EdDriscoll.com

Posted 5/11/2002 04:35:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
LES IS MORE: I used to play guitar extensively from about age 17 until about 25. Over the past few years, after I moved out to California, I've been resuming my playing a bit, and also experimenting with home multitrack recording of music. (see my post here on the subject). Over the past few weeks (I dropped it off after my day of jury duty, back on April 23rd), I had my 1982 Gibson Les Paul Custom electric guitar rebuilt by C.B. Perkins of San Jose. They basically took a 20 year old axe that had been very, very heavily played and abused by an exuberhant college-student with pretensions of Pete Townshend-hood and gave it a 50,000 mile tune-up, which included re-leveled frets, headstock repair, new circuitry...and a third pickup added, to better resemble the Les Paul Customs of the late 1950s. (I won't bore you with a complete post-graduate doctoral thesis-level history of the Gibson Les Paul, which I'm quite capable of doing. But there were basically two popular versions of the guitar in its "golden era" of 1957 through 1960: the Les Paul Standard, which had a sunburst-style finish, such as this model. The Customs of that period were black with gold hardware. If you really want some Les Paul guitar minutia, visit these folks.) Here are a couple of photos of my new/old axe. I love it. It not only looks nice, it's a real icon of Americana. One of the things I like about the three pick-up Les Paul Customs that were made from 1957 until 1960 is the sort of tension between the very rich tuxedo or piano black finish, and the three gold-plated humbuckers. It seems like an instrument perfectly at home in America's 1950s optimistic, exuberant can-do, but still elegant and innocent period. It reminds of Cadillac coupes from that era--very elegant interior and exterior, you could drive it to any destination--an expensive restaurant, a wedding, etc., and yet there are those rocket fins and aircraft style taillights--as if it wants to go into orbit at any moment. That duality is reflected in the music the Custom is capable of. When I listen to the electric guitar playing in the jazz orchestra on Gil Evans' elegant Out of the Cool album from the early 1960s for some reason, I picture the three pickup "black beauty". But if I put on my laser disc of The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus, I can watch Keith Richards raunch out on that same guitar. And I like something that contains both elegance and exuberance!

Posted 5/11/2002 04:13:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
LILEKS ON TECHNOLOGY WHEN IT GOES WRONG, and the joys of Orange Julius. Just click here. (Assuming the technology goes right. Maybe I'm just posting this because our cable modem was down for much of the morning....)

Posted 5/11/2002 12:03:07 AM by Edward Driscoll
POP-UP EBAY: Linking to a ZDNet story, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake says that eBay has announced it's trying pop-up ads on their Web site. He is not happy about the idea, and says "Methinks it is time I looked for a piece of software that stops pop-ups - I am an eBay trader and don't need more irritation in my life." As I wrote in mid-March, here's what I'm using to block both pop-up ads, and their newest cousins--Macromedia Flash ads.

Posted 5/10/2002 01:44:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
BACK AND TO THE LEFT. BACK AND TO THE LEFT: Byron York describes a Chuck Schumer who sounds like he's seen one too many Oliver Stone movies.

Posted 5/10/2002 10:42:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
DEN BESTE ON HAMAS SUICIDE BOMBERS:"Hamas says that its campaign of bombings against Israel will go on. I know some are probably wondering why. The reason is that the Hamas leadership has no choice. As long as the campaign continues, then it hasn't succeeded. But as soon as they call a halt to it, then it has failed. And then the supporters of Hamas will want to know why they didn't win, and what their sacrifice gained them. The top leadership of Hamas won't have any answers."

Posted 5/9/2002 09:59:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE BAD NEWS FOR AOL: Their bonds have been reduced to "Just Above Junk" according to this Reuters article.

Posted 5/9/2002 02:44:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT START, POOR FINISH: InstaPundit links to this article by Dan Gilmour in the San Jose Mercury News (or "the Murky News", as it's sometimes called out here). Gilmour makes some excellent points about the recent California electricity crisis:

it's vital to remember that the fleecing of California in 2000 and 2001 didn't just happen because of some corporate malfeasance and federal nonfeasance, no matter how much we might like to think so. California itself bears much of the responsibility, starting with the bogus but ballyhooed deregulation. The virtuoso finger-pointing among California politicians is a race from truth. Gov. Gray Davis, who was stampeded into ill-advised, massively expensive power purchases during the crisis, is one of the most ardent deflectors of blame. He shouldn't get away with this revisionism.

Gilmour loses me with the last paragraph however, which reads like is a cheap copout to end the article on:

Ultimately, the mess is a reminder to ourselves. Our energy gluttony plays into the hands of the manipulators. Think conservation. The energy we don't need to consume is our own weapon in this fight. Let's use it better.

