Image

Joe Doakes, formerlly of Como Park, emails:

Republicans need better advertising to win this Fall.  They need a cartoonist. 

Panel one:  Biden saying “We must make gas more expensive so people use less, to save the planet for our children.” 

Panel two: farmer telling trucker: “The price of fuel went up.  I can’t afford to eat the cost, I’m passing it along to you.”

Panel three: trucker telling grocer: “His cost went up and so did mine.  I can’t afford to eat the costs, I’m passing them along to you.”

Panel four: grocer telling Black woman carrying baby: “Their costs went up.  I can’t afford to eat the costs, I’m passing them along to you.”

Panel five: Black woman holding baby, both looking out of the panel at reader: “We can’t afford to eat.”

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

Conservative cartoonists have a half-life of about one year.

But hope springs eternal.

Pretty Vacant

Remember this episode – one of the events boosters of Downtown Minneapolis have hung their hat on as a symbol of their commitment and capability?

It’s the 1999 move of the historic Schubert Theater [1] – a $14 million move that was part of a $42 million (in 1999 dollars – call it about $73 million today – as part of one of the various downtown revitalization efforts that happened before downtown got devitalized. The Cowles family pumped a pile of money into turning it into a community art space – home to a dance theater and other arts companies.

Well, Downtown Minneapolis is gonna downtownminneapolis:

The Cowles Center for Dance and Performing Arts announced Wednesday that it would end its dance programming at the Goodale Theater as of March 31. The downtown Minneapolis center’s educational and community programs will, however, continue through the end of the 2023-24 school year in May.

“It became clear, probably several months ago, that Artspace, our largest donor and administrative partner, was having their own financial troubles, which wouldn’t allow them to sustain their level of giving to the Cowles,” said Joseph Bingham, co-director of the Cowles Center. “We’ve been working in the background to kind of figure out what that meant financially and figure out either a Plan B or whether that meant potential fundraising or another partner in the picture.”

According to Bingham, two weeks ago, Cowles staff found that Artspace’s financial picture couldn’t sustain the performing arts center.

It’s unlikely that financial disarray in an arts organization is directly connected to the crime and economic malaise that’s been Downtown’s dominant feature this past four years.

But for at least some people – in this case, Libertarian Burnsville City Councilwoman Cara Schulz – one other social and literal contagion had something to do with it:

I wrote Cara to clarify. There was literally an email saying “good riddance and a pox on your house, as it were”, or words to that effect.

But yet another unused building certainly isn’t going to help things.

So – here’s the current plan:

  • Some major network picks up my show. Maybe weekday afternoons.
  • I turn the building into a broadcast studio (a la Keillor at the Fitzgerald) and conservative event center.

[1] Ho Lee Crap. 25 years?

Urban Progressive Privilege: Clouds Of Smug Descend

“Art” as humanity used to know it is pretty much dead, at least in any community of people who call themselves “artists” anymore.

This was from a, for lack of a better term, “art event” in Powderhorn Park over the weekend:

Ignore the stupid sled.

Look, rather, at the audience. What do you see?

Inevitably, they are smug, corn-fed, entitled, white progressive members of the laptop class and the non-profit/industrial complex – no doubt from “Urban Life” theme parks like Marcy Holmes or Merriam Park, larping it up as “art fans” in Powderhorn, the part of Minneapolis that smug progressives go to when they want to be “down with the neighborhood” (before they scamper back home to where all the barristas and short order brunch technicians have to commute to from Fridley and Brooklyn Center).

The MPD has condemned the display – which, I’m sure, is causing all sorts of nasal snorking over lattes this morning.

And why not? It’s not their stores being cleaned out (none of them as any concept of the free market more involved than a coffee shop), not their cars being jacked (does anyone actually steal electric cars?), not them waking up to bullet holes in their siding.

Here’s hoping every last one of these cretins needs a cop sometime soon.

Who knows? Sometimes even Progressives can learn something.

Taking Out The Improvements

My college theatre professor, Pat Lavin, used to talk about one of her jobs when she was an LA theatrical producer and director – which was going in to have a series of rehearsals with long-running shows to “take out the ‘improvements'” that’d crept into the show over months or years of live performances.

Sounds like writers need to come back from the grave and do the same thing.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The Guthrie Theatre keeps sending me begging letters.  Please, please come see a show to support us.   We need the money.

