Books Lying Open
¤ The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
¤ The Bachman Books, Stephen King
¤ Bushwhacked, Molly Ivins
¤ Skinwalkers, Tony Hillerman

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Insufficient archers when the dragons come calling.

Answer of the Day:
¤ Because longer is better?

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your snack of choice prove rather messy.

¤ The Republican Party of Texas is an interesting group of relatively fanatical individuals. They run the state, but more importantly for national news, Dubya came from Texas and was a member, much of the current Senate and House leadership is from Texas, and their ideology drives much of the national Republican Party. The only problem is... they're all completely wacko.  I've seen several blog posts about it, all from left wing blogs pointing out how amazingly crazy the Texas Republicans are, and it's not some sort of "look at those nuts" hearsay, it's precise and scientific. The Texas Republicans have their whole manifesto on their website, and they require that anyone running for office in Texas as a Republican sign and adhere to it (though obviously not all do 100% of the time). It's not like people are blogging about Skull and Bones or the Trilateral commission or something where it's all conjecture and rumor, the Texas Republicans are quite open and honest about their goals. It's just that their goals are against a great deal of what America stands for, in this modern day and age.

Here's a new blog entry where the person quotes damn near their whole manifesto, with attempts at snarky remarks after each section. I don't think his snark or humor is really up to par, but it's fascinating just for the wierdness of what he's quoting. Don't want to read it all?  Here's a quote from a Salon article on the subject:

The obvious response is what that blog's first comment says, that yeah it's extreme and out there, but it's just a state party, they don't take it all that seriously, etc. A topic that the former CalPundit tackled in a blog post from last October, when he was talking about the Texas GOPers on a regular basis. In it he outlines the party platform in much more detail, and talks about why this sort of thing should be taken seriously.

I think this isn't all that uncommon, for large interest groups though. Look at the NRA.  Your average member is a country guy who likes hunting and fishing and thinks guns are a right and likes that the NRA promotes youth gun safety classes, hunting, etc.  My grandparents were such people, and from their end of the spectrum, that's what the NRA is, and it's a useful organization.

On a national scale though, the NRA's actual political weight and priorities are insane. They oppose any registration or regulation of guns of any kind. They oppose any bans on anything, machine guns, sniper rifles, concealed weapons, etc. In their world of logic, we'd all be safe if everyone were armed. Sort of like the Cold War, where no one dared do too much since nukes would fly and everyone would die. Or the Wild West, with vastly more deadly weaponry. The fact that the murder rate and crime rate in most of the Western World, countries where they have strict gun control, is about 1/1000th that of the US, where anyone can get their hands on an easy, instant murder weapon, doesn't filter through the NRA mindset.

Gun control debates aside, (and I don't support taking away everyone's gun either; I'm just using other countries as an example and not really discussing my POV on the topic today) my point is, the local, grassroots supporter of the NRA sees only the friendly, reasonable side of the organization, and never really gives a thought to what craziness the organization stands for on a national level, and what their yearly membership fees are used for when it comes to lobbying politicians.

Your average republican voter in Texas (or anywhere else in the US) isn't the theocratic Christian xenophobic bigot that he'd have to be to support the entire state party. But by supporting that party, that citizen is empowering their grander goals and schemes, whether he likes it or not.  And no, I don't have any solution for that problem.

eader mail!

I haven't posted any for a while, but then again, I haven't had much of it lately. Funny how the latter leads to the former.

First up, here's a quick mail from Charlie, in which he comments on the Ronald Reagan stuff from Saturday's blog.

After seeing Ted Rall's post about Reagan, I can see why people would take offense to it. Not due to the fact that Ted disagreed with his policies, but with the irreverent manner in which he wrote the post. "Anyway, I'm sure he's turning crispy brown right about now." There's something about showing such disrespect to a dead man that rubs people the wrong way... almost seems short of dancing on his grave.

But true, all of a sudden the media loves Reagan. Of course, its all just so the 24-news channels can have something to babble about for the next week. I mean the man had like 4 funerals before he was buried. Why all the hysteria? I think Reagan represents a certain 80s nostalgia. People always remember the past more fondly.

I wonder about the whole "burn in hell" thing. I'm sure Charlie's right here, and that's what really pissed people off, though I've seen plenty of other strictly-policy critiques of Reagan that have generated their fair share of hate mail as well.

