MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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Fall-deral (and Fiddlededee) 2008
The leaves all have fallen from the trees in my corner of the world, and the November elections are behind us – and so it’s again time for another annual tradition on MayerBlog: my autumn “Fall-deral” entry, with some miscellaneous observations about recent developments in politics and popular culture:
n Because He’ll Stink Presidents of the United States are often popularly known by their initials: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is “F.D.R.,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy is “J.F.K.,” Lyndon Baines Johnson is “L.B.J.,” and Teddy Roosevelt is “T.R.” So it’s obviously apt to call President-elect Barack Obama, “B.O.” From this point on, in MayerBlog that’s what he’ll be called. Why? Because, as the most unfit person ever elected to the nation’s most important political office, he’ll rank among the most rank of the U.S. presidents. Or, in other words . . . .
n With a Fiend Like This, Who Needs an Enema? B.O.’s running mate, V.P.-elect Joe Biden, made headlines on October 20 with his remarks at a fundraising dinner, when he predicted that we’d have “an international crisis, a generated crisis” to “test the mettle” of the new president. “I guarantee you it’s gonna happen,” Biden said. Biden’s not particularly prescient: Even a moron could predict that America’s enemies – whether it’s militant Islamic terrorists like Osama bin Laden or dictators of rogue states like Russia’s Putin-on-the-Ritz, Iran’s I’m-in-a-Jihad, North Korea’s Kim Jong Mentally-Ill, or Venezuela’s Hurricane Hugo Chavez – would find an opportunity to catch the United States unprepared with a weak, inexperienced Chief Executive like B.O in the Oval Office. (Venezuelan missile crisis, anyone? Or perhaps another Iranian hostage crisis?) Joe Biden’s mouth just may be the only enjoyable thing about a B.O. presidency.
n Casino Royale Flushed Ohio voters, as the pre-election polls had predicted, overwhelmingly voted, 63% to 37%, “No” on Issue 6, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have authorized a single $600 million casino resort to be built in Clinton County. Although traditional gambling foes may claim the “No” vote as a victory, it doesn’t show that Ohioans are opposed to legalizing gambling in the state. Rather, they’re opposed to tinkering with the Ohio Constitution, especially to create a monopoly for a single casino-resort developer. Supporters of Issue 6 had received huge amounts of financing from that single developer – just as the opponents of the issue received huge amounts of financing from a rival casino company outside the state. Both sides spread much disinformation about the proposal, but the supporters were right in saying that legalized gambling would keep money in Ohio that is currently flowing to out-of-state casinos and would bring more jobs, more tax revenues, and simply more fun to Ohio. Opponents who oppose gambling on paternalistic moral grounds have their arguments undercut by the fact that there’s already legalized gambling in the state – through the government-monopolized Ohio Lottery. A proposal to open up legalized gambling to any casino operator who’ll comply with general laws applied to all legal businesses (including tax laws), I predict, would pass muster with the General Assembly – if anyone had the guts to introduce it in the legislature – or would get overwhelming voter approval if offered as a referendum sometime in the not-too-distant future.
n Predatory Paternalism Ohio voters by a similarly wide margin – again, 63% to 37% – also, unfortunately, approved Issue 5, a referendum upholding Ohio House Bill 545, a law passed by the General Assembly earlier this year that, essentially, will outlaw the payday lending business in the state. The law caps interest rates lenders can charge on short-term loans at 28 percent, making it virtually impossible for them to find it profitable to make such loans (which are inherently risky because they’re given to borrowers who have poor credit records). The law also limits borrowers to four loans per year and bans loan terms shorter than 31 days. Supporters of the law were a broad bipartisan coalition consisting of most of the political establishment of the state, Demopublican and Replicrat politicians alike, together with the editorial boards of the Columbus Dispatch and most other major newspapers in the state. They condemned payday loans as “predatory,” ignoring the economic reality that makes such high-interest, short-term loans mutually attractive to poor consumers with bad credit histories and to willing lenders. As Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality said in a recent debate on the issue, the proposal reeks with elitism, by crusading activists “who don’t share the pigmentation nor the ZIP code of the people they are alleging to save.” He added, “This feel-good activism can often have the stench of paternalism and a fundamental belief that working-class Americans are incapable of making their own financial decisions.” This misguided law limits the economic freedom of all Ohioans, depriving them of the ability to obtain payday loans, which are an option that should be available to willing borrowers, especially people with poor credit histories but who need quick money for emergency purposes. Outlawing short-term, high-interest loans will not only drive payday loan businesses out of the state but also will force consumers to try to obtain even costlier legal loans from banks and other credit institutions – or to resort to truly predatory loans offered by the real “loan sharks” of the criminal underworld. (Will we never learn the lesson of Prohibition? Making illegal something that people want – whether it’s alcohol, drugs, or short-term loans – will only drive them to illegal sources.) Finally, by outlawing such loans, Ohioans are furthering the nation’s unfortunate trend towards legal paternalism, which is far more “predatory” (and destructive of individual freedom and responsibility) than anything in the free market.
