Requiem For A Heavyweight

If everything you ever knew about Rod Serling came from The Twilight Zone or Night Gallery, I urge you to take a look at this film, which is an adaptation of Serling's Playhouse 90 script. Anthony Quinn plays The Mountain, a sweet natured palooka who's taken way too many in the head over a seventeen year career. When, after a fight with a young Cassius Clay (that's right, they got future heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali to make an appearance early on, and it's hard to believe he was ever that young), the doctors tell him he won't be allowed to box anymore, his promoter, the venal Maish Rennick (Jackie Gleason) cuts him loose. Unfortunately for Maish, the Mountain lasted too many rounds with Clay, so the mobsters who bet on the fight demand Maish's money or his hide. What follows is a competition for the Mountain's services as well as his soul, pitting Maish against the only two people in the world who give a damn about The Mountain: his trainer, Army (Mickey Rooney) and an agent for the unemployment office, Grace Miller (Julie Harris).

It is a treat to see this much acting talent on display in the service of a taut, moving tale. Though in some ways the outcome is predictable--The Mountain seems to have nowhere to go but down--his motives for acting as he does are surprisingly complex, so much so that I'm still processing them a day after seeing the movie. If you haven't seen this picture, I urge you to grab it from Netflix. It's worthy of your time.

Not Sure I Agree 100% With Your Police Work, Alec

Alec Baldwin, in what is otherwise a tame blog entry at The Huffington Post, wrote this howler:

The past eight years have been the moral low point of the American experience.

Mr. Baldwin, because I like you I'll chalk this up to the blogger's disease of writing without revising because as you probably do know, in absolute moral terms this country has sunk way lower. You've got your slavery, your genocide, your segregation. Back in the 1920s the KKK ran entire states (and not just southern ones). In West Virginia, being a union organizer could get you shot, and the government would do nothing. We were into public lynchings and women as chattel. We've lent our support to dictators who ripped off their countries and killed millions. Hell, this country wasn't an actual, functioning democracy until the Civil Rights Act and the abolition of the Poll Tax in 1964. So while I'm happy to say that George W. Bush is a moral idiot, and that his administration had done damage to this country from which it may never recover, whoever wins this fall, we're still not as bad as we've been.

Change the "the" to an "a", and problem solved, Mr. Baldwin.

Oliver Stone's George W. Bush

I understand that Josh Brolin will be playing our National Nightmare in Oliver Stone's movie, and while I think I understand why Stone is interested in making a movie about Bush--like Bush, Stone had a difficult relationship with his father and a long term infatuation with booze and powder--I'd rather have Stone do an autobiography. George W. Bush, for all the damage he has done and will do before this game is over, just isn't a very interesting person. He's always struck me as empty, mean-spirited, and vain--sort of a cross between Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. And while those characters were, in their own ways, compelling, it's necessary to remember that Tom isn't the lead character in Gatsby and can afford to be flat, and Patrick Bateman, for all his depravity, has a willingness to examine himself and his flaws that makes him interesting enough to carry a book. George W. Bush has never confronted the mad, empty, swirling vortex that is his conscience, and given his stated attitudes about self-reflection, he never will. That makes him a problematic lead character for a story. The only way to get at him, I would think, would be to place him in contrast to someone with actual humanity. Sadly, no one in the administration qualifies, and no one outside of it could get close enough to him to offer some perspective.

So why make the movie at all? I'm sure at some point Stone will tell us. But it'll take a lot of convincing to get me in to watch a three-hour movie about a willfully ignorant upper-class psychopath, when much more compelling psychopaths are already in my DVD and book collections.

Goddamn It No!

