"A famous economist once remarked: 'You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.'"

"That epigram, issued by Robert Solow in 1987, became the subject of a lot of debate among economists in the 1990s.... A decade later, another famous economist made a similar observation about the internet — actually, a prediction: 'By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.' That was Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman.... We’re now hearing similar questions about artificial intelligence...."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "Are we in an AI bubble that’s getting ready to pop? The promised AI revolution isn’t here yet. But it’s a smart bet that productivity gains will follow" (WaPo).

And this caught my eye: "A friend who is a lawyer... asked a chatbot to draft a document, and though the draft needed work, he estimated it had saved him two to four hours of typing. I asked him what he did with the extra time. He pleaded the fifth." Pleaded the Fifth, eh? That makes it sound as though he billed the client for the 2 to 4 hours it would have taken to do the work traditionally!

It's not just the "typing" that the AI did for him. It also composed material into solid standard English, wrote the citations in the required form, put the substance in some sort of order, and probably much more. It wasn't just "typing" he'd have been doing during those hours. 

McArdle is using the word "typing" in a way that reminds me of Truman Capote's famous insult to Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing." Oh, Jack wasn't just typing typing. He was typing typing. 

"When you finally get to the phrase that needs improving, you have to rotate the platen downward in order to squeeze fresh words above it...."

"Because of this awkwardness, the tendency of the typer, as opposed to the writer (in Truman Capote’s famous distinction), is to move ever forward, ever faster. Why waste thirty seconds revising an obscure clause, when you can tack on an explanatory sentence in five? Hence paragraphs come out longer than they should be, and an accretion of verbal debris weighs the typescript down. Such debris, of course, can be cleared away in revision. But the tolerance that permitted it in the first place tends to lower critical standards the second time around. The pen, on the other hand, is an instrument of thrilling mobility. Its ink flows as readily as the writer’s imagination. Its nib flickers back and forth with the speed of a snake’s tongue, deleting a cliché here, an adjective there, then rearing up suddenly into white space and emitting a spray of new words.... Unlike the electric typewriter, it does not buzz irritatedly when motionless, as if to say, Hurry up, I’m overheating. It sits quietly in the hand, comforting the fingers with acquired warmth, assuring you that the sentence you are searching for lies somewhere in its liquid reservoir...."

From the essay "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Smith-Corona" — written in 1981, before writers used word processors.

The essay, by Edmund Morris, is collected in "This Living Hand: And Other Essays" (commission earned). 

I added the link on "Truman Capote's famous distinction." My link goes to Quote Investigator, which looks into whether Capote really said — about "On the Road" — "That’s not writing, that’s typing."

"YouTube really rewards straightforward, untrammeled, and unscripted discussion, and it's really what people expect on the platform."

Says Jordan Peterson, talking to Piers Morgan about how to conduct an inteview. He's distinguishing YouTube from "legacy TV." He's responding to Morgan, who has just acknowledged that Peterson is phenomenally successful on YouTube:

 

They're right about the constraints of television, but I want to show you this amazing segment of television from October 9, 1970, when the host, Dick Cavett — and guests Jeanne Moreau and Lee Marvin — kept almost entirely quiet for minutes on end while Truman Capote stumbled and mumbled his way to the most important question in the world:

Was Capote straightforward? He was untrammeled and unscripted! But straightforward may seem like the opposite of what he was. And yet, his struggle to find his point is real, and isn't that a form of straightforwardness? I don't think he's holding anything back, and I don't think he's using more words than he needs. He's just very, very needy.

"[T]he movie version of 'Breakfast at Tiffany’s,' while certainly beloved, isn’t nearly as interesting to any Capote fan as the novel..."

"... in which the author’s voice comes through (and where the character was imagined as more of an 'unfinished' type, à la Marilyn Monroe, whom he wanted for the role). Capote was disappointed by the casting of Audrey Hepburn; ergo, clips from the movie actually misrepresent his vision."

From "'Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation' Review: An Imagined Tête-à-Tête Between Capote and Williams/Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland uses the friendship between two icons as a leaping-off point for an affectionate if somewhat forced dual portrait" (Variety).

I watched 2/3 of that documentary last night and stopped only because of streaming problems (which I attribute to my internet service, AT&T, not to the streaming service, Criterion Channel).

 

In that trailer, Capote, at 1:12, says "Here is a man who has devoted his whole life to art and is a genius" and then, at 1:28, "Most people think because somebody is a creative individual, they must be intelligent. It is not so. Like Tennessee Williams."

"The Radziwill-Capote friendship ended... They fell out when she refused to testify for Mr. Capote in a libel suit brought by Gore Vidal..."

"... over a Capote assertion, citing her as his source, that Mr. Vidal had been ejected drunk from the Kennedy White House. Mr. Vidal said he had merely been escorted to his hotel by friends after antagonizing Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Mr. Vidal won the suit and an apology."

From "Lee Radziwill, Ex-Princess and Sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Dies at 85" (NYT).

