The great French landscape painter Hubert Robert was born on this day 1733. Inventor of the electromagnet and electric motor William Sturgeon was born 1783. Composer Richard Wagner were born in 1813. Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859.

The great Laurence Olivier was born in 1907. Most Americans probably remember him as the evil Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man. Or for older people (or just lovers of old films), Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. And I most remember him in Sleuth. (Never, never, never watch the remake of Sleuth.) But Olivier is probably most important for his work in first bringing Shakespeare to the screen in a compelling way. I’m not that fond of his films, actually. I think Welles (who was widely criticized relative to Olivier at the time) is better and more cinematic. But there is no doubt that the man can act. Here he is doing that scene from Hamlet:

Phil Tucker was born in 1927. He was the director of a delightfully silly, but ultimately terrible film, Robot Monster. That’s the film where the villain is a guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet. It’s easy to laugh at, but Tucker got it produced and the film made a lot of money. Here is the trailer:

And Harvey Milk was born in 1930. He was one of the most important gay rights advocates ever. In San Francisco he is a legend. And he would likely be alive today if it weren’t for the unstable Dan White.

Bernie Taupin is 63 today.

The day, however, belongs to the great American impressionist Mary Cassatt who was bore in 1844. I don’t have a lot to say about her. Look:

Happy birthday Mary Cassatt!

Update (23 May 2013 12:52 am)

I just watched Robot Monster again. I take back “terrible.” It is actually an amazing little film. It has pretty much all of the problems of low budget films of that time, but it has a few positives. The acting isn’t bad. And it is truly bizarre in a delightful way. It is also filled with lots of unintentional gems like the whole marriage ceremony. I always love how movies of that time were filled with scientists who were very serious about their Christianity. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.

Matt Yglesias is very insightful about the Federal Reserve. Last year, he asked an incredibly important question, “If the unemployment and inflation rates were reversed, would the Fed do something about it?” The point is that the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate to keep both inflation and unemployment low. Yet all the Fed seems to care about is inflation. At the time he said that, inflation was 2% and unemployment was 8%. If it were the other ways around, the Fed would be working hard to cool the economy down. But they are perfectly happy with the way things were (and are).

There is some talk among conservatives that the Fed should have a single mandate: keep inflation low. The idea is that the Fed shouldn’t worry about employment at all. Note that this is an idea that is designed to help the rich. Inflation hurts people who have a lot of money. Unemployment hurts people who have to work for a living. By saying that the Fed should only worry about inflation, the conservatives are telling us everything we need to know about them: they are policy hacks for the rich.

But today, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar asked the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke how the Fed would act differently if it did have the single mandate. Yglesias rightly noted that after much bobbing and weaving, the Fed chair said that he wouldn’t do anything differently. And that’s important, if not surprising. We have long known that the Fed didn’t seem to think that 8% unemployment was anything to worry about. After all, none of the members of the Fed even know anyone who is out of a job.

Even Bernanke notes that he currently thinks that inflation is too low. Well, his primary tool regarding raising inflation is gone: he can’t lower interest rates anymore. So the only way to raise interest rates is to convince the finance community that inflation is coming. And the only way to do that is to convince them that the economy is improving. So if Bernanke wants to bring inflation up, he should work on bringing unemployment down. But he’s not very interested in that subject.

I suspect that he thinks that the power elite (the only people who matter) will never attack him for keeping inflation too low. But I’m not sure that’s true. In the next 20 years (while Bernanke is still alive), important people may well look back and say, “That guy just allowed the crisis to go on and on, ruining the lives of millions of people. All because he was afraid of angering the bankers. What an awful person and central banker.” Regardless, I doubt it is as simple as he thinks. And future generations will look back at him as a failed Fed chair. Sometimes caution is a bad thing. We don’t want cautious fire fighters. We don’t want cautious central bankers in the wake of a terrible financial crisis.

