June 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Neal Adams, Batman: Illustrated by Neal Adams, Vol. 1, 2012.
Neal Adams, Batman: Illustrated by Neal Adams, Vol. 2, 2013.
Peter Bagge and Gilbert Hernandez, Yeah!, 2011.
Art Baltazar and Franco, Tiny Titans, Vol. 8: Aw Yeah Titans!, 2013.
Jeffrey Brown, Vader's Little Princess, 2013.
Caroline Jayne Church, My First Prayers, 2008.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), Good 'n' MAD, 1969.
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, Catwoman: When in Rome, 2007.
Randy Lofficier et al, Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon, 2003.
William Messner-Loebs, Wonder Woman: Amazonia, 1998.
Paola Mulazzi et al, Tinker Bell and Her Magical Arrival, 2012.
Sean Murphy, Punk Rock Jesus, 2013.
Manuela Razzi et al, Tinker Bell and the Most Precious Gift, 2013.
Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, 2002.
Steve Vance et al, Realworlds: Superman, 2000.
Matt Wagner, Batman and the Mad Monk, 2007.
Matt Wagner, Batman and the Monster Men, 2006.

DVDs:
Lincoln, 2012

Duty Now Legend Ties

The Los Angeles Times reports the deaths of singer Slim Whitman, arrestee Rena Price, valet parker Herb Citrin, television producer Gary David Goldberg, singer Bobby "Blue" Bland, writer Richard Matheson, drummer Alan Myers, fugitive Marc Rich, writer Gordon Bricken, Selective Service head Curtis Tarr, and photographer Bert Stern.

I Lift My Lamp beside the Golden Door

In The New Republic, Nate Cohn and T.A. Frank discuss the immigration bill.

"That Used to Be a Thing"

"Why did we think the agency was targeting only conservatives? Because apparently Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, ordered the agency to audit its treatment of tea-party groups, and only tea-party groups. The IRS dutifully reported it was indeed targeting tea-party groups; everybody assumed it was doing no such thing to liberal groups. The IRS inspector general is defending its probe, but the IRS's flagging of conservative groups seems, at worst, to be marginally stricter than its flagging of liberal groups, not the one-sided political witch hunt po[r]trayed by early reports.

"What about the rest of the scandals? Well, there aren’t any, and there never were. Benghazi is a case of a bunch of confused agencies caught up in a fast-moving story trying to coordinate talking points. The ever-shifting third leg of the Obama scandal trifecta—Obama’s prosecution of leaks, or use of the National Security Agency—is not a scandal at all. It’s a policy controversy. One can argue that Obama’s policy stance is wrong, or dangerous, or a threat to democracy. But when the president is carrying out duly passed laws and acting at every stage with judicial approval, then the issue is the laws themselves, not misconduct."

Jonathan Chait at New York looks back at the "Obama Scandals."

And Alec MacGillis at The New Republic considers what happened with the IRS.

"A Literary One-Hit Wonder"

"After finishing the Yates and Cheever bios, Bailey tells the Weekly, he was a bit burned out and looking for a lighter subject. His first idea was to write a collection of mini-profiles of promising young writers who got off track and never made their literary mark—long-forgotten names like Nathan Asch, Calvin Canfield and Jackson. But when he read the editor's preface to The Lost Weekend and learned about Jackson's pathetic end at the Chelsea Hotel, he knew he'd found his next full-length subject: 'I had to get to the bottom of that,' he says. 'How did the author of The Lost Weekend end up like that?'"

Paul Teetor in the LA Weekly reviews Blake Bailey's Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson.

"A Man and a Woman Forgotten to History Had Changed Flying Forever"

"Their plan is hare-brained and half-baked. But they imagine it will work because so many other people have gotten away with even crazier stunts. More importantly, no one is really trying to prevent them from taking over a plane in the first place. For a decade, the airline lobby steadfastly resisted the cost of additional security. The majority of planes hijacked were detoured to Fidel Castro's Cuba, and for a while it was simply cheaper for the airlines to pay for the extra fuel to fly the planes back home. And even federal officials thought many fliers would rather take the bus than submit to the inconvenience of metal detectors. As the head of the FAA put it in the 1960s: 'Can you imagine the line that would form from the ticket counter in Miami if everyone had to submit to police inspections?'"

Hector Tobar in the Los Angeles Times reviews Brendan I. Koerner's The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking.

"The Original Frenemies"

"Collins, an author and writing professor at Portland State University who's appeared on National Public Radio as a 'literary detective,' paints a rich portrait of post-Revolutionary Manhattan, a muddy little burg wracked by fever and drink, where everyone knew everyone. Nearly every man in the courtroom, from judge to juror, owed political fealty to either Burr or Hamilton. The lawyers, meanwhile, may have been cooperating on the Weeks defense, but in his spare time Burr was building the coalition that would soon make Thomas Jefferson president and doom Hamilton's Federalists."

Mark Schone in the Los Angeles Times reviews Paul Collins's Duel With the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery.