The New Kids on the Block are reforming. New album, new tour. Are all you motherfucking people out of your motherfucking minds?!? Of all the achievements of the 1990s--terminating the first Bush presidency, the Internet, Grunge music, Seinfeld--the most important was the death of the New Kids. Their destruction made all of these other things possible. Now we bring them back! How dead is a culture when it's trying to resurrect this:



Okay, America, I've been patient. I've tried to preserve a sense of calm and proportion as you've allowed Michael Bay to have a career that doesn't involve mopping shitty water away from the broken toilet in an Alabama prison. I've sat there stunned while you allowed George W. Bush access to the White House twice. I've endured the idea that you're going to remake The Incredible Hulk a mere five years after its first release. But this is so clearly a cry for help that I cringe at your future. Please America, get the help you need now, because with NKOTB coming back, a Tommy Page revival can't be far behind, and I can't watch you go there. It'll tear me up inside. Please, I beg you. Stop yourselves before it's too late.

Bad Movies About Show Business

This blog post might have concerned itself with something brilliant--Joseph Mankiewicz's All About Eve or Robert Altman's The Player. All these little pixels could have been put into the service of extolling their brilliance, but alas, their master is a masochist, and must devote himself to that peculiar species of bad movie called the shitty show-biz expose.

We'll leave Showgirls out of this, for no other reason than that I've never actually seen the whole thing and don't want to put it on my Netflix list. Instead, we'll begin with the movie that features jerky dancing, jerky middle-aged teen-agers, and jerky oily, sleazy drug dealers. Yes, it's The Girl In Gold Boots:



As you can see, sweet bippies are out in full force in this picture, which delivers the news that some of L.A.'s sleazier go-go dancer nightclubs were under mob control. (I'll pause for your gasp.) In the movie, Michelle works at EAT, a trendy little bistro that her abusive, drunken father owns. So desperate is Michelle to escape from EAT that she hooks up with Buz, the world's oldest living dead-end kid. Together, Michelle and Buz make their way to L.A. At some point in their travels, they pick up a fey young hitchhiker named Critter, from whom flowery language pours like a flowery language spigot.

Michelle hopes one day to become a dancer, and that gives Buz the idea of setting her up in one of the mob's most fashionable joints. His sister, the titular Girl in Gold Boots, (using "titular" in this context has its hazards) dances there whenever she manages to get off the pipe. Will Michelle become the headline attraction? Will the house band play one of Critter's songs? Will Buz get a piece of the Lufthansa heist and live to spend his money? Yes. Yes, and no, not in this movie anyway.

The movie does force audiences to confront some difficult issues, such as what it says about a society that the mob can pack a nightclub with dancing this lame. Michelle is a terrible dancer. Buz's sister is a terrible dancer, though it's easy to believe that she's sullied her pretty mind with heroin. Critter is a terrible singer/songwriter. And Buz is a talentless hack of a criminal. They get two hours to pool their incompetencies to form a cascading cataclysm of ineptitude. The result is painfully dull, though it is fun to watch Buz's reaction shots when Critter punches him in the face near the end.

But there are movies that take place at EAT, and there are movies that eat the soul. And such a movie is The Lonely Lady, a film funded by Pia Zadora's billionaire husband so that America could see Ms. Zadora sexually humiliated and traumatized for its amusement. If she didn't divorce him after this, she should have:



I remember watching this flick when I was twelve. My parents were asleep and I was looking for a glimpse of premium cable skin. Little did I know the price of that glimpse was watching Ray Liotta (who I'll bet never screens this movie for friends at his house) try to rape Pia Zadora's character with a superphallifraglicistic garden hose spigot. Conservative Christians spend a good portion of their lives pushing for abstinence education in schools. I don't think we need it. Screen The Lonely Lady in a health class, and none of those kids will reach in between their own or anyone else's legs for fifteen years.

Todd Solondz's Happiness was a major turnoff, but I got the impression that it was supposed to be. I'm guessing that the producers of The Lonely Lady somehow believed that their movie was going to be a turn-on, and all this folderol about how tough it is for women to make it in Hollywood without making it in Hollywood was just a smokescreen. Well, I guess my erotic tastes differ from Zadora's husband, because, even at the horny age of 12, The Lonely Lady made me sick.

