‘Tora, Tora, Tora’ will be shown at the Warner Grand in San Pedro on Dec. 7th, it was announced today. I wonder why…
I’m going, and I’d like to suggest that the rest of the L.A. Blogger community ought to come out as well.
What do you think??

One of my best friends spent years as a community organizer for parks in New York City. She is a fountain of funny stories and ‘on-the-ground’ political wisdom, and one of her truisms is: dog doo ends all meetings.
That is to say, much like Godwin’s Law, as soon as dog waste is brought up, the meeting is effectively over. The room divides, the tempers get hot, and constructive discussion flies out the window.
I’ll suggest a corollary of this, which is: race ends all Democratic politics.
In the discussion of the ‘Veterans Day’ post below, the thread immediate turned into a race politics thread…who were the racists, and what political power did they have in which party. And constructive discussion sort of petered out.
Now, race is a real issue in American life today.
Yesterday, I had dinner with a friend. I was dropping off a character reference letter for him to give to the sentencing judge next week. He got talked into something stupid, got set up, and got arrested. Another casualty of the drug wars (to his credit, he blames no one but himself…one reason he’s the kind of guy I’d write judge letters for). There’s a chance…a narrow chance…that he will just get probation, which means he’ll get to keep the job he’s had for twelve years.
We were talking about it and he said something that rang my bells pretty hard.
“Now,” he said quietly, “when I get pulled over and they ask me if I’m on probation, I’ll have to say ‘yes’.” I looked at him.
“Damn,” I said, “they never ask me that…” and then the unspoken acknowledgment. He’s black, I’m not.
Now I’ve ridden along with cops a fair amount (I also have good cop friends). Without going into a lot of detail about my friend, there are things that would make me look at him twice (things I learned to look for from cops, and which I saw and remarked on when he and I first met…part of how we became friends).
But his matter of fact comment is no less heartbreaking to me because I know that if I was a cop, I’d be asking him the same question. And there, in a nutshell, is the American Tragedy of race.
But…it isn’t the only problem or the only tragedy we face. And the fact that it stops us in our tracks…that it stopped Janice Hahn…that it stops discussion…is a bigger problem. I won’t pretend to lecture anyone on this subject tonight.
But the lecture’s coming.

Check out Joe Klein in Slate. A key quote:

The Democrats have to stop being so goddamned negative and pessimistic. No piece about the party should omit Dick Gephardt’s famous retort to Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ads: “It’s getting closer and closer to midnight.” (For that reason alone, Gephardt should be barred from further national political activity.) Reich, this is your specialty: Why are Democrats always so downbeat and mopey about the most dynamic economy in the history of the world? Why are your friends at the American Prospect so perpetually dour, dark, and humorless? Why can’t they be as funny as you are?
The most important qualities that Newer Democrats need to enlist are optimism and an inspirational, idealistic American patriotism. This is particularly true if they want to appeal to young people. I would guess that those who watch Saturday Night Live and MTV adhere to only three bedrock political principles: tolerance, environmentalism, and entertainment value. (I would guess, for example, that they intuit the difference between Eminem’s—and, yeah, mea culpa, Sister Souljah’s—scathing social realism and true intolerance.)

Read the whole thing.
I’m busy, serious bloggage later tonight.

I can’t believe I forgot this one:
Sartre’s play: Dirty Hands. An excellent examination of ideology, purity and praxis.

First, I think golf is a stupid game. My attitude is best summed up by the famous Michael Schumacher response to the question “Do you play golf?”: “No, I’m still young enough to enjoy sex.” (I love taunting my brother the golf fanatic with that).
But the recent uproar over August National has taken a turn for the stupid.
First, the leading critic of Augusta, Martha Burk, deserves an abject apology from Porphyrogenitus (of Ranting Screeds), Instapundit and Kathryn Lopez of NRO, for their dumb-ass misreading of her Ms. Magazine article. In well-read society, prefacing something with “A modest proposal” is usually a dead giveaway that what follows is pointed satire, as her article obviously was. (I wrote an economics paper for a Marxist economist a long time ago entitled “A modest proposal” in which I suggested that we simply make being poor a capital crime. Dumbass didn’t get it either, until I shoved Swift’s book under his nose.) Lopez then gives a half-apology here, in which she makes this profoundly wrongheaded statement:

I did, in fact, have the piece. I also suspected Burk didn’t really want to sterilize all men. However, Burk, a feminist writing that in Ms. was not the same as the likes Rod or Jonah writing the same thing on NRO. Ms. folks do believe men are the problem, and, frankly, anyone who has spent too much time exposed to feminist literature knows that.

