Category: Miscellaneous

On Andrew Sullivan

Based on his recent columns in New York Magazine and the reactions to them, I’m sure that when liberals look at Andrew Sullivan’s latest piece, with the self-explanatory title “The Gay Rights Movement Is Undoing Its Best Work” they will accuse him of overreacting in such a way as to be an even bigger overreaction.

Not that Sullivan is above criticism. I think he protests too much when he says that the gay rights movement of his day succeeded by being “not leftist.” This would be news to a lot of people. Indeed, it was mainly Sullivan’s argument that cast gay marriage rights as a conservative position. But that was back when that was still possible. Ironically the very success of the gay rights movement in mainstreaming the community may be why the (non-libertarian) Right is so extreme now. When your movement is not based on ideas so much as grievance against “the establishment”, anti-wokeness is a badge of honor. In any event when Sullivan says: “We emphasized those things that united gays and straights, and we celebrated institutions of integration — such as marriage rights and open military service. We portrayed ourselves as average citizens seeking merely the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else”, that agenda was in common with the previous strain of mainstream liberalism that focused on civil rights for racial minorities. In this regard someone like Martin Luther King was “not-leftist” only in the relative sense of not being Malcolm X.

But Sullivan does have a point. The previous concept of liberalism was something that the average person could relate to. It created empathy for people who had previously been “othered.” This is where a not-leftist like myself would point out that King wanted people to focus not on the color of one’s skin but on the content of one’s character. In that respect, liberal reform advocated not just a government responsibility but a moral aspiration. Insofar as there was anything conservative about this sentiment, it was when Ronald Reagan applied his “morning in America” rhetoric. This optimism worked because it brought Americans together and won a majority for the party in charge, regardless of which party that was. Now of course, Donald Trump says “America First” and “Make America Great Again” but with the implication that it was only great before all those foreigners showed up. He won only because he got just enough votes in just enough states to win the Electoral College. The goal for him, and Republicans in general, is to divide and not unite. And the Left is doing much the same thing. Sullivan says that the advocates for gays and other sexual minorities are “rhetorically as much about race and gender as it is about sexual orientation (“intersectionality”), prefers alternatives to marriage to marriage equality, sees white men as ‘problematic,’ masculinity as toxic, gender as fluid, and race as fundamental. They have no desire to seem ‘virtually normal’; they are contemptuous of ‘respectability politics’ — which means most politics outside the left. … ‘Live and let live’ became: ‘If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.”

This ties into where Sullivan changes subject to bring up a BBC interview between journalist Cathy Newman and right-wing Canadian professor (apparently they do exist) Jordan Peterson. The interview was dissected that much more thoroughly by Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. The part of the dialogue that cuts to the chase went like this:

Newman: Is gender equality desirable?

Peterson: If it means equality of outcome then it is almost certainly undesirable. That’s already been demonstrated in Scandinavia. Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them to do it of their own accord. It’s 20 to 1 female nurses to male, something like that. And approximately the same male engineers to female engineers. That’s a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law. Those are ineradicable differences––you can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure, and tyranny, but if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get equal outcomes.

Newman: So you’re saying that anyone who believes in equality, whether you call them feminists or whatever you want to call them, should basically give up because it ain’t going to happen.

Peterson: Only if they’re aiming at equality of outcome.

Newman: So you’re saying give people equality of opportunity, that’s fine.

Peterson: It’s not only fine, it’s eminently desirable for everyone, for individuals as well as societies.

Newman: But still women aren’t going to make it. That’s what you’re really saying.

In this case and others, Peterson went into very detailed examples for why certain social inequities occur (as he puts it, on the standard that ‘equality of outcome’ is more important than equal opportunity) and gave a multifaceted explanation for why different results occur, indeed why they are more likely in a social-democrat policy where the government gives women more benefits and opportunities. And at least once Newman reduces his response to the assumption that things can only be a certain way, and telegraphs that her conclusion is based on her predecided opinion of his position instead of what he actually said. This is… I believe the word I’m looking for is “essentialist.”

This sort of thing is why a lot of men hear the phrase “mansplaining” and think of it very ironically. Because mansplaining, like “white privilege”, is referring to a real thing but in a very counterproductive way. Mansplaining is a gender-specific example of a universal vice: namely, interrupting, acting like you know better, and presenting the other person’s argument to them without listening to what it actually is. When you see this interview, you can see that it’s possible for a woman to do the same thing to a man. It’s happened to me lots of times. But when someone cops this attitude with me in a political debate, I don’t call it “mansplaining,” I call it “arguing with the imaginary libertarian in your head.”

Like when such people tell me, “there’s no point in voting third-party because of our first-past-the-post system.” As if I, and all the other people working to change the system, aren’t already aware of this. I’m sure that in 19th Century Russia, there were “liberals” telling their friends, “yes, we all want reforms, but the Czar is an absolute monarch of an autocratic government. Whaddya gonna do?”

In the Atlantic piece, Friedersdorf goes to another exchange:

Newman: Aren’t you just whipping people up into a state of anger?

Peterson: Not at all.

Newman: Divisions between men and women. You’re stirring things up.

“Actually, one of the most important things this interview illustrates—one reason it is worth noting at length—is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is ‘stirring things up’ and ‘whipping people into a state of anger”, Friedersdorf says.

Where this ties into Sullivan’s post is the rejection of the very concept of common ground or good-faith argument. Neither is there a possibility of arriving at the truth beyond “my truth” or my position. Friedersdorf points out that Newman’s style of confrontation is common not only on social media platforms but also on Fox News, and elsewhere in his column, Sullivan goes back to his recent theme on the destructiveness of social media like Facebook and Twitter. The reason that this attitude is a problem for the Left is the same reason that it is embraced by the Trumpniks and Fox News: While various disenfranchised groups have greater numbers and influence than ever, this is still a white-majority country that is still broadly right-of-center, and while “identity politics” may be necessary in a lot of cases, it encourages the feeling that whites and conservatives need identity politics too. You can win – barely – by dividing people when you already have a majority. When you’re the minority, dividing people keeps you a minority.

Where I disagree with Sullivan’s piece this week is where he says: “The Trump era is, I fear, not just about this hideous embarrassment of a president. It’s also fueled by a reaction of many ordinary people to the excesses of the social-justice left — on immigration, race, gender, and sexual orientation. ” This is true up to a point. But he fails to stress that if the Left is pushing the Right to radicalism, the reverse is also true. I am pretty sure that we would not be so wrapped up in the #metoo moment if Hillary Clinton were president, for instance. But then, that would be largely because liberals would assume they’d cured sexism the way President Obama cured racism.

I may have said this before, but what liberals need to figure out is that if the only thing that mattered about the 2016 election was making liberals cry, Donald Trump would have won the popular vote. What conservatives need to figure out is that Trump did not win the popular vote because making liberals cry was not the only thing that mattered. And if one can concede that the side you hate has aspects that are objectively awful, you still have a moral responsibility in how you react to that. A hint: You do not improve the system by citing the awfulness of Them and then making Us that much worse.

