The American Culture

The fattening of America's children demonstrates the truth of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

An article in the Wall Street Journal confirms once again that the pursuit of a safe, painless world is a search for an impossible utopia and only makes us less human, less healthy, and less happy. The author points out that authorities' fear that children will suffer unnecessary accidents at play is actually stunting kids' development and will create physical problems for them in adulthood:

The headlong drive for safety has indeed created dangers, but not those identified by the safety zealots. Risk is important in child development. Allowing children to test their limits in unstructured play, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, "develop[s] their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength." Scrapes and bruises are how children learn their limits, and the need to take personal responsibility.

The harmful effects of our national safety obsession ripple outward into society. One in six children in America is obese, and many of them will face a lifetime of chronic illness. According to the Center for Disease Control, this problem would basically cure itself if children engaged in the informal outdoor activities that used to be normal. But how do we lure children off the sofa? One key attraction is risk.

"Risk is fun," the author notes, acknowledging the time-honored truth that nearly every good thing has its price:

An informal survey of children by the University of Toronto's Institute of Child Studies found that "merry-go-rounds . . . anecdotally the most hated piece of playground equipment in hospital emergency rooms -- topped the list of most desired bits of playground equipment." Those of us of a certain age can remember sprinting to get the contraption really moving. That was fun. And a lot of exercise.

One great irony is that the building of playgrounds was originally intended to create a safer place for kids to play, so that they wouldn't be as tempted to prowl about in old mineshafts, abandoned warehouses, and the like, after the fashion of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. But of course the places can never be truly safe until they are all made entirely virtual, with the children sitting in padded chairs, using their thumbs to perform simulated physical activities on computer games.

The solution imposed by our safety nazis, well-intentioned though they be, is to take away this thing that brings great pleasure and exercise to multitudes of children in order to prevent a very, very few from being hurt in the course of play.

Certainly we don't want children to be injured unnecessarily, but that's precisely the point: allowing the small risk of harm is indeed necessary if kids are to get exercise and enjoy themselves doing anything involving physical activity.

What is even more important is that the safety nazis' success in preventing such risks may actually be the most damaging thing they could do to the nation's children. The process of experiencing and enduring little hurts is what teaches us the practical physics of life, to know the various levels of physical danger we run into day after day and how to avoid them. Preventing children from testing the world and learning the consequences of their choices makes them dangerously ignorant and will ultimately bring far more harm to themselves and those around them.

That's the real consequence of the snugly cocooned existence the safety nazis want to inflict on our nation's children and even us adults.

As the WSJ author notes, 

America unfortunately is going in the opposite direction. There is nothing left in playgrounds that would attract the interest of a child over the age of four. Exercise in schools is carefully programmed, when it exists at all. Some schools have banned tag. Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. (How else can we guard against a child falling down?) Little Leagues forbid sliding into base. Some towns ban sledding. High diving boards are history, and it's only a matter of time before all diving boards disappear.

Safety is meaningful only in the context of other benefits and risks. Safety always involves trade-offs -- of opportunities, of scarce resources and, especially in the case of children's play, of learning to manage risk. The question is whether the trade-off makes sense.

The WSJ author calls for "someone" to be given the authority to make these choices. But that is what we already have. We are the ones who are responsible for putting them in place.

What is called for is for citizens to elect authorities who have common sense and understand that the creation of a perfect world for human habitation is not just a fool's errand—it is hubris of an astonishing degree.

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The Coen brothers' follow-up to their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men is drawing decidedly divided reviews after its Venice Film Festival premiere.

Reuters reports on the initial reaction to Joel and Ethan Coen's new spy comedy, Burn After Reading, here. The story quotes a decidedly negative review in Variety:

The Coen brothers' latest film, the madcap comedy "Burn After Reading," has sharply divided the critics, unlike last year's acclaimed "No Country For Old Men" which won four Oscars including best picture. . . .

Trade paper Variety panned the comic spy spoof, calling it a "flame-out."

"Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one," wrote Todd McCarthy. "As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up."

Another critic, by contrast, thought it absolutely brilliant:

At the other end of the scale was Screen International's Lee Marshall, who called the movie "a beautifully produced mix of spy story, U.S. zeitgeist satire and relationship drama.

Still another critic found it to have what I would note is a common flaw of Coen brothers films: great talent put to inept use:

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter, in a mixed review, calls "Burn" "a minor piece of silliness with all the trappings of an A-list studio movie."

I suspect that the film will be mildly enjoyable but far from a classic. We'll let you know more when we see it.

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The FBI has arrested a man for posting copyrighted songs on his website.

Exemplifying the federal government's stepped-up efforts to combat copyright violations, the FBI arrested 27-year-old Kevin Cogill yesterday for posting nine tracks from the upcoming Guns 'n' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, on his blog, according to Reuters.

An FBI agent was reported as saying Cogill admitted posting the tracks. He then removed them from his site, but by that time the songs had begun to circulate widely, an FBI spokesperson said.

Cogill was released on bail. He faces a maximum sentence of three years if found guilty, and five years if it is determined that he profited financially from the act.

This is a vivid example of the increasing seriousness with with federal authorities are pursuing copyright violators.

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Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson is about to release a new album that pays tribute to Southern California.

Brian Wilson's latest album, That Lucky Old Sun, is scheduled for release Sept. 2. According to an AP story, Wilson's new album is a tribute to Southern California and reunites him with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, in addition to his usual touring band and other collaborators.

The story quotes Wilson as being very happy with the results:

"I think the new album is just as good as anything the Beach Boys ever recorded," says Wilson. "Playing these songs live, I feel proud. You know that funny feeling you get in your stomach, like, 'Oh my God, this is sounding great!'"

The story describes the music as varied and the sound and lyrics as not naively nostalgic or too derivative of the band's past work:

Songs such as "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl" touch on Beach Boys melodies while "Mexican Girl" adds a dash of salsa flavor. "Midnight's Another Day" and "Oxygen to the Brain" reference Wilson's dark days in the '70s and '80s, when he receded from the spotlight into isolation, drugs and weight gain.

Wilson calls "Midnight's Another Day," which skirts on a solitary piano melody, his favorite song, "kind of introspective, kind of how I feel around people."

The album's last song, "Southern California," reminisces about co-founding the Beach Boys in 1961 with his late brothers Carl and Dennis, and ends the album on an uplifting note. Wilson sings, "It's magical/ Living your dream."

Wilson still has the strong religious faith he always had even during the darkest times, the story notes:

"When I go to the keyboard, I feel holy, like an angel over my head. I feel very holy. When we did (the Beach Boys hit) 'God Only Knows,' I felt holy about that too. A godly something comes through me," Wilson says, motioning with his hand.

I've ordered my copy already. You may do likewise, and help support this publication at no additional expense to yourself, by clicking here.

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Hollywood conservatives are increasingly coming out of the closet and defying the McCarthyite bullying by the industry's overwhelmingly leftist power brokers.

In a very interesting story about Hollywood and politics, The Weekly Standard notes that filmmaker David Zucker (Airplane!, The Naked Gun) is one of a growing number of openly conservative people in the Hollywood film and TV industry and that his forthcoming film, An American Carol, mocks a wide variety of leftist notions:

Zucker's latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo. . . .