Well, okay, what are you showing?  “Dial M for Murder,” hey, I know that one, it’s a classic.  Wait, what’s this in the description?

“While in London promoting her new murder mystery, Maxine drops in on her former lover Margot who shares some distressing news: She’s being blackmailed for a love letter from Maxine that went missing after their affair ended . . . This clever, fast-paced adaptation adds extra layers to the iconic tale, making the “Will he get away with it?” question even more thrilling.”

I remember “Dial M for Murder.”  There were no lesbians.  I can’t see that this “clever, fast-paced adaption” adds anything worthwhile to the story.  It looks to me like base pandering.  That’s why the Guthrie needs money, because they’re so busy signaling their virtue that nobody wants to see their shows.  They can’t just tell a good story, they must “improve” it by making it a morality tale, by beating their audience over the head with how hip and woke and sensitive they are.  They must bastardize every classic into boring message fiction, even though “boring message fiction is the leading cause of puppy-related sadness” and people really shouldn’t make puppies sad.

Nope, not going.  Which saves me a c-note or more, with dinner and parking, so silver lining.

Joe Doakes, staying home but not in Como Park

I’m all for updated retellings of classics. For example, “Richard III” set in the 1930s was brilliant, because it showed the eternal truths of the original play in a setting – interwar Europe – where those truth were acting in real time within living memory. (Perhaps a version set in the 2020 election would be in order).

So – how is Dial M improved with an extraneous lesbian sub-plot?

I’m open to suggestions.

Unearthed

I saw Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” two years ago.

“Whaaaaat? You never saw…”

That’s what I freaking said. I somehow managed not to see the movie until Christmas-time, 2021.

I probably watched it 4-5 times that season, and a couple more last year and this.

But I wasn’t aware that there was another ending…:

Speaking of movies – it’s become clear in recent years that the only thing needed to call a film a “Chrismas Movie” is any intersection with Christmas of any kind, no matter how tangential.

So with that in mind, here is the list of the top 12 “Chrfistmas Movies”:

  1. Die Hard
  2. Alexander Nevsky
  3. Lethal Weapon 1
  4. Patton
  5. Goodfellas
  6. Full Metal Jacket
  7. Carrie
  8. Better Off Dead
  9. Stalag 17
  10. Rocky IV
  11. The Rev
  12. Trading Places.

But whatever you think is really a Christmas movie, I wish you and yours a happy one.

It Was 81 Years Ago Sunday…

…that the best movie of all time (for my money) debuted:

Casablanca ends begins year 82.

I can’t post the whole movie – stupid copyrights – but I’ll throw this out there in the unlikely event some of you haven’t seen it.

Me? By my rough count, I’ve seen it something like 86 times in the past forty years.

Appetizer? One of the most gloriously emotionally manipulative scenes in the history of movies:

I’m also reminded that the first time I saw the movie is now closer to the debut than the present day. I don’t want to talk about it.

Public Is To Art As It Is To Restrooms

I’m informed that the National Museum of Women in the Arts has re-opened after $70,000,000 in renovations.

I think I missed the NMOWITA in my various sprints through the DC museum scene, but by all accounts it’s dedicated to art either created by, or created by intersectional classes favored by, entitled upper middle class white academic progressives…

who are nevertheless “victims”:

“While the discourse has progressed since the museum was founded, gender and intersectional racial inequality remain pervasive in the art world,” the museum’s director, Susan Fisher Sterling, said during the preview Tuesday. According to a 2022 report, female-identifying artists made up only 11 percent of acquisitions at US museums between 2008 and 2020 (with Black female artists representing just .5 percent).

I’d like to ask Ms. Fisher Sterling to show her work – a walk through the Art Crawl and the Fringe Festival might make you think a supermajority of “artists” are women in some currenty-fashionable sense of the term.

And if the National Endowmen of the Arts is spending $70,000,000 to remodel a museum based on your “art”, you’re not oppressed.

Although…

…perhaps the critics could “oppress” you with an honest review.

It seems appropriate.

Government subsidy is the death of art.

Let Them Eat Paint

Overdoses.

Public solicitation and delivery of prostitution.

Open drug dealing.

Gang activity. Robberies. Muggings. Assaults

No, I’m not talking about the House DFL Caucus offices. I’m talking about the big Metro Transit stations in Minneapolis.