We don’t have a cycle of Thesis and Antithesis reaching a higher Synthesis. We just have a cycle where Thesis and Antithesis continue to make each other worse. At best, the situation is where the US is like a sailboat, and Left and Right are constantly fighting each other for control of the mast, and every so often, this struggle causes the boom to swing around and whack one of them silly.

In my About page, I’d mentioned that Andrew Sullivan’s blog was my primary influence in starting this site. This was not because I’d always agreed with him. Indeed, on The Daily Dish he had said quite a few things that attracted a lot of dispute and rebuttal, and to his credit he was able to post and respond to a lot of these comments (without actually having a comments section). Sullivan was able to admit, in real time over a course of years, where he had been wrong (for example, in supporting the Iraq invasion) and where he needed to take responsibility for that. That is far more than most conservatives have ever been willing to do. It seems to be more than a lot of liberals are willing to do. I gravitated to Sullivan’s blog because his willingness to question things and still present a civil platform was something the culture needed. It still is. Especially now.

 

On Immigration

Amazingly, it appears that the Shithole Shutdown (TM) is coming to a quick end, because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did what Democrats do best: caved compromised for the good of the institution. The question is whether Republicans in both houses of Congress are willing to reciprocate, and most liberals don’t think they will. But my guess is that this is what Schumer is counting on. Republicans have both houses of Congress and the White House. They have the initiative, and they are the ones being proactive. It was Donald Trump who decided to end President Obama’s DACA order, and thus made this an issue for Congress. It was Mitch McConnell and the Congressional Republicans who withheld Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding last year so they could make that an issue for the next budget debate. And they used that to set up a choice between supporting DACA recipients and CHIP recipients. By bargaining for CHIP, Schumer put the ball back in Republicans’ court and obliged Stephen Miller or whoever Trump’s substitute brain is this week to come up with a DACA deal before February 8. And if that doesn’t happen, it will be a lot harder for them to blame the Democrats. And as we know, blame is the only objective here.

The general issue of illegal immigration is something that I have been mulling over in my head for quite a while now, but obviously the present situation makes it that much more relevant.

Be warned: What I say here has something to piss off everyone in the family.

The issue is that in regard to the Latin American community (the main ethnicity of immigrants being discussed) we are actually dealing with three related but distinct groups. First, you have the people who were born in another country and came to this country illegally (the so-called ‘undocumented’). Second, you have people who were likewise born in another country but were brought here illegally by their parents when they were young children, were raised in this country, and are effectively Americans except for a legal technicality (the ‘Dreamers’). And finally, you have the children of such illegal immigrants who were born here, and are full American citizens, but have to worry about their families being deported.

It matters that these are related but separate groups. The conservative, anti-immigrant position fixates on a few points. One is that immigrants (again, principally Hispanic) are allegedly not assimilating to the larger culture, especially with regard to learning English. Statistically at least, that’s not the case. According to at least one 2007 paper, first-generation Mexicans (presumably including illegal immigrants) still lag behind in learning English. However second-generation immigrant Hispanic children acquire English just as fast as Asian or European immigrants. Moreover, support for making English the official language of the US is nearly equal among white, black and Asian populations, but while a distinct minority of first-generation Hispanics favors this policy, a clear majority of third-generation Hispanics do. Indeed that might help account for why 28 percent of Hispanic voters went for Trump in 2016.

This is contrary to the racist or near-racist idea that certain people are innately unable to adopt American values (whatever those are). When Hispanic Trump supporters were interviewed, some of them said that they were citizens from families that had lived in the United States for generations. They didn’t identify with the negative stereotype of recent immigrants that Trump was trading in. Thus, the longer one’s family has been in the US (or the farther back one’s heritage goes) the more likely one is to adopt mainstream or even conservative positions. In turn, this indicates that the more assimilated or “American” a person feels, the less likely it is that they will automatically identify with liberal-left institutions. Certainly it is not guaranteed that they will vote for Democrats just because they’re “people of color.”

Another complaint is that “illegals are taking our jobs.” This is not entirely true, but there is a certain amount of truth to it. George J. Borjas, writing for Politico, says: “The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.” This is countered by the (mostly liberal) apologia that unauthorized immigrants are “just doing the jobs Americans won’t do.”

In the current economy, without the same job security and benefits of the European job market, Americans work harder and take less vacation time than workers in EU countries. The number of people holding multiple jobs came to about 5.2 percent of the working population in 2016. There is no such thing as “jobs that Americans won’t do.” There are jobs that Americans will not do for no minimum wage and no safety standards.

But American citizens and people raised in America would know their rights and the laws of the system. For “under the table” employers to act the way they want, they would need people who don’t know their rights and if they did, are hindered from acting on them due to the threat of deportation.

For that, frankly, you need an illegal.

Yet, liberals who are generally against libertarian positions on free trade agree with libertarians on this one point of free movement of labor. (And vice versa.) The same people who object to corporations “outsourcing” jobs to countries with lower wages and safety standards do not consider that hiring illegal labor amounts to outsourcing within our own borders. And the liberal position on this ignores all of the standard liberal objections to laissez-faire economics, including the point that you need a government to establish the rules of trade in the first place.

By the same token, conservatives who go on about “borders, language and culture” elide the fact that this country is under replacement fertility rate, that immigration is the main reason we still have population increase, and that as the Republican voter base becomes older and whiter, they are going to need a browner labor force to pay for their Social Security and Medicare.

Hispanic American citizens (and to a lesser extent Dreamers) have been educated in this country and thus have access to greater career opportunities than immigrants who do not have documentation or legal status. Younger generations of immigrants are more likely to identify with the old culture, and more likely to see themselves as vulnerable to government policy where minorities are concerned. For different reasons, Republicans and Democrats have ulterior motives in leaving the legal status of immigrant families up in the air, and to leave the current immigration policy up in the air so that current and future immigrants stay in illegal status rather than go through a bureaucracy that takes years to confirm residency.

Ultimately, Republicans are looking for a captive labor market and Democrats are looking for a captive voter demographic, and that is why we do not and will not have a consistent and fair immigration policy, because a consistent and fair policy would not be of benefit to either side.

It also means that there is neither a good faith argument nor honesty on either side. For instance, in Vox, Ezra Klein says, “I’ll admit I’m unnerved to see not just Trump, but McConnell and others, begin to refer to the core issue as ‘illegal immigration’ — the more they define DREAMers as illegal immigrants and a DACA deal as amnesty, the harder it will be for them to back down and eventually cut that deal.” There’s just one problem: Technically, the Dreamers ARE illegal immigrants and a DACA deal IS amnesty. Conservatives should not be afraid to say this. And liberals should then reiterate the moral argument: Dreamers were raised in this country and have no ties to their country of origin. They did not choose to come here, and should not be punished for what their parents did. But if we let them stay (which is both the moral and practical policy) we are doing the same thing that Reagan Republicans did and putting off a consistent policy on controlling immigration.

Indeed, that amnesty is much of the reason that the Republican political culture is so hostile to negotiation and compromise now, because for decades they’ve been chewing over the idea that compromise means “they” get everything they want and “we” get nothing. And in the long term, the actual racists took advantage of that, which is how the party of Reagan and the Bushes became the Tea Party and then the Party of Trump.

