Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 20
February 24, 2015
Site News
Three posts in a month. Wow. That got out of hand quickly.
The reason blogging has been non-existant is that I’ve been tied up with another project. I’ll tell you all about it next week, I hope. It’s kind of fun.
February 23, 2015
Do You Want to Job to Roman?
Galley Reader K.T. sends along this video mashing up Frozen and smark complaining about Roman Reigns. I barely keep up with the WWE, but this is awesome.
February 18, 2015
Who Wrote the Best ’50 Shades’ Lede?
Kay Hymowitz, for the win:
In her standup act, comedian Whitney Cummings scoffs at the claim that men like strong women. “Sorry, I’ve watched porn,” she says. “Men like Asian schoolgirls with duct tape on their mouths.”
She can do demographics, high-brow criticism, and this. Hymowitz is a national treasure.
February 9, 2015
Trailer City
Is McFarland USA the annual middling Disney feel-good sort-of-true sports flick? Yes.
Does it have Kevin Costner, who’s a better leading man in middle age than he was in his youth? Yes.
Is it the cross-country movie I’ve been waiting for my whole life? Oh yes. Yes it is.
January 30, 2015
Romney 2016 Update
My favorite part of this Romney 2016 walk-through isn’t that Romney has come to the conclusion–for the second straight cycle–that there’s no one running who could possibly be a better candidate (or president!) than himself. And it isn’t that he considers Jeb Bush a “small time” businessman.
No. It’s that when Romney looks at the 2016 field, the only two people who stand out as “strong presidential material” are . . .
Bob Portman and John Kasich.
Once again, Mitt Romney displays the laser-like intelligence and keen acumen which earned him hundreds of millions of dollars in the private sector.
January 29, 2015
About Andrew Sullivan
I don’t have any interesting thoughts about Andrew Sullivan leaving his blog, but Galley Friend X emailed in with some:
His “retirement” will spark no shortage of ponderous reflection on the end of blogging—it’s already starting—but isn’t there a much more obvious force driving this?
We’re in the last two years of the Obama Administration, and so of course a number of its journalistic proponents are exhausted. TNR has collapsed, the American Prospect is collapsing, and now Sully’s quitting too. All of them were well energized (and well supported) when they were the loud opponents of a Republican administration. But after six years of a Democratic president, they’ve all lost their mojo. I don’t blame Sully for quitting now—if I were him, I wouldn’t want to spend the next two years defending Obama and promoting Hillary, either.
When this happened eight years ago, it sparked all sorts of discussion (on the Left) of whether conservatives were intellectually “exhausted.” But this time around, when it’s liberal journalists and intellectuals who are exhausted, they’ll turn it into a process story.
In any event, I suspect that Sully’s “retirement” from blogging won’t last more than six months into a Republican presidential administration. Hell, if the polls are close after the Republican convention, Sully’s blog will probably reappear, magically, on a major media website.
January 28, 2015
January 23, 2015
Marvel Decides to Ape DC
Because the New DC was such a profitable, artistically rich masterstroke, Marvel has decided to blow up its two comic-book universes, too. Sigh.
On the one hand, I’m surprised that Disney is allowing this. Why monkey with a formula that has created the raw materials for billions of dollars worth of intellectual property?
On the other hand, excepting the Matt Fraction Hawkeye, I don’t think I’ve read a Marvel book in two years that wasn’t better than meh. Most of them have been terrible. The company has clearly been in a creative rut since Ultimatum. (I blame Civil War, myself, which kicked the annual maxi-series obsession into high gear.)
I wonder what the ripple effect will be on the cinematic universe. You can already see the seams starting to show in the project’s being announced for Phase 3 of the Marvel movie universe: Why do they need to kill Captain America? Why do they need to put Civil War on screen? Why do they need to start breaking up the Avengers?
The answer, I think, is that Disney has absorbed the notion that instead of using the existing characters to tell interesting stories, they need to be constantly morphing and changing the universe itself so as not to lose the attention of moviegoers.
Which is obviously how the Marvel group thinks about their comic book universe, too.
Santorum. Scalia. Incest.
Here’s law professor Josh Blackman explaining why banning adult incest is likely to be very difficult:
First, the father and daughter are both consenting adults who are claim to love each other, and enjoy sexual relations with each other. Why should the state have any interest in their private lives. They aren’t even seeking any recognition of their relationship.
Second, as we learned in Windsor and its progeny, the state has no compelling interest in encouraging responsible procreation. That incestuous relationship may yield children with birth defects, under strict scrutiny, is not a sufficient reason to stop them from cohabitation. . . .
Third, we learned in Windsor that traditional notions of morality are grounded in animus, and do not provide a valid basis for infringing on personal relationships. The New Jersey legislator said as much: adult incestuous relationships “violate our acceptable moral standards.” That’s a per se violation of the principles of Romer.
Fourth, to the extent that we look abroad to international law to inform evolving standards of decency, experts in Switzerland and Germany have proposed decriminalizing adult incest.
He then goes on to ask (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) on what grounds we might deny marriage to incestuous adult couples:
And if siblings are allowed to have sexual relationships, why shouldn’t they be able to receive a marriage license. Why should the government deny them a license if the couple asked for one? Granted, there is no social movement pushing for incestuous marriages, like there is for same-sex marriage.
Ah, but if there were a social movement . . .
But don’t worry; it’ll be here before you know it. After the transgender campaign is won, the left will need another frontier. That’s the thing about the sexual revolution: It’s one of those endless wars that never really concludes.
