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.

May 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Jules R. Benjamin, A Student's Guide to History, Twelfth Edition, 2013.
Anthony Bourdain et al, Get Jiro!, 2012.
William H. Chafe, Harvard Sitkoff, and Beth Bailey (eds.), A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America, Eighth Edition, 2011.
William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, Seventh Edition, 2010.
Garth Ennis et al, Hitman, Vol. 2: Ten Thousand Bullets, 2010.
Garth Ennis et al, Hitman, Vol. 3: Local Heroes, 2010.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), The Indigestible MAD, 1968.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), The Recycled MAD, 1972.
Justin Gray et al, All Star Western, Vol. 2: The War of Lords and Owls, 2013.
Glen Hanson et al, Realworlds: Wonder Woman, 2000.
James D. Hudnall et al, Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography, 1989.
Victoria Kann, Pinkalicious: Flower Girl, 2013.
Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor, Batman: Death by Design, 2013.
Randy Lofficier et al, Superman's Metropolis, 1997.
Pat Olliffe et al, The Invincible Iron Man: An Origin Story, 2011.
Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture, 2012.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman, Vol. 1: The Court of Owls, 2013.
Matt Wagner, Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity, 2005.
Mark Waid and Alex Ross, Kingdom Come, 2008.
Daniel Wallace, Batman: The World of the Dark Knight, 2012.

DVDs:
Pixote, 1981.

You're Welcome

"Still, California’s challenge is America’s: how to manage public business competently enough—collecting taxes, covering costs, educating children, fostering research, protecting the environment, maintaining order—to allow the creative carnival of its private activities to go on. And this is where Jerry Brown’s accomplishment seems most impressive. Arnold Schwarzenegger left office with a budget deficit of about $27 billion, having covered some of the state’s obligations during his final year in office with IOUs. This year’s budget shows a surplus of at least $500 million. 'We are governable!,' Brown told me, emphasizing it because so many people have argued the reverse. 'We balanced our budget. Arnold just borrowed money, but we’re paying down our debts. We’re coming back.'"

James Fallows in The Atlantic praises Jerry Brown.

But David Dayen in Salon has another take.

"8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live"

"By Tuesday night, New York was completely abandoned. At press time, however, some 10 million Los Angeles–area residents, tired of their self-centered, laid-back culture and lack of four distinct seasons, and yearning for the hustle and bustle of East Coast life, had already begun repopulating the city."

From The Onion.

"It’s Time to Rename These Bases"

"All these installations date from the buildups during the world wars, and naming them in honor of a local military figure was a simple choice. But that was a time when the Army was segregated and our views about race more ignorant. Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?"

In The New York Times, Jamie Malanowski criticizes military bases named after Confederates.

"Rust Belt Stories"

"The author is fully present in these scenes, though the tales are predominantly those of others: Steelworkers laid off in their 50s, never to work again; autoworkers in their 40s moving into service jobs at a fraction of their former pay; chronically poor urban scavengers; young men who will never have a shot at a factory job rolling drugs in urban underground economies. Or economies in which nothing is produced."

Scott Martelle in the Los Angeles Times reviews Edward McClelland's Nothin' but Blues Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland.

"For the Purpose of Strewing with Flowers or Otherwise Decorating the Graves of Comrades"

"As America recognizes the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclaimation, we would do well to revisit the origins of Memorial Day among freedpeople in Charleston. While they honored those who fought for their emancipation, it was not simply a moment of great triumph and celebration for freedpeople, but a complicated process that led to the unexpected death of hundreds of thousands of former slaves."

Jim Downs at The Huffington Post discusses Memorial Day and the end of slavery.

"Nazis Were All but Invisible in American Movies at the Time When Depicting Their Savagery Might Have Done the Most Good"

"In the end it was Jack Warner who brought the rest of Hollywood on board. By using the techniques of 'March of Time,' he was able to blend melodrama, agitprop and a remedial history lesson into the Warners production 'Confessions of a Nazi Spy.' The film made it through the censor boards and onto American screens in the spring of 1939, only a few months before the outbreak of war in Europe. By then, as Doherty pointedly notes, even the most optimistic of Hollywood’s businessmen had concluded that Nazi Germany was no longer a viable outlet for American movies, and was unlikely to be so again for the foreseeable future."

Dave Kehr in The New York Times reviews Thomas Doherty's Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.

"The Other Half Is Equality"

"We usually think of greater inclusiveness as a blow struck for equality. But in our time, the stories of greater social equality and economic inequality are unrelated. The fortunes of middle-class Americans have declined while prospects for many women and minorities have risen. There’s no reason why they couldn’t have improved together—this is what appeared to be happening in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies. Since then, many women and minorities have done better than in any previous generations, but many others in both groups have seen their lives and communities squeezed by the economic contractions of the past generation. Like almost everything else, the new inclusiveness divides the country into winners and losers. It’s been good for those with the education, talent, and luck to benefit from it; for others—in urban cores like Youngstown, Ohio; rural backwaters like Rockingham County, North Carolina; and the exurban slums outside Tampa—inclusiveness remains mostly theoretical. It gives an idea of equality, which makes the reality of inequality even more painful."

George Packer at The New Yorker looks at "What America Has Gained, What America Has Lost."

