Reason Magazine - Topics > Media

Dead on the Fourth of July

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EDT

The first time I met Jesse Helms was in 1981. My fifth grade class had risen early, boarded a bus in North Carolina, and taken a five-hour trek to Washington, where we tried to pack a week's worth of civic tourism into a single day. Zipping through the U.S. Senate, we filed in for a photograph with our state's senior senator.

"So these children are from Raleigh?" Helms said to a staffer.

"No," came the reply. "Chapel Hill."

A hint of a scowl crossed the Republican legislator's face. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me, knowing as I did that he hated my hometown and the liberal-leaning university it contained. When the state was mulling a plan to build a zoo, Helms had cracked that it should just put a fence around Chapel Hill.

That would not be an appropriate comment for this occasion, so our host changed the subject. His eyes scanned the crowd of kids, and apparently they fell on my nametag. Before I understood what was happening, he was shaking my hand. "My name's Jesse, too," he drawled. "Maybe we're related!" I stood there dumbly, surprised and paralyzed; before I knew it, my namesake was gone and we were marching to the next stop on the tour.

One of the class chaperones fell into step beside me. "Thanks," he said, "for not spitting in his face." I got the impression from his tone that a part of him would have liked it if I had spat at the senator. If Jesse Helms hated Chapel Hill, then virtually everyone I knew from Chapel Hill hated Helms right back.

By the '90s that contempt had spread far beyond our city and state. If you asked the average liberal about Helms in 1995, there were two things he was likely to tell you: that the senator was a racist and that the senator was a censor. The evidence for the first charge, if you cared to ask, would be a TV ad he ran in his 1990 campaign, in which a white man crumples a job application after a racial quota keeps him from finding work. The evidence for the second charge would be Helms' crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal program that funded material he considered obscene.

In other words, the typical Helms-bashers were actually prettifying the picture. The man was a Jim Crow nostalgist who wanted to obliterate the line between church and state, and they were whining about his run-of-the-mill conservative stances on affirmative action and Robert Mapplethorpe. You'd think Helms was just another Republican, notable only for his accent and his ties to the tobacco industry. But he was much more than that. You needn't favor racial preferences or federal art subsidies to find Jesse Helms objectionable.

Helms was, almost literally, a child of the segregationist order. His father was a cop in Monroe, North Carolina; in his recent book Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism, the historian William Link writes that the senior Helms "was expected to maintain the racial hierarchy through intimidation and, if necessary, brute force." (Link quotes a black Monroe woman who said the officer used "his power to the fullest, in the wrong way.") The constable's son came to prominence as a defender of that racist regime, but he made those old arguments in a new medium, reading virulent editorials on WRAL-TV in the '60s. "Are civil rights only for Negroes?" he said in one 1963 broadcast. "White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who had their purses snatched last year by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated."

In the 1950s, an alliance emerged between free-marketeers and segregationists. It was not an inevitable union: Jim Crow laws were, in addition to all their other injustices, an intrusive array of restrictions on freedom of contract and freedom of commerce. But the alternatives suggested by the civil rights movement often restrained those freedoms from the other direction, opening space for a coalition that would have seemed much stranger a generation earlier. Thus, in 1964, the Deep South voted for Barry Goldwater, a man who had taken the lead in desegregating his family's department store, the Arizona Air National Guard, and the Phoenix public schools years before the law required any of those institutions to be integrated. He had also voted for federal civil rights bills in 1957 and 1960. But he shared the segregationists' hostility to two provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and that mutual interest allowed conservative activists to create a political realignment.

If Goldwater relied on the votes of racists he despised, then Helms was the other side of the alliance: a segregationist who could speak the language of liberty but never really adopted freedom as a principle. Helms realized early on that it looked better to position yourself as a foe of big government than as a defender of state-created privileges, so he preferred to talk about the new powers the federal government was claiming, not the old powers the state government had exercised for decades. In other words, he learned to talk like Goldwater. But there's little doubt that his sympathies lay with the larger system of legally enforced white supremacy. Helms maintained that the South had no racial problems until the feds "manufactured" them; according to Link, he established quiet ties to the White Citizens' Councils and similar groups.

Helms' anti-statist rhetoric wasn't entirely a pose. As a Raleigh city councilman in the '50s, for example, he led a lonely fight against the federal urban renewal program. But anyone tempted to believe the right-wing direct-mail king Richard Viguerie's eulogy for the senator—sample quote: "It's the free market views, policies, and leadership of President Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Milton Friedman that have led the world to experience the greatest movement out of poverty in history"—should review Helms' record in office. As far as economic policy was concerned, his chief concerns were preserving and extending the trade barriers that protected North Carolina's textile industry and the subsidies that supported North Carolina's tobacco farms.

In social policy, Helms favored anti-porn statutes, compulsory school prayer, and—"in the best interest of public health"—sodomy laws. In international affairs, he pushed for U.S. aid to some of the most repellent figures on the world stage, from the Salvadoran death-squad organizer Roberto D'Aubuisson to the Mozambican terror group RENAMO. After the Cold War ended, some critics of American foreign policy hoped that Helms' hatred of the United Nations and nonmilitary foreign aid would transform him into an old-fashioned isolationist who eschewed foreign entanglements. That isn't how it worked out. Over the course of the decade, Helms sponsored bills to tighten the embargo against Cuba and to send $100 million in military aid to Bosnia. After some early dithering, he also came out for expanding NATO into Eastern Europe. By the end of his career, he couldn't even hold the line against the foreign aid he loved to criticize: Under the influence of his buddy Bono, Helms put his weight behind a $200 million assistance package for Africa.

In other words, the man was no more committed to limited government abroad than he was committed to it at home. But he maintained his reputation as a skinflint isolationist. And why not? A good politician knows how to lie, and Helms was an expert politician.

1983: another school, another field trip to Washington, another audience with the man who shares my name. Now a smartassed seventh grader, I set a goal for myself. Tired of receiving mass-produced deceptions via the newspapers and television, I would get a legislator to lie to me personally. I approached the senator. "Excuse me, Mr. Helms," I said in a deferential tone. "My name is Jesse Walker. I don't know if you remember me, but we met a couple years ago on another class trip."

