MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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Thoughts for Summer 2009
It’s time for another annual tradition: once again, MayerBlog will be on a summer hiatus, for the next three and a half months (until Labor Day), while I continue writing the manuscript of my book on the U.S. Constitution and other summer writing projects. Before going on hiatus, however, I could not resist the temptation to comment on a number of important issues in public policy and popular culture – issues that are in the news today and are likely to remain in the news throughout the summer. (Also included is my annual preview of summer movies.)
n Gas-Price Hysteria, Yet Again? As summer begins, it’s time again for what, unfortunately, has become another annual summer tradition – the hysteria over high gasoline prices. Usually, the annual angst is the natural result of the economic law of supply and demand: with the supply of oil and refined petroleum products (including gasoline) holding steady at best, while worldwide demand for oil and petroleum products peaking during the summer travel months, it’s only natural that gasoline prices in the U.S.A. tend to skyrocket during the summer. As I noted in last year’s comments on gas price hysteria, despite politicians’ attempts to scapegoat the oil industry (“Big Oil” and its allegedly “excessive profits”), the blame really falls on the politicians themselves – and especially on members of Congress, for the misguided federal energy policies they have enacted into law. With Democrats controlling both houses of Congress as well as the White House, we can expect those misguided policies to continue and even to get worse, as Democrats enact the radical environmentalists’ agenda, which is hostile to carbon-based energy such as oil. With no additional drilling for oil in the United States’ plentiful reserves in Alaska and off the nation’s coasts – in other words, with no further development of U.S. natural resources – Americans will continue to depend on imported oil for their gasoline. And with no new refining facilities being built in the country, supplies of gasoline and other refined petroleum products will continue to fluctuate, depending on a variety of factors, including the impact of hurricanes and other natural disasters. Thus, supply will hold steady, at best, while demand grows – resulting inevitably in higher gasoline prices. Gas may not soar above $4 a gallon as it did last summer, principally because the economic decline has reduced demand below its summer norms, but no one should be surprised if gasoline prices average closer to $3 a gallon instead of $2 for most of the summer. Nor should we be surprised if politicians again try to evade their well-deserved blame for the problem and again try to demonize businessmen for simply trying to earn profits.
n B.O.: The Continually Rising Stench Readers of this blog realize that since the November 2008 elections, I have referred to the man who is now President of the United States – the current occupant of the White House – by his initials, “B.O.” Other modern presidents have been known by their initials – TR, FDR, JFK, LBJ – and using this president’s initials in lieu of his name seems appropriate, as I have argued. It’s because B.O. as president, in a word, stinks. He is the most unfit man ever to be president: his limited executive experience – confined to his activities as a political activist on the local level, a so-called “community organizer” in the corrupt world of Chicago politics – plus his limited experience as a U.S. Senator (confined mostly to his campaigning, first for that job and then for the presidency) make him among the least qualified men in U.S. history to serve as chief executive of the government of the United States. Moreover, his policies are, for the reasons mentioned in the next paragraph, truly bad for America. Not all forms of b.o. have an unpleasant smell, even in the summertime. For example, the healthy smell of manly sweat after mowing the lawn, or making love on a sultry summer night, might be considered downright pleasant (at least to some people, in a raunchy sort of way). But this particular B.O. has a decidedly unpleasant smell – a truly offensive stench, a noxious stink – that emanates from the current president’s policies. His policies are undermining all that is great (and good) about America: the constitutional system of limited, republican government that America’s Founders created, a system that gives more legal protection to individual freedom, in all its aspects (including economic freedom), than any other country’s on earth. It is this system that has made free-market capitalism thrive, bringing prosperity not only to Americans but to the entire world. Unfortunately, this limited-government, individualist, capitalist system is what B.O.’s policies seek to undermine, if not destroy: If B.O. and his power-hungry cronies have their way, the United States will become more of a socialist nation, with the federal government controlling major segments of the nation’s economy – making the U.S., which was once the world’s “last, best hope” for freedom, more like the nations of Europe, ironically, just as Europe is finally moving away from its disastrous 20th-century experiment with socialism and discovering the virtues of the American free-enterprise, capitalist system. Two things, fortunately, stand in the way of America’s fatal decline down the road to serfdom: first, our legal/constitutional system and the protections it provides (albeit incompletely and often inconsistently) for individual rights; and second, B.O.’s own shortcomings and limitations. As I’ve also noted in my previous blog entries, B.O. is basing his presidential administration on the same strategy that worked so well for him in the 2008 presidential election: in a word, on bullshit. So far, B.O.’s bullshit has helped him pull the wool over the eyes of gullible Americans who are fooled by his personal charm or who are afraid to speak out in opposition to him or his policies for fear of being labeled “racist” or some other derogatory term (such as “mean-spirited,” “selfish,” or even “individualist,” which B.O. and his collectivist comrades are trying to turn into a negative). But I remain optimistic enough to believe that, eventually, enough Americans are sufficiently rational and honest to realize that “the emperor” truly has “no clothes” – the naked truth, so to speak, about B.O.
n Testing B.O.: When Will the News Media Notice the Stench? Vice President Joe Biden is an idiot, but there’s one thing he’s probably correct about: foreign enemies of the United States – militant Islamic terrorists, or the rogue regimes that control Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela – will try to “test” the current president of the United States, B.O. They’re already begun doing so, with the leaders of Iran and North Korea – “Ah’m in a Jihad” and “Kim Jong (Mentally) Ill” – openly announcing their plans to continue developing nuclear weapons and the missile capability to launch them against their enemies (Israel, in the case of Iran, and the Pacific coast of the U.S., in the case of North Korea). B.O. already has signaled the weakness of his administration’s foreign policy with regard to Russia (offering to unilaterally back off plans to install a missile-defense system in eastern Europe, which would have helped contain Russian expansionism under Vlad Putin’s dictatorship). B.O.’s attempts to appease thugs all over the world – bowing to the Saudi king, shaking hands and smiling with Hugo Chavez, etc. – will only encourage them to be more aggressive in their anti-Americanism. Meanwhile, the left-liberal news media continues its naïve love-fest with B.O., acting more like propaganda arms of the White House or the DNC than like the independent, objective and indeed critical observers of power-wielders that the media ought to be. When the media’s “slobbering” love affair (to borrow the apt term used by Bernie Goldberg in his latest book) will end is anyone’s guess, but my theory is that even B.O.’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders in the media will finally begin to realize “the emperor has no clothes” when his shortcomings in foreign policy and defense leadership finally are starkly revealed. Sadly, that will happen when al-Qaeda or some other militant Islamic group (or one of the anti-American regimes noted above) commits another act of atrocity against America: another 9-11, or somewhat less ominously, another event like the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80. It took the latter event finally to make most Americans realize how unfit Jimmy Carter was to be president; and, unfortunately, it seems it will take a comparable crisis for most Americans to realize the truth about B.O. and to make him, like Carter, a one-term president.
n A Presidency Based on Bullshit As I noted in this year’s “Prospects for Liberty” essay, the biggest pile of bullshit being peddled by B.O. is the conceit that his administration is bringing “change” to America, when in fact it’s doing nothing other than continuing – albeit on a radically expanded scale – the failed policies of the 20th-century regulatory/welfare state. As I noted there, the snake-oil that B.O.’s trying to sell is the “same old, tired semi-socialist, paternalist policies that the federal government has been tinkering with, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, for the past century or so, since the beginning of the 20th-century regulatory/welfare state. All B.O. really promises to do is to expand the welfare state – to increase government and its controls over Americans’ lives, making the U.S. even more of a socialist country – and that’s not any kind of real `change’ in public policy, at all.” B.O.’s record as president thus far – his first 100+ days, much touted in the left-wing news media – merely confirms my prediction. Virtually every day of his presidency, he’s announced some new policy initiative – a policy “change” that’s really nothing new but just an expansion of government regulatory authority over more and more aspects of Americans’ lives, another grab for power by the federal government, typically rationalized by citing the nation’s economic downturn. (The recession is typically described by B.O. administration officials and their allies in the news media as “the worst since the Great Depression,” but in fact it’s no worse – and by many important measures, actually no where near as bad – as the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the economic mess caused largely by bad federal policies during the Johnson-Nixon-Ford-Carter years. That, by the way, was the mess that President Ronald Reagan referred to in his famous First Inaugural statement, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem” – a statement no less relevant today than when he made it over 28 years ago.) B.O.’s policies aren’t mere bullshit, however; they’re dangerous bullshit because, by perpetuating and even expanding the same old failed paternalistic policies of the past, they’re making the nation’s problems even worse. Whatever signs of economic recovery that economists might see today are not the result of any of B.O.’s policies but rather result from the natural working-out of the market system, as the economy moves out of its recessionary phase and back into a growth phase, following the normal business cycle. No doubt (being the master purveyor of bullshit that he is), B.O. will try to claim credit for the recovery – attributing it to the so-called “stimulus” legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress earlier this year – but the economic effects of that massive increase in federal government spending have yet to be felt in the nation’s economy. Whatever recovery is occurring, is doing so in spite of, rather than because of, the administration’s policies. And when the effects of the massive increase in federal spending and the size of the national debt do finally play out, they will be disastrous – bringing back the problems of inflation and high interest rates, coupled with continuing sluggish economic growth and high unemployment; to put it simply, the infamous “stagflation” of the 1970s will return. And that’s the best case scenario of what will result from the Democrats’ failed economic policies. Perhaps nothing better epitomizes B.O.’s “tyranny of bullshit,” as I call it, than his attempted sleight-of-hand with the federal budget. After unveiling an unprecedented-high $3.6 trillion budget in early May, B.O. then announced – with much media-covered hoopla – that he was proposing $17 billion in cuts. The 121 programs B.O. wants to kill or shrink account for less than one-half of 1 per cent of the budget (and less than 10% of the interest due next year on the $11.2 trillion federal debt). Significantly, 56% of the proposed cuts are in military spending (one of the few legitimate concerns of the federal government), including major cuts in weapons systems and other Pentagon programs. Meanwhile, the administration wants to increase spending on veterans’ medical care, environmental protection, low-income housing, early-childhood education, and global health initiatives (doubling U.S. spending on foreign aid by 2015). Emphasizing how truly miniscule B.O.’s proposed spending cuts are, compared to these increases and the overall size of his proposed budget, Senator Judd Gregg (R.-N.H.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, likened it to “taking a teaspoon of water out of a bathtub while you keep the spigot on at full speed.”
n Putting the “Bully” into the “Bully Pulpit” Another aspect of B.O.’s bullshit-based presidency that’s been noteworthy has been its hypocritical efforts to distinguish itself from the previous Bush administration, typically by focusing media attention on superficial policy differences while obscuring the ways in which B.O.’s presidency actually merely continues many Bush policies, usually the worst Bush policies (those that Democrats liked). Consider, for example, B.O.’s announced intention of not only continuing but even expanding Bush’s infamous “faith-based initiative,” tying the federal welfare state to churches; or the previously-mentioned proposal to further expand U.S. spending on global heath programs (building on the Bush administration’s record-high U.S. spending in Africa to combat AIDS); or the B.O. administration’s plans to expand the war in Afghanistan. One other way in which B.O.’s presidency thus far seems to offer more continuity than “change,” compared with his predecessors, is in the way it threatens not only limited, constitutional government but more generally the rule of law. Clinton’s presidency greatly undermined the rule of law in America (see the excellent collection of essays, The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton, edited by Roger Pilon and published by Cato Institute in 2000) – a horrid legacy that, in the eyes of many libertarian critics, was matched and even exceeded in many respects by George W. Bush’s presidency. B.O., though, may set new lows in the undermining of the rule of law. Instead of following the law (what he took an oath – albeit a flubbed oath – at his Inaugural to do), B.O. has not hesitated to use the coercive power of government, or threats of coercion, to force businesses to follow his dictates. That dangerous pattern of intimidation has been evident not only in the administration’s partial nationalization, or “bailout,” of banks and other major financial institutions but also in its efforts to nationalize the automobile companies, Chrysler and GM. As public-policy researcher John Lott notes in a recent op-ed, “Thugs in the White House” (May 8), the standard m.o. used by the administration to force its control over financial institutions that have accepted government bailouts has been to threaten to impose unnecessarily costly public audits and to replace disobedient CEOs with political cronies willing to do B.O.’s bidding. Even those institutions that the government has failed to take over through bailouts have been threatened by the power-grabbing B.O. administration, which has not hesitated to use the White House press corps to destroy the reputations of opponents. Consider, for example, the way the administration brokered the Chrysler bankruptcy, a deal made possible by bullying tactics that used the power of government coercion as the ultimate threat to bring the owners of Chrysler’s debt to the table. Clifford Asness, co-founder of the $20 billion hedge fund AQR Capital Management, posted an open letter detailing the dirty politics being employed by B.O., shortly after the president publicly scolded Chrysler bond-holders for not making enough “sacrifices”: “The President is screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying.” As law professor Todd Zywicki observed in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed (“Chrysler and the Rule of Law,” May 13), the B.O. administration’s behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy “is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors – entitled to first priority payment under the `absolute priority rule’ – have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.” As Cliff Asness suggests, the administration brokered the company’s bankruptcy so that a favorite Democratic donor group, the UAW, can seize control of it. Todd Zywicki notes that B.O. “may have helped save the jobs of thousands of union workers whose dues, in part, engineered his election. But what about the untold number of job losses in the future caused by trampling the sanctity of contracts today?”
n “A Time for Choosing” On May 7, I participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the Columbus Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, on the topic “The Future of the Conservative Movement.” Although I’m not a conservative – rather, I describe myself as economist Walter E. Williams describes himself, as a “radical for liberty,” a “liberal” in the true, classical sense of the word, a radical individualist and advocate for limited government and free-market capitalism – nevertheless, for several years now I’ve been urging my fellow libertarians to ally themselves with limited-government conservatives in order to promote their shared principles. Noting how the Bush presidency nearly destroyed both the Republican Party and the conservative movement, with a president who compromised far too much with leftist Democrats (and who pursued the “big government” policies urged by his “neoconservative” and “compassionate conservative” advisors), I suggested that the proverbial “silver lining” in the current dark political cloud over Washington, D.C. (with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and with B.O. in the White House) is that, in their opposition to B.O.’s policies, Republican politicians and conservative political activists might again return to those limited-government principles on which they may find common ground with libertarians and political independents who value individual freedom. To do so, however, Republicans and conservatives must disregard the advice they’re getting from RINOs (those “moderate” Republicans and certain types of “big government” conservatives who’d like to turn the GOP into a pale imitation of the Democrats, kind of “socialists light”). As I said in my talk, “the antidote for the poison being spewed by the collectivists of the left isn’t a collectivism of the right” – rather, it’s a principled defense of individualism. There is indeed a battle now raging, within both the GOP and the conservative movement, for the “soul” of both the Party and the movement. In my May 7 talk, I suggested that the political situation today is rather similar to the situation 44 years ago, in the months following Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss in the 1964 presidential election, when Goldwater’s limited-government conservative principles seemed dead, politically. Yet in a mere 16 years, in the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan won, by leading a coalition of limited-government conservatives, libertarians, and independents. And in 1980 Reagan’s successful campaign used rhetoric astonishingly similar to that used by Goldwater, whom Reagan supported in 1964 in his famous speech, “A Time for Choosing.” Among other things, Reagan observed: "It‘s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, ‘We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government‘ This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man‘s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves."
Those words are just as relevant today as they were 45 years ago. Today we – not just conservatives and the GOP, but all Americans – are again at a crossroads, at a “time for choosing.” One road, the one advocated by Democrats and “moderate” Republicans, leads to total government takeover of the American economy and, with it, the end of “the American dream”; the other road, the one that Republicans and conservatives need to rediscover, leads us forward along the journey envisioned by America’s Founders, who dared to imagine a free society in which individuals governed themselves and order came not from the coercive power of government but from the free operations of the marketplace. The famous saying is true: Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. By the same token, however, those who remember the past – those who know history – are not likely to be surprised by anything, especially in the world of politics.
n The Pernicious Babbling Brooks One of those RINOS whose advice ought to be ignored by Republican Party strategists is David Brooks, the New York Times’ favorite “conservative” columnist (which is to say he’s not really a conservative at all). In a recent column, Brooks urged that the GOP should cease being “the party of individualism and freedom” and should become instead “the party of civil order.” What exactly does he mean by civic order? Apparently he means using the coercive power of government to deny individuals the freedom to choose how to live their own lives – in other words, the paternalistic regulatory/welfare state. Brooks’ complaint is that Republicans are too different from the Democrats, the party of the welfare state: he argues that Republicans need to be more “community-oriented” to get in touch with “the young,” to be less devoted to capitalism in order to have something to say to “the lower middle class,” and to be more devoted to radical environmentalism in order to have something to say to “the upper middle class.” So, according to Brooks, young people aren’t interested in individual freedom, the “lower middle class” isn’t interested in bettering themselves through free-market capitalism but just want more government handouts, and the “upper middle class” would willingly forego their SUVs in order to save the world from “global warming.” That sounds more like a Democrat political strategist’s view of the world than that of a so-called “conservative.” If the GOP wants a political comeback, it needs to do precisely the opposite of what Mr. Brooks recommends: it needs to become truly the party of individualism and freedom and leave paternalism to the Democrats.
n A “Renaissance of the Free-Market Movement”? David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, offers some words of optimism in the May 2009 issue of Liberty magazine. First, he describes the sad state of political affairs prior to the 2008 elections: “Back in September and October, I think that libertarians, conservatives, and even Republican politicians were shell-shocked by one blow to free-market capitalism after another: the federal `takeover’ of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, the all-power-to-Paulson plan, the collapse of Washington Mutual, congressional passage of the power-to-Paulson-plus-pork plan, the 22% drop in the Dow Jones average in one week, the Federal Reserve Board’s unprecedented decision to lend directly to nonfinancial companies, the government’s partial nationalization of major banks, Paulson’s announcement that he would use his bailout money for something other than what he asked Congress to authorize, the auto bailout in direct defiance of a congressional vote, and so on and so on.
“There was no time to fight these measures. Most of them were announced as done deals, others as measures to be taken by the Treasury or the Fed without any request for Congressional authorization. With the incumbent president in charge, both [major-party] presidential candidates going along, and most of Congress afraid to challenge the dire warnings of catastrophe, it was impossible to create any real political debate. Defenders of capitalism were reeling.”
But now, with B.O. in the White House and Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, things are quite different, Boaz notes. “Smaller-government folks feel no compunction about vigorously taking on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid government,” especially when all it has to offer is “an old-fashioned, Keynesian, throw-money-at-the-problem spending bill described as `economic stimulus.’ Most free-market economists felt no ambivalence about opposing that bill. Robert Barro of Harvard called it `probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.’” Boaz sees in the reaction against against the so-called stimulus bill what he describes, hopefully, as “the beginning of the renaissance of the free-market movement”: “Freed from the burden of feeling some connection to a big-government Republican president, Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the bill in both houses of Congress. Libertarians played leading roles in galvanizing the opposition. The Cato Institute ran full-page ads in almost every major newspaper in the country, with the names of more than 200 economists who `do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance.’ The ad was talked about on television, was waved by Republican senators at a press conference, and seemed to energize free-marketers who felt their voice hadn’t been heard in national debates over the past few months.”
“So,” he concludes, “the bad news is that the federal government has now committed at least $7.8 trillion in loans, investments, and guarantees since the beginning of last year. But the good news is that the free-market movement is back in gear,” and in fact “in much better shape than it was in the FDR era.”
n Real Progress There are at least two other fronts on which free-market, or libertarian, political activists may have room for optimism: medical marijuana and same-sex marriage. Both are examples of a trend toward real progress – not that kind advocated by today’s so-called “progressives,” who like their predecessors in the early 20th-century Progressive movement are advocates for greater governmental control, or paternalism. Rather, it’s the kind of real progress championed by true “liberals,” in the classic sense of the term: advocates of maximizing individual freedom and limiting governmental control over people’s lives, whether it’s their choice of a marriage partner or their choice of a substance to ingest into their bodies. There is a definite trend to liberalize laws criminalizing the possession and use of marijuana, particularly to allow for its medicinal use. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested that California policymakers begin debating whether to legalize marijuana, while over a dozen states (including California) already permit medical use of marijuana under state law. (While the Bush administration insisted that the federal “war on drugs” trumped such liberal state laws – resulting in the unfortunate Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Raich (2005) – B.O.’s attorney general Eric Holder announced in mid-March that federal agents now will seek criminal charges only when both state and federal laws are violated, a rare instance of meaningful, pro-liberty “change” in policy by the B.O. administration.) While neither Democrat nor Republican politicians seem willing to reconsider drug criminalization as a general policy (Gil Kerlikowske, B.O.’s “drug czar” recently stated that “legalization isn’t in the president’s vocabulary, and it certainly isn’t in mine”), a more lenient policy toward marijuana (or at least its medical use) finally might prompt policymakers to realize the failure of prohibition. In November voters in both Massachusetts and Michigan adopted liberalized marijuana laws, and medical marijuana bills have been introduced in the legislatures of several states, including New Jersey, Illinois, and Minnesota. Meanwhile, in recent months, four states have joined Massachusetts in giving legal recognition to same-sex marriage. In Connecticut, Vermont, and Iowa decisions by the state supreme courts changed the law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples; in Maine, legislation allowing same-sex marriage was passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor. Similar legislation has been passed by the New Hampshire legislature and is being considered by legislatures in New York and New Jersey. Outside of New England (where, as USA Today suggested in a March 26 article, religious opposition to same-sex marriage is the weakest), prospects for expanding the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples may be bleak, at least for the near future: in California, for example, the state supreme court is likely to uphold Proposition 8, last November’s ballot measure banning same-sex marriage. But the momentum is starting to build in favor of same-sex marriage, as American popular culture seems to be shifting from homophobia (outright fear or hatred of homosexuality) to mere heterocentrism (bias in favor of heterosexuality). As I noted in my May 2004 blog essay on “Marriage, American Style,” I’d like to think that legal recognition of same-sex marriage ultimately will be seen by most Americans as in keeping with our “traditional” values of individualism and equal treatment under law.
n A Fucked-Up Decision and More Supreme Folly Near the end of April a divided Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on the one-time use of expletives, in a case arising from Cher’s outburst at an awards show televised in 2002. (As she waved her lifetime achievement trophy, Cher said, “People have been telling me on the way out every year, right? So, fuck `em.”) The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), applying a new policy banning even “fleeting expletives” (brief use of vulgarities association with sexual or excretory functions), had fined Fox Television Stations, which had broadcast the 2002 Billboard Awards ceremony featuring Cher. A federal appeals court had agreed with Fox that the FCC policy was arbitrary, but the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, overturned the lower court’s decision. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for the five-justice majority (comprised of the Court’s four conservatives, joined by moderately conservative Justice Kennedy), maintaining that “[e]ven isolated utterances can be . . . vulgar and shocking” and harm children, the FCC’s supposed rationale for the ban. As he read the majority opinion on April 28, Justice Scalia referred to the forbidden utterances as the “f-word” (i.e., fuck) and the “s-word” (i.e., shit). Justice Clarence Thomas (the best of the Supreme Court’s nine justices) concurred with the majority but wrote a separate opinion criticizing the Court’s rationale for more FCC regulation of broadcast TV than cable because of the assumed scarcity of airwaves, an assumption that has been proved false by the development of new communications technologies. Commentators speculate that if another case involving FCC regulation of broadcasts should come before the Court, Thomas might – as he has done in the past – join with the Court’s four “liberal” justices (who in this case dissented, maintaining that the FCC policy was not sufficiently justified and may violate First Amendment free-speech rights), in creating a majority to void the expletives ban under the First Amendment. As I’ve argued previously on MayerBlog (see my essay “Abolish the F*CCing FCC!,” Feb. 8, 2006), FCC regulation of speech is not only silly – words like fuck and shit are fine Anglo-Saxon words that ought to be freely expressed, along with all the other so-called “Dirty Words” that the late comedian George Carlin mentioned in his classic monologue from the late 1970s – but, more importantly, FCC regulation of broadcast content is blatantly unconstitutional, for it cannot be squared with the explicit language of the First Amendment, which provides that Congress shall pass “no law abridging freedom of speech.” As I argued in my previous blog, the mere existence of the FCC is inconsistent with the absolute language of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, as the Supreme Court’s 2008 term draws to a close, news about other major Court decisions this year has been overshadowed in the media by speculation over whom B.O. will nominate as a new justice, to succeed Justice David Souter, who has announced his retirement at the end of the current term. The president has said he wants to appoint someone who will have “empathy” for the problem of common people – which sounds like a qualification more appropriate for a social worker than for a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, whose chief responsibility is to apply the law impartially, and to uphold the limits the Constitution imposes on governmental power. B.O. is also under political pressure from left-wing activist groups and others to appoint another woman to the Court; even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court’s lone female member (since Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement), has joined the chorus calling for a selection based primarily on sex. Don’t be surprised if our “affirmative-action” president (who owes his election to deft manipulation of racism) makes a selection based on “affirmative-action” policies, under which superficial traits (like sex or race) trump individual qualifications – in other words, if he selects a new justice principally because she’s female and easily confirmable by the Democrat-controlled Senate. The new justice, whomever she may be, no doubt also will be a left-liberal “activist,” in the worst sense of that term. (See my essay, “Judicial Activism, Real and Imagined,” April 4, 2005.)
n Tortured Rationalizations Many Democrats in Congress – egged on by leftists in their party and left-wing activist groups like the ACLU, and anxious to help the B.O. administration’s continuing efforts to distinguish itself from its predecessor – are pushing for a so-called “truth commission,” to investigate the CIA’s alleged use of “torture” in interrogating militant Islamic terrorist prisoners. Whether so-called waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques constitute torture, as that term is defined and prohibited under U.S. and international law, or whether they are legitimate “enhanced interrogation” techniques justified when used against terrorists whose criminal conspiracies may pose imminent dangers to American lives – that is a question about which reasonable minds, equally committed to the rule of law, might differ. The Bush administration approved such harsh interrogations; the current administration has repudiated them, just as it has bowed to the left-wing “political correctness” police in refusing to even use the term terrorist to describe militant Islamic criminals. Yet certain Democrats seem eager to pursue a witch hunt (a modern variant of the McCarthyism of the late 1940s and early 1950s), targeting certain key officials in the Bush administration, including the authors of the Justice Department memos approving harsh interrogation methods (including John Yoo, now a law professor at UC-Berkley, and Jay Bybee, now a federal judge), and perhaps even higher-ranking officials, all the way up to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been vocal in his criticisms of B.O. administration policies. To its credit, thus far the B.O. administration has rejected the idea of an independent commission, recognizing it would “just become a political back-and-forth,” in the words of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. An internal Justice Department study also has recommended that Bush administration lawyers who approved harsh interrogation methods should not be prosecuted for their misjudgments – which is about as close a recognition from the current administration that one could expect that the proposal is nothing but a political witch hunt, an effort to criminalize policy differences. Undeterred, certain Democrat leaders in Congress nevertheless continue to push for an investigation – an effort that may bounce back and bite them in their butts. Nancy Pelosi – the moron who, as House Speaker, holds the No. 3 position in the U.S. government – may have jeopardized her own leadership position by continuing to insist, contrary to the evidence, that the CIA misled her in a long series of CIA briefings she received about the interrogation methods. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent editorial, “Now, when disclosure of the details of those briefings undermines the Democrats’ political game, Mrs. Pelosi tries to dump responsibility back onto the CIA. . . . Whatever one’s politics may be, there has to be some recognition that Washington – the U.S. government – simply can’t function if it is endlessly entangled in the exquisitely argued, one might say absurd, blame-games that she and some Democrats are running against former Bush officials, and that now threaten the political standing of the Speaker herself” (“Pelosi’s Self-Torture,” May 15).
n The Tyranny of “Green Bullshit”: An Update In the second part of my annual “Prospects for Liberty” essay for 2009 (posted January 26), I maintained that “[p]erhaps the greatest threat to the freedom and prosperity of the industrialized Western world today is the threat posed by radical environmental activists and the politicians who follow their bullshit, pseudo-scientific theories.” Chief among this “green bullshit,” as I call it, is the theory of “global warming” – or “climate change,” as it’s now euphemistically called – in other words, the theory that the average global temperatures are increasing, and that the Earth’s warming will lead to disastrous consequences, and most importantly, that this dangerous global warming is caused by human activity, namely, by man-made carbon dioxide (a so-called “greenhouse gas”) created by the burning of carbon-based “fossil fuels” such as coal, oil (and other petroleum products), and natural gas. The best scientific evidence is that this theory is nothing but “junk science,” maintained and propagated by forces of “political correctness,” and that sound scientific evidence and theory refutes it in virtually all its major points: there isn’t even a consensus about global warming (some scientists still fear global cooling instead), let alone that it’s caused by man-made carbon dioxide. Indeed, the best evidence is that whatever climate changes occur on Earth do so as a result of naturally-occurring forces (such as sunspot activity) beyond human control. Rather than debating how to try to change climate trends, we should be debating how best to adjust to them – what human beings have been doing since they first appeared on the planet. Nevertheless, a coalition of radical environmentalists and other special interests (including the burgeoning “alternative energy” industry that has come into being thanks to government subsidies) generally has been remarkably successful in lobbying the Democrats who control Congress and the White House to enact laws and to implement federal government regulations and other policies, all premised on the global warming myth, or hoax, and designed to replace carbon-based fuels with other energy sources. This so-called “green” movement indeed does pose the greatest current threat to Americans’ freedom and prosperity. The policies being pushed by advocates of “green” bullshit are not only unnecessary, based on fatally flawed “junk science” theories, but also dangerously threatening to our economic freedom and to our lifestyles. As for the threats to our freedom, what’s at stake are both the freedom of businesses and consumers: for businesses, such as electric utility companies, it’s the freedom to use the most readily-available, efficient and reliable fuels (which are carbon-based fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas) to generate power; or for vehicle manufacturers, the freedom to manufacture and sell vehicles (cars, trucks, and SUVs) which are popular with consumers despite the fact that they are relative “guzzlers” of gasoline. For consumers, of course, what’s at stake includes the freedom to buy electricity from companies that generate it at lowest cost, as well as the freedom to drive whatever sort of vehicle one prefers (as well as other freedoms already limited by the “green” police, such as the freedom to purchase certain kinds of clothes washing machines, or toilets, or even electric light bulbs). Yet, so long as Americans are gullible enough to be taken in by all the “green” bullshit, they will continue to see both their freedoms and their living standards erode, as the “green police” push for more government policies designed to force carbon-based energy out of the marketplace. A number of good books shattering the “global warming” myth have been published in recent years, several of which I’ve already recommended here: among them, Bjorn Lomborg’s Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (2007), Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr.’s Climate of Extremes (2009), Iaian Murray’s The Really Inconvenient Truths (2008), Roy Spencer’s Climate Confusion (2008), and Christopher Horner’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism (2007) and Red Hot Lies 2008). A new book, which I highly recommend, is Steve Milloy’s Green Hell, which I discuss below. Finally, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the premiere libertarian think tanks in the U.S., has an excellent site, Cooler Heads Digest, which links to new material on the Internet that presents the truth about so-called “climate change” and other radical environmentalist myths.
n The Coming Energy Crisis The most imminent “green bullshit” threat to Americans’ freedoms – one that merits close attention to Washington politics, before Congress adjourns for its summer recess – is the legislation proposed by U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D.-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D.-Mass.), co-chairmen of the panel’s energy and environment subcommittee. The Waxman-Markey bill would mandate a reduction in U.S. emissions of so-called “greenhouse gases” (i.e., carbon dioxide) to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below by 2050. In April, former vice president Al Gore called the bill “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress” – which alone should cause alarm to all rational persons (as Gore is the most extreme alarmist and fear-monger on this issue). What the legislation will do is to make it much more difficult and expensive for utility companies to generate electricity, by forcing them to shift from readily-available, economical and dependable carbon-based fuels to the new “alternative” energy sources (wind, solar, etc.) which are expensive (so expensive they exist only by virtue of heavy government subsidies) and very unreliable. As a result, electricity will become not only significantly more expensive throughout the United States – having devastating ripple effects on the nation’s economy, fueling inflation, among other problems – but also unreliable, raising the specter of more black outs and “brown outs,” the kind of problem the state of California had several years ago, except throughout the United States. The Waxman-Markey “energy” bill is more aptly called an energy-rationing bill, because it will inevitably lead to more expensive and less available energy. Republicans in both houses of Congress should oppose the bill, as should many common-sense Democrats, such as freshman Democratic Congressman Zack Space, from Ohio, who is now being subjected to a barrage of TV and radio ads (sponsored by radical environmentalists, organized labor, and the alternative-energy special interests groups), designed to pressure him into supporting this horrid piece of legislation. (Ohio moderate Democrats are being targeted because much of the state’s electricity is generated from coal, an industry that is critically important to Rep. Space’s district in southeast Ohio.)
n CAFÉ Lunacy Yet another example of bad public policy being pushed by the tyranny of “green” bullshit – as well as an example of the power-grabbing tendencies of the president – is the administration’s sweeping revision of auto-emission and fuel-economy standards. In mid-May B.O. proposed the most dramatic change in federal regulations over autos since the Clean Air Act of 1970, which set auto-pollution standards for the first time and banned lead from gasolines. But the new regulations do not target pollutants, in the true sense of the word; rather, they follow the radical environmentalist “green” agenda, based on the global-warming myth, by targeting carbon dioxide (a naturally-occurring gas that poses no health harms to humans other than in the fantasies of global-warming alarmists). The new regulations would, for the first time, limit the amount of carbon dioxide vehicles could emit, by mandating that vehicles burn less fuel. In the name of reducing gasoline consumption, the federal government for years has mandated fuel economy standards, through so-called “corporate average fuel economy,” or CAFÉ, standards. But now, those standards are becoming not only far more draconian but also are being revised deliberately to pander to the radical environmentalist, or “green,” anti-carbon agenda. According to an administration official, the new regulations are designed to mandate a 30 percent reduction in so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions of cars and trucks by 2016; cars would have to average 39 miles per gallon and trucks, 30 mpg. And, in an effort to push implementation of the new regulations, the administration also has proposed a streamlined rulemaking process, including unprecedented coordination by the two agencies mostly responsible – the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation – working jointly to ramrod the new rules through. These new regulations will not only limit the freedom of Americans to purchase the kind of motor vehicles they prefer – they will effectively outlaw SUVs and other “gas-guzzling” vehicles – but will also endanger Americans’ safety on the nation’s highways. Current CAFÉ standards already have had that result, for the most economical way for auto makers to improve fuel economy is to reduce the size and weight of vehicles, making them less safe in crashes – as recently-released studies have verified. The new CAFÉ standards proposed by B.O. would make “a very bad situation even worse,” as recently noted by Sam Kazman, general counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Noting that existing fuel-economy standards already have had a negative impact on consumers by “raising car prices and reducing the availability of models,” he added that they tend to make cars less crash-worthy. “You make these standards more stringent, you’re going to make them even more lethal,” Kazman warned. “The research and development burden that these new standards are imposing on the industry are incredibly expensive with very little payoff, and so you’ve got this ironic standard that you have regulations that are killing both people and car companies.” (“Killing both people and car companies,” WorldNet Daily, May 19). The “help” the B.O. administration has given American auto manufacturers – the bankruptcy it has forced on Chrysler and is about to force on General Motors – so far has been avoided by Ford Motor Company, which has managed to stay in business without federal handouts. But now, thanks to the new CAFÉ standards, it seems that B.O. is determined to put Ford out of business, too.
n More Presti-digital-delaytion Congress, in its far-from-infinite wisdom, has delayed until June 12 the deadline to force U.S. TV broadcast stations to convert from analog to digital signals. As I noted in one of my March 19 “Spring Briefs” entries (scroll down to “Presti-digital-delaytion”), the Congressionally-mandated national switch represents in microcosm many of the failures of government paternalism, of the federal “Nanny State.” It’s not just the principal folly – the erroneous belief that a free market in broadcasting would not better adapt to new technologies, and hence, the rationalization for government control over broadcasting through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – but also the various ways that Congress allegedly has “helped” American consumers weather the transition that it forced upon the market. Core to the government’s plan to turn the USA into an all-digital TV market was its coupon program -- $40 coupons, two per household – which mainly has resulted in inflating the cost of digital converter boxes (by, shall we say, about $40, the cost of the indirect government subsidy). Not surprisingly, the $1.34 billion program ran out of money by the end of 2008 (the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA), the agency established to administer the program, exhausted its budget in just ten months): the government grossly miscalculated the demand for the “free” coupons, resulting in a first-come, first-served system. Conscientious, prudent consumers applied for their coupons, while imprudent ones – not coincidentally, many of them also the “neediest,” the poor, elderly or disabled Americans that Congress claimed to be “helping” in the first place – failed to request them in time (despite the government-mandated broadcaster warnings about the February deadline for the switch). Not surprisingly, the current Democrat-controlled Congress not only extended the deadline to June but also, as part of the massive spending legislation passed earlier this year, also appropriated $650 million in funding for new coupons. At the request of Congressional Democrats, the NTIA is now sending out coupons via first-class mail, in hopes that households that have yet to purchase digital converters will get them before June 12. (Only Americans who receive “free TV” via antennas will be affected by the switch to digital broadcasting; subscribers to cable and satellite TV services aren’t affected and will continue to receive channels via those services.) Wanna bet that, because some pathologically imprudent consumers will still not buy converters by June 12, some members of Congress will sponsor a bill to delay implementation of the transition yet again? (The FCC is spending millions of dollars in its DTV budget to buy the help of dozens of organizations – including AARP, AmeriCorps’ federally-paid “volunteers,” and the national association of volunteer firefighter – for “DTV outreach,” to help consumers install their converter boxes. Apparently, the federal government knows no bounds in its assumption that Americans are a bunch of idiots who cannot do even the simplest task without government assistance.)
n Casting Perils Before Swine (Flu, That Is) The media-hyped scare over the so-called “swine flu” (the new variant of the H1N1 influenza virus) has proved to be mostly a bust. Although the disease has spread from Mexico (apparently its country of origin) throughout most of the U.S. states and many nations around the world, the epidemic is not increasingly as much as many experts feared and this particular strain of flu seems to be relatively mild (no more deadly than the typical winter-season flu which annually results in the deaths of tens of thousands of people from flu-related complications). Some observers have likened the hysteria over this year’s H1N1 flu to the “swine flu” scare of 1976, which resulted in fatal overreaction by the U.S. government. (Fearing a replay of the 1918 flu pandemic, the most deadly in modern history, the government urged all Americans to be vaccinated. Over 40 million Americans – almost 25 percent of the population – received the swine flu vaccine before the program was halted in December 1976. But the pandemic, which some experts at the time had estimated could infect 50 to 60 million Americans, never materialized; only about 200 cases of swine flu and one death were ultimately reported in the U.S. The vaccine proved to be deadlier than the flu: more than 500 people are thought to have developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition, after receiving the vaccine; and 25 people died. The episode triggered an enduring public backlash against flu vaccination, embarrassed the federal government, and cost the director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control his job.) This year’s hype over the H1N1 flu is even more reminiscent of the exaggerated scare over the so-called “bird flu,” the avian H5N1 influenza virus, about three years ago, in 2006. Once again, epidemiologists and other supposed public-health experts expressed fears that the virus could mutate, begin spreading from human to human and cause a global pandemic; but those fears never materialized, either. The bird flu remained confined largely to those areas in southeast Asia, and even in the hardest-hit countries it had weakened by May 2006. (Vietnam, which had almost half of the human cases of H5N1 flu in the world, as of mid-May 2006 had not had a single case in humans or a single outbreak in poultry reported that year. Thailand, the second-hardest hit nation until Indonesia overtook it, had not had a human case reported in nearly a year or one in poultry in six months.) With warm weather approaching, the number of new countries with bird flu cases in either birds or humans had declined drastically by May 2006. Good hygiene and common sense (travelers getting vaccinated before visiting hard-hit countries, properly cooking poultry meat or eggs, and washing hands often with soap and water or sanitizing with alcohol-based hand gels) successfully combated the bird flu. Apparently, similar common-sense techniques (particularly hand washing) are now successfully combating this year’s “swine flu” outbreak, as well. Once again, it seems the supposed “cure” (government “protection” of public health) is worse than the disease.
n The Summer of Atlas Shrugged Something is very wrong. The “American Dream” seems a relic of bygone days, and the United States seems no longer the world’s “best, last hope” for freedom, as the nation suffers from a crippled economy caused by more and more federal government regulation of business, as the U.S. seems to be emulating the socialist “people’s states” around the world. Once successful businesses are closing, as the men and women who run them – the productive people who keep the “motors of the world,” the nation’s key business enterprises, working – quit, realizing that instead of protecting their rights, the government is instead helping facilitate the “looters” who would live off the wealth they’ve earned. Instead of standing up for the rights of productive persons, the nation’s leading intellectuals are leading the charge calling for even more government-coerced looting, claiming that everyone has a duty to “sacrifice” for the sake of others (especially those “less fortunate,” or more needy, than oneself). Even more ominously, whenever anyone speaks out in defense of individual rights, the intellectuals not only denounce them for being “selfish” but also maintain (however logically inconsistent their arguments may be) that there are no longer any moral absolutes, that everything’s relative, and therefore that everyone ought to blithely accept the nation’s economic and cultural collapse. Sound familiar? That scenario, which nicely describes the most pressing problems currently facing Americans, also describes the plot of Atlas Shrugged, the magnificent novel written by Ayn Rand. First published nearly 52 years ago, in October 1957, the novel continues to be a best-seller: indeed, it’s selling better now than at any time during the half-century it’s been published. Stephen Moore, in an op-ed published earlier this year, theorized that the novel has special relevance today because of the recent massive growth in the federal regulatory/welfare state: “Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957,” he wrote (“Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 9, 2009). And Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, in a mid-March op-ed in the Journal’s weekend edition, explained the novel’s “relevance” to today’s problems in terms of Rand’s philosophical message: "The book's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. . . . Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society – particularly its dominant moral ideas.
"Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few people test the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote `affordable housing,' which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.
"The message is always the same: `Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good.' But Rand said this message is wrong -- selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. . . . Selfishness -- that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest -- she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily for mutual benefit.
"Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism -- and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imagineable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention -- and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.
"Rand offered us a way out -- to fight for a morality of rational self-interest, and for capitalism, the system which is its expression. And that is the source of her relevance today."
("Is Rand Relevant?" (Mar. 14)). Ever since I first read Atlas Shrugged, 35 years ago (when I was only 19 years old), I’ve regarded the book as the most important I ever read. Indeed, I regard it as the most important book written in the 20th century and one of the most important books ever written – a book that has more profound insights into human nature than does the Bible (and a book that’s far more relevant to life in modern society than is that book written by various anonymous authors in a primitive dessert culture thousands of years ago). For more on my take on why Atlas Shrugged is so important, see my three essays in celebration of the book’s 50th anniversary, especially Part I, “Courage To Face a Lifetime” (Sept. 27, 2007). (Part II, “Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus,” discusses my favorite passages of the book and is recommended for people who have already read the novel; otherwise, it might contain some “spoilers.” Part III, my report on the 50th anniversary conference in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the Atlas Society in October 2007, also contains the text of my talk, on the significance of Atlas Shrugged in terms of “Completing the American Revolution.”) Anyone who hasn’t yet read Ayn Rand’s magnificent novel should do so; and everyone who has read it, should read it again. It’s the single most important book to read this summer.
n Green Hell, Murder Mysteries, and Other Recommended Summer Reading Another book that I highly recommend for reading this summer, because of its relevance to current issues in politics and public policy (the above-discussed “tyranny of green bullshit”), is Steven Milloy’s Green Hell (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2009). The subtitle of the book describes its thesis: “How Environmentalist Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.” Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com and is an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Milloy reveals the dark agenda behind the movement to make America “Green”: an authoritarian crusade to dictate the very parameters of our daily lives – where we can live, what transportation we can use, what we can eat, how we heat and power our homes, and even how many children we can have. He shows how the Green movement has gained so much power: “Steamrolling nearly all opposition with its apocalyptic predictions of environmental doom,” it has gained influence throughout American society, from schools and local planning boards to the biggest corporations in the country.” Indeed, one of the strengths of the book is Milloy’s expose of how big businesses have knuckled under to the Greens, even aggressively promoting the green agenda to the detriment of their own stockholders – as well as how Green elites (hypocrites like Al Gore) stand to profit enormously from the restrictions and regulations they seek to impose on the rest of us. As the publisher’s summary describes it, the book is a “comprehensive takedown of the entire environmental movement,” a book that (I hope) will indeed help open Americans’ eyes to “a looming threat to our economy, our civil liberties, and the entire American way of life.” Summer is also the perfect season for reading my favorite genre of fiction: historical murder mysteries. Some recently- or newly-published books that are on my “To Read” list this summer include: Lindsey Davis’s Alexandria, her latest Marcus Didius Falco novel (in which her protagonist, a private “informer” in ancient Rome during the time of the emperor Vespasian, travels to Alexandria, Egypt with his family, on a working vacation); Anne Perry’s Execution Dock, her latest William Monk novel (in which Monk, a former policeman and private detective and now an officer in the Thames River police, investigates a sex-slavery ring involving children and aristocratic pedophiles); and C. J. Samsom’s Revelation (his latest novel in the Matthew Shardlake series, set during the reign of Henry VIII, this one at the time of his sixth and last marriage to Catherine Parr). For more on these books and other historical mysteries that I recommend, see my revised “Guide to Historical Mysteries.” Finally, summer’s also a good season for reading more contemporary mystery novels. And I plan, for my pleasure reading, also to continue reading several books in two “classic” series that are also favorites of mine, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories and Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.
n Summer Movies: A Preview In the classic early-1980s comedy skit TV show, SCTV (with Toronto’s talented Second City comedy troupe), one of the most memorable skits was “The Great White North,” a mock talk show hosted by two beer-drinking Canadian “average Joes” (or should that be, “average Joes, eh?”), the McKenzie brothers, Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas). Bob and Doug frequently did film reviews, judging movies mostly by how explosive they were (literally). Their favorite movies not only “blew `em up,” but really “blew `em up good.” Bob and Doug would be really happy at the movies in the summer of 2009: As USA Today noted in its annual preview, LOUD explosions will be the main theme in this summer’s movies: “Among the titles packed with fire and falling debris over the next few months [are] J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek, with whole planets consumed by cosmic weaponry; Quentin Tarantino’s World War II campfest Inglorious Basterds, blowing up the placid French countryside; the fantasy soldier saga G.I. Joe; and sequels to Transformers, Terminator and X-Men, which threaten to wipe out life on earth” (“Yay, it’s the end of the world! Upcoming movies promise to blow the lid off summer,” April 24). (Another theme, identified in a more recent USA Today article, is that of the “origin” story – which also characterizes both the X-Men and Star Trek films – and the hidden sequels. “Nervous that moviegoers are weary of sequels, studios are downplaying the continuing stories entirely. For this summer’s franchise pictures, numerals have been retired . . . . There’s this week’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (the second installment), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (also Part 2, June 24), and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (the third chapter, July 1).” (“Film franchises successfully turning back time,” May 21). Some of the new action movies are worth seeing. These include the first two big box-office successes of the season, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which debuted May 1) and Star Trek (which debuted May 8). Wolverine is a worthy addition to the X-Men movie series, featuring the personable (and incredibly versatile actor) Hugh Jackman as the most intriguing of the “mutants.” And director J.J. Abrams’ “reimagining” (to use Hollywood lingo) of the origins of Star Trek: The Original Series, the maiden voyage of NCC 1701, the starship Enterprise, is an interesting film that should appeal to both fans and neophytes alike. (Although some Trekker purists may object – or, at the very least, raise both eyebrows, a la Spock – to the way the story plays fast and loose with the Gene Roddenberry canon, the liberties can be rationalized by the movie’s time travel/alternate universe main plot line, a staple of the Star Trek genre of films. And the actors who portray the young original crew of the Enterprise are inspired choices, led by Chris Pine as the young James T. Kirk and Zachary Pinto as the young Spock. My favorite was the 20-year-old Anton Yelchin as the young Chekhov, who nearly steals the movie with his over-the-top Russian accent – even though he’s a genuine Russian-American.) Most of this summer’s blockbuster action films, however, aren’t worth seeing (except perhaps at a bargain matinee if one has nothing better to do); they’re merely big-budget exercises in gratuitous violence and special effects. Movies on my “not-worth-seeing” list include: Terminator Salvation (May 21) (a prequel to the Terminator series, which despite no-doubt solid performances by Christian Bale as Connor and Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese, unfortunately will showcase much too much violence); Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June 26) (in the original, the huge special effects almost overwhelmed lead actor Shia LaBeouf’s charm, and in the sequel the even-huger effects and violence are almost sure to do so); G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (August 7) (I wasn’t a fan of the toy, so I have no interest in the movie). And, of course, the film that surely will epitomize gratuitous violence this summer: Quentin Tarantino’s WWII flick, Inglorious Basterds (August 21) (a more appropriate misspelling in the title would use a “u” instead of an “e”). Movies that I do look forward to seeing include, at the top of the list, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 15), the sixth installment in the Harry Potter film series which promises to be, like its five predecessors, a remarkably faithful adaptation of J.K. Rowlings’ magical book. Some comedies that promise to be amusing, in a light-hearted summer kind of way, include Land of the Lost (June 5), a big-budget update of the campy `70s show for kids, starring the amusing Will Ferrell; The Proposal (June 19), a romantic comedy starring the likeable Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock (and featuring Betty White as – surprise! surprise! – a dirty old lady); Bruno (July 10), a quirky comedy starring the versatile Sacha Baron Cohen (star and co-creator of Borat) as a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion expert; and Funny People (July 31), Judd Apatow’s latest combination of bawdy humor tempered with sentiment, starring Adam Sandler as a famous stand-up comedian dying of a blood disorder, with Seth Rogan as the man’s protégé and friend. Finally, one film that no doubt will have much violence but which will probably be worth seeing nevertheless is the real-crime drama Public Enemies (July 1), with Johnny Depp as the notorious criminal John Dillinger and Christian Bale as his nemesis, G-man Melvin Purvis.
| Link to this Entry | Posted Monday, May 25, 2009 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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