"[Trump] is fighting for the fundamental idea that this country belongs... not to the radical left Communists...."

"We are going to have to be on top of it every single day focused every single day, driving forward every single day with unrelenting focus and passion because God gave us this country our founding fathers fought and died for this country, generations of Americans have sacrificed and bled for this country and we are not going to let the radical left — the Communists — and the American haters take our country. It's not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. So I ask you all to send a message right now to all the bureaucrats, to all the radical left commies, to the criminal aliens... to everyone who threatens the future of this country...."

Stephen Miller — at CPAC yesterday — called America's left wing "communists" and even "commies."

I think this is the only serious current use of the word "commie" that I've recorded in this blog. I've quoted a couple comic deployments of the word — here and here.

And I quoted Rush Limbaugh describing the "Dr. Strangelove" character Buck Turgidson: He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies."

And I've got John Wayne in a Playboy interview — back in 1971: 

"Littlefeather’s 60-second plea for justice resulted in immediate and enduring personal backlash. She says that in the wings, John Wayne had to be restrained..."

"... from storming the stage to physically attack her, while in the aftermath, her identity and integrity were impugned (the rumors were so abiding that in 2012, Dennis Miller mocked Elizabeth Warren by calling her 'as much Indian as that stripper chick Brando sent to pick up his Oscar'). Littlefeather, who had acted in a few films before her infamous moment, says that the federal government threatened to shut down any talk shows or productions that put her on the air."

 From "Academy Apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather for Her Mistreatment at the 1973 Oscars/Nearly 50 years after suffering harassment and discrimination for protesting Native American mistreatment, the activist will be the guest of honor at an evening of healing and Indigenous celebration hosted by the Academy Museum on Sept. 17" (Hollywood Reporter).

From the Academy's apology letter: “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”

Analyzing idiolects.

So much great stuff in that, including John Wayne not even trying to talk like Genghis Khan but just doing what I assume is the only reason they made that Genghis Khan movie, being John Wayne. Virtually everything else is actors doing a fantastic job, and Erik Singer (a dialogue coach) talks about exactly what they are doing. Personally, I dislike biopics, and I find accurate copying of speech patterns too distracting. I'd rather see documentary footage of the real person. That is, I find it impossible to put up with more than a half minute of Natalie Portman talking like Jackie Kennedy. But I like when the actor chooses some things to copy and then brings something new to understanding the famous person — like Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan.

AND: Here's more of Singer doing his thing (haven't watched this one yet):



IN THE COMMENTS: Ken B said:

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought Eisenberg was the best there. The others, no matter how accurate, sound like mimicry. He was playing a character and bringing out the arrogance, assorificery, and brilliance very naturally and convincingly.

I agree.

I singled out Blanchett, above, but while writing about what she did I was also thinking about how Eisenberg did Zuckerberg. It's an even better example of of what I'm talking about. Maybe I'll watch that movie ("Social Network"). I've seen so few of the movies Singer analyzes, because I don't like biopics and I love documentaries.

"[My pussy hat] covers our John Wayne bust in our front hallway. I feel ever more depressed and angry when I look at it."

"Every day I see it and think of my granddaughters, who also marched, and their future in this America, where Donald Trump is truly destroying all we stand for. I like the color though."

From "The Second Lives of Pussy Hats/One year later, these Women’s March symbols have found new purpose as stuffed toys and talismans (when they’re not being worn, that is)." (NYT).

What does "categorically" mean in "We categorically reject Wax’s claims"?

I'm trying to understand this open letter signed by 33 members of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I've been avoiding writing about the op-ed cowritten by Penn lawprof Amy Wax because it aggravates me and I haven't been inclined to get into the details. I mean, I get this far...



... and what the hell? John Wayne in "The Searchers"?!



Is that "reinforc[ing] bourgeois values" — shooting the eyes out of a corpse of someone who believed that without eyes he'd "wander forever in the spirit world"?

