically, I don’t think you can find a McCain analogy in Jane Austen. The closest you could come would be the main male character in "Persuasion." At least he was a naval officer.

For that reason among others, I predict Obama will win the Chick Lit vote, hands-down.

Obamaweb

Mike Fitts helped us make up our minds

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
A few days back, I shared unwelcome news with colleagues here at The State. You, our readers, ought to know as well.
    It is with the deepest regret that I hereby announce that Associate Editor Mike Fitts has left theChamber_066_0005
newspaper. His last day on the job was Friday, July 18. This page was likely the last of ours that he saw through the composing room.
    Mike, a graduate of the University of Missouri — the gold standard among J-schools — joined the paper in February 1990 after a brief stint at the Anderson Independent Mail.
    I first had the honor of working with him early the next year, when I was asked to drop what I was doing (a year-long project on fundamental problems in South Carolina government called “Power Failure”) to help out on the national desk during the Gulf War. I was immediately impressed with his quick comprehension of the importance and context of national and international events. Not many journalists his age (or mine) took the kind of interest he did in military affairs. He wasChamber_066_0004 no more a veteran than I was, but you didn’t have to tell him the difference between a rifle and a gun. He was fully ready to explain this war to our readers.
    I soon learned that Mike knew something about everything, from current events to national and world
history to the most esoteric bits of popular culture. You didn’t want to play Trivial Pursuit with this guy — at least, not for money. Throw a line from an old movie at him, and he’d answer with embellishment. Make a literary allusion or refer to something that happened in politics before he was born, and he’d tell you something about it you didn’t know.
    (After I helped him with something on his last day, he replied by instant message: “Which it’s a kindness, Captain.” He was channeling a character from Patrick O’Brian’s novels about the British Navy in the Napoleonic Wars. I first heard of these wonderful books from Mike, and they are a shared passion.Chamber_066_0003 I will miss such exchanges.)
    Most of all, he not only knew things, he knew which ones were important — and why.
    Mike’s abilities in this regard were recognized when he became the newspaper’s national editor, and have been invaluable to the editorial board since he moved to the third floor in 2000.

    Mike has been our expert on national and international issues from Day One. Closer to home, he has taken on the challenging subjects of the environment, energy policy, economic development and higher education. In recent years, as our staff shrank, Mike put his desk experience to work designing our pages.
    But his greatest contribution has not been obvious to the reading public, or indeed to anyone outside of the editorial board. That is his ability to help the group frame difficult decisions, breaking them down into their component parts and setting them out in a logical sequence that does much to lead us to our eventual conclusions. I’ve made passing reference to this in past columns. Of our discussion of whom toChamber_066_0002 endorse in the GOP presidential primary this year, I mentioned that “As our lead editor on national affairs, Mike framed the discussion, speaking at length about each of the Republicans. As others joined in, it quickly became apparent that each of us had reached very similar conclusions….”
    Later that month, I would write that “As he did before the Republican primary, Associate Editor Mike Fitts framed the discussion of our Democratic endorsement, and did a sufficiently thorough job that the rest of us merely elaborated on his observations….”
    It would be an exaggeration to say we endorsed Sens. McCain and Barack Obama because of Mike — we all had our reasons — but he certainly helped us reach consensus more quick
ly and smoothly. Arriving at an answer quickly — if you remain convinced later it’s the right one — is a particular virtue in our profession.
    It’s called “leadership.” Mike has it, and it’s of that rare sort that works unobtrusively, in a collegial setting. This editorial board has benefited greatly, which is why his name’s been on our masthead the last few years.Chamber_066_0001
    Mike is leaving us to work at a new, business-to-business publication that will soon begin here in the Midlands. As far as we are concerned here in editorial, the only good news in his plans is that he will still be around, and we might get to see him and his family from time to time.
    When I asked whether he wanted to write a farewell column, Mike said he’d let his last one stand for
that purpose. In that vein I invite you go to our Web site and read it. It appeared in the last weeks of the nomination battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, under the headline, “The necessary ingredient for success: hope.”
    I’ll close with an excerpt:

    In 2008, America needs a strong dose of hope from its politics, which have been a source of gloom for years. Cynicism, partisanship and big-bucks lobbying have led to a government that does too little, as big issues go unaddressed. That’s no fun to cover as a journalist, and brings no satisfaction to suffer through as a citizen, either. In this election year, I hope for better.