“You gotta thank the Lord, right?!” Am I right?! Really! The Lord! You gotta thank him?! Right?! Right?!

As the tornado was bearing down on Moore, Oklahoma, Rebecca Vitsmun and her infant son were waiting it all out in their bathtub. But as Vitsmun watched the coverage on her laptop computer, she became convinced that the storm was coming right toward them. So she put her son in the car and drove off in the opposite direction. And they survived! But when they got back, the house was destroyed.

That’s when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer showed up. He interviewed the young mother and asked what any objective journalist would, “You gotta thank the Lord! Do you thank the Lord? For that split-second decision?” Vitsmun seemed a bit uncomfortable. “I’m, I’m, I’m…” she stuttered. And then, giving him a big smile said, “I’m actually an atheist.”

So I guess that split-second decision had more to do with watching the news and making a rational decision rather than, say, getting telepathic advice from Odin.

Here’s the clip. It is a lot of fun for two reasons. First, of course, is the very awkward Wolf Blitzer. Second, is the wonderfully bright and happy atheist

In a broader context, this is a horrifying instance of journalistic malfeasance. Blitzer is hectoring this poor woman. In fact, he first says, “You gotta thank the Lord!” Vitsmun says in a very meek voice, “Yeah.” It is only when he pushes her that she decides to make an issue of it. And good for her! This is one of the few times that a journalist is completely nailed for his cultural prejudices. It’s great to see.

It might have been interesting if Blitzer had asked the song, “You gotta thank mom, right?!” Damned right!

Netflix kept pushing a documentary named Heckler on me. So I finally watched it. I’m curious about the phenomenon. It is very strange to me that people go out to see a comedian and then decide to interfere with the show. I understand they are usually drunk, but I still don’t get it. So I was quite interested in what people had to say on the subject. And the 15 minutes of this film that is about hecklers is quite interesting. The rest of the film is an attack on “critics” and a plea for understanding that performers have feelings too.

I write about performance art a lot. And I always try to approach a work on its own terms. It is stupid, for example, to complain that Without a Clue is silly, as some critics have. Yes, it is silly! That’s what it is. Complaining that a work is not what you wanted it to be is not criticism. And that is sadly what most of what we call “criticism” is. But in the case of Heckler, I feel the filmmakers tricked me. They claimed to make a film about hecklers when it was really about criticism.

Having said that, it isn’t as though I’m against watching a film about criticism. I think the state of film criticism is deplorable. And Heckler does a reasonable job of this. It doesn’t talk about what I think are some of the worst aspects of criticism. And it implies that a critic savaging an independent filmmaker who is just getting by is no worse than savaging George Lucas. But okay: the film works well enough.

I do not, however, think that Heckler succeeds in making its argument. In fact, the filmmakers even seem to know this. The film follows Jamie Kennedy (who is also a co-producer) as he confronts a number of online critics who have savaged him films in the past. At first, I felt sorry for the guy. But after a while, it was clear who the real bully was. The people who were attacking him were minor critics, some of them not even professional. Kennedy, on the other hand, has a net worth of $6 million. And he seemed particularly upset that people had panned Son of the Mask—a film with an $87 million budget. I have no opinion of the film since I haven’t seen it. But I’m not terribly sympathetic to a millionaire who worked on a big budget film and got bad reviews.

At the end of the film, Kennedy takes all of his reviews over the years and throws them on the ground. Then he has two obese women in bikinis set them on fire and the three of them walk away, wrapped around each other. When I saw that I almost lost it. Really?! That’s the final point of the film? Luckily, that was not the end of the film, although I have a hunch it was originally. After this scene, Internet film critic Devin Faraci comes on and says, “Well, I guess it’s really nice that people who make a lot of money for fucking around in front of a camera get an opportunity to really complain about the people who have to sit through the stuff that they make. And, of course, it’s always nice to have big, fat ladies at the end of your movies. Burning your reviews—congratulations. I guess that there’s some kind of real catharsis going on there. Hopefully, that’ll carry through to Malibu’s Most Wanted 2.”