A growing state simply needs more electricity--this is Economics 101 here. Which means that conservation really isn't the only answer here, if indeed it's an answer at all. Appealing to consumers, who use far less electricity than businesses, hospitals, state and local government-provided services, etc., is just silly. Besides, why should consumers suffer because their local governments don't have the sense to authorize what should be obvious: building more power plants, the lack of which is what got California in the crisis that Gray Davis only exacerbated.

Posted 5/9/2002 02:09:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE 60s REVISITED: James Bowman reviews Steven F. Hayward's recent book, The Age Of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order:

In a larger sense his book is an argument with the Standard Heroic Account of the last 40 years. As such it is another shot in the battle over the historiography of the 1960s, which is what really lies behind the so-called �culture wars� of America today. Most academic historians and the media consensus, still dominated by now-aged reporters who were getting their start in the 1960s, hold to the view that the decade was a period of heroic liberations � most notably from colonialism, from racial segregation, from traditional sexual restraints and traditional male dominance or �patriarchy� � and that its twin achievements in America were the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements. Hayward concentrates his fire on these two triumphs of the American left and purports to show how the first�s wrong turning after the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964 produced today�s racial �balkanization� while the second was fundamentally misconceived from the start � though not without the help of the inept and foolish Johnson administration � and gradually grew dishonest as well. Not surprisingly, the media come in for rather a lot of bashing, not only in connection with Watergate, which is supposed to have been their finest hour, but also for the reporting, or mis-reporting, of the Goldwater candidacy in 1964, the Reagan phenomenon in the 1960s and again in the 1970s, the Tet offensive and the New Hampshire primary of 1968, which between them reversed the tide of public opinion on Vietnam (though both arguably because of misperceptions of what had actually happened), and the Nixon presidency as a whole. Hayward notes one after another the important facts that the Standard Heroic Account leaves out with respect not only to American successes in Vietnam and the real nature of Nixon�s failure but a host of other markers along the way from 1964 to 1980 � for example, the McGovern commission�s changes in the rules of the Democratic party nominating process after the fiasco of Chicago in 1968. These were �intended to �open up� the Democratic Party, but in fact the effect of the rules changes adopted in the aftermath of Chicago was to lose the party to many of its traditional core constituencies and capture it for a new set of mostly left-leaning factions�.

Very good review of what sounds like a very good book, which is of course leading up to Volume II, when the real Age of Reagan begins.

Posted 5/8/2002 02:38:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPIDER-MAN: OK, I promised my thoughts on Spider-Man: While I�m not as over-the-top, blown-away, dazzled, bursting with excitement about the new Spider-Man film as James Lileks is, I will I say I liked it one helluva lot more than Rex Reed (which admittedly, isn�t saying much). The more I think about the film, the more I think that Lileks� comparison to Casablanca is an apt one. They�re both run-of-the-mill, studio assembly line product but with one difference: they have soul, both via their scripts, and via their actors. Here�s my comparison: Spider-Man is like the first Star Wars movie. (No, not the Phantom Menace, Episode I, from three years ago, dummkopf, the original 1977, Mark Hammill/Carrie Fisher/Harrison Ford Star Wars.) While the original Star Wars cost 10 million dollars, and Spider-Man cost $139 million, both are examples of fairly big budget films of their respective times. What they both feel like however, are hip b-pictures made good, because you can tell that the (mostly) young actors in it are having a lot of fun, and want you to have fun too. And in both films, they�re propelled by a script that�s very different from the typical cynical, morally bankrupt product that Hollywood generates. And they both have a religious core to them. With Star Wars, it was the new age-y �The Force�, but at least they weren�t the typical existential characters living out their lives believing they�re going to be just so much dust when they die, and that therefore their lives don�t matter, that seemed to populate many of Hollywood�s films both then and now. In Spider-Man, Peter Parker�s Aunt May actually wants Grace said before Thanksgiving dinner, and prays before going to sleep soon after. Think about this triple play: Grace, the Lord�s Prayer and Thanksgiving�and nobody�s poking fun at them! For Hollywood, this is a major step forward (or backward, to when movies had more respect for the audiences watching them). And Spider-Man�s Manhattan isn�t the Fritz Lang/Leni Riefenstahl/Albert Speer Gotham City that Tim Burton�s Batman operates out of�as Lileks notes, this is a very real, very human feeling New York (and yes, the Flatiron Building for the Daily Bugle�s HQ was a great touch�and a flatiron is what J. Jonah Jameson�s hair looks like it�s combed with), filled with New Yorkers with a �you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!� attitude. And yes, I have quibbles�the Green Goblin�s mask looks especially silly, and Spider-Man moves too digitally, too jerkily. And why is The Front Page still, after over 70 years, the role model whenever a director wants clich�d newsroom scenes? But these are very minor quibbles. Spider-Man ends with Spidey swinging off an American flagpole, high above the damaged, bloodied, but still dazzling New York skyline. And the whole film feels so American, without rubbing the audience�s collective nose in its patriotism. This is a very right feeling film (and no, I don�t mean that in a political sense). All the big pieces work. Almost all of the little touches are right. And Cliff Robertson gets to deliver the film�s tagline, which is the only proper tagline it could have, since it�s been Spider-Man�s tagline for almost forty years now:

With great power, comes great responsibility. By all means, go see Spider-Man, if you�re one of the two or three Americans left who hasn�t seen it yet.