For the link to Mike’s last column and more, visit my blog at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

The vanity of John Adams

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Adamsjohn

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite Founder was John Adams. This attachment on my part dates from my college days in the early 70s, when I more or less inadvertently earned a second major in history (I had not planned it thus; I suddenly realized, with one semester to go, that I was within six credit hours of such a major, so I took two more courses. Up until then, I had merely taken as many history courses as I could as electives.)

The last week or two, I’ve been watching — gradually — the HBO series based on the Pulitzer-winning McCullough book. I was reminded by the book, and am reminded again by the excellent series, that one of the things that endeared Mr. Adams to me was his all-too-human frailty. It brings him down to a level where I am able to identify with him. The airy aloofness of Jefferson is not my way; nor is the lofty unattainability of Washington, with his natural leadership ability.

But almost every time I read of, or see portrayed so well by Paul Giamatti, the crabby vanity of Adams, I have to laugh, because I see myself. Tonight, my wife and eldest daughter joined me in recognizing his touchiness as he complained mightily of having come in second to Washington in the first presidential election.

Adams was of course right to feel that he had done much — perhaps more than any man — to earn the affection and electoral support of his countrymen. After all, HE had put Washington’s name forward to become commander of the Continental Army so that he could rise to greatness, and HE was the one who insisted that Jefferson write the Declaration, after HE, Adams, had nagged and argued and fought independence into being adopted by Congress. And then there was the matter of being the first ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, etc….

But even the lamest modern political consultant could have explained how much more attractive as a candidate Washington was. And Adams’ protests that he should have done better in the election, when you see them portrayed by the brilliant Mr. Giamatti, are comically unbecoming. He was SO vain, so quick to be affronted. And when I noted I would have been the same, my wife and daughter nodded. (You know, they COULD have argued with me just a little, but they didn’t.)

As explained in the series (by way of Abigail reading a letter aloud), Washington got 69 electoral votes, and Mr. Adams only 34, which wounded him deeply. But the guy who came in third (John Jay, no slouch himself) received only nine. Adams received as many as all the rest put together (a field of 8 or 10), and yet he is so put out at getting fewer than half as many as Washington that he pouts to Abigail, "I consider such a showing a stain upon my character!"

This is why I could never offer for public office — I’d be just as petulant, were I to lose, which I probably would, being the way I am.

Far better to suffer such mortification vicariously, through studying (and seeing portrayals of) the life of Adams — and joining Laura Linney’s Abigail in being affectionately amused at his humanity. Far less painful than living it.

Of course, Abigail gets him over his tantrum by calling him "Mr. Vice President," thereby puffing him up a bit. The office had not yet been compared unfavorably to "A warm bucket of spit."

And yes, I realize that seeing myself in John Adams, a great man, is also very vain. See what I mean?

I’m not alone in seeing Bistromathic principles at work in modern finance

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Did you think I was being a tad hyperbolic (just to throw another mathematical concept at you) when I cited Bistromathics in explaining my confusion over the nation’s economic problems?

Well, I had to laugh just now reading tomorrow’s op-ed page, which contains this Paul Krugman column.

Paul Krugman is, according to his billing, an actual economist. Most of his columns might read as though they were written by a summer intern at the National Democratic Party — he is my nominee for Most Partisan Writer Currently Published in Major Newspapers. In fact, I had to double-check to make sure this column was actually written by Paul Krugman, since it did not blame anything whatsoever on George W. Bush. But it actually is a Krugman column. And he actually is an economist.

Anyway, the part of his column that grabbed me was this part:

    The most important of these privileges is implicit: it’s the belief
of investors that if Fannie and Freddie are threatened with failure,
the federal government will come to their rescue.

    This implicit
guarantee means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized.
If Fannie and Freddie do well, their stockholders reap the benefits,
but if things go badly, Washington picks up the tab. Heads they win,
tails we lose.

    Such one-way bets can encourage the taking of bad
risks, because the downside is someone else’s problem. The classic
example of how this can happen is the savings-and-loan crisis of the
1980s: S.& L. owners offered high interest rates to attract lots of
federally insured deposits, then essentially gambled with the money.
When many of their bets went bad, the feds ended up holding the bag.
The eventual cleanup cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.

