Unknown . . . Meet Known

22 April 2024

Science Friction

Where the Known Meets the Unknown

Michael Shermer

Times Books: Henry Holt, 2005. 296pp. Introduction . Notes (thoughtfully marked in-text). Index.

I’ve been a Shermer fan for many years, particularly when I subscribed to his magazine, Skeptic, before moving to Saudi. And I already have Why People Believe Weird Things (1997) and The Borderlands of Science (2001) on my bookshelf. So why am I just getting around to this 2005 book? Simple: I just found it at a used book sale and figured I ought to get it.

Here’s one of Shermer’s key points: “There are no ‘facts’ in science, in the sense of something being proven 100 percent. One thing that is certain in science is that nothing is certain in science” (39).

Now the highlights

• 3-D “Impossible Crate” illusion (xv) – optical illusions and the power of beliefs to determine perceptions (“I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”)
• Therapeutic Touch (xxv) – How the youngster Emily Rosa (left) did a professional debunking experiment (c 1996)
• Psychic for a Day (Ch 1) – How he learned to perform tarot card and palm reading, astrology and mediumship. He learns the “Rainbow Ruse,” “Fine Flattery,” and “Barnum reading.”
• the “Bright” brouhaha (Ch 2) – his group’s attempt to address the “labeling issue” regarding skeptics, free thinkers, humanists, atheists, agnostics et al. In 2003 they introduced the term “brights” and they were immediately (and justifiably) scorned as being “elitist” (among other accusations.) Most popular alternative: “Critical thinkers” and “Freethinkers” (though this was also most divisive)
• Anthropology Wars – Napoleon Chagnon vs Patrick Tierney and the Yanomamö people of Amazonia. (Ch 5)
• Alt med: “The world of complementary and alternative medicine is complex and murky, particularly in the cancer community” (105). “We are typically offered a choice between scientific medicine that doesn’t work and alternative medicine that might work…but alternative medicine is not a matter of everything to gain and nothing to lose. There is much to lose” (106). (See the website What’s the Harm?)
• Mutiny on the Bounty – what really happened? (Ch 8). It seems Capt. Bligh, despite a habit of “bad language” wasn’t really so bad, regarded more as a professional, humanitarian leader (125). Verdict: evolutionarily adaptive emotions (competing desires for status) expressed nonadaptively (129)
• The case of the QWERTY keyboard (138) and the witch craze movement (143) — fascinating but he ties these inexplicably to what he calls LaPlace’s Demon
• What If? (Ch 10) – “counterfactual conditioners” e.g. What if the South had won the Civil War?

The book really gets abstruse at this point and continues throughout with hard-to-understand charts and diagrams despite seemingly clearcut premises. Frankly, I was skimming a lot.

• Star Trek – Gene Roddenberry vs Harlan Ellison and what is arguably the finest program in the series, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Oddly, Shermer plans to use this show as the centerpiece of an elaborate discussion and says “so it bears brief synopsis” — but then launches into complex diatribes by Ellison about “egocentric Roddenberry” and the history of Ellison’s original script without a word about the episode’s actual plot…until 3 full pages later.

Now, there are problems. In some places the writing and syntax gets a bit confusing.

The big issue, though — at least for the non-professional, non-PhD reader — is that the discussions get unbelievably abstruse and almost impossible to parse in at least half the book. We can’t necessarily blame Shermer for this since he does in fact have good academic credentials but, check this:

“These thematic pairs help illuminate what is really going on in the so-called evolutions wars. When Gould, Lewontin, and Eldredge are pitted against Dawkins, Smith, and Dennet, it is almost always along a spectrum of one of these five themata [cited earlier]. Maynard Smith’s claim that Gould’s ideas are confused and that he is giving non-professionals the wrong ideas about evolution is an indictment of Gouldian theory against others’ data. Wright envisions a cyclical metaphor of time with directionality generating purpose, and thus is critical of Gould’s emphasis on the directionless arrow in a purposeless cosmos…Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, but he prefers phyletic gradualism…”

…and continues on in this vein for another couple hundred words (262).

In sum, what we’d really like in a book like this is what Shermer calls “a literary style that balances professional scholarship with popular exposition.” (263) Maybe we could send Bart Ehrman over to help him out.

Cool…Can you dig it?

23 April 2024

Birth of the Cool

Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde

Lewis MacAdams

The Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2001. 287pp. 40 great B&W photos. References (20pp). Index.

This is a very easy read since it’s well-written and has a lot of section breaks within each chapter, so it’s easy to sort of pick up and put down without having to finish the entire chapter.

Basically starts up in the 1930s and follows the jazz scene (esp. Miles Davis, Cab Calloway) until we get to the avant-garde and “pop art” scenes with folks like Andy Warhol and then the beat generation with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and then the hippie/folk scene with Seeger, Guthrie, Dylan, Joan Baez.

“The birth of cool took place in the shadows among marginal characters, in cold-water flats and furnished basements” (23). However, “as soon as anything is cool, its coolness starts to vaporize” (19).

Peter Stearns: Cool conveys an air of disenchantment, of nonchalance, “shattering the personality from embarrassing excess” (19) — which is the overall theme of the book.

Slanguage

“Beat” came from conflating ‘beatific’ (as in “beat down”) and ‘Sputnik’ (14)

“Cool” first comes from an 1825 satirical magazine – “right cool” as in impudent, insolent or daring. Supposedly the modern term is from the Mandingo word for “gone out” or “trippin’” and was used by Afro-Americans in Florida as early as 1935 (16-17). But maybe coined by Lester Young (19). “For black men, ‘cool’ essentially defines manhood. Only one’s peers can bestow cool” (19).

“Bebop” was a kind of code, used by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie in 1942 (though no one knows for sure how it was coined. But Dizzy said, “If you’re doing boom-boom, and you’re supposed to be doing bap on a boom-boom, that’s just like beeping when you should have bopped” (45). Beboppers were the 1^st generation of thoroughly schooled black musicians. They could read music and some had gone to college. They presented themselves with berets, goatees and horn-rimmed glasses to show a rejection of rural roots and affinity with the European avant-garde. (45)

A “Johnson” — a good person/good people (112)

“Drag” “jive talk,” “scram,” “palooka,” “pushover” – you had to know which words were in vogue at any given time. (116-19)

“I dig/dig it” — maybe coined by Norman Mailer. “A ‘cool cat’ said ‘I dig’ because neither knowledge or imagination comes easily and one must exhaust oneself by digging into the self. If you do not dig you lose your superiority over the Square…and less likely to be in control of a situation” (200).

