1. An enthusiastic Jeff Goolsby says Peter Schiff “rocked it” at the debate I hosted yesterday, seen below (and our Federalist Society hosts sounded happy, too, which is nice). There will at some point be video from the Schiff folks, I think.
Interestingly,
though it did not come up during the debate, Schiff’s (friendly) opponent, law
prof Richard Carnell, is a conservative Christian – and perhaps far more
surprisingly, also an avowed Christian is leftist writer Chris Hedges, who I
saw debate shortly afterwards yesterday, criticizing “black bloc” protest
tactics within Occupy Wall Street against the objections of a representative of the
anarchist group CrimethInc.
I found myself
sympathizing with Hedges (much as I criticized his book Death
of the Liberal Class), and me sympathizing is almost always a sign that
someone or something on the left is about to be turned on by other leftists
(sorry to be a canary in the coalmine that way – remind me to blog about Naomi
Wolf). Some people at the back of the
CUNY Graduate Center kept shouting and swearing at Hedges (but the members of
the mighty Occupy Poughkeepsie seated in front of me seemed pleasant enough). There was some macho bellowing of
disagreement when Hedges argued that black bloc tactics are troublingly
hypermasculine.
CrimethInc’s B.
Traven (who noted that his fellow punks have gotten much more political over
the past decade) argued that violence doesn’t only begin when a non-government
individual does it – and any self-respecting libertarian must find that
logical. Hedges’ argument, though, as he
repeatedly stressed, was more tactical than narrowly-moral: You don’t build a
broad-based, MLK-sized movement by scaring (possibly injuring) apolitical
average citizens or inviting a police state crackdown. Some at the event had no sympathy for that
line of argument.
Interestingly, even
though I’m something of a Tea Party sympathizer I thought one of Hedges’ best
arguments was that if his fellow leftists encourage black bloc tactics, they’re
going to end up very unhappy if the Tea Party – or even outright proto-fascist
groups – adopt the same sorts of tactics.
It could be Berlin 1930 all over again, with opposing political gangs
fighting in the streets. Politics looks
more and more like the early
twentieth century lately, not the usual 1950s/1960s redux.
That’s more stuff to
sort out on MONDAY (Sept. 17, 8pm) at our Dionysium summit about Occupy and
Tea Party commonalities, at Muchmore’s (2 Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg). Strange as it may look to some, this summit
is really another means of continuing my ongoing fusionist project, of which
the essay “Conservatism for Punks” (in the anthology Proud
to Be Right) was a part
two years ago.
2. Emilio Quintana
was nice enough to translate that essay into Spanish, which I don’t speak. If you do, though, check it out on the website Contrautopia. (And
just vow to check with me on the accuracy of the translation before you angrily
ask me why I want to paint all clowns
orange or something like that.)
3. Speaking of
punks, above, in addition to Goolsby’s photo of Schiff et al, is a blurry photo
I took of other panelists on that Rew and
Who? broadcast I was on recently – and a less-blurry picture I took of what
was on my table as I waited to appear: one bunny rabbit noisemaker from that
pivotal day’s Pussy Riot protest, one Partisan
Review anthology (a legacy of the C-SPAN ex, now living on a new continent
and blogging at a new URL, both without scandal, to the delight and approval of
all), one Justice League issue in
which Superman and Wonder Woman kiss, and one Johnny Walker Black, neat.
4. And speaking of
Christians, I’ll see rock reporter turned religion advocate Dawn Eden speak
at the First Things offices (35 East
21st) today at 6, and that reminds me that even though I often mistakenly
think of my interactions with serious Christians as something that only began
in the late 90s via political channels, in fact I must admit that many of the
smart and studious kids in my high school were Christians.
Even though I was a
solidly atheist enough teen to argue with them occasionally, I didn’t really care enough (or take these things
personally enough) to remember vividly how many of them were Christian. It’s almost – dare I say it – as though me
remembering them as smart made me
forget to file them under Christian. But it happens – even in secular New
England.
5. Meanwhile, in
Australia, the awesome Nick Cave has written the current bootleggers-vs.-cops
movie Lawless, which I’m told is
rather libertarian.
6. If so, it’s a
good month for anti-authoritarian movies,
since The Master sounds like an artful takedown of cults. Of course, the trailers for the movie use a
cultish technique themselves (as do many avant-garde films, interestingly),
which is to slightly confuse people by being cryptic. I would rather startle them into alertness
with the punk slogan (admittedly originally used by Margaret Sanger) “No gods,
no masters!”
But confuse people,
whether through art or mysticism, and they will grovel at your feet. Take the undue tolerance people have shown for
some of (Transcendental Meditation adherent and surrealist) David Lynch’s work
(wonderful as some of it is). Here are
the positive bits (though not all bits were positive) of the Wikipedia entry
for his absolutely terrible Inland Empire,
for instance:
Inland Empire was named the second-best film of 2007 (tied
with two others) by Cahiers du cinéma, and listed among Sight & Sound's
"thirty best films of the 2000s," as well as The Guardian's "10 most underrated movies of the
decade"…Overall the film has been well received by critics. The New
York Times classified Inland Empire as "fitfully brilliant" after the
Venice Film Festival screening. Peter Travers, the film critic for Rolling
Stone magazine wrote, "My advice, in
the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on"…Jonathan
Ross, presenter of the BBC programme Film 2007, described it as "a work of genius... I think." Damon Wise
of Empire magazine gave it five
stars, calling it "A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by
an enigma" and Jim Emerson (editor of RogerEbert.com) gave it 4 stars and
praised it: "When people say Inland Empire is Lynch's Sunset Boulevard,
Lynch's Persona or Lynch's 8½, they're quite right."
Oh, please. It was awful.
7. Nearby, you’ll see a panel of a woman telling Captain
America he’s a jerk. So hard to please
people. At least the Ramones liked
Spider-Man, though. I knew they did a
great cover of the theme to his 60s TV show, but I did not know there was a version of the video that
showed them lip-synching to the song.
Awesome.
With Joss Whedon, to my delight, planning an
Avengers-related S.H.I.E.L.D. TV
series, my one big Marvel adaptation wish, I now realize, is that they use the
character Moondragon in the 2014 Guardians
of the Galaxy movie. True, the
character can be annoying in the comics, but a hot bald arrogant bisexual
martial artist psychic chick would translate well onto the big screen, I’m
thinking. Not all characters do. (Too bad Persis Khambatta is dead and Sinead
O’Connor is fat and has hair.)
Even though I’m almost entirely off the junk these days, I
like to tell people who for some reason might want to become comics addicts
(not samplers of old classics, mind you, but buyers of trashy new stuff) when
there’s a convenient “jumping-on point,” and next month’s Uncanny Avengers (written by the swell Jonathan Hickman) definitely
seems like one of those points at Marvel. It’s very consciously Marvel’s attempt to
blend some members from their two most popular teams (X-Men and Avengers) into
one unit.
(HUGE SPOILER WARNING
FROM THIS WEEK.) The new team is
apparently sparked by Cyclops turning into Dark Phoenix and killing Prof. X
this week, but I don’t think you’ll need to know that to pick up Uncanny
Avengers #1 – and in any case, Prof.
X has died several times. (SPOILERS OFF.)
The X-Men comics have recently played with dystopian themes
– fitting for my talk of utopia and reform during this blog’s “Month of Reform”
– while over at DC, the series Earth 2
appears to be turning that alternate universe into DC’s default darker-and-dystopian
world (dark invaders, dead heroes, destroyed cities, etc.). The characters in StormWatch have a history of getting authoritarian delusions as
well, and there are some hints the Justice League itself might be headed that
way (while the newly-popular Animal Man
and Swamp Thing see the main DC
Universe turning into the decaying Rotworld – and while we’re touring alternate
realities, some might be pleased to hear there’s a Smallville: Season Eleven comic book, though now that he’s
Superman, it may be pointless).
In any case, if you want a jumping-on point for the DC Universe, this month’s “Zero Issues”
(all fifty-odd DC Comics ongoing superhero series being numbered #0 in
September) give you a good one, recounting origins and other important
flashback moments. You know, a
libertarian novelist friend of mine who visited New York recently and a
conservative playwright whose party I went to that same weekend would likely be
aghast that I still care about any of this.
8. But they both
appreciate the theatre enough that they may be pleased I will take to the stage
for karaoke again tonight – with libertarians.
It’s a relatively free country, so you could join us from 9pm on in the
large back room of Bar 182 tonight.
9. If you’re one of
those people who prefers quality in your music, though, you’ll have to join me
in the audience for (my fellow Phillips Foundation fellow) Jesse DeConto’s band
Pinkerton Raid on Saturday at 11pm at Freddy’s Bar (627 Fifth Ave. in Brooklyn). One of his fellow North Carolinians, Kristen
Leigh (that state apparently being a hotbed of hipster/traditionalist overlap),
will perform “chamber folk” at 10pm that night at the same location.
10. Of course, at heart I (like this cat) remain a
New Wave person, and I couldn’t help but think of the Fixx song “Saved by Zero” when
Andrew Muchmore (owner of the eponymous bar where we’ll do Monday’s Occupy/Tea
event) lamented that things are so bad for some people out there that maybe we
should just erase all debts and start over (as David Graeber might also
urge). Starting over might also entail
everyone forgetting that this is literally the thirty-fourth time I’ve
mentioned the Fixx on this blog.
Fight Club, with
astonishing prescience, ended (as some may forget) with a back-to-zero scene –
shot in 1999 – that is an almost perfect combination of Occupy Wall Street and
9/11 (not that the Occupants would want those things linked in the public
mind). Maybe we can discuss that, too,
at this coming Monday’s Dionysium (8pm at Muchmore’s!), even though the founder
of the original, Austin, TX Dionysium, L.B. Deyo, thinks Fight Club is a crappy movie.
Maybe everything is terrible.
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