How Could Alcohol Prohibition Possibly Be Relevant Today?

New York Times TV critic Neil Genzlinger opens his review of Ken Burns' new documentary about Prohibition by suggesting that "flappers in speakeasies and biddies beating temperance drums" do not seem like "a recipe for modern-day relevance." But Genzlinger wants those inclined to dismiss Burns' subject as quaint to know that in Prohibition "you can hear history talking directly to the Americans of 2011." Indeed, the documentary calls to mind "Santayana's phrase about learning from the past or being condemned to repeat it." And what is the obvious lesson that Genzlinger draws from the story of Prohibition? He concludes that "the noble experiment" was an example of "extremism that sabotages itself by refusing to compromise," which "sounds like tomorrow's headlines." I'm pretty sure he is referring to the budget cuts favored by the Tea Party movement. After all, how else could a disastrous attempt to stop people from altering their consciousness with a politically disfavored intoxicant possibly be relevant in this day and age?

Reason.tv interviewed Burns about his new documentary, which began last night and continues tonight on PBS:

Comments

[Max]

Which Libturd has a crush on Burns?

[John]

Wow. The lesson to be learned from Prohibition is about budget cuts. Nothing to be learned about the current prohibition that we are engaging in. That is some major league stupid.

[Barry D]

Furthermore, given the barriers to amending the Constitution, Prohibition obviously wasn't an "extremist" position in its day.

Stupid, wrong, self-defeating, sure. But those are actually substantive judgments, or can be. "Extreme", by itself, means nothing.

[John]

Good point about the amendment. And of course notice how no one on his side is "extreme". The people who want to run multi trillion dollar deficits are not extreme. The people who raid medical marijuana clinics and arrest doctors for giving out too much pain medicine to ill patients are not extreme. Only those evil Tea Partiers are extreme.

[Pro Libertate]

If I ran the Tea Party, I'd adopt the "extreme" label and run "extreme" ads like Mountain Dew. Extreme to the max!

[BakedPenguin]

Did Burns say that? I thought it was the NYT flack.

[JW]

NYT flack:

And what is the obvious lesson that Genzlinger draws from the story of Prohibition? He concludes that "the noble experiment" was an example of "extremism that sabotages itself by refusing to compromise," which "sounds like tomorrow's headlines."

[John]

It was the NYT flack. That is who I meant.

[Proprietrist]

I've been wondering - if it took a national amendment for Congress to have the authority to outlaw alcohol, where does it get the authority to outlaw other drugs without a similar amendment? You'd think such an amendment wouldn't be too hard to pass. Wonder why they never tried?

[Cunctator]

I have loudly wondered this for years.

[Hugh Akston]

Yeah, I don't get it. Is he being coy about the obvious parallels with the WoD, and if so why?

[John]

Because he thinks everything in history must confirm his biases.

[Pro Libertate]

It's hard not to think that he was strongly urged not to make that analogy.

[ola]

This. Also I wish Nick would have pushed him into the question of why the constitutional amendment instead of just passing a law prohibiting it.

[Professional Critic]

Virtually all NYT reporters are experts at writing well and missing the point completely. It's a hard thing to pull off consistently, kudos to the Grey Lady.

[T]

Look, the drug war thing is the easy and obvious answer. So you have to be different and edgy to get the page views. What more different and edgy than tying the ills of the past to the Tea Party movement?

[Pro Libertate]

Hey, anybody ever see Spartacus? Doesn't Ken Burns look like Marcellus (Charles McGraw)?

I wonder what that means.

[Trespassers W]

Yes and yes.

[Pro Libertate]

Good. So we can put Marcellus lines into his mouth: "You're not as stupid as I thought. You might even be intelligent. That's dangerous for slaves."

[Ska]

I'm going with Randy Marsh. Someone should ask Burns how he feels about naggers.

[SugarFree]

When The New York Times goes to war, it's total war. As the election nears, TEA party hate and OMG KOCH will be worked into more and more. The nadir will be reached when the restaurant guide has a 6-page spread on restaurants to avoid because the Koch Bros. might have eaten there at one point.

[Pro Libertate]

I don't pay much attention to all of this, but it seems to me that the Kochs just are just too mild to be the fodder of all of this Two Minutes' Hate.

[Aqua-Assualt Rabbit]

You go to war with the Goldsteins you have.

[Pro Libertate]

You'd think they could do better than that. It's got kind of a "Let's go after Ward Cleaver" feel to it.

[WarrenT]

Well, he was a little hard on the beaver last night.

[Dagny T.]

Kinky.

[H man]

June likes it. You know she had to learn Jive from somewhere.

[Pro Libertate]

I'm surprised no one has ever done a gritty prequel of Leave it to Beaver. Kind of like 9 1/2 Weeks but with Ward and June.

[H man]

Wouldn't internet rule 34 apply here?

[Pro Libertate]

I'm pretty confident that there's a whole June-with-her-pearls-on fetish that's alive and well on the Internet somewhere.