“hootenanny” — Seeger says he first heard the word at rent parties in Seattle, c. 1941 (255), though the origin might be Scots/Appalachian for open-mic folk or country music parties. The term became well known in early 1960s with an ABC musical variety show (which later became Shindig as tastes changed)

Pop Art & Folk Rock

The last part of the book deals with new wave cinema of Belmondo and Godard and “American cool” with Jimmy Dean, Lenny Bruce, Lelia Goldoni (Shadows), Kerouac, Warhol and The Factory. Seems like everyone was either a drug addict or alcoholic. “Heroin was our badge” (trumpeter Red Rodney) (56). The book closes with an extensive treatment of Bob Dylan—his rise and his fans’ consternation when he went electric.

The American folk music renaissance can be dated from when Pete Seeger met Woodie Guthrie at a benefit for migrant farm workers in March 1940. (255). Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” was written while he was awaiting trial for “contempt” during his trial for supposedly being a Communist (256)

Featured photos:

Gil Evans, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Jean-Paul Sarte, Juliette Greco, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cab Calloway, Billy Eckstine, Theolonius Monk, Billie Holiday, Chano Pozo (Afro-Cuban), Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, Joan Vollmer, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, John Cage, Alan Watts, Marlon Brando, Gregory Corso, Norman Mailer, James Dean, Lenny Bruce, John Cassavetes, Jean Seberg, Andy Warhol, Nico, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger

Birth of the Cool is also a 1957 compilation album by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.

Hillbilly Elegy

10 April 2024

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J. D. Vance

HarperCollins, 264pp. Notes (nicely indexed in the text, but oddly only 21 notes, of which 18 are in the first 1 /3  of the book, almost like he got tired of footnotes). Sadly, no Index

Given Vance’s current (2024) political stance as a now Trump-supporter (he flip-flopped in 2018), along with being anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage and a proponent of other right-wing issues, I was wary of this book which, admittedly, has earned high praise, along with the movie version. So I was pleased to be able to pick it up for free at the library. Vance’s family originated in Jackson, KY and migrated to Middletown, OH — halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton — where he was born. He was elected to the U.S. senate in 2023 and interestingly, although Vance certainly has his Ohio bona fides, for much of his professional career, he and his family lived in San Francisco. Although raised in a conservative evangelical Protestant environment, he converted to Catholicism in 2019.

First off, Vance is an excellent writer and his depiction of the Appalachian migration to the north, especially industrial Ohio, makes this a hallmark study of American history. Although I don’t have much personal experience with that demographic subculture, I do have some “neighboring” familiarity: I lived in Dayton, OH for 4 years, near to where he grew up; I lived in Warren, OH which is in the industrial belt that many of the Appalachians emigrated to, esp. the populations of Akron, Youngstown and points west. And my sister lives in northern Kentucky. So I’ve traveled by Vance’s hometown of Middleton numerous times.

Basically this is a history of how the problem-ridden, lower-class Appalachians migrated north for jobs and brought their culture with them. Vance describes himself as a “cultural emigrant” (252).

At least that’s the first half of the book. By Ch. 7 he’s moved from hillbilly cultural documentary to full-memoir mode so the remaining 150 pages rather tediously cover his grade school, high school, undergraduate college (Ohio State) and grad school (Yale) life. But, after all, it is a memoir. He continues his unveiling of what it’s like to be a true hillbilly situated out of his element, but the historical theme is mostly gone as we hear about his Mamaw and Papaw, his mother’s extremely checkered life of drugs, alcohol, and her numerous (8?) short-term husbands.

Vance himself seems to have moved (or rather, been forced to) about every 6 months to various family member’s abodes.

As a result, it was nearly impossible to keep track of J.D.’s tangled web of familial relationships in the book — brothers, sisters, half-brothers, half-sisters, cousins and especially parents and their partners. Vance himself seems to have changed names a few times.

When asked as a kid whether he had any brothers or sisters, he wanted to just wave his hand and say, “It’s complicated” (81).

Highlights

• Dialect: “minners” (minnows), “crawdads” (crayfish), the “holler” (hollow) and best of all, how to pronounce “Mamaw” (“ma’am-aw”) (23). Side note: my sister has a holler behind her house and can’t seem to decide which pronunciation to use. Same with “Appalachian.”
• About the Appalachian fighting mentality: “Destroying store merchandise and threatening a sales clerk were normal to Mamaw and Papaw: That’s what Scots-Irish Appalachians do when people mess with your kid…They could go from zero to murderous in a f****** heartbeat” (40)
• The Hillbilly 3 R’s: “Reading, Rightin’, Rt. 23” (the migratory route through SE Kentucky) (37)
• “Hillbilly culture blended a robust sense of honor, devotion to family and bizarre sexism into a sometimes explosive mix” (41)
• “People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and not find a single person aware of his own laziness” (57)
• The land of “the loud and the proud”: people who wore their faith on their sleeve, always ready to let you know how pious they were” (85)

His discussion of “school vouchers,” which he describes as giving “public money to schoolchildren so that they can escape failing public schools” is interesting. (126) This could just possibly be a preview of a right wing philosophy whereby school vouchers nowadays mean giving public funds to private/charter schools. Or maybe he just thinks our failing public schools should be fixed.

So overall, this is a great read if you’re at all interested in Appalachian culture, kinda like reading about David Crockett¹ or Johnny Appleseed². But one has to wonder how a working (barely) class democrat (as he says), former Trump despiser who you’d think would be a lifelong Dem somehow got hisself turnt aroun’ and now downplays climate change.

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¹David Crockett: The Lion of the West, Michael Wallis

² Johnny (Chapman) “Appleseed,” featured in The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan.

 

 

 

Hangin’ Out with the Witches!

22 March 2024; upd 24 March

[This is repeated on my Incidental Theologian site…just couldn’t decide whether the category should be Books or Religion]

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman

Witchcraft in Colonial New England

Carol F. Karlsen

Professor of History at University of Michigan

Norton, 1998 (orig 1987). 370pp. Notes (77pages! nicely indicated in the text). Index. Appendix: list of accused witches. Epilogue. Afterword (gives a 20-years-later perspective on the original edition). Numerous statistical tables.