n An Excess of Democracy The results of other referenda approved by American voters on Election Day generally confirm the truth that the United States today suffers from an excess of democracy. America’s Founders designed our systems of government, both state and federal, as republics (that is, as government by representatives of the people, not directly by the people themselves) because they understood that direct democracy led to unwise policies and violations of individuals’ rights by the tyranny of the majority. (For more on this, see my previous entry, “A Republic, Not a Democracy,” June 6, 2005).) Overall, voters across the United States tended to demonstrate that they’re not any wiser deciding issues directly than they are in electing politicians to represent them in making such decisions. Arguably, those most harmed by direct democracy in this year’s elections were homosexual Americans who’d like to have the same legal rights (including the right to marry and to adopt children) as heterosexual couples. California voters approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, thereby essentially overturning the California Supreme Court decision in May that mandated equal treatment under marriage law for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Voters in two other states, Arizona and Florida, also amended their state constitutions to prevent courts from overturning laws barring same-sex marriage. And voters in Arkansas approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Tax-limitation proposals did not fare well this year. Massachusetts voters rejected a ballot measure to abolish the state’s income tax, thus thumbing their nose at an opportunity to shed their state of its high-tax image, as “Taxachusetts.” (The commonwealth actually ranks 23rd, right in the middle of the states, with a combined state-local tax burden of 9.5% of average household income, according to the Tax Foundation. Ohio, in comparison, ranks 7th, with a 10.4% tax burden.) Voters in North Dakota also foolishly rejected a proposal to cut the state income tax in half and to lower the corporate income tax by 15%, despite projections that the state is expected to have a budget surplus next year. But voters in Colorado did wisely reject a proposal increase the state’s sales tax to fund services for people with developmental disabilities. Tax-limitation initiatives actually are among the few types of laws for which popular referenda are appropriate, because they limit governmental power and they’re the type of measures unlikely to be seriously considered by legislatures. Another type of law well-suited for direct popular action is a proposal to end so-called “affirmative action” programs (that is, racial or sex preferences in government hiring and state college admissions); that’s because the political establishment considers such programs sacrosanct. Nebraska voters approved a ban on race- and sex- based affirmative action, similar to measures that have passed, in recent years, in California, Michigan, and Washington. Returns in Colorado on a similar affirmative-action ban were, at this writing, still too close to call. Another type of law well-suited for direct popular action – the imposition of term limits on legislators and other political offices – did moderately well this year, with voters in South Dakota rejecting a proposal to repeal their state’s term-limit law mandating an eight-year limit for legislators and voters in Louisiana approving a measure establishing three-term limits on public boards and commissions. On the other hand, most other kinds of issues decided by voters this year were ill-suited for direct popular action because they’re issues, like same-sex marriage, where the majority easily yields to the temptation to impose its values on everyone. Thus, voters in Missouri approved a measure forcing utility companies to generate or purchase more electricity from so-called “alternative” energy sources (that is, sources other than fossil fuels), including wind and solar power, while California voters rejected a more draconian “clean energy” measure that would have required utilities to generate 20% of their power from such alternative sources by 2010. California voters did approve an initiative pushed by animal-rights activists, forbidding chicken farms from keeping hens in cages and mandating minimum “living spaces” for other kinds of farm animals. Efforts to limit or ban abortions, however, failed in three states: California, Colorado, and South Dakota. In Washington state, voters approved a measure permitting physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill, competent adults. And, in two other pleasant surprises among the referenda results, voters in Michigan approved a proposal to allow medical use of marijuana by people who suffer from certain illnesses, while voters in Massachusetts decriminalized the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana.