And what’s the remedy?

According to Metro Transit and its big government stakeholders: murals.

Metro Transit is turning to murals in an effort to make its bus and light-rail stations more welcoming.

The latest installation is at the I-35W and Lake Street Transit Station in south Minneapolis, a busy hub that’s been plagued by graffiti and where two people were wounded in a shooting this spring. Police data also show there have been two robberies near the station this year.

Local artist Kada Goalen spent six weeks and 90 gallons of paint transforming gray and beige concrete walls and pillars into a vibrant spectacle featuring giant songbirds against a backdrop of color.

Let’s cut to the chase: what this is is not a serious attempt to make Transit less onerous at best, dangerous at worst.

It’s yet another transfer of money from taxpayers to the favored clients of the political class.

Thick Skin

Also true for movies, literature, art, theater, even standup comedy:

I’m not inclined to care much about whether someone who produces something I want, need or enjoy “hates” me – least of all with anything remotely artistic. Especially with music – consuming which gives the artist almost no money unless you buy merchandise or go to a concert.

You produce some piece of music I love, but you hate me? Laugh’s on you.

But the cartoon is correct in that the left has grown as entitled about art as they have about, say, minority, female and gay voters.

Plastic, And Fantastic

If you havne’t seen the Barbie movie? The following review is submitted for your consideration. .

If you’re going to say “I have no intention of ever going to that movie, because it’s woke crap and I don’t care what you say”, that’s also fine. . If you want to leave a comment to that effect, I respectfully ask you to take it to, say, Fraters Libertas or Anti-Strib.

If you want to tell me I’m wrong about something to do with the movie, by all means, welcome.


Counterintuitive

I was probably inclined to dislike it, initially. Not because of any of its merits (Margot Robbie can do almost no wrong), or even any of what one might reasonably predict it’s flaws might be.

But do you want to know a little secret? I’m tired of popular culture bashing men. 

And no, it’s not just a parochial, knee-jerk, gender, politics response; I hate laziness and clichés, whether Amos and Andy, or speedy Gonzalez, or every villain on “Law and Order: SVU“ (hint: it’s always the Christian conservative.)

It’s become a cliché of modern screen writing and advertising; men in popular entertainment are pretty much, either:

  • – Neutered halfwits
  • – Safe Buffoons (think Fred Flintstone) 
  • – BroDudes, with undercurrents of stupidity, malevolence, or both.
  • – villains with no more subtlety than a cad in a melodrama, tying the heroine to the railroad tracks
  • – Actors with enough star power (Matt Damon, George Clooney, Harrison Ford) to avoid the clichés.

One typical example: from two years ago, a dramedy, called “Single Drunk Female“, a fairly promising concept  about a 20 something advertising exec who drinks herself out of a career and into supervised probation.  A fascinating premise.…

… that apparently couldn’t survive without turning every male in the cast into an impotent, helpless, hopeless buffoon, a one dimensional droog, a villain, or in the case of one and only one characterl, a supernaturally wise voice of reason.

Oops – I just checked my notes, and it turns out that that character, the closest thing to a three dimensional male character, was  actually a transgender woman.

I’d rhetorically ask “imagine what a steady diet of popular culture consistently painting men (who aren’t stars) as buffoons, douche bags and villains does to boys” – but you don’t really have to imagine it, do you? Sometimes it seems boys are living down to the example that popular culture has laid out for them for the past generation.

So yeah. I wasn’t inclined to see the movie, and I started the whole proces with a bit of a chip on my shoulder.

And as I noted this morning, I’d seen a couple of great movies on the previous two weekends – Sound of Freedom and No Hard Feelings. Why harsh the buzz?

I figured I’d do like I’ve done for the last 20 installments of X-Men, 49 Fast and Furiousers and 16 Avengers and Justice Leagues, and let someone else have my seat.


But my NARN colleague Jack Tomczak said it was worth a watch – emphatically .

So I figured – why not?

To keep an open mind, I tried to avoid the reviews – but I got sucked into at least part of Ben Shapiro’s scathing reaction. I will brook no babble about Shapiro, by the way; he’s a very sharp guy, really good at most everything he does. Literally, nobody in the media is covering the Hunter Biden scandal like Shapiro. I don’t get the hate some conservatives have for Shapiro, and I don’t have to worry about it.

