Maya Angelou and My Education

Posted on 28 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

I just found out that Maya Angelou has died. I was never a big fan of her poetry, but she was a great narrative writer. I loved I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings when I read it in high school. And there was one part that I especially liked. It was in Chapter 5. The two children have been sent to live with their grandmother—Momma—because their parents’ marriage was ending. And she describes this incident where these poor white girls come by each morning to taunt Momma. They are the lowest of the low, but they think because they are white, they are above the blacks. But they must know this is not true, based upon their behavior.

When Momma sees them coming, she sends the children inside. But she will not let these white girls affect her. Here is most of the passage, but I will warn you, this passage is one of the reasons why the book is often removed from schools. To me, it is one of the most profound things I’ve ever read:

Before the girls got to the porch, I heard their laughter crackling and popping like pine logs in a cooking stove. I suppose my lifelong paranoia was born in those cold, molasses-slow minutes. They came finally to stand on the ground in front of Momma. At first they pretended seriousness. Then one of them wrapped her right arm in the crook of her left, pushed out her mouth, and started to hum. I realized that she was aping my grandmother. Another said, “Naw, Helen, you ain’t standing like her. This here’s it.” Then she lifted her chest, folded her arms and mocked that strange carriage that was Annie Henderson. Another laughed, “Naw, you can’t do it. Your mouth ain’t pooched out enough. It’s like this.”

I thought about the rifle behind the door, but I knew I’d never be able to hold it straight, and the .410, our sawed-off shotgun, which stayed loaded and was fired every New Year’s night, was locked in the trunk and Uncle Willie had the key on his chain. Through the fly-specked screen door, I could see that the arms of Momma’s apron jiggled from the vibrations of her humming. But her knees seemed to have locked as if they would never bend again.

She sang on. No louder than before, but no softer either. No slower or faster.

The dirt of the girls’ cotton dresses continued on their legs, feet, arms, and faces to make them all of a piece. Their greasy uncolored hair hung down, uncombed, with a grim finality. I knelt to see them better, to remember them for all time. The tears that had slipped down my dress left unsurprising dark spots and made the front yard blurry and even more unreal. The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.

The girls had tired of mocking Momma and turned to other means of agitation. One crossed her eyes, stuck her thumbs in both sides of her mouth, and said, “Look here, Annie.” Grandmother hummed on and the apron strings trembled. I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles.

One of the smaller girls did a kind of puppet dance while her fellow clowns laughed at her. But the tall one, who was almost a woman, said something very quietly, which I couldn’t hear. They all moved backward from the porch, still watching Momma. For an awful second I thought they were going to throw a rock at Momma, who seemed (except for the apron strings) to have turned into stone herself. But the big girl turned her back, bent down, and put her hands flat on the ground—she didn’t pick up anything. She simply shifted her weight and did a handstand.

Her dirty bare feet and long legs went straight for the sky. Her dress fell down around her shoulders, and she had on no drawers. The slick pubic hair made a brown triangle where her legs came together. She hung in the vacuum of that lifeless morning for only a few seconds, then wavered and tumbled. The other girls clapped her on the back and slapped their hands.

Momma changed her song to “Bread of Heaven, bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more.”

I found that I was praying too. How long could Momma hold out? What new indignity would they think of to subject her to? Would I be able to stay out of it? What would Momma really like me to do?

Then they were moving out of the yard, on their way to town. They bobbed their heads and shook their slack behinds and turned, one at a time:

“‘Bye, Annie.”

Momma never turned her head or unfolded her arms, but she stopped singing and said, “‘Bye, Miz Helen, ‘bye, Miz Ruth, ‘bye, Miz Eloise.”

Note the girls call the older woman by her familiar name, and she replies respectfully to each of them. I felt then as I feel now, like the young Angelou: I want to kill those girls. But Momma was right. Momma is an extremely strong woman. And a better person than I.

Maya Angelou was 86 years old. She will be missed.

Democrats’ Senate Chances Keep Looking Better

Posted on 28 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Over the weekend, Martin Longman, as part of his usual duties at Political Animal wrote, I Am Optimistic About the Senate Races. I am not quite as optimistic as he is, but I still tilt in his direction, so I thought it would be useful to go through his argument.

Let’s start with the bad news. He has given up on Tim Johnson in South Dakota. But he is also quite gloomy about John Walsh in Montana and Natalie Tennant in West Virginia. I think he’s being way optimistic on these last two. The Upshot provides a great comparison of five groups who are handicapping the election: The Upshot itself, 538, Cook Political Report, Rothenberg Political Report, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Of all three races, the best prediction for Democrats is Rothenberg, that finds Montana a toss-up—and if you go to their site, you’ll see even it thinks it tilts Republican. Anything can happen, of course, but this is a clear -3 for the Democrats.

Now we get to the more winnable races. First up, we have good ol’ Mark Begich of Alaska. Everyone seems to agree that this one is a straight tossup, except (strangely) 538, which gives a slight advantage to Begich, even though they still think the Republicans have the edge in keeping the Senate (or at least they did back in March when they last calculated it). Similarly, pineapple crusher Kay Hagan of North Carolina is looking the same, although The Upshot is slightly bullish on her. For Longman, this means we’re going to keep these seats. For old statistical me, I think it means we’ll keep one of those seats. So that’s a likely -1 for the Democrats.

He also noted:

Mark Pryor of Arkansas has opened up a double-digit lead in the polls, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana had a 24% lead in the April New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation Poll.

That’s putting far too good a spin on these races. 538 (which is out of date, but still) and Rotherberg both have these races leaning Republican. And Longman is putting way too much emphasis on that one poll. The Upshot only gives Landrieu a 41% chance right now. Again, I’d split the difference and give the Democrats a -1 on this. That puts us at -5 thus far—one less than the Republicans need to take over the Senate.