At The American Conservative, Samuel Goldman responds.

Joe Klein at Time reads Packer's new book.

"Every War Has Come to an End"

"Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony at a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the ground.  Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to school; immigrants coming to our shores; fans taking in a ballgame; a veteran starting a business; a bustling city street; a citizen shouting her concerns at a President."

The New York Times prints President Obama's speech about counterterrorism.

"The Troubling Question Is Why She Has Become What the Education-Reform Movement Is Looking for in a Standard Bearer"

"Surely one reason that the education-reform movement comports itself in this strident and limited manner is that it depends so heavily on the largesse of people who are used to getting their way and to whom the movement’s core arguments have a powerful face validity. Only a tiny percentage of American children attend the kind of expensive, non-sectarian private schools where many of the elite send their children. It is worth noting that these schools generally avoid giving their students the standardized achievement tests that state education departments require, making the results public, and paying teachers on the basis of the scores, and that they almost never claim to be creating hyper-competitive, commercial-skills-purveying environments for their students. Sidwell Friends, of presidential-daughter fame, says it offers 'a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders.' That doesn’t sound like it would cut much ice with Michelle Rhee."

Nicholas Lemann in The New Republic discusses Michelle Rhee.

"Zelig in the Corner of Someone Else’s Portrait"

"When he crosses a present-day mind, it is almost never as the plump, white-mustachioed burgher painted by Sargent. We see instead the slender young man, one hand playfully on his hip, the other on the back of Lincoln’s chair, being photographed with Nicolay and the president in Alexander Gardner’s Civil War studio. Hay may have written, in 1900, that 'the most important part of my life came late,' but his heart and subconscious are unlikely to have believed it. While sailing home from Europe shortly before his death—he’d gone for a rest cure but succumbed, as always, to social distractions—he had a dream about going 'to the White House to report to the president who turned out to be Mr. Lincoln' instead of the incumbent Roosevelt. It was his service to the first that brought him into the realms of myth and even religious mystery; his work for the second put him in the mere thick of history."

Thomas Mallon in The New York Times reviews John Taliaferro's All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt.

This Can't Be Today

"I was just grateful I got on for the ride. For some reason, which I cannot explain, we have become to other people what Television was for me. That is for me the greatest satisfaction because those guys, for me, were it. For all the bullshit that's out there, one of the most rewarding things for me has been, 25 years later, to go out and play again. It's almost more rewarding now – I've never been in a room where so many people are so happy to see me. There are people for whom this music means a great deal, and it's very humbling."

Michael Hann in The Guardian presents an oral history of the Paisley Underground.

"A Commitment to Democracy as Process"

"O’Brien is right that Obama represents an American political tradition, though there’s no need to go back to seventeenth-century Rotterdam to find it. The focus on democratic process, reform, and an ideal of deliberative democracy has been shared by many of the less successful Democratic candidates (and a few Republicans, like Representative John Anderson in 1980) since the 1950s. It’s the tradition of what historian Sean Wilentz called the 'beautiful losers,' beginning with Adlai Stevenson, and journalist Ron Brownstein called 'wine track' candidates (people who talk about 'new politics') as opposed to the more electable 'beer track' candidates like Bill Clinton (who focus more on basic economics than on the nature of politics). Obama’s passion has always seemed to be more for a richer and more collaborative form of politics than for any particular vision of economic justice.
"Obama’s presidency has been the first real test of a politics focused on reform and democratic participation rather than traditional bipartisan bargaining—and it has failed. Over the last four years, American politics split sharply into the two primary traditions: the first a sort of hyper-Lockeanism represented not just by the Tea Party but even by Mitt Romney’s division of the country into 'makers and takers,' the second a demand—driven by circumstances and crisis—for a much more active, expansive government role in the economy. Economic issues, once a natural zone of compromise, began to seem more like social issues, matters of irreconcilable absolutes. There wasn’t much room in the middle, and for a period, Obama’s discursive strategy seemed wholly irrelevant."

Mark Schmitt in the Washington Monthly reviews Ruth O’Brien's Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition.

"Devastating to Open Access"

"Harris understands the temptation to resort to two-tier pricing. During the economic downturn and subsequent squeeze on state budgets, funding for community colleges was cut $809 million over three years. Faculty and staff were cut. Class sizes increased to 20-year highs; teacher-to-student ratios rose to 11-year highs. The number of course sections decreased. Students faced waiting lists.
"The solution, however, is not to create a pricing system that favors 'haves' over 'have-nots.'"

The Sacramento Bee's Editorial Board criticizes proposals to create "pay to play fees for community colleges."

"Mere Representation"

John Harris and Meghan Sutherland in The Guardian discuss Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle.

"A Particular Kind of Socialism"

Whatever its political vagaries, people bought the NS just as much for the 'back half,' outstanding books and arts pages that gave one of the best reflections of serious English culture for most of the last century. Evelyn Waugh was not the only one amused by what he called the notorious contrast 'between the Jekyll of culture, wit and ingenious competition and the Hyde of querulous atheism and economics which prefaces it.'"

In The New Republic, Geoffrey Wheatcroft marks the centennial of the New Statesman.

The $64,000 Stingray Mobile

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for animator Ray Harryhausen, car customizer Dean Jeffries, bicycle designer Al Fritz, actor Taylor Mead, and television psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers.

