On this day in 1896, the great composer Virgil Thomson was born. I like his work, but it is bizarre in Thomson’s own way. There is, of course, Four Saints in Three Acts with its libretto by Gertrude Stein (And is it ever Gertrude Stein!) with music that is completely fitting. But here is his score to The River, a documentary about the Mississippi. It uses many American standards in what are often very humorous ways:

The great jazz saxophonist and composer Paul Desmond was born in 1924. Here is a reworking of his tune “Take Five” from his album Skylark from the end of his career. The song is called “Take Ten”:

The great R&B singer Percy Sledge is 72 today. He is best known for his mega-hit “When a Man Loves a Woman.” He is actually a lot more than that, but it’s still by far my favorite of his work. So:

Other birthdays: physicist Julius von Mayer (1814); horrible businessman Andrew Carnegie (1835); mathematician Ernst Schroder (1841); hell road paver Carrie Nation (1846); children’s author P D Eastman (1909); baseball player Joe DiMaggio (1914); one of the great villains of the 20th century, Augusto Pinochet (1915); film director Norman Tokar (1919); the stupidest “smart” guy ever Ben Stein (69); and actor John Larroquette (66).

The day, however, belongs to perhaps the greatest playwright of all time, Lope de Vega, who was born on this day in 1562. During his lifetime, he wrote at least 500 plays. He was a writing machine. I can’t help but find Shakespeare wanting in comparison to him, just based upon the fact that Shakespeare stopped writing at the end of his life. Writing seems to have been nothing more than a means to wealth and a coat of arms. Lope was driven. What’s more, Lope was subversive. Whereas Shakespeare never wrote anything that challenged the power elite (quite the opposite actually), Lope did so repeatedly. I wrote about this in, The 500 Plays of Lope We Have Not Read. A great example is from the play Fuente Ovejuna, which I also wrote about:

Happy birthday Lope de Vega!

Alright folks, this is funny. It is the most recent “New Rules” segment on Real Time with Bill Maher. This one is called “Our Kennedy is Kennedy.” It is a comparison of Kennedy and Reagan, because as Maher correctly notes, Reagan is the Republicans’ Kennedy. But the presentation is done from a liberal perspective and Reagan comes off as pretty bad. While Kennedy was in office, it was the time of, “Ask not what you country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” When Reagan was in office, it was the time, “Greed is good.” Or to be fair, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Because let’s be honest: when the Republicans are in charge, government sure the hell is the problem.

Generally, Maher’s “New Rules” segments are quite insightful. This one really isn’t. It is just funny as hell. There were at least three times when I burst out laughing. That is most especially true of the Judd Nelson joke. I won’t spoil it. But… Poor Judd Nelson! Anyway, enjoy:

Captain Fogg over at Human Voices wrote a very compelling contrast between the way the far right treats Obama versus how they treated Kennedy, Remembering the Hero. Even though today Kennedy has an approval rating that tops 90%, while he was in office, he received the same kind over-the-top rhetoric about how he was discarding the Constitution and how he was a traitor.

Let me take it a bit further. Basically, since at least World War II, there has always been about 20% of the population that thinks that the commies are taking control of the nation. That’s not just me, that’s the conclusion of Change They Can’t Believe In.

Ever since 2009, I’ve been amused and outraged that the Tea Party is treated as some legitimate political movement. The mainstream press just loved the idea of middle class people finally organizing. But that’s not what was happening at all! These were the McCarthyites who knew that 81 communists worked in the State Department. These were the Birchers who ranted about the communist plot of water fluoridation[1] in 1960. And of course, these were the people with the “treason” signs on the parade route in Dallas.

I think our country would be a good deal better off if we knew more about John Wilkes Booth. He wasn’t crazy. It was just that in the circles he ran, it was a given that Lincoln was a tyrant. In his mind, he was Brutus in Julius Caesar—not an assassin but a hero of the people.

No one thinks themselves greater patriots than the Tea Party. But they aren’t patriots to the United States. They are patriots to some kind of vague notion of what they think America once was. And most sadly, that usually means an America where only whites had power.