Did you get that? "Someone else’s problem…" As you and I and Zaphod and Ford all know, there is a concept involved in the understanding of Bistromathics called "recipriversexclusons," and recipriversexclusons are essential in the generation of an SEP field, or "Somebody Else’s Problem" field. What’s that? Must I explain everything? Oh, all right:

"An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t
let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem…. The
brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot. If you look at it
directly you won’t see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your
only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."

So there you have it. And if you can’t see what I’m saying, just blame it on the recipriversexclusons.

The real Room 101

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HOrwellgeorgeaving made a reference to "Room 101" in Orwell’s 1984, I went to find an explanatory link. (On some
level or other, the very existence of hypertext is one of my biggest motivations for blogging. Even though most of y’all may not — and probably don’t — follow the links, just finding them and setting them up releases endorphins in my brain. I dig making the connections; my favorite literary device is allusion.)

In this case, I was more than usually rewarded.

Like Winston Smith, you probably know already what Room 101 is. As O’Brien explains it to the prisoner,

    You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the
answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the
worst thing in the world…
    The worst thing in the world… varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.

In my case, it was having blood drawn, which is why it took me almost 49 years to work up the nerve to start making donations at the Red Cross.

But the really cool thing, the point of this post, is to share with you what I learned by reading the Wikipedia link:

Orwell named Room 101 after a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House where he used to sit through tedious meetings.

Boy, can I identify with that! I certainly hope Wikipedia was right on that one, because it really brings Orwell down to where I can relate.

Here’s a creepier fact I ran across, about the days when the Stasi terrorized East Germany:

The people of the GDR lived through their own private Nineteen Eighty-Four every single day. Funder describes Orwell’s book as "like a manual for the GDR, right down to the most incredible detail". The party, if not the proles, knew that very well. She remembers that the much-dreaded Stasi chief Erich Mielke even managed to renumber the offices in the secret-service headquarters. "His office was on the second floor, so all the office numbers started with ‘2’. Orwell was banned in the GDR, but he would have had access to it. Because he so wanted the room number to be 101, he had the entire first floor renamed the mezzanine, and so his office was Room 101."

The ‘Jewish lobby’

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Check this letter on today’s page:

Hollings speaks truth about Middle East
    I agree with former Sen. Ernest Hollings on his answer, as stated in the June 15 State, to James T. Hammond’s question, “How do you think our policy in the Middle East should change?” Sen. Hollings said, “Settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and 80 percent of the problems will disappear.”
    In order to solve a problem, all facts must be truthfully presented. As long as it is considered anti-Semitic to state true but politically incorrect facts about Israel, it is impossible to solve the Middle East problems. If we want to solve these problems, get rid of the Jewish lobby (the biggest lobby in Washington), and get the facts on the table.
HARRY L. NORTON SR.
Summerton

I bring it up to suggest that Mr. Norton should check out this piece in Foreign Affairs that I mentioned previously. It makes it pretty clear that U.S. support for Israel — whatever you may think of it — has long been based in widespread support among NON-Jews in this country. Argue that this nation should take a harder line on Israel if you like. But to complain about the "Jewish lobby" is to miss where most of the support of current policy is coming from.

Apparently, black folks don’t have ‘biographies’

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Today, I went to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift certificate I received for Father’s Day. Given the occasion, it seemed fitting to use it to buy a copy of a book I’ve been meaning to read, Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.

Of course, I sought it under "biography." No dice. I scanned the shelf where the "O’s" would be repeatedly. I looked to see if it had been mistakenly placed under "New Biography." Nope. Then I looked to make sure it hadn’t been filed by "Barack." Nope. Not under the "B’s."

So I went to the "Current Affairs" section. No luck.

Finally, I did the thing I hate, and went to the information desk. The clerk made a beeline for the "Store Favorites" table, and handed me a copy. As one does under such circumstances, I felt constrained to explain why I had had to ask for help, muttering something about having searched and searched under "Biography."

The clerk told me it wouldn’t have been under "Biography." It would have been under "African-American."