I think I will go watch All About Eve now. I need to feel better.

Swing Your Razor Wide, Sweeney!

I enjoyed Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd tremendously, and I plan to grab the video soon after it comes out this week. But I also was glad to discover on Youtube what looks like a close to complete version of the George Hearn/Angela Lansbury version of Sweeney Todd. I remember watching this production on--well, memory fails me but I think it was Showtime--in the early 1980s. It had a profound influence on my literary and theatrical tastes. (Readers of my first published short story "The Knife Man" or the people who saw my senior project at Lawrence can testify to this.)

Here's the opening. It takes some doing, but the rest of the segments are available as well:

SAT Panic Setting In

With the May and June iterations of the SAT approaching fast, worried parents have been ringing my phone and bombarding my inbox looking for help. In business terms, this works out swimmingly for me, but it saddens me that ETS has so successfully oversold both colleges and parents on the predictive power of this test that my students get stuck for months, sometimes years, memorizing vocab lists and test-taking strategies instead of...well...learning stuff. A student who studies for several months physics, or French, or Chinese history, comes away in grave danger of actually knowing something about their subject. Months spent poring over sample SATs ensure that the student comes away knowing a lot about taking the SAT, a skill transferable to nothing.

Of course, hard, repetitive labor in the pursuit of meaningless rewards is a staple of life in the working world, so maybe the SAT serves a purpose in that it prepares students for the more soul-deadening aspects of adulthood. It certainly does say something about our culture that we spend so many billions of dollars to fund an educational enterprise designed to teach students nothing of consequence. But, what the hell. It's a living.

Oh, the Pain! The Pain of It All!

I have a headache that could knock over a clydesdale. Must cheer up...what to do...

A Couple of Hideous Films

To distract myself from the bad economy, the war in Iraq, and my own personal struggles, I watched two of the worst movies Hollywood ever made (and to think, neither one involved Michael Bay).

Let's take the second one first, a film with no conceivable reason for existing except, well, maybe as a stimulus package to keep the Southern California economy going, we have 1978s Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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Janet Maslin, reviewing this film for the New York Times, described it as "a business deal set to music", and I can't dispute her. The object of the game here seemed to be to find as many people as humanly possible to sing Beatles songs, except, naturally, the Beatles. If you ever wanted to watch Alice Cooper, Steve Martin, or George Burns sing a Beatles song, this movie is talking to you. The plot is some nonsense about the band's retrieving instruments that the Future Villain Band (Aerosmith) stole from them, but the plot is no more important here than it would be in a porn movie. It's all about finding excuses, however strained, to sing Beatles covers. And oh do those excuses grow strained. I pulled muscles just following them. I expect that all the checks cleared, and that the cast did okay for their contributions to soundtracks and image sales for t-shirts and assorted swag. But honestly, who gives a shit?

From bad to worse we go. I can honestly say that Concorde, Airport '79 is a better movie than Monster A Go-Go, for this reason. Monster A-Go-Go lacked both a monster and any trace of a-go-go, while Concorde did have a Concorde (or a model of one anyway) and two airports (or models of them anyway). And from the looks of it, the action did take place in 1979. So the film is, if nothing else, a triumph for the Truth in Titling movement.

Here's a clip. It's in German, but you don't need to follow the dialog precisely to delve the multiple layers of insanity and inanity contained in this six-minute sample.



Yes, it's amazing, isn't it? Who knew you could just open the window of a jet at supersonic speeds, stick your arm out, and fire a flare to distract a heat-seeking missile. If only the Air Force had been hip to this, they could have diverted all that money for countermeasures into schools, hospitals, or urban renewal.

Other things I learned from Concorde:

Men appreciate it when their friends, after setting them up with women they fall in love with, inform them that the woman was a hooker.