"He is Valjean to the Tea Party’s Javert"

"In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Richard Hofstadter argued that right-wing movements often harbor a perception of 'a conspiracy against a way of life.' Following Hofstadter, Parker and Barreto suggest that Obama’s ascendance threatens the Tea Partiers’ traditional understanding of America. The president does not look like them or reflect their values; he personifies in an unavoidable way the changing face of the country. Thus the Tea Party despises Obama personally, distorting him into a grotesque papier-mâché figure good only for burning in effigy. Cue the Hitler moustaches, Nazi salutes, and dark mutterings of socialism in response to what are in fact very mild center-left policies. The 'birther' controversy, which remarkably persists in some quarters, bears all the hallmarks of Hofstadter’s paranoid style: state officials in Hawaii supposedly conspiring to hide Obama’s foreign lineage, thereby defiling the Constitution."

Michael O’Donnell in The New Republic reviews Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto's Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.

"A Bronze, Bearded Figure with a Determined Gaze Perched atop a Three-Foot Marble Pedestal"

"Douglass is the fourth African American to have a statue or bust in the halls of Congress, following the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth. Reflecting the nation’s complicated past, Statuary Hall also includes Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee."

Ben Pershing in The Washington Post reports on the debut of a statue of Frederick Douglass at the U.S. Capitol.

Second Glove Hamburger Beanery

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for composer Bob Thompson, restaurateur Harry Lewis, historian Robert Fogel, musician Sam Most, impresario Bernie Sahlins, surfwear designer Bob Meistrell, restaurateur Irwin Held, and actor James Gandolfini.

"Whether Someone Would Really Want to Return to a Particular Time Depends on Socioeconomic Class, Age, Sex, Race and Health"

"In 1950, a young man, with or without a high school degree, would have found it much easier than it is today to get and keep a job in the auto industry. And in that year, according to Colin Gordon, a historian at the University of Iowa, the average autoworker could meet monthly mortgage payments on a median-priced home with just 13.4 percent of his take-home pay. Today a similar mortgage would claim more than twice that share of his monthly earnings.

"Other members of the autoworker’s family, however, might be less inclined to trade the present for the past. His retired parents would certainly have had less economic security back then. Throughout much of the 1960s, more than a quarter of men and women age 65 and older lived below the poverty level, compared to less than 10 percent in 2010."

 

Stephanie Coontz in The New York Times warns against nostalgia. 

"What We Need Is a Change in Incentives for Corporate Elites"

"'It is ironic that I would be writing about the postwar American corporate elite as a model for responsible leadership,' he admits. “I spent the early part of my career characterizing these people as the "bad guys," and there certainly was plenty about which to complain.'
"But he doesn’t pursue the truly unexpected and uncomfortable paradox his historical study reveals. When America’s postwar corporate elites were sexist, racist company men who prized conformity above originality and were intolerant of outsiders, they were also more willing to sacrifice their immediate gain for the greater good. The postwar America of declining income inequality and a corporate elite that put the community’s interest above its own was also a closed-minded, restrictive world that the left rebelled against—hence, the 1960s. It is unpleasant to consider the possibility that the personal liberation the left fought for also liberated corporate elites to become more selfish, ultimately to the detriment of us all—but that may be part of what happened. The book sidles up to but doesn’t confront head-on the vexing notion that as the business elite became more open and meritocratic, it also became more selfish and short-termist."

Chrystia Freeland in Democracy reviews Mark Mizruchi's The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite.

"As If in a Careful Dance with Its Audience"

"Wandering through the exhibit, one is reminded of the filmmaker's beloved tracking shots, which accompany protagonists through trenches, corridors and hedges, influenced by filmmaker Max Ophüls, whose death, the exhibit notes, Kubrick memorialized on the set of 1957's Paths of Glory. Intensified by the filmmaker's fondness for wide-angle lenses, they emphasize the singular travels of his protagonists moving through time and space."

Doug Cummings in the LA Weekly reviews "Stanley Kubrick" at LACMA.

"Superficial, Juvenile Nonsense"

Michael Lind at Salon goes on a tear against libertarianism.

"Kennedy’s Finest Moment"

"But he quickly spun that news into a plea for national unity behind what he, for the first time, called a 'moral issue.' It seems obvious today that civil rights should be spoken of in universal terms, but at the time many white Americans still saw it as a regional, largely political question. And yet here was the leader of the country, asking 'every American, regardless of where he lives,' to 'stop and examine his conscience.'       

"Then he went further. Speaking during the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation—an anniversary he had assiduously avoided commemorating, earlier that year—Kennedy eloquently linked the fate of African-American citizenship to the larger question of national identity and freedom. America, 'for all its hopes and all its boasts,' observed Kennedy, 'will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.'"

 

Peniel E. Joseph in The New York Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy 1963 speech on civil rights. 