You’ll note that on the Web site, it’s considered to be a biography. But apparently not in the store. In case you wondered, John McCain does appear under "biography." Yes, the subtitle of the book is "A Story of Race and Inheritance." I get that. But it’s still a biography — or, to be technical, and autobiography. If it was right to file this under "African-American" instead of "Biography," then the McCain books — which feature him as a Navy aviator on the cover — should have been under "military history." But they weren’t.

After I got home a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that I didn’t go check what the clerk had told me — I didn’t search the "African-American" section, assuming that such a section exists. I’ll try to remember to check next time. But I do know that there were no copies under "Biography."

Through a Marine’s eyes

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This was forwarded to me today, and I pass it on as I received it:

I was part of the Dateline NBC special program titled “Coming Home” that aired Sunday, May 25th. It is about the “cost of killing.” I live in South Carolina. My name is Jesse Odom and I am 25 years old. I served in the Marine Corps and fought in Iraq. Here is my story.  Thank you.

    People on both sides of the spectrum, those for the war in Iraq and those against the war in Iraq, for the most part, say that they support the troops.  That support is typically limited to putting yellow ribbons around trees or by placing some type of sticker on their cars, and of course, by verbally saying that they support our troops. People automatically assume that our troops will get the armor they need to protect themselves in combat, they will assume that they have decent living conditions here in the States and in our warzones, they assume that our men and women are getting all of the health benefits they need, they will assume that our men and women who have been in combat will get the proper mental health care they need in order to get back on a stable mental track. The list goes on. I am tired of our naïve approach to supporting our troops and I pledge to change that. 
    On March 20th, 2003, my unit (Alpha Company 1st Bn 5th Marines) was the very first group to cross the Kuwait-Iraq border. Shortly after, we were engaged in combat and I found myself holding a fatally wounded Marine in my arms, my friend and leader, Shane Childers. I watched him die and he spoke his last words to me. He was the very first American killed in the war. We fought our way to Baghdad, accidentally and unfortunately killing the innocent, constantly living in fear, and trying to stay alive. Once we made it to Baghdad we found ourselves in what many have said was the most violent and fierce firefight during Operation Iraqi Freedom. We fought for nine hours. Nearly a hundred men were wounded and I witnessed the death of another Marine that I looked up to. We raided Saddam’s palace and the Abu Hanifah mosque where Saddam had been sighted. We killed many men and captured others. We lived at the palace for a while and then moved back to southern Iraq and eventually back to the United States.
    Shortly after getting back to the United States I finished my enlistment while my friends in my unit went back to Iraq. I started to write a book when I got out of the Marine Corps. I didn’t plan to publish the book but I used it as a coping mechanism. I camped out at my computer night after night, putting my unit’s story into words. Throughout this process, I kept up with some of my other friends that also got out of the military. Many of them struggled, and some still do. My friend, Chip Wicks, could not handle his problems and hung himself in February of 2004. This put me on a path to try to change some things. I started talking to my other friends and many of these men also had, and still have, a difficult time coping with the fact that they had witnessed and did things that many in our country could never imagine. They have a hard time coping because they are good men with Christian beliefs and a moral conscious; even though many do not regret fighting in Iraq. Many of these men will not get help, but even those that do, have to fight tooth and nail to get the help they need.
     Some of our men are being asked to use their own money to get counseling for their PTSD. The list of faults is too long to list in this email.  The faults are not limited to mental health care. However, I have decided to focus my efforts on PTSD and the suicide epidemic among our combat veterans.  People read my manuscript and loved it. I was told I should get it published and eventually I took the steps to do this. In the book, I tell my unit’s unbelievable story. But, the story does not stop on the battlefield. The battlefield has followed us home. Also, I tell of the haunting aftermath of war. I describe some of the issues that our troops and veterans face today.  I use real examples.
    In this book, I follow my unit as we prepared for war, when we went to war, and now home, where we have been put on the back burner. I am devoted to support our troops and I am going to do what I can to make a difference.
    I set up a fund titled the Chip Wicks Fund in honor of my friend that took his own life.  I am donating 10 percent of my royalties from the book sales to this fund, and the publisher has agreed to contribute 10 percent of their net proceeds from this book to the fund.  I am also accepting donations on my website.  The fund will be used to seek out and help those that have problems adjusting back into the civilian world.  Those that have or may have PTSD.  I don’t want any more of my brothers and sisters to die due to depression (suicide) when they can be helped.  I want you to help me support the troops. Not by simply waiving a flag or putting a ribbon around a tree. I want you to put this story on the front page of your paper and help me change some things.  I am trying to get more support from our government, but that will take some public pressure. 
    My book is eye opening.  It is not written by a seasoned author, a ghost writer, a politician or journalist who went on a fact-finding tour in well protected areas in Iraq. This book was written by a Marine infantryman who went and served his country and is now asking our country to truly support our troops and our combat veterans. You can help me and our men and women in uniform (and veterans). I want people to read my book and see what is going on behind the scenes of our media. I want to sell books and raise money for an unresolved problem in our country. I want people to read the book so they can see the world through an enlisted man’s eyes. My efforts are not limited to the book and the fund, I am going to go to our politicians and demand change.
    My book is titled “Through Our Eyes” (Bella Rosa Books, June 2008, ISBN 978-1-933523-14-9).
    You can go to my website and copy anything on it you want to put in your newspaper article (excerpt, pictures, bio, etc). My website is www.iraqthroughoureyes.com — I want to open the public’s eye and this book will help do that.