The senator took the bait: "Why, of course I remember you, Jesse." He smiled warmly, looked me straight in the eye, spoke in a confidential tone, and gave me the heartiest handshake I had ever encountered.

It should have been a private moment of triumph. Instead it taught me what a born politician can do. For a second, I forgot the whole plan and believed him.

Jesse Walker is reason's managing editor.

Witchblade Creator Dead at 37

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:26:00 EDT

Michael Turner, the former golden boy of Image Comics and Top Cow Comics, and more recently, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, died last month of cancer. Turner's style was as good as it gets by action comic book standards, but he'll be remembered most for successfully challenging the Comics Code Authority (CCA).

The CCA wielded gospel-like influence during the Red Scare, banning visual depictions of and references to drugs, sexuality, and violence. For almost 40 years, publishing houses had to go through the CCA if they wanted their titles to see the light of day. In response to artist complaints, the CCA liberalized its code in 1971 to allow references to drugs, and again in 1989 to allow representations of gays. By the late '80s, the CCA had fewer and fewer topics to go after, but big houses like Marvel Comics and DC Comics still made whatever artistic changes the CCA deemed necessary.

The rise of comic shops in the early 1990s meant that newsstand comics had a smaller market share. Artists and publishing houses who didn't want their work censored by the CCA had a new home. Image Comics was founded in 1992, and its earliest titles—Spawn and Gen¹³, as well as Turner's Witchblade—proved that a comic could draw fans without doing time on a newstand. Inspired by Image, Marvel and DC followed suit a few years later, creating smaller houses that would eventually foster titles popular with adult readers, such as Sin City.

Below are some highlights from the original Comics Code, published in 1954:

If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
No comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.
Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

Turner's work violated every nearly every rule in the 1954, 1972, and 1989 codes. Thanks in part to the path blazed by Witchblade, two of the four biggest comic publishing houses in the country—Image and Dark Horse—operate by their own in-house standards, free of the CCA's anti-comic moralizing.

Editor Brian Doherty hates on Image co-founder Rob Liefeld (for artistic reasons) here.

Kurt Loder on Gonzo

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:13:00 EDT

Rolling Stone's and MTV's Kurt Loder gives two thumbs up to the new documentary about journalist Hunter S. Thompson:

The late Hunter S. Thompson was a dazzling writer who in his days of greatness—from the mid-1960s to the mid-'70s, approximately—misled a lot of younger writers into believing that if they just ingested enough drugs and alcohol, they, too, could write like Hunter S. Thompson. It didn't work that way. In the end, it didn't even work that way for Hunter anymore.
In "Gonzo," Alex Gibney's moving new documentary about Thompson, we meet the man foursquare: not just the brilliant, rampaging star of the "new journalism" of that period, but also the irascible crank, the drunken gun nut, the public menace. Hunter was much-loved by his many admiring cronies, among them Bill Murray, Keith Richards and Johnny Depp (who narrates the film). "On the other hand," says his ex-wife Sandy, "he was absolutely vicious." Such balanced candor is rare in any documentary, and it makes "Gonzo" the most transfixing film about a troubled artist since the 1994 "Crumb."

Sounds well worth watching. More here.

Related: Clay Felker, the impresario behind New York, one of the great wellsprings of New Journalism, died recently.

reason's David Weigel reviews Gonzo here.

Kurt Loder talks with reason.tv about how new technology has made our current age into a golden age of journalism:

Gitmo in the Rockies (Aspen Ideas Festival Edition)

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:10:00 EDT

From June 30 through July 6, The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic Monthly are hosting an "ideas" festival in, well, Aspen, Colorado. What are you missing out on, besides extra-long baking times? Here's an official (read: sent out by a P.R. firm in a spam email) highlight from Tuesday, July 1:

• Tyne Daly and Sandra Day O'Connor kicked off the day at the Mercedes-Benz Sunrise Stretch, a warm-up session taught by one of Aspen's top yoga instructors.

More here.

Official Cagney & Lacey website here. Bonus points for first commenter to correctly say which one Tyne Daly played.

Christopher Hitchens Tortured (Seriously)

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:57:00 EDT

Christopher Hitchens underwent waterboarding for a Vanity Fair story. His conclusion?

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

Below is an excerpt from his day in the life of a torture victim:

In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

Check out the full story here. See the video here. Jacob Sullum on waterboarding here.

"We Are All Hussein."

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:49:00 EDT

Barack Obama supporters looking for ways to neuter the negative impact of his middle name, Hussein, have taken to using it themselves:

The movement is hardly a mass one, and it has taken place mostly online, the digital equivalent of wearing a button with a clever, attention-getting message....Legally changing names is too much hassle, participants say, so they use “Hussein” on Facebook and in blog posts and comments on sites like nytimes.com, dailykos.com and mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s networking site.

The idea of assuming another person's identity as a sign of support is as old as Kirk Douglas in a loincloth:

Some said they were inspired by movies, including “Spartacus,” the 1960 epic about a Roman slave whose peers protect him by calling out “I am Spartacus!” to Roman soldiers, and “In and Out,” a 1997 comedy about a gay high school teacher whose students protest his firing by proclaiming that they are all gay as well.

Supporters are trying to reclaim the name and drown out subversive accusations that Obama is a practicing Muslim, but one Obama supporter's anecdote reveals that the exercise is better at shocking mommy and daddy than catalyzing a widespread change in social perception:

Ms. Nordling changed her name after volunteering for Mr. Obama before the Kentucky primary. “People would not listen to what you were saying on the phone or on their doorstep because they thought he was Muslim,” she said....But when her father saw her new online moniker, he was incredulous.
“He actually thought I was going to convert to Islam,” Ms. Nordling said.

Wait—so Hussein does have Islamic significance?

The Onion on Heller

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:18:00 EDT

"Our most intelligent newspaper" has once again spoofed the names of reason staffers in its "American Voices" survey section. Among the reactions, a customs agent named "Kari Welch" says, "'Great! Now I can finally shoot the Statue of Freedom off the top of the Capitol building. Goddamned allegorical figure.'"

More here.

