Monthly Archives: June 2015

Whiny Comedians Are Just Growing Old

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Jerry SeinfeldYou may have heard the recent brouhaha regarding Jerry Seinfeld who claims that he no longer performs at colleges because all those mean kids are so politically correct. He specifically complained about the fact that one of his jokes doesn’t play because of the sensitivities of the youngins. On Late Night With Seth Meyers, he said, “I do this joke about the way people justify their cell phone — ‘I need to have it with me’ — because people are so important. Well they don’t seem very important the way you scroll through them like a gay French king…” My first reaction was that maybe the reason that joke doesn’t work that well is because it isn’t that good a joke.

There is the common response to that, which I’ve heard for years from professional comedians, “If people don’t laugh, it isn’t funny; if they do laugh, it is.” I agree with that. That’s why I try very hard to say “I didn’t think that was funny” rather than “that wasn’t funny.” The truth is that something I don’t find funny at one moment I might find hilarious at a different moment. What’s more, different kinds of people like different kinds of humor. But here is Jerry Seinfeld explaining that his joke just is funny and there is something wrong with the kids who don’t find it funny. Could it be that Seinfeld is now 40 years older than the college kids and the problem is with him? Could it be that he’s like the old Borscht Belt comedians who didn’t get Lenny Bruce?

Bill MaherI was listening to Sam Seder the other day and he was talking about Seinfeld’s recent whining. He wasn’t sympathetic — but for a very interesting reason. He said that he was a huge Sam Kinison fan in the 1980s. Now Kinison was known for pushing the envelope of what was considered acceptable. And so there were always television talking heads discussing what Kinison had recently said that was totally over the line. And, Seder said, it seemed that there would always be Jerry Seinfeld there as the example of the “good” comedian. And Seinfeld, while not criticizing Kinison, would talk about how he worked clean — or something along the lines of what those Borscht Belt comedians used to say when they facilitated the attacks on Lenny Bruce. So to Seder, there’s a kind of hypocrisy in what Seinfeld is doing now. Of course, the great irony is that Kinison was in trouble because he was pushing comedy forward; Seinfeld is upset because he’s being left behind.

Nathan Rabin wrote an excellent editorial about this over at The Los Angeles Times, Seinfeld and Maher: More Cranky Than Comic These Days. This sums up his point:

Both comedians seem to think they are taking stands against oppressive touchiness, but when I watch them rant, I think of old men yelling at kids to get off their front lawns. They see that their jokes don’t get the responses they once did, but instead of blaming themselves, they blame the world.

Maher is an even bigger issue for me. I’ve never liked Jerry Seinfeld. I’ve always thought he was a middle of the road comedian doing tired observational humor. And I thought the show was so hateful that I had a hard time getting into it. But Maher is a different matter. He does wear his politics on his sleeve. And even though I disagree with him a fair amount, I admire the attempt. At least he has an edge. But he falls into brainless libertarianism and I tune him out. Humor depends upon the listener’s connection to the truth of the material. When a joke is premised on something that goes entirely against my worldview, it is jarring and so not funny. I’m the wrong audience for the joke. But if Bill Maher is performing for an audience of people like me, it’s his fault a joke dies, not ours. He is not paid to stand up there on the stage and say things that he wants to say; he’s paid to entertain us.

No comedian is perfect. It’s a hard job. But the fact that Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher may not get quite as big a laugh on some of their jokes is hard to be sympathetic to. There are new comedians who are up on stage alone dying night after night. Seinfeld ($800 million dollars) and Maher ($30 million) are rich men. They don’t need to perform at all. In fact, if they stopped performing, they would provide some room for up and coming comedians. But the least they can do is to stop whining. None of us care.

The Economic Progress Lie — It Ain’t All Good

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Dean BakerThere is an issue that makes a lot of people think that I don’t understand economics. It is this idea that we are so much better off now than we used to be. This is used as a justification for things as diverse as excessive and ever growing inequality and deforestation. The theory goes: well, there may be bad things about our economic system, but everyone has so much higher a standard of living, it’s worth it. But do we really have a higher standard of living? In one way: yes. Sugar used to be a luxury; now it is cheap. But in another way, we don’t. Now we have sugar in all our foods devaluing the extra sugar we get.