n One-Party Rule: The Tyranny of Demagogues Even though the Democrat-controlled Congress has had lower public approval ratings than President Bush, the Democrats again benefited from American voters’ ignorance – their erroneous belief that the president is responsible for all the country’s ills (when his principal constitutional duty is merely to enforce the laws passed by Congress). Cynically (and hypocritically) exploiting Bush’s unpopularity (while simultaneously evading responsibility for their own misguided policies, especially those that helped cause the Wall Street financial crisis), Democrats increased their majorities in both houses of Congress, thereby assuring at least two more years of misrule and unwise legislation. In the past Congress, Democrats had a 235-199 majority in the House (with one vacant seat) and a 51-49 working majority in the Senate (two independent Senators caucused with the 49 Democrats, giving them control). In the new Congress that has just been elected, Democrats will have a projected 256-177 majority in the House, including projections for a half-dozen or so districts still too close to call (a net gain of approximately 20 seats), and a projected 57-43 working majority in the Senate (still counting the two independents as Democrats and including projected outcomes of four races still too close to call – a net gain of six seats). Thankfully, the Democrats failed to gain a 60-vote, filibuster-proof Senate, thus leaving the Senate filibuster rule as the last remaining check that Republican lawmakers will have on the most extreme bills being pushed by their Democrat colleagues or on B.O.’s far-left nominees. With B.O. in the White House and Democrats continuing to control Congress, the country will be subjected to one-party rule, a “tyranny of the Demagogues,” as I call it. The silver lining in the dark cloud that will hang over Washington for the next two to four years is that Democrat rule may finally force the Republican minority in Congress to rediscover the principles of limited government and individual freedom – principles that Republicans seem to have forgotten after eight years of the “Democrat light” policies of George W. Bush. Some political commentators maintain that Republicans are at their best (as seen by those of us who value minimal government and maximum freedom) when they’re in the minority and thereby forced to articulate positions opposed to the Democrats’ proposals for expanding the regulatory and welfare state. I hope they’re right – because over the next two years, we’re likely to see efforts to expand the powers of the federal government reminiscent of FDR’s “New Deal” in the 1930s and LBJ’s so-called “Great Society” of the mid-1960s, two other periods in modern U.S. history when the national government was controlled by big-government Demagogues. With luck, the American electorate will see what a profound mistake they made in trusting the Demagogues in this election, and they’ll return a chastened GOP back to power in Congress by 2011.
n A Libertarian Fizzle Bob Barr’s presidential candidacy for the Libertarian Party (LP) failed to set any records. With less than one percent of the vote nationally as well as in critical “battleground” states like Ohio and Virginia, Barr did about the same – neither significantly better (contrary to the optimistic projections, including mine in my last entry, “A Standard-Bearer, Not a Spoiler”) nor worse than other recent LP candidates. Other third-party candidates similarly made hardly a ripple in ocean of the nationwide popular vote for the two major-party candidates: Ralph Nader, as an independent presidential candidate, garnered about 170,000 more votes nationwide than did Barr; the other third-party or independent presidential candidates did less well than Barr. Nationwide, the most important impact the LP had on the election (as far as I can discern) was for the LP candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia to win enough votes to force the Republican incumbent, Saxby Chambliss, into a run-off election against his Democratic opponent (one of the four U.S. Senate races still unresolved). It’s also possible that Barr “spoiled” McCain’s opportunity to win North Carolina’s electoral votes: as Lawrence White notes on the “Division of Labour” blog, Barr’s one percent of the vote (approximately 25,000 votes) more than doubled B.O.’s 12,000-vote margin over McCain. Because Barr was by far the strongest (or the most credible) presidential candidate the LP ever has fielded, there no doubt will be much hand-wringing among Libertarians about what went wrong and whether the LP has a future in American politics. Just wait for the next issue of Liberty magazine. One explanation that I can give, based on anecdote and personal information, is that many people who otherwise might have voted for Barr ended up holding their nose and voting for McCain instead, despite McCain’s many flaws, because they so fear the left-wing policies of the Democratic presidential candidate. As libertarian commentators such as Brad Smith and Jonathan Adler have noted, the combination of a B.O. presidency with large Democrat majorities in Congress will result in such decidedly un-libertarian policies as tax increases on wealth-producers (including a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies), huge spending increases, protectionism, nationalized health care, abolition of the secret ballot for union elections, potential reimposition of the “Fairness Doctrine,” and the appointment of federal judges largely unsympathetic to individual rights. It appears that notwithstanding his flaws, McCain seemed to many voters the only viable alternative, especially with the polls showing the presidential race tightening in some key “battleground” states and with the McCain-Palin campaign using more libertarian rhetoric in their criticisms of B.O. (zeroing in on his socialist plan to redistribute wealth, for example) in the final weeks of the campaign.
