In order to escape the heat yesterday, I snuck away to the cheap movie theater and watched Star Trek Into Darkness. I was none too pleased with the first “new old” Star Trek. In particular, I don’t buy most of the characters. The only one who manages to make me believe he’s the real guy is Karl Urban as McCoy. The others are silly caricatures like Scotty (with all due respect to Simon Pegg) and Chekov. Or they are banal Hollywood archetypes like Kirk and Uhura. I wasn’t expecting much from the movie and it delivered.

The film is a good example of what has become of action films. Into Darkness effectively takes the two Nicholas Meyer Star Trek moves and puts them into one. Instead of using the episode “Space Seed” as background, it is put right into the film. But rather than the Enterprise finding the Botany Bay, the head of Starfleet uses Khan to start a war with the Klingon Empire. So you have The Wrath of Khan with The Undiscovered Country. Yet both of those films are better. A large part of it is just that Meyer actually knows how to tell a story. But so does J. J. Abrams, when he wants to (e.g. Super 8). I think the bigger problem is that because of how easy and cheap CG effects now are, action scenes take up far too much time in these movies. You can literally leave the theater at the beginning of an action sequence, buy some Jolly Joes, flirt with the ticket taker, and be back in your set before missing any important plot information.

But the film is fine. It works. Star Trek is by its very nature a silly franchise. It should have been a half hour shorter. But hey, the people need time to finish their popcorn. Regardless, it was a hell of a lot better than Man of Steel.

There were, however, two things that really bugged me about this film. The first is that I don’t like being pandered to. My knowledge of the original cast Star Trek is far greater than I would like to admit. I hated it every time the film tipped its hat to something in the future. I know all about Dr. Marcus. I know that she and Kirk are going to hook up and that she’s going to give birth to Kirk’s only son and that in The Search for Spock, he will die and Kirk will get to say his best line ever, “Klingon bastard! You killed my son!” I do not need to see Kirk ogling the young Dr. Marcus in her underwear. Not that I ever mind looking at Alice Eve in her underwear.

The second thing that really bugged me was far, far worse. When did Dr. Marcus suddenly become British? Her father isn’t British. She isn’t British in 20 years when she and Kirk reunited in The Wrath of Khan. What the hell is that all about? Similarly, when did Khan become British? Because 20 years later, Khan will talk like this:

What is going on? The producers decided that if anything, Scotty and Chekov had to have even more silly Hollywood accents, but Marcus and Khan could just become whatever? And here’s the thing: Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch are fine actors. They could have done the accents. They’re from England. Unlike most American actors, they’re trained. Karl Urban managed it. Jeez!

Afterword

I could go on and on about how Star Trek generally betrays all of its high ideals for the future of humanity. But let me just say this: the worst thing is the way that it is so rigidly hierarchical. If we are to survive for another 250 years into the future, we have got to get beyond that. And it is interesting in Star Trek Into Darkness that there isn’t even much in the way of token women commanders. It is as though the producers today are no more evolved than they were in the 1960s.

I have basically been in agreement with Sean Trende about the Republican Party’s option regarding being a white party. But there is a very big difference. Trende seems to think it is a good idea; I think it is just the Republican Party’s only option given that they are unwilling to do anything to moderate their ideology or stop their pandering to what is essentially a bigoted base. Well, Trende is out with a fourth article that shows in excessive detail that Republicans can continue to win election with this New Southern Strategy.

To some extent, however, Trende is attacking a straw man. No one I know is making the argument that Republicans can’t or won’t win elections if they don’t broaden their appeal. The argument is that it will get harder and harder. And Trende effectively concedes this point. His whole argument is predicated on the idea that Republicans can win 70% of the white vote. I find this a highly dubious contention, although it is a lot easier to imagine now that the Supreme Court has effectively shot down the Voting Rights Act.

