Camelot theory is predicated on what might have been. Director Oliver Stone feverishly asserts that President John F. Kennedy would have ended the Cold War, especially in Vietnam (where he would withdrawn all advisers) – as do Kennedy cabinet members Kenneth O’Donnell and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

In Stephen King’s new novel, “11/22/1963,” the author has Kennedy living beyond Dealey Plaza and rejects the wishful thinking of mythifiers. In King’s alternate history, Kennedy doesn’t get the romantic aura death grants him; whatever glow he still has will wear off because of Vietnam and Civil Rights. In contrast to Lyndon B. Johnson, who was by far the more effective politician (few of Kennedy’s programs made it past Congress), JFK barely beats the GOP standard bearer Barry Goldwater.

Rather than fulfill the wishes of Stone, Kennedy doesn’t withdraw the troops but situates them protectively around Saigon, and thus all but assures an earlier Teht offensive. Not even the ungodly amounts of money Kennedy sends into Saigon prevents it collapse, well before 1975.

(Spoilers ahead!)

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Although he probably didn’t mean to say this, director Godfrey Reggio’s excellent 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi has a sequence that beautifully illustrates the failure of large socialized programs vs free market capitalism. This illustration reveals why if government spending often results in poor services and bankrupt results over time.

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Here’s the clip. We start with scenes of New York majesty followed by a street slum, followed by rows of project apartment buildings as urban blight. Then, at the end, we’re shown gleaming glass towers which are the product of free market capitalism. The project buildings were products of President Johnson’s war on poverty which spent billions and did exactly what you’d expect billions of tax dollars thrown at an abstract problem like poverty would do. Those apartment buildings would have gone up in the 60s. The film was shot around 1979. Less than 20 years. Think on that when you watch the clip above.

That’s government in action right there. Some of those buildings were barely 20 years old, if that. And they want to take over 1/6th of our economy, the health care business, and manage it the way they do everything else. You know, as effectively as Medicare, Social Security, The Post Office, Amtrak which are all about to go under. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae? Failing badly. Hey, why not just show the government debt while we’re at it to see how well they run things. They’ve created trillions in debt based on promises they made. Promises made by politicians that you and your descendants would be footing these bills. They didn’t ask for your consent. Just as they are ignoring the public’s will with the health care bills. (more…)

“I don’t blame nobody.  I just want to say when I was twelve, TWELVE, somebody hadda help me it not be like it is now…. Why no one put Carl in jail after I have baby by him when I am twelve?”  — From “Precious,” Based on the Novel “Push,” by Sapphire.

From ABC’s 20/20 segment on “The Blind Side”:

Deborah Roberts: There are some black people who feel a little uneasy about the notion of the wealthy white family comes in to help the poor black kid…

Michael Oher:  I don’t understand why people would feel that way because as long as somebody’s, uh, somebody’s helping somebody and taking, you know, somebody off the streets,  I don’t care, you know, black or white, that shouldn’t be a problem.

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I recently wrote a critique of the art community’s lack of dissent in the face of many controversial decisions made by the current administration. Entitled “The Artist Formerly Known as Dissident,” one of the key points argued in the article was the potential danger associated with the use of the art community as a tool of the state. Little did I know how quickly this concern would be elevated to an outright probability. 

Sometime between when I finished the critique and when it went live online, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”  (more…)