Longman also takes it as a given that the Democrats are going to take Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, and New Hampshire. I tend to agree, and I have to say that I don’t understand why people give Mark Udall such a low chance. The best is 61% from The Upshot. But I think that the Democrats will manage to keep all those seats. But if the Democrats lose just one of those seats, the Senate goes red.

There is one other element here. There are two Republican seats that could go blue. The first is Georgia, which I wrote about this weekend, Could Michelle Nunn Win in 2014? On that race everyone gives the advantage to the Republicans. But I’m encouraged in this race. Nunn polls especially well against Kingston, and he seems to be the guy that the Republicans want to nominate. In the end, it is all going to come down to turnout. But I really do think that Nunn could pull this one out. Still, the best you could say is that it is a tossup.

The other Republican seat is just too delicious: Kentucky, where the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is up for election. At this point, everyone agrees that McConnell has a big advantage over Alison Lundergan Grimes. But McConnell is not well liked in the state, and if Grimes can find an issue that resonates with the voters, she could win. Thus far, she seems to be getting some traction with the Medicaid expansion. Other than the true believers on the right, I don’t think McConnell’s position on that issue makes much sense. “Why do you want to deny healthcare for poor people and not stimulate the Kentucky economy?” Still, you have to say this one is McConnell’s to lose.

Right now, The Upshot give the Democrats a 58% chance of keeping the Senate. And their likeliest scenario is exactly what I’ve just outlined: 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans in the Senate. Given the Democrats hold the White House, that means they would have control of the Senate. Much will happen in the next five months though. I’d like to think that the economy will continue to improve. That makes many of the marginal Democratic candidates far more competitive. If that happened, it could easily end with the Democrats only losing one seat: 54-46 Democrats. But if the economy tanks, I think you have to assume the Democrats losing seven seats: 52-48 Republicans. But that’s likely the worst we would see.

It doesn’t look like the catastrophe for Democrats that many Republicans are expecting, even under the worst conditions.

Rude and Useless Comments

Posted on 28 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Who cares about comments There is an issue with comments around here that even after almost five years, I don’t get. There are people who agree with me and go into some depth about details. There are questions. There are people who disagree with me and make cogent arguments. And then there are people who just come around to yell at me. It’s very frustrating because these people seem to not actually read what I’ve written. They are angry at me and so they grab onto something I’ve written and blast me on that.

This morning I had such an experience. For some reason, my article Ayn Rand and Indians has been getting an incredible amount of traffic recently (it always gets a fair amount). I assume this is because a popular Facebook account posted it. I’m glad. I’m proud of the article. One thing I know a lot about is Ayn Rand. It’s kind of funny. There are a lot of libertarians who run around thinking that Rand is super keen without having read much or any of her work. They just take it on faith (Really!) that the smart woman had it all figured out. She didn’t. There are gaping holes in her work because she didn’t take philosophy seriously.

This brings us to the following comment by a guy who runs a Philippines-centric website VINCENTON with the subtitle, “Free Market Rocks.” There hasn’t been an article posted on it for almost two months, it gets almost no traffic, and the writing is entirely typical of a college student who is brashly going to “tell it like it is!” But don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen much worse. The main problem is that I’ve see so much like it. At least I can say this of Frankly Curious, it isn’t like any other liberal blog and the quality of the writing and analysis are at a high enough level to attract a decent sized audience that even includes some “name” writers.

Here’s the start of his comment:

I was about to make a long rebuttal to all your illogical responses to the well-thought-out, well-reasoned replies to your sophomoric, anti-logic analysis until I read this: “…the United States is the most savage nation ever.”

The two responses that he calls well-reasoned basically just repeated Ayn Rand’s initial philosophical error. If you say that everyone has the right to their own property, that means that everyone has the right to their own property. It does not mean that everyone has a right to their own property as long as you think they are using it as it ought to be used. That’s fascism. (I’ve noted before that her writing is a “bizarre mixture of fascism, anarchism, and Hollywood romanticism.”) They also made the mistake of thinking that there was an American Indian nation instead of all kinds of little nations with many different lifestyles. And above all, they made the mistake of thinking that the native peoples didn’t have the idea of property rights. This last bit really bugs me, because it not only justifies land theft, it justifies genocide, which is what we Europeans did regardless.

But I especially took exception to his quote of mine. I was responding to a commenter named George who said the Indians were all at war, implying I guess that they were savages who deserved what they got. Here is what I actually wrote in response, “Regardless, if being at war is what makes a culture savage (and I’m open to that idea), then the United States is the most savage nation ever.” So VINCENTON totally mischaracterized what I said and used it as an excuse to chronicle other nations’ savagery. It’s a typical strawman attack. And it wasn’t even a good argument on that basis because he didn’t show that these other countries were more savage than the US.

The main thing here seems to be that this young man was upset that I attacked Ayn Rand who is a hero of his. If you look at his About page, it doesn’t mention Ayn Rand, but it is filled with Objectivism dogma about “selfishness” and “ego.” And he’s written about her ad nauseum. He once wrote that Ayn Rand “is utterly hated by the Left because of her unassailable arguments against altruism, self-sacrifice, mysticism, communism, and all forms of totalitarian ideologies.” So the fact that I have doubtless read more of her (all of her, as far as I know) and have come to the conclusion that she is fundamentally fascistic, must be upsetting.

But his comment was very much like doorbell ditch. If Rand’s arguments are unassailable, why doesn’t he defend her? He doesn’t, because he can’t. Back in the 1980s, I heard Rand’s heir Leonard Peikoff say that the United States stayed pretty much a free nation for a hundred years. During almost all of that time, we had slavery in this country. How any reasonable person could say that the United States was more free in 1850 than it was in the 1980s is beyond me. But for Rand and Peikoff, it is quite easy. If you scratch Objectivism just a little bit, you will see fascism and white supremacy.

