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Politics, Economics, History, Etc.

Academy Award Nominations Reflect Cultural Shibboleths

January 23, 2007

The nominations for this year’s Motion Picture Academy Awards were announced today, and they basically repeated those made earlier this year by the Golden Globes. Dreamgirls was left out of the Best Picture nominations, rather surprisingly according to Hollywood insiders, and Sacha Baron Cohen was not nominated for his performance in Borat, which was not a surprise. (The Academy seldom honors broad comic performances, except those that are intended as serious. . . .) The AP story noted that ethnicity appeared to be a plus this year: With five blacks, two Hispanics and an Asian, it was the most ethnically diverse lineup ever among the 20 acting nominees. After decades in which the Oscars were a virtual whites-only club, with minority actors only occasionally breaking into the field, the awards have featured a much broader mix of nominees in the last few years. The nominations are indeed much more "diverse" ethnically than in prior years, and in fact much more so than the population of the country. A non-caucasian is now decidedly more likely to receive an Academy Award nomination than a caucasian is. Can affirmative action for caucasian actors be on the way? Peter O’Toole was nominated for Best

American Muslims’ Protests of Fox TV Show “24″ Are Misdirected

January 19, 2007

By S. T. Karnick

American Muslim groups have protested to Fox Television for the use of Muslims as terrorists on the Fox TV program 24, CNN reports: Two years ago, Muslim groups protested when the plot of the hit Fox drama ’24′ cast Islamic terrorists as the villains who launched a stolen nuclear missile in an attack on America. Now, after a one-year respite during which Russian separatists played the bad guys on the critically acclaimed series, Muslims are back in the evil spotlight. Unlike last time, when agent Jack Bauer saved the day, the terrorists this time have already succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles suburb. As we noted earlier this week on this site, the attribution of the fictional terrorists as Muslims actually makes a good deal of sense. After all, if you are going to have the premise that terrorists are operating on American soil, then Muslims would indeed seem to be the most likely ones to do so at this point in time. That much should be obvious. If anything, the program has gone too far in the opposite direction over the years, pretending that threats other than Islam are predominant. As Fox pointed out in

The Only Kind of Conservatism These TV Writers Could Imagine As Not Entirely Repulsive

January 16, 2007

By S. T. Karnick

On the Acton Institute’s Power Blog, Jordan Ballor analyzes a scene in the most recent episode of the ABC-TV series Brothers and Sisters which he shows to be indicative of the mentality of big-government conservatism. Ballor writes: Here’s a speech gives to a group of ladies and donors (My comments are in brackets. The full episode is available for viewing at ABC.com here by clicking on the Brothers & Sisters graphic and selecting the episode marked 1/14/07. McCallister’s speech begins at approximately the 01:22 mark of the show): I barely left the house most Sundays . My mom would cook elaborate dinners for neighbors, friends, and sometimes people we barely knew. By ten I could whip up a perfect meringue, to glaze a pan, dress chicken . But by the time puberty rolled around I’d had enough. Football, friends seemed more important. So I told her I was done. I was a guy, I didn’t want to spend Sundays in the kitchen with my mom. And you know what she said?

NC Bar Charges Nifong with Ethics Violations

January 8, 2007

By S. T. Karnick

The North Carolina Bar has filed charges against Durham District Attorney Thomas Nifong. The Center for Individual Freedom’s Freedom Line reports: On December 28, 2006, the North Carolina State Bar filed ethics charges against Durham, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong for public statements made related to the so-called Duke University rape case. As noted earlier on this site (see articles here, here, and here) and elsewhere, the case was a blatant instance of false prosecution from the beginning. The Freedom Line article nicely summarizes Nifong’s motives in pressing the entirely groundless case forward: As most everyone now knows, Nifong was a career prosecutor until he got appointed District Attorney to fill out an uncompleted term. He liked the top job. He decided to run for election to keep it. At the time, he had some competition. He needed a political edge. Nifong got that edge when, in March 2006, a stripper hired to perform at a party for the Duke lacrosse team claimed she had been gang raped there. Talk about a prosecutor’s political dream. The stripper was black, poor, a single mother working her way through college. The lacrosse players were mostly rich, mostly white, going to

Why We Hate

January 5, 2007

By S. T. Karnick

Peter Wood, the brilliant anthropologist and author of the new book A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Today, has contributed a very astute analysis of "The Liberalitarian Dustup" in National Review Online. I recommmend it highly. Analyzing the disagreement between libertarians and liberals as to whether the two sides have much in common and might make good political bedfellows, and concentrating on leftist Jonathan Chait’s furious rejection of libertarian Brink Lindsey’s overture suggesting an alliance, Wood uses the exchange to exemplify the absurd amount of anger in political discourse today, and the amount of it that seems so thorougly unjustified by the intellectual or political differences at hand. We know all of that already, of course, but Wood adds something of value to the discussion. He succinctly and correctly identifies the sociological and cultural origins of the great unleashing of anger in contemporary political discourse: The Newly Angry are moved by a sense that they are most authentic, most transcendently themselves, when they are unleashing their anger. New Anger is the narcissistic self in high dudgeon. Wood points out that modern-day, extreme expressions of anger in political discourse are actually attempts to characterize oneself as authentic and one’s

Nifong Drops Rape Charges Against Falsely Accused Duke Students

January 3, 2007

By S. T. Karnick

As you may have heard in the news, District Attorney Michael Nifong has dropped the rape charges against the Duke University lacrosse players falsely charged last March. As Thomas Sowell notes in National Review Online, Nifong decided to drop the charges when the head of the lab that looked at the DNA evidence in the case testified under oath that the accuser had DNA from other men on her, but none from any Duke player. However, as Sowell astutely notes, Nifong has left some relatively minor charges hanging over the three young men identified by the stripper in a rigged photo lineup. Nifong’s blatant misconduct led to this author’s call for his impeachment last May, along with prosecution of the accuser and the firing of Duke University President Richard Brodhead, who sided with the accuser and castigated the Duke lacrosse team, the Duke student body, all non-poor caucasians, and all males. The man is an utter disgrace. From the start of this sordid affair, I have consistently referred to the players as falsely accused, the accuser as phony, Nifong as guilty of gross prosecutorial misconduct, and Brodhead as a race panderer and a disloyal, smarmy class warrior. Nifong’s latest action

Sowell on NC False Prosecution Scandal

December 23, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

As you will recall, I’ve been writing about the Duke false prosecution scandal since the beginning, on the Reform Club and then on this site since its inception. (See articles here and here, for example.) Over time, this writer’s analysis has been confirmed repeatedly by additional revelations from North Carolina, and other writers have created a chorus of boos for NC prosecutor Thomas Nifong. I initially called for Nifong’s impeachment, the resignation of Duke president Thomas Brodhead (who jumped on the scandal as a way of showing support for the town’s people over the students at his own university), and the prosecution of the unnamed accuser (who remains unnamed—her reputation, such as it may have been beforehand, continuing unscathed by this incident, unlike those of the accused Duke lacrosse players, their teammates, and especially coach Mike Pressler, who was forced to resign despite having notihing whatever to do with the incident that never actually happened) Now the superb economist and opinion writer Thomas Sowell has called for Nifong’s removal from office and disbarrment. Sowell points out that an impulse behind this matter is a desire for retribution for past injustices against blacks. But as Sowell points out, the Duke lacrosse

The Brilliance of “Going My Way”

December 16, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

TV stations tend to show the great 1944 film Going My Way, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald, more often around Christmas, even though only a couple of scenes are set during Advent. The film, however, always repays watching. In particular, it illustrates the superiority of moral suasion over coercion in the creation of civil order — a lesson always worth remembering. Although Going My Way won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the film’s reputation rapidly declined beginning in the 1960s, and critical consensus has long dismissed as trite, sentimental, and unsophisticated. This is an entirely erroneous and indeed dimwitted interpretation of the film, and one that cries out for redress. The story is familiar: easygoing, likeable Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) is assigned by the local Catholic bishop to help bring St. Dominic’s Church, a faltering urban congregation led by Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald), back to its feet and in particular to overcome its financial problems. Crosby’s O’Malley represents the liberal side of the church — as it was then manifested, it is important to remember — and Fitzgibbon the conservative aspect. The key element here is that Crosby’s liberalism is entirely limited to

Animal Rights Activists Lose One

December 11, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The National Basketball Association has announced that the league will stop using the microfiber composite basketballs it has been employing this season, and will return to use of leather basketballs as in previous years. Players had complained that the new basketballs became very slippery during games and the microfiber coating would cut the players’ fingers after repeated use. In response to the hailstorm of complaints from players, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced that the league will go back to the old basketballs beginning January 1 of next year. The decision is a blow to animal rights activists, who it is rumored convinced the league to use artificial basketballs instead of the traditional leather ones. As All Headline News reports: The few positive comments about the non-leather NBA basketball have come from the animal rights group PETA. PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, touted the new ball as a victory for animal lovers and cows the world over. "Although basketball may be a game to us," says PETA’s website, "it’s no fun for cows whose skins are used to make basketballs." The website also said, "It’s easy to moo-ve away from leather." And easy to move back., too

The Bane of Conservative Cultural Criticism

December 8, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The Bane of Conservative Cultural Criticism

The Achilles heel of most conservative cultural critics is their tendency to characterize repugnant works of pop culture as establishing that society as a whole, or some great swath of it, is irredeemably corrupt. In commenting, for example, on Carol Iannone’s scathing review of the pro-homosexual and apparently exceedingly vulgar and imbecilic British film The History Boys (written by the overrated and immensely asinine author Alan Bennett), Lawrence Auster of View from the Right claims that "the British elites despise their country, their culture, their history, and secretly or openly wish to have done with it all." Auster says that this movie shows that Britain is on a "path to national suicide." One play, of course, does not a culture make, and Auster can undoubtedly claim his point is that The History Boys is not conclusive in itself but is revealing as part of a massive chain of evidence of corruption. Auster, however, writes, "by the time the movie ended, the realization hit me that the British elites that created a movie like this, that praised and recommended a movie like this, seek with cold and deliberate malice the destruction of their country." Now, that is surely wrong, and it

Culture and Nature: Animals Gone Wild

December 6, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Our friend and fellow classical liberal Ilana Mercer has a very interesting and well-argued article in today’s American Spectator, on how a powerful and widely held cultural idea has actually changed the natural world, and for the worse. Mercer points out that the often laudable effort over the past couple of centuries to discourage mankind from harming animals has had an awful unintended consequence: many animal species are losing their fear of human beings and are increasingly attacking humans. Mercer argues: While Western man works to rid himself of the most basic ethical instincts, like defending his kinfolk, animals remain true to their nature. Wild beasts intuit that their teeth and talons are meant for tearing flesh — any flesh, the easier the better. It makes perfect animal sense to attack a thing that is docile, slow, and passive, like the not-so sapient Homo sapiens. It has been decades since animals were aggressively repelled from human habitat, and they now brazenly make themselves at home in manicured suburbs. It used to be that men killed and hunted encroaching creatures. Thanks to decades of cultural and legal emasculation, they no longer have the urge or license to protect home and hearth.

The Limits of Utilitarianism—A BBC Drama Series

December 6, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The Limits of Utilitarianism—A BBC Drama Series

The BBC TV program 11th Hour, currently being shown in the United States on Monday nights at 9-10:30 EST on BBC America, has an interestingly ambivalent attitude toward science. The four-episode series appeared in the UK early last year and is now in its first run in the United States, according to my calcuations. To be sure, the program is pro-science, but it’s not at all certain how we as a society ought to decide what is allowed and what isn’t. The protatonist’s investigation of "scientific disasters" suggests that there must be some limits, but what they are is not clear to him or his associates. In the end, of course, the pilot episode seems to decide that it’s up to the government to figure it out on a case by case basis, and whatever benefits the greatest number without raising too much of an Ick Factor will be allowed. That is, it comes out in favor of a fairly straight utilitarianism. The series stars Patrick Stewart as Prof. Ian Hood, a scientist who works for some shadowy department of the British government and investigages criminal activities in the realm of high science. The first episode, which premiered this past

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Academy Award Nominations Reflect Cultural Shibboleths

American Muslims’ Protests of Fox TV Show “24″ Are Misdirected

The Only Kind of Conservatism These TV Writers Could Imagine As Not Entirely Repulsive

NC Bar Charges Nifong with Ethics Violations

Why We Hate

Nifong Drops Rape Charges Against Falsely Accused Duke Students

Sowell on NC False Prosecution Scandal

The Brilliance of “Going My Way”

Animal Rights Activists Lose One

The Bane of Conservative Cultural Criticism

Culture and Nature: Animals Gone Wild

The Limits of Utilitarianism—A BBC Drama Series

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