Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Fisking Michael Moore





I do this because I'm a mean Republican who hates, and hates, and desires nothing more than to increase the degree of suffering in those I have arbitrarily decided are my enemies, and to hear the lamentations of their women. Also because I'm about to tie my post-per-day record.



The original article is here, in USATODAY.



The GOP doesn't reflect America




In point of fact, it porously absorbs America into itself, only to wring itself out again, and then to rub suds of America all over the Kitchen of Freedom, and oh, I've gone cross-eyed...



Michael Moore, Filmmaker



NEW YORK — Welcome, Republicans. You're proud Americans who love your country. In your own way, you want to make this country a better place. Whatever our differences, you should be commended for that.





Sounds almost sincere, don't he? I'm sure in some way he thinks he is, and doesn't see any form of condescension in this.




But what's all this talk about New York being enemy territory? Nothing could be further from the truth. We New Yorkers love Republicans. We have a Republican mayor and governor, a death penalty and two nuclear plants within 30 miles of the city.




I'm glad to see Moore is falling away from the usual "Republicans are Hick Aliens in Boffo, Socko NYC" routine. Good for him. But perhaps he'd like to explain how nuclear power is a strictly Republican issue. Or perhaps he'd like to explain where these two plants he refers to are. I went looking for nuclear plants in the NYC area, found this site, but couldn't find any plants within thirty miles. The closest one was in Buchanan, NY, and that's 46 miles away. The next closest one is in Forked River, NJ (81 miles), which would not seem to have anything to do with the Republicanism of New Yorkers. Maybe he means the Secret Halliburton Plants that have been built with money from the Saudis, the North Koreans, and the Freemasons.


As for the death penalty, it was re-instituted under Republican Governor George Pataki. But it was first de-instituted under Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. One may argue that it's Republicans who support the Death Penalty more vigorously than democrats do, but public opinion polls have shown widespread support for capital punishment in every year since 1972. Presumably, that includes some Democrats.




New York is home to Fox News Channel. The top right-wing talk shows emanate from here — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly among them. The Wall Street Journal is based here, which means your favorite street is here. Not to mention more Fortune 500 executives than anywhere else.



You may think you're surrounded by a bunch of latte-drinking effete liberals, but the truth is, you're right where you belong, smack in the seat of corporate America and conservative media.





New York is home to every news Channel, and hosts most nationwide radio programs. Even PBS has an office in New York. That proves nothing. Surely Moore isn't arguing that every Fortune 500 exec is a Republican. Quick someone get the memo to Warren Buffet!




Let me also say I admire your resolve. You're true believers. Even though only a third of the country defines itself as "Republican," you control the White House, Congress, Supreme Court and most state governments.




Dare one ask, how that happened? Did we Reps, driven by our resolve, simply walk into the political branches of government one day, like student radicals did to President's offices in the 60's, and refuse to leave?


Or did the voters put them there, in spite of the fact that we're only a third of the country? Maybe we aren't a third of the voters?




You're in charge because you never back down.




That's funny, I could swear that I've read guys at NRO attribute the same character trait to the Democrats. Either one side is wrong, or, now bear with me here, both sides find the stubborn refusal of the other side to say "Gosh! You're Right!" incredibly irritating. Maybe that impression shouldn't be used as argument.




Your people are up before dawn figuring out which minority group shouldn't be allowed to marry today.



That's why today (but never before, mind you) we don't allow gays, tommorrow we won't allow asians, thursday it'll be the blind, and to kick of the weekend, just to be crazy, we won't let ourselves do it. It's called "strategery."




Our side is full of wimps who'd rather compromise than fight. Not you guys.



I can only guess this is sarcasm. If so, where's the kicker? Is the statement so ludicrous that it refutes itself? Or is the magic and holy word "compromise" what elevates your side?


I guess you'd prefer to compromise with the Saudis that you think are the real villains behind 9-11. Good luck with that.




Hanging out around the convention, I've encountered a number of the Republican faithful who aren't delegates. They warm up to me when they don't find horns or a tail. Talking to them, I discover they're like many people who call themselves Republicans but aren't really Republicans. At least not in the radical-right way that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Co. have defined Republicans.




And again, the reason that these non-Republicans are here to nominate a radical-right Republican is...?




I asked one man who told me he was a "proud Republican," "Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?"



"Well, sure," he said. "Who doesn't?"



I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.



"Absolutely," he replied.



"Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?"



"Um, no." The pause — I get that a lot when I ask this question — is usually because the average good-hearted person instantly thinks about a gay family member or friend.




So you ask a "proud Republican" three questions and discover that he desires clean air and water, favors equal rights for women, and is not a slavering homophobe. What do you conclude? That Republicans want the same things as the rest of us, and just disagree on the details? Noooooo...you conclude that this person, his claims to the contrary, obviously can't BE a Republican!




I've often found that if I go down the list of "liberal" issues with people who say they're Republican, they are quite liberal and not in sync with the Republicans who run the country. Most don't want America to be the world's police officer and prefer peace to war.




See? Since EVERYONE KNOWS that Republicans are warmongering savages who'd bomb a third-world nation as soon as look at them, people who think peace is better than war are OBVIOUSLY not Republicans! Why, it's so simple!




They applaud civil rights,



And here's more proof. Republicans never support civil rights. We must therefore conclude that Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and all the Republican congressmen who voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were, in fact, not Republicans.


Who was a Republican? Maybe...Woodrow Wilson...?




believe all Americans should have health insurance



And I think no American should have health insurance. Nope, none. That'll solve the problem...muhuhahahahahaha!


I don't suppose Mikey asked these people if they think the way to give all Americans health insurance is for the federal government to pay for it.




and think assault weapons should be banned. Though they may personally oppose abortion, they usually don't think the government has the right to tell a women what to do with her body.



Here's where I want Mike to show me his questionairre, and maybe reveal just how large his sample was. A lot of people who are opposed to "gun control" will say that they don't like "assault weapons," but I find it difficult to believe that he covered a wide swath of Republicans and met no NRA members. Likewise, no National Right-to-Life members.


Sure, it's very likely that there are plenty of Republicans who don't mind gun control and who don't mind abortion. As regards the latter issue, Republicans are a bit less doctrinaire than the other guys, as the careers of Pataki, Guiliani, and Schwarzenegger show. But when Moore claims that these views constitute the majority, I just don't believe him.




There's a name for these Republicans: RINOs or Republican In Name Only. They possess a liberal, open mind and don't believe in creating a worse life for anyone else.