In the comment, VENCENTON also called me a “creature.” This goes along with one of his articles, “The Left’s Endless Smears Against Ayn Rand.” In it, he wrote, “Evidence or proof is not important to these half-wit creatures.” But neither is it important to him, based upon his comment. Then, just three sentences later, he wrote, “Ad hominem attack is one of the best weapons of the left.” It would be hard to write a believable character who was this aggressively clueless. He is upset that liberals claim, “Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism is a cult.” He then goes on to write many paragraphs quoting Rand reverently as if he were quoting the Bible. It’s sad, but hopefully he will grow out of it. (For the record: Objectisism is very cult-like, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a cult.)

As all my readers know, I’m very angry about the state of the world. But what I don’t do is go to other websites where I disagree and shout at people. In fact, when dealing with someone I disagree with, I try to be as polite as possible. This often leads to very useful dialogues and surprising common ground. (Of course, I feel no such need when people are dumping on me here.) I wonder if people like VENCENTON think by shouting and running away that they win the argument. In their minds maybe. Meanwhile, seven days a weeks, there are new articles here. And the fact that I get more and more immature comments is a sign of the growing success of Frankly Curious.

John Fogerty

Posted on 28 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

John Fogerty I have the worst headache I can remember having, so it’s kind of hard to write. So forgive me if this is short. Last year, the birthday post was about Isabelle Carre, who I have such a crush on that her picture in on my computer desktop. But I don’t have much to add about her. It has been hard to get her films on DVD. But after I write this post, I may just get back into bed and watch Romantics Anonymous.

John Fogerty is 69 today. He is such an amazing talent. Bruce Springsteen called him the “Hank Williams of our generation.” That’s about right. Everyone remembers him from Creedence Clearwater Revival, but his work has been remarkably consistent. Like most writers, those earlier songs were raw because he hadn’t yet fully developed his own style. The problem with a fully developed style is that your work is not as universal.

But first, let’s listen to what is still my favorite of his songs and one of my very favorite rock songs ever, “Fortunate Son.” What I most like about it is its pure populist anger. Compare it to the supposed populism of the Tea Party where all the anger is focused on the poor. To them, the fact that most of our elected officials in Congress are millionaires just means that they are better. The fact that government policy takes money away from the poor and gives it to the rich is just great. They’re mad at hell and they don’t know what it is they’re mad about. Fogerty is mad that poor boys are the ones sent off to fight and die in wars. And that’s even more true today than it was then.

Fogerty is unusual in that he almost never writes love songs. But this song, “Broken Down Cowboy,” from his 2007 album Revival is just that: a love song for his wife of 23 years, Julie Kramer:

Happy birthday John Fogerty!

“Great Men” and the Great War

Posted on 27 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Stay Strong and Delude On Maybe I’m just an iconoclast and everything else follows from that. But I’ve caught a bit of this three part series that The History Channel is doing, The World Wars—I assume for Memorial Day. But the little I’ve seen has been nothing short of pathetic. It is all the usual stuff with Neville Chamberlain portrayed as weak—completely disregarding the thirty-year rule and what we learned about his administration in the late 1960s. I wrote about this to some extent before, so I won’t belabor the topic, Neville Chamberlain Was Right.

But what most annoys me is the presentation of Winston Churchill. You would get the idea that Churchill won the war based on nothing but his will power. And of course, Churchill, a war monger always, was not surprisingly always pushing for more military funding. That’s all fine, but at the same time, the depression was still on and Keynes had not been fully embraced. But based upon the series, you would think that Chamberlain was doing nothing but fighting against Churchill, even though we now know he was engaged in a very large (but not large enough) buildup of the military. But then Churchill is in charge and announces, “Stay strong and carry on!” And victory is theirs!

What really bugs me about it is that it is totally the “great men” theory of history. This is about the most brain-dead approach to history I have ever seen. When I was younger, I used to wonder, “Who thinks this kind of claptrap?” And then I started reading Ayn Rand and I found out. It’s all this Nietzsche superman stuff with neo-Romantic ideas as though Agamemnon was a real guy. I remember Rand writing something along the lines of, “Who do you think does these things?!” The idea is that, well, of course, Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. But that isn’t the point. The point is that there are social and economic pressures that bring men like Hitler to power. This is why I’ve always thought the “go back in time and kill Hitler” game was stupid. If it hadn’t been Hitler, it would have been someone else. He might have been better than Hitler, he might have been worse. But something bad was going to happen.

The third episode is tomorrow night. I will have to avoid seeing even a minute of it because I know it will make me apoplectic. Because I already know the narrative. Two of the “great men” are George Patton and Douglas MacArthur. So it will be Patton’s tanks and Churchill’s iron will that defeat Germany with a minor assist from Stalin. And MacArthur and two atomic bombs defeat Japan. Even though we know it was basically the Soviet Union that defeated Germany, allowing England to survive to claim victory. And as I discussed last year, it was Stalin’s re-declaring war on Japan that caused that nation to surrender.

I’m sure the show will do a more evenhanded job than it would have done in the 1970s, when I used to hear that World War II didn’t start until the United States entered it. But it is still the case that it will be a whitewash where the good guys (Churchill and Patton) and the good nations (England and America) defeat the bad guys (Hitler and Mussolini—I haven’t heard Hirohito mentioned) and the bad nations (Germany and Japan). Stalin was as great a villain as Hitler, but given he was on our side, they’ll have to hedge. And since Americans now seem to believe the only thing wrong with Fascism is that it was antisemitic, it’s hard to hate Italy very much.

This isn’t history. This is just bedtime stories for a nation that doesn’t want anything complicated and certainly doesn’t want to consider anything that might chip away at our myths. After all, before the rise of Nazi Germany, America was the big country for eugenics. We conducted a far bigger genocide on the native peoples here before Hitler was even born. The point isn’t that we are especially terrible. The point is that history is a mess and there’s lots of blame to go around. And what is the point of trying to understand history if you are just going to turn it into trite stories that make you feel good? Just read Pride and Prejudice instead.