An actual solution would mean creating a real government policy through Congress and not just kicking the can down the road and using the conflict as a pretext to rile up the base by blaming the other guy. An actual solution would be a permanent solution, one that would acknowledge human rights while also asserting the priority of the government to control immigration. The latter is not an inherently racist position, but as with the rest of Republican conservatism, it has become such due to the embrace of Donald Trump and a voter base that is proudly reactionary. That is why we are where we are and why negotiation is increasingly impossible under the current politics. Which is why anybody who cares needs to seriously look at the current political leadership and plan to change it.

 

REVIEW: Bright

The latest Will Smith vehicle, the “buddy-cop movie with a twist” Bright, is produced by Netflix for their streaming service. It got a lot of critical attention, mostly for the wrong reasons. Karen Han at The Daily Beast memorably referred to the LAPD-meets-monsters film as “a $90 Million Steaming Pile of Orc Sh*t“. Even more memorably, IndieWire critic David Ehrlich started his review by saying the movie was “so profoundly awful that Republicans will probably try to pass it into law over Christmas break.”

The idea of mixing Tolkien-style fantasy with the modern world seems to be a weird idea to a lot of this movie’s critics, but it’s already a well-established literary genre called Urban Fantasy. In fact one of the older manifestations of this in media was the role-playing game Shadowrun,  which not only had Urban Fantasy but combined it with the then-popular genre of Cyberpunk, in which the environment is collapsing, corporations ignore civil law and anybody who can’t make it in the wageslave world ends up taking quasi-legal mercenary jobs for said corporations because that’s the only way they can make a living. (Back in 1989 when the game was first released, that premise was called ‘science fiction.’)

If you, like me, grew up with that background, then the premises of Bright are a lot easier to accept. Perhaps the creative team (Suicide Squad director David Ayer and Hollywood writer Max Landis) grew up with that material too. The setting does seem to parallel Shadowrun in certain respects. For one thing, law enforcement is as corrupt As Fuck. Smith’s cop is pressured by his peers, sergeant and even Internal Affairs into getting his Orc partner fired, and when they get the opportunity, they even tell him to kill the guy while plotting to double-cross him and call the two of them casualties in a gang fight. OK, maybe that’s not as bad as the real LAPD, but it’s up there.

One difference between Bright and much of Urban Fantasy is that it’s assumed that fantasy races and magic have been around for at least 2000 years, ever since humans, Elves and other races fought against Orcs under control of “the Dark Lord” and all those races have been around ever since. By contrast, in Shadowrun, the return of magic to the world is a phenomenon less than a century old, and the resulting culture clash is a little more believable. One valid point that the critics do have is that the movie doesn’t do a good job of integrating this new element of “just like the real world only with Elves and Orcs.” Orcs are obviously second-class, but there are neighborhoods actually marked “Elves Only” in a way that ought to be illegal discrimination under American law. Again, it’s not well explained. One aspect that is similar to Shadowrun is that with the obvious species differences, human racial differences, while real, are not nearly as meaningful. I don’t know if they deliberately cast Will Smith’s wife as a white woman, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

There also seems to be a certain hate in the fan community for Landis that set up a negative perception of this movie. Max Landis is an opinionated and volatile figure in Hollywood, who by his own admission, “had a lot of behavioral and emotional issues” and is not prone to make friends with his behavior. His usual subject matter as a writer is the sort of fanboy stuff that turns off a lot of younger writers, with Landis coming off as the Daily Beast critic puts it, “a privileged white man (the son of John Landis) lacking any grasp of race relations.”

Of course that was all before accusations of misogyny over social media debates gave way to deeper accusations that Landis was a “ritual sex abuser.”   As it happens, Landis is the main producer of the BBC America series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and the second season of that show, like Bright, includes a team of heroes who have to keep a magic wand out of the hands of an evil psycho-bitch.

Like David Ayer’s previous work, the movie Bright is (literally) dark, ultra-violent, and foul-mouthed. The use of actors in funny makeup to comment on racial intolerance is a trick that’s been used many, many times before by the Star Trek franchise, and usually better. It’s especially egregious when you have a black protagonist being obliged to dispose of an enchanted creature as a pest, saying “fairy lives don’t matter today.”

So yeah, this movie has problems. But there are a lot of movies that aren’t technically “good” that I end up liking anyway. This was one of them. If you like lots of gunfire, this definitely scratches that itch. And as mismatched buddy cop movies go, this is at least as good as Alien Nation.

This is because, as uneven and incomplete as Bright is in presenting the setting, overall it is much better than one would expect from a straight-to-Netflix production in terms of both production values and acting. Costuming and vehicles are appropriately gritty, and the makeup on the Orcs is very impressive, with Joel Edgerton as Jakoby the Orc having an amazing range of expression given that he is completely unrecognizable. And while the Fantasy elements are flawed for the reasons I described, they are still fascinating, with a lot deliberately unrevealed. In particular, the climactic battle where the evil cult leader tries to persuade the Elf girl to return to the fold is the most intense and best-acted scene in the movie, even considering that most of the dialogue is in a constructed language. It makes one wonder how this background would have been handled with a little more development.

Given that Netflix has already announced a sequel to this movie, it’s possible that there may be a deeper exploration of the setting. Presumably without Landis as the scriptwriter.

This investment in the subject is why I ultimately give Bright a recommendation, along with two other reasons: One, it was an inspired move to cast Margaret Cho as a police sergeant; two, it introduces the phrase “tittybar gunfight”.

Now That’s Comedy

The other day I saw this thing on Facebook that I thought was funny enough to Share. It was a picture of Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles, captioned “instead of trying to not offend anyone, can we just get back to offending everyone again?”

And I got this response from one of my FB friends (name omitted to protect the guilty): “Meh. The youngins who keep saying this kind of stuff about things like ‘Blazing Saddles’ and George Carlin don’t seem able to grasp that their strength did not rely in ‘offending everyone’. It was about the way they unflinchingly told the truth with humor while PUNCHING UP. It pisses me off when people want to pretend the milquetoast bothsiderism of South Park and some dumbass ironic/not-ironic comedians like Daniel Tosh or the verbal diarrhea of the alt-right are heirs to the legacy of ‘offensive’ classics. ‘Blazing Saddles’ and George Carlin had no problem taking sides. They specifically took the side of the oppressed against the privileged. They just did it with self aware humor. Any idiot could see what their point was. Unlike some of today’s ‘satirists’ that can’t figure out (that) part of satire is actually having a fucking point. ‘Offending everyone’ as a goal in itself is weak bullshit.”

Well, point taken about Daniel Tosh.

But I wanted to respond in depth, and in doing so, I realized I would be committing the same error as my interlocutor: Namely, if you have to explain the joke, it isn’t funny. But that’s part of why I have a blog in addition to Facebook. Going into depth on Facebook would be that much more defeating the point, but as long as I’m going to explain a joke, I might as well do so on a blog nobody is reading.

The reason humor works is because of thwarted expectations. One expects a certain thing and then something else happens, sometimes something embarrassing to the subject. There is not much funny about pretty or privileged people humiliating the ugly and powerless. After all that is too much the norm in many places. But the reverse offers some potential for humor. As Krusty the Clown said when he hired Sideshow Bob, “the gag only works when the sap’s got dignity!”

