Which is to say, it simply means “something I do not like.”

Ryan Murphy, the Glee showrunner, is angry at Newsweek for running a piece about gay actors playing straight characters. Murphy doesn’t just disagree with the essay–he says it’s “homophobic.”

The only problem is that the piece’s author is gay. So he may be wrong or stupid or loathsome or evil, but he probably isn’t “homophobic.” If he was, he wouldn’t be very good at being gay.

The NY Observer has a big story on David Bradley’s audacious plan to merge the forces of Hotline, National Journal, and Congress Daily to fight Politico.

Michael Bloomberg has come in for deserved criticism from the right for this idiotic comment:


“If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that,” Bloomberg said. “Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”


People tend to focus on the “health care bill” part–which is ridiculous enough. But the really offensive portion is Bloomberg saying that the attempted bombing “could be anything.” Because of course, there are plenty of groups it absolutely could not have been.


For instance, how many terrorist incidents have there been in the last 20 years from Unitarian groups? Episcopalians? Tibetans? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?


If Mayor Mike doesn’t want to be candid about the obvious–that the overwhelmingly likelihood of the involvement of Islam with this terror incident, that’s fine. You could cobble together a rationale for such a demurral. But to affirmatively construct the idea that it could have been lots of groups who absolutely could not have been behind the incident is worse than dishonest.


At some point America is going to get over its multi-culti sensitivities regarding Islam’s alarming rate of coincidence with violence. And it won’t be a happy day.

Joe Sarno–who may or may not have been the real-life Jack Horner–died last week. The NYT, funnily enough, carried a lengthy obit. A particularly dedicated Times watcher might be able to pinpoint the exact moment with the New York Times became the kind of paper that would run a 900-word obit on a semi-obscure soft-core porn director. My non-educated guess would be some time around July 1975. Whatever the case, here’s a taste:

His early films were straightforwardly, even single-mindedly erotic, although flashes of nudity came only intermittently and the sex act took place outside the frame. Shot in a self-consciously artistic style, films like “Red Roses of Passion” (1966) and “Odd Triangle” (1968) explored the anxiety-haunted, tentative steps toward sexual liberation of middle-class suburbanites born too early to experience the uninhibited self-expression of the baby-boom generation.

“He was one of the pioneers of the American sexploitation film and a driving force in the sexual revolution of the 1960s,” Mr. Bowen said. “The films were gritty, down to earth, with a very distinctive style. At their best they were very dirty — they just did not have explicit sex.”

Joseph William Sarno was born on March 15, 1921, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and grew up on Long Island in Amityville. His father was a bootlegger, and his mother was a socialist labor organizer. He enrolled in New York University but dropped out immediately after Pearl Harbor to enlist in the Navy. As an airman, he saw action in the South Pacific. . . .

After the war Mr. Sarno found work as an advertising copywriter and sold ripping-yarn feature stories to digest magazines like Coronet. His film career began when the Navy, mistakenly believing that he had filmed bombing runs during the war, asked him to direct training films. He accepted the offer and then headed off to buy a book on cinematography.

Over the next several years he made dozens of training films for the Navy and industrial films for military contractors. His first venture into feature films came when an independent producer approached him to write the screenplay for an erotic film, “Nude in Charcoal,” which was released in 1961 and shown, like all of Mr. Sarno’s films, in grind-house theaters.

Mr. Sarno wrote the screenplays for all 75 of the 35-millimeter films he made over the next 15 years, and for his subsequent hard-core films. The first film for which he received sole directing credit, “Lash of Lust” (1962), was never released. Atypically, it was an erotic costume drama about Gaul in the time of the Romans, shot in the forests of upstate New York.

Walter Russell Mead has another long, interesting essay. The key take-away:

The three countries who did the most to build the modern global, liberal, capitalist and democratic world order (the Netherlands, Britain and the United States) were blessed by both the geography fairy and the culture fairy.  Geographically they were placed where they were relatively free to develop on their own without being the playthings of foreign interests.  Culturally they were the products of a history which gave them a set of attitudes and values that promoted their success as capitalist countries. The combination of favorably geography and success in capitalism helped to propel each of these countries to global power in their day, and further gave them the power to reshape the world to their liking.

Other countries and cultures like capitalism less and for a variety of reasons are not as good at it.  Some, like China and India, gradually get the hang of it and start to gain power and influence in the world system.  Others, like Egypt, have a harder time.