(Re)Name the Candidate

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:31:00 EDT

With the general election just a sound bite away, our biggest concern shouldn't be the economy, Iraq, gas prices, immigration, or rumors that Jake Gyllenhal and Reese Witherspoon have finally moved in together. Instead, we should be thinking about nicknames—for Barack Obama.

Newsweek ran a story some months back about Obama's switch from "Barry" to "Barack." Although conservative pundits relished the condescension potential in Barry, it ended up making everyone who used it sound like a schoolyard bully with a byline. But there is an older nickname floating in the ether, one with an innocuous construction but damaging implications, and I can't help but wonder if it will experience a revival: the good Senator from Hyde Park.

If John McCain manages to figure out why everyone is so upset over the price of gas between now and when the MSM quits humping his leg, he might have time to pull a bastardized version of the stunt Reagan pulled in 1966, and tie Obama to the academic radicals of Hyde Park and the University of Chicago. (Granted, the folks at U.C. aren't dropping acid en masse, occupying campus buildings, or hosting love-ins, but our cultural deviance threshold has decreased since the '60s—just ask David Horowitz.) Or maybe the average voter no longer feels threatened by the pale-faced residents of the Ivory Tower. If that's the case, my vote for "Anticipated Smear of the Year" goes to the one suggested over at Talking Point Memo.

Dave Weigel wrote about the biggest Obama smear to date here. Michael Moynihan wrote about the U. of Chicago's 100 least-informed faculty members here. Jesse Walker wrote about political paranoia and its deep roots in American politics here. Visit Obama's hopeless anti-smear website here (subjects include "Barack's Books," "Barack's Religion," and "Barack's Patriotism.")

the eXile in Exile

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:49:00 EDT

Here's Sean McMeekin writing in reason in 2001, in an article about the eXile, the irreverent muckraking Moscow tabloid founded by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames:

Ames and Taibbi often remark that their paper would be shut down in a minute if it were published in New York or Washington, if not for unlawful slander then by armies of enraged feminists, anti-obscenity activists, and sexual harassment lawyers. In light of the heat generated by the eXile just among the expatriate community of Americans in Moscow--where the editors have repeatedly endured blackmail, petition drives to boycott the paper's advertisers, and even death threats--such a scenario is not hard to imagine.

In Moscow, by contrast, Ames and Taibbi are free to go on smearing rhetorical mud pies over the Clintonian New World Order. Fleeing the unwritten speech codes of their native America, Ames and Taibbi have found a First Amendment haven in the former capital city of International Communism, of all places.

That didn't last. The Russian government has just shut down the newspaper. More precisely, the authorites "audited" its editorial content, prompting the paper's weak-kneed investors to withdraw their funds. The eXile website is still online, though its future is also uncertain. "Looks like this Fifth Column is winning, and we'll be forced to retreat from Moscow," eXile columnist Gary Brecher writes. "Ya hear that, Moscow, ya ungrateful place? We're shakin' your dust from our 'Nam boots and setting up a new site somewhere not so allergic to truth, boobs and gory jokes. Maybe we can get Eritrea to give us a home."

Update: Good news -- the online edition isn't ready to die just yet. It plans to keep publishing from an "undisclosed Putin-proof location."

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:57:00 EDT

The State Department was so offended by the Home Office's decision to deny Martha Stewart a visa that it has retaliated by denying a visa to Boy George. At least that's what it looks like. Not one to fling mud, Boy George is attributing the denial to his 2005 New York arrest for possession of copious amounts of cocaine.

The former Culture Club front man had been excited as hell about performing a free concert for New York City's sanitation workers, with whom he served his court-mandated community service:

"I'm pretty devastated because I am so excited about this forthcoming tour and having my visa application denied seems unfair after I swept the streets of New York spotless. There are a number of public figures who are openly using drugs and they have no problem with immigration...

George has a good point about the sweeping, but I'm not sure our immigration policy would benefit from new regulations allowing the "deportation" of people like Courtney Love and Robert Downey, Jr. (Or was George referring to other immigrants?)

Like Martha, Boy George is a high profile celebrity with a non-violent, nonrecurring criminal history. Neither of them poses a threat to public safety or to national security—the two abstractions which both the U.S. State Department and Britain's Home Office claim to be upholding by forbidding an investor with deep pockets and a performer with a reliable fan base from stimulating their respective economies.

Here's a new slogan that both agencies could share: "Fucking with celebrities to keep you safe."

Carlin Kicks the F*cking Bucket

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:28:00 EDT

The guy whose raunchy lines your prudish friends hated you for reciting in crowded restaurants, George Carlin, is dead of a heart attack at 71 years old.

CNN misses him so much that it's hosting an ever-so-lightly censored version of the “Seven Dirty Words” sketch on its site. The sketch (which grownups can view uncensored below) led to Carlin’s arrest and the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. Fortunately, the 5-4 ruling let Carlin off the hook on the grounds that his monologue was "indecent but not obscene"; unfortunately, it also gave the Federal Communications Commission some guidelines on how to censor the airwaves without violating the Constitution.

Carlin refused to vote, calling the electoral process the "delusion of choice." Ironically, one of the last times he publicly discussed politics was during an interview with the late Tim Russert.

For your pleasure, a compilation of reason-esque Carlin quotes:

"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity."

"If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him."

"Think off-center."

And of course, the video:

Nick Gillespie on Carlin's American Spirit, here. Jacob Sullum writes here on two decades of post-Seven censorship.

UPDATE: Check out Jay Dixit's thorough and fascinating interview with Carlin on the Psychology Today blog.

Quite Possibly the Worst Editorial Cartoon Ever (Tim Russert Edition)

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:04:00 EDT

More proof that the editorial cartoon is the absolutely lowest form of art:

This is either funniest thing ever or just really sad.

Question: Was there no space for a crying Statue of Liberty?

Thanks to Dave Weigel. And tip o' the pixel to Michelangelo, of course.

Update: More Russertania below and here.

Whole archive here.

