President Obama's Star Trek

Maureen Dowd apparently saw the new Star Trek movie and was filled with hope that her job at the New York Times could be saved. She compares President Obama to Spock. "I dreamed that Spock saved our planet, The Daily Planet of journalism." She does make some good points about the decline in serious journalism. Blogger Glenn Reynolds thinks that serious investigative reporting is the place where newspapers have real advantages over the New Media.

To Maureen Dowd, President Obama is a new kind of Spock - an intellectual who keeps his own emotions in check (like the old Spock) but who can evoke intense emotion in others - to "charm both worlds".

Commanding his own unwieldy starship of blended species, with Cheney, Limbaugh and other pitiless Borg aliens firing phasers from all sides, Mr. Obama has certainly invoked Mr. Spock’s Vulcan philosophy of “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” And he even recruited some impulsive Rahmulen muscle for his Utopia.

HIS Utopia. Think about that as you watch the video linked below. Remember all the things that went wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, with brilliant utopian plans in the 20th century.

In his new (low-budget) Afterburner video, Bill Whittle takes Dowd's Star Trek analogy and runs with it, with some snark between the serious points. He gives an interesting history of the Star Trek series, "the only genuinely American mythology in the modern world", before moving on to his main points.

Worth your time and deep thought, even if you don't agree with everything he says. For a little chuckle, check out the ironic caption under Captain Kirk at the very end of Bill Whittle's video (and his performance in the YouTube video linked here).

Whittle makes a reference to a farm boy, too. Victor Davis Hanson's piece fits in with Bill Whittle's video quite nicely.

VDH on Obama's Foreign Outreach

Victor Davis Hanson has the rather unusual and valuable perspective of a university professor who is also a farmer. He farms raisins up the road from us in Selma. A tough business. He wonders here how long it will be until President Obama gains "wisdom about the tragic universe in which we live".

In the first segment of his essay,

Obama Versus the Way of the Universe

VDH discusses the short-term focus of the Obama Administration's deficit spending and "Deficit Foreign Policy, Too".

VDH expects positive short-term effects from Obama's recent "I've changed America" speeches abroad. His favorite line from Obama's Cairo speech was the apology on Gitmo "where inmates have laptops and Mediterranean food,"

spoken to millions whose societies kill and maim tens of thousands in Gulags on a yearly  basis.

But though he expect short-term benefits, VDH doesn't share the enthusiasm of Evan Thomas during Obama's foreign tour that he's sort of God .

VDH thinks that Obama "hits against human nature" in his outreach to hostile governments and that only "someone who has not been in the real world, but only marketed rhetoric without consequences (e.g., if Obama had a bad day organizing, or legislating, was he fired?) could believe . . " that his conciliatory language would change the way the world works on a long-term basis.

By way of illustration, VDH presents a personal story:

A Farmer's Tale

"In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself–at 26."
Read the whole thing. The tale has a surprise ending.

Have you read it yet? A few observations:

Stephen R. Covey frequently speaks about the differences between relatively natural systems, such as a farm or caring for an infant, and more artificial systems such as academia and politics. He makes the point that on a farm, it becomes obvious right away if you have taken actions which do not take into account the laws of nature. If you plant too deep or put off planting at the proper time, you just won't get a crop. If you skip weeding, your crop will be meager. If you talk real nice to your neighbor while he steals your water, then go to the Water Board and expect them to do something, you could lose your farm to your neighbor in short order. The laws of human nature become obvious quickly on the farm, too.

In more artificial systems, natural laws are not as obvious, and they often operate more slowly. The day of reckoning is often delayed for a long time. In academia, for example, if you're clever, you can sometimes figure out what the teacher wants you to say or write, and get along fine for quite a long time by saying the right words and skating by on minimal actions. Sometimes you can even figure out how to improve your odds of answers on tests which will impress the teacher, rather than studying. But eventually, the deficiencies in your true learning become evident, sometimes all at once. Covey got a serious ulcer in graduate school when he finally went head-to-head in oral exams with fellow students who were less clever at gaming the system than he had been, but who had paid the price to actually learn their subject matter. He talks about the rewards for following through on an appropriate plan in discussing the "Law of the Harvest."

VDH talks elsewhere about how the baby-boomer generation is the first in America to consume more than it produces - to live off the work of past generations and foreign creditors. We are not producing much of a harvest. We've been living on credit and promises for some time now. The current administration seems to be extending this trend with truly massive deficit spending and "deficit foreign policy". Wonder how long it will be until it catches up with us in a really dramatic way?

Maybe there are some things we can do to make the shock less severe when it comes.

Media bias? What media bias?