Ideology is is an amazing thing. It renders someone capable of writing a sentence like that and not perceiving how utterly fatuous it is.



So why do they use the same label as those who back a status quo of women earning 75 cents to every dollar a man earns, 45 million people without health coverage and a president who has two more countries left on his axis-of-evil-regime-change list?



Hold the phone a second. Name me one instance where anyone in the GOP has said that women making less than men (which is a statistic I've always found specious, but that's an argument for another day), or that 45 million people without health coverage is a GOOD THING. Sit down for five seconds, breathe into a paper bag and allow this thought to cross your mind: MAYBE THEY JUST DON'T THINK MY SOLUTION WILL DO ANY GOOD OR IS WORTH THE COST.


And I seriously doubt that your conversations with these supposed "RINO's" led you to think that they disapproved of Bush' Axis-of-Evil Diplomacy. Hell, most Republicans I know favor P.J. O'Rourke's solution to Middle Eastern Conflict: "raze buildings, burn crops, sow the earth with salt, and sell the population into bondage," especially after a sufficient number of alcoholic beverages. Then they usually sober up and decide that giving Arab countries democracy so they can argue with one another instead of the rest of the world is the preferable alternative. If Mikey had asked anybody whether they supported removing Saddam Hussein from power, I'll bet he would have found a connection between the straw hats and Dubya.




I asked my friend on the street. He said what I hear from all RINOs: "I don't want the government taking my hard-earned money and taxing me to death. That's what the Democrats do."



Money. That's what it comes down to for the RINOs. They do work hard and have been squeezed even harder to make ends meet. They blame Democrats for wanting to take their money. Never mind that it's Republican tax cuts for the rich and billions spent on the Iraq war that have created the largest deficits in history and will put all of us in hock for years to come.




Because we weren't all in hock before that. Clinton balanced the budget for a few years (well, him and the presumably all-RINO opposition that, through rigid party discipline even though they know they don't agree with the leadership, somehow got voted into control of Congress), and that solved all our budget problems. The fact that prior to the Clinton years we hadn't had a balanced budget since the Johnson Administration (and that a weasely one) wasn't going to do us any financial damage, noooo....




The Republican Party's leadership knows America is not only filled with RINOs, but most Americans are much more liberal than the delegates gathered in New York.



How can that be, Mike? You've established that the delegates are all eco-friendly, gender-neutral, non-gay-hating, pro-civil-rights, pro-health-insurance-for-all, pro-gun-control, pro-choice, "normal" folk. I thought they were "quite" liberal.




The Republicans know it. That's why this week we're seeing gay-loving Rudy Giuliani, gun-hating Michael Bloomberg and abortion-rights advocate Arnold Schwarzenegger.



The fact that Guiliani was a national figure before 9/11, a celebrity afterwards, and the former mayor of the city where the convention is taking place; that Bloomberg is the current mayor of the city where the convention is taking place; that Schwarzenegger is a worldwide celebrity and the man who unseated the governor of the largest state in the Union by an unheard-of recall vote has nothing to do with it.


One might also keep in mind the fact that John McCain, who cannot fairly be described as gay-loving, gun-hating, or an abortion-rights advocate, also spoke the first night. There must be a reason for this somewhere...somewhere...




As tough of a pill as it is to swallow, Republicans know that the only way to hold onto power is to pass themselves off as, well, as most Americans. It's a good show.



This must be a motive similar to the one which caused the Democrats to spend their convention trying to convince the country that they actually gave a rat's ass about fighting terror. We shall see whose mask slips first.




So have a good time, Republicans. It could be your last happy party for awhile if all the RINOs and liberal majority figure it out on Nov. 2.



Figure what out, Mike? That real-life, actual Republicans, unlike the writhing cacodemons of your books and movies, are normal, bourgeois folks who wish no harm to anybody?


Why, you visionary you. It must have been like looking into Chapman's Homer.

Welcome to the Party, Pal...





I shouldn't be enjoying the hostage plight of the two French journalists, and when I think about it, I don't. Whatever the perfidity of Chirac's foreign policy, nobody deserves to have this done to them. It's not just desserts, it's not poetic satisfaction. It's just one more tiny little pool of hate that the Islamists have managed to bring into the world, one more group of people left feeling victimized and wounded. Now is the time to offer sympathy and an invitation to join our anti-terror reindeer games, even if such offer be rescinded.

It likely will be. There was talk of it being tied it to the "headscarves ban" in France, and that made sense to me. But reading today's Belmont Club made me think otherwise. It seems they're actually going to negotiate, and make someone else concede. So now really could be the time for Allawi to say, in the strictest possible terms, "Fuck off," or something more diplomatically suitable. And then the Elysee will call it "unacceptable", and then they will do...nothing.

Links Will Have Links





A day after I throw up Vodkapundit, he leads me to Infidel Cowboy, who's got the best summation of Kerry I've yet seen:


he is a flip flopping wishy washy no plan having say whatever is politically advantageous power hungry unserious about national security billionaire class warfare waging warmed over piece of Dukakis.


I think I'll stick him where Happy Fun Pundit used to be. Come to think of it, the linksheet could use some pruning....


UPDATE: There! Dropped some things, reorganized some things, and added Iraq the Model while I was at it. Good times...

Sully's Back, Day Two





Muuuuuuuch better. Not surprising that Guiliani and McCain would draw good marks, but I see a return of the thing that makes Sully's site worth reading: optimism. Hopeful Sully is always sharper and better than Angry, Despondent Sully. And he's aware enough to see that the winds are shifting, and the Swifties are part of that (though he has to insist that McCain's "old soldier" honor would never countenance such things, as though it's that and not his need to defend McCain-Feingold that has him mad at the 527's. A former guest of the Hanoi Hilton being sympathetic to John "VVAW" Kerry? Please).


'Course, the old boy would probably just say that this is his old reasonability coming back to fore. I don't know that he would be wrong.

Blog Triumphalism





It would seem that the bloggers have "forced" the Mainstream Media (or MSM, as the 'net-savvy would have it) to deal with the Swift-Boat issue. Such has been the running story for a week or more, and John Podhoretz encapsulates it in the New York Post today. He closes with expected grandeur, saying that "They (the "old" media) are worried the bell is beginning to toll for them, and they're right."


DUNH DUNH DUNNNNNNNNNNNNH!