Posted 5/8/2002 02:00:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
SEGWAY CLAIMS FIRST VICTIM: Orrin Judd sent me the link to this story, which he found on the Enter Stage Right Web log. Apparently, the Segway has had its first public accident. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that an officer, whose name wasn't released, was injured recently using one. The Journal-Constitution says:

A member of the Central Atlanta Progress Ambassador Force toppled from one of the personal scooters on Cone Street near Luckie Street about 8:40 p.m. Thursday. The officer, whose name was not released, injured his knee going up a driveway onto the sidewalk, said Atlanta Police Sgt. Michael Giugliano. He was taken to Grady Hospital.

ESR describes the picture as "priceless". I wonder if the injured officer will be calling these folks (or vice-versa)?

Posted 5/8/2002 01:45:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
TRUE LEADERSHIP: Gary Dempsey of the Cato Institute on why it's a very good thing that the US bailed out on the International Criminal Court:

Most troubling, however, is the muddled understanding the president's critics have of the concept of leadership. Indeed, the president's critics seem to believe that it is an expression of American leadership to go along with treaties that are flawed, like the International Criminal Court, and treaties that are contrary to U.S. national interests, like the Kyoto Protocol. By that logic, following the bad policies of other countries is a form of American leadership. True leadership, however, is something different than the president's critics imagine. True leadership means pursuing policies that are in America's national interest, and persuading other countries that the policies are in their national interest too. It does not mean, as some of the president's critics contend, doing things because they will make other countries happy. That's what we might more accurately call "followership."

Posted 5/8/2002 11:54:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
CRUSADER KAPUT: Donald Rumsfeld has cancelled the Crusader artillery system, a 40-ton, self-propelled, rapid-fire cannon that was to have entered service by 2008. I'll be interested to see if the Sarge and the Group Captain have any thoughts on this. UPDATE: Group Captain Mandrake weighs in, complete with photos--and this comment, which shows how cumbersome the Crusader would have been:

Crusader is a wonderful hi-tech system. Unfortunately, at 48 tons per unit, it was designed for the Cold War and the battles that it was assumed would be fought during it. Crusader should ideally be in place long before the battle. Each Crusader system comprises the firing vehicle, the ammunition vehicle and crew. One C-5 aircraft Galaxy can carry one Crusader unit. That's a lot of Galaxys' needed to move a usable amount of systems into your theatre of operations. Back during the Cold War, a system like Crusader would be in position long before any fight, and use its self-propelled ability to move around with the battlefield.

Posted 5/8/2002 11:43:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE PINK TRIANGLE: Found on The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today section. I was tempted to call this "outrage of the week" when I first read it, then immediately came to my senses--it ranks fairly low in the outrage department compared to the rest of the headlines so far this week:

What's Next, Yellow Stars? Nazi Germany forced homosexuals to wear pink triangles. Cleveland's WEWS-TV reports on a student Lakeland Community College "who we'll call Ian," whom the college tried to force to wear a Nazi-style triangle. "The assignment was to wear a pink triangle around school for the day as a symbol of gay rights and then write about the experience," the station reports. Ian objected to the assignment on moral grounds. "I asked 'What if a student were to feel uncomfortable with this--would there be an alternate assignment? [The instructor] said no." Ian got an F and was threatened with expulsion, but WEWS says when it contacted the college, it backed down. "When NewsChannel5 spoke with Ian later in the day, his teacher had given him an apology note that read, in part, that the requirement was waived."

Paging Tom Wolfe--here's more grist for the book on academia.

Posted 5/8/2002 10:09:35 AM by Edward Driscoll
YUCK: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has a photo of the proposed new European Union flag--and it's really bad, especially when compared to the photo below it of the current EU flag, which is at least much easier on the eye. I made two very silly points on the comment section of the good Group Captain's blog, which I'll repeat here:

Remember when I mentioned that I saw "Vanilla Sky" and started channeling Beavis and Butthead's "This thing sucks, but it sucks in like, ways we haven't seen stuff suck before" bit? This flag sucks in ways we haven't seen stuff suck before. Truly hideous.

And...