n Some Small Victories My votes against Issue 6 (the gambling casino monopoly) and for Issues 1 and 3 (two other Ohio constitutional amendments, respectively, to reform the procedure for putting referenda on the ballot and to reaffirm property owners’ water rights) weren’t the only ones on my ballot where other Ohio voters were smart enough to agree with me. There were a few other small victories (from my perspective), as well. The two incumbent Justices of the Ohio Supreme Court, Maureen O’Connor and Evelyn L. Stratton (both Republicans, but they run as nonpartisan candidates), were reelected, by wide margins over their challengers. Justices O’Connor and Stratton are both excellent justices, part of the new majority on the Ohio Supreme Court that generally adheres to a philosophy of judicial restraint, refraining from the activist decisions of the former majority on the Court, which in the late 1990s had attempted to dictate policy (on such matters as school funding, tort reform, and workers compensation reform) to the Ohio General Assembly, thereby abusing their judicial powers. It’s great to have a Supreme Court that acts like a court, not a legislature. My Congressman, Pat Tiberi, was reelected, handily. He’s a moderately conservative Republican (who voted against the bailout before he voted for it). Meanwhile, in the adjacent 15th Congressional district (the seat of retiring Republican Congresswoman Deborah Pryce), the the race between the Republican candidate, Steve Stivers, and the Democrat, Mary Jo Kilroy (or “Kiljoy,” as I call her), remains too close to call and may not be resolved until all absentee and provisional ballots are counted, in about two weeks. Thus far, Stivers is narrowly leading, but a large portion of the vote has gone to the Libertarian candidate, Mark Noble (about 5%, according to early returns) and a fourth, independent candidate (about 4%). And in my local school district, a majority of the voters agreed with me in voting “No” on a proposed property tax levy. It’s good to see my neighbors apparently understand that property owners in the district are already being forced to pay too much for the cost of educating their neighbors’ kids in failed government schools.
n An Affirmative Action President; or, “Hey, Brother, Can You Spare a Quota?” Political commentators in the media, predictably, are celebrating B.O.’s “historic” victory in the presidential election (actually, technically, in the election of Electoral College members). A typical editorial was printed in yesterday’s USA Today, which maintained that B.O.’s “improbable personal journey to the White House is inextricably intertwined with the nation’s long, bloody road to racial equality,” while also claiming that he “didn’t dwell on race during his campaign or make it much more than a subtext of his candidacy.” Oh, really? As I discussed in my previous entry, “The Emperor Is Naked!” (Oct. 16), B.O.’s candidacy from its start was defined in terms of his race – or, more specifically, his emphasis of the black side of his biracial heritage, tied to a Marxist political philosophy. His campaign was based entirely on symbolism and image, deftly cultivating the issue of race (exploiting both black Americans’ feelings of racial solidarity and white Americans’ feelings of racial guilt). A large percentage of the millions of Americans who voted for him voted not for B.O. the individual – a man who lacked both the experience and the judgment to qualify him for the presidency, and who holds political views far to the left of the American mainstream – but for what B.O. symbolized for them; simply put, they wanted a black man – any black man, regardless his background or his views – to be elected president. Someone with the same lack of qualifications – the same level of inexperience, the same far-left political views – as B.O. who did not identify racially as black, simply would not be elected president. He was elected because of his race (which is a deplorable reason, a form of racism, just as deplorable as voting against him also because of his race); and in this sense, can be regarded as an “affirmative action” president. (Here, I refer to so-called “affirmative action” programs that result in the admission or hiring of persons because of their race or sex, despite their lack of qualifications. As I explain in my previous entry, “Affirmative Racism,” (Jan. 23, 2006), such “affirmative action” programs are based on collectivist premises and actually perpetuate racism – for racism, properly considered, is a form of collectivism. The true antidote to racism is individualism.) B.O.’s election indeed may have “already moved the nation forward” toward the goal of “racial equality,” as the USA Today editors assert. But that’s not any sort of real progress because “racial equality” isn’t any sort of noble goal: to aspire for equality of the races is a step backward, accepting the collectivist premises of America’s racist past, of a nation where the institution of slavery was recognized by law based on racial identity and everyone was classified according to his race. True progress means a truly color-blind society where equality means equality of rights for individuals, not races, and where each person is judged as an individual, by “the content of his character, not the color of his skin,” as Martin Luther King famously declared. Judged objectively, B.O. is unfit to be president. When Americans realize that – and when they realize that his skin color truly shouldn’t matter at all – then, and only then, will the nation move forward along the path of true progress.