"Enumerating Heresies and Defining Orthodoxies"

"'There is much that citizens from all points on the ideological spectrum can learn from the story of the Federalist Society,' Avery and McLaughlin conclude. And indeed there is. Although they don’t spell out the lessons for liberals, at least two emerge from the data they present. First, the various strands of legal liberalism—civil libertarians, Great Society liberals, neoprogressive technocrats, economic populists and advocates of equal rights on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation—would do well to set aside their ideological differences and converge around a common approach to constitutional interpretation that citizens can understand. And second, if liberals want to take the courts back from conservatives, they have to recognize that ideas—and judicial appointments—matter."

Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times reviews Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin's The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back From Liberals.

Fiat Nox

"When Clark Kerr was installed as UC's president, he cited the 'immeasurable benefits' the university had derived from the 'long vision and the understanding of the legislators and officers of our state.' As that 'enlightened and friendly environment' has eroded in the decades since, so has the education of successive generations—and the prospects for California's future."

Seth Rosenfeld in the Los Angeles Times identifies Ronald Reagan's governorship as the beginning of the University of California's decline.

Brave New School

"Those that have signed up are a mix of for-profit and nonprofit institutions, many of them business schools, both in the United States and overseas. Professors and administrators say they have been won over by on-the-job performance. 'This is what they do for a living,' says Ms. Whisenant. 'We're working with professionals.'"

Audrey Williams June in The Chronicle of Higher Education writes about companies in India that allow American college professors to outsource grading.

"I Went to Those Shows . . . "

"My parents are awesome, but they're pretty left-wing. They live in Canada now. They moved when Bush was re-elected. You know how a lot of people said they were going to do that? My parents actually did it. So I was raised with what I would say was a healthy alternative political view. Certainly, most of my memories of my childhood are at City Lights, because that's where I was babysat. Lawrence Ferlinghetti would watch me, and I would play in his office."

Stephen Mooallem in Interview interviews Winona Ryder.

"It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way"

"Jim Knoepp of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group that has campaigned against the guest worker program, said farm work, like other difficult labor, can be made attractive to Americans at reasonable cost, and farmers should not be excused from doing so.

"'There used to be lots of American pickers who moved around the country,' he said. 'But wages have stagnated and conditions have deteriorated and agriculture is unwilling to make these jobs attractive. Think of trash collection. That’s not very appealing either. But if you offer a decent wage and conditions, people do it.'"

 

Ethan Bronner in The New York Times reports on a lawsuit in Georgia alleging hiring discrimination in farm work. 

The Devil Made Him Do It

"Wilson came out of a difficult Jersey City, N.J., childhood, spent largely in foster homes from which he repeatedly ran away; eventually, he escaped into the Air Force where he began performing. Cook offers an intriguing glimpse into black nightlife in mid-'50s California, where Wilson got his professional start, in San Francisco and the working-class rooms of the San Joaquin Valley. He was older than both Bill Cosby, whose success preceded his (and of which, according to 'Flip,' he was jealous), and Richard Pryor, whom he hired as a writer-performer for 'The Flip Wilson Show. ' Pryor paid him back by calling him 'NBC's house Negro.'"

In the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd reviews Kevin Cook's Flip: The Inside Story of TV's First Black Superstar.

"The Further West One Comes, the More There Is to Like"

"San Francisco readily embraced the outré young Irishman. Wilde returned the favor. 'There is where I belong,' he told his hosts at one reception. 'This is my atmosphere. I didn't know such a place existed in the whole United States.' When the time came for him to leave San Francisco on April 8, even the railroad locomotives were said to have echoed one of his catchphrases, whistling 'too too!' as they left the station."

Roy Morris, Jr., in the Los Angeles Times discusses Oscar Wilde's 1882 visit to California.

"Bang Up the Middle of the State"

"Dropping into the Central Valley from the mountains surrounding the Tejon Pass is like breaking open a petit four, getting past the glossy, pretty exterior: inside is the cake. The urban surfaces of California are what we see in movies and on TV: slick, manufactured, shouting, cajoling, bamboozling, seducing, ready to sell you something. And then the confected beauty of the city gives way; now the land reaches far out to the sky. Your ears pop from the pressure change, and a sign advises you that the next gas station is 19 miles off."

Maria Bustillos in Aeon magazine drives the Five.

Smoke Out Hickory

"But after an election in which Democrats rode a wave of minority support to keep the White House and Senate, party activists should wonder about one of the founders for whom that event is named. If branding matters, then the tradition of honoring perhaps the most systematic violator of human rights for America’s nonwhites should finally run its course."

Steve Yoder in Salon argues in favor of dumping Andrew Jackson from the name of Democratic Party fundraising events.

April 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Scott Beatty, Catwoman: The Visual Guide to the Feline Fatale, 2004.
Howard Chaykin, Batman: Dark Allegiances, 1998.
Darwyn Cooke with Dave Stewart, DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 2, 2005.
Tony S. Daniel, Batman: Detective Comics, Vol. 1--Faces of Death, 2013.
J. M. DeMatteis and G. L. Barr, Realworlds: Justice League of America, 2000.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), The Dirty Old MAD, 1971.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), Polyunsaturated MAD, 1972.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), The Organization MAD, 1960.
Matt Groening, Radioactive Man: Radioactive Repository, Volume One, 2012.
Dan Jurgens et al, The Return of Superman, 1993.
Roger Stern and Eduardo Barreto, Superman: A Nation Divided, 2000.