Michael Kinsley Didn’t Review Greenwald

Posted on 27 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Last week, I wrote, Lord Michael Kinsley. It was based upon his “review” of Glenn Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide. The article is not really about what Greenwald wrote, but about what Kinsley always writes. He is an apologist for the power elite. I want to revisit this topic, because today, the Public Editor of The New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, wrote, Kinsley, Greenwald and Government Secrets. She is reasonably critical of Kinsley.

She makes two points. First, is that the “sneering tone” that Kinsley takes toward Greenwald is unworthy of the Book Review. Second, is that, “Kinsley’s central argument ignores important tenets of American governance.” She goes on to note the importance of journalism in the founding and the history of this country. I’d like to address both of these in a little more depth than Sullivan could in her very political editorial.

Michael Kinsley The very fact of the “sneering tone” should have made it unpublishable. It is clear that Kinsley doesn’t like Greenwald. And he’s hardly alone. Many journalists (Ones I like!) have a problem with him. He is notably harsh, seemingly without a sense of humor, and has no problem criticizing people who are on his own side. He rather reminds me of myself when I was twenty years old. But I really don’t understand what is wrong with this country. Somehow we have gotten to the point where it is more important that our presidents and journalists be good drinking companions than that they do their jobs well.

Now I can’t prove that Kinsley hated Greenwald before writing the article, other than quoting from the review itself, “Greenwald seems like a self-righteous sourpuss, convinced that every issue is ‘straightforward,’ and if you don’t agree with him, you’re part of something he calls ‘the authorities,’ who control everything for their own nefarious but never explained purposes.” I will note that this is the standard line on Greenwald. A couple of years ago, Jonathan Chait sarcastically referred to him as, “Brave Radical Truth Teller Glenn Greenwald.” And then said, “Greenwald’s penchant for telling bold truths that the corrupted partisans are too blind to see, in a manner that in no way is sanctimonious, is an inspiring example for us all.” Chait has said many similar things about Greenwald, even when he is agreeing with him.

But I can’t say what Kinsley has said about Greenwald or surveillance in the past, because of all the automatic content that web pages create. So even after searching for hours, I came back to the same current discussion. When I searched for articles from 2012, they include auto-links to, “Read about Michael Kinsley’s attack on Glenn Greenwald’s new book.” But it seems pretty clear that Kinsley is with Chait in long thinking that Greenwald is sanctimonious and in need of a good slap. And that is really all that Kinsley’s “review” is. So despite what Book Review editor Pamela Paul thinks, Kinsley was a lousy choice to review a book by Greenwald.

Glenn Greenwald The second issue is even more of a head-scratcher. This is why I keep putting “review” in scare quotes. I don’t mind negative reviews. In fact, they are often some of the most useful reviews. But they need to engage in the material. Greenwald may be extreme, but he is also an expert—a successful civil rights attorney and very knowledge about this specific subject. He deserves a hearing. And based upon Kinsley’s “review” he got no hearing. Kinsley simply thinks that the government has the right to keep secrets and it should be up to the government to decide what secrets should be revealed. No Place to Hide is almost 300 pages long and I got absolutely no idea of what arguments he was making from Kinsley’s “review.”

Pamela Paul may think that Kinsley is a serious person who writes good book reviews, but it seems to me that there are many good writers with backgrounds in these issues that could have been hired to write a review. Whether those reviews were positive or negative, the reader would have been given some insights into the issues involved. Kinsley’s review was little more than, “So’s your ol’ man!” And although that is more or less what I expect from Kinsley, I generally expect more from The New York Times.

More Robert Price Islamophobia

Posted on 27 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

The Human Bible Robert M Price is such a curious fellow. I have long enjoyed his books and lectures on various aspects of religion. In fact, his essay in The Historical Jesus: Five Views (“Jesus at the Vanishing Point”), is probably the most profound thing I’ve ever read about the historical Jesus. His contention is, and I fully embrace it, that Jesus may or may not have existed. But after thousands of years of folklore and myth making, there is no historical residue left. And it has brought me to the point of raw confusion as to why Christians seem to need Jesus to have walked the earth. Some Iron Age guy got killed and others claimed to see him later and that means you just have to believe in him and you go to heaven? Why does that need to happen in this world? I really don’t get it.

But Price is brilliant, not just about Christianity but things like New Age theology and fictional theology (he is something of an expert on the writings of H P Lovecraft). Yet his politics are as shallow as they could possibly be. Based upon his occasional statements, it seems clear that the only real political instruction he gets is from right wing radio on his way to and from work. Now I understand: we all have some things that we know more about than others. I, for example, know rather a lot more about English language translations of Don Quixote than anyone outside a literature department. On the other hand, I know almost nothing about cricket. (This is not from lack of trying!) But I don’t pepper my writing of things I do know about with ignorant statements about the positioning of wickets. But Price does pepper his writing and talks with what strikes me as ignorant right wing talking points.

Last year, I wrote, Another Conservative Atheist? In it, I discussed his anti-choice opinions, which I don’t necessarily think are that bad, I just don’t know why they were brought up. But mostly I was talking about the comic strip Jesus and Mo. The “Mo” is Mohammad, and the two guys hang out and talk, and often argue with a female bartender who is an atheist. Sometimes Moses is there too. Price mentioned that he was surprised that the artist hadn’t had a fatwa taken out against him. But it was clear to me: the strip is rather sweet and it isn’t going after Islam any more than it is going after Christianity. Mohammad comes off pretty well.

In Price’s reaction, I detected a strong dose of Islamophobia. Then later, in Episode 28 of his podcast The Human Bible, he was talking about hypocrisy. And as an example, he mentioned Congress members who excluded themselves from Obamacare. Well, as anyone who knows anything about Obamacare can tell you: Obamacare doesn’t affect people who already get healthcare from their employers. But it is because of this conservative talking point that the law was changed and gummed up even more. I was angry enough that I commented:

Oh my, a bit of Dr. Price’s conservative politics has fallen into his podcast! I wouldn’t mind if it had been something other than a talk radio canard that shows a total lack of understanding of Obamacare.