But I accept that increases in food availability are important. But there haven’t been major improvements in this regard in my lifetime. When it comes to the technological innovations that people think of, I am unimpressed. Remember the great Peter Thiel quote, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” I always think of music distribution. When I was very young, I had a transistor radio and we used to walk around listening to it. Later there were Walkmans. Then MP3 players. And now Pandora. Each of these are marginal improvements, but hardly revolutionary. None of it is any better than wandering around a used record store and finding Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat and having a religious experience.

I was very pleased to read a recent Dean Baker article, Is the Middle Class Better Off? Economists’ Poor Logic on New Goods. The article is in reference to the hypothetical, “Would you be willing to trade an income of $50,000 in 2015 for an inflation adjusted $100,000 income in 1980, knowing that you can only buy the goods and services available in 1980?” The answer is supposed to be, “Of course not! How would I ever live without Netflix?!”

This falls right into what I was talking about before. At that time, we had VHS players. What’s more, there were actual good local rental companies where you could get what you wanted. I’m not saying that things aren’t better now. But they aren’t substantially different. And if you are interested in things that are a little out of the ordinary — little films like Medicine River — you may not be able to find them at all now. Of course, you could instead go to your satellite television where you will find half the stations running paid advertisements, reruns of Pawn Stars, and other content that is in no way better than the reruns of Gilligan’s Island that I grew up watching.

Baker noted that this question is a false one. “Ask someone who lived in the suburbs in the 1960s how they would feel living without a car. It would be pretty awful, but just 30 years earlier most middle class families did not have a car or think they needed one.” I’ve lived without a car for many years now. Overall, I think my life is better for it. Sometimes it’s a pain, but that is due to the way society is now organized around the car. Or consider the cell phone. I now feel freaked out if I leave home without my phone. But that’s ridiculous and I quickly realize that it is no big deal. I’m sure there are a lot of people who would gladly give up their cell phones if it would mean that their free time was unmolested.

But the biggest issue with this hypothetical is that a $100,000 income would provide something exceptional that no amount of consumer gadgets will ever compensate for: economic security. The biggest thing that limits happiness in modern America is economic uncertainty. Along with that better income at that time comes certainty that you will maintain that job and retire with a pension. It means allowing you to do what you want with your time. Sure, you wouldn’t have your movies streamed by Netflix. But if you lose your job tomorrow, you are going to lose you your Nixflix account anyway.

Technological progress is a great thing. But it comes at a cost. More and more, I don’t think that cost is worth it. But regardless of where anyone comes down on the question, everyone should agree that there are very real costs we pay for our constant marginal improvements in the “goods and services” that we can buy.

Morning Music: The Bob Newhart Show

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The Bob Newhart ShowMy first real introduction to jazz was probably listening to theme shows in the early 1970s. One of my favorites was the theme from The Bob Newhart Show called, “Home to Emily.” It was nominally written by the series co-creator Lorenzo Music. It’s a pretty enough tune. But it is actually what film composer Patrick Williams did with it in terms of arranging and producing the song. I just love the sound of it.

When I was in college, I really wanted to start a band that could play like this. But even if I had those kind of organizational skills, I would have had no business playing in it.

Anniversary Post: Giordano Bruno Crater

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Giordano Bruno CraterIt is almost impossible to resist marking this day as the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. But I am a science nerd at heart. And so on this day in 1178, the Giordano Bruno crater was formed on the moon. How do we know? Well, there were these five monks in Canterbury and they were looking at the moon. Being the 12th century, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. Then as now, everything on television was crap. And they saw more or less an explosion on the moon.

Gervase of Canterbury was more or less the Christ Church historian at that time. And so he related what the other monks had told him. He then wrote, “From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the Moon which was below writhed, as it were in anxiety, and to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the Moon throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed its proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then, after these transformations, the Moon from horn to horn, that is along its whole length, took on a blackish appearance.” Pretty amazing!

The truth is that we don’t know that this asteroid impact was what created the Giordano Bruno crater. There are other explanations. For example, what they could have seen was a meteor exploding in the earth’s atmosphere, but aligned so that it looked like there was an explosion on the moon. Either way, it’s a pretty cool thing. I like to think that it was the Giordano Bruno impact. Because that crater was named after — You’ll never guess! — Giordano Bruno.

