October 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Victor Bockris, Transformer: The Lou Reed Story, 1995.
Alan Davis and Mark Farmer, Justice League of America: The Nail, 2004.
Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty, Batman: The Joker's Last Laugh, 2008.
Joshua Hale Fialkov et al, I, Vampire, Vol. 3: Wave of Mutilation, 2013.
Steve Fischer, When the Mob Ran Vegas, 2005.
Alan Grant et al, The Batman of Arkham, 2000.
Paul Gravett (ed.), The Mammoth Book of the Best Crime Comics, 2008.
David Howard-Pitney, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s: A Brief History with Documents, 2004.
Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer, Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989: A Brief History with Documents, 2011.
Mat Johnson et al, Right State, 2013.
Gerard Jones and Gene Ha, Batman: Fortunate Son, 2000.
Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser (eds.), Teaching American History, 2009.
Randy Lofficier et al, Batman: Nosferatu, 2000.
Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents, 1998.
Ernest R. May, The 9/11 Commission Report with Related Documents, 2007.
James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, My Lai: A Brief History with Documents, 1998.
Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, 2002.
Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents, 2007.
Jerry Siegel et al, Superman in the Fifties, 2002.
Jerry Siegel et al, Superman in the Forties, 2005.
Louise Simonson and Dan Schoening, Wonder Woman: Monster Magic, 2013.
Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie, The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents, 2008.
Matthew Avery Sutton, Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents, 2013.
Judd Winick et al, Batwing, Vol. 2: In the Shadows of the Ancients, 2013.
Brian Wood et al, Star Wars, Vol. 1: In the Shadow of Yavin, 2013.
Rowena Yow (ed.), Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics, 2013.

DVDs:
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949.
Barbie: Princess Charm School, 2011.

"Almost Nobody Was Fooled by Welles’ Broadcast"

"How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America’s newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted. In an editorial titled 'Terror by Radio,' the New York Times reproached 'radio officials' for approving the interweaving of 'blood-curdling fiction' with news flashes 'offered in exactly the manner that real news would have been given.' Warned Editor and Publisher, the newspaper industry’s trade journal, 'The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove ... that it is competent to perform the news job.'"

Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow in Slate counter the long-told story of panic following the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938.

"Essentially Was a Social Networking Site"

"For the first two years, Kaufman mostly sold clothes she'd made and pieces by other Westside artists, but once NaNa moved to a bigger location on Broadway (and Kaufman teamed up with two partners), the store started importing goods from England, such as the technicolor hair dye later branded in the U.S. as Manic Panic, Mary Quant hosiery and, most famously, punk footwear such as Docs and skull-buckle boots. i-D Magazine was their style bible, and Kaufman would photocopy its pages 'to let kids see what kids on the street wore in London.'
"A mother of two grown children who today owns the funky Santa Monica clothing and gift shop Brat (its name honors NaNa employee Bobbi Brat, who died of cancer at age 26), Kaufman recalls staying up all night making overseas calls to try to track down merchandise. 'It wasn't like you could get on the Internet and source something," she says. "Nothing was really easy, but it was very exciting when it arrived. . . . Street fashion really was a revolution.'"

In a 2009 Los Angeles Times article, Steffie Nelson takes a look back at NaNa shoes.

"Why Did This Thing Have to Be So Complicated in the First Place?"

"In saying this I don’t mean to excuse the officials and contractors who made such a mess of health reform’s first month. Nor, on the other side, am I suggesting that health reform should have waited until the political system was ready for single-payer. For now, the priority is to get this kludge working, and once that’s done, America will become a better place.

"In the longer run, however, we have to tackle that ideology. A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn’t have to be that way."

Paul Krugman in The New York Times discusses Steven Teles's idea of "kludgeocracy."

It Was Alright

"With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. 'One chord is fine,' he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. 'Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.'"

Jon Dolan at Rolling Stone reports the death of Lou Reed.

Michiko Kakutani writes an appreciation in The New York Times.

