The defining divide in American politics is probably between Republicans and Democrats. It encapsulates all our other divides — by race, education, religion and more — and it’s growing.
This partisan divide is such a big part of people’s political identities, in fact, that it’s reinforced simply by “negative partisanship,” or loyalty to a party because you don’t like the other party. A Pew Research Center poll from last year found that about 40 percent of both Democrats and Republicans belong to their party because they oppose the other party’s values, rather than because they are particularly aligned with their own party.
But what if Americans’ views of the parties, particularly whichever one they don’t belong to, are, well, kind of wrong? That’s the argument of a study by scholars Douglas Ahler and Gaurav Sood that was recently published in The Journal of Politics. They had the polling firm YouGov ask American adults to estimate the size of groups in each party. For example, what percentage of Democrats are black, or lesbian, gay or bisexual? What percentage of Republicans earn more than $250,000 a year, or are age 65 or older?
What they found was that Americans overall are fairly misinformed about who is in each major party — and that members of each party are even more misinformed about who is in the other party.
Blacks made up about a quarter of the Democratic Party, but Republicans estimated the share at 46 percent. Republicans thought 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual, while the actual number was about 6 percent. Democrats estimated that 44 percent of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year. The actual share was 2 percent.
People also overstated the numbers of these stereotypical groups within their own party — Democrats thought 29 percent of their fellow Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual — but they weren’t off by as much as members of the other party.
In short, “the parties in our heads,” as Ahler and Sood write, are not the parties in real life.
You might say, “This is just one study.” And it is. I suspect that some of these results just show Americans’ innumeracy — most blacks are Democratic-leaning, but most Democratic voters are not black. But I wanted to highlight this research in part because I think it speaks to the political moment we are in, and the study’s findings fit well with other recent research on political polarization. Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, published a book earlier this year that I highly recommend called “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.” In describing American politics today, she argues that partisan identity (Democrat or Republican) has become a “mega-identity” because it increasingly combines a number of different identities.
Mason writes in her book [emphasis hers]:
“A single vote can now indicate a person’s partisan preference as wellas his or her religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood and favorite grocery store. This is no longer a single social identity. Partisanship can now be thought of as a mega-identity, with all of the psychological and behavioral magnifications that implies.”
In other words, if you told someone on the phone whom you had never met before that you are white, that single fact would not tell them much more about you. But if you told them that you are a Republican, they could reasonably assume that you are not black, lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual, nonreligious or Jewish. They could also assume that you don’t live in Washington, D.C., and that you don’t believe racial discrimination is the primary reason blacks aren’t making more advances in today’s America. If you told them you are a Democrat, they would have good reason to believe that you are not a white evangelical Christian and don’t live in coal country in Kentucky. (We should not exaggerate how perfectly sorted people are: In raw numbers, there are still plenty people who buck their party’s stereotypes— young and non-evangelical Republicans and Democrats who are religious and non-urban.)
And which party people belong to is important because there is some evidence that instead of people choosing their party affiliation based on their political views (and changing parties if their views are no longer represented by that party), they shift their views to align with their party identity. The clearest case of this might be polls showing Republicans with more favorable views of Russia and Vladimir Putin after the 2016 election.
But you can also see people molding their political opinions to their party on other issues. Opinions of the FBI, for example. Or, perhaps, the half of Republicans who have told pollsters that they support separating children from their parents at the border.
“The danger of mega-partisan identity is that it encourages citizens to care more about partisan victory than about real policy outcomes,” Mason told me. “We find ways to justify almost any governmental policy as long as it is the policy of our own team. What is best for America, Americans or even small children is secondary to whether our party’s team gets what it demanded.”
So we are in a situation where Americans have sorted themselves into two parties along not just ideological lines, but also by geographical, religious, racial and other social and cultural differences. At the same time, they’ve adopted inaccurate, caricatured views of both parties that overstate these already sizable demographic differences. And they’ve started taking positions on issues based on whatever stance their party adopts.
This dynamic seems less than ideal — hence the title of Mason’s book.
“These misperceptions are one of many factors fueling the contemporary partisan gulf,” Ahler said in an interview.
Non-conservative Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass:
Just what will the rage-filled American political left and their Democratic Partyhandmaidens do when they take power?
Given their recent calls to mob action, harassing Republicans and their families out of restaurants and movie theaters, spittle flying from angry mouths, America is right to wonder what will happen when the left holds the federal hammer in its hands.
The end of Donald Trump is a dream they chase, just as they chased White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family from the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., a few days ago.
But just about the last thing any American wants to dream about is the rat cage strapped to your face before a thorough confession of political sins. Then come the other rituals, from the shaving of heads to the public walks of atonement, with Maxine Waters cackling and shrieking in the background.
Oh, pardon me. I’m sorry. Did I just type “rat cage”? What was I thinking?
With all the easy references in media to “Nazis” these days, a dehumanizing term applied to Americans who dare believe their country should have secure borders, I thought perhaps a small mention of “rat cage” might be acceptable, too.
I apologize. My hyperbole is wantonly irresponsible. And what makes my sin worse is that now we’re being told by the voices of reason to take a step back and remember a time of gentle civility in America, before Trump and his brutish, vulgar ways.
