Cat Scratch Patriotism

If Samuel Johnson's quote that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel still holds true, then there may be no bigger scoundrel in America today than Ted Nugent. The "Motor City Madman", who is all too happy to paint others as hating America, would surely be the first to tell you what a true patriot he is as he shares his outrage at those who would compromise the values on which America was founded. The current target of Nugent's wrath is the Army officers who canceled Nugent's appearance at Fort Knox in the wake of comments he made about President Obama.

Not surprisingly, Nugent viewed the base commanders’ decision as an attack on his first amendment rights and an insult that “defiles the sacrifices of those heroes who fought for the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights.” While I'm obviously happy to see that Nugent's sphere of interest goes beyond the second amendment, it seems to me that he somewhat misunderstands the first. Yes, congress can't pass laws abridging freedom of speech (not to mention religion or peaceful assembly), but that doesn't mean your words can't have consequences, especially when you call the President a criminal and compare him to a coyote while extolling the virtues of shooting said coyote. 

Obviously Nugent should be able to say whatever non-slanderous and non-threatening things he wants about whoever he wants, especially the President, just as I can say whatever I want about him under those same parameters. On that note, it genuinely offends me to hear rants about patriotism and the sacrifices of our military from a man who, rather than risk being sent to Vietnam, decided to soil himself for a week before meeting the draft board. That seems like a far better place to begin a discussion about who’s “anti-American” or who's actually dishonoring our military.

When Less is (Alan) Moore

When the Watchmen prequels were announced in February, despite the bad blood that’s coagulated between Alan Moore and DC Comics over the past two decades, the reaction was pretty muted overall. Moore gave one of his typically dismissive (and self-serving) comments about DC being “dependent on ideas that [he] had 25 years ago”, people from DC gave the expected spin, and the world kept turning. A couple months later, the simmering has given way to a boil as Before Watchmen has become the flashpoint for the debate over how comics creators are treated by the two major publishers. 

To be sure, this is a debate worth having, but I find myself increasingly annoyed at Moore’s prominence in the discussion. It’s amusing, albeit in a sad way, that the two most prominent stories of creator mistreatment of my youth are in a sense still with us even if the creators themselves are not. The ongoing legal dispute between DC Comics and the heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and the one between Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby aren’t just landmark intellectual property cases, they speak to how hard it is for major corporations to do the right thing when billions of dollars are at stake. I only wish that people didn’t insist on equating the treatment of Moore with the genuinely shabby treatment Siegel, Shuster and Kirby received. 

I want to sympathize with Alan Moore's position, but I have a hard time doing so, not in spite of the way DC treated the creators of Superman but rather because of the way DC treated them. Unlike Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Alan Moore was a successful and established comics professional when he started working for DC.  Rather than take the project he originated to an independent publisher where he could have been sure of full ownership, Moore signed a deal to do Watchmen with a major publisher and now acts like a spoiled crybaby whenever the large corporate entity (DC has been owned by Warner since the 1970s) adheres to the terms of that contract. Everyone takes Moore at face value when he says he was  swindled but has anyone considered that maybe he was just dumb?

My focus here is not on whether Moore’s contract with DC was fair or if they lived up the spirit of that contract (both of which seem be more of a grey area than the righteous care to admit) or whether Before Watchmen is "ethical" (I can't get past how pointless the endeavor is for long enough to render judgment). Intellectually I know I should want to take Moore's side, but it's hard to throw my support behind the mean-spirited crank who's spent most of the past 25 years being equal parts self-righteous and mendacious on this issue. In a 1987 issue of The Comics Journal, Moore described the situation with DC on Watchmen as follows.

"So basically they're not ours, but if DC is working with the characters in our interests then they might as well be. On the other hand, if the characters have outlived their natural life span and DC doesn't want to do anything with them, then after a year we've got them and we can do what we want with them, which I'm perfectly happy with."