I posted on Newsweek's plan to transform itself into a sophisticated liberal journal three days ago, with Iowahawk's insightful "walk a mile in my shoes" take on the magazine's counter-intuitive plan to reduce subscriptions. And the rather surprising announcement that Stephen Colbert will guest-edit Newsweek. Because the first step toward becoming a really serious political journal is to hire a television satirist as a guest editor. Wild. Wonder how he'll do editing George Will?

Today, we learned that Newsweek's Evan Thomas has said,

"I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world, he's sort of God."

Don't know about sophisticated, but Mr. Thomas has had the liberal part down for quite some time. The magazine cover for Newsweek's next issue.

Former Classics Professor Victor Davis Hanson (not of Newsweek), thinks of the function of the chorus in ancient Greek drama as he observes today's media:

The slavish manner in which the media lock stepped into Bush the near-fascist for tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, renditions, Patriot Act, Iraq, and Guantanamo; followed by choruses of Obama the sensitive, anguished overseer of tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, renditions, Patriot Act, Iraq, and Guantanamo was one of the most frightening things I ‘ve seen in a free society in 50 years.

Update: More adulation. from TIME, the New York Times and others.

Update 2:  The plan to become a serious liberal journal didn't work out for Newsweek any better than we thought it would.  The Washington Post had to sell it to the husband of a Democratic congresswoman.

June 6, 1944

What did YOU do on June 6 this year? What Eisenhower said to the troops before that day, plus a remembrance of June 6, 1944 by Reagan here. More from Reagan here, and from Obama here.

Update: Normandy's gratitute has not faded.

Via Wretchard at Belmont Club: One last time, without the politicians. It got to me.

20 Years Since Tiananmen Square

A friend reminded me through a Twitter post that the Tiananmen Square Massacre was 20 years ago today. Claudia Rosett was there. She provides an eyewitness account and places the protest in historical context. Her short summary of events leading up to this massacre is a wonderful review of history. Read the whole thing. She concludes:

If you have ever looked at that famous photo of the lone man near the square, facing a column of tanks, and been deeply moved, then I would say you have understood the heartfelt cry we now refer to by the shorthand of Tiananmen.

Whatever the complex forces still playing out beneath the surface in China, that uprising was a message about the universal desire for freedom, a message with which--however muffled it may often seem--it would be richly rewarding to keep faith.

UPDATE: An interesting variety of perspectives on Tiananmen and other peaceful protests and the responses of human rights organizations to actions against those protests. The comments include a link to a newly-released photo of Tank Man from the New York Times.

We also learn that Deng's son was thrown from a roof and paralyzed by the Red Guard. This book tells the astonishing story of another target of the Red Guard. If I recall correctly, there were reports that her only child, a daughter, may have killed by throwing her off a roof. My Mom gave the book to me. The author may have unwittingly played a role in the later liberalization of China. An amazingly strong, principled, intelligent woman. A remarkable book.

UPDATE 2: June 4, 1989 was an important date for another reason, too. It was the beginning of freedom in Poland. History is full of little ironies, isn't it? Interesting that Gary Cooper would become the image of freedom in Poland.

Government Motors

Iowahawk tried to warn us last November. Watch the video.

Looking toward the future:
31 years old? Not yet graduated? No automotive experience? Sort of frightening. You may want to follow the links.

Playboy caters to hate-filled segment of the Left

Newsweek is apparently not the only magazine which is deliberately limiting its customer base. Playboy may have miscalculated in its latest attempt to be "edgy". The link to Ed Driscoll is work-safe. There are lots of secondary links. Can't guarantee all of them. Check out the comments from liberals quoted in Driscoll's post. I won't repeat them here.

From the comments, it appears that Hugh Hefner's daughter is on President Obama's business advisory council. Unfortunate.

Key observations on the hatred of conservative women demonstrated by the short-lived Playboy article which was the subject of this post:

Ed Morrissey

The fact that the magazine published this piece of effluvium should be enough to show that everyone in the editorial process, from the writer to Hef himself, don’t want women empowered. They want silent sex objects, and when confronted with women whose opinions differ from theirs, want them humiliated.

Ed Driscoll

(conservative women are) not human to the identity politics-obsessed left, because they think different.

Much like the 2008 Democratic primary, and the election season that followed . . . it’s helped to shed a glimmer of light on a remarkably primitive side to what’s commonly called “liberalism” or “progressivism” these days.

"Primitive." How very true. Read the whole thing. It's not just Playboy. And liberal women (like Hillary Clinton) can also become targets of verbal savagery by people to the left of them.

GOAL? To get prominent conservative women (and insufficiently liberal women) to Shut Up.

