I have mentioned many times that Gosford Park is one of my very favorite films. But I’ve never really written about it. Tonight I sat down and watched it again and it has lost none of its power. It’s hard not to compare it to Downton Abbey which is like a cartoon version of Gosford Park. The difference is that Downton Abbey is pure genre. Godford Park is what we might call postmodern genre. It pretends to be genre but it isn’t. It is a manor drama where someone is murdered and there are lots of suspects. But no one really cares about the murder mystery and it is clear from the start that that the inspector is not going to get his man.

Although it is an ensemble cast with some of the best actors working, it is the story of Mary MacEachran, an inexperienced lady’s maid played by Kelly Macdonald. She is the first character we see at the start of the film and the last character with any dialogue, and pretty much the last character we see. Because she really doesn’t know her job, she acts as us. And as such, she is the only person who solves the murder. And she gains great wisdom throughout the film.

People always get mad at me for “spoiling” films by explaining what happens. I don’t think such complaints are valid. Barring truly surprising endings like The Sixth Sense and Psycho, we all know how films are going to end. But in Gosford Park, it probably helps to know what’s going on. Because it is the densest film I’ve ever seen. I’ve talked to people who have seen it once who had no idea what happened in the film. I had figured out what the crux of the film was within the first quarter of it, but it took me a good five viewings to get straight all the subplots. I think the importance of the orphanage is pretty obvious if you are watching the film closely. The script is really good at setting up the denouement.

But it isn’t the main plot that keeps me watching the film. It is filled with interesting characters, all trying to get through life as best they can. And although none of them are absolutely terrible people, most of them are not very likable. And sometimes it is very sweet. The three sisters are an exercise in literary formalism. One of the sisters married for money and has a miserable marriage. One of the sisters married for status and has a miserable marriage. And the youngest sister married for love and has a nice marriage, although they are constantly struggling financially.

The younger sister’s husband is Commander Anthony Meredith played by the always wonderful Tom Hollander. He is feeling defeated generally in life and has hid away in the jam cellar. Dorothy, servant responsible for the jams who is played by the equally wonderful Sophie Thompson comes upon him. He asks her, “Why is it, would you say, that some people seem to get whatever they want in life? Everything they touch turns to gold. Whereas others can strive and strive and have nothing. I wonder, do you believe in luck? Do you think some men are lucky and some men just aren’t and nothing they can do about it?” She responds, “I believe in love. Not just getting it, but giving it. I think that if you’re able to love someone, even if they don’t know it, even if they can’t love you back, then it’s worth it. And…” At that point, she realizes that she has been too forward and revealed too much of herself. She’s embarrassed, but his eyes have been opened. He says, “That’s a good answer.” Then he goes to his wife in the drawing room and kisses her quite publicly and passionately.

Now sure: that could be sentimental. But it isn’t. It’s just a simple scene that shows a man, who like all of us, has lost sight of what is good in his life by focusing on the little problems. He has the one thing that no other man in the film has: a wife who loves him. And even though everyone looks down on them, that’s not their problem. They have an absolute good. And the others are living their lives like they are playing a game.

The other standout subplot involves an aristocratic man who married a middle class woman for her money. The money turned out to be less than he had thought. And so he hates her because of their lack of money and because of her bourgeoisie tastes. He is cruel to her and arguably the least likable character in the whole film. But over the course of the film, she finds herself. She realizes that she has value and her husband is just a pompous bore. That marriage may not last, but he will no longer have the power over her.

Even my very favorite films have little flaws. Gosford Park has none. If you love great film, you owe it to yourself to watch it. But not just once. It takes a couple of times watching it to figure it all out. That isn’t to say that it isn’t enjoyable the first time. You will fully understand the film on one viewing, but it becomes richer and richer with subsequent viewings—at least up to six.

Afterword

I’m a big fan of Robert Altman, especially of McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye and many others. But Gosford Park is the best thing he ever did.