DVDs:
Batman: Year One, 2011.
The Dark Knight Rises, 2012.
Django Unchained, 2012.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, 2008.
A History of Violence, 2005.
Steve Martin: The Wild and Crazy Comedy Collection, 2007.
Wreck-It Ralph, 2012.

"I Demand You Get a Grip"

"Yeah, that's her, staring you down, eyes blazing, cursing under her breath. She's a piece of work with zigzag black bangs, a blood-red shirt and hands firmly planted on hips. When the guy who's in love with her inches forward, telling her, 'I can't live without you,' she shoots him down: 'Then why aren't you dead yet?'
"She's not big on holding back."

Anh Do in the Los Angeles Times talks with Lela Lee, creator of Angry Little Asian Girl.

Der No-Show Freedom Pain

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for singer George Jones, lawyer Leo Branton, Jr., singer Chrissy Amphlett, singer Richie Havens, newspaper publisher Al Neuharth, designer Storm Thorgerson, architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, sports broadcaster Pat Summerall, and restaurateur John Galardi.

"USDA Rolls Out New School Brunch Program For Wealthier School Districts"

"'Quite simply, we believe all children of privilege deserve a proper, well-composed brunch plate with complimentary jalapeno cornbread mini muffins and honey butter on the side. With this new program, we can finally begin to offer the superior culinary experience that until now has been sorely missing in school cafeterias from Greenwich, CT to Palo Alto, CA.'"

From The Onion.

"What the Occupiers Find Most Transformative about Their Protests Counts for Their Detractors as the Principal Reason to Dismiss Them"

"Occupy could have put its 'people power' behind a few clear, concrete, policy proposals such as student or mortgage debt restructuring, higher bank capital ratios or specific tax reforms – more progressive direct tax rates, for example, or the elimination of such outrageous loopholes as the tax discount on carried interest. The success of Tobin tax campaigners in Europe shows that politicians are responsive to anti-finance sentiment.
"Granted, campaigns such as Strike Debt have grown out of OWS but they no longer have the numbers in the street to make themselves heard. A greater willingness to engage could have secured the movement a more permanent voice – a voice that would carry weight when decisions are made, rather than a voice merely talking to itself. Those of us who think that the system is ours to reform will see this as a missed opportunity to fix the problems that brought people to Zuccotti Park in the first place."

Martin Sandbu in The Financial Times uses the publication of three new books to ponder Occupy Wall Street.

I Want to Believe

"There are number of factors, but probably one of the most important ones in this instance is that, paradoxically, it gives people a sense of control. People hate randomness, they dread the sort of random occurrences that can destroy their lives, so as a mechanism against that dread, it turns out that it’s much easier to believe in a conspiracy. Then you have someone to blame, it’s not just randomness."

Alex Seitz-Wald in Salon talks with Stephan Lewandowsky about the popularity of conspriacy theories.

"Isn’t That 'Dependence,' Too?"

"Communitarian conservatives (frequently, though not always, traditionalist Catholics; Ross Douthat is a pretty good contemporary example) often criticize libertarian types for complicity in the 'atomized individual' part of the destructive dynamic Nisbet was talking about, or, more practically, for promoting a political message that repels voters who don’t view 'altruism' as immoral or who may anticipate needing external help at some point in life. Indeed, you sometimes get the sense that Randians and 'traditionalists' hate each other more than their common liberal enemy. But if you boil off the philosophy and look at actual public policy issues, you have to wonder if this is often a distinction without a difference."

Ed Kilgore at The Washington Monthly contrasts individulist and communitarian conservatives.

Screaming Fields of Sonic Love

"And yet, as scrutinized as she has been, Gordon has always been considered a mystery. A typical Sonic Youth interview featured Moore waxing philosophical while Gordon, in sunglasses, sat by his side, nearly silent. Aloof, remote, and intimidating are often used to describe her. After decades in the public eye, it seemed like this was the way things would always be. Then, in the fall of 2011, Gordon and Moore announced they were separating. The news called into question the future of Sonic Youth and devastated legions of music fans. Jon Dolan, one of the flintiest rock critics around, began a piece for Grantland about their breakup with this plaintive cry: 'Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!'"

Lizzy Goodman in Elle magazine talks with Kim Gordon.

"Self-Radicalizing in a Western Environment"

"No, they want to make headlines. That’s the point. They want to become a hero. It’s why I compare them with many of the guys who did the Columbine sort of terrorist attacks against a school. They were very young guys, probably loners and slightly suicidal. They want to end in beauty, they want to do something extraordinary."

John J. Judis in The New Republic interviews Oliver Roy about the Boston bombers.

"What’s the Difference between Ketchup and Catsup?"

"'Well, catsup has more tomatoes, comes in a bigger bottle. It’s cheaper, but tastes just like ketchup. Now,' she continues, 'we know that’s not true. But that’s what your competitors are saying, over and over. And they’re selling their watered down, flavorless sauce by pretending that they’re you. It makes you mad, doesn’t it,' she adds.
"It does. But wait a second. Is there a difference between ketchup and catsup?"

