Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 44

In Praise of Chris Claremont

His view of The Wolverine is both perceptive and totally professional. Turns out he’s an artist who’s also a total grown-up. Who knew?

I still haven’t seen the movie, partly because after Chris McQuarrie’s script got subsumed, I just kind of assumed that it wouldn’t be as good as it could have been. McQuarrie–who is fantastic–described his original script as “Kurosawa’s Wolverine.” It’s kind of tragic to have had that on the page and then get a different movie.

Pope Francis and the Media

Elizabeth Scalia says that Pope Francis is just using the press:

Spinning and framing is what takes up most of the time of the mainstream press. That being so, some Catholics on social media are voicing concerns that Pope Francis is being “used” by the press in order to serve their own, gay-sympathetic agenda. Wrote one terribly irate man on Facebook: “Francis hasn’t broken through the media hostility to Catholicism—rather, they think (wrongly, I presume) that he’s an ally in their fight against Catholicism.”

Perhaps they do believe that; perhaps some of them really are “using” Francis. But how do they know he is not “using” them right back?

I think that might be an overly optimistic read on the situation.

Wendi Richter vs. The Fabulous Moolah

This is probably the best installment yet of the Masked Man’s shoot series. It’s the original Montreal Screwjob. And it’s all the better for there being full video of the incident.

Juicebox Kremlinology

An interesting observation from Galley Reader X:

So this is interesting: In a one-week period both Ezra Klein and Annie Lowrey published pieces reporting that Larry Summers’s friends, who want him to replace Bernanke as the Fed Chairman, have started a sexist “whispering campaign” against the other top contender, Janet Yellen.

Neither story actually cites evidence of such a “campaign.” In Ezra’s article, which came out first, his only example was a two-month old quote from Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher. According to Ezra, Fisher said that if Yellen were to get nominated to succeed Bernanke, then the pick would be “driven by gender.”

Now, invoking Fisher as part of a coordinated pro-Summers campaign is pretty absurd in and of itself, because Fisher is a very hot critic of a lot of what Larry Summers stands for.

But what was even better was when Mrs. Klein tried to use the same Fisher quote in her own front-page NYT story a couple days ago: the Times had to quickly issue a correction, bluntly saying that Lowrey (and, implicitly, Klein) had taken the quote out of context:

 An article on Friday about Janet L. Yellen and Lawrence H. Summers as possible successors to Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve omitted context for a quotation from Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. In an interview earlier this year on CNBC, Mr. Fisher said of a potential choice to replace Mr. Bernanke: “It’s a presidential decision, and we’ll see if it is driven by gender or other considerations and so on. Janet is extremely capable. There are other capable people.” He did not say simply that a decision to choose Ms. Yellen would be “driven by gender.”

If there’s a “whispering campaign” going on, it’s not between Summers’s anti-Yellen buddies. It’s between the Kleins, and whoever’s urging them to push the Summers’-friends-are-sexist storyline.

Jedi Party at Space Hooters

From the people who brought you freestyle Bane:

 

(Courtesy of Galley Friend A.S.)

Who Knew?

So Variety loves–really loves–The Canyons. They even liken Lindsay Lohan’s performance to Brando in Last Tango in Paris. No kidding.

Meanwhile, over at First Things . . .

Rusty Reno has an . . . extraordinary essay about the magazine’s future.

And Eric Cohen has an equally extraordinary response.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an exchange like this in a magazine of letters. And I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

On Superman-Batman

I worked out some of my angst concerning Zack Snyder’s coming Superman-Batman project over at TWS.

Bonus: Galley Reader J.V. sends along this exhaustive chronicle of the battles between Batman and Superman. The takeaway is that Kal-El crushes Fancy-Pants Bruce just about every time out of the gate.

About the Daily Show

Mollie Hemingway has a pretty convincing call to be wary of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. It’s predicated on the experience of a fellow named Matt Slick, who agreed to be part of a produced piece. He details his experience here.

The producers Slick spoke with misrepresented their intentions to him, but that’s no great sin and it happens at every level from the New York Times and 60 Minutes down to Sally Jesse and your local City Paper. But what’s really eye popping is the editing which was done in post to distort Slick’s words.

After the fact, Slick requested a copy of the full interview (nearly 3 hours), but the show refused. Luckily, Slick was smart enough to record the interview separately. For example:

What they edited and put on TV was this:

Matt:  “The reverse happens as well [camera angle change] where homosexuals go out and find straights to beat up.”

Now notice what happened on the show.  They had me saying, “The reverse happens as well [camera angle change] where homosexuals go out and find straights to beat up.”  That is not what I said.  I said “I don’t know about bullying where homosexuals go out and find straights to beat up”.

That’s most definitely not something that happens every day. But unless the Daily Show comes out and apologizes to Slick, you have to assume it’s standard operating procedure over there.

On Ruy Teixeira

Dan McLaughlin has an extensive–and I mean extensive–critique of Ruy Teixeira, particularly concerning his attacks on Sean Trende and What to Expect. I think it’s pretty devastating. But then, I would.