I don’t think most of these people really wanted armed revolt and political assassination. But Captain Fogg is right that these people are sowing it. But whenever there is a tragedy that they helped create—whether it is Dallas or Oklahoma City—they slink away. For a while. When they come back, they don’t slink. They stride proudly back with their signs, “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery!”

[1] This scene from Dr. Strangelove seems like an exaggeration but it isn’t:

Aaron Carroll is a health policy expert and a medical school professor and lots more besides. He’s also co-written two very fun books with Rachel Vreeman: Don’t Swallow Your Gum! and Don’t Cross Your Eyes… They’ll Get Stuck That Way!

What I know him from primarily is his writing at The Incidental Economist where he does daily battle with idiot conservatives and intermittent battle with idiot liberals (there isn’t as big a supply of them). For example, on Friday, he wrote, Life Expectancy and Health Care Spending. He provides a graph that shows how most countries conform to a particular trend: the more money they spend on healthcare, the longer their people live. Except for the United States. We spend way more than everyone else and don’t live as long. For example, we live about as long as people do in Chile, but we spend five times as much per person.

Anyway, today, he posted a great video just in time for Thanksgiving: Turkey Doesn’t Make You Sleepy. It is informative and funny and most of all: it will give you something to talk about over Thanksgiving dinner!

I can hardly wait!

Afterword

I just found the following quote from another of his articles, Survival Rates Are Not the Same as Mortality Rates:

What I love about this is that I’ve been exposed to that same whiplash. But I think it isn’t two groups. I think they are the same people who make differing claims depending upon their rhetorical needs.

For years, I’ve wrestled with the ultimate political question, “Are conservative wonks really that ignorant or are they simply forced to pretend to be because of their ideological necessities?” I think I’ve come down on the side of, “They’re really that ignorant.” In modern America, just following the facts makes one a liberal. Conservatism is an ideology; liberalism no longer is. Thus, the only people left to do the conservative wonkery are ideologues who are not interested in the facts except in as far as they substantiate their ideology.

Consider healthcare reform. The solution that we finally got with only Democratic votes is a conservative one that depends upon the existing insurance market system. Liberals looked at the available proposals and went with the one they thought they could get passed. Conservatives, on the other hand, start with the idea of everything that healthcare reform cannot be. For example, it could not be a single payer system. And in the end, it could not even be their own conservative plan. We see this over and over again in other areas: first comes ideology and any solutions to problems must pass that hurdle first.

Friday night, Holman Jenkins wrote, The Medicare-for-All Diversion. In it, he boldly takes on the oft repeated (true) claim by liberals that Medicare is better than private insurance because it has far lower administrative overhead. Medicare has 2% overhead costs while private insurance has 20%. Aha, Jenkins notes, “Much of Medicare’s overhead is hidden on the books of other agencies.” Q-E-fucking-D! Except… Not so much.

Austin Frakt at The Incidental Economist provides, Facts on Medicare Administrative Costs. It turns out that, contrary to what every conservative just knows, the government is pretty good at just about everything it does. And that is especially true of accounting. The Treasury Department applies the work that the IRS and HHS does for Medicare to Medicare. In other words, and not to put too fine a point on it: Holman Jenkins is just wrong.

But this isn’t even Jenkins’ main point. He must know deep down that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. (That would require research!) So he argues that the reason Medicare is so efficient is because its members are so unhealthy. Really! Get this:

So private insurer administration costs are higher because they are keeping their members so healthy. Or something. That might make some sense if he were talking about profits. But he isn’t and health insurance profits are really quite low. It is all that money they spend trying not to pay for care that eats up the money. If insurance companies paid out no money to members because they were all so healthy, administration costs wouldn’t go up, profits would. And, of course, then insurance costs would go down. Blah blah blah. Leave it to a conservative to understand absolutely nothing about how business works.

He ends by making another totally bogus claim that his own column contradicts, “Look, if Medicare had cracked the secret of administering large sectors of the economy more efficiently than the private sector can, we’d be wise to hand the entire economy over to Medicare. We don’t hear too many making this argument.” We actually do have data that shows just that. And the fact that healthcare in the US costs about double what it does in other advanced economies also shows that. But the facts never get in the way of a conservative making an argument against what they see as socialism. It is disingenuous in the extreme for a Wall Street Journal columnist to say that he would follow the facts to the best policy. That just isn’t true. Even if you could convince him of the facts, he would still be against the policy because, “Freedom!”