For instance, there’s this verse, which is (I think) from the legendary Steve Allen:

Roses are red / And violets are blue / You think this will rhyme / But it ain’t gonna

And then there’s the following: “Before I post something on social media, I ask myself three questions: Is it necessary? Is it helpful? Is it kind? And if the answer to any of these is No, I go ahead and post.”

These are examples of thwarting expectations.

These points are not inherently opposed to the social message of Blazing Saddles, which was very real. It’s just that in addition to the social message, that film was also a platform for extremely vulgar jokes. Thinking that your piece is supposed to be a vehicle for class consciousness before it is a vehicle for humor is the comedy equivalent of producing Christian rock. And nobody wants that. Although Mel Brooks actually did produce a farce about the period of the Bolshevik Revolution. It wasn’t as funny as the real thing, but there weren’t nearly as many casualties.

By the same token, sensitivity and political correctness sometimes intersect with the point that “punching down” usually isn’t funny. But sometimes they’re just a different standard of funny, in the same way that veganism is a standard of cuisine that dispenses with elements that were based on cruelty and power relationships. Elements like “fat”, “sugar” and “taste.”

For instance, take “the dozens.” A.K.A. “Yo Mama.” Like, “Your mom is so stupid, she stares at the can of orange juice cause it says ‘Concentrate’.” Or “your mama’s so lazy, she thinks manual labor is the president of Mexico.” What did your mom ever do to deserve this? Isn’t this sexist?

By contrast, back when I was growing up, you had a lot of ethnic jokes. Some of these were only told within the ethnic community, as with Jewish jokes in the Borscht Belt or the material black comedians still use. But I remember seeing several joke books with stuff like “Polack jokes.” As Wikipedia points out, the problem is that such ethnic jokes are “conditional jokes” in that they require accepting some stereotype that may or may not be accurate. It seemed as though a lot of the joke writers were World War II vets. Most of the Italian jokes ridiculed Italian military performance (‘did you hear of the Italian tank with seven gears? One forward, six in reverse’) or cowardice (‘the reason it was called the Six Day War is because in 1967, the Arabs fought the Israelis and six days later the Italian Army surrendered’).

Such jokes discount the point that part of Italian reluctance to fight in World War II was because most soldiers were poorly paid, poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly led, fighting for a Fascist government that since 1922 had led Italians to a steady decline in living standards.

Meanwhile the Poles of World War II fought valiantly, but usually in exile, because Poland was a country carved up between a brainwashed leftist collective and a racist war machine. Sort of like the 2016 election, only with tanks.

The point being, at one point in history, nobody got the memo that “punching down” isn’t funny, because that sort of thing was a lot more popular. But it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now.

So to test the efficacy of “punch up” vs. “punch down” humor, I decided to engage in a little thought experiment, which I think both Left and Right will enjoy.

Basically, take any one of those generic ethnic/insult jokes, and substitute the target (Mexican, Italian, blonde, etc.) with the word “Republican.”

For instance:
Q: How do you know a Republican has used your computer?
A: There’s white-out all over the screen.

Q: How many Mexicans will it take to pay for Trump’s wall?
A: None, Republicans. You are.

Q: What’s the difference between a prostitute and a Republican?
A: A prostitute won’t fuck her own kids for a tax cut.

See, now THAT’s comedy.

REVIEW: The Last Jedi

The main knock that critics had on The Force Awakens (Star Wars Episode VII) was that it too closely paralleled the original Star Wars (Episode IV). To me, that similarity should have been the main subject of the storyline. How is it, that after more than thirty years (real time and in-setting), the Star Wars universe is back to square one? Why did Han Solo leave Leia and return to smuggling? Was it grief over the loss of their son, or was it just Han being Han? Who is Snoke, what is the First Order, and how did they take over from the Empire? Why did Luke not rebuild the Jedi Academy after it was destroyed by the Knights of Ren, and how did they seduce Ben Solo to the dark side? And what does Rey have to do with all this?

SPOILER ALERT: Not all of those questions are answered in The Last Jedi.

In addition to the primary Skywalker/Rey saga, there’s a mission where the cowardly-yet-brave Finn (John Boyega) tries to save the Resistance, or what’s left of it, with the help of two new characters, a plucky engineer (Kelly Marie Tran) and a stuttering scoundrel (Benicio Del Toro, in what may be his most Benicio Del Toro performance to date). Otherwise, fans have been telling people to not spoil the movie. So I won’t. I will just say: GO SEE IT. The Last Jedi offers everything you want to see in a Star Wars movie. Including hope.

Note: This is also a very long movie, about two and a half hours. Yet, I did not feel any bladder urges until the credits started to roll.

The Force was with me.

REVIEW: Justice League

When I was on vacation back East, my brother took me to see Justice League for its special Thursday night premiere on November 16. However I didn’t have access to my computer to post a review until I got home. So by now it’s hardly a secret that in this movie Superman comes back to life.

After Clark Kent’s funeral in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) and Diana/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) form a working partnership, ending their retirement from superheroics and using Lex Luthor’s files to recruit additional metahumans to form a team against a threat that Batman is convinced is just around the corner.

The first two metahumans are surly drunk Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and the nervous-but-eager Flash (Ezra Miller). The third is Victor Stone (Ray Fisher), whose genius father used cybernetic parts to rebuild his body after an auto accident that maimed Victor and killed his mother. However this turned Victor into an inhuman cyborg with vast control over technology that sometimes controls him in turn. Moreover, the reason Doctor Stone could perform this operation is because he was using an alien artifact he called a “Change Engine” that turns out to be tied to Batman’s impending threat: Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds), an alien warlord who is so powerful that in an ancient age, he could only be driven off by a coalition of gods, Amazons, Atlanteans, at least one Green Lantern and a troop of humans who look suspiciously like the Men of Gondor. Steppenwolf’s power is tied to three Mother Boxes (including Cyborg’s Change Engine) that were dormant on Earth until Superman died, at which point they reactivated and beckoned Steppenwolf back. (While Steppenwolf has Mother Boxes, boom tubes and an army of Parademons, his connection to Darkseid is mentioned only once.)

Justice League brought back a couple of things that irritated me about Batman v Superman. The first was angry-yet-stupid Superman. After Steppenwolf beats up the team in their first encounter, Batman deduces that Cyborg can hook his Mother Box up to the Kryptonian biomatrix at Luthor’s lab in Metropolis, and put Superman’s corpse in to revive him. And in one of his best lines, Flash muses whether the revived Superman will be cool and back to normal or whether this will be like “Pet Sematary.” Well, the plan works, and sure enough, the result is more like Pet Sematary. Until Batman uses an unusual tactic to get Clark (Henry Cavill) back to his senses, Superman kicks ass on the entire team, not coincidentally destroying what’s left of his own ruined monument. It sort of makes sense that Superman is not in his right mind after revival, after all he’s been mostly dead all year. But still, it ties into the idea that people are supposed to be afraid of Superman. And that conflicts with a larger theme that is implicit in Justice League: Why do these guys NEED Superman, anyway?