That if I want to kill the person who could expose the dark secrets of my industrial empire, it is far easier to try to bring down her passenger jet by rigging a missile test to malfunction, getting a rogue pilot to chase the jet with a French Air Force F4 Phantom, and by planting a device which opens one of the plane's cargo doors and decompresses the passenger compartment than it is to hire a professional killer to shoot the one person I'm actually trying to kill in the back.

That heads of corporations who participate in major felonies always sign their names prominently on all incriminating documents.

That small private jets are nearly as fast as supersonic transports. (And to think that Lockheed never included that in the brochure!)

That old women with bladder diseases who get trapped in airplane bathrooms while the plane is spinning are funny.

That airline passengers feel intense loyalty to their flights. Even after someone launches missiles and combat jets against their aircraft, they'll still come back after a day's layover to continue their journey on the same plane.

That there was an era when someone thought a cameo by Charo was a selling point.

Yep. I watch them so you don't have to.

Productivity, Of Sorts

Yet another agent rejected The Ice Age. Knowing I have to fight through this shit doesn't make it easier. I just keep telling myself that it is desperately unlikely that the only three people in the literary universe who admire this book are Charles Johnson, David Shields, and David Guterson. There's got to be one with a press and some advance money and a decent distribution channel to the chain bookstores.

I also sent the publisher of my novella, "Escape Velocities", the second part of what will eventually be the next book, concerning the misadventures of the adult Derrick Raleigh. He'll either love it, or it'll offend the hell out of him. We'll see.

At the end of everything, I think I can pronounce Let Us Sit Upon The Ground to be a success. It got some media attention, and a couple of hundred people or so took it home with them, one way or another. I've stopped advertising it. I need the money for other things, like being alive.

Update: According to Google, I actually got 448 listeners just from Podcast Alley. I don't have the figures for the other feeds, but combined with Apple, it might just have gotten into the four figures. Not bad for a guy whose budget could be conveniently measured in cents.

The Sorrow and Pity Party

A few days back, bitterspice told me about a conversation she'd had with her sister in which her sister said she wanted Hillary Clinton to win on March 4th because she "hated" Barack Obama. She never came out and explained what bothered her so about Obama, but she really wanted Clinton to win and was angry that Obama was in the way.

All this struck me strange, but I guess that's where things are now. Clinton supporters are unable to fathom why anyone would turn her away for Obama, and Obama supporters are so caught up in their own feelings of inspiration that they're offended when they see anyone who isn't similarly impressed. Speaking as the supporter of a long line of primary losers--Edwards, Clark, Edwards, Harkin, Jackson, Hart, and Kennedy, I have but one thing to say to those in one can't who can't conceive of supporting the Democratic ticket if their candidate isn't on it: get over yourselves.

When the Washington caucuses came along, I hunted down the location and voted for Clinton. I was in the minority in that room, as usual, but I was fine with that. I certainly didn't despise the people on the other side. Theirs was a passion I didn't share, but if it came down to Obama vs. Insert Torturing Right-Wing Creep Here, Obama's easily my guy, and I'll listen to his inaugural speech with as much hope for the future as the last seven years will allow me to have. Besides, now that I'm done with voting, I figure I'm out of it. I'm content to let people who still have a vote decide where to go from here.

But, as James Wolcott pointed out today, other people can't seem to handle this simple idea:

The Sorrow and the Pity Party

Look, I understand the knocks against Hillary Clinton, truly I do. There are no flaming arrows fired her way that I haven't seen traverse the air before, no bill of indictment drawn up containing charges with which I'm unfamiliar. Reciting her sins and liabilities has become a familiar refrain, but if it's the Gregorian chant you live by, if you find Hillary Clinton such an insupportable choice for the Democratic nomination that you prefer to suckle your pride and idealism rather than soil your conscience should she be at the top of the ticket, fine, have fun with that. But, please, I beg of thee, could you at least spare the rest of us your longwinded, preeny, pious dirges?

