Group Sex

 By now, most of you have seen this video. A teabagger now known to be Chris Reichert of Victorian Village, a neighborhood in Columbus, OH, taunted and threw money at a man suffering from Parkinson's Disease. (Conservatives must get off on attacking Parkinson's sufferers. Remember this?) According to Wikipedia, Victorian Village:

is considered a gay village. Many of the homes are owned by same-sex couples, contributing to the diversity of the neighborhood. Gay gentrification was instrumental in the redevelopment of Victorian Village after the area declined in the 1960s and 1970s.

A Freudian might say that Mr. Reichert, his masculinity either challenged or stimulated from living in close proximity to gay people, got all excited from being part of a mob and symbolically sodomized the man: You can figure out for yourself what throwing the dollars all over the guy stands in for. The cameras gave Mr. Reichert an opportunity for others to see his manhood in action, at least as much manhood as one can show when mocking an older man with a degenerative disease. 

To me, the teabagger mob action of last week was a form collective sexual ecstasy that met the needs  of people who feel powerless in most aspects of their lives. There was an orgiastic spree of screaming and shouting, obscene talk, faces uncontrollably warped by anger and fear, and horn blowing and invocations of God, all culminating in a frantic orgasm of unspeakably filthy phone messages and bricks hurled through symbolic glass windows.

In the end, it all comes down to a sick obsession with President Obama. It's like the men fear and are fascinated by black male sexuality, while the women -- who comprise 55% of teabaggers -- fear it and are attracted to it. The fascination and attraction engenders self-loathing -- of which they have no shortage anyway -- which amps up the emotional chaos. They articulate these feelings through a fetishistic veneration of the Constitution that brooks no interpretation other than their own and a fear of Big Government (draw what symbolic conclusion you will) that did not exist when Obama's white predecessor assaulted the Constitution and increased the reach of government into personal lives.

So this is what it's all about: The same old baseless fear of white men that a black man is out to get their women. They don't see that the President is a happily married family man with children. In fact, they don't see him as a human being at all. He's a malign force after them personally, an inhuman thing to be gelded for the safety of us all.

Am I oversimplifying? Is teabaggery just about race and sex? Well, in post-Freudian America, what isn't about race and sex? OK, there are other things at work, such as paranoia, tribalism, nativism, jingoism, anti-intellectualism, and a blasphemous practice of Christianity that prays for God to intervene in secular political matters. But mostly, teabaggery (or teabuggery, in the case of Mr. Reichert) is about fear and loathing of The Other. And The Other is anyone not like them, as represented by the figure of an African-American president who somehow manages to keep his cool and rise above their most obscene deprecations. Which must drive them even crazier. I knew I liked the guy...

Parsley's Pics writes that the rage is not about health care?  How good it be? It's completely disproportionate to a law that guarantees insurance to 32,000,000 of our fellow Americans, eliminates rescission, allows people with pre-existing conditions to purchase insurance, and rebates $250 to senior citizens as part of closing the Part D doughnut hole...

Barely ten, I bolted from Rose Chintz china...

"I feel paying taxes is one of the most patriotic things I get to do as a citizen of the United States"...

We'll just keep on keepin' on...

Old Man River, he just keeps rollin' along...

Those teabaggers just love the Constitution...except for free speech. State your preference for leader of the free world and you'll get run off the road. Sarah Palin thinks (to the extent that she thinks) this is just peachy and wants to see more of it...

True Story Dept: Oklahoma encourages hate crimes based on race or religion...

Here's Dirpy,  a cool app that transfers YouTube audio to iTunes. Enjoy!

Confessions of a Liberal Fascist

 If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
-William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Perhaps the most startling assertion by the teabaggers and the conservative media is their equation of liberalism with fascism. I don't read their propaganda books because I won't give them my money, so I didn't know that the source of all this is a two-year publication by right-wing provocateur Jonah Goldberg called Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Recently, the History News Network sponsored an on-line symposium on the book, in which academic specialists in fascism eviscerated Goldberg's fundamental grasp of the term, his selective misreading of history, and his flawed scholarship. Goldberg's blustery response attacked straw men and defended his right to define fascism as he chose, never mind that the academic definition of the term has coalesced around a meaning that has nothing to do with contemporary liberalism.

The allegations in Goldberg's book are apparently gospel among the right, and explain why I am an America-hating force of evil in the eyes of Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, and the teabaggers.

Who am I? What makes me a threat to truth, justice, and the American Way?

I was born in 1955, the first of five sons, to a librarian father and a stay-at-home mother who practiced speech therapy on the side to bring in extra money.  We went to church on Sunday and most of us attended parochial school at one time or another, despite the financial burden that must have been. In both parochial school and public school, my brothers and I not only said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the Star-Spangled Banner, we meant every word. Our family lived in such exotic locales as Washington, D. C.; South Bend, IN; Concord, NH; Baltimore, MD; Columbus, OH; and Kingsville, TX. (Back then, the country had a shortage of librarians, who ascended the career ladder by moving.)

My father was, and is, a Stevenson Democrat who annually paid out a dime to any of his boys who knew that February 5 was "Adlai's" birthday. He also never let my mother forget that she voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. From them, all of five of us came to value reading, humor, education, history, art, politics, movies, music, travel, and the Democratic Party. And, I'll come right out and say it, my veteran father raised us to have a deep skepticism of the military, especially generals. Dad -- a Bostonian -- also bequeathed us his lifelong devotion to the Boston Red Sox, an inheritance which may or may not be a blessing. He'll answer for that one on Judgment Day.

