Communism

In deference to the recent interest in the red scare, and in rehabilitating that period, I present a page from an anti Communist Comic Book. This page is taken from "Better Dead than Red" by Michael Barson. I couldn't find it online, but here's a similar book.

Intellectual Capital

Emmett Tyrell today wrote a bit today on getting a "Holy City" for America. He made this well informed comments on Hollywood.

"I suspect New York would win the liberals' nod, at least prior to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's crackdown on squeegee men. Or possibly Hollywood, Calif., would get their accolade. It is, after all, their present cultural capital, their Florence, their Athens.

I am told the liberals love those Hollywood "action movies" showing busty women in tight-fitting military garb, pistols on their hips, grenades hanging from the bodices, as they beat the living daylights out of flabby white men and various creatures from outer space.

The creatures are so bizarre in their physiological components that Darwin if he saw them would laugh -- and Darwin was not a very giggly fellow. They have eyes and ears that serve no imaginable purpose, and appendages that seem useless, and warts, and tails and skin might make any dermatologist a millionaire."

This is the sort of writing you get if you read only conservatives. Nobody considers Hollywood to be the modern Florence. And who told you that "Liberals" love action movies? Who? Out with it! Liberals, in fact, love long boring talky films, preferably in another language so they can demonstrate their reading skills.

And then finally taking on Hollywood Alien Design? I'd like to see you do better Mr. Tyrell. How many aliens have you created for Hollywood? It's not as easy as it looks. And it's hard enough knowing how to mold plastic and which glue won't cause permanent skin damage without having to be experts in Darwinian Evolution as well. Maybe you should just give those Hollywood alien designers a break.

Anyway, my selection for America's holy city would be Tijuana, Mexico. You can get anything there, for very reasonable prices.

James Woods at Salon

James Woods gave an interview for his upcoming film, entitled Northfork. Apparently the film is really good and you should go see it. The interview is at Salon--so you have to watch an ad to get it.

But then the interviewer, Amy Reiter, gets a little more than she bargained for, when she starts to ask him about politics.

"If a rational person heard this conversation they'd think, Oh, he's making a good point or she's making a good point, they'd hear it that way. But the way you could potentially report it, I could sound horrible: "James Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger," or whatever the fuck. I don't even want to be in that category.

So I, to try to help my friends who made a beautiful film, try to get their film promoted, am making a deal with the devil. You're going to talk about the film for five minutes and never mention it in the article, I'm sure, or mention it in one line just to get it out of the way. And I actually tried to help you get through it quickly because I knew it was just a pretext to talk about the other stuff.

No, that's not true.

I don't know if these are facts. I'm just saying they're impressions. So I'm just sitting here getting my ass again to the gangplank, getting my ass chopped off by the pirates, and talking to Salon.com so I can be humiliated and degraded, and it's fine because I'm doing it for the movie, but honestly, it just saddens me because it would be wonderful to have a conversation with somebody who says, "Well, yeah, that's a good point," and then wrote a kind of balanced article about it. That would be great. Then I'd be actually interested in talking about politics."

On the one hand it's easy enough to sympathize with his point; personality journalism is about destroying its subjects. On the other hand, it's hard not to see him as a bit over the top and paranoid for a guy who really doesn't have to worry about where his next meal is coming from. If he doesn't like doing press, I suppose he could just stop.

Further thoughts from Me

Apparently my titles haven't really been titles, this is confusing, but a learing experience

And Another Thing!

Robots would be cool but they would devalue the labor market. But they would be cool, as I said before.

And in other news

Im checking things out.

Ann Coulter Latest Book Reviewed (but not by me)

Actually it's reviewed by Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post, who raises some very salient flaws within the book. Check it out!!!

I have finished Hillary's Living History--makes me want to listen to Sidney Blumenthal's work. I'm starting to reevaluate the Clintons. That said, Ms. Clinton's work would still benifit from a more honest discussion of earlier accusations of infidelity, and a more complete analysis of how her Healthcare proposal failed so spectacularly.

The book does succeed in humanizing her a bit; it portrays, for example, a picture of Hillary Clinton loving her daughter Chelsea. I admit this is a radical idea, but it is possible that Hillary, rather than being the demonic force of evil that some portray her as might have been a human woman, subject to the feelings and problems of people everywhere.

The Mushy Middle

Is there a middle ground in America? The other day I was listening to Rush while driving around at lunch and he made comments to the effect that there isn't. The "moderates" are simply people too weak to make up their minds. They will move with the crowd. So for President Bush to try to reach out to the middle ground is foolish; he should focus on his base.

Cal Thomas has a different take in his article today. He states "Bush is basically a conservative who seeks to portray himself as a non-fire-breathing moderate, except when it comes to the war on terrorism. This is where the country is, and it is where the Democratic presidential candidates and much of their leadership are not."

This may seem a trivial question to you--but it is key. If there is no middle ground, as Rush would have you believe, than the election is all about energizing the base. The more energized your base is, the more likely you are going to win an election. And the best things President Bush could do to energize his base are to commit to putting a hardline Conservative on the bench.

On the other hand, if their is a middle, than whoever gets their first might win--or they might not. The real question is how important is the middle. How decisive.

Bow Wow Wow

Seems like i'm doing more than usual on Race right now. I guess its a hot issue. Anyway Michelle Malkin talks about race in her latest article, as it relates to education.

