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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Andrew Klavan</title>
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		<title>The Final Truth of True Detective</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-final-truth-of-true-detective/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-final-truth-of-true-detective</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-final-truth-of-true-detective/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 04:55:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cohle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[klavan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nic Pizzolatto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[series]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[True Detective]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220795</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time turns out not to be a flat circle.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/tf.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-220858" alt="tf" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/tf-450x239.jpg" width="450" height="239" /></a>Lots of spoilers here.</p>
<p>Given the nearly ecstatic reactions that greeted HBO’s <i>True Detective</i> in some quarters, it seems almost surly of me to say that I found it a good, generally entertaining show but not a great one.  That, however, was my final reaction. The list of pros and cons that I began with in my first blog held pretty much valid throughout. The style, structure and especially acting were all superb, giving the show the <i>feeling</i> of something great. But the plotting was unoriginal and finally rather bland and the showy philosophizing ultimately delivered less than met the eye (more on that below).</p>
<p>On top of this, while the final chase sequence had a wonderfully cool setting, I — and several people I asked — found it strangely lacking in any sort of suspense or emotion. At the end of the first season of <i>Dexter</i>, I remember actually standing up from the couch I was so tense and involved. Here, I mostly felt impatient to get on with it. I’m not sure why this should’ve been so. Maybe the heroes had become representative philosophical tropes rather than human beings, or maybe it was simply that they were both such isolated depressives that it didn’t really matter even to them whether they lived or died. Certainly the villain added nothing to the piece and the portentously referential conspiracy never really paid off. Carcosa, my eye.</p>
<p>In any case, to the very end, I kept wanting to love this series but only liked it. But then liking a show is no small thing. Indeed, while I suspect a lot of the over-the-top enthusiasm for the series was event-generated rather than content-generated, there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. The fact that the show was interesting enough to blog about and discuss and disagree over was a source of pleasure. I don’t want to seem negative about it at all. Watching was a fun experience.</p>
<p>As to the final dispensation of Matthew McConaughey’s nihilist detective Rust Cohle: my response was somewhat divided.</p>
<p>At the end of the story, Cohle has a redeeming mystical experience. Near death, or possibly beyond the border, he finds that his identity contains an irreducible and presumably eternal aspect that is bound together with everyone that he has ever loved. The only truly mystical experience of my own life was very similar (sans the whole stabbed-by-a-serial-killer business) so while the revelation struck me as a bit sudden and unearned, I certainly could identify with it.</p>
<p>But if you were paying attention to Cohle’s various philosophical speeches throughout the series, you know that this mystic moment, if we take it seriously, negates every single word he’s previously spoken. In the light of Cohle’s experience, it can no longer reasonably be held true that identity is an illusion gratefully surrendered at death, or that humanity is a tragic misstep in evolution, or even that time is a flat circle. Since it turns out we are, in fact, engaged in an eternal struggle between light and dark, Cohle has basically been talking complete crap this entire time.</p>
<p>This certainly explains the character’s central inconsistency: that, while a nihilist, he is obsessed with doing good and finding justice. It also explains why he drinks so much, since booze alleviates the tension of maintaining a philosophy that deep down we know to be untrue. Cohle’s revelation also makes us, the audience, feel that we have been engaged with an authorial voice that is bigger than its central character. This always broadens and deepens a work of art because it frees us from the oppressive sense that we are being lectured by an author who thinks he possesses the Absolute Truth — which we, of course, know he cannot.</p>
<p>So I not only personally approved of this plot turn, I also appreciated it.</p>
<p>And yet, on another level, I couldn’t help feeling that the religion Cohle was discovering here was the religion of elitism, what we might call Snobianity:  the belief that only a vague mystic spirituality amenable to the analytic maundering of intellectuals can possibly be held valid. (Atheist Sam Harris seems to me one of the high priests of this cult.) Why else did every simple Christian in the show turn out to be a loser or a child-molesting murderer? After all, it seems possible that even someone as stupid as a Christian might be just as linked to eternal love in the afterlife as an intellectual. The only difference is:  the stupid Christian knows it’s true beforehand, while the intellectual is likely to be taken by surprise.</p>
<p>It was almost as if writer Nic Pizzolatto wanted Cohle to have his hip, urbane, cynical persona and his mystic revelation too.  But of course the latter trumps the former entirely and renders hipness, urbanity and cynicism morally worthless.</p>
<p>Just saying.</p>
<p>Anyway, my final review: great acting and great style in a generally enjoyable show.</p>
<p><strong>Previous Blogs on the Series:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part I: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective/">The Real Mystery of HBO’s ‘True Detective’</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part II: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/who-is-the-true-detective/">Who Is The True Detective?</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Part III: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-babes-of-true-detective/">The Babes of True Detective.</a></strong></p>
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		<title>The Babes of True Detective</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-babes-of-true-detective/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-babes-of-true-detective</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-babes-of-true-detective/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Mar 2014 05:49:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220315</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is the HBO crime series too hard on its women?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-06-at-2.23.54-AM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220398" alt="Screen Shot 2014-03-06 at 2.23.54 AM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-06-at-2.23.54-AM.png" width="298" height="239" /></a>Reading <i>New Yorker</i> television critic Emily Nussbaum’s feminist attack on HBO’s <i>True Detective</i>, I found myself thinking, “That’s really interesting, honey, but could you get me a beer, I’m trying to watch TV.”</p>
<p>Oh, all right, I’m joking. But come on. Leftist critics are always hailing art that’s “transgressive,” until it transgresses against their own small-minded, conformist political views. Then they get as offended as a Westboro Baptist watching an episode of <i>Glee</i>. Nussbaum doesn’t like that the neo-noir <i>True Detective</i> partakes of noir conventions like sexy femme-fatales and put-upon wives, or that it delivers the sort of mind-blowingly titillating nude scenes that HBO should probably patent at this point. (HBO-O-O, a registered trademark. And by the way, lads, if you missed the nude scene with torture porn queen Alexandra Daddario, it’s in the second episode about fifteen minutes in, and worth canceling a meeting for.)</p>
<p>What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Nussbaum doesn’t like the way the show treats women.</p>
<blockquote><p>I’ve turned prickly, and tired of trying to be, in the novelist Gillian Flynn’s useful phrase, the Cool Girl: a good sport when something smells like macho nonsense. And, frankly, <i>True Detective </i>reeks of the stuff&#8230; To state the obvious: while the male detectives of <i>True Detective</i> are avenging women and children, and bro-bonding over &#8216;crazy pussy,&#8217; every live woman they meet is paper-thin. Wives and sluts and daughters—none with any interior life.</p></blockquote>
<p>Meh. Who cares? The story is told from the point of view of two guys. The women are seen pretty much as guys experience women: desirable, vexing, loving, essential, annoying as hell. The macho vibe is where a lot of the show’s cool energy comes from. You don’t like it, sister, change the channel. Instead, you can watch Jane Campion’s incredibly soporific <i>Top of the Lake.</i></p>
<p>“Campion jolts the viewer with actual taboo nudity: she films the saggy bodies of middle-aged women, members of a feminist encampment,” Nussbaum says.</p>
<p>What piety! What cant! What imaginary America does she inhabit, I wonder. Taboo nudity? Hasn’t she heard? There hasn’t been any such thing in years. Saggy older women going naked is not taboo. Why, it earns your sleepy aimless story good reviews in the <i>New Yorker, </i>doesn’t it? The people who make these programs live for good reviews in the <i>New Yorker</i>. So where’s the taboo? And who does Miss Nussbaum think is being jolted? Believe me, it wasn’t the sagging breasts that made me stop watching that snoozer. It was the sagging pace, absent all narrative drive.</p>
<p>Let’s talk about some female characters who would really be taboo in a film or TV show. How about a heroine who crusades for the lives of unborn children? I wonder what sort of reviews that would get in the <i>New Yorker</i>. How about a dame who refuses to have sex with anyone until he marries her because she believes that’s God’s will? I’d like to see Nussbaum sing the transgressive praises of that! How about a woman who finds it rewarding to make a home for her husband and children. Whoa sorry, I got carried away. I don’t want to try to expand Nussbaum’s consciousness too far, it might break.</p>