Please support the troops.
Thank you,
Jesse Odom

Speaking of books. On a blog related to the Dateline NBC segment referenced above, a producer mentions one called "On Killing: The Psychological Cost Of Killing In War And Society" by Lt. Col. David Grossman. I’ve read much of it while drinking coffee on a couple of separate visits to Barnes & Noble. It is truly fascinating, and contains a lot of data I had not encountered before. For instance, I had known that a lot of soldiers never fire their weapons when in contact with the enemy, but an analysis of widely scattered battles through history demonstrated that a startling number of those who DO fire more or less intentionally MISS.

HERE’s that Wolfe quote

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Back on this last post, I made reference to something Tom Wolfe had written, and I just had to run it down, and it turns out to have been from The Right Stuff, and most delightfully of all, it was making fun of my least favorite sector of the MSM:

In the picture on the screen all you could see was the one TV woman, with the microphone in her hand, standing all by herself in front of Annie’s house. The curtains were pulled, somewhat unaccountably, inasmuch as it was nine o’clock in the morning, but it all looked very cozy. In point of fact, the lawn, or what was left of it, looked like Nut City. There were three or four mobile units from the television networks with cables running through the grass. It looked as if Arlington had been invaded by giant toasters. The television people, with all their gaffers and go-fers and groupies and cameramen and couriers and technicians and electricians, were blazing with 200-watt eyeballs and ricocheting off each other and the assembled rabble of reporters, radio stringers, tourists, lollygaggers, policemen, and freelance gawkers. They were all craning and writhing and rolling their eyes and gesturing and jabbering away with the excitement of the event. A public execution wouldn’t have drawn a crazier mob. It was the kind of crowd that would have made the Fool Killer lower his club and shake his head and walk away, frustrated by the magnitude of the opportunity…

Mind you, this was long before the 24/7 cable "news" channels took this sort of foolishness to exponentially greater lengths…

Eagerly awaiting ‘The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt’

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When I was looking for a link for this post, I ran across some really good news I had not previously heard. Martin Scorcese is making a movie based on Edmund Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which I happen to be reading.

Now folks, this is what we call exciting movie news! Why didn’t the Real Message Center send me a pop-up about this one?

I’m so pumped — or DEE-lighted, as Morris tells us Ted would have said — that I don’t even mind that young Mr. Roosevelt will be portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind anyway, after the excellent job he did in "The Departed." And "The Aviator," for that matter. Sure, he may not be Harvey Keitel, but then who can imagine Keitel as TR?

Basically, Scorcese has turned DiCaprio into a highly respectable entity, "Titanic" notwithstanding. It even strikes me now that they teamed up to do a movie about New York from the days when TR was police commissioner there, and police HQ was on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. OK, so, it was a generation before, but it was the right century.

I haven’t looked forward to a film production this much since I heard HBO was going to do Band of Brothers…

This makes me feel SO much better

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Energy Party think-tanker Samuel Tenenbaum gave me this book to read this morning, but knowing how slow I am at getting books read (currently I’m slogging my way through The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Breaking the Spell simultaneously, and have promised myself a novel when I’m done with those), I figured it would be awhile before I’d be in a positive to comment on it, which I figure is something Samuel is hoping I’ll  do, which is why he gave me the book.

