Hollywood, Howard Zinn and the Fellowship of the Ring

Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky deconstruct The Fellowship of the Ring. "I’m pretty sure this is a parody, but, really, how can you tell the difference?" Heh.

Radical historian Howard Zinn died a year ago today. But his influence is still very strong.  It would be fine to have the viewpoint of a radical historian broadly considered in America if so many people did not consider it to be the ONLY VALID viewpoint.

Recommended as companion reading to Zinn's signature book: Paul Johnson's A History of the American People.

Former radical Ron Radosh wrote a piece in Minding the Campus the day after Zinn died:

Howard Zinn's death yesterday affords us the opportunity to evaluate the remarkable influence he has had on the American public's understanding of our nation's past. His book A People's History of the United States, published in 1980 with a first printing of 5000 copies, went on to sell over two million. To this day some 128,000 new copies are sold each year. That alone made Zinn perhaps the single most influential historian whose works have reached multitudes of Americans. Indeed, Zinn found that his book was regularly adopted as a text in high schools and most surprisingly, in many colleges and universities. . .

Zinn was aided in getting his book attention by two youthful neighbors, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. When both became movie stars, they used their celebrity to popularize Zinn's work and to help bring it to a wide audience. As Damon told the press recently, Zinn's message showed that what our ancestors rebelled "against oftentimes are exactly the same things we're up against now." Zinn himself added a few weeks ago that his hope was that his work will spread new rebellion, and "lead into a larger movement for economic justice."

So, Matt Damon ---  from the ultra-rich, insulated, shark-filled artificial world of Hollywood  (a world rife with nepotism,  cronyism and people who believe themselves to be very important)  --- imagines himself to be one of the common folk within   Zinn's "continuous rebellion of the masses against oppression" narrative.  Figures.  Sort of reminds me of the French aristocracy play-acting as shepherds and milkmaids to escape the intrigues of the Court.

From Zinn's perspective, history should not be told from the standpoints of generals or presidents, but through that of people who struggle for their rights, who engage in strikes, boycotts, slave rebellions and the like. Its purpose should be to encourage similar behavior today. Indeed, Zinn candidly said that history was not about "understanding the past," but rather, about "changing the future." That statement alone should have disqualified anyone from referring to him as a historian.

Zinn did not exempt President Barack Obama who he thought was both "a mediocre" and "dangerous president" from his criticism. In the last article he wrote, that appeared in The Nation last week, Zinn argued that Obama's foreign policy was "no different from a Republican," that he was "nationalist, expansionist, imperial and warlike." As for his proposed domestic programs, he found them "limited" and "cautious." He also did not approve of the apparent decision to try those responsible for 9/11, and referred to them as "suspected terrorists," who "have not been found guilty."

Zinn was certainly entitled to his perspective, widely held by many in the academy, but its danger lies in the favorable reception he often got from those who know little. As one of his proteges, Dave Zirin, writes on The Huffington Post: "With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States." That, precisely, is the problem.

Back in the day when there was still a difference between "liberal" and "leftist", Zinn was investigated by the FBI, like many of the Hollywood Left. They were later successful in demonizing those who questioned their communist affiliations, and the dominant Hollywood culture still endlessly brings up the blacklisting of those years -- while they blacklist others who don't agree with their ideology.

Orson Bean is old enough to have been blacklisted once in Hollywood for being a communist ("kind of cool, except for losing your career") and again for becoming more conservative. He describes the second blacklisting as much more difficult.  Bean's difficult experiences helped lead his son-in-law, Andrew Breitbart, to rebel against the Hollywood Left and become a libertarian/conservative activist.  Funny how these things are connected.

Ultimate Recycling

It's hard to imagine that someone who went to school at Berkeley and who writes as well as Richard Fernandez was once affiliated with a street gang that prowled around a smoky garbage dump.

I finally ran into a photoblog which accurately conveys something of the landscape in certain scenes of my novel, No Way In. The My Sari-sari Store site is a treasure-house of images that capture a world that very few people, least of all the better sort of indigenes, will ever know. The photoblog is subtitled Happyland: a look into the world of the utterly, utterly poor. That is a title of genius which could only have been generated by somebody who truly “knows” that millieu and can be used to describe the entire civilization of the islands. It is not entirely facetious. The people who live in Happyland feel the same sorrow, but also the same joy that every human being feels.