That's as far as I get into the op-ed. Maybe I'll get back to it, but right now I just want to react to the open letter, which has one sentence that deals with the substance of what Professor Wax wrote. That sentence is: "We categorically reject Wax’s claims."

What are Wax's claims that they can be categorically rejected? As summarized in the open letter, the claims are:

1. "All cultures are not equal." That's Wax's prose, and I think it's intended to mean: Not all cultures are equal (as opposed to: there is no culture that is equal to any other culture).

2. "[V]arious social problems would be 'significantly reduce[d]' if 'the academics, media, and Hollywood' would stop the 'preening pretense of defending the downtrodden,' because that would lead to 'restoring the hegemony of the bourgeois culture.'"

3. (Quoting not the co-written op-ed, but Wax speaking in an interview) "'Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans,' because 'Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior.'"

I can understand feeling outraged and combative in response to these ideas, but how do you categorically reject them without saying more than "We categorically reject Wax’s claims"? There are no references to studies, no arguments at all. It's just a stark expression of hating these ideas — or fearing them. It feels so insubstantial, as if they're only saying we don't want to talk about this and we want to make you feel the same way. It's not very inspiring to people like me who feel bad about the op-ed and are looking for a way to talk about it. I admit that I don't want to talk about it, but the 33 lawprofs are indignantly proud of their complete refusal to talk about it.

Reasoned discourse is out the window. Expect a future in which everyone leans into the microphone and says "Wrong."

"Opposing the John Wayne Day resolution is like opposing apple pie, fireworks, baseball, the Free Enterprise system and the Fourth of July!"

Said California state assemblyman Matthew Harper (a Republican), who "sought to declare May 26, 2016, as John Wayne Day to mark the day the actor was born" and encountered opposition:

He had disturbing views towards race," objected Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, leading off a 20-minute debate. Alejo cited a 1971 interview with Playboy in which Wayne [said] "I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people"....

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, cited his comments defending white Europeans' encroachment on American Indians who Wayne once said "were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

The article — at Fox5ny — nudged me to assume that we were approaching the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Wayne, which skewed me against the Alejo/Gonzalez position. But I caught myself, Googled for info, found out John Wayne was born in 1907, and must come down against Harper. Let it go. The second-most-liked John Wayne quote at Good Reads is: 

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

Think about it, Pilgrim.





For reference, here's the full text of the Playboy interview — PDF. Key passage:

"Maureen O’Hara... was called the Queen of Technicolor..."

"... because when that film process first came into use, nothing seemed to show off its splendor better than her rich red hair, bright green eyes and flawless peaches-and-cream complexion."



O'Hara died today in Boise, Idaho, at the age of 95.

"Heirs of the late movie legend John Wayne are suing Duke University for the right to use the actor's iconic nickname to promote their alcoholic beverages."

"Wayne's family wants to sell products featuring the Hollywood star's nickname and image, but the North Carolina university says it doesn't want anyone to think it sponsors the booze."

Who would get confused into thinking that a university was marketing its own brand of alcohol? If that were at all something that could be happening, there would already be Motion W Beer.

ADDED: Clearly, Duke the movie star is much more likely to come to mind when you see a bottle of booze. In fact, if you drink enough booze, you may find it particularly easy to pull off your John Wayne imitation:



"It's gettin' t' be ri-goddamn-diculous. If you guys don't start thinking as men, we're gonna have a lousy country."

John Wayne "upbraided star Kirk Douglas for playing the part of Vincent van Gogh like a 'weak queer.'"

"How can you play a part like that? There’s so few of us left. We got to play strong, tough characters," Wayne said.

“It’s all make-believe, John,” a dumbfounded Douglas replied. “It isn’t real. You’re not really John Wayne, you know.”

