Calling Alfred E. Newman

 One of the best educational advantages boomers enjoyed in their youth was exposure to the old Mad magazine. It taught its readers, among other things,  that a lot of commercial advertising was shifty, silly, dishonest stuff aimed at fools,  deserving of ridicule,  and not to be taken seriously.  Much of it still is.

The latest inane trend is woke advertising. Sometimes it is explicit as when viewers or readers are told that the XYZ company not only makes darned fine crotch itch ointment but honors LBGTQ and BIPOC communities, is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is striving to remake the world in service of those things.  More often it is less direct. It sometimes is done by the selection of the models and images in the ad on the basis of race, as  though seeing a black person in a commercial is supposed to make a viewer think the advertised company is in the vanguard of something or other. Black people make up around an eighth of the population of the country but lately seem to be about half of the actors in TV commercials, and probably more than half of the so-called authority figures such as people playing doctors or scientists or executives in commercials. This is good news for black actors, but one has to guess many of them might feel a little patronized by people who had little use for them in the past becoming interested only as they became handy symbols.

One place black people are “under represented” in commercials is in ads for things such as burglar alarm companies. There one can be pretty sure the crooks will be white guys – often oddly enough white guys dressed like Nancy’s boyfriend Sluggo but with a mask.  Indeed  in the world of commercials, white men are life’s losers. The clueless ones, the stupid ones, the ones who never get the word usually will be white men. In a commercial featuring a white man in a domestic setting, he probably will be washing, cooking, cuddling a child and generally coming across as a good little homemaker. If there is an unlikeable or out of touch guy in a suit in a commercial, he usually will be white. Women and black men may be portrayed as strong and independent, but mainly not the white guys.

  Many conservatives find this depiction of white men wrong, insulting, utterly unrealistic, and demeaning. They are right. It is, but it’s usually not worth getting too worked up over. It is just a fad, and one that does little real harm since few take its implications seriously (and it is not as though people in other groups have not been given the same treatment and worse at various times). I think it is better most of the time for white guys to ignore it or laugh it off.  Of course if ticked off enough or if the insults are presented as something to take seriously, they also can refuse to buy the product being advertised. A few more cases of get woke, go broke might shorten the fad’s duration.   They certainly would serve some people right.

 

 

Funny Movies

 

Puritanism -The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

- H. L. Mencken

 

One hears all the time that Blazing Saddles (or Airplane or Animal House or Caddyshack or Young Frankenstein or Dr. Strangelove or Smokey and the Bandit or many others) could not be made today. It is probably true. We are in a prudish and puritanical time. It is interesting to remember that such films could not have been made much earlier than they were either.

Restrictions come in various forms – including direct government censorship (which is supposed to be illegal in this country), pressure from self-proclaimed defenders of public morality, and so-called self regulation  done as appeasement. Before the 1960s movie makers faced all three. State and local governments prohibited the showing of films on forbidden topics. The Catholic legion of decency and other pressure groups pushed filmmakers to avoid themes and content they considered immoral. The movie industry’s  trade association enforced  the Motion Picture Production Code which specified what was allowed and what was forbidden in movies. These days there are no production code and no censorship from American governments, but the pressure from the defenders of morality is pervasive and intense. Feminist, race hustling, LBGTQ, green, multicultural, “progressive”, and various other woke puritans are on full alert in social and other media to try to make sure that no one, anywhere in the movies is having any good, raucous, politically incorrect fun. They are as dogmatic and seem to be just about as successful with the movie industry as the other legionnaires of decency were in the old days.

Those of us who like that sort of fun can be glad there was a long period between one bunch of prudes losing power and another one gaining it. We can also be glad that for now at least, funny films from those days are still available. However it might be a good idea not to count on that remaining true. Streaming services seem like good targets for pressure to stop offering content someone deems inappropriate. I’d recommend a person going ahead and get copies of the stuff he likes  on his own media in his physical possession just in case.  The forces of decency are on the march.

It is an interesting aside that the puritans in the saddle today and the successors of the ones who were in the past generally despise and would like to cancel each other. There are amusing irony and useful lessons in that, but I doubt if many in either group would see them.

 

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Doing the Continental?

 In much of continental Europe  the term “right wing” usually has meant authoritarian political  ideas and parties promoting race, nationality, tradition, established religion, obedience to dictates of the state, opposition to free markets, and often anti-Semitism. “Left wing” usually has meant authoritarian ideas and parties promoting nationalization of private property, regimentation of economic and personal life, government control of media, obedience to dictates of the state, opposition to free markets, and hostility to traditions. Right and left have shared an ideological contempt for liberals and liberalism. America has been lucky to avoid having a major left or right wing political party in the continental sense.