Afterword

Holman Jenkins is a real charmer. Here, via Gawker, is what he wrote about Stop & Frisk:

At Slate on Friday, Dave Weigel published an interesting interview with Joe Scarborough, “Eisenhower is Looking Pretty Damn Good”: A Conversation With Joe Scarborough. What fascinates me is that someone like Scarborough can be considered a reasonable or mainstream Republican. The man is as extreme as they come. The only reason he comes off as something other than a full tilt ideologue is that he isn’t in office. As New York Magazine reported, “He supported impeaching Clinton, abolishing the Department of Education, and cutting off AIDS funding for the so-called Ryan White Act.” Yes, that whole liberal conspiracy known as “public education” has to go! And now, like all Republicans, Scarborough just loves Clinton! (He seems as anti-gay as ever, but isn’t willing to come right out and say that gays ought to die for the “sin.”)

What comes through loud and clear in the interview is the disingenuousness of Scarborough. His whole political strategy is to lie in wait. The Republicans should just wait for their chance. When they finally control all branches of the government, they can destroy the New Deal once and for all! Ha ha ha! That’s what he says—he just doesn’t end it with an evil laugh. But Scarborough thinks the time will come. Weigel asks him, “So when do you use the power you have to roll back the New Deal?” And his response is blunt:

So Scarborough’s “reasonableness” comes from the fact that he understands you can’t roll back decades of settled legislation while the Democrats are in power. His problem with Bush is not that he was a fool and a bad president, but that when he had the chance, he didn’t destroy our liberal state.

There are two problems here. First, Bush tried to do that. He tried to privatize Social Security. And our older citizens were having none of it. So Scarborough seems to be calling for the Republicans to take control of the government, pass really unpopular laws, and then never again win an election for a couple of generations. He’s pitching fantasy here. The Republicans can’t “roll back” Social Security and Medicare because these programs are hugely popular among the most reliably conservative demographic groups: the elderly. So the Republicans can roll back programs for the poor all they want, but it would be suicide to do so to programs for their base.

Scarborough talks about how Bush was a “big government Republican.” But Reagan, who Scarborough so loves, was also a big government Republican. Scarborough is pushing an old lie that is just untenable today—namely, that the Republican Party is in favor of small government. As Dean Baker put it, “In other words, the most obvious story here is not that conservatives are opposed to public goods. Rather they are opposed to public goods that could have the effect of less income being redistributed upward.” So I bristle whenever I hear such nonsense.

If he were being honest, Scarborough would admit what he means: he likes popular Republicans of the past. The rest is just apologetics. When Eisenhower was in power, it wasn’t the time to roll back Social Security. When Reagan was in power, it wasn’t time to roll back Social Security and Medicare. In fact, Reagan helped to make Social Security stronger! But when Bush was in power, it was the right time. And when President Christie has a Republican controlled Congress, it will be time. Scarborough’s world view seems to be divided into nostalgia (“Weren’t old Republicans grand!”) and fantasy (“Soon seniors can go back to eating cat food like they’re supposed to!”).

With all this in mind, I have a new definition of a “reasonable” Republican:

With that understanding, go ahead an call Joe Scarborough a reasonable Republican.

The great Ukrainian painter Marie Bashkirtseff was born in 1858. She died of tuberculosis at only 25. It is amazing to think what she would have done had she lived a reasonably long life. As it is, she was a master. Check out the link for a few of her works.

The great ragtime composer Scott Joplin might have been born on this day in 1867. For a long time, people thought so. Now they don’t. But no one knows when he was born, so we might as well celebrate his birthday today. Ragtime is one of the most distinctive musical forms ever and no one was greater at it than Joplin. It is like having a whole band on the piano. As a result, playing ragtime is really hard—that left hand has to do a lot of work. Anyway, here is Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” played by Joplin himself (on a piano roll anyway):

One of the greatest basketball players ever, Oscar Robertson is 75 today. He was a hero to me when I was a kid. But I was really disappointed to hear him talk about the movie Hoosiers. Robertson was a sophomore on the losing team and I guess he took particular offense to it. He noted that the team was not all black. But he was wrong to say that was how the film portrayed the team, because it didn’t. What’s more, on the commentary for the film, the writers discuss how because of Robertson, the Hickory (Milan in real life) team would never have been able to beat the team the next year. Robertson alone was that great—as a high school junior. It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just unfortunate that he even talks about it. He’s one of the greatest basketball players ever, for Christ’s sake!

