Thursday, May 05, 2005

HALFWIT. A New Republic article cites a Dominionist nut as an example of what American People of Faith are thinking. Hugh Hewitt blows his stack: "It would be as if I made a claim that the Democratic Party believed 'x' because Michael Moore and the Greenpeace Board of Directors said 'x,'" huffs Hewitt.

Actually, Hewitt has claimed, repeatedly, that Michael Moore represents the Democratic Party, even without the "Greenpeace Board of Directors." Here's Hewitt at the 2004 Democratic Convention:
The podium speakers are acting the part of Penelope in the Odyssey — unraveling all that has been woven by the delegates during the day, or in this case, by Michael Moore during the day. It is a hard-Left group of delegates, and Moore's their crown prince even if Kerry's king for a day...
Throughout that Convention, of course, Hewitt made a mantra of referring to the Dems as "the Kerry-Moore Democrats."

I guess when you're working for Jesus, you don't even have to fact-check your own ass.
SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY. It's so much nicer to talk about cancer than about gay people.
NO COMMENT. "That particular girlfriend loved Prince, which was my first clue this wouldn’t last and would end hard." -- James Lileks.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

PROGRAM NOTES. I forced myself into the template and, instead of setting the whole works on fire and hopping up and down, naked and screaming, as a sane man would, I added some links. I don't know what kept me from putting Tbogg and Fafblog up there before; sloth, perhaps, or jealousy. Dum Luk's, author Martin Langeland's new showroom of high-definition language, is added as a rebuke to us all.

Atrios I'm leaving off. Not out of pique. It just seems ridiculous, like saying, "You know who you should listen to? The Beatles," at a party.
WHEN NERDS ATTACK! The previously-noted Kulturkampfer rage at George Lucas for not admitting Yoda is really Alan Greenspan has been relayed to major wingnut disseminators. Clearly their Right-sabres are all bent out of shape.

All I can say is, anyone who couldn't see what Lucas was up to from the very first appearance of Imperial Storm Troopers should be embarrassed to admit it, not loudly bewailing his fanboy betrayal.

UPDATE. If that's not enough KultKampf action for you, at OpinionJournal Harry Stein explains at great length that Jon Stewart isn't really funny.

I don't understand their need to deny the artistic abilities of people they don't agree with. I mean, I thought it was kinda funny when Bush jerked off that horse, and I'm not afraid to say so.

UPDATE II. Speaking of jerk-offs, at The Corner they explain that they're no prudes -- quite wild actually! They make jokes about Star Trek! -- but Laura Bush went too far -- though she may deserve a pass based on the agricultural nature of her blue material ("Farm humor isn’t about sex, it’s about life") -- the Bush Twins went too far, The Flintstones was a total ripoff of The Honeymooners, etc.

If they did go totally mad, how would we tell?

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

LICENSE TO SHILL. Just in case you were wondering how the Culture War's higher-ed front was going, Roger Kimball provides an update:
The old Marxist strategy of “increasing the contradictions”—a strategy according to which the worse things get, the better they really are—is a license for thuggery. It excuses all manner of bad behavior for the sake of a revolution that will (so it is said) finally transform society when all the old allegiances have finally collapsed. If one or two tottering institutions require a little push to finish them off, so be it. Shove hard: You cannot, as comrade Stalin remarked, make an omelette without breaking eggs.

As with anything to which the word “Marxist” applies, there are at least eighty-seven things wrong with this strategy. Morally, it is completely irresponsible. Intellectually, it depends upon a fabricated “contradiction” to confer the illusion of inevitability. In real life, the only thing inevitable is the certainty of surprise.

Nevertheless, as one looks around at academic life these days, it is easy to conclude that corruption yields not only decay but also opportunities. Think of the public convulsion that surrounded the episode of Ward Churchill blah blah blah blah...
Then he goes on for hundreds of incendiary words about how bad liberal professors are, and ends by threatening their tenure ("An arrangement that was intended to protect academic freedom and intellectual diversity has mutated into a means of enforcing conformity and excluding the heterodox").

In other words, after a long explanation of the bad Marxist way of getting things done, Kimball pretty much tries the same thing himself. Evidently he means what he says about a "license for thuggery," but also believes that he possesses such a license. I wonder where he imagines he got it from?