My advice: more Chuck Heston impersonations, less low information conservatism. [Price does a great Charlton Heston impersonation whenever he is reading something that God is supposed to be saying—it’s great fun! -FM]

To my surprise, that comment got ten “thumbs up” and no “thumbs down.” That’s more than I’ve ever seen on any comment on the site. I suspect there are a lot of people like me who appreciate Price’s erudition and humor but who are completely opposite him on politics. But again, it isn’t that he’s a conservative. I have no problem with conservatives generally. But I do have a problem with people popping out brainless conservative talking points. And this particular example is something that could have easily come from Victoria Jackson. But I think that Price got the hint, because since then, he has made no such boner statements.

The reason I bring this all up is because I just came upon Price’s review of Candida Moss’ excellent The Myth of Persecution. (I discussed it before myself.) It was a pretty positive review, but he went all haywire at the end:

Finally, if Eusebius trumped up the myth of a long age of Christian martyrdom in order to advance the interests of his preferred brand of Christianity, it seems equally likely that Candida Moss’ demolition effort has political motivations of its own. She warns that the long-cherished paranoia of Christians who imagine themselves the constant targets of Satan and his agents contributes to a political climate in which modern Christians refuse to take seriously the reasoned opinions of ideological opponents. She bemoans the shrill protests of Catholics Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and Presbyterian Ann Coulter who compare opposition by liberal politicians and media to Roman persecution of their ancient co-religionists. But one may wonder if Moss’ use of the persecution trope as a weapon of accusation against these conservatives is not itself a mirror-image version of the tactic she decries.

Moss wants us to stop demonizing our enemies and to start a sympathetic dialogue with them. Let her see how far such appeals get with Al-Qaida and the Taliban. I should say that those who go gunning for school children and who massacre members of rival religions have pretty well demonized themselves. I can’t afford to care what childhood traumas or what socio-economic deprivations may have led them to their bloodthirsty courses of action, and neither can she. Gandhi once advised German Jews to use his principles of nonviolent resistance against Hitler. You know where that gets you? Ah, er, martyrdom.

There are a couple of things that really annoy me here. The first is that he’s twisting her argument. Moss is a liberal Christian and she is trying to make the argument that liberal Christians are Christians too. In the conservative Christian community (and in the media as well), liberal Christians are either ignored or treated as though they aren’t real Christians or that their faith must be weak. What she’s saying is what Pope Francis is saying, “There’s more to Christianity than stoning the fags and ‘protecting’ the unborn.”

The other problem is the Islamophobia. Implicit in what he is saying is that all Muslims are terrorists. He doesn’t mock her for trying to have a dialog with Timothy McVeigh. But I don’t recall her talking about an interfaith dialog but rather an intrafaith dialog. She is concerned about her own religion: Christianity. But somehow, Price has to make it about how awful the Muslims are. It’s sad—especially coming from someone as smart as Robert Price.

Welfare State Is Good for Economy

Posted on 27 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Paul Krugman’s column on Monday was, Europe’s Secret Success. It is about how even though the European Union is a monetary mess, its economy is doing rather well. Of course, you would never know that from reading or watching mainstream American news. Because everyone just “knows” that Europe is collapsing because of its generous welfare states. This why Americans so often know things that just aren’t true.

This idea that welfare was destroying Europe never made any sense. The northern nations were doing the best and they were the ones that had the most generous welfare programs. Greece, the country doing the worst in the European Union, had a rather stingy welfare state. The same is true of the other “problem” countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal. I think this all comes back to our Calvinist tendencies that we must all suffer for our sins. So the idea is that having a strong welfare state must be bad because it doesn’t cause people to suffer.

Of course, this just happens to be what the power elites want to hear. They want low taxes and low inflation and high unemployment. All of those things help them because the more desperate the working classes are, the better for the rich. It still amazes me, because we nominally live in a democracy and there are so many poor people.

Let’s consider France, because I love France and for whatever reason, most Americans have a problem with the French. France has a very big welfare state and they have one of the best healthcare systems in the world. But in the past, they didn’t have a terribly vibrant economy. But for the past decade and a half, our economy (in terms of being good for workers) has been going down and their economy has been going up. This great graph is from a Krugman blog post, Cheese-eating Job Creators. It shows that now (and for some time), France is employing a far higher percentage of its working age population than the United States:

What is happening in France is what conservatives in this country claim they want to be happening here. That was what supply side economics was all about, right? It wasn’t supposed to be about making the rich richer; it was supposed to be about growing the pie and making everyone richer; jobs for everyone! Except that it was a resounding failure as I discussed in part recently, Reagan’s Legacy: Tax Cuts for Rich, Tax Hikes for the Rest. But don’t expect them to look at France or Germany or Sweden or the Netherlands and think, “Maybe we should try that!”

For me, this is very personal. My business partner Mikhail and I are working on a great new high tech gizmo that I believe will revolutionize the extreme sports industry. But because of my just scraping by with my various gigs and his enormous workload at a very famous high tech firm I guess I shouldn’t mention, we haven’t even been able to test the system for almost two months. Having something like a guaranteed income would allow us to be more entrepreneurial, not less.

But most conservatives know nothing about business—the closest they come is finance, which is a part of business, but isn’t anything without people like us who are actually making things that people want to buy and use. And they have this idea that the only way to get people to start businesses is to make it like a tightrope act over the Twin Towers: if you succeed, you are set for life; if you fail, you are dead. That’s not the way that works the best, because for one thing, careful people like Mikhail and me, don’t thrive in that environment, even though we have a great deal to offer the world.