I would discuss the Orwellian implications of the barcode-like design of the flag, but I always feel a bit gouache invoking the original Mr. Blair's name.

But this flag really is bad. The esteemed InstaPundit also weighed in on the issue, on his blog. And he's right--the timing couldn't be better. Political assassinations, anti-Semitism, taxing the Internet. When the chips are down--let's design a new flag!

Posted 5/8/2002 09:56:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
ALASKA UNDER SIEGE? Kevin M. McGehee, the author of the Flyover Country Blog thinks it is, in this article from FOXNews.com's Blog of the Week series.

Posted 5/8/2002 09:47:19 AM by Edward Driscoll
"IF WE ONLY HAD TANKS" Sorry for the double dipping of Jonah Goldberg today, but I loved the points he makes on the "'suicide bombers' are the only weapons the Palestinians have argument:

The most annoying argument made by apologists for these massacre-bombers is the one which begins with something like, "the Palestinians don't have American-made tanks and helicopters, 'suicide bombers' are the only weapons the Palestinians have...." The reason this argument is so annoying is threefold. First, the explicit assumption in this formulation is that if indeed the Palestinians had helicopters and tanks, they would in fact use them. In other words, to make this argument is to concede that the Palestinians are at war with Israel which would put all of the peace rhetoric in a very different light. Which leads to the second issue. Nobody who makes the "the Palestinians don't have tanks" argument will ever concede the logic of their assertion. If you say to them, "So if they had tanks they'd use them? That doesn't really sound like a desire for peace." You get eye-rolls as if you just don't get it. And, lastly, contrary to what this argument implies and the assertions of countless Arafat apologists, the Israeli military was not designed nor intended to be aimed at the Palestinians. It was designed to fight wars with actual nations which, several times in the past, tried to destroy Israel. To suggest that the Israeli military is a weapon intended for the Palestinians is a form of moral equivalence. It assumes that Israeli weapons were intended for murder just like Palestinian bomber belts. And that's a lie.

Posted 5/8/2002 09:42:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE WASHINGTON WARRIORS?? Found via NRO's The Corner, is this article which says that the days of the Washington Redskins as the Redskins could be numbered. Hope they're wrong.

Posted 5/8/2002 08:44:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
"FORTUYN TOLD OF EUROPE'S FUTURE". Jonah Goldberg's take on Pim Fortuyn and his assignation, from The Washington Times:

The overplaying of Le Pen and the underplaying of Fortuyn stem from the same elite ignorance about what is going on in Europe, and to a certain extent, in America. Mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, is dividing Western societies across the ideological spectrum. Pim Fortuyn, who was shot five times on Monday apparently by a fringe environmentalist left-winger, was a rising political star who championed homosexual rights, favored the legalization of many drugs and the further liberalization of Holland's euthanasia laws. Yes, Fortuyn was also for lower taxes and looked at the European Union with skepticism, but those positions alone don't get you called a "fascist," even in Europe. Indeed, Fortuyn was an openly gay man, something you don't normally associate with the forces of reaction. But Fortuyn was called a fascist � and worse � simply because he took a hard line on immigration.

Posted 5/7/2002 08:43:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE EMPIRE HITS A TRIPLE: Hey, at least it doesn't strike out. Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits gets a sneak preview of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones:

Okay... right now you're probably wondering one thing: is Episode II a better Star Wars film than Episode I? And the answer is a DEFINITE yes. Attack of the Clones is far more enjoyable than The Phantom Menace. It's a better film overall. And it's a darned good Star Wars film. BUT... it isn't a really great Star Wars film, and I don't think it's quite as good as a lot of early reviewers would have you believe. I'm not trying to throw cold water on your enthusiasm... I'm just trying to encourage you to temper it a little bit.

See also the review of Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News. Spider-Man rocked (more on this in a later post). Star Wars: Episode II is sounding pretty good. Men in Black II looks good from the trailers. This could be the best summer for movies in a long time.

Posted 5/7/2002 01:57:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
GETTING IT WRONG: Charles Paul Freund of Reason writes that Pim Fortuyn's story is too complex to fit into the easy boxes that reporters want to put it in:

Pim Fortuyn, the assassinated Dutch politician who was highly critical of Muslim immigration, is being universally described in the major media as "right wing," "far right wing," "extreme right wing," etc. Most accounts lump him and his political movement, which was expected to do well in the national elections scheduled for next week, with various anti-immigrant movements elsewhere in Europe. The New York Times, for example, wrote on its front page Tuesday that Fortuyn "carried the same strong anti-immigrant message that has helped propel a resurgent far right to political triumphs in Austria, Denmark, Belgium, and, through Jean-Marie Le Pen, France." This is a pretty lazy way to tell Fortuyn's story, and fails entirely to take into account his own rhetoric. It illustrates how the process of straining political events through the standard journalistic narrative templates - especially the right-vs.-left narrative -- can simplify a story so greatly that it emerges as a different story, perhaps even the wrong story.

UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini sounds like he agrees with Freund--he noticed the same cookie-cutter (and wrong) approach in Brian Williams' MSNBC telecast.

Posted 5/7/2002 10:16:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE DEATH OF THE SAT: Found via NRO's The Corner, Heather McDonald has an essay in City Journal on the coming replacement for the SAT. Why do colleges want to junk the SAT in the first place? McDonald writes:

Under pressure from the University of California, which was forbidden from using race to override low test scores in 1995 and so was desperate to jettison the SAT, the overseers of the SAT are creating a new test that tries less to measure aptitudes like reasoning skills and more to measure knowledge of subject matter learned in school.

Which means, as McDonald says, "we have come full circle":

it was elite private schools that fought to preserve content-based exams for college admissions before World War II, against the growing movement for aptitude testing. Educational reformers like James Conant argued that aptitude tests would allow bright students in less demanding public high schools to compete with less bright but better-prepared prep school students. The prep schools, for their part, predicted that discarding content-based exams would drag down academic standards by devaluing actual learning. They may have been right, but they lost the day. The aptitude test proponents claimed victory for meritocratic democracy against inherited privilege. Expect the race industry to resurrect the same arguments against content testing as were used in the 1940s, but without proposing aptitude tests in its place. There is no reason to think that the test score gap will go away with a different test, since the explanation for it lies largely in a culture that devalues academic achievement. So after spending millions on developing a new test, the education profession will be left with its old options: shooting the messenger by blaming the test for differential academic outcomes, or finally telling the truth about the cultural changes needed to overcome lagging academic achievement. The sky will fall before the latter option comes to pass, so get ready for another decade of covert racial preferences and explicit excuse-making around the new SAT.

The junking of the current SAT could have repercussions beyond college admissions--in Bobos In Paradise, David Brooks talks about (and yes, I'm really simplifying here) the introduction of the SAT in the first place, how it changed college admission policies, and how that lead to today's "bobo" ("bourgeois bohemians") culture, a very different American culture than that of the first two-thirds of the 20th century.

Posted 5/7/2002 01:46:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
DVD-AUDIO IS DOA, according to the Digital Bits:

the folks over at AudioRevolution have written up a great story on the DVD-Audio and SACD formats, which seem to be pretty dead on arrival. Part of the problem is that consumers are reluctant to buy into formats with uncertain futures and few decent software titles. The fact that there are two competing high-rez audio formats, and few players that support both, doesn't help. And the record companies seem to have a very definite lack of interest in promoting the formats much beyond the connoisseur market, probably owing to nervousness about digital piracy. But there's another problem too, which the article discusses. Simply put, there's a lot of disagreement about how best to create multi-channel, 5.1 audio mixes of older 2.0 stereo studio recordings. The article is well worth a read, so be sure to check it out.

Posted 5/7/2002 12:05:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
HOLLINGS AND ISRAEL: Joe Wilson, in an an article in The Washington Times titled Words unbefitting mood of the Senate writes:

In recognition of this urgent situation, the United States Senate overwhelmingly passed S. Amendment 3389, a resolution that stated the United States and Israel were "engaged in a common struggle against terrorism," and condemned homicidal Palestinian bombings. Seldom is the moral clarity of a subject so obvious, and seldom is the closely divided Senate ever in such agreement. Yet, Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, South Carolina Democrat, and Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, cast the only two votes against this resolution.

Wilson adds:

True to form, Mr. Hollings was not content with a simple vote against Israel. In a diatribe before votes were cast Thursday, he compared Israel's democratically elected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with the evil and brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. This is a cruel and malicious slander. Mr. Hollings also called Mr. Sharon "the Bull Conner of Israel." For those who don't remember, Bull Conner was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who in 1963 unleashed attack-dogs and fire hoses on civil-rights protesters during the movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If in Mr. Hollings' mind Ariel Sharon is a modern day Bull Conner, he seems to be comparing Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah organization is directly linked to terrorist groups like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to King. It also equates the evil suicide-bombings being carried out by Palestinian terrorists to the protests of the civil-rights movement. This type of logic is out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Not to mention...this type of logic.