Six weeks shy of her 45th anniversary, my mother passed away. What kind of person was she? The kind whose passing had five daughters-in-law in tears at her memorial service. The kind who did the everyday work of raising five boys while returning to graduate school so that she could resume her career, the point of which was to save money to send us to college. From her, we learned patience and forbearance. From both, we learned as a matter of daily instruction that "violence never solved anything." (My father, now 81, also had a two-word apothegm that I will lobby to have etched into his grave marker: "Cheer up!")

My parents also raised us to respect others regardless of race or religion. I can't remember a time when I assumed anything other than, as Sly Stone put it, "we are the same whatever we do." Like any white person, I've had to keep a watchful eye on my assumptions about race, but that's not because of anything my parents taught me. I once told my father that if I ever hit it big, I didn't want to make the mistake of believing that it had been 100% by dint of my own hard work. He told me to never lose my compassion. (He has also been known to say that one should never resist a generous impulse.)

They were so open-minded that two of their closest friends were Republicans, although this was back in the days when conservatives didn't automatically dismiss anyone who disagreed with them as being fascist-Nazi-socialist-communists. I recall my mother laughingly telling my father that a neighbor boy had asked his mother -- who told her the story -- if his family and ours were still friends because we were Democrats. Those were the days.

Above all, my parents taught us to value family. We moved a lot, and so learned to stick together. Vacations were spent visiting relatives in Pittsburgh and Boston. Oft-told stories were typically of family lore. My father adopted Pittsburgh sports teams as readily as if he had grown up there and made sure that my brothers and I pulled for the Pirates and Steelers (who genuinely sucked back then) almost as hard as we rooted for the Red Sox and Notre Dame.

After graduating from college in San Antonio, I met and married the woman who would be my wife for twenty years until her death. During the course of our marriage, we also lived in Austin, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. She stayed at home and took care of our two sons while my career -- in the private sector, I might add -- developed and flourished.

Our boys grew up, stayed in school, and learned from me many of the same things my parents taught. They are hard workers, well-liked, and don't have many bad words for anybody. It's also their curse to be fourth-generation Red Sox fans.

My wife took care of me when we thought that I had Multiple Sclerosis and when we knew that I had cancer. We were, for want of another phrase, best friends. Five years after her death, I was fortunate enough to meet Premium T., now my wife and best friend.

In short, I was raised in a church-going nuclear family that lived family values and believed in liberty, justice for all, and the national pastime. I married, had a career, and raised children. I've suffered sickness and loss. I've grieved. I've loved and been loved twice.

And that's how I became a fascist...

The on-line edition of the Seattle Times published an edited version of my What If... blog of last Thursday. The comment thread is here. I read one of the three comments removed by The Times, an unhinged rant about William Ayers. The Times did not respond to my request that they reinstate it. Too bad, because it was unthreatening, contained no obscenities, and was a perfect example of how loony tunes these people are...

God, but I love this stuff. You can't make it up. Nope, you won't catch the Republican National Committee at just another "club with glass boxes filled with naked dancing girls." These boxes are made from the windows of a 1920s Manhattan building that housed the New York Times. Talk about a class act. But what's this about equipment rental?...

Roy demolishes the theology of Glenn Beck...

Check out this comical exchange between Rushbo stand-in Mark Steyn and a caller who proudly hails from "Belair, Maryland, home of John Wilkes Booth." I mean, with these people the laffs just keep on coming...

Call Me Disillusioned Dept: Sean Hannity is a greedy fraud and Michael Steele is a corrupt pol...

Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war. "It's just patriotism. It's in our Constitution." All I can say is, "Shake it, shake it, Hutaree." All the way to prison for a very long time, please. Parsley Pics has more here, including video...

Pictures at a Revolution

Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood tells the back stories of the 1967 Best Picture nominees. Deploying considerable reportorial and analytical talents, Harris combines interviews, contemporary sources, and film criticism to explain how 1967 set the stage for the director-based films of the 1970s, ten years of film history now recognized to be as significant as the 1940s.

The story begins in 1963, when French film buffs Robert Benton and David Newman conceived the idea of combining an American gangster story with the techniques of French New Wave movies. They wanted Francois Truffaut to direct a screenplay they had written about a pair of obscure Depression outlaws named Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Truffaut reviewed the script, liked it, and nonetheless passed on the opportunity to direct. Bonnie and Clyde eventually came to the attention of actor Warren Beatty, whose career had bogged down and who had decided to produce his next movie so that he could retain a strong degree of artistic influence. Beatty acquired an option on the script and began looking for a studio to finance it. His search would be a long one, but the film he eventually made became legend despite an indifferent effort by Columbia to promote and distribute it.

Meanwhile, 1964 caught the movie world off guard. The three biggest Hollywood hits were musicals; one of them (The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews) was gargantuan, passing Gone With the Wind in 1966 as the biggest moneymaker ever. The other two were Disney's Mary Poppins and Warner Brothers' My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn and, fatefully, Rex Harrison. Producer Arthur Jacobs, who had long wanted to make a film based on the Doctor Dolittle children stories, seized on the idea of musical version of the tales starring Harrison. A troubled production from the beginning, Doctor Dolittle became a notorious flop synonymous with the misconceived film that ran wildly over budget.