This is a fascinating and extremely well-documented study of the witch period from roughly 1620 to 1725 in MA and CT (mainly Salem, Hartfield and Fairfield.) Witches (accused, that is) were typically middle-aged or older women, 40-60+, often “alone” (either widowed or deserted) moderately poor or eligible for inheritances because they no brothers or sons (and were thus ripe for exploitation). Witchcraft was not considered hereditary but often passed on to those closest to them. Males could also be accused of being witches, but Karlsen’s documentation seems contradictory or confusing, and my takeaway is that males comprised maybe 10-15-20% — though it seems males were luckier overall since they had lower execution rates.

Possession: Karlsen spends a great deal of effort explaining the difference between being a “witch” and being “possessed.” Someone “possessed” was, in effect, “recruited” and “caught in the throes of demonic affliction” (10-11). Since most witches were women, the people they chose to recruit were almost always other females, much younger ones (10). Possession was:

“A dramatic, religious ritual through which young females publicly enacted their struggle to avoid internalizing the evil of witchcraft.  (244) Signs of possession included strange fits; violent contorted body movements; trances; paralyzed limbs; difficulty eating, breathing, hearing and speaking; sensations of being beaten or pricked with pins; grotesque screams; pitiful weeping…punctuated by unsettling calm between convulsions. (232).

So, in a sense, there was a clear distinction b/w being a witch and being “possessed.”

Witch Outbreaks (see notes and table below). First one: Hartford CT, 1662.

Some interesting items.

• Witchcraft trials became a regular feature of the social environment in the late 1640s. However, by the late 1650s a new group—the Quaker testifiers— had aroused witchcraft alarm. To the Puritans, Quaker doctrine smacked of blasphemy, partly due to that group’s views on female spiritual leadership, a “lay ministry” and of course their “quaking,” which was seen as a sign of possession (122, 124)
• The two sins that “permeate the continuum of witches’ behavior are (1) lying — all witches were presumed to lie, (2) pride —“Satan’s most grievous sin”)
• “Goodwife” (usually abbreviated “Goody”) was the generic first name or courtesy title for married women of high social standing but not of noble birth, which might be accompanied by the honorific “Mrs.” or “Mistress” (as in the mistress of a household).  The counterpart for men was “Goodman.” (54, 79). [FYI: This is where the phrase “Goody Two-Shoes” comes from. See also Goodwife]
• “thornback” — epithet for an unmarried woman by choice (187) [FYI: The word spinster was used to refer to single women between the ages of 23-26, while thornback is reserved for those 26 and above]
• Average age at first marriage for females between 1600 and 1650 was 20 or 21 (considerably younger than English women at the time (187). But later generations married older, e.g. avg. of 6 years later in Ipswich, Mass. “Permanent spinsterhood” increased in the late 1600s (203)
• “Alone women”: Widowers were able to remarry in greater proportions and more quickly (up to age 60) than widows whose chances deteriorated after age 40. And women past menopause “had outlived much of their usefulness to colonial men” (206). Thus, widows opted to remain “alone” (206)
• When/why did witch trials end? By the end of the 1600s, the power of the Puritan ministry began to fade. Even though The Great Awakening of the late 1730s led to renewed religious fervor, the Puritans never fully regained their hegemony in New England (255). However, Karlsen asserts that much of the credit for the dramatic change belongs to the Possessed who had not limited accusations to just people designated as likely witches. Thus, it seemed to New England’s elite that the possessed had “usurped a power they were never meant to claim” (253) and “the witch figure herself took on a less intimidating shape in the minds of the larger population” (256). The author does admit that this is not a widely shared view among academicians. Nevertheless, as noted below, the actual sociological causes would be good to get into.

Problems with the book

1. The author talks about “outbreaks” incessantly, but it’s not till p. 24 that we understand that it refers strictly to “witchcraft outbreaks” and not disease outbreaks, like the plague. So if you are scouring or reading selectively not from the the beginning you have to guess what she means.
2. Since the word “witch” is almost exclusively applied to women in common discourse [from the Old English wiċċe] the book’s entire statistical treatment of female vs male witches is suspect. It’d be like saying “most molestations of children by priests were committed by males” — but since nearly all priests are male, the statistic makes no sense.

Note: The modern spelling ‘witch’ with the medial ‘t’ first appears in the 1500s. Old English had both masculine (wicca) and feminine (wicce) forms of the word, but the masculine meaning became less common in Standard English, being replaced by words like “warlock” and “wizard.” The earliest recorded use of the word “witch” dates to about 890 CE where it refers to “woman.”

3. While Karlsen argues that other historians have neglected the influences of women in Colonial New England witchcraft history, she has done just the opposite, focusing specifically on the role of women in colonial society. She does deal with the roles and accusations of males throughout but the overall tone seems to focus on misogyny and women’s (understandable) discontent with their lot in life in the period…which she asserts is the foundation for women becoming witches (see, e.g. p128f)
4. Great footnotes—almost too much—but there’s no bibliography which makes it nearly impossible to identify a particular book/article date and publisher. E.g. a footnote citing “Hansen,” p317, gives the title and author’s name but without a biblio, we now need to Google the publication to discover if it was written in 1750, 1850, 1950 or 2000. And since the authors are not indexed, we have no way of discovering the first mention in the text.
5. There is no discussion whatsoever of methods of execution (with one exception where a hanging is mentioned casually—and, to be fair, the cover illustration does show women being hanged). Now, it may be that the method is not central to her various themes, but this is certainly worth a few notes, esp. considering the dozens of statistical tables for every other aspect of the witch trials. But most readers (such as me) wonder how many executions were “burnings” which is the popular notion, how many were hangings, or dismemberments or even old-school horse dragging or other means.
6. The elaborate statistics, tables and discussion of ages and gender are confusing and often seemingly contradictory. In several places, Karlsen shows a table and then contradicts it.
7. Why/how did it end? The end of witchcraft is ascribed, at least in part, to the over-indulgence of possessed women making widespread accusation and thus, presumably, watering down the entire process. But considering the significance of this key question, it’s surprising that Karlsen basically ignores it except in the most vague academic terms about “transformation from external to internal controls of sexual behavior” and “the new formulation of womanhood in the early 1800s” (Epilogue 252-56)

Overall, this is a great way to look into the era of witchery in New England as well as the lifestyles but there are a lot of confusing statistics and the book as a whole seems to be a “Women’s Studies” thesis, which causes one to wonder if there’s another side to things.