Giordano Bruno is the man who only 400 years later would be burned alive by the very same church because of various ideas he had — including that the stars were suns that were very far away and that there were other worlds. I know a lot of my atheist friends like to blame this on religion. But that’s really unfair. The problem is humanity itself. We are a fearful species and it brings out our greatest cruelty. At the same time, there are incredibly liberal religious people and incredibly fearful, vicious non-believers.

But let’s just say happy anniversary to the Giordano Bruno crater. And let us ask forgiveness for what we did to Giordano Bruno. All too often, we know not what we do.

The Exorcist Is Too Serious But Still Enjoyable

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The ExorcistThe second to last episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus is “Mr Neutron.” It is widely reviled and considered one of the worst episodes of the series — if not the worst episode. I think it is comedic genius. The main storyline is about Mr Neutron: “easily the most dangerous man the world has ever seen.” Yet he spends the entire episode hanging out in the suburbs discussing gardening and falling in love with the cleaning woman. In the end, the humans destroy the world out of their fear of him. As I watched The Exorcist earlier today, I thought a lot about Mr Neutron.

For all the really stupendous things that Pazuzu does to poor little Linda Blair, he seems perfectly contented to hang out in that room. And he is powerful. It takes Death over an hour and half to kill of Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal, and Pazuzu manages to do it in the couple of minutes that Jason Miller steps out for a breather. Although that does feel a bit forced. They knew that they were dealing with a dangerous creature — prone to staying in one room — but dangerous nonetheless. It had, after all, killed the film director; it sprayed green goo everywhere; and it twisted that poor girl’s head in circles. Oh: and levitation and moving stuff around and making the room cold.

But the thing about the film is that it is highly effective. The first half of the film is classic suspense — the kind that we used to get in haunted house movies (also in more recent films like The Others). Early scenes like when Ellen Burstyn goes up in the attic looking for rats are chilling. So by the time we get to the last 20 minutes of the film where Blair is wearing an inch of makeup and we enter the world of Poltergeist, it doesn’t seem silly. Although out of context, that part of the film is indeed silly — very silly.

The real problem with the film is the center section. There is too much time spent trying to justify the premise. It’s a movie after all. If I had a little girl who came down stairs at a party, just to urinate on the carpet, sure, I’d think she might need to see a doctor. But if she started freaking out while her bed was bouncing around the room, I wouldn’t go to the group of doctors and complain that they kept telling me my daughter had a brain tumor.

Ultimately, this is what keeps The Exorcist from being a great film. It takes itself too seriously. It’s fine to spend half a movie questioning if the impossible is really happening. But that’s only true if it is never clear what’s really going on. In this film, that isn’t the case. Pazuzu is mad at Max von Sydow and apparently, this really oblique way was the only way to get to him. Overall, I’d have to say that Constantine does a better job of this aspect. But it’s third act is weak (although the scene with Peter Stormare is great), and with The Exorcist we get the previously mention green goo and rotating head — which is awesome.

It’s also notable that on a technical level, the The Exorcist is first rate. I loved the cinematography. And the editing is paced really well. The dialog is usually pretty weak, but the outstanding cast makes it work anyway. But for a horror film made over forty years ago, it holds up remarkably well. Still, it’s more fun to watch House on Haunted Hill or The Shining.

Afterword

There is much I could say about the theme of the film. Maybe I will at some later time. I’ve got the flu and I don’t feel up to it. But the film doesn’t deserve too much analysis. It touches on a few things, but doesn’t take anything very seriously. But hey: green goo.

Kansas Balances Budget on the Backs of the Poor

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Sam BrownbackWe should not be happy about this, Brownback to Sign Historic Sales Tax Hike After Bruising Budget Battle. As I’ve written about a lot around here, Kansas is in big trouble. Governor Sam Brownback wanted to cut taxes in his state. So he did what conservatives always do when they want to do something insane: he went out and found himself a heterodox economist who would tell him what he wanted to hear. It wasn’t hard. He went to Art Laffer who has been saying that tax cuts pay for themselves since the 1970s. He’s always been wrong, but that hardly matters.

So in the case of the recent tax cuts in Kansas, Laffer was wrong again, and the state has found itself with a huge budget deficit — 12% short in the fiscal year starting next month. They’ve already savagely cut their spending so now they are to the point where they have no choice but to raise taxes. Now the logical thing to do would be to raise the taxes that they lowered. But that is not acceptable. You see, those taxes were lowered on rich people. And despite what conservatives say, they don’t care about low taxes in a general sense; they care about low taxes on the rich.