… To increase the pressure, Samuel emphasized I was one of the few he’d given it to, the others being Barack Obama, Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Amy Klubocher (yeah, I had to ask, too — it’s the woman who spoke to the state Democratic convention over the weekend), Capt. Robert Miller (a Democrat, late of the U.S. Marines, who is trying to challenge Joe Wilson), Harris Pastides and John Mark Dean at USC… He plans to give one to Lindsey Graham tonight.

… you’ll notice a trend toward Democrats there. Samuel says Dr. Dean did complain about the book’s politics, to which Samuel said, Ignore the politics! Read the science!

But apparently it’s not necessary to read the book in order to blog about it. This guy panned it without Samuel even giving him a copy. That is, I think he panned it — the post was so long that I figured I could read the book quicker.

I mention this because I’ve got to hand it to the guy for admitting that he didn’t read it. Did I tell my 11th-grade English teacher I hadn’t read Moby Dick? No way (if I had, she might not have given me an A-plus on the essay test, which still stands as a great moment in the annals of the Golden Shovel). Did I tell the audience at the Salman Rushdie symposium I moderated recently that I hadn’t read any of his books? No way. They might have thought less of me…

But this guy, who just comes out and says it, and dares ’em to come on (as Huck Finn would say — and I did read that), is an inspiration to B.S. artists everywhere…

By the way, here’s my short synopsis of what the book’s about. Mr. Zubrin says thumbs-down to hydrogen, thumbs-up to methanol from coal.

Jimmy Breslin is a Moustache Pete

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This morning on NPR, Jimmy Breslin was talking about his new book, The Good Rat. It was, of course, an interview replete with his raspy assertions that he knew what the real mob was all about, and that stuff in the movies is a lot of hooey.

Yeah, I know Breslin knows more about the mob than I do, but as an enthusiast of mob flicks, I find his attitude kind of irritating. Sure I know "The Godfather" wasn’t for real — it was less about the Mafia and more a sort of grand American morality play centering around the questions of which is right and good: a society built on laws or one on personal relationships between men. Sure, I know that The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight was probably closer to the truth, but it’s a parody, and I suspect "Mean Streets" is even closer. And "Goodfellas" closer than that.

What about "The Sopranos?" the interviewer asked. He copped a plea: "I was working doing columns on… Sunday nights. I never saw it."

Never saw it? Come ahhhn! Who, in the 21st century, is dependent on watching something when the network (is HBO technically a network? maybe not) shows it? It’s better on DVD. I, who didn’t have HBO anyway, am currently in the middle of the fourth season. Somehow, you get the idea that Mr. Breslin is so Old School, he doesn’t own a DVD player, and still lives life in real time.

But I think he’d like it if he watched it. Don’t you?

Anyway, he did admit that DeNiro is really good at playing a wise guy, so that’s something.

The artificial Horatio Alger

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Here’s a socio-political Rorschach test for you. The Christian Science Monitor tells the story of a kid from a middle-class background in North Carolina who moved to Charleston and played homeless (if you’re from N.C., living in S.C. is probably as down-and-out as you can imagine) with $25 in his pocket and no prospects.

He wrote a book about it. It seems to be based on the premise that any poor person should be able to do this. Read it and see what you think.

And yeah, I know "Horatio Alger" is a stretch, since he was only trying to amass $2,500 in savings (and did twice that). But it was the best allusion I could think of.

Do my will, or I will blog out the moon! I mean BLOT! Blot out the Moon!

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Lunar_eclipse

Gaze into the sky, ye mortals, and tremble! Behold my power as I stretch forth my hand! Especially between now and 10:01 p.m. Eastern time!

You must do my bidding; you have no choice — defy me, and lose the night’s most blessed illumination!

Hear me — you must henceforth vote for either Barack Obama or John McCain in all primaries yet to come!

Oh, and McCain — you must not ask Sanford to be your veep, or future generations will curse you as they stumble in the darkness!!!!

(Hey, I thought it was worth a try. It worked for Hank Morgan. Columbus, too.)