So instead of relying on what Ms. Burk actually said, we’ll rely on what Lopez thinks she knows about her audience. Stupid, embarrassing, and the apology itself requires an apology.
Porphyrogenitus is usually a lot better than this.
Instapundit missed on that one too, and I trust that he’ll be as quick at backing off as he is in stepping forward.
As far as I’m concerned, Augusta has the absolute right to remain private and discriminatory. But they ought to have the decency to do so behind closed doors, and they gave that decency up when they started hosting a national, public (i.e. open to non-members) golf tournament.
If a bunch of old rich guys want to buy a golf course and go play with each other, I’m all for it. But don’t run a $10 million a year enterprise out of it and then keep claiming it’s a “private” matter.
Calpundit is all over this.
(added links)
(edited for tone and grammar)

Councilmember Janice Hahn is now working to find a venue for the veterans’ showing of ‘Tora, Tora, Tora’ mentioned here, here, here, and here.
For those who don’t live in Los Angeles, or who haven’t had much to do with city government here, let me take a moment for an aside.
We have a ‘weak mayor’ system, somewhat strengthened by the charter revisions we’ve recently passed, and a 15-member City Council. Each Council member is, in effect, the mayor of a city of roughly 250,000 people. City departments respond adroitly to council requests; and no development project will be approved in any council district without the consent of the district Councilmember. So Councilmember Hahn’s (that’s hahn-at-council-dot-lacity-dot-org) role here is fairly crucial.
Here’s today’s story from the Daily Breeze:

An uproar over a quashed plan to show “Tora! Tora! Tora!” at a San Pedro theater has prompted Los Angeles city officials to try to line up an alternative venue.
Veterans were stunned when they were told it would be insensitive to the Japanese-American community to go forward with a planned Dec. 7 showing of the 1970 Academy Award-winning film on the 61st anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
While organizers said they appreciated the effort to find a new location, they are still steaming over the charges of insensitivity.
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn outlined her feelings in an e-mail sent in early November to the volunteer board of the Fort MacArthur Military Museum in San Pedro, which was organizing the commemoration as a museum benefit.
“The manager of the theater informed us that he had made his decision in part because of concerns whether the screening of the movie on that particular day would be seen by some as insensitive,” Hahn wrote. “. . . Every person I have spoken with has recommended that I concur with the department’s decision.”
Asked about the decision last week, theater manager Lee Sweet said his determination was based on there being a prior theater booking for Dec. 7.
And although Hahn’s e-mail did not mention a prior booking at the theater, in remarks Tuesday the councilwoman also stressed that was the overriding reason that the Pearl Harbor show could not be scheduled.
“In no way do I have anything to do with booking events or canceling events” at the city-managed 1930s-era movie theater, Hahn said.
The event was never canceled, she said, because it was never scheduled.
“It was never an event,” the councilwoman said. “It hadn’t even gotten that far.
“The only thing I was asked to do is see if I could overturn a booking which is not in my purview.”
When Hahn received a request from the veterans to intervene, she consulted with Assemblyman George Nakano, D-Torrance, and other Japanese-Americans before issuing her decision by e-mail.
“(Nakano), like the others I spoke with, expressed serious reservations regarding showing the film on that date,” Hahn said in her e-mail. Nakano could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Hahn went on in her e-mail to mention that her father, the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, was a World War II veteran and that she supported veterans.
“My support of the department’s determination was not in any way meant to offend anyone, most especially you or any veteran,” Hahn wrote. “I sincerely regret that it was received in this way.”
Veterans said they asked for Hahn’s help, believing she had the political clout to do so.
“It’s definitely not her job to book events, but by the same token, it is her job to stand up for what’s right,” said Joe Janesic, vice president of the museum’s volunteer board. “She could have called (the theater manager) and asked him to reconsider. . . . We knew that Councilwoman Hahn could have either some influence or would be able to outright reverse the decision.”
Veterans contend that they got the runaround from theater personnel, who first told them the night was booked but later said it wasn’t.
When the event originally was conceived last May, Janesic said they were told by Sweet that there was a prior booking to show the movie “Boys Town” on Dec. 7.
But later this summer, veterans learned that plans for the movie had fallen through. “Boys Town” now is scheduled to be shown later this month.
With nothing else listed for that night on the theater’s Web page schedule, organizers resumed efforts to schedule the event but were met with a series of city objections about finding a print and securing insurance for it.
The volunteers managed to do both.
Last week, Sweet said there was now a new booking for that night: Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, the councilwoman’s brother, has reserved the Warner Grand on Dec. 7 for his holiday party. Councilwoman Hahn said she did not know about the party.
“I don’t want anyone to think we’re unreasonable,” Janesic said. “(The city) has every right to say what gets shown on their property, but when they start throwing in all these objections, it screams cover-up.”
Since it was published Sunday in the Daily Breeze , the story has been debated on talk radio stations and referred to by Internet sites.
Hahn said Tuesday that she has asked the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, which manages the Warner Grand, to find another venue for the museum’s Pearl Harbor event.
“Now that I realize that the showing of ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ is apparently very important to the World War veterans in commemorating Pearl Harbor Day, I’ve asked the department to work with this group to find another venue,” Hahn said. Janesic said he appreciates the gesture, but added that finding a theater won’t be easy. The volunteers already have looked for other venues without success, he said.…

Comments to follow later today.

