1790s The Washington Administration

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“Still, antifederalists spied royal trappings galore, small but menacing concessions that portended a monarchy. When Washington rode out on public occasions, through unpaved streets teeming with wandering pigs, he often traveled in a buff-colored coach with two liveried postilions to guide him. The coach was pulled by six white horses that had been rubbed with lustrous white paste; their coats were brushed till they veritably gleamed in the dark. At the same time, to certify his republican credentials, Washington took daily walks at two o’clock each afternoon. To modern eyes, the most incongruous fact of all was that Washington had seven slaves shipped up from Mount Vernon to assist his white household servants.”

-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”

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The Decline in Civility

A little more than a week after a 17-year-old soccer player punched a recreation-league referee in the head in suburban Salt Lake City, the referee is dead, the player faces charges, and youth sports are left with questions about the seeming rise in severity of assaults on officials.

-- New York Times

Apparently it has grown somewhat common for referees to be assaulted. Youth sports are said to be especially problematic. I guess there really is a letdown in civility.

Lion Love

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cross-posting

LJ is not accepting my cross-posting, and I am not feeling that it is really worth going to the trouble of posting separately over there. I mean, who really cares?. I don't know if anyone is even looking at more than half that stuff. Such cute lion pictures, too.

"Teen Mom" Sex Tape

That "Teen Mom" sex tape is working out well.

I never knew her and couldn't be less interested in watching the video. I'd rather watch a chikan video, frankly. She is part of today's 'reality television'. I tried "Big Brother" when it first came out some years ago, maybe over a decade ago (maybe just before Mother died), but couldn't keep interested, and I was never tempted by reality-TV again.

Ender's Game

Ender's Game

Saw an ONTD post about a new movie coming out, titled thus and based on a book. Sci-fi. About creating super kids to fight superior outer-space aliens. It doesn't sound like my cup of tea, not at this late date, but it is highly praised, and it makes me wish that I were a much faster and more voracious reader, because I suspect it is worth the read. It's a series, too, which makes it it more formidable, even if the first book at least can stand on its own. But I think I'd rather spend the hours rereading the Nina Zero novels.

A body built for sex

Meh, I think this one is better:

Kat Dennings

[ONTD]

The Great Gatsby

The new "Gatsby" movie has come out, starring Leonaro DiCaprio. It has invited some new stabs at literary criticism for the book. Here is an interesting and somewhat negative take on Fitzgerald.

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Like many American moralists, Fitzgerald was more offended by pleasure than by vice, and he had a tendency to confound them. In The Great Gatsby, polo and golf are more morally suspect than murder. Fitzgerald despised the rich not for their iniquity per se but for the glamour of it—for, in H. L. Mencken’s words, “their glittering swinishness.”

Yet Fitzgerald also longed to be a glittering swine himself, and acted like one anytime he could afford it. “All big men have spent money freely,” he wrote in a letter to his mother. Given the means, he was only too happy to drape Zelda in furs, buy up the local Champagne supply, and throw Gatsby-worthy parties. These conflicted feelings about wealth bled into his work—and in fiction, as in life, piety and swinishness pair poorly. On the page, Fitzgerald’s moralizing instinct comes off as cold; the chill that settles around The Great Gatsby is an absence of empathy. The glittering swinishness, by contrast, sometimes serves him well: There’s a reason Gatsby contains the best party scenes in American literature. But when you combine the two—when you apply a strict moral code to the saturnalian society to which you are attracted—you inevitably wind up a hypocrite. Jonathan Franzen once described Gatsby as “the central fable of America.” If so, it is the fable of the fox and the grapes: a story about people who criticize precisely what they covet.

-- Kathryn Schulz

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One suspects this the critic has sacrificed fairness for the sake of a provocative angle. It must be hard to say something new about the novel. I'm sure Fitzgerald thought murder was more odious than polo, though I can see how it could be a matter of some confusion. What a sport!

Rape Dolls

Silly but cute. It must not be just me. It was on a tumblr called "Rape Dolls".

Daily Fun

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