Classical Gasbags

tcavanaugh@reason.com (Tim Cavanaugh) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EDT

High Comedies

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:30:00 EDT

If the recently concluded HBO series The Wire is arguably the most aesthetically accomplished fictional indictment of the decades-long war on drugs, there is no shortage of contenders for the most absurd bit of prohibitionist agitprop, from the unintentionally hilarious 1936 movie Tell Your Children (better known as Reefer Madness) to the widely parodied 1987 public service announcement in which the role of "your brain on drugs" is played by an egg frying in a skillet to an early 1990s TV ad in which the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles counsel a grammar school kid offered a fistful of joints ("Get a teacher," advise the Turtles, "get a pizza, get real").

Then there's the latest offering sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a mockumentary called Stoners in the Mist, featuring a pith-helmet-wearing narrator explaining the strange customs of the slack-jawed, amotivational, Lava lamp-loving inhabitants of "Cannabis Isle." Online at abovetheinfluence.com and featuring squirrely navigation and a rhythmic drum track more stupefying than anything produced by Cheech & Chong, Stoners underscores what most Americans already knew: Real winners don't do anti-drug websites.

Here's a short magical mystery tour, culled from the foggy memories of reason's editors, of decades of advertising and small-screen messages that inadvertently made childhood just a little more bearable. And drugs—even NoDoz—just a little cooler.

"Marijuana...is the Hula Hoop of the Jet Generation!" Produced in the late 1960s by the American Medical Association, this anti-cannabis commercial featured animation groovier than the film Yellow Submarine and a detailed list of just how fun it is to get high. "The human brain," notes the serioso narrator, "is hardly a Tinker Toy." But judging from the spot's graphics, it sure looks like one, especially if you've been smoking dope.

Dragnet's "Blue Boy" Episode. Clocking in at number 85 in TV Guide's 1997 list of the best TV episodes ever, this segment told just the facts about LSD-and a face-painting hippie called Blue Boy, who overdosed on the stuff after being arrested by Sgt. Joe Friday, played by three-pack-a-day smoker Jack Webb, who died in real life of a heart attack at age 62. Honorable mention: the "Big High" episode, in which two cannabis-craving parents get stoned and let their child drown in a bathtub. "After 25 years on the job, it's finally happened," groans Friday's partner, Bill Gannon. "I'm going to be sick."

Sonny Bono's Secret Message. "If you become a pothead," the curiously speech-slurring future congressman warned in this 1970 PSA, "you risk blowing the most important time of your life: Your teen age [sic]." The pitch might have been more effective if Bono's eyes weren't quite so red--or his jumpsuit so golden and shimmery.

Stop the Madness! This star-and-monkey-studded mid-'80s video is the Citizen Cocaine of Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign. (The First Lady even has a cameo.) Featuring past and future drug users ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger to David Hasselhoff to Whitney Houston-and a spasticated spider monkey dancing to the strains of a Herb Alpert trumpet solo-"Stop the Madness" didn't just make a case for getting high (anything to stop the "Stop the Madness" video!). The title track previewed the lockdown that has given the U.S. the highest rate of incarceration in the world: "You thought that using dope would be a party/Now you're a prisoner in a cell crying to be free."

Heavy Metal Drug Addicts Destroy Communism. In August 1989, what The New York Times described as "thundering hordes of Western heavy-metal rock" acts, including Motley Crue, Ozzie Osbourne, Skid Row, and Bon Jovi, played at the Soviet-sanctioned Moscow Music Peace Festival as guitar-grinding "ambassadors of peace and temperance." The concert, which was broadcast to the West on MTV, was created by the American impresario Doc McGhee as part of a parole deal stemming from a 1987 conviction for marijuana importation. The Berlin Wall fell a scant 14 weeks later-long before Ozzy or Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx entered rehab.

I'm So Excited by Caffeine Pills! In a 1990 episode of the crypto-kiddie-porn high school sitcom Saved by the Bell, Jessie (played by Elizabeth Berkeley, later to triumph as a bare-it-all-to-get-ahead dancer in Showgirls) gets hooked on caffeine pills while studying for a big math test and rehearsing for a singing audition. Her friends' intervention comes soon enough to save Jessie from the ultimate coffee high but not before the audience hears her espresso-distorted version of the Pointer Sisters' anthem of chemically free overexuberance, "I'm So Excited!"

Pee-Wee Herman Says No to Crack-and Jail Time. "Everyone wants to be cool," the uber-ironic Saturday morning children's show host admits in this ad made as part of a sentencing deal after Pee-Wee's 1991 arrest for masturbating in a Florida movie theater. "But doing it with crack isn't just wrong. It could be dead wrong."

One Frying Pan Can Ruin Your Whole Kitchen. Riffing off the legendary 1987 ad "This Is Your Brain on Drugs," this 1999 spot created by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America features an underweight model personifying heroin chic, who explains the downside of smack (a drug regularly used by less than 0.1 percent of Americans) by smashing up a kitchen with a cast-iron frying pan.

If you're interested in related fare, check out The Best Week Ever's "10 Funniest Anti-Drug Commercials in Advertising History" and 10 Zen Monkey's "Five Druggiest High School Sitcom Scenes."

And if you're still locked in a terminal buzz from watching so many videos online after your coffee break, contribute a little more to the declining productivity of the American economy by watching the infamous episode of Quincy, M.E., that answers the musical question, "Can punk rock kill?"

Nick Gillespie is editor of reason.com and reason.tv. A version of this appeared in the June reason.

The Movie Trailers That Are Destroying America!

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:31:00 EDT

From The Colbert Report, the "trailers that are destroying America," including one for The Incredible Hulk. Colbert reads the movie as a pro-Al Gore documentary, and notes in passing that the former VP, like the Hulk, "got huge after embracing the green agenda." About five minutes of fun, fun, fun.

Now Playing at Reason.tv: How The Week Is Redefining News Mags for the 21st Century

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Bill Falk is editor in chief of The Week, the magazine that promises to "tell you all you need to know about everything that matters." Six years old and boasting a growing circulation of 500,000 subscribers, The Week has redefined the news magazine for the 21st century by offering wide-ranging and witty takes on the topics of the day. For each issue, Falk and his staff sift through thousands of newspapers, magazines, websites, and other sources to produce a concise and comprehensive gazette of news, opinion, and attitude.