Instapundit has picked up the story on a conflict between some City of L.A. agencies and a veteran’s group (over showing ‘Tora, Tora, Tora’ on Dec. 7th) I talk about below, (but still no blogroll link!! where’s the justice??) and his opinions are certainly clearer than mine.
He suggests an email to the City Council member involved, Janice Hahn: hahn-at-council-dot-lacity-dot-org (I’d hate for her mailbox to get filled with spam…).
One thing that bemuses me about this one is that they took the position without any protest from the ‘offended’ community; they reacted in anticipation of offending someone.
Amazing, but true.

So Matt Yglesias and Josh Chafetz are listing some ‘core books’ for we wannabe political theorists.
Looking at the selections, it’s hard to find fault (except in myself, in my having missed a few of the books!); I’ll suggest that my bias is toward Josh, simply because I don’t think you can do a good job of understanding Enlightenment thinkers without having read at least Aristotle, Aquinas, and Machievelli.
Plus Josh references Schumpeter and Berlin, two of my touchstone writers.
I’ll throw a few more books onto the pile, then tomorrow or so try and boil the list down to one of my own, plus list the ones new to me that I now feel compelled to read.
Here are some additions:
De Toqueville: The Ancien Regieme and the French Revolution. The roots of revolution are the same now as they were then; read a more-or-less contemporary account by a brilliant political thinker.
Jurgen Habermas: The Legitimation Crisis. The self-consuming nature of legitimacy in modern society. Almost unreadable, but worth the grudging effort.
Ortega y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses. Massification…and the dissolution of intermediate social structures…is one of the key social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Here’s a (florid, somewhat overblown, politically out there) seminal work in the area.
Berlin: The Roots of Romanticism. I’ve already beaten this one almost to death.
[Update for visitors from Oxblog: I added
I can’t believe I forgot this one:
Sartre’s play: Dirty Hands. An excellent examination of ideology, purity and praxis.]

Ann Salisbury and Jeff Cooper want me to adjust my medication. They think that I am misreading the Democratic Party in my post below, and ask me (thoughtfully, as friends do) to step back and reconsider.
I need to do some homework; it’ll take some time with Google and if I can get into it, Lexis. This is a crazy week, and I’m going to try and go to Comdex for a day next week, so give me a few days for a concrete reply. But here’s the deal.
I know a bunch of Democrats. I know people who run Democratic campaigns. I know people who are Democratic elected officials. They’re my friends, and I love them, and genuinely believe they are trying to do good, and often succeeding.
Every day, I read the L.A. Times, the Daily Breeze, and the Wall Street Journal cover to cover. I read CNN.com and all the blogs on my blogroll pretty much daily (all the ones with *’s every day, and many others); I probably spend an hour or so a day reading. I subscribe to The Atlantic, Harper’s, Granta, and Scientific American, along with a bunch of business, technology, and motorcycle magazines, and I read them all as soon as I get them. I pick up The Economist every other month.
I don’t say this to make myself out as some kind of font of knowledge, but to say both that I’ve got some direct knowledge and that I’m a pretty voracious media consumer (with the exception of TV and talk radio), and I’ll tell you now that when I think of Democratic patriotism, I still somehow can’t get the image of Michael Dukakis sitting in a M-1 Abrams out of my mind.
The ‘brand impression’ that I have of the Democratic Party includes many things; it includes compassion, justice, equality…but it doesn’t include patriotism.
The very word ‘patriotism’ makes me cringe a little bit as I say it, and that’s a problem.
This was triggered as I started to write an appreciation to all the American soldiers who had served. As I wrote, I started worrying about my phrasing. I was worried about being criticized for not qualifying my praise for the ones who had served in unjust wars, or who had somehow acted badly, or who had extended imperialism.
Maybe the folks I know are just a little to ‘left’ liberal. Maybe my filters, because of my personal history are just set in a certain way so I see that a little more.
Maybe this is a problem that exists only in my head.
…or maybe not. And if not … if I’m right, and the anti-American left has managed to create the brand all liberals have to live with … then we liberals have a much bigger problem to deal with, and we’d better start dealing with it.
Let’s dig a little and see.
(11/12: fixed dumb error re Dukakis’ name, added some emphasis, cleaned up some grammar)

…are dangerous. Dave Yaseen, of the usually smart blog A Level Gaze, posts what I pray to Woodie Guthrie is a slip of the liberal tongue. His post concludes:

Yes, this debacle of an election is the media’s fault. But it’s our fault as well, and we need to drastically change the way we do things in the Democratic party, not diddle around with how to phrase things to make them palatable to the electorate. If we have to drag American voters, kicking and screaming to chose their own interests, so be it.
(emphasis mine)

Well, damn. That’s the way to reach the poor uneducated voter and get them onto your side…
…or not. My comment to him was to say that I hoped this was a slip of the tongue (which all of us are subject to) and if not, that if this really represented the philosophy of the leadership of the Left, they’d better be prepared to be sleeping outside on the porch for the full length of a long, cold winter.