Salon (which some probably think non-partisan) launches ongoing "Ryan-Shaming" feature

The left seems to be getting more comfortable taking things out of context with each passing day (unexpected side effect of Net culture?), which is troubling -- especially given that left-wing loon editor Joan Walsh at Salon yesterday announced an ongoing "Ryan-Shaming" feature over there, inviting readers (as if they needed encouragement) to stick out-of-context quotes on Ryan photos -- like the one here that Salon dun all by itself.

The original context, if you watched the interview that spawned the phrase, was Ryan cautiously making the common philosophical point that "the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life," in other words that the means by which a fetus was conceived doesn't necessarily alter its claim to protected moral status -- a point he immediately followed by noting that the Romney administration position would be that there should be exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. He certainly did not say "just," as the vicious little children at Salon suggest, to make him look all, you know, callous and evil and maybe pro-rape to boot. 

And I say all this as someone pretty damn close to moderate/indifferent on the abortion issue (and planning to vote for pro-choice Gary Johnson) but fond of accurately recounting arguments, something the pro-choice side rarely feels obliged to do and that the left in general does less and less.

Paglia on Lucas, Bassey before Adele, Ice-T vs. Aimee Mann, and TX vs. Fiona Apple

•CAMILLE PAGLIA calls George Lucas our greatest living artist in her new book, and I'm not sure about that, but we can trace one of his inspirations (likely for one of his worst titles as well as for the beautiful opening scrolls in all Star Wars movies).  Just watch the first five seconds of this, then skip to 1 min. 15 sec. in, I dare you.

•SHIRLEY BASSEY BEFORE ADELE: Adele's theme to next month's Bond film is all well and good, but did you know Shirley Bassey recorded an unused theme to the prior one, Quantum of Solace? 

•AIMEE MANN questioned Ice-T's acting ability on Twitter, and Ice-T responded by telling her to "Eat a hot bowl of dicks."  And so the New Wave/hiphop antagonism continues.

•WHEN FIONA APPLE WARNED that she'd make abusive officers famous after her drug arrest, the county sheriff's PR official wrote in reply (according to CNN):

"First, Honey, I'm already more famous than you, I don't need your help.  However, it would appear that you need mine.  Two weeks ago nobody in the country cared about what you had to say.  Now that you've been arrested it appears your entire career has been jump started.  Don't worry, Sweetie, I won't bill you."

Green Arrow and the Return of Helena Wayne/Bertinelli

Reason editor and Ron Paul’s Revolution author Brian Doherty may have addressed an Institute for Humane Studies crowd last night – and Atlas Shrugged Part II may be in theatres starting Thur./Fri. – but tonight the capitalist who matters is: Oliver Queen, head of Queen Industries.  Yes, superhero Green Arrow makes his solo live-action TV series debut tonight at 8pm Eastern on the CW show Arrow.  Leaving off the “Green” may indicate it’ll be hipper and more streamlined.  Maybe.

Other comics characters already slated to appear if the show survives include villainous archer Merlyn, Black Canary (destined to marry Green Arrow in the comics), Deadshot (from the semi-criminal team the Suicide Squad), and the Batman-like Huntress.  Interesting wrinkle with Huntress’s appearance: I blogged a while ago about there having been multiple versions of her because of DC Comics periodically revising their fictional universe, some named Helena Wayne (daughter of Bruce) and others named Helena Bertinelli (daughter of a mobster).  Well...

One decade ago, Helena appeared on the short-lived TV series Birds of Prey (as did Black Canary, making tonight’s show a bit of a reunion).  At the time, that meant that the TV Helena was the classic daughter-of-Batman version while the version appearing in the comics was the daughter-of-a-mobster version, Helena Bertinelli (though to complicate matters, the TV version was called Helena Kyle – after her mom, Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman).  As of tonight, the situation is reversed: Just one year after DC’s most recent reboot of the universe, it is Helena Wayne who appears in the current Worlds’ Finest comic book but Helena Bertinelli who appears as a character on TV’s Arrow.  The two (primary) incarnations of Huntress keep passing like ships in the night. 