n Buying the Presidency – With Other People’s Money Of all the various scandals associated with the 2008 presidential election, perhaps the worst was the way in which B.O. bought the presidency, in two ways. First, his campaign spent an obscene amount of money: it broke all sorts of records for campaign financing, both in fundraising and in spending, with over $230 million on television advertising alone, culminating in the purchase (for a mere $4 million) of a half-hour of primetime TV to air on Oct. 29 a 30-minute commercial simultaneously on seven channels (NBC, CBS, Fox, BET, Univision, MSNBC, and TV One). Second, and more ominously, B.O. essentially bribed Americans to vote for him, in exchange for his promised “tax cuts.” As the Wall Street Journal noted in an Oct. 13 editorial (“Obama’s 95% Illusion”), B.O.’s claim to “cut taxes” for 95% of “working” families really amounts to a plan to impose one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5% (the most productive Americans, who already are paying some 60% of all federal income taxes) and then to redistribute that wealth, through so-called refundable “tax credits” (that is, direct government payments) to millions of people – including some 63 million Americans who pay no income taxes at all. (A genuine tax cut allows productive people to keep more of the wealth they’ve earned and created themselves; it doesn’t involve taking wealth from those who produced it and redistributing it to those who didn’t – that’s nothing but a welfare payment.) B.O.’s plan to vastly expand the federal welfare state might be considered “change” by some – but it’s really nothing more than a new way to dole out “bread and circuses” to the masses, as the emperors of ancient Rome did. And it’s no less a bribe simply because Democrat p.r. consultants label it a “tax cut.”
n Question Democrats, Lose Your Right to Privacy Remember “Joe the Plumber”? Samuel Joseph (“Joe”) Wurzelbacher is the Ohio man who was thrust into the limelight last month when his question about the Democratic presidential candidate’s tax plan prompted B.O.’s infamous comment that he wanted to “spread the wealth around.” The Democrats’ attack machine – aided by their allies in the news media – immediately responded with attacks on Joe Wurzelbacher, using personal information they obtained illegally from government databases. According to news reports in the Columbus Dispatch, some of that information was pulled from government databases (including those maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services) which were accessed through accounts assigned to various government offices staffed by Democrats. Although it’s apparently still unknown who checked on Mr. Wurzelbacher’s personal information, it’s clear that it was not done for legitimate law-enforcement and government business. As a spokesman for the McCain campaign in Ohio noted, “It’s outrageous to see how quickly [B.O.’s] allies would abuse government power in an attempt to smear a private citizen who dared to ask a legitimate question.” And the real outrage is that the national news media focused their story on Joe – missing (and, by reporting on his personal life, in fact helping to perpetrate) the real story here: the invasion of Joe’s privacy rights.