Jonathan Richman is 63 today. I am deeply divided about him. He is one of the most profound popular musicians of the last half century who was hugely influential in the punk movement. And much of his work is marvelous. At the same time, I can’t really think of an artist who is as lazy as Richman. For years, he released half-hour records filled with new versions of old songs—and never his best material. What’s more, his later songs are rarely refined, often in need of second, third, and fourth rewrites.

What was always best about his work was the raw emotion that he put into his songs. He was never afraid to admit to his emotional needs. At 17, when most young men spend most of their time pretending to be stoic and without need, Richman wrote, “People all over the world are starving… for affection.” But he’s widely misunderstood. Most of his work is pedagogical. In fact, if you listen to him carefully, he can be annoying because he is very interested in tell you how to live your life.

With the release of Richman’s second album, Robert Christgau wrote that the album needed “one funny song as astonishing as ‘Pablo Picasso’.” Christgau is wrong; “Pablo Picasso” is not a humorous song. It tells the story of a cool guy and how all the girls are just giddy over him.The refrain is “Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.” This is sometimes followed up with, “Not like you.” But the song ends with a devastating payoff, “Pablo Picasso was never called.” This is the defining theme of Richman’s work: you must risk being hurt in order to be loved. Sadly, it isn’t just Christgau who doesn’t understand this. Many people have covered the song and most don’t end it correctly. Most fans seem to think the song is about the painter. It’s really sad.

Even more sad is that most of the time, I don’t think that Richman knows what he’s doing. After boycotting the song for decades, he has begun doing it again. But now the song is more about confidence. It’s still pedagogical. But thinking is not his strength. The song is also an homage to the Velvet Underground, more so than any other song:

After this period Richman began doing charming children’s music that still holds up reasonably well, but is certainly nothing to be proud of. Finally, he came back to what the music was all about with a kind of stripped down surf music. His most fulfilling album was 1985’s Rockin’ and Romance. (Typically never released on CD.) That’s where his raw emotion met with having a wife and a child. Here is a live version of one of the songs off that album, “Now Is Better Than Before.” It’s adult without losing any of the youthful idealism of earlier songs like, “Girlfriend”:

And here is a little of his surf music from the same album, “Vincent Van Gogh”:

Happy birthday Jonathan Richman!

I sat down this evening and watched The Music Man. (Guess why.) In general, I don’t think musicals translate very well to the screen, but this film was even further harmed by the choice of Morton DaCosta to direct it. He directed the original Broadway version, and I’m sure he did a great job. He was, after all, a theater director. But the film is all over the place. At times it is just a filmed version of a theater piece, including fading spotlights to end scenes. But other times, it goes for realism. It’s disturbing because as a viewer, you never know how your supposed to approach the film.

One thing that I was more impressed with this time was Onna White’s choreography. It’s really fun and clever and completely in keeping with the time period of the film (1912). At times, its magical, as in the dance number for “Marian The Librarian.” But most dances numbers are at least denigrated by the direction. Overall, there is too much action. Each shot is filled with so many people, it is often hard to know what to focus on. DaCosta is in love with the long shot, like he had never seen any films past Griffith’s earliest.

Another problem is Shirley Jones. Her singing voice is so much stronger than all the other lead vocalist that it doesn’t seem to belong. (This is distinct from the ensemble singing that is without exception fantastic.) There is also an acting discontinuity between Jones and Robert Preston. As long as Preston is playing the cavalier con artist, he’s just great. But at the end, when the two of them fall in love, his performance is stilted and unconvincing. In fact, it is so much so that all these years I thought he was gay.

The film is sexist as it could be, not least of which portraying the affluent women as hens. And there is not a single non-white character in the film. It also portrays the people of Iowa in a very bad light and generally has a low opinion of small town America. It is, in short, an extremely cynical movie with a sentimental ending tacked on. But in its defense, the ending could have been a whole lot more sentimental.