"I have, in sorrow, come to the conclusion that should Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee, I will not cast a vote for president. I live in Virginia, which she has no realistic chance of carrying, so perhaps it takes little courage for me to make that decision, should it be necessary. But given that I am politically active, that I teach government to adolescents, that I encourage them to participate, it is truly in sorrow that I find I must make this decision.

"I will try to explain, if you care to keep reading, why I have made this decision."

Explain, the Kos Diarist proceeds to do, for numerous earnest, soul-searching paragraphs.

There's more. Read the whole post.

My feeling has always been that if you can't bear the thought of messing up your nice, clean soul with the muck of real-world politics, then maybe political engagement isn't the hobby for you. It's not nice out there. People say mean, cruel, backbiting things, and sometimes they even fib a bit. And if you want to use the political system to get anything done to help people without power (a hard enough trick to pull off in any political culture), then you need to attract the attention of a cruel, backbiting, ruthless bastard whose interests coincide with your desires. In Star Trek terms, yes, everyone likes the Good Kirk, but he can't live without the Evil Kirk.

I voted for Hillary, at least in part, because I respect ruthlessness in politicians. I was an Edwards guy to start with, but he didn't last long enough for me to vote for him, and Hillary seemed the one willing to go to war to get the things Edwards talked about done. Maybe Obama can be more effective, but I don't know that he has the steel for it. He strikes me as a man who fears making enemies. Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he, like John Kennedy, really does have an enforcer's mentality underneath the idealistic patter. But I'm broke and need health insurance that actually pays for things, so when the caucus came to town I didn't feel as if I could work on the if-come. That's why I voted the way I did.

Still, other Democrats have other priorities. I respect that, and wouldn't think of telling anyone what to do. The animosity between the two camps seems misplaced. This isn't, after all, the Stalin-Trotsky split or anything. Hillary and Obama are politically very close to each other, so much so that they have to strain to find things to argue about. They're close in another way too, though, which Obama supporters might want to consider before they get too carried away.

If Obama is to make it to the presidency and survive in it, he's going to have to be every bit as ruthless as Hillary, or the opposition and events will consume him. To accomplish anything worthwhile, he'll have to do things that will put stains on his shining armor. He'll have to do things that offend the moral sensibilities of his supporters. The Corleone family will never be legitimate. Our Evil Kirk will never be exorcised. That's politics. That's life. Accept it or walk away, but spare everyone the wailing and gnashing of teeth. This country's in too deep for us to waste time striking poses of moral innocence.

Moving Up, Diagonally, In the World

From what I'm told, an interview with me will appear on KOMO AM 1000 tomorrow morning. People who wake up earlier than I do should take note.

The Makers of Fashion

Digby asks:

If people object to superdelegates deciding who our nominees should be I would certainly think they'd object to Maureen Dowd and the kewl kids, of all people, doing it. Do they really have our best interests at heart?

No. I'd say they've never given the slightest thought about our interests. They're much more interested in their own.

The rules for modern punditry aren't really anything new. Court gossips have been around as long as there have been courts to hold them, and I'm willing to bet that, once upon a time, pundits stood in the Roman forum to say, "Well, Cicero's second Philippic needed to get around the Circus Maximus in record time. Did it?" "I don't think so, Decius. I mean, it may have won the race by a nose, but it's still not enough to break Marcus Antionius's momentum. It was too shrill, I thought, too angry." Established pundits, like their Renaissance courtier ancestors, sit in a comfortable social position, not high enough to face disaster from ordinary political shifts, and not low enough to suffer the consequences when most political decisions go wrong. (Barring of course the collapse of their country or empire, but how often does that happen?). They see themselves as guardians of the world of power and prestige. And like the doorman at Studio 54, they bar entry to people who don't have the right look, who aren't trying hard enough, or are trying too hard to get inside the club.