<p>The fact is: you don’t see too many women like those on TV precisely because Nussbaum wouldn’t appreciate them. She’s the critical establishment. She’s the person the filmmakers are trying to please. She, to put it plainly, is the person who needs to be transgressed against in order for art to be truly transgressive!</p>
<p>Just for the record, however, while <i>True Detective</i> is definitely told from a male, and yes macho, point of view, its women are actually far more complex than Nussbaum gives them credit for.</p>
<p>For instance, there’s the child-peddling madam who makes a speech about prostitution as a feminist institution: “Girls walk this earth all the time screwing for free. So why is it you add business to the mix and boys like you can’t stand that thought? Because suddenly you don’t own it the way you thought you did.” Is that pure self-serving rationalization or does she have a point?</p>
<p>And there’s the underaged hooker Beth. Detective Marty Hart tries to “save” her by slipping her some cash and solemnly telling her to “do something else.” Then later, after the girl seems to have reformed herself, Marty sleeps with her (in another eye-scorching nude scene, episode 6, about 18 minutes in). The girl’s sexual degeneracy stands as an accusation against both the feminist self-justifications of the madam and the baloney white knight heroics of Marty.</p>
<p>Finally, there’s Michelle Monaghan’s Mrs. Hart who, when pushed to the limit of her endurance, does something terrible out of a heart-breaking mixture of innocence, hurt, romanticism and justifiable rage. To get back at her philandering husband, she sleeps with his partner Rust — because she’s too conventional to sleep with a stranger, and because Rust is in love with her and therefore both morally and physically safe. Her morality, isolation and yearning lead her to do something incredibly cruel to Rust, who’s more or less innocent of her pain. That’s a pretty complex character by my lights. I won’t speculate on why Nussbaum can’t see Mrs. Hart’s inner life.</p>
<p>Not that she, or anyone else, should give a rat’s, but, just so I’ve said it, I actually think Nussbaum would be a smart, insightful critic if she could free herself from the narrow-minded political prejudices of her elite caste. But, of course, if she did that, she wouldn’t be writing for the <i>New Yorker</i>!</p>
<p>Anyway, I have critical problems with <i>True Detective</i>, as listed in my first two blogs, but the female characters aren’t one of them. In fact, even though they exist in the minds of the men telling the story, they’re pretty multi-faceted and diverse.</p>
<p>That said, I didn’t like the penultimate episode much. Kinda slow. But I’ll wait till the last episode to deliver a final review.</p>
<p><strong>Previous Blogs on the Series:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part I: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective/">The Real Mystery of HBO’s ‘True Detective’</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part II: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/who-is-the-true-detective/">Who Is The True Detective?</a></strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Who Is The True Detective?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/who-is-the-true-detective/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=who-is-the-true-detective</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/who-is-the-true-detective/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Feb 2014 05:43:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219937</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The quality of HBO’s crime series rests with detective Rust Cohle.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/rust-cohle.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-219941" alt="rust-cohle" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/rust-cohle.gif" width="350" height="321" /></a>In <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective/">my first blog</a>, I wondered: is the HBO series <i>True Detective</i> really any good — or does it just look like it’s good? Does it just have the <i>feel</i> of of a great crime show without actually being one?</p>
<p>Ultimately, the answers to these questions rest on the work of talented writer Nic Pizzolatto and more specifically on his central <i>True Detective </i>creation, Detective Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey.</p>
<p>Cohle is an expert investigator, a ferocious rebel, a dedicated drunk and a long-winded philosopher. His aggressively articulate nihilism is part of what drives his partner Marty Hart (played by Woody Harrelson) crazy. Whenever Cohle begins to deconstruct the humanistic or religious conventions of the Louisiana society around him, Hart demands he “stop talking,” and keep his opinions to himself.</p>
<p>The quality of Cohle’s reflections varies widely, from high to low to ridiculous. Let’s take a look at an example of each.</p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The High:</span></strong></p>
<p>In one scene, after recounting how he searched for clues in the records of various murder victims, Cohle goes off on a genuinely eloquent and disturbing rant about the relief of death in a meaningless world. In the end, says Cohle, each murder victim is glad and grateful to let go of her life because it means an end to the wearying effort of pretending to be a self, pretending there’s some logic or wholeness to the experience of human existence, some soul that constitutes a true identity. All this soul stuff is a sham, Cohle tells us, and there’s something relaxing about finally letting it go, even at the hands of a killer.</p>
<p>This is certainly one of several defensible reactions to the philosophical complexities of human life. Well and originally spoken as it is here, it cuts close to our fears and makes us shiver. Powerful stuff.</p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Low:</span></strong></p>
<p>In a scene at a tent revival, however, Cohle’s high philosophical nihilism descends into something more like typical elitist disdain for the beliefs of his social inferiors. Looking around at the worshippers, he bitterly questions their intelligence. He growls that only idiots like these would do good merely for fear of eternal punishment or in hope of eternal reward.</p>
<p>Now, of course, people do hold such opinions but in the mouth of a philosopher like Cohle, they come off as mere cocktail party guff, only just about half smart. Sure, some religious people are stupid but many are very intelligent indeed. Christianity’s appeal to a wide range of IQ’s is actually a feature of the religion not a bug — though it seems to irritate intellectuals that this should be so. And as for creating one’s ethical outlook based on a potential eternity of spiritual development&#8230;  well, one wonders what Cohle’s  own fierce sense of ethics is ultimately based on. In any case, a guy who goes to the gym as much as Cohle apparently does should be pretty comfortable with the idea of sacrificing some immediate pleasure toward a future good.</p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Ridiculous:</span></strong></p>
<p>And finally, there are painful scenes where Cohle descends into pseudo-deep self-serious self-parody. In the most obvious one, he pompously explains the Nietzschean concept of eternal recurrence to two interrogating detectives: “This is a world where nothing is solved. You know, someone once told me time is a flat circle. Everything we&#8217;ve ever done or will do, we&#8217;re gonna do over and over and over again.” I don’t know about you, but this is not the attitude I want in my law enforcement officials! Puckish comedian Daniel Tosh caught the right tone when he announced a new episode of his comedy show by tweeting, “Starting to feel like time is a flat circle, you guys,” and then hash-tagged that with a reference to Michelle Monaghan’s nude scene: “#Monaghansgreatass.”</p>
<p>Internet literary investigators have had a good time tracking down the sources of some of Cohle’s musings, most particularly in an interesting 19th century horror story anthology called <i>The King in Yellow </i>by Robert W. Chambers. And that’s fun, like finding Easter eggs in a video game. But, of course, literary references are not particularly interesting in and of themselves. They’re only really worthwhile when they act as a short-hand method of giving meta-shape, scope and cohesion to a work. They help the author avoid overlong explanations and keep him from disturbing our suspension of disbelief. When Virgil appears in Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>, for instance, we are meant to understand, among other things, that Dante is making a Virgilian epic of Christian faith just as Virgil made a Homeric epic of Roman history. If Dante said this outright, he would not only seem prolix and pompous, he would wake us from his nightmare of hell.</p>
<p>So do these references add anything? Well, I’m not sure. <i>The King in Yellow</i> is an eerie and original work that prefigures the horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Its various stories circle around a play so powerful it drives men mad. I will have to wait for the conclusion of <i>True Detective </i>to see if this expands the show’s themes.</p>
<p>So far, for me, the trouble with Rust Cohle is that he is completely isolated as an observing intelligence within the story. There is no one to answer him or make him doubt himself. His partner’s occasional defenses of faith, family and self-discipline are not just inarticulate, they’re so transparently hypocritical and self-serving as to be absurd. It might’ve been nice if someone on the Bayou had read as much Dostoevsky as Cohle has read Nietzsche, but <i>True Detective</i> never strives for that sort of complexity. Which makes it predictable. When an alcoholic tent preacher tells Cohle he went looking for God but found only silence, who could be surprised? Since he’s essentially living in Cohle’s universe, what else could he have found?</p>
<p>For me, then,<i>True Detective</i>’s quality will ultimately depend on the question: Who is Cohle to Pizzolatto? Is he the authoritative mouthpiece for the writer’s own philosophy or is he instead part of the writer’s exploration of a larger world-view, a view in which Cohle merely plays a part. It’s the difference between a character in Shakespeare who speaks his philosophy out of his own experience and personality in the context of the greater world of the play, and a character in Paddy Chayefsky, say, who trumpets Chayefsky’s leftist political philosophy, declaring The Truth the playwright wants us to hear.</p>
<p>Which kind of character is Cohle? Is there something about him personally that has stripped him of his faith in God and the self and yet left his (philosophically incoherent) insistence on truth and compassion and ethics intact? Is that philosophical incoherence part of the story? The reason for his drunkenness maybe, or the problem he’s obsessively seeking to resolve? Or is he just Our Hero, flaws and all, telling it like Pizzolatto thinks it is? If that’s the case — since Cohle too often comes across as a pompous blow-hard — <i>True Detective</i> may turn out, for all its style, to be ankle-deep and paper-thin.</p>
<p>We’ll know more — and I’ll blog more — after the show’s next installment.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Previous Blogs on the Series:</strong></span></p>
<p><strong>Part I: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective/">The Real Mystery of HBO’s ‘True Detective’</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Real Mystery of HBO’s &#8216;True Detective&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-klavan/the-real-mystery-of-hbos-true-detective/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:51:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HBO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michelle Monaghan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pizzolatto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[series]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[True Detective]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219697</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Despite stunning style and performances, the question remains:  Is this show any good?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/true-detective-poster.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-219723" alt="true-detective-poster" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/true-detective-poster.gif" width="280" height="374" /></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The biggest mystery at the center of the new HBO crime series </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">True Detective</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> is this: is this a good show or not? When the first episode ended, I thought, “I don’t know if that was great or mediocre.” Six of eight episodes in, I’m still not at all sure.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In part, this is a problem endemic to mystery stories: endings are dispositive. AMC’s </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Killing</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> had everything it took to be a great crime series — acting, atmosphere, intelligence, suspense — until the idiotic solutions rendered it second rate. The ending of </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Crime and Punishment</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> secures the novel’s status as a work of genius, whereas the ending of Woody Allen’s attempt to nullify </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Crime and Punishment —</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Match Point — </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">reveals the film as nothing deeper than you would expect from a really smart undergrad philosophizing over pizza and beer.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So we may not know the full truth about </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">True Detective </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">until the final hour’s close. But how’s it doing so far?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Well, it has big shoes to fill, first of all. The show was clearly set up by HBO — and has already been hailed by some — as the next great crime show in this era of great crime shows. After </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Shield, The Wire, The Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Justified</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, man, I set my DVR for this baby before the promo announcer reached the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">tive</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Detective</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. And I wanted to love it. And I still want to love it. And I sometimes feel like I almost love it. And I might come to love it. But I don’t love it yet.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So as a crime writer and a crime story fan, I’m going to try to get to the bottom of this phenomenon in a series of blogs. In this first one, let me list what I see as the basic pros and cons. There will be spoilers.</span></p>
<p>The Pros.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The style: it looks great. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga is doing a fantastic job conjuring up a Louisiana wasteland where the bayou laps at the edge of something that’s not quite civilization.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The structure: Two cops are interviewed in 2012 about a crime that occurred in 1995. So we simultaneously get to see our heroes in the bloom of youth and at the beginning of their decline, each period informing our idea of the other; very cool.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The acting: toss a couple of parts like this to Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and it’s feeding time in the lion’s den. They’re a joy to watch and almost obscure the fine performance being turned in by the underused Michelle Monaghan as Harrelson’s put-upon wife and a wonderfully subtle smaller turn by Shea Whigham as a tent preacher.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Cons. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Well, the tired plot above all and the even more tired plot elements. A Satanic serial killer who poses his victims? Really? Evil-doing religious people who molest children? Boy, I never saw </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">that</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> before! A corrupt Billy Graham type? It is to snore. Nothing surprises. Nothing is new. Even the writer Nic Pizzolatto said in an interview, “I’m not interested in serial killers. I certainly have no desire to get into some kind of creative competition for who can think of the most disgusting serial killer.” Well, fine — then come up with something fresh. That’s the job. Quite often, this strikes me as a crime story for people who never watch or read crime stories.</span></p>
<p>The pros and cons came crashing together in one stunning set piece at the end of episode four. Here’s the set up. Our detectives, Harrelson’s Marty Hart and McConaughey’s Rust Cohle, find they have to reach a source in a biker gang. But hey, it just so happens to be the biker gang Cohle used to be undercover with. And hey, it just so happens the bikers never found out he was an undercover cop. So Cohle goes back into the gang, is forced to take a lot of drugs to prove his sincerity and then, to further prove his sincerity, is forced to participate in an armed hold-up which starts a shoot out and race riot. But he manages to drag the source out of the melee.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What? The plotting is absolutely ridiculous — but then the action sequence is absolutely superb. I don’t mean to be picayune or cranky. I loved the funny, crazy, exciting shoot-out and chase. I just didn’t believe it for a minute. It violated the show’s carefully constructed sense of realism. I was dying to just kick back and enjoy it but the coincidences and absurd reasoning kept taking me out of the moment.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The whole show is kind of like that. At one point, Michelle Monaghan’s character remarks of her husband (I’m quoting from memory): “He didn’t know who he was, so he didn’t know what he wanted.” The same could be said of the series.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But all of this, though basic, is secondary. The real star of </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">True Detective</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> is Pizzolatto, the writer. This is first and foremost a </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">written</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> show and the question behind the question of its quality is this: does Pizzolatto have something really rich to say or is it all just flash and bang?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">More on that in my next installment.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The New York Times vs. David Mamet</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-klavan/the-new-york-times-vs-david-mamet/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-new-york-times-vs-david-mamet</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:19:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Mamet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[double standards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Anarchist]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Times sets out to destroy one of America’s most important artists for his thought crimes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Mamet.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-186319" alt="Mamet" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Mamet.jpg" width="260" height="167" /></a>The New York Times is very good at what it does — which nowadays involves a lot of lying in service to a leftist agenda.  There are the outright lies (such as the paper’s recent distortion of a police bias trial to make the NYPD appear racist), the lies of omission (such as its lack of full reporting on the Obama administration’s fatal acts of malfeasance and dishonesty in, say, the Benghazi and Fast and Furious scandals), and the atmospheric lies (such as its rose-colored reporting on the disastrous economy in bluer-than-blue California).  Altogether, these lies combine to make the paper something like the Matrix: a plausible imitation of reality intended to deceive people so that their substance may be milked to feed an overweening state.</p>
<p>As in the 1999 sci-fi film that begat that metaphor, rebellion against the illusion results in swift retribution.  And nowhere does the Times rush to punish resistance so quickly as in the arts.  Times reviewers consistently give sympathetic treatment to leftist cultural works while attacking those of a conservative bent, often regardless of quality.</p>
<p>Which brings me to David Mamet.</p>