Monday, May 02, 2005

SHORTER JANE GALT: Not only are Hollywood actors liberal and wrong -- they don't even know how to act! Jane Galt must school them in empathy!

(Refresh my memory, folks: back when libertarians actually existed, what were their distinguishing characteristics?)
BED-WETTERS AT CAMP KULTERKAMPF. How goes the Culture War? Bit of a snag at Libertas ("a forum for conservative thought in film"). The author has found an interview where Geoge Lucas mentions Fahrenheit 911 without spitting.

"Wired put Lucas on its cover, his face half-encased in the helmet Darth Vader," says the disappointed fanboy. "That may be more appropriate than they imagined."

His fellow Jedi rush in waving their light-sabres. "I still believe that despite Lucas’ own personal philosophy, his films belie a deep rooted conservatism," says one. "Perhaps Lucas doesn’t realize it," insists another, "but he is subversively conservative and even pro-life when he depicts this cold Cloning facility with a million babies in jars."

Yeah. And if Princess Leia ever got to know you, she'd really, really like you.

UPDATE. The Libertas post has received more comments; so far this one is my favorite. In case they've taken it down, here's the complete text:
As though there needed to be a subset of the “Star Wars Loser Group” now we have, whiney conserva-geek-star-wars-losers. What’s more, they’re looking [for] depth in a Star Wars movie. Depth! Meaning. Important political statements!

Time to turn off the computer, get out of the basement, move out of mom’s house and get a life.
Whoa -- looks like someone's gonna get a purple nurple.
Q.E.D. "I know Andrew [Sullivan] has a tendency to believe his own personal political preferences should and must be in perfect accord with external reality, but I’ve never subscribed to such a view." -- Jonah Goldberg.

The qualifier "external" suggests there is an internal reality by which one might make sense of Goldberg's politics. It probably resembles Porky in Wackyland.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

DEATH OF A DREAM. I took a stroll by the former Plaza Hotel this fine Spring afternoon. In its day, the Plaza was a monument to all that was splendid in the Big Apple – the gold standard of hospitality, the home of Eloise, the monogrammed bathrobe at the end of the rainbow for countless mid-level managers.

But that Plaza is gone. In its place stands a cruel mockery: Its windows, as high as rocks can reach, have been brutally shattered, and rough workmen’s planks obscure their once-majestic views. The fabled doors, once guarded by proud men in splendid uniforms, now swing loose on their hinges, freely admitting squatters and prostitutes -- not the new Plaza’s guests, but its masters. Its white façade has been pitted by gunfire and scarred by graffiti; the scrawled legend BROKEN PROMISES looms over a family of three huddled against the north wall, sharing a makeshift supper.

The Oak Bar, in former days redolent of expensive cologne and fine wines, today reeks of crack cocaine. A visitor to the capacious bathrooms receives, instead of a gentle whisking of the shoulders and a posture suggesting that a tip would be appreciated, blows to the head and a rough frisking.

"This our house now," says "Crick," a self-styled "Customer Service representative" who patrols the lobby, a baseball bat in his right hand and a Blunt perched insouciantly between his teeth. "You got any problems, you fill out a card an’ give it to the desk clerk."

The effects of the Plaza’s decline reach far beyond its own walls. High life has drained from Fifth Avenue. Brooks Brothers is now a Dress Barn. Elizabeth Arden is a nail salon. Only the NBA store thrives. This famed thoroughfare, where splendid Easter bonnets were so recently displayed, is deserted after nightfall. "Since the Plaza moved to mixed-used, Fifth Avenue is a no-go zone," admits a weary-looking Sgt. William Daniels of the NYPD. "We only come in at dawn to carry out the dead."

"This is a wake-up call to our fellow citizens," declares Business Improvement District President Charles F. Gordon from behind the sandbag barricades of what was once F.A.O. Schwartz. "It’s too late for the Plaza, but for Christ's sake, keep the Helmsley open. Because if they get the Helmsley, it’s just a short hop to the Oyster Bar, and then God help New York!"