Posted 5/6/2002 09:15:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
C'MON JAMES, TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL. James Lileks really, really, really, really likes Spider-Man. And he's not afraid to tell you why:

this movie is more important, in the long run, than any other movie, novel, artwork or musical composition that will be produced in 2002. I�m not saying it has a higher degree of artistic accomplishment - it is, after all, a comic-book story splashed on a wall. But novels have little cultural impact these days. Even the most celebrated novels are discussed more than they�re actually read. Deeper, smarter, wiser movies will be released, but they will have small audiences of people who were already inclined to believe whatever point the movie made. Art - be it sculpture or painting - is culturally irrelevant, gazing into the Mobius strip embedded in its navel. Every art form has its moment when it sums up a culture, or an aspect of that culture, be it �J�Accuse� or Guernica or the Rite of Spring. But all these forms have been shouldered off to the wings by movies, because only movies have the killer combination of mass distribution, mass pre-publicity, a huge target audience, and the trebled appeal of story plus music plus acting plus visual effects on a scale unachievable in scope and size in any other medium. In 30, 40 years, they�ll look back at the culture of 2002 just as we look back at the movies of WW2. Anyone look at the painting or novels of the 40s to discover the mood of wartime America? No. It�s the movies. The all-time WW2 movie, in retrospect, is �Casablanca,� because it sums up who we wanted to be. Cynical and idealistic. Selfish and altruistic. Lovable and lovelorn. Selfish entrepreneur and fighter for the greater good. We might have been Rick; we might have been Sam; in our weaker moments we knew we were capable of being Renauld; we really didn�t want to be Victor Lazlo, as much as we might have admired him, but we were damn sure we would never be Strassner. In the end, when it counted, we shot the Nazi, let the girl go, and found weary, bemused comfort in the camaraderie that would sustain us in the battle ahead. Look, if you can read all that into a Hollywood studio assembly-line product like Casablanca - my favorite movie, as cliched as that sounds - then we ought to be able to find some cultural resonances in Spider-Man. And we can. All I�m saying is this: when historians sift through the pop-culture of America looking for hints and clues, they will notice that a character born in Vietnam-era 1963 reached a mass appeal in 2002, shortly before the Second Iraq War, and they will pay particular attention to the recurring phrase: With great power comes great responsibility.

OK, I know I posted a big chunk, but go over and read the whole thing. Now I have to see the damn movie! (And when you're done with Lileks' column, you will too.)

Posted 5/6/2002 08:04:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
BILL--TWO WORDS: STREAMING AUDIO. Matt Drudge's current headline is:

O'REILLY RADIO SHOCKER: STATIONS PAID TO CARRY SHOW Bill--have you discussed Internet media as part of a complete broadcasting package? We here at EdDriscoll.com would be proud to be paid to carry your show. You can even name the media--Apple Quicktime, Real Player, or Windows Media--or all three! Have your lawyer call my lawyer--I'm sure we can work out a mutually agreeable price. (And for everybody else, don't forget the tipbox on the left.)

Posted 5/6/2002 07:29:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
...AND THE BANTHA IT RODE IN ON: Orrin Judd has a long excerpt from an essay by Hank Parnell in the Texas Mercury, on The Inadequacy of Science Fiction followed by his own thoughts on the subject. Parnell writes:

science fiction is now little more than a platform for ideological agendas that are half-baked, to be charitable. Leftist scholars such as Bruce Franklin, and later David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer and John Huntington, have long berated Heinlein and the Campbellian school as being "right-wing reactionaries"; but one need only read Gregory Benford's essay "Reactionary Utopias" to understand how the writings of such left-wing icons as Ursula Le Guin are full of their own brand of intolerance, bigotry, and a desperate avoidance of reality.

Since I don't have all that much to add to Parnall's essay or Judd's comments about it, I'll add my two credits worth by discussing sci-fi from a different tack: Star Trek and American Liberalism. I've long felt you can track the face of American liberalism by examining Star Trek in its various incarnations (Jonah Goldberg has written about this as well). When Star Trek first went on the air, Gene Roddenberry, and I would assume most of the folks who produced the show were Kennedy or FDR-style liberals who, while they believed in a big, active Federal government also felt that the US was a just, tolerant nation, that Judeo-Christian values and capitalism were good things. Star Trek had episodes that almost stated out loud that Vietnam was a just conflict ("A Private Little War"), that the Constitution was a good thing ("The Omega Glory"), that Abe Lincoln was a good man ("The Savage Curtain"). The Enterprise was forever opening new trade routes, meeting entrepreneurs ("The Trouble With Tribbles"), the youthful but extremely competent Captain Kirk was obviously inspired by JFK and the Federation was an obvious stand-in for the USA. Somewhere between Star Trek: The Original Series (as it's now often referred to) and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry went from a JFK/FDR-style liberal to a McGovern liberal. The Federation ceased being a capitalist system to some sort of vague benign communist intergalactic Sweden. Capitalism became evil--bad--really, really bad--hence the Ferengi and the greedy businessman from the twentieth century in the first season episode "The Neutral Zone" whom Picard gives a stern--and very intolerant in his lack of diversity--dressing down to. The Klingons and Romulans went from cold-war Russia and China stand-ins capable of the worst atrocities, to simply "differing forms of government which we must seek to understand". And of course, near the end of "Deep Space Nine", environmentalism, the then-current liberal obsession du jour was introduced, as Jonah Goldberg notes:

