Author Page for Robert Farley

Last Kaus this Week

I apologize in advance…

Mickey is trying to correct the impression that he just doesn’t like homosexuals:

If a gay man, say, goes to see “Wuthering Heights,” there is at least one romantic lead of the sex he’s interested in! In “Brokeback Mountain,” neither of the two romantic leads is of a sex I’m interested in. … My wild hypothesis is that more people will go see a movie if it features an actor or actress they find attractive! If heterosexual men in heartland America don’t flock to see Brokeback Mountain it’s not because they’re bigoted. It’s because they’re heterosexual. “Heterosexuals Attracted to Members of the Opposite Sex”–for those cultural critics wondering what a commerical disappointment for this much-heralded movie will Tell Us About America Today, there’s your headline. …

Fascinating.

If I’m reading this right, Mickey thinks that the box office of a film depends on the attractiveness of its stars to the opposite sex. The reason Mickey (and his hypothetical American movie going audience) doesn’t want to see Brokeback Mountain isn’t because gay sex makes him uncomfortable, but rather because there are no women involved. Mickey, you see, watches movies because he likes to think about having sex with attractive actresses. This explains why he was just as skeptical about the box office chances of, say, Master and Commander (no female characters) as he is about those of Brokeback Mountain. No women, and guys won’t want to see it. Or so I assume; I haven’t actually checked back into his archives to find out. Also, I invite you to examine the 2005 box office list, and tell me how much the success of these films depended on the attractiveness of their stars to the opposite sex, as opposed to story, setting, acting, writing, directing, and so forth.

I can see why Mickey feels resentful about all this. Damn dirty liberals like Frank Rich are trying to make him feel bad about not wanting to see Brokeback Mountain. Well, they’re not actually trying, but Mickey suspects that they might. Sexual preference, you see, is genetic, and Mickey is a confirmed, genetically determined heterosexual, meaning that he can’t enjoy a movie in which men have sex with one another. Worse, if Mickey did find the sex scenes…interesting… then he would be forced to ask awkward, uncomfortable questions about himself. Since we are all genetically determined to like either men or women, Mickey might be forced to wonder about which way his genes actually pointed. I can see how that would be difficult for him.

Have no sympathy for Mickey. If he had written that he was reluctant to see Brokeback Mountain because Ang Lee is a hit or miss director, I wouldn’t be harassing him. If he were reluctant to see it because films on such topics often take on an Afterschool Special quality, I wouldn’t harass him. If he were reluctant to see it because he doesn’t care for cowboy romance films, I wouldn’t harass him. Mickey has been quite specific, though; he doesn’t want to see it because it’s a gay film, and thinks it will fail commercially for the same reason. That he may be right about the second doesn’t excuse the first.

UPDATE (from Scott): Roger Ailes finds the only film of the last half-century that Kaus could like.

Counterinsurgency is Hard

Fine post on counter-insurgency from Kingdaddy.

Via AG.

America Meets America

Duss has a nice post.

Unclear on the Concept

The battle never ends.

Here’s a test. Can you distinguish between these two events?

1. A prominent Congressman shuts down the government because the President makes him use the back door of Air Force One.

2. A prominent Congressman decries the President’s handling of the war in part because that President has failed to communicate even with the hawkish elements in the opposing party.

If you think that these are qualitatively different, congratulations. You’re smarter than Mickey Kaus. I would advise sending an e-mail to Jacob Weisberg and asking for prominent blog space on the homepage of Slate.com. God knows, we can only be the better for it.

Which Historic General Are You

Julius Caesar You scored 46 Wisdom, 69 Tactics, 53 Guts, and 50 Ruthlessness!

The Best of LGM

Gentle Reader,

If you would take a look below the ads and Donation Box (clickety click!) on our right sidebar, you’ll notice a new feature, Best of LGM. Thus far, I have only collected posts relating to Our War Against Mickey Kaus, Sunday Battleship Blogging, and the Goeben. We hope to add some more topics in the next couple weeks, including Roe vs. Wade, China, Friday Cat Blogging, and others. Enjoy!

Sometimes He Just Defies Description

But “wanktastic hackmeister” is a good start:

Guilt-Trip, Incoming! I’m highly skeptical that a movie about gay cowhands, however good, will find a large mainstream audience. I’ll go see it, but I don’t want to go see it. (Why? Sexual orientation really is in the genes. Sorry.) When the film’s national box office fails to live up to its hype and to the record attendance at a few early screenings, prepare to be subjected to a tedious round of guilt-tripping and chin-scratching by Frank Rich and every metropolitan daily entertainment writer who yearns to write about What the Movies Say About America Today. (Wild guess: They say we’re still homophobic!) That will be harder to ignore than the movie. … Maybe if we all go see it, Rich won’t write about it! [He'll write about it-ed Good point.] 9:15 P.M.

Mickey may be right about Brokeback Mountain failing to find a large audience, although it’s really hard to say. It’s the second sentence that really confounds me; how could one’s attitude towards the genetic determinacy of homosexuality possibly affect one’s desire to see Brokeback Mountain, either positively or negatively? Setting aside the fact that discussion about genetics and homosexuality is hardly finished, I’m just very flummoxed as to how your position on that questions affects your inclination to see Brokeback Mountain any more than it affects, say, your preference for mustard over catsup or your desire to see King Kong.

