Eisenhower: The White House Years (2011) by Jim Newton

Dwight Eisenhower president during the most nostalgically beloved decade has found his own affectionate place among those who dream of a time where moderates worked together while leaving those awkward extremists off their social calendars. Just look at the list of people Jim Newton got to blurb his new biography of Ike’s White House Years: John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Dianne Feinstein, and Norman Lear. The sort of folks who dreamed about two parties who GOVERNED not grandstand that worried about policy, not political affiliation. Of course such a time never existed but when you have to watch Republicans take (and following!) pledges never to raise taxes again, Senators understandably fall into a little daydreaming. What is not as forgivable is when a journalist and nominal historian does the same. Newton at the end of the book uses Eisenhower’s shockingly persistent warning of the military-industrial complex to take a couple swipes at George W. Bush and Obama and governmental regulatory policy. He’s stuck as Hagel thinking government could work or at least should as it did under Eisenhower

Anyone who would be subjected to such hagiographic biography is probably pretty awful.  Theoretically a good president made difficult, controversial decisions that would lead historians to make complex judgment of their accomplishments and failures. Not so for Jim Newton, who can barely sop to the idea that the general may have made a wrong decision. The White House Years is a chronological view of the day-to-day life (“struggles” would be a far too dramatic word to describe the book) of President Eisenhower where you get barely idea of the period or the man. Like most books of this ilk, crises are the focus instead of any philosophical underpinnings for policy. It doesn’t help that there is very little idea of domestic policy outside of Eisenhower slow (Newton describes it as a moderate) approach to McCarthyism focusing more on politics and foreign policy. In this field Eisenhower help overthrow the freely elected leaders of Iran and Guatemala. A course of action Newton only finds the courage to criticize near the end of the book.

Personality-wise, while Eisenhower has the reputation to be bland as oatmeal, he was still a man who led a multinational force against Nazi Germany and President of United States who navigated the waters during the early Cold War. He obviously had some ideas on America and its place in the world. But Newton can barely get past cliché pleasantries of Eisenhower’s upbringing in Kansas as though he personified the virtues of a state. When you are unwilling to talk about vices there are very little to say about a person. It takes away the sharpness of a human being when you will not question their motives. Also it makes any critics look like the Romans crucifying Jesus. Adlai Stevenson did not shame himself in 1956 when he questioned a man who suffered a massive heart attack and health problems could handle the difficulties of office for another 4 years but Newton can only wonder who would dare speak ill of Dwight. Yet there are serious criticisms of Eisenhower, he should have moved faster on Civil Rights and against McCarthyism. He shouldn’t have put so much trust in the CIA. The people he surrounded himself were not topnotch and would bring around governmental difficulties.

To quickly speak about the scholarship, Newton obviously read many book on Eisenhower and some primary sources about his White House years. He got to interview John Eisenhower (which leads to him being over-represented in the book) but otherwise keeps to the records. There won’t be any new arguments found for those with a decent background in the 1950s as Newton keeps us on the tourist campgrounds far away from any grizzly bears or anything interesting.

But I’m not one to ignore fascinating tidbits just because I hate the book and there are nice pieces of information throughout the work. Consider this speech given by Eisenhower to the American Society of Newspapers:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Even I, if only for a moment, dream of a time where keeping defensive spending down was a Republican goal and not some sort of crypto-form of treason which for them to yell about. Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich would watch Social Security burn before taking a nickel from the Coast Guard and it’s hard to see Ron Paul as an heir of Eisenhower. And thus a little nostalgia for moderate Republicans before they all went to the great golf course in the sky might be entitled. Let’s just not pretend it serves justice to them.

Can Santorum afford to lose Michigan?

Mitt Romney has returned to his state of birth to find that 40 years tend to change a place. The trees are more even, the cars are coming off the assembly line again, and George Romney is a distant memory. For all the doom and gloom the media is giving about Romney being unable to win the state his father was once governor, there’s no particular reason to think Romney should play in Michigan. Michiganers have their own problems to worry about and have little time to plan a coming home party for a former governor’s son.