Of course, maybe I’m wrong about what the filmmakers thought. Right after Faraci’s comment, the music started with the lyrics, “Hate is all around…” But Faraci’s take is my own. Kennedy is a whiny man who deserves very little sympathy. And in general, the complaints about critics were that they were too harsh and too absolute in their judgments. That’s pretty funny coming mostly from stand-up comedians whose stock and trade are absolute and extreme opinions about the world. Critics often work in hyperbole for the same reasons: they are trying to entertain.

Most of the other stars interviewed were substantially better than Kennedy. Arsenio Hall really stood out as someone who had a good perspective. So too did Louie Anderson, Patton Oswalt, Bill Maher, and Paul Rodriguez. But there was nonetheless, far too much whining. There was also a bizarre section of the film regarding Uwe Boll’s boxing matches with critics. The whole thing did little more than strengthen stereotypes of Germans as brutes. What’s more, it reminded me of an SNL skit where a caveman learns the secret of fire. Everyone says he’s smart. The alpha male kills him and then says, “Now I smart!” I’ve never seen any of Boll’s films, but his boxing skills don’t make me wish to see them.

The biggest problem with critics is the power they have over small independent films. They have little impact on big budget Hollywood films like Son of the Mask. And I think that the real power that critics have should be challenged and they should be held accountable. One bad review of a small film in the New York Times can destroy the film’s chances for a decent distribution. Given these very real stakes, the minor complaint that stars get their feelings hurt seems like a waste of the opportunity to make a film.

Over at Mother Jones, Julian Sanchez provided an overview of what’s going on with the most recent case of the Obama administration going after whistleblowers. It is very hard not to accept the most intense critics’ contention that this is not about national security or even embarrassment. This is about creating an environment in which people who see government wrongdoing feel that they can’t go to the press.

One of the best examples of this is former NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake who blew the whistle on the wasteful and unconstitutional Trailblazer Project. Drake did all that he was supposed to in terms of trying to take care of the matter internally. And then, when that didn’t work, he went to the press. As usual, he was being gone after under the Espionage Act of 1917—clearly an outrageous use of the law. And they didn’t even charge him with distributing classified documents. Instead, they changed him with “Willful Retention of National Defense Information.” That’s right: he held onto documents. In the end, all the government got was a “misdemeanor of misusing the agency’s computer system.”

But the issue there wasn’t to get him. It was to stop people like him in the future. And now the situation has gotten even worse. Now it seems that the administration is going after Fox News reporter James Rosen. Again, I doubt they mean to get him or even prosecute him. But as Sanchez pointed out, “The Rosen case is especially unsettling because the warrant affidavit suggests that Rosen himself could be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act, on the grounds that his alleged encouragement to a source to provide classified information amounted to ‘conspiracy.'”

Most reporters won’t even risk angering a White House source for fear of losing “access.” So there is no doubt that the threat of a night raid by the FBI, not to mention years in prison, will turn the few remaining investigative journalists into pundits. This all looks very much like a full court press against the Fourth Estate. It is very troubling. And this scandal, really does reach to the president; he’s the one who sets the policies.

Afterword

Sanchez ended his article arguing that people really should care about this issue because the government isn’t always just trying to protect the national security. I think this came off as rather naive. It is almost never the case that documents are classified for good reasons. I would be shocked if even 5% of all classified documents were justified. It is mostly just a matter of protecting reputations and a blind drive to make everything secret. That way, the power elite know that they’re important: they get access to these files and the rest of us do not. It’s pathetic.

Poet Alexander Pope was born in 1688. He is best known for not being Pope Alexander. In fact, since Pope burst onto the English literary scene in the earth 18th century, the Vatican has stopped naming popes Alexander. The last such pope was Alexander VIII, who was born in 1610. I have no evidence that this is a direct result of policy. But really, if you became pope, would you want people screwing up your name? Perhaps if you were an evil pope. (Antipope?!) But even then, school children already have enough difficulties with Alexander Pope and all eight of the Pope Alexanders.

