November 2009 Acquisitions

Books:
Jennifer P. Mathews, Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley, 2009.
Frank Miller, Sin City, Volume 4: That Yellow Bastard, 2005.
Frank Miller, Sin City, Volume 5: Family Values, 2005.
Frank Miller, Sin City, Volume 6: Booze, Broads, and Bullets, 2005.
Frank Miller, Sin City, Volume 7: Hell and Back, 2005.
James Oakes et al., Of the People: A History of the United States, 2009.
Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Christmas, 2002.
Walt Disney's The Jungle Book, 2003.

DVDs:
The Exiles, 1961.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982.
The Killers, 1946/1964.
There's Something about Mary, 1998.
Yo Gabba Gabba: Meet My Family, 2009.

"Any Senator Can Stick Up the Senate"

"The only problem is that, because the filibuster had rendered the chamber so laughable, with renegade members pulling all-nighters and blocking all the Senate's business, the 'reformers' came up with a new procedural filibuster--the polite filibuster, the Bob Dole filibuster--to replace the cruder old-fashioned filibuster of Senate pirates like Strom Thurmond ('filibuster' comes from the Dutch word for freebooter, or pirate). The liberals of 1975 thought they could banish the dark Furies of American history, but they wound up spawning more demons than we'd ever seen before."

In The Nation, Thomas Geoghegan and the magazine's editors oppose the filibuster.

Slippin' into the Future

"Americans have always been a work-focused people. And despite the fact that this stresses us out immensely (Americans report feeling more stressed than citizens of other nations, and we also suffer from more heart disease and other stress-related health problems than others), we report feeling happiest when at work. In fact, if we had more free time, surveys suggest that the majority of us would fill it with more work. We have a very difficult time unplugging, and many of our technological advances have ensured that we don't have to. Cell phones, e-mail, laptops, jet travel, and hotels wired with wi-fi all allow the capability to be at work all the time, even on vacation. Part of it might be what Hoffman refers to as our quest for 'big promotions, big money, big homes' and that fear that came with knowing that 'if you didn't succeed in "making it," as the colloquial phrase had it, you had only yourself to blame.'"

Jessa Crispin in The Smart Set reviews Eva Hoffman's Time.

"Advertising Is Based on One Thing: Happiness"

Gawker.TV presents "The Tao of Don: A Complete Collection of Don Draper's Words of Wisdom."

"Without a Single Footstep to Guide Us"

"One area where Wood makes a particularly noteworthy contribution is in tracing the surprise development of America’s democratic identity. 'Surprise' is the word. Too often forgotten is the fact that America’s patrician founders harbored great fears about the 'excesses of democracy.' Though the new country was to be a daring trial in self-government, it was expected to be guided less by egalitarian impulses than by the aristocratic beliefs of well-bred gentlemen. That day, however, was quickly waning."

In The New York Times, Jay Winik reviews Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.

Fixing Windows

"Most of all, he continues to have the same burning need for significance, and his stock has never been higher. His old boss, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, hails him as 'America’s top cop'; a California police official says Bratton is 'as close as there is to a deity in our business.' Even a onetime critic like Steven Levitt, who in Freakonomics disparaged Bratton’s role in New York’s crime drop--instead attributing it to the legalization of abortion--is now a believer. 'Someone who’s able to go to two different places and reduce crime dramatically in both of them? You have to give the guy some credit,' Levitt says. 'If you asked me who I’d want as police commissioner in my city, I’d say Bratton.'"

Jason Zengerle in New York wonders what is next for former New York and Los Angeles police chief William Bratton.

Shop til You Drop

"We hear a lot about recession-proof occupations--nursing, for example. These jobs are recession-proof because we can't realistically manage without them. America needs more recession-proof products, and Americans need to refocus their spending habits around those products. In contemplating a purchase, we might ask ourselves: Does it actually do something? Does it do it better than the previous version? Or does it just make me feel good to own? And: How much am I paying for amenities that aren't a part of the product's basic job description?"

In the Los Angeles Times, Steve Salerno argues in favor of a "vanity tax."

And Meghan Daum contemplates the wonders of the SkyMall catalog.

Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon interviews Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays.

"We Still Seek No Wider War"

"I will tell you the more I just stayed awake last night thinking about this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know what in the hell it looks to me like we're getting into another Korea [...] I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damned mess that I ever saw."

Bill Moyers on his PBS program presents recordings of Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and 1965 as the president decided to increase the American involvement in Vietnam.

Well, Well, Well, You're Feeling Fine

"To her surprise, patients often got greater relief from pot than from prescription drugs--and they reported no side effects. In 2007, she shut down her family practice on Sunset and went herbal all the way on Melrose. Her answer to the obvious question? Yes, the money is better."

Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times visits Dr. Sona Patel, the most glamorous marijuana doctor in L.A.

"Trapped in the Face of a Monster"

"'What I'm worried about is that you think you're going to meet your birth mother or father and they're going to love you and welcome you with open arms. But he's not that kind of person.'"

Pete Samson in The Sun interviews Matthew Roberts, who recently found out that his birth father is Charles Manson.

Populist Parties?

"This shift in emphasis is connected with the shift in the social base of the Democratic Party from the working class to an alliance of the wealthy, parts of the professional class and the poor. And progressive redistributionism also reflects the plutocratic social structure of the big cities that are now the Democratic base. Unlike the egalitarian farmer-labor liberalism that drew on the populist values of the small town and the immigrant neighborhood, metropolitan liberalism tends to define center-left politics not as self-help on the part of citizens but rather as charity for the disadvantaged carried out by affluent altruists. Tonight the fundraiser for endangered species; tomorrow the gala charity auction for poor children."

Michael Lind in Salon wonders if a populist wave will benefit Democrats or Republicans.

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.

The Street Heats the Urgency of Now

"The reverberations of the fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be much smaller than we had expected at the time. In essence, what happened was that we belatedly saw through the gigantic fraud of Soviet superpower. But the real trends of our time—the rise of China, the radicalization of Islam, and the rise and fall of market fundamentalism—had already been launched a decade earlier."

Niall Ferguson in Newsweek argues that 1979, not 1989, is the most significant recent year.

"The Film You Have Just Seen Is an Improvisation"

"Cassavetes' movie not only anticipated Mean Streets, Stranger Than Paradise, She's Gotta Have It, and Slacker, among countless others—it helped will them into being. As Martin Scorsese noted, after Shadows, there were 'no more excuses' for aspiring filmmakers: 'If he could do it, so could we!' And yet 50 years after its release, Shadows is a forgotten movie, revered by cultists, critics, and historians but neglected by a culture on which it has had a profound influence."

Elbert Ventura asserts in Slate that John Cassavetes invented modern independent film fifty years ago today.

"In an Age of Selfishness, They Embody Responsibility"

"We are a nation that guarantees the freedom to worship as one chooses. And instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln's words, and always pray to be on the side of God."

The New York Times prints the text of President Obama's speech at Fort Hood.

Hold the Mayo

"This wonderful book is, in other words, both memorial and call to arms, a shofar blast meant to summon the far-flung back to the Temple remnants. 'I hope to open your hearts to the same unrestrained love of Jewish delicatessen that I feel . . . and then subsequently fill those hearts with cholesterol.'"

Rich Cohen in the Los Angeles Times reviews David Sax's Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen.

Tear Down This Myth

"To many American conservatives, the answer to those questions is simple: Reagan stared down the Soviet Union. And the Berlin Wall speech stands as the dramatic symbol of Reagan's challenge and triumph.
"But those who say this ignore the actual history and context of the speech."

James Mann in the Los Angeles Times revisits the subject of Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War.

I'm Livin' in the Aughties

"Counting the 100 trends, fashions, memes, personalities and ideas that shaped the first decade of the 21st Century."

From a new blog: You Aught to Remember.

A. O. Scott in The New York Times Magazine considers how to keep up with the decade's movies.

'ville.2k names "the 101 Best Music Videos of the Decade."

Simon Reynolds on The Guardian's music blog ponders why beards are popular among the decade's musicians.

And David Segal in The New York Times wonders what nickname the decade should have.

Andy Serwer in Time calls the '00s the "Decade from Hell."