Director Stanley Kramer was well-known in his day for message films like Judgment At Nuremburg and The Defiant Ones. Never a critical favorite, Kramer made earnest, solidly crafted "serious" movies that lacked artistic significance: A typical Kramer movie delivered a comforting social message that usually fell just short of controversy. As race became the defining domestic issue of the 1960s, Kramer conceived of a social comedy about integrated marriage in which the daughter of an affluent, liberal-minded suburban couple introduces them to her doctor fiance, who happens to be black. In the 60s, only one African-American actor would be acceptable to white audiences in this role: him being Sidney Poitier. And for the film to have widespread appeal, it must feature the reunion of the screen's most famous couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner became, despite scathing reviews, the biggest grossing picture of 1967, as movie fans turned out in droves to see Tracy's last film. Guess sold as many tickets in the south as in other parts of the country.

By the early 60s, Mike Nichols had established himself as the hottest director on Broadway. Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, his initial foray into film-making, garnered critical and commercial success. Nichols became interested in directing a film version of a chilly 1963 Charles Webb novel called The Graduate, a dialogue-heavy book about a WASP-ish college hero suddenly uncertain of his prospects. Nichols had trouble finding a producer until the success of Whose Afraid caught the attention of schlockmeister Joseph E. Levine, who wanted a class property to offset his reputation for vulgarity. After searching far and wide for the right actor to cast as Benjamin Braddock, Nichols finally settled on an unknown named Dustin Hoffman, who became an on-screen stand-in for the director. Young people loved The Graduate and their parents didn't understand it. For the first time, Hollywood discerned the existence of a youth market that would line up to see movies that their elders ignored.

In the Heat of the Night, in some ways the most durable of the five films, won the 1967 Best Picture Academy Award; star Rod Steiger was named Best Actor. Operating on a low budget, director Norman Jewison stripped the original screenplay of broad social significance in favor of a confrontation between the urbane black detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) and the bigoted but shrewd police chief Bill Gillespie (Steiger). Assisted greatly by editor Hal Ashby, Jewison fashioned a lean film characterized by a unique color palette and innovate uses of lenses. Critics were divided about the Heat -- Truman Capote called it a "good bad movie" -- but the film struck a chord.

Delayed two days because of Martin Luther King's assassination, the 1967 Academy Awards were something of an anticlimax. (A churlish Bob Hope cracked snide jokes that indicated his reactionary displeasure with even that brief a delay.) The leaden evening that saw an absent, grieving Hepburn win her first Academy Award since 1933 (she won again the following year for Lion in Winter) was highlighted by Best Actor Steiger's acceptance speech. In the Heat of the Night upset the artistically superior Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate to win Best Picture. Norman Jewison ascribed it In the Heat of the Night to timing: "We happened to arrive at a moment when people felt strongly about race."

When haven't they?...


Plagued with problems from the onset, Doctor Dolittle flopped from the very beginning. Prickly and tyrannical, Rex Harrison held himself aloof from the rest of the cast. The scene of Doctor Dolittle riding a giraffe was cut from the final print of the film.




Guess Who's Coming To Dinner was Sidney Poitier's third and biggest hit of 1967, a year in which he became the most popular movie star in the United States. Repeatedly and unwillingly cast as the acceptable Negro, Poitier accurately predicted that the times had passed him by and that his career as actor was virtually over. The film paired Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy for the ninth and last time.




Dustin Hoffman thought that he was all wrong for the part of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate.  Uncertain that he would get another film role, Hoffman didn't bother to unlist his number in the New York City phone book, and collected an unemployment check the same week that the film was released.




The movie that its writers had conceived as an homage to the French New Wave, Bonnie and Clyde came to symbolize the youthful unrest and rebellion of the 60s. In the trailer, note the contrast between the psychedelic graphics and the Depression setting.




Director Norman Jewison filmed In the Heat of the Night on location in Illinois because Sidney Poitier refused to work south of the Mason-Dixon line. Initially leery of working Rod Steiger, Poitier bonded with the other man and the two developed a deep mutual respect.

Sunday Funnies and Arts

As always, click to enlarge...

You gotta live 'em every day...

How's your gaydar?...

A Marine reminds the teabaggers of what a civil war really means. Unsurprisingly, they don't seem to have taken kindly to having a bucket of ice water poured over their collective heads...

Stupidity is the most powerful force in the universe...

Two-thirds of U. S. companies pay no federal income tax (Thanks, Projections)...

The ghosts of Newport past...

Watch this famous scene from Robert Altman's Nashville (1976) and notice of the beauty of the editing:


Each of the women in this scene knows that that Tom (Keith Carradine) is singing "I'm Easy" to her. They all realize that he is a rake and a cad, but three of them believe that he will "leave his cautious words and ways behind" for her. One of them, Linnea (Lily Tomlin), the one to whom Tom has actually dedicated the song, can tell that she is being seduced for a one-night stand. But it has been such a long time since she has been seduced that the moment overwhelms her in spite of herself.

