Check out this eight-minute interview with my friend David Gordon reminiscing about Salma Hayek, Robert Novak, and Tony Stark. Or something like that.
(Check out also his memories of Jason Robard and his discussion of five books by Tibor Machan.)
Archive | December, 2008
Keith Olbermann’s Bogus Journey
I hate to be in the position of defending Bill O’Reilly, but Keith Olbermann’s rant against him last night was pretty shabby.
Olbermann thought he’d caught O’Reilly in a contradiction because in a recent interview O’Reilly called himself a supporter of the separation of church and state, while in an earlier statement O’Reilly had, in Olbermann’s words, “called the separation of church and state bogus.”
No, he didn’t. What O’Reilly actually said (as was clear from the excerpt Olbermann provided) was that he didn’t buy the “bogus separation-of-church-and-state argument” against the display of Christmas symbols and such on state property. In other words, it wasn’t the separation thesis itself that O’Reilly was calling bogus, it was the inference from that thesis to a specific policy conclusion.
Now as it happens I think O’Reilly was mistaken in calling that inference bogus. Still, it was clearly the inference and not the premise that O’Reilly was calling bogus, and so Olbermann’s triumphant crowing over O’Reilly’s supposed inconsistency was either dishonest or sloppy.
I still prefer Olbermann to O’Reilly, but at some point during the campaign he really jumped the shark for me.
Cato Institute Publishes Leftist Screed!, Pars Sexta
My final contribution (a brief and hopefully eirenic valediction) to the Cato-sponsored portion of the discussion is up at Cato Unbound.
In other news, Peter Klein has responded to my earlier response, and P. M. Lawrence has counter-responded. I’ll have more to say anon.
Vintage Bondage
Take a look at this scene from Doctor No.
What’s the most remarkable thing about this scene? The fact that Bond is obviously scared shitless.
How often have we seen him that way? In most Bond movies he’d be cool as a cucumber, disposing of the threat calmly and with a quip (or, if it’s the Daniel Craig Bond, with swift brutal efficiency and no quip – but no fear either).
But this scene was from the very first* Bond movie, before the films had drifted as far from the books as they eventually would. I’ve recently started reading through the original Bond books, and the James Bond of the novels is a far cry from the supercool superhuman of most of the movies (and almost as far a cry from the ice fury of the recent movies) – instead he’s a fallible, flawed, psychologically messed-up human being who pops pills, whimpers in his sleep, irritates people (I mean unintentionally), and doubts the morality of his missions. Oh yeah, and he looks like Hoagy Carmichael.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a Bond movie that was actually based on the books. But I’m not holding my breath.
* Movie trivia fact: okay, strictly speaking the first Bond film was a low-budget 1954 tv-movie of Casino Royale (unconnected with either the 1967 spoof or the 2006 reboot). But hardly anybody’s seen it (I have – they’re not missing anything).
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