I've never been interested in Princess Radziwill, but I'm thoroughly intrigued by the news that Vidal sued Truman Capote for saying that he was drunk when what he was really doing was antagonizing Robert Kennedy.

Here's an article from People from 1979: "Sued by Gore Vidal and Stung by Lee Radziwill, a Wounded Truman Capote Lashes Back at the Dastardly Duo." That's the way we talked back then, 40 years ago — "dastardly duo."

Says Capote of Vidal: “I’m always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day.” Retorts Vidal: “Truman made lying an art form—a minor art form.”

Celebrities were so much better then — better at talking, I mean.

The spat, legal and otherwise, springs from a 1975 Playgirl interview in which Capote charged that Vidal had been bounced from a 1961 White House party because of drunken and obnoxious behavior. Should it ever come to trial, the case could feature cameo court appearances by such eminent eyewitnesses as John Kenneth Galbraith, George Plimpton, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.—and even Jackie O herself. Capote has given a preview of the fireworks-to-come in a withering blast at the guest of honor of that ill-starred Camelot bash—Jackie’s little sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, 46.f

It was Princess Lee, says Capote, who told him that Gore was tossed out of a White House function. Vidal’s alleged offenses: putting his arm around Jackie and insulting her mother, Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss. (Curiously, Gore’s mother was a previous Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss.[)]

Keeping up with the Auchinclosses.  By the way, "[)]" is not an emoji — what would it be an emoji for? — It's me providing the close-paren that People left out.

Guests at the party... deny that Vidal was forcibly ejected, though they confirm that he squabbled with Bobby. And Lee herself—on whose testimony Truman had counted—shocked him by signing an affidavit for Vidal. “I do not recall ever discussing with Truman Capote the incident or the evening,” she declared in the document. Replies Capote angrily: “She’s just a treacherous lady, and that’s the truth of it. She’s treacherous to absolutely everyone.”

What did the princess think of being caught in the quarrel? “We know what they are,” she told a New York gossip columnist. “They are two fags. It is just the most disgusting thing.”

Okay, the "treacherous lady" is dead now and so are Capote and Vidal, the men she called "two fags."  Capote fought back at the time:

“We all know a fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room,” he said, and went on to define a Southern fag as “meaner than the meanest rattler you ever met.”... “I know that Lee wouldn’t want me tellin’ none of this,” he giggled, “but you know us Southern fags. We just can’t keep our mouths shut.”... 

“You know, she calls herself a princess,” he marveled in falsetto. “I always thought that a princess was the daughter of a king and a queen.” (Radziwill’s title dates back to her 1959 marriage to Polish Prince Stanislas Radziwill, whom she divorced in 1974.) ... He accused Lee of jealousy toward her sister (“The princess kind of had it in mind that she was going to marry Mr. Onassis herself”) and claimed she once tried to woo author William F. Buckley Jr. away from his wife....

“You know, I was placed in an impossible situation by this whole thing,” he says. “It wasn’t as though I sat down and was deliberately being vindictive. She simply didn’t tell the truth.” He accuses Radziwill of turning sister Jackie against him, then deserting him for Vidal during Capote’s lengthy struggle against liquor and pills. “I think she kind of thought I wasn’t going to pull myself out of that the way I did,” he surmises.

"The conservative Roberts majority will no doubt frame future rulings on voting restrictions and gerrymandering as solidly grounded in law and the Constitution."

"And yet it could become increasingly difficult to believe the court is doing law, not politics, if a conservative majority of Republican appointees issued decision after decision that had the effect of helping Republican candidates win elections.... Elections are the only obvious, if indirect, way for the public to express its discontent with a wayward Supreme Court. Maybe a mobilized Democratic Party can somehow overcome all the barriers of Republican entrenchment.... If a new dominant national alliance emerges to the left of the Roberts Court, maybe the justices will find a way to become a part of it. Or the Republicans could remain in power because they make a persuasive case to the voters, not because the court aids in eroding the democratic process...."

From "When the Supreme Court Lurches Right/What happens when the Supreme Court becomes significantly more conservative than the public?" by Emily Bazelon in the NYT.

I have little confidence that my excerpt will be comprehensible to anyone. One key is to understand that there's a theory that the judiciary is really a political branch, and that for all its posing as operating in a completely different mode — interpreting legal texts — it's really tracking democratic preferences. There's a concern that the new majority on the Court will permit redistricting and various voting law that will help Republicans win elections, putting them in control of the overtly political branches of government. And there's an idea that the Court will notice that those supposedly democratic branches are not properly majoritarian anymore and that distortion will motivate the Court — which is covertly political — to step into the role of representing what it knows to be the true majority.

I'm trying to put the argument in blunter language than Bazelon is using. I see that Bazelon is now the Truman Capote fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School, which sounds like a fantastic position. But I wonder, what would Truman Capote write?

ADDED: What exactly is "creative writing"? Wikipedia says:

Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature.... Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category....