Prison reformer Elizabeth Fry was born in 1780. French primitive post-impressionist Henri Rousseau was born in 1844. Great stride pianist Fats Waller was born in 1904. Here he is doing his cowritten song “Ain’t Misbehavin'”:

The first female President of Ireland, Mary Robinson is 69 today. I am constantly amazed at these seriously Catholic countries. Ireland elected its first female president in 1990, where America is still waiting. Maybe “amazed” is not the word; “disappointed.” The man who always makes me feel like dancing, Leo Sayer is 65 today, so we won’t be hearing anymore from him. Comedian and pretty damned good Senator, Al Franken is 62. Judge Reinhold is 56. His name is “Judge”:

The day belongs to aviation pioneer, Glenn Curtiss who was born on this day back in 1878. He was at first a competitor and then a partner with the Wright Brothers, eventually creating the still extant Curtiss-Wright Corporation. He died suddenly at the age of 52 of appendicitis. Here is the summary from Wikipedia:

Happy birthday Glenn Curtiss!

After reading John Dean’s take on the recent scandals, I noticed that another of my favorite conservatives, Ramesh Ponnuru had waded into these waters, ‘Obama Scandals’ Could Actually Hurt Republicans. I love those scare quotes in the title. The truth is that these aren’t really Obama’s scandals, but it would be fair to call them Obama’s troubles.

The argument that Ponnuru made is a common one these days on the left: the Republicans might be overreaching on these issues. Coming from liberals, I’m unimpressed. Just like with the talk that the current scandals might turn out to involve Obama, the Republicans might overplay the scandals. The truth is that the Republicans don’t exactly need these scandals to overplay their hand. Regardless, this wasn’t Ponnuru’s main point.

The big comparison for everyone seems to be 1998. That was Bill Clinton’s sixth year. Clinton had been involved in a scandal regarding lying about an affair. The standard narrative is that the Republicans overplayed the scandal and ended up doing damage to themselves. It is widely believed that the president’s party loses lots of seats in Congress during the president’s sixth year in office (this is a myth). So when the Democrats picked up a couple of seats, everyone said it was because the Republicans angered the voters with all their focus on Cigar-Gate.

But Ponnuru showed that this wasn’t the case. Only 5% of the voters in 1998 were motivated by the sex scandal and most of them voted against Clinton. The real story was that the voters cared about the economy and education (As usual!) and they were very unhappy with where the Republicans were on these issues. Ponnuru argued that the current crop of Republicans is being equally out of touch. And the scandals are just making it worse on them because it is allowing them to focus on scandals that will likely come to nothing rather than pushing for real policy changes. As he put it, “They’re trying to win news cycles when they need votes.”

The only place I disagree with Ponnuru (and this is a running disagreement) is his belief that the conservative movement actually has policy ideas. I really don’t see this. They do have some ideas relative to current policy. For example, changes in Medicare will put limits on the few people currently using Medicare Advantage. But if the Republicans suddenly found themselves in charge of the federal government, what policies would they push? They would repeal Obamacare, but not replace it with anything. They would enact regressive tax cuts. And they would try to outlaw abortions. Basically, they would try to destroy the legacy of the New Deal onward. But none of these policies even claim to tackle the problems that our country faces.

So I continue to wonder why someone as smart as Ponnuru can continue to think that his movement has ideas for the future. I’m sure that there are conservative ideas out there. But the movement itself isn’t interested in them. The Republicans could rename their party the Anti-Democratic Party. That would be more honest. But Ponnuru is correct that they aren’t going to succeed as long as they think all they need to do is to destroy Obama. After all, Obama will never again run for office.