Honestly, I prefer genuine Medveditism to Kaus’ cynical, too clever by half wankery. “Oh, I’ll see it in order to prove that I’m not homophobic, but don’t forget that it really is a plot by liberal Hollywood to demonstrate that we’re all homophobic. By the way, I’m a liberal, so you should take seriously my critiques of all these other dirty liberals.” Will I see Brokeback Mountain? I don’t know, depends on the reviews. I wasn’t really planning on it, but the preview I saw looked pretty solid, and you can do a lot worse than Proulx and McMurtry.

News from the Northern Front

Be sure to read Dave Noon’s update on our progress in the War Against Christmas.

Courage.

Maye

Let me echo Redbeard and Angelica (among many others) on the Cory Maye case; it seems that this guy is getting railroaded. You don’t have to be a Second Amendment purist to believe that someone who shoots an unannounced intruder in the middle of the night in his own home doesn’t deserve to die.

Yarr…

Blarg.

“My Humps” has made me a fatter man. I think it’s fair to attribute 3-4 pounds to the fact that I can’t figure out how to change the radio station in the gym at my apartment complex. If “My Humps” starts playing at the beginning of a workout I can ignore it, but if it starts playing when I’m 23 minutes in on the elliptical, I just can’t muster up the gumption to finish. I think I need an Ipod.

Matt Yglesias: Wrong about “My Humps”, wrong for America.

The Dream of a 313 Ship Navy

Interesting report from the New York Times on how the Navy is thinking about its procurement future.

I think that Matthew Yglesias evaluation of the DD(X) as a ship that is “cool but useless” is a little bit unfair. The DD(X) has actual mission capabilities beyond combat at sea. The Advanced Gun System is capable of delivering a lot of ordinance to points deep inland in a very short amount of time. As such, it represents a real increase in current naval capabilities. This doesn’t mean that we should buy it; the DD(X) is very expensive, and it doesn’t look as if the Navy will be able to afford more than a small number (although it’s unclear whether the seven destroyers mentioned in the article are the initial buy or the entire production run). But to call it useless is putting the case a little bit too strongly. I’m inclined to think that the Arleigh Burke destroyers have a long, useful life in front of them, but at some point we will have to come up with a replacement. The DD(X) might not be it, but I like the idea of the Navy procuring ships that keep Joint operations in mind, and that you can actually imagine being engaged in the kinds of conflicts that might happen in the next twenty years.

The LCS is the other new ship that the Navy is working on. Whereas the DD(X) is really expensive ($3 billion a ship), the Littoral Combat Ship is relatively inexpensive (about $200 million). LCS is a roughly frigate sized ship that is designed to operate in shallow waters and fulfill a variety of different missions, from amphibious operation support to anti-piracy. Like the DD(X), the LCS design shows that the Navy is at least beginning to think of its missions in a less Mahanian fashion; that is, directed toward ends other than the destruction of an enemy fleet at sea.

Whether the procurement of either the DD(X) or the LCS in any kind of numbers will happen is in serious question. The Navy has been declining in size for quite a while, and Congress is unlikely to be very receptive to calls for a funding increase. See Brad Plumer for a bit more on this. Personally, I am very doubtful that the Navy will ever get a DD(X), but I think the LCS has a much brighter future, if only because the Navy can sell it as a multi-purpose vehicle.

For a very bad analysis of naval procurement, see Ed Morrissey. His post on this topic is a clinic on inept half-thinking on the issue of naval power. For Ed, one “existential threat” is just as good as another; if we needed a huge Navy to prepare to fight the Soviet Union, then we certainly need one for the War on Terrorism. And if we don’t, then we need one to prepare to fight China. That the procurement proposed by the Navy doesn’t seem particularly geared towards the Chinese threat apparently escaped his notice. His most laughable assertion is this:

In a decade, the Chinese fleet may surpass our Pacific fleet in firepower, a dangerous imbalance not only for us but for our Pacific Rim allies such as Japan and South Korea. That shift in power will signal not just Beijing but other regimes and terrorist bands that the US has lost its primacy on the seas — and that will exponentially expand our problems.

Quite. The first part is true; if China goes on a crash naval buidling spree, and the US Navy loses six aircraft carriers in a mysterious boating accident, then the PLAN might approach equality with the USN in a decade. Of course, the JMSDF would still be larger than the PLAN, but in the mind of Ed things like that don’t matter; despite all actual evidence, Japan will bandwagon with Chinese power rather than balance against it. As for South Korea, it has perhaps escaped Ed’s notice that China doesn’t need a single fishing boat to threaten Seoul. To his credit, I will allow that it’s possible that Al Qaeda pays close attention to the relative naval procurement strategies of the US and China, much in the same way that it’s possible flesh eating zombies could crawl from the sea tomorrow and begin attacking US naval assets around the world. This is what happens when a blogger can’t bring himself to analytically distinguish between naval power and his own masculinity…