Seriously, though, I trust you won’t be able to tell the difference.  For archery-oriented TV action purposes, the one thing likely to matter is that she wields a crossbow.  Let’s see if I make it through the whole hour.  

Columbus, Tura Satana, Chavez, and the Upper Crust

•In honor of Columbus Day, a clip ending with a line about Columbus that is my favorite moment from the infamous Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

•Curvy star Tura Satana passed away last year, and though in real life, she was everything from b-movie actress and exotic dancer to rape victim and martial artist, perhaps the most amazing thing – even more amazing than her reported refusal of Elvis Presley’s proposal of marriage – is that she was briefly a Los Angeles police dispatcher.

•And the Spanish-influenced bits of the New World got just a bit more socialistic yesterday after Venezuela, alas, voted the authoritarian Hugo Chavez another six-year term and no doubt six more years of consolidating power and shutting down rivals and independent media.  

•But on a somewhat brighter presidential note, here in the U.S. there is a book about JFK on the NYT bestsellers list right now edited by a Brown historian who was once the Upper Crust guitar player/back-up vocalist known as Lord Rockingham: Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy.

Music, Mobsters, and Misdirected Regulatory Efforts

Is the music industry evil?  We’re hoping to discuss some variation on that topic at the Oct. 23 Dionysium gathering at Muchmore’s, if you have some expertise on either side of the issue and would care to volunteer. 

This much I’ll say: The music industry is arguably less evil than human trafficking, the chosen profession of the cartel of bad guys in the Liam Neeson action movie Taken, the sequel to which comes out tomorrow, I’m pleased to see.  As Scott Nybakken says, one of the reasons the first Taken worked is that it was unapologetically patriarchal: Dad rescuing his sexually-exploited daughter from thugs – or in the sequel, daughter and wife, which must be weird for the recently-widowed Neeson, but then, he has a very special set of skills (called acting) and if you are in the theatre this weekend, he will find you.

Oddly enough, there is a slight connection between the bar event and human trafficking, though.  We may well use Oct. 23 to discuss Muchmore’s – like all too many NYC establishments – getting a summons for ostensibly violating the City’s draconian “cabaret laws,” which forbid even small amounts of spontaneous dancing at establishments not licensed for dancing.  It’s like Footloose in this insane, ostensibly free-thinking city. 

And a friend with some professional political experience tells me the City suddenly resumed enforcing the laws in the 90s as an extra excuse to shut down the strip clubs – and in some cases prostitution, supposedly – that it then wanted to get rid of.  So rather than target real problems directly – by, say, arresting a violent pimp or john and leaving people who are doing no harm alone – the law acts with its usual blanket unsubtlety, and everyone is rendered motionless to this day. 

In a City that seeks legal and regulatory solutions to such terrible menaces as margarine and table salt, this explanation is at least superficially plausible. 

But we can discuss it all on the 23rd – without dancing, I’m afraid.

“Month of Media” Begins with Presidential Debate (but Also Fox)

•My desk at Fox News during my time there was right next to that of Joe Muto, the notorious “Fox mole” who wrote stealthy dispatches about working at the place, until he was fired.  Muto now has a $100,000 or so book advance for a manuscript with the working title Atheist in a FOX Hole.  And readers everywhere will just have to hope the book contains juicier revelations than his “mole” articles did, since the biggest bombshell in those was probably the leaked video revealing that Romney sometimes talks about horses.

If I were the tell-all turncoat type – which I’m really not, unless you’re, like, plotting to kill someone – I could probably scrape together some kind of shocking tell-all (the things you don’t know about Joe Muto...), or...

•I could more naturally go the Pat Caddell route, warning (quite rightly) about the disturbing power the partisan press has when it decides to be a de facto one-party press, outlier Fox notwithstanding.  If the media have not-so-subtly hinted to each other that it’s OK now to be blatantly in the tank for the Democrats, the whole culture is imperiled in a truly frightening way. 

•And yet: I’ve been saying for years, since I first worked at ABC News, that the real “media bias” story is not political in the usual sense – though it will affect even tonight’s presidential debates (and may even help explain Gary Johnson’s exclusion from them, since he has only belatedly become a punchy, dynamic speaker, if you ask me). 