Having said all this, you probably think I hate the film. That’s not true at all. It works. And it works on a number of levels. First, there are the songs. Meredith Willson was a genius. There isn’t a single song in the film that isn’t a winner. And Willson does something especially well that most songwriters do really poorly or not at all: he writes great bridges to his songs. The only person who rivaled him was Richard Rodgers in his early years.

The script is also very funny and clever. The respectable women in town are against Marian because she reads things like, “Chaucer… Rabelais… Balzac!” It’s funny at the same time that they’re right: those writers are dangerous to their small minded views of the world. And the film does a much better job of providing a back story for Harold Hill, where we see that in a fundamental way, he is conning himself more than anyone. This is paid off really well when Winthrop asks Hill, “What band?” And Hill replies ruefully, “I always think there’s a band, kid.”

The Music Man is a nice film and I definitely think it is something that you should share with your kids. I just wish the adaptation to the screen that been better done as it was in 1776. And interestingly, that was the same situation: the Broadway director also directed the film: Peter Hunt. And for obvious reasons, Hunt went on to be a highly successful film director. But in terms of the songs and the story, The Music Man is better. Not that the kids shouldn’t be forced to watch both!

Paul Waldman wrote an interesting article over at The Plum Line, The Maximum Freedom of the Rich to Influence Elections. It follows off of Harry Reid’s recent idea that we need to have a constitutional amendment
to reverse the Supreme Court’s recent “money is speech” rulings. From my perspective, this is far too little, far too late. But that doesn’t mean that conservatives aren’t freaking out at the thought of it.

Mitch McConnell’s spokesperson Don Stewart started tweeting out rubbish like, “Sen. Reid on the floor now calling for an amendment to the Constitution to restrict the First Amendment.” Given the assumptions, you really can’t argue with this. It’s just that the assumptions are all wrong. Imagine a city council meeting where everyone got to speak, but the only person anyone could hear was the one with the loudest voice. Would that be democracy? That’s what the “money is speech” argument is.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the fundamental libertarian principle (which is also the basis of conservatism more generally): government is the only entity that can limit your freedom because it is the only entity with the legal right to put you in jail or kill you. But that isn’t even true in the most basic way. I can think of three rich people who seem to have gotten away with murder: OJ Simpson, Phil Spector, and Robert Blake. And they all did it because we live in an Animal Farm country where everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.

There is no greater risk to the liberty of all Americans than granting the right of a tiny fraction of Americans to spend as much money as they like on presidential campaigns. I’m certainly willing to yield Stewart’s point: limiting campaign contributions would indeed decrease one kind of freedom in this country. But it would be far offset by the increase in the liberty of everyone to make their own unmolested political decisions. But Stewart’s argument is typical of libertarian argumentation: there are no competing interests. This is just an excuse to keep the status quo and to avoid increasing the total liberty of the nation. This is why, when you get right down to it, libertarianism becomes nothing but a system designed to remove all limits from the rich at the expense of the poor. Such a system would be even worse than communism under Stalin.

But I’m not too keen on many of the ideas out there for dealing with money in politics. Reid’s idea, as I said, is tepid stuff—even if it makes conservatives apoplectic. And I’m not too interested in Waldman’s pet idea of making all donations go into a blind pool were candidates didn’t know who gave to them. The problem, I think, is that this would work great for the super donors like the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson, because it isn’t just anyone who can give $100 million to a political candidate. There are other ideas—many others. Political scientists are really smart people. Personally, I would like to see strict limits to campaign lengths, but I don’t think that would be enough.

Regardless, I am behind any proposal that makes things better. Because what we have now is basically an oligarchy. And it is only getting worse.

On this day in 1915, probably the greatest American economist ever Paul Samuelson was born. He is the man most responsible for establishing Keynesian economics to its place as the fundamental basis of the science. But today, there are real debates as to whether economics is a science. There is no doubt that Samuelson was as scientist, and he did brilliant work in a number of areas, in the end publishing almost 400 papers. But what about the profession?