Although The Week is a non-partisan publication, Falk has no shortage of opinions about the state of the media-and particularly the troubles facing old-style, mass-circulation print behemoths such as Time and Newsweek. Such mags are "clearly in a bad place," he says. "It's unclear what their role is in this new media landscape....They're fishing around for what their role is going to be."

In this 10-minute interview conducted and filmed by reason.tv's Nick Gillespie and Dan Hayes, Falk explains why he thinks The Washington Post is the best newspaper in America, why content will always be king across all media platforms, and why it may not be a bad thing that politics is starting to look more and more like a reality TV show in which contestants get voted off the island.

Click below to view. To add this video to your site and more reason.tv, go here.

Question: What do Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Nine Kittens Bobbing Together to a Song, and PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel Have in Common?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:48:00 EDT

Answer: Stories about them were recommended to pals of FriendFeed cofounder Paul Buchheit last week, according to The New York Times.

Following the feeds of people you like and admire, these companies say, allows the serendipitous discovery of needles in the information haystack. "Friends are likely to have some similar interests and tastes. Just the fact that your friends find it interesting should make it more interesting to you," said Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed's four founders, all of them former Google engineers.
Last week, for example, Mr. Buchheit's followers on FriendFeed were treated to what he himself had discovered and found valuable online: links to interviews with the investor Peter Thiel in Reason magazine and the Google co-founder Larry Page in Fortune, an article about Justice Antonin Scalia's views on torture on a political Web site, and a YouTube video of nine kittens moving their heads in rhythm to a song, among other Internet ephemera.

Read "Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise."

Plastic Surgery Disasters

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:46:00 EDT

On Tuesday, Newsweek devoted over 1200 words to My Beautiful Mommy, a children's book about plastic surgery. Since then, news of the tummytuck-touting tome has shot through the blogosphere, inspiring the sort of irate commentary ordinarily reserved for It's Just a Plant or Frog and Toad Do Dallas. (*)

All of which might be understandable if the book had any ... readers. As Teresa Nielsen Hayden notes,

This story is equal parts hokum and hot air. You'd think that somewhere in those three [Web] pages of titillating handwringing, [Newsweek writer Karen] Springen would have gotten round to mentioning that My Beautiful Mommy is a self-published vanity-press book available only from its "publisher"--or, presumably, from [author-surgeon] Dr. Michael Salzhauer.

Big Tent Books (not to be confused with Big Tent Entertainment) is a vanity press and marketing and fulfillment operation.... [It] has the usual problem of vanity presses: zero to lousy sales and distribution. They're a lot better at making books than they are at promoting them. Only a few of their titles are even listed at Amazon, and those are listed badly--half the normal publisher-furnished information is missing. Sales are minimal.

My Beautiful Mommy is not one of the books Big Tent lists on Amazon. It has no ISBN that I can detect--and this close to its publication date, I should be able to detect one. Clearly, this book is not destined to make its way to the shelves of your local bookstore.

But maybe it is now, thanks to Newsweek's publicity blitz.

Footnote: There is not, in fact, a book called Frog and Toad Do Dallas. But if you draw it yourself, staple it together, and send a copy to Newsweek, you just might have a hit on your hands!

The Image Lies

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:42:00 EDT

Friday fun link: Photoshop disasters.

The News Media vs. the Innocent

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Years ago, Ray Donovan, Ronald Reagan's Labor Secretary, was prosecuted for corruption, only to be acquitted. After the verdict, Donovan asked plaintively, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"

Steven Hatfill knows where to go to get his reputation back. But upon arriving there, he finds the door blocked by someone who says her privileges are more important than his good name. That someone, of course, is a journalist. And, not surprisingly, she enjoys the broad support of other journalists, who have proved to be slow learners about the obligations they share with their fellow citizens.

Hatfill was a casualty of the anthrax scare of 2001. Just after the 9/11 attacks, someone mailed letters containing anthrax spores to several news organizations and a pair of U.S. senators. Some 22 people were infected, and five died. In the aftermath, the Justice Department labeled Hatfill, who had done research on biological warfare for the army, a "person of interest." Secret information leaked to the press suggested he was the terrorist behind the attacks.

But the suspicions were wrong. Hatfill asserted his innocence, and he was never charged in the case. He sued the government, The New York Times and others for damages. Federal Judge Reggie Walton concluded that the claims have "destroyed his life" even though "there's not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with" the anthrax attacks.

Years later, Hatfill is still awaiting vindication. Last week, he inched closer when the judge ordered Toni Locy, a former USA Today reporter, to disclose her sources about Hatfill—or else face fines of up to $5,000 a day for contempt. A host of news organizations, including Tribune Co., filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging that she be spared from providing evidence.

Here we find ourselves on depressingly familiar ground. Back in 2005, Times reporter Judith Miller refused to say who told her that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. She went to jail for contempt before finally acknowledging it was vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Five reporters didn't want to reveal their sources about Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was tarred for alleged espionage but convicted only of a single minor count of mishandling classified data. Their demands got nowhere, forcing their employers to reach a costly settlement with Lee.

The news media keep losing these cases, yet journalists and their attorneys refuse to recognize reality. They continue to insist on their right to keep evidence of wrongdoing and lawbreaking from the courts, no matter what the collateral damage.

Locy reported on the suspicions about Hatfill based on interviews with confidential sources in the Justice Department and the FBI, who may have violated federal law in leaking information about him. Since she discarded her notes and says she can't remember which of 10 people told her about Hatfill, the judge says she has to turn over the names of all 10 so Hatfill's lawyers can question them.

Judge Walton found that the identity of her sources "goes to the heart" of his case, and that there is no other way he can get the information. Without Locy's testimony, the damage done to Hatfill would go unpunished and unrepaired.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and its allies also think the $5,000-a-day fine, which the judge says she must pay herself, is outrageously excessive. But the point of such fines is not to accommodate the financial resources of the person who is defying the law—it's to force her to comply, in the interests of justice.

Justice should not be at odds with the job of the news media. But in this instance, it is. University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, one of the premier experts on the First Amendment, thinks the press has overstepped. "It's important to remember here," he told me, "that these sources were not blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing but were allegedly doing something wrong in revealing the information about the identity of the suspect."