But just "burn in hell" not even specifically about Reagan. Does that really offend people? I see it as a flippant remark, and a relatively minor insult. I mean how bad can it be if you can say it on TV? Unlike say, "Suck my dick." or Eat my shit." or even the old standby, "Fuck you."  Yet if Ted Rall had ended his blog by saying that he wanted Ronald Reagan to fellate him, or had said, "Fuck you, Reagan." would that have upset people as badly?

I'm not religious though, so of course someone saying something about hell or heaven or purgatory or limbo or nirvana or whatever metaphysical concept or location they can think of doesn't mean anything to me.  My logic has always been something like, "Why should I worry about going to hell? Are you worried about not dying in glorious combat, and therefore not being called by the Valkyries to Valhalla, where you could enjoy the deadly daily duels and all the mead you can drink?"

I.E., one fantasy afterlife is as good as the other.  Though honestly, the Norse one sounds a lot more interesting than sitting around basking in God's glorious radiance. Wouldn't that get old long before the eternity of fighting and wenching and feasting in Valhalla? But to be realistic, there are obviously quite a few more people today, at least in the US, who believe in the Biblical version of the afterlife than believe in the one the Vikings dreamed up. (We'll leave a discussion of which one has more evidence to support it for another day.)

That being said, why does it so offend people to hear someone they don't like, don't agree with, and have never heard of before (which is how most of Rall's flame mailers probably feel about him) say a dead guy is burning in hell? People are so easily-offended. Who is Ted Rall to them? Some guy online who they've never heard of and likely never will again. Why do they care what he thinks about Reagan, and his heavenly (or not) prospects?  It's like getting angry because some spam email says you have a small penis and can't satisfy women. It's like being furious at the "fuck you" you read in a bathroom stall.

It just seems so weak to me, like the angry people are so insecure in their own opinions and values and conclusions that absolutely anyone who says anything different must be vigorously attacked. I guess if I were Rall I'd be cutting and pasting in a quick, "Why do you care what I think of Ronald Reagan?" to several hundred people. Of course he'd get nothing but more flames and hatred back, so it would be a largely pointless exercise, but then again, so is blogging in the first place.

Also on Reagan, it's not something I would have thought about if I hadn't seen it mentioned in some of the news coverage of Reagan's death, but apparently he was really loved in Eastern Europe. Beloved in most of the countries that were ruled by the hated communists when Reagan was president. Here's a quick quote from an emailer who lives in one of those nations.

This is certainly the general view of things, but is it accurate? I'm not a big Cold War history buff, but didn't basically every US president since the USSR formed in the years after WW2 do the same thing? Lines were drawn and nukes were threatened to stop the Russians after they gobbled up most of Eastern Europe, Truman, a democrat, was president during the late 40s when the amazing Berlin Airlift kept half of that city free, and US policy continued to be strongly military and strongly opposed to any further Soviet expansion from then up through Reagan and Bush, when the USSR finally cracked apart due to financial stress and human opposition. Did Reagan really do anything virtually all of his predecessors didn't do? Does he just get the credit since he was in charge during the 80s, when the financial stresses began to really crack the USSR apart, and when the people really began to chafe under their totalitarian rule?

I don't really know; as I said I'm not a history buff of that era. But how about an analogy?

Let's pretend that Reagan was elected president in the 70s, (he actually served from 1980-1988), instead of Nixon, or Carter. Once in office, Reagan pursues the exact same policies, same defense spending (including the boondoggles, like Star Wars), makes the same speeches, etc. Does the USSR crack and the Berlin wall fall right then and there, due to the pressure Reagan put on? Or would it still have taken until the 80s or even the 90s, regardless of who the US president was? Was there really that big a difference between Reagan's approach to anti-communism, and the anti-communism practiced by Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, or Carter?

Reagan had a famous "Tear down this wall!" speech in Berlin, but didn't every president make a stop there, in the days? (Remember? Back before Bush, when US Presidents were welcome visitors in most countries on earth.) JFK's infamous "I am a jelly donut!" speech in the early 60s is every bit as famous as Reagan's, but it didn't bear fruit for 25 years. I'm sure there are several books on this by now, but given that it supposedly takes at least 30 years after he's out of office to fairly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a president, it's doubtful any of them have the objectivity to be relied upon. 

¤ On another subject, here's a mail from Elisabeth, spurred by my rambling The Lovely Bones review/discussion, which appeared in this space on June 8, 2004. Her mail spurs quite a bit of rambling by me, mostly on Oprah's Book Club.