I think what liberal economists do is science. This is something that Paul Krugman talks about a lot. When new data come along, they alter their theories of the science. But look what happened to the conservative economists in the 1970s. When stagflation (high inflation coupled with high unemployment) happened, they found that economic shocks could throw the economy on tilt. In that case, it was an oil price shock. But instead of building on the Keynesian base that had worked so well to explain the economy up to that point, they threw it out. And what’s worse, they clearly threw it out because they didn’t like the political implications of Keynesian theory. The Keynesians, on the other hand, did use the shocks to build on the existing theory. (Although even they didn’t seem to do that great a job, but at least it was still science.)

Consider Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity. It didn’t cast away Newtonian mechanics. Newtonian mechanics was a special case of relativistic mechanics. That was one of the reasons we could have confidence in the theory. The same goes for quantum mechanics: if you pull out and look at macro-scale phenomena, you see that it becomes good old fashioned classical mechanics. That’s how science works. If you are bopping around from one incompatible theory to another, you aren’t doing science.

To this day, many conservative economists think that people like Samuelson and Keynes were wrong, or worse: a joke. This is despite the fact that Samuelson was hugely important in showing that the neoclassical approach to microeconomics leads to Keynesian macroeconomics. Of course to people who do economics as a science and not mathematical doodling, Paul Samuelson is a towering figure. He also built the MIT economics department, bringing in three really important economists who I’ve actually heard of: Franco Modigliani, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman.

Also, he was born in Gary, Indiana:

Happy birthday Paul Samuelson!

Many people have noted that voter-ID laws are a solution is search of a problem. But as Scott Lemieux has noted, that’s really not the case, The Vote Fraud Fraud: Still Fraudulent. Republicans saw a very big problem: the percentage of white people (especially the old and male ones) in the country was dropping, and pretty much no one else was interested in voting from them. So looking at that problem, they came up with the simplest solution imaginable: stop people who aren’t white from voting.

That was a simple solution because it has a long history of working. Two words: Jim Crow. Pretty much everything that whites did to stop blacks from voting into the 1960s is being done now. As I’ve noted before: if a citizen doesn’t have an ID necessary to vote, what is the requirement that they get such documentation? It’s a poll tax. When the government stopped high school teachers from registering students, what is that? It’s intimidation of voter registration drives. And there is a long list of other ways that the white elites worked to keep others from voting, all on display today, albeit without the same open campaign of terror.

It’s also really interesting that the Republicans have not pursued ways of stopping voter fraud through absentee ballot. That’s the kind of voter fraud that could be done on a large scale that might actually affect the outcome of an election. But absentee voting is something that is done by older white voters. You know: Republicans. So there is no concern about that kind of voter fraud. Again: this is because voter-ID laws are not about voter fraud. They are about stopping Democrats from voting.

A great example of this comes to us from Iowa where Secretary of State Matt Schultz released a report last week on voter fraud. After two years and a quarter million dollars, he found a total of 117 cases of “voter misconduct” with 17 more cases that are pending. That’s roughly 0.008% of all the votes cast in 2012—assuming those 17 pending cases come through. So is it a big deal? No. But even if it had been 99% of the ballots were cast illegally, it wouldn’t matter.

You see, these cases of voter fraud mostly involved non-citizens and felons registering to vote. And some of them involved people voting in two states, by absentee ballot in one of the states, we assume. Of course, none of this necessarily means these people actually voted. A non-citizen may have registered and then not voted. Someone who recently moved to Iowa might still have been registered in his previous state without voting there. So the number—small as it is—is likely overstated. But the most important thing is this: none of this kind of voter fraud would be addressed by requiring voters to show identification at the polls.

What Schultz is doing is what Republicans always do in these cases: show that there is some voter fraud and then argue that this fraud justifies laws that would have no effect on that kind of fraud. The truth is that any complex system will have errors in it. For example, reducing food stamp fraud means that a lot more people who ought to get food stamps won’t. The only way to eliminate fraud is to eliminate the program. In order to eliminate voter fraud, we would have to eliminate voting. The question is, which is better: a slightly imperfect democratic system or a non-democratic system?