I don't see that quote referenced in a lot of these "DC shafted Moore" pieces. That's probably because the man who said those words understood exactly what the terms of his deal meant. Moore probably hoped that Watchmen would be like the novel Superfolks, a cult success that would drift off the radar in a few years to be rediscovered a generation later at which point he (and Gibbons) would be able to reap the rewards. When it didn't work out that way, Moore conveniently decided DC had "swindled" him. At a time when the heirs of creators who truly were swindled are rightfully fighting Marvel and DC over these legacies, the issue of creators’ rights deserves a much better poster child than Alan Moore.

An Inconvenient Truth (Sarah Palin vs. Facts)

The only regret I'd have if I were making a documentary about Sarah Palin's attitude toward facts is that the ideal title has already been used by another fairly recent film, An Inconvenient Truth. The latest example is the former governor's comments suggesting that the recent Secret Service scandal can be traced to "poor management skills" on the part of President Obama.

As usual, Palin seems to have missed a few key facts, including one that was right in front of her (or, technically speaking, behind her). One of the agents caught up in the Colombia scandal, David Chaney, was part of her security detail during the 2008 campaign. In short, if Chaney is somehow indicative of a "boys will be boys" culture at work in the Secret Service, it's a culture that predates the current administration.

Even if you want to make the case that the current administration should be trying to change the culture of the Secret Service, the facts are still not on your side. As reported in The Washington Post and other outlets, the decisive action of Paula Reid, head of the Service's Miami office (which oversees its operations in South America), once she first heard the allegations about the agents in Colombia was key to limiting damage and putting the current investigations in motion.

Reid is a 21-year veteran of the Secret Service who's steadily risen up the ranks of a decidedly male-dominated agency. She was promoted to her current position, one with international ramifications, on President Obama's watch. I'll be curious to see if Sarah Palin weighs in on how Reid reflects on the President's management skills or whether she represents another inconvenient truth the former governor would rather avoid.

Game Over? (Not At Penn State)

As the Jerry Sandusky case shows, clearly there was a strong current of secrecy at work at Penn State. Some might be inclined to debate whether this strain of insularity in the university as an institution constituted some sort of equal and opposite reaction to the open and friendly nature of the actual residents, but that's simply a distraction from the fact this culture needs to be understood and changed to avoid future tragedies. At the same time, the rush of books on the subject, including the just released Game Over, gives me pause - and not just because I'm an alumnus.

By the authors' own accounts, Game Over was written to a very tight deadline. This all but guaranteed that its publication would precede both Jerry Sandusky's trial and the various investigations into Penn State's conduct related to the charges against him. In short, whatever the claims on the dust-jacket, it can't possibly tell the whole story.

Whatever Joe Paterno did or didn't do (let alone should have done), it's hard to deny that there was a rush to judgment to decide his fate. Like many of the Penn State faithful, what bothered me about Paterno's treatment by the university was not really his dismissal but rather the fact a man who had done so much good for Penn State and the community seemed to get less due process than an accused child molester.

Game Over seems to be riding the same wave of judgment. Even putting aside some cynical musings about what the authors intend to do with the proceeds of this insta-book, I can't shake my instinct that it will not in any way help the pursuit of justice for Sandusky's victims. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the thing about cynicism - expecting the worst seldom makes you look like a fool.

Jackie Robinson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Make a Double Play)

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of watching the Washington Nationals play the Cincinnati Reds on Jackie Robinson Day. Though I knew when I got my tickets that they were for the day where Major League Baseball commemorates the day Robinson first played in the major leagues, the significance of it didn’t fully register until well after the game’s 11th-inning conclusion. Robinson’s debut in the majors and the overdue process of integrating baseball that it started is certainly worth celebrating. At the same time, it’s important to remember that commemorations of our society’s advances are in some ways more significant for what they tell us about the progress we have yet to make as they are for what’s been accomplished.