What’s far more primary ending is if Santorum lost the state. Michigan is a rust belt state with GOP blue-collar workers. This is suppose to be Santorum’s sweet spot. He’s one of them, grandson of a coal miner; Pennsylvania politics is as pure as coal dust and a proper training ground for winning the hearts and minds of a Michigan voter especially when Romney’s most recent interaction with the auto industry involved him telling them to drop dead. Rick Santorum should have the primary wrap up.

And while Nate Silver has given Santorum a 72% chance of winning the state, his lead has dropped like a stone. From being up by 15%, Santorum is now leading only by 4. What happened? Besides Romney burying him in PAC money, Santorum is an unlikeable hyper-social conservative. Instead of making this race about Romney’s car flub or how Santorum can solve Michigan’s economic woes, Santorum has made the race about Obama’s contraception deal. The result? Santorum is losing Catholics to Romney.

In essence, this is why Santorum is bound to lose the race. It’s not only about Romney’s powerful entrenched stance with money and GOP VIPs (though that might have been enough), it’s Santorum is bad on the issues, bad on campaigning, and bad on organization. The last social conservative candidate is finding out you can’t fight basic political physics when you don’t understand the subject.

HA! The School Color is Brown!

Accepted (2006) appeared on Comedy Central this morning. I’m sure that means nothing to you but really it’s completed a journey that deserves to be noticed. The movie is so lazy that how it found the energy to get off the couch into a movie theater and now onto  television can only be counted a miracle, powered by some awesome drug or maybe twinkies. Accepted is the last comedy movie script to escape the 1980s alive and it took a lot of damage on the flight out. The plot alone meant this movie had to be written or at least dreamed up in Reagan’s America. Having a black guy make African fertility god statue is now considered sorta iffy but would have been nice company in any Animal House ripoff. When the 80s script stepped out in the year of 2006 out of a fiery blaze, it unsurprisingly lost most of the vulgarity and the very little sense of complexity those films contain.

The plot or at least the plot that survived the crash is such: Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) because Melville references are great with the kids (What pretentions this did movie have? What heights did it expect to climb, what empires to conquer that it name its protagonist Bartleby?) is a high school conman who just learned he’s been rejected from all the schools applied to has his nerd straight arrow friend Sherman (Jonah Hill)  make a website for a fake school called South Harmon Institute of Technology before you know it, Bartleby has found a building for his fake college gotten Sherman’s crazy uncle and ex-academic Ben Lewis (Lewis Black) to pretend to be the dean, and has a place for his friends in the same predicament to hide for four years. But it turns out anyone who press applied on the website got in so there’s now 300 kids who think they’re going to college at South Harmon! What follows is unwacky hijinks as Bartleby must deal with running a school while running circles around his parents, the Harmon dean who wants to put him out of business, the dude dating the chick Bartleby has his heart set on, and the accreditation board. And boy does it not deliver on the small promise of drama given from this plot outline. It’s the longest episode of “Saved by the Bell” but without the pizzazz.

The movie hits its lazy stride in the very first scene where Bartleby and his jock friend are taking pictures for fake IDs when their nerd straight arrow friend Jonah Hill arrives to tell them that GASP the assistant principal is coming right at that moment! How will they justify the people, the camera equipment, and photo background? Any high school huckster this side of Ferris Bueller should have a zany plan to put into action and Long delivers by… having the group sing off-key and claiming it’s a glee club. Why not a photography club or something that involves the other props in a satisfactory way instead of a reference to the Music Man? It’s like they mixed pages of the rough draft into the regular movie without anyone caring enough to notice.

So little thought went into the script that to hit regular beats of “80s raunchy comedy” that it needs the audience to fill in the missing plot points by osmosis. Knowing we’re suppose to hate the rich frat dude, the movie forgets to set him up as being evil. Long is just mercilessly mocking this guy for apparently being luckier than him with the ladies. Somehow the bully is already chairman of a student committee, a well-established frat member, and dreaming of law school even though he’s a freshman in school for probably a few weeks. He should be president of Ohio by Junior year, before coming Emperor of the Rust Belt by graduation. When Lewis Black appears as the cynical intellectual with some radical ideas that got him thrown out it’s not surprising to find out he is neither an intellectual nor radical. Whose complaints range from “business is corrupt” all the way to “government is corrupt.” He’s the Lenny Bruce of the Ivy League! Such banality wouldn’t play in Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School and even if it did, at least we would have gotten a Dangerfield one-liner.

All of this laziness could be ignored for Hollywood drivel if it wasn’t for the fact that the movie obviously thinks it’s delivering a message from the creative muse to all those special snowflakes out there that educational institutions have been ignoring for being stupid.  At the end of the film, the Ohio accreditation board recognizes SHIT as an institution of higher learning after Bartleby delivers a speech about the creative process. They conveniently forget South Harmon has been a fraud up to that moment. At least in Animal House, we knew the guys were just as full of shit as the establishment. They were fighting on equal absurd terms. When Justin Long gives a sermon about the value of the arts and criticizing higher education, the movie has set-up a straw world where he happens to be right. Somehow every misfit at South Harmon is actually an artistic outsider who just needed to construct their own program to succeed. If this movie is the result of such a program, we could at least take the satisfaction that these kids would have better chance of employment graduating from the University of Phoenix.

To end, unlike this self-satisfy ode to odes to college, on a high note: Jonah Hill shows the talent that took him to better things. Considering half his dialogue is a repeating of “guys, you’re gonna get us into trouble” like a grown up version of Chucky from the Rugrats, the fact the other half he delivers some funny lines and a certain amount of affection to a bunch of friends who spend their time driving him out of his comfort zone is a marvel. Almost enough to carry a episode “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.”

Super- The Best Defense for Organized Religion Ever

SPOILERS and such. PLEASE watch the film before reading this.

What if some guy dressed up a super hero and tried to fight crime in the real world? If you ask Matthew Vaughn, you get weird pedophilia subtext. However James Gunn delivers in Super (2010) an answer that’s actually related to the question and a complex and even-handed view of religion.

There’s a lot of obvious comments on religion throughout the film. Like the Blues Brothers, Frank is put on a mission from God (Rainn Wilson) after his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) relapses into drug abuse and starts living with her dealer ( the mission is given to him by God who touches his brain after tentacles molested him). Frank’s personal hero is a Bibleman-ripoff played by nerd favorite Nathan Fillion whose messages Frank receives as the word of divine. Yet there’s more going on than the obvious. Frank plays the role of religion in society, the only competent agent keeping people in line by violently beating those who violate the social code.

As a character, Frank is rather simple. He’s honest, direct, quiet and incredibly unhappy to the point he questions the purpose of happiness. Frank’s virtue seems impeccable. For example, when he tries to lie, the listener quickly sees through his subterfuge. Frank simply lacks the ability to be manipulative. The rage, however, hidden behind his exterior leads to roaring rampage of revenge that reestablishes a sense of morality in a community.

Frank’s unremitting morality causes him to go after anyone who doesn’t show decency to his fellow man. Even butting in line deserves a beating. Oddly, this wins the support even by those who suffered collateral damage like the woman in the wheelchair and the underage male prostitute that Franks saves from a john.  Taking action is highly popular since people are sick of those who create hostility in the community. Frank could keep the upper-moral hand if it wasn’t for his self-selected confidant and sidekick, Bolty (Ellen Paige).

Bolty’s relationship with Frank is the same as the one between zealots and religion. She gives Frank’s morality shape and energy. He comes to her to learn about how to be a super-hero and she later saves his life from a couple of goons. However she also uses Franks for her highly immoral purposes. Her drives are violent and nasty, vigilantism is being able to hurt someone without consequences. She targets Frank’s wrath against a dude who might be innocent and then has to be stopped by Frank before she bashes his brains in. When Bolty literally rapes Franks, it underlines what she had done to Frank figuratively up to that point.  It’s amazing there could be a more evil figure in the film, but the person who holds Frank’s wife is the nastiest piece of work.

Jacques (Kevin Bacon) is a modern secular voice. He’s willing to patronize Frank and his old ways when it comes to cooking eggs. But doesn’t think twice when taking his wife. Frank’s earnestness is just a form of naivety. At the end of the film when Jacques tries to show Frank has no way of knowing he’s right, that the universe isn’t as simple as it is in Frank’s philosophy. Frank mercilessly stabs Jacques for his moral relativity, a great way to end disagreement though rather egregious- you wouldn’t do it to a friend or at least I hope you don’t.

Religion, Marx’s opiate of the masses, is not wrong in principle of wanting a moral society. People simply do not like thieves, cheats, and murderers. Yet in practice what is gained a power that could be used for good or evil. Frank’s instincts for what’s right can be muddled in the heat of the moment or when directed by someone he trusts. Super contains both a simple tale of an alienated man who breaks after losing his wife and a multilevel look at what religion does and does not to. Also it’s funny. Probably should have mentioned that one earlier but whatever. Sometimes you just gotta read between the lines.

A Field Guide to Problem Solvers on the Internet

So you have a problem! Don’t worry though, since the invention of the internet there’s millions of people waiting to say homophobic, illogical, and vaguely anti-Semitic things on your favorite bicycle message board while asking to see pictures of naked women when you seek their solace. This guide will give help you classify each type of adviser you shall find and should be as helpful as the people it mocks.

An hypothetical problem:

“My girlfriend was hit by a car last week and she’s in the hospital. I’m not sure what I should be doing for her. She’s talking and everything but her parents are really worried and won’t tell me what’s wrong. Should I talk to her? What should I do?”

The Pity-Party- “I’m SOOOOO sorry! Have you try drinking tea?” The Pity-Party excretes empathy at twice the lethal dosage and wants to know how bad they feel about it. They know how lonely a person looking for advice on the world wide web can be and want you to know they’re looking out for you even if it’s not in any tangible or helpful way. They’ve tried to cure feline leukemia with hugs and when that failed bought 20 more cats just to try it again. They hope some of their human warmth will help lighten your load but this being the Internet, you probably have three other windows open where middle-schoolers are calling you gay for being bad at video games or for talking to women. Having a complete stranger pretend to be your friend for 45 seconds isn’t probably going to be much comfort.

The Magician- “Invent a time machine. Stop the car from hitting your girlfriend. Problem solved.” The reverse of the Pity-Party is someone who is dead certain there’s ALWAYS a solution to your problem. They’ve seen enough episodes of MacGyver to know an assortment of household appliances can fix even the most intricate problems from relationship woes to the deficit. When presented with a non-technical with no owner manual to fall back on, they’ll start coming up with innovative solutions which show that not only have they never been able to hold a conversation with a waitress, they’ve also learned physics from Harry Potter. They’re so over the edge that their only question when you invite them to a funeral is if you prefer a Christian or Zombie resurrection. How they’ve survived long enough to type these things on to a computer shows they’re not even crazy enough to follow their advice which should be enough of a reason not to follow it.

The Columbo- “I’ve never had a problem with my girlfriend… are you sure she’s at the hospital?” Whenever you ask for anonymous help there’s always one guy who thinks it’s step one in an elaborate plan to steal the crown jewels. They take one look at the situation, quickly assess it to be untrue, and start asking questions assuming they’ll be able to pull the thread from your web of lies to show the world you made up something on the internet. Why they’re certain you’re a liar whose problems with your coffeemaker is actually part of a plot for world domination is never clear. I’ve been accused of lying about how many bookstores were in the town I was living. How I would profit from such a lie, even in an Internet argument where cheap pride is almost always the goal, has never been clear to me. Hopefully it involved air ships. Speaking of which…

The 1-uper- “My girlfriend was killed when she was hit by an airship.” On the internet, there’s always someone who has gone through the exact same circumstances as you who would be glad to tell you how much worse their situation was. No matter how specific your problem of getting your face covered in honey at the Church ice cream social and than stung by bees while making eye contact with your crush whose laughing at your predicament, there’s always someone who had that happen with wasps. Even though 1-upers have existed since the time that there were two cavemen comparing how many sides their wheels had there’s still no proper defensive technique to handle the situation. Or at least no adequate solution since dueling has fallen out of favor.

The Savior- “ YES! Talk to her!” The Savior is the one brave soul willing to tell you to do the hard thing you already knew you’re suppose to do. In an ocean of madness, you can count on a solitary voice to point out the painfully obvious. Your problem is probably harder to solve in execution of the solution than in actually finding the solution. Unfortunately their precise logic, expertise in the field, and plentiful evidence for the correct solution still means you’ll actually have to do something. Maybe you’re just better off talking to the Pity-Party again.

Why for One Brief Shining Moment, Superman Returns was Worth Watching

For reasons too stupid to go into detail, I have rewatched Superman Returns (2006). I will give this to Superman Returns- usually a movie like this is too bland to even remember. For example, all I can say about 10000 BC is that I’m pretty sure I saw it and there were wooly mammoths running around but I can’t be certain. Maybe I just assumed there were wooly mammoths because what else would a caveman movie be about? Maybe there’s only sabertooth tigers and they didn’t have enough CGI leftover to make mammoths which would be a shame but what does it matter no one was going to remember 10000 BC. Anyways, Superman Returns contain a scene I’ll probably take to the grave which is sad in its own way but I don’t care. What happens is a collision of unneeded crazy and film technique that pushes the boundaries of how much camp is acceptable in drab little comic book movies.

To set the scene, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is snooping around on Lex Luthor’s (Kevin Spacey) yacht, I think in-universe Lois Lane has won the Pulitzer five times merely for snooping around the correct Luthor vehicle, and stumbles upon Luthor’s secret wig room (This is why Lex Luthor is actually the greatest comic book villain of all time not that anyone has developed Luthor’s baldness into a fullblown pathos before this moment. Think how emotional a scene of Lex crying while trying to comb his bald head, continuing even after he started beeding. That’s a scene that wins you an Oscar or the comic book version of Oscars) And it’s shot, edited, and acted the same way you would if Lois Lane stumbled upon Lex Luthor’s secret murder room where instead of toupees, there are different mutilated corpses. In the most imaginative use of the camera in the whole film (thanks Bryan Singer), we get scare cuts to each wig at odd angles intercut with images Katie Holmes terrified face. They’re WIGS lady! You’ve seen one everyday on the who-is-he-trying-to-fool head of Perry White. To completely underline how insane this scene is what happens directly after. Lane is trying to escape the yacht before… the wigs eat her I guess and runs into Lex in a bathrobe brushing his teeth. Nothing could better state how stupid Lane’s near existential dread of wigs can be than how harmless their owner is, it could only have been better if Lex called the police (Lane is trespassing on his property). But instead he kidnaps her because that’s just what he does and we enter the bland third act. A brief shining moment though, just a twinkle in Kevin Spacey’s eye, it looked like the movie was going to make the most stirring statement against toupees ever put on film. And I’ll always regret what could have been and celebrate what we got.

Why Google’s (unofficial) motto of “don’t be evil” ensured they would go evil

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos. – Walter Sobchak The Big Lebowski

So Google’s slow fall into the moral abyss is once again prodded and measured by the media it’s nice to look back to where they went wrong. Well, besides becoming a corporation in the first place the quickest route to pure evil. If you are really want principled, ethical decisions, the most useful thing is to design a system that can make ethical decisions or if you rather focus on the word “principled,” you list out your principles. “Don’t be evil” says a lot about the corporate culture of Google and not really anything good. Oh sure, they’re footloose and fancy-free, casual clothes and a nice cafeteria but they’re really not sure to do with their responsibility as the most important website on Earth. Google could be good, hell they can still be good. They should list their ethics, their principles on what they think about privacy, freedom of information, the internet, etc. But that was never the game. Google needs the efforts and talents of a work force who would be uncomfortable with a regular company so Google claims to be the irregular company. In practice, Google isn’t any different from any giant corporate concern when it comes to ethics- get around anything that will mess with the bottom line. There is no reason for it to fool anyone as long as you focus on their movements, not their sandals.