History Buff Alert

We have the New York Times to thank for bringing this fascinating piece of history to our attention.

Fan Letter

Among the few tidbits of serendipitous news that surfaced this week is that Steven Spielberg is making a film titled Lincoln, based on the book, Team of Rivals, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. Even better news is that the lead will be played by Daniel Day-Lewis, surely one of the finest actors of his generation. Liam Neeson had originally been cast, but backed out, feeling that his age was inappropriate to the role. Neeson would, at 6'3", have been closer to Lincoln's towering 6'4", while Day-Lewis measures up to a mere 6'1". But, who's going to quibble over a couple of inches when such an array of talent comes together to create what one might hope will be the cinematic event of 2012 (a presidential-election year). As an American history buff and Day-Lewis fan, I never miss the re-runs of Last of the Mohicans, a film near the top of my Ten Best Movies of All Time list.

Those of you unused to reading such effusive fan-dom on what purports to be a serious blog may find comfort in knowing that this is the first and, hopefully, the last such post, save only the possibility of my expressing equal glee should persistent rumors of Tea Party ballot-stuffing in favor of Bristol Palin on Dancing With the Stars prove to be well-founded.

Rachel and the Not-So-Sly Fox

No great Olbermann fan I, but this clip is an eye opener for anyone living on Mars who actually believes that FNC is in fact "fair and balanced". What's most terrifying is that on election night more people watched FNC than any other network, cable or broadcast. As my friend Norman would say, good grief!

WSJ: Split Personality?

The vast divide between the even-handed reporting in the Wall Street Journal's news pages and the unalloyed reactionism of its editorials was never more evident than in yesterday's edition in which columnist Ashley Jones wrote – in the WSJ Law Blog – a straightforward and balanced pre-election piece on the effect of the SCOTUS Citizens United
v. FEC ruling on incumbent senate candidate Russ Feingold (who subsequently lost).

At the end of the column, "for a different take", Jones links us to a WSJ editorial on the subject, a piece of writing so unremittingly snarky it makes the queen of snark, Rachel Maddow, look like the Dalai Lama.

It starts out by charging "good-government liberals" (or 'goo-goos', in Journal-speak) with wanting to regulate "political speech" (code for unrestricted anonymous campaign funding) and goes downhill from there. We are asked to "celebrate…the death of campaign finance reform" (pace, John McCain) and to agree with the editors that every Democrat ("from President to dogcatcher") will be shifting the blame for their mid-term shellacking onto the Supreme Court (NB: I hasten to concede that some undoubtedly will).

While the Citizen's United decision may or may not be sound law, it certainly flies in the face of any republican concept about government's obligation to provide a level political playing-field. In fact, the Court itself held, in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, that political speech may be banned based on the speaker's corporate identity. That ruling was intended to "prevent the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of [corporate] wealth...that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas." 'Nuf said.

My purpose here today is not, however, to wallow in the detritus of Citizens United, but to ponder the dichotomy of style and substance between the WSJ's news coverage and its editorial pages. One might ascribe it to Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function", or we might, more churlishly, put it down to schizophrenia.

Corporate Personhood: Fact or Fantasy?

One of the delights associated with newspaper reading is the random encounter with an article whose headline might not have drawn you to it online, but which, with idle page-turning, happens to catch your attention for no reason other than pure serendipity.

Religion sections having become an exotic species in newspapers of late, my curiosity was piqued by a headline in the Cape Cod Times: Do Corporations Have Souls? The author (The Rev. Edmund Robinson) starts out with a Halloween peg about the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain, during which "the veil between this world and the other world was said to be at its thinnest, allowing the fairy folk to escape the sidhe, or fairy hill, and wander about in human villages."

It was but a short narrative leap from those shades and spirits to the incorporeal entities now frighteningly empowered to fund election campaigns anonymously, courtesy of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, a case which infamously declared corporations to be persons under the law, and therefore entitled to all of the free speech protections of the 1^st Amendment.

Robinson then proceeds to demolish the premise of corporate personhood as a theological absurdity, a compelling perspective not previously encountered in my readings on the subject.

We may of course choose to accept or reject his doctrinal arguments according to our own religious convictions, but there is no getting around his essentially humanistic contention that corporations are not people because they are not mortal, and, consequently, neither die nor harbor fear of death, a uniquely human imperative that existentially influences our behavior, hopefully for the better.

I commend the complete article to your attention.

Promises, promises

So amazed was I to encounter on the front page of our local newspaper a headline stating that one of our congressional candidates has an actual "plan" to offer, rather than the usual mix of glittering generalities and ad hominem calumny, that I hastened to read the article.

Alas, t'was not to be. It seems that the candidate's plan relies heavily for implementation upon passing two Constitutional Amendments, despite the fact that in the 222 years since the Bill of Rights was ratified, over 10,000 Amendments have been offered and only 17 have passed (the ERA having been on life support since 1923).

One must therefore reluctantly conclude that we are, as usual, being offered only what those of us old enough to still be reading newspapers call "pie in the sky".

We is Sarah

Without becoming unduly obsessive about the essential witlessness of Sarah Palin, her most irritating trait may well be her insistence on referring to herself in the 1st person plural.

Acceptable use of the imperial we is pretty much restricted to sovereigns and heads of state, and, even then, is generally derided in democracies as an affectation; especially when utilized by someone holding no public office whatsoever.