Realism or Fantasy?

"The literary roots for this came from two streams in the 1960s. The highbrow, mainstream literary and leftist types endorsed such nonfiction, black prison literature as The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Eldridge Cleaver’s essay collection Soul on Ice; Poems from Prison, compiled by inmate and poet Etheridge Knight, which includes Knight’s “Ideas of Ancestry,” one of the most famous and highly regarded African-American poems of the 1960s; and Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. All of these books have become part of black literary canon and are frequently taught in various college literature, creative writing, and sociology classes. On the pulp, populist fiction side in the late 1960s and early 1970s were the novels of former pimp Iceberg Slim and imprisoned drug addict Donald Goines—including Trick Baby, Dopefiend, Street Players, and Black Gangster. These novels are the direct antecedents of the books that Chiles found so dismaying in 2006. They occupied a small but compelling portion of the black literature output in the 1970s. Many saw them in a far more political light at that time; now these books dominate African-American literature or seem to. Then, as now, there is a strong belief among many blacks—poor, working-class, and bourgeois intellectuals—and many whites, as well, that violent, urban life represents 'authentic' black experience and a true politically dynamic 'resistance' culture."

Gerald Early on America.gov considers the rise of black pulp fiction.

"Barack Obama Names Alan Moore Official White House Biographer"

"'I look forward to seeing the kinds of subplots he will surely weave throughout the main narrative of my presidency, and how he'll tie them all back together at the end in a way that just elevates the thing to a whole other level. God, that guy is the master.'"

From The Onion.

"The Real Brains and Boss of the Chinese Government"

"Her eight-month visit to the U.S. in 1943 to raise aid for her homeland would be the envy of any modern-day PR person. She wrote countless articles, addressed both houses of Congress, and wowed crowds at Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall. Her greatest achievement was as a propagandist, persuading Congress and the American public that her husband could deliver a democratic China."

Melanie Kirkpatrick in The Wall Street Journal reviews Hannah Pakula's The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China.

Death of the Dream

"As a result, for the last two decades we have been starving higher education. California's public universities and community colleges have half as much to spend today as they did in 1990 in real dollars. In the 1980s, 17% of the state budget went to higher education and 3% went to prisons. Today, only 9% goes to universities and 10% goes to prisons.
"The promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here, has been abandoned."

Jeff Bleich in the Los Angeles Times laments the state of California's public education system.

The Raw and the Cooked

"A powerful thinker, Mr. Lévi-Strauss was an avatar of 'structuralism,' a school of thought in which universal 'structures' were believed to underlie all human activity, giving shape to seemingly disparate cultures and creations. His work was a profound influence even on his critics, of whom there were many."

Edward Rothstein writes an obituary for Claude Lévi-Strauss in The New York Times.

Si, Se Puede

"And yet Chávez did not act alone. The movement he built was populated by an eclectic agglomeration of people who left the fields, classrooms, courts and churches to become organizers and activists in one of the most unique collaborations in California history."

Richard Steven Street reviews Miriam Pawel's The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement in the Los Angeles Times.

Stubborn Things

"In fact, Hirsch is and always has been a liberal Democrat. Far from being elitist, he insists, cultural literacy is the path to educational equality and full citizenship for the nation’s minority groups. 'Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children,' Hirsch writes, and 'the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents. That children from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories.'"

Sol Stern praises E. D. Hirsch in City Journal.

Kawaii Couture

"A birthday party today takes place at the site of a multidimensional exhibit titled 'Three Apples'--in the lore, Hello Kitty weighs as much as three apples--which opened Oct. 23 and runs through Nov.15. The exhibit at Culver City's Royal/T cafe and art space, features more than 80 pop artists and designers including Amanda Visell, Frank Kozik, Natalia Fabia and Simone Legno showcasing their interpretations of the feline."

Sophia Kercher in the Los Angeles Times celebrates the thirty-fifth birthday of Hello Kitty.

"Mayan Calendar Warns Of Cataclysmic Roland Emmerich Film On Nov. 13"

"'At this point, all we can do is hope and pray that the high priests were wrong and the running time is less than 143 minutes.'"

From The Onion.