I'm all for jumping outside the bounds of "normal" legal writing, though I don't like the term "creative writing." First, "creative" is way overused in our culture. Everyone's child is so creative, and young people accept low-paying jobs that are portrayed as "creative." Second, if you're writing nonfiction, you shouldn't be "creating" your facts. You want to be creative in what facts you pursue and how you present them, but why invite the confusion? The use of Truman Capote's name in connection with writing about law is also interestingly confusing, since Capote — for all his excellent writing style — was known to have deviated from rigorous truthtelling in his nonfiction work, "In Cold Blood." From Wikipedia:

Writing in Esquire in 1966, Phillip K. Tompkins noted factual discrepancies after he traveled to Kansas and spoke to some of the same people interviewed by Capote... Tompkins concluded:

Capote has, in short, achieved a work of art. He has told exceedingly well a tale of high terror in his own way. But, despite the brilliance of his self-publicizing efforts, he has made both a tactical and a moral error that will hurt him in the short run. By insisting that "every word" of his book is true he has made himself vulnerable to those readers who are prepared to examine seriously such a sweeping claim.

True crime writer Jack Olsen also commented on the fabrications:

"I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it... Capote completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes.... That book did two things. It made true crime an interesting, successful, commercial genre, but it also began the process of tearing it down. I blew the whistle in my own weak way. I'd only published a couple of books at that time – but since it was such a superbly written book, nobody wanted to hear about it."

"If, in a spirit of free intellectual and imaginative inquiry, you dared to suggest that a man who masturbated in front of a woman he barely knew without her consent..."

"... might have been acting out, in an attitude of aggressive contempt, his own shame and emasculation — if you tried to understand his actions, without justifying them — you would be shouted down and vilified. Imagine the outcry if you went further and speculated about why Harvey Weinstein allegedly manipulated some actresses dependent on his power into watching him while he was naked. Could it be that Mr. Weinstein, who reportedly had often been mocked for his appearance, wanted to dehumanize these women as well, while at the same time turning himself into a person who is watched and admired, like a person of beauty?... [I]n the realm of the free operation of intellect and imagination that is culture, let there bloom the suspension of moral judgment for the sake of a better understanding of our moral natures. It’s not because we owe anything to the likes of Harvey Weinstein; it’s because of what we owe ourselves."

Writes Lee Siegel in the NYT in "Whatever Happened to Moral Rigor?" — remembering the old days when James Baldwin, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer engaged in the "imaginative inhabiting" of evildoers.

ADDED: Siegel writes:

Closer to our own time and place, Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas accidentally kills a white woman in the novel “Native Son,” and then rapes and murders a black woman; Gore Vidal wrote with sympathy about Timothy McVeigh; and David Mamet composed “Oleanna,” a prescient play about sexual harassment, accusation, guilt and innocence that, famously, had no clear resolution.

But he seems to have missed the news (last February) that David Mamet says he's written a play about Harvey Weinstein.

"Proving that the library is more a monument to Laura’s artful airbrushing than W.’s artless leadership..."

"... there’s a swank Café 43 with fancier fare than W.’s cherished PB&J’s, and a gift shop featuring Laura’s favorite books, from Dostoyevsky’s 'Brothers Karamazov' to Truman Capote’s 'Music for Chameleons.'"

"One of the things that I find really cool about her is what I consider her caginess."

"And I think maybe the mystery surrounding her, and that sort of silence that she decided to maintain with the media, that becomes part of the legend of the book."

So said Wally Lamb, about Harper Lee. Both Lamb and Lee liken Lee to Boo Radley, a character in Lee's book "To Kill a Mockingbird," which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

***

I blogged about "Mockingbird" back in 2005, noting: 1. the Law Review essay I wrote defending Atticus Finch from a feminist attack and 2. the controversy about whether Truman Capote actually wrote the book. That last link goes to a blog post where I participate in the comments thread:

I actually think "Mockingbird" isn't a good enough work of art to be Capote's. People love it, but... it's rather cartoonish artistically. It's didactic and lacks complexity. He could have helped her, but it doesn't seem to represent his mind.

It's a funny thread, with Jeremy (the blogger) at one point saying:

... I just finished spending the last five hours reading In Cold Blood from cover-to-cover. I was skeptical of the idea that this was the same author who had written To Kill a Mockingbird, until at the end where they are going to hang one of the killers and they dress him in a giant ham costume.

"I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men."

Harold Schechter, author of "The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century," picks five books that describe great murder trials.

1. "The Murder of Helen Jewett" by Patricia Cline Cohen (Knopf, 1998)....

2. "Dead Certainties" by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1991)....

3. "The Minister and the Choir Singer" by William M. Kunstler (William Morrow, 1964)....

4. "Compulsion" by Meyer Levin (Simon & Schuster, 1956).