<p>One of the most important American playwrights of the last 40 years, Mamet, in 2008, at the age of 60, broke from the near-universal leftist conformity of the theater community and declared in an essay in the Village Voice that he was “no longer a brain-dead liberal.”  He followed this up in 2012 with a book entitled <em>The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture</em>, which was nothing less than a conservative manifesto.</p>
<p>For the Times’ culture writers — and anyone else interested in preserving the left’s near-monopoly on our arts — Mamet’s political conversion presented a problem.  The Pulitzer-winner’s credentials could hardly be any more impressive.  He’s written mainstays of the modern theater like Glengarry Glen Ross and American Buffalo, and screenplays for such terrific films as The Untouchables and The Verdict.  His original mix of American tough-guy vernacular and Pinteresque allusion had a huge effect on stage writing throughout the last third of the 20th century.  He is an American master.</p>
<p>So the Times set out to destroy him.</p>
<p>The one time I met Mamet, I asked him if he had paid a price for admitting to his conservatism.  He laughed and replied that, after his Voice piece, the New York Times had given his next play not one, but two, bad reviews!  I do not believe the paper has given a new play of his a good review since.  When they praise his early plays, it is often to compare them unfavorably to his later ones.  And when his latest play, “The Anarchist,” opened on Broadway last December, they not only savaged it but celebrated its commercial failure with a nasty, slanted post-mortem.</p>
<p>While no one under the emotional age of 127 looks to the New York Times to set his cultural agenda, live theater is the one art form that remains somewhat dependent on the paper’s good opinion.  Manhattan is still the center of the theater universe and a review from the Times can be decisive.  So when Times chief theater critic Ben Brantley greeted “The Anarchist” with a childishly sneering, dismissive, and largely content-free pan, it was perhaps unsurprising that the play proceeded to close shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>The Times then followed its bad review with its subtly brutal obituary, “Behind a Flop, A Play(wright) Within a Play,” by Patrick Healy.  Healy opines that the rapid “demise of ‘The Anarchist’ raises questions about the theater business.”  These questions, according to Healy, are:  Did loyalty to Mamet and the hope of a big score lead the producers to rush the play to the stage?  Should Mamet have been allowed to direct his own work?  And — the big one, given a paragraph of its own:  “Does Mr. Mamet&#8230; still have something to say to a contemporary audience?”</p>
<p>Are these, in fact, the questions the play’s closing raises?  What about: “Can a Broadway dominated by musicals and revivals still support new, small, serious drama?” Or how about: “Has the Times’s politically-inspired sniping at the playwright cost him popularity?”</p>
<p>But no, to Healy, the questions are only:  is Mamet too influential, is he unable to direct, is he too old?</p>
<p>This last is a particularly vicious swipe in a culture world overeager for the young and hip — especially among Times readers, for whom the word “hip” is too often followed by the word “replacement.”  And since it often requires several decades for an artist to acquire the wisdom and courage to openly embrace conservatism, the charge that he is past his prime is usually readily available to his left wing detractors.</p>
<p>But never mind.  Let me try to answer Healy’s questions.</p>
<p>Over the last week or so, I’ve been steeped in Mamet’s latest stuff.  I watched the HBO drama Phil Spector, which Mamet wrote and directed; I attended the Los Angeles revival of “American Buffalo” at the Geffen Playhouse; and I read “The Anarchist” (a performance wasn’t available to me).</p>
<p>Phil Spector is a smart, entertaining bagatelle.  It’s largely worthwhile for Mamet’s superbly kinetic direction (answering one of Healy’s questions) and the brilliant speeches written for Al Pacino’s Spector.  (“Extraordinary accomplishments&#8230;  transform the grateful into an audience, and the envious into a mob.”)  It’s not a major work, but it’s a minor work by a major talent.  This and the fact that Mamet’s 2009 “Race” was a hit on Broadway despite more sneering attacks from the Times seems to answer another Healy question:  yes, Mamet can still bring it.</p>
<p>As for American Buffalo, it was great.  The Geffen revival is some of the best theater I’ve seen in LA (where the Los Angeles Times has also been waging an anti-Mamet campaign).  The story of three small-time thieves losing track of everything that matters in their illegal pursuit of an endangered American dream is as powerful and relevant today as it was in ’77.  The fact that a revival of this terrific play bombed on Broadway in 2008 (after another Times pan) reminds us that artistic and commercial success don’t always gibe on the Great White Way.</p>
<p>And what about “The Anarchist?”  My judgement here has to be provisional.  Mamet’s plays reveal themselves in performance more than on the page because&#8230;  well, because they’re plays.  All the same, I think I can safely say that this short, two-handed drama is a small but important work of the American theater.  It will be re-staged and reconsidered long after Ben Brantley, Patrick Healy and the paper they work for are all forgotten.</p>
<p>Like Robert Redford’s recent movie <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/bad-company/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FrontpageMag+%28FrontPage+Magazine+%C2%BB+FrontPage%29">The Company We Keep</a>, “The Anarchist” concerns a Weatherman style leftist terrorist (Cathy).  After 35-years in prison for killing two policemen during a politically motivated bank robbery, Cathy is brought before Ann, an authority figure who has the power to facilitate her parole.  Cathy claims that she has converted from Judaism to Christianity, and deserves her freedom.  Ann is suspicious.  The intellectual fencing match between the two women slowly reveals Cathy’s outlook and motivations.</p>
<p>Of course, it was the play’s politics that were going to get under the Times’ skin.  Redford’s movie, with its soft focus view of ‘60’s radicals, got a lukewarm but affectionate and sympathetic review from the paper, but Brantley brusquely dismissed Mamet’s tougher approach.  (“If you know Mr. Mamet’s politics&#8230; you know which way Ann leans.”)</p>
<p>This is not just biased, it’s dumb.  The play is informed by Mamet’s politics, sure, as Redford’s movie is informed by his, but “The Anarchist” is much more deeply informed by Mamet’s Jewish faith.  The verbal battle between Cathy and Ann is underscored by a bold critique of Christian forgiveness in light of the demands of Jewish justice.  In this, “The Anarchist” sings a sort of counterpoint to the Merchant of Venice.  Since Merchant – and much western culture — depicts Jewish justice as rigid and bloodthirsty while Christian mercy droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, to see Mamet stage the argument from a Jewish perspective is radical and bracing.</p>
<p>It’s powerful intellectual theater, rich, deep and provocative.  It’s no surprise it had a short run on a Broadway dominated by musicals and paltry star vehicles — especially with the Times on the leftist warpath.</p>
<p>But whether my judgement of the play is borne out or not, the larger point perhaps is this.  An art world with only one opinion is an art world inhospitable to the arts.  David Mamet has come roaring into the maturity of his vision.  He is a conservative.  Perhaps the lockstep guardians of our political sensibilities should get over it and give him the honest consideration he deserves.   The New York Times’ ongoing treatment of one of America’s most important artists will determine whether the paper still has anything to say to a contemporary audience.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The One-State Solution</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/the-one-state-solution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-one-state-solution</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:16:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Why not give the Middle East to the Jews?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mideast.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95229" title="mideast" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mideast.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="301" /></a></p>
<p>Why not give the Middle East to the Jews?</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" width="440" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uIEeiDjdUuU?version=3" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="440" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uIEeiDjdUuU?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<title>How To Behave During an Islamic Massacre</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/how-to-behave-during-an-islamic-massacre/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-to-behave-during-an-islamic-massacre</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 04:00:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[different culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[expression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free expression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Huh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[massacre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sensitivity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sensitivity training]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sort]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thoughtful discussions]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Some tips on treating blood-crazed Islamic madmen with respect and tolerance. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/klav.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-91186" title="klav" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/klav.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="265" /></a></p>
<p>Andrew Klavan is here again with some sensitivity training, absolutely free.  When  pastor-slash-attention-seeking-kook Terry Jones committed the crude and  nasty act of burning the Koran, Muslims in Afghanistan responded with  thoughtful discussions and debates about the unpleasant edges of free  expression…  Whoops, just kidding!  In fact, they cut people’s heads  off!  Sort of a different culture, huh.  And you know what that means.   Right!  We have to learn how to treat blood-crazed Islamic madmen with  respect and tolerance.  So here are some tips…</p>