Aisha Harris answers the question in Slate.

"Diverted Them from the Life of the Mind"

"Only in recent years did colleges start to resemble country clubs, with a few classrooms thrown in. Competing for students, universities also competed to see who could build the nicest dorms, gyms and stadiums. The expenses were passed on to students, of course, who met rising tuition costs by taking out more loans. Student debt has doubled in the last decade, topping $1 trillion, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards."

Jonathan Zimmerman in the Los Angeles Times criticizes lavish university amenities.

"Study: Majority Of Americans Not Informed Enough To Stereotype Chechens"

"'Clinical trials show that most individuals will make brief, fumbling attempts to stereotype Chechens based on what little they know about Russians, but eventually drop the subject entirely after running out of anything to say within seconds.'"

From The Onion.

"Those Who Recently Dreamed of World Power Now Despair of Governing the City of New York"

"The 1970s—in New York and around the country—saw the dawning of a new era of austerity, as the earlier assumptions of economic growth faded. The contraction of the state also meant the shrinking of the social imagination. The stern dictums about the necessary limits of political dreams contrasted sharply with the new populist utopianism of the free market, where anything might be possible. We still live today in a society defined by these two poles: the harsh limits of the political sphere and the delusional boundlessness of the market. Although it wasn’t solely responsible for bringing the city into this new age, New York’s fiscal crisis marks the boundary between the past and the present we still live in today."

Kim Phillips-Fein in The Nation connects New York City's fiscal crisis of the 1970s to the city of today.

For Truth, Justice, and the American Way (or for Stalin, Socialism, and the International Expansion of the Warsaw Pact, depending)

"If familiarity breeds contempt, this character’s seven decades of cultural ubiquity have bred something more insidious. In writing my cultural history of the iconic superhero, I repeatedly encountered a view of the character as a stolid, unremarkable chunk of conceptual furniture. It was one place where the received wisdom of comic book obsessives (who tend to focus on edgier stuff) overlapped with that of the general public (who tend to ignore comics of any provenance). The Big Blue Boy Scout was a safe, unchanging, anodyne fixture of our popular culture. A bore.
"They’re all wrong."

Glen Weldon in The New Republic looks back at seventy-five years of Superman.

As does Larry Tye in the Los Angeles Times.

"We Just Want to Be the Band We Were in 1985"

"A sign of the times, reviewers frequently described Quercio's voice and stage persona in terms that, from a 21st-century lens, seem an awful lot like coded homophobia. He was routinely dismissed as being too 'fey,' and one 1987 review in the San Diego Union-Tribune labeled him a 'twerp.'
"'We were in Arizona, and I remember a local Phoenix reviewer described Michael as the "king of twee,"' said Benair. 'That really bothered him.'
"Quercio, for his part, is magnanimous about any homophobia he may have faced: 'It was really never much of an issue. Probably because we came up in Los Angeles, where no one really cared.'"

Matthew Fleischer in the Los Angeles Times meets up with a reunited Three O'Clock.

"The Full Weight of Justice"

"Today is a holiday in Massachusetts—Patriots' Day. It's a day that celebrates the free and fiercely independent spirit that this great American city of Boston has reflected from the earliest days of our nation. And it's a day that draws the world to Boston's streets in a spirit of friendly competition. Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people. I'm supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other, and move forward as one proud city. And as they do, the American people will be with them every single step of the way."

NPR publishes a transcript of President Obama's remarks about the Boston Marathon bombings.

"My Dear Fellow Clergymen"

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. That’s a beautiful creed,” King told his crowd. It is easy to read such sentences in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and other works by King and leave it at that. But it is vital to read what he said next: “America has never lived up to it.”

Jonathan Rieder in The New York Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Devil Embers in the Black Count Grove

Columbia University announces the winners of the 2013 Pulitzer Prizes, including Tom Reiss for biography, Fredrik Logevall for history, and Gilbert King for general nonfiction.

Camping Out

"Unfortunately, what Camp does not have is an effective tourism office. Ever since Sontag’s slapdash observations attained the esteem of a Fodor’s guide, potential visitors have been fantastically confused about just what our town has to offer. Is camp a full-fledged aesthetic sensibility or a simple mode of humor? Is it a lens through which to view objects or an inherent property within them? Is it a subversive (gay) language or just another denuded subcultural trifle? We have had such poor public relations on these and other issues that some writers have recently gone as far as to declare us dead! (A bit dramatic for my taste, but given the aura of mystery surrounding camp, I don’t really blame them.)

"The good news is that camp is definitely not dead nor necessarily confusing."

J. Bryan Lowder in Slate presents "a set of travelogues—postcards from camp."

"Our Tax System Has Actually Fostered Inequality"

"The fiscal problem we face is not, then, a lack of revenue sources. We can finance any amount of transfer payments and 'entitlements' by taxing corporations’ profits in the same way we tax personal income, using a progressive formula. If necessary, give them a mortgage deduction—they already get something like it in the form of accelerated depreciation allowances on their purchases of capital equipment—but make them pay higher taxes on their income. Do that, and the federal deficit goes away."

On tax day, James Livingston in The New York Times makes a proposal.