In May 1924, self-professed Nietzschean supermen Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the pampered sons of two prominent Chicago families, set out to prove their intellectual superiority by committing the "perfect crime." They abducted and killed Loeb's 14-year-old cousin, then stuffed his nude body into a drainpipe. Despite the supposed brilliance of their plan, they were arrested less than two weeks later. The highlight of their prosecution--which had been immediately (and rather prematurely) trumpeted as "The Trial of the Century"--was the summation by their lawyer, the formidable Clarence Darrow, who delivered an eloquent 12-hour attack on the death penalty. His clients were convicted but spared execution. In "Compulsion," Meyer Levin's 1956 best-selling account of the case, the author thinly disguised the story for legal reasons, producing what many critics consider the prototypical "nonfiction novel"-- a genre that Truman Capote would take credit for inventing a decade later.

5. "Kidnap" by George Waller (Dial, 1961)....

Kind of a harsh stab at Truman Capote, but don't you want to read "Compulsion"?

Alternatively, we can dig out the old DVD of "Rope" and watch it one more time. That's always great fun:



And can you imagine a lawyer today subjecting the jury to a 12-hour attack on the death penalty? Can you imagine the lawyer being considered brilliant and eloquent for doing so? Can you imagine a jury today getting roped in by a lot of high-flown talk about the death penalty after hearing evidence of a brutal, senseless murder? Frankly, it's outright unfair to decide who gets the death penalty based on what the lawyer said about the death penalty in general. All that brilliant talk would be equally applicable in any capital trial.

Here's the text of Darrow's summation, helpfully divided into titled sections. From the final section:

I have stood here for three months as one might stand at the ocean trying to sweep back the tide. I hope the seas are subsiding and the wind is falling and I believe they are, but I wish to make no false pretense to this court. The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and the thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own,--these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients. These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. And as the days and the months and the years go on, they will ask it more and more. But, your Honor, what they shall ask may not count. I know the easy way.

I know your Honor stands between he [sic] future and the past. I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows. In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that some time may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgement and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

Think of the children!

From Meyer Levin's book — which you can search inside at Amazon:

When someone asked if Nietzsche's superman philosophy justified murder, Judd perversely replied, "It is easy to justify such a death, as easy as to justify an entomologist impaling a butterfly on a pin."

The room became quiet. Danny Mines of the News said, "We all had a little Nietzsche in college, Steiner, but that doesn't mean you have to live by it."

"Why not?" Judd demanded. "A philosophy, if you are convinced it is correct, is something you live by."

We all studied our menus. "The herring is excellent here," Judd announced to McNamar, "but I suppose you don't like herring — you aren't Jewish."

Throughout the meal he continued to flash his erudition and against my will, I was being pushed by the others, set up as the antipode — for I too was a university graduate at eighteen.

Hmmm... Do you like novelization?

If not, read the confession of Nathan Leopold:

When we planned a general thing of this sort was as long ago as last November I guess at least, and we started on the process of how to get the money, which was the most difficult problem. We had several dozen different plans, all of which were not so good for one reason or other....

The next problem was getting the victim to kill. This was left undecided until the day we decided to pick the most likely-looking subject that came our way. The particular case happened to be Robert Franks. Richard was acquainted with Robert and asked him to come over to our car for a moment. This occurred near 49th and Ellis Avenue. Robert came over in the car, was introduced to me and Richard asked him if he did not want to help him.....

"Richard who?"

Richard Loeb. He replied no, but Richard said, well, come in a minute. I want to ask you about a certain tennis racket. After he had gotten in, I stepped on the gas, proceeded south on Ellis Avenue to 50th Street. In the meantime Richard asked Robert if he minded if we took him around the block, to which Robert said, no. As soon as we turned the corner, Richard placed his one hand over Robert's mouth to stifle his outcry, with his right beating him on the head several times with a chisel, especially prepared for the purpose. The boy did not succumb as readily as we had believed so for fear of being observed Richard seized him, and pulled him into the back seat. Here he forced a cloth into his mouth. Apparently the boy died instantly by suffocation shortly thereafter. We proceeded out to Calumet Boulevard in Indiana, drove along this road that leads to Gary, being a rather deserted place. We even stopped to buy a couple of sandwiches and some drinks for supper....

ADDED: Leopold and Loeb pleaded guilty, and Darrow's harangue was directed at the judge. Here's Judge Caverly's opinion, which rests not on a general opposition to the death penalty, but on the youth of the defendants:

It would have been the task of least resistance to impose the extreme penalty of the law. In choosing imprisonment instead of death, the court is moved chiefly by the consideration of the age of the defendants, boys of eighteen and nineteen years.

"A Scanner Darkly."

I hadn't gone out to a movie theater, I think, since last December January. (The movie was "Capote.") I'd been considering various movies but never quite got sufficiently motivated until today. It's not just that I wanted to see "A Scanner Darkly." It's that it was also disgustingly hot out, and that pushed me over the edge.

I love Richard Linklater -- the director -- mostly from "Slacker," which will always be one of my very favorite movies. And I'm interested in Philip K. Dick enough to care. I also like flat animation a lot, even thought Linklater's watery, flow-y rotoscoped style, which I'd seen in "Waking Life," is not my favorite thing. But that was enough. I finally went to the movies.