So, let’s remember those civilized times, shall we?
It seems almost quaint to remember Hillary Clinton kicking more than 60 million people to the margins of American culture. She sentenced them to eternal limbo in her “basket of deplorables.” Remember?
Her audience tittered and giggled. A few wise Democrats saw this instantly as a horrible mistake, just as Chicago Democrat David Axelrod now understands that the ugly sounds coming out of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters’ mouth — and the larger Democratic orgy of public shaming of Republicans — are terrible political mistakes.
Chicago is a practical town. A crooked, violent town, yes, and broke, but practical in some things. Wise Chicago Democrats could see the chaos Clinton unleashed with her “deplorables” remark.
But by then it was too late. America heard her words. And more than 60 million of them voted for Trump.
It wasn’t the only reason she lost the election. It wasn’t the Russians. Clinton was the dowager empress of a discredited Washington establishment. 2016 was the year of insurgency. And her “deplorables” comment became a rallying cry.
Shaming is a goad. It keeps people in line, lest they stray and are devoured on social media as a lesson to others.
Americans aren’t big on shaming. They don’t like it when it comes from the Twitter feed of some anonymous troll with a cartoon head.
They like shaming even less when they envision themselves as the next target, up close, their families surrounded, the screamers in their faces, flecks of spittle flying. What comes after shaming? Pain.
But the left loves to publicly shame those who challenge them. The left’s attacks on conservative speakers at college campuses was but a precursor to what’s happening now.
Americans don’t mind debate. What they do mind is picturing themselves ordering a chicken dinner and being told to leave because of their politics, as happened to Sanders.
Or shouted at in a restaurant, and outside her home, as is happening to Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security.
Or being yelled at and allegedly spat on as was Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at a theater where she hoped to watch the documentary on the gentle Mister Rogers.
Spittle, hate, shaming and Mister Rogers?
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Waters, the Los Angeles Democrat considered a hero and wise woman to some, argued publicly that those loyal to President Trump should be hounded, publicly.
“And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” Waters said at a rally the other day. “And you push back on them.”
This is exceedingly dangerous. It begs violence. And if it happens, it will rightly be put in the lap of the Democrats.
Because Waters is a Democrat, and what she calls for is mob action and vengeance. The mob lunges forward, filled with self-righteousness and seeks a dehumanized enemy.
What adds to the danger is that Trump voters have already been dehumanized as “deplorables” and most recently and loudly as Nazis by many in media and the left, for daring to think America should have control over its borders.
Trump wouldn’t know civility if it bit him. He’s not an example of prudence and good manners. And he’s no Mister Rogers.
What he’s doing is making Waters the public face of his opposition. He won’t let it go. Her idiocy has great currency.
Some Democrats, like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York, properly admonished Waters. But unless Democrats censure her publicly in the House (and they wouldn’t dare), they’ll sidestep this and search for some new outrage to change the subject.
They are such expert dancers in Washington, as they must have been in their past lives, in the glittering French palace of Versailles, knowing just when to point the toe, and when to put their best foot forward, while stepping off to the side.
A gunman blasted his way into the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis with a shotgun Thursday afternoon, killing five people, authorities said.
Journalists dived under their desks and pleaded for help on social media. One reporter described the scene as a “war zone.” A photographer said he jumped over a dead colleague and fled for his life.
The victims were identified as Rob Hiaasen, 59, a former feature writer for The Baltimore Sun who joined the Capital Gazette in 2010 as an assistant editor and columnist; Wendi Winters, 65, a community correspondent who headed special publications; Gerald Fischman, 61, the editorial page editor; John McNamara, 56, a staff writer who had covered high school, college and professional sports for decades; and Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant hired in November.
Two others were injured in the attack that began about 2:40 p.m. at the Capital Gazette offices at 888 Bestgate Road in Annapolis.
Police took a suspect into custody soon after the shootings. He was identified as Jarrod W. Ramos, a 38-year-old Laurel man with a long-standing grudge against the paper. …
“This was a targeted attack on the Capital Gazette,” said Anne Arundel County Deputy Police Chief William Krampf. “This person was prepared today to come in. He was prepared to shoot people.” …
Ramos’ dispute with the Capital Gazette began in July 2011 when a columnist wrote about a criminal harassment case against him. He brought a defamation suit against the columnist and the organization’s editor and publisher. A court ruled in the Capital Gazette’s favor, and an appeals court upheld the ruling.
Neither the columnist, Eric Hartley, nor the editor and publisher, Thomas Marquardt, are still employed by the Capital Gazette. They were not present during the shootings.
Police said the suspect used “smoke grenades” in the attack. They said 170 people were inside at the time.
The Capital Gazette is owned by The Baltimore Sun.
Phil Davis, a Capital crime reporter who was in the building at the time of the shooting, said multiple people were shot as he and others hid under their desks. He said there was a single male gunman.
“Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees,” he wrote on Twitter. “Can’t say much more and don’t want to declare anyone dead, but it’s bad.”
“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.” …
Davis later told The Sun it “was like a war zone” — a scene that would be “hard to describe for a while.”