And I did read one other, extremely positive review, from someone who’s probably closer to my side of the cultural divide than most.

So with a few misgivings, I went to the movie.


People on the right side of the cultural fence who’ve never seen the movie can be forgiven for assuming a couple of things:

  • It’s “woke”. It’s from Hollywood, which has been destroying lots of beloved franchises lately, so it’s not an *unreasonable* default guess.
  • It trashes men. As I noted above, it’s pretty much the ultimate lazy Millennial screenwriter trick. And on the sufr the surface, sure.

————

“Woke”

Michael Knowles isn’t my favorite commentator, but he nailed this point. If you look at the story behind the story – as the director, Greta Gerwig, urges the viewer to do – it’s a very sly *critique* of “woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” feminism and the collapse of social traditions.

There are so many pointers to this – without giving out any spoilers, I’ll point you to America Ferrera’s [2] understated but brilliant “Harried Mom” character, and her interaction with Rhea Perlman’s character, presented as the woman who invented Barbie and put Mattel on the map, but who I think actually represents…well, I’ll let you figure that out on your own [3], and on and on.

But here’s the connection that sneaks up on you, that is so brilliant and shuts the whole “woke” thing down.

The movie starts in a stylized prehistoric era [4] with little girls playing with dolls – which, narrator Helen Mirren tells us, were always babies, which always left the girls always playing Mommy.

And “then came Barbie”. The little girls then smash their baby dolls and tea sets, as the scene dissolves to perfect, pink, plastic Barbie World, with women doing everything that matters and men demoted to, well, Ken.

There’s even a sly aside to the modern world’s attempt to repeal biology when Helen Mirren notes that “Midge”, the pregnant Barbie, was discontinued.

A bunch of other stuff happens, and we fast forward to the final scene, the final *line* of the movie.

I won’t spoil it. But there is no way to put the opening – the literal and figurative smashing of traditions and expectations dating back to the beginning of time – and the closing together and *not* see that this movie is a *critique* of “third wave feminism”, and the changes in social norms that they have been about for the past few generations – throughout “Barbie’s” commercial life.

I won’t spoil it. Put on your critical hat, watch it, and tell me where I’m wrong.

———–

“Men / Ken”.

As far as how it treats men – via “Ken”, singular and plural? Yep. Men are vapid, ineffectual, impotent, pointless.

And *that’s the point*. [5] And it may be even more brilliant than the critique of third wave feminism. [6]

Let’s step outside the movie and look at sociology, 2020s style.

What does every sociologist, especially on the right, identify as the problem with young men today? Lack of purpose, goals, meaning?

And that those young men fill in the gap left by the lack of *purpose* to masculinity by asserting it via mindless, deflecting hedonism and pointless violence? [7]

Because society sees them as being about as useful to the world as a bike is to a trout?

Again – no spoilers. But *that* – flopping around without purpose, and then wondering what that purpose *should* be – and its parallels with young mens struggles today, is the point of Ken (singular and plural). When you watch the movie, and see the arc of “Ken’s” behavior throughout, keep that in mind.

———-

So what did the other reviewers miss, that I caught?

To me, the big theme was how very important *purpose* is to life. “Barbieworld” reflects “Modern” society in that everyone has all their material wants met (in fact, to a city full of dolls, they are irrelevant), and all the affirmation they need…

…but there is no purpose.

And it’s when, and how, Barbie and Ken discover that humans (not dolls, literally or figuratively [8]), women *and* men, need *purpose* in their lives that made me sit up in my seat and whisper “holy crap, this is good”.

————

Oh, yeah. The movie is a visual joy.

And not just the Barbieland sets – which are everything you heard they are. They look just like the little Barbieworlds that the girls in the neighborhood would put together out on Mrs. Goehner’s patio, only perfect.

But there are two other visual moments that are much, much better.

The visual change when Barbie meets Rhea Perlman is jarring – and a huge cue as to what lies ahead.

And there’s a scene, near the end of the show, where Ken and Barbie realize what’s missing in both of their lives – neither in Barbie World nor the Real World, but a place that has no visual definition but slowly, subtly shifting lights that are characters in their own right – one of the most striking bits of cinemetography I’ve ever seen. I may watch it again just for that.

————-

Think that review was long? You should see the first one I wrote.