I took some folded up notebook paper in case I wanted to write down quotes for a blog post. Here, let me put this through my scanner (darkly):



The word "bigs" is supposed to be "bugs." I wrote that during the first scene, which was harrowing... and involved bugs. I forgot I'd already written on that side of the fold when I wrote down a sentence from a long conversation three hopeless Substance D addicts had about a guy who wanted to be an imposter -- like the guy Leonardo DiCaprio played in "Catch Me If You Can" -- but he figured out he could just be an imposter imposter: "You could just pose as an imposter, it would be a lot easier."

Despite the seeming charm of that, this is not a film that finds drug use cute. It's very hallucinatory, so it's most likely to draw in an audience that is interested in drugs, but it is devastatingly antidrug, to the point where it made me feel guilty for writing that post last week about psilocybin. Just say no, kids, or you will be scrounging around in the dirt of an endless cornfield trying to pick the little blue flowers of death.

The film was quite brilliant, and if you think about it hard you can figure out what happened. Presumably, it helps to have read the book, which I haven't. It would probably be more enjoyable the second time for me, to notice all the details now that I understand the story.

While I've got the scanner fired up and receiving my handwritten notes, here are the (extensive!) notes I made for podcast #55:



They seem hallucinatory in the afterglow of "A Scanner Darkly."

Are we really going to watch the Oscars when we haven't seen the films?

Manohla Dargis writes:

TONIGHT, an expected 41 million Americans will tune into the 78th annual Academy Awards to watch a spectacle largely honoring films they have not seen and may never get around to watching....

There are all sorts of reasons why "Munich," along with "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote," "Crash" and "Good Night, and Good Luck" were nominated for best picture (they're pretty good, for one) and a couple of reasons why we should care. Among the most obvious and discomfiting, however, is that Big Hollywood increasingly finds it difficult to make the kinds of high-profile movies that the industry likes to honor with its most important awards.

Well, I'm going to watch -- with TiVo to leap the longueurs -- because I like simulblogging this sort of thing. See! I simulblogged the Oscars last year. Wasn't that amusing?

The Dargis conclusion:

The crisis now facing Hollywood isn't unique to the movies; the atomization of the culture makes it hard to know what people want, particularly when they belong to a multi-everything society like ours. Still, something will be lost if Hollywood continues to downsize its ambitions and fails to make movies that connect with the mass audience, to make movies that speak to us as a unified whole rather than as a mass of self-interested egos, that give us a sense of collective identity and social cohesion. A nation of iPod-people, each staring at his or her individually downloaded film on the delivery system of his or her choice, seems a poor substitute for the oceanic feeling that comes with watching a film with a crowd, finding communion in the dark.

Yeah, well, that crowd is slurping gallons of soda and popping up to pee every 5 minutes, so spare me the old blather about communion in the dark -- which sounds like something Norma Desmond would say:

And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after 'Salome' we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!

Maybe we've about had it with being your wonderful people in the dark, communicants at your bogus church. Maybe this atomization of the culture is a good thing. We can find our affiliative connections over small things through blogging and other internet methods. And these will be much richer, better connections. Since the new movies can be made and distributed cheaply, digitally, real artists can reach out to us with film, and we will be here -- yes, with our iPods -- to listen to them.

Oh, but something will be lost? You're looking for "a unified whole rather than ... a mass of self-interested egos"? Excuse me if I -- ooh, I'm so egotistical! -- opt out of your dream, which reminds me, somehow, of all of my least favorite political schemes.

"Illegal pornography ... much of it like today's Calvin Klein underwear ads ."

An obituary for Joel Dorius:

[H]is life [as an English professor at Smith College], in Northampton, Mass., crashed on Sept. 2, 1960, when three state troopers, a local police officer and a United States postal inspector raided the home of a colleague, Newton Arvin, 60, and found boxes of "beefcake" magazines and pictures of men — illegal pornography then, but much of it like today's Calvin Klein underwear ads — and diaries detailing 20 years of his closeted gay life.

Under interrogation, Mr. Arvin — a professor of American literature at Smith, winner of the 1951 National Book Award for his biography of Herman Melville, a friend of the critics Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Crowley and a former lover of Truman Capote — named names, including those of Mr. Dorius and Edward Spofford, both untenured Smith professors. Their homes were raided, too — Mr. Dorius was away at the time — and more materials deemed pornographic were found.

The raids were part of a crackdown on obscenity in the mails by President Eisenhower's postmaster general, Arthur E. Summerfield, whose ban on "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was overturned by the courts. The authorities raided warehouses, seized publications and then went after people on the mailing lists....

All three, and four other men named by Mr. Arvin, were charged with possessing pornography, and Mr. Arvin was charged with being lewd and lascivious. Under pressure by the prosecution, Mr. Arvin testified against the others and received a one-year suspended sentence. He suffered a breakdown, committed himself to a mental hospital and died in 1963.

Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford, under a quirk of Massachusetts law, accepted the court's guilty verdict, without presentation of evidence, to preserve their right to appeal. In 1963, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned the convictions of all three professors, ruling that search warrants for the raids were unconstitutional because they had failed to define obscene materials.