Folks, don't you believe it. While getting the Swifties on TV and in newspapers was undoubtedley a triumph for the blogosphere, as was the bringing down of Trent Lott two years ago (with no help from this space, let the record show), it's a bit much to claim that we are somehow the "new" media.


The unspoken truth is that "we" really couldn't exist without "them." Take a look at Instapundit's postings on any given day. He links as much to articles from the "old" as the "new". More to the point, without press services and pro journalists on the ground handing in the facts, "we" would quickly run out of the raw material needed to fill our space. Let's not forget that this whole Swiftie story came from a TV ad.


As I mentioned some time ago, the purpose of the blogosphere is not to supplant, but to enhance and improve. We're no more going to get rid of newspapers than we are books. Our job, as independent content-promoters and commentators, is to watch the watchdogs, to question their motives, slam their tactics, force them to be what they claim they are: ideologically objective transmitters of important fact. In the blogosphere, we don't make the news, we make the news better.

Monday, August 30, 2004

Moron, Er, More on, Campaign Finance Reform.





Robert Samuelson agrees with me.

Oy.





Reading Andrew Sullivan on his first day back from vacation is becoming a yearly exercise in slapping one's forehead. How can any man not memorizing Moveon.org's press releases dismiss the Swifties as merely "jumping like bait on the end of Karl Rove's line"? Does the possibility that these guys might be telling the truth bear no weight at all? And after Bush endured the firestorm about his service, I don't see the injustice in Four-Month Kerry being made to answer a few questions, too. Especially since he's made those four months the lynchpin of his campaign. But no, it's all the work of Bush's "cronies." All that's missing here is a description of smoke-filled rooms.


But, when it comes to the role of the federal government in politics, I can't say I disagree with the guy. Sully says he wants to hear Bush talking about "reform of entitlements, a U-turn on public spending, staying the course on education reform, reforming the military, simplifying the tax code." Frankly, so do I (although how we're to "stay the course" on education while slashing public spending is beyond me, but probably not beyond the chaps at Cato Institute). And I have little doubt that Bush will mention exactly those things, or at least some of them.


But I don't think that's really what Sully wants. Nothing short of the complete repudiation of "Santorum, Dobson, and DeLay" will suit him, even if Santorum, Dobson, and Delay are all willing to vote for reforming the tax code, entitlements, the military, etc. Lacking that, we're all supposed to vote Kerry, who won't give Sully anything he wants (that includes gay marriage, Sully. Kerry won't touch that with a ten-foot cattle-prod).


I'm not thrilled with Bush, either. Declaring war on the 527's last week was but one of a slew of incidents that had me shaking my head. But I don't have a choice between Bush and Thomas Jefferson; I have to choose between a guy who wants, at varying degrees of priority, to fix all the things Sully and I think should be fixed, and will vigorously go after terrorism and terrorist states, and a guy who's demonstrated a talent for nothing beyond straddling issues like a rodeo clown. To vote Democratic this November is to vote for the same old, same old: special interests feeding off the federal teet, socialization of everything that isn't nailed down, and surrendering our foreign policy to the the whores that starved Iraq and are currently playing their fiddle while slaughter goes on in Sudan. To vote Republican is to vote for the possibility of change, even if that change should come from those who don't consider everybody that wonders if God's Word ought to be taken seriously a "theocon."


Time to choose, old boy. What is it you really want?




UPDATE: I'm not alone. For Vodkapundit, merely mentioning Sully's name brought forth a torrent of "Gah, I'm sick of him." Observe.


I do believe I'll put VP on the linksheet. But I'm-a keepin' Sully. Old time's sake and whatnot.




ONE MORE THING:: Sully also unfairly slams Zell Miller, for condeming LBJ's civil rights agenda in the 60's. Fair enough, but when he was governor of Georgia, Zell advised the state legistlature to drop the Confederate flag from the state banner, mentioning that Georgia was part of the CSA for but four of the 270 years of her existence. In 2001 they did so, and in 2003, they adopted the new flag. That sounds like repentance to me. So lay off, Sully.

Rock the Boat





So the Kerry Daughters show up at MTV awards, and get booed by the crowd. It's tempting to read more into this than it warrants. Me suspects that while I don't see much Kerry love among the MTV crowd today, this has more to do with the kids not wanting their event hijacked by lame politics.


Bill Clinton Kerry ain't. And 1992 this is not.

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Sisyphus is No Myth

Or,Remember How We Reformed Campaign Finance?



Fear the 527's.


They're out, and around, and "shadowy," sinister groups that take in money from donors and...brace yourself...take out ads on Television that crititcize government leaders! Dear Sweet Maker! Stop them before they get the children!


We are now faced with the situation where expressing your opinion on the airwaves (unregulated) is now grounds to be sued by the President of the United States. Yep, there's Bush, conferring with McCain via calls from Air Force One, making notes as to how these demons of private opinion can be reined in.


Scott McClellan emphasizes that we're not for making the 527's illegal, oh no. They simply need to be made "live under the same campaign finance restrictions (as hard money groups) because they are engaged in partisan activity." In other words, we're to make them pointless.


I seem to recall that the 2001 McCain-Feingold Incumbency Protection Act was to have solved this problem for us. I though everybody's donations were supposed to be regulated and declared and stamped and approved and pure as the driven snow now. Yet somehow clause 527 escaped their notice. No one wondered, in fine-tuning the great and glorious legislation that McCain-Feingold was, whether there might yet be any loopholes for soft money to slip through. Or perhaps they honestly believed that this loophole wouldn't matter. At any rate, we have a new demon to kill, and our politicians best speechifying will be called to duty.


Campaign Finance Reform is easily the most ludicrous cause of our age. Born of the will to keep politics for the little guy, CFR has instead become a mobius strip of legislation, defamation, and weaseling, doomed to failure because it stands contrary to economics.


The first rule of economics we all learn as children is that Things Cost Money. It's almost never discussed or even recognized, but so do all the things upon which a political campaign depends. Staff, computers, buttons, straw hats with tricolors, they all require cash consistent with market value to acquire. This money must come from somewhere. Half of us don't vote and don't care which guy wins. Most of the rest are too greedy after feeding ourselves, our families, our credit card companies, etc. to feel like giving money to either blue-suited platitude-dispenser. Sure, we'll pull levers on election day, but it's out of a sense of duty, or a profound distaste for one side or another, not a sense of immediate interest. We try to pick the guy we think won't screw things up deliberately.


