November 2012 Acquisitions

Books:
Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton, Batman: Knight and Squire, 2011.
Chuck Dixon et al, Robin: Year One, 2008.
Garth Ennis and John McCrea, Hitman, Vol. 1: A Rage in Arkham, 2009.
Justin Gray et al, All Star Western, Vol. 1: Guns and Gotham, 2012.
David Kennedy and Lizbeth Cohen, The American Pageant, Volume 2: Since 1865, 2013.
Dennis O'Neil et al, Batman: Venom, 2012.
Si Spencer, Simon Gane, and Cameron Stewart, The Vinyl Underground, Vol 1: Watching the Detectives, 2008.
Si Spencer, Simon Gane, and Cameron Stewart, The Vinyl Underground, Vol 2: Pretty Dead Things, 2009.

"Not Just to Minister to the Slaves, but to Do Away with Slavery"

"An absolute pacifist, she incurred the resentment of Church authorities for opposing U.S. involvement in World War II and subsequent forays into Korea and Indochina. She mentored the Catholic activists who broke into a government office and poured homemade napalm on draft files in 1968 to protest the Vietnam war. And Day was such a resolute champion of labor that, in 1949, she even backed a gravediggers’ strike against a Catholic cemetery in New York City. When the powerful archbishop, Francis Cardinal Spellman, ordered seminary students to break the strike, she denounced him for bringing 'so overwhelming a show of force against a handful of poor working men.' What Spellman did, she added bitterly, was 'a temptation of the devil to that most awful of all wars, the war between the clergy and the laity.'
"Like any good anarchist, Christian or not, Day had no faith whatsoever in the desire or ability of governing authorities to create a moral, egalitarian society. At the recent bishops’ meeting, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago recalled asking her, just after the 1960 election, how she felt about having a Catholic in the White House 'who can fight for social justice.' 'I believe Mr. Kennedy has chosen very badly,' she snapped. 'No serious Catholic would want to be president of the United States.'"

Michael Kazin at The New Republic reports that American bishops have endorsed sainthood for Dorothy Day.

I Dream of Free Agency

The Los Angeles Times publishes obits for actor Larry Hagman, boxer Hector "Macho" Camacho, activist Lawrence Guyot, and union leader Marvin Miller.

"The United States Needs a Middle-Class Welfare State that Is Bigger, not Smaller"

"Any rational person, with no personal pecuniary interest involved, would conclude that we should expand the stable, efficient, low-overhead public part of America’s retirement security system—Social Security—while cutting back the failed, inefficient and unreliable parts—tax-favored employer pensions and individual retirement savings accounts like 401Ks. Instead, we are barraged with propaganda demanding that we cut Social Security, the successful public program, and expand the private savings alternatives like 401Ks and IRAs that have failed so miserably.
"Why? The answer is that Wall Street wants to charge fees on as much of our retirement money as it can get its tentacles on."

Michael Lind in Salon opposes cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

"Potent Mix of Class Anxiety and Carnal Violence"

"What's missing in the film, though, are the fears and complications surrounding race from Cain's novel: Nick Papadakis, known as 'the Greek,' becomes Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway). Cain's Cora is a dark brunet who worries people will think she's Mexican. Turner, of course, plays her the only way she could, as a blond bombshell, a black widow in white shorts."

Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times traces the cinematic legacy of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice.

And Steve Erickson in Salon praises Cain's novel.

"I’m at Ground Zero in the Saga of Republicans Closing Their Eyes to Any Facts or Evidence that Conflict with Their Dogma"

"I am disinclined to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy. They comfort themselves with the fact that they held the House (due to gerrymandering) and think that just improving their get-out-the-vote system and throwing a few bones to the Latino community will fix their problem. There appears to be no recognition that their defects are far, far deeper and will require serious introspection and rethinking of how Republicans can win going forward. The alternative is permanent loss of the White House and probably the Senate as well, which means they can only temporarily block Democratic initiatives and never advance their own.
"I’ve paid a heavy price, both personal and financial, for my evolution from comfortably within the Republican Party and conservative movement to a less than comfortable position somewhere on the center-left. Honest to God, I am not a liberal or a Democrat. But these days, they are the only people who will listen to me. When Republicans and conservatives once again start asking my opinion, I will know they are on the road to recovery."