Here's a clip from "Lust for Life," the movie that brought out the homophobia in John Wayne. Vincent and his dinner date, Gauguin/Anthony Quinn, are having a nice conversation about which other artists to invite to their French country home, and when Vincent brings up Millet — Millet! — it erupts into a lover's quarrel about art and emotion. Vincent adores Millet, who, he says, "uses paint to express the word of God," and Gauguin snaps that "he should have been a preacher, not a painter." Then it's on to "If there's one thing I despise, it's emotionalism in painting," a none-too-subtle attack on Vincent that escalates into accusations of the "You paint too fast"/"You look too fast" kind.

"Newt was a solitary boy whose extreme nearsightedness made it extremely difficult for him to recognize people until he was about 12..."

I am a jaded blogger whose extreme fussiness about writing and psychoanalyzing makes it extremely difficult for me to believe that the extreme overuser of the word "extreme," Gail Sheehy, has actually written a fine article about the extremely weird and painful childhood of the man who might have been called "Newt the McPherson," after the "big, brawling man" who impregnated his mother when she was 16, but who acquired the last name of the "bar-fighting bread-truck driver" who married her shortly thereafter.

From heroes in history books and cowboy movies [young Newt Gingrich] extracted idealizations of himself. It was in the darkened theater of the mind, the local cheese box of a movie theater in Hummelstown, that he had his awakening, “a moment where I realized, I can be a leader,” he said.

He would watch John Wayne kill the bad guys four or five times in a row and go home to try aping the laconic lope of the 6-foot-4 actor. This was not easy for a short, pudgy boy. Nevertheless, he said, “I imprinted John Wayne … as my model of behavior. I was a 50-year-old at 9.”

When Newt dared, at 15, to break the old man’s curfew of 11 p.m., Bob Gingrich recalled, with an intimidating pantomime, how he “grabbed him by the lapels and I smashed him against the wall. Then I dropped him. He didn’t do it again.”

Yikes. Read the whole thing, if you can.

Smoking and the $93,000 stamp.

The print run was destroyed — but a few stamps escaped — because Audrey Hepburn's son did not like that cigarette holder in her mouth.



That happened in Germany. Here in America we just airbrush the cigarette out of the old celebrity photos:



Roger Ebert:

Depriving Bette Davis of her cigarette reminds me of Soviet revisionism, when disgraced party officials disappeared from official photographs. Might as well strip away the toupees of Fred Astaire and Jimmy Stewart. I was first alerted to this travesty by a reader, Wendell Openshaw of San Diego, who wrote me: "Do you share my revulsion for this attempt to revise history and distort a great screen persona for political purposes? It is political correctness and revisionist history run amok. Next it will be John Wayne holding a bouquet instead of a Winchester!"

IN THE COMMENTS: Sofa King picks up on the cue to photoshop:



And kristinintexas found this startling revelation that Bette Davis was not holding a cigarette in the original photograph. (Her fur coat, however, was downgraded to cloth.)

But, of course, Bette Davis was big on smoking, and so Chip Ahoy gives us "Bette Restored:

"Justice Scalia is Not a Nice Man. A fanboy learns the truth."

Well, the insolent fanboy has won the sympathy of at least one law blogger, but really... You presume to take up the Justice's time at a book signing and you haven't got a copy of his new book? You bring his 1997 book to get an autograph? I mean, I can see how an unsophisticated person might think it's okay to try that, but when it didn't work you should have felt chastened. Instead, you write a long letter — with typos and references to "Star Trek" and Jimmy Carter — scolding Justice Scalia?

I presented my book [A Matter of Interpretation], you took it, looked at the front cover, and gruffly said, "This is not my book. I won't sign this book." The book was pushed aside and you waived [sic] me away.

At first I thought you were joking. You had to be. Who doesn't sign their own book at a book signing? Apparently you don't. As the massive crowd poured in I tried to show you that the cover said in large bold print: 'BY ANTONIN SCALIA.' You were having none of it.