Only an Asshole Gets Killed for a Car

"It wasn't the first feature to mash up science fiction, underground culture and cutting-edge music; 'Liquid Sky' was a huge indie hit in 1982, but its more cerebral, synth-driven saga contrasts sharply with the rough-and-ready of Cox's politically astute debut. And 'Liquid Sky' was set in New York, a city then secure in its status as the center of the cultural universe. Cox's film, in comparison, explores the edges of a metropolis that was in search of a center, a place where 'the life of a repo man is always intense.'"

Sheri Linden in the Los Angeles Times revisits Alex Cox's Repo Man.

I Choose My Choice

"Still, as a wave of educated, middle-class Americans becomes focused on sewing non-sweatshop curtains and pureeing non-GMO baby food for their own families, they are increasingly uninterested in pursuing large-scale collective solutions to the very problems that drove them to become modern homesteaders in the first place. These droves of radical post-consumerist home-ec enthusiasts may believe that change begins in the home, but for them it also ends there. Matchar cites economist Juliet Schor’s prediction that the new economy will be a 'synthesis of the pre- and post-modern,' affording every worker the ability to choose whether and when to work either in or outside the system. If educated middle-class workers aren’t rallying for better health care and paid sick days within the system, what hope do minimum-wage workers have? If wealthier moms are judging each other for shopping at Trader Joe’s, who’s holding down the fresh produce prices for lower-income families? It’s easy to see how the new domesticity, born of inequality and economic hardship and professional dissatisfaction, will only exacerbate those trends for workers further down the food chain, leaving them struggling to opt in to the economy at all."

Ann Friedman in The New Republic reviews Emily Matchar's Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity.

Goldbuggery

"But the runaway inflation that was supposed to follow reckless money-printing—inflation that the usual suspects have been declaring imminent for four years and more—keeps not happening. For a while, rising gold prices helped create some credibility for the goldbugs even as their predictions about everything else proved wrong, but now gold as an investment has turned sour, too. So will we be seeing prominent goldbugs change their views, or at least lose a lot of their followers?       

"I wouldn’t bet on it."

 

Paul Krugman in The New York Times discusses the belief "that gold offers unique security in troubled times."

Iron Gap-Toothed Mouseketeer

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for modiste Lilly Pulitzer, documentarian Les Blank, actress Annette Funicello, and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Dorian Lynskey in The Guardian discusses Thatcher's effect on British pop music.

"To Push Their Legislative Programs through Congress, the New Dealers Sold Their Souls to the Segregated South"

"The calculation was simple enough. Thanks to the disfranchisement of blacks and the reign of terror that accompanied it, the South had become solidly Democratic by the beginning of the 20th century, the Deep South exclusively so. One-party rule translated into outsize power on Capitol Hill: when Roosevelt took office, Southerners held almost half the Democrats’ Congressional seats and many of the key committee chairmanships. So whatever Roosevelt wanted to put into law had to have Southern approval. And he wouldn’t get it if he dared to challenge the region’s racial order."

Kevin Boyle in The New York Times reviews Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time.

"Now You Know Why the Knights in Your Chess Sets Always Look Like They’re Screaming in Agony"

"Inspired by the Neoclassical architecture of Victorian London and a very modern need for standardization and mass production, the Staunton chessmen helped popularize the game and quickly became the world standard. The new Staunton pieces by Daniel Weil reinforces this architectural history of the original pieces while respecting their timeless design."

Jimmy Stamp at Smithsonian discusses the history of modern chess pieces.

Crawdaddy Muppet Previews

The Los Angeles Times publishes obits for music critic Paul Williams, puppeteer Jane Nebel Henson, cymbal manufacturer Robert Zildjian, and film critic Roger Ebert.

"The One They’ve Been Waiting For"

"The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest.

"Benjamin Carson is that Conservative Black Hope of the moment."

 

Ta-Nehisi Coates in The New York Times reflects on the rise and fall of various Anti-Obamas.

The Final Comedown

"The stickers they distributed included read ones reading 'REGISTER COMMUNISTS, NOT FIREARMS,' and tiny one members would slap on restroom walls or inside phone books featuring an image of rifle cross hairs, and this text: 'See that old man at the corner where you buy your papers?… He may have a silencer equipped pistol under his coat. That fountain pen in the pocket of the insurance salesman that calls on you might be a cyanide gas gun. What about your milkman? Arsenic works slow but sure.… Traitors, beware! Even now the crosshairs are on the back of your necks.'"

Rick Perlstein in The Nation recalls the Minutemen of the 1960s.

"History Licking Its Chops To Judge George W. Bush"

"'Oh man, I’ve been holding out a while for this one—just let me at that fucker once and for all,' said the ongoing timeline of human events, which acknowledged it’s been champing at the bit to properly evaluate the 43rd president since he left office in January 2009. 'I’m raring to get that son of a bitch in my crosshairs, carefully analyze each of his foreign and domestic policies, and develop a consensus view of his administration that will endure in the annals of American politics. Let’s do this!'"

From The Onion.