But Zucker's film, together with a spike in attendance at events put on by "The Friends of Abe" (Lincoln, not Vigoda)--a group of right-leaning Hollywood types that has been meeting regularly for the past four years--is once again reviving hope that conservatives will have a battalion in this exceedingly influential battleground of the broader culture war.

Zucker, a Wisconsinite, was raised in a leftist family and retained those political views in adulthood. In the 1980s, however, he began an evolution away from the left, which became complete in the year 2001:

Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. "Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn't take it anymore," he says. "The response to 9/11--the right was saying this is pure evil we're facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this? I think I'd just had enough. And I said 'I quit.'"

His new film, An American Carol, "is based loosely--very loosely--on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens," the story by Stephen Hayes notes:

The holiday in An American Carol is not Christmas and the antagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead, the film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone, who has joined with a left-wing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July. Along the way, Malone is visited by the ghosts of three American heroes--George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy--who try to convince him he's got it all wrong. When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video. "This will not be hard to find in Hollywood," says one. "They all hate America." When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil.

Hayes notes that the lead actor in the film, Kevin Farley (younger brother of the late comedian Chris Farley), is, like Zucker, a political conservative who was afraid to let the filmmakers know his politics, lest they not want him for the job.

Also appearing in the film: Jon Voight (an acknowledged supporter of Republican John McCain for president), Dennis Hopper (a former hippie type whose work has clearly shown rightist influences over the years), James Woods (a Catholic who seems to be right of center without being pushy about it), Kelsey Grammer (openly a Republican and a political conservative), and the tough-guy character actor Robert Davi (whom the article quotes as despising Keith Olberman and articulating strong politically conservative views).

The article includes a hilarious anecdote from Grammer:

Grammer, who is friends with Ann Coulter, says he quoted her once to some of the young people who work for him.

"'Ann Coulter,'" he says, recalling their horror and assuming their voice. "'She's the antichrist.' And I said: 'What the f-- do you know about the antichrist? You don't even believe in Christ.'"

Farley's willingness to step up and admit his political conservatism is an interesting object lesson: there are probably many more conservatives in Hollywood than it seems, and many more who would be open to a right-of-center point of view if the left were not so powerful there and so willing to engage in McCarthyite bullying tactics to keep people in line politically.

In fact, the story notes, "The more Zucker is known as a conservative, the more frequently he has encounters with others who consider themselves conservative."

The left will not give in easily, however. The story includes a powerful example of the McCarthyite tactics of Hollywood's leftist bullies and their cowardly helpers:

Lee Reynolds . . . is a conservative. . . . Reynolds was active duty military for 12 years and shortly after 9/11 worked as the chief media officer for detainee operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

When he returned, he took a job as a production assistant on a film--he asked me not to name it--shot in several locations across the United States. Reynolds worked hard and, he says, won the confidence of the film's directors, who gave him more responsibility. But just as he was making a name for himself, word began to spread that he had been in the military and, far worse, that he supported the efforts of his uniformed colleagues in the war on terror.

"Once they found out I was a Republican, unfortunately for some people it was a problem," he recalls. Several people who had talked to him regularly throughout the shoot simply stopped. And a trip that he was to have taken to participate in an offsite shoot across the country was abruptly cancelled. Another person was sent in his place. Reynolds says that he had only two colleagues who treated him the same way they had before, including "an anti-Bush lesbian" who was disgusted by the dogmatism of the others on the film.

All it takes to break such domination is for a few people, equipped with the ordinary amount of courage alloted to the average human being, to stand up to the bullies. Others of less stern stuff will soon see that it's all right to reject the regnant political culture of Hollywood and, gasp, think for themselves.

Revolutions are made of that sort of stuff.

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The box-office success of the new comedy film Tropic Thunder is especially good news in light of the protests lodged against it by professional busybodies annoyed by references to mental disabilities in the film. These so-called advocates for the disabled actually called for a national boycott of the film.

Representatives from several advocacy groups met with Dreamworks Studios executives before the film's release, trying to convince them to take the word "retard" out of the dialogue or make a public apology. The studio politely refused to do either, which was precisely the right response.

The film's strong appeal at the box office makes it obvious that audiences were equally unimpressed by the advocacy groups' complaints.

Unlike the elitists who try to control what everyone can see and hear in the media, normal people are able to discern the difference between movies and reality. What's more, they can tell that the use of a derogatory term in a fictional dialogue is not an endorsement of the term, nor an assertion that some people are inherently inferior, and is in no way an incitement to be unkind to others.

If only our elites, who think themselves so much smarter than the hoi polloi, were even half as wise as the people whose lives and culture they so arrogantly endeavor to control. 

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 The top three current U.S. motion picture box office draws all share a populist point of view—but without the ugly politics that often accompany such a perspective.

Number 1 at the U.S. movie box office for the second week in a row is Ben Stiller's comedy Tropic Thunder, which pokes much fun at Hollywood. Usually films about Hollywood don't go over very well with audiences, but this one has more resonance. Its satire about self-absorbed, arrogant Hollyweird actors has broader implications in reference to the increasing distance between American elites and the American people as a whole.

The film's central gag, that the elite actors are fully disconnected from reality and no longer have any idea of what it's like to live in the real world, also applies all too widely to our news media, politicians, professoriate, business leaders, legal profession, and other elites. Hence the film has a strong populist appeal without translating it into the rather ugly politics that typically accompanies populism.

Likewise sending a populist, anti-elite message through comedy is the weekend's number 2 film, House Bunny, written by the scenarists for the equally populist comedy Legally Blonde. House Bunny brought in an estimated $15.1 million, just $1 million less than Tropic Thunder.

In third place with $12.3 million was another new release, the action fantasy Death Race, starring Jason Statham as an elite character brought low: he's a former NASCAR driver framed for murder and sent to prison where he must participate in a win-or-die road race.

The Dark Knight—number 2 during the previous weekend—fell to fourth, at $10.3 million, a large 37 percent drop in ticket sales, and seems unlikely to catch record holder Titanic. The Dark Knight is now at $489 million, good enough for number 2 alltime

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With real conspiracies taking real lives around the world, this summer's X-Files movie just didn't capture the public imagination.

The X-Files phenomenon, a huge cultural force in the 1990s, is officially over, it seems.

As E! Online reports, the theatrical film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, is an unmitigated box-office disaster:

In one of the sadder tales of the summer, The X-Files: I Want to Believe ($1.2 million, per Box Office Mojo) disappeared from the Top 10 after just a two-weekend stay. To date, the $35 million movie has failed to gross even $20 million overall, and managed to sell fewer tickets than Space Chimps ($1.7 million; $25.4 million).

During the Clinton era—when conspiracy theories ran riot—the show had a real connection to the American psyche. It had additional social resonance in the runup to the year 2000, when some religious folk were predicting world-changing events would occur because of divine intervention, and more earthbound doomsayers claimed that the U.S. economy was going to shut down because computers would not be able to handle the changeover to the year 2000.