I don’t often urge people to go see movies – but I urge you ignore all the hype on BOTH sides, put on your critical hat, and check it out.

[1] Well, we did. Not sure if they do anymore.

[2] An actress I hate to love, but I love anyway.

[3] Hint: it’s a name the Sixth Commandment advises one not to take in vain.

[4] It’s borrowed from the beginning of “2001: A Space Odyssey”

[5] This is one of several parts Ben Shapiro got hung up on. Shapiro’s brilliant – I push back hard on the conservative hate he gets – but he totally c**pped the bed in his review. Which I *really* don’t get – it’s not like he’s too uneducated to see subtext, allusion and symbolism, especially when it’s *right there on the screen*. Very much the opposite. It’s almost like he c**pped the bed on purpose. Why would he do that? No freaking clue.

[6] Seriously. I may go see the movie again just to put together all the pieces of this subplot.

[7] No spoilers – but there’s a scene I’ll just describe as “Omaha Beach In Saving Private Ryan via Barbieworld” that made me double over laughing, and wince, out loud.

[8] Without getting into politics, much of modern society treats humans as interchangeable widgets whose meaning is to consume. I could write a piece ten times as long as this already huge review on the horrors of that subject alone.

Filmy Streak

Movies are pretty streaky to me.

Before Gran Torino came out I think I’d gone something like 3-4 years without seeing a movie in a theater. No big deal – I scarcely noticed it, and had plenty of other stuff to keep me busy.

After the “lockdown” ended, I went to a couple of films just to throw a throbbing middle fingers at the Karens of the world. I don’t even remember the movies – just how good throwing. that finger fels. Also how much room I had. I literally was the only person in the theater more than once. #ThaanksGovernorWalz

But I’ve been light on movies again, for a while now. I didn’t grow up with comic books (other than “Flaming Carrot” and, later, “King and Country”), so I have no nostalgia for the endless Marvel and DC franchises. For that matters, I lost all interest in Star Wars after “Attack of the Clones or whatever it was called. I literally haven’t seen a single one after the third episode/sixth movie. When asked which universe I prefer, Star Trek or Star Wars, I reply “Firefly“.

And I try to avoid going to movies I reasonably believe are going to be a waste of time and money. I’ve literally walked out of one movie in my life (The Burbs with Tom Hanks).

But I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. I’ve seen movies four weekends in a row. And – unbelievably – they’ve all been good.

  • Sound of Freedom. Amazing film. . Unbelievably intense. Its critics say “it manipulates the audience ZOMG”. Right . So did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Oliver Twist” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”. That’s art, especially art for a cause, for you. .
  • No Hard Feelings. Yep ,a Jennifer Lawrence film. “But she’s a lefty”. I don’t care – it’s a movie with a fundamentally conservative message. One reviewer called it “a sex comedy without the sex”, and it’s not wrong – especially given that the one nude scene is hilarious and diametrically not erotic in the least.
  • Oppenheimer. I love the fact that a director trusts and audience to be able to follow a complex, non-sequential plot.

Aaaaaaaand Barbie.

“Wait – wut”

Yep. Barbie. And I’d do it again – entirely on conservative social criticism grounds .

More tomorrow .

Kind Of A Drag

Let’s talk about drag shows.   Not the current hot-button politics of the whole genre today.  Just the “art form” itself.  

I don’t care for them.

No, not because it involves men cross-dressing. Guys wearing dresses and wigs to play a role? Mitch, please. All the female parts in Shakespeare’s day were played by cross-dressing men. Monty Python and Kids in the Hall were cross-dressing decades ago, and at least on the surface they did it for the same exact reason as drag shows do; Entertainment.

Which is the crux of why I don’t care for drag; it’s entertainment – and it’s just not entertaining.

To me, anyway.

Oh, I’ve tried. I’ve had friends who say “give it a chance!”. And I did. And I just…don’t…care.

Part of the problem is it appropriates [1] “burlesque”. And burlesque, as a genre, bores me stiff – especially the modern version of it. It’s not that I “can’t relate” – one of the points of art is to learn to relate to things that aren’t part of your life, or to get better insights on things that are *or* aren’t parts of your life. Art should challenge you, and I actively seek out art that is different from my personal status quo. I’ve learned a lot, and grown as a person, for the effort.