Journalists and citizens may disagree on the proper role of the news media in a free society. But when the press finds itself protecting the guilty at the expense of the innocent, it's made a wrong turn somewhere.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Forget It Hillary, It's Chinatown

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:15:00 EST

As reason.tv videographer Dan Hayes notes at that site's video blog, Rough Cut, Hillary Clinton actually won the Ohio primary even after Jack Nicholson, the Laurence Olivier of American celebrity douchebags, released this ad in favor of the former First Lady.

A clip roll of various Nicholson performances ranging from the Joker in Batman ("this town needs an enema" is not included, alas) to Five Easy Pieces (where Jack's hip character harangues a waitress in a diner to show how disaffected and down with the common man he is) to A Few Good Men (where his military commander characters unconvincingly sanctions torture of U.S. servicemen as the only way to protect this land of liberty). The clip ends with an Colbert-Nation-like eagle emblazoned with the legend: "I'd rather live on my feet than die on my knees." Which strikes me as a very clumsy way to recall the good old '90s from a Clintonian perspective.

Yes, it's that good.

Question: Where do Barack Obama and John McCain go for their equivalent celebrity gag-ads?

Remixed Propaganda Posters

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:29:00 EST

London has a new poster campaign asking citizens to report potential terrorist photogs, cell phone users, and house dwellers on an "anonymous anti-terror hotline" ("Terrorism: If you suspect it, report it.") The original posters say things like "Thousands of people take photos everyday. What if one of them seems odd?"[PDF] and "Thousands of people have mobiles. What if someone with several seems suspicious?"[PDF].

Naturally, parodies have sprung up.

Here's my favorite (and a favorite of Cory Doctorow), despite the slightly dumb use of that much-abused word, fascism, from Flickr user illegalphotos:

For more on the joys of living in the remix age, stay tuned for my upcoming review of Matt Mason's book on the subject, The Pirate's Dilemma, in the next issue.

In the meantime, tide yourself over with one of my favorite pieces remixed WWII propaganda. Also, this one, a close second in that genre.

With His Ballot in His Hand

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:00:00 EST

Like no other Democratic candidate in this presidential campaign, Barack Obama has had an affinity for fan-launched viral videos, from a cutting spoof of Apple's famous 1984 ad to a star-studded singalong to a stump speech. But the most interesting Obama clip circulating online right now might be "Viva Obama!," a musical tribute cooked up by the Chicago-based marketing company Nueva Vista Media and performed by a California mariachi band. Aimed at Latino voters in Tuesday's Texas primary, the video features a Spanish-language testimonial to the junior senator from Illinois.

Translated into English, the song begins:

To the candidate who is Barack Obama
I sing this corrido with all my soul
He was born humble without pretension
He began in the streets of Chicago
Working to achieve a vision
To protect the working people
And bring us all together in this great nation
Viva Obama! Viva Obama!

The anthropologist Margaret Dorsey has listened to lots of lyrics like these—though this is the first time she's heard someone combine a corrido, a specific kind of ballad frequently used in South Texas political campaigns, with Mexican mariachi music. "This is insane," she laughs as she hears the song over the phone. "I can't wait to listen to it at home. It sounds like a wonderful example of cultural hybridity and innovation."

Dorsey has spent a lifetime surrounded by borderlands politics and borderlands music. The daughter of a now-retired Texas judge, she attended her first rally when she was five. More recently, she spent several years researching and writing Pachangas (2006), an intriguing study of the intersection between music, marketing, and politics along the Texas-Mexico border. It focuses on the pachanga, a local institution whose forms range from family barbeques with musical entertainment to choreographed commercial spectacles sponsored by Budweiser, Ace Hardware, and other multinational firms. She did her fieldwork in and near Hidalgo County, a rapidly growing border county that contains over 700,000 people.

Dorsey, 34, is now a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. I interviewed her in late February, just a few days before the Texas presidential primary. We began by exploring the deep roots of Obama's campaign corrido.

reason: When did the corrido originate as a form?

Margaret Dorsey: The corrido of the Texas-Mexico borderland area comes out of a context of intercultural contact and conflict, specifically between Anglo and Mexicano populations. Américo Paredes [author of With His Pistol in His Hand, the classic study of the subject] points to the time period around 1900 to 1920, when you see the real emergence and innovation of this form in the region.

reason: What is the literal translation of "corrido"?

Dorsey: Literally, correr means "to run"; it's about a flow. But the best translation in English is really "ballad," or "border ballad."

The quintessential corrido, the ur-text, is "El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez." Paredes found many, many iterations of this song. It's never exactly the same: People change the places a little, and they play with it. But it follows the corrido form in terms of its rhyme scheme. There is a corrido melody, and it follows that. And the text tells the story of an upright man fighting for the right cause against a system that is not upright.

This is important, too: A corrido is based in reality. It's a legend, but it's based on historical fact. It's extrapolated from this wonderful story of what happened to this fellow.

reason: And what did happen to him?

Dorsey: In a nutshell, it's the story of an upright Mexicano fighting the unjust rinches, or Texas Rangers. It's a very long story, but the short version is they come on his property and try to arrest his brother, a shooting match breaks out, people are killed, and then he flees and Rangers chase him all over the state. Once they meet up, Cortez is put in jail. He is tried in several counties in rural Texas, and finally President Lincoln's daughter intercedes to have him freed.

reason: So it's a classic outlaw ballad, then.

Dorsey: It is. You can talk about this in relation to European balladry traditions. You can talk about this in relation to the Robin Hood story. It's connected to both Mexican and U.S. folk forms. In terms of Spanish balladry traditions, Paredes argues that it builds upon the romance form.

reason: It's interesting that this form that's identified with celebrating the righteous outlaw would evolve into something celebrating the outsider politician.

Dorsey: It makes a lot of sense, right? In my book I talk about [Judge Edward] Aparicio [subject of a popular campaign corrido, "The Song of the Judge"]. He was the politician from Washington state running for office in Hidalgo County in South Texas. And who was he running against? The political machinery. So you can see how those valences work.

You can see it with Obama, too. Bill Clinton was just stumping for Hillary Clinton in Corpus. There was not a strong turnout. There weren't many people there. And -- this fits perfectly with the corrido -- who was standing on stage with Bill Clinton? All of the political establishment, all of these elected officials. Then Hillary Clinton spoke at University of Texas-Brownsville, and from what I could see, she did not have a huge turnout.