The truth is that TV, at least, is less left-wing (or right-wing, certainly) than concerned with its own internal aesthetic dynamics.  If a story has striking visuals or a short, clear soundbite, it doesn’t merely become more likely to get aired – it gets talked about by the visuals-oriented media as if it really is more important than the complex or non-visual stories.  And even if you think you’re a hardcore skeptic, you’re probably falling for it.  (I said way back in the 90s that if visuals didn’t matter, the Federal Reserve would probably be on the news all the time, and I suppose by that measure, things have improved.)

The Net has complicated the TV/press dichotomy, but just a few years ago, a good test of the truth of my point in the preceding paragraph was talking to people who got their news mostly from TV vs. people who got it mostly from print.  Sometimes there were “big” ongoing stories largely unknown to one or the other audience based mostly on the dynamics of their preferred medium (“There’s a kid stuck in a well?  When did that happen?”). 

And it’s not as simple as explosions getting more replays.  The very experts you think of as experts are dictated in large part, not so much by whether they are (in the strictly sexual sense) “good-looking,” but certainly by whether they are interesting to look at, by whether they say things in a way that quickly grabs the attention of channel-flippers.  And these people even end up more likely to be touted in print.  And the media get so accustomed to doing this, they don’t even think about it anymore. 

If you’re in a rush and producing something, you may have time to say, “Oh, she’s good!” but you will probably never find the time to say, more accurately, “Oh, she’s good, as a talker and a visual, compared to other physicists, at least given that we need to try to squeeze in another female for gender-balance and because women hold more eyeballs.”  (Shallowness is feminism’s best friend on TV, by the way, and don’t let them guilt-trip you into believing otherwise.)

And, as with so many things (sports, religion), people come genuinely to believe what it’s functionally most useful for them to believe.  So they really do think that guy’s a brilliant scientist, and this other one is an eminent psychologist, and so on.  And you believe it too.

Religion and Reform: Behold These Ten Comments

Religiosity is no guarantee of good behavior and may even distract people from the (highly educational) earthly consequences of their (un)ethical decisions.  And yet: religion provides an important enough socializing function for many people that we should not throw out the community-building and morals-inculcating baby with the superstitious and myth-spewing bathwater. 

That’s one of the cautious thoughts that makes me in some sense a social conservative of sorts even while being an atheist (and anarchist, etc.).  The question, then, becomes whether I should put my money where my mouth is by joining one of those churchlike-without-God sorts of organizations like Ethical Culture or some Humanist Society or something (forgive me if I’ve completely misrepresented their views, but you know what I mean).

Unfortunately, those organizations, judged from afar, appear to tend to be embarrassing mushy liberal/socialist New Agey Unitarian sorts of affairs – another argument for traditionalism, though not ultimately one strong enough to overcome the fact that there is no God.  Also, I’m busy.

However:

1. Tomorrow (Monday, Oct. 1) 7pm sees the NYSalon crowd (including some reformed Marxists) discussing the reformed-or-mushy state of American “spirituality” – with all its “I’m not into religion, but I’m very spiritual” weirdness – at a panel discussion at the New School (55 W. 13th, 2nd floor), and I’ll check that out. 

2. Dawn Eden’s talk at the First Things HQ a couple weeks ago was ecumenical in its own way, given her Jewish upbringing and rock n’ roll reporter past, despite what an admirable job she does of hewing to the rules of her adopted Catholic religion (no relativist she). 

But that was during this blog’s now-ending “Month of Reform,” whereas October shall be: a “Month of Media.”  That means more rock, less talk (well, also several interesting movies, so let’s focus on those instead of the exhausting election, in a surprise bit of counter-programming).

3. Eclectic in his own way – and bearded – is Dawn’s pal, First Things editor David Mills, who started out leftist and union-affiliated before going all Gandalf.  I suspect you will hear of him again on this blog as it navigates an increasingly strange and kaleidoscopic future.

4. Happily for the Jews (converted to Catholicism or otherwise), Sukkot tonight coincides with the Fox Animation Domination season premieres, as G-d wants humanity to celebrate, or would if He existed. 

5. Like many people, I highly recommend the gently and quietly Scientology-parodying movie The Master, which certainly captures the tension between the dangers of gullibility and the benefits (at least for those adrift) of structure, almost any structure.