Over at Bloomberg View, I saw that John Dean had written an article, Obama’s Not Nixon, He’s Harding. I knew immediately what he was talking about: Teapot Dome. Normally, I would not have clicked through. But I really like John Dean, and I couldn’t believe that he was really comparing Obama’s scandals with Harding’s.

Not surprisingly, Dean did not disappoint me. He was making a totally reasonable argument. As usual. Most of the article is an attack on those who are comparing Obama’s troubles with Watergate. In particular, Dean is concerned about statements that have been made by Bob Woodward. Given that Woodward was such an important player in the Watergate scandal, and that he wrote a book about it with Carl Bernstein, one would think that he would have some perspective on it.

Dean was too nice to question Woodward’s motivations. But I’m not. Woodward seems to crave attention. Last year shortly after the Benghazi attack, he claimed that there was no scandal. But more recently, he has been trying to associate the talking point revisions between the State Department and the CIA to Nixon’s hacked tape transcripts. There is no similarity, especially when you consider that Obama was not involved at all. But Wordward really seems to have some kind of hard on for Obama—for now.

Dean’s comparison of Obama with Harding was just the most current chapter in Dean’s efforts to rehabilitate Harding’s reputation. He rightly notes that when Harding found out about Teapot Dome, he was outraged. He asked about it, and was lied to. Then he went on a “get in touch with the people” tour and died. Until fairly recently, he was blamed for the many scandals during his presidency. (They were more common back then.) Dean’s point is that regardless of the scandals going on now, there is no indication that they involve Obama.

What is perhaps ironic is that Dean is the writer of Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. So Dean not only knows Watergate, he isn’t afraid to use it as a comparison. And remember: Dean is a conservative. Of course, at this point, that makes him about as conservative as Obama. Regardless, there really is nothing to these scandals regarding presidential malfeasance. Time will show that to be the case.

Yesterday, Cass R. Sunstein wrote an interesting article, How to Humble a Wing Nut. He reported on some research by Philip Fernbach at the University of Colorado. He found that by asking test subjects to write down everything they know about a controversial policy, he got them to moderate their views and lower their belief in how much they know about the subject. This isn’t a terribly surprising result, but it is nice to see it made concrete.

The problem is that I doubt that it is of much usefulness. Debates are all about not losing face. In the study, there is no face to lose. My experience writing about politics is that a lot of subjects turn into an inconclusive muddle the more you look at them. As a result, I tend to not write about them. That’s not because they aren’t important. It is just that I don’t have much to add to the debate. Similarly, that’s why I write a lot about economics: it is very clear. America has been off the rails, economically speaking, for so long that the major debates are nowhere near the margins where there is actual disagreement in the science.

The problem I have with Sunstein’s article is his position that the crazies are “out there” and the truth is the moderate position in the center. So his list of wingnut views is as follows:

I don’t agree with any of these position as stated. However, there is a great deal of fascist thought in the modern Republican Party, even if I have never claimed that the party itself is fascistic. Obama, like every other person in the world, has some socialistic leanings. The big banks don’t run the Department of the Treasury, but they have enormous power, both directly and indirectly. And the United States (like all countries) considers its own interest in all foreign affairs.

The fundamental issue is that the “center” or “moderate position” is not absolute. Bill O’Reilly would undoubtedly call me a “far left wing” writer. But in the context of most European countries, I would be center left, or even just center. The problem I have with the United States is that our politics have been so distorted. It no longer reflects what the people believe; it reflects the interests of the power elite. Sunstein is a reasonable man, but he is part of that elite and so it is natural for him to think that the middle of American politics is just right.

Regardless, I don’t think this study is going to be all that helpful. I’m going to give it a try, though. I like the idea of quizzing my debate partners. Even if it does them no good, it should help me to understand them. And despite my at time flaming rhetoric, I have a great deal of respect for those who will talk politics with me. My problem is with the propagandists and with people who can’t seem to get past that propaganda. But communication is always helpful.