[SugarFree]

Koch-mania lets them paint libertarians with the omg crazy rightists brush. It's really a sort of auto-immune disorder after the liberaltarian love-fest during the Bush era.

We are a cancer, rather than excise the wound, they'll take off the whole arm.

[wheelock]

My favorite thing about the whole Kochtopus thing is that it seems to escape these folks that Koch Industries seems to be the only big evil corporation they can find at the center of the whole conspiracy. Wouldn't big ugly corps like GE benefit from the evil plot to limit the power of the government... where is their support of the tea party?

[Groovus Maximus]

According to the Occupation Wall Street faggoty douchenozzles and their bastard ilk, killing the patient and raping and feasting on the carcass is the preferred method of resolution.

It's very Dahmer-esque.

[Episiarch]

What is this "New York Times" that you speak of? Is this something that people actually care about or pay attention to?

[Pro Libertate]

It's a giant clock in the heart of New York City, which shows the different times within the city limits, which cross multiple time zones. Thus, New York Times.

[SugarFree]

It is the clearinghouse for leftist memes.

[John]

It is something neurotic Manhattanites read to make themselves feel better.

[Episiarch]

Uh, let me inform you, John, as someone who was a Manhattanite: no one reads the New York Times in Manhattan. You read the Post or The Daily News.

[John]

I said neuritic Manhattanites. And yeah, the Post and the News are much better papers. And that is why the Times is going broke.

[sloopyinca]

Neurotic Manhattanites seems a bit redundant to me.

[Pro Libertate]

In 2939, they'll be known as Woodies. The etymology of that term will be unclear.

[Hugh Akston]

But you can be assured that SugarFree's head in a jar will be screaming it as loud as he can at all passersby.

[Pro Libertate]

Nobody listens to the SugarFree Head in 2939.

[Episiarch]

"As an interesting side note, as a head without a body, I envy the dead."

[JW]

"Yes! Front row!"

[Pro Libertate]

It's a complex multianagram of meanings:

* Enormity Skew
* Metiers Wonky
* Write Monkeys
* Yetis Workmen
* Eke Nits Wormy
* Enemy Tis Work

And so on.

[sloopyinca]

Monkeys Write is the most appropriate acronym for anything I have ever seen in my entire life...evar!!!!!

[Dagny T.]

Yetis Workmen is apt now that we know STEVE SMITH is in NYC at the Wall Street Occupiers protest. STEVE SMITH WORK MEN. AND BY "WORK" OF COURSE STEVE MEAN "RAPE."

[Pro Libertate]

If I ever name any business entity, I'm going to check out the anagrams first. You'd think they'd have done that long ago.

[Tim]

Thanks Patriot Rebel.

[Pro Libertate]

That's even better than Pro Libertate.

[Warty]

Whatever you say, Reprobate Lit.

[Pro Libertate]

You have a bad one: Aw try.

[Warty]

I like At Wry.

[Pro Libertate]

That's okay. Your name isn't very sophisticated, anagram-wise. I have like 14,000, and that's just in English.

[JW]

How many do I have?

[Pro Libertate]

None. WJ means nothing.

[JW]

You've underestimated us again, "Pro" Libertate.

[Pro Libertate]

I already checked Google. Nothing good. Now, it were, say, WC, that would be good.

[JW]

But it's the center of WWJD!

[Pro Libertate]

Frankly, you need to hire an anagram consultant.

[Ska]

Said the guy giving no credit to Wooden Jesus.

[Pro Libertate]

I have high standards when it comes to anagrams. WJ is too ambiguous.

[Pro Libertate]

If it were, that is.

Your killallmimes does give us "maim, sell, kill." Or "Makes Mill ill."

[Hugh Akston]

Khan Sought.

'nuff said

[Pro Libertate]

Nice.

[Pro Libertate]

How did Rand know about Wrath of Khan before there even was a Star Trek? I mean, that has to be intentional, right?

[Hugh Akston]

There's an Ewok reference in there too, but I'm too goddamn lazy to work it out.

[Pro Libertate]

Rest in my Ewok
Insert my Ewok
I rent my Ewoks
Try mein Ewoks
My inert Ewoks

[Hugh Akston]

Much obliged, captain.

[Pro Libertate]

The Ewoks shot first.

[Tim]

That guy needs a shave, and a neck tie.

[John]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/.....tary-units

Holy cow. Remember, you had to vote for Obama because McCain was going to get us into a big war, you know like with someone like Pakistan.

[BakedPenguin]

Jesus. What are we doing over there again?

[Pro Libertate]

Our goal is to restore the empire of Alexander the Great at its greatest extent. We plan to buy Greece from the EU.

[alittlesense]

We start out offering 5 bucks for Greece, 6 with the Parthenon, and close the deal at 5.50 with the Parthenon.

[Pro Libertate]

Heck, the UK already owns major chunks of the Parthenon. Might as well move the rest there, or, perhaps, to North America.

[Almanian]

What's the Univ of Kentcky going to do with the Parthenon?

OH! New "Adolph Rupp INTERNATIONAL Arena". Brilliant!

[Pro Libertate]

That joke might work if we were talking about OSU. It's just An University of Kentucky.

[Almanian]

#WINNING!

Right?

[sloopyinca]

Hey @kenburns just bc you look like Stephen King with Aids doesn't mean you can ramble on like a fag.

[Pro Libertate]

It's already established that he's Marcellus from Spartacus.

[capitol l]

Dammit! They didn't even have Aids back then. Helpers yes, but no Aids.

Ken Burns looks like someone put a chopped prince valiant wig on top of an uncircumcised penis...Yeeeah, let's go with that.

[Pro Libertate]

Sure they did. Only back then, you could only get it from sleeping with monkeys.

[sloopyinca]

RAAAAA...... nevermind.

[Pro Libertate]

The Romans would eat anything. The Greeks would fuck anything. Put those two cultures together, and strange things happen.

[Pro Libertate]

Sorry. Please move the above comment under capitol l's.

[capitol l]

Somewhere P Brooks is laughing at you.

[Pro Libertate]

His. . .is. .. the. . .superior. . . .

[capitol l]

Yeah, you're right.

I remember reading about it in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it was in the glossary, under Aids.

[Joe M]

The fact that Genzlinger never once even mentions the WoD shows that he is a worthless hack.

[wef]

Until you start ignoring that deadtreerag and power-worshipping font of thug-press buttinski-ism, you'll only crave prohibited intoxicants all the more.

[Hugh Akston]

I think this goes back to what I was saying the other day about criticism of any government policy is being treated like an attack on the whole philosophy of interventionist government.

So now the liberals in good standing aren't allowed to critique obviously bad policies because that will just feed the anarchist tea party rethuglican Kochtopus?

[The Other Kevin]

I watched a little of the documentary this weekend. Interesting stuff. They said the temperance movement somehow got every public school in the country to teach a "temperance" class three times a week. And the class taught things like, just one drink could damage your throat and stomach, and make you an alcoholic. These were the kids who grew up and voted for prohibition.

Sounded an awful lot like DARE or MADD. Or obviously the Tea Party.

[Barry D]

Sounds a lot like the "green" movement, too.

[Tman]

I watched the first part of this series last night, and to Burn's credit there was an emphasis on the fact that progressives were the ones who started the Temperance movement, and conservatives were made to go along with it if they wanted to remain relevant in the polls.

It doesn't excuse the conservative acquiescence to the movement, but it's clear that it was another example of progressives wanting to use the power of the bully pulpit to force other Americans to live the way they wanted you to.

We'll see if this theme lasts through the second two parts.

[R C Dean]

it's clear that it was another example of progressives wanting to use the power of the bully pulpit jackboot and nightstick to force other Americans to live the way they wanted you to.

[Tman]

Yeah, they did actually have a part about Carrie Nation, the Kansas saloon smasher who would just walk in to Saloons and start smashing all the bottles in the bar randomly.

What I couldn't figure out was how these Saloon owners and patrons would simply stand back and let this happen. It's as if no one had the balls to grab this psycho property smasher and throw her back out on the street. I suppose things were a lot different back then, and granted the Kansas bars were operating pseudo-legally, but still- no one grabs crazy lady and says GTFO?

[R C Dean]

It's as if no one had the balls to grab this psycho property smasher and throw her back out on the street.

Crazy bitch, swinging an axe? You've got two options: Leave quickly, or gun her down like a mad dog.

[Tman]

It was just weird. They had one episode where the patrons blocked her entrance to a saloon, but she eventually convinced them to step aside so she could come in a trash their whole operation.

It's unfathomable to think of something like that happening today, unless it's the Federal Government or the Mafia. This was just one old ugly pissed off lady.

[wef]

After watching Burns apologize for "drug" prohibition, he comes across as a safe social critic. Well, he is a creature of so-called Public media.

[ChrisO]

Endless still photos accompanied by stentorian narration. Who can possibly resist that shit?

[Gilbert Martin]

"I watched the first part of this series last night, and to Burn's credit there was an emphasis on the fact that progressives were the ones who started the Temperance movement, and conservatives were made to go along with it if they wanted to remain relevant in the polls."

I watched it too.

Another thing that I heard was that the anti-saloon league teamed up with the progressives to pass the 16th Amendment creating the income tax. The progresives wanted to redistribute wealth (of course) and the prohibitions wanted to create a different tax income stream for the federal government so that it wouldn't be reliant on liquor taxes and would therefore be in a position to outlaw booze.

[Tman]

Yeah, I caught that as well. So the nannystaters are the reason we have an income tax too.

Well done.

[Air Jordans 2011 Shoes]

Here you can choose more new products, enjoy more discounts, so you get favorite products while saving money.