So that leaves out a substantial number, even a majority, of the voting public. So who in their right mind is going to give somebody else money so that they can pay their little armies of pols and wonks and put images of themselves on during breaks of Survivor promising to Rid the World of Threats to the Bridge to the 21st Century that will Bring the Two Americas Together, plus give us health care?


You can call them those that have a direct stake in certain legislation passing or not passing. You can call them those that have the leisure to devote themselves to the byzantine nuances of legislation. I call them rich people.


Economic and political reality are thus wed. Yet we rightfully fear plutocracy. So politicians, in fits of idealism/power-lust, seek to lay a dam across the funding river, and let flow everything out in thousand-dollar droplets, so that nobody's money is more important than anybody else's. But the weight of interest is always too big for the dam, and ways around or through cracks are constantly sought.


Now let's take the Swift Boaters at their word, and assume that they are merely a group of vets who wish to publicly set the record straight about John Kerry's mini-tour of 'Nam. If they turn out to be right, the public could sour on Kerry, and so benefit the Bush Campaign. In the mind of CFR this constitutes and undeclared, unregulated campaign contribution to the Bush campaign. Hence, it cannot be.


Maybe the Swifties are connected to Dubya and the GOP, but let's look at the principle here: a private citizen, sufficiently fired up by public affairs to want to sway the minds of his fellow citizens, is no longer an examplar of democracy in action but a grave threat to truth and fair play. The freedom of political speech, to make one's voice heard, the one right without which all others are empty promises, is now to be regulated by the powers-that-be. And we all go along, because they know how to push our buttons, and who doesn't love doing something that promises to frustrate the rich (never mind the fact that they never seem to actually get frustrated. That's what money does)?


For his wickedness, the gods punished Sisyphus to monotony: to forever push a boulder up a mountain only to watch it fall again, and again, and again. For our jealousy and apathy, we seem to be similarly cursed: to forever put a paper tiger in a sea of serpents, watch the tiger disintegrate, and be too distracted by this drama to notice that we've forgotten how to kill snakes.


Monday, August 23, 2004

"Did You Know He Was In...?"

Or, How a Cliché comes full circle



When my friend Jon Gibbons used to write for our University Newspaper, he promised every week to write about a particular subject, and begin every week's column with "I know last week I said I would write about ________, but..."


I open with this because I'm beginning to feel that way myself. I wanted to do a week of film reviews last week, and wrote one. It's getting to the point where I can't bother apologizing about it, because you've heard it all before. Like Jon's gimmick, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy: whatever I say I'm going to write about this week stands the least likelihood of actually being published on this blog. The difference is Jon was making a joke out of it, and I'm just being inconsistent.


I also open with this because it seems a fit analogy for the fun Kerry's been having with the Swiftboat Vets of late. I mind a time when it all America, democrat and republican, could have a good laugh when anyone said, in perfect mimicry of a debating TV pundit "Did you know John Kerry was in Vietnam?" Of course, this time was the primaries, when the donkeys hadn't married Kerry and the elephants weren't all that worried about whoever got nominated. Now only the Bush crowd still makes this joke, to fading laughter, and the anti-Bush crowd (what, you think anyone's actually voting for Kerry?) either sniffs disdainfully or launches into a tirade about Bush's National Guard service.


Frankly, I'm undecided on the Swift Boats issue. I wasn't "in-country" in '69 (my father wasn't even old enough), so I really can't say with any degree of certainty whether Kerry earned his medals or not. My guts tell me the events have been dramatized, but I could be wrong.


But frankly, that's not the issue, and this post by new-linksheet-member Adiemantus tells why:


If we believe Kerry's statement from thirty years ago that the war in Vietnam had nothing to do with the preservation of freedom, much less with the defense of America itself, then how can we possibly take him at his word now when he brags constantly that he "defended this country" by fighting in that war? Isn't that exactly the kind of assertion that young John Kerry called "criminal hypocrisy." But old John Kerry has never retracted young John Kerry's claim that the war in Vietnam had nothing to do with the defense of America's freedom. To the contrary, when given the opportunity to explain what he meant back then, old John Kerry contends that young John Kerry's claims were "honest":


When you try to have it both ways, you must admit to the tension and speak bluntly about each side, or you will provoke one or both sides trying to nail you down. That's what's happening here. The banality of Kerry's Veteran stance is turning to a hunt for the true John Kerry. And, like this humble blog, whatever he says the story is, that's the least likely to be the story.


Tuesday, August 17, 2004

And It was Good?

Or, the Theological Implications of Seven




Let me begin as I often do, apologizing for my absence and vowing to do better. I've been taken up with my beloved, camping, and sick with a cold in the seven days since last I wrote. I plan to spend the rest of the week reviewing before I return to work and thence explore the wider world again. Normally I review music. This week, I will be reviewing film. I start with a grisly favorite.


Seven was the kind of film that was very popular among my age group when I was in college: it trafficked in stylish gloom, in an almost Nietzschean contempt for the human animal. It doesn't have a happy ending; in fact, it posits the notion that happy endings are false, an impossible dream (I wonder if Charlie Kauffman took the straw man he unravels in Adaptation from this film). In the world of this film, human nature is too weak and vacillating to obtain real virtue, and evil is too powerful to be stopped. Love is but Tragedy-in-Waiting. For other examples, see Swimming With Sharks, The Usual Suspects, Fight Club and the third Alien movie (Incidentally, if you haven't seen any of these movies, there will be spoilers ahead. Fair warning).


Movie buffs will note the common threads these films share with Seven: two of them also feature Kevin Spacey in the heavy role, and the two that don't were directed, as Seven was, by David Fincher.


Kevin Spacey may not be, as critics are wont to say, the greatest actor of his generation, but he's still pretty damn good. He hasn't done anything really interesting since American Beauty, so it's really too early to tell at this point. The body of work leading up to his Oscar turn fairly screamed "type-casting," but Spacey worked the material he was given. Buddy Ackerman, Keyser Soze, and John Doe are all different men, with different motivations, and Spacey plays them all differently. That they all, in the end, come down on the side of the devils, is not relevant: there are seven deadly sins, not one, and of the three bad guys Spacey plays in Swimming With Sharks, The Usual Suspects, and Seven, only one of them is truly conscious of the fact that he is evil.


As to Fincher, he too hasn't surfaced with anything impressive in the new millenium (2002's Panic Room is merely watchable). But he is a skilled director who knows how to use darkness and light, who is equally comfortable with the sardonic, frenetic MTV-style and the grander, more sedate mode of cinema storytelling. I am sure that when he finds a new kind of story to tell (and Panic Room may have been the beginning of such a search), he will tell it well.