Just in terms of creating jobs though, America is terrible. Here is a graph from economist Antonio Fatas that I’ve altered to highlight just how badly America does at keeping its people employed:

The power elite of this country should be embarrassed by this. Most especially the conservatives should be ashamed, and yes, I do include Bill Clinton in this, because like all the New Democrats, he’s an economic conservative. But instead, both parties of the United States stand around and look for better ways to take more money away from the poor who actually spend it and push the economy along, and give it to the rich who just sit on it. In a hundred years, historians will look back and say, “What were they thinking?” But I know what they are thinking: they are thinking that all that matters is taking care of their own class. Keep interest rates low so the stuff they own doesn’t lose value. Keep taxes low so they can keep as much of their money as possible. And keep unemployment high so that workers are so desperate they will work for little and never raise a fuss for fear of losing one of the few jobs around.

That’s modern America. Yesterday, an online friend criticized me for my rhetoric about the “political nonsense that’s tearing us apart.” Wrong! What’s tearing us apart is an ever widening gap between rich and poor that is allowing the rich to call all the shots. We don’t get policy that is best for all of us. We get policy that is best for the power elites. And I don’t care that the Tea Party folk think I’m being mean when I point out that they are a bunch of fools who vote against their own interests because the power elites can play them like a fine violin. This is my country too and the rich are destroying it, just as many of the founders—most notably Thomas Paine—feared.

But at least we still have equality of the kind a great Frenchman once told us:

Charity of Bruce Cockburn

Posted on 27 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

The great singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn is 69 today. I actually know him because he and my wife were once a thing. I think she was with him during at least part of the Stealing Fire tour, which is interesting because I actually saw him on that tour. That was a hugely influential album to me. I still think “Nicaragua” is one of the great songs. At this point, I have seen Cockburn far more than any sane man should have to. He’s an excellent live performer, but I’m not that fond of live performances. Mostly, it is the crowds. When there was a backstage where we could watch, that was much better.

But by far the worst thing about the concerts were the fans. It is such a group of pasty white upper-middle class liberals who I just want to slap. And after the concerts, it was almost impossible to get away. Because Cockburn backs just about every cause in the world, people see him a lot the way that they see Noam Chomsky. So whereas other musicians had to sign autographs and hear about how great they were, Cockburn had to listen to much wringing of hands about this or that. And it would go on for an hour or more.

For his part Cockburn was great. He has the patience of a saint. And in my experience, he was a very nice guy. Although you can tell, he’s kind of lost in his own head. He is certainly a shy guy. At this point, I’m really curious about his position regarding Christianity. He was always at least nominally a Christian. That’s what his song “Wondering Where the Lions Are” is all about. But unfortunately, talking to him would require that I get back in touch with my wife. And that isn’t going to happen.

Here’s two songs of Stealing Fire:

And here’s “Each One Lost” off his newest album, Small Source of Comfort:

Happy birthday Bruce Cockburn!

Odds and Ends Vol 11

Posted on 26 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

Howdy, friends and neighbors! I gotta tell you, I was not planning to do an Odds and Ends today, but we are more than overdo. You know who does a great Odds and Ends kind of thing? Our friend Infidel753. And we’re not just talking politics either, or even mostly. I get a lot of great stuff from him. By the way, I asked him about that 753 thing and he responded, “The 753 refers to 753 BC, which is the traditional (though likely apocryphal) date of the founding of Rome. I’m interested in Classical history, as I hope my occasional posts about it show.” So there you go. I probably should have known that, but as you all know, I have this thing about numbers, which probably blinded me to its historical significance. I think you can guess what number I would follow with that series: 7, 5, 3… Anyway, like a reasonable person, he just provides simple introductions to articles whereas I am forced (it is the way of my people) to yammer on and on. So on I yammer.