I mean, Batman is the brains and the bankroll, Flash is at least as fast as Superman, Wonder Woman is about that strong, Aquaman is almost that strong, and Cyborg can do things with technology that haven’t even been quantified yet. There are a couple of good scenes that get to the heart of the matter. At one point Bruce tells Alfred (Jeremy Irons) that Clark was a better human than him. Clark had managed to fall in love, get a job, and live alongside regular people, something Bruce had never done. That and the influence of his foster parents made Clark more grounded than the antisocial Batman. Later there are a couple bits of dialogue where Diana confronts Bruce and brings up the notion that he is (in a passive-aggressive way) trying to get her to take over the team. And he responds that after Steve Trevor died, she withdrew from the world. She didn’t act as a public superhero, and basically hid her light under a bushel while Superman became a public figure. And she responds in so many words that when you’re placed in a position of leadership, and have to make decisions that could get people killed, at that point everyone is Steve Trevor.

Wonder Woman is the closest thing to a morally perfect character in the DCEU, but even she doesn’t see herself in Superman’s role. Superman is specifically referred to as a beacon of hope in Justice League at least once. The problem is that that description could fit Superman in almost any other DC movie before BvS (including Man of Steel) but it’s at odds with the themes of BvS, in particular the idea that Superman is an alien, godlike being who is a figure of fear, or at best awe. This is why the government in BvS had plans to stop him (and Doomsday) with a nuke, and why in Suicide Squad Amanda Waller and her allies were able to present their project on the rationale of being able to stop Superman (or a similar threat) in case he kidnapped the President. The best analog to Superman in Marvel Comics in this regard is Captain America, the Golden Age hero that every costumed hero since has tried to emulate. And that’s because Captain America always does the right thing, even if it means going against the authorities. In Captain America: Civil War, the movie makes it clear that world governments would have good reason to monitor and regulate metahumans, but it also makes it clear that if the US government is against Captain America, then it’s the government that’s in the wrong. Whereas in the Snyderverse, Superman isn’t the world’s greatest hero because of his spirit or inspirational presence. He’s the greatest hero because he is the most powerful being on Earth who hasn’t decided to become a supervillain, apparently because he lacks the initiative.

The assumption of many fans is that Superman is like this in the DC Extended Universe because Zach Snyder is a devotee of Ayn Rand (his production company is called Atlas Entertainment). I have addressed this subject at great length. In any case Snyder, along with scriptwriter Chris Terrio, wrote the original story for Justice League and was directing the movie until the tragic death of his daughter forced him to quit work on the film. Somewhere in this process Joss Whedon got put in (allegedly because test audiences found Snyder’s first run film unwatchable) to co-write the script, and ended up taking over direction as well (even though Snyder is still listed as sole director). As most other reviewers have pointed out, this has resulted in a disjointed and uneven film. It’s sometimes hard to tell where Snyder ends and Whedon begins, but for the most part Justice League is very much a Zach Snyder film- ponderous direction, muted colors, overcast skies and way too much CGI. There is however one scene that seems unquestionably Whedon’s: in the Big Boss fight, Superman has to help Cyborg contain an energy explosion, and when it throws them back, these two characters – who up to now have been MORE grim and serious than Batman – lie back and laugh. And they joke about it. I just couldn’t imagine something this relaxed and good-natured in Snyder’s work up to this point.

Moreover, the earliest previews for Justice League (mostly released before Whedon stepped in) showed Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller having so much fun playing their characters that it gave me the impression that DC was trying to change the direction of things.

At least once in Justice League, Batman says that his drive to form the team (and later, to revive Superman) is an attempt at redemption on his part: Batman almost killed Superman because he had the wrong idea about him. I get the impression that Justice League is a similar quest for redemption on the part of DC’s movie team. It doesn’t exactly work, because the script makes clear that Zach Snyder (and/or Chris Terrio) still doesn’t get Superman. Ultimately, though, Justice League is in the same class as Suicide Squad:  a grim and muddy Snyderverse project that, thanks to bright performances and some last-minute script doctoring, ends up as a patchwork monster that somehow manages to live.

Oh, and I mentioned that Justice League brought back two of the things that irritated me about BvS. The first was Mean Superman. The second was Jesse Eisenberg’s irritating dingbat version of Lex Luthor. Fortunately he appears only very briefly and at the very last scene after the credits. So teasing the next movie with an end-credits scene is one of two things that the DCEU learned from Marvel Studios. The other of course, is hire Joss Whedon to write and direct your movies.

REVIEW: Thor: Ragnarok

Much of the action in Thor:Ragnarok has already been given away in the previews: Thor (Chris Hemsworth) must fight the evil goddess Hela (Cate Blanchett, looking like Marilyn Manson as designed by Jack Kirby) to defend Asgard, and is defeated, losing both his hammer and his hair.  While Heimdall (Idris Elba) leads a resistance to Hela’s occupation, Thor and his brother/rival Loki (Tom Hiddleston) wind up on an alien planet where Thor is enslaved to a gladiator master who’s played by Jeff Goldblum, because why not.  And in his first match, Thor must fight The Hulk, “a friend from work”, setting up what might be the greatest mismatched buddy-cop movie of all time.

It’s slightly more complex than this, but Thor: Ragnarok is a very straightforward, ass-kicking movie, and the fight sequences are spectacular, even if they’re obviously CGI.  The principals are given a fun supporting cast including Tessa Thompson as the last of the Valkyries and “Korg”, an animated pile of rocks (voiced by Taika Waititi, the movie’s director).  And while a lot of the cute touches in this film are on par with other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s also a bit of character growth.  Thor has always been a big lunk who is often the comic relief in his own stories, but he is a good deal more intelligent than he has been depicted in previous movies.  I liked where Thor was able to see through Loki’s deceptions, at least twice.  He is able to do this because as Thor tells him, Loki doesn’t want to be anything other than what he is.

Although if anyone knows about the original Norse myth, the title Ragnarok sort of gives away what could be a major change to the setting.  Even so, for the most part, everything works out for everybody.  Until the end-credits sequence.

 

 

The Weinstein Rebranding

People are still wondering what to do about Harvey Weinstein.

CBS’ James Corden mentioned the issue – after late night hosts were taken to task for NOT mentioning the issue – at an October 13 event in Beverly Hills, by opening with ““This is a beautiful room, it’s a beautiful night here in L.A.   It’s so beautiful, Harvey Weinstein has already asked tonight up to his hotel to give him a massage.”  And later: “Harvey Weinstein wanted to come tonight, but he’ll settle for whatever potted plant is closest.”

This did not go over well.  Rose McGowan, who was at the forefront of this issue, called Corden a “motherfucking piglet” and said that he was a friend of “HW.”  Anthony Bourdain, whose girlfriend Asia Argento has (like McGowan) accused Weinstein of rape, ripped that much deeper into Corden, saying “NOONE stood up and said, ‘fuck you, Pop’n Fresh!'” and “Mr. Corden is free to tell whatever jokes he likes.  As he should be.  I’m free to suggest he’s a porcine, pandering tool”.

I was struck that while both McGowan and Bourdain were trying to strike out to stop women from being objectified, neither felt qualms about making fun of Corden’s weight.  Now I love Anthony Bourdain, but: He’s on CNN.  Not only that, he’s a chef, and should be a little more sensitive to the fact that weight gain is a possible hazard of gastronomy.  I could ask Bourdain if his ability to eat without getting fat is a beneficial side effect of his former heroin addiction.  But that would be mean.