Other birthdays: Spanish painter Juan Martinez de Jauregui y Aguilar (1583); novelist Laurence Sterne (1713); children’s writer Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849); painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864); architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876); ridiculous writer Dale Carnegie (1888); famed conservative bigot William F Buckley Jr (1925); the original Ringo, Pete Best (72); the great bass player Donald “Duck” Dunn (1941); actor Billy Connolly (71); serial killer Ted Bundy (1946); and actor Thierry Lhermitte (61).

The day, however, belongs to the great philosopher Baruch Spinoza who was born on this day in 1632. What can I possibly say about Spinoza that will not trivialize him? He was in many ways the father of the Enlightenment thinkers who would come after him. But what is most important to me is his writing and thinking on religious matters. Spinoza argued for pantheism—the idea that all of the universe is a manifistation of God, or parts anyway. But not in the simplistic way that people tend to think about it, “We are all one, dude!” In my discussions with theists, I’m usually struck by how tightly they hold to Descartes’ idea that the body and the soul are different. Spinoza countered this by arguing that physics and metaphysics must be one and the same. The problem, from my perspective, is that we are parochial. So we cannot “see” God any more than we can see our eyes. Of course, regardless of how you define pantheism, from a traditional standpoint, it becomes atheism. If everything is God then nothing is. One thing is certain, such a God does not love us. Spinoza understood that.

Happy birthday Baruch Spinoza!

I’ve written a lot around here about the distinction between a critic and an ombudsman. When it comes to film, there is very little criticism. Mostly, so called movie critics are nothing but ombudsman. People get the idea that I think there is something wrong with being an ombudsman. There isn’t. My problem is that these “critics” claim to be more than they are. All most people want is an ombudsman.

So I was quite interested to hear about The Q Filmcast. It is a podcast featuring five guys. Each week, they all watch a film that is available on Netflix Instant Watch and then discuss it. It has something to do with WRFN in Nashville Tennessee, and it is very professionally done. At least one of them is on-air talent, with the kind of voice that fills me with a combination of jealousy and disgust. How dare you speak like that, and how can I learn to do it! Other people are techs. I figure they all work at WRFN one way or another.

The thing about the show is that it is pure ombudsmanship. And given that there are five of them, the listener actually gets different perspectives. That’s great because no one claims to speak the ultimate true. I’m kidding! They all claim it, just as we all do. But you get a variety of that. And that was well on display for last week’s episode, which was on The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

The group was split: four of the guys really liked the film and one really didn’t. Out of 10, they gave the film: 8, 7, 7, 6, and 2. Eventually, one of the 7 guys bumped his rating up to 8 and the 2 guy bumped his rating up to 3. I felt sorry for the guy who panned the film. His name is James Savage and I gather that he is usually like this. But he highlighted how there are many ways to love a film but generally only one way to hate it. One of the criticisms was that it was repetitive. But nothing could have been more repetitive than Savage’s review which was basically, “It just didn’t…”

Often I find myself in conversations about films which the other person didn’t like. And they have nothing to say. It is like Tim the Enchanter describing the Vorpal Bunny in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “He’s got huge sharp… He can leap about… Look at the bones!” In describing his reaction to the film, Savage was reduced to, “It didn’t have enough… The aliens were too… It just wasn’t good!”

I’m not putting the guy down. The film is not for everyone. In fact, it isn’t for more than a small subset of film viewers. And as a lover of films myself, I don’t recommend The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra to most people. For the right kind of person, it is a triumph. For most people, it is an extremely weird and silly thing. But this gets to something really important to me when I talk about films: did the film work on its own terms? Look at my article about Ethan Hawke’s attempt at Shakespeare, Another Sucky Hamlet. I really hated it, yet I wrote, “Don’t get me wrong, the film is not all bad. In fact, the film shows every sign of being a very creative endeavor. I don’t think it works, but the producers were trying to do something new and I applaud that.”