“I’m a police reporter. I write about this stuff — not necessarily to this extent, but shootings and death — all the time,” he said. “But as much as I’m going to try to articulate how traumatizing it is to be hiding under your desk, you don’t know until you’re there and you feel helpless.”
Davis said he and others were hiding under their desks when the shooter stopped firing. Then police arrived and surrounded the shooter.
Photographer Paul Gillespie had finished editing photos from one assignment and was preparing for the next when he heard shots behind him and the newsroom’s glass doors shatter.
He heard another shot, he said, dived under a co-worker’s desk “and curled up as small as I could.”
“I dove under that desk as fast as I could, and by the grace of God, he didn’t look over there,” he said. “I was curled up, trying not to breathe, trying not to make a sound, and he shot people all around me.”
Gillespie said he heard one colleague scream “No!,” then a shot. Then another colleague’s voice, and another shot. He could hear the gunman approaching his hiding place.
“I kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to die. I can’t believe this.’ ” Gillespie said.
But the gunman passed him, he said, and continued to shoot. Eventually, there was a lull in the shots. Gillespie stood and ran for the exit, through the shattered glass, jumping over the body of a colleague he believed was dead as another shot rang out in his direction.
He ran to a nearby bank and screamed for people to call the cops.
“I feel like I should be helping to cover it,” he said, “but I’m a mess.”
Authorities said police responded to the scene within a minute of the shooting.
The injured employees were identified as Rachael Pacella, a reporter who covers education and the Naval Academy, and Janel Cooley, a sales representative who covers downtown Annapolis. Both were treated and released. …
Josh McKerrow, a Capital Gazette photographer for 14 years, started his day Thursday covering Induction Day at the Naval Academy at sunrise. He was driving home to celebrate his daughter’s birthday when Capital editor Rick Hutzell called.
“He said he’d heard there had been a shooting, and he couldn’t get in touch with anyone in the newsroom,” McKerrow said.
Then he heard sirens.
“My heart sank,” McKerrow said. “I knew.” …
Jimmy DeButts, an editor, wrote on Twitter that he was “devastated and heartbroken.”
He praised his colleagues’ work.
“There are no 40-hour weeks, no big paydays — just a passion for telling stories from our community,” DeButts wrote. “We keep doing more with less. We find ways to cover high school sports, breaking news, tax hikes, school budgets & local entertainment. We are there in times of tragedy. We do our best to share the stories of people, those who make our community better. Please understand, we do all this to serve our community.” …
The Capital Gazette is one of 30 tenants in the building. Five others share the first floor with The Capital. They include accountants, lawyers, financial and medical offices. The newspaper has been in the building since 2015, according to CoStar, a real estate information company. They have 5,000 square feet of offices.
Aaron Smith and Randall Fisher of the Fisher Law Office were on the fourth floor at the time of the shooting, but they didn’t hear or see anything. They learned of the assault when a colleague texted Smith.
They flipped a desk over in front of the door to the office and stayed there until SWAT officers arrived. They then walked out of the building with their hands on their heads, like everyone else in the building, Fisher said.
Bethany Clasing, who works on the second floor, said she heard a single gunshot. Then police yelled: “Get down! Get down! Don’t move!”
Rayne Foster of Frost and Associates LLC said a plainclothes officer entered her fourth-floor office suite and told the receptionist to lock the doors because there was an active shooter. She quickly gathered people together.
Some employees removed high heels to prepare to flee the building. Others hid. One pulled two handguns out of his desk drawer for self-defense.
The shooter chose a target as likely to be unarmed as a school. Reporters are notoriously incorrect about firearms because reporters are unfamiliar with firearms. In my entire career I have known no one in the media who is a CCW carrier, and I would bet I could use two hands to count the number of journalists who own firearms even for hunting.
In 2012, Ramos filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper and a columnist over a July 2011 article that covered a criminal harassment charge against him.
He brought the suit against then-columnist Eric Hartley, naming Capital Gazette Communications and Thomas Marquardt, the paper’s former editor and publisher, as defendants.
Throughout my career I have heard from people displeased with their presence in the publication. (As well as people displeased with their absence from the publication, for different reasons.) They never grasp that (1) police and court records are by state law open records (except for juvenile offenders), and (2) their problems with my writing, unless something is mistaken, are something to take up with the police or the court system. I’ve gotten threats of lawsuits, and I’ve gotten threats of cancellations of subscriptions or advertising, sometimes carried out. I’ve also gotten physical threats, though never delivered in person, and never carried out.
Perhaps this could be credited to the trauma, or perhaps she’s always this way, but, reports the Huffington Post via Yahoo:
A shaken journalist who survived Thursday’s deadly attack at The Capital Gazette newspaper says she “couldn’t give a fuck” about thoughts and prayers if “there’s nothing else.” …
In an interview with CNN on Thursday night, Capital Gazette writer Selene San Felice told Anderson Cooper what it was like to hide under her desk while the gunman opened fire. She also said the attack had left the newsroom “shaken,” but she was not interested in politicians’ well-worn platitudes.
“I’ve heard that President Trump sent his prayers. I’m not trying to make this political, right? But we need more than prayers. I appreciate the prayers. I was praying the entire time I was [hiding] under that desk. I want your prayers but I want something else,” San Felice said.
“I’m going to need more than a couple days of news coverage and some thoughts and prayers because our whole lives have been shattered,” she added. “Thanks for your prayers, but I couldn’t give a fuck about them if there’s nothing else.”
Although CNN didn’t bleep San Felice’s comments, Cooper warned viewers that the interview contained strong language.
“I remember being so upset hearing about the victims who were texting their families,” she said. “And there I was sitting under a desk texting my parents, telling them that I love them.”
Five newspaper people were killed yesterday at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis. I can’t imagine how brutal that must be for the families. I met one of the victims, Rob Hiaasen, a few times; he was the brother of my close friend Carl Hiaasen. From all accounts Rob was a fine journalist and a wonderful man. My heart aches for his family, for all the families.
My heart also aches, on this sad day, for the larger family of journalists, especially newspaper journalists. It’s a family of which I still consider myself a member. I started in this business in 1971, as a rookie reporter at the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., for (if I recall correctly) $93 a week. Since then most of my friends have been newspaper people. No offense to any other profession, but these are, pound for pound, the smartest, funniest, most interested and most interesting people there are. They love what they do, and most of them do it for lousy pay, at a time when the economic situation of newspapers is precarious, and layoffs are common.
It’s also a time when the news media are under attack — for being biased, for being elitist and out of touch with ordinary Americans, for not caring about the nation. And I’ll grant that in some cases, some of these criticisms are valid. There are cable-TV “news” operations openly devoted to either propping up or tearing down Donald Trump. There are newspaper journalists who seem far more interested in getting on TV, and jacking up their Twitter numbers, than being fair or accurate. There are incompetent, dishonest people in this business, as in any business.
But these people are a minority — I think a tiny minority — of news people, especially of newspaper people. There are over 1,000 daily newspapers in the United States, most of them covering smaller markets, like Annapolis or West Chester. The people working for these newspapers aren’t seeking fame, and they aren’t pushing political agendas. They’re covering the communities they live in — the city councils, the police and fire departments, the courts, the school boards, the high-school sports teams, the snake that some homeowner found in a toilet. These newspaper people work hard, in relative obscurity, for (it bears repeating) lousy pay. Sometimes, because of the stories they write, they face hostility; sometimes — this happens to many reporters; it happened to me — they are threatened.
But the news people I know are still passionate about what they do, and they do it remarkably well. And here’s the corny-but-true part: They do it for you. Every time they write a story, they’re hoping you’ll read it, maybe learn something new, maybe smile, maybe get mad and want to do something.
That’s what the people were doing at the Capital Gazette when they were shot. And the survivors, God bless them, put out a paper the next day. Because that’s what we do in this business.
So criticize us all you want; when we screw up, feel free to call us on it.
But don’t say we don’t care.
This isn’t the first time violence has been committed against journalists. Arizona Republic reporter Don Bowles was rewarded for his investigative reporting on organized crime with a car bomb that killed him in 1976. The worldwide record of violence against journalists, including murder, is far more extensive — 33 so far this year, after 46 in 2017 and 73 in 2015.
Nor will it be the last time, for reasons that have nothing to do with what Donald Trump or anyone else says about journalists. In this world disputes and disagreements increasingly get solved with violence, regardless of the availability of weapons. There are people running around who, though they don’t consider themselves mentally ill and may not be considered legally mentally ill, are what we used to call “deranged,” “crazy” or “disturbed,” to use subjective non-scientific terms. I’m not sure what to do about that in a country that supposedly supports individual constitutional rights.
Here’s an odd anniversary: Four days after Cher divorced Sonny Bono, she married Gregg Allman. Come back to this blog in nine days to find out what happened next.
Birthdays start with Florence Ballard of the Supremes …
The movie that many Americans have been waiting for — a full-length feature on the life of Ronald Reagan — is becoming a reality. Last week, it was announced that 64-year-old Dennis Quaid (The Right Stuff, Soul Surfer) has been signed to play Reagan in a biographical movie scheduled for release next year. Quaid will play Reagan as an adult, and teenager David Henrie will play the Gipper as a young man. The film is produced by Mark Joseph, who has been an executive on 45 films ranging from The Passion of the Christ to Max Rose, the last film starring comedian Jerry Lewis. The executive producer is Ralph Winter, of the X-Men superhero franchise.
What makes the movie exciting to Reagan fans is that it will be the first movie that will not seek to take down or tarnish the former president. Reagan was intimately involved with Hollywood for some 30 years, first as a leading man, then as the host of the top-rated General Electric Theater and as six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild. But most of Hollywood never forgave Reagan for becoming a conservative. Take Ida Lupino, the noted actress and director. She used to babysit Reagan’s children in the 1950s. But after he became a Republican in 1962, she cut off all ties and never spoke with him again.