I can understand the resentment somewhat.  Harvey Weinstein is simply one very obnoxious example of something that has been tolerated in management-labor relations for longer than anyone has reported, and the culture is getting to a point where people want to do something about it.  So they want comedians to bring it up.  But then when comedians tell jokes about the subject, they go, “how DARE you!  This has been made light of for far too long!  The time for tasteless jokes about sexist millionaires is OVER!”

Oh, of course.  When all the tasteless jokes and sexist millionaires have monopolized the Republican Party, there should be no place for them in our sense of humor.

But this is a serious subject.  When Harvey Weinstein’s own brother says their relationship was so poisonous that he could barely deal with him on a professional level, the brand of the family name has gotten to the point that the future of The Weinstein Company – which produced the Lord of the Rings films and award-winning works by Anthony Mingella and Quentin Tarantino – is almost certainly limited.  And it struck me: How does the rump organization survive when people still know it was associated with the lowest form of sexist, bullying boor?

Have Donald Trump buy it!

After all, he has much the same reputation, and he actually got elected.

And it’s no secret that Trump craves media attention and respectability.  He tried to make himself an Atlantic City casino mogul in direct opposition to the industry in Las Vegas.  And ran four casinos into the ground.  He became a major owner in the spring-league USFL.  And ran it into the ground.  Then he lent his name to NBC’s The Apprentice.  Which got cancelled in its first iteration after steadily declining ratings.  So if anything happened to the (former) Weinstein Group under Trump, at least it doesn’t have much to lose.

And it is testimony to how surreal and reality-threatening this Administration is that just after I came up with that idea, I saw this article while web-surfing:

Close Trump Associate Invests in Weinstein Company, Will Presumably Also Pursue Cosby Partnership

“On Monday, the Weinstein Company announced that a financier named Tom Barrack has agreed to provide it with “an immediate capital infusion” and begin negotiations regarding ‘a potential sale of all or a significant portion of the Company’s assets.’  … In other words, it appears that Tom Barrack is bailing Harvey Weinstein and his enablers out.

“What are some of the other items on Tom Barrack’s professional résumé? Let’s hear from CNN:

It was 1994 and the land once known as “Trump City” was an embarrassing boondoggle, crumbling at the feet of an erratic namesake who took out $400 million in loans and seemed all too willing to default on more. Chase realtors could not see a path to black for debt king Donald Trump.

Tom Barrack could.

“Barrack, the network writes, then traveled from “New York to Los Angeles, Taiwan, London and Saudi Arabia, begging billionaires to buy the loans and keep the bankers from Trump’s throat.” And it worked! Barrack would go on to become a major fundraiser for Trump’s presidential campaign and chair Trump’s inaugural committee. Trump, of course, has been accused of sexual assault by 15 women.”

Truly, birds of a feather.

One has given lots of money and media attention to Bill and Hillary Clinton.  One has been known to be violently abusive of his male associates and underlings, in public.  One has an unproven but well-rumored reputation of of philandering, sexual harassment and even physical abuse and rape.  And such rumors never get anywhere because said person has always used his legal and media connections to crush any individual victim’s attempts at exposure.

What’s the real difference between Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein?  Clearly, the difference is that when one is a Democrat, Republicans actually care.

That’s the key.  Republicans are clearly willing to tolerate the exact same things in Donald Trump that they would never tolerate in any other person.  Not even any other Republican.  Why?  Because Republicans are good Christians.  Because you have to have faith.  And faith is trust in things unseen.  Such as, Donald Trump’s intelligence, competence, and moral integrity.

Weinstein, or more directly, his company, needs a rebranding.  Trump desperately craves legitimacy in the media.   He can get it by attaching his brand to an equally desperate institution that used to have success and prestige and is now just trying to survive.  Like he did with the Republican Party.

Trump.  Weinstein.  It’s a match made in Heaven.

That is, if you, like me, are an atheist.

Twitter Is Too Aptly Named

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.  A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible.

-George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

This week, one of the biggest news stories was the sudden and cascading decline of movie producer Harvey Weinstein as testimony about his history of sexual harassment continued to reach the media. Things have gotten to the point where The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel Weinstein from the institution “well in excess of the required two-thirds majority”.

There’s not too much more I can add except to touch on two points people have already made. One, Harvey Weinstein resembles nothing so much as a bowl of oatmeal with a beard on it. Second, Republicans cannot accuse feminist liberal Democrats of hypocrisy in supporting fundraiser Harvey Weinstein if they’re going to continue to enable Donald Trump, whose sexist behavior is that much more thoroughly documented and whose bullying and vengeful temperament is that much more publicly obvious.

Rather, I want to use this issue to touch on something that has been bugging me for a while and ties into it in several ways.

During this week, former actress Rose McGowan has been increasingly active on social media, especially Twitter, in regard to the Weinstein case. Eventually she stated that she was not merely harassed but actually raped by Weinstein. But on Thursday October 12, Twitter suspended her account, which caused McGowan to respond on Instagram asking concerned people to boycott Twitter over the matter. Twitter stated – after the fact – that the reason for McGowan’s suspension was that she had posted someone’s private phone number. They also said, “We will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future.”

But as Vox.com pointed out, the miscommunication led to intense controversy for Twitter, along with accusations of inconsistency. “Because the offending tweet that included the phone number had been deleted, it wasn’t initially clear from McGowan’s Instagram post or a perusal of her Twitter feed which of Twitter’s rules she had violated. McGowan didn’t appear to have threatened anyone, and she wasn’t sharing graphic content or engaging in hate speech or violent speech.

“The industry veterans McGowan had been discussing in her tweets, however, are all powerful public figures in Hollywood. This fact, along with the lack of initial clarity about why she was suspended, led to rampant speculation that she was being silenced for being too aggressive about calling out the many men who allegedly stood by while Weinstein continued his pattern of assaults on women for years. ”

On Saturday, the ABC News site released a story about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s official response to the issue.  And reading this piece I was struck by two things. One was that the platform was going to be clarifying new rules: “New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence. [sic] These changes will start rolling out in the next few weeks. More to share next week.”

I’m not sure if anybody else finds it odd that such a public platform would need to add strictures about non-consensual “advances” and displays of nudity, not to mention glorification of hate and violence. But then when someone like Milo Yiannopoulous gets banned for violating Twitter’s “terms of use” I think the implied joke is that Twitter has any.

Secondly, for Dorsey to make his statement on Twitter, he had to release it in multiple posts. This is an increasingly common usage of the platform known as a “tweetstorm.” In this case, the article shows an excerpt starting with post 6: “We decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them. 7/ New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence. 8/ These changes will start rolling out in the next few weeks. More to share next week. ” As in, the quote that I just gave from the news article had to be posted as two separate posts in Twitter, within a larger announcement.