So I think it is important to distinguish between “I didn’t like this film” and “this film is no good.” And as an ombudsman, I think this distinction is critical. Savage seemed to back himself into a corner. In fact, near the end, he rejected his position as thoroughly as one ever does in these situations. He increased his rating to 3 out of 10. But he was cheeky about it, indicating that what was wrong with the movie wasn’t really up there on the screen but rather inside his brain. He didn’t like it because he didn’t like it.

The people who liked it did a better job as ombudsmen. And I’ll go further: they make the film more enjoyable for someone about to watch it. Because they clearly got it. As I indicated before, most people watching the film will just be confused by it. This is why generally it is best to watch comedies with an audience. We all learn how to approach the film from others. And most audiences include people like me who I call “easy laughers”—people who see the humor in everything. So the four guys who like Cadavra provide a kind of introduction to how one should watch the film.

There was one bit of criticism brought up a few times that I thought was correct. The film does drag a bit in parts. To me, this is part of what is brilliant about it—what makes it something more than just good entertainment. But from the standpoint of someone who just wants to watch an enjoyable film, it doesn’t necessarily work. Both the end of the first act and the beginning of the third act are padded. This is entirely correct for genre. Even though Blamire isn’t still pushing the jokes as fast as ever, most people would find these parts a tad slow. I think these are the best parts of the film. But most people do not intend to watch the film ten times. (Although one of the guys said he watched it three time!)

Anyway, I think The Q Filmcast podcast is a much better introduction to a film than any review that you are likely to read. The conversation is very animated and often amusing. And everyone clearly takes it seriously. Even Savage had paid close attention and knew the film well. That alone is a lot more than many “critics.”

Afterword

In each episode, they come in with “top 3” lists. For example, they’ve done “child performances” (No question: Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon.) and “visionary directors” (How about: Alejandro Jodorowsky.) and so on. For this film, they wanted, “Top 3 Films with Skeletons in em’.” They mentioned the clear ones: Jason and the Argonauts and Army of Darkness. Almost as an afterthought, they mentioned one of my all time favorites: House on Haunted Hill. That was the first film I thought of when the subject came up. But I would definitely add what is clearly a strange pick, but which has an image that has stayed with me my whole life, Manhattan. “What are future generations gonna say about us?”

On this day in 1859, famed outlaw Billy the Kid was born. What I find interesting about him is that he was an attractive young man. And I think this is why he is alternately described as dashing and despicable. The biggest prejudice among humans is against the ugly and for the beautiful. The best is always assumed about attractive people. As a result, I think that Billy the Kid was a psychopath. Of course there are other issues. I don’t think a life a crime is natural even for psychopaths. We have a screwed up society that actively generates desperation and then sits back and enjoys the feeling of superiority when desperate people behave badly.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

The great screenwriter Robert Towne is 79 today. He is known in Hollywood as a “script doctor.” These are the guys who fix crappy scripts that other people have written. Or at least, that’s the theory. In practice, I’m sure that most scripts are perfectly fine. I always know there is trouble ahead when a film has too many screenwriters. It is usually an indication that the director really didn’t know what he was doing and so had many (mostly uncredited) writers hack away at it. But Towne also writes his own original scripts. The most important of these was Chinatown.

Other birthdays: Russian impressionist Konstantin Korovin (1861); Harpo Marx (1888); comedian Steve Landesberg (1936); and the president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro (51).

The day, however, belongs to the great actor Boris Karloff who was born on this day in 1887. He is best known for his performance as Frankenstein, which he performed with great depth. (You really should own Frankenstein: The Legacy Collection.) I tend to remember him for later B films like The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors. But his greatest performance, for me, is in The Mummy. Still, I have to present the following scene from Bride of Frankenstein and not just because I have such a big crush on Elsa Lanchester. The monster acts the way all men do when women spurn them. And what is wrong with him in the end? He’s a sweet guy, “She hate me—like others”:

Happy birthday Boris Karloff!