6. Amidst Middle Eastern craziness from the Muslim folk,

BOOK NOTE: The Moynihan Report (blacks, gingers, and more)

The Moynihan report I refer to in the headline is not this week’s report that Michael C. Moynihan has gone from Reason to Vice to Beast (which sounds like a three-phase descent into Hell) – but he too would likely find the 1965 “Moynihan Report” (officially The Negro Family: The Case for National Action) interesting (and is not to be confused with a white supremacist also named Michael Moynihan without the C. in the middle). 

Today’s Moynihan has libertarian acquaintances (some of whom I spoke to last night) who, like so many of one’s acquaintances, ostensibly have the same basic political principles but end up at each other’s throats half the time over little sticking points on which I wish people would learn to compromise. 

(Some reading this likely think me absurdly libertarian, for instance, but might be amused to know I was likened to a fascistic condoner of rape yesterday online by a libertarian – a fine fellow in his own way – who was offended because I think we can reasonably deplore vandalism on public property as opposed to thinking all public property essentially an inherently-unprincipled no man’s land.  This debate arose as a side effect of my friend Pamela Hall getting spray-painted on the NYC subway while trying to defend a pro-Israel poster from a vandal, as you may’ve seen in a dramatic video clip.)

In similar fashion, most decent people were agreed in 1965 that America had to correct its gigantic, historic mistakes on race – yet it’s interesting how quickly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act the fissures appeared on what to do next.  I find myself fascinated again and again by moments in history where factions suddenly appear because no one had quite noticed that numerous conflicting principles had long been bundled together as if they were a single thing.

(To take perhaps my favorite example, look at the way nineteenth-century radicals worked happily together without seeming to notice that some of them were statist-socialists, some left-anarchists, and others capitalistic proto-libertarians.  When you’re a united front against the aristocracy or slave-owners [or whatever the enemy happens to be], you can overlook internal divisions for decades.  “Liberalism,” plainly, is a similar story – and more recently, “conservatism.”  If the numbers of “libertarians” increase enough, they will plainly be ready to replicate the phenomenon and sometimes already do.)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time a sociologist and an Assistant Secretary of Labor (under Kennedy and LBJ, later working with Nixon and Ford), released a report in 1965 – mere months into the modern legislative Civil Rights era, really – that already contained within it three profoundly different and plausible views on how to approach race in America. 

Out of (1) compassion and with a Democrat’s basic belief in the appropriateness of using government to address large-scale social problems, Moynihan nonetheless drew (2) the rather neoconservative conclusion (before affirmative action and the Great Society had even had set in) that the real problems of the black community were more rooted in sociology and family breakdown than in any remaining legal barriers that the government could fruitfully address, and (3) most libertarians at the time, had there been enough of them to bother asking for advice, would likely have concluded that government should stay out of the whole issue and let the market subtly steer people toward productive and socially-harmonious habits, as it tends (eventually) to do. 

The report indeed sparked great controversy (much

BOOK NOTE: Free-market environmentalism, animals, and comics

•I confess – though I am not really a collector anymore – that I checked out some of DC’s relaunched comics over the past year, finishing up (for me) with a few of the Zero Month issues (all numbered #0) they put out this month.  My main conclusion is that they’ve nicely simplified most things (almost like the whole universe is one big pilot episode for an animated series now, probably not by coincidence). 

There are already some bungles in the new continuity, such as both Dick Grayson and Tim Drake being the first person ever to deduce Batman’s secret identity, but on the bright side poor Hawkman, for example, seems to have a single, simple origin for the first time in twenty-seven years.  I wish them well.

(And for those wondering, no, I really will not even try to find out what this Trinity War they’re building up to is – I leave that for the young.  If my favorite comics writer, Grant Morrison – who is a strange man – actually finishes his miniseries Multiversity and his Wonder Woman graphic novel, though, I’ll probably come back a year from now to check those out.  If those don’t happen, there are literally ten major superhero movies coming out in the next two years, so I should be sated.)