By the time Gene Roddenberry died, the various spin-offs were becoming hotbeds of gender hand-wringing, environmentalist pot shots (it turns out that warp technology was creating too many interstellar potholes and humans would have to learn to live within reasonable limitations). The last remaining Trek show � Star Trek Voyager � regularly sermonizes about the fate of the American Indian (we saw that coming at the end of the Star Trek Next Generation), the interstellar environment, and the limits of technology. The most recent Star Trek movie Star Trek VIII: Endive Salad and Mineral Water on Hollywood Boulevard was an unrelenting screed about the need for baby boomers to drop out of the rat race, give up superficial things like age and beauty and "appreciate the moment." It was a gitchy-goo travesty.

Of course, the beauty, or the danger of science fiction (depending upon how you look at it) is all of these elements can be explored without ramming the viewer over the head. The Brothers Judd list The Matrix as one of their favorite conservative films, and yet on the DVD's audio commentary, one of the film's directors (I forget which Wachowski brother) mentions, like a McDonalds or Starbucks-hating antiglobalist how much he hates corporations, and Joe Pantoliano's character, who sells out the rest of his team, is referred to as "Mr. Reagan". And yet, it's obvious why a film like The Matrix would appeal to conservatives. The same is true with (the original, 1977) Star Wars: Lucas has explicitly stated that the Rebels were supposed to be the Vietcong, beating the evil Empire (America, of course), lead by a corrupt former Senator who has seized dictatorial power (Richard Nixon). But name a conservative or libertarian who doesn't like Star Wars--it's a wonderful way to spend two hours.

Posted 5/6/2002 05:23:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
"QUALITY CONTROL": Two words of advice for the Libertarian Party from Happy Fun Pundit. HFP's reader letters are quite amusing, also.

Posted 5/6/2002 03:18:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN ON FORTUYN'S MURDER:

it's chilling to think that this combination of ideas - if poised to reach political power - could be grist for assassination. In Holland, of all places. The enemies of liberalism are many - on the far right, the far left, and the Islamist fundamentalist orbit. For these reasons, Fortuyn should be hailed as another martyr for gay visibility, along with Harvey Milk. But what's the betting that the gay left won't go near this story? Here's hoping they will.

Read the rest of Sullivan's post, and then ask yourself how an openly gay Dutch sociology professor (as Dave Kopel noted, via InstaPundit) gets dubbed "far right-wing" by Euro-cratic politicians. UPDATE (via Matt Drudge): the gay & lesbian newsmagazine The Advocate has a pretty fair sounding take on Fortuyn and his assignation. Meanwhile, Rod Dreher has several more posts on Fortuyn on the Corner, and Glenn Reynolds has more items here.

Posted 5/6/2002 02:57:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
"PROJECT GAP-TOOTH": Matt Drudge has a preview of an upcoming Vanity Fair article that goes behind the scenes at ABC and its news division. No one is spared, including Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, Disney president Bob Iger and Ted Koppel (although Koppel comes off much better than several of the other folks mentioned). (Incidentally, "Project Gap-Tooth" was Iger's top-secret codename for his attempt to woo David Letterman from CBS. To be a fly on the wall at 51 West 52nd Street...)

Posted 5/6/2002 02:19:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS: Nina Yablok (the world's best business lawyer, not to mention my wife) has news about the California EDD (Employment Development Department) and work for hire statutes. Reading between the lines, it's also a reflection on the unfortunate "us verses them" conflict which runs rampant through California's government when it comes to small businesses. For more on the excesses of California's government, check out Steve Den Beste's take on the Oracle/California State Government scandal.

Posted 5/6/2002 12:31:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
SWALLOW THE RED PILL NEXT SUMMER. The Internet Movie Database says that it will be an all-Matrix summer next year:

Two Matrix Sequels To Come Back-to-Back Warner Bros. is planning to release the two sequels to The Matrix within months of one another next year, Time magazine reports in its current issue. The first one, Matrix Reloaded, is due to be released in May, and the second, Matrix Revolutions, in August or November, Time said. In an interview with the magazine, star Keanu Reeves said cryptically that the 1999 original was "about birth. The second is life; the third is death."

Posted 5/6/2002 12:25:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
I.T. WORK FORCE SET TO GROW, Reuters says:

The outlook for hiring in information technology jobs -- one of the hardest hit sectors in last year's downturn -- was starting to improve even as the national unemployment rate touched its highest level in more than 7-1/2 years, a report released on Monday said. Hiring managers report they will attempt to fill 1.1 million information technology jobs in the next 12 months, according to the report by the Information Technology Association of America industry group.