<p>Backgrounds by the scimitar-wielding Justin al Folk.</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EKerbOi_mrI?version=3" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="440" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EKerbOi_mrI?version=3" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object></p>
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		<title>Barack the Magic Suit</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/barack-the-magic-suit/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=barack-the-magic-suit</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 04:05:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A fabulous story about a glorious place where whatever you think should be true is true.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fant.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-90210" title="fant" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fant.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="231" /></a></p>
<p>Today, boys and girls, <a href="http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&amp;mpid=80" target="_blank">PJTV’s Klavan on the Culture</a> presents a tale of enchantment, a fabulous story about a glorious place where whatever you think should be true <em>is </em>true.   And who should be president of such a fantastical land?  You guessed  it.  Barack the Magic Suit.  Here’s how it all happened–once upon a  time…</p>
<p>Animation by Justin the Magic Folk.</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" width="440" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rOmTH1fIhBE?version=3" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="440" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rOmTH1fIhBE?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<title>Your Public Sector Union At Work</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/your-public-sector-union-at-work/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=your-public-sector-union-at-work</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 04:06:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afternoon Edition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Behold! A ravening beast with a single red eye and fangs dripping the blood of devoured state budgets.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="highslide" onclick="return vz.expand(this)" href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/klavan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-87623" title="klavan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/klavan.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="296" /></a></p>
<p>As a member in good standing of Tiny Satiric Commentator’s Local  #456, <a href="http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&amp;mpid=80" target="_blank"></a>I understand that private sector  unions are a necessary evil in a world  in which fat plutocrats bathe in  their own money while smoking  cigars–a patent fire hazard.  But the  public sector union is a  different kind of animal altogether, a ravening  beast with a single red  eye and fangs dripping the blood of devoured  state budgets.  Or  something.  Anyway, I am here once again to explain  it all to you in  under four minutes–after which, by union rules, I get a six hour  break.</p>
<p>Justin Folk of Lunatic Video Guy Local #137 provides the lunatic video:</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" width="440" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/su4PwZCWUdg?version=3" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="440" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/su4PwZCWUdg?version=3" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object></p>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<title>Multiculturalism Explained</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/multiculturalism-explained/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=multiculturalism-explained</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/multiculturalism-explained/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Feb 2011 04:18:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=86028</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Left expects us to tolerate intolerant cultures like Iran's. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/klav4.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-86027" title="klav4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/klav4.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Why does the Left expect us to tolerate intolerant cultures like that of  Iran? Will moral relativism be the end of our culture? Find out as  I explain the dangers of multiculturalism:</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="100" height="100" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9POkP2oCFhA?version=3" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9POkP2oCFhA?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<slash:comments>23</slash:comments>
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		<title>Stop the Hate!</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/stop-the-hate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=stop-the-hate</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/stop-the-hate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:00:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=84975</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to a world where conservatives are branded racist for wanting people to be treated equally.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/klav.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-84976" title="klav" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/klav.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="266" /></a></p>
<p>Welcome to a world where conservatives are branded racist for wanting people to be treated equally:</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="100" height="100" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-TJ7OGl4CGw?version=3" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-TJ7OGl4CGw?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<title>The History of Western Culture in 2 1/2 Minutes</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/the-history-of-western-culture-in-2-12-minutes/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-history-of-western-culture-in-2-12-minutes</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/andrew-klavan/the-history-of-western-culture-in-2-12-minutes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Jan 2011 04:05:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=81872</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From Socrates to Star Trek, the West is the best. Here's why.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/klavan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-81875" title="klavan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/klavan.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="254" /></a></p>
<p>From Socrates to Star Trek, the West is the best. Here&#8217;s why:</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="100" height="100" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PrhCivQrrRQ?version=3" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PrhCivQrrRQ?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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		<title>KlaviLeaks Makes Andrew Klavan Public Enemy No. 1</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/klavileaks-makes-andrew-klavan-public-enemy-no-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=klavileaks-makes-andrew-klavan-public-enemy-no-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/klavileaks-makes-andrew-klavan-public-enemy-no-1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Dec 2010 04:20:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=79343</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Klavan on the Culture releases its archives of thousands of videos showing what's really going on behind the scenes in our government.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/wikileaks.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-79344" title="wikileaks" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/wikileaks.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="316" /></a></p>
<p>Julian Assange–Obama’s Czar in charge of Exposing All Our Secrets–has  now been arrested for the crime of sleeping with a feminist without a  condom.  (Until that happened, I always thought that was the <em>punishment</em> for a crime.  As in, “Arrested for espionage, he was sentenced to sleep  with a feminist without a condom.”)  But the downfall of the louche  Australian Wikileaker has not lessened the threat to America’s national  security.  Not while I’m around it hasn’t!  That’s right, this week we  at <a href="http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&amp;mpid=80" target="_blank">PJTV</a>‘s  Klavan on the Culture at long last are releasing our stunning cache of  videos giving the viewer unprecedented access to the behind-the-scenes  operations of the nation’s high and mighty.  Hold on to your hats–or, if  you don’t have a hat, feel free to hold on to the hat of the person  next to you.</p>
<p>Justin Folk supplies the visuals, which he pilfered from a government computer:</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="100" height="100" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FlsjRnH4eHM?version=3" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FlsjRnH4eHM?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
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		<title>The Windows</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/the-windows/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-windows</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/the-windows/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:00:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=78261</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A short story.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/k11.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-78290" title="k1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/k11.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="640" /></a><strong>[This article is reprinted from <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/">City Journal</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>He began every day with a naked woman.  FemArt.com had a new one each week. He didn’t subscribe to the site. The  free 30-second sample video was enough. Explicit, even exploratory,  without being overtly sexual or pornographic. Just a nude girl or  sometimes two posing or laughing or running on a beach or through the  grass or by a lake or near a railroad track. Not the likeliest  scenarios, admittedly—he sometimes pitied the women for the harsh stones  or gritty sand against their bare flesh—but their images beguiled his  imagination and brought him to life.</p>