But in this case, the Republican push for voter-ID is not about doing anything about voter fraud. It is about voter suppression. This is why states have reduced early voting: there is not even a pretense of fighting voter fraud there. It is all about stopping the Wrong Kind of Voter. This dates back to the earliest days of our republic. But at least men like John Adams were honest enough to admit to their own elitism. Now the elitist party has half the country convinced it is looking out for their interests. Meanwhile, white people vote to keep Those People in their place, while their tax dollars continue to go to Exxon and other “deserving” causes.

H/T: Jonathan Bernstein

Emily Dickinson famously wrote, “The Heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot as it relates to two of my favorite conservative writers: Josh Barro and Dave Weigel. Both are smart young men who see the conservative movement for all its silly ridiculousness. But each has a soft spot for a Republican politician that simply can’t be explained by who they are. In fact, in the only thing that really distinguishes the objects of their affection are idiosyncrasies that make them less generally appealing, not more. So Barro loves an loudmouthed bully and Weigel loves a neo-confederate subgenius. The heart wants what it wants.

Josh Barro’s infatuation with Chris Christie is the harder one to understand. I know that among the pundit class, Christie is seen as a practical politician who is willing to work across the isle. But that really isn’t true, and Barro is far too smart to believe that. Christie is an absolutely pure conservative. There is no major issue on which he disagrees with his crazy party. Sure, he gives himself a little ideological wiggle room to not froth at the mouth about Muslims, but he is governor of a blue state after all. And he’s governed in an extremely conservative way. This is the man who has killed important public works projects and has done all he can to destroy the public pension system. (You know: contracts only matter when they apply to rich people!)

But Barro just loves him. In fact, he loves him so much that I simply won’t read him anymore when he’s talking about Christie. It’s always the same apologetics. Christie could be caught poisoning squirrels in the park and Barro would argue that it means nothing because squirrel lovers don’t vote in presidential primaries. Last November, Barro wrote a classic, Let’s Stop The Hand-Wringing About Chris Christie Being A “Bully.” In that article he’s pushing against this idea (that I share) that Christie’s obnoxious act is going to alienate just about everyone outside of New Jersey. Reading Barro on Christie always reminds me of the Far Side cartoon where the dog is trying to lure a cat into a clothes drier, thinking, “Oh please, oh please…” Barro is hoping against hope that the object of his affection will be the next president.

But my all time favorite was the article I wrote, Josh Barro Phenomenon. Barro liked the article so much that he tweeted to me, “your post is the dumbest thing I’ve read today, and I read several other dumb things today.” But based upon another tweet, it was clear that he didn’t understand what I was talking about. Christie had just killed the Hudson River tunnel. Christie did it for his usual conservative reasons like, you know, that he hates regular people and that he wants to save money to give to his cronies. But Barro was right there to make the reasonable sounding argument, “The project is filled with waste!” Well, sure; that can be said about every project ever done. But the truth is that he will always find some reasonable excuse for why Chris Christie is right.

I don’t mind that Josh Barro is in love with Chris Christie, but does he have to flaunt it in public. I mean, there are children watching!

The situation is somewhat different with Dave Weigel. It has to be. Barro is an idealist and Weigel is a cynical curmudgeon. (And he’s only 32; imagine him in his 70s!) Almost everything that he writes oozes with playful disdain. If Bokonon had been a journalist, he would have been Dave Weigel. Yes, it’s a funny old world. When all the world follows his advice and kills themselves, he will wryly note that people are strange as he goes off in search canned foods and shelter for the night

But as a bleeding heart libertarian, Weigel has a strange fondness for Rand Paul. I understand: they are both at least nominally libertarians. But Paul is no kind of bleeding hearter. He’s very much like his father Ron Paul who I did not vote for when he ran for president as the Libertarian Party candidate when I was a registered libertarian. Because the Paul family isn’t even libertarian; they are neo-confederates. They are anti-federalists, as Steven Taylor describes in The Anti-Federalist Impulse. So why is a “social justice” kind of libertarian like Dave Weigel so infatuated with Rand Paul? I guess we just have to depend upon Ms Dickinson: Weigel’s heart wants what it wants, and apparently that is the pre-epiphany Grinch sized heart that resides in the mostly empty chest cavity of Rand Paul.