For years, everyone rolled down the windows of their cars when it got hot, because the air conditioner was assumed to consume so much energy. But then, the air conditioners got more efficient, or at least we were all fooled by those Car Talk guys, and we learned that it actually used less energy because cars are so aerodynamic when the windows were rolled up. So I was very interested to read Joseph Stromberg over at Vox, who tells us, Why Rolling Down Your Cars’ Windows Is More Fuel Efficient Than Using AC. Now maybe this isn’t always true. If you have a super aerodynamic car and you are traveling down the road at 100 mph, then okay, maybe use the AC. But for normal people: use the windows. Plus: your dog will like it more, not to mention your Komodo Dragon. (Anyone know that film reference?)
This next article is so old, it is from when Matt Yglesias was still at Slate. (Since then, he’s moved to Vox where his work is arguably even better.) This article tells us something I already knew, but which won’t change our vindictive society in the least, Big Data Says You Should Hire Criminals. Basically, ex-cons are more productive on average. No one knows why exactly. One theory is that ex-cons are just glad to have a job and so they try harder. I don’t doubt that’s part of it. But also a big part of it is that ex-cons are (to use a term from pool hustling) working under speed. If there are two candidates for a job that are identical in every way except that one of them has a felony drug possession charge, you know which one is going to get hired. So if two people are doing the same job and one of them is an ex-con, he’s undoubtedly more skilled, more intelligent, more everything, really. People (white people anyway) think that people who break the law, serve their time, and then its over. It isn’t. It is held against you for the rest of your life. We are a cruel and stupid people.
Being a short man, I know that it sucks to be short. Women generally prefer tall men, even though in my experience sex is better when you are roughly the same height. (Just saying.) In the business world, you are ignored. If you try to be assertive, you are said to have a Napoleon complex. And by the way: two brief points about the Napoleon complex. First, Napoleon is not short; that myth was the result of a unit conversion error. (Damned imperial units!) Second, psychologists have studied this supposed complex and have found that it doesn’t really exist. One study “discovered that short men were less likely to lose their temper than men of average height.” But mostly, they don’t find any difference.
Well, one thing about being short is very good: you live longer. A 50 year study of 8,000 men found that shorter men live longer—especially very short men—5’2″ and below. It is thought that we only have so many cells to create in our lifetimes and being short requires fewer.
This is very interesting. Jason Jones of The Daily Show went to India to study democracy there, in a multi-part segment, India Jones and the Election of Doom. Now, despite all the recent bad coverage, India has a vibrant democracy—a hell of a lot better than ours. But in the segment, he hired a journalist to write a paid article in the Millennium Post, Poll shows US Number A-1 Star Jason Jones does best Indian Election Coverage. Well, it was taken down. When the editors found out, they wrote, Dear Readers. And then, Moutussi Acharya wrote an opinion piece, Jon Stewart, America’s Biggest News Douche. Clearly, the article comes out of annoyance about the Jason Jones piece. But it makes a number of valid points, including the contention that the show has to twist itself in knots in order to maintain its impartiality. I would also note that usually when going after liberals, the show just isn’t as funny. But that could well just be my perspective.
If The Upshot is supposed to replace FiveThirtyEight at The New York Times, it has failed completely. Because The Upshot is far, far better than FiveThirtyEight ever was—and currently is, unless you are into sports, where it is probably great. Anyway, a week and a half ago, Michael Paulson wrote, Americans Claim to Attend Church Much More Than They Do. Well, that’s hardly a shock. According to the article, “Americans continue to report high levels of belief and participation—more than 90 percent of Americans say they believe in God or a universal spirit, and nearly 40 percent report weekly attendance at a worship service, numbers that have remained relatively unchanged for decades.” But it isn’t really about God. It is about this stupid American idea that being religious makes you a good person. Given how negative public Christianity is, I hardly think that’s true. But some researchers decided to check out how much people lie about their church attendance. They compared telephone surveys where people had to speak to other humans to online surveys where they didn’t. And they found that people reported a lot less church attendance when they weren’t trying to impress another human. Only 9% of white evangelical protestants (You know: the most hateful but also devout of the Christians.) admitted on the telephone to rarely or never going to church; online, the number almost doubled to 17%. Overall, 43% of Americans admitted that they rarely or ever went to church. The biggest disparity was among my fellow Catholics, who reported 15% on the phone and 33% online. But that’s to be expected; the great thing about being a Catholic is that getting forgiven is built right into the program!
Speaking of Catholics, Brandon Ambrosino over at Vox published an article that didn’t surprise me, Catholics Are a Lot More Liberal Than Evangelicals. Part of this is the confessional. But I think a bigger part of it is that the Catholic Church doesn’t encourage people to read the Bible. All that Protestant garbage of finding God in that book of ancient folk tales only confuses people. And so they grab onto it in the most pathetic, simplistic, childish way. The Bible becomes literally true and inerrant. And what can they grab onto? Not the Holy Trinity, that’s one that professional theologians grapple with their whole lives. No, they grab onto homosexuality being a sin and women being subservient to men. No wonder the most explicitly protestant believers (the Evangelicals) are the most screwed up. I so wish there were an actual Christian God so that at some point, these people would be taken aside and told, “You know: you really blew it! You should have spent a lot more time on the Sermon on the Mount and a lot less on Leviticus. But you are forgiven, now go get your wings and harp…”
You probably know Stuart Margolin as Angel on The Rockford Files and perhaps also that he is a big television director. But my friend Pow Wow reminded me that he is also a singer and songwriter. There isn’t much of him online. But here he is doing Chuck Berry’s great “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”:

Well, that’s enough for now. I’m going to have to create a category for these posts. Right now I put them in politics, but that isn’t right. They are their own thing. Anyway, until next time!

Victoria Jackson is Charming but Wrong About a Communist in the White House

Posted on 26 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

For months, I’ve been wanting to write about Victoria Jackson. Now you all probably know her from Saturday Night Live where she usually played a dumb blond. And then she came out as a big Tea Party member and we all knew that it wasn’t an act. Media Matters wrote an excellent article on her political evolution, How Fringe Media Helped Turn a Conspiracy-Loving SNL Star Into a Politician. But despite it all, I really do think that she’s a very funny woman. Here is her own song, “There’s a Communist Living in the White House.” Pushing aside that it is totally ignorant, not only of the president but of what communism is, I think it is quite charming. Jackson is a good example of just how dangerous strongly held opinions, enormous ignorance, and moderate celebrity can be:

My favorite line is, “Doesn’t anyone read history?” Yeah, Victoria, some of us actually do read history. That’s why we know what is “communism” and what is just “some policy I don’t like.” The parts about how maybe she’s stupid and maybe she’s crazy are less charming, because they’re meant as insults not just to liberals but to her own family and friends. Some Christian she is!

I don’t mind that she mentions that only Glenn Beck understands her. I wish she didn’t follow it up with other people who are the only one who understands her. But okay: she’s silly and I like that. But Sean Hannity?! He’s just a partisan hack. Whatever the Republican Party believes, he repeats. If the Republican Party went communist, there’d be a communist in Sean Hannity’s chair.

But it is the middle section of the song that makes it so great. This is where she goes through the reasons that she knows there’s a communist in the White House, “Where do you want me to start?” That’s always a bad way to start an argument because it usually means, “I haven’t much thought about it.” But she’s able to go through all the great hate radio talking points:

His grandparents were socialist. While she says this, behind her is an article about Frank Marshall Davis, who was said to be Obama’s mentor but wasn’t really. It’s also not the case that Davis was a communist, but in the 1940s and 1950s, pretty much any community organizer was labeled a communist at one time or another. I’ve never actually heard anything about the political leanings of his grandparents. His grandfather fought in World War II. His grandmother worked making bombers during the war. But this is entirely typical of conservatives. I still burn with anger at what conservatives were willing to say about war hero John Kerry just to win a political fight.
His father was a communist. I think it is safe to say that his father was a socialist. Given that Obama barely knew him, I don’t see what difference this makes. And even if he had grown up with him, we generally don’t hold children accountable for their parents’ actions and beliefs.
He had “Marxist” professors. This comes from part of Dreams of My Father. And the remark is about how he tried to be “cool.” Here is the whole paragraph:
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated. But this strategy alone couldn’t provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.