Yesterday, Francis Wilkinson pushed back on Trende’s argument, Republicans’ Dead-End Search for ‘Missing White Voters’. He argued that the numbers are all well and fine, but this isn’t just about numbers. He said that the current demographic makeup of the Republican party is a “crisis of legitimacy”:

I would go further. The more that the Republican Party becomes seen as the party of whites, the more that whites themselves will rebel against it. There is a lot of identity in politics but only the most extreme don’t wince at the thought of identifying as white in this regard. There is too much history and no one wants to be associated with white bigots setting fire hoses on black protesters. And note: the Republican Party wouldn’t have to become overwhelmingly white to be perceived that way; it would only take the kind of white-focused campaign that Trende envisions.

None of this changes my notion of what will happen, however. I like Trende—I think he is a brilliant analyst. I’m tempted to say that he has harmed the Republican Party by demonstrating that they don’t have to make any changes. But I don’t think that’s right. This is another case like Reinhart and Rogoff. The Republican Party was always planning to push further into being a white party. Trende has simply supplied them with the intellectual grounding to justify it. This will not end well.

I just read a short essay by David Foster Wallace, “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed.” It really made me think how much we are prisoners of our brain chemistry. Because Wallace gets it. He really understands what life is all about. And yet he chose to end his own life to avoid the psychic pain that leads many brilliant and insightful people to do so.

I don’t talk about this a lot, because I think it just disturbs people. Life is a form of anti-art. It is like we are all composers working on a piece of music that no one will ever hear. Eventually, no one will even know that it existed. It won’t even be like those Shakespeare plays that we only have titles for. Our lives come to nothing and I absolutely do not mean that metaphorically. The process is the art. And that is glorious!

Wallace understands this completely. He wrote in the essay:

I understand: it is dark. It is hard. People don’t like to think this kind of thing. But to me, this is freeing. On my best days I feel like a painter whose brush cannot err. And the memory of those days carry me through the days where it seems all I do is brush more grey on top of the grey from the day before. And for me, that is enough. Sadly, it was not enough for a mind as great as David Foster Wallace. And now all that is left of his art are shadows in the form of his writings and others’ memories. That would have happened eventually, of course. But songs that end abruptly as so frustrating.

Das ist nicht komisch.

[1] “This is funny.”

On this day in 1714, the great German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck was born. I have a great fondness for him because his Flute Concerto in G was one of the first real pieces of music I ever learned. He composed during one of my very favorite periods: the transition from Baroque to Classical. He’s also very interesting for a curious historical fact. Gluck’s protege was Antonio Salieri. And despite the fact that Mozart disparaged him in one letter to his father as one of the Italians who were holding him back, Salieri was about the least Italian composer of that period. He may have been Italian in birth, but spiritually he was all German. I tend to think he was just that way and that is why he and Gluck hit it off so well. Gluck, like Salieri, was primarily an opera composer. It was the great age of opera. Mozart certainly thought of himself as mostly an opera composer. Yet Beethoven, born only a few years later composed all of one opera. Opera didn’t do well in the early days of the Romantic period. (Actually, I would say that music didn’t do that well in most of the days of the Romantic period, but I don’t want to start a fight.) Here is a fragment from Gluck’s opera Alceste:

And speaking of Germans, the great writer Hermann Hesse was born in 1877. Rene Lacoste, the tennis player who invented those stupid alligator shirts, was born in 1904. He was apparently know as “the alligator” because of his aggressive style of play. Also because he couldn’t move his jaw from side to side. (That’s an alligator joke; look it up!) Bizarre and brilliant science fiction writer Cyril M. Kornbluth was born in 1923.

Civil rights icon, Medgar Evers was born in 1925. It is strange, but no injustice in the world has quite the grip on me as his murder. I find it almost impossible to talk about him and even writing about him makes me upset. I think that an excellent movie could be made based upon his investigation of the torture murder of Emmett Till. I’m surprised that no one has done that. Anyway, if you don’t know about Medgar Evers, you should at least watch this Democracy Now! segment about him on the 50th anniversary of his murder:

And Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas was born in 1932.

Polly ‘Kiss My Grits’ Holliday is 76. Stock car racer and sexist asshole Richard Petty is also 76. Comedian Larry David is 66. One of my favorite character actors, Saul Rubinek is 65. So he won’t be acting anymore. And truly amazing pianist Roy Bittan is 64.

