The Sound of the Crowd

Article from Salon.com’s A&E page about how some people are trying to “read” the trilogy as an allegory for Catholic, evangelical, conservative values. Makes you wish for the good old days when Sauron was just supposed to be Hitler and the One Ring weapons of mass destruction, doesn’t it?

Key ‘graph:

“Though he detested these interpretations, Tolkien offered a truce by drawing a line between “allegory,” which placed responsibility on the author, and “applicability,” which left readers free to find parallels of their own without pretending to read the author’s mind.”

Carl Anderson, the singer/actor who played Judas in the film of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” has died of leukemia at 58. I’m a fan of that piece/film, and especially Anderson’s character and performance, so I thought I’d take note of it here. He had also understudied the part, to Ben Vereen, on Broadway and had a schmaltzy hit single in 1986 with Gloria Loring. Other than that and a part or two in films, his career seems to have come down to revival after revival of JCS. Which is too bad, but on the other hand, better than some.
Well done, Judas…

This is a fine how-do-you-do.

Eric Alterman, author of that fine book “What Liberal Media,” answers Andrew Sullivan.

Skip, Skip, Skip to my Heller

The Washington Post has a story about how even those who don’t support gay marriage aren’t wild about amending our constitution. It contains this gem of a ‘graph:

Brian Trader, 25, of Stafford said he doesn’t think the Constitution is the place to make such changes. Trader, a Republican, said same-sex marriage shouldn’t enter into presidential politics. “I don’t believe in gay marriage, but it doesn’t affect me at all,” he said.

Further: According to a story in the LA Times, my home state is pretty evenly divided on the idea of an amendment. But there’s also a question of how much this debate will hurt or help either party. Here the notable ‘graphs are these:

“Democratic political consultant Bill Carrick said that, although the public’s opposition to gay marriage might present a problem for his party this year, the support for gay rights positions among younger people suggested that focusing too heavily on the issue could come back to haunt the GOP in the future.”

and

“Although most Democrats opposed such a constitutional amendment, a sizable portion, 36%, did not. Republican political consultant Dan Schnur suggested that those numbers indicated same-sex marriage was the type of moral issue that could splinter Democratic support, particularly if it continued to receive prominent publicity.”

Still further: But, why a Constitutional Amendment? And why now? Funny you should ask. All together, now: Ohhhhhhhhh.

Conservative columnist Jon Podhoretz was the guest on The Daily Show tonight. Podhoretz is something of a bete noire of mine; for now suffice it to say I consider him to be a meanspirited twit (for more, see my forthcoming West Wing book review in Ink19).

On the show, attempting to argue against what he called the liberal caricature of Bush as an idiot, he mentioned two recent columns in Time, by Joe Klein, and on MSNBC (and in Newsweek) by Jonathan Alter. Here’s the thing. That’s a drastic oversimplification of what each column says. See for yourself.

Elsewhere on his blog, the aforementioned Mark Evanier announces plans to offer live commentary there on the Oscars sunday night. Is this something any of you would like to see me do? It looks like it could be fun, and I’ll undoubtedly have a few things to say after the fact, but does anyone really care?

As you’ll have heard by now, Bush is officially backing a gay marriage ban. So far, we have thoughts from a couple of our favorite bloggers around here, Mark Evanier & Josh Marshall.

Favorite ‘graph, from Marshall:

“The support among conservatives has taken some real hits. The White House has decided that the long-predicted rising economy won’t float them through this election. The situation in Iraq looks wobbly and likely to get worse before it gets better. So deprived of the ability to run on his record he’s decided to save his political hide by trying to tear the country apart over a charged and divisive social issue which is being hashed out through the political process in the states.

It’s his dad and the flag burning amendment all over again.”

As I’ve implied once or twice before, my mother is a Dennis Kucinich supporter. I’ve bounced around between a number of candidates, finally ending up, like most liberals of my ilk, with Johns Kerry & Edwards. As I’ve also said before, of the serious candidates the one I probably agreed with most was Howard Dean, but I never quite warmed to him (again, like most liberals of my ilk). But anyway, my mother and I have these occasional discussions about Kucinich, most recently, my question of why is his campaign any less vain and wrongheaded than Ralph Nader’s? So she sent me this story, from Alternet, in response.

“From house parties to homemade signs, Kucinich has asked his supporters to reach out to their communities and have a conversation about values. He has brought new activists into the political fold. He has not attacked the other candidates; he has only pointed out his differences with them. He has not threatened to start a new party or to trash the nominee.”

To which my reply is: Prove it. Show me numbers. This looks good in theory, like the very idea of Kucinich’s campaign, but I’m skeptical as to how it actually played out in the world in which we live. I’m putting this out publically because I know one or two others of you are or were Kucinich supporters as well. Is there any proof that Kucinch’s campaign has done what his supporters what to believe it has?