Friday, April 29, 2005

WISHFUL NON-THINKING. Lot of death-knells for newspapers lately, and what they have in common -- from the Ole Perfesser's smug solipsism("...it does seem as if we're undergoing a major change. I know that I pay less and less attention to newspapers and television...") to Richard Brookhiser's L'Envoi -- is that they're ridiculously premature. U.S. newspaper circulation, as even hostile reports admit, is down maybe about a point -- which means our papers are outperforming the national economy. Hey, maybe America's finished, too!

Certainly this is not a good time to grow rich in journalism, but -- this may shock the libertarians; cover their ears -- often getting rich is not the point. Sometimes the incentive is power. For decades certain gazillionaires (cough Murdoch cough) have been operating their tabs at a deficit just to keep their journalistic hobby-horses alive. 'Twas ever thus. You think James Callender got published on the strength of any fan-base besides Thomas Jefferson?

So why the declarations of irrelevance? Simple. These guys are pushing something called blogging. In this blog thing, some very few make money on ads, but mostly the practice is meant to burnish reputations sufficiently to get the reputees gigs with Media Matters, right-wing radio, or some other venue in a for-profit branch of the Fourth Estate. Some idiots, like myself, do it with only mild recompense from confused Blogad shoppers who perhaps picked a handful of sites from top of an alphabetical list, and some bloggers get nothing from it but the satisfaction of knowing that unseen dozens of bored office workers now know what the blogger had for dinner last night, what sort of stool the dinner engendered, and the blogger's thoughts on Faulkner and the Law of the Sea.

Sounds like quite a revenue stream, eh? Well, maybe, just maybe, if they can get everyone to believe that the Paper is dead, there'll be a reverse Tinker Bell effect. Then those few Americans who still know how to read will come running to Powerlineblog, jettisoning sports, weather, local news, and any other service Powerlineblog cannot deliver, just to be on trend!

It obviously works in politics, their reasoning seems to be; and since everything is politics, why should it not work for me?
GRAB BAG. The new Jonah Goldberg column is chock-full of idiocies, and I am very short of time. So I'll grab one of the idiocies, and you guys do what you will with the rest.
In the world we live in today, to be an American conservative requires two complementary forms of argumentation: skepticism about the new and faith in the old. You must have both to be a conservative of any stripe. Which new things you’re skeptical about and which old things you revere distinguish the kind of conservative you are. I think, unlike many readers, that by this criteria alone Sullivan is a conservative.
I revere our democracy and am skeptical of the government con men to whom it has been entrusted. I revere Social Security and am skeptical of the government con men etc. I revere our national resources etc.

Obviously I am a conservative. Goldberg's wrong about Sullivan, though, who is conservative -- as everyone possessing the bullshit-penetrating x-ray glasses known to my people as "common sense" knows -- only because the gravy train marked "Gay Conservative" still had empty seats when he turned up at the station.

Over to you.
SHOWING THE LOVE. Next to a drawing of him in which his narcotized-psycho features are scrunched into something resembling a smile, John Bolton is rhapsodized by the Crazy Jesus Lady:
It has long been said that in Washington a friend is someone who will stab you in the front. Mr. Bolton, again if the charges are true, has been a friend to many. He tells people off to their faces. That's refreshing. As a human tic, if that's what it is, it is probably more individually controllable than the temptation to damage people behind their backs, which is what people in intense environments more commonly and destructively do.
Really, Peggy? You really mean that?

Then here's some Bolton-style friendship, you brain-damaged old harpy. There was a time when your flights of flackery were so diabolical that we often had to step back out of sheer awe at your evil. But this here's some feeble shit. Where'd you get this he-shows-his-love-by-screaming-and-throwing-things strategy -- your marriage counsellor?

I don't care how many unwashed Gipper-touched-me-there spots you've collected, you've clearly been out there in the ether so long you don't even know what solid ground feels like. No wonder you had to go freelancing your propaganda skils during the last Bush campaign -- the White House guard-shacks are probably wallpapered with your mug shot. You're only fit to feed wingnut theo-fantasies in the Journal and play Prop Female at think-tank events.

Now way be my government appointment? Clearly I have the required temperment!