Earth's Mightiest Movie

The long-awaited film version of Marvel Comics’ The Avengers doesn’t open in theaters for three weeks, but I figured I’d get my review out of the way early (even though I haven't seen it yet) to avoid the rush. Though there are far too many overblown CGI-infused action sequences, they’re offset by perfectly played character moments which make The Avengers much more than just a loud, garish spectacle. The combination of writer/director Joss Whedon's instinctive feel for these troubled but noble characters and the note-perfect casting of the leads (for which Jon Favreau, Kenneth Branagh and other filmmakers also deserve credit) ensures that the film versions of these iconic characters manage to be true to the spirit of their comic-book incarnations while also transcending them. Even more so than last year’s film version of Thor, The Avengers proves that the phrases “comic-book adaptation” and “artistic merit” can apply to the same movie and reaches a level that its all-but-inevitable sequel will be hard-pressed to match, let alone surpass.

The Past Is a Foreign Country (and Another Channel)

Among all the changes in broadcasting, the greatest are often less about production styles or program content than they are about how the audience at large views the medium itself. In this light, there may be no greater evolution than the shift from programs being seen as something fleeting unlikely to be seen again beyond a few years of reruns to items of lasting importance that people actually want to collect. It's a change that can be neatly illustrated by the difference between the era where taping a show was the only way to be sure of seeing (or hearing) it again and the present day, where things are being released that you can't believe anyone would want to watch once, let alone own them permanently.  

It's hard to believe that even the most dedicated VCR archivists envisioned the current environment where many of the things that aren't available on video are almost as noteworthy as the long-awaited release of a cherished title. It’s equally hard to believe that the owners of some of the world’s most beloved programs held them in low regard for many years. A case in point can be found with the BBC and the experiences of one of their most stalwart performers.

Though not nearly as well known around the world as John Gielgud or Derek Jacobi, Martin Jarvis has long earned his place on the list of actors who were born to narrate. In a career that’s encompassed everything from a starring role in the Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical adaptation of the Jeeves & Wooster stories, By Jeeves, to numerous guest roles in Doctor Who, Jarvis may be most recognized for his voice. Over the years, he’s appeared in numerous productions for BBC Radio and has read countless audio-books, ranging from the works of Charles Dickens to the memoirs of long-time Beatles associate Geoff Emerick.

I came across a copy of Jarvis’ memoirs in a used bookstore a few months ago and was especially amused by an anecdote related to his work in the audio medium. Jarvis wrote…

“I suggested to the BBC in 1974 that, with its wealth of books already on tape and in its archives, it ought to issue some of them on commercial cassette. The treasure was vast: readings by Gielgud, Richardson, Redgrave, Richard Burton, Michael Hordern, Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, Sybil Thorndike and many, many others. Not to mention its trove of comedy and documentary material. I was told, though, that there was unlikely to be any call for such releases and, in any case, it wasn’t BBC policy to be so commercially minded.” 

Though he was discussing radio, he could just as easily been talking about TV, because the same mindset seems to have pervaded BBC Television in the 1970s. The end result was that hundreds of programs were purged from the Corporation’s archives and probably lost forever. Thankfully, as Jarvis describes a bit later in the book, the BBC changed its corporate mind about the value of older programs and has been digging into its archives of both TV and radio. As DVD and CD releases enable fans, both new and old, to revisit decades of classic (and even not so classic) programming, it’s good to remember how fortunate  we are that the programs even survived long enough for that to happen.

Perception Dictates Reality (especially if you've had a couple too many)

At first I thought it was an April Fool's joke, but there it was in black and white, the newspaper ink smudging slightly on my fingers. Right below the story about the attempts to revitalize Britain's local pubs was a scientific explanation for the phenomenon known around the world, especially to college students, as "beer goggles". According to the results of a study published in the appropriately named journal Alcohol in 2010, the consumption of alcoholic beverages reduces our ability to judge facial symmetry. Because facial symmetry is generally an indicator of good genetics, it's also one of the key elements in the perception of attractiveness. The study, which was the work of researchers from London's Roehampton University, also found that the effect was slightly more pronounced in women than men. At this point, I think I would be wise to say something about limited sample size and quit while I'm ahead.