Read

I'm pretty caught up on reading these things, just not on writing about/linking to them.

In the October 18 New Yorker, you'll find Sean Wilentz's article on the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, which lays out neatly its roots in the John Birch Society. Proving that it is a liberal rag, the magazine has kindly put the article online for free. I really try not to pay attention to this sort of thing (i.e., the current idea being promoted by Beck et al. that our true history has been stolen from us), sort of in the same way I ignore crazy street people, preferring not to get involved, but, just as with its article on the Koch brothers, this is an important piece of journalism. Plus it's pretty juicy stuff.

Calvin Tomkins's profile of the artist John Baldessari is in the same issue but behind the pay wall. It says some smart things, though. You can read Ben McGrath's profile of Nick Denton, however, which is loads of fun, and Jill Lepore's review of sex-ed books for kids, which is hilarious from its opener:

It was in the living room. My father was reading the newspaper. I was reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. “By Jove, Peterson!” said he, “this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you have got?”
“A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it were putty.”
“It’s more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone.”
“Not the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle!” I ejaculated.

I looked up from my book.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hmm?”
“What does ‘ejaculate’ mean?”
He put down the newspaper and sighed. I never did find out who stole the Countess’s blue carbuncle.

In the October 25 issue, Ben McGrath, writing about the history of movie catchphrases being adopted by politicians, has a brief bit that sets the record straight on Network and gets in a zinger at the same time:

Paladino is a Tea Party man, and, like a number of Tea Party insurgents, he’s been getting good mileage out of the famous Peter Finch line from the 1976 movie “Network”: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” If you’ve been out leaf-peeping upstate, you’ve probably passed a few yard signs that read, “I’m mad as hell, too, Carl.” Paladino even played the clip at a campaign event, as a rallying cry. What he’s mad about is what Republicans are usually mad about: government spending. But anyone who’s familiar with the film might well ask whether Paladino, whom the News has taken to calling Crazy Carl, has thought this one through. Howard Beale, the character played by Finch, is in the midst of a nervous breakdown at the time of his quotable outburst. “Network” is not a story of redemption through anger. Beale is portrayed as a delusional tool of corporate interests who ends up getting shot on live television when he has outlived his usefulness to them. For a hotheaded political aspirant like Paladino, inviting comparison with Howard Beale, as a radio host said last month, is a little like citing “Lennie from ‘Of Mice and Men’ on the issue of rabbit husbandry.”

Tad Friend's article on the leaf blower wars of California is classic stuff but behind the wall. Basically, it's about the number of ways that neighbors can find to be angry at one another and how, exactly, we should handle them. I have to say, though, that the study that found a grandmother with a rake is barely beaten by a leaf blower strikes me as awfully suspicious. Perhaps in a very small area that would hold true, but it doesn't seem so, at least from anecdotal evidence.

What you can read is Nicholas Lemann's profile of Harry Reid, which, like the last time the New Yorker ran one of these, ended up really making me like him, despite the fact that we have significant political and philosophical differences. I think I have a soft spot for people who tend to jam their feet into their mouths:

“He’s not a charismatic person who’s gifted with great oratorical skills,” Richard Bryan, who met Reid when they took the bar exam together, in 1963, and went on to serve with him in the state legislature and the U.S. Senate, says. “He doesn’t fit into the mold of a hail-fellow-well-met. His retail political skills—working the room, marching in a parade—that’s not his strong point.” Reid is prone to crassly impolitic remarks. Earlier this year, it was revealed that he had praised Obama for not speaking in “Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one”; more recently, he has called Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, the “hottest member” of the Senate, and remarked, “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.”

There's also the fact that he's on the opposite side of this:

One day, I visited an Angle supporter named Elissa Wahl, a thin, bespectacled young woman who runs a homeschooling organization out of her house, in one of Las Vegas’s new middle-class subdivisions. Wahl has been homeschooling for sixteen years. In 2002, when the Nevada Department of Education tried to require homeschoolers to use an approved curriculum, Wahl organized an opposition. “I believe God has laid an interest on my kids’ hearts,” she told me, “and I don’t want government to interfere with that.” She and her allies found a friend in state government: Sharron Angle.

We were sitting at Wahl’s dining-room table. Her children were taking a break from their lessons to watch television. “Back in the eighties, Sharron wanted to homeschool her son,” she said. “The school district said no. So she started a little private school in a church. She ran for the state assembly to fight for homeschooling. Because of that, we have no high-school-equivalency exam. No hundred and eighty days of school. We as parents are in charge of our kids’ education. That’s our constitutional right. We were one of the first organizations to endorse Sharron—before the Tea Party, before anyone. We never endorsed anyone before.”

She went on, “Sharron’s just a normal person, honestly. She’s small. She’s tiny, O.K.? She smiles a lot. She feels led by God to this position. She doesn’t want to live in Washington. She sincerely believes God has called her to this position and told her what to do. A lot of people say she’s kooky—like my neighbor. Well, if she’s kooky, so am I.”

If there's one thing I really believe in (and there isn't; there are lots), it's public education, and the idea that homeschooling can consist of whatever you want to is just... lunatic, isn't it?