Dorius lost his job at Smith, which, just four years ago, made the small gesture of naming a small scholarship after him and Spofford. Dorius, died at age 87, without an apology from the college.

The Oscar nominees.

Here. Comments?

UPDATE: The nominated films are unusually dark and dreary this year, aren't they? Of the films with major nominations, I've only seen "Capote" and "A History of Violence," both of which I thought were reasonably good, but not that good. Seeing these nominations scarcely makes me any more likely to go to the movies than I was before. And I'm much less likely than usual to watch the awards show. There's nothing awardsy about these films, nothing big and glamorous. And where are the women? Mostly, it looks like a parade of trudging, depressing men. The only note of feminine charm is "Pride and Prejudice."

MORE: Seeing the nominations did cause me to buy a DVD: "Crash." I think it may have the momentum. I'll try to develop an opinion about whether it deserves it. And I watched a new DVD yesterday -- it's like I'm on a film-watching spree -- "The Aristocrats." A pretty good documentary about what it means to tell a joke.

Trying to read blog charts.

What inferences can you make from blogging patterns? For example, look at this chart for blogging about Samuel Alito:

I see confirmation. If the nomination were running into trouble, the discussions would have kept up. Right?

Okay, that was an easy one. Let's look at films. Here's "Brokeback Mountain":

The recent spike is the Golden Globes. But I'm impressed by the overall building of the discussion.

Compare "Capote":

Again, there's that Golden Globes spike, but maybe there's a slight increase in the level over time.

Let's try to read how the domestic surveillance issue is affecting politics. It's harder to think of what search term to use, but I'm going with "NSA":

Well? What can you say? Bloggers react to news, but bloggers react to a certain type of news story. You know what the biggest story yesterday was, don't you? This. The 42-page Department of Justice legal analysis of the NSA program can't compare to a whale swimming in the Thames.

Posts that contain Whale per day for the last 30 days:

Actually, I'm surprised at how well the whale does on a non-Thames-swimming day.

So what do you think? Is there any future in reading blog charts?

Simulblogging the Golden Globes.

Are you watching the Golden Globes? On this last day of winter break, this Martin Luther King Day holiday, I whiled away much of my time in can't-put-it-down mode watching the DVDs of Season 1 of "Project Runway," which recently came in the mail. I watched it effortlessly, in marathon form. Oh, how I loved it! I laughed. I cried. I loved Austin Scarlett from the first moment, and I loved a lot of other people over the course of the high-speed (for me) season. As Kara Saun emerged as a force, I cried at her greatness. But I won't do any spoilers here. If you didn't watch the show, order the DVD. Now, I can move comfortably back into Season 2, already in progress. But do I have the TV energy to sit through the crazy Globes? Well, yes, why not?

Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney, for "Syriana." He thanks Jack Abramoff. "Who would name their kid 'Jack' with the last word's 'off' at the end of you last name? No wonder that guy's screwed up."

Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz for "Constant Gardener." Her dress isn't not as good as what Austin Scarlett could have made. Her speech is the usual boring thanks. No smutty political talk a la Clooney.

TV supporting actor: Paul Newman for "Empire Falls." He's not there.

TV supporting actress: Sandra Oh. She's irritatingly overexcited saying "I-I-I-I-I-I feel like someone's set me on fire."

Drew Barrymore comes out in horrendous green with shockingly pendulous breasts to introduce the first of the best picture nominees "Good Night and Good Luck."

TV actress: Geena Davis wins for playing the President of the United States. She's chubby and wearing a dress that would have been devastated by the "Project Runway" judges. She's funny, taking people by in telling a story of a little girl who told her she wanted to be President then admitting it was a fake. And there's no add-on joke that lying is a way of being President-like.

TV actor: Hugh Laurie, for "House." Blabby! Thinks he's cute.

Clip from "The Producers" introduced by baby-talking hag Melanie Griffith. The film is an embarrassment.

"Empire Falls" wins for whatever the category is for that.

Best Actor, TV: Steve Carell, for "The Office," beating that "Earl" guy and Larry David. He acts out reading from a piece of paper, a speech written by his wife. A line from it: "To my parents, for not making me go to law school."

Best Actress, movie musical or comedy: Reese Witherspoon for "Walk the Line." "Okay, my husband just hit me so hard, I almost fell over."

Actress, TV comedy: Mary-Louise Parker for "Weeds." She giggles a lot in a weed-appropriate way. "I just want to make out with all of you."

Actor, TV movie: Jonathan Rhys Meyers for impersonating Elvis.

Actress, TV movie: S. Epatha Merkerson. "I'm 53 years old. This was my first lead in a film."

Screenplay: "Brokeback Mountain." Larry McMurtry thanks his lawyers and his Hermes 3000 typewriter. "It's kept me for 30 years out of the dry embrace of the computer."

TV musical/comedy: "Desperate Housewives."

John Williams wins for one of his drecky soundtracks. Then some crappy song from "Brokeback Mountain" wins.