The scene begins with an extended shot of a seemingly bored Linnea, then cuts briefly in turn to Mary (Cristina Raines), Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), and L. A. Joan (Shelley Duvall) before returning to a suddenly alert Linnea. What has captured her attention? The camera, which never leaves audience level for the entire scene, begins an nearly imperceptible zoom toward Tom, a shot that lasts for over thirty seconds before a cut back to Mary. After offering brief glimpses of Opal (whose sigh presages the climax of the scene) and L. A. Joan, Altman settles on a rapt Linnea, who, one hand inside of her coat, leans against the side of a bench for support.

The scene then cuts back to Tom, who by now is so close to the viewing audience that we have front row seats for his seduction of Linnea. The zoom continues, now slightly faster. Tom glances up, but away from the camera: He's not looking at us, for we are the spectators here. A cut to Linnea gives way to a return cut to Tom; for a second, they are the only people in the room.

A nice, tension-breaking touch follows. The camera returns to Mary, who glances over her shoulder. Altman follows the glance to Opal, the cuts to L. A. Joan. She looks over her shoulder, which the camera follows until it settles on Linnea and another slow zoom. These are the only pans in the scene; otherwise, the shots are static, except for the slow zooms.

Altman chooses to jar us slightly, interrupting the zoom to cut back to Tom. By now, he gazes steadily at Linnea. When the camera returns to her and resumes its slow zoom, she takes a deep breath and blinks once -- a superb acting touch that lets us know that Tom's seduction is complete. The applause that follows is as much for that as the song.

If you haven't seen Nashville, move it to the top of your Netflix queue. Nashville is not only Altman at the pinnacle of his powers, it's one of the top films of the 70s. In both cases, that's saying quite a bit...

They Were For It Before They Were Against It

Mitt Romney defends health insurance mandates in a 2008 Republican presidential debate:


Now Romney that mandates are fine if a state adopts them, but not the federal government. This might even pass the laugh test if he hadn't made the case for mandates while running for a federal office. But, Der Mittster isn't the first politician to say something slippery. This, however, is another matter:


My gosh. That he can say all of this with gravitas and blithely expect to be believed... The contempt this man has for his constituents must know no bounds.

There was a time when I put Orrin Hatch in the same category as Bob Dole: I disagreed with him, but I respected him. How could I have been so wrong.  Not that you care, Orrin, but now I hold you in the same contempt that you hold for me.

Now watch Chuckles Grassley dance around the question of mandates like he's barefoot on hot coals:


But, Chuckles, as recently last year you thought mandates were such a jim dandy idea that they might be the ticket to a bipartisan agreement:


This was even on Fox News, so you know it must be fair and balanced...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to put into effect a lesson I learned a few years back when I lost a pair of concert tickets. I called the ticket service to see if I add any recourse:


Helpful Phone Person: Did you lose them or did they never arrive in the mail?

Me: I lost them.

HPP: Because if you lost them, I can't help you. If they never arrived, I can reissue the tickets. Now, did you lose them or did they never arrive in the mail?

Me: I'm certain that I lost them.

(Lengthy pause)

HPP: Sir, did you lose them or did they never arrive in the mail?

Me: I told you, I...oh... Yes, that's right: I never did get them.

HPP: Fine. Now, if you'll give me your name and credit card number...

Ignorance Is Strength

The American Enterprise Institute has parted ways with David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter and  fellow of the Institute. The separation came in the wake of this blog entry by Frum, in which he criticized the Republican strategy opposing health care reform and urged conservatives to accept it as a done deal.

I don't have any sympathy for the man who coined the phrase "axis of evil," the three little words that compressed George Bush's simpleminded, Manichean world view into a sound byte that gave him cover when he invaded Iraq, disengaged from North Korea, and amped up the anti-Iran rhetoric. But, consider what has happened: The so-called intellectual arm of conservatism just turned anti-intellectual. They have in effect fired someone for committing a thought crime. Teabaggery has gone viral within conservative circles...

Although Republican efforts to distance themselves from teabagger vandalism and violence were largely self-serving. Eric Cantor (D-VA), reduced to underlining that he does "not condone violence," accused Democrats of exploiting the attacks on their offices and homes for political gain. But it won't be that easy to turn the table: People know where this is coming from and they know it's not Democrats. The Republicans have a tiger by the tail, and it will be interesting to see who eats who...

I'm as surprised as anyone by the Republican senate leadership's apparent decision to roll over and allow the reconciliation bill to pass without much of a fight. They had blustered about dragging the session out past Easter, but at the end of the day it seems that they just didn't want to miss the vacation that starts this weekend. So much for a last-ditch, Remember the Alamo stand against anti-American legislation certain to end our way of life...

The loud talk of repeal is nonsense. For one thing, the Republicans don't have the muscle. And even if they someday do control the House, Senate, and presidency, they won't have to guts to take away health insurance from 32,000,000 people, not to lifting the bans on rescission, payout limits, and pre-existing conditions. What they will do is use repeal in the same way that they use abortion: As a means to separate the base from its money via red meat fundraising...

Roger Ebert takes on Glenn Beck, taking particular exception to Beck exhorting his followers to leave churches with a commitment to social or economic justice...

According to John McCain, black is white, the sky is blue, and the grass is green. (Thanks, Projections!)...

Notes from the Cracker Barrel: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. (Thanks, Editilla!)...

Republicans turned off by the size of Obama's package. Secretly, they're turned on...

What a week! No matter what the vicssitudes of life, though, this song has been bringing a smile to my face since I was in high school. And all in all, this has been a week of blues skies:


Warren and Dicky really feel it on this one!