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Outbreaks 

First one: Hartford CT, 1662.

Too little is known about Hartford’s early history to explain why the first outbreak happened there, but like Salem a generation later, it was a community that had suffered years of internal dissension; people had focused their disagreements on the church and its ministers. The outbreak allowed their expression, in attacks against neighbors and nearby towns but it may also have united clergy and townspeople in their struggle agains the Devil and his local supporters (26)

Like many parts of the book, this explanation seems internally contradictory…and wait…”local supporters” of the Devil?

Trump: Art of the Denial

10 March 2024

Trump: the Art of the Deal

by Donald Trump with Tony Schwartz

Random House, 1987. 246pp. 16-pg Photo section; Index; special section “How the Deals Came Out”

Don’t hate me but I saw this in a used book store and decided I should just see how it actually reads. Furthermore, can we see hints or omens of Current-Day-Trump in his pre-Apprentice (1987) self-description? By now we all know that Trump was more of an “advisor” or “contributor” and Schwartz did the actual writing. (Of course the nice thing about a used book is that none of the profit goes to Trump.)

Let’s start with an interesting (sort of) section on housing discrimination: Ch 7, “Trump Tower.” Trump blathers on about how Trump Tower was “virtually the only condominium in New York.”

“To buy an apartment in a cooperative—which is what most buildings in New York were at the time—you needed approvals from the Board who have ridiculous, arbitrary powers including the right to demand all kinds of financial data, social references and personal interviews. The can reject you for any reason they choose, without explanation. It’s a license to discriminate” [my emphasis] (121-22)

Yet a few years prior to the Tower (1973) the Trumps were sued by the Fed for blatant housing discrimination. Trump proclaims that the federal suit was “settled with zero, with no admission of guilt.”[sic]

However, as Michael Kranish writes, “They signed a consent order…Trump says it was very easy, but actually he fought the case for two years. The Trumps took essentially the first settlement offer the federal government provided.”

• The fed’s suit was 1973; work on the Trump Tower started in 1979. Trump says it was “the equivalent of 68 stories” but was really 58 floors.
• I hate lawsuits and depositions” (7). [This is in regard to a lawsuit the Trump org has brought against a contractor on Trump Tower. However he has been involved in 3,500 up to 2019 alone. James D. Zirin writes. “He sued at the drop of a hat. He sued for sport; he sued to achieve control; and he sued to make a point. He sued as a means of destroying or silencing those who crossed him. He became a Plaintiff in Chief.”]
• “He is definitely the only guy in my life whom I ever call ‘honey.’” [Referring to his brother Robert, two years younger.] (14).
• “Buying Mar-a-Lago was a great deal even though I bought it to live in, not as a real estate investment” (19-20)
• “People think I’m a gambler. I’ve never gambled in my life.” Then, “The only time in my life I didn’t follow that rule was with the USFL. I bought a losing team in a losing league on a long shot. It almost worked, through our antitrust suit, but when it didn’t, I had no fallback” (34) [Oddly, he says this immediately after claiming he’s never gambled “in his life.” But isn’t spending money on a “long shot” kind of the definition of gambling? At the end of the book he spends a complete chapter describing the deal] (181-198)
• “I am very competitive and I’ll do anything within legal bounds to win. Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition” (74). [Trump is referring to the company’s plan to purchase two waterfront sites from Penn Central. But another bidder “suddenly came out of the woodwork” and he believed (“genuinely”) their bid was not legitimate.]
• “Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells” (118). [This ‘splains a lot about current-day Trump strategies]
• “To me, committees are what insecure people create in order to put off making hard decisions” [This is part of his USFL treatise, which is mostly complaining about the other team owners who were reluctant to move their playing season from Spring to Fall to compete with the NFL (since the Fall is “football season”). But other owners kept wanting to compromise and appoint a long-range planning committee to study the question. The Trump quote actually makes some sense!]
• Re USFL, Trump is very upset about how his anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL is going. After each day’s testimony, the NFL’s spokesman would go to the halls and lobby the press masterfully, telling them what a great day is had been for them. He griped to his league commissioner: “It drove me crazy…Why aren’t you out lobbying the press?” who responded “It isn’t important. It’s the jury we’ve got to convince.” Trump says “Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works” because it’s nearly impossible for jurors to resist reading about a case that’s getting massive attention (196). [And this goes a long way in understanding Current-Day-Trump!]
• Also, when he loses the anti-trust suit he says, “I wasn’t happy about the outcome, but in a way I was relieved. My attitude is that you do your best and if it doesn’t work, you move on to the next thing” (197) [All I can say to this is: It is to laugh. When did Trump ever just “move on”? He adds that the fans came out the biggest losers in this whole affair.]
• “The only people bullies push around are the ones they know they can beat” (202). [Regarding NY’s then-mayor, bully Ed Koch]

• “One of the first things that anyone should learn about real estate—NY in particular—is never to sign a letter of intent” (219-20) …yet the book is full of Trump doing just that, e.g. with the Trump Tower negotiations (see p. 101)
• He loves, loves, loves tall buildings and obsessed with building the “world’s tallest building”; in fact, he uses that exact phrase 11 times in Ch. 13 alone.

Trump displays model for Television City with world’s tallest building, on projected site at West Side railyards

In fairness, Ch 12 about re-building the Wollman ice rink actually sounds like a Trump success miracle. After 6 years of incompetent governmental attempts to renovate the rink, the city finally announces an 18-month timetable to finish the work. Trump decides to step in and says he can do it in 6 months. Which he does, thus demonstrating the contrast between sludgy, complicated governmental incompetence and effective private enterprise. (210)

Ivana – fashion model – 1975

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FYI: I have also written a review of Mary Trump’s 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough [How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man] if anyone cares to inquire. I never posted it on my book blog but I’m happy to pass it along.

Christian Nationalism

26 Feb 2024

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Tim Alberta

Harper Collins, 2023. 493pp. With (useless) Notes. Index.