For a Strong, Just, and Free America

"The contours of Obamacare, the plans for Iraqi withdrawal, green jobs in the Recovery Act—CAP had a hand in developing all of these ideas. In so doing, it frequently borrowed heavily and adapted the work of others, including other liberal think tanks in Washington. But precisely because CAP was pulling together the politics and policy, it was in a position to promote those plans with officials and lawmakers—quite a few of whom, conveniently, were former CAP affiliates."

Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic celebrates ten years of the Center for American Progress.

Devious, Truculent, and Unreliable

"For its first 150 pages, Autobiography comes close to being a triumph. 'Naturally my birth almost kills my mother, for my head is too big,' he writes, and off we go–into the Irish diaspora in the inner-city Manchester of the 1960s, where packs of boys playfully stone rats to death, and 'no one we know is on the electoral roll'. In some of the writing, you can almost taste his environment: 'Nannie bricks together the traditional Christmas for all to gather and disagree … Rita now works at Seventh Avenue in Piccadilly and buys expensive Planters cashew nuts. Mary works at a Granada showroom, but is ready to leave it all behind.' And when pop music enters the story, he excels. Before the Smiths, Morrissey fleetingly wrote reviews for the long-lost music weekly Record Mirror under the name Sheridan Whiteside, and his talent for music writing is obvious. By the late 60s, he is marvelling at hit singles by the Love Affair, the Foundations and the Small Faces; in 1972, as with so many thousands, he marvels at David Bowie miming to Starman on an ITV pop show called Lift Off With Ayshea. 'It seemed to me that it was only in British pop music that almost anything could happen,' he writes, which is spot on."

John Harris in The Guardian reviews Morrissey's Autobiography.

"A Victim of Its Own Success"

"Now, a dozen or more chains—including Lucky Brand, Gant, Flannel and Alexis Bittar—populate the street. They're not the Gap or H&M, admittedly, but neither are they mom-and-pop operations.
"'It's gotten really fashionable, not always in a good way,' said Pierre Auroux, a Venice resident who was leaving an Abbot Kinney lunch spot on his bicycle one recent sunny afternoon. In years past, he added, "it was less Beverly Hills and more of a beach vibe. It wasn't as safe and nice, but that's what gave it character.'"

Martha Groves in the Los Angeles Times explores the transformation of Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

"Alumni Magazine Tiptoeing Around Campus Shooting"

"'The spirit of renewal is in the air at Yateson this fall, starting with the complete renovation of the second floor of the library,' read the editor’s letter of the magazine, which also featured pieces on the school’s upcoming fall theater production, the library’s newly installed 'military-grade' metal detectors, and the new cafeteria dining options."

From The Onion.

"5-Year-Old Reluctantly Lets Crying Mom Sleep In His Bed Again"

"'All right, come on, get in,' said the exhausted child, who reportedly proceeded to rub the 37-year-old’s back while assuring her that she was okay and everything was going to be fine."

From The Onion.

"Journalists Still Don’t Know How to React"

"Given all of this, Tracy feels the Onion wasn’t out of line. 'Satire has to be allowed to push these buttons and replicate that which it condemns—that’s literally its definition,' he writes. 'The Onion’s missteps tend to come not when it’s overly offensive but when its offensiveness doesn’t serve any redeeming social value. By cleverly casting the racist name of the Washington team in a new light, it did provide a great service to its readers, who hopefully include Daniel Snyder.'"

Prachi Gupta in Salon discusses a controversial article from The Onion.

"The Outrage Was Immediate"

"Only one of the principals of that evening in 1973 is still alive: William Ruckelshaus. Now in his 80s, he runs a foundation in Seattle and is still active in national life. He was then, and still is, a moderate Republican. I wrote to him and asked, 'If you knew, that ultimately, President Nixon would be forced to resign and that future generations of Republican legislators would spend so much time trying to even the score, would you have taken a long view and done what was necessary to protect the president and keep him in office?' I didn’t really expect an answer—but within two days an email came back: 'The answer is no.'"

Michael Goldfarb in Salon connects the Saturday Night Massacre to today.

Mercury Kings Play Songs of Gummi

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for film critic Stanley Kauffmann, astronaut Scott Carpenter, novelist Oscar Hijuelos, candy promoter Hans Riegel, actor Kumar Pallana, football coach Bum Phillips, cartoon-studio chief Lou Scheimer, and former House speaker Tom Foley.