<p>Then there was e-mail. Notes from the Fever Swamp. Fears; conspiracies; dire predictions. <em>I  hear my upstairs neighbors whispering at night. . . . The president is  one of them. . . . It’s all foretold in Revelation. . . . They have the  materials they need for the Times Square attack. . . .</em></p>
<p>Sometimes there was a personal threat as well. There was one today, in fact. <em>We’re getting closer, Stein. You can count your days on a single hand. A single finger maybe. . . .</em></p>
<p>During his life—that’s how he thought about it: back in the old days,  during his life—he had had a reputation as a hard case, a tough guy.  Plenty of journalistic adventures to his credit. Government corruption  exposed. Some mobster stuff. A couple of war zones. Enough danger and  legal trouble and nights on the road to cost him a wife at least, a poor  darling from his native suburbs who’d signed on for something a little  more home-and-garden. He was no stranger to the wickedness of the world,  in other words. Back in the old days, during his life.</p>
<p>Now though, here, alone, each time he opened an e-mail threat, his  stomach did that Broken Elevator thing, that sudden, souring plunge. No  point in calling the police any more. They were weary of him. Skeptical.  But he—Stein—had every reason to take this stuff seriously, and he did.</p>
<p>He put most of the e-mails in a file labeled LUNACY. One or two—the one about the Times Square attack, for instance; plus the threat on his life—went into a smaller file labeled LEGIT.</p>
<p>Then he made coffee.</p>
<p>He drank it black, out of a mug decorated with the newspaper’s logo.  Even he found that sort of pitiful. He carried the mug around the  apartment, sipping from it and muttering to himself—muttering,  oftentimes, phrases from his final argument with Connor, the paper’s  editor in chief. Things he’d said, things he wished he’d said.</p>
<p>“Maybe the readers are alienated by tiptoeing, candy-assed lies, you  ever think of that? . . . It isn’t about me. . . . How is the simple  truth self-dramatizing? . . . Taking it personally? What does that mean?  Because I’m a Jew? Is that what you’re saying? Come out and say it, you  little . . .”</p>
<p>He hardly knew he was doing it until suddenly he’d realize. He found that sort of pitiful too.</p>
<p>This morning, his coffee half-done, he stopped by the window beside  his desk. Lifted the slats on the shutter. Peeked out at the sidewalk  three stories below: the sidewalk and the brownstones and the pale green  sycamores of West 69th Street near the park. Suits and skirts on their  way to work. Artists and neighborhood ladies walking their dogs. No one  suspicious. No one standing strangely still, watching his window. As  there sometimes was. Or as he sometimes thought there was.</p>
<p>He closed the slats. He never opened the shutters. Never.</p>
<p>Time to get to work. Time to update his blog, distilling yesterday’s  research—phone calls and texts to and from a growing network of sources,  websites studied through the long night just past. But before he could  begin, there was a strain of music, the heavenly harp-stroke of a  cartoon angel. An instant message. Rose2475.</p>
<p>Stein moved eagerly toward the sound. Quickly sat at his desk, his  hand going to the computer mouse, his head jutting toward the monitor.</p>
<p><em>morning jerry. u there?</em> He had made himself invisible online. She couldn’t see him. <em>if u dont answer 1 day I’ll stop trying.</em> Then: <em>no I won’t.</em> Then: <em>really. ru there?</em></p>
<p><em>Im here</em>, he typed, after a moment’s hesitation. <em>sorry. another threat today. Hav 2 b cautious.</em></p>
<p>He despised himself the moment he sent it. Trying to make himself  sound dangerous and romantic. Like a posing teen. Hoping to impress her.  What a knucklehead he was. What a sucker. How did he even know she was  who she pretended to be? How did he even know she was a <em>she</em>?  Probably some old man with a fetish or some ten-year-old prankster  punking him for laughs. Or one of the evildoers. An evildoer cat’s-paw,  toying with him. Maybe so.</p>
<p><em>I worry about u</em>, she wrote back, and, for all his self-reproaches, he found it crazy-gratifying: she worried about him. <em>ur safety. ur health. ur mind even!!! y not take a break, get away, come visit me (she sed batting her lashes) meet me.</em></p>
<p>She always refused to send him photographs—and he couldn’t find any  online. She said he had to come and see her for himself. She promised  she wasn’t hideous. He wouldn’t look upon her and turn to stone, she  said. He liked her teasing him like that, beckoning him. Little did she  know he sometimes imagined her with the face and body of one of the  naked women on FemArt.com. Or maybe she did know. If she was a man—an  assassin smirking at the keyboard—she would know precisely the sorts of  things she had maneuvered him into thinking.</p>
<p>Whoever she really was, he had met her first in a chat room where he  was following up a tip about a cell upstate. She was a librarian in  Oneida, she said. She was looking for sources of local history. That  conjured in him images of a walk down tree-lined lanes, holding hands  with a prim girl who would be beautiful if you would just take off those  glasses, Miss Jones. . . . A little too sweet a dream. A little too  easy. And all to the music of that angel chord of hers.</p>
<p><em>u could just walk out the door and hop on the thruway</em>, she wrote. <em>There’s zero to keep u ther. u could come today.</em></p>
<p><em>You can count your days on a single hand</em>, he thought. <em>A single finger maybe. . . .</em></p>
<p>But she was right: he could go. He could see her for himself. Stuff a  change of clothes into a traveling bag. Be there by afternoon.</p>
<p><em>how ru?</em> he wrote back. <em>Wuz new in oneida?</em></p>
<p>She told him. <em>same old.</em> Getting ready for the library’s summer programs. Reading books to the children at story time, her favorite part of the day. <em>My ordinary life.</em></p>
<p>Stein touched the monitor with his fingertips.</p>
<p>After Rose2475 signed off, he settled down to work.</p>
<p>His computer screen was divided into windows. His blog, The Threat  Level, was at the center. His new documents and interviews were in  tabbed folders to the upper right, his saved research in folders to the  left. Live views from various webcams around the city were arrayed along  the bottom: shifting angles on Times Square, Central Park, Ground Zero,  the Manhattan skyline. Up top, there were shots from the security  camera outside his brownstone and from the camera he’d mounted above his  own apartment door to take in the welcome mat, the landing, and the top  of the stairs.</p>
<p>There were divisions within the Threat Level page as well. Links to  other blogs. Relevant news stories from other sources. His own most  recent posting. And—always—the column that had gotten him fired: “Their  God Is Not God.” He never took that down. He left the headline boldly  visible—and the lede as well: “If God is real, some descriptions of him  will necessarily be more accurate than others.” Then a link to the body  of the text. It made him feel good—made him feel unbowed and defiant—to  keep it posted like that. He couldn’t be silenced, etc. Connor and his  compliant city room could all go to hell, etc. But, of course, he knew  how little it meant in fact. Even as it swirled down the drain with the  rest of the lying old media, the newspaper maintained a circulation of  half a million. His blog? It had maybe 300 subscribers, got maybe a  thousand hits on a good day. A voice in the blogosphere wilderness. A  voice crying: <em>Their God is not God.</em></p>
<p>Never mind. Business time. He went at the keyboard. Intel pointing to  an imminent and catastrophic attack on Times Square seemed increasingly  credible. The mosque the city was planning to build near Ground Zero  was widely viewed as a major victory among the terrorist cells and had  inspired them to plan more missions. Federal denials of increasing  cell-phone and Internet chatter were the result of bureaucratic  stupidity and politically correct appeasement. <em>Don’t be offensive. Don’t get them angry. We don’t want to insult anyone’s religion.</em> The same logic that had lost Stein his job.</p>
<p>“Why the hell not, Connor?” he muttered. <em>Law enforcement sources say their hands have been increasingly tied</em>, he wrote. “You think slapping God’s name on something makes it sacred?” <em>The cells have used so-called community liaisons to infiltrate antiterrorist agencies at the highest level.</em> “I could slap God’s name on a butcher knife and cut your stupid throat, you pompous, cowardly . . .”</p>
<p>Once he got going like this, the prose flowed, febrile and fluid. On  and on without paragraphs or punctuation, just the occasional ellipsis  like a gasp for air. Even he—some part of him—watched the words unwind  and wondered if he was raving now, if he was mad. But the sources were  reliable, deep, solid. He was still a good reporter. He leaned into it  and went on and on.</p>
<p>There was—suddenly it seemed—a knock at the door. He nearly jumped  out of his own skin. That wasn’t just a turn of phrase either. He really  felt his inner man skyrocket while his body froze in place.</p>
<p>“Who is it?” he shouted, turning in his chair only slowly.</p>
<p>“Morton’s. Your sandwich,” a voice came back.</p>
<p>He glanced at the clock on the bottom of his screen. Noon already. He  checked the view of the camera above his door. It was the guy—one of  the usual delivery guys. No one else, as far as he could see.</p>
<p>He felt the stiffness in his body as he stood. He went—not to the  door—but to the shuttered window on the opposite wall. “You didn’t  buzz,” he shouted over his shoulder. “How’d you get in the building?”</p>
<p>“Old lady was coming in at the same time, let me in.”</p>
<p>Stein peeked out through the shutter slats. There. On the sidewalk. A  man—an olive-skinned man in jeans and a T-shirt—just now turning away.  Wasn’t he? Just now walking away? Or had he simply been strolling past?</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/k2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-78263" title="k2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/k2.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="618" /></a></p>
<p>Stein closed the slats. Swallowed hard. Went to the door. He didn’t  use the peephole. They could just blow you away through the peephole. He  opened the door only enough to let the delivery guy pass the paper bag  through to him. He passed back a cash tip.</p>
