Tuesday, May 20, 2003

What's My Beef?

At the moment, it's book reviews written by highly-interested parties. Wasn't there a belief years ago that a formal review should be penned by someone who doesn't have a horse in the race? And if so, what happened to that policy?

The new book by Clinton cohort Sidney Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars, is presently being reviewed all over the place — and rarely by someone who doesn't have a vested interest in the book being totally believed or disbelieved. A large part of the work calls the New York Times coverage of Whitewater inept and dishonest...and the New York Review of Books assigned one of the men behind that coverage to review Blumenthal. (He did a pretty poor job of discrediting it and, as Joe Conason notes here, made some amazing errors in his review. Here's a link to that review.) The New York Times commissioned two reviews — one by another reporter whose coverage is criticized by Blumenthal. The New York Observer assigned Andrew Sullivan, a former editor of Blumenthal's who has invested a lot of column space perpetuating a version of the Clinton scandals that Blumenthal's book seeks to debunk. Vanity Fair is running as what may or may not be its only review a piece by Christopher Hitchens, who is called a drunk and a backstabber in the book — also a man who has wrapped a lot of his career around a lot of "facts" that Blumenthal says are not so. Slate ran two reviews today — one by Michael Isikoff, who is soundly criticized in the book; the other by Timothy Noah, who is a close friend of Blumenthal's.

Why does it have to be one or the other? I'm not saying these folks shouldn't have had the opportunity to write about the book and rebut whatever they felt warranted rebuttal. But wouldn't it be nice if some of these differing versions were evaluated by parties that weren't already wedded to one in particular? Who couldn't be accused of looking to settle scores or defend their own work?

I always come to these disagreements with the assumption that both sides are at least somewhat full of manure; that there are fuzzy memories and distortions and outright fibs emanating from all directions. Someone who has a stake in the matter may write with more outrage or passion but their reviews pretty much come down to "Don't believe a word of this dishonest book" or "Believe every word of this candid account." You'll get the occasional admission of one or two minor points just to look reasonable, but otherwise it's all or nothing. There is no one to impartially weigh whatever evidence exists and tell us which portions of the book stand up to scrutiny and which don't.

Once upon a time, that's what a reviewer was supposed to do. But these days, all we get are a lot of wrestling matches.

• Posted at 11:35 PM · LINK

Giants Stand Among Us

I love it when you stumble across a website that answers a question you've had for years. Like at least a few of you, I have long been curious about those huge fiberglass advertising figures you occasionally see adorning roadside businesses. They usually have their hands in a position that suggests they were designed to be Paul Bunyan holding an ax, but that someone adapted the mold to make them into someone else holding something else — like a muffler or a set of tires.

If you don't know what I'm talking about — or especially if you do — you'll want to visit this page and read all about what they call "Muffler Men." There's an interview with a guy who made a lot of them, plus a nationwide index to their location and the many variations and...oh, just go look. You'll understand. And many of you will go, "Oh! I've seen those things!"

• Posted at 9:54 PM · LINK

The Rich Get Richer...

The extremely wealthy Warren Buffett explains how the tax-cutting strategies of the Bush administration benefit the extremely wealthy. Read about it here.

• Posted at 5:01 PM · LINK

More on Conventions

As you'll recall, a group that claims to be promoting "family values" has been trying to get folks riled up over the fact that the recent Motor City Con had a few ladies on the premises who'd posed undraped for magazines, and also had some dealers who sold such magazines. Here's an e-mail from Janet Harriett, who was actually there...

I really enjoyed your blog comments on porn at cons, and I got a kick out of reading the con report you linked to. That organization seems to be among the many that exist for the sole purpose of being offended.

Last weekend, we attended the Motor City Con in Novi, Michigan, which also had an auction to benefit Make-a-Wish, former Playmates (who, incidentally, do not look half as interesting fully clothed and in person), and several vendors selling Playboy and a few more explicit magazines and videos in close proximity to non-adult material. As a rule, the adult material is well marked in separate boxes, which vigilant parents can easily keep their children from viewing. Many parents do not have a problem with their children and teenagers being exposed to seminude images, and those who do can certainly engage in a bit of parenting to keep their children out of those boxes or away from the booths that sell them. After all, there is no rule saying one must look through the wares of every vendor.

And as far as the presence of Playmates goes, every con we have attended that had Playmates advertised that fact heavily in all its promotional material, and it is rather difficult to purchase tickets without knowing if one or more might be there. It is not as if parents get their wristbands and suddenly find out that there are women there that make their living by selling photographs of themselves in various stages of undress.

Those who are not actively trying to be offended can get through cons by choosing to not spend time at the vendor and guest booths with adult material. Those who are might do better to choose not to attend at all and leave us our weekend of fun.

Agreed — especially with the line about organizations that exist to be offended. I think we sometimes don't pay attention to how much of our national dialogue is driven by sheer opportunism. A lot of us have a tendency to take viewpoints at face value and to debate them on that basis. One of the reasons I stopped listening to Talk Radio is that I heard one too many hysterical people of whom I thought, "That person would not care about that issue — or at least, not care that much — if they weren't on the radio with a need to keep it interesting." I don't mean they're always lying. I mean, I'm sure a lot of the authors of Clinton-hating books really do hate the Clintons. I just think they wouldn't hate them so much, or find so many reasons to, if Clinton-hating had not brought them fame and fortune. Mr. Bush seems to slowly be developing a parallel industry of folks whose incomes seem to hinge on being outraged.

The folks going "Shame, shame" towards comic conventions are trying to drum up a controversy, at least in part because that's their business. The cry that someone is forcing smut on our children is almost too easy for the crusaders to resist. Certainly, a lot of the Werthamesque persecutions of the fifties, as well as the occasional busting of comic shops these days, was/is based on the Easy Target principle. At the same time, I think the stores and convention owners need to recognize that to the extent these campaigns work at all, they work because they tap into a real concern out there. Some parents are flustered by how often sexual imagery is unavoidable; how their children see it and ask about it — or perhaps worse, see it and don't ask about it. Either way, it's an issue, and one that can be successfully exploited by those with a reason to do so.

A couple of folks wrote to me to say, "Playboy Playmates have no place at a comic convention. They have nothing to do with comics." I think that's also an unrealistic way to view the situation. The day of the pure comic convention is pretty much behind us. As anyone who's been to a Comic-Con International in San Diego can attest, the word "comics" has come to represent a certain energized concept of art and storytelling in an array of media — film, television, animation, gaming, etc. It no longer has to be printed on newsprint to be "comics" — a concept, by the way, that Jack Kirby was predicting in 1970. TV stars are flocking to comic conventions to sell autographed photos. Movie studios are engaging publicists who'll specialize in promoting their wares at comic conventions. The Playmates and porn stars can make money at them so they've become a part of comic conventions. That is the new reality, and convention organizers are going to have to deal with the zoning problems it creates. It may mean carving up the exhibitor space politely but firmly, designating certain portions as okay for the tots. It may mean going further to educate the public that a "comic book convention" just might have adult film stars lurking about. I agree with Janet that parents have to be pretty dumb to not know that kind of thing may be there, but dumb people do a lot to keep these so-called "pro-family" groups solvent. If convention owners and book store proprietors would be a little more attentive to this issue, they might not seem like such Easy Targets.

• Posted at 11:03 AM · LINK

Comic Artist Website of the Day

I don't like a lot of the recent attempts to take comic book characters who were designed for stylized line art and turn them into fully-rendered, close-to-realistic paintings. Most strike me as boring and forced, especially when long-established super-heroes suddenly start looking like the artists' friends who posed for reference. That said, there are about three exceptions and the main one is Alex Ross. He has an amazing way of making the characters still look like the characters and to keep the excitement intact. His website is full of examples. As you'll see.

• Posted at 1:00 AM · LINK

Gentleman Gene

Here's a link to a pretty good interview with comics legend Gene Colan. Gene is another example of how the best artists are sometimes the nicest guys.

• Posted at 12:09 AM · LINK