The rules of punditry are simple and time-tested, and can be translated to any situation or political moment.

1. Never acknowledge that any event is new or unexpected. Admitting this would demonstrate that the pundit is out-of-touch, unaware, unfashionable, fallible. In the event something new does pop up, the pundit should have a ready excuse for his failure to notice: the weather, a stomach flu, or the CIA. Alternatively, the pundit should employ a tortured line of reasoning to explain that the new thing was always predictable and that he did in fact predict it, then swiftly change the subject or attack a convenient scapegoat: see Gellar, Uri or Friedman, Thomas.

2. When interviewing a politician on television, a pundit must be sure that the question he's asking will enhance his reputation as a tough, brash, ruthless truth-seeker. The exposure of actual truth is incidental. What matters is that the question makes the politician appear uncomfortable on camera. In the event that the politician comes off well, the pundit should immediately declare the politician to be an honest, straight-talking sort who holds up under rough questions, thus enhancing both reputations.

3. While a pundit should always appear to be in good humor, he should, like Sweeney Todd, seldom laugh but often smile. Actual jokes should be left to safe subjects--politicians already judged to be on their way down or who make the mistake of demonstrating obvious ambition or expertise, entertainment figures, and people who can't defend themselves. For guidance, read The Book Of the Courtier (Book II, page 117 of the Wordsworth Classic edition, for those following along.)

Next I will try to tell you , as far as my judgement shall show me, what the means are that the Courtier ought to use for the purpose of exciting laughter, and within what bounds, because it is not seemly for the Courtier to be always making men laugh, nor yet by those means that are made us of by fools or drunken men, by the silly, the nonsensical, and likewise by buffoons. And although these kinds of men seem to be in demand by courts, yet they deserve not to be called Courtiers, but each by his own name, and to be held for what they are.

Moreover, we must diligently consider the bounds and limits of exciting laughter by derision, and who it is we deride; for laughter is not aroused by jeering at a poor unfortunate nor yet at an open rascal and blackguard, because the latter seems to merit greater punishment than that of being ridiculed, and the mind of man is not prone to flout the wretched, unless they boast of their wretchedness and are proud and saucy. We ought also to treat with respect those who are universal favourites and beloved by all and powerful, for by jeering at these persons a man may bring dangerous enemies upon himself. Yet it is proper to flout and laugh at the vices of those who are neither so wretched as to excite pity, nor so wicked as to seem worthy of capital punishment, nor so great that a touch of their wrath can do much harm.

Remember that in America, and particularly on American television, vices include being caught thinking in public, showing an interest in policy, or demonstrating actual knowledge of a subject other than baseball or American Idol. An appetite for too much knowledge is a like an appetite for too much chocolate or alcohol, the sign of a seriously unbalanced and unpleasant personality.

4. A pundit's true loyalties aren't to principles or ideologies, they are to other pundits and the maintenance of their status as a class. Like the Soviet nomenklutra, pundits must always guard their fellows against demands for accountability and responsibility. While it is true that some crimes, murder, child molestation, or an overindulgent sympathy with the poor, can result in expulsion from the class, at no point should a pundit be blasted from the class for spouting nonsense, however laughable or bigoted it may be. It is this feature of pundit life that explains the longevity of William Kristol, Maureen Dowd, and Don Imus.

5. Because pundits, regardless of the ideological livery they wear, are well-heeled and insulated from the effects of most political policies, they judge political activity on the basis of stagecraft and deportment. For them, it is acceptable for a nation's fate to turn on a candidate's laughs, sighs, or smirks, and their criticism of a candidate's perceived faults as actors enables them to burnish their own credentials as mavens of campaign fashion.

6. The pundit class's attitude toward a person in power varies between abject sycophancy and sneering condescension. Sometimes this depends on whether the politician is up or down in the opinion polls, but there are longer term preferences to explore. Because pundits generally like to picture themselves as soap bubbles floating above the world's drabness, they tend to prefer politicians who, on some level, match or exceed their indifference. Politicians who succeed with the pundits are typically those who express a certain nonchalance in the face of what the base vulgar call life. Should these politicians express any interest in the world around them at all, they do it in small gestures, executed gracefully. The rest of the time, they maintain the kind of detachment that allowed George W. Bush to say, during a golf game, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive." Sneering condescension, by contrast, is reserved for those who show any excess of passion, intelligence, or wit. Such qualities, in a powerful person, might lead that person to do damage to the status quo, or to call silly and hackneyed ideas by their proper names. Anger and indignation,regardless of provocation, are especially frightening, and bring swift condemnation from the pundit class.

There are more rules, but these are the chief ones. I can't say I know how to break the grip of these people on the national discourse, but I don't feel too bad. No one else in the history of civilization has either. So just sit back, relax, and accept that as the U.S. slides into its decadence, the pundits' voices, always in search of a powerful patron to flatter or a threat to slander, will only grow louder.

Hmm, I think I may have written a play about this...

Amy Sullivan, Pro-Choicedness, and Converting Evangelicals

Kevin Drum, who's gets along with Amy Sullivan better than many in blogworld do, offers this defense of her reluctance to accept the "pro-choice" label in an interview with Salon. (I'll quote Sullivan first, then the criticism, then Drum's defense.)

Sullivan:

Well, I don't like the [pro-choice] label. I guess the reason I wrote about abortion the way I did in the book is because I have serious moral concerns about abortion, but I don't believe that it should be illegal. And that puts me in the vast majority of Americans. But unfortunately, there's no label for us.

Amanda Marcotte:

Yes, there is. If you think abortion and other forms of contraceptive birth control should be legal—i.e. that women should have the legal right to decide when they have children—you are pro-choice. Even if you still reserve the right to judge them for it. This entire interview with Amy Sullivan, like all her talk on getting the evangelical vote, makes me tired. She appears to have a definition problem, basically, characterizing evangelicals as if they are all Bible-believing Christians, when most self-identified evangelicals are patriarchy proponents with a thin veneer of Christianity over everything as a moral justification.

And finally, Kevin Drum:

Actually, I think Amy's point is precisely the opposite. In the rest of the interview, she basically suggests that about 60% of the evangelical community is politically conservative and won't ever vote for a Democrat. But the other 40% will, and those 40% are worth trying to appeal to. And one way to appeal to them is to acknowledge their moral qualms about abortion even if you don't happen to share them yourself. Like this guy:

"I think that the American people struggle with two principles: There's the principle that a fetus is not just an appendage, it's potential life. I think people recognize that there's a moral element to that. They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies and themselves and there is a privacy element to making those decisions.

"I don't think people take the issue lightly. A lot of people have arrived in the view that I've arrived at, which is that there is a moral implication to these issues, but that the women involved are in the best position to make that determination. And I don't think they make it lightly."

That's Barack Obama, likely the next Democratic candidate for the presidency. All he's doing is acknowledging the moral dimension of abortion, while remaining solidly in favor of abortion choice, reducing unwanted pregnancies, and encouraging responsible sexual behavior.

Now, I don't know why Amy rejects the "pro-choice" label, and it's pretty likely that I don't agree with her reasons — largely because I don't have any moral qualms about early and mid-term abortion in the first place. But then, I'm not an evangelical, am I?

Okay, I don't have a problem with people trying to label themselves as they like, within the limits of logic, but Sullivan does lose me here. I'm pro-choice because, whatever my moral qualms about abortion may be (I don't actually have any, but bear with me), I don't think they should be the basis of legal restrictions on women's control of their bodies. Sullivan expresses more or less the same idea, so, well, I guess she's pro-choice, whether she wants to call herself that or not.