The TV series and first movie were quite well written, acted, and produced, by and large, and Carter's imaginative combination of supernatural horror, conspiracy film, and police procedural genres made for an interesting mix until the well began to run dry in the last few years. Even then, however, there were some good episodes among the dross.

Today, however, when we face real conspiracies such as 9/11 and the continuing Islam-based carnage in Iraq and in Europe, it seems the fanciful stuff of the X-Files no longer speaks to people. Now we have to believe in horrors we really don't Want to Believe.

The X-Files was a good program while it lasted, but it seems the zeitgeist has moved on to other haunts. Until X-Files creator Cris Carter finds a way to connect the concept with current realities, I suspect the franchise will remain buried.

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The Number One musical hit "I Kissed a Girl" has raised a good deal of controversy because it's sung by a female. But is the song really good enough for its opponents to worry about?

One of the biggest songs of the year, a Billboard number 1 hit, has been Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl." It's basically a novelty song telling the story of a girl who drinks too much at a party and kisses another girl, a complete stranger. The chorus sums up the song's dramatic story line:

I kissed a girl and I liked it,

The taste of her cherry Chapstick.

I kissed a girl just to try it.

I hope my boyfriend don't mind it.

The song has a bouncy melody and is backed with an infectious beat and an artful vocal performance by Perry. Perry's performance in the promotional video (see it here) for the song suggests that the character hasn't yet decided on what to do about it all, as she clearly enjoys the memory of the event. The lyrics and vocal melody of the bridge convey an intense enjoyment of female pulchritude as the character sings, "Ain't no big deal; it's innocent!"

The song need not be seen as an unabashed endorsement of lesbianism or even of sexual experimentation, however. Perry sings in the chorus, "It felt so wrong; it felt so right," and the end of the video suggests that the entire thing may have been a dream.

Nonetheless, the strong female erotic imagery in both the song and the video could very well strike youngsters as an endorsement and normalization of lesbianism.

One of the delicious and/or ghastly ironies of the situation is that the performer, age 23, is a former Christian pop singer, previously known by her family name, Katy Hudson, and her parents are both pastors in Christian churches.

Naturally, many Christians are highly annoyed about this transition and her immensely popular new song. An ABC News story quotes Christian music reviewer Russ Breimeier as saying, "It seems like ever since the name change, she's gotten this rep as a party girl. You can still hear some of the talent that was there before, but it just sounds like she's doing whatever she can to get noticed. And that's unfortunate. I feel bad for her folks."

In the context of Perry's debut album, One of the Boys, on which "I Kissed a Girl" appears, she and her song should seem much less of a threat, because the ludicrous craving for attention, good or bad, so pervades her work as to ruin its effect. The All Music Guide review captures this admirably:

Listening to Katy Perry's litany of belched alphabets, fruity boyfriends, Vegas hangovers, and lesbian lip-locks on her debut, One of the Boys, it's easy to assume she'll do anything for attention, and a close read of her history proves that suspicion true. . . . Given this long line of botched starts, maybe it makes sense that the 24-year-old trollop is singing with the desperation of a fading burlesque star twice her age, yet Perry's shameless pandering on One of the Boys is startling, particularly as it comes in the form of some ungodly hybrid of Alanis Morissette's caterwauling and the cold calculation of Britney Spears in her prime. . . .

All the [professional musicians involved in the recording] give One of the Boys a cross-platform appeal, but there's little question that its revolting personality is all down to Katy Perry, who distills every reprehensible thing about the age of The Hills into one pop album. She disses her boyfriend with gay-baiting; she makes out with a girl and she's doesn't even like girls; she brags to a suitor that he can't afford her, parties till she's face-down in the porcelain, drops brands as if they were weapons, curses casually, and trades under-the-table favors. . . . Perry is not untalented—she writes like an ungarbled Alanis and has an eye for details, as when she tells her emo meterosexual boyfriend to hang himself with his H&M scarf on "Ur So Gay"—but that only accentuates how her vile wild-child persona is an artifice designed to get her the stardom she craves. . . [T]his is music designed to be everywhere after Perry's taboo flirtations break down doors. The problem is not with Katy's gender-bending, it's that her heart isn't in it; she's just using it to get her places, so she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade.

That's from a website that is by no means a bastion of conservative thought. The Chicago-area Daily Herald newspaper quotes Julianne Shepherd, editor of a music magazine called the Fader, as being equally dismissive:

"It is a novelty track in the oeuvre of Aqua's 'Barbie Girl.' Therefore it will never die, but it will live on over your gym's PA system and on really terrible radio," Shepherd says. "The song's appeal is that it is vaguely salacious, but still clean enough so people don't feel too much like heathens for listening to it. People in clubs like to dance to vaguely nasty songs that they don't have to think very much about, and this is it."

Since the song will evidently be around for a while, the obvious strategy for parents concerned about its subject matter is not to try to keep their children away from it but instead to embrace it as a "teachable moment" and encourage their children to draw from it whatever the parents consider to be the right conclusions about the issue.

Clearly "I Kissed a Girl" isn't going to fall into the social memory hole any time soon, and it could lead some young people to think that sexual experimentation is without consequences, but the reality is that neither Katy Perry nor her hit song is big enough to make much of a difference in the world, as long as parents care about their children and talk to them honestly about what they do and should value in life.

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TV talk-show hostess Ellen DeGeneres is getting married to a woman. So where's the oppression?

The photo above is of a lesbian couple, one of whom is immensely wealthy, getting married.

Two things should be perfectly clear from this:

One, given that Ellen DeGeneres is only one of numerous openly homosexual Americans who have managed to accumulate vast wealth in our society, homosexuals are decidedly not an oppressed class in the United States.

Two, contrary to activists' plaintive cries and angry denunciations of American society, homosexuals can and do get married, and in perfectly fabulous, well-attended, enormously publicized weddings if they wish.

There is no oppression of them to be found.

The push for same-sex marriage laws is not a move for freedom for people of the same sex to "marry" each other. They already have  that. On the contrary, the press for same-sex marriage laws is a blatantly statist, coercive attempt to force everyone else to acknowledge these unions regardless of their own personal opinions and wishes.

That is oppression, pure and simple and outrageous. All freedom-loving people should oppose the imposition of same-sex marriage laws.

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Michael Phelps's endorsement of Frosted Flakes cereal has raised the ire of food nazis who worry that kids will ingest more sugar than they would if he endorsed something else.

Food nazis are blasting swimmer Michael Phelps, winner of a record-setting eight gold medals in this year's Olympic Games, for endosing a breakfast cereal. The New York Daily News reports, in an article pretty openly agreeing with the swimmer's critics:

Olympic legend Michael Phelps will appear on boxes of the Kellogg's brand sugar cereal, drawing sharp criticism from health experts worried about the message he'll be sending to children across America.

"I would not consider Frosted Flakes the food of an Olympian," said nutritionist Rebecca Solomon of Mount Sinai Medical Center.

"I would rather see him promoting Fiber One. I would rather see him promoting oatmeal. I would even rather see him promoting Cheerios."

Fiber One? What kind of a kid is going to eat Fiber One? You could put Spongebob Squarepants' picture on the box and kids would still hate the stuff. And rightly so. We adults eat it because, well,  you know why.

Children burn lots of calories if their schools let them get some exercise once in a while. The big problem is that the schools in this nation are almost exclusively run by government and therefore have no respect for either their customers or for simple common sense. Hence they have cut back on recess and gym in favor of activities that are less likely to bring liability lawsuits and of classes intended to help raise the kids' grotesquely poor scores on the standardized tests required by NCLB, lest the children be sent to real schools where they'll actually learn something. So the kids are bloating up like blueberries.

Let's hope Phelps sticks to his guns and ignores these meddling busybodies. 

After all, when it comes to figuring out what's good for you, whom are you going to believe, a pasty-faced "nutrutionist" or a guy who can swim faster than a motorboat?

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A British organization's crusade against a new Barbie doll is an embarrassment to Christianity.

Some things are not good but are not worth worrying about and certainly not worth complaining about. Others are basically innocent but nonetheless manage to run afoul of the self-appointed neopuritan cultural avengers who infest the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain.

The Black Canary Barbie is one of those perfectly harmless items that has come under attack. As the Chicago Sun-Times reports, a British Christian organization has attacked the Mattel toy company for releasing a Barbie doll dressed as the DC comic book heroine known as the Black Canary (photo aove). The doll is clad in black, as the name suggests and in accordance with the character, and her habiliments consist of a leather body suit, jacket, gloves, boots, and fishnet stockings.

The dolls are intended mainly for adults, as part of the Barbie Loves Pop Culture series, and cost more than twice as much as the Barbie dolls marketed to children. One would imagine that the great majority of parents would steer their little dears toward the more conventional options in the Barbie line.

Nonetheless, the Christian Voice organization in Great Britain has decided to stop talking about Jesus for a while in order to go on a crusade against a doll. The Sun-Times story reports:

"Barbie has always been on the tarty side and this is taking it too far," the group said in a statement that was picked up by the British tabloid the Sun.

The Sun-Times story archly notes that "Christian Voice is known on the other side of the pond for its extremist views." This is precisely the kind of loudmouthed, tin-eared, fun-hating, arrogant, priggish idiocy that makes many non-Christians think all Christians must be a bit loony. Christian Voice should get off of Barbie and get down to the business of telling people what the Bible really says.

Hint: there's nothing about Barbie in it.

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This Saturday brings a full day of Laurel and Hardy films on Turner Classic Movies. Rest assured: they are not to be missed.

Turner Classic Movies is presenting a full twenty-four hours of Laurel and Hardy films this Saturday, beginning at 6 a.m. EDT. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were both the best and most beloved comedy team of their time, and their better films still hold up superbly.

The TCM festival includes a goodly helping of the duo's early 1930s short films, which are their best and some of the funniest films of all time. These films were produced by the great Leo McCarey, who also directed some of them.

The humor comes mainly from the two characters' stupidity, Stanley's naivete, and Oliver's attempts to salvage some dignity during the hopless messes into which the characters invevitably plunge themselves. Typically Oliie functions as a father or uncle figure, and Stan as a son or nephew, although the two are nearly always presented as equal partners, as friends and not relatives.

The technique McCarey applied to the films was based on his extensive experience working on silent comedies: start with a small gag and build continuously until something big falls to pieces. Then, start over. Done properly, it worked every time.

The films often show the boys trying to fit into some middle-class, bourgeois setting or other, and failing miserably. Tit for Tat, for example, shows them trying to run an electric-appliance repair shop and running into increasing trouble from hostile neighbors. Another common theme is for the boys to try something naughty—such as going out drinking—and enduring frightful consequences for it. The feature Sons of the Desert, for example, shows them as lodge members trying to attend an out-of-town meeting without their wives knowing.

The values the films present are thus very positive and edifying, and the boys' struggles to fit into a confusing modern world are something even we space-age twenty-first century ultramoderns can understand.

Also meriting mention is actor Jimmy Finlayson, who frequently appeared as a nemesis to the boys and was hillarious in his bristliness. 

For those who don't have the full twenty-four hours free for Stan and Ollie, I recommend the following in particular: Blotto, Brats, Laughing Gravy, Pardon Us, Helpmates, Them Thar Hills, Tit for Tat, The Fixer Uppers, Sons of the Desert, Block-Heads, and the especially delightful The Music Box.

The schedule for the TCM Laurel and Hardy day follows:

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I've always considered Oprah Winfrey insipid and her entire empire an offense against our natural human critical faculties. Apparently she provides entertainment and enlightenment to a substantial number of people, but it's rather sad to think how far down a person must be if Oprah can actually enlighten them. I particularly dislike her smarmy demeanor and superficial politics, seemingly so compassionate and caring but actually merely smug and tyrannical. Nonetheless, she sells.

But she sells a lot less than she used to, in at least one business. While sales of U.S. magazines were down by an average of 6.3 percent during the first half of this year, and subscriptions dropped by 0.3 percent, Oprah's O magazine fell much farther: subscriptions fell by 1.7 percent and single copy sales were down by 17 percent.

I'd like to think that the Oprah phenomenon has run its course and is following the overall trend in the communications media, where the bigger players are tumbling and smaller, more consumer-friendly ones are taking over, but I suspect we still have a lot more Oprah in our future.

Alas....

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The USA Network has renewed its new crime drama series In Plain Sight after the show's first run of twelve episodes this summer. Although the writers and performers had some difficulties establishing the lead character as someone viewers would want to watch week after week, they resolved the problems after the first couple of episodes, and the program earned good enough ratings to merit renewal.

USA also announced that a new series based on the network's 2007 comedy-drama mini-series The Starter Wife, starring Debra Messing, will premiere this October 10.

In addition, the cable channel announced three new drama series have been approved for production.

Covert Affairs is about a CIA linguist partnered with an ex-boyfriend, Operating Instructions (executive produced by NBC talk host Conan O'Brien) follows an inner-city surgeon after returning  home from Iraq, and Stiffs is about a single father who transports bodies for a morgue and solves homicides with his medical-examiner brother.

Although all three of the new pilots sound either overly arch or as if they are trying too hard for significance, the USA Network has a good track record of creating shows that somehow manage to work as good series television—programs that entertain and enlighten without pretending to great profundity. The continuing success of the USA Network in producing drama series that consistently have writing and performances on a par with programs on the broadcast networks shows the continuing breakup of the networks' hegemony over TV viewing habits.

With cable networks continuing to strengthen their slate of weekly dramas, they are breaking into the broadcast giants' last bastion of superiority. Thus television is undergoing the same process as the rest of the communications industry, as old giants fall and are replaced by leaner, more agile providers who are more responsive to consumers' wishes.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Legendary action director John Woo's historical drama Red Cliff is already the most successful Chinese film ever, but it remains to be seen whether that will translate to success in the United States—something Woo has had difficulty achieving despite his Western sensibilities.

One of the most influential directors of the past two decades has had a rocky career since emigrating to the United States in 1993. The Chinese-born director John Woo transformed the Hong Kong cinema by bringing a strong modern Western sensibility, particularly an affinity for complex characters with multiple levels of motivation. His late 1980s films films for producer Tsui Hark are classic action films: melodramas with real imagination and moral insights.

A Better Tomorrow, The Killer,and Hard-Boiled provide the kind of propulsive operatic, bravura action the movies do better than any other form of expression, and they also mean something, with Woo's concern evident not only for innocents caught up in difficult circumstances but also for the non-innocents who recognize their lives are out of order. Woo showed a clear awareness of both people's need for redemption and the possibility it could be achieved. That makes his best films stand out from the general run of action movies and even the works of respected directors such as Peckinpaugh, Coppola, and Scorsese.

But what really caught people's attention in Woo's work was not the intelligence or wisdom but instead his over-the-top inventiveness at creating action scenes. The scene in which several characters hold each other at gunpoint, none daring to shoot first, is a Woo invention that has been copied endlessly since.

It should hardly surprise us, then, that Hollywood lured Woo to our side of the Pacific and that his films there were inconsistent at best. His first American film, Hard Target, was a Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle that was edited to death because it earned an NC-17 rating in its original cut. Broken Arrow and Face/Off were terrific, but Mission Impossible 2 was a bloated mess in which he should never have become involved, and Windtalkers was surprisingly uninspired.

There's possibly an interesting subtext in the film which may reflect the director's feelings at the time: the struggles of the film's Navaho codebreakers to fit into an alien Western military culture could reflect Woo's difficulties in bringing his deeper sensitivities into play when his Hollywood employers just wanted bigger explosions and faster chases. Maybe, but the film isn't interesting enough to make us want to think about it.

Paycheck (2003) was something of a rebound for him, as it showed he could still make a strong action film with some thought behind it, but soon afterward Woo left the United States to make a four-hour, two-part epic film based on the beloved Chinese historical epic novel The Romance of Three Kingdoms, starring Tony Leung, one of Hongkong's most popular actors.

Woo's choice to return to his roots appears to have paid off both financially and aesthetically, according to reports from China. Since it opened in Chinese theaters on July 10, Red Cliff has already become the highest-grossing Chinese film ever, with its $44 million of ticket sales as of  Monday breaking the record set by Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower in 2006, which brought in about $40 million in China.

The China Daily reported a representative of the company that produced and distributed Red Cliff said he expected the film to remain popular and overtake the overall record holder in Chinese theatrical film box office sales, Titanic, which brought in just over $52 million.

Part 2 will hit Chinese theaters in December. The two-part Red Cliff is the most expensive Chinese film ever made, at $80 million. The China Daily notes that it is indeed an epic production: "It is based on a well-known historical battle in 208 AD in which thousands of ships were burnt. Magnificent battle scenes are one of its biggest features."

The film will open the Tokyo International Film Festival in October, and will be shown in a single-episode, much-shortened edit in the United States. The expected U.S. release date has not yet been announced.

Red Cliff marks another milestone in being the first collaboration between director Woo and the equally legendary action sequence designer and director Cory Yuen. An interesting article at ITN's Kung Fu Cinema site provides additional information on the film's action sequences and includes video from a Chinese-language film about Yuen's action choreography in Red Cliff.

The promotional trailer for the Cannes Film Festival showing earlier this year is available here.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The recording industry is in a panic as album sales continue to drop. Is this really a problem?

Technological change in the United States is continuing its good work of breaking down sclerotic institutions and businesses and instituting greater freedom in the marketplace by leveling the playing field between incumbents and startups and between big firms and smaller ones.

This a very good thing indeed, although those who benefit from the old ways tend to think otherwise.

A vivid example of this process is the music industry, as evidenced by a recent story in Business Week documenting the travails of the industry's major players and the rise of the independents—a trend to which the development of the Internet has contributed greatly. Fact One, of course, is that sales are down overall:

The grievous state of selling music is well annotated, with total album sales falling 11% in the first half of '08. Major labels struggle to keep platinum sellers (acts that sell a million units) from backsliding to gold (500,000 units) or worse. But some smaller labels—among them Sub Pop, Merge, and Matador—have hit a pocket of relative prosperity, with many of their top stars selling more records than ever.

The slide in album sales, however, does not mean that people can't make a living from music. As Michael Arrington noted on TechCrunch earlier this year, it just means the business is changing as technology alters the marketplace: musicians will make more of their money from concerts, with recorded music serving as a way of getting potential audiences interested in attending.

Such natural changes in society and industry apparently terrify some of the wealthier musicians. One such is Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who has cast aside his rebellious reputation and decided to call for government help in the form of a music tax, as Arrington notes in his article. Whoa!

Yet no one should see this changing marketplace as some sort of weird, space-age invention. After all, musicians used to make their entire living off of performances, and some did very well indeed. Even today, that's where the real money is.

In any case, we probably won't be going back to the days in which wealthy members of the nobility supported composers and musicians out of a spirit of noblesse oblige, and the evidence is very clear that artists are no freer under the current system than they were back then. They're free to be creative and starve, or to fit the marketers' specifications and just possibly get a minute slice of the mountains of money the recording companies still take in despite the recent downturn in their fortunes.

What seems to be happening here is not an actual decrease in the amount of money going to the music industry but instead changes in the product mix for which that money is spent and a widening of the distribution of that money within the industry. That will benefit the smaller players and thus reward variety and creativity. The Business Week article mentioned previously provides important evidence supporting that conclusion:

Seattle's Sub Pop, famed for signing a then-unknown trio called Nirvana in the late '80s and long adept at minting a hit moments before the label's lights went out, has recently notched three gold records. One of them, The Postal Service's Give Up, is nearing platinum. Another, the Shins' Wincing the Night Away, debuted at No. 2 on Billboard. This, for a label and milieu in which selling 50,000 records was once considered an ungodly feat.

According to Sub Pop, in 2007 it posted record revenues, which rose 79%, to around $20 million—14% from licensing its bands' music to advertisers and entertainment properties. It also sold more records in '07 than in any other year. (Sub Pop is private, so these figures cannot be independently confirmed. Some executives familiar with similar labels say that revenue level sounds high. And—disclosure—I play guitar on one Sub Pop release.)

In short, people who used to make a grotesque amount of money in the music business—the biggest artists, the stockholders and managers of the big music companies, and what Arrington aptly refers to as their "bloated bureaucracies"—are no longer getting as much of the geetus as they used to. Naturally, they're steamed about it, so of course their first impulse is to run to the government and urge it to tax and jail the people who want to obtain their products.

The system they want to protect, however, is the one that grotesquely overcharges consumers, rampantly steals from all artists not powerful enough to fight back (which is all but a lucky few), and deliberately puts out the stupidest, least creative and innovative products it can, under the conviction that people don't want to hear anything but crummy knockoffs of the crummy knockoffs of previous crummy knockoffs they bought just a week ago.

The system from which they benefit so luxuriously cannot last, however, as the rise of the indies noted in the Business Week article exemplifies the extent of the changes the industry is undergoing:

What explains the indies' staying power? For starters, the Web's flattening of distribution, and the growing appetite for licensing less mainstream music. The Shins have provided music for ads by McDonald's (MCD), Microsoft (MSFT), and Gap (GAP). "Advertisers realize: 'I don't have to get the Beatles to have a successful commercial,'" says Ira Antelis, former music director for ad agency Leo Burnett—and indie bands come cheaper, to boot. Other aspects of the indie world—small staffs, modest expense structures, and strong relationships with an audience and its musicians—are built for a music environment that's shrinking even as niches become more important.