When Rand Paul announced that voter-ID laws were not a good thing for the Republican Party, I didn’t mention it. What was there to say? All he meant was that it was bad public relations. But many liberals were annoyed when he walked back even that tepid statement to proclaim to the world that he was shocked that people would think he was against voter-ID. And just to prove that Paul really is just a neo-confederate, his PAC director Doug Stafford said, “Senator Paul believes it’s up to each state to decide that type of issue.” Just like in the good old days of Jim Crow!

But Weigel, always eager to prove his fealty to his guy, was having none of it, Rand Paul’s Voter ID Walkback. You see, Rand Paul didn’t actually walk back his comments. He still means them: voter-ID is bad for the Republican Party, but move it along. It’s fine. He just wants to link them to his noble efforts to give felons back their voting rights. I’m all for that, as I wrote last month, Stop Assuming All Felons Are Murderers. But it’s only 11 states where voting rights are not automatically restored after felons complete their punishment. And most of those 11 states are red states. So I suspect Rand’s interest in the issue is more about being viable in the Republican primary in Mississippi than in any thoughts about what is right.

Still, who else turns Rand Paul’s cretinous position on voting rights as a laudatory article about Rand Paul, the ex-con’s best friend? Only someone in love with the man for reasons the rest of us cannot see. The same goes for Josh Barro. I really don’t understand how two really smart, knowledgeable, and clear-eyed political commentators can be so blind about these objectively awful men.

If Emily Dickinson were around today, I think she would say, “The Heart wants what it wants—because it’s blind and stupid.”

A lot of politics is just about differences of opinion. You know: reasonable people can disagree. I’ll give you an example. I believe in a guaranteed minimum income. Providing this would allow people to go out and be creative: they could build innovative businesses without worrying that failure would ruin them. It would also raise the wages of difficult and boring jobs because people could get by without doing anything. And it would improve the level of human dignity. But there are those who say the opposite. They claim that it is only when people are staring into the face of total destruction that they come up with great ideas. I think they are totally wrong and history proves it, but these people really do believe what they argue.

What if, however, the state of California started a project to provide a guaranteed income and it worked really well. Suddenly, California’s economy was booming with highly innovative new products and the happiness index went through the roof. Imagine that the people that didn’t believe in a guaranteed minimum income tried to hide the success of the program. Or even worse: imagine they tried to keep the people in California from knowing about the program so they didn’t take part in it. That would be evil.

Well, that’s what we have with Obamacare. Jonathan Cohn reported yesterday, A Shameful Victory for Obamacare’s Opponents. McKinsey and Company did a study of Obamacare and found that about half the people who shopped on the exchanges ended up not purchasing insurance. But here’s the key, “[T]wo-thirds of these people said they didn’t know they could get financial assistance.” How proud the conservative movement must be that their disinformation campaign worked so well!

You may remember back last year when Sean Hannity had on four couples who were hurt by Obamacare. It turned out that all the people were mistaken. But I was especially interested in Robbie and Tina Robison:

Or there was Julie Boonstra who just knew that Obamacare was going to cost her money even though it was going to save her well over a thousand dollars per year. These and many millions more have been lied to very effectively by the right wing disinformation system. It’s disgraceful.

I’m sure that as the years go on, everyone will see that they are better off with Obamacare than they were before Obamacare. Eventually, Republicans will stop talking about it and Fox News will find that it doesn’t boost their outrage ratings. Within ten years at the most, we will be at that glorious moment of, “Keep your government hands off my Obamacare!” But the cynic in me will still be sad. Because all the same “journalists” will be lying about something else and all the same viewers will have learned nothing and will believe whatever lies come next.