Newsweek's Survival Strategy. Bonus: Iowahawk, Colbert

Newspapers all over the country and venerable weekly news magazines like TIME and Newsweek are suffering financially. Some of their problems are due to competition from the New Media and the "personality" rags. Some of their problems are self-inflicted. They don't have enough "meat" for a serious weekly, and they're not flashy or gossipy enough to compete with "People" et al. They don't fit the interests of the American populace as well as they used to, up to about the time when Dennis Prager, still in high school, remembers stores in NYC devoted primarily to customers interested in a wide range of serious journals and competing newspapers. Many of these customers had never attended college. Something changed in the 1960s. Newspapers and magazines, already weakened by television and societal changes, really began to struggle later, as more and more people started turning to the internet for news and analysis.

Newsweek's editor, John Meacham, has decided that the way for Newsweek to survive is to become a serious political journal again. He realizes that subscriptions will be seriously reduced, but he wishes to focus on a serious core audience. Jim Geraghty compares Newsweek with The Economist, the journal most admired by Mr. Meacham. As I recall, The Economist was first recommended to me when I worked in So Cal by a visiting Irish colleague or by a Hungarian colleague who spoke 7 or 8 languages. I found The Economist to be very worthwhile. Though I never bought it. I either read our department's copy or the company library's copy. I used to enjoy reading TIME sometimes, a really long time ago, but it's changed. I don't remember ever being particularly excited about Newsweek. Though some of the columns, by George Will et al, were good.

Here, Iowahawk channels a three-week-old copy of Newsweek. Too good.

UPDATE: Was Newsweek stung a little by Iowahawk's piece? They've engaged another satirist, Stephen Colbert, as their guest editor for the next edition. That will convince people that they're a serious journal.

Focus on Hollywood

Andrew Breitbart: a man with a mission

I wrote a little post on Andrew Breitbart and his father-in-law Orson Bean at the beginning of the year, soon after Breitbart started his newest website, Big Hollywood. Breitbart has sharpened and limited his focus to exposing media bias and to combating the "totalitarian" culture in today's Hollywood. A David and Goliath sort of mission, it seems to me.

Peter Robinson interviews Andrew Breitbart about his new project in a 5-part video here. It's an interesting little series on an influential person you've not heard much about. Peter Robinson's interviewing style is a bit too animated for my taste, but he asks some very interesting questions. If you decide to watch any of the segments below, press the "start" button in the middle of the video frame, then click on the "full screen" button at the lower right for best sound and video quality. Press "Esc." to exit the full screen mode.

Breitbart characterizes those who now control Hollywood in very negative terms in Part 1 of these interviews. He gives a specific example of how the Left uses projection - accusing those they intend to target of the behavior they themselves intend to engage in. During the Bush years, the refrain "Dissent is patriotic" was constant from the left. Yet when questioned, they couldn't name anyone who was limiting their dissent. After Obama came into the presidency, the same people who had earlier proclaimed that "dissent is patriotic" engaged in vigorous efforts to vilify and silence dissent. focusing in particular on people like Rush Limbaugh.

In Part 2, Breitbart talks about how the Hollywood Left silences other points of view in Hollywood. He also believes that the views of a small, culturally insulated, parochial group of people in Hollywood, numbering in the low thousands, have a profound impact on American foreign policy. In Part 3, he talks about the beginnings of his disillusionment with the Left, and about how he, when already a conservative, came to be the developer of the liberal website, Huffington Post.

Part 4: Why talk radio is dominated by the Right and the blogosphere is dominated by the Left. Projection again: Hollywood and the media accuse the Right of doing what they intend to do to others. In Part 5, Peter Robinson can't get Andrew Breitbart to talk about national politics. Breitbart again makes it clear that his focus is on media bias and Hollywood political culture. He discusses how he became a fiscal conservative (in his evolution from liberal to libertarian to conservative) - after reading authors he had not been exposed to in college - Hayek, Burke, etc.

Dennis Prager mentions from time to time how surprised he was that his fellow students in college and grad school seldom did any serious reading which was not required by their professors. Conservatives are much more likely to be exposed to serious liberal thought than the other way around. Liberal academics often don't seem to see much need to expose their students to opposing views, (though they do expose students to variations on liberal themes) because they are confident that their own views are superior. And intellectual curiosity among college graduates is rare. A far greater number of serious political journals existed before the 1970s than exist now. And venerable news magazines - Time, Newsweek, etc., have dumbed down their content with the rising number of college graduates.

Rare is the American on the Left who can speak intelligently about serious conservative political thought, without resorting to distortions and stereotypes. Sad.