WordPlay - Language, Culture, Media, and Meaning

'Snapped'

    A commentator on MSNBC suggested last night (11/05/09) that the horrors at Fort Hood occurred because the perpetrator, the Army psychiatrist, had 'snapped' due to the stress of doing post-combat counselling of combat soldiers. So another mass murder has occurred because someone snapped. Shortly after Columbine, I recall someone on a call-in show insisting that society could gain nothing from the disaster until someone figured out what had made the two youthful murderers 'snap'.

    An interesting word, 'snap', in this context. The notion it conveys is of a personality under great, perhaps unbearable stress, who 'snaps' in the manner of a steel girder or two-by-four when the pressure becomes too much. There's a kernel of sympathy at the base. Maybe you, maybe I, maybe anyone, would 'snap' if we were subject to the same conditions. So maybe anyone, everyone might succumb. To that extent, moral judgment becomes blurred, maybe even suspended, in a warm blur of empathy. How can we blame the gun wielder for being overtaken by fate?

    There's only one small problem with this metaphor. It doesn't apply.  The Army psychiatrist, the Virginia Tech zombie, the Columbine killers, innumerable others - the process is remarkably similar in all these cases, and it has nothing to do with snapping. What it does have to do with is a morbid fascination with the commission of a spectacular, self-glorifying act of violence, that a long, systematic process of self-brutalization and enurement transforms from a horrific fantasy into an act that can actually be done in real, concrete life.

    The Columbine case is typical and illustrative of the process. The two young thugs spent more than a year, planning, scheming, and daydreaming about their rampage. To be sure, some of this time was necessary to procure firearms and fabricate explosive devices. But the vast majority of the time and emotional energy was spent by the two, closeted together, playing video games, talking, discussing, gradually making what seemed incredible and obscene, practical and commonplace. (The actual 'plan' was incredibly juvenile. The two killers were dead by each other's hand less than 15 minutes after they began.) Over time, the real human presence of their classmates fades and blurs into the cyber reality of video game victims. Gradually, systematically, they nurse the trivial slights and insults they experience into a cause for righteous anger - they infuriate themselves. (Neither boy was a victim of bullies. The leader was a lifelong bully himself.) Over a year, what at first was the aeriest fantasy of revenge becomes something they might do, then something they could do, then something they will do. An unspeakable crime becomes ordinary, acceptable behavior.

    It takes a long, long time to get from first period homeroom to mass murder.

    The Army psychiatrist went through the same process, immersing himself in the phenomena of suicide bombing and extreme Islamic fundamentalism. The metaphor he used may be different than Columbine, but the process of systematic de-sensitization, self brutalization, and the like, is identical. The same may be said of the Virginia Tech killer and all the others. None of them 'snap'. One and all, over a significant period of time, they work the petty annoyances and frustrations of everyday life into causes for rage, dehumanize the class of victims who will become their eventual targets, and finally act. The final impetus may appear random (e.g., deployment to Afghanistan), but the process is anything but. 

    In short, these are anything but impulsive crimes, perpetrated as the result of great stress. They are repulsive, deeply premeditated acts of utter viciousness, intended to satisfy a self-indulgent morbid fantasy and the narcissistic demands of a pathologically inflated view of self.  Neither the acts nor the actors are entitled to the least bit of sympathy. 

    So for my money, save your tears and sympathy for the victims of these appalling acts - for these people actually do experience a 'snapping', of the ties between husband and wife, between parent and child, between friend and companion, of life threads that were intended to be spun out far longer and spread wider than they are. "Spare me your expressions of regret" (a line of Robert Bolt's from the movie Dr. Zhivago that I really like) for the criminals. Trust me, they have already lavished all the sympathy on themselves anyone could ever hope for.

    (P.S. Some readers may have noticed the absence of proper names in the essay above. It's not a coincidence. Years ago, I attended still another seminar, this one in evidentiary law. The presenter, a DA from some county in Southern California, was a very funny guy, with an Eastern seaboard accent. Most his stuff was based on street hypotheticals, encounters between cop and suspect. But every once in awhile, he'd touch on real cases. He always spoke indirectly about the perpetrators of these - 'the Heisman Trophy wife killer' or 'the people who came to Sharon Tate's house.'

    In the midst of all this, he suddenly paused and became dead serious. "I never use the proper name of a murderer," he said. "Never." This expression of moral purposefulness was all the more striking, coming as it did in the midst of what was basically a light hearted presentation.

    In any case, it seemed like a good principle to me, and I've tried to stay with it.)

   

Three Movies About Unique Subjects

    Movies have been made about every conceivable subject and in every conceivable style - love, hate, war, peace, life, death, music and art, horticulture and agriculture, straight narrative, flashback, experimental, the works.  But I'll give you three movies that (in my not-so-humble opinion) are absolutely unique in terms of the subject matter they address. 

   1. The Hustler. There are all kinds of movies about winning and losing, the agony of victory and the ecstasy of defeat, in just about every kind of sporting activity. But The Hustler is the only movie I know about the actual process of winning, i.e.,  of gaining and keeping the mindset necessary to master the art of winning. Let me apologize in advance for something - a large part of that art consists of alterations in attitude and self-awareness subtle to the point of being subliminal, and for that reason difficult to describe in concrete language. So if some of what follows sounds a little ersatz and flat, bear with me.  

    Early in the movie, Fast Eddy loses, to Fats at pool and to others in the larger aspects of life, because he literally doesn't know how to win. He has an appreciation of his own enormous talent, but none at all of what it is he really wants or how to obtain it. The theme of the picture is established with some brilliance in the prologue, in which - while en route to the big meeting with Fats - Eddie executes an ordinary hustle with a panache that is absolutely unnecessary and even dangerous. The object of the exercise should be to leave the suckers in ignorance of the fact that they've been hustled. Eddie doesn't understand that. He delights in showing off his brilliance in a way that actually endangers the real object of the game. That's the point of departure for the plot.

    In the first big meeting with Fats, Eddie easily establishes himself as the superior player. But he is too callow and immature to set the limits, i.e., he knows how to play the game, but doesn't understand the constraints of the game itself. 'The game isn't over until Fats SAYS it is!' he declares, ridiculously - and of course Fats will not say any such thing until he can claim victory. (A note to all gamblers and particularly poker players - if you don't quit at some point when you're ahead, the only possible way to quit is when you're behind. An inarguable, gruesome point of common sense and mathematical fact.) 

  The basic movement of the picture is the story of Eddie acquiring (at significant personal cost) the perspective and maturity, the mindset, necessary to prevail.  The second (and final) encounter with Fats is deliberately anti-climactic and perfunctory - Eddie knows now who he is, what he intends to prove (much more than superior skill at rotation pool), and - above all - what the limit of the game actually is, what winning actually means. He's learned how to win, and become a mensch in the bargain.    

    The Hustler thus stands as a unique picture. (By the way, I disliked the sequel made some 25 years later, 'The Color of Money', as much as I liked the first. There is no way that the Eddie Felson who emerges at the end of The Hustler emerges as the Eddie Felson of the sequel. No way.)      

    2. All That Jazz.  Life and death are of course the staple of all drama, maybe even a universal theme, the ultimate subject of all. But All That Jazz is the only one I know that is actually about the process of dying. The most vivid scenes in the picture, the musical numbers set in the hospital and themed around open-heart surgery, are the ones that stay with the audience, and rightly so. But, as with The Hustler, the theme is consistent throughout. Thus, the first dialog in the movie is a colloquy between the hero (Joe Gideon, the alter ego of the director, Bob Fosse) and a lovely Lady in White who turns out to be Death herself. The picture goes on from there. 

     I could discuss any number points of interest that illustrate the point, but I'll stick to just one. Intercut throughout the movie are scenes of Gideon doing an endless edit of a comedian doing a bit based on the discussions of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on the various psychological stages of dying. (The picture-within-a-picture is entitled 'The Comedian', obviously referencing - in this autobiographical movie - Fosse's picture 'Lenny'.) The subplot is interesting in its own right, but it simultaneously provides an ongoing rumination about the death process, becoming more acute and focused as the edits become sharper and better. They form a counterpoint for the increasing debilitation of the hero. His eyes become redder, his cough becomes heavier, his discussions with the Lady in White become more intimate. All That Jazz may be the most thanatophiliac movie ever made.

    The star scenes, the ones that every one remembers, are the ones in the last third of the movie, when Gideon is hospitalized. It is a near-certainty that no one else will ever stage a musical number based on open heart surgery. The most unsettling scene, in my opinion, is the one in which Gideon, having escaped from his hospital room, comes across an elderly woman, bedridden and moribund, and impulsively mounts the bed and gives her an impassionate soul kiss. That shook me up immensely the first time I saw it. It is a truism, of course that the inevitable decline of the body is matched by a decline in passion, but that was the first time I saw the fact starkly dramatized. It occurred to me, then and now,  that maybe the worst part of aging might be the frustration of remaining passionate while the flesh weakens and then deserts. Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas advised. Maybe that's the exact ungentleness he meant. If so, like a lot of good advice, there's a lot more edginess in it than you'd think at first.

    The movie ends with the hero metaphorically in the arms of the Lady in White, and corporeally in a body bag. The picture has moved vector-like towards that conclusion from its very first frame to the last syllable of its recorded time. There are a lot of movies that feature death as a theme or event, but All That Jazz is the only one I know that is about dying.

    3. Lust, Caution. I have a number of Chinese friends and acquaintances. To a man and woman, they admire Ang Lee and his accomplishments as a filmmaker. To a man and woman, they all  agreed that Ang Lee had lost his mind with the movie Lust, Caution. The reason is the notorious bedroom scenes, which go to verge of hard core porn and maybe beyond.

    The critics were not as shocked as my friends, but many had problems with this picture. The reason, stated in more than one review, was the coldness and distance of the hero and heroine. Talk about missing the point! There are ten zillion movies about love, in all its varieties, but Lust, Caution is the only one I know that's about lust. The picture is absolutely faithful to its title.

    The famous scenes are not at all erotic, but actually rather off-putting. They are edgy, ugly, angry encounters, laced with violence and raw hatred. The couple at the center are physically attracted to each other, no question - but they are also locked into a relationship based on mutual contempt and self-loathing. A nearly murderous intensity runs throughout everything they do. This is passion, to be sure, but it is not love - the opposite, in fact, lust in action, as the poet would say.   

    If the movie was only concerned with sexual combustibility, and the hero and heroine matchstick people, it would not be worth writing about. But that's not the case. Both hero and heroine are complex, intelligent individuals, who deserve better - it's the war, the occupation, and the compulsion of larger moral duties that ensnare them.  Although their relationship is lust-based, it is as complicated and multi-dimensional as any love story.  The picture is long, and plot driven - a story of wartime intrigue and spy melodrama. The story moves slowy, logically,and consistently toward the point of departure at which this sort of destructive affair is possible for person who might have deserved better.

     The ending of this movie is extraordinary. The climax turns on the first unambiguously loving act done by either character, which act leads to disaster for both. The action is emotionally and dramatically appropriate, but why the character does what is done is next to impossible to articulate in any but the largest terms. (My apologies for being so vague, but this is essential plot stuff.) Events follow quickly thereafter, leading to one of the most complex denouements in all film, in terms of the variety of emotions it evokes. It's next to impossible to describe in full - there is literally too much to say.

    If I haven't been clear, let me be so now. Lust, Caution is a masterpiece, likely the best picture Ang Lee has ever made (which is really saying something), and one of the greatest in the canon. (While in this mode of unrestrained enthusiasm, let me say that the score by Alexandre Desplat is absolutely superb, haunting and completely appropriate.) That said, it does have a flaw. Those famous notorious scenes are somewhat miscalculated by the genius director. They go on much too long and in too much detail. They are so extremely explicit, so far beyond the normal pale, that they distort the larger movement of the picture. The first time I saw the movie, I was frankly rattled, and a little embarrassed to be viewing this stuff in mixed company. I watched the rest of the movie waiting for another shoe to drop, and for that reason missed a lot of nuance. But I had a sense there was more, much more to it, and went back to it when it came out on blu-ray. Once inured to the shock scenes, I discovered the masterpiece I have described here.

    It would be a shame if the explicit scenes were too offputting, because Lust, Caution is actually a relationship movie, very much the work of the director of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and Brokeback Mountain. There are very few persons of  romantic implication, particularly women, who would not be touched and moved by this story.

   

   

   

The Notch Effect

    I have often used the 'belling the cat' metaphor as shorthand for the difference between high concept strategy (always extremely easy) and actual implementation (always extremely difficult). I'm way overdue for a concrete example. Given the current discussion about health care reform, the 'notch effect' is a good illustration.

    The notch effect bedevils social welfare schemes. I first learned the phrase in a book published by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1971, 'The Politics of A Guaranteed National Income'. It may be hard to believe post-Watergate, but the first Nixon Administration actually produced some innovative ideas. Many environmentalists would be astonished to learn that the EPA was founded then. Moynihan, the resident token Democrat intellectual in the Cabinet, attempted a massive overhaul of the welfare system, based on the notion of a guaranteed base income, which was borrowed from Milton Friedman's concept of a negative income tax. The reform failed completely, under merciless fire from both Left and Right. Moynihan wrote about the experience in the book I mentioned. Good reading, although the ordinary arithmetic (sic - not math) becomes mind bending within the first hundred pages. In any case, it was in that reading I became aware of the Notch Effect.

    Suppose you are a conscientious Out. You make sincere speeches to the effect that a nation that can create the Internet can provide decent education, housing, health care to all the uninsured Poor. Now, suddenly, you are an In, and you have to translate that goal into practice. How do you do so?

    I'll use 1970 type numbers for convenience. Who exactly are the Poor? You are a reformer, not a mad man, so you eliminate able bodied adults who can support themselves even if they choose not to. You restrict the definition to the disabled, and families with dependent children, with income of  less than $5,000, You structure a system of education, housing, and health benefits to remedy the effects of this poverty. Well and good.

    It is here that the notch effect shows up. When you set the poverty line at $5000 and provide substantial benefits for those below, you create a notch at that level. Someone who earns $4,999 a year receives benefits worth a several thousand dollars. However, if that someone works one more hour at the Burger King, and end up with $5,001, he or she gets nothing. A 2 dollar difference makes a (say) $5,000 difference. You unutterable fool. You are going to pin down the poor to permanent welfare dependency, unless the family (improbably) can leapfrog to an income position at which it can do without the subsidized benefits.

       That obviously won't do, so you are going to have to include some graduated scale according to which benefits are phased in, and then fazed out. Well and good, but your simple little system just went up several levels in complexity. (That's why the arithmetic in Moynihan's book began simple but became mind numbing).

    And of course, we are only thinking of income as a simple, one dimensional variable.  What about illegal and non cash income? Drug dealers? Madams? Applicants with huge undisclosed cash resources? That clearly won't do. You obviously can't effectively police this sort of fraud at the administrative level, but you can regulate against it and criminalize the receipt of benefits when such conduct is turned up by other police investigations? But that's a whole new set of regulations, and another layer of complexity.

    Are you talking about one income or two? The core issue of American social aid systems. Are you going to determine poverty on the basis of individual or family income? Individual? You fiscal idiot. By that measure, every minor child qualifies, no matter that his daddy's rich and his ma is good looking. You'll break the bank.

    Ok. so eliminate minor kids and determine their eligibility by reference to parent's income. Sorry, but you still have a problem. Every stay-at-home mom with a conniving soul has suddenly become eligible, no matter that her loyal husband is a rock star. You fiscally irresponsible rad-lib.

    Ok, so let's include the husband's income. WHAT????? You've just disincentivized and demoralized the most marginal fathers in society, if the benefits you are offering equal or exceed the income the father can provide.

    Ooooooooooookay . . .  why don't we include a 'presumptive minim income' from the father, regardless of actual earnings, so that he has no motive to leave? WHAT???? You heartless bastard. You are going to deny or limit benefits to needy families on the basis of PRESUMPTIVE income? Money that is non existent? Don't you know how difficult it is for a single mother of limited education actually enforce her rights?

    And on and on and on. What about parental support? What about families headed by single women with children of multiple fathers? And I am simplifying by treating housing and health as unitary variables. Easy enough with the basics, but what about the grey area? Take acne with adolescents. Maybe it's a single zit below the lip of an impossibly vain cheerleader, or maybe it's the kind of major disfigurement that turns a formerly well-adjusted child into a social misfit. How do you decide coverage? By pimple count?

    I have made (I hope) my point, without (I hope) insulting anyone's intelligence. The target here isn't anyone on the Left or Right. The target is empty sloganeering. For what it's worth, I think there's a moral imperative to assist the poor, and in such a way -  to the extent practicable - that they are not disempowered. (This is my version of belling the cat.) I think most Americans have exactly the same value. Persons who are skeptical about this program or that do not necessarily have different values. They may have a different view of just what the task of belling involves, and how well it will really work.

Truly Guilty Pleasures

Lots of moviegoers talk about 'guilty pleasures' that are not all that guilty, i.e., movies that actually have some reputation in certain circles. But I'll give you four that are truly guilty, that you might like on one these hot summer nights.

1. Radioland Murders (1994). This offbeat homage to screwball comedy was produced by George Lucas, and almlost universally despised by the critics. The conventional wisdom is that it has the same place in Lucas' career that '1941' has in Spielberg's. The plot takes place in 1939, on the evening that a Chicago radio station (clearly modeled after WGN) is about to go national. The station is going to showcase all of its programs. The major sponsor announces that he hates all the scripts, which have to be rewritten while the show is in progress. Meanwhile, homicides keep occurring. The picture includes bows to all the famous radio drama prototypes, as well as radio music - Spike Jones, the Andrew Sisters, Gene Autry - the works. The picture was widely denounced as sophomoric in the extreme, and just plain silly in parts.

So what are its redeeming features? It is by miles the fastest paced movie I have ever seen in my life. It makes the Marx Brothers look like they're walking in molasses. The plot takes off in the opening credits and does not slow down for two hours. (In fact, I think that is one of the reasons the critics disliked it so much - on the big screen, the pace of action would been numbing.) Although it IS silly, it is also great fun, with any number of good gags. The musical numbers are superb. The overall affect is wonderfully energizing.

Seond, it looks terrific on a reasonably sized TV. The cast is first rate, and manages to convery most of the jokes as they fly by. A good movie for a late, hot night, if you can focus your attention. My daughters and I had great fun with it.

2. The Escape Artist (1982). I am probably the only Bootie who thinks of Emily and Zooey Deschanel first as the daughters of Caleb Deschanel. Father Deschanel is a world class cinematographer, who won an Oscar for 'The Black Stallion' and (I think) 'Cold Mountain'. 'The Escape Artist' is the only picture he ever directed, one of the last movies done at Zoetrope Studios for Coppola. The picture chronicles the adventures of what can only be called a magic prodigy - a teen-age sleight-of-hand wizard - in a corrupt town. The movie has all sorts of problens. For one thing, the scene designer couldn't decide whether the action took place in the 30's or 50's or some time in between. The casting is positively weird, with Joan Hackett and Desi Arnez in their last roles.

But I don't know anyone who doesn't like this movie. The hero's use of his repertoire to escape from one tight spot after another is fascinating. The score, by Georges Delerue, is absolutely terrific and deserved a better fate. (The picture got a cup of coffee in limited release in 1982, and promptly disappeared.) With all its obvious flaws, a truly haunting movie.

3. Mack the Knife (1979). At least the first two are on DVD. Good luck in even finding this one. I saw it on laser disc years ago. It is the Globus Brothers version of 'Threepenny Opera' and came in for the usual round of denunciations on the grounds of sacrilege. But the truth is that the Threepenny Opera isn't all that good, apart from the songs, and this movie is actully quite good. It starred Raul Julia (who is also in 'Escape Artist'), Julia Mignenes, Richard Harris,  and Roger Daltrey as a street singer who provides narration of the action in the form of versions of 'Mack the Knife' written for the movie. No matter what the critics thought, the production values are really good, Julia is superb, and the movie is actually very solid.

4. Return to Oz (1985). This picture is cheating a little. Although it was the most universally despised movie of the 80's, it has won support and a following over the years. An amalgam of the second and third OZ books, it is far darker than the MGM musical, a sin that the contemporary critics in 1985 were unable to forgive. They were particularly incensed that Dorothy is snatched away to Oz as she is about to undergo a quack electroshock procedure circa 1890.

However, what they overlooked is that this version of Oz is actually much closer to Baum's books than the musical. More to the point, both my daughters when younger vastly preferred THIS Oz to the musical - and I have heard the same thing universally from parents whose children have seen both. It's an odd thing - the light-as-air musical with the color and funny costumes is actually the adult movie, while the dark and sombre movie is the kids' version.

In any case, it's an awfully good movie, that both children and grandchildren will enjoy. Another great score, this one by David Shire.

"Talk" - A Poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko

read the poem quoted below in Time or some such when I was 14. I think Yevtushenko was on the cover. The poem isn't very good even in Russian, and the translation is a disaster.

But the concept has stayed with me my whole life. God, what I wouldn't give for a little integrity, not even honesty, just the attempt at honesty, from any of the myriad public personalities, pundits, politicians, etc. But these days image is everything, as the long ago commercial put it, which may be a good mantra for a tennis player but is a lousy motto for a statesman.

At any rate, here is the poem, written in the first years of the Kruschev thaw:

Talk

You're a brave man, they tell me.
I'm not.
Courage has never been my quality.
Only I thought it disproportionate
so to degrade myself as others did.
No foundations trembled. My voice
no more than laughed at pompous falsity;
I did no more than write, never denounced,
I left out nothing I had thought about,
defended who deserved it, put a brand
on the untalented, the ersatz writers
(doing what anyhow had to be done).
And now they press to tell me that I'm brave.
How sharply our children will be ashamed
taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage.

-- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Why the United States (and the West) Has Won the Iraqi War

Because a day like today (June 30th, 2009) has dawned in Bagdhad.

I am fully aware in writing this that there are formidable issues of ethnic and religious rivalry that still threaten the new nation, and will persist into the indefinite future. But are these any different than the ones that beset this nation not so long ago? Or any other nation?  There are two schools of thought in English political philosophy, one descending from Hobbes, that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and humankind the prisoners of its appetites, the other from Locke and Hutcheson, that human beings are fully capable of self-governance and freeing themselves from the historical nightmares of tyranny and theocracy. The second theme is, of course, fully embodied and articulated in the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson actually semi-plagiarized a great deal of Locke.

You either believe this stuff or you don't. I do. A lot of the editors who are going to be publishing copies of the Declaration and Gettysburg Address this next Saturday (July 4th) give that legacy only lip service. What has been enormously disheartening to me in the last six years is to see the Deranged Opposition turn its back on the most basic ideas that the United States offered to the world, embracing fascism and racism - anything to justify its loathing of George Bush.

I actually opposed the war in 2003, worried that the human cost would outweigh the benefit. But I never descended into the moral fury that seemed to engulf the opposition. That a positive outcome might be possible, that the United States even in its worst days was grimly and clumsily going about the business of nation (not empire) building - that seemed to me apparent. It was a basic truth that the anti-Administration faction went to almost any lengths to deny.

To say that a government based on the free consent of the governed is possible doesn't mean that it is going to come to pass. Our own nation was not able to bridge a colossal cultural gulf, and the related issue of slavery, without a monstrous civil war. (A Hobbesian writing in 1789 who could envision the later war would have smugly cited that catastrophe as proof that the new democratic nation was a failure.) The United States was also almost miraculously blessed with the right kind of heroic personalities at the right time, both on the macro scale(Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt) and micro (that a man of the stature of Joshua Chamberlain happened to command the volunteer Maine regiment stationed on the extreme left flank of the Union forces on the second day of Gettysburg.)

But the plain fact is that victory in a conflict of this sort cannot consist of more than the providing to a free people the opportunity to escape the dead hand of history that has held them in its grasp, to establish in concrete reality that government based on the consent of the government - and that is where we are today. There is still a long way to go? The stability created in the last few years is fragile and may fall apart? Absolutely true - but also true of every nation on the face of the earth, including this one. I am simply not going to accept the notion that any people are condemned to despotism and/or the rule of priests forever and ever. 

So congratulations to all those who labored and sacrificed to achieve such a day. God speed to the Iraqi people, and their nation, may God smile upon them as He (She, It, or They) did upon this fractured land once upon a time.

The Tolerance of He-Who-Knows-Best

I am actually a fan of the New Yorker columnist Adam Gopni, who writes entertainingly about a number of difficult topics. But I can hardly let this pass, from his appreciation last fall of the philosopher John Stuart Mill. The sentences quoted below are taken verbatim from the second paragraph of the article, the emphasis added by yours truly.

"[John Stuart Mill] was right about nearly everything, even when contemplating what was wrong: open-minded and magnanimous to a fault, he saw through Thomas Carlyle’s reactionary politics to his genius, and his essay on Coleridge, a leading conservative of the previous generation, is a model appreciation of a writer whose views are all wrong but whose writing is still wonderful. Mill was an enemy of religious bigotry and superstition, and a friend of toleration and free thought, without overdoing either. (No one has ever been more eloquent about the ethical virtues of Jesus of Nazareth.)"

Someone might inform Mr. Gopnik that the tolerance that means something extends to the subtext as well. It's just barely possible that the rights and/or wrongs of Coleridge's conservative thought and Carlyle's reactionary politics might be too complex to be dismissed airily in an adjective.

Harry Potter and the Green-Eyed Critic

    A couple of days ago I ran across an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled 'Sex and the Single Wizard', a genuine exercise in superciliousness, conducted by someone named James Parker, who gives off all the vibrations of a committed twit. The article was of the 'bait and switch' type, in that it purported to be a discussion of the difficulty of transforming the Harry Potter novels into quality screenplays. However, the pudding proved in the tasting to be a snide attack on the books themselves. A little warning to Parker and others of his ilk – if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, snide is the most easily recognizable variety of envy.  Sorry, Parker, but your secret is not safe with me.

    J.K. Rowling hardly needs defense at this point in her career from a minor league blogger like yours truly. But I have long wanted to write a grace note on the Harry Potter novels, an exercise in uninhibited fandom, and  this seems to be the right occasion. Rowling did not succeed on the scale she did because of luck or good connections. She succeeded because she is a narrative genius.  I have to confess a failing here that in any case will shortly become obvious. I am a story addict, a quintessential 'tell-me-what-happened-next' reader. I often finish books and movies that are plainly terrible, just to find out how the story turns out. So with that sordid confession behind, let's proceed.
Leaving the question of literary value aside for a moment, and considering the Potter novels simply as storyteller's art, the series is one of the great achievements in Western literature. Using prose of elegant simplicity, Rowling succeeded in weaving a dazzling number of threads - plots, subplots, sub-sub-plots, extended themes, characterizations, nuances, thrones, principalities, etc. - into a seamless narrative by which the plot arc is (seemingly) effortlessly advanced – the art that conceals art, the finest kind. A loose comparison can be made to a passacaglia, a form of musical composition in which the progression of the piece occurs in the base line, while various melodies play in the upper register.  In the same way, the  plot arc (Harry vs. Voldemort) moves relentlessly through a series of harmonic progressions towards an inevitable resolution, while the minor plots play out in the upper staves.

    A few devices – the most obvious example being the enigma of Snape's loyalty and motivation – are almost as large and extended as the plot arch itself. Others, such as the extended account of the Weasley family's confrontation with their obnoxiously ambitious son Percy, have a multi-volume scope. Smaller riddles – Dumbledore's puzzling tolerance for the charlatan Madame Trelawney – are of lesser scope, but also run through more than one novel. Then there are the volume stories themselves – the first five books stand alone nicely. The smaller narrative mechanisms are too numerous to recite. All of them are integrated gracefully and naturally into the flow of story and  characterization.

    The 19th Century Viennese music critic Edward Hanslick despised Wagner's operas (and paid a price in consequence). But he was honest enough to note his admiration for the 'bee like industry' that informed every bar of Gotterdammerung. A nice phrase, 'bee-like industry', and one that applies equally to Rowling's attention to detail in Harry Potter. I do believe it's a quality that can be found in almost all successful  'large' works of art.  

    It won't do, of course, to bestow all this raving praise on the Potter books and stick to high concept. I do believe a trip to the nitty-gritty is required, a hard look at the worker bee in action.  By way of example. I'd like to take a hard look at  an episode at the end of the fourth book, the Goblet of Fire. I choose this particular scene because the nadir, the truly wretched bottom of Parker's supercility, is reached when he compares Tolkien's Sauron favorably to Voldemort. That's absolute nonsense, for reasons I'll address in a moment. But for now, to the nitty-gritty. A caution; there are Spoilers here. But I am making the natural assumption that any reader who is interested in these thoughts is already thoroughly familiar with the Potter novels.

    Near the end of Goblet of Fire, Harry wins a wizarding contest. But when he lays hands on the prize, it proves to be a trap, a magical device that transports Harry to a place where Voldemort lies in wait with his most faithful servant. As the action goes forward, Voldemort is restored to his full power, his acolytes arrive, Harry escapes miraculously, and returns to Hogwarts to give an unverifiable account of what happened. Doubts about Harry's veracity spring up like weeds, and the consequent cloud over him in the bureaucracy and elsewhere becomes a central theme in the books that follow

    Now, all this would work naturally and plausibly even if Harry alone fell into the trap. But that is not the way Rowling chose to tell the tale. Harry is accompanied by Cedric Diggery, a minor figure that Rowling has taken great pains to characterize and to include in final journey. Diggery is a sort of Hogwarts' Frank Merriwell, a boy popular with everyone and a heartthrob with the girls. His presence at the scene of Harry's confrontation with Voldemort adds nothing to the action, for he is murdered instantaneously with his arrival. 'Kill the spare', Voldemort directs, and so it happens. So why all this effort to inform the reader of Diggery's sweetness and popularity? And to see to it that he is present when Harry first confronts Voldemort?

    My own intuitive explanation?  Rowling has organized the story in the way she did precisely so she can introduce Voldemort with the line  - 'kill the spare'. In its ruthlessness, its murderous malice, and its complete indifference to the human qualities of Cedric Diggery, it demonstrates immediately all the evil with which Voldemort has been described by others. To Voldemort, to whom only his own needs matter, Diggery is the 'spare' – not even inquiry about his name or why he happens to be there - murdered for no other reason than he is redundant. From the involved preparation for this scene, it is apparent it was no 11th hour inspiration. Rowling had had this masterstroke in mind at least from the outset of the fourth novel (when Harry encounters Cedric and his father before the World Quidditch Match, at which time the boy's charm and effect on the schoolgirls is apparent ). In its directness, its efficiency and its effect, it is that – a masterstroke.

    Rowling goes on to present Voldemort in a tremendous series of scenes and encounters – the one that registers most vividly with me is a dinner during which a helpless captive twists upside down from the ceiling while the other 'guests' each wish they were anywhere else.  His influence becomes more and more a reality in the lives of the principals. In the last volume, the lights are going quietly out all over the magic kingdom. Harry and his allies are reduced to living in a mobile tent, as their friends are overwhelmed, one after another. Off hand, I can't think of another hero reduced to such desperation before the tide turns. Voldemort's evil has moved from the realm of the possible to a complete, devastating reality.

    The cliché that a monster or villain is always reduced in stature by the reveal has become a cliché because it is so very, very  true. Very few reveals succeed. But the reveal of Voldemort, conveyed in these ice cold scenes, are a brilliant success, and another triumphant example of the narrative skill the authoress demonstrates at so many other points.. (The only other one I can think of that is similarly accomplished is the 'reveal' of Norman Bates' mother at the end of Hitchock's movie Psycho.)

    And what of Sauron, whose brooding evil Parker contrasts favorably with Voldemort? In this respect, the Lord of the Rings is a version of the Emperor's New Clothes. Tolkien informs his readers endlessly (and didactically) that Sauron is Evil, that a Shadow is spreading over the Middle World, etc., etc., - but yet Sauron never wins a round. Not even one blessed inning.  Not even one light left jab. He does no significant damage to anyone. It's like watching a tennis match  (mixing the sports metaphors) in which the commentators keep touting one player who never hits a winner. Frodo goes through the entire narrative unscathed. He doesn't lose any friends. He doesn't lose any blood. He doesn't even miss any meals. Hell, he doesn't even miss the mustard for his ham sandwich.

    I remember being first bothered, then really annoyed with this when I first read the books, at approximately age 20.  EYou can't endlessly reiterate the fearsomeness of the villain/monster, and then set up a story in which he is unable to alter even one minor event.  My recollection is that Tolkien was aware of this, but fatuously believed that the basic narrative demand was satisfied by repeated 'cliffhanger' episodes (“And they were about to carry the day, and would have carried the day if not for . . . “). He could not have been more wrong, Sooner or later, no matter how great the risk, you have to deliver the goods, let Voldemort appear, show Norman's mother, let Dracula come out of hiding. Even mediocre storytellers know that. It is a shame that one of Tolkien's Inkling friends, say. C.S; Lewis in a mood of Screwtape realism, didn't sit the lad down and give him the bad news. JR, old chap, this is not working.

    Both Rowling and Tolkien use similar imagery – shadows spreading over the landscape, the silent growing power of the evil force – but where as Rowling gives the readers incidents, murders repulsive in their coldness, personalties changed, apparatchiks running wild (the scene of Umbridge interrogating a half-blood magician is infuriating to read) – Tolkien simply endlessly uses the background imagery, while giving nothing in the foreground. His story becomes frustrating, and then unintentionally comic. It is my own cynical thought that, had Tolkien not been a tweedy Oxford Don surrounded by famous friends, but an ordinary amateur scribbler, that his epic might not have seen the light of day. Even what is good and inventive in it owes a big debt to Wagner.

    Had Tolkien been entrusted with the Harry Potter/Voldemort scene in which Cecil Diggery meets his end, Harry and Diggery would have been menaced . . .  threatened from all sides . . .  come close to death . . .  BUT, at the last second, Dumbledore would arrive, having found the port key, or Cecil would discover a charm on the premises, or Voldemort's wand would break, or something. And Voldemort and his cohorts would slink away, muttering threats, having accomplished nothing. But he'll be back, boy . . . . he's REALLY mean, just wait and see . .  . . I'm tellin' you, that Sauron – er, Voldemort is EVIL . . . you'd better believe it. (Tolky, baby, it ain't happenin'.)

    The plain, ugly, unvarnished  truth is that, if Tolkien had been responsible for that scene, Cecil Diggery would be alive today!!!! But, scandal aside, and unluckily for him, the writer who did have the conn was far more gifted writer made of far sterner stuff. 

    I don't mean to imply that the Potter novels are a perfect, finished work of literature. There is no such thing. There are dozens of minor plot holes, and one major one. But what is good about the books is so very, very good. When considering the value of a work of art that, with no greater means than words on a printed page, managed to capture the attention of the world in a post literate age, it might be a good idea to focus on how the trick was done, not its supposed flaws. Too late for Parker, but good advice for other twit critics. 

    For what it's worth, even Parker's sniggling comments about the sex life (or lack thereof) of Harry Potter are beside the point.  The base storyline concerns Harry's maturation, magnificently told, from complete confusion about who he is, to a recognition of his own identity. Erotic subthemes don't fit well in that context. Besides, there is in the subtext some sly innuendo that one of Harry's principal antagonists, more glibly sophisticated in every way than the chronically confused Harry, may be doing quite well in that way. You would never write 'Harry Potter and the Harems of Hogwarts'. But you might try 'Draco Malfoi and the Sluts of Slytherin'. My sense is that Rowling does not particularly care for this fraternity boy style of loose womanizing. She has a lot of company.

    That's about it. My apologies to Parker, whose rather silly essay in truth was no more than a prompt for an appreciation I have meant to write for some time.  I have to beg the question I raised above, about the literary merit of these books. The question of whether the skill and care that has been lavished on what is ultimately a story of children's fantasy seems a real one to me. Although the entertainment value may be justification enough, the issue is still interesting. I think there is something there a bit more significant than entertainment. I'll take that up on another day, if anyone is interested.

    But this essay is long enough as it is. Thanks for the attention paid.

Groucho Olberman

The Big Store (1941) is not vintage Marx Brothers stuff. By that time, the lads had been in the MGM stable for six years. The once zany nihilists had become old routiniers. Nevertheless, it contains one classic verbal gag that I have had cause to quote again and again over the years.

Grouch is applying (never mind why) for the position of floorwalker at the Big Store – a sort of Macy's/Gimbels place – to the manager, the perpetually exasperated Douglas Dumbrille. The room is crowded with onlookers. The manager puts a test question to Groucho:

*

Manager: A woman has fainted on the fourth floor. What do you do?

Groucho (after brief pause): What color is. her hair?

Manager (in amazement): What color is her hair? What difference does that make?

Groucho (turning to the onlookers): There you go. A woman has fainted on the fourth floor, and he says [weary sigh] 'what difference does that make?'

*

You wouldn't think a rhetorical trick this transparent would work on any audience. You'd be wrong. It is worked constantly, on audiences of all types, in a variety of forms. The latest and greatest practitioner of this verbal sleight of hand is Keith Olberman of MSNBC. Last fall, Sarah Palin in the midst of her campaign, poked fun at the wastefulness of doing fruit fly research in Paris. France, that could presumably be done just as easily in the United States. The project had been noted as classic pork barrel stuff by a number of tax payer organizations. But that evening, there was Olberman, in his most pontitifical voice and face, so pontifical that it is almost meta-papal, backgrounded by a display of notable projects involving fruit flies, denouncing Palin as an anti-science Luddite. Even though there was no face to face encounter between Grou -er, Olberman – and Sarah Palin, I'll translate it into Marxese.

*

Olberman: So identify some of these pork-barrel boondoggles you're against.

Palin: Well, going to Paris to do ordinary research for one.

Olberman: Name the research.

Palin (amazed): Experimentation with fruit flies, I believe.

Olberman (turning to the MSNBC audience): There you go. I ask her to name wasteful projects and she says [weary sigh] 'experimentation with fruit flies'.

*

It's the same device as Groucho's, but not nearly as funny. Maybe that's because Groucho's is a joke, and Olberman's is a con.

If this was merely a sidenote to the recently concluded campaign, it could be relegated to history with no further ado. But Olberman is still very much with us, and now beating the drums nightly about the treatment of detainees back in 2002-2003. I don't watch these shows, any of them, of any political stripe. The spectacle of the preacher preaching to the converted doesn't do much for me, no matter who the preacher, who the congregation, or what the scripture. But my friends who do watch Olberman are having a tough time extracting hard facts from the discussion. The rather limited CIA interrogations seem to be associated with the much larger number of field interrogations done in Iraq and Afghanistan which is in turn conflated with the prisoner abuse in Abu Gharib, which weren't interrogations at all. The more you watch Olberman, the less you understand and the more indignant you become, which I suspect is not a coincidence.

(I should say something about the substantive issue before ending this. Back in 2001-2003, I was more than a little scandalized by the open discussion and public acceptance of harsh interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists. I was particularly infuriated by Alan Dershowitz's suggestion of a torture warrant, which was appalling. There is no question that we as a society have got to decide how to deal with these issues in future. The shock of 9/11 sent us reeling into areas in which we would rather not be. John McCain's opinion on the subject seems to me the correct one, and decisive.

However, there is also no question in my mind that these practices were fully aired, subject to much public discussion, disclosed to Congress, etc. It is rather despicable hypocrisy in my view to hide under your desk for six years, tacitly endorse the tactics of the day, then emerge with your finger pointed when you feel safe. If Olberman can produce any statement in condemnation or denunciation of the CIA in the 2002-4 time frame, I stand corrected. But as I recall he was making funny noises on Fox Sports Cat the time.)

So there you have the exposure of the Groucho-tactics used rather openly by Keith Olberman. The difference is that Groucho Marx made himself a legend playing comic and inartful con men. Olberman is the real thing, and quite artful. Groucho's act was very funny. Olberman's isn't funny at all.

An Anecdote About the Death Penalty

A few days ago, a discussion about the death penalty broke out in the small, civil forum where I usually hang out. The argument quickly devolved into a debate about the validity of the conventional abstractions. Does the death penalty deter or not? How can the State justify taking a life as punishment for taking a life? A few of the anti's brought up the Illinois experience, both the blanket clemency granted by outgoing Governor Homer Ryan in 2003 and the 'exonerations' claimed by the Northwestern project. (The word 'exonerations' is in quotes because there is much to wonder about in those claims. But that's a subject for another day.)

To me, this approach to the subject is suspect in its entirety. There is no one, universal rule that applies to the death penalty. Each case is unique, absolutely idiosyncratic, a law unto itself. I can only explain myself anecdotally.

Back in 1999, I attended a brush-up seminar in evidentiary law. One of the presenters was a prosecutor working out of the District Attorney's Office in Alameda County. She was a blonde, suburban 'soccer-mom' type, working in inner Oakland. Despite the obvious demographic disadvantages (risking a little political incorrectness here), she presented her cases simply and directly and got excellent results.

Her topic was the use of thematic and demonstrative evidence. It was a first-class presentation, but the substance of one of her cases interested me more than the nominal subject. It concerned a capital case she had recently conducted successfully in Oakland. I was particularly struck by the conduct of the jury.

The facts were stark. The victim was a four-year-old child. The defendant had become involved with her mother, and they had had some sort of falling out. In some shortsighted move made either for revenge or to set accounts straight, the defendant had kidnapped the little girl and held her at gun point. The police were called, there was evidently, a short car chase, and then a hostage stand off. The car was surrounded. It became apparent that the defendant's plan had failed completely. As the police called for him to give up, evidently feeling he had to prove he was not a braggart given to empty threats, he blew the girl's brains out in the front seat of the car. It was an absolutely pointless thing to do, a pure, vicious act of malice. There is worse. The girl was not only an only child, but also an only grandchild. The hopes of two generations vanished with her. The grief of the family was beyond telling

There was obviously no question of guilt in this case. Also, there was no racial issue. Everyone who mattered -- defendant, victim, the majority of the jury, and above all, the jury foreperson -- was African-American. (Of course the prosecutor was white, and I don't know about the judge and defense counsel, but these don't matter.) The only issue was the penalty.

The prosecutor was well trained philosophically. She themed the case around a maxim of Kant's (as I recall, the primary slide actually attributed it to him) -- that there are some crimes that are such an affront to humanity, such a horrific assault on human values, that not to respond to them with the ultimate penalty, is to disregard and insult the victim's humanity. I am writing this from memory -- the actual formulation used at trial was much pithier and more direct.

This theme resonated with the jury. (If it is not obvious already, this woman was a superb trial attorney.) I don't think the reason was the attribution. I have had some fun lately discussing expressions of apparent wisdom uttered by great men that are actually the reverse. But Kant's insight to my mind is the reverse. It resonates because it accurately describes the moral process involved in these cases at the level of jury decision. The primary criterion in resolving these situations is the moral quality of the act (although, to be sure, since that moral quality encompasses motive and purpose, the defendant's background and character are included implicitly). Though not always expressed explicitly, this is the guiding principle of most jury deliberations. It becomes lost completely in the appellate process.

The foreperson was a competent, extremely well organized young African-American woman, a young professional or junior executive. From the start of deliberations, she kept the jury focused on the primary issue -- was the nature of the defendant's act such that imposition of anything else but the death penalty was an affront to the small child humanity? That was the question the jury felt it had to answer.

Over nearly seven (!) days, the jury discussed every aspect of the crime in exhaustive detail. The deliberations began with two-thirds of the jury members believing that death was the appropriate verdict. The others had reservations. The arguments were quiet and thoughtful, disagreements put respectfully. As the days passed, one after another, the jurors in the minority came around to the notion that death was the only possible result. Finally, unanimity was reached.

That, however, did not end the deliberations. The forewoman directed the jurors to separate for an hour, reflect on themselves, their lives, and beliefs, and return. If after that interval any one of them doubted the moral correctness of the result, they would report themselves as divided -- for they had reached the end. When they regathered, the verdict was still unanimous. The jurors then held hands for a moment of silent prayer. Then they delivered their verdict to the court.

You may not agree with the outcome. That's not my point. What I want to emphasize is the real human content that occurred in this actual trial and how different in kind that it is from discussions of the subject in the abstract. If you had approached this jury panel and either extolled or berated them because their decision might (or might not) deter some hypothetical child killer who doesn't even exist in reality, I think they'd look at you as if you had two heads. How on earth does that matter? And if you suggested that their agonizingly considered judgment should be vacated because of police misconduct in a different case in a different city, I believe they'd be rightfully furious. What the devil, they would say, has that got to do with this? This trial was about that child and the man who killed her -- and if a different case has to be reversed, by all means reverse it. But what has the one case to do with another?

In most of these arguments, it's usually the anti's clinging to the abstract, searching for some rule that would ban the death penalty in all places and under all circumstances. To them, the actual human and moral content of the particular case is inconvenient and irritating, often infuriating. But the reality is that each case is unique. There is no universal. Demonstrate an actual miscarriage of justice and of course it should be reversed, and the victim (defendant) compensated. But why should a defendant whose guilt is buttressed and reconfirmed by DNA analysis get the benefit of the test that exonerates someone else? Why does Ted Bundy walk because of second thoughts about someone else?

The one and only thing that matters is the moral quality of the particular act at issue. The rest is noise.

[In the meantime, if I were an anti, I wouldn't be too much worked up about the fate of the child killer I described in the first paragraphs. I heard this story at a seminar in 1999. The trial likely occurred in 1997-9. It is improbable that the judgment is even final in the California Supreme Court. It'll be another decade, at least, before the Federal habeas corpus has run its course -- say, 2020. By that time, the lost little girl, the center of the story, will have long since turned to dust. The moral journey that the magnificent jury undertook will be as completely gone and forgotten as she is.

Unless you and I remember it.]

(This piece originally appeared in a slightly edited form on the American Thinker on April 12.)