"Identity Politics" in the 1860 Election

In a review of a biography of Abraham Lincoln in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik makes a couple of throwaway observations of the 1860 campaign for the Republican nomination for President, observations about parallels to today's world.

The Lincolnians also courted a now often overlooked interest group, the émigré Germans, including many exiled by the failed liberal revolutions of 1848. As [Sidney] Blumenthal notes, Lincoln had bought a German-language newspaper, in order to appeal to those key players of the “identity politics” of the time. (It was the equivalent of surreptitiously funding Facebook pages in 2020.)

Source: The New Yorker.

Identity politics. Facebook. Both in a paragraph about the election of 1860. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

POTD: For a Dreamer of Houses

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Dallas Museum of Art. It shows "Rubber Pencil Devil," by Alex Da Corte, ("2018, glass, aluminum, vinyl, velvet, neon, Plexiglas, high res digital video, color, sound"). It's part of the exhibition "For a Dreamer of Houses".

Bonus photo after the jump.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020): Blunt satire of Trump supporters, debutante balls, plastic surgeons, anti-abortion clinics, and, yes, Rudy Giuliani. But vulgarity is no longer shocking, merely vulgar. But then, Giuliani and Trump themselves are vulgar, so call it a draw. D+

 

 

 

 

 

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

My Octopus Teacher (2020): Nature documentary like you've never seen. Diver in South Africa spends a year visiting, studying, and learning from one particular octopus. He even makes friends, if that's the right word. It's clearly intelligent, curious, and playful. Fascinating. B+

Review: The Index of Self-Destructive Acts

From The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha:

On the day that Waxworth arrived in New York to write for the Interviewer, a man named Herman Nash stood on the rim of the fountain in Washington Square and announced that the world was about to end."
	Amazon

The index of self-destructive acts is a baseball statistic developed by Bill James that counts up all the mistakes a pitcher makes that are entirely in his control: balks, wild pitches, errors, etc. There's not much baseball in this novel by Christopher Beha, but there are a lot of self-destructive acts.

The Man Who Wouldn't Spy for the US

"The F.B.I. tried to recruit an Iranian scientist as an informant. When he balked, the payback was brutal." Laura Secor tells the story of Sirous Asgari, an Iranian who had once attended graduate school in America, where his wife gave birth to his American citizen daughter, and where his two sons attended American universities. But on a visit in 2017 he was detained by the F.B.I. He was charged with "theft of trade secrets, visa fraud, and eleven counts of wire fraud." He considered the charges to be nonsense and refused a deal offered that appeared to be the real reason behind the charges — to get him to agree to act as an informant, that is to spy for the US back in Iran. He fought the trumped up charges in an American courtroom and won. But after the judge dismissed all charges against him, even before he could leave the courtroom, he was detained by I.C.E. And then the real hell began.

Lovecraft Country (TV 2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

Lovecraft Country (TV 2020): Monsters, magic, witches, ghosts, shape shifters, time travel, and racism, lots of racism, from 1921 Tulsa race massacre to 1950s Jim Crow. The Korean War filler episode is the best. The CGI is impressive. The plot doesn't make a lick of sense. C+

Lake Highlands Gets a Signature Bridge

Advocate Lake Highlands has the story: "That bowl of spaghetti that is the Skillman/Audelia/LBJ interchange will become a beautiful — and safe — gateway into Lake Highlands."

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020): Part memoir, part nature doc, part prescription for avoiding environmental disaster. Attenborough calls it his witness statement of global decline in a single lifetime. He warns the next 93 years will be worse without change. B-

POTD: Mausoleum of Aga Khan

From 2019 11 19 Aswan

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Aswan, Egypt. It shows the Mausoleum of Aga Khan on the Nile River. According to Wikipedia, "He was the 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili religion. He was one of the founders and the first permanent president of the All-India Muslim League. His goal was the advancement of Muslim agendas and protection of Muslim rights in India." He died in 1957.