You know Grover Norquist — the guy who all the Republicans rush to so they can sign his pledge to never raise taxes. Well, that pledge isn’t actually about all taxes. It’s just a pledge to stand against increasing “the marginal income tax rates.” That’s because the federal income tax is the only federal tax that is progressive. Richer people really do pay more. (Extremely rich people don’t, because they make “unearned” income.) When Congress was set to raise the payroll tax — an extremely regressive tax that hits the poor hard — Norquist was all for it. So just remember that: conservatives are for lowering the taxes of the wealthy; they don’t care about the taxes of anyone else.

The Kansas legislature came up with two tax increases to make up for the corporate giveaways of the last couple of years. The first is an almost 6% (0.35 percentage point) increase in the sales tax. Sales taxes are great from the standpoint of conservatives. They screw the poor, but inch by inch, so that it isn’t really noticed. Are you really going to notice that your laundry soap costs two cents more? Sure, the hundred bucks you lose for the year will be noticeable, but you won’t know who to blame; you’ll just have a vague feeling that you are falling behind — because you are.

The second tax increase is going to be noticed. And it is going to make people mad. Kansas currently taxes a pack of cigarettes 79 cents. The new law will increase that by $1.29 — that’s a total of $2.08 tax on a pack of cigarettes. Now you might say, “Great! We should discourage smoking!” And I agree to some extent. But poor people are more likely to smoke. And if we are doing this for public health reasons, the tax should go toward helping people get off cigarettes and toward treating cigarette related illnesses. This Kansas tax is just meant to grab some money from the most vulnerable people in our society.

Remember: Sam Brownback was just re-elected governor. And what he is doing now is going to make a lot of people really angry. Yet this is no bait-and-switch. Brownback is doing what he’s always done. This is more of what I wrote about recently, Swing State Voter Regret Is Killing Me. When the price of a pack of cigarettes jumps up to $7.00, there will be a lot of Kansans who will think they’ve been screwed by Brownback and his cronies. But they’ll be wrong. A lot of poor and middle class people vote for people like Brownback thinking that he would never hurt them. They are deeply confused. Maybe some day they will learn.

Afterword

I know a surprising number of people who are on disability who are Fox News addicts who consistently vote Republican. When I ask them why they vote for politicians who will, if they get the opportunity, cut their support, they brush it off. The Republicans, they claim, just want to get “those” people — the scammers — not good deserving people like themselves. It’s pure delusion.

Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Real Liberal

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Hillary ClintonMatt Yglesias reminds us of something important, Hillary Clinton Has Always Been to Obama’s Left on Economics. This is part of Clinton’s branding campaign. And I have always accepted this. One of the narratives to come out of Bill Clinton’s presidential tenure that I think is actually true is that Hillary was the more liberal of the two. Of course, it was generally presented as, “Bill Clinton is extremely liberal but Hillary is a radical.” Neither of those statements were true, but I think they got the ordering right. I don’t think that Hillary Clinton would ever have ended welfare as we know it.

Now I understand that Hillary has always come off as something of a war hawk. But is she any worse than her husband or Barack Obama or George W Bush? More to the point, could she possibly be as bad as the Republicans running for president? The only candidate for whom a case could be made would be Rand Paul. And he has shown himself to be easily pushed towards a more arrogant and belligerent stance. And let’s not forget that George W Bush ran on an isolationist policy — he wasn’t going to get involved in any “nation building.”

But the truth is that I don’t care. Regardless of what presidential candidates say about foreign affairs and the national security state, the moment they get into office, all the generals and spooks take the new presidents aside and explain that if they don’t continue on with business as usual, there will be a terrorist attack and the president will be blamed. I’m not sure if this is done out of actual concern or in a coercive way, “Nice country you got here; it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.” But the end result is the same.

None of this really matters to me. I am liberal right down the line, but the truth is that without economic justice, pretty much everything else is worthless. Racism wouldn’t have a tenth of its power if the nation had relative economic equality. Racism is fed by rich people convincing poor white people that their problems are due to poor black people. That doesn’t mean that I don’t fight against racism — including my own — but it does mean that I am focused on economic issues. If there were actual populists in this country — economically liberal and socially conservative — I might have some trouble knowing who to vote for. But as it is, the people who are terrible on social issues are also terrible on economic issues. When it comes to the Democrats, they tend to be good on social issues and okay on economic issues.