n Well . . . , Duh! A recent study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs confirms that (wait – take a breath – are you ready for this?) the “Big Three” commercial network newscasts favored B.O., the Democrats’ presidential candidate, over John McCain, the Republicans’. The Center tallied up the total number of positive comments made by sources, voters, reporters, and anchors on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news over the past two months, finding they reflected positively on B.O. in 65% of the cases, compared with only 31% for McCain. ABC’s World News had more balance (57% vs. 42%) than NBC’s Nightly News (56% vs. 16%) or the CBS Evening News (73% vs. 31%). In contrast, Brit Hume’s Special Report on the Fox News Channel showed more balance than any of the major network broadcasts – with 39% favorable comments for McCain and 28% positive for B.O. – although Fox News’ coverage was dominated by negative evaluations of both the Republican and Democrat campaigns. (This shows that Fox News really does live up to its motto of “fair and balanced,” and that it seems biased in favor of the right only because the other networks are so biased in favor of the left.) The Center’s study generally confirms what has been disgustingly obvious to many Americans – at least to those of us who are not blindly partisan Democrats: that the news media generally has been “in the tank” for B.O. throughout the entire campaign, going all the way back to his Democratic primary contest against Hillary Clinton. Why have the news media been such unabashed cheerleaders for B.O.? Part of the answer is that he’s a left-wing Democrat – in fact, a radical left-winger masquerading as a centrist – who holds political views that accord with those of most media professionals. That’s just part of the answer, however. Two other factors are important, in my opinion, in explaining the media’s pro-B.O. bias. One is the candidate’s own ruthlessness in exploiting in “race card,” cashing in on both black Americans’ race-identity politics and left-liberal white Americans’ guilt. In other words, B.O. has been the beneficiary of a kind of “reverse racism.” The other factor is the gullibility of media professionals: not very bright persons who tend to focus on superficialities because they’re incapable of deep philosophical thought, the media generally have been the ideal victims of the kind of con game that David Axelrod, B.O.’s chief strategist, has been waging – a campaign long on style but short on substance (as I discussed in my previous entry, “The Emperor Is Naked!”). Except rather than being victims, the media acted more like willing accomplices in Axelrod’s con game.
n The SNL Factor There’s a long history of presidential candidates courting voters by making appearances on popular TV programs. (I’m old enough to remember when Richard Nixon made a cameo appearance on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, to say “Sock it to me?” and thereby help clinch his win in 1968.) But never before this year’s presidential campaign has popular television – and particularly, late-night TV – had so significant an impact on the election, perhaps because so many people (especially young voters) get their news, not from “real” news programs, but from satirical shows like the Comedy Channel’s Colbert Report or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL). The writers and hosts of these pseudo-news programs share the left-wing political bias that the media generally have, and that bias has been evident in the positive – indeed, the fawning – coverage they’ve given to B.O. and Biden. B.O.’s appearance on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show on Oct. 29 – the same night as B.O.’s half-hour primetime “infomercial” – had 3.6 million viewers, making it the most-watched episode in the show’s history. And who could not help but notice the overt fawning by the gals on ABC’s The View, when they had not only the Democrat candidate but also his wife, Michelle, as their special guests? John McCain and Sarah Palin, too, made the obligatory visits to popular TV comedy/variety and late-night shows, but their appearances almost always hurt rather than helped their campaign, because of the media’s leftist bias against them. The View gals were openly hostile to McCain, as was David Letterman – who, after spending several minutes complaining about being earlier “snubbed” (for which McCain was far too apologetic), then proceeded to ask the Republican candidate tougher questions than anyone has ever asked his Democrat counterpart. Unlike comic Fred Armisen’s impression of B.O. (which is so understated it’s almost reverential), Darrell Hammond’s impression of McCain seems like a senile version of his Dick Cheney. And Tina Fey’s much-publicized impression of Sarah Palin isn’t at all flattering: it’s perhaps the most devastatingly negative of all the media’s attacks on Governor Palin, reflecting SNL’s East Coast leftist, elitist contempt for the conservative Republican “hockey mom” from Alaska (including ridicule for the way she – and millions of other Americans in the heartland – speak). By appearing on SNL, both McCain and Palin looked like chumps, too naïve to realize that the laughs were not with them, but at them. No wonder they lost the election, even to such idiots as B.O. and Biden.
n He’s Really Mad It’s not just the election (and the media’s disgustingly obvious bias in favor of B.O.) that has made the national news media look bad in recent weeks: the media also looks bad (and justifiably so) because of its hysterical coverage of the Wall Street financial crisis. CNN’s Ali Velshi earned well-deserved criticism by acting as a cheerleader for the government bailout plan. And CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer may have helped contribute to a steep one-day decline on the Dow Jones when he appeared on NBC’s Today show Oct. 6 to urge people who might need money during the next five years to take it out of the stock market “right away.” “Mad” Jim did teach people one important lesson, the value of free advice: it’s worth just what it costs.
n Damn Socialist Tinkering Did you remember to switch all your clocks back one hour, to Standard Time, during the wee hours of the morning of November 1st and 2nd? Thanks to Congress’s expansion of Daylight Saving Time, Americans had to wait several additional weeks to “fall back,” and thus make up for the hour of time we lost back on March 8th & 9th, when Congress forced us to “spring forward” to Daylight Saving Time, or D.S.T. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense. Whatever benefits some special interests might derive from D.S.T. are not worth the inconveniences it causes all of us by being forced to change all our clocks twice a year. Americans should stand up and demand that the national government, which is far too big and far too intrusive on far too many aspects of our lives, keep its hands off our clocks!