The day, however, belongs to the great Thurgood Marshall, who was born in 1908. He is probably best remembered for being the first African American on the Supreme Court. And in recognition of his service, when he retired, Bush first tried to replace him with Robert Bork. When that didn’t work, we got stuck with Clarence Thomas. If Marshall had just hung on like all the conservative justices and served until he died, Clinton would have been able to replace him. Imagine what a huge difference that would make today. For example, the Voting Rights Act wouldn’t be effectively abolished. Regardless of this, I most remember Marshall for successfully arguing Brown v. Board of Education. He was a great man who would cry to see the way that people like Samuel Alito dump all over his legacy.

Here is a great interview of Mike Wallace with Thurgood Marshall after Brown v. Board of Education:

Happy birthday Thurgood Marshall!

Afterword

Can you imagine how Mike Wallace’s son Chris would have handled that interview? I don’t think too ill of Chris Wallace, but I feel certain that in the context of the time, his interview would have been something that today we would see as explicitly racist.

Steve Benen revisits an issue that he and I have both discussed a lot. Back in March, I wrote about Rob Portman. He is the anti-gay rights Republican who suddenly became pro-gay rights when he learned that his son was gay. The point is not that there’s anything wrong with this. It is natural. But most of us don’t have to experience something personally to empathize. To take it to extremes, I don’t have difficulty feeling sorry for pedophiles; it must be awful to be sexually attracted to children—especially in a society that sexualizes children. (This does not mean that sexual predation shouldn’t be criminalized.) Why is it that so many Republicans seem unable to understand the difficulties of anyone not exactly like themselves or their families?

The most recent example of this comes from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Cantor is (theoretically) in favor of more money for medical research. Very insightful conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru asked Cantor, “What do you tell your Republican colleagues who are inclined to say, ‘Look, we spent too much money as it is?'” And Cantor replied: because his dad’s sick. That’s it. Before his father got a rare disease, Cantor had no reason to think that maybe the whole country should work together to find cures. But now it’s personal.

I think that conservatives believe that making these claims humanizes them. And it may well be the case that people perceive it that way. But to me this just screams, “I’m a selfish asshole! I only give a shit about anything if it directly affects me!” This is what I think when I look at the Cheneys. As you probably know, they are extremely conservative—except when it comes to gay rights. And they are only liberal on that one issue because their daughter is gay. As I wrote before, “How can these kinds of conservatives look at their entire ideology with this one exception carved out and still maintain their faith (because it is nothing if not pure faith) in the rest of their belief system?”

What explains it is that conservatism as a philosophical system is nothing but a polite rendering of “childish selfishness.” If you are a conservative, you don’t think that taxes should be low because that’s fair. You think that your taxes should be low because otherwise it harms you. You don’t want to pay for artificial limbs unless you need one. You don’t want environmental regulations on what you do, but you will freak out if someone else’s pollution affects you.

Now look: I understand that the “serious” conservative thinkers aren’t like that. But this is how the national Republican Party behaves. Sometime back, I entered a bumper sticker design contest run by the local Republican Party. I offered up this:

But that isn’t quite right. It is more accurate to say that Republicans are the “Fuck You Party.” Their guiding philosophy is, “I’ve got mine; fuck you; and the only way you will change my mind is if somehow I lose mine.”

So Eric Cantor is for more medical research because daddy’s ill. I’m sure he’ll find the money by taking it from something he doesn’t care about—like nutritional aid. I’m sure he doesn’t know anyone on SNAP. So fuck them.

Chris Kluwe is a punter for the Oakland Raiders. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by punters because their kicking legs went up so high. You’ve got to be flexible to do that kind of thing. And in a game as unrelentingly boring as football, the punters and kickers are kind of cool. But I had never heard of Kluwe until yesterday when I read an article he had written for Salon, Here’s What’s Wrong With Ayn Rand, Libertarians.

He read Atlas Shrugged and determined what was wrong with John Galt: he lacks what Kluwe calls “rational empathy.” What he means by this is basically the Golden Rule. And that is not a form of empathy. One doesn’t have to agree with another or think that one might find himself in the same situation to empathize with that person. Kluwe accepts Ayn Rand’s philosophical framing: I’ll help you because it helps me and for no other reason. He just wants to soften the rough edges of her philosophy. The problem is that he’s attacking a caricature of that philosophy. Objectivism is really no more cruel than the philosophy that Kluwe has on offer.