Following the election, Bruce Bartlett in The American Conservative reflects on becoming an apostate.

"Take a Look around You, Boy/ It's Bound to Scare You, Boy"

"When Lyndon Johnson lit the national Christmas tree in December 1964, he presided over a nation at once hopeful and complacent, largely trusting its institutions and feeling assured about its future path, even as certain deprived groups, notably black people, were complaining angrily of exploitation. Phenomenal economic growth and unprecedented prosperity, along with the absence of extreme inequality and of large-scale immigration, helped to explain why the United States seemed to be a remarkably stable and confident place to live. It was hardly surprising that a great many Americans, including millions of young people who were nearing adulthood, had developed high expectations. No people in the modern history of the world had had it so good."

Salon publishes an excerpt of James T. Pattinson's The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America.

"A Nationwide Experiment in Consumer Irrationality, Dressed Up as a Cheerful Holiday Add-On"

"Economists typically think of consumer choice as dispassionate cost-benefit analysis by rational market actors—a bunch of people saying to themselves, 'Will having this $179.99 TV now create more pleasure than having the $179.99 in my bank account to do other things in the future?'—but the 2007 study shows that shoppers don't actually behave that way at all. In fact, they're choosing between immediate pleasure and immediate pain."

Kevin Roose at New York points out the humbug that is Black Friday.

Pilgrims' Progress

"According to the hypothesis, infected ship rats landed in the New World and excreted leptospira, infecting raccoons, mink, and muskrats whose urine further contaminated any standing fresh water. It is unclear why this particular infectious disease should afflict Native Americans and not subsequent European colonists. Prior exposure does not necessarily result in immunity because there are a number of different infectious strains."

Madeleine Johnson in Slate looks into why in New England "as many as nine out of 10 coastal Indians were killed in the epidemic between 1616 and 1619."

"As Businesses, Pandora and Spotify Are Divorced from Music"

"When I started making records, the model of economic exchange was exceedingly simple: make something, price it for more than it costs to manufacture, and sell it if you can. It was industrial capitalism, on a 7" scale. The model now seems closer to financial speculation. Pandora and Spotify are not selling goods; they are selling access, a piece of the action. Sign on, and we'll all benefit. (I'm struck by the way that even crowd-sourcing mimics this 'investment' model of contemporary capitalism: You buy in to what doesn't yet exist.)

"But here's the rub: Pandora and Spotify are not earning any income from their services, either. In the first quarter of 2012, Pandora-- the same company that paid Galaxie 500 a total of $1.21 for their use of "Tugboat"-- reported a net loss of more than $20 million dollars. As for Spotify, their latest annual report revealed a loss in 2011 of $56 million.

"Leaving aside why these companies are bothering to chisel hundredths of a cent from already ridiculously low "royalties," or paying lobbyists to work a bill through Congress that would lower those rates even further-- let's instead ask a question they themselves might consider relevant: Why are they in business at all?"

Damon Krukowski at Pitchfork argues that streaming-music companies only "exist to attract speculative capital."

Crusader Cat Honor

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for voice actor Lucille Bliss, clothier Bernard Lansky, and historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

The Twinkie-Era Defense

"Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever—and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of 'socialism.' Indeed, the whole Romney campaign was based on the premise that President Obama’s threat to modestly raise taxes on top incomes, plus his temerity in suggesting that some bankers had behaved badly, were crippling the economy. Surely, then, the far less plutocrat-friendly environment of the 1950s must have been an economic disaster, right?

"Actually, some people thought so at the time. Paul Ryan and many other modern conservatives are devotees of Ayn Rand. Well, the collapsing, moocher-infested nation she portrayed in 'Atlas Shrugged,' published in 1957, was basically Dwight Eisenhower’s America.

"Strange to say, however, the oppressed executives Fortune portrayed in 1955 didn’t go Galt and deprive the nation of their talents. On the contrary, if Fortune is to be believed, they were working harder than ever. And the high-tax, strong-union decades after World War II were in fact marked by spectacular, widely shared economic growth: nothing before or since has matched the doubling of median family income between 1947 and 1973."