Thursday, April 28, 2005

BIBLE BEATINGS. Norbizness offers not only a wicked cool Ween reference (now do one called IT REALLY HURTS MOMMY/STINKY VASELINE) but also an introduction to the National Council on Bible Cirriculum in Public Schools (tagline: "It's Coming Back..." which I think was also the tagline of one of the Alien movies).

To be fair, the Bible folk have both good and bad reasons to throw the Good Book at pre-teens. Among the bad:
Proponents say the course would utilize the Bible as a textbook to study history, literature and geography. Opponents argue the class, to be taught by a local minister’s wife, would indoctrinate students to Christianity.
Anyone who has lived among human beings (paper cut-outs of human beings don't count) for any length of time knows how this one works out. The minister's wife starts out in her demure, white Secular Humanist labcoat, merely using the Bible to help kids find Magog on a map, but before you can say "Funny, I don't feel tardy" she's stripped down to her Jesus-string and the kids are storming through the halls and pulling down the lanterne for godless biology teachers.

But I can get behind the Bible as Literature dodge -- mainly because, while this obviously is a dodge to these folks, it is also true that the Bible is literature, and vitally important literature at that. And we may see from this course the results that human experience leads us to expect: the weak-minded indoctrinated, the lazy confused, and the inquiring (especially if they are blessed with teachers who are not down with the zombies-for-Christ program) inspired to learn that the Good Book is not just something with which Granny consoles herself and upon which politicians place their hands when they lie, but a book with dizzyingly rich literary, religious, and political contexts -- which knowledge may make the world more interesting to them, and -- Hallelujah! -- lead some out of the stultifying swamp of ignorance (and religious bigotry) entirely.

Always bet on knowledge over ignorance, kids. It may not pay off very many times, but when it does hit the winnings are exceedingly large.

Of course, the law of unintended consequences cuts both ways. Since "important part of our culture" is a big hunk of the Bible justification, after a few frivolous lawsuits Cultural Relevance will become the standard by which Mr. Hand will be forced to accept papers about The Relationship Between Pulp Fiction and The Clinton Impeachment. Plus the poetry might inspire rhymes like this:
I'm black but comely, my bed is green
I use the myrrh and not the Afro-Sheen
Which would just be terrible.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

PAGE SIXTH CIRCLE OF HELL. Boy, this gossip columnist really lets Katie Couric have it:
Andrew Lack, former president of NBC, described Katie, during the good times, as a "fist in the velvet glove," while for years her staff has called her "Katie Dearest." Bryant Gumbel... once complained, "I've had one assistant for 18 years. Somebody who shall remain nameless went through five in five years..."

...the stress of crashing ratings has obviously made her inner Cruella de Vil — always there under the surface — emerge full-time...

Each morning she is now expertly and heavily made up — not exactly the look most harried working moms can emulate. And while doing interviews, her bare legs in stiletto mules are perpetually center stage, getting more attention from the camera than the guest she is supposed to be interviewing...
Mee-yow! But wait'll you hear this, girls:
But what I think has contributed to Katie's major loss of appeal is that millions of women have finally caught onto the liberal bias in much of her reporting.
Wha? Huh wha? Wha huh wha?

(chuckling amiably) Aw, alright, she isn't a gossip columnist, she's -- well, I'm not sure what she is but she writes for NRO so she must be something. You caught on right away, didn't you? What a disagreeable old man I have become.

Part of what makes me that way is this vision of an alternate universe where not just headline news, and the arts, and sports, but even tabloid celebrity burble must be about politics.

PS: I really just went to American Scene to grab the link, but can anyone explain this gibberish? "Levantine beauties," "men without chests," the notion that "increased levels of disposable income" make women in their mid-20s more attractive than women in their early 20s -- maybe "Reihan" doesn't exist at all except as a code name for Douthat's id.