"Upended the Entire Intellectual Tradition of Its Discoverers"

"Irish and Italian immigrants proudly pointed to Columbus' Roman Catholic religion to fight the prejudice they experienced in their adopted country, and in 1882, they founded the Knights of Columbus, now the world's largest Catholic service organization. But during the late 20th century, Native Americans bristled at the notion of Columbus' 'discovery,' feeling that their ancestral lands didn't need discovering.
"But the real reason Columbus' voyages should be remembered—and celebrated—is for their central role in prying loose European curiosity from the vise put in place by the medieval church."

Joyce Appleby in the Los Angeles Times considers a legacy of 1492.

And Yoni Appelbaum at The Atlantic discusses the history of Columbus Day.

"Probably the Best-Known Book about Death Published in the Twentieth Century"

"The book arrived at a time when the taboo on death was just starting to ease. For much of the early twentieth century, death was spoken of in hushed voices, when it was spoken of at all. Numerous scholars have since discussed the cloaking of death in the Western world, its transition from a ubiquitous and semi-public event to something shameful and hidden, best left to medical experts and technical specialists (like the new professional class of funeral directors). Rising industrialization and urbanization in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries helped push the graveyard out of town, and these shifts coincided with the rise of a new reserve, in which displays of strong emotion, such as grief, were unseemly.
"But during the 1950s, the landscape changed. In 1955, Geoffrey Gorer’s fascinating essay 'The Pornography of Death,' argued that proscriptions around death had replaced the Victorian taboo against sex. In 1959, psychologist Herman Feifel came out with The Meaning of Death, a collection of essays often credited with singlehandedly establishing death, dying, and bereavement as legitimate areas for study. Yet neither Feifel nor Gorer made their way to American dinner tables. It was Mitford who got ordinary people talking."

Bess Lovejoy in Lapham's Quarterly marks the fiftieth anniversary of Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death.

"An Angry Place, a Stew of Superpatriotism Fueled by Anti-Communist Paranoia, Fierce Racism and Anti-Semitism"

"It was an amazing confederacy. People were lured to Dallas, they were marching to Dallas. There was just this rising sense of anger and distrust toward Kennedy, toward perceived socialism, religion. People feared him as a Catholic.
"I found that Dallas became really one of the most singular cities on planet Earth. For some reason out in the heartland in the middle of Texas, really powerful people coalesced around this notion that Kennedy was a traitor and in fact was guilty of treason. And these weren't just folks who were idly thinking these thoughts; they were acting on them and forming organizations and movements to essentially overthrow Kennedy."

Melissa Block on National Public Radio talks with Bill Minutaglio about Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis's new book, Dallas 1963: Patriots, Traitors, and the Assassination of JFK.

And inspired by Dallas 1963, Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker traces the Tea Party to the John Birch Society.

And James McAuley ruminates in The New York Times.

Massive Resistance

"Mihm said today’s fight has a parallel in the nullification movement of the 1830s when John C. Calhoun, who had resigned the vice presidency to run for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina, devised a strategy to oppose a tariff that he said hit the South unfairly. If the state legislature passed a law that refuted the federal one, the state could ignore it based on what he called a 'concurrent majority.'
"President Andrew Jackson eventually interceded and thwarted the nullification movement. Had it gone forward, Mihm said, it may have led to the breakup of the Union before the Civil War.
"Now, he said, those who want to stop Obamacare 'are trying to find another way to nullify that poses a much graver threat, but not to the law,' Mihm said, referring to a possible failure to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
"'Our debt is something we all, every one of us, are on the hook for,' he said. 'And the idea that you can take that and make that a bargaining chip is very similar to the idea of the nullifiers.'"

Michael Tackett at Bloomberg compares today's Republican Party to Southern conservatives of the past.

The Constitutional Option

"As the wording of the amendment evolved during the Congressional debate, the principle of the debt’s inviolability became a general proposition, applicable not just to the Civil War debt but to all future accrued debts of the United States. The Republican Senate leader, Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, declared that by placing the debt 'under the guardianship of the Constitution,' investors would be spared from being 'subject to the varying majorities which may arise in Congress.'"