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		<title>Is America Satanophobic?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/is-america-satanophobic/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=is-america-satanophobic</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/is-america-satanophobic/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 04:05:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=78125</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is the sensitivity for the Prince of Darkness?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/klavan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-78124" title="klavan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/klavan.jpg" alt="" width="425" height="329" /></a></p>
<p>Is America Satanophobic? Check out Andrew Klavan shedding light on the Left&#8217;s new cause:</p>
<p><object style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="100" height="100" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OvdHlsKuBpg?version=3" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="height: 390px; width: 440px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OvdHlsKuBpg?version=3" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<title>A Man Alone</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/a-man-alone/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-man-alone</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-klavan/a-man-alone/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:03:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[annoy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assault charge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[autobiography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[black leadership]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bond]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brainwash]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brotherhood organization of a new destiny]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Jesse Lee Peterson versus the “black experience.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/jesse.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51533" title="jesse" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/jesse.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="333" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[This article is reprinted from <a href="http://www.city-journal.org">City Journal</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>In December 2001, the Toyota Motor Corporation held a public meeting at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with racial activist Jesse Jackson. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss Toyota’s “Twenty-First Century Diversity Strategy,” a ten-year program worth some $7.8 billion in contracts for minority-owned businesses. At even a casual glance, the program seemed a capitulation to Jackson, who had threatened to call for a black boycott of the carmaker over some ads that he deemed racist. Toyota’s denials that it had given in to racial extortion rang unconvincing.</p>
<p>Also in attendance that day was another black minister named Jesse—the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson. Peterson is the staunchly conservative head of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, or BOND, which is dedicated to “rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man”—educating males, mostly black males, about personal strength and responsibility. Peterson is also Jackson’s sworn nemesis and calls him, among other things, a “racist demagogue” and a “problem profiteer.” For two years prior to the Toyota meeting, he’d been holding rallies declaring Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a “National Day of Repudiation of Jesse Jackson.” So when it came time for the Q&amp;A, Peterson asked Toyota’s reps if BOND could apply for its grants without joining Jackson’s Trade Bureau at an entry fee of up to $2,500.</p>
<p>“All hell broke loose in the room,” Peterson writes in his book <em>Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America</em>. “Several blacks got up and started screaming obscenities at me.” Jesse Jackson denounced “some parasites who want to pick up apples from trees they didn’t shake.” When Peterson tried to leave the meeting, he claims that Jesse’s son Jonathan confronted him and shoved him in the chest, while others surrounded him, shouting obscenities.</p>
<p>Peterson sued, claiming that Jesse Jackson threatened him and that Jonathan assaulted him. The jury split 6–6 on the assault charge, and it was settled out of court. A lengthy 6–6 split on the other charges ended when, according to the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, three jurors, still professing to believe Peterson, surrendered to the argument that he hadn’t proved his claims. Though Jesse Jackson had to admit under oath that his Trade Bureau played a role in distributing the Toyota grants—and though he acknowledged the “parasites” remark—he and his son walked away largely unscathed.</p>
<p>I couldn’t help but think of Jesse Jackson when I visited Peterson at BOND recently. I couldn’t help but think of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, with its monumental marble headquarters in Chicago and branches in major cities around the country. BOND’s offices, by contrast, are in a shabby storefront sitting amid furniture stores, gas stations, and billboards in a flat and dispiriting stretch of L.A.’s Mid-City West section. Whereas Rainbow/PUSH reportedly receives double-digit millions in corporate grants and sponsorships, BOND gets by on about half a million dollars a year in mostly private donations (though some money comes in from Toyota since the 2001 brouhaha). Its Home for Boys, a gabled house in a pleasantly leafy residential neighborhood nearby, can hold eight residents at a time, with some sharing rooms. That, along with BOND’s After-School Character Building Program, which takes on ten to 12 kids for six to nine weeks, represents an effort no larger than, say, a church Sunday school: about 70 boys have graduated from both programs so far. BOND chapters begun in Flint and Lansing, Michigan, have had to close down for lack of funds.</p>
<p>But if BOND is austere, it nonetheless provides Peterson with a platform from which to speak his indomitable piece. The building includes a rudimentary chapel—a cross, a podium, maybe 30 office chairs—where he preaches to a small congregation every Sunday (the sermons are later posted on his website and YouTube). There’s also an admirably equipped studio from which he puts on a radio and Internet call-in show five mornings a week. As BOND’s president and CEO, he makes regular TV appearances with Fox News stalwarts Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity (who serves on BOND’s advisory board). He also writes a no-holds-barred column on the popular conservative Christian website WorldNetDaily, and he makes occasionally raucous speaking appearances, including a recent debate at Yale University in which he denounced affirmative action, to predictable hisses from the Yale Political Union.</p>
<p>Still, the contrast between Jesse Jackson’s wealth and fame and Jesse Lee Peterson’s relatively modest circumstances seems an object lesson in the fate of competing narratives and identities. The great social thinker Shelby Steele has written that to “be black” in America requires the wearing of a mask. Either you are a “challenger,” like Jackson, who essentially tells whites: “I judge you racist until you do something—such as giving me money—to prove otherwise.” Or you are a “bargainer,” like Barack Obama, who says, “I will not use racism against you, if you will not use race against me.”</p>
<p>But Jesse Lee Peterson will not “be black” in that sense at all. “The ‘Black Experience’ is a myth used to control people,” he has written. His approach to the problems facing America’s entrenched black underclass is profoundly personal. And his comparatively marginal place in the culture raises the possibility that, for a public black in America, to be a man only is to be a man alone.</p>
<p>Most black Americans are suffering not because of racism but the lack of moral character,” Peterson tells me. We are sitting in his office in BOND’s cramped second story. It’s a threadbare space: cheap desk, cheap chairs, some books on cheap shelves, some photos of friends and BOND graduates hanging on the off-white walls or propped against them. “About 50 years ago, the government came in under Lyndon B. Johnson, and it said to black people, ‘We’re gonna take care of you. You can’t make it because of racism. But you can’t have a father in the home, you can’t have a man in your home.’ ” He’s alluding to welfare systems that subsidized single mothers and thus discouraged marriage. “And many black people decided to go with that, and they took the fathers out, and the government became the daddy of the family. And the so-called civil rights leaders became the head of the people . . . and they have managed to brainwash, dumb down, and demoralize the people for their own personal gain.”</p>
<p>Like many outspoken conservatives, Peterson is only noticed by the mainstream media when he makes statements that are, I suspect, purposely calibrated to shock and annoy them: “Thank God for slavery” (because it brought blacks out of Africa to America) and “Barack Obama hates white people.” Like many black conservatives, he is subject to continual name-calling and racial slurs. One man even pulled a gun on him when he recognized him in a restaurant, Peterson says, and others have threatened violence against the radio stations that run his show. But in appearance and behavior, at least, he doesn’t fit the firebrand mold. He’s a slender man of average height with a relaxed, quiet aspect. A cleft palate, not repaired until he was in his teens, left him with a slight speech impediment, and he has developed a careful manner of speaking, not ferocious at all, not even in the pulpit. He is self-effacing and humorous and notes his own lapses in grammar and eloquence by telling me simply and without apology, “I didn’t get a great education.” He is scrupulously direct and thorough when answering questions, and his worldview is strikingly coherent and precise.</p>