UPDATE. Baseball Crank cries foul in comments, and he's right. (Following the Mets gets you a fair hearing at alicublog!) BC does not conflate baseball and politics. You have to go back to vintage Noonan for that kind of thing. Or Robert Ziegler. Or -- but I'm digging here. I can see that the politicization of sports is running behind the politicization of everything else -- but give it time.
WHO PAYS? Nicole Gelinas of the New York Post has been carefully planting explosives under the Mayoral candidacy of Freddy Ferrer. She's not the only one, of course; some local bullshit liberals have been saying the guy is too non-bullshit liberal to win against the beloved current Mayor, Richie Rich, and his dog Dollar. Take New York magazine, please:
Ferrer’s remarks are well tailored to his audience. This is a union-proud, racially diverse, stone-liberal crowd of academics and students, about half of whom wear anti-Bush buttons on their lapels. In other words, a strong sampling of the city’s leftish Democratic base...

Assembling only a textbook New York coalition of unions and racial special interests actually does Bloomberg a favor, however: It allows the mayor to spin his wealth as a positive, declaring himself unbought and unbossed, a plutocrat channeling Shirley Chisholm...
The author, Chris Smith, is probably the only person alive who looks at Michael Bloomberg and sees Shirley Chisholm. Scratch that; I don't he sees that, either. He's just casting about for metaphors, however feeble, to help explain the appeal of the Boston fixer beyond the distressingly simple fact that Giuliani pushed for him last election -- after of course pushing for himself -- and squeaked him by the useless Mark Green.

But that's how the cognoscenti do when they lose their guts. Local conservatives have their own methods. The Posties have been fanning the flames lit by some cop-friendly comments Ferrer made about the Diallo shooting years ago -- never mind that the Post itself has routinely excused every shooting of civilians by cops since the dawn of Rupert Murdoch.

In the intellectual wing of that movement, though, they have to come up with stronger stuff. Gelinas works the angle that Ferrer, even more than his less-electable competition for the Democratic nomination, is anti-business: "None of the four Dem candidates for mayor has much experience in the for-profit economy," she writes, "...But only one candidate is willing to repeatedly reveal his irredeemable lack of understanding of how private-sector Gotham works: former Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer."

Ferrer is suggesting that we address our large shortfalls of City revenue with taxes on big business -- in this instance, on stock transfers. Gelinas will have none of it. That will chase big business out -- "Wall Street isn't a captive of New York City, as it once was," she says.

In Gelinas' view, big business is in no way to be touched up for City revenue, or even addressed disrespectfully. She finds our cigarette taxes and the State's big-tobacco lawsuits equally noxious -- not on grounds of injustice to smokers, but because the transfer of funds from tobacco companies to the government is "hypocrisy"; and when City pension fund managers lean on companies like Winn Dixie on discrimination grounds, she sounds the tocsin at the City Journal: "No longer content merely to change corporate America from the outside, public-pension funds are now taking advantage of a chastened and weakened post-Enron corporate America to shift the focus of their political and economic power to the inside of the corporate boardroom. Their resolve to change the world one shareholder resolution, press release, and board election at a time spells trouble for taxpayers, U.S. corporations, and the national economy."

New York is of course not entirely a business-unfriendly environment; we give corporations tax breaks all the time, but despite the jobs this has safeguarded, we're still in the hole. Even Gelinas has noted that "From 1988 to 2000, [a Center for an Urban Future] report notes, Gotham handed out $2 billion in tax breaks and incentives to 80 top-notch firms, simply to keep the jobs in the city. But half of those companies still moved jobs out of town." Such payoffs "have simply warped the city's growth pattern, at best." Her solution: cut other business taxes, such as "unforgivably regressive 8.625 percent tax on consumer goods [which] openly encourages merchants to leave," and thereby make a still more favorable climate for business.

One may ask, then, where Gelinas expects the money New York pressingly needs to come from. A hint comes in a recent Gerlinas essay on the parlous state of our subways. Along the way she calls for the usual conservative remedies: privitization, sticking it to the unions, etc. The firms that pick up the MTA's baton ought to do very well under this plan. But there is a constituency to whom Gelinas offers no surcease:
Cutting artificially high costs is one goal — but politicians must also allow the MTA to hike the artificially low price of a ride. Right now, city and state pols treat the subway as a social service — when the fare is raised, they complain of a regressive tax.

The MTA should ensure that fares cover the actual cost of a ride. Fares should cover operating costs (after federal and state capital grants), just as they did 100 years ago, and should be indexed yearly to inflation.