n Hollywood Went to War – But Nobody Came The most interesting news of the Fall movie season is that Hollywood’s so-called “war films” have been a bust. The most recent flop was Body of Lies, a $70 million Ridley Scott film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, which debuted at only $13 million at the box office in October (losing to a talking dog, Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which took in $17.5 million, and a low-budget horror flick, Quarantine, which took in $14.2 million, over $2 million more than it cost to make). Body of Lies was the ninth consecutive “contemporary war drama” (in other words, a film about war in the Middle East) to go largely ignored by moviegoers in the past two years, according to a recent story in USA Today (“A losing battle for war films,” Oct. 13). Since December 2006, the average haul for a Mideast war film has been only $11.2 million, and several movies (such as Grace Is Gone, Home of the Brave, and Redacted) have grossed less than $700,000 despite big names like Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack. Why have such “war films” been so unpopular with moviegoers? Perhaps it’s because they’re more accurately called anti-war films, reflecting Hollywood’s leftist political bias, including its pacificism and in particular its opposition to U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American people seem to have grown weary of war in the Middle East, indeed, but they’re apparently even more weary of Hollywood’s heavy-handed propagandizing on the subject. “The movies are repeating the same themes people see on TV and the Internet,” the USA Today article quotes Brandon Gray of BoxOffice Mojo.com. He adds, “There’s also the perception that if Hollywood does take a political stand, it’s going to be liberal and Democrat.” As I noted above, “Well, . . . duh!”
n Opus Extremus “Opus” is no more. The cartoon penguin created by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed and syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group since the 1980s (first in “Bloom County,” and then in “Outland” in the 1990s and in his own “Opus” strip since 2003), made his last appearance in newspapers on Sunday, November 2. His creator, Breathed, announced his planned retirement from the weekly strip – and, hence, the imminent finale of Opus – earlier this year. Sadly, I won’t miss him. I was a fan of Opus in his earlier years, when he was a delightfully apolitical character; but over the past few years – and especially over the past several months – I found the cartoon less amusing, as the cartoonists’ leftist political bias became more and more heavy-handed. (What should we expect, after all, from someone with a first name like “Berkeley”?) So, rather than mourning the end of Opus, I feel more like saying: Good riddance!
n Buckeyes, After All, Are Nuts College football fans in Michigan and Ohio are looking forward to Saturday, November 22, this year’s date for THE GAME, Michigan vs. Ohio State. Unfortunately, the greatest rivalry in college football isn’t living up to its usual hype this year; some heretics even have suggested that the most important Big Ten game on Nov. 22 will be Michigan State vs. Penn State (in which Joe Pa’s team will try to preserve its unbeaten record and a shot at the national championship). Michigan has had a disastrous season under first-year coach Rich Rodriguez. (I admit I’m no longer the Michigan fan I used to be: I ceased being a dues-paying member of the U of M Alumni Association many years ago, in protest against the University’s racist “affirmative action” admissions policy, which it litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And I lost much of my interest in Michigan football when Lloyd Carr, the last of the classy coaches from the Bo Schembechler era, retired last year.) Ohio State’s dreams of another shot at the national championship crumbled on Oct. 25, when Penn State came to Columbus and out-defensed the Buckeyes, 13-6. (Not that OSU had any realistic chance at the national championship: the team again has been vastly overrated, as its humiliating defeat by USC earlier this season so dramatically demonstrated.) Ohio State fans, nevertheless, are building up the hype over the Michigan game to its usual insane level, if not further. Why? Two reasons: First, given their respective disappointing seasons, both teams are looking to THE GAME as a way of salvaging some pride. (Give the emotional edge to Michigan this year: Coach Rod could help earn his place in the Michigan coaching pantheon by repeating Bo’s feat of winning against a much-favored OSU team. And given Michigan’s abysmal record this year (its first losing season in over 40 years), the game in Columbus will be the closest thing to a bowl game that Michigan will have this year.) The second reason for all the hype here in Columbus? Isn’t it obvious?
| Link to this Entry | Posted Thursday, November 6, 2008 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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