Just not from burlesque. Or drag, for that matter.

As far as drag shows showing school children a window to that culture? Fair enough. We have a lot of cultures; some involve snake-handling, debutantes, monster truck rallies, soccer, “Real Housewives”, ultimate fighting, eating ghost peppers off the vine, and drag racing. I personally can tolerate, even respect several of those cultures without feeling any need to learn more about them than I do, but this isn’t about me; in the interest of raising well-rounded children, shouldn’t we also let them participate in in-church 24 hour prayer vigils, three-gun shooting competitions and Turning Point USA rallies? Give them a view into lots and lots of cultures? Have your people call my people.

I mean, as far as culture goes, in for a penny, in for a dollar.

Of course, the current fracas isn’t about exposing kids to different cultures; it’s about undercutting the dominant culture.

Of course, drag has existed for well over 100 years; it’s a political subject to day, because none of its current hot-point status is about “exposing children to culture” for its own sake.

Just for purposes of argument, let’s forget for a moment that drag, like the burlesque of which it is a minstrel-show version, is inherently sexual in nature; all of the tropes of burlesque were ways to play peek-a-boo with the sexual mores of the Victorian era, and Drag is an “ironic” homage to that era, around the claim that men with “alternative lifestyles” today have to be as sly and coded about their preferences as the straight world did 150 years ago. Which, given the near supremacy of “alternative lifestyles” in today’s dominant culture is itself just a tad preposterous [2]. Saying it’s not a primarily sexual art form is like saying burlesque is nice and chaste; it’s preposterous, and would get you laughed out of any room not controlled by lunatics manifesting a social agenda.

Don’t be a moron.

But I set out to write about a genre, not a political fracas, and it’s to there I’ll return; you wanna dress up and sing? Go to it! No need to save me a seat.

Continue reading

“The Only Way Home Is Through Berlin”

It’s an aphorism I’ve kept in my mind through a *lot* of life’s ugly travails and misfortunes this past 20-odd years, along with “This, Too, Shall Pass”. Together, the two lines are wonderful, complementary views of coping with life’s vicissitudes; trouble ain’t forever – but sometimes, the only way past a problem is to finesse, claw or bludgeon your way all the way to the other side of it.

Through divorce, dips in the employment situation, post-divorce shenanigans, teenage problems, pandemics, riots and all of life’s other ups and downs, both aphorisms have been priceless.

The original line was from Tom Sizemore, as Sergeant Horvath in “Saving Private Ryan”.

Sizemore didn’t write the line.

But if anyone else – John Krasinski or RuPaul or Mark Wahlberg or even Tom Hanks or Morgan Freeman, even a young Clint Eastwood – had delivered the line any other way, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.

But something about the way Sizemore delivered that line made it memorable enough to keep it front and center all these years.

And for that, I remember Tom Sizemore.

Ma’Donn

To: Madonna
From: Mitch Berg, Former Club Jock, Current Irascible Peasant
Re: Things I Find Threatening

Ms. Ciccone,

The world is full of threats. Nuclear weapons. Crime. “Anti”-Fa. Baggage fees, resort fees, airline fees (or so the President told me during his State of the Union).

But while you were, in your prime (30-40 years ago) a very influential pop star, and were a reliable floor-packer when I was a club DJ, one thing I’d never, ever call anything about you is…

…uh…

…a “threat”.

I wasn’t aware that filler caused excessive grandiloquence.

That is all.

Deathless Art

Oh.

The art dealer representing Hunter Biden said the president’s son had the potential to be one of the most influential painters of the modern era, but declined to say whether he’d cooperate with a congressional investigation into sales of the art.

Georges Bergès, who has been overseeing the sale of Biden’s paintings, said the 53-year-old would ‘become one of the most consequential artists in this century.’

His comments came as the New York Post pressed him on whether he would comply with requests from the House Oversight Committee, which asked to see the names of individuals who purchased Biden’s artwork and the price they paid for it.

It’s art. You wouldn’t understand, peasants.

When The Post asked Bergès whether or not he intended to cooperate, the art dealer declined to comment and instead waxed poetic about the heights of Biden’s artistic prodigy.

‘I represent Hunter Biden because I feel that not only his art merits my representation, but because his personal narrative, which gives birth to his art, is very much needed in the world,’ he said. 