What If...

It's the winter of 2003, the day after the invasion of Iraq. An angry mob of African-American protesters gathers outside of the entrance to the White House, screaming imprecations and waving American flags. Several hold signs accusing President Bush of sending young black men to die for a family vendetta. A group of white Bush aides nervously makes its way through the crowd, hearing shouts of "killer," "murderer," "thug," and at least one unprintable racial slur.

A number of Democratic party representatives and senators exhort the crowd into a greater frenzy. A blast from a pagan horn quiets the mob so that one of them can invoke the blessings of God on a Congressman who has joined them.

A state party leader and two Republican Congressmen who support the war report that unknown people have hurled bricks through windows of their home offices. One receives death threats against her and her family, including use of the word "assassinate." A number of other representatives receive threats as well. When reporters contact a leading anti-war activist, he disavows responsibility for the death threats:

I’m advocating broken windows. I’m advocating vandalism...How ambiguous is it if I say break windows? Am I saying kill people, absolutely not.

The spouse of a third representative, one who supported the war after initially expressing reservations, tells him that she has had to unplug their home phone because of threatening, obscene messages left with their answering service. One caller says that "I hope you get cancer and bleed out your ass and die."

A prominent Democratic senator speaks out about the militarization of America, arguing that the war is unaffordable and foreign to our way of life.He argues that America simply can't afford a massive defense establishment.

An anti-war leader releases the home address of another pro-war representative. Someone cuts a propane line leading to the house, creating the danger of a massive explosion. Police reveal that the house is actually the family home of the brother of the representative. When contacted, the activist who supplied the address calls the episode "collateral damage" and "condemns" the vandalism initiated by his actions. Other activists insist that the address was correct, apparently to justify the vandalism.

Does it take much to imagine the reaction of Republican politicians and the conservative media had any of this actually happened? Does it even require your imagination?...

Axis struts shocks...

Born under a bad sign...

The teabaggers deny up and down that they are racist in any way, shape, or form. Point out specific examples of signs and speeches and you'll hear that they don't exist. Wonder why the rallies are all white and someone will mumble something about playing the race card. But when was the last time a mob of screaming white people meant anything good to a member of a minority group?...

Senator Rachel Maddow? We can only dream...

GOP senators block health care...and national security...and fire safety...and law and order...(Thanks, Projections)...

Birds on a Wire remembers Civil Rights movement martyr Jim Reeb...

Stop the Presses! Most teabaggers are Republicans...

Yes we can/No you can't...

Rush has that old fashioned love in his heart...

You knew it was just a matter of time before this happened. The Black Negro College Fund?...

Audio of threats made to Bart Stupak:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

"There muzzles of three million rifles who [sic] can be, if required, pointed directly at the hearts of anyone who wants to be a tyrant in this country:"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This one goes out to Rush and the gang:

Robert Redford and Me

How about a break from health care reform in favor of a bit of levity?

Away from the silver screen, I've never laid eyes on Robert Redford. Not so much much as a nanosecond of a celebrity sighting from a hundred yards off. Even so, we've crossed virtual paths a couple of times.

Shortly after I moved to Austin in 1981, John Nichols set up a table at Scholz' Garten to sign copies of his newest novel, The Nirvana Blues. As an admirer of The Milagro Beanfield War and The Magic Journey, I wanted to meet Nichols even though -- in those grad school days -- I could ill afford the price of a hard copy novel. Nonetheless, I went down to the Garten and stood in the signing line.

The line moved slowly because Nichols actually spent time chatting with each patron. I thought about what I wanted to talk about, and by the time I reached the head of the line, I had it: I had seen something somewhere that a film company had taken out an option on Milagro. Was this true? Nichols smiled broadly. It was indeed true, and he had been talking to "Bob Redford" about the possibilities. He didn't know whether anything would come of it, but "Bob" was really interested. A film of Milagro was released seven years later, 1988, written in part by Nichols and directed -- yes -- by Bob Redford.

In the mid-90s at the behest of good friend Paul Newman, Redford became in investor in The Nation. Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation and a truly kind man, relished telling me the following story. It seems he had lunch one afternoon with Redford and Newman. Navasky -- who I don't think would mind me say looks nothing like that pair -- trailed them out of the restaurant when lunch was over. A woman grabbed his coat sleeve wanted to know something: "I know you're somebody. But who?"

Finally, while I can't claim to have heard this one first hand, I am reading the book from which this one comes. It's 1966 or '67, and Redford -- a young, up-and-coming actor who had already done acclaimed work on Broadway and had starred in Barefoot in the Park with Jane Fonda) approached director Mike Nichols about lead role in a film Nichols had begun called The Graduate. As Nichols tells the story,

We were friends, we had done [the stage version of] Barefoot. I was playing pool with him and I said, 'I'm really sad, but you can't do it. You can't play a loser. He said, 'Of course I can play a loser!' I said, 'You can't! Look at you! How many times have you ever struck out with a woman?' And he said, I swear to, 'What do you mean?' He didn't even understand the concept. To him it was like saying, "How many times have you been to a restaurant and not had a meal?' (from Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Mark Harris, p. 237)

For the record, I have a meal when I go to a restaurant. As for how many times I've struck out, well, let's save that one for the record books...