This phenomenon has started to develop some criticism within Twitter. One article on Buzzfeed implied that much of the need for the tweetstorm could be solved by just getting a blog. But it went further and mentioned complaints that the tweetstorm violates Twitter etiquette (‘Twitter etiquette’ being an oxymoron that ranks up there with ‘gaming journalism’) in that the “stormer” is making a multi-post statement with no indication of when it winds up, although there are some exceptions. This already shows signs of escalating: “Imagine, for a moment, a future version of Twitter where the tweetstorm™ convention spreads, bleeding first through the tech venture capital and entrepreneur community. Then the tech reporters catch on, issuing long monologues on the future of the industry/a given product. Tweetstorms™ are rebutted by other tweetstorms™, which is manageable and contained in a niche media sphere until Politics Twitter catches on. Always on the lookout for a new broadcast platform, the tweetstorm™ spreads from reporters to pundits and think tanks and then to the politicians themselves. Once a frenetic but followable place, your timeline is now virtually destroyed by an avalanche of soliloquies. ”

But the tweetstorm is simply bringing up both the deliberate and practical limitations of Twitter. When the press interviewed Dorsey in 2009 about the origins of Twitter, he said that at the time (2006) he and the other developers were working with the constraints of the instant-message (IM) format for mobile devices, where basic phones were limited to 160 characters before they split the message. Limiting a username to 20 characters and the main text to 140 was where the concept developed. They worked with that format precisely because it allowed the user to update from anywhere. Dorsey said the “twitter” name came from that idea: “We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word ‘twitch,’ because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But ‘twitch’ is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word ‘twitter,’ and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.”

Unfortunately, Twitter is too aptly named. Tweets are exactly that, short bursts of inconsequential information, but that very informality has exploded the popularity of the format such that people are using it in ways that just don’t work. Thus, the tweetstorm. The tweetstorm is for people who are trying to express complex, paragraph-length arguments in a format that is deliberately hostile to the complete sentence, let alone the paragraph.

But the popularity and convenience of Twitter ties into the other issue, namely that the tweetstorm implies the question, “why not just start a blog?” Twitter and other social media like Facebook are designed for immediate transmission and feedback. They are impulse media. I believe that if you are going to have a social media presence, you should know the right tool for the right job. I don’t need a blog to share cute animal videos to friends. For that I have Facebook. I don’t post to this blog every day or even every week because I don’t always have time to elaborate on my ideas, whereas I can usually find the time to post something on Facebook. But I decided to create my own blog not only to post essay-length pieces but because I could control the content to a greater degree than something I posted or liked on Facebook. I had already mentioned that this blog has no comments option because I had noticed the same problem on Facebook that critics are finding with Twitter, the capacity of people to hijack the thread with their own opinions which end up becoming bitter debates that crowd out the original post.  Just as the posting format affects the content, so does the larger context of the medium. Just as Twitter is built around the “short burst of inconsequential information” to an even greater degree than other platforms, that is the way its reply/comment function works. In that respect, for the Buzzfeed writer to complain about the extended reply is to miss the point. To be worried about such a thing is to believe that the other person’s opinion is consequential and worth respecting. That’s not what Twitter is about. Twitter is not about considered opinion. Twitter is about hit-and-run posting.

Which brings us to the most problematic Twitter abuser. Liddle Donnie Trump. The Harvey Weinstein of presidents.

There’s usually a recurring theme in Washington DC’s assessments of the “president”, even from Republicans who have always supported him. It’s words to the effect of “somebody needs to take away his phone.” That is, someone on Trump’s staff needs to make him stop tweeting. The most glaring recent example of this problem was when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced indirect efforts to talk to North Korea and Trump tweeted, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man”. This is not the sort of thing that a president does if he cares about his Secretary of State and his position as a representative. But that’s not the sort of thing that you do if you care about actions, period. And yet every time the subject comes up,  Trump and his shills defend his use of his personal account to blur the line between personal and political statements, saying that it is how he speaks “directly to the people.” Trump would not be the first president, especially in the Republican Party, to try to bypass the media gatekeepers of information. But as with everybody else who uses Twitter, his choice of platform both shapes and becomes the message. Analysts have noted that a lot of his tweets take place at 3 am or some other time when he is in bed or sleep-deprived, which only increases the likelihood that the posts are impulsive rather than deliberate. Or perhaps, Trump’s actions are deliberate only in that he has just enough concentration to be impulsive. Given that Trump was caught on tape in 2000 saying he couldn’t support Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign because it was supported by David Duke, there is evidence that Donald Trump once had a brain. But Trump, like his party, has since become prone to unsubtle, unconsidered opinion to the exclusion of serious thinking. Before social media, you had AM radio concentrating “conservative” positions down to emotionalism. Now on the Internet, the medium of expression is that much more prone to opinion that is literally reactionary.

The concepts that George Orwell referred to in Politics and the English Language were developed in setting for his novel 1984 with Newspeak, the Party’s official version of the English language. Characters in the book mentioned that Newspeak was the only language in history whose dictionary got smaller with each new edition. In the book’s appendix Orwell stated that the language was deliberately constructed by the Party for specific goals: “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. … Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. ”

Orwell’s legacy is full of ironies. A defender of cooperative anarchism, he has become the right-winger’s favorite critic of socialism. More ironic than that, his concept of language control is being best realized not by a state socialist program but by a capitalist endeavor.

In this context, Aja Romano’s Vox article is worth reviewing in that it emphasizes the political element of Twitter’s inconsistent enforcement of policy. “The suspension of McGowan’s account neatly illustrates what has become a pattern in terms of how Twitter deals with harassment and abuse on its site. That is, while victims of abuse and marginalized users who deal with harassment are frequently censured over strict readings of Twitter’s abuse and safety rules, like McGowan, users who are widely seen as perpetuating real ideological violations of those rules are rarely censored.” Milo Yiannopoulous is only one famous example. Donald Trump himself is considered above censure on his Twitter account on the ground that his position makes his posts “newsworthy.” Of course threatening national security by threatening regional nuclear exchange over North Korea is going to be newsworthy. Romano continues: “McGowan’s suspension makes clear that Twitter’s abuse policies, or at least its inconsistent and confusing enforcement of those policies, do not protect abuse victims. In particular, women like McGowan who have experienced harassment and attempted to speak out about it on Twitter can be silenced at any time using the same inconsistent policy that Twitter refuses to levy against a Richard Spencer, a David Duke, or a Donald Trump — men who take advantage of the vagueness of Twitter’s abuse policies to perpetuate racism, violence, harassment, and fear.”

I would assert that the “vagueness” that Twitter’s critics observe is in fact consistent with the site in operation. Twitter is intended to be used in haste. It is intended to change the terms of debate to favor snark, insult and negativity. The positions of users like Richard Spencer or (pre-election) Donald Trump were less provocative to Twitter management than those of a Rose McGowan because whether Twitter’s users or management admit this or not, people like Donald Trump are the ones using the platform in the manner it was designed to be used.

I cannot say that this is a deliberate position on the part of the site developers, given that Jack Dorsey has apparently only now been made aware that such antisocial behavior needs to be discouraged. But that very fact indicates it was not something he was concerned with up to now.

This is also a cautionary example. Twitter became very popular with the liberal pop culture because of its wide access and ease of use, but as with much of liberal culture, it has become co-opted by the authoritarian Right, which is that much more committed to a mindset of whim and irrationality.