This does point to something larger, though. Sullivan wants to convince secular Democrats that they should allow their politicians to reach out to evangelicals, and maybe that is an option worth exploring. Considering that our last two Democratic Presidents, and almost certainly our next one, will be evangelicals, while secular Democrats have had, I dunno, Pete Stark of California, I wonder just how much more outreach to evangelicals we frigging need, but let that pass. To get evangelicals and secular Dems talking, Sullivan has to overcome a good deal of mutual suspicion. Speaking from the secular side of things, I can say that most of us are aware that we're a minority in the Democratic party, just as we are everywhere else in the U.S. outside The Skeptics Society and the Center for Inquiry. We're not especially well organized. We've seen one political party overwhelmed by religious zealotry, and we worry that the other one will be too, leaving us nowhere. The seven years of George Bush that evangelicals helped inflict on us have rubbed us raw. We worry that, in order to get the evangelical voters Sullivan wants to attract, the Democrats will easily and gladly sacrifice our interests.

Hair splitting on being pro-choice won't help allay those fears or establish trust. Trust begins by calling things by their proper names. If Ms. Sullivan is by any sensible definition, pro-choice on abortion, where does she think the harm is in saying so?

My Play's Trailer (Belatedly Added I Admit)

Idiocracy

Warner Crocker writes about Susan Jacoby's new book:

Great read with, I'm sure, some controversial facts. Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post takes on "The Dumbing of America." She looks at this from several angles including the march of technology and how it impacts politics. She lists three points along the path of anti-intellectualism: video, lack of general knowledge, and an arrogance about the lack of general knowledge. She's right to a degree that no one would want to tackle these issues in an election year. Where she misses is that, sadly, no leader anywhere will touch this at any point before or after an election.

She also misses, what to me is a crucial fourth point as to why we continue to dumb things down. Money, or rather the pursuit of more of it or the fear of not making any. In my business of the theatre we are in fact our own worst enemies, when it comes to the dumbing down of our audiences. We don't play certain plays because they are deemed elite or will be a poor seller because we have to protect the bottom line. And of course that begins a downward spiral that in the not-for-profit world was supposed to be taken care of by donations, which then became sponsorships, which then got strings attached, which then led to keeping the sponsors happy, which essentially kept the spiral moving ever downward.

As much as I agree that anti-intellectualism, which involves not just general ignorance, but also a pride in that ignorance, is spreading, and that certain people exacerbate the trend by dumbing things down, there's something else here. As much as I, or people in my social circle, value art, science, and intellectual pursuits, the sad reality is that most people feel as if they can get along just fine without them. In our culture, incentives to acquire knowledge beyond the math required to fill out a tax form or the English needed to follow an office memo are paltry. Ignorant people find jobs, make livings, meet spouses, and produce offspring. They can become TV stars and talk show hosts. They can be upwardly mobile, and they can, at times, make substantial fortunes. Sometimes, they even become Presidents of the United States. Given all this, I can see why people don't feel they need to put in any extra effort to learn more than they already think they know (even if they don't know very much).

That said, while the decision for ignorance over knowledge doesn't cost much individually, it is devastating collectively. Societies that can't tell bad ideas from good ones tend to lead the world in the manufacture of corpses. Considering the damage that we can do to ourselves and our planet in the 21st century, we need to find some way to motivate people to learn. Otherwise we might find life very soon becoming, once again, brutish, nasty, and short.

Hmm, I think someone wrote a play about this...

I've Returned

Why? Because there's such a thing as the right tool for the right job.

To Those Still Using This Blog to Get to the New One

I've just made it easier. The new URL for the Third Omnibus is www.jsomnibus3.com.

Meet the New Blog

I feel like it's time to retire the second omnibus. I've got new blogging software. It allows me to put together no only a new blog on the .mac space I'm paying for, but to easily update and link to my new podcast. Head over there for the details, and update your links.

A Real Stand-Up Babe

Bitterspice got me the second season of "The Rockford Files" on DVD. I'm a lucky man.