Since the beginning of the present two party system in the years before the Civil War and with the exception of many southern Democrats before, during,  and in the hundred years following that war, those in both of the major parties have generally claimed to accept, though surely not always followed, the general principles of liberalism – liberty, free speech, individual rights to life and property, equal justice and the rule of law, freedom of conscience and association, and limits on the power of governments. There has been a strain of leftist authoritarianism among the  Democrats that sometimes (parts of the New Deal, some things in the McGovern candidacy, Sanders) became very influential in the party. There has been a strain of nativism and xenophobia among the Republicans that sometimes (Donald Trump) became very influential in that party. However, neither party has abandoned liberal ideas to the point of becoming explicitly illiberal overall.

Some people worry that our luck is about to run out. There are reasons for the fear. From the green new deal to “equity” demands for delivering equal outcomes at gunpoint to attempts to silence dissent in media and on campuses, there is plenty of bad stuff coming from the Democrats and their supporters in the media. From xenophobic attacks on immigration to demands that America be a Christian country without separation of church and state to Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, there is plenty of bad stuff coming from the Republicans and their supporters in the media. People in both parties these days are unusually intolerant of those with whom they disagree and unusually eager to force their neighbors onto their version of the path to virtue. The behavior of the Republicans and their friends is in one way more worrisome that that of the Democrats and theirs. For about  fifty years beginning with the Goldwater campaign, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to claim to stand for liberty, individual rights, and limited government. Many still do, but now it is easy to find conservatives arguing that belief in limited government is outdated, that the era of liberalism is ending, and that the choice for the future is between left wing authoritarians and right wing authoritarians.  Too many among the Democrats have had a soft spot for regimes such as Castro’s Cuba, and lately too many among the Republicans have developed one for regimes such as Salazar’s Portugal. Tucker Carlson, whose show is said to be the most popular evening news program in the country, made news recently by visiting Hungary and extolling its right wing regime, even proclaiming that country to be freer that the United States.

While understanding all that, I still  am more optimistic. People - Democrats, Republicans, and many of the rest of us - are standing up for the liberal order and resisting the authoritarians. I think we will be okay, and that neither major party will become Euro left wing or right wing. It will be a struggle, but it has almost always been a struggle. While liberalism is good for people who want to lead their private lives and let others do the same, it is bad for would be rulers with stars in their eyes. There are usually plenty of the latter hanging around, hoping to frighten and enrage people into giving them the power they crave. I think this time there will be enough Americans who won’t be buying explicit illiberalism from either the left or the right.  But I don’t think liberally minded people  should take that for granted. I don’t want to be wrong, and I don’t want it to be a closer shave than would be really comfortable.

 

 

Condign Punishment

Trump should have been impeached and speedily convicted after  January 6^th,2021 and before the inauguration, solely for his illegal and unconstitutional order to Vice President Pence to block certification of the election of Biden. That was the real attempted coup d’état that day. (There is a good case that some of his other actions after December 14^th also amounted to an impeachable attempted coup.) He is also guilty of stirring up his deluded followers to break into the Capitol -  though his probably insincere stipulation about staying peaceful probably would get him off the hook on charges of criminal incitement to riot. Regardless of that technical point, he is to blame for what happened. He should never have held the rally in Washington on that day, and he surely should not have sent large numbers of overwrought people over the Capitol to stop the “steal”.

Of course the rioters themselves, as distinct from the people who attended the rally but did not break into the Capitol, are also to blame. They should be punished for their crimes, but it should be condign punishment, not politically motivated excessive punishment. Their crimes were forced trespass, vandalism, petty larceny, and perhaps brawling with some cops.  There was no arson, systematic looting, murder, or massive destruction of property. Yet many of them are being denied bail, held in solitary, and generally treated more harshly than rioters in politically approved riots that did have arson, systematic looting, murder, and massive destruction of property and far more harshly than is usual for the crimes they committed.

This is wrong as a matter of equal justice. It is also stupid as a matter of politics.  It gives clear evidence supporting the claims by conservatives that the country now has a two tiered system of justice, with one set of rules for Democrats and their followers and one for everyone else. It also could lead to the rioters being seen as martyrs rather than ridiculous, unadmirable chumps who had been fooled by the man who is most guilty for what happened. The riot was outrageous, and he is the appropriate target for most of the outrage.