He might consider looking back at Seven, which, though it might be far less popular than Fight Club, is a deeper film, far more nuanced, and in the end, far more humane, once one scratches the surface.


The premise is one that doubtless had sociopaths the world over slapping themselves on the forehead for not having thought of it first: a serial killing that takes the Seven Deadly Sins (Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Lust, Pride, Envy, and Wrath) as its modus operandi. Each victim is forced at gunpoint to engage in an activity to which they already show inclination, to the point of death (for the first crime, an obese shut-in is forced to gorge himself until his stomach literally bursts). The Sin is turned upon the sinner, and as the teaching goes, the wages of sin is death.


But, as Ford Prefect would say, that isn't the clever bit. The clever bit is the relationship that the killer, called, in a surfeit of irony, John Doe, develops with the two detectives assigned to capture him. At first, the two cops are police-movie stock characters: the cynical, hard-bitten, about-to-retire veteran William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), and the idealistic, loose-cannon rookie David Mills (Brad Pitt). And naturally, the two go through the don't-like-each-other/learn-to-deal-with-each-other/come-to-esteem-each-other character arc, with a few key variations. The first such variation is that what first comes to bind the two men together is the Mills' wife, played by Gwenyth Paltrow. She invites Somerset to dinner and strikes up a friendship with him, albeit out of lonliness. The relationship is completely platonic by any reasonable standard; Somerset dispenses fatherly advice and shares her discuss for the urban environment that Mills has moved her to.


Contempt for the City (which appears to be New York, but is never expressly states as such. It represents every-City, the City of Man) is a dominant theme in Somerset's conversation, and is the reason for his impending retirement. He tells Mrs. Mills, when she confesses that she is carrying David's baby, but is terrified to raise a child in the city, that he, in a similar situation, convinced his lover to abort the child. He is regretful, of course, but feels positively that his course of action was the correct one. The City of Man is too corrupt even to raise human children in it.


Mills, on the other hand, expressly begged to be transferred to the City. When pressed for a reason, he said that he hoped to "do some good," and while this answer is not articulate, his subsequent behavior in the film does not render it as shallow. Mills demonstrates every characteristic of a Crusader, a Templar Knight. He is volatile, contemptuous of legal niceties, and clings to a vision of reality that many, Somerset included, would view as simplistic. Bad guys are malignant worms, "crazies," not worth any more attention that it takes to stomp on them, and certainly undeserving of human respect (when John Doe is in custody, Mills seems to delight in playing Bad Cop, snidely asking the killer if insane people are aware that they're nuts).


As I said, eventually the two put their differences aside to catche John Doe. But they never become friends, as Cop Movie Tradition would have it; there remains a gulf between them. In between the fourth and fifth murders of the seven, the Lust and Pride killings, the men sit at a bar and consider their options. Somerset tries to convince Mills not to get his hopes up, tries to explain that the City will wear down his moral underpinnings, that the Apathy which rules it scours such neat categories as good and evil. Somerset tries to tell Mills he is naive, Mills responds that Somerset is spiritually weak:


I don't believe that you're quitting because you think these things. I think you want to think these things, because you're quitting. You want me to agree with you, to say 'yeah, it's all fucked up, we should all go live in a log cabin somewhere.' But I won't say that. I won't. I can't.


To this, Somerset has no reply.


No, Arthur, that isn't the clever bit either. The clever bit come after the Pride killing, when John Doe, bald and bloody, strides into the police station and gives himself up. He claims that the remaining two bodies of the seven are buried somewhere, and that he will sign a full confession if Somerset and Mills, and only Somerset and Mills, accompany him to recover them. Both detectives are skeptical, but agree that the case must be finished. They don wires, and, with a lone SWAT helicopter for backup, drive John Doe out of the city.


It's a ruse, of course. They stop in an open field full of high-tenstion power lines and are met by a delivery van with a package. Somerset intercepts the van and opens the package, while Mills guards John Doe, who confesses to Mills that he has become envious of Mills and the fruits of domestic bliss that Mills enjoys with his wife. So much so, in fact, that he condemns himself of the Deadly Sin of Envy. Somerset discovers, with horror, "what's in the box," and tries to get Mills to put his gun down. Mills figures out what's in the box (his wife's head) and, as John Doe requests, becomes Wrath. Somerset pleads with Mills not to play John Doe's game. Mills struggles with his shock and anger, and gives in, gunning John Doe down in full view of the SWAT guys in the helicopter. The film ends with Mills sitting, like a sated beast, in the back of a police car, while Somerset tells the captain that he won't be retiring after all. Cue the closing quote:


Earnest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place, and worth fighting for. I agree with the latter part.


Cut to black.


As I said, a gloomy story, almost Presbyterian in it's condemnation of the wicked Sons of Adam, and the inevitability of Judgement. And, as I said, a film happily recieved by the Tragically Hip of its time, feeding Hip Despair: The worlds f-ed up, the Titanic's going down, and there's nothing you can do about it, so drink up and dance merry. But a few years beyond the initial rush of the film's twist, and a few viewings on DVD, and more becomes apparent. To wit:




1. Most of the Seven Deadly Sins involve the excessive or disordered love of something which in itself is good, but becomes perverted by idolation. Gluttony, for example, is the disordered love of food and comfort, Lust the disordered love of sexual pleasure, Pride the disordered love of self, etc. The exception to this rule is Sloth, which is not founded on a surfeit of love, nor on a lack of it. Sloth, usually defined as laziness, is in reality Spiritual Despair, the lack of Hope. In the film, John Doe's Sloth victim is the only one who is not dead when the police find him.


Instead, he's all but a vegetable, having been strapped to a bed and fed a steady diet of narcotics and antibiotics. He has been reduced to the level of a beast, unable to communicate, hardly even able to move. Yet despite what the M.E. says, it seems that Sloth has suffered the least amount of actual pain, that he has in fact been drifting on a sea of drug-induced mindlessness. Of all John Doe's victims, he is the only one that is unaware of what has been done to him.




2. Before his discovery, Sloth is believed by the police to be John Doe himself. Only when the SWAT team invades Sloth's appartment to they discover another victim instead of the perp. The confluence of these facts is interesting, especially in the face of John Doe's rant on the nature of human sinfulness and the purpose of his murderous spree:


Only in a world this shitty, could you even try to call these people innocent and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, and in every living room, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example.




3. John Doe claims to be Envy, because he wants David's simple life and pretty wife. But this theme his utterly absent from the rest of the film, and pretty easy to see through as a means to convict David of Wrath. Indeed, based on the above speech, would it not be truer to say that he suffers from Spiritual Pride, an unshakeable belief in his own superiority and the vileness of those around him. We are quick, in this day and age, to denounce this sin, and so is the film. The victim of the Pride killing is a model, who, after John Doe slices offer her nose, is given the choice, call for help and live deformed, or swallow sleeping pills and die. She chooses the latter, and even the detectives have difficulty summoning sympathy for her. She is then shuffled off, as John Doe turns himself in.


But it seems as though John Doe is the true victim of Pride, and is typically unaware of it, choosing to engage in an act of projection in victimizing the model. Pride is usually given pride of place among the sins, as the one "by which the angels fell." Satan's overmastering sin, blotting out and corrupting all his supposed origonal virtues, was his pride. Is it not be appropriate that the murderer in the film is motivated by the same sin?




4. Wrath is the excessive response to a wrong done to one. For a police officer to gun down an unarmed man, even though that man has been discovered to have murdered the officer's wife, is excessive, however much we sympathize with the officer, however easily we would do the same thing in the same circumstance (I cannot, in good faith, protest that I would be above such a thing). As an officer of the law, Mills is expected to allow the law to take it's course (which would be easy, as John Doe confesses to his crime). And as Children of God, we are expected to allow God to punish the wicked.


But there is that sympathy. Who would do other than David? Who would be able to resist the urge to save the law its trouble? Who, presented with a firearm and the man who had slaughtered one's spouse, could refrain from giving that man justice?


And that is the nature of Wrath: the excessive or disordered love of Justice. What sin is more transparently present in our image of the crusading cop? Dirty Harry is Wrath personified, killing those that do wrong and apologizing to none for it, indeed sneering at all who do not do as he does as weak. We sympathize with Dirty Harry, we silently give assent to his way of doing things, because we long for justice, and will have Dirty Harry's justice rather than none at all.




5. Where does this leave Envy? To us, Envy seems a silly, almost laughable offense, "the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on." Envy seems the little brother of Pride, the father of Theft. Dangerous, perhaps, but a gateway sin, not really Deadly.


Perhaps not. Envy can also be construed as an excessive love of Justice, or an excessive love of an ill-concieved Justice. The elder brother of the prodigal son is Envy: why do I not have what my brother gets? Why am I not getting what I should have. Did that brother ever dream of having a fatted calf killed in a feast for his sake, before his father ordered that the lost son should get one? Probably not. Envy is the belief that others should have nothing that one deems them undeserving of having. It is holding to Justice as one narrowly percieves it, not as Justice truly is. It is easy to imagine John Doe asking himself why should all these sinners live, even prosper more greatly than John himself does? This line of thought may prove barren (John is apparently independently wealthy, and chooses to fester in the slime of the city), but it does show a possible way to classify the villain as he classifies himself.




6. So Mills is Wrath, and Doe might be Pride or Envy, but what is Somerset? Why is he in this movie, beyond the banal necessities of Crime Drama? He does not become Mills' friend, the two barely function as partners. He may vow at the end of the film to give Mills "whatever he needs" but the promise rings hollow: what can the old man do for the fallen Wrath? What purpose does he serve in the film?


There are two lines of thought, as I see them. One is that Somerset is to Mills what Intelligence is to Will, the one who should be master of the other, but often is not. Despite Somerset's wisdom and intellectual gifts, he often has a hard time convincing Mills of anything. Mills acts out of certitude, he labels a person or a situation, and acts accordingly, head down, fearing nothing. Somerset can get inside John Doe's head, can listen to him and appreciate the deviousness of his mind. But he is unable to restrain his young partner from taking the quick and easy path. How common it is that the Mind cannot restrain the Passions that burn within the hearts of humans.


The other possibility is darker yet, and refers back to some of my earlier points. First, Sloth's victim is first beleived to be the killer. Second, John Doe justifies his rampage by condemning our Apathy, our unwillingness to confront sinfulness, our despair of living in a clean world. In effect, the Sloth of the world is what caused these people to die. Jesus said that those who sin will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme against the Spirit will not be forgiven. In other words, those that refuse the gift of resurrection, either by refusing to believe they are sinners or refusing to believe they can be saved, will not be saved. Sloth is the real spiritual monster.


Now who's the character who doesn't believe that good can be done, that evil can be withstood?


Ironically, if this line of thought is followed, it is the only one that shows even a glimmer of hope. This is in a way appropriate, as the earliest words of John Doe, found with the Gluttony victim are "Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up into light" (Milton, Paradise Lost). Somerset's Sloth is most obviously illustrated in his insistence on retiring, despite his captain's cajoling that being a cop is what his purpose is. He despairs of defeating evil, and thus will not try any longer. But at the end of the film, he changes his mind. Mills' fall has apparently convinced him that he must continue. That the world may not be fine, but it is worth fighting for. Sloth is repudiated.


And if Sloth is repudiated, then the sermon has been preached, and heard. But this opens the path to whether John Doe is truly an instrument of God. And even asking such a question is an act I will not, at this time of night, dare.


Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Hooray for Cosmetics!





Made a few changes to the site. The comments now seem to be available: and my rear end thus wide open for attack. Go on...make it hurt.



Don't know if I've got my archive links taking over the page issue fixed yet. I'll probably have to publish this post to find out.

UPDATE: No. Maybe I'll do like Volokh and stick my archives underneath my links. Ah, well...



Friday, August 06, 2004

Doh!





This guy beat me to the punch on the Phillipine war analogy. That'll learn me.


But he left quite a few things out. There's still hope for my laziness.


Thursday, August 05, 2004

Adding to Aristotle, via Machiavelli



Or, Begging Some Ph.D. to Give Me the Mockery I Richly Deserve



Recently I picked up at my favority little hole-in-the-wall book and music shop a copy of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which I will analyze next week, and a compendium of Machiavelli, containing both The Prince, and his longer and less famous work, The Discourses. I'd read the former in high school, and had somehow mislaid my copy. The latter book I'd heard of but never read, and have only just skimmed the first two chapters when something occurred to me.



Attempting to describe the origin of the Roman Republic, Machiavelli harkens back to an idea loosely derived from Aristotle, that their are six kinds of government. Three of these are "good" in the sense of being moderate and devoted to providing justice and good order: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (which Aristotle would have called polity). The evil twins of these forms are the three bad kinds: monarchy devolves into tyranny, aristocracy devolves into oligarchy, and democracy devolves into chaos and mob rule (which Aristotle, seemingly just to make it confusing, referred to as democracy). Aristotle seemed to think that a system of government which mixed these forms would be most stable, and Machiavelli seems to be agreeing, and, if I guess at his gist right, will be arguing that the Roman Republic was just such an attempt.



I remember ideas of this kind from poly-sci classes in both high school and college, and remember in particular one professor pointing out that the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1787 were working from this premise. Thus, our constitution was a practical experiment in "mixed" government: the seperate executive branch represents monarchy, the Senate represents aristocracy (or so it was originally envisioned, when state legislators elected senators, not the people), and the House of Representatives represent the masses.



All of which makes the average American kid pat himself on the back for belonging to the nation that had such wise founders, but as one ages, one sees the cracks in the system. For one thing, the Senate has been as subject to the popular winds as the House since 1913, and even when it wasn't, does being elected by the representatives of the people at the state level really seperate them from the vox populi enough to be considered aristocratic. And given the science that gerrymandered construction of "safe" congressional districts in the House, one could hardly be faulted for suggesting that the Senate is actually more responsive to shifts in popular winds. If you doubt me, consider this statistic, while control of the Senate has changed hands 5 times in the past 24 years (in 1982, 1986, 1994, 2001, and 2002) control of the House has changed only once in the same period.



It also used to bother me that these analyses always left out the judicial branch. The Founders may have intended the third branch to be the weakest, but it's difficult to say so now. In fact, if De Toqueville was right and America's aristocracy is the legal profession, I would say that the black-robed savants of the Supreme Court are the true grandées of the land. They command, and even the President obeys; after all, in most cases the President belongs to their class, just as any King was also a nobleman.



Satisfying as such impertinence is, it is not the true goal of my thoughts here. Machiavelli seems to be suggesting that Aristotle's polity = our republic and I submit that such ought to be considered the fourth kind of good government, seperate from democracy. This will do much in helping to explain the differences between the presidential and the parliamentary system. In England, the official executive (the Queen) is weak, practically a cypher, while true executive power derives from control of the legislature, which, because of tighter party discipline, results in greater control of policy by the voters.



In their elections, British subjects vote less for a specific man, than one of two or more party platforms, and the party that wins usually enacts that platform with a minimum of fuss, by majority vote. Our political parties are much less disciplined, and our committee systems much more convoluted, so legslative defeats are common for the party in power. Therefore, in spite of the fact that Britain is officially a monarchy, I would describe it as functionally a democracy (in the good sense), whereas despite the democratic trappings of the American goverment, I would describe it as functionally a mixed government, or a republic.



But we have a conundrum here. For each of Machiavelli's three good forms, there is a bad form. Anyone aquainted with the history of Rome knows that her Republic did not last forever, but slipped away from it, its forms preserved (the Senate of Rome continued to meet, in various guises, into the Medieval period) but its substance utterly transformed. Similarly, 200 years past 1787, and there is virtually no one in America who believes that the government created in her Constitution is a flawless example of "good" government. Republicans believe as a matter of course that something has gone wrong since the founding, and Democrats believe that the system requires constant revision to meet the needs of succeeding generations (the "living Constitution"). So what is the republic's version of tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule?



Let us return, as Machiavelli did, to Rome. When the Republic died, it did not backslide into the hereditary monarchy of the Tarquins. The Emperors of Rome sometimes inherited their positions, but more often they fought for them or were appointed to them by their unrelated predecessor. In the struggle between the nobility and the commoners of Rome, the winner was the army that served them both. It became the undisputed emperor-maker, and very soon after Augustus became a law unto itself, often beyond even the power of the emperor to control. However, the army, far from being an exclusive club, was open to all citizens and (later on) non-citizens. Do your time and earn your place and you too would ride the gravy train, and if popular enough, even stood a chance of calling yourself Caeser.



What do we call an institution that purports to be servants of the people but really holds power well beyond their official task, and really pursues its own ends, and rewards members not for serving the public good but for playing the game by the institutions own rules and traditions?



I submit that the best term is found in this editorial by British historian Paul Johnson in the July '03 issue of Forbes. Chastizing European anti-Americanism as cultural racism as ignorant as anything Americans are accused of being, Johnson writes:



The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy. Italy and Germany have had democracy only since the late 1940s; Spain, since the 1960s. France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes. Elements of the French system are being imposed throughout the EU, even in countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have long practiced democracy with success. In a French-style pseudodemocracy, intellectuals have considerable influence, at both government and street levels. In a true democracy, intellectuals are no more powerful than their arguments.


A few problems: Johnson has a different viewpoint on American democracy than I do (although his is worth considering). Also, I don't know if his take on European democracy is wholly, or in any part, just (but I suspect there is some truth to it). But, if accurate, his description of the diplomatic elite of the EU undermining voter intent in Europe partly mirrors the military elite that undermined Rome's electoral processes.



So we come back to our question. What do we call it when the servants of a republic become its masters, when the rules of holding office and the authority of the office-holder takes precedence over the popular will that ought to guide a mixed government?



France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes.


France's position is unique in Europe: alone among her neighbors, her President wields actual authority, and is seperately elected from the legislature. She is thus, by my definition and her own, a republic. So, if Johnson has described her situation accurately (a description which one could also apply to the federal government of the United States), what do we call her? What is the bad form of the republic?



I think bureaucracy works just fine. If you have a better term, I'm all ears.





Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Schadenfreude

Or, Fuck you, Lady, that's what stairs are for... *



Last night, after meeting with my Shakespeare reading group, a few of us stayed over and watched Jackass: the Movie on TMC. Four guys, two gals. The guys, of course, enjoyed every minute of it. The girls, less so, shaking their heads often declaring the whole exercise stupid (duh), the same way most women will when forced to sit through a Three Stooges movie. I enjoyed it greatly, but rather less well, and rather more guiltily, than an average episode of MXC. This last, for those unaware is a Japanese import called Most eXtreme elimination Challenge, in which average japanese folks bang themselves up battling ostentatiously silly yet painful obstacle courses. For some reason watching the above is absolutely hilarious to me, and am fully aware that, when the people aren't Japanese, it's less so. Probably because, looking different from me, I don't identify with them as much, don't feel empathy for their physical discomfort, and can therefore enjoy comedy of the pratfalls.



I'd venture that the same would be true of people of any race not my own, which may be why Jackass didn't sit as well with me. Then again, the Three Stooges are white, and watching them slap the crap out of each other is just as funny. Maybe I didn't like Jackass quite as much because it's grosser: involving eating a snowcone soaked with piss and things of that nature. Then again, I seem to recall laughing when that happened. I don't know...



What is it, this schadenfreude, this deliberate enjoyement of another's pain and misfortune? I suspect it's quite closely related to the humor impulse, which some anthropologists say, may have been an early threat-denial system for humans, a way of saying "It's okay, don't worry about it" to the rest of the tribe. I also suspect that, contra the ladies watching the movie last night, that women have the same impulse, but, as in all things, it's more emotionally oriented, whereas men are more physically oriented. Men love physical humor; women less so. But women will get sadistic enjoyment out of torturing the girl that doesn't belong; not physically, but emotionally and psychically. Women know how to get inside someone else's head, and when engaged in combat, they'll work to that advantage without much in the way of remorse.



Then again, when Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher sent to jail for sleeping with her 12-year-old student, got out of prison this morning, there were crowds waiting outside, and among them were teenage boys waving signs that said "I'm 18, Baby" and "Take Me Home". Mean, not physical, but funny. Approve or disapprove?



This analysis is getting nowhere. Where's Camille Paglia when I need her?



*"Avenue Q" reference

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Music Review: The Hives -- Tyrannosaurus Hives


Or, How to Serve the Master Without Eating Bugs


The moment that made me realize that Rock really was coming back into fashion was the moment I first saw the video to "Hate to Say I Told You So" by the Hives. It was perfection itself: perfect guitar riff, bass solo (!), Howlin' Pelle Almqvist screaming and preening and carrying on like Mick Jagger circa 1966. I liked the aesthetic of the video, too: Blazing white background, matching suits for the band, freezing members in mid-jump when their instruments dropped out. It was the best video I'd seen in years, and the best new song I'd heard in years, and it made me do something I hadn't done in years, if ever: run out and by a CD based solely on a music video.

Holding that CD in my hand made me see the direction the Hives had taken with the retro genre: Play like the Sonics, look like N'Sync: Bright and shiny and electronic. An Exploding Plastic Inevitable for the new Age. Sure, I dug the Strokes and the Stripes and Los Vinos for what they brought to the picture, and probably agreed that Jack n' Meg were the most artistically daring with their soulful, minimalist bump n'grind. But Pelle and the Boys had the "Makes Me Jump Up and Down" award, down pat.

That was then. A few years later, and how fare the New Rock Quadrifecta? The White Stripes knocked a lot of socks off with Elephant, a record that improved on White Blood Cells in the quality of the songs and the satisfying way they click together. The Strokes, more cautiously perhaps, followed up Is This It with Room on Fire, also an improvement, but far less obviously so. The Vines opened with a great deal of promise on their first album, but have come apart, as yours truly predicted, on Nicholls' drug issues and are presently swirling the drain. The Hives are the last in with their sophomore effort, and in Tyrannosaurus Hives, have given us what amounts to an enigma.

The first time I listened to it in my car, I was frankly disappointed with the first half of the CD. It sounded like them, but they sounded almost neutered, trebly and sparky, with none of the balls-to-the-wall explosion that propelled the first album. It wasn't until "B is for Brutus" that I found a song that stayed with me longer than it's playing time, and it wasn't until "See Through Head" I found a song I enjoyed, and it wasn't until "Diabolic Scheme" that I found a song I'd call good. After those three songs, everything melded slowly back to inconspicuousness. Aware as I was that the band was planning a more severe departure for this album, and aware as I was that their new label, Interscope, had balked, I concluded that the boys had taken the path of least resistance, got a few "different" songs on the record for the critics, and made the rest a half-assed retread of Veni Vidi Vicious.

Yet for some reason, I couldn't stop listening. At first it was for the three songs I'd deemed worthy, then I decided that the new single "Walk Idiot Walk" wasn't too bad, then I started bobbing my head to the other songs as well. Somehow, subconsciously, they'd wormed their way in and had their way with me. And here I sit at the keyboard, unable to explain how this happened.

When in doubt, I go to the cover art. The Hives have apparently decided that the best background for their slick ties-and-spats look is a sickly, scaly green (some connection here, no doubt, with the "Tyrannosaurus"). Instead of a picture of a band, they go for a drawn slight-caricature (others have noted that it makes Pelle look like a Clockwork Orange-era Malcolm McDowell). It looks deliberately ugly, and not in the typical punk-rock, it's-so-ugly-it's-cool way, but rather in the way that makes you not want to look at it. Why on earth would the Hives, who have made a name for themselves in cheery self-idolization ("This is your new favorite band" bellowed the sticker on their first album), go out of their way to mess with their image? It's not as though they've stopped bragging about themselves. Word has come quietly through the rock press that they're the best live band of all the NRQ. So what's the deal? Are they actually disowning their second album, as a label-ruined monstruosity?

I found an answer where I first found joy, in "Diabolic Scheme," a murky exercise in feedback and gloom. "They sound like vampires," I thought, and then it hit me. The Hives are vampires, the new vampires of rock. That is not to suggest any affinity with Alice Cooper/Misfits horror-core burlesque. I'm thinking of the vampire in an Ann Rice novel, shiny and beautiful and masterful, and empty inside. They raise undead sounds (channelling Jagger a hell of a lot better than Jagger himself, these days) to precise, almost machine-like precision (can you imagine these guys jamming?), and use it to say... nothing in particular (I haven't read the lyrics in the liner notes, have you?). They even dress like vampires, right down to the spats, eschewing capes probably out of diligence to the garage-rock aesthetic and not wanting to evoke the aforesaid Alice Cooper.

I'm fully aware that all this may be the result of too much caffeine, but I think it makes all the pieces click into place. How else to explain their aristocratic relationship with critics and fans ("Look into my eyes...We are your new favorite band..."), or the mystery man who actually writes the songs? As Dracula with Renfeld, so the Hives with Randy FitzSimmons. And like real vampires, they don't tell anyone, leaving only certain encodes signs for the wary. They hide their true face behind a shiny mask, sucking your twelve dollars away, and leaving you feeling wierd, drained, and for some reason hungry to repeat the experience.

Or was that all of mass culture? I get so confused sometimes.