When I See an Elephant Fly

"Under his supervision, the Disney studio was inhospitable to minorities, few of whom were said to have worked there and they were virtually verboten on the screen, except to be ridiculed. Disney's was a white, Protestant, middle-class studio and fantasy. Minorities need not apply.
"How much of this portrait was the product of a smear campaign by Walt's enemies and how much a product of Walt's own unenlightened attitudes is difficult to determine."

Neal Gabler in the Los Angeles Times explores whether Walt Disney was a racist.

The Hope That House Built

"We put a question on the ballot and in November 1967 we got roughly 40 per cent of the people of Cambridge to vote against the war, roughly the same percentage as in other places. We then had a sociology graduate student study the vote and his report was very clear: the higher the rent you paid, the more expensive your home, the more likely you were to vote against the war. We got the Harvard vote, but we lost the working class. It was a blow to all of us young lefties who thought the key to everything was the working class. And that political division was really a split in the Democratic Party. [There were] the anti-war liberals who were well-educated and tended to have more money than the traditional base of the party. The split between them and the working-class base is the key to the next 30 or 40 years of American politics. We are maybe coming out of that period. But the struggles of the Obama administration suggest that one election does not transform a country."

Luke Slattery in The Australian interviews Michael Waltzer.

"Montessori School Of Dentistry Lets Students Discover Their Own Root Canal Procedures"

"'Sure, we could say to our students, "The enamel here has completely eroded and needs to be addressed immediately." But what's more satisfying, what's more dynamic, is to just let them slowly develop an "impression" of why a patient might be screaming.'"

From The Onion.

Theories of Justice

"Sandel's discussion of welfare begins with Bentham's famous definition of justice as 'the greatest happiness for the greatest number.' This formulation could justify a commitment to market distribution, if it were shown to be the best means for promoting the general welfare. But pleasure is not the only good, and there is no common measurement for things as different as love and money. In any case, the quest for aggregate happiness also risks running afoul of personal rights. It is absolutely true that personal freedom matters, whether in a libertarian version that insists on noninterference and contract, or more egalitarian schemes--like those of Kant and Rawls--that square individual freedom with equal freedom for all others. Libertarianism, however, is compromised by the mistaken assumptions of self-ownership."

Samuel Moyn in The Nation reviews Michael J. Sandel's Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? and Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice.

"The Lash of the Dictator"

"The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to 'deteriorating service.' Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade 'the privacy of the examination room,' that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the 'freedom to choose their own doctor.'
"All dire—but also wrong. Those forecasts date not from this year, but from the battle over Medicare in the early 1960s."

Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times revisits debates over adopting Social Security and Medicare.

And, via YouTube, Ronald Reagan denounces "Socialized Medicine" in 1961.

A Crypto-Fascist Metaphor for Nuclear War

"Football in the 1960s became political, not just warlike. An ardent fan of the game, President Richard Nixon also used football—see his calculated attendance at 1969's 'Game of the Century' between Arkansas and Texas—to identify with his 'silent majority' against his enemies. Pregame and halftime at the Orange Bowl (and soon the Super Bowl) became showcases for elaborate patriotic displays. Over time, football fans came to take this football-related patriotism—a brand of flag-waving more like superpatriotism—for granted, as if it were embedded in long tradition, perhaps even in the very nature of the game. It wasn't and isn't."

Michael Oriard in Slate explores the role of nationalism in American football.

Strangers in Paradise

"The movie's most enthralling sequences are when the camera floats free from the narrative altogether and simply takes in the surroundings. As Homer sits idly at a corner table, the film observes his fellow drinkers, men with worn, scarred faces, and a gay couple that mingles with the straight crowd. The night scenes glow and shimmer, evoking the lonely luminescence of Edward Hopper and the street scenes of Paul Strand."

Upon the release of The Exiles on DVD, Sam Adams in the Los Angeles Times revisits the 1961 film.

"A 'Leftism of Style'"

"Bérubé's story begins in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Hundreds of thousands of Americans united to protest what they considered unnecessary military aggression. Skepticism was expressed by every strain of leftward thought--from dovish independents (Lincoln Chafee) to libertarian socialists (Ed Herman). And yet, none of the individual messages were reflective of the group as a whole. The anti-war movement became associated with inflamed smash-the-state rhetoric and even its moderate voices were written off as 'dirty fucking hippies.' Left became a term of derision, and to be against the war was to be anti-American. As Bérubé describes, hawkish Democrats suddenly carried liberalism's banner; center liberals were dubbed radical; and radicals became the center of attention. The 'Manichean Left' is to thank for this--and it didn't have to be this way."

Alexandra Gutierrez reviews Michael Bérubé's The Left at War in The American Prospect.

Gimme Kindie Rock

"Many other leading kid rockers have previous or double lives as adult musicians. Peter Himmelman already was an acclaimed singer-songwriter when he made the kids record 'My Best Friend Is a Salamander' in '97. They Might Be Giants make youth-themed albums for Disney and grown-up alt-rock too. Members of Milkshake played the Lilith Fair as Love Riot, and members of the Moldy Peaches, the Mekons and Medeski, Martin & Wood have all dabbled with family music, generally because they have become parents."

Evelyn McDonnell in the Los Angeles Times depicts the rise of alternative children's music.

"I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore"

"Social movements, like armies, define themselves by their conquests, not by their defeats. Feminism failed to make child care available to all, let alone bring about the total reconfiguration of the family that revolutionary feminists had envisaged, and that would have changed this country on a cellular level. Like so many other ideals of the sixties and seventies, the state-backed egalitarian family has gone from seeming—to both political parties—practical and inevitable to seeming utterly beyond the pale. The easier victories involved representation, or at least symbolic representation. For all the backlash against Roe v. Wade, the movement had steady success in getting women into the government and the private-sector workforce. The contours of mainstream feminism started to change accordingly. A politics of liberation was largely supplanted by a politics of identity."

In The New Yorker, Ariel Levy contrasts Gail Collins's When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present and Leslie Sanchez's You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary and the Shaping of the New American Woman.

"Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be"

"'Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: "one nation under God,"' said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. 'Well, there's a reason they put that right at the top.'"

From The Onion.

The Road to Sanity

"The only problem with this analysis is that it has no factual basis whatsoever. If Hayek were even remotely correct, all of Europe would be one huge gulag by this time. At the very least, Europe would be mired in poverty, growth nonexistent and freedom hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
"Of course, that is not the case at all."

Bruce Bartlett in Forbes asserts that taxes do not necessarily lead to tyranny.