McCain increasingly turns toward November

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Here’s an excerpt from a McCain release that illustrates what we’re seeing more and more, which is the "presumptive" nominee starting the general election campaign:

   

The Washington Post this week clearly laid out one of the key differences at stake in the coming general election. The Post reported, "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year’s spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group." Barack Obama is no better; he requested and received over $91 million of our hard-earned tax dollars for his own special interests and earmarks.
    What’s worse is that Senator Obama, who claims to be a candidate of "change," has refused to disclose the earmarks he requested prior to last year, when he started running for president. Washington needs change, but we will ever see it from someone who is part of the business as usual crowd in the Senate. How many earmarks did John McCain request last year? Zero.

This is a good place for him to start, since fighting pork gets him in good with those crybabies in his base we keep hearing about, and plays well with independents. Heck, even Speaker Pelosi has teamed up with Jim DeMint to fight earmarks.

One quibble, though: It makes no logical sense to say, "Barack Obama is no better," when in the same sentence you quantify the degree to which he was at least less bad: He sought $91 million worth of pork to Sen. Clinton’s $340 million. Assuming, of course, those numbers are accurate.

Huck Finn had a good rule of them that should be applied to political rhetoric: "Overreaching don’t pay."

The Eclectic Sandlapping Palmetto Tree

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The NYT today has a story keyed to the 20th anniversary of Bonfire of the Vanities, from the perspective of “how has New York changed since then?”

Thinking back on the way he wrote about the Big Apple, it occurs to me that if Wolfe would really like to write about bizarre, rococo foibles in a sociopolitical context, he should come to South Carolina. He’s done New York; he’s done Atlanta; now he’s doing Miami. All have been done to death. He should come to the home of neo-Confederates, Green Diamond, Bob Jones University, Jake (it’s pronounced “Jakie,” Mr. Wolfe) Knotts, an antebellum form of government, the nation’s most libertarian governor, Andre Bauer, Thomas Ravenel, John Land, Glenn McConnell (arguably the most powerful man in the state, Mr. Wolfe — pictured at right) and the Hunley — and, just a bit into our recent past, Lee Atwater, Strom Thurmond, Fritz Hollings, Jack Lindsay, Ron Cobb, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker… by comparison, even Rudy Giuliani seems boring.

It would be like Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test without the acid (who would need it?). Actually, come to think of that, I’d much rather see him write about us in his nonfiction mode — partly because the reality here is weirder than any fiction, and partly because I just prefer his nonfiction works, particularly Acid Test and The Right Stuff.

You know why Wolfe disappoints me as a fiction writer? He has no love for any of his characters. Think about it — is there a sympathetic character anywhere in Bonfire or the Atlanta book? It’s a very depressing view of humanity. By contrast, his detached-but-intimate style of journalism makes real people come into view in a way that is far more engaging.

The soul of discretion

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Maybe we should get Dirk Gently to become Columbia’s new police chief. In any case, this story certainly reads more like Douglas Adams satire than anything like reality. And yet, here we are:

    Nearly a month after stepping down as Columbia’s interim police chief, Harold Reaves has not returned to work for the city.
    And it’s not clear whether there is a job waiting for him.
    City
manager Charles Austin, who granted Reaves’ Nov. 1 request for personal
leave, told The State this week he doesn’t know how long Reaves will be
out. Austin also said he has yet to ask Reaves specifically why he
wanted time off.
    “As long as he is on personal leave, I think it
would be a matter of his discretion. I’m sure when he comes back, we’ll
have some discussion what the reason was about.”
    Austin earlier said Reaves requested time off for unspecified “family matters.”

Why do I think of Douglas Adams? Well, if you read So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish, you may recall that, after several years bouncing around the galaxy in his bathrobe, the hapless Arthur Dent returns to Earth, and decides he’d best give his boss a ring at work. His boss doesn’t bat an eye at his ridiculous explanation of his absence, and when he asks in an offhand manner when Arthur might return and Arthur gives a vague answer that suggests it might be months in the future (when I get home, I’ll look up the actual wording), his boss greets that with a chipper response along the lines of Right, then. Fine! Cheerio! See you when you get back!

This is apparently meant to lampoon the laxness of personnel policy at the BBC, and it’s quite funny to anyone who’s worked in a real workplace with actual accountability.

But in this, real-life, case, Mr. Austin isn’t even asking why his employee is gone, or when he’s coming back. And somehow, it’s not nearly as funny that way.