March 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love, Sappho Was a Right-on Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism, 1972.
Edward T. Chang and Russell C. Leong (eds.), Los Angeles--Struggles toward Multiethnic Community, 1994.
Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, 2012.
Darwyn Cooke, DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 1, 2004.
Chuck Dixon et al, Batman: Contagion, 1996.
Marcia A. Eymann and Charles M. Wollenberg (eds.), What's Going On?: California and the Vietnam Era, 2004.
Alan Grant, Batman: The Abduction, 1998.
Theodore Hamm, Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974, 2001.
Dan Jurgens et al, Superman: The Death of Superman, 2003.
Dan Jurgens et al, Superman: World without a Superman, 1998.
Gerald O'Collins, Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction, 2008.
John Ostrander et al, Superman: The Kents, 2000.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman: The Black Mirror, 2013.
W. A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst, 1981.
Judd Winick et al, Catwoman, Vol. 2: Dollhouse, 2013.

DVDs:
Ratatouille, 2007.

Muscle Trumpet

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for bodybuilding promoter Joe Weider, journalist Anthony Lewis, record producer and songwriter Deke Richards, actor Richard Griffiths, and record producer Phil Ramone.

A Sunkissed Miss Said, "Don't Be Late"

"But there is something irrational, indeed unpatriotic, in rooting for California to fail, as so many conservatives are now doing. Sure, they are upset that the Republican Party is dead in this state—R.I.P. G.O.P. And, among the fringes, there are those who cannot accept that California is a minority-majority state, with whites making up about 39 percent of the population. They’ve seen the future and don’t like it one bit.
"When Cal-haters say people are leaving the state because of high taxes—its top rate is 13.2 percent on earnings over $1 million—they mean people like them. Or people like the golfer Phil Mickelson, who complained that the tax burden on the millions he makes hitting a little white ball may force him to look beyond his Southern California moorings.
"Because, by any measure, the state is still growing."

Timothy Egan in The New York Times looks at California's comback.

As does Paul Krugman.

"Man Cautiously Avoids Barnes & Noble Section Where Teens Check Out Graphic Novels"

"'I really don’t want to go over there,' said Gannon, adding that he would prefer to avoid asking the lip-pierced, teenage girl with a ski cap covering her dyed-red hair if she would please move her backpack so he could browse the shelves. 'I’ll just pretend to browse the Business and Money section until they leave.'"

From The Onion.

"If Dixie Can Make Peace with the Hellish Parts of Its Legacy while Fostering Its Inherent Strengths, It Just Might Achieve a Real Breakthrough"

"Thompson finds the greatest reason for hope in an unlikely place—the past, specifically that part of it staked out by the Agrarians, the group of Vanderbilt University teachers and students (among them Robert Penn Warren) who in 1930 published 'I'll Take My Stand,' a manifesto in praise of the Southern way of life.
"Although wrong about race, the book was right about much else. The Agrarians championed sustainable family farms, ecology, human scale and, most of all, community. They were green many decades before the rest of America, and they were down home."

Steve Oney in the Los Angeles Times reviews Tracy Thompson's The New Mind of the South.

"The Blueprint for All Motion Picture Parodies to Come"

"For many of us, the first exposure to classic films wasn’t on film at all, it was in print. It was in black and white even if the films were in color, it was printed on cheap paper, and it was full of some of the worst puns known to man. We thrilled to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Oddfather, Arthur Penn’s revisionist Western Little Dull Man, the sophisticated sex comedy Shampooped, and Stanley Kubrick’s ground-breaking 201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy. For us, Casablanca was cast with professional wrestlers, My Fair Lady featured women’s libbers trying to reform a male chauvinist Burt Reynolds, and The Exorcist ended with Satan demanding a six-film deal."

Grady Hendrix in Film Comment traces the history of Mad magazine's treatment of the movies.

"I Would Exterminate"

"Although we think of the Civil War as fought by armies, the historian Daniel E. Sutherland has recently reminded us that it was also marked by extensive guerrilla warfare that spread throughout the Confederacy and into Northern border areas. Such fighting occurred first and most virulently in Missouri. Another historian, Matthew C. Hulbert, calls the guerrilla war in Missouri 'hyper-violent,' making it a 'uniquely different wartime experience' from that of ordinary soldiers. Even the name given to the guerrillas, 'bushwhackers,' carried connotations of a different kind of fighting—attacks from ambush. Indeed, Hulbert argues that Quantrill’s biographer 'concocted' the exchange between his subject and Seddon in part 'to legitimize the brutality' of the Missouri guerrillas."

Nicole Etcheson in The New York Times discusses Confederate William Clarke Quantrill.

Things Fall Deep

The Los Angeles Times runs obituaries for Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, car designer Roy Brown, actor Harry Reems, and author Chinua Achebe.

"YouTube Reaches 1 Trillion Racist Comments"

"'It’s hard to even comprehend how many completely ignorant comments 1 trillion is. We’re truly humbled by our dedicated and extremely uneducated users who make such vile and imperceptive statements each and every day. Thank you, everyone.'"

From The Onion.

The Mortal Code

Columbia University awards the 2013 Bancroft Prize to historians W. Jeffrey Bolster and John Fabian Witt.

"Drifting In and Out of Focus Like a Dream"

Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times reports that Toyo Ito has won the 2013 Pritzker Prize for architecture.