There is so much to criticize about Ayn Rand. Corey Robin has long been very insightful about her melodramatic approach to life, as in Garbage and Gravitas. Or if you prefer something less intellectual, there’s Kevin Drum’s question about the timing of Atlas Shrugged. Or there is my own discussion of Ayn Rand as the racist she was, Ayn Rand and Indians. But Kluwe just bites around the edges of Rand as if he pretty much agrees with her. He even repeats a tired conservative canard about the “welfare collectors who churn out babies because it means another weekly check to buy shoes or purses.” Why doesn’t he come right out and say what he means: the welfare queen in a Cadillac.

None of this really mattered as I read the article. Kluwe is not a public intellectual and he was at least grappling with ideas that very few people do. Then I got to the end of article where it said, “Excerpted from the book Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies by Chris Kluwe.” This is a big complaint of mine. Kluwe made $1.6 million just from playing football last year. Does he really need to publish a book in an already crowded industry? This is what I wrote about Stephen Colbert:

But in Colbert’s case, he can actually write. Kluwe’s writing, despite all the editorial help he undoubtedly received, is weak. It’s awkward. He repeats himself in an almost random way that reeks of a first draft. Yet the book is a best seller—not because it is a good book but because Kluwe is a star in the NFL. This is yet another reason we have The Winner-Take-All Society: because success in one field guarantees it in all others. We can only hope that Kluwe doesn’t get it into his head to start a band and direct movies. But if he does, I assure you they will be hugely popular.

Afterword

Am I jealous of Kluwe? Of course! It is entirely unfair that such a literary and intellectual mediocrity gets to write for Salon. There is no way this SubGenius would be published there or anywhere else except that he apparently can punt a football with great skill. It is an offense to all serious writers—good and poor.

I came upon this exceptional video of Tim Wise talking about white privilege. His basic thesis is that the power elites of this country use racism to keep the poor from getting their rightful share of the rewards of this country. He tells the story that I know from Michelle Alexander’s excellent The New Jim Crow. There was no “white race” when the American colonies started. There were lots of indentured servants of European and African origins. The problem was that they had a tendency to bind together and revolt against powerful land owners. That wouldn’t do. So the elites got a great idea: divide and conquer. They defined the whites as slightly better than the blacks. That put an end to the rebellions because they could depend upon the poor whites for support.

The idea is immortalized in this great scene from Mississippi Burning, “If you ain’t any better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?”

As Wise points out, this is still just as useful a tactic today as it ever was. They used to tell Southern whites, “If we end slavery, the blacks will take your jobs!” That’s a powerful argument for poor whites who are just barely getting by. Today the same thing is said about Latinos, “If they become legal, they’ll take your jobs!” Divide and Conquer. That way, the poor will never know what’s killing them: the unjustified riches of the power elite.

Here’s Tim Wise’s brief talk, which is well worth the ten minutes it runs:

Early Baroque composer Claudio Saracini was born on this day in 1586. Modern master of projective geometry, Jean-Victor Poncelet was born in 1788. Female French novelist who wrote under the name George Sand was born in 1804. Grammarian William Strunk Jr was born in 1869. Silent film pioneer Alice Guy-Blache was born in 1873. She was one of the people who started making narrative films instead of stupid things like Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat and Seminary Girls. She made over 400 films during her career, including 22 of feature length.

Charles Laughton was born in 1899. The great director William Wyler was born in 1902. His films ranged from Wuthering Heights to Funny Girl. Estee Lauder was born in 1906.

On this day in 1915, one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century was born, Willie Dixon. His songs have been performed by countless performers. And often, they gave him credit. If you play the blues, you probably already know that half of all the tunes you play were written by Willie Dixon. Here he is on Saturday Night Live doing “Spoonful”:

And another fine director, Sydney Pollack was born in 1934.

Actor Karen Black is 74. Choreographer Twyla Tharp is 72. Debbie Harry is 68. Here she is with Blondie doing “Rapture”:

And Dan Aykroyd is 61.