This review is also posted on my Incidental Theologist site since it covers both realms

This is a powerful indictment of the political evangelical movement and “Christian Nationalism” written by a highly regarded journalist (and Christian) whose father was a pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brighton, MI*

“Evangelical” – from the Greek evangelion (“good news”), typically used to distinguish reformed “revivalist” Protestants from the staid customs of Catholicism (10). British scholar David Bebbington posits four key elements: 1) Biblicism; 2) Crucicentrism (Jesus’s death as atonement for mankind); 3) Conversionism (sinners must be born again); 4) Activism (sharing the gospel). Although, there remains no real consensus what it means the term soon became synonymous with “white conservative Republican Christian” (11).

(As noted below, there is the increasingly popular useless “Notes” section at the back with very detailed citations, including long weblinks accessible only to Kindle users that have no referents in the text itself. Cf, publishing notes on the Paul Aarts book.)

The crux of the book in case anyone asks what “Christian Nationalism” is about: reclaiming America for God” (435). In short, government should declare Christianity the state religion (434)

• Jerry Falwell (Sr): “This idea that “religion and politics don’t mix’ was invented by the devil” (53). Falwell and Liberty U are treated in detail in Ch. 3 (and elsewhere) [but where in the bible, one might ask, does “the devil” say that?] However, Falwell was not flashy in the pulpit nor esp. eloquent. His sermons emphasized “the fundamentals of the faith” and at one time said that “Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to be soul winners” (56).
• Liberty’s Arthur DeMoss regarding Trump: “the only candidate who has dealt almost exclusively in the politics of personal insult” (77). These bullying tactics have no defense for anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ…”It’s not the Christ-like behavior that Liberty has spent 40 years promoting with its students.”
• Great line: “epidemic of priests trading white collars for orange jump suits” (118).
• Pastor Bill Bolin’s “diatribes” at FloodGate Church in Brighton, MI, aka Headline News whereby he spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines, COVID, ivermectin. “He had traded his pulpit for a soapbox, riffing it like opening night at a campus coffeehouse” (144)

Some problems:

• Dashes: much as I loves me some dashes—and I use ’em myself all the time—Alberta overuses them throughout, often six to a page.
• The whole section is confusing as it compares 2011 and Oct. 2016 surveys by the Public Religion Research Institution:

“Something had changed; and it wasn’t just the party affiliation of the scoundrel in question [Obama?]…What I’d personally encountered during those five years…was a sudden onset of dread. They [who? evangelicals?] had spent Obama’s presidency marinating in a message of end-times agitation. [huh? Where was this end-times message coming from?] Something they loved was soon to be lost. [what?] Time was running out to reclaim it…Desperate times called for desperate—even disgraceful—measures” (116).

Having read this a dozen times I still have no idea what it means and who is being referenced. Did they want Obama again?

• Nice headline from the Babylon Bee satirical newsletter: “Evangelical Mistaken for Mormon After Treating Everyone with Kindness, Respect” (118). But how about a citation in the Notes section? since not every reader knows about the BB and that’s exactly what the footnotes section is for.
• As noted, the publishers have put all the citations in the back, chapter by chapter, but there are no indications in the text as to when there will be a note, and the notes themselves are not linked to any page or textual reference.
• Big problem: The entire book is divided, chapter by chapter, into the particular cities being featured — Brighton, MI, Atlanta, Lynchburg VA, Erie PA (Ch. 13), Columbus, etc but the Table of Contents completely ignores these and simply lists “CHAPTER ONE,” “CHAPTER TWO,” etc. and thus there’s no way of looking up what cities are being discussed! How hard would it have been to simply list the city names in the TOC? It would literally cost nothing but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone at the publishing house
• Speaking of Erie, PA (my hometown, which I had no forewarning of due to generic chapter titles): the chapter opens with some of the most overblown and pointless “performance prose” I’ve seen outside of a drugstore novel:

“Inside the Bayfront Convention Center, an architectural peninsula bounded by the shimmering indigo waters of Lake Erie, men with artificially enhanced muscles strutted around the lobby grunting and jogging in place and bending in ways that tried the elasticity of their spandex suits. They carried powders that assured them of Samsonian size, vitamins vowing vascularity, pills promising paradisiacal pectorals, all manner of almost supernatural betterment” (247)

Problem is, we’re never told who these men who are “just down the corridor” are. Was there a weightlifting show going on? Were they security people for gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano? Although this was the intro to a report on Mastriano’s rally where there was an “undercurrent of violence” and thus a checkpoint with metal detectors, we never do find out who the spandex men are. Also, the author doesn’t seem to be aware that there’s an actual geographic “peninsula” directly across the Bay and that the Convention Center is simply set up along the waterfront dock area.

• There’s also a confusing section in Ch. 21 on the Jerry Falwell Center at Liberty U. which Jerry Jr. apparently wanted to prevent from opening. Seems Jerry Jr was “spoiling for a fight” and didn’t want the Center to be named after his father because he thought it would “erase his [Jerry Jr’s?] legacy and dilute the real vision of his father” (419-20). This simply makes no sense.

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* Side note: One of my friends from an atheist group advised that he didn’t care for the book because it was written from the POV of a Christian believer, so presumably how much “faith” could we put in it? This is true, but as I pointed out, sometimes it takes someone inside the institution to take it down, or at least discover the failings.

Biography of “the Reluctant Beatle”

13 Feb 2024

George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle

Philip Norman

Scribner, 2023. 487pp. Photo inset. Index. (and worthless Source Notes by chapter)

Let’s start by just saying this is a fascinating history of Harrison from birth to death, along with all the Beatles and how the band came to be. However, there are editing/style problems so I’m also going to deal with those rather than try to summarize the Beatlemania that we’re probably at least somewhat familiar with.

I will say that this could have been aptly titled: How to Screw Up Your Life With Sexual Infidelities, Drugs and Alcohol — and we’re not just talking about George here. It’s also a tale of financial mis-management of the musicians and deceptions. Of course the book is not entirely full of negativity, but the drug lifestyles of the other Beatles as well as Clapton, Dylan, Delaney Bramlett, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Spector et al., are certainly a major element of the rock ‘n’ roll and entertainment worlds.

First, some highlights

• Harrison’s love of the ukelele
• “Skiffle/skiffle groups”: origins of Brit rock – a British variant of the 1930s American Great Depression style where people would make music by blowing melodies into kazoos and jugs, scraping a kitchen-washboard with thimble-capped fingers. According to Norman, it appeared in Britain at the same moment as rock ‘n’ roll (15).
• Beatle rule: “Sex on the road doesn’t count” (415)
• Tabloids for “prurient food shoppers”
• Apple Corps Records: a pun on ‘apple core’
• History of the “Apple Scruffs” – George’s name for the women who hung out on the walkway steps and other locations  hoping to get a glance at the boys (225; 293-99). Later memorialized in a song by that name in 1970. “On either side of the front steps, a small crowd of young women from all over the country, and the world, waited all day, every day, regardless of weather or season, for however fleeting a glimpse of this or that Beatle exiting or departing” (225).
• Traveling Wilburys. Fascinating origin of the band’s name: They needed a name that would partly shield them from all their current managerial obligations and contracts, so they used one of George’s old expressions: “If a taping turned out to have a mistake, ‘We’ll bury it in the mix’.” (400)
• Allen Klein, Denis O’Brien – it would be hard to find two shadier business associates.

Now, the problems

Since the author is a Brit, there are a lot of British terms and usages as well as music industry slang — quite understandable. But the author (and editor) are continually screwing up sentence understandability using confusing pronouns and sentence fragments, especially in the latter half of the book, suggesting editing burnout. It would sometimes take me 5 minutes and numerous re-readings of a paragraph to figure out who was doing what to whom.

Referencing Lennon’s Double Fantasy, named after his favorite freesia bloom (whatever “double” means):

“With the album’s release in November came an intense round of media interviews dispelling the long-standing rumors of a Howard Hughes-style hermit who’d gone completely bald, the ultimate Beatle [sic] tragedy, and snorted so much cocaine that it had destroyed the septum between his nostrils” (381).

Not only is it confusing, it’s ungrammatical.

Unfortunately (maybe) I didn’t mark down all the pronoun and name confusions, but here are a few examples. Referring to a partnership dispute among the Beatles in the High Court in 1970:

“George’s bewigged ventriloquist’s doll spoke in an authentic George tone of ‘the superior attitude which for years past Paul has shown to me musically’” (p303).

But there’s no hint of who the “bewigged doll” might be—a barrister? a judge? a manager? Wait…26 pages later we learn that it is apparently Denis O’Brien, a sleazy American lawyer.

At the same hearing we learn that John had submitted a written statement about the dispute:

“John’s statement reflected little credit on the man soon to write a song pleading ‘gimme some truth’.”

But this is not a universally known song lyric, so does it refer to a Lennon song or a Harrison song?  (It turns out to be from John’s Imagine album.)

In a section about George’s wife Pattie (Boyd) attacking Ringo’s wife, Maureen, upon learning of George and Maureen having an open affair and discovering them in his “guilty bedroom”:

“A French or Italian wife at this point might have resorted to a loaded revolver. Pattie’s milder English response was to attack Maureen with a brace of water pistols and then give two fingers to the Hare Krishna piety that George could put on and off as it suited him” (334).

I’m guessing “brace” is British slang for “a pair” (though not 2020s use) but one wonders how Pattie could “hammer on the door” and have water pistols at the ready in case she catches the couple in the act. (Water pistols, really?!) And what are the “two fingers”? Is that British gesturing, such as one might use while bracing two water pistols? (Oh, and Boyd’s first name is spelled differently at different places: Pattie/Patti)

In a section about a get together of George, Pattie, Clapton and his girlfriend, Charlotte Martin, “she was totally unconscious of Clapton’s rapturous gaze” — OK, she must be Pattie Boyd. But then we read;

“In the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party at Cilla Black’s house, she [?] recalls, ‘everything went swiftly downhill . . . Charlotte didn’t seem remotely upset about Eric and was getting uncomfortably close to George.’ He [Eric? George?] denied anything untoward and accused Pattie of paranoia, whereupon she (Charlotte? Pattie?] fled the house and went to London to stay with friends” (ellipsis in original, 240-41).

In a section on a British television (Ch. 4) special celebrating Carl Perkins:

“George joined a group of his [George’s or Perkins’?] devotees, including Ringo, Eric Clapton, and Johnny Cash’s daughter Roseanne, seated in a row rather like a school class to play along with Perkins classics like “Honey Don’t,” “Matchbox,” and his [George’s?] early signature track [?] with the Beatles, “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.” (391)

In most instances throughout the latter half of the book we can guess that “he” usually refers to George, but not always.

Another problem is a publishing gaffe: There are 8 pages of “source notes” that are completely worthless because there’s no reference in the text and the notes simply list various sources. So it’s hard or impossible to know if the reference is to a song title, book title, movie title or whatever, without telling us what is being referenced back in the text. Thus, if there’s a juicy quote in the chapter, you can’t go to the back and see where it came from.

In addition, there are numerous sentence frags, though maybe that’s just a stylistic device.

Finally, a technical note about money. Norman states that the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night had been assigned a “rock bottom budget” of £20,000 — whatever rock bottom means, but probably not what the author thinks — but in fact it cost $500,000 (£400,000). Maybe someone originally thought they could get it done for £20k, but that’s not explained. And it takes 2 or 3 pages for us to realize that it’s Hard Days that is being referenced.

Overall, ignoring the grammatical and descriptive obfuscations, this is worth reading if you are hankering for the lowdown on what might be the most deservedly famous musical groups. They paid their dues. And none of them were saints (OK, maybe Ringo)

What happened to Rudy?!

19 Dec 2023

Giuliani

The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor

Andrew Kirtzman

Simon & Schuster, 2022. 458 pp, Notes (by chapter and page number but not in-text). Index. Photo section.

How it began and how it all came crashing down.

Kirtzman has been following RG since the 1990s and was with him on 9/11. Rudy was a celebrated prosecutor and contender for the presidency at one point “but by the end of the Trump presidency he was reviled, ridiculed and ended up widely ostracized, in legal jeopardy and facing financial ruin” (jacket info). What we (and I think this applies to practically everyone who came across him) wanted to know is “What happened to you?” As it happens, we learn that this question has been, and is being asked throughout the world. Did Rudy change some time after 9/11 or were the seeds of his downfall there all along?

I’m not sure there’s a clear answer. What we do learn is that his father, Harold, was a crook, mob muscle and convicted armed thief. “He had a terrific sense of humor but also a very bad temper” (17). By contrast, his mother was controlled and focused, a tough, protective woman and strict but loving parent (17).

In college, Rudy was “a Kennedy fan leading an Eisenhower lifestyle” (24), and hopelessly square.

One problem with the writing is the author’s occasional confusing narrative: “A liberal Democrat, he [Dinkin] prevailed in 1989 in a bitter race against Giuliani, less than a year out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who ran as the Republican and Liberal Party candidate” (55). But wait, who is the liberal, who was “a year out”? We see this sort of who-are-we-talking-about-now? confusion in many places. In another place we read that Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab (who was arrested in 2016 for money-laundering) had “built an improbable empire exchanging gold for oil and natural gas from Iran.” But wait, he wasn’t exchanging (selling) the gold; he was selling the oil and gas to get the gold (instead of cash). (287)

Trump

Trump and RG had a long-standing relationship (though rarely seen together back in the day) based on a symbiotic mix of friendship, respect and self-interest. were “old-school, outer-borough brawlers who took pleasure in bludgeoning their opponents” valuing loyalty above competence. (98)

As we learn, Rudy wasn’t quite the 9/11 hero we came to believe and his flaws and various adulteries were there all along.

Rudy’s downfall

“At an advancing age, out of power, his lifelong dream unrealized, he grew decadent. He gained weight and continued to drink. He focused on superficial things—the acquisition of homes, appearing on the social circuit, a feverish pursuit of money” (249). “Giuliani wasn’t changing his stripes as much as surrendering to his worst instincts.”

“In the alternate universe of Trump’s White House, where bombast was the guiding principle, he was the logical choice as Trump’s lawyer, unconstrained by the conventions that presidential lawyers were expected to practice. He was gleefully ferocious , an attack machine perpetually set to kill. He would say anything, do anything to win. He was, in short, just like Trump” (294)

Of course we get the deets on the amazing Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference debacle (364f), the Borat movie incident, the dripping hair dye sweat at his Nov 2020 “election fraud” press con, along with his various dirty dealings with foreign governments (Fruman, Parnas 304-13). By the end of the book we’re no longer mad at Rudy…just sad at how low he has sunk.

So the book’s answer to “What happened”? can be summarized with 6 terms: alcohol, old age, senility, Judith (Nathan, his 2^nd wife), desperation, greed.

The book closes with this epitaph: “Giuliani’s role was to enable the president, feed him lies, encourage his worst impulses and lead his most malevolent battles. He did so enthusiastically  because Trump made him relevant again, years after he’d foolishly squandered the love and respect of millions” (384).

Somewhere early in life he developed a moral certitude that protected him from fear and self-doubt and viewed those who opposed him as either moronic or corrupt. His unshakable belief in his own moral code, his almost fanatical sense of righteousness that propelled his rise, also shielded him from shame. The disasters he inflicted on the country would not have been possible if he hadn’t been so capable of justifying each bad decision. (390).

Now, if we could just get publishers to put the footnote markers in the text instead of making us have to guess if there is a note in the back.

Cassidy Hutchinson has had…enough

21 Nov 2023

Enough

(but should have been titled Enough!)

Cassidy Hutchinson

Simon & Schuster, 2023. 359pp. No index. 8pp photo insert.

Cassidy became practically an overnight political sensation in the spring of 2021 when she was a key witness in the hearings by “The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol.” (And that’s not even the full name!) Of course, depending on your political side, she was either a super-hero or lying traitor. Having watched her televised depositions, I’m firmly on the former side. This amazing and actually heart-rending book gives the full back story on how she went from being a Trump loyalist as special assistant to chief of staff Mark Meadows to a fervent truth-teller who blows the lid on the White House insiders shenanigans, esp. her boss.

(21 Dec.: In retrospect, I see that I’ve mentioned several negatives about this book, but that’s just because it’s an important book and needs careful analysis.)

There are some publishing quibbles (below) but for now I’ll stick to the positive highlights.

• Trump hates fundraisers—he expects people to flatter him, not the other way around (139)
• “Will be wild” (86-7)
• COVID: one of Trump’s lowest moments in retrospect…not the political handling but his personal disregard for others. Consider that he knows he’s got COVID but goes ahead with a crowded schedule of a campaign rally, TV debate, Supreme Court announcement, airplane trips, etc and probably infects dozens or even hundreds — all mask-less. Oddly though, Cassidy feels empathy for him when the public sends him negative remarks (144). Thankfully, she later takes on the opposite attitude a few pages later (146); however, this suggests that her editor wasn’t paying attention.
• Bizarre Rudy Giuliani story: “Rudy slips his hand under my blazer, then my skirt” and she feels his cold fingertips on her thighs (210). Yikes. Who’d a thunk Rudy could do such a thing!
• Oddity: She is a 23-25-year-old woman in a technically un-named position (her boss never seems to get around to defining it) as assistant to “Mark.” He makes it clear on her first day that he wants her with him wherever he goes—his “shadow,” his “eyes and ears” (82) Yet a few weeks (?) into the job he asks her to attend the Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA) meetings with him and she “declines” (89). (She used to work in the OLA and suddenly quit to work for Mark, leaving her old job completely unfilled…but maybe that’s just how things work in D.C. politics.) At times she seems to be the real “power”—e.g., telling chief of staff Meadows (“Mark” as she refers to him throughout the book) to “go visit the president” or advising guest list names against her boss’s wishes, among other things (95-97). It seems that everything must go through her.
• She often talks about strained finances— esp. when it comes time to testify and she needs a lawyer—but she is clearly one of the most influential “minor figures” in the entire WH. She doesn’t take vacations (until one time, late in the story), buy expensive dinners and she spends 18 hours a day in the office. Presumably most of her day-to-day expenses are covered by the government. Seems that life in D.C. must be pretty dang expensive for someone making only $72K (later, $90K still working for Trump after Jan. 20)
• Interesting use of “they” in the Jan. 7 section about a deputy press secretary—clearly meant to disguise the gender identity since the neutral pronoun is not used anywhere else (225)
• Jan 19: “The president and I never said goodbye. Some goodbyes are better left unspoken” (233)
• On leaving the WH: “I had burned my candle at both ends and had no wick left” (233)
• She seems to do a fair amount of drinking, e.g., “bourbon night” date with a friend wearing sweatpants and sweatshirt (239) and an all-niter in “Kevin’s cabin” at Camp David: “as the sun began to rise I decided to head back to my cabin for a power nap and to sleep off the wine” (106). Not that I’m accusing of anything but it does seem that most or many episodes involve multiple glasses of wine.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀
There’s way too much “first-naming” throughout. This certainly does reflect the presumed intention to show her first-name basis with dozens of close colleagues and friends, but for those of us not part of the scene, it gets tiresome to try to figure out who Amy, Kevin, Elise, Alyssa, Debbie, Eric, Dan, Ben, Jack, Hope, Sam, Ron and others are. “Mark” — Ok since that’s her boss and William (an ex?-boyfriend). But with no index, the others simply get lost.

And speaking of no index…every political/history book needs one.

𝑪𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒐: No idea who’s idea it was to show a Mona Lisa-type overly mascara’d shot that would be perfectly appropriate for a family dining room side table, but it does nothing at all to convey the angst, indecision, trauma and drama of this great woman’s role in the WH leading up to and following Jan. 6. Instead, one of the shots of her testifying, esp. the shot of her looking up seriously at the committee at the dais would have been perfect. (at right) What the cover pic needs is some indication of grit, or at least determination. We understand that a playful or grinning pic wouldn’t be appropriate, but how about something that calls out “Enough!” (And by the way, this is one of the few instances where an exclamation mark in the title would be perfect.)
• The first 35 pages are basically her childhood bio (grade school, high school, choice of college), suitable for a personal memoir of a famous historical figure. But all we really care about as readers is to find out how her decision-line evolved from A to Z in the course of year. In fairness, her bizarre and totally dysfunctional relation with her father as an abused (not physically) child—even up to adulthood—plays a role in her life as a Committee witness, but that could have been dealt with in a 2-3pp summary, possibly even an Intro section after the Prologue.
• Minor quibble: Cassidy refers throughout to “the boss” and “the chief” and apparently this is abundantly clear to those in the WH circle but for those on the outside it’s not always clear which one is Trump and which is Meadows. (eg, 162: “The boss asked him to meet up with Tony Bobulinski”).

𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐋:

This is an important and fascinating account of how a young woman managed to transform her thinking—𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠—based on personal experiences. One of the big questions skeptics (and others) have is: How do you get someone to change their mind based on facts? Is it even possible?
However, there are signs that this book may have been rushed into publication. Ch. 12, for example has several typos (‘gravely’ for ‘gravelly’; “hold room/hotel room”?) and what my students call “gobbledygook” writing (e.g., the OTR explanation; “there was not a microphone and speaker set up”; placing documents on reporters’ seats “after they disembarked”; “jumping in to redirect Mark’s displeasure”) — seemingly concentrated in pp 149-155.

That said, please do get this book!

Politics of Hysteria: When the GOP lost its mind

15 Nov 2023

Weapons of Mass Delusion

When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind

Robert Draper

Penguin, 2022. 384pp. Notes on Sources. Index. Excellent B&W photos open each chapter

“The disturbing eyewitness account of how a new breed of Republicans, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene (84 reference items w/ multiple pages), Paul Gosar (56 references), Matt Gaetz (10 items), and Lauren Boebart (12 items) have taken the politics of hysteria to even greater extremes and brought America to the edge. [Jacket text] Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy gets 44 references and Liz Cheney 41. In short, all the major players are enshrined here in all their shenanigans.

In sum: Draper captures an 18-month defining moment in time for the GOP. He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, along with documentary photographer Louie Palu whose photos open each chapter.

• Trump and MTG campaign style: “all heat and hyperbole” (42)
• MTG as Georgia carpetbagger; moved from 6^th to 14^th District, Rome, GA. (42-43). There are 84 index references for Greene with multiple pages for each.
• “Trump’s insincerity was so brazen…as to suggest the psychodynamic of a serial felon who half wishes to be caught.” Trump “bizarrely smothered the flag with hugs and kisses to emphasize his patriotism at CPAC conference in 2020.” Later in the year, he famously stood in front of a church near the White House in the wake of a Black Lives Matter demonstration wordlessly holding up a bible [upside down] as if it were a bumper sticker. “His everyday fables of personal greatness became a running joke in the media” (52).
• Trump’s most dubious anecdotes tended to be of the “sir” genre: in which some random rough-hewn man…would approach with tearstained cheeks, offer profuse gratitude and unfailingly call him “sir.” (52-53). (see “‘Sir’ alert: This one word is a telltale sign Trump is being dishonest,” Atlantic July 2019, on file)
• Eight months after the Capitol riot the stolen election was now as central to MAGA theology as the crucifixion of Jesus was to Christianity. It also brought profit. The alternative-facts ecosystem now had its own media megaphone: Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) (280)
• Paul Gosar: “the most dangerous man in Congress” (Ch 28, 287ff). There are 56 index references, several of which have multiple pages. (Personally, I had no idea how evil this guy is. In Arizona, we just hear his name a lot but generally don’t pay much attention.)
• Gosar: the “Dentist Patriot” (Ch. 1). Assigned to be MTG’s mentor (38).
• Gosar’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts showed an animated video on Nov 9, 2021 showed an anime protagonist with Gosar’s face flying through the air and stabbing the photoshopped face of AOC in the back of the head with a sword. The same anime displayed Gosar flying at Pres. Biden with two swords. Although it was actually an intern in Gosar’s office who designed the anime, when Gosar was told about it by his son, Gosar agreed it was great: “The creativity of my team is off the hook,” he enthused on Twitter. Afterward, his digital director issued a statement saying “Everyone needs to relax…It’s a cartoon. Gosar can’t fly and he doesn’t own any lightsabers” (290).
• Liz Cheney: “Far from regarding Trump as the party’s savior, Cheney’s position was that the former president was a lead anchor around the GOP’s neck.
• Madison Cawthorn: “At his tender age [25] and only four months into his first term in the House, Cawthorn was already developing a reputation as one of the most dishonest elected officials on Capitol Hill” (175).