All the News that Fits

"Many former alt-weekly editors would like to persuade you that their cutting take on city politics and the arts combined with their dedication to the feature form won readers. Actually, it was the whole gestalt that made the publications work. Comprehensive listings paired with club and concert ads to both entertain and help readers plan their week. Classified ads, especially the personals, often provided better reading than the journalistic fare in the front of the book. No better venue for apartment rentals existed; even people who had long-term leases used the housing ads to fantasize. Even the display ads, purchased mostly by local retailers and service providers, were useful to readers.
"In most cities—and eventually in all—the alt-weekly was priced at zero for readers, prefiguring the free-media feast of the Web, and these publications became cultural signifiers. Bob Roth, one of my bosses when I edited Washington City Paper (1985-1995), told me to watch people as they picked it up from a street box and walk away with it: Almost to a one, they would hold it in their hands or fold it under their arms as if to display the paper’s flag so onlookers would know they were City Paper people, whatever that meant."

Jack Shafer at Reuters discusses the decline of alternative newspapers.

Hail, Columbia

"Thanks to these and other women who marched, women's rights in America were secured (even if they remain always and ever contested). A century later, Columbia looks like a lady who knows how to lean in. Enough time has passed, it seems, that we might consider reviving her spirit, and returning her to the pantheon of America characters for the years to come."

Garance Franke-Ruta at The Atlantic looks back at a neglected symbol of America.

"Approaches 1"

"I was entering into the online world pretty deeply in the eighties, and I was offended by how glibly these comparisons came up—almost invariably inappropriately. My feeling was that the more people got into this habit, the less likely that people remembered the historical context of all this. And as you know, one of the injunctions of Holocaust historians is that we must never forget, we have to remember. And I just thought, Well, I’m going to do a little experiment and see if I could make people remember."

Dan Amira at New York talks with Mike Godwin about the eponymous internet law.

But Somewhere the Party Never Ends

"The coming of stagflation, and the seeming incapacity of economic orthodoxy to deal with it, discredited the Keynesians and lifted the monetarists. Economic policy didn’t seem to be working, and as the 1970s progressed, the pressure to make a change became irresistible. Monetarists ascended to key policy positions, but this ascent did not mark the capitulation of center-left governing practices to the neoliberal faith in free markets, as right-wingers like to claim. The idea that accepting monetarism meant accepting free markets is the result of a retrospective 'conflation of monetarism with a theoretically separate set of arguments about the supposed superiority of markets over government intervention in the economy.'"

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Michael W. Clune reviews Daniel Stedman Jones's Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics.

"Living Like a Cross between a Chameleon and a Magpie"

"But there’s more to Mr. Bowie’s compulsive changeability than a career strategy. What he was really developing during the ’70s was a new postmodern psychology based around flux and mutability. His great precursor and influence here was Warhol, the inspiration for his 1971 song 'Andy Warhol' and a role Mr. Bowie would actually play in the 1996 biopic 'Basquiat.'  Analyzing Warhol, the art critic Donald Kuspit wrote of 'the protean artist-self with no core'—a description that could also fit Mr. Bowie."

Simon Reynolds in The New York Times welcomes the return of David Bowie.

The Unknown World

"Most of us will find the news that some black people bought and sold other black people for profit quite distressing, as well we should. But given the long history of class divisions in the black community, which Martin R. Delany as early as the 1850s described as 'a nation within a nation,' and given the role of African elites in the long history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, perhaps we should not be surprised that we can find examples throughout black history of just about every sort of human behavior, from the most noble to the most heinous, that we find in any other people's history."

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at The Root explores the history of black slaveowners.

"Make Concern for the Future"

"Lasch considered himself a man of the left, and saw his attack on liberalism as coming from that perspective. But he also admitted that he was not entirely sure of his own viewpoint, and so he dived into social theory, reading Marx, Weber and the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse), among others. As we learn, this would become a typical pattern: when confronted with doubt and intellectual obstacles, he upped his reading and expanded into new areas. Indeed, he was far from the typical academic historian: he reached far afield into sociology, psychology and other areas, wherever his explorations would lead him."

Sean Collins at Spiked reviews Eric Miller's 2010 book, Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch.

One Day Leader of the Tears

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for pop producer Shadow Morton, singer Cleotha Staples, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, pianist Van Cliburn, actress Bonnie Franklin, and singer Bobby Rogers.

"You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here, but It Helps"

"And yet without the Plath life-story sitting alongside it, marking it out with an especial integrity, The Bell Jar starts to show its family likeness. I’m thinking here of JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951), of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962).

"That is, The Bell Jar’s Esther belongs to the empyrean of the beatified and the beaten just as much as Holden Caulfield or Sal Paradise. Its narrator speaks in a distinctly countercultural tongue. Like those literary works to which it bears such a striking affinity, it presents a portrait of the stifling conformism of postwar American society. And in the rebellion-cum-suffering of Esther it counters it."

 

Tim Black at Spiked considers Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar fifty years after publication.

Truth or Consequences

"In the epilogue Morin and Rouch pace the halls of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, recapping and analyzing their experiment and its aftermath. Their subjects were variously blamed for being 'too true' or 'not true enough,' for being exhibitionists or phonies. But the filmmakers' hypothesis is that the moments they have captured on film are no less true, or at least no less revealing, for being acted. How we act, in other words, reveals something about who we are."

Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times discusses the DVD release of Chronicle of Summer.