All signs point to an economic recovery, after an extremely mild recession (which some economists have argued wasn't a recession at all). So when will the stock market start reflecting this upturn? Or is its ability to be a leading economic indicator on the fritz these days?

Posted 5/6/2002 11:20:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
In 21st century European news, Anti-immigration Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn has been shot dead. In National Review's "The Corner" Weblog, Rod Dreher writes:

this will be a bombshell to the Netherlands' political world, which is benignly socialist. No word yet on who the attacker might have been, but if it turns out to have been one of Holland's peace-loving Muslims, Fortuyn's point about the need to stop accepting all these unassimilable immigrants will have been made far more forcefully than he ever could have hoped.

Posted 5/6/2002 11:04:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHO TURNED IN ANNE FRANK? Found, oddly enough on the home page of Wired News, under their "Ephemera..." column, with no link to any article for background material was this piece titled:

Judas Unmasked? Who betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis? The question has lingered since the end of World War II and now a British author thinks she has found the answer. Carol Ann Lee believes that a business associate of Anne's father Otto, Anton Ahlers, tipped off Dutch police to the whereabouts of the Frank family. German and Dutch security police raided the building alongside an Amsterdam canal and arrested the Frank family, including Anne. Only Otto survived the ordeal; Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp only weeks before the end of the war.

The title leaves me with a definite sense of moral queasiness, and a vague reminder of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's essay on "Defining Deviancy Down". Judas of course, "turned in" Christ. But Nazi Germany, and its conquered nations, were teeming with "Judases" , ready to turn in their fellow neighbors at a moment's notice. What do you call Judas when he's but one of millions? NOTE: For a variety of Anne Frank links, as well as a review of her diary, visit this Brothers Judd page.

Posted 5/5/2002 09:37:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
EYE ON THE PRIZE: Orrin Judd looks at George W. Bush's Middle East strategy, and likes what he sees:

So long as Mr. Bush continues to keep his eyes on the prize--preserving Israel; cultivating Russia, Turkey, and India; nurturing Pakistan and Iran; quieting Palestine; deposing Saddam; and destroying al Qaeda--all of the sometimes contradictory steps that advance us towards our goals can be properly viewed as mere tactics and frequently nothing more than feints or dodges. It is the strategic vision that matters and to a shocking degree, it appears to be "the man who put the duh? in W" who has it.

Read the whole thing, including Judd's checklist of what the Middle East might look like in ten years.

Posted 5/5/2002 09:26:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
"LET THE KIDS DRAW, OR THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON": Happy Fun Pundit looks at teachers who suspend students who draw stick figure parodies of their teachers. And I can't believe I just typed "teachers who suspend students who draw stick figures." What a weird, weird world the education system has become over the last 15 years or so. Tom Wolfe has been threatening to do a book on the education system for years. He'd have lots of fun getting into the mind of the teacher that HFP describes above.

Posted 5/5/2002 06:24:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELCOME TO THE 1970s: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake finds a Georgia high school that has held its first(!) integrated prom:

Until this year, separate High School Proms were held for black and white pupils at Taylor County High School, Georgia, USA. I think I am unsettled more by the "Some of my best friends are black" comments I read between the lines of the quotes. Perhaps that's just me. Read the CNN report and make up your own mind.

In the early 1960s, comedian Mort Sahl once did a riff about a southern school sending exchange students to visit the 20th century. Looks like these kids are only just now arriving.

Posted 5/5/2002 06:18:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHENEY ON OZZY: Matt Drudge has a piece on Lynn Cheney's embarrassment over the Blizzard of Oz's appearance at this weekend White House Correspondence Dinner in Washington.

"He's hardly someone we should be applauding... not a role model, I am rather embarrassed," Cheney said after the dinner, according to sources.

I haven't seen Ozzy's MTV series, but from everything I've read (including this piece), it sounds like the most powerful anti-drug campaign since Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" commercials of the 1980s. Parents should watch it with their kids and say "Son, don't do drugs. You do not want to end up as screwed up as Ozzy Osbourne." Believe me, you don't!

Posted 5/5/2002 06:09:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
VICTIMS OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS: Glenn Reynolds deflates the myth of a prosperous Sweden:

Though they think of themselves as prosperous, Swedes as a group are actually worse off than black Americans, according to this Swedish study. Swedes are trained from birth to view their society as a compassionate one in which everyone prospers, while the harsh capitalism of the United States makes some people rich and leaves other people destitute. Er, except that what it really does is make some people really, really rich, and leave other people just, well, richer than the Swedes. Best excerpt, highlighted by reader Todd Bass who sent this link: "Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household," the HUI economists said. If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said. . . .