It’s not about politics; it’s about being young.
He taught a course on Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was explicitly not a communist. But for some reason he is a boogeyman for conservatives, even while they submerge themselves in Rules for Radicals for help with their astroturfing efforts.
His college records are sealed. That’s a common conspiracy theory, that even if it were true is simply racist and has nothing to do with him being a communist.
Obama said “spread the wealth” (to the liar Joe the Plumber) which is a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto. Not to nitpick, but that book was written in German, so it can’t be a direct quote. The English translation not only doesn’t have that phrase, it has no similar phrase. What’s more, “spread the wealth” is not the same as “redistribute the wealth.” And as people like me have been saying all along, the redistribution that is going on is the same as is always going on: from the poor to the rich.
He appointed Van Jones who is a “reported” communist. By this she means that when Jones was 24 he claimed to be a communist and probably knew as much about the term then as Jackson does now. He had long ago repudiated the statement.
His preacher was Jeremiah Wright and he followed black liberation theology, which some conservatives call Marxist. Obama, in a typical act of cowardice, repudiated Wright. But really, what in the world do conservatives not call Marxist?
He had the government take over the banks and the car industry. He didn’t.
He was trying to “jam socialized medicine done our throats.” Yes, and he was so sneaky about it that it was done in the form of free market reforms that all conservatives were in favor of until Obama accepted it.
He was for Cap and Trade. Again, it was another typical communist trick of using a free market approach to a social problem. It is strange that it is the very thing that John McCain ran against Obama on in 2008.

She ends with, “How much more proof do you need?” My answer to that would be, “Any!” But it shows why people claim that Obama is a communist and why the same people called Bill Clinton a communist. It’s the same reason that Bill O’Reilly calls any politician or pundit who disagrees with him “far left.” Because the conservative movement has moved so far to the right that they can’t see that ideas like Obamacare are conservative in an absolute sense. Cap and Trade is another free market conservative idea. These people have no idea what real leftist policies are. And as I often rant around here, “Why don’t we nationalize the banks, given that the conservatives are just going to say that we are doing that anyway?” Why don’t we have socialized medicine like they do in the United Kingdom, given that conservatives are just going to say that we are doing that anyway? Why don’t we provide a guaranteed income given that conservatives already claim we do?!

Victoria Jackson is silly and charming and funny. But her thinking on these matters is no less serious than most other conservatives and certainly no worse than the likes of Amy Kremer. If I had a ukulele, I’d perform a song about all the Tea Party members who have been elected to the House and the Senate. It would be called, “There’s a Bunch of Idiots in the Congress!”

Joe Miller Joke Book

Posted on 26 May 2014 by Frank Moraes

I’ve been kind of down recently, literally feeling like Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) at the beginning of The Mask. And I thought, “I know! I’ll do what Stanley does: I’ll get some old cartoons to cheer me up!” So I requested a bunch from the library, including Looney Tunes Super Stars: Daffy Duck. Now I’ll be honest, I’m not a big Daffy Duck fan. My friend Andrea loves him because he’s so over-the-top in his greed for money and attention. I’m more of a Bugs Bunny kind of guy, because he doesn’t generally bother anyone. He’s just doing his thing and other people intrude on him. But it turns out that Daffy Duck is more sympathetic early on.

One of the examples of this is a 1942 cartoon, Daffy Dilly. In it, Daffy is a street salesman trying to pawn off his very tired gag items like hand buzzers and lapel flowers that squirt water. No one is interested. So he pulls out a book and says, “How about a Joe Miller joke book?!” You don’t have to know who Joe Miller was to get the joke. It is kind of the same as, “How about a Sinbad joke book?!” But the joke is actually a bit different than that and not so mean. (For the record, Sinbad has a bad rap; for the kind of work he does, no one is better; and Houseguest was a nice fun comedy.)

So who was Joe Miller? He was an English actor at the beginning of the 18th century. And he was known for playing comedic roles such as Trinculo in The Tempest and the grave-digger in Hamlet. After he died, a playwright by the name of John Mottley published a book called, Joe Miller’s Jests, or the Wit’s Vade-Mecum in 1739. It was hugely popular, although it apparently had only three jokes attributed to Joe Miller. The subtitle of the book was, “A collection of the most brilliant jests; the politest repartees; and most elegant bons mots [clever remarks], and most pleasant short stories in the English language.”

The first edition contained 247 jokes, including thigh slappers like, “A lady’s age happening to be questioned, she affirmed she was but forty, and called upon a gentleman that was in company for his opinion. ‘Cousin,’ said she, ‘Do you believe I am in the right, when I say I am but forty?’ ‘I ought not to dispute it, Madam,’ replied he, ‘For I have heard you say so these ten years.'” Actually, that’s not a bad joke. But it isn’t exactly fresh. Over the years, the book contained more and more jokes. Its popularity, however, was its own undoing. Since everyone had read it, everyone knew all the jokes. So before long, “Joe Miller” became shorthand for a tired and unfunny joke.

But Dickens presented the book in a brighter light, roughly one century after its publication, in A Christmas Carol (1843). As Scrooge prepares to send a large turkey to Bob Cratchit, he says to himself, “He shan’t know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will be!” And another century after that, Daffy Duck was on the streets of New York with some pretty tired items to sell. But as he says at the end, “It’s a living.”

Afterword

All of the DVDs have a disclaimer at the beginning of them that, while certainly necessary, are provided with more care than I would have expected:

Some of the cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros’ view of today’s society, some of these cartoons are being presented, as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.

I will note that a couple of things struck me as very bad, but not that many. The worst was where Daffy Duck agrees to be Elmer Fudd’s slave and does a whole Uncle Tom routine. But overall, I’ve seen far worse from the period. And frankly, Gone With the Wind is far worse than anything on any of these DVDs.