Tag Archives: National Review Online

Horn Dogs in Space #StarTrek50

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Oh dear.

It seems Gene Roddenberry’s zipper, if not the Starship Enterprise he imagined, had a gravity problem. It was constantly down.

Unless you’ve been stranded on a lonely planet in a far distant galaxy, you know it was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek the other day, having first aired on September 8, 1966. star-trek-50-frontA new book, The Fifty-Year Mission is described in NRO  as a “two-volume, 1,300-page oral history documenting the history of the franchise… an extraordinary achievement of research and reporting, filled with inside scoop and backstage drama, fragile egos and the surmounting of great technical challenges… essential for diehards, as well as for readers interested in film and television production in general.”  Now, clearly, as described, the book is multifaceted & comprehensive, but, naturally, it’s Roddenberry’s horn-dogginess that’s getting the headlines.

The aforementioned NRO article, titled The Great Boor of the Galaxy is a worthwhile read for a Trekkie, but below are a few select paragraphs. Enjoy.

No one is more responsible for this sense of novelty than Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, whose posthumous reputation more closely resembles that of a religious figure than a Hollywood producer. With his long hair, sideburns, and bushy eyebrows, his professorial clothing and theatrical sense, Roddenberry in his maturity took on the appearance of his friend Isaac Asimov, instructing generations of adoring fans in the tenets of IDIC, or “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” a philosophy of logic, inquiry, multiculturalism, and peace.

Roddenberry is lauded as a progressive icon, a prophet, the self-styled “Great Bird of the Galaxy” directing humanity to a limitless future in the stars. “There is no question in my mind that Roddenberry is a genius,” says actress Diana Muldaur. “There’s no disputing his genius,” says movie producer Harve Bennett. “He was a man who was able to reach out through my television and explain to me that I had a place in the world and in the future,” says Whoopi Goldberg. Longtime Roddenberry friend and collaborator Bob Justman is more measured but just as complimentary: “His background was very humble, but he’s a man who educated himself and he’s found that his mind is fertile ground.”

…

But there is a problem. Intended as a tribute to Star Trek and its creator, The Fifty-Year Mission ends up debunking the Roddenberry mythos. Liberal visionary? Maybe. But he was also an insecure, misogynistic hack.

…

Roddenberry never stopped rewriting. “The problem,” says his biographer Joel Engel, “was that he basically couldn’t write well enough to carry it off.” For 25 years, a script never left Roddenberry’s hands without becoming worse.

For all of the control Roddenberry exercised over Star Trek, the franchise prospered only when it was under the aegis of others… The Star Trek that has imprinted itself on fans for decades is Gene L. Coon’s. His shows deepened the relationships between Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy. He created the Klingons. There was more humor. Says writer David Gerrold, “Gene L. Coon created the noble image that everyone gives Roddenberry the most credit for.” Shatner puts it this way: “Gene Coon had more to do with the infusion of life into Star Trek than any other single person.”

With Coon at the helm Roddenberry turned to other projects, and to his own worst instincts. He was a horn dog. Affairs with police secretaries had been just the start. While on the force he had become friends with Jack Webb, the star and producer of Dragnet, who eased his entry into Hollywood and competed with him for the affections of actress Majel Barrett. Meanwhile Roddenberry also had an affair with the actress, singer, and model Nichelle Nichols. His relationship with Barrett was an open secret, lasting a decade before he divorced his wife. He and Barrett got married in 1969. (Their son, Rod, was born in 1974.) As for Nichols, Roddenberry cast her in a history-making role as Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura.

…

The episodes Gene L. Coon supervised are considered to be Star Trek’s finest. But Coon did not last long. When Star Trek recaptured Roddenberry’s attention, he didn’t like what Coon had been doing. And Coon, who had grown tired of arguing with Roddenberry, Shatner, and Nimoy, was out.

…

Roddenberry died in 1991. You could argue that the franchise he created has been more successful in the 25 years following his death than it had been in the 25 years before…

…

It was the brilliance of the idea, and the psychological need it satisfies in audiences, that allowed Roddenberry to get away with being, in most respects, an incredible, insufferable jerk to his family, friends, and peers. After reading The Fifty-Year Mission, I know why Gene Roddenberry stuck so fiercely to his notion of a future where human nature has been transformed into pure good. It’s because he knew more than anybody how truly awful we can be.

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Trump is Bat Guano Insane

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Not an hour ago, a grown man, who happens to be the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party for President of the United States, Leader of the Free World, said this:


What does one even say? I’m utterly speechless.

Kevin Williamson at NRO, a favorite writer of mine, summarizes the book on one Donald J. Trump’s manifest unfitness for any office of public trust. I could not agree more. Enjoy.

This Election Is Not an A/B Test
‘Not Hillary Clinton’ isn’t good enough
By Kevin D. Williamson — May 6, 2016

As soon as it became clear that game-show host Donald Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee, the usual radio ranters and Fox News mouths began the inevitable litany: If you aren’t for Donald Trump, then you must be for Hillary Clinton — it’s Himself or Herself.

There is more to this than A/B testing.

“If you aren’t for Trump, then you’re for Clinton” is a cheap rhetorical ploy. I’d write that any thinking adult would be ashamed for falling for that kind of sixth-grade debater’s stratagem, but a Republican electorate capable of choosing Donald Trump as its standard-bearer is incapable of shame.

The angry insistence — him or her! — is, for the moment, mainly an attempt to forestall further criticism of Trump. That criticism consists of stating a fact that is not a matter of degree but a binary proposition, a yes/no question. It is not that Trump is less mentally stable than Mrs. Clinton (probably true) or that he is more dishonest than Mrs. Clinton (difficult to say) or that he might do even more damage to the republic, or any other point of comparison between the candidates.

The issue, instead, is this:

Donald Trump is unfit for the office.

He is unfit for any office, morally and intellectually.

A man who could suggest, simply because it is convenient, that his opponent’s father had something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy is unfit for any position of public responsibility.

His long litany of lies — which include fabrications about everything from his wealth to self-funding his campaign — is disqualifying.

His low character is disqualifying.

His personal history is disqualifying.

His complete, utter, total, and lifelong lack of honor is disqualifying.

The fact that he is going to have to take time out of the convention to appear in court to hear a pretty convincