5/27/09

Sotomayor's "Racism"


Matthew Yglesias nails the problem the GOP and the Right has with its misguided proclamations of "reverse racism":
You never hear Rush Limbaugh decrying everyday racism against non-whites in the United States. You never hear him recounting an anecdote about an African-American man having trouble hailing a cab or being followed by a shopkeeper. He doesn’t do stories about how people with stereotypically “black” names suffer job discrimination. He doesn’t bemoan the fact that the United States has an aircraft carrier named after a fanatical segregationist. Which is fine. Everyone’s interested in some things and not in others. Rush isn’t interested in racism. Except that like most conservatives, he’s actually very interested in allegations of racial discrimination against white people. He sees the defense of white interests as integral to his political mission. And he hates identity politics.

Indeed, it'd be highly beneficial to the Right if there was any consistency in their racism claims, but I'm hard pressed to find a recent or even moderately dated example of them jumping to the aid of non-white claims of racism. Incredibly telling and unfortunate.

5/12/09

Bigger Than Life


For some strange, beautiful reason, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life, his Eisenhower-era masterpiece of domestic life turned inside-out by an overworked, medicated determinism, is available from Hulu, free of charge.

5/11/09

Chuck Berry

5/7/09

What City Shall We Build?

A very interesting post by Rob Holmes of Mammoth about the proper place of urbanism:
The master planner — whether a new urbanist, a landscape urbanist, or modernist — refuses to confront the exigencies of the city, both good and bad, preferring to imagine an idealized condition (which, when constructed, is much more likely to trend towards dystopia than utopia).
Although he doesn't use the words exactly, Holmes is calling for a kind of humility in urban planning that is as yet lacking, even (or especially) in the utopian aspirations of our new urbanist saviors.

Take, for example, the glut of mixed retail/residential complexes just west of downtown Los Angeles. The idea is noble but most of the buildings are far from inspired. And 1100 Wilshire, perhaps the most interesting looking of all the new construction in that area, is the least urbanist--the building literally sits upon a pedastal (the parking garage) surveying the city, at once a sculpture and an observation tower. The tag line for their new-age-easy-listening-electronica-soaked website is "Live Above LA."

It's true that we need to rethink the city--a Los Angeles full of 1100 Wilshires divorced from the world but dependent upon its resources is not a pretty vision of the future--but this does not mean that in order to save Los Angeles we must destroy it. Too often, what is considered to be "wrong" with Los Angeles is also what is wonderful about it. For instance, low density creates pockets of affordability unthinkable in Amsterdam or Manhattan. This affordability, in turn, creates the cheap rents, large spaces and large amounts of free time that lets artists take risks. At the same time, if the megalopolis continues to widen its gyre at this rate, the center cannot hold.

Again I am reminded of MOS' plans for turning strip malls into renewable energy cells. Likewise, Holmes' entreaty to use "tactical insertions aimed at altering the city through the modification of flows of capital, people, goods, services, water, etc." seems like an inspired idea. For in the end, cities are invited, not invented.

5/6/09

Bo Diddley

1955:

5/5/09

John Ford Matters (Apparently)


In his New York Times Op-Ed piece today, David Brooks chides the Republican Party for not seeing the forest for the trees when it comes to their cinematic influences:
Republicans generally like Westerns. They generally admire John Wayne-style heroes who are rugged, individualistic and brave. They like leaders — from Goldwater to Reagan to Bush to Palin — who play up their Western heritage. Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity.

But the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different story. Ford’s movies didn’t really celebrate the rugged individual. They celebrated civic order.
...

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.

While Brooks is correct in his assessment of the misreading of Ford (and Hawks, Boetticher, and Mann), the ideas of community are welcome ones. Politically Ford was more or less a moderate Republican who suggested, through his best work, the need for compassion and dignity in his frontiersman voice. One wonders if the politicization of Ford, long deceased but whose work is among the greatest any American artist ever created, is an apt metaphor for a political party that is timid on torture and socially conservative. An interesting read, nonetheless.