<p>Like Steele—who provides both a blurb and a frontispiece quotation for Peterson’s autobiography, <em>From Rage to Responsibility</em>—Peterson decries the transformation of the civil rights movement from a principled appeal to the American creed to a politicized shakedown of guilt-ridden whites. He condemns the government subsidies of single motherhood that have helped set loose a plague of black illegitimacy and its attendant plagues of generational poverty and crime. (See “<a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_2_heralds.html">Heralds of a Brighter Black Future</a>,” Spring 2005.) And he bemoans the black culture of dependency on government support that even welfare workers privately call “welfare psychosis.”</p>
<p>But Peterson is no metropolitan academic. Despite his quiet demeanor and delivery, his message is charged with that old-time religion. Where Steele views the last 40 years of civil rights activism as a complex and poisonous blend of white guilt, black opportunism, and government incompetence and corruption, Peterson sees an intentional power grab by an anti-American Left, a self-interested attempt to destroy the nation by destroying manhood and marriage, part of the ongoing and eternal struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. “You cannot control a moral people,” he tells me. “You have to keep them immoral in order to control them.”</p>
<p>When Peterson starts talking, the words <em>I don’t agree with everything he says, but</em> . . . leap screaming into your mind. Even conservative commentator Dennis Prager, who serves on BOND’s advisory board and calls Peterson “one of the handful of great men anyone is privileged to meet in a lifetime,” makes a similar disclaimer in his foreword to the autobiography. It’s a gesture of mental self-defense, I think, against a preacher who seems very peacefully and yet relentlessly to say what has become, in the current American narratives of race and gender, virtually unsayable.</p>
<p>Take Peterson’s vision of restoring the lost black family, which is unflinchingly religious and traditional. “There is a spiritual order to life that was ordained by God,” he tells me. “And that order is God in Christ, Christ in man, man over woman, woman over children. And it’s not an ego trip, it’s just a spiritual order, that men are subject to Christ and women are subject to men.”</p>
<p>At this point on the interview tape, you can hear me start to stammer hilariously. <em>I don’t agree with everything he says, but</em>. . . . And yet, at the same time I’m stammering, several thoughts crowd in on me. First, Peterson’s traditionalism is only an echo of Paul’s advice to married couples in Ephesians, not to mention John Milton’s deathless description of Adam and Eve: “He for God only; she for God in him.” Second, his words are spoken in answer to a community where I’ve repeatedly heard black women describe black men as “weak” and black men describe black women as “mean.” Third (and I can’t wait to drop this comment at my wife’s next dinner party), the happiest middle-class white families I know are still fashioned on some version of Peterson’s principle—the husband as head of the household—as long as that leadership is understood, as Peterson understands it, to be subject to an overarching moral order of love, gentleness, and grace.</p>
<p>“What men don’t understand is that they represent God in the family, in the home, and . . . they’re supposed to love what’s right more than anything else,” Peterson tells me. “And when they love that, then God dwells in them and works through them to guide them in the right way so that they can guide their families.”</p>
<p>Peterson’s program for restoring this paradigm is fashioned from his personal experience—almost, in fact, a universalization of his autobiography. Born in 1949 in the sleepy little town of Comer Hill, Alabama, he grew up on the former plantation where his great-grandparents had labored as slaves. His father would not acknowledge him, and his mother had moved north to start a family with another man. Peterson was raised by his grandmother and frequently disciplined by his grandfather, who managed the old farm for its white owners. But despite the fact that his great-grandfather had been murdered by a white mob, and despite the Jim Crow world in which they lived, “Not once did I hear them blame white folks or say that it was because we were black,” he tells me. “They understood that it was wrong, but they understood that it was a <em>moral</em> issue, it was a <em>spiritual</em> issue. And so they taught us not to hate.”</p>
<p>It was not racism that troubled the young Peterson as much as what he calls a “hunger for father.” He writes in his autobiography: “I used to yearn, to literally ache in my gut, for him to come into my life and make himself known to me, and claim me as his son.” Peterson did come to know his father in his early teens and drew deep satisfaction from occasional visits to him in East Chicago, Indiana, where he had a family and owned a laundry business. At 16, Peterson moved in with his mother and stepfather in the nearby city of Gary and there came to learn of her deep resentment of the man who denied impregnating her. “Her anger at him kept her from loving me,” Peterson writes.</p>
<p>On graduating high school, Peterson moved to Los Angeles and was soon adrift in the sixties counterculture. After a series of odd jobs, he learned how to play the welfare system. Merely by claiming to be a drug addict, he was able to cadge $300 a month in government handouts, plus rent and food stamps. He stopped working altogether, turned to full-time drug use and sex, and “descended into a pit of irresponsibility and laziness. It nearly destroyed me.” Peterson and his friends in South Central L.A. would frequently gather around the radio to listen to Louis Farrakhan. The fiery Nation of Islam preacher “made me feel good to be black” and “caused me to hate the white people around me.” Through most of his thirties, Peterson writes, “I was a sullen, furious, and racist black man.”</p>
<p>It was another radio preacher who changed Peterson’s direction: Roy Masters, a British convert from Judaism, who advocated praying to God for self-knowledge and listening quietly for God’s response. Such prayers led Peterson to confront his anger, not against whites, but against his own parents, so that he came to understand himself outside the context of his skin color. He visited his mother and forgave her for her anger. She cried. He visited his father and forgave him for his neglect. The older man was grateful. For Peterson, the experience was liberating and set him on the path of ordination and a successful, directed life.</p>
<p>It is, in its general outlines, an archetypal black American life story—the same arc from poverty and prejudice to drift and personal degradation to revelation and reclamation that defines, say, <em>The Autobiography of Malcolm X</em> or <em>Manchild in the Promised Land</em>. What distinguishes Peterson’s story, what distinguishes Peterson, is the ferociously un-racial, nearly anti-racial terms in which he came to understand his salvation. Having nearly lost himself in the narrative of being an angry black man in a racist America, he now seeks to reclaim angry black men by having them reproduce his personal narrative of purely individual forgiveness, liberation, and faith. With emotional, educational, and career counseling of the young men who come to BOND, “we are putting the fathers back by showing them how to overcome anger,” he says. “They have to first forgive their fathers for not being there to guide them and to fill that emptiness that they feel within themselves. They have to forgive their mothers for being angry at the fathers and turning the children away from the fathers. . . . And then they have to stop resenting themselves. And when they can forgive, then you feel good within yourself and you can move on with life.”</p>
<p>It seems clear why such a program would have less mass appeal than Jesse Jackson’s I’m-black-you’re-racist-give-me-something-or-else approach. Identity politics is easy; forgiveness is hard. The kind of personal forgiveness that Peterson preaches is more difficult, too, than the straighten-up-and-do-right Christianity of many more popular white ministers, like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, because it requires an inner revolution rather than outward restraint.</p>
<p>And for now, at least, the evidence of BOND’s effectiveness is purely anecdotal. Some of the graduates of the program are working for BOND—to all appearances, happily and effectively. There are a few testimonials on the website, and there are those smiling pictures of graduates and participants in Peterson’s office. “One or two didn’t make it,” he tells me. “But most do.”</p>
<p>Six young men, aged 16 to 30, are currently living in BOND’s nearby Home for Boys. The place looks exactly like what any parent would expect a well-tended home filled with males to look like. The bedrooms are a bit rough-and-tumble in the folded-clothes department but clean underneath. There are the requisite big-screen TV and X-Box in the front room, a pleasant kitchen and a usable washer-dryer toward the back, and a patio with a barbecue outside. Run by a live-in manager and his assistant, the Home is a place for young men to learn how to find work, save money, and pay bills. While most of the residents were at school or work when I visited, 30-year-old Mensah Watts was there doing the laundry on his day off from one of his two full-time jobs: maintenance worker at UCLA and clerk at a CVS drugstore. He hopes to become a writer and is working on a fantasy novel and a memoir in his rare off hours. He credits Peterson with his reclamation from anger and rebellion. For all that, however, there is no tracking system for BOND graduates and no statistics with which to gauge the program’s success.</p>
<p>Statistics for failed approaches, on the other hand, are plentiful. After 40 years of the racially based politics that Peterson condemns—40 years of activists crying bias, of billions of dollars in race-sensitive government programs—the black illegitimacy rate, with its high correlation to poverty levels, has more than tripled, to over 70 percent; the black homicide rate is more than seven times higher than the combined white and Hispanic rate; and blacks’ average SAT scores are 200 points below whites’. Whether we agree with everything the minister says or not, it’s worth wondering if Shelby Steele isn’t right when he says of Peterson’s life story that it “does what the entire field of American sociology fails to do. It makes the point that traditional values are <em>transformative</em> in themselves and, therefore, the best antidotes to social dysfunction.”</p>
<p><strong><em>Andrew Klavan is a </em>City Journal<em> contributing editor and the author of such best-selling novels as </em>Don’t Say a Word<em> and </em>Empire of Lies<em>. His new thriller for young adults, </em>The Long Way Home<em>, will be out in February.</em></strong></p>
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