Will some low-wage workers be unable to pay? Sure — but the city and state governments can offer them vouchers based on need. Gov. Pataki could never stiff the city of that subsidy — or the poverty police would come knocking. (We'll take care of them later, one imagines Gelinas saying under her breath -- ed.)

Treating the subway as a market service paid for by customers, not as a social service subsidized by politicians, would improve the prospects of long-stalled projects.
These big, gleaming buildings, these roads, these trains, and whatever stadia Bloomberg and his allies muscle through -- they were not, and are not being, built for you, fellow citizens. In the new order, it will be made clear in the form of user fees, fare hikes, and whatever else you can or can't spare. Just don't ask the folks making huge profits off you to kick in a little. That wouldn't work; more to the point, it would be very unfair.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

IT'S A GREAT LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN, OR EVEN IF YOU DO. Sometimes I get tired of my own anger, and wonder if it isn't a bad thing to keep up this blog. Every time I see an outrage (well, not every time, teeny-boppers -- I'd be on here 24-7, or whenever the public library was open, parked at a public terminal, surrounded by my shopping bags, wearing four coats and twelve days' growth of beard, and radiating a strong fungal musk) I open Blogger and vomit out a response; but like Harry Hope's liquor after Hickey has reformed, it don't have no kick no more, and I come away still seething.

Sometimes I think I need an alternative action plan -- anger management classes, Paxil, or some more lasting form of self-expression. Anything's gotta beat serving as the Bizarro-world equivalent of those poor fellows who regularly rise to denounce Che t-shirts or Mao in the library as if the kids' eyes hadn't been glazed like Krispy Kreme since word one and the janitor weren't already putting up the chairs.

So I did like the social worker suggested and made a list, and the upshot is I will keep it up a little longer anyway, as the reasons in favor are still compelling:
  • Another year and I qualify for the blogger vesting program.
  • When I finally get Peggy Noonan alone in a corner of some think-tank dinner and make her listen to my crappy proto-electronica, I can truthfully say, in a wheezing voice, "I wrote you letters, many letters, why haven't you answered my letters?"
  • I'm right and they're wrong.


UPDATE. One of the tasks I set for myself as a young man was to stop fishing for compliments. It may be that, under the guise of thinking out loud, I dropped the flag with this post -- the only mystery greater than other people, after all, is oneself. I'm very grateful nonetheless for all the kind and (as usual) eloquent words in comments, even if you are all FBI agents, as the three-foot-tall green man in the corner insists. I expect to keep this popsicle stand open for a while yet.

Monday, April 25, 2005

NEXT ISSUE: HOW ABC'S "BLIND JUSTICE" IS REALLY A PLEA FOR PROMPT CONFIRMATION OF FEDERAL JUDGES. Thanks to Sun Myung Moon's top-down management style, even a simple review in the WashTimes of the Virginia Opera's Faust reflects the new realities:
...The nasty scene where Faust bullies the frantic Marguerite borders on the blasphemous, but proves a dramatic necessity, propelling the work toward its beatific vision of redemption. The work's emotional portrayal of moral conflict is sometimes derided by modernists as decidedly out of touch with contemporary sensibilities. Yet it somehow resonated strongly in this production, perhaps unintentionally illuminating Pope Benedict XVI's recent condemnation of the "dictatorship of relativism," and casting this opera in an entirely different context.
Perhaps unintentionally? Did they bring in wind machines and sand dunes to portray Faust's wanderings through "'deserts' of sprituality"? When Marguerite was swept into heaven, did Roy's Rock rise in her place? Was Mephistopholes given a fat suit, a movie camera, and a Flint, Michigan cap?

More to the point, why might Moon, who has already declared himself Messiah, pump up his competition? Perhaps he hopes to lull Benedict into a false sense of security -- then, when the Pope least expects it, out come the thunderbolts and all the glory associated with end times.

Maybe Benedict's in on it too, and they plan to put their apocalyptic death-match on pay per view.
BUT HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH MUST-SEE THURSDAY? I could not get "Justice Sunday" on my little wire-hanger-reception TV, so you must look elsewhere for informed commentary. But without bragging too much on my predictive capacities -- I have long maintained that the nation would go to hell in a handbasket, and see, here we are! -- I can safely say that this show isn't going to do much for Senator Frist's cause. The serious Christers are already pledged up, and while mushy appeals to public decency and morality may sway some uncommitted souls in need of a stronger sense of redemption, the invocation of Christ as Bringer of Senate Procedural Reform seems a non-starter even in the church counties.