Ooh! Gwyneth Paltrow comes out in a neat white dress with puff sleeves. A special award for Anthony Hopkins. We see him playing a number of roles, including Hitler (yelling) and Nixon (sobbing). And the usual fava-beans-and-a-nice-chianti stuff. [ADDED: Chris emails: Worst-ever misquoting of a famous movie line: "Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille" (Anthony Hopkins).]

Best director: Ang Lee for "Brokeback Mountain." "Wow, getting this award, for this movie, from The Man." (The Man is Clint Eastwood.) "And everyone in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China: I wish you a Happy New Year."

Best actor, movie musical or comedy: Presented by John Travolta. Joaquin Phoenix for "Walk the Line." I don't like the way the actors in dramatic musical movies always beat the comic actors in this category. It's against the spirit of the categorization.

Best picture, musical or comedy: "Walk the Line." Again, unfair to comedies. A violation of the spirit of the categorization. "I know that John and June are up in Heaven with my mom and dad," says the producer, inanely. Why would Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash hang out with some producer's parents? That's just nutty.

Best TV drama: "Lost." "The show is an exercise in faith, and most of all we would like to thank you for having faith in us." Suddenly, the awardcast has gone all religious.

Dennis Quaid introduces clips for "Brokeback Mountain," calling it "controversial" and saying it "rhymes with 'chick flick.'" Ew! Yikes. Classy.

Best actress, drama: Felicity Huffman, who cries and salutes transgender persons for "becoming who they really are."

Best actor, drama: Phillip Seymour Hoffman for "Capote." "I was given the best part of my life."

Best picture, drama: Morgan Freeman announces the nominee. I hear his voice and look for the penguins. [ADDED: Sorry, it was Denzel Washington. I was in another room, listening, at this point.] "Brokeback Mountain" wins. Producers accept and are, as always boring. No info on what his parents are doing in the afterworld.

And the show ends precisely on time. Nothing surprising or weird this year, despite the conventional wisdom that people get drunk and let loose at the Globes. I wouldn't count the implied smuttiness of the Clooney and Quaid remarks. Just your basic handing out of awards to pretty much everyone you thought would get one.

UPDATE: The Anchoress followed the Globes and has lots of catty things to say about fashion -- and emaciation.

I'm actually, finally...

...going to see a movie! It's not that I never see a movie. More later.

UPDATE: Movie seen: "Capote." I expected to like it more than I did.

Part of my disappointment I attribute to the dim projection at the theater. The visual concept of the film is darkness -- lots of underlit, claustrophobic rooms and jail cells, many actors in black suits and black hats -- so cranking the light down a few notches drained the life out of the surface of the film. But the script was also weak, leaving the actors to carry the story with their faces -- aided by the conventional dramatic lighting that puts the same shadow-pattern curved around half of every face. And these faces all underacted, which is better than overacting, but fairly dull, especially when virtually the entire movie consists of closeups.

Yes, from time to time we see a bleak landscape (in case you've forgotten how all there is in Kansas is flat, empty land with the occasional dot of a farmhouse) or a crowd of people (congregated closely together in black suits and not making any noise or otherwise demonstrating that it comprises individuals). There's Catherine Keener, as Truman Capote's friend Harper Lee, but she's given almost nothing to do except stand about on the sidelines, looking crazily older and plainer than she's ever had to look in any other movie. (Is that good for an Oscar? Is it enough to count the way that gaining weight and looking bad routine worked for Charlize Theron in "Monster.")

But what bothered me the most about the movie is that it flattened the character of Capote himself. We seem him in the end devastated after the murderer he'd bonded with was hanged, and we're told that he never finished another book and that he died of the complications of alcoholism, with no sense at all that he went on to spend many years partying with socialites and being a lively raconteur on TV talk shows. I had to wonder if the filmmakers had meandered into some dopey Hollywood anti-death penalty message, which had nothing to do with what seemed to be the real story of the man. It seems they decided to drop the sexual attraction Capote was supposed to feel for the murderer. Capote's homosexuality had no energy to it, and Capote himself seemed to sleepwalk his way along a path he chose out of nothing more than writerly ambition. There was a deadness to the character as played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which is a character idea that could make sense at the center of the movie, but they dialed everything around him down, creating the contrast in the wrong direction. There was a bit of a good idea: that Capote was a damaged man and he saw himself in the other damaged man, the murderer. But there were simply not enough apt words in the screenplay for that idea to live.

Setting the mood for the Oscars.

From the L.A. Times:

Oscar's desperate search for relevancy continues. With the choice of Comedy Central's Jon Stewart as the next Oscar host, the film academy has apparently opted for the host most like the films that presumably will be nominated for the award itself — small, literate, political-ish, gems like "Brokeback Mountain," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Capote."...

As news of Stewart's coronation spread through Hollywood, people were cheered for just the potential break in the increasingly staid, self-important, Oscar glopfest.