The reality is that music companies will have to become leaner and meaner, and soon, and musicians will have to take greater responsibility for their own finances and pay serious attention to the business side of their careers.

That is not a disaster. On the contrary, it will benefit all parties, including the most important ones of all—the consumers.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new book claims the author of the Dr. Seuss stories intended them to convey Christian ideas and themes.

A Presbyterian minister has gone through the mega-popular children's books by Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, and found there are strong undercurrents of Christian thought in the stories, although the books are commonly characterized by the press as usually being merely fanciful and occasionally conveying politically leftist themes:

A recent AP story lays out the issues well:

No one has ever doubted the layers of meaning in the stories of Dr. Seuss. The Lorax has obvious lessons about the environment. The Butter Battle Book took direct aim at the Cold War arms race. Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now! was one way to demand the resignation of President Nixon.

So when Horton's world of Who-ville was "saved by the Smallest of All," Robert Short saw the savior of the Whos as a symbol for the Savior of all people. From Green Eggs and Ham to How the Grinch Stole Christmas , Short has reinterpreted many of Theodor Seuss Geisel's stories as subtle messages of Christian doctrine in the new book, The Parables of Dr. Seuss.

Questions remain, however, about whether the original author intended such an interpretation or Short, a retired Presbyterian minister, is just seeing the stories through the lens of his own life.

The common notion that Geisel was basically a leftist certainly has a basis in fact: in the early years of his career he was a political cartoonist of a distinctly left-wing orientation. Less obvious instances of left-of-center political implications cropped up on occasion in the Seuss books, as noted in the AP story, but that of course does not mean that Geisel could not have intended to convey Christian religious themes in his books

The story goes on to quote author Short in making his case for his thesis that Geisel consciously placed Christian imagery and ideas in his celebrated children's books:

"He never did say, 'I'm going to do this, I'm going to incorporate my Christian faith into my stories,"' Short said. "And I think it's fine that he didn't do that because it's up to us to draw the conclusion whether it's actually there or not."

Short cites Geisel's early life—the son of Christian parents, mandatory chapel services at Oxford and Dartmouth—to demonstrate Geisel's "strong religious background." Short and Geisel met once—in 1978—and, after Short sent Geisel a copy of two of Short's Peanuts books, Geisel wrote Short to say that he enjoyed the way Short "handled the material."

The AP story notes that the people in charge of Geisel's estate (he died in 1991) have taken great care to prevent the public from seeing his books as overly didactic:

However, a biography on the Dr. Seuss Enterprises official website notes the following: "Like most works of merit, the works of Dr. Seuss have been overanalyzed; many scholars have found devices where there are truly none to be found. For the most part, Ted enjoyed writing entertaining books that encouraged children to read."

The AP author appears skeptical about Short's thesis, but gives him room to make his case:

So is The Cat in the Hat really the Christ who arrives with a "BUMP" and turns the world upside down for God's children? Is the mother in the story a symbol of the old religious law? Are the fish in the bowl representative of churches that adhere to a restricting version of the Gospel? Did Dr. Seuss really intend for his stories to be interpreted this way?

It's a quandary that, for some, would puzzle even the Grinch's puzzler.

"There's so much of it," Short said. "And it fits so neatly into the configuration of the Christian message that I'm convinced that he knew what he was doing."

I think they're both partly right. I believe that Short is probably correct in identifying strong Christian overtones in Geisel's Dr. Seuss stories, and that the AP author is probably correct to doubt that Geisel meant to convey Christian ideas prominently, if at all, in his stories. Both notions are at least highly plausible, and they do not contradict each other.

After all, as Short notes, Geisel did indeed have a strong religious background, and regardless of whether he was a churchgoer later in life, those early experiences and ideas would surely have formed much of his worldview and influenced his ways of thinking and perceiving things. Hence, even if he left the church, his very imagination might well have been solidly based in a Christian perspective.

The imagination, moreover, is the part of his mind that would be most resistant to censorship by any conscious decisions he might make as an adult, and the very nature of the books shows that Geisel gave his imagination pretty much free reign when writing them.

Where Short probably overplays his hand is in asserting that Geisel consciously intended to convey Christian thoughts and themes, as the AP story quotes him:

"I was amazed at what I found when I started looking at it—all this Christian imagery was very carefully factored into his stories," Short said in an interview from his home in Little Rock.

"And that's what this book intends to do, is show how he has done this in a very carefully crafted way. It's there, and you could make an argument for it being intentionally there, because it's done with such great care."

This is an unnecessary leap of logic, and one for which there is at present no convincing evidence. In the case of C. S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton, it is clear both from their lives and their writings that their fictions are meant to convey Christian ideas. The same is true of authors as diverse as Henry Fielding and George Gilder. In Geisel's case, by contrast, that intention is certainly not evident. Yet the ideas and themes are surely there in his books, as Short has taken great pains to point out.

Having them in his books should be enough. What Geisel actually thought consciously about such matters is, after all, between him and God. We should be thankful that the Dr. Seuss books are at least to some extent doing the good work that Short identifies—without posthumously enlisting him as a Christian soldier.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

ABC's new fall series based on the BBC time-traveling police drama Life on Mars debuts October 9. If it can stand comparison with the original, it will be an extraordinary accomplishment indeed.

It seems rather a fool's errand for ABC, the least serious of the broadcast TV networks, to attempt a remake of the superb BBC television series Life on Mars, but that's precisely what they're doing. The Imdb.com item on the forthcoming fall series concisely summarizes the problems with the production, but the real difficulty is in imagining the American screenwriters matching the brilliance of the dialogue, the seriousness of the situations, and the historical insights that were such strengths in the BBC version.

It's also difficult imagining anyone recreating the combination of toughness, dedication, menace, crassness, cruelty, vulgarity, moral strength, rule-bending, and bizarre decency of Philip Glenister's characterization of DI Gene Hunt. It's simply a unique performance, and though the producers of the U.S. series have brought on the highly talented Harvey Keitel for the role, it is extremely implausible to expect that the character will be anything but greatly diminished.

Keitel may make the American version, Lt. Gene Hunt, into an interesting character, but he cannot convey the sheer force of will that Glenister portrayed. And without a strong force of nature in Gene Hunt to play off of, the obstacles confronting the protagonist, Detective Sam Tyler, will certainly be less formidable.

Also in the cast are Gretchen Mol and Lisa Bonet, both of whom are likeable and will help make the show more interesting than it might otherwise be. Nonetheless, what will be most interesting to see is whether the ABC series can capture any of the magic of the BBC original, and what will be most mysterious will be to try to figure out why the network and the show's producers thought this was a good idea for a remake.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Can government strengthen marriage?

An interesting article by American Enterprise Institute scholar Kevin Hassett at Bloomberg.com considers the problems that divorce causes for society in addition to its terrible consequences for the individuals most directly involved.

Using the recent Christie Brinkley-Peter Cook divorce as his news hook, Hassett points out the nasty allegations that arise in divorce cases as each spouse tries to prove that the other is a monster and should get less of the couple's money after the split, being an undeserving swine:

The ugliness of the case was best-captured by the news alert posted by the Associated Press announcing the settlement: "Christie Brinkley settles NY divorce with husband who had teen mistress, online porn habit."

Ms. Brinkley's allegations against her husband may well be true, of course, which makes them also indicative of the gross realities of people's banal, reckess indulgence of uninteresting lusts.

For a variety of reasons, nearly half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. Clearly that is not a good thing. It is important to note, however, that around two-thirds of first marriages do not end in divorce; the numbers are skewed higher because of multiple marriages and divorces among those in the one-third of first marriages that do fail.

Even so, one-third is a terribly high failure rate.

These failed marriages impose awful costs on the families invloved, Hassett notes:

Researchers at Ohio State University found that while divorce reduces a person's wealth by an average of 77 percent, men typically have 2.5 times the wealth of women after a divorce.

Toll on Children

Living in a family that is not of the traditionally nuclear variety also takes a toll on children. A thought- provoking review of the literature by economists Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, Sara McLanahan of the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University, and Elisabeth Donohue of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, highlights the costs vividly.

Most compelling is their discussion of a 2005 study by Paul Amato: ``Amato reports that if the same share of children lived with their biological parents today as did in 1980, about 300,000 fewer children between the ages of 12 and 18 would repeat a grade, 485,000 fewer would be suspended from school, 250,000 fewer would need psychotherapy, 210,000 fewer would be involved in violence, and 30,000 fewer would attempt suicide every year.''

Hassett then asks the question, since divorce is so bad (which I think we should accept at least provisionally as a premise), what can society do to help strengthen marriages so that they don't break apart as commonly as they do?

Much to his credit, Hassett, a political conservative, acknowledges that the efforts of Washington policymakers to reduce the incidence of divorce have accomplished little:

You can hardly say policy makers haven't tried. Over the past decade or so, a number of steps have been taken.

The 1996 welfare reform set a national goal of encouraging the ``formation and maintenance of two-parent families'' and reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births. . . .

President George W. Bush expanded these efforts in 2002 with the Healthy Marriage Initiative. The program provides $100 million per year in state grants designed to ``help couples, who have chosen marriage for themselves gain greater access to marriage-education services, where they can acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage.'' . . .

In addition, Bush's 2001 tax cuts also tried to eliminate any marriage disincentives brought about through the tax code. The law relieved married couples in lower tax brackets from the ``marriage penalty'' by increasing their standard deduction to twice that of singles.

These efforts, though, have hardly made a dent in the problem. That's evident both from the macroeconomic trends, which continue to worsen, and from the scientific literature. Summarizing what we know, Haskins, McLanahan and Donohue write that ``the evidence that pro-marriage programs will produce benefits is thin.''

Acknowledging that the programs tried so far have not worked, Hassett says that we should look to science to solve the problem:

[C]ommit to using the scientific method to discover innovative public programs that work. A good way to do this would be to provide ample research grants for pilot programs designed to encourage family formation, and to consider relying on faith-based initiatives in this area as well.

This seems to me a rather hopeless notion. Given that all the national-government efforts to strengthen marriage have gone for approximately naught, perhpas the real reason is neither that "the problem is insurmountable," as Hassett suggests as one possibility, nor that the efforts so far simply haven't been guided by sufficiently clever science.

These two responses represent the extremes of despair and of false hope, it would appear. 

I think that there's a better answer than either of these, fortunately. It's based on my foundational premise about government and human society:

Nearly all good social actions come as the result of individual human choices, and nearly all bad ones are caused by government.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it, as Ozzy Osbourne so aptly said.

It's a very good template for thinking about social actions, I believe, and is surely one of the basic premises behind classical liberalism.

So, how does this apply to marriage and divorce?

Very directly, actually.

Here's how.

The government policy that has done the most to undermine marriage in this country is no-fault divorce.

Enacted in state after state beginning in the 1960s, no-fault divorce laws were put in place for highly compassionate reasons—and hence ought immediately to arouse our suspicion and hostility. The idea was to help prevent people from being trapped in loveless marriages, especially ones in which children will be exposed to daily hostility between their parents.

Even the most cursory look at the daily news will show how successful this policy has been at achieving its ideal of ridding the society of all bad marriages and retaining only the good ones. One might even suggest that there is some causal connection between no-fault divorce and rise of domestic violence which has coincided with the implementation of such policies across the nation. I certainly think it more than merely plausible.

The pros and cons of no-fault divorce have been debated endlessly, and are well summed up in the about.com article "The Issue of No-Fault Divorce."

The facts of the matter appear to compel a thoroughly dire conclusion: no-fault divorce undermines all marriages by creating an easy "out" for every married person. All marriages have their ups and downs, but with no-fault divorce, each partner is always vulnerable to the possibility that their spouse may simply call it quits during one of the "downs."

We could put that word 'always' in italics and bold type, to emphasize the central effect of no-fault divorce laws on all marriages at all times.

Thus it seems clear that no-fault divorce laws undermine all marriages by weakening each party's trust of the other, regardless of how strongly they may love each other or be committed to marriage in general and their marriage in particular.

That, our course, must constitute a pervasive negative consequence of government policy on all marriages in our society.

This points the way toward a highly practical, rather deceptively simple solution to our very high divorce rates, and a strong philosophical foundation for this answer is available in the straightforward application of classical liberal principles of political philosophy. 

The key is to recognize that as far as society is concerned, marriage is a contract between two individuals. And one of the few but central roles of the state is to enforce contracts. What no-fault divorce is, then, is a universal failure of the state to enforce a particularly vital and consequential contract.

The solution, then, is very simple and direct: end no-fault divorce. Governments should require that a party calling for a divorce will show that the other party has violated the original contract so egregiously that the only fair outcome is for it to be dissolved and the wronged party to receive just compensation.

This is a simple but not simplistic proposal. Certainly it leaves much discretion to judges, juries (potentially), and of course the parties to each and every marriage in the nation. It is, in a word, liberating.

Undoubtedly, religious and cultural factors must have some effect on divorce rates as well, and they could certainly contribute to the effort to strengthen marriage in the United States. A recent Barna poll, for example, refutes the now-common belief that evangelicals have a higher divorce rate than the U.S. population as a whole. In addition, a 2007 essay in the New York Times pooh-poohing divorce as a social issue included this useful tidbit of information:

The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began back in the 1970s.

A look at divorce certificates—certainly a superior method of measuring divorce rates—confims this trend:

The narrative of rising divorce is also completely at odds with counts of divorce certificates, which show the divorce rate as having peaked at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married couples in 1979 and to have fallen by 2005 to 16.7.

These numbers, though indicating a significant improvement over the past three decades, are still too high, by historical standards, and given the divorce consequences noted above, we'd do well to work on bringing them down further.

Also interesting is the fact that the divorce rates went up as the 1960s mentality spread through the population and as no-fault divorce became common. Once the Do Your Own Thing poison began to work its way out of our national veins and as people became used to the new rules regarding marriage, things turned around and began making slow progress toward a better marriage culture. But divorce rates in the United States are still at an unhealthily high level, most sensible people would agree.

So although cultural and religious efforts are certainly important, it's not implausibe to think that their effect has been blunted by the government's refusal to treat the marriage contract as a serious commitment that should not be sundered without either strong agreement from both parties (which is not the case with most divorces) or a sufficiently egregious breach of the contract by one of the parties.

Where ending no-fault divorce is unbeatable, indeed, is in two areas: one, its strengthening of this vital contract with all its attendant social impacts, and two, in its restoration of government to its proper role in dealing with marriage.

That role is the same one the state should have in all social situations: the enforcment of contracts and the adjudication of disputes among parties to them.

When the state fulfills its proper role, society functions the very best it can. Isn't that what we all want?

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Audience interest in the forthcoming Star Wars: Clone Wars is rather muted as the film's release date approaches.

An article in the Chicago-area Daily Herald newspaper, along with several other such reports, says the forthcoming Star Wars: Clone Wars is not exactly animating those who enjoyed the earlier films in the series:

[At] a Lucasfilm presentation at the recent Wizard World comic convention in Rosemont. Steve Sansweet, [where] Lucasfilm's director of fan relations, unveiled details about new "Star Wars" products coming out in the next few months, including "Star Wars: Clone Wars," a full-length computer-animated film that arrives in theaters on Aug. 15 . . . the applause [for a showing of the movie's promotional trailer] was positive, but polite—hardly the raucous response that has greeted past "Star Wars" previews. And chatter about the film on movie and "Star Wars"-related message boards has been surprisingly restrained so far.

"You're definitely not seeing the kind of hype you got with the last three films," said Mike Barrick, a staff member at theforce.net, a "Star Wars" fan site.

The story quoted a fan at the convention as being interested in the film and planning to see it, but not enthusiastic:

"I'll definitely see the movie," Krause said. "The trailer looks pretty cool. But for some reason, I'm not as excited as I was before the last few films came out."

The story points out that the "Clone Wars" era has already been covered by the series Clone Wars on Cartoon Network and by other offerings, which might dampen interest because audiences could feel they already know enough about it and there would be few surprises.

That strikes me as a dubious explanation, given that TV tie-ins usually create more interest in a film.

A more likely explanation is touched on briefly in the Daily Herald story: the animation of the film, with its obviously strong Japanese anime influence, does not look very appealing. As the images shown above suggest, the animation is quite smart and exudes energy, but it looks far too much like a video game. One can imagine this working on a big screen in a movie theater, but I can see why most people would consider waiting to find out if their more Star Wars-fanatical friends like it before venturing in.

In addition, given that the last three Star Wars films were rather mundane and not nearly as entertaining as the first three installments in the series (chapters 4-6), it should hardly surprise us if audiences take a wait and see attitude.

That's rather a pity, perhaps, given that the political and social ideas implicit in episodes 1-3 (the fourth through sixth films released) seem rather positive. 

Star Wars: Clone Wars can surely do well at the box office and add something to the Star Wars canon if the story and characters are appealing—but at this point it is clearly understandable why the potential audience's enthusiasm is rather muted.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A new competition proves Americans aren't the only ones with too much time on our hands.

The recent U.S. Air Guitar Championships in San Francisco, to determine who'll represent the United States at the Aug. 20-22 air guitar world championships in Oulu, Finland proves the truth of an adage I've mentioned on several occasions: Everything happens in the Omniculture.

It's also additional proof of my point that Americans turn everything into a competition. This apparently is true also of the Finns, who pioneered this loony sport-art-amusement.

As the USA Today storon the U.S. championship competition notes,

[Defending U.S. champ William Ocean, 29] is a corporate events planner in New York; he's Andrew Litz to his fan-tastic parents, who have been known to show up at competitions toting foam fingers to cheer on their son. "My mom likes to say that the kicks she felt in her stomach were really me doing windmill strums."

And Ocean and his dad used to do Keith Richards/Mick Jagger air duets at family weddings. Seriously.

Watch Ocean in action on any number of YouTube clips and you see a mix of Spinal Tap's grimacing Nigel Tufnel and some of Jimi Hendrix's more outrageous moves. Sometimes it does look like he's playing a guitar that's invisible, but mostly it's all about the posing and hopping around like a madman during a 60-second, custom-edited track.

Why do people like this activity to the extent of watching competitions? The USA today story suggests an answer, from writer-musician Dan Crane, 37, who wrote the book To Air Is Human:

"It's a completely atavistic response to hearing music, much like dancing is," Crane says.

Possibly. A more likely explanation is Crane's point about boredom in the Scandinavian winters:

the Finns, who pioneered this "sport," also are known for such offbeat competitions as wife carrying and cellphone throwing. "They have very long winters up there," says Crane.

We Americans don't have long winters, but given our amazing wealth and astonishing amount of leisure time, it's understandable that everything that can happen, does. And given the competitive nature of our society with its roots in market capitalism, it's only natural that pretty much everything we do, we turn into a competition.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gerard Baker of the Times of London presents simply the finest analysis of Obamania yet offered: "He ventured forth to bring light to the world."

 Stirring, beautiful, profound, hilarious—and horribly true.

Gerard Baker's article is one of the best satirical pieces I've seen in a while. In a time when the media mass together viciously to destroy all original thought, it takes courage to write the truth, even in a veiled, sarcastic manner. Baker has succeeded brilliantly.

An excerpt:

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

. . . And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can."

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Although The Dark Knight achieved the biggest opening weekend and opening week U.S. box office performance in history, it will be difficult to knock off the all-time champ, Titanic.

An article in E! Online speculates on how well The Dark Knight can be expected to do over the course of its run, concluding that the new Batman film has started out on what looks like an extremely strong performance but will probably fall well short of the overall record, $600.8 million, set by Titanic.

The reason, the article points out, is simple: staying power is the most important factor. Using Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as an example, the article shows that films that really capture the society's imagination across many different demographic groups have slower but steadier :

As it turned out, Dead Man's Chest went about things all wrong. The way to gross $601 million is:

• Opener smaller than The Flintstones. (Titanic's $28.6 million debut is the 238th "biggest" of all time, per Box Office Mojo.)
• Play at fewer theaters, at your peak, than Lost in Space.
• Never, ever make more than $13.6 million in a single day.

But mostly:

• Post your second-biggest day ($13.1 million) on your 58th day in release. (Note: It's easier to do this if, a few days prior, you nab a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations.)
• Instead of falling by 50 percent in your second weekend, go up by 24 percent.
• Go up by 25 percent in your fifth weekend.
• Don't sell fewer than $1 million worth of tickets until…day 102.

In short, make money consistently, constantly and, above all, crazily. And do it all with movie ticket prices going for about $4.69, instead of today's $7.08 average.

Titanic, the article notes, was number 1 at the U.S. box office for 15 weeks. The Dark Knight has a very long road to travel before it challenges that accomplishment, but it did have another record-breaking weekend last week, bringing in another $75.6 million—the largest second-weekend take in history—and passing the $300 million mark faster than any other film in history.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)