‘His is a story of perseverance; Hunter’s story reflects what I believe is the beauty of humanity, judged not by the fall, but by having the strength to rise up, by having the character required to change and the courage to do it.’

The worst thing about current events is, unlike books, you can’t skip to the end to see how i t

Bowdlerized

I graze a bit on NPR, mostly to find material. Let’s just say it’s a “target rich environment”.

The network has a couple of shows – chock full of vaguely-black sounding accents and topics, slathered over the same progressivized-for-your-protection content they provide the other 162 hours a week, shows like “It’s Been a Minute” and “The Takeaway”, that seem to try to address, not so much the “black” audience, but NPR’s huge, relentlessly white progressive audience, apparently to make them feel, if not “more authentic”, at least a little less guilty.

But I’m here to bring the guilt back.

In recent months, I’ve heard 2-3 shows on the relentlessly woke networks – interviewing the stars of the movie “The Woman King”, an “afrocentric feminist” story about a sub-Saharan kingdom’s unit of female warriors.

The movie – and the gushy, smarmy, self-congratulatory interviews – gabble and prate on and on about female power and empowerment and inspiration and enough word salad to unstop a cement colon.

What doesn’t get mentioned? The real life “warrior women’s” main military and economic justification; procuring slaves to sell. They were a revenue-generation tool for the Dahomey monarchy.

Go ahead. Tell me where the slavery talk is. I’ll wait.

National Review’s Armond White – one of modern media’s most intellectually consistent and rigorous film critics, and incidentally a black man – was not amused:

Historical fraudulence is a problem, but the reasons behind it are what cause alarm. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and screenwriters Dana Stevens and Maria Bello gainsay Dahomey’s role in the slave trade, trivializing the complications of that original sin. Instead, they offer another Millennial gender-flip, conceived to further sexual confusion via racial frustration and feminist anger.

This approach cannot be taken seriously because, like Black Panther and The Lion King, The Woman King is juvenile. The film’s comic-book premise treats black audiences like children. That adolescent kick over hair-pulling catfights is extended into an almost laughable, pseudo-political history lesson pitting women against men…Thus, she gives us Dahomey as Wakanda, a made-up history for uninformed viewers who feel so “unseen” that they can be robbed and conned again.

But let’s not bury the lede here.

NPR, and Hollywood.

Erasing Slavery.

It’d be so cool if NPR engaged with the proles. I’ve got so many questions.

Because Of Course

I have no investment in comic books. I don’t want to generalize this, but I really don’t recall anyone in my social circle – or anyone I knew at all, really – reading them after about age 12.

So in the “epic battle“ between DC and Marvel, I vote “present“. If I care to vote at all.

Which I don’t.

Watching the descent of Hollywood into endless reboots of DC and Marvel properties is not the most depressing aspect of watching western culture today. But it’s not far from the bottom of the barrel, to be honest.

I’m not saying, I want the comic book industry to kill itself off.

But if I did, I’d want to see a lot of stories like this:

The “gay Superman“ gimmick a couple years ago was one thing; at least he still looked like Superman.

The anorexic superman played by “transgender man“?

Well, isn’t that just so 21st-century.

UPDATE: I’m told I’ve fallen for a joke tweet.

Then it’s a pretty brilliant joke, since the premise is exactly that plausible, in Hollywood, these days.

Singular

Angela Lansbury died earlier this week. She was just short of her 97th birthday.

I’m from a generation, sociology and geography that mostly knows her from Murder She Wrote and thousand viewings of Beauty and the Beast when my kids were little, and the bit of trivia that she was in, and exceptional, in one of my favorites, Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

But if I ever want to know how important an actor really is, today as in 2004, I go to Sheila O’Malley:

If you think there is another career like Angela Lansbury’s – if you think a comparison can be made to somebody else’s career – you’re wrong. There IS nobody else. If Judy Garland were still around, doing television and movies and Broadway, then MAYBE. But other than that: Angela Lansbury stands (stood) alone. Angela Lansbury never rested on her laurels, and never stopped working. She showed up everywhere. She was bone-chilling in The Manchurian Candidate. She was sassy and insouciant as Elizabeth Taylor’s teenage sister in National Velvet. She was Auntie Mame. She was Mrs. Lovett. She was Jessica Fletcher, dammit.

It’s high time I watched Gaslight again.