"In Oberlin, Ohio, local school board president Tony Marshall argues that only black high school teachers should teach "black history." Non-black educators may be able to teach black students to write well, conduct research, and digest accurate facts and information. But arming black students with the same fundamentals that every other student needs to succeed is apparently not what Marshall wants for his kids: "A black teacher brings an experience and understanding of being black that no else can bring."

If Marshall had to choose between hiring white historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and black rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, in other words, he'd rather have the pot-smoking, profanity-spewing, gang-banging convicted felon in the classroom because of Snoop's skin-deep "experience and understanding."

OK let's unpack this just a little bit. Why does Ms. Malkin assume that a Black history teacher won't give a student the "same fundamentals that every other student needs to succeed?" Are blacks inherently less capable teachers?

Then there is the bizarre comparison in the second paragraph. Would Marshall really pick Arthur Schlesinger Jr. over Snoop Doggy Dog? Or even the other way around, which is of course what I meant to say. Let's go to the video tape, which in this case is a news story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Michael Williams, interim director of Cleveland State University's black studies program, said schools should choose a black teacher if that person is most qualified.

If two teachers are equally qualified, Williams gives the edge to the black teacher.

"That person still has the advantage of the culture," said Williams, who is black. "They understand the nuances of the culture."

Oberlin School Board President Tony Marshall, who is black, agrees. The phrase "color-struck" might mean nothing to a white person, he said, but a black teacher would know that it suggests a black person who prefers lighter-skinned blacks to darker-skinned blacks.

"A black teacher brings an experience and understanding of being black that no else can bring," Marshall said.

So let's make this point clear--Michael Williams and Tony Marshall appparently agree that if there are two teachers who are equally qualified to teach a class, you should give deference to the black teacher. So I guess, it begs the question; does Ms. Malkin see Snoop Doggy Dog and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as equally qualified to teach history?

Your Weekly Rush

Here's Rush on why blacks don't vote Democratic.

"Why they do so is something you can't say if you want to be around tomorrow. I've danced around this for 15 years, because people react to it with an emotion unseen in discussing other voting blocks. There's nothing complicated about it. The reason 94% of the black population is never going to vote for Bush or a Republican no matter what that Republican does is that they've chosen a way of life where Democrats are the masters and they're on their plantation. They have been made wards of the state.

They have been made totally dependent thanks to a deliberate effort by liberal Democrats to make them a permanent voting block."

Yep. 94% of American blacks have chosen a life where they are slaves.

This is a very ugly kind of race baiting, but beyond that, it's ludicrous. While a larger number of blacks are on welfare as compared to society as a whole, the number is nowhere near 94%. And we only count those people who vote. It is the black middle class that votes, not those on welfare. And why do they vote for Democrats as opposed to Republicans. Well I suspect it has to do with Democrats being willing to try to solve America's problems as opposed to ignoring them and blaming the victims. But it's also possible, Rush, that racially divisive rhetoric by Republicans might drive some away.

Going through Slow Period

Stuff at work is picking up and so I'm not here as much as I'd like to be, and after reading 6 articles trying to find one worth commenting on, I can testify that my low post days aren't the worst that can happen. The best article I can find is one by the always good Paul Krugman. He compares President Bush's popularity to Prime Minister Blairs problems, and comes up with three potential reasons that President Bush seems to be faring better.

"One answer, surely, is the kid-gloves treatment Mr. Bush has always received from the news media, a treatment that became downright fawning after Sept. 11. There was a reason Mr. Blair's people made such a furious attack on the ever-skeptical BBC.

Another answer may be that in modern America, style trumps substance. Here's what Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, said in a speech last week: "To gauge just how out of touch the Democrat leadership is on the war on terror, just close your eyes and try to imagine Ted Kennedy landing that Navy jet on the deck of that aircraft carrier." To say the obvious, that remark reveals a powerful contempt for the public: Mr. DeLay apparently believes that the nation will trust a man, independent of the facts, because he looks good dressed up as a pilot. But it's possible that he's right.

What must worry the Bush administration, however, is a third possibility: that the American people gave Mr. Bush their trust because in the aftermath of Sept. 11, they desperately wanted to believe the best about their president. If that's all it was, Mr. Bush will eventually face a terrible reckoning."

Anyway hopefully I'll be back with something cool. Hope you are all having a nice morning.

Anti-Semitism

Suzanne Fields writes today on the growth of Anti-Semitism on the left. And in so far as such Anti-Semitism exists on the left, we here at Make me a Commentator!!! would like to condemn it. Anti-Semitism is another name for racism, anther name for hatred, and hatred is ugly, whether motivated from the left or from the right.

There is a tendency among all people to ally with those who seem to support your cause. The left in America does not like President Bush, and many find out military occupation of Iraq very troubling. Islamic Fanatics feel much the same way. However, lets not delude ourselves into thinking that makes Islamic Fanatics nice people. Whatever we may think about the founding of Israel, the fact is it is the most democratic nation in the middle east, and an ally of the United States.

This does not mean that the left should not criticize Israeli policies. Indeed we have a duty to do so. And to clarify for some on the right--it is possible to disagree, even disagree vehmenantly with the policies of a nation without hating that nation, or its citizens.

Adding to my Stuff

I've decided that it would be nice to keep an ongoing list of the quotes I've put up at the top. It's in roughly chronological order, but it is not dated. Here it is. Enjoy!

New Quote

Hooray! A new quote from Lao-Tzu. Enjoy!