February 2004 Archives

I spent the evening with baby watching In Harm's Way on American Movie Classics. Ostensibly a 1965 vehicle for John Wayne as a take charge admiral (starring opposite Patricia Neal as a Navy nurse and his main squeeze), the film is a much more interesting portrayal of his executive officer played by Kirk Douglas. An embittered veteran driven to drink by an incompetent commander, Douglas sobers up when Wayne arrives on the scene and makes Douglas his executive officer. After commiting a terrible crime, Douglas seeks to escape disgrace and punishment and redeem himself on a one man suicide mission that discovers the enemy fleet, including the legendary Japanese battleship Yamato. Having provided the intelligence crucial to victory Douglas perishes in a dogfight with four enemy Zeroes. I thought the role particularly interesting because it foreshadows the kind of role his son Michael would later play, rather than the more unidimensional Douglas of such films as Spartacus. The timing of the film, made as the nation was sinking deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam, is cause for reflection: hearkeing back to the moral clarity of World War II, the film is even shot in black and white to recall the old WW II propaganda films.

It is a commonplace of American history that one way the Southern planter aristocracy maintained its dominant social position was to focus the hatred of poor whites on African Americans. So long as the white poor could comfort themselves with their supposed superiority to African Americans, they were unlikely to analyze the true source of their misery and turn their ire on their white betters. According to the New York Times Magazine, a similar story appears to be playing itself out in today's France, where the large and growing North African population, frequent victims of discrimination, vents its frustration on France's Jewish minority. The result is a wave of anti-Semitism in France unparalleled since the end of the Second World War.

The Motley Fool debates gay marriage. (Registration required.)

Halley Suitt gets it right . . . again. She has the insight to see that it is not just gays who will rally against the President's bigotry, but their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends, in addition to people who believe that the Constitution is too important to serve as a vehicle for hate ever again.

Yahoo! News - Report: Slavery Alive and Well in Florida

"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Modern-day slavery is alive and well in Florida, the head of a human rights center said Tuesday as it released a report on people forced to work as prostitutes, farmworkers and maids across the state."

With this kind of thing going on in Florida, why is our nation focused on trying to prevent people from getting married?

George Bush continues to be a master of talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he decries "partisan anger" and touts a commitment to opportunity and responsibility. On the other hand, he wishes to amend the Constitution to take away the right of people of the same sex to be married. The President apparently sees no contradiction in these two positions. Hopefully, the electorate is not so blind.

Op-Ed Contributor: Lawyers, Guns and Mayors

"The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would shield irresponsible firearms manufacturers, wholesalers, dealers and trade associations from any form of civil liability in cases in which they recklessly or negligently supply firearms to criminals."

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

It is hard to take seriously a New York Times article by Leslie Wayne whose thesis is that wealthy Arab-Americans are raising large amounts of money for Bush but whose examples are mostly Iranian or Pakistani.

Norse Map or German Hoax? Still No Rest for Vinland (washingtonpost.com)

"When it surfaced in 1957, it was too good to be true: a purported 15th-century world map depicting an island to the far west labeled Vinilandia Insula -- the fabled Vinland -- proof positive, it seemed, that Norse explorers had reached North America long before Columbus."

My father still has a copy of the original book Yale published touting the Vinland Map -- purporting to show the Viking discovery of America -- before ithe map was exposed as a forgery. I grew up in the certainty that it was a clever fake, and that the University had been fooled. It seems not everyone is willing to let the matter rest, however.

ethicalEsq & haikuEsq...: home

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser -- in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."

David Giacalone (a.k.a ethicalEsq.?) posted the above quote in his short history of Abraham Lincoln's law practice. Among the additional benefits of settlement are that the weaker party (whose success in a lawsuit may have as much to do with resources and the state of the law as justice) has the chance to emerge from the suit with a tangible and certain benefit, and the knowledge that the stronger party recognized some validity to his claim.

My wife and I had a rare escape to the Shakespeare Theatre today, where we saw a very strong peformance of perennial favorite Henry IV pt. 1. Ted van Greithuysen, in a departure from his usual serious roles, played Falstaff; giving the fat knight a little more of an air of sophistication than usual, to great effect in such lines as "Banish not Falstaff thy Harry's company." One gets the sense from van Greithuysen's performance that Falstaff has a sense of what the future holds. Floyd King, whose usual line is clowns, fools, and buffoons, played Owen Glendower pretty straight, relying on Glendower's bizarre and pretentious mysticism to create its own comic effect. Finally, Andrew Long created a vigorous Hotspur with a biting tongue, and threatened to steal each scene he was in. Overall, the tavern scenes were most effective, whereas the fight scenes came across as perfunctory.

Halley Suitt on what women want.

Caterina.net: )Difference(

"It's gonna have blood and hair on the walls," Marty said. Frank looked blank, the creative assistants nodded.

John Boswell - Wikipedia

"John Eastburn Boswell (March 20, 1947 - December 24, 1994), a gay historian, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at the College of William and Mary and at Harvard University. He became a professor of history at Yale University, and helped organize the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale in 1987. He was chairman of the history department at Yale from 1990 to 1992."

It is to Halley Suitt's credit that she doesn't get the fact that Andrew Sullivan gets hate mail because he writes about gay issues. She's right, it's a sad commentary on American prejudices, and too few people are willing to denounce this kind of bigotry. However, it is not surprising in a nation where the President is pushing an initiative to amend the Constitution in order to deny gays equal protection of the laws.

On a related note, I am almost finished with John Boswell's fascinating account of how general tolerance for gay sexuality in Classical times and during the Renaissance of the Twelfh Century gave way to vicious repression of gays -- and Jews, Muslims and religious dissenters -- in the thirteenth century, leaving Europe (and European culture) with a legacy of hate that persists to this day. Boswell admits that the question has been so little studied (and so misrepresented by modern scholars reluctant to come to grips with references to gays in Classical and Medieval literature) that any conclusions are tentative. Nevertheless, he hypothesizes that the growing repression in the thirteenth century was linked to the rise of absolutist monarchical states unwilling to tolerate any deviation from prevailing orthodoxies.

Open shut them,
Open shut them,
Give a little clap.

Open, shut them,
Open, shut them,
Put them in your lap.

--Montgomery County Library