When reading the likes of Paul Johnson, William F. Buckley, or even David Brooks, it is easy to get so caught up in the eloquence of the writing and ostentatious erudition, that one misses the distortions (and sometimes plain lies) and specious arguments. It doesn’t take much of a leap to conclude that the well-written, pointedly erudite presentation is intended as a smokescreen for what are almost always poor arguments.

I was in San Francisco today, so I grabbed a copy of The San Francisco Examiner. My reason for picking it up was the hope that it contained a Sudoku puzzle. It did. But before I got to it, I read the whole paper.

The Cover Story

The cover story was about a court’s finding that Judge Walker—who overturned the intolerant Prop. 8 banning gay married—needn’t have recused himself from the trial. Gay rights opponents claimed that Walker could not be impartial because he was gay. How a heterosexual person would be any more even-handed is not clear. But many things are unclear from the article. Most of it puts forth the anti-Walker case: fags can’t be objective about fag things. The article spends much more time presenting and sanitizing this objection. It ends with two paragraphs about how two different groups are planning to appeal the ruling. (To be fair, the article does describe the pro-Walker argument. It is done well, but isn’t the core of the article.)

The rest of the issue is typical local news and the usual AP stories you would think would be written locally: an article about the California budget and a surprisingly thoughtful article about Schwarzenegger’s sex scandal. It is only when we get the editorial page that things take on a very bad turn.

The Editorial Page

Of the four major editorials, all but one written by people on the staff at The Weekly Standard. The first, unattributed article is, “Four Pivotal Questions for Tim Geithner.” The article is riddled with Republican talking points designed to scare rather than enlighten. The author makes the argument that since bond prices haven’t gone up in the face of threats not to increase the debt ceiling, there must be no problem—preposterous. He also slams Obama for saying Chrysler paid back the bailout when they have not yet paid back money Bush loaned. Not really the same thing, right? Just a commentator going out of his way to find fault? You bet.

Then we get to the Weekly Standard guys. David Gelernter writes, “Ryan must get to the point.” From the title you would think the article is critical of the Representative. Instead, it says what Ryan has said ad nauseum, that people don’t like his program because they don’t understand it. Quite the opposite is true; the better people understand his plan, the more they hate it. It is, after all, a way of taking benefits away from the poor and middle-class to give giant tax-cuts for the wealthy.

Lee Smith ends his article, “Israel may be drawn into the turmoil of violent Arab spring.” Here he presents a surprisingly clear statement of the racism in the USA that defines Israel as good and Palestine as bad: “The problem is the character of the societies that gives rise to these regimes.” Additionally, he finds we can only refer to the peace process by putting the phrase itself in scare quotes: “peace process.”

Finally, we get to the big guns of William Kristol and Jamie M. Fly (of the Foreign Policy Institute). They wrote an article called, “Panetta’s duty to the Constitution.” I find it ironic that Kristol only seems concerned about the Constitution when Democrats are in charge. The article itself has little to say other than to warn Panetta to uphold the Constitution. What does that mean? Give defense as much money as they want.

I’m not surprised to find The Examiner nothing more than a mouthpiece for the right wing. It has taken me this long to read it in its current form because its covers are visually obnoxious: what I would expect from the New York Post or the National Enquirer. They are clearly going after the lowest instincts of the public.

Not a Total Loss

But then, I wasn’t after news. Unfortunately, the Sudoku puzzle I sought was also disappointing. It was very easy, as one might expect. It did, however, offer an interesting moment. I got a good ten minutes out of it. So the experience wasn’t a complete loss.

Yesterday, I wrote a short article about how his name ought to be pronounced, Anthony Weiner Pronounces Name Wrong. I did not talk about the political aspects of the sexless sex scandal he is now in the middle of. There isn’t much I have to say on the subject, except this: the scandal is over. The continued interest in the case (it is the number one story on Google News, as I write this) is disgusting. Unless reporters can show that Weiner did something other than what he claimed in his press conference, they are only showing their own lewdness. There is no news in publishing the private conversations with these women. Even the information that Weiner’s wife is pregnant is irrelevant to the scandal.

The fact that reporters are allowing the Republicans to get any traction on this issue is itself lewd. The only story here is the unabashed hypocrisy of this cult masquerading as a political party. They are allowed to push this story above the fold on the first page, and thus take attention off their dangerous antics over the debt limit. If this is what we get from the fourth estate, perhaps we are better off without it.

I read the most amazing thing in The Chronicle today, “Six percent of Americans over 18 have sent a nude or near-nude image of themselves to someone else and 15 percent have received one, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.” I’ll have to think about this more, but off hand, it would appear that on average, every person who sends a naked (or nearly so) picture of themselves, sends one to 2.5 people. Does this mean people are 2.5 times as likely to be voyeurs (perhaps unwilling ones) as exhibitionists?

First, check out this segment:

I think her rankings in the “Post-Bill Clinton Modern American Political Sex-Scandal Consequence-O-Meter” are wrong. In particular, she seems to have a real problem with prostitution and thinks that it alone makes something creepy and prosecutable. For example, she finds David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer, who only had adulterous, consensual sex with prostitutes, very creepy and prosecutable—far more creepy and prosecutable than Larry Craig, who was trying to have sex in a public restroom. Personally, I find people trying find sexual partners in airport bathrooms far more creepy than a man paying a prostitute for sex—and this has nothing to do with the homosexuality Craig’s act. I can see that Vitter deserves to be higher on the creepy scale than Spitzer (and he isn’t), given the great hypocrisy of his behavior. But Craig shares this hypocrisy with Vitter—in fact, Craig’s hypocrisy is probably worse.

And there is the case of Mark Sanford. I understand that the guy cheated on his wife and it shows hypocrisy. But the man was in love. Screwing around behind your wife’s back is bad, but it is hard to find a man falling in love with another woman all that creepy. As creepy as Larry Craig? I don’t think so. She also places him far lower on the prosecutable scale as the details of his misuse of funds shows. They are far worse than anything John Edwards did, who she maxes out on both scales. I disagree with her about how creepy his affair was, too. I don’t think that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sex scandal is all that creepy. I guess I just don’t find guys having affairs all that creepy. They do it all the time.

Finally, we come to Anthony Weiner, who Maddow places low on the prosecutable scale, but rather high on the creepy scale. I do think it’s a little creepy. It is more creepy than Spitzer, surely. But it is certainly less creepy than a married, anti-gay rights politician actively seeking gay sex in a public bathroom. Let’s not forget here that Weiner did not actually have any sex. This is basically all about online flirting. Much ado about nothing? Very little anyway. I’m not really sure what the whole point of this segment was, except to bring up all the major sex scandals of the past few years. So it isn’t just that Maddow is wrong; she is also disappointing; she is better than this.

Update

On the next day’s broadcast, Maddow claimed (rightly) that Mark Sanford’s and John Ensign’s transgressions were worst than Anthony Weiner’s. But the day before, she placed Sanford below Weiner on her creep scale. Ensign was only slightly higher. What’s with that?

Rachel Maddow is a very silly woman. I don’t know how she ever got a news show, but I’m glad she did.

O’Donnell is a very insightful guy. He thinks about politics better than anyone I know of. This is amazing.

In 1855, Walt Whitman self-published the first version of Leaves of Grass. This version of the book was only 95 pages long and did not include the poem “I Sing the Body Electric.” It would have to wait for the 120 page, 1871 edition. (The final edition was 438 pages in 1891.) Don’t believe the many sources that claim the poem was published in 1855. Regardless of the extra 16 years, this is by far the first time anyone wrote or (following Chomsky) said these words:[1]

I bring this up only because there seems to be a lot of confusion over this point, because a lot of people have borrowed from Whitman without mention. I suspect many were more influenced by Ray Bradbury than Walt Whitman. Bradbury does mention Whitman. In the screenplay of The Twilight Zone episode “I Sing The Body Electric” (Season 3, Episode 35) three lines from the beginning of the poem are heard. I assume it is based on an earlier short story with the same title. It is a strange little tale about a widower who needs someone to care for his children after their mother dies. Human replacements like nannies and babysitters don’t seem to be working, so they go to a company called “I Sing the Body Electric.” This company creates an electronic grandmother—who looks human—for the family. With her love and care, the family is saved. Then she goes back to the factory. The crowd goes wild.

Today, most people know Whitman’s line from the song sung in the film Fame. You can watch and hear it in all its glory on YouTube (more and more stuff on YouTube is not allowed to be embedded—I don’t know why). Alan Parker makes it all work far better than it deserves; the man is amazing. The song itself only includes the one line; the rest of the lyrics (which are pretty cheese if you listen) are by Wade Lassister. (Sorry Wade, but the song wouldn’t have been a hit if they hadn’t been.)

When you think of “I sing the body electric,” you have Walt Whitman to thank. Certainly Bradbury gets some credit for moving the line into science fiction (although it does seem obvious). All the others are just lifters. That’s fine: Whitman belongs to us all. But he ought to get the credit.

[1] This is the first of nine parts—most much longer.

I had planned to write about some important differences I noticed in the Beckett on Film version of Krapp’s Last Tape and the play itself, but I finally got around to watching Lars and the Real Girl and I had two thoughts about it: one emotional and one technical.

No Third Acts

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote in The Love of the Last Tycoon, “There are no second acts in American lives.” And ever since it has been fashionable for people who don’t know a lick about dramatic structure to say he was wrong. They usually assume it means that people don’t have second careers—that is how simplistic the thinking goes. It is never mentioned that this quotation is not from some party that Fitzgerald attended and thus is his opinion, but from the half-finished first draft of a novel. Should we assume that Melville preferred to be called Ishmael, because that’s what he wrote in Moby Dick? Of course not. And the same logic should be applied to Fitzgerald, especially given that he might have removed the whole line had he lived long enough. (This is highly doubtful; it is a great line.)

There are first acts in our lives: things go wrong. There are second acts, too: things get more and less complicated. There are not third acts in our lives: there is never any resolution. Much of the brilliance of Waiting for Godot is that its structure is life: every day is a minor variation on the day before. There are no conclusions; nothing is ever resolved. In this way, life is one long second act: complication after complication; we do better sometimes and worse others. Even on the most trite level where we try to cram birth, life, and death into the three acts, there are no third acts; birth and death are not acts—they are events. Fitzgerald’s life itself shows this. Yes, he died. But did he have a massive heart attack just as he typed that last period of that last novel? No. He died having almost half his planned chapters undone: 14 out of 31. It was second act all the way up to falling dead off that armchair.There are no third acts in real life.

Which brings us to Lars and the Real Girl. What are we to make of such a movie? The first half of the film is very funny. Nothing can quite compete with a sex doll in a wheelchair, holding a prayer book in the middle of a church. That is effortless comedy. The second half of the film is a tragedy. The film is basically Love Story with a sex doll and a fourth act tacked on to make everything work out. Since I knew this was the course the film would take from the moment the sex doll arrived (the filmmakers had to lay a little—surprisingly little—groundwork for the fourth act to work), I found myself sobbing throughout the second half of the film—certainly as much as I did during Love Story.

Did the happy fourth act ending make me happy? Of course not. It was just a cheap trick, anyway. And if I don’t think there are third acts in real life, I certainly don’t believe in a follow-up. In real life, far from getting the girl, Lars doesn’t even get his sanity back. Some days are better than others—just like it is for the rest of us.

Modern Films Are Too Long

Lars and the Real Girl is typical of modern films. It comes in at about an hour forty-five, and yet has only about an hour’s worth of content. The first act is way too long, the second act barely exists, its third act is interminable, and its fourth act is just silly. It helps that all of these acts were extremely well done: the dialog and scene construction, art direction, lighting, acting, even editing in as much as it was allowed. I’m sure the editor could have made a near perfect film with the material she was given: it just would have been, as usual, about an hour long.

The first thing one learns as a novelist—even a failed one—is that some stories just don’t lend themselves to a novel. A novel requires a lot of material. Well, so does an hour forty-five film. I wish filmmakers would learn that.