Obama had a rally around the same time at University of Texas-Pan American, in Edinburg. At that rally, people arrived six hours ahead of time so that they could be close to Obama.

reason: But is a university typical? A campus would probably be stronger territory for Obama.

Dorsey: Well, I was watching the news, and they were interviewing some young people who had come from Rio Grande City, which is an hour away. Obama's bringing in lots of young people, and when you talk to political scientists who study Latinos in the U.S., you can see it's clearly falling along the lines of young, educated, cosmopolitan Mexicanos overwhelmingly supporting Obama. For Hillary Clinton, it's middle-aged Mexicanos.

reason: There's also the idea that someone like Alonzo Cantu, who was reported to be bundling contributions for Hillary, also has the sort of turnout machine that can bus people in to vote for her -- people who might not be as politically engaged on the national scene but know who their patrons are. Do you buy that argument?

Dorsey: I think people who make that argument are discounting the ability of individuals to make their own choices.

reason: The most recent poll numbers I've seen have Obama ahead statewide but with Clinton holding the lead in the border country.

Dorsey: That's pretty much what I've been seeing, too. I haven't seen any surveys that have Obama ahead in the region. What people have told me is that in places like the Austin area his backing is much stronger, but when you get into South Texas there's a much more even split. Even families are split.

We're just going to have to see. I don't think anyone knows. I'm not a predictor.

reason: You mentioned Hillary Clinton's rally in Brownsville. I thought it was interesting that the Brownsville Herald headline called it a "presidential pachanga." Later in the article, the reporter said the rally had "the feel of a political pachanga."

First of all, how would you define a political pachanga?

Dorsey: There are different types of pachangas. You have corporate pachangas, you have family pachangas, and you have political pachangas.

When you look at the political pachangas, specifically in Hidalgo County, you see various iterations of it. You see old-style pachangas, which are still in practice, which are all men, typically out in the country on a little ranch. There's live music, the men cook the food, they're talking politics, and they're organizing people to run for office.

Another kind arose with women taking an explicit role in politics: the dance-hall style pachanga. You find that in small towns and cities. It'll be in a dance hall, usually a family-owned dance hall. It'll have food—traditional Mexican-style entrees, but also served with white bread and things like that. It involves usually a conjunto band. Conjunto bands play various genres of music, including corridos and including dance music. They always have an accordion and a bajo sexto, which is a kind of guitar, and a vocalist.

These rallies involve a pretty set format. You usually have some prayers, the showing of the colors of the flag, patriotic gestures, introduction of the candidate, then the candidate's speech. And then everyone leaves. It almost feels like going to mass, it's almost that regimented. People dance beforehand and afterwards.

The third kind is a novel combination. It's moving more toward a spectacle format, so it has a much more visual orientation, easier to broadcast on TV.

reason: What's the relationship between a political pachanga and the sort of rally Hillary had in Brownsville?

Dorsey: I can't comment on it, because I wasn't there and I didn't talk to anyone who went to her event. The images I have just aren't clear enough.

reason: I found another report about the Clintons going to pachangas back in the '90s. Those were actual pachangas that do fit the term?

Dorsey: They do. Bill Clinton is and was a strong presence in this area. You go into restaurants, and you see signs with the owner shaking Bill Clinton's hand, saying this was Bill Clinton's favorite restaurant. I remember a couple of years ago Hillary Clinton was down in the Valley raising money. So they have maintained their presence in that area for a long time. I never heard about Barack Obama going down to the Rio Grande Valley and drawing in the big money people and raising money the way Hillary has.

reason: I want to read a couple of quotes from your book. First: "Scholars have tracked the work of people, particularly upper-class conservatives in power, who use terms like 'boss,' 'patrón,' and 'machine' in conjunction with politics to describe all that is bad in U.S. politics. Usually such discourse functions to disenfranchise poor citizens (who tend to be darker and immigrant), keeping them as far removed from the political system as possible." The other one is earlier in the book: "With the final fall of bosses like [James B.] Wells, who saw Mexicanos as political capital, and with the rise of reformist candidates, politics reverted to strict racial segregation and a systematic disenfranchisement of Mexicano voters. The texture of politics in South Texas shifted from one of pistol whipping and brow beating—coercing Mexicanos to vote a certain way—to excluding them from the process altogether."

At the surface, grassroots democratic reform seems to be opposed to that kind of machine politics. On the other hand, there's this history of people using "reform" as a way of cutting out the lower rungs.

Dorsey: Usually that's been how people are disenfranchised. When I was doing my fieldwork down there, you still heard Republicans using that rhetoric. The Republicans would use this talk of transparency. And Barack Obama also talks about transparency in his speeches, though that doesn't necessarily mean that the valences are the same.

This is why the story of Aparicio is so important. Block-walking [visiting voters door to door] and grassroots politics are very important to this area. It's very important for people to get to know the candidates, for people to have personal contact with the candidates. The corrido, the music, can often work to facilitate that.

So you do have this very complicated relationship between personal contact and people looking at voters, especially people of color, as a "herd" to be marshaled to vote one way.

reason: How does Obama's rhetoric fit into that? The period of disenfranchisement that you're talking about was the Progressive Era, which is associated with liberal reform.

Dorsey: Right. Martha Menchaca, who's at UT-Austin, is writing a book about this period in Texas politics. And she agrees that these analyses of "machine," "boss" politics where you have people voting in herds is highly problematic. She's an anthropologist writing a historical study that's going to add a lot of complexity to our understanding of that.

With Obama, it's just hard to tell. I realize that's not really a fair answer, but I think we'll be better positioned to answer that question in the general election. Because the general election will be Republicans vs. Democrats, and that's when you tend to see that rhetoric used more clearly, because it tends to be Republicans using that kind of talk against people of color, who tend to vote Democratic. Republicans are already talking about Obama the same way: He's part of "the machine from Chicago."

reason: A lot of people wouldn't talk to you on the record about political pachangas. Do you feel that reticence was justified?

Dorsey: If one feels afraid or threatened to speak about it, certainly it's justified. It's not my place to tell them they should feel safe or unsafe. Politics is still physical in Hidalgo County. The day Barack Obama spoke in Edinburg, the local TV station reported the sheriff going out to a site where people were campaigning for a state rep race -- the campaign workers were having clashes. People were afraid it was going to turn into a fistfight.

Politics in South Texas is still very personal. It's still very family-based for a lot of people. You still hear stories about there being brawls at the polls. That's not everywhere at all times, but it still happens.

At the pachangas themselves, I write about the politiqueras, the ward-heelers, and some people affiliate their role with a type of coercion in getting people out to vote.

reason: Your book talks about the corporate pachangas converging with the political pachangas. When did that start to happen?

Dorsey: I didn't put a date on that. But companies like Budweiser putting on these huge pachangas has been around now for at least a decade. One important fact that I highlight in my book is that right at the time when you expect the candidates to be busy at their own pachangas, Budweiser hosts this huge event and all of the political players are there.

Those events aren't just people from the lower Rio Grande Valley. They bring in people from all over South Texas.

reason: You had a quote in the book about the changing meaning of the term "crossover." A marketer you interviewed, Robert Peña, flipped the word on its head—instead of talking about Tejano stars and the like crossing over to the mass market, he said that advertisers need "to cross over into the Hispanic marketplace." So instead of the outsiders crossing over to the mainstream, the people who are seeking the consumers cross over to the consumers' niche.

You seem ambivalent about that process, but I think it demonstrates a really interesting mutual influence between the local population and the transnational companies.

Dorsey: And we're seeing this today in these political campaigns. You see that in that webpage you sent me: "Viva Obama!" Hillary Clinton is doing it, too. I think Robert Peña was showing some foresight.

We have this wonderful Obama corrido, this hybrid kind of mixture. At the same time, both Obama and Clinton voted in favor of the fence—what people along the border call the wall. And that is highly unpopular in these places.

reason: How do they address that issue when they're in South Texas? It's not just immigrants who are upset—property owners are having their land taken.

Dorsey: Hillary Clinton said at the debate that when she spoke at the University of Texas-Brownsville the previous night, she learned that the president's plan would go right through the campus of the University of Texas. She said there was a "smart way" and a "dumb way" to protect the border and that this was clearly "absurd." And she said it had to be "reviewed" and that she would "listen to the people who live along the border." But then, after she says that, she talks about "smart fencing" and using technology.

So while they're stumping, people from inside the Beltway are finally hearing what people on the border have been saying forever. It doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, if your skin is light or dark, if your first language is English or Spanish—almost everyone is against the wall. So people like Hillary are saying that we're going to build it in spots, but first we have to listen to the people. She's trying to do both.

Obama's not that much different. He even said, in this debate, that they "almost entirely agree." Obama has three talking points on immigration, and he does a good job in sticking to those three points. But one thing he's added—and Hillary Clinton has mentioned this too—is that we need to work with Mexico and the governments of Central America to fix their economies so that we don't have as many people coming in. Then he shifts attention to—this is his number—the "12 million undocumented workers" in the U.S.

reason: How did you get drawn into this world? Was this around you already, or did you decide as an academic that you wanted to take a closer look?

Dorsey: I was raised in Texas politics. When I went to grad school I was interested in studying the relationship between music and politics, but I didn't know where they came together. I was constantly going back and forth between studying music and studying politics, and the convergence just wasn't there. Then, in 1998, I was reading the Corpus Christi paper, and I saw this photo of Bush stumping with [Tejano star] Emilio Navaira. And he just swept the largely Mexicano counties, the first time a Republican had done that since Reconstruction. That's what brought it all together.

Jesse Walker is managing editor of reason.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, They Stink: WFB on the Beatles

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:54:00 EST

The always-innerestin' site 10 Zen Monkeys has posted a fun tribute of William F. Buckley, Jr., titled "The Collected Controversies." There's a lot of good stuff there, including the National Review founder's dumping on the Fab Four:

In a 1964 essay titled "Yeah Yeah Yeah, They Stink," Buckley had written that the Beatles were not merely awful: "I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful." His diatribe acknowledged the National Review critic who argued that after Sinatra's twitches and Elvis's thrusts, future entertainers would have to wrestle live octopuses. "The Beatles didn't in fact do this," Buckley wrote, "but how one wishes they did!"

"And how one wishes the octopus would win."

10ZM also includes his rarely citied final rejoinder to Gore Vidal in their famous TV bitchfest ("Go back to [your] pornography"), a mention of a dreadful novel about Elvis Presley, and this quote that all conservatives should read closely:

"Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great."

(One controversy that's missing: Buckley's and National Review's odious defense of state-enforced segregation.)

Whole 10 Zen Monkeys, well worth reading, thing here.

I've been trying to track down video of Buckley's great Firing Line interview with Jack Keroauc, the king of the Beats last TV spot (I believe) and a real melding of two very different conservative minds, but can't find it online anywhere, alas.

The editor of The New York Times Book Review and author of a fantastic bio on Whittaker Chambers, Sam Tanenhaus, has a Q&A about WFB here. (Tanenhaus is writing a bio of Buckley too).

Update: Commenter Xmas below points to the Kerouac Firing Line interview here.

Alan Bock on Buckley

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:03:00 EST

The OC Register's Alan Bock writes about William F. Buckley, Jr.:

His intellectual independence shone through from time to time, as in his early understanding that the drug war was unwinnable and socially corrosive, and his realization fairly early on that the Iraq war was a disaster, something the war-addled folks to whom he turned over National Review have yet to come to grips with. I don't know whether it is a commentary on present-day conservatism or present-day cable news that it is difficult to imagine a program of civil discussion like "Firing Line" from the current batch of angry shouters and rude dealers in the ad hominem that pass for conservative (and most liberal) talkers today.

Bock also knocks Buckley for his Murray Rothbard obit while concluding "there's little doubt that he had an enormous impact on the history of this country."

Whole thing here.

Bock blogs at the OCR's always interesting Orange Punch blog (he's there along with Steven Greenhut and Mark Landsbaum) and has his own thang over at alanbock.blogspot.com.