•On a more serious note, the latest issue of Critical Review (Vol. 24, No. 1) contains, among other interesting things, Jonathan Adler’s article “Is the Common Law a Free-Market Solution to Pollution?” which presents some evidence that in the past the market didn’t always arrive at the hypothetical problem-solving means free-market environmentalists envision.  Sorting out who to sue when there are multiple effluent sources, for example, can very complicated.  No doubt true – but usually it’d be just as complicated for regulators as for class-action-suit lawyers, it’s important to note. 

Adler steers clear of the (almost “God of the gaps”-like) leap of assuming that what is complicated for markets is easy for government, though – and even notes, for instance, that the financial pressure from lawsuits can create purely market-based incentives to add things like tracer chemicals in effluent to prove you aren’t one of the polluters in a given area. 

As with countless other institutions such as mutual aid societies for poverty relief, industrial capitalism was only working on these issues for a very short time before government usurped the problem-solving mechanisms involved – and environmental issues weren’t as high a priority or as easily dealt with technologically in the past.  As with so many things, I think we can do even better in the future without resorting to government. 

(In the mushy interim, here is a partly public/partly private rhinoceros being guarded by men with machine guns as he roams around in Kenya, as I noted recently on Facebook.)

There is no reason to do anything rash like declaring ourselves “crunchy conservatives” (as Rand Paul does in his new book) or resurrecting nineteenth-century-style agrarian Toryism with its disdain for industrialism (at the same time, after yesterday’s entry, I’ll end the paleo-bashing, I promise – it’s just such an uphill battle to get people to make econ calculations as it is). 

•Love ’em or eat ’em, animals are mighty entertaining, so here are:

–three surprising species getting along

–even more-amazing footage of many, many species NOT getting along at all

–some serious competition for Maru from a dog in the box-entering department

–and a cat using utensils.

BOOK NOTE: Helen Rittelmeyer, Straussians, and 25 Reasons to Atone

[This entry was about that ex of mine from the CSPAN2 appearance going on to criticize utilitarians -- and about Straussians like historian Edward Banfield as well -- but it’s been a few years, I think she’s not only moved to Australia, gotten married, and matured but grown a bit more libertarian in the process to boot, so don’t waste any more time reading my comments about that old conflict. Read her more recent work if you like, and, our differences notwithstanding, I’m sure it’ll be smart and witty.]

International Day of Peace (and an evil computer)

Before I go off to dine with warmongers on this International Day of Peace, here’s an awesome five-minute 1970 sci-fi reminder (that works as a self-contained bit) that some prices (such as being enslaved by a super-computer) are too high to pay for world peace, from the film Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Peace-by-Colossus would also be an unacceptable form of reform (in keeping with this blog’s theme this month).  More next week on cures worse than their diseases.

Occupy Wall Street’s one-year anniversary warrants a Tea Party at Muchmore’s (but no dancing!)

Remember, both Tea Partiers and Occupants are welcome at tonight’s 8pm Dionysium gathering at Muchmore’s (2 Havemeyer St. on the corner of N. 9th in Williamsburg, one easy stop into Brooklyn on the L – just walked three blocks east of the Bedford Ave. stop).

I’ll be hosting a “summit” aimed at finding common ground between these two activist movements spawned by the Financial Crisis.  Creating a “post-Crisis reality,” if you will, may require fusing these alternate worlds – especially if we are to get beyond right and left and, as I think necessary, cope with the messier and far more technical problem of the elaborate overlap between corporation and state created by a century of regulation built upon a pro-centralization Progressive legal foundation.  What began with a misguided reformer’s impulse to perfect things through a multiplicity of rules now requires us to intelligently discard most of those rules and the web of subsidies and bailouts and too-big-to-fail favors that go with them. 

What better time than today – both Citizenship Day and Constitution Day in addition to Occupy’s one-year anniversary – to explore those issues?  But you can also show your support for Muchmore’s amidst another legal battle if you join us tonight: The place was just given a summons for ostensibly violating the oft-derided cabaret laws, yes, the archaic New York City laws against dancing that have been so often mocked here.  So join us – just please, for Muchmore’s sake, don’t dance. 

I guess I’ll have to hope local Tea Party-supporting rapper Toots Sweet doesn’t show up and bring this bevvy of dancing girls.