"I'm excited about it," says "Chronicles of Narnia" producer Mark Johnson, an academy member and former member of the organization's board of governors. "There's such a need for relevancy in the world at large, and not just the movie business. You want to make the Oscars as relevant and sexy as you can be, within the guidelines. I have [nothing against] bad taste and vulgarism in a lot of what I listen to and see, but in the Oscars there's no place for it."

Others hope that the irreverent Stewart will cut loose a little. "The Oscars have grown into this appalling circus," says film historian and critic David Thomson. "We're trapped with it, and very often the films are not worthy. I don't think the host is terribly important, but to the degree that we're fed up with the show, a new host is fresh meat.

"A new host can say, 'I'll only do it if I can do it my own way.' That's the real bargain — whether the real host is given liberty or the academy sits on him. If they give Jon Stewart his freedom, it would be a merciful touch. He's always against pomp. Maybe he can be fun."

But those movies -- those "small, literate, political-ish, gems like 'Brokeback Mountain,' 'Good Night, and Good Luck' and 'Capote'" -- do so want to be taken seriously, and the Oscars are supposed to be the occasion to make us take the serious movies seriously. It's a difficult trick to be a good, funny host without stepping over the edge and signaling that the Oscar movies are not the pompous things they pretend to be. Maybe Stewart can do what they need.

No Lisa Kudrow? Then I just don't care about any of your opinions.

The Screen Actors Guild Award nominees were just announced.

A quick scan reveals what you'd expect to see. For movies, they round up the folk from "Capote," "Brokeback Mountain," "Walk the Line." There's TV too. Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series. Oh, it's the usual Patricia Heaton, Megan Mullally stuff. No Lisa Kudrow, for the brilliant "Comeback"? Then I really don't care about your judgment about anything. Or do you think if she was good the show wouldn't have been cancelled? Or, why waste an award on a show that can't be helped?

Well, this reminds me. Whenever you read one of these lists of nominees, what you really want to know is who got snubbed. I mean, there are some things actors do that are just such over-the-top pleas for a nomination that it's really embarrassing when they don't get it. Like, for actress-in-a-movie this year, they had to feel required to give a nomination to Felicity Huffman for "Transamerica." She did the big gender identity thing this year. That's usually good for a nomination. Oh, and Charlize Theron got ugly again, so we need to say yes, Charlize, very nice. Again.

So, who got snubbed?

Bonus link: the Directors Guild Award nominees.

UPDATE: Chris emails:

OscarWatch.com has a list on the left side bar of all the potential contenders, and it has color-coded asterisks marking which ones got the nominations from each group, so you should be able to figure it out there.

But I'll tell you, here (these are just all the people they list on oscarwatch.com who didn't get nominated):

Actor: Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow), Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale), Ralph Fiennes, Eric Bana (Munich) snubbed.

Actress: Keira Knightley, Joan Allen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Vera Farmiga (who I've never heard of).

Sup Actor: Bob Hoskins is the main snub. Terrence Howard in Crash apparently, when he's also a contender in Hustle & Flow in the lead category. Will Farrell, Frank Langella, and Kevin Costner

Sup Actress: This is more interesting--Maria Bello and Scarlett Johannson snubbed. Laura Linney, Diane Keaton, and some other people I don't think anyone cares about.

DGA "snubs": The Constant Gardener, Walk the Line, Cinderella Man (Ron Howard), King Kong, Syriana, Match Point (Woody), A History of Violence.

Best film of the year.

I haven't been reading many of the ten bests lists this year. Here's one, rounding up the usual suspects, the Oscar-y crap with landscapes/history/biography and those heavy-handed sexuality and violence themes.

What a big drag! I especially loathe the biopic. This year, we're supposed to care about Truman Capote and Johnny Cash -- I mean a pretentious actor impersonating Truman Capote or Johnny Cash. Last year, we were supposed to be excited about Liam Neeson pretending to be Alfred Kinsey and Jamie Foxx pretending to be Ray Charles. Both of those '04 movies played on cable TV yesterday evening and I was switching back and forth trying to get a bit of a sense of what was thought to be so good there. Neeson seemed to be giving a competent performance as a dull man, but Foxx was being a giant ham. I was cringing.

Why can't we just see actual footage of Ray Charles? It's disconcerting to imitate his mannerisms. Since there's plenty of film of the man, why not make a documentary? Is this acting stunt worth doing? I seriously do not understand why they make so many biopics, especially of people there's plenty of film of, especially when they are singers and we've got innumerable filmed recordings of their concert performances.

Is it because the actor can show us the actual consumption of drugs and alcohol, and we can drag in an actress for him to have big, loud fights with? Those awful domestic disputes! I'm never interested in seeing a man and a woman just yelling at each other about their relationship! I think Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are interesting in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," but, after that, I really don't need any more. Husband and wife squabbles! Why not just live in an apartment building with thin walls?

I avoided nearly every movie in 2005, pursuant to my aversion to movies. But I did see a few and I can give my full stamp of approval to one. It's a documentary: "Grizzly Man."



And here's Grizzly Liz: