A surprise movie hit this summer does not feature superheroes or spies or cops. It stars two dead intellectuals, known for their prodigious literary output and their skill at oratorical combat. The Best of Enemies is a documentary about the ten debates in 1968 on ABC News between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal.

ABC News, the perennial third place ratings finisher back  when there were three broadcasters, decided to gamble on a new format for covering the political conventions. Rather than providing comprehensive gavel-to-gavel coverage, the network offered just a few hours of coverage each night, followed by a debate between the two eloquent spokesmen for the Left and Right.

According to the movie poster, the Buckley-Vidal confrontation was an epochal event: “2 Men. 10 Debates. Television would never be the same.” A.O. Scott, in the New York Times, agrees:

There’s no doubt that the debates were a harbinger of cable-news shouting matches to come, as television journalism transformed itself from democracy’s buttoned-up superego into its snarling id.

Another commentator considers the debates “a turning point, the moment when the networks, the press, the pundits, and even average Americans first realized their taste for political bloodsport. A terrible beauty had been born ….”

The rhetoric evokes Alamogordo, as if the critics had just witnessed the first terribly beautiful mushroom cloud. Just what happened to justify such hyperbole? Continue reading →

The New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has decided not to appeal the penalties imposed on his team for the so-called “Deflate-gate” scandal. That leaves Tom Brady alone to pursue his appeal later this month of the four-game suspension imposed on him.

We’ll get to Tom Brady in a moment.

But first, put yourself in right field with one out in the top of the ninth inning, a runner on second, and your team leading by one run. The batter hits a line drive your way, and you race toward it, diving, and landing over the ball — a fraction of a second late. You’ve trapped it. The runner on second, with an unobstructed view, sees the trap and runs to third. What do you do?

Sprawling on the grass, you hold your glove aloft with a wondrous “hey, look, I caught it!” expression. Then you get to your feet and throw to second, doubling up the runner and ending the game.

You’ve cheated. You know it. The runner knows it. Possibly most of the cheering fans know it. But as long as the umpire doesn’t know it, you are a hero. The opposing manager is on the field screaming, but his anger is directed toward the umpire, not toward you. If roles were reversed, he would have expected his outfielder to do exactly the same.

The detour illustrates a point. In sports, there is cheating – and then there is cheating. Much of what we call cheating is not only accepted, it is admired. Continue reading →

The Americans, an FX drama series about a Russian spy couple posing as seemingly normal suburbanites in Reagan’s America, is the “best show” on television, according to the Washington Post.  In 2013 and 2014, it was nominated for Critics Choice TV Awards for best dramatic series, best actor, and best actress. One critic applauded: “Not since The Wire worked its last corner has a drama series been as outright binge-able and richly satisfying.”

Well, cotton candy is outright binge-able and richly satisfying to sugar addicts. But no one would mistake cotton candy for serious food.

No one should mistake The Americans for serious television. Although co-stars Kerri Russell and Rhys Matthews — who are romantically involved in real life — deliver consistently compelling performances, the show is the television equivalent of junk food.  Its depiction of the Cold War between East and West is worse than worthless; it is dangerous to the mental health of viewers, particularly the distressingly large number of young viewers who get their history from television.  They will learn about as much about the history of the Cold War by watching The Americans as they would learn about the Ice Age by watching The Flintstones.   Continue reading →

Watching The Theory of Everything, the biographical film about Stephen Hawking, one wonders: why do geniuses behave like jerks?

There is the jerkiness portrayed in the movie. In 1990, after 25 years of marriage to the devoted Jane Wilde, Hawking informed her that he was flying to America with Elaine Mason, his therapist. He has long since left the therapist for whom he left his wife.

There is also jerkiness unmentioned in the film, but widely known. In May 2013, Hawking, after initially accepting an invitation to speak at the President’s Conference organized to mark the 90^th birthday of Shimon Peres, changed his mind and declared that he would not participate in any academic or cultural exchanges with Israel. He announced his support for the BDS – boycott, divestment, and sanctions – movement.

Now there are many reasons why ordinary people should oppose BDS. First, Israel, whatever its faults, is the lone democracy committed to individual rights in the Middle East, and therefore deserves support, not isolation. Second, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have  greater freedom to protest and greater access to independent courts than any other Muslims in the Middle East. It makes no sense to boycott Israel and give a pass to the oppressive regimes ruling Syria, Iran, or Turkey, to name a few. Third, those attending international cultural and academic events tend to be the very Israelis most opposed to their government’s policies. BDS, ironically, undermines the Israelis most committed to change and entrenches those most resistant.

But these are reasons for ordinary people. Stephen Hawking is not an ordinary person. He has an added reason to oppose BDS. Hawking suffers from ALS, which has left him unable to utilize any muscles functions except for his cheeks, whose movement is monitored by a sensor attached to his spectacles. He sole means of communication is through a computer Intel Core  i7-based communication system, which runs on a chip designed in Israel.

If BDS were universally adopted, as Hawking wishes, the very technology he  relies upon to communicate would be unavailable to him. Hawking, a supposed champion of logic, thus takes the absurdly illogical position of opposing the same kind of exchange that allows him to communicate his opposition in the first place.

A first grader would blush at the internal inconsistency of such a position. Continue reading →

Benjamin Franklin supposedly observed that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.  Super Bowl XLIX is proof that God exists and roots for the Patriots.

We can now close the book on “Deflate-gate,” the non-scandal about the supposed under-inflation of the footballs used by the New England Patriots in their January 18 victory over the Indianapolis Colts. For we now know the cause of the reduced air pressure.

It was not Tom Brady. It was not Bill Belichick. It was not the anonymous locker room guy. It was not even Ben Affleck or Matt Damon or the many others who bravely stepped forward to take responsibility.

God deflated the footballs.  Continue reading →

How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part that laws or kings can cause or cure.
Samuel Johnson

In case you missed it, Silicon Valley has a “diversity problem.” That, at least, is the view of the New York Times, which published an editorial earlier this month, lamenting the fact that most Silicon Valley employees are white and Asian men. “Among technical employees,” the Times noted, “few are women, and even fewer are Latino or African-American.” The editorial noted that there is “a lot the government needs to do” to address the issue, and it urged the technology industry to “start tackling its diversity problem right now,” implying that if the industry doesn’t fix problem, the government will.

We probably won’t read about it in the Times, but there are even more egregious “diversity problems” throughout the economy. For once you assume, as the editorial does, that any divergence between the demographic profile of the population at large, and the demographic makeup of a particular industry, represents a “problem” – why then, in the words of a famous Broadway hustler, “we’ve surely got trouble, right here in River City.”

If anyone wants to “start tackling a diversity problem right now,” they should start with the Cambodians. This ethnic group comprises 0.09% of the national population, less than one tenth of one percent. Yet here in California, 90% of the doughnut shops are owned by Cambodians. In other words, Cambodians are one thousand times over-represented in the doughnut industry, at least by the logic of the Times. That means that whites, blacks, Latinos, and all of us who are not Cambodian are dramatically under-represented in the doughnut business.

Continue reading →