“Sa Tondo man, ay may langit din” is code phrase which means that “we too can reach heaven” and is often uttered in an undertone to assert a fundamental equality of humanity with those who zip by in automobiles. It is the key to deciphering the us versus them dynamic of a Third World society of which the diplomatic set usually knows only the upper crust. The people eating the food salvaged from dumpsters, or living off the trash are brothers in their own way, to the poor in Cairo and those who want a better life. That is the half we should get to know if we want to understand what the societies of our “allies” are really built on. There is value to running around with the English speaking elite, and swap stories of common memories at Georgetown, but it is the people of Happyland, who, in whatever language, make up the bulk of those who are aspirational.

Take a look through the photos:

The photos are great. They are not compositions of pity, but depictions of people whose sufferings while not to be underestimated have a humanity that is not undervalued. I am particularly grateful to Happyland photos for depictions of scavenging, which readers will remember from the book. Note this scavenging is the genteel stuff, not the hard core demonic scene that characterized Smokey Mountain. . . 

I looked up an old Belmont Club post I remembered from before the blog was moved to Pajamas Media, when I only knew Fernandez as "Wretchard".  It is about hazards facing the very poor, including those at Smokey Mountain in the Philippines:

. . . Many years ago I actually lived for some months in and around a dump site far worse than the one which collapsed. It was known as Smokey Mountain; and the infernal fires which arose from it night and day were caused by the spontaneous combustion of organic material underfoot. If anything resembled a terrestrial version of hell, it was Smokey Mountain at night with garbage trucks snaking up the hill amidst pillars of fire and smoke, attended by what seemed innumerable legions of imps. The site was featured in many documentaries which purported to show the horror of life in the Third World, but I can tell you, from first hand experience, that the denizens of Smokey Mountain considered themselves to be comparatively lucky. They had a guaranteed income. . . 

A tremendous amount of recycling was achieved in this way. What you have to understand is that the garbage which finally settled to the bottom of Smokey Mountain had been stripped of its last usable material. It was picked clean. Most of Manila's cardboard, a considerable percentage of its glass bottles and quite a bit of its scrap metal came from the labor of thousands of scavengers. From a certain point of view it was the epitome of "appropriate technology". It was almost fantastically "Green". And come to think of it, it was mostly honest labor.

For those who think that understanding a "carbon footprint" is all there is to knowing about environmentalism, a spell in the Third World would be an interesting experience, though I'm damned if I can say what lesson it conveys. As for myself, I can distinctly recall reading Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine during that period, a novel about a revolutionary in Italy whose passwords were "never a rose without a thorn". Yes indeed. Never a rose without a thorn.

UPDATE: Wretchard describes in the comments some of the features of society in the Phillippines which make "Happyland" almost inevitable, and how those conditions could be changed.

Newsweek finds a new way to keep the Big Lie alive

NEWSWEEK,  the magazine that the Washington Post sold for one dollar, makes a new effort to remain relevant. They devise a way to further the big lie about a connection between the Arizona shootings and the Tea Party -- indirectly but very obviously, with cover art of an assassin wrapped in an American flag.

The cover story by Jonathan Alter is more than 2,000 words. And what one word does not appear in that article? Zeitgeist. 

Remember when Newsweek used to do reporting?

There is absolutely no excuse for Newsweek's false image of America-loving assassins now that so much is known about the Arizona shooter. Even if they believe The Narrative with all their hearts. The astute Andrew Klavan, way back on January 9:

. . . Indeed, the Left’s hysterical response to all who disagree with it — that they are racist or sexist or “phobic” or somehow reminiscent of Hitler — has become so predictable that satirists, from the libertarian Greg Gutfeld to the liberal Jon Stewart, have made fun of it in routines.

But never mind that, because the Left’s sudden talk about incendiary political rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shooting isn’t really about political rhetoric at all. It’s about the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere—the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad, not to mention the frequently fatal effects of delirious environmentalism. Europe is in debt and on fire. American citizens are in political revolt. Even the most left-wing president ever is making desperate overtures to his right.

But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith:  the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth.

The Arizona shooter lived in his own dark little world. The Left's utopian dream world is a brighter place, but it isn't sustainable. It's falling apart before their eyes.  Their dark side is becoming more transparent as they become more desperate, and as alternative voices are more accessible.

Daniel Henninger explains one foundation of "The Narrative".

There has been a great effort this week to come to grips with the American left's reaction to the Tucson shooting. Paul Krugman of the New York Times and its editorial page, George Packer of the New Yorker, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and others, in varying degrees, have linked the murders to the intensity of opposition to the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. As Mr. Krugman asked in his Monday commentary: "Were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?"

The "you" would be his audience, and the answer is yes, they thought that in these times "something like this" could happen in the United States. Other media commentators, without a microbe of conservatism in their bloodstreams, have rejected this suggestion.

So what was the point? Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief. . .

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the "intensity" that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: "Can't we all just get along?" Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's piece for Harper's may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter's essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right. . . 

Read the whole thing.  They REALLY MUST believe that Repulicans are dangerous.  Noam Chomsky is quoted below.  His textbooks recently sold more than any other author at the UCLA bookstore (don't know if he's still the top seller).  He has said, among other things, that we have to be balanced in our thinking about Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia -  considering the benefits as well as the losses.  Pol Pot's goal was to totally obliterate the people's memory of their culture so he could build a new, pure one.   The only "benefit" I know of is that he killed off practically everyone who knew how to farm, so the "non-evil" people (those who weren't considered dangerous because the didn't wear eyeglasses or exhibit any significant sign of education) had nothing to eat.:

“The latest election....you could almost interpret it as a kind of death knell for the species," (said) Chomsky, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

Oh, boy.

And remember that libeling the Right is the only way the Left can win.

Libeling the Right: The only way the Left can win* in America

Dennis Prager:

Last week, following the murder of six people and the attempted murder of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, the American people were given a vivid display of the single most important tactic of the left: libeling opponents.

Most Americans have been naively and blissfully unaware of this aspect of the left's arsenal against the right. But now, just as more Americans than ever before understand the left's limitless appetite for political power in an ever-expanding state, more Americans than ever before understand that a key to the left's success is defaming the right.

Read the whole thing, or listen to this related audio. One of the few times I've heard Prager yell.

The Left is starting to have a hard time getting people to believe The Narrative, because leftist policies are failing all over the world.

* Although sometimes the Republicans help them out by doing stupid stuff which they can exaggerate, mock and misrepresent. Non-progressives will usually only vote for a leftist if they think the Right is worse.

Obscure Kennedy History

The Memorial of the Inauguration of JFK

The 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration seems to have brought out the history buffs. At the 50th anniversary commemoration at the Kennedy Center, they read a poem by Robert Frost, but not the one he recited at the inauguration, nor the one he had intended to read:

Both of these poems are pugnacious, echoing of American exceptionalism, and a bit bloody. The Kennedy's decision to trade them out for "The Road Not Taken," is an interesting one.

Instead, they chose the "The Road Not Taken", which I memorized as a child (got my only standing ovation at school from reciting a Frost poem). The rejection of history at the commemoration is one more indication of how much the dominant culture's values have changed in 50 years. (Though I think "Left on Left violence" actually started out as "Left on Liberal" violence. The political rhetoric of the Democratic Party under Kennedy included many elements of classical liberalism). We need to start using more specific language.

The Prelude to Watergate

Fifty years ago next week, Richard Nixon stood uncomfortably on the Capitol's inaugural platform and watched his rival John F. Kennedy being sworn in as president. "We won" the election, Nixon fumed, "but they stole it from us."

Indeed, the dirty tricks that helped defeat Nixon were more devious than merely the ballot-stuffing of political lore. In one of the least-known chapters of 20th-century political history, Kennedy operatives secretly paid off an informant and set in motion a Watergate-like burglary that sabotaged Nixon's campaign on the eve of the election. . . .

Indeed, the mysterious break-in to recover Nixon's incriminating financial documents convinced him that such burglaries were standard practice in national politics. Nixon vowed that he would never be caught unprepared again, and he ultimately established his own corps of hard-nosed operatives to carry out espionage and sabotage, which culminated in the botched break-in a dozen years later at the Watergate office of the Democratic Party.

A half-century afterward, Washington still lives with the residue of the Kennedys' little-known dirty trick, which helped unleash our modern scandal culture and continues to influence politics and media today.

So, it wasn't just Joe Kennedy paying off the Daley machine in Chicago to stuff ballot boxes? The author of this piece has written a book about the rise of the modern scandal culture during this time period. It's still with us.

Keith Olbermann: First Casualty of the New Civility?

Or maybe the first casualty of the buyout of NBC and its subsidiaries like MSNBC from GE by Comcast.  Al Franken is upset because the FCC approved the sale, which he thinks increases the corporate control of the media.  He may have a valid point. But it's better than government control. And GE is a very big corporation, too.  Franken didn't seem too upset by it's control of the NBC family of stations. GE seemed to get some really special treatment during the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress. And:

The FCC just approved GE’s sale of MSNBC’s parent company — NBC/Universal — to Comcast. The Obama administration just hired GE’s CEO to a big position.

I think some moves are being made behind the scene.

Hey, Olbermann, this was the president you wanted.

Don't feel too bad for Keith. Word is he'll still get his 7 million per year salary for the next couple of years or so. Conservative Bloggers Hardest Hit. Really. Larry O'Donnell and Ed Schultz are hateful, too, but they just don't have Olbermann's mockable ability to project self-importance.  Olbermann has a touch of a sense of humor, too.

Say is isn't so, Keith:  Keith Olbermann GREEDY?  But he's a Progressive.  Forgetting about the Little People on his staff?  Not possible.  He's a Progressive.

James Taranto: "My one regret in life so far: I was "Worst Person in the World" only once. Proud of having beaten out both Louis Farrakhan and John Stossel, though."

Memories:

The keyboard  Video

Daily Caller got under Keith's skin by buying his .com domain name.

Keith takes personal responsibility for Tucson.  Week in review by someone who watched so we didn't have to.

B-b-but… what’s going to happen to the new civility now? "Just kidding. Enjoy your new martyr, lefties!"  Keith's farewell broadcast video.

Snark from the Left: He who must not be named.  (watch video)

The New Civility in Washington D.C.

Well, that didn't last long.  Why is it that almost certain that when liberals (or Democrats) accuse conservatives (or Republicans) of some sin, it is a sin which they have just committed themselves or are planning to commit in the near future?

Relatively moderate Democrat Steve Cohen compared Republicans to Nazis with regard to the health care bill.  Even though Hitler promoted government-run health care.  He later said that he was really only comparing their lies to Nazi propaganda.  But they weren't lying.

Ironically, Cohen had at one time been attacked in an extremely uncivil manner by more liberal Democrats and was defended by conservatives and libertarians.  I heard as a guest on Dennis Prager's program -- TWICE (once when being smeared by his Democratic primary rival (with references both to the KKK and to his Jewish heritage - go figure) and again after his election when his request for membership in the Congressional Black Caucus was rejected even though he represents a majority-black district. I thought he sounded pretty reasonable and have read mostly good things about him.

He seems to have changed.  Note Cohen's ridiculous comparison of the Tea Party to the KKK (with a little reminder of the Nazis thrown in) on radio in the first video here. This vicious, bigoted characterization was accepted nonchalantly by the hosts of the program, probably because they are used to stereotyping Tea Partiers as the wrong kind of white people.  They've chosen their designated villain, and no evidence is necessary.  (Update:  one of these Young Turks is evidently ideological enough to be tapped to come on board at MSNBC after Olbermann's departure).

The second video includes an earlier news report about his Democratic Party primary rival connecting Cohen to the KKK.  This is way too ironic to make sense. Maybe he developed Stockholm Syndrome after he was elected due to pressure by the liberal Democratic juggernaut in the 111th Congress.

Congressman Cohen's speech on the house floor presented an opportunity for a civility test for liberals. Would they speak out against what Cohen said? Jon Stewart did.  (language alert)

Iowahawk is not what most people would call a liberal, but this is very funny. Note the recycle link at the bottom of the piece.

Are there any better ideas for increasing civility in Washington D.C.? How about a return to the principles of classical liberalism?   Some advice from George Washington would probably not hurt, either.

Negotiating childhood disabilities

Movie review of "The King's Speech" with a link to an interview of the leading actor:

I grew out of a stutter when I was a kid so long ago that I had almost forgotten it, but watching "The King's Speech" over the holidays brought back some painful memories. The "King's Speech" is a wonderful movie, the kind that just about the whole family can enjoy together without embarrassment and that audiences spontaneously applaud when the credits start rolling (as the one we were in did).

Also at Powerline, Thomas Sowell (now 80) wrote a book about fighting through the special education establishment in dealing with his son's disability.  Recommended by parents.

Perry Mason could teach today's reporters a few things

Too many reporters in the big national news organzations today take a very superficial, predictable approach to their stories. They shape their stories to fit a pre-determined template, usually based (wittingly or unwittingly) in their political ideology and consistent with stories by their colleagues.

Similarly, in the Perry Mason mysteries on TV, we usually first saw a "Designated Villain" story line, typically set up by the real villain or an accomplice.  This story line was usually reinforced by biased witnesses and  (unintentionally) accepted by unbiased witnesses and the prosecution.   If Perry Mason had not challenged the "Designated Villain" story line in the TV dramas, ALL of his clients would have lost in court.

In the fictional world of Perry Mason, the police and prosecution were usually honorable even if they didn't dig deep enough during their investigations.  Unfortunately, in the real world, not all police or prosecutors are this unbiased and honorable as the ones in these TV dramas. And Perry Mason (like professor K.C. Johnson) would have faced additional challenges in the real world.

We would hope that reporters would act fairly and honorably in gathering and reporting as much pertinent information on their stories as possible - just as we would hope that prosecutors would look into all the evidence fairly before charging a suspect.  Assuming honorable intentions and adherence to established ethical standards, if the prosecution had used some of the investigative techniques used by Perry Mason in the TV stories, there would be fewer people falsely accused of murder in these TV dramas.  Similarly, if reporters in the mainstream media (and their editorial support) did a little more investigation and/or reported fairly on what they found, there would more truth in their reporting and less drama when their reports are challenged by the NEW MEDIA, readers or viewers.

So, how do we spot bias or falsehoods in news stories?

Perry Mason is not conducting classes for incurious or biased reporters (or for their readers or viewers). And most reporters don't have a Della Street or Paul Drake to do research for them, even if they wanted to present a fair and accurate story. So I guess we'll have to turn to attorney Gabriel Malor for a detailed explanation of how bias and false conclusions are introduced into a story.

Malor demonstrates how a (probably idealistic) reporter for CNN reinforced his desired narrative to present a story which would "make a difference", by focusing on a designated villain and reinforcing his case that this villain was a genuine villain without presenting any facts whatsoever to support this designation.  Read the whole thing.  The CNN report came AFTER the initial flurry of national media reports blaming the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for the Arizona shootings had been shot down.  There was no excuse for this desperate  attempt to keep "The Narrative" alive: 

This type of slime job relies on several techniques common to bad fiction, but the central trope is the Designated Villain.

The Designated Villain, like its counterpart the Designated Hero -- about which I wrote here in relation to the President -- occurs when an author violates the "Show, Don't Tell" rule. A character is treated by the author and the other characters as the villain of the work even though the character hasn't actually done anything to justify this treatment. Quite simply since the protagonists oppose him, he must be the bad guy, even if all his evil occurs off screen and is barely mentioned. The villainy has to be assumed by the reader.

Like the Designated Hero, the Designated Villain is very much present in modern reporting. Fortunately, unlike fiction in which the reader has no choice but to accept the assumptions made by the author, we do not have to accept the assumptions of reporters. Here are just a few the CNN reporter uses to designate the Tea Party as the villain of both the Tucson shooting and, illogically, racist violence that occurred fifty years ago:

Malor demolishes the assumptions inherent in the CNN smear job, with the help of Google.  Remember as you read his piece that reporters can access Google, too.  Not to mention search engines designed  precisely to help the media present accurate stories.  And the layers of editors and fact-checkers which are supposed to increase our confidence in the Mainstream Media.  An example of information which could have easily been found by CNN if they were really interested in reporting the truth:

Please, please, please click the second link and watch the whole thing to see the Tea Partiers asking Giffords not to treat them like "a mob" and Giffords talking about the Tea Party and swastikas. That's how far from reality the CNN reporter wanders. Rather than shouting her down, the Tea Partiers tried to get her to state her positions and treat them with respect. In return, she slandered them with a Nazi comparison.

 We need to teach the kinds of analytical skills demonstrated in Gabriel Malor's piece to ALL STUDENTS. Particularly in journalism school, if reporters want to restore some trust in the mainstream media.

This is the problem with designating a villain outside of fiction. The assumptions necessary to make it work depend on the reader to be utterly ignorant of reality. In the real world, charged political rhetoric is common and rarely leads to violence. But to liberals, it is a feature of "right-wing" political speech and someone always ends up getting hurt. Evidence? No evidence required. . . 

Fortunately, the "working press" (particularly the local press) did a better job that the elite national press on this overall issue.  And the New Media helped get the truth out, too.