The day, however, belongs one of the greatest mathematicians ever Gottfried Leibniz, co-inventor of calculus and so much more, who was born in 1646. And unlike Newton, Leibniz wasn’t an asshole.

Happy birthday Gottfried Leibniz!

There is a great deal of pretending in public life. For example, people pretend to care about children who float away in balloons. But they don’t really. They like the drama. But they don’t know the kid or the parents. The kid is probably a brat and the parents, as we now know, are assholes. This situation is so much worse in politics. The Onion made fun of this recently in an article, Romney Drops By To See How Down-And-Out Family He Met On Campaign Trail Doing. As we all know, “humanizing” campaign stops are about as real as the Tooth Fairy. Think: Paul Ryan cleaning pots at a soup kitchen.

But the fakery goes much deeper than that. What I most hate are claims by politicians that they are helping rather than hurting. The common argument is that we need to gut welfare programs to protect the poor from the horrors of government dependence. You see, it is those meanie liberals who want to help the poor who are really hurting them. Of course, if conservatives really wanted to help the poor, they would provide universal healthcare for the poor; they would provide good (equalized) schools; they would provide free college. Think about it on the most basic level: if conservatives wanted to help the poor, they would at least provide good food for their children. But what did the conservatives in the House of Representatives just do? The moderates voted to cut nutritional assistance. The extremists voted against this because it didn’t cut enough. So I think we can reasonably conclude that when it comes to the poor, conservatives are only using claims of helping as an excuse for taking money away from them.

It would be a major mistake to think that conservatives only want to harm the poor. Since I’m not able to write a book here, I can’t list all the harm that conservatives would like to do. So let me just mention a convenient example: women. Over the past few years, we have seen campaigns that claim that abortion hurts women. The problem with this claim is that it is true, but misleading. Walking to the store kills women. More than 10 pedestrians are killed every day here in the United States. Walking, like just about anything else you do, can harm you. The question is not whether walking is a totally safe thing to do but rather if the risk is reasonable—especially compared to other options. (Similarly, about two people are stuck by lightning every day in the US, although only about 10% of them die.)

So what about all those dangerous abortions that conservatives are so worried are harming our women folk? Well, it turns out: not so much. Matt Yglesias alerted me to a paper published last year, The Comparative Safety of Legal Induced Abortion and Childbirth in the United States. And they found that women were 14 times as likely to die from childbirth as from a legal abortion.[1] But if the conservatives get their way, we can likely equalize those numbers—maybe even make abortion more dangerous. A liberal might say we could equalize the numbers by providing more prenatal care for poor people. But that might increase the danger faced by poor women as they travel to the doctor. Silly liberals.

I understand the best arguments against abortion. I don’t accept them, but I understand. There is no reasonable argument that a 16-cell zygote has equal rights to its human host. But at least I can interact with such arguments. The vast majority of the anti-choice community doesn’t make those arguments. Most of the arguments just come down to a puritanical belief that slutty girls should suffer. But the argument that these people are just looking out for the health of the women are contradicted by the science. It’s very simple:

Childbirth is dangerous.
Abortion is not.

Any questions?

Afterword

Here is the abstract of the paper:

[1] If you look around, you will find people claiming that far more women die from abortions than child birth. This is referenced to a journal Medical Science Monitor, but not to a specific article. Also, the same journal has published other questionable anti-abortion articles. Regardless, the discussion at Pregnancy Choices 4 Me indicates that previous studies were flawed because death certificates claimed the wrong cause of death in 73% of cases. Regardless of how accurate this is, it does not relate to the study discussed here. There is also the question of spontaneous abortions (miscarriages), which have nothing to do with abortion law and everything to do with increasing prenatal care.

This afternoon at the Plum Line, Jamelle Bouie provided, Yet Another Reason to be Skeptical That the GOP Will Reform. Bouie is a “glass half full” kind of guy. But that doesn’t make him naive. Still, that headline is almost sweet; I can’t but smile at the thought of us needing another reason to be skeptical of GOP reform. The Republicans have been approaching crazyland asymptotically so long that they’ve arrived from any practical perspective.