David Leonhardt writes that health care reform is the first part of a long-term goal to reverse the inequalities of wealth created by the Reagan Revolution...

An open letter to conservatives...

HBO's Treme pays tribute to NOLA food...

R. I. P., Marva Wright...


It's a week late, by R. I. P. Alex Chilton, too...

You Go, Joe!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

New Hypocritical Apoplectic Hell No Blues

I was taught to respect my elders, and I usually do (especially now that I'm fast approaching elderhood myself). But what can one say about the two women here who oppose universal health care even though their age group receives it?


Fair and balanced:


A drop in the bucket of the swath???

"The Catholic Church has a buncha leftists in it."


Would that it were true: I might still go to church.

Bob Forrest is going Republican:

What They're Saying

James Fallows writes:

For now, the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)... TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period.

Katie Connolly:

More significant though is the political difficulty of arguing against the benefits of the bill, especially the ones that kick in early. Republicans will have to tell people with preexisting conditions that their new ability to access coverage will be withdrawn. They’ll have to tell young people and their parents that young folks won’t be able to stay on the family plan. They’ll have to tell Americans that they’re fighting to allow insurance companies to drop sick people from their rolls once more. Those aren’t easy fights to have. Health-care reform was much easier to dog before it actually becomes law.

Newt Gingrich:

...the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times. They [Democrats] will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years [with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s].

 What an odious, repellent man. He ran like Custer trying to take that one back.

Keith Ellison (D-MN and the only Muslim member of Congress):

For me, this legislation represents progress toward universal health care for all Americans. Every landmark piece of legislation had a beginning. Women’s rights did not end with the 19st Amendment; Civil Rights did not end with the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; Social Security enacted in 1935, and Medicare in 1965, did not begin as we know them today. So too is it with this health care reform bill. It is a beginning – and an important one,

Paul Krugman:

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.

And last but not least, the meltdown from the man who would be Speaker of the House of Representatives. Here he is -- John Boner with his top hit "Hypocritical Apoplectic Hell No Blues":

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge...

Looks like Bart Stupak has decided to vote "aye" on health care reform. If so, this pretty much seals the deal, with House Democrats increasingly confident that they have the votes to pass the bill...

Read this fascinating backgrounder from the New York Times about how the Democratic leadership rallied from from Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts to put the party on the brink of passing its most far-ranging social legislation since the mid-60s. Nancy Pelosi comes across especially well, most notably when she dismisses a panicked Rahm Emmanuel's argument for piecemeal bills as "kiddie care"...

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself...

Cockney rhyming slang...

Women of European reputation unite!...

Newsweek explains how health care reform reduces the deficit...

Harry Truman leaves Washington...

New Orleans slave sale, 1861 (click to enlarge):

(Thanks, Editilla)

A buoyant President Obama addressed Congressional Democrats yesterday. He's at his best...


Nihil Obstat writes that, in the wake of yesterday's teabagger slurs and threats aimed at John Lewis and Barney Frank, it's time to treat these "people" for what they are:

Terry, Nichols, Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh's direct descendants : domestic terrorists who need the FBI up their asses the way Cheney was up Bush's

Distributor Cap doesn't like the health care bill but supports it anyway...

The Time Has Come

The health care bill that the House will vote on tomorrow calls to mind Winston Churchill's quip about democracy being the worst possible system except for all of the others. Now, in the case of health care there are preferable alternatives stretching from a weak public option to single payer. But I've become less and less convinced that those were ever feasible. The Democratic caucus was always split on the issue, and the further legislation moved to the left, the fewer votes it would have gotten. As the Republicans hinged their strategy for returning to power on the failure of any health care legislation, none of them were ever going to vote for it no matter what it contained. At the health care summit, President Obama pointed out that, by opposing the bill, Republicans opposed a number of provisions that they had historically supported.

So, the votes were always going to have to come exclusively from the majority, and the Democratic majority was never unified on the best approach. (In defense of the Democrats, it's a lot easier to unite against a necessarily complex piece of legislation than to oppose it in lockstep.) Moreover, no organized, widespread grassroots pressure in support of single-payer or a public option ever emerged, so there was never any serious pressure from the left for an alternative. Say what you will about the teabaggers, they show up in numbers and make their voices heard; progressives never really got the boots on the ground. (Nate Silver argues here that even if they had, their impact would have been minimal. It's an interesting read in which he applies probability theory as opposed to insider analysis.)

So, we're left with a bill whose abortion provisions abridge the constitutional rights of half the country and that brings 30-35,000,000 mostly subsidized customers to health insurance companies, a group whose greed and pointlessness would make a parasite uneasy. But, I'm for the bill, and in the end it's not even a hard call.

History says that should this bill fail, it will be approximately 20 years before another president takes on health care reform. Harry Truman tried first in 1948. Lyndon Johnson tried again in 1965, one of the peak years of American liberal power, and settled for Medicare and Medicaid. Richard Nixon flirted with health care reform briefly in 1971, but he was distracted by wars in Vietnam and Cambodia and never attracted the support of an indifferent public by pushing seriously against conservative and liberal opposition. Health care reform was tabled was tabled until 1993, when Bill Clinton tried and spectacularly failed.