Yglesias noted:

The truth, however, is that on the kind of pocketbook issues Clinton spent most of yesterday’s speech discussing, she’s always been on the left wing of the Democratic Party. She’s been in the public eye far too long to have avoided inconsistencies over the years. But in positional terms, somewhat to the left of Obama — or Bill Clinton — on economics is where she’s been this whole time.

Yglesias went on to note that Clinton ran to Obama’s left on economic issues in 2008 and that she was the head of the leftist wing in the Bill Clinton White House. None of this makes me want to abandon my support for Bernie Sanders. I was just going over his page at On the Issue, and there is remarkably little that I disagree with. But the bottom line is that Hillary Clinton is a perfectly acceptable Democrat. And she has potential to be a great president. People should stop saying that she’s just pretending to be liberal to get the nomination. She really is a liberal.

Morning Music: Édith Piaf Again

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Édith PiafI just watched The Exorcist — which I assume I will write about later today. The film is unrelentingly serious and bleak. So I think I owe myself the treat of something of ultimate beauty and happiness. And nothing makes me happier than listening to Édith Piaf — even if there is a current in her work that soon the music will stop and we will all die.

Here is “L’Accordeoniste,” which, admittedly is not a happy song. But it is beautiful and poignant. If you prefer, you can listen to “La Vie en Rose” or “Non, Je ne Regrette Rien.” Otherwise enjoy this song about a prostitute who forgets her troubles while listening to your accordionist husband play — until he is sent off to war and killed.

Anniversary Post: Taj Majal

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Mumtaz MahalOn this day in 1631, Mumtaz Mahal died in childbirth. It was her 14th child. She was the star of that early television show, “14 Kids and Dying.” Interestingly, her last baby — a girl, Gauharara Begum — lived to be 75 years old — the second oldest of her children. Mumtaz Mahal was married to Shah Jahan. He was only a couple of months older than she was, and she was the love of his life. When Jahan became the Mughal Emperor of India, she because empress. But none of this is why we remember her.

Jahan was so heartbroken when Mumtaz Mahal died shortly before her 38th birthday, he started to build the Taj Mahal to house here tomb. It took 21 years to build (although it was mostly completed after 11). It is unquestionably one of the greatest architectural achievements in the history of the world. and it is a touching story as well. But I would add that most great art created by men was done to impress and honor what is objectively the better sex.

Taj Mahal

Happy anniversary the beginning of the Taj Majal!

People Still Do Doctor Faustus — I Wonder Why

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Doctor FaustusThere is a new production of Doctor Faustus that just opened in New York at the 200-seat Classic Stage Company, starring “Mr Big” from Sex and the City, Chris Noth, as Faustus, and and veteran screen actor Zach Grenier as Mephistopheles. I have a great fondness for the play, but it still remains a mystery to me why anyone would want to produce it. A standard line about it is that the play has a beginning, a muddle, and an end. And you know that from the start: Faustus sells his soul for 26 years of Mephistopheles entertaining him. And at the end, he learns the valuable lesson that 26 years of playing pranks on the pope is really not compensation for an eternity of damnation.

That gets to the even bigger problem with the play. Faustus is not a likable character. He’s clearly an idiot. When Mephistopheles shows up as he is, Faustus requests that he change into a Franciscan friar. While it is clever of Christopher Marlowe to get a demon to walk the stage throughout the play as a religious figure, Faustus comes off as a small minded man of petty privilege. What’s more, he does not make his deal with the Devil out of any duress but rather boredom. He’s the most arrogant of characters — thoroughly disagreeable.

Faustus’ servant Wagner is far more engaging. In the context of the play, he too is wavering off the path of righteousness. But he does it only because he sees his master acting badly. But he is smart in a way that Faustus is never shown to be. Wagner manages to trick Robin into be his servant. And that is about the end of Wager’s acting on the dark side. His character all but fades away toward the end of the play.

Far more interesting is Mephistopheles because he seems truly to be a tragic character. Of course, we don’t see how he got to his damned place, but we see the results. In my various attempts to rework the play, I always find that even after his damnation, Faustus still doesn’t get it. He’s just a silly person. Mephistopheles, on the other had, exudes sadness and wisdom. And it is hard not to sympathize with him for the 26 years he must spend with Faustus who — despite all his academic credentials — has no noble aspirations or interests.