The event was free for me because I am a law student. In fact, I only went because it was free. I had class that night but skipped because this was going to be so much better than learning about informal rulemaking procedure in Administrative Law. I intended to buy your new book [Making Your Case] when I had the money. For now, I owned this book. It had inspired me. It was the one I wanted signed. And again, you'd already made the royalties off of it when I purchased it. So what could be the harm?...

I think it is important to note that you are a public servant. While you are not a member of the political branches, you nonetheless are on the public pay roll. It should be an honor for you to be admired so much that people even want your signature. But you have become arrogant and aloof in your marble castle up on the Hill.

If your intention was to sell book you have a funny way of going about it. Now I will never buy your new book, whereas I was looking forward to it before. I will tell everyone I speak to on the subject of Originalism and the Court how big of a jerk you were. I am not famous but I am well respected by those who know me. Any books you sell will not be from my recommendation.

But the worst part of it is that from now on and for the rest of my life I will never think of you the same way. From now on you will not be the lovable jerk you come off as. Instead you will be like a philosopher king growling at his peon subject.

Earlier in the evening you wouldn't even take a picture with me. I understood because of the onslaught of photos that would inevitably follow. I had the honor of meeting Justice O'Connor, who was speaking at my school, a few months ago. After the event she was in a hurry to be somewhere. I asked if I could have a picture with her. Though she was clearly put out she took thirty seconds out of her life to do something nice for an admirer. In my life this has been true of Lenard [sic] Nimoy (Spok [sic] from Star Trek), Stan Lee (creator of Marvel Comics), Senator Cornyn of Texas, and former President Jimmy Carter. They were all busy people and they took a few seconds to do something nice for a fan and member of the public. There are stories John Wayne would talk to his fans for hours while his food got cold. What can I say? You're no Duke.

I'm sure you won't care about me or my letter. You may not even see it. If you do you'll probably only correct the grammar and then throw it away. You'll see yourself as the victim of a slanderous smear campaign by a looser [sic] fan who can't afford a book. But you brought it on yourself by not taking a few seconds to sign a book you wrote at a book signing.

I like this comment at the second link: "This guy is a fan of Scalia *and* Jimmy Carter??? Something doesn't smell right." Yes, think about it. People who don't like Scalia could wreck his signings by bringing the wrong book (and trying to provoke a reaction by babbling and pointing to his name on the cover). I'm picturing hordes of Scalia haters deliberately screwing up his signings: Okay, when you get to the front of the line, you pull out your downloaded copy of his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, tell him how brilliant and inspiring you found it, and beg him to autograph it.

ADDED: Justice Scalia's new book is "Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges."

A writer admires a writer he identifies with.

Tom Carson has a deft essay on Bob Dylan's "Chronicles," in the NYT Book Review. Carson writes elaborate start-and-stop sentences full of interesting ideas. Here are a few that jumped out at me:

Yet the man only had to grow an emaciated ant colony under his nose to get me regressing into speculation about his motives -- or, at any rate, thinking How strange instead of Wow, we're both geezers.

Even more gnomic and less rewarding was those liner notes' unreadable amplification in his ''novel'' -- ah, remember when the term ''novel'' conferred cachet? -- ''Tarantula,'' published in 1971 but written much earlier.

At once naive and wily, the diction summons up the hobbledehoy eagerness, skeptical wit and odd hardscrabble decorum of a half-remembered, half-concocted native idiom with such verve that you can scarcely tell the genuine colloquialisms from the ones he's just made up.

As self-serving as ''Volume One'' is, not to mention coy -- unless I seriously misremember his marital history, the nameless ''my wife'' of 1971 and her 1987 counterpart are two different people -- the sprays of language, cockeyed aphorisms and good anecdotes win out, with highlights ranging from Dylan's spilling the beans that his boyhood dream was to attend West Point to a charming description of the day he met -- and serenaded -- John Wayne in Hawaii, where the Duke was filming ''In Harm's Way.'