Hmm - I had to laugh at your review of that book - its success owes far more to being selected for Oprah's Book Club back a year or two than for any actual earned merit. I bought it quite awhile ago and was very disappointed - in fact I don't believe I actually finished it. Had I realized (Prior to the purchase) that it was an Oprah selection, I would have read the Amazon reviews before spending the $15-20 at Costco.....

I've always meant to blog about the Oprah book club, while never getting around to it. The only problem is that I've never seen the Oprah show in my life, and have very little desire to ever do so. I'm somewhat familiar with her, but just via cultural osmosis. I wasn't even sure she was still on the air, since I remembered her talking about retiring a few years ago, and she never seems to be in the news anymore. But no, she's still filming new shows, though you have to wonder that she didn't retire out of penance for inflicting that smug Dr. Phil dillhole upon the world.

Her book club began back in the mid-90s, when she would feature a book on her show one day a month (I think), have the author on, and generally talk it up for a full hour. Given her vast housewife audience, any book so featured would become an instant bestseller, much to the rejoicing of most authors and all publishers. Lobbying for a slot on the show became intense, books selected increased ten fold or more in sales, etc.  With cultural critics (such as myself) forever lamenting the overpopularity of bad TV shows, music, movies, computer games, and the underpopularity of books, you'd think anything that got more people reading would be a wonderful thing. And it is, but as with everything in this world, it's not too hard to find something to criticize about it, if you look.

What did people dislike about Oprah's Book Club? The types of books offered, since they became very familiar over time, as this Slate article from 2002 summarizes:

The Oprah club is now its own recognizable market brand—and its very titles serve as shorthand for commonly recognized genre conventions: tales of lurid family abuse, tales of the individual struggle of redemption, and—God help us all—tale upon tale of three generations of women absorbing life's hard knocks in a small town.

Basically "good for you" tear-jerkers. Literary lima beans and brussels sprouts, books that you won't especially enjoy, unless you really enjoy crying as you read about other people's pain, but that you feel like you should read. Of course this definition is much more accurate if you're a 30-65 y/o female who feels you know far more about life's hard knocks than most other people, through your own unique struggle to maintain a life of your own while still being a good wife, a nurturing mother, and a person who is entirely unable to parallel park your gigantic SUV that you have never and will never drive over any terrain rougher than that patch of gravel in the middle school parking lot when you pick up the twins from soccer practice.

The only time in recent years that Oprah's Book Club has been much in the news was then Jonathan Franzen had the almighty cojones to turn down a spot on the show when he was invited on to promote his new novel, The Corrections. Making matters worse, he did it in sniffy fashion, and dared to point out that most of Oprah's book choices were pretty cheesy stuff. He was roundly-excoriated for being elitist and commercially-insane, but I thought it was pretty cool, at the time. I've never read his book either, and I doubt I'd much enjoy it; it sounds like the "well written but about nothing" type of novel that I generally get bored by 1/3 of the way through.

To be honest, his objections were pretty wimpy, rather than a good, strong, "her book choices suck and I don't want to be tarred by the same brush" statement, so really, all you can enjoy about it is how out of shape Queen Oprah got.

"There's something very uneasy-making for me about having that corporate branding right there next to my name and title."

...

"I see this as my book, my creation, and I didn't want that logo of corporate ownership on it," he told The Oregonian. He feared the Oprah symbol would be seen as "an implied endorsement, both for me and for her" and that her selection of his book would tarnish his artistic purity. "I feel like I'm solidly in the high art literary tradition," he explained, and the knowledge that his book was being read by hundreds of thousands of (ugh) talk-show viewers filled him with "these feelings of being misunderstood." Yeah, it stinks when crowds of people who never even went to graduate school show up to buy and read your "high art" novel.

On National Public Radio, Franzen commented that "more than one reader" had confided to him that they were "put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick." He worried that men would think it was a chick book, dashing his "hope of actually reaching a male audience." In a typical backhanded compliment, he said of Oprah: "She's picked some good books, but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself..."

Anyway, Oprah's book club is now gone, at least as a regular feature, despite the fact that books about "heroic but flawed women working to overcome their difficult childhoods" still abound. I guess even Oprah got sick of the same old thing after a while, and rather than expand her horizons to other types of books, or lower them to include romance fiction or other junk her audience laps up on their own, she just pulled the plug on the whole thing. And I have to give her some credit for that, I suppose.

Her imprint is still useful for most of us though, since if you like the type of books Oprah tends to Book Club, then you know where to get them, and if you don't like that type, you know what to avoid.  There's always the off chance that you might hate Oprah's taste and therefore pass up a book you would otherwise have enjoyed, but really, what are the odds?