Also, the rest of the November Reason is now online, which means anyone desperately interested in reading virtualized versions of my quickie squibs on libraries and the Handschu guidelines can now do so.
Keep your foot hard on the pedal, son, never mind them brakes
Let it all hang out 'cause we got a run to make
The boys are thirsty in Atlanta
And there's beer in Texarcana
And we'll bring it back no matter what it takes
East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'
We're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' Bandit run.
Ol' Smokey's got them ears on, and he's hot on your trail.
He ain't gonna rest 'til you're in jail
So you got to dodge 'im and you got to duck 'im
You got to keep that diesel truckin'
Just put that hammer down and give it hell
("East Bound and Down," traditional ballad, southern U.S., late twentieth century; popularly attributed to the Bandit's legendary accomplice, known variously as "Cledus Snow," "The Snowman," and "Jerry Reed")
MEA CULPA: A while back I speculated that the New York Press' new management would push the paper into decline. Nine months later, I have to admit I've been proven wrong. Among other highlights, the Press remains the place to go for witty assaults on the incredibly overrated Thomas Friedman, memorably lanced there a few years ago by Alexander Cockburn and attacked enjoyably this week by Matt Taibbi.
I do wish Cockburn and Christopher Caldwell and John Strausbaugh still had columns there, but I guess you can't have everything...
SELF-PROMOTION: My latest article for the Reason website is about the new Matrix movie and the decline of the Paranoid Gnostic Sci-Fi Thriller genre.
Also, my column from November's print edition of Reason is now online. It's about business improvement districts and the sometimes blurry boundary between public and private.
The first loss was Paul Darmafall, a.k.a. the Baltimore Glassman, a mad and sometimes homeless veteran who made strange, beautiful objects out of broken glass and discarded junk. The man just died of a heart attack, at age 78.
The second is the American Dime Museum. This Wunderkammern of sideshows past, co-founded by Shocked and Amazed editor James Taylor, announced earlier this week that it was closing, and Taylor has definitely withdrawn from the project. But his former partner, artist Dick Horne, now says he hopes to keep the gallery going.
I have nothing clever to say about these events -- just that the Glassman will be missed, and that I'll miss the museum too if it closes for good.
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK: Far-right fixture Jack Wheeler is circulating a screed against "the anti-American right," by which he means conservatives who oppose either the war in Iraq or the Ashcroft approach to homeland security. By Wheeler's account, Howard Phillips is now indistinguishable from Howard Dean, Grover Norquist has "long-standing connections to a network of financiers of Moslem terrorists," and Bob Barr is "a paid whore for the ACLU." Such men, he writes, are "left-wing conservatives"; they hate Bush and Ashcroft "because Bush and Ashcroft are actively protecting American national security."
I'll concede half a point to Wheeler: the many legitimate criticisms of John Ashcroft have sometimes been undermined by critiques with far fewer roots in reality. For a parallel, go back to the '90s, when those of us who were disturbed at Janet Reno's war on civil liberties had to distinguish ourselves from her more paranoid critics. More bluntly, we had to distinguish ourselves from folks like ... Jack Wheeler.
In 1995, Wheeler wrote this in the newsletter Strategic Investment:
The slaughter of dozens of women and children in Waco by government stormtroopers under the command of Field Marshall Reno may pale in comparison to what has been planned for late March: a nationwide BATF/FBI assault on private militias as the prelude to a possible declaration of martial law throughout the United States.
All leaves and vacations have been canceled for BATF/FBI personnel, and for various State Police and National Guards such as California's. The Army's infamous Joint Task Force Six (which did the training for Waco) has been training BATF jackbooters with Bradley Assault Vehicles at Ft. Bliss, Texas. Government agent provocateurs are set to plant fully automatic and heavy weapons, like rocket launchers, on the property of militia leaders. Every militia in the country -- and there are dozens, many of which are well-armed and well-lead by former or even active-duty officers -- is on a state of Red Alert. Should Reno be stupid enough to actually attack them militarily, there is going to be a lot of blood.
The establishment media is programmed to immediately thereafter thunderously bellow for nationwide gun confiscation and even martial law. The Senate Armed Forces Committee has been alerted and is questioning key Defense and Justice people behind closed doors. Hopefully, Reno's Waco 2 can be stopped in time.
When the appointed date came and went with no "Waco 2," Wheeler was unapologetic. I do not remember whether it was him or one of his defenders who declared that the assault never took place merely because Wheeler had bravely exposed it. The following month brought the Oklahoma City bombing, and some conspiracy theorists tried to link it to the crackdown that never was, but that's a pretty hard case to make.
I don't fault Wheeler for blasting Reno -- Reno deserved criticism, and it sure beat his other infamous '90s crusade. (Wheeler was obsessed with the notion that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian.) But it shows a lot of chutzpah for a man who credulously spouted some of the weirdest tales about the last attorney general to turn around and denounce even the most moderate conservative critics of John Ashcroft.
Especially when so many of the laws that Ashcroft's pushing are just warmed over proposals from the Reno era.
(Side note: Back in the '80s, Wheeler was a big booster for the Afghan mujahedin. He might want to tread carefully when attacking Norquist for his alleged ties to Islamic terrorists.)
Meanwhile, the December issue of Reason has just been released. I have three articles in it: a profile of Robert Anton Wilson, an interview with Bob Barr, and a brief bit about how some Ukrainian con artists bilked a bunch of Leninist sects.
He has this bitter look on his face, this very special bitter look that says I know....He looks with this kind of casual look, as though it's building up, this anger. And then finally it comes out, and he says:
"Governor Faubus."
(canned laughter)
The word is beginning to come. You can feel it!
"Ad-lai Stevenson."
(canned laughter)
Now he's beginning to really swing. He's really giving us the truth! He waves his hand for silence. His face has assumed the bitter look of the tea that General Yen long ago himself drank deeply to the dregs. Disgust is evidenced for the entire world -- all of the things, everything he sees!
"Ike."
(canned laughter)
Cartoonist Aaron McGruder's niche lies in applying this brand of comedy to black pop culture. Where Shepherd's prototype says "Ike," McGruder says "Sisqo"; where the prototype says "Adlai Stevenson," McGruder says "Juwanna Mann." There's rarely an effort to say something clever about the targets. It's easier just to pronounce their names with a sneer.
For all that, Boondocks is actually one of the less objectionable strips out there: It has one genuinely funny character (Huey's grandfather), the Sunday art looks great, and occasionally it pisses off the right people. It's come under severe criticism recently for mocking Condoleeza Rice -- the gag behind a dozen or so recent strips is that the woman just needs a good man to warm her heart, and while that isn't especially funny, it's entertaining to watch the political class get discombobulated over it.
It also shows how slow the pundits can be to catch onto these things. This is hardly the strip's low point, but it's still unleashed rants like this one from National Review's John Derbyshire:
Never mind Doonesbury. For a REALLY offensive comic strip, check out "Boondocks." The basic premises here are:
----White people are scum.
----Black people are wise and good, except that...
----Any black person not an anti-war white-hating socialist is a self-loathing moral criminal with a tortured soul.
----Capitalism is evil.
----Black and non-black Americans are engaged in a zero-sum game.
----Blacks are losing that game because they don't hate whites enough.
----Blacks who collaborate with The Man in any way are either evil or mentally ill, or both.
Which is just strange. Administration officials aside, white people are not the target of Boondocks. Black people are. They are mocked not for failing to be "anti-war white-hating socialists" but for being "embarrassing," a trait which sometimes consists of espousing the very ideas that Derbyshire is attributing to the strip. McGruder's politics are on the left side of liberal, but when his protagonist, the boy radical Huey, goes off on a real tear, chances are it's Huey and not his hate object that's being satirized.
But the biggest problem with Derbyshire's critique is that it's looking in the wrong direction. Boondocks is not mediocre because of its "premises." It's mediocre because its creator seems to think his job stops once his premise has been stated.