Sean Wilentz in The New York Times advises President Obama on how to counter House Republicans.

At Reuters, Garrett Epps joins in.

"A Domestic Cuban Missile Crisis"

"The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. (Obama could, theoretically, threaten to veto a debt ceiling hike unless Congress attaches it to the creation of single-payer health insurance.) To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic. But it turns out to be the perfect tool for the contemporary GOP: a party large enough to control a chamber of Congress yet too small to win the presidency, and infused with a dangerous, millenarian combination of overheated Randian paranoia and fully justified fear of adverse demographic trends."

Jonathan Chait in New York explains the stakes of the current standoff.

"The Story of Mainstream Republicans Realizing They Can't Control Tea Party Republicans"

"Because they won’t compromise. You’ve got about 52 members of the Republican conference who are affiliated with the tea party in some official way. That’s a bit less than a quarter of all House Republicans. That’s enough in the House. They refuse to compromise because, to them, compromise is capitulation. If you go back to Hofstadter’s work when he’s talking about when the John Birch Society rode high, he talks about how conservatives would see people who disagree as political opponents, but reactionary conservatives saw them as evil. You can’t capitulate to evil."

At The Washington Post, Ezra Klein interviews Christopher Parker, author of Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.

And Andrew Sullivan at The Dish considers a new report.

"Bad Things Happen Everywhere"

"So after scripting a story set there ('Escape' also includes flirtatious French teenagers, a possibly demonic child and a mad scientist straight out of the 'Lost' mythology, all in the service of indicting Disney's culture of forced cheer), he began figuring out ways to shoot it. He scouted locations by bringing his own children to Disneyland, then cast-no name actors—Roy Abrahmson, a man who just last month was serving as a limo driver at the Emmy Awards, plays the lead—before he began shooting in Anaheim and Orlando. Production often involved guerrilla tactics, such as scattering his iPhone-enabled crew throughout the park so the whole thing didn't look like a movie shoot. Moore was so scared that Disney would catch on that he edited the movie in South Korea."

Steven Zeitchik in the Los Angeles Times talks with John Sloss about Sloss's new movie Escape from Tomorrow, made surreptitiously at Disneyland and Disney World.

"David Bowie Asks Iman If They Should Just Do Lasagna Again"

"Sources confirmed the nine-time platinum recording artist—who claimed at one point in the 70s to have subsisted on a diet of red peppers, cocaine, and milk—then preheated the oven, started boiling a pot of water, and searched around inside the kitchen cabinets, at one point asking Iman if she had seen the 'good baking pan.' In addition, Bowie, who allegedly had an affair with Rolling Stones lead vocalist Mick Jagger at the pinnacle of the glam rock era, suggested that the 'fridge needed a quick wipe down' while grabbing a carrot, a cucumber, and a box of organic spinach to make a quick salad. Iman, one of the fashion world’s most legendary ethnic supermodels, noted philanthropist, and entrepreneur, reportedly ripped a page off of a notepad hanging on the refrigerator door and wrote 'Windex, aluminum foil, milk' below a lengthy list of items."

From The Onion.

The Hunt for the Ambassor Calvary Cook Book

The Los Angeles Times publishes obits for cookbook author Marcella Hazan, lawyer Leonard Kerpelman, writer Tom Clancy, photographer Bill Eppridge, Protestant pastor Chuck Smith, poet Jose Montoya, and Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.

"Losing a Large Slice of the Middle Class to the Ranks of the Democratic Party Could Justify Extreme Measures"

"Until now, social welfare programs in the United States have exhibited a 'big hole,' Professor Skocpol said, consisting of nonpoor working-age Americans and their children. Obamacare closes a big chunk of it.

"'The main beneficiaries tend to have lower wages, employed in smaller businesses that are not providing health insurance,' she said. 'They are not elderly. They are also not the poorest.'       

"And they might be grateful to Democrats for the benefit."

 

Eduardo Porter in The New York Times explains Republican intransigence toward the Affordable Care Act.