The films in which the character of Reagan has made an appearance have reflected that bitterness. In 2003, CBS hired left-wing activist James Brolin, Barbra Streisand’s husband, to play Reagan in a three-hour miniseries. The New York Times got hold of an advance script and found several scenes, involving the Hollywood blacklist and AIDS, that it called “historically questionable.” One showed Nancy Reagan begging her husband to help AIDS patients only to hear him reply, “They that live in sin shall die in sin.” Lou Cannon, Reagan’s most prolific biographer, dismissed the film by saying the assertion that Reagan had been an FBI informant was “really wrong” and that “Reagan was not intolerant” toward gays. CBS executives eventually caved and shunted the film to their Showtime cable channel, where it bombed.
That disaster kept Hollywood silent on the topic of Reagan for about a decade. Then, in 2016, only weeks after the death of Nancy Reagan, it was announced that Will Ferrell was going to star in a “comedy” about Ronald Reagan’s slipping into Alzheimer’s while he was still president. The script had made Hollywood’s informal roster of the best unproduced scripts making the studio rounds. It was given a live read, with Lena Dunham and James Brolin (again!) playing various parts. Here is the summary:
When Ronald Reagan falls into dementia at the start of his second term, an ambitious intern is tasked with convincing the commander in chief that he is an actor playing the president in a movie.
Luckily, the outrage from Alzheimer’s-advocacy groups and the Reagan family forced Ferrell to abandon the project only two days after it was announced.
Mark Joseph, the producer of the new Reagan film starring Quaid, says he felt compelled to make his movie before Hollywood attempted once again to rewrite history. His research has been meticulous. He personally reviewed KGB and FBI files kept on Reagan. He interviewed more than 50 of Reagan’s friends, aides, and cabinet members. Among them were people who rarely grant interviews, such as Donn Moomaw, Reagan’s pastor, and Ben Aaron, one of the surgeons who operated on Reagan after the attempted assassination against him in 1981. The script is based on two biographies by Reagan historian Paul Kengor and is personally endorsed by Ed Meese, Reagan’s close confidant and attorney general while he was president.
The script premise is a fascinating one. It begins with a Putin-like figure, the new leader of Russia, visiting a nursing home to interview an old KGB agent named Viktor Petrovich (played by Jon Voight) to learn how Reagan and the U.S. defeated Communism. The movie tells Reagan’s story through Petrovich’s eyes as he follows Reagan for four decades; Petrovich can’t get his superiors to heed his warnings about Reagan until it is too late. The Petrovich character is a composite of several KGB agents who did indeed track Reagan throughout his career. The film also covers other aspects of Reagan’s life, including his domestic policies and religious faith.
“The story of Reagan is a fascinating one, whatever one’s politics,” Joseph told me.
We came at it from the angle of wondering what his enemies thought of him and how they followed him and ultimately lost to him. Nobody knew him like his enemies did — and it’s through that lens that we tell the story. It’s impossible to understand the last century without understanding who Ronald Reagan was.
I agree, and here’s my prediction: It will be impossible for millions of Americans to resist seeing a film that finally puts Ronald Reagan in proper historical perspective, and that will be highly entertaining to boot.
Given Joseph’s involvement, I’m guessing Reagan fans need not worry about a Brolin- or Ferrell-like savaging of Reagan in this movie. Of course, sometimes things change. Consider actor Timothy Bottoms, who played George W. Bush for laughs in Comedy Central’s “That’s My Bush” and a Bush-like doofus in “Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course,” but then played dead-serious Bush in Showtime’s “DC 9/11.”
Quaid is an interesting casting choice. I’ve been a fan of his ever since one of the most underrated movies of all time, “The Big Easy.” For some reason I saw that before Quaid’s portrayal of astronaut Gordon Cooper in “The Right Stuff.”
Meanwhile, Jordan J. Ballor writes about a movie now in theaters:
I saw Incredibles 2 over the Father’s Day weekend, and just like its predecessor, there’s a lot to ponder beneath the surface of this animated film. In the real world we’ve had to wait 14 years, but the sequel picks up basically where the original left off.
As the Rev. Jerry Zandstra wrote of the original, “litigiousness and mediocrity are some of the biggest obstacles in our culture. The propensity to settle every dispute by legal action undermines values, such as trust and forgiveness, that are essential to the maintenance of genuine community. Fear of rewarding or achieving excellence discourages human persons from fulfilling God-given potential.” In the sequel, superheroes are still illegal, for reasons of both litigiousness and social anxiety over “supers,” that is, those who have super abilities.
Incredibles 2 has a lot to do with the virtues of a system that allows individuals to find out what they can do well and how those abilities can serve others for their good. In this, it is true to the stewardship mandate at the heart of all superhero tales: with great power comes great responsibility. Or as Jesus puts it, to those whom much is given, much is expected.
But the issues of trust are at play as well in the sequel, and in a way that shifts the focus beyond the legal system to the marketplace. It is always notable when the businessperson or the entrepreneur in a film is something other than the villain, and without spoiling it, Incredibles 2 stands out in this regard. The villain is someone who wants to sow discord and distrust, and who mocks the trust that, among other things, characterizes the marketplace. Why would we trust someone we don’t know well (or at all) to care about our interests? Adam Smith gave a compelling answer to that question long ago, but the film does a good job making the case for re-examining the dynamics of trust and distrust in a digital age.
And while it may not offer a fully-fledged theory or philosophy of society, Incredibles 2 does a fantastic job of opening up lines of conversation and discovery around a host of issues, including family structure and gender roles, vocation and stewardship, digital worlds and virtual reality, as well as law, justice, and the market. Among the offerings of brooding anti-heroes and gritty realism of many superhero films lately, Incredibles 2 is a film that is helping to make superheroes great again.
For the eighth James Bond film, star Sean Connery wasn’t coming back. Three key members of the 007 creative team, screenwriter Richard Maibaum, production designer Ken Adam and composer John Barry, weren’t going to participate. And producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were mostly working separately, with this movie to be overseen primarily by Saltzman.
The result? LiveAndLetDie, which debuted 45 years ago this month, would prove to be, financially, the highest-grossing movie in the series to date.
Things probably didn’t seem that way for Eon Productions and United Artists as work began. They had no Bond. Broccoli and Saltzman didn’t want Connery back for 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. The studio didn’t want to take a chance and made the original screen 007 an offer he couldn’t refuse. But that was a one-film deal. Now, Eon and UA were starting from scratch.
Eon and UA had one non-Connery film under their belts, 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. They had tried the inexperienced George Lazenby, who bolted after one movie. For the second 007 film in the series not to star Connery, Eon and UA opted for a more-experienced choice: Roger Moore, former star of The Saint television series. Older than Connery, Moore would eventually employ a lighter touch.
Behind the camera, Saltzman largely depended on director Guy Hamilton, back for his third turn in the 007 director chair, and writer Tom Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz would be the sole writer from beginning to end, rewriting scenes as necessary during filming. In a commentary on the film’s DVD, Mankiewicz acknowledged it was highly unusual.
Perhaps the biggest creative change was with the film’s music. Barry had composed the scores for six Bond films in a row. George Martin, former producer for the Beatles, would take over. Martin had helped sell Saltzman on using a title song written by Paul and Linda McCartney. The ex-Beatle knew his song would be compared to the 007 classic title songs Barry had helped write. McCartney was determined to make his mark.
Saltzman liked the song, but inquired whether a woman singer would be more appropriate. Martin, in an interview for a 2006 special on U.K. television, said he informed Saltzman if Eon didn’t accept McCartney as performer, the producer wouldn’t get the song. Saltzman accepted both. The song eventually received an Oscar nomination.
LiveAndLetDie wasn’t the greatest James Bond film, despite an impressive boat chase sequence that was a highlight. The demise of its villain (Yaphet Kotto) still induces groans among long-time 007 fans as he pops like a balloon via an unimpressive special effect. Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James), up to that time, was probably the most over-the-top comedic supporting character in the series. (“What are you?! Some kind of doomsday machine, boy?!”)
LiveAndLetDie is one of the most important films in the series. As late as 1972, the question was whether James Bond could possibly continue without Sean Connery. With $161.8 million in worldwide ticket sales, it was the first Bond film to exceed the gross for 1965’s Thunderball. In the U.S., its $35.4 million box office take trailed the $43.8 million for Diamonds Are Forever.
Bumpy days still lay ahead for Eon. The Man With the Golden Gun’s box office would tail off and relations between Broccoli and Saltzman would get worse. Still, for the first time, the idea took hold that the cinema 007 could move on from Connery.
Many editors at the former Her Majesty’s Secret Servant website criticized the movie and its star in a survey many years ago. But the film has its fans.
“I vividly remember the first time I saw one of the Bond movies, which was LiveAndLetDie, and the effect it had on me,” Skyfall director Sam Mendes said at a November 2011 news conference. Whatever one’s opinions about the movie, LiveAndLetDie ensured there’d be 007 employment for the likes of Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.
“Live and Let Die” is my favorite Bond movie.
Yes, the ending is ludicrous, but the entire premise has gotten increasingly ludicrous. That doesn’t mean Bond movies aren’t entertaining.
Francis Wilkinson starts with a liberal view of recent political history:
It seems, maybe, that President Donald Trump has abandoned his policy of separating children from their immigrant parents and warehousing them in detention facilities. But the conflict over the policy has been, among other things, starkly clarifying.
“I think we’re at the beginning of a soft civil war,” political scientist Thomas Schaller said in a telephone interview. “I don’t know if the country gets out of it whole.”
The heightened conflict of recent weeks led to more ominous rhetoric— anyone else notice the abundance of Nazi references from sane people? — and more definitive, unequivocal acts. Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt renounced his party of 29 years this week and pledged to vote for Democrats until decency returns to the GOP.
Law professor and blogger Orin Kerr, perhaps sensing the ugly turn in the air, tweeted: “Few things are more corrosive in politics than the conviction that you have been wronged so much that you’re justified in breaking all the rules to get even.” …
And what if Democrats fall short in November? Especially if Democratic candidates get more votes than Republicans but fail to gain control of at least one side of Congress?
Here’s an easy prediction. Democrats will then experience rage — at Tea-Party levels or worse. …
Democrats won’t give up on democracy. It’s too central to their identity, and their commitment to democratic norms and processes is also their point of greatest contrast with Trumpism.
Instead, Democrats will give up on conservatives. They will give up on Alabama and Mississippi, on Kansas and Nebraska. They will explore ways to divorce their culture, politics and economy from Trumpism and from their fellow Americans who support it.
I don’t know exactly what that would look like. But liberals have a great deal of cultural, academic and economic heft, stretching from Hollywood to Harvard. Just this week, some Hollywood powerhouses flirted with leveraging their clout against the Trumpist Fox News. There are endless variations on such a power play. If Democrats opt to use their power more aggressively — breaking rules —Schaller’s soft civil war hardly seems unlikely.
“Democrats won’t give up on democracy”? That’s hilarious. Ask Wisconsin Republicans how often Democrats consulted the GOP when the former were in the minority in 2009 and 2010. Ask Congressional Republicans how often Barack Obama and his sycophants considered the GOP’s opinion when Democrats had total control of the federal government in 2009 and 2010. Former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D–Iowa) used the word “bullshit” frequently during his brief presidential campaign, and that’s a perfect word for the view through Wilkinson’s left eye.
The column by Francis Wilkinson presents a catalog of things Democrats are mad about — from the existence of the electoral college to Trump’s “propaganda apparatus” — and predicts that if Democrats lose the midterm elections, there will be hell to pay. (And Republicans, you know, could make a similar list of their own complaints.)
“I don’t know exactly what that would look like,” Wilkinson writes. “But liberals have a great deal of cultural, academic and economic heft, stretching from Hollywood to Harvard. Just this week, someHollywood powerhouses flirted with leveraging their cloutagainst the Trumpist Fox News. There are endless variations on such a power play. If Democrats opt to use their power more aggressively — breaking rules — Schaller’s soft civil war hardly seems unlikely.”
Well, actually this sort of thing seems to be well underway. Hollywood has basically turned its products, and its award shows, into showcases for “the resistance.” Americans are already sorting themselves into communities that are predominantly red or blue. And in heavily blue Washington, D.C., Trump staffers find that a lot of people don’t want to date them because of their politics.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was even kicked out of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, because the owner and employees disliked her politics. This seems like a small thing, but it would have been largely unthinkable a generation ago.
And, in a somewhat less “soft” manifestation, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was bullied out of a restaurant by an angry anti-Trump mob, and a similar mob also showed up outside of her home.
This probably sounds familiar to Wisconsinites who have seen leftist boycotts of everything from pizza to bratwurst because of politics. Penzey’s Spices, a company in Wauwatosa, has now made it a business model to call its Republican customers racist because President Donald Trump won, and before him Governor Scott Walker. Protesters even attempted to disrupt a Special Olympics event and the opening of State Fair one year because of their hatred of Walker.
Apparently the “coexist” bumper stickers are meant to be ironic.
But the disintegration of politics at the national level is particularly worrisome. We’re just a year removed since a Bernie Sanders supporter attempted a mass assassination of Republican Congressmen who were warming up for a intramural softball game against the Democrats. We’re not that far removed in time from violent riots at Berkeley and other college campuses.
Historian Michael Beschloss, not exactly an alarmist, is warning that he has seen this kind of behavior before. “It is almost beginning to sound like some of the things that happened before the Civil War,” Beschloss told Politico.
I’m not saying that denying someone a table at a restaurant should be compared to “Bleeding Kansas.” Nor am I even suggesting that the restaurants should be forced to serve Trump Administration officials.
But we’re to a point where civil discourse is becoming impossible. We’re no longer arguing at Thanksgiving Dinner like President Barack Obama encouraged us to do. The Left is just sputtering rage and attempting to bully everyone into thinking like they do.
Back to Reynolds:
Will it get worse? Probably. To have a civil war, soft or otherwise, takes two sides. But as pseudonymous tweeter Thomas H. Crown notes, it’s childishly easy in these days to identify people in mobs, and then to dispatch similar mobs to their homes and workplaces. Eventually, he notes, it becomes “protesters all the way down, and if we haven’t yet figured out that can lead to political violence, we’re dumb.”
Apparently, some of us are dumb or else want violence. As Crown warns, “We carefully erected civil peace to avoid this sort of devolution-to-a-mob. It is a great civilizational achievement and it is intensely fragile.” Yes, it is indeed fragile, and many people will miss it when it’s entirely gone.
Marriage counselors say that when a couple view one another with contempt, it’s a top indicator that the relationship is likely to fail. Americans, who used to know how to disagree with one another without being mutually contemptuous, seem to be forgetting this. And the news media, which promote shrieking outrage in pursuit of ratings and page views, are making the problem worse.
What would make things better? It would be nice if people felt social ties that transcend politics. Americans’ lives used to involve a lot more intermediating institutions — churches, fraternal organizations, neighborhoods — that crossed political lines. Those have shrunk and decayed, and in fact, for many people politics seems to have become a substitute for religion or fraternal organizations. If you find your identity in your politics, you’re not going to identify with people who don’t share them.
The rules of bourgeois civility also helped keep things in check, but of course those rules have been shredded for years. We may come to miss them.
America had one disastrous civil war, and those who fought it did a surprisingly good job of coming together afterward, realizing how awful it was to have a political divide that set brother against brother. Let us hope that we will not have to learn that lesson again in a similar fashion.
There was a definite horn rock theme today in 1968, as proven by number seven …
… six …
… two …
… and one on the charts:
Today in 1971, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were sentenced on drug charges. And, of course, you could replace “1971” with any year and Jagger’ and Richards’ names with practically any rock musician’s name of those days.
Or other people: Today in 2000, Eminem’s mother sued her son for defamation from the line “My mother smokes more dope than I do” from his “My Name Is.”
Birthdays start with LeRoy Anderson, whose first work was the theme music for many afternoon movies, but who is best known for his second work (with which I point out that Christmas is less than six months away):
The Supreme Court has barred public-employee contracts requiring workers to pay union dues, dealing a severe blow to perhaps the strongest remaining redoubt of the American labor movement.
The 5-4 vote, along conservative-liberal lines, on Wednesday overruled a 1977 precedent that had fueled the growth of public-sector unionization even as representation has withered in private industry. More than one-third of public employees are unionized, compared with just 6.5% of those in the private sector, according to a January report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The impact of the ruling is likely to stretch far beyond the workplace, sapping resources from unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Education Association that have provided funds, resources and activists largely in support of Democratic candidates. In the 2016 election cycle, public-sector unions spent $64.6 million on political activities, and 90% of that went to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The largest spenders were the nation’s two biggest teachers’ unions and AFSCME.
Still, total spending by all labor unions, $213.3 million in the 2016 cycle, was small relative to the $3.43 billion spent by businesses. That business spending was split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.
Justice Samuel Alito, whose opinions have shaped the court’s turn against public-sector unions, wrote for the majority.
“Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable,” even if they are part of collective bargaining that benefits that employee, affronts a “cardinal constitutional command,” he wrote. Justice Alito quoted Justice Robert Jackson’s 1943 opinion forbidding mandatory recitation of the flag salute in public school: the government may not “force citizens to confess by word or act” any opinion.
“In most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned,” Justice Alito wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Nothing about this particular context—states that had authorized public agencies to negotiate labor contracts similar to those in the private sector, and state and local bodies that approved such contracts—called for any different response, he said.
Plaintiff Mark Janus said he was “thrilled that the Supreme Court has restored not only my First Amendment rights, but the rights of millions of other government workers across the country.” Mr. Janus, a child-support specialist for the state government in Springfield, Ill., objected to a $45 monthly payroll deduction for Afscme Council 31, which negotiated the contract providing him wages and benefits.
“The right to say ‘no’ to a union is just as important as the right to say ‘yes,’” said Mr. Janus, who was recruited by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to serve as plaintiff after Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican who initiated the case, was dismissed from the suit on procedural grounds.
For the court’s liberals, the decision Wednesday—the final day of this term—capped a term replete with disappointment.
“There’s no sugarcoating today’s opinion,” Justice Elena Kagan said from the bench. The majority, acting as “black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices,” had stopped “the American people, acting through their state and local officials, from making important choices about workplace governance,” she said.
Joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Kagan accused the majority of “weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.”
Some 20 states, principally in liberal-leaning regions such as the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, permit government agencies to reach union-security agreements with labor organizations, requiring employees within a bargaining unit either to join the union or pay it a fee for core services, such as negotiating and enforcing contracts.
Unions, which call such charges “fair-share fees,” say they are necessary to prevent free riders—employees who are happy to receive the raises, benefits and job security a union contract offers but prefer to let their co-workers foot the bill.
Although the government must respect many of its employees’ constitutional rights, a line of Supreme Court precedent gives public agencies more leeway when they act as employers, reasoning that managers need discretion in how they run their shops.
The 1977 precedent that the court has now overturned, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, reasoned that a public agency might find it beneficial to accept a union-security clause for the same reasons a private company might—ensuring labor peace, avoiding strikes and the like.
Abood held that objectors cannot be charged for union activities beyond collective bargaining, such as political campaigning.
But after the court tilted further to the right in 2006, with the appointment of Justice Alito, antiunion groups developed a challenge on the premise that anything a union does in relation to a government agency, including bargaining, is inherently political, because elected officials ultimately are responsible for its decisions.
Under that theory, it would violate the First Amendment for government to condition a job on subsidizing political speech a worker may oppose—and therefore public-employment contracts including union-security clauses would be unconstitutional. The court majority has now accepted that argument.
A pair of prior Alito opinions, adopted by 5-4 votes, had signaled to conservatives that justices would be receptive to that theory, and the court appeared poised to overrule the Abood precedent after arguments in January 2016. But with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia a month later, the court deadlocked 4-4 and left the 1977 rule in place.
After President Donald Trump appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the vacancy, however, it was clear that the reckoning for public-sector unions had only temporarily been postponed. Illinois, where Republican Gov. Rauner has been locked in conflict with public-employee unions since taking office in 2015, supplied the vehicle.
The theory behind Wednesday’s decision poses no immediate threat to union-security clauses in private-sector contracts. Unlike government agencies, private businesses generally aren’t required to respect free-speech rights and can establish various conditions of employment, including requiring fair-share fees, if permitted by state law.
This all started here in Wisconsin with Act 10 and Recallarama earlier this decade. Voters in this state twice decided that government employee unions should not have more power than taxpayers.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 