The highlight reel is pretty rich, though:
[Family Research Council] President Tony Perkins (!! -- ed.) said Democrats were using filibusters to exclude religious believers from the bench. Holding up a Bible, he told the audience, "What we are saying tonight is that as American citizens, we should not have to choose between believing what is in this book and serving the public."
A man waving a Bible on TV and asking for money is one thing, but a man waving a Bible on TV and asking for proxy support in a contest not involving colorfully-named wrestlers is just wasting everyone's time.
LATE BLOOMER. Finally saw Sideways. The objections to it touted by some people back when it was in theatres seem strange to me. Of course male critics, like any other filmgoers, will be flattered to see themselves in a main lead. But credentialed critics are successes, in that they are bylined and paid for doing what I am doing here for free; Miles is a chronic failure in a field closely related to theirs. Wouldn't they more likely view him as a loser -- somebody that they're demonstrably better than?

In fact, what I minded about Miles was that he is so ceaselessly stuck in gloom without being genuinely witty or otherwise appealing about it. His observations on everything except wine are purposely ridiculous whinging. Modern drama, and literature, and film are packed with attractive, indeed galvanic, underperformers -- Gray's Butley, Lowry's Consul, and Jack Nicholson's Bobby Dupea come to mind. If you must be damned, be stylishly damned!

Also, I never thought I'd say this, but Paul Giamatti doesn't help. He's a wonderful actor and his extreme sensitivity as a performer leads to a few heartbreaking moments, but his raging schlub bit gets hard to take sometimes -- well, many times. I mean, it's a road movie -- it's not a good thing if you keep wishing you could get out of the car.

Stephanie and Maya are a problem, too. The former isn't much more than a device, and the latter -- well, this may be where the Times guy got it from; she's so level and true that you have to wonder how she got placed in the same universe as Jack and Miles. And Payne really miscalculated with all the scene-setting; it doesn't add much to see California wine country in such lavish detail. Maybe Turning Leaf had a piece of the action.

Well, gee, Roy, that doesn't sound like much of a recommendation. So what's good? Mostly stuff that (forgive me) ripens over the course of the film. The dramaturgy is wicked smart. For example, throughout most of Sideways I wondered, what do these two guys see in each other? They spend most of the movie savagely attacking each other's actions and motivations. Good friends may do that, of course, but underneath it all you expect to see traces at least of the ties that bind.

Payne was subtle about this -- maybe over-subtle. The big clues came late: the attack at the golf course, and especially Miles' reclamation of Jack's wallet. After these the rest of their relationship, and the whole movie, made more sense. Jack may seem like a heedless horndog and Miles a volatile lush, but each has a strain of madness that the other can enjoy, if only because it's different and thereby more exciting to him than his own. Again, maybe too little too late, but how much better that is than something like the little speech Kevin Spacey gives in American Beauty to explain to us what a hot tamale his wife used to be before she got so anal.

And I liked Jack. He's a user, a dumbass, and a devious shit -- the way he melds his lie about himself with a lie about Miles, as a hedge against detection, would seem Machiavellian if he weren't so fucking dumb -- but the fact that he comes up with this shit solely by instinct, just to keep the party going, is part of his appeal. He's not charming, really, in the traditional movie sense; his shallowness is too obvious -- I think even Stephanie sees that from the get-go. But he's got an appetite for life that not only draws people to him but makes them feel happy and good about themselves. For a while, anyway.

Also -- and maybe mainly -- that's one hell of a coda. I'm not sure how much it needs the rest of the movie -- it needs Miles' journey, and it needs a casual remark by Maya at Stephanie's place, but not much more. I figured Miles would have to come around at the end, but I didn't expect his way of doing it to be so simple and so moving. Moral: A big finish, as they say in the show biz, takes care of a slow middle. And among the countless hours of crap I have watched in my time, I am grateful for every small epiphany.