I’m sure the production will be like those of all Elizabethan plays: highly edited and finessed so as to make them better than they are on the page. There is, regardless, a lot of fine poetry on the page — much more than, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” One nice thing about Marlowe’s writing is that, when well performed, you can hear the poetry. It can be very pleasing. I think there has been too much work done to make Shakespeare sound too naturalistic. Although his work was already well into the process of naturalism that continued up to the Restoration. So I hope the production embraces the poetry rather than obscuring it.

But I still don’t see much point in doing Doctor Faustus. Although it is a better choice than yet another one of Shakespeare’s plays.

DNC on Donald Trump 2016 Announcement

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Donald TrumpWith Donald Trump’s announcement that he is running for president, DNC National Press Secretary Holly Shulman released the following statement:

“Today, Donald Trump became the second major Republican candidate to announce for president in two days. He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward [to] hearing more about his ideas for the nation.”

—Democratic National Committee
DNC: Donald Trump “Adds Some Much-Needed Seriousness … Lacking From the GOP Field”

Crazy Republican Says Drought Due to Abortions

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Shannon GroveCalifornia is going through it’s worst drought on record. Four years we have been suffering from a lack of water. There is basically no snow pack. The situation is dire and Governor Brown has done a number of things to address the situation like water rationing. But according to Republican State Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, we have the wrong approach. The drought is not due to a high pressure system sitting off the west coast pushing away winter storms. It is due to the fact that God is unhappy with us because we haven’t passed laws to make abortion illegal.

According to RH Reality Check, Grove was speaking at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet. And with a Bible in hand that she waved above her head, she said, “This is the infallible word of God!” The fact that people like this have political power is truly frightening. A lot of Americans are worried about the Islamic State. But it is over there. It isn’t in charge here. But people like Grove have a lot of power and they are no more rational. I don’t see how it would be hard to convince Grove that we ought to be stoning homosexuals, given that the Bible is “the infallible word of God!”

But then she got down to the subject of the California drought. “Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she said. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.” In other words: if the state of California would just pass a law making abortions past 20 weeks illegal, our drought would be over. It’s amazing that NOAA hasn’t picked up on this simple solution. There’s no need for general circulation models; it’s all right there in the Bible. Except, of course, that it isn’t right there in the Bible. Like most modern American Christians, Shannon Grove decides on her own what the Bible means and then claims that that is the literal word of God. I call it hubris, and God looks down on that in the Bible.

What I think is fascinating about this is how it shows what the anti-choice movement really thinks of life. As soon as Perry signed that law, it rained. And then this year, well, the rain rain rain came down down down. And 46 people died in the flood this year. We don’t know how many people have died or will die as a result of our drought in California. But none of this matters, because people like Grove and her buddies in the anti-choice movement don’t care about humans after they are born.

Grove has also looked at California’s drought from a political perspective. Back in 2009, she was complaining about water used to support endangered fish. She said, “What civilized society destroys its own food source for a three-inch fish?” Of course, that’s not what she actually means. What she means is, “What civilized society puts the smallest pressure on corporate profits to protect an important ecosystem?” Of course, the issue isn’t the fish anyway; that’s just a nice way to blame our drought on those long-hairs. The point is that we can’t approach the drought in a rational way; the drought is an opportunity to demagogue in the name of business interests and fundamentalist Christianity.

Grove is, of course, not alone in her vile nuttery. World Watch Daily editor Bill Koenig has also blamed the drought on abortion and — What a surprise! — same-sex marriage. Columbia Christians for Life director Steve Lefamine had the nearly 2,000 deaths as a result of Hurricane Katrina all worked out, “God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion.” But somehow God never judges us for all the innocent people we kill in war. Consider this table from War Made Easy:

War Civilian Casualties
World War I 10%
World War II 50%
Vietnam 70%
Iraq 90%

But these have nothing to do with the California drought. That’s because, once again, these people don’t care about human life. That’s why I refuse to call them pro-life — although there are people like Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig who I think do quality for that name. But people like Shannon Grove are just demagogues who want to deprive people of rights in the name of pushing their pro-corporate and authoritarian policies. It’s disgraceful. Maybe God’s mad at them and that’s why California is having this drought. But most likely it’s just that stable high pressure system.