"To Understand Edward Snowden's Motivations, Look to Aaron Swartz"

"Snowden’s mindset seems similar to me. He told The Guardian that, as a teenager, he considered the Internet 'the most important invention in all of human history' because it connected him to 'people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own.' But, as an adult, he increasingly worried that surveillance was destroying the Web. The same invention he believed could liberate mankind was becoming a tool of oppression."

Noam Scheiber at The New Republic reacts to the National Security Agency leaks.

And Alec MacGillis "welcomes the uproar."

Fearsome Harlem Mermaid

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for documentarian Jean Bach, Senator Frank Lautenberg, football player Deacon Jones, farmer Bob Fletcher, film editor William T. Cartwright, and swimmer-actress Esther Williams. 

"Cut from the Top"

"This relationship between university and community poses a stark contrast to the UCOP in Oakland. As Kerr succinctly put it, 'The university-wide system has no alumni, no students, no faculty, no sports teams, no one to cheer for it.'
"Students, faculty and campus administrators know what the most pressing challenges are. And we are our own best advocates; we know who our students are and what our faculty can accomplish. We have loyal alumni who understand the value of excellent and accessible higher education."

David N. Myers in the Los Angeles Times calls for the downsizing of the University of California Office of the President.

But Peter Taylor objects.

"Passion Plays on Television, Even If It’s an Act"

"Toward the end of its run, as reasonable guests (and major advertisers like Domino’s Pizza) became harder and harder to woo, The Morton Downey, Jr. Show became more and more of a Network-style sideshow, peopled by assorted crazies and attention-mongers: Nazi skinheads, strippers, conspiracy theorists. The speed of his downfall makes the last third of the documentary difficult to watch: We see an increasingly out-of-touch Downey berating and humiliating his guests and employees, then physically assaulting his wife before leaving her for a much younger woman, whom he proceeds to nearly bankrupt himself spending his money on. (They would remain together until his death.) He’s an unredeemable bastard, but in his pettiness and desperate need for recognition, there’s something moving too. The man whose logo was a cartoon of a wide-open, yammering mouth would probably not have objected to this mostly unflattering but ultimately respectful portrait."

Dana Stevens in Slate reviews Evocateur: The Morton Downey, Jr. Movie.

The Benefit and the Burden

"By 1983, it was apparent that a huge shift in power resulted from Prop 13. More local funding decisions were made in Sacramento, as the state government picked up responsibilities that could no longer be financed at the local level because the property tax was the principal revenue source for local governments.
"On the 25th anniversary of Prop 13 in 2003, William Fulton and Paul Shigley, editors of the California Planning & Development Report, asserted that Californians had lost a great deal of control over their local governments as a consequence."

Bruce Bartlett at The New York Times looks back at Proposition 13, thirty-five years later.

As does Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.

"The First Liberal Democratic President Took Office Exactly 100 Years Ago This Spring"

"Yet Wilson, together with his allies on Capitol Hill, also laid the foundation for the 20^th century liberal state. He signed bills that created the Federal Reserve and progressive income tax rates, secured humane working conditions for merchant seamen and railroad workers, restricted child labor and curbed the power of large corporations. After the U.S. entered the war in Europe, his administration began operating the railroads, lifting the hopes of leftists who had long advocated public ownership of what was then a rich and vital industry.
"In 1916, Wilson accepted renomination with a speech that defined political conflict in terms that remain surprisingly fresh. Our programs, he told his fellow Democrats were 'resisted at every step by the interests which the Republican Party … catered to and fostered at the expense of the country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a reaction which will save their privileges, for the restoration of their sworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they have lost.'"

Michael Kazin in The New Republic calls Woodrow Wilson "The Forgotten President."

The Name Game

"Oliver and colleagues argue that liberals, consciously or unconsciously, signal cultural tastes and erudition when picking their child’s name. In conversation with me, Oliver used himself as an example. He and his wife, a novelist, named their daughter Esme—a name gleaned from a story by the writer J.D. Salinger.
"On the other hand, conservatives, by being more likely than liberals to pick popular or traditional names (like John, Richard, or Katherine), signal economic capital. That is, they are choosing names traditional to the dominant economic group—essentially, wealthy whites."

John Sides at The Washington Post looks at liberal and conservative patterns in naming babies.

"A Party Spinning Happily Out of Control"

"Then there are his origin stories. Strausbaugh offers Village roots for flash mobs, cabaret laws, Occupy Wall Street-like park protests and New York University’s lack of popularity with locals (its land grabs have been controversial since at least 1832). Rather less convincingly, he entertains the theory that costumed revelers migrating from the Waverly Theater’s midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” straight to CBGB begat punk fashion. (This story begs for photographic proof—perhaps Debbie Harry in Magenta’s maid uniform.)"

Ada Calhoun in The New York Times reviews John Strausbaugh's The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues.

Light My Alligator Child Family

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for musician Ray Manzarek, journalist Haynes Johnson, musician Marshall Lytle, singer Clarence Burke, Jr., and actress Jean Stapleton.