Since 1993, the current system has developed more cracks than the San Andreas Fault. Rising rates have forced individuals and small businesses to drop insurance and have inhibited the increase of real wages as businesses struggle to maintain benefits. Even so, companies have more and more asked employees to assume higher co-pays for ever more limited coverage. Moreover, the preexisting medical conditions of millions of Americans preclude them from having insurance even if they can afford it. Others have run up against the limits of their policies, and still more have had coverage dropped in the middle of expensive ongoing treatment for pernicious diseases.

Unless something changes, the future appears even more bleak. Sooner or later, financial pressures on state and local governments will force them to consider cutting benefits. Increasing global competition from companies that don't have to worry about offering health insurance will give them a competitive edge over American businesses. Real wages will continue to stagnate and possibly decline. Twenty years from now, the only people with insurance they can trust will will work for the federal government or a successful company in an industry that competes for people. Or they will be independently wealthy. If you're Bill Gates, Mitch McConnell, or a software engineer, you'll be in good shape. All others...

I'm convinced that this is the practical alternative to not passing this bill. Whatever its flaws, the legislation

• puts a national policy in place for a sector that accounts for 16.5% of the economy
• allows people with preexisting conditions to obtain insurance
• ends the inhuman practice of rescission
• eliminates payout ceilings
• allows parents to cover their children until age 26

I wish that the House was about to vote on single-payer health care tomorrow. But it isn't. Considering that the alternative is another twenty years of an increasingly malevolent system that pressures doctors, patients, and hospitals to the complete advantage of insurance companies, I must support it...

And, damn it, I also don't want to see the obstructionists and the haters win. I'd hate to see that become the blueprint for legislative success...

It takes a lot of guts to bully a man with Parkinson's Disease, but these teabaggers are more than equal to the task. What's the word for this? "Repellent" comes to mind...

Stupid & Contagious is happy that Bob Dylan's Love and Theft is Newsweek's #2 album of the decade, but wonders what it means...

If you thought the French horn was George Martin's idea, think again:

That's It for the Other One

I recently had an instructive exchange with a teabagger over on fivethirtyeight.com. This guy makes his teabagger meetings sound about as threatening as a sewing circle, filled with high-minded Hallmark rhetoric about reducing the size of Big Government for the safety and financial future of the country. Other readers on the blog have at times expressed concern over the racist and violent imagery coming from 'bagger rallies, but he consistently ignored these comments.

Just for fun, I called him on it and accused him of sticking his head in the sand. His response essentially implied that said reports were a figment of the liberal imagination and the neither I nor anyone else could cite actual instances of racist imagery or threats of violence. When I provided citations, he answered (I think this was the point) that he personally had an African-American minister and that therefore there was no racism or violence among the 'baggers.

Now, this guy is a supercilious twit whose intellectual reach doesn't go any further than a melange of Republican/Libertarian talking points. It was all too easy to yank his chain (forgive me, Father, for I have sinned), so I told him to stop hiding behind his minister's robes and either quit the ostrich thing or admit that he agreed that racist and violent imagery was a legitimate teabagger tactic. He made a snarky, flip comment about the likely results of the November election. He didn't respond at all after I contributed (with citations) a revolting description of a typical lynching and asked if he could finally understand that threats of sexually mutilating our African-American president coupled with calls for states' rights might seem racist to some people. I concluded that he was a fellow traveler with purveyors of racism and violence pornography, and said so. (I rather liked that phrase!)

So, are the teabbaggers racist? Even I will concede that if an African-American conservative showed up at a 'bagger coven, he or she would be greeted with open arms. But what if fifty or a hundred appeared? What if the group was a mix of African-Americans and Latino immigrants? That they would be welcomed, I'm less sure about.

At heart, there's a nativism or tribalism underlying 'bagger meetings that makes them little different in spirit than an Afghan mountain man using homemade weapons to repel outsiders. That's why the 'baggers hate Obama, don't like immigrants, and in fact don't like anyone who doesn't agree with them right down the line. They claim to love America, but it's a peculiar kind of a America composed exclusively of members of their tribe. They love America, maybe, but in the end they hate most Americans.

At one level, it's easy to understand the impulse and even sympathize with it. The 'baggers feel invaded, and history is replete with invaders who conquer and enslave. Pretty soon the paranoia about the Other kicks in, the talk of violent resistance and civil war grows, the paranoia escalates, and the anger grows more intense.

But just because the impulse is understandable doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't rise above it. I mean, isn't that what we're called to do either by our god or by our consciences? The liberal imagination not only allows for a diverse world, it celebrates the possibilities of such a world. The 'baggers see this as naive, no doubt, as they reach for their guns and agitate for open carry laws. Maybe so, but I'd much rather live in my world than theirs. At least I'm not afraid to go to downtown Seattle in the daytime and least I love Americans.

Last week, the 'baggers mustered only a few hundred people to protest health care legislation, not exactly the March on Washington. Over time, I don't think the 'bagger backlash can survive its lack of know-how. Ironically, what they need most in order to last as an independent movement are the skills that only community organizers bring to the table. In other words, they need ACORN and Barack Obama, the one group and the one person they despise above all others. Sometimes, life is funny...

Hawaii sez "Enough! No more requests for birth certificates! He was born here, already"...