 

Paul Krugman in The New York Times argues that "you can have prosperity without demeaning workers and coddling the rich."

"Satan From Suburbia"

"Norman convincingly portrays the Stones’ flamboyant lead singer not as a Dionysian character, but rather as a largely happy, well-adjusted, and risk-averse man. The Dartford-born son of a Phys Ed instructor and a hairdresser, Michael Jagger was the product of a loving and stable family, and in 1961 he even got himself admitted to the prestigious London School of Economics (at a time when only about two percent of British high school students moved on to universities). Temperamentally even-keeled, and occasionally kinder than his reputation would imply, he nowadays runs the Rolling Stones like one would a corporation, and he has done so—wisely and practically—since the mid ’70s. As his longtime assistant Shirley Arnold remarked, he simply 'has no dark side.'"

John McMillian in The New Republic reviews Philip Norman's Mick Jagger.

"The Ur-Kennedy Was the Most Fascinating of Them All"

"Given the extraordinary sweep of Kennedy’s life—banker, Wall Street speculator, real estate baron, liquor magnate (but not bootlegger), moviemaker, Washington administrator, ambassador, paterfamilias and dynastic founder—the miracle is that Nasaw was able to tell the whole damned story in only 787 pages."

In The New York Times, Christopher Buckley reviews David Nasaw's The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.

Slate runs articles adapted from Nasaw's book.

"California Appears Finally to Be Waking Up from Its Long Budget Nightmare"

"Key factors in the turnaround are the improving state economy, prior budget cuts and the passage of the Proposition 30 tax measure, Taylor found. By 2014, the state will have a surplus of $1 billion and that will grow to more than $9 billion by 2017, according to the fiscal outlook.
"That means what is known as the 'structural deficit' - the carryover deficit from year to year - will be eliminated."

Wyatt Buchanan at the San Francisco Chronicle reports good news for California's state budget.

Odd&B

"Neglecting the beats that have propelled the genre to the top of the charts over the past decade (be it the bass-heavy hip-hop of a few years ago or the four-on-the-floor Europop of today), Miguel and acts such as Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, Mateo and Dawn Richard are cutting their own versions of alternative R&B."

 

Gerrick D. Kennedy in the Los Angeles Times discusses "the most significant stylistic change in R&B since neo-soul rolled around in the 1990s."

He's Mr. One Percent/ He Ran for President

"On the off-chance this nonsense still needs rebutting, let’s be very clear: There are plenty of reliable Republicans who get heaping piles of government goodies, as my colleague Jonathan Cohn has explained: seniors who love their Medicare, veterans who depend on VA benefits, corporations that gorge on lavish subsidies. Believe it or not, there are even wealthy financiers out there who don’t pay income taxes on their loot and who deduct the mortgage interest on their vacation homes. (Not that I have anyone specific in mind.) Cohn points out that Romney himself promised an exceedingly large 'gift' to elderly Republican voters: restoring $718 billion worth of savings from Medicare that Obama had achieved through the Affordable Care Act."

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic tears into Mitt Romney for Romney's explanation for losing the election.

"Hand-Painted Monuments to Rock Gods"

"What became of McCartney's head? They found the culprit, who had kept his head, and brought the relic to the book's release party where it was presented Mario Rueda, the 94-year-old artist who had painted it."

Liesl Bradner in the Los Angeles Times discusses Robert Landau's new book, Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip.

Missed Connection

"I have one very vivid memory: when I used to visit New York, I would come in for vacation and visit friends, and always spend the entire time in Manhattan. But when I met my wife—I actually came out from California to go on our first date—she was living in Brooklyn, on Bergen St. near Flatbush. We took the subway there, and I just remember it being so dramatic to go from the frenetic, noisy bustle of Manhattan and to come up out of the subway and be in a neighborhood that was extremely quiet and peaceful. I was taken by how beautiful the streets were: the brownstones, all the trees that were up above. I think, in that moment, there was the first glimmer in my mind that Brooklyn could possibly be a place I’d want to live after being on the West Coast my entire life."

Mina Kaneko at The New Yorker talks with Adrian Tomine about the inspiration for his new book, New York Drawings.

"Waiting for the Historically Curious"

Three years ago, the decade-old museum joined with street artists to assemble a synthetic wall across Wilshire Boulevard, and then invited Angelenos to tear it down. That event—marking the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's demise—brought media attention and broadened the museum's fan base to more than a constituency of professors, graduate students and historians, Wende Executive Director Justinian Jampol said.
"'We're not officially open on the weekends,' Jampol said as local college students hummed around paintings on a recent Saturday. 'But as you can see, that is not necessarily the case.'"

Andrew Khouri in the Los Angeles Times discusses expansion plans for Culver City's Wende Museum of Cold War history.

"It’s Going to Be a Smaller Business"

"And while self-publishing has brought some good work out along with a lot of bad, there is little to no money at the front end. (We tend to hear about the rare exception of runaway success, not the hundreds of thousands of self-published books per year that go nowhere or lose their authors money.) For the independently wealthy, those who married well, or businessmen writing valiantly on the secrets of their success, these are real options. As with much of the Internet-driven transformation of the creative class, authors hoping to make a middle-class living with a modest advance will increasingly be out of luck."

Scott Timberg in Salon looks at threats to the publishing industry.

"Election Day 2012 Is Just the Beginning"

"Before 1992, California had not given its electoral votes to a Democrat running for president since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 electoral landslide. But in the early 1990s California became a majority-minority state, and since then the state has inexorably turned bluer and bluer (aided by ham-handed Republican legislation on immigration that profoundly alienated Hispanics). Only 30 percent of Californians are now registered Republicans, the lowest mark since record-keeping began. In 2012, every single statewide office belonged to Democrats, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein ran essentially unopposed."

Andrew Leonard in Salon reports that Democrats will have supermajorities in the California State Legislature.

The Age of Obama

In the wake of the election, Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast and Ross Douthat at The New York Times discuss the possibility of that rare phenomenon: political realignment.

And Benjy Salin at Talking Points Memo interviews Ruy Teixeira about the 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority.

"'The Onion' Calls Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania For John Edwards"

"The Onion is now also calling Oregon, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Oklahoma for Edwards, whom members of this editorial board endorsed last month with an elegant piece that highlighted his many accomplishments, most notably his 2007 extramarital affair, which he nobly and bravely conducted while his wife was dying of cancer."

From you know who.

The Fascist, Kenyan, Socialist, Muslim, Nazi, Communist...

... has been re-elected President of the United States.

The Late Adopter Endorses...

... Barack Obama for re-election as President of the United States.

TimePeace

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for philosopher Paul Kurtz, etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige, psychologist Arthur Jensen, singer-songwriter Terry Callier, and historian Richard Nelson Current.

"Modern Ways of Thinking about Politics Can without Undue Exaggeration Be Said to Begin with Hobbes"

"As for how Ryan squares this with the more 'liberal' thinkers who came after Hobbes, again the answer is context. Without Hobbes, there would have been no need for John Locke to react to him, and without Locke, no Paine or Jefferson, no Hegel or Marx."

In the Los Angeles Times, David L. Ulin reviews Alan Ryan's On Politics.

"Explains, Expounds, Clarifies"

"Newsweek was a relief for some readers after the overpowerful, mostly conservative Time. A few readers (and a few editors) liked to throw Time dramatically in the trash, so infuriated were they when Luce published his own, idiosyncratic conservatism. Newsweek became the magazine for liberals. But more important, starting in the 1950s and 1960s, it was also the magazine for good writing, especially for those who were put off by the strange Timese language that Luce and Brit Hadden had created. Martyn and his successors turned the magazine into the anti-Time. Years later it still was. In 1970, Richard Smith remembered calling his editors 'the noble guerrilla band, fighting the "panzer division on Sixth Avenue."  We took pride in our speed and flexibility and occasional irreverence.'"

Alan Brinkley at The New Republic eulogizes Newsweek.

"If It's a Social Contract, We're in Breach of Contract"

"It wasn't until much later that I came to fully appreciate the value of those two years at Diablo Valley College, and I think it's fair to say that the state of California got something in return. Like millions of others who have passed through the community college system, I became a contributing taxpayer, supporting the public institutions that serve all of us.
"But the grand master plan that once set California apart and helped drive its economic engine—a strong K-12 commitment and a high-quality college education accessible to just about everyone—has unraveled."

Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times worries what will happen to California's community colleges if Proposition 30 does not pass on Tuesday.

"A Contempt for the Electorate"

"Mr. Romney, by contrast, seems to be betting that voters have no memories, poor arithmetic skills and a general inability to look behind the curtain. We hope the results Tuesday prove him wrong."

The Washington Post's Editorial Board denounces Mitt Romney's campaign.


"In his closing argument today, Mitt Romney unveiled the passive voice to argue why President Obama’s reelection would portend terrible things. Pay close attention, English teachers: 'The debt ceiling will come up again, and shutdown and default will be threatened, chilling the economy.'

"Shutdown and default will be threatened, you say? By who, exactly? Well, by the Republicans in Congress, of course.

"You can see why Romney would omit this detail from his closing pitch. Since taking control of the House of representatives in 2011, Republicans have engaged in a de facto campaign of economic sabotage. They abandoned their previous belief, shared with the entire macroeconomic forecasting field, that short-term deficit reduction harms a depressed economy. They turned the debt ceiling vote, once an opportunity for mere posturing, into a hostage crisis threatening dire economic consequences worldwide.

"David Frum joked last spring that their argument was 'Vote Republican. It's too dangerous to leave us in opposition.' And now this is the Republican candidate’s actual argument! Except he omits the 'us' via the passive voice."

Jonathan Chait at New York concurs.


"The voters, of course, may well recoil against these cynical manipulations at the polls. But win or lose, the Romney campaign has placed a big and historic bet on the proposition that facts can be ignored, more or less, with impunity."

And Kevin M. Kruse in The New York Times excoriates Romney's post-truth campaign.

"A Huge Waste of Money"

"Steyer argues that measures like Proposition 39 are necessary because the Legislature can't act. 'The Legislature tried three times since 2009 to close the loophole but it couldn't, because of concerted action by the moneyed interests.' He ticks off the raft of political issues that have been getting addressed not by the Legislature but at the ballot box: 'Gay marriage, three-strikes, GMOs, environmental law, taxes,' he says. 'That's a pretty big legislative agenda.'
"But is the initiative process up to the task of taking over? Almost certainly not, because it's already been co-opted by the same moneyed interests."

In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik criticizes California's "self-indulgent initiative process."

"The Oilfield in the Placenta"

"In this respect, it’s not really useful, or possible, to specify a break point where the money game ends and the ideological one begins. They are two facets of the same coin—where the con selling 23-cent miracle cures for heart disease inches inexorably into the one selling miniscule marginal tax rates as the miracle cure for the nation itself. The proof is in the pitches—the come-ons in which the ideological and the transactional share the exact same vocabulary, moral claims, and cast of heroes and villains."

Rick Perlstein in The Baffler connects political and commerical mendacity.

Totally Wired

"'Gilles and I realised in 1987 that there was a growing crowd around our two club nights: Monday at the Wag in Soho, and Dingwalls in Camden on Sunday afternoons,' says Piller. 'And among that crowd were musicians who had something to say. Brand New Heavies, the James Taylor Quartet, Jamiroquai – they all came out of that group of about 250 people.'"

Tom Horan in The Guardian talks with Eddie Piller about the twenty-fifth anniversary of Acid Jazz records.

"Always Saw a Blank Piece of Paper, However Small, as a Challenge"

"The quirks of Lennon’s prose style were evident from an early age. He was given to mazy wordplay, absurdist humor and nonsense verse, often supplemented by marginal drawings. By age 12 or 13, he’d started drawing his own handmade newspaper (today we’d call it a zine), 'The Daily Howl,' which owed a fair share of its humor to the BBC radio program The Goon Show. In 1958, when John was 18, he made an adorable, modernist-flavored Christmas card for his girlfriend (later first wife) Cynthia Powell. '… I love you forever and ever isn’t it great? I love you like GUITARS,' he writes. In another letter to Cyn, he says he wishes he were on his way to her flat 'with the Sunday papers and choccies and a throbber.' (By 'choccies' he meant chocolate; a 'throbber,' Mr. Davies helpfully explains, is another word for a boner.)"

John McMillian in The New York Observer reviews Hunter Davies's The John Lennon Letters.