For many Greeks, capitalism still feels wrong.  The substitution of market forces for traditional social relations undermines aspects of Greek life that are very dear to many people; the inequality that so often results from capitalism offends deeply held social ideas about fairness.  More, since the rising powers whose policies and interventions have done so much to shape Greek history have been capitalist, Greeks associate institutions like the IMF and the ECB (European Central Bank) with foreign meddling and unjust usurpation.  And the successful capitalist countries (and the foreign multinational corporations who come with it) have never scrupled to press their advantages in less developed or weaker countries like Greece.

In many parts of the world it is easy to spot a vicious cycle at work.  Because a country or a culture missed the visit of either or both of the two modernization good fairies (geography and culture) it starts out handicapped in the race to master capitalism and control their own destiny.  As a result, they fall behind, and lose power and control to other, faster rivals.  Capitalism becomes ever less popular, ever more associated in the public mind with a world system felt to be wrong and unfair.  Those feelings of alienation make it steadily harder for the country to adopt and follow the policies that could reverse the cycle and bring it success.  And so it goes.

On a global scale, the Greeks are not doing so badly.  They belong to three of the rich world’s most exclusive clubs: the OECD, the European Union, and NATO.  Their per capita GDP, while low by west European standards, puts them ahead of places like Hong Kong, Israel and South Korea.  Yet the feeling of being victims, manipulated by powerful interests who do not have their best interests at heart, and locked into an economic system that violates some of their most deeply felt values is very real.

Greece has a history of muddling through, if not always very happily.  It is likely though not certain that this crisis too will pass, leaving Greece still in the eurozone, still linked to a prosperous EU and still relatively well placed in the global order.  This is certainly what I hope, and given the debt of gratitude the whole world owes Greece for its extraordinary and unparalleled contributions to global culture it is the outcome that we all ought to seek.

But whatever happens in Greece, we need to remember that its problems are not unique, and the clash between those who like the world that capitalism has made and those who hate it is not going away.  The global capitalist revolution offers the best and indeed the only hope that I see for the relief of poverty, the advance of human rights and the protection of the environment worldwide.  Like all great revolutionary movements, however, it creates divisions, inequalities and resistance.  Revolts against the liberal capitalist world system — fascism and communism above all — shaped the history of the twentieth century and inflicted unprecedented misery and harm until they were defeated.  The radical terrorist movement led by Islamic renegades has more recently inflicted grave harm in many places and its violent course has not yet come to an end; we are likely to see more crises and conflict in the twenty first century as the anti-capitalist counter-revolution finds new forms and new allies.

The Greek tragedy now taking place offers us an opportunity to study the forces at work in our world, reflect on the human dilemmas and difficulties that lead to social and economic strife, and perhaps think more wisely about how we can advance the capitalist revolution in ways that make this global transformation a little easier to bear for those who are caught up in it and who feel that their lives are being overturned by hostile and immoral hidden hands.

Galley Friend R.S. sends along a link to this cliched-yet-entertaining Bill Simmons column. Check out #62, in particular.

But what will really drive you insane is this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaZIAXJJDKQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I haven’t watched more than 5 minutes of NBA basketball since Answer was traded in 2006. And I don’t miss it. Stuff like this is why.

Another reason, however, is stories like this one: So the Caps lose Game 7, the victim of one of the greatest upsets in NHL history. A mother and daughter who had been at the game got a flat tire heading home and were stranded on the Roosevelt Bridge. They called AAA. While they were waiting, Caps forward Brooks Laich drove by. He pulled over to see if they needed help. And then changed their tire for them.

It’s a great story, and one you can imagine happening with NHL or MLB players. Not so much the NBA.

Felix Salmon is also very smart and his discussion of Greece and the future of the Eurozone is disturbing.

I covered emerging market sovereign bonds for many years, but I’ve never seen anything like this: a country trading at levels where the bear case is terrifying, the bull case is very hard to articulate, and everybody is talking about a possible default even when the country has an investment-grade credit rating from two agencies and is only one notch below investment grade at the third. Maybe the only thing which really explains what’s going on is that both yields and ratings are sticky. Which would imply that Greece has a long way to deteriorate from here.

Stuart Taylor and Clive Crook are out.

Andrew Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi-Coates stay on the dole.

Rock on.