Europe's Promise

Monday, I heard Steven Hill, author of Europe's Promise, speak about the book and what the United States could learn from the way European nations conduct social policy. Personally, I believe that we can learn a great but will apply little. The average conservative would have listened to Hill's reasoned presentation and then told him to move to Europe if he thought it was so great. But the presentation was thought-provoking, especially when he demolished some of the myths and preconceptions that obscure American understanding of Europe. Here are a few of them:

France and Germany have single-payer, government owned and operated health care systems.
Not so. Both countries, along with Belgium and Luxembourg, provide universal health care access through payroll deductions and a pool of private, not-for-profit insurance companies. 

Europe's economies are socialistic and moribund.
Actually, Europe is a powerful, thriving capitalist entity with more Fortune 500 companies than the United States and China combined, and the World Economic Forum says that it has some of the most competitive economies in the world. Small businesses? They provide about two-thirds of European jobs compared to one-half of American jobs. 


Europeans pay more taxes than Americans.
Yes and no. European tax rates are higher, but they cover what amount to hidden taxes in the United States, such as college tuition, co-pays, deductibles, sick leave, and parental leave. 


The United States is more technologically innovative than Europe.
Depends on what you mean. European firms may not be developing the latest in military hardware or dominate the software wars, but Europe has high-speed trains and leads the world in green technologies such solar arrays, high tech windmills, hydrogen and electric cars, and sea power. It's no accident that Europe is the most energy-efficient continent. 

OK, but the United States has national and world defense responsibilities that Europe doesn't have.
The European Union and its nations emphasize diplomacy in world affairs over the application of military force. As Hill explains,

velvet diplomacy has been instrumental in bringing greater peace, democracy, and prosperity to the former communist dictatorships of eastern and central Europe, as well as to neighbors such as Turkey, Ukraine, and others in its periphery. All told, this “Eurosphere” links two billion people -- one-third of the world, including many Arab countries -- to the European Union and its way of doing things.

Even so, the combined standing armies of European nation number over 2,000,000 soldiers. Anyway, we can see how far military adventurism has gotten us.

None of this will change anyone's mind, but it may give you a few bullets in the ammo belt the next time you find yourself in a tangle on Facebook...

St. Patrick's Day Irish Stew: To my little home in Westport, in the county of Mayo...Happy St. Patrick's Day, Lakewood style...Irish immigrants...Bob Dylan sings "One Irish Rover"...

Chad Finn remembers Nomah. Me, I'll never forget him. With Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra revived Boston baseball. I've seen some great clutch hitters, including David Ortiz and Edgar Martinez, and Nomar is right up there with them. As Finn writes, everything Nomar hit or threw was a line drive...

Happy Birthday, Nat! Get your kicks on Route 66! (Maybe Nat was Black Irish?)

What's In A Word?

Forty-five years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress on national television, urging them to pass legislation that guaranteed the voting rights of all Americans regardless of color. A determined and pugnacious Johnson rocked back and forth like a heavyweight looking for an opening as he admonished Congress for taking eight months to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and demanded that it pass voting rights legislation expeditiously. He got his wish: The 1965 Voting Rights Act passed both houses in less than four months.

The immediate impetus for Johnson's speech was the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, which deteriorated into mayhem before it got out of Selma. An appalled nation watched televised accounts of police attacking peaceful marchers with clubs, police dogs, and fire hoses. Johnson seized the opportunity to deliver one of the most momentous speeches of the American presidency. In the first five minutes of the speech, Johnson cut to the chase: "There is no Negro problem...there is only an American problem." About a minute into the speech, he framed the events in Selma as a pivotal event in the American fight for freedom:

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

Watch:


To southern politicians, Johnson's reference to Appomattox must have felt like a battering ram to the solar plexus. By invoking Lee's surrender to Grant, he sent the message that the Civil War had not been about states rights; it had been about ending slavery and extending freedom to all Americans. With that single word, he undercut the white South's entire rationale for opposing civil rights legislation, aligning it with slavery and injustice. With that single word, he forged a connection between the ideals of the Revolution, the fight to end slavery, and the fight to extend political rights to all. In effect, Johnson exposed the southern deification of states rights as a lie to rationalize injustice.

Worse for them, Johnson was a southern politician himself, so no segregationist could complain that a carpetbagging northerner was imposing his values on a southern way of life. That, combined with the images from Selma, swept away the fiction -- the lies, really -- that the south had and would continue to have racial harmony if only they were left to their own devices.

Johnson was nothing if not a masterful politician who well understood the import and effect of political language. He had alternatives to Appomattox: He could have selected from among such uncontroversial and more immediate patriotic locales as San Juan Hill, Chateau-Thierry,  and Normandy. But by choosing Appomattox, he sent a message to the white south: From here on in, they had a choice of being on the right side of history or the wrong side of history. But they should be under no illusions that they were on the moral side of events...

My father remembers the speech well. We lived in Columbus, Ohio at the time, little knowing that soon we would be Texans ourselves. Dad watched it on television and thought it was great. He listed Johnson's many accomplishments in education, civil rights, and health care, then -- like almost every liberal of his generation -- lamented that Vietnam had destroyed a potentially great presidency...

No one knew it then, but 1965 was to date the historical high water mark for the liberal presidency. Johnson was immensely popular: When he flew to Detroit for a speech, cheering throngs lined his route from the airport. In addition to the Voting Rights Act, 1965 saw major federal initiatives in education and the passage of Medicare/Medicaid...

You can write to the Texas Education Agency to express concern about the content of Texas textbooks, which will ripple out to many other states. The link is here...