In the Vox article, media critic Matt Zoller Seitz was quoted (from Twitter) saying “I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it now: if a superior alternative to Twitter appeared tomorrow, I’d be gone from here in a heartbeat.” My advice to Seitz would be to get together with like-minded people and come to a consensus about what “a superior alternative to Twitter” means, and then find people of means to finance it and experts to create it. My personal goal is to make enough money to where I can buy out Twitter with the specific purpose of destroying the website. Either that, or use the space for something more ennobling, like bumfights or fetish porn.

REVIEW: Star Trek: Discovery

I had already posted my impression of the first preview of Star Trek: Discovery, and having finally gotten to see the pilot episode tonight (Sept. 24) I think that based only on the first show, Discovery is pretty good for what it is.  My problem is with what it is.

The good part is that the lead character, Michael Burnham, is very good and very well-played by Sonequa Martin-Green.  At the series start she is actually the first officer aboard the USS Shenzhou but is supposed to be transferring to the ship in the show’s title.  First however, the Shenzhou has to survive a confrontation with a particularly fanatical sect of Klingons.  And apparently Burnham was raised by Spock’s father Sarek after her parents were killed by Klingons, so this may be a bit personal for her.  In the course of the episode, Burnham’s relationships with other bridge crew including Science Officer Saru (Doug Jones) and her captain, Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) are established, and another strong point of this show is the chemistry between the crew that is obvious even at this point.  Said chemistry helps to heighten the tension when Burnham attempts a pre-emptive strike on the Klingons and everyone else (especially the captain) is warning her against it.

As I said in my other post, I like the relationship between the Burnham and Georgiou characters.  But I have problems.  If I could boil them down to one point, it would be that the producers are trying to make their own material with a tangential connection to Star Trek, without even resembling it as much as the retro-Trek of JJ Abrams’ movies.  This is especially important given that this show, like Enterprise, is supposed to be set in the main timeline (specifically, ten years before the Original Series).  And yet, the overall look, from the blue suit uniforms, to the darkened bridge, to the heavy use of lens flare, makes the show resemble AbramsTrek (specifically the scene on the USS Kelvin) more than the deliberately old-school Enterprise.

To quote the relevant part of my last piece, “Continuity is always an issue when you’re using established intellectual property, because while it defeats the purpose of creating something new if you don’t go off in a new direction, it defeats the purpose of saying that X is X when the new thing departs from the setting of X to begin with. It would be less irritating if Star Trek: Discovery had simply taken the parallel-universe of the J.J. Abrams series, or set the show within the past of that timeline. But the implication is that this is the universe of the original series, which already has quite enough problems with “retcon.” It’s not quite so bad with comic book properties, where a superhero series gets rebooted from scratch every decade or so and nobody questions this.. But even then, continuity matters. You can say that your Superman has no continuity with the Christopher Reeve Superman, but if you want to say that he IS Superman, don’t act surprised when people wonder why he needs to kill somebody.”

So again, given that this is supposed to be the same setting as Enterprise and TOS, you have stuff like Abrams lens-flare scenes, and you have the Klingons who have been retconned to look more alien YET again.  Continuity in Doctor Who is easier to keep track of.  And then it turns out that the scenes with Sarek were not with a younger Spock but with a child Burnham (the relationship between the two not being clear in the previews).  The use of Sarek seems gratuitous; it’s not as though another Vulcan elder couldn’t have been substituted without giving this character the baggage of being associated with Mark Lenard’s character.  Because he isn’t.  He’s played by James Frain.  And when you’re playing a Vulcan, there’s a difference between “unemotional” and “creepy.”  When I think of James Frain, I think “creepy.”

As a side note, I am thinking there might be a practical reason that future episodes of this show are only going to be accessible on the CBS All Access streaming site.  A practical reason other than greed, that is.  Streaming services like Netflix allow the production of original programming with “adult” language and concepts that wouldn’t be possible on a broadcast TV show.   The pilot of Discovery doesn’t have anything that I would see as “mature” or objectionable.  However the publicity for this show has had a lot of articles in liberal outlets like Vox making much of the fact that this is the first show in the Trek franchise to have a regular character (played by Broadway star Anthony Rapp) who is openly gay and in a committed relationship with another crewman.  However, these characters were not in this pilot, presumably because they’re on the Discovery and not the Shenzhou.  It could be that some people at CBS, especially its Standards and Practices department, thought that such a concept might damage people’s fragile eggshell minds.  This is my speculation.  But again, I don’t see much reason why this program needs to be on a premium source outside broadcast TV.  Besides greed, that is.

Of course given that CBS All Access is a streaming service, Star Trek: Discovery doesn’t really have to worry about ratings.  But as much as this show intrigues me, I’m not sure if I’d shell out $5.99 a month just to see how it develops.  Which is another point of ironic contrast between this show and The Orville, a broadcast series on Fox, which is notoriously fickle about SF shows.  The Orville is basically old-school Trek with the serial numbers filed off, but despite having to be different for copyright purposes, it “feels” like the same spirit.  Star Trek: Discovery is official Trek product- and again, pretty good for what it is- but what it is goes out of its way to NOT feel like Trek.

REVIEW: The Orville

This is a follow up on my preview of The Orville coming out of its panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, now that the series has premiered on Fox tonight (September 10).  The details aren’t too far removed from what has been shown so far in the previews; the pilot opens with Seth McFarlane’s character Ed Mercer, an officer in the “Planetary Union” forces, walking in on his wife (Adrienne Palicki) having sex with an alien.  A year later, an admiral approaches him with an offer to captain a mid-level ship, making it clear that he is performing below his potential, especially given his “personal issues” over the prior 12 months, and he is getting the post only because the fleet is short of commanders.  Mercer sets out on his maiden voyage but then finds out that Kelly Grayson, the ex-wife, is the only first officer available.  Hilarity ensues.  Sorta.

What surprises me is that given that McFarlane invented a space alien modeled on Paul Lynde, an R-rated teddy bear, and the entire Griffin family, The Orville is probably the closest thing to a family-friendly production he’s ever done.  (Though not entirely, given the sight gag in the opening scene.)  This confirms my impression from Comic-Con that McFarlane and his production team (including former Star Trek The Next Generation producer Brannon Braga) are trying to make something that would actually appeal to Star Trek fans and not insult their intelligence, which several McFarlane productions could be accused of doing.  Then again, so could the final episode of Enterprise.

The results are fairly mixed, because while there is good humor, the execution is a bit low-key and feels muted.  Moreover, while it’s always good to see Palicki in something, and the pilot makes it clear just how much her character is the ultimate brains behind Mercer, the idea of the two leads being bickering exes is so done that it’s going to take some more skill than I saw in this script to keep it going, unless future episodes just put this hook on the backburner as a background element.

Even so, I was dismayed that a lot of the reviews I’ve seen for this show have treated it so negatively.  It could be better, but it is a lot better than they’re saying, and I’m willing to give it a chance if only because it is clearly written by Star Trek fans for fans.  For instance, Mercer manages to get out of a confrontation by taking advantage of the fact that starship shuttles in this genre never have seat belts, which you’d have to be a real fan to appreciate.