Bouie provides a number of good examples: Texas’ Obamacare refusal and abortion clinic restrictions; Louisiana’s push to turn income taxes into regressive sales taxes; Kansas’ successful attempt to do the same. And now there is North Carolina screwing the unemployed. As Bouie notes, “As a matter of policy, the cuts make little sense. But as a matter of ideology, they fit perfectly.” Indeed they do! These Republicans are mad as hell about mythical problems and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Plus, they need the extra money to subsidize ExxonMobile, which only made $41 billion in 2011.

Where I think that Bouie goes wrong is in thinking that these actions will hurt the Republican Party. Only 50 years ago, the Democratic Party was racist and yet no one blames the current Democratic Party. People hardly blamed the Republican Party after Nixon—Ford almost won re-election. The Republican Party can be as vile as they want as long as they win elections. And the moment that the electoral tide changes, the Republicans can turn on a dime and the people will not blame them at all.

I understand that I am a cynic. But I’m almost never let down. There have been far more cases of Republican corruption than Democratic corruption, but it hasn’t made a bit of difference. Part of the problem is the media. It always treats the two parties as though they were equally valid. If one party started calling for all Mexicans to be put into concentration camps, the media would dutifully report that as the center-right position. (Since I’m on the subject: what the hell is “center-right” and “center-left”? By European standards, the Democratic Party would be considered center or slightly conservative. The Republican Party would be called far right. In what sense is Barack Obama center-left. How is Lindsey Graham center-right? All these labels do is hide the fact that our political system is far out of whack.)

Political parties always follow public opinion; they never lead. Just look at same sex marriage. Obama was against it until he was in grave danger of being drowned by the wave of public opinion. The true movers and shakers in that cause were the brave men and women who—at great risk to their relationships to their families, friends, and employers—came out publicly and said they were gay. And in 20 years, gay men and women will not be any more likely to vote for one party than the other. It just won’t be an issue. The Republicans of that time will pay no price for their decades of homophobia and scapegoating.

The same goes for Latinos and any other minority group that the Republicans currently vilify. Consider George Wallace, one of the most vocal and repellent segregationists in our long and colorful history. In 1982, he claimed to have been wrong and all was forgiven. He was again elected governor of Alabama. And he did some good—making a record number of black appointments to state positions. But the point is, he paid no price for his past behavior. And the same will be the case for the Republican Party generally.

After The New Yorker published their great “Bert and Ernie” cover celebrating the recent same sex marriage decisions from the Supreme Court, there was understandably much debate. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association called it child abuse. And he has been somewhat supported by the Children’s Television Workshop who claim that, “Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

I’ve never thought of Bert and Ernie as a gay couple, but they do represent an archetype the same way as Oscar and Felix on The Odd Couple and Frasier and Niles on Frasier. No one is suggesting that these characters are doing the nasty off screen. But they provide in a metaphorical sense something that we rarely see on television: married couples who are equals. But Bert and Ernie do something that we never see with similar characters: they sleep in matching twin beds in the same room, just like married couples in the golden age of movies:

What I find interesting about the magazine cover, is that there is nothing specifically sexual about it. What it shows is intimacy. And that is what Bryan Fischer is angry about. It upsets cultural standards that dictate that men should never be gentle or close with each each. Anything beyond a slap on the back or a punch in the arm might lead to anal sex in a public park. (I assume that people like Fischer spend a good deal of time imagining men having anal sex.)

But I think these kinds of proscriptions are what make men so screwed up. In social interactions between men, I estimate that half of all the time is spent communicating, “I’m not gay!” And that has led me to believe that most men are a hell of a lot more gay than they know. Or at least that unless they keep up all this macho bullshit some gay guy will come onto them. Louis CK has a brilliant routine about when he was younger how this gay bar owner was constantly trying to have sex with him. Twenty years later, he talks it over with a friend and figures out that the actual story was just, “There was this gay guy.” Regardless of how ugly or out of shape a guy is, he thinks everyone just wants a piece of that.

I think much better of Bert and Ernie. I suspect they do cuddle on the couch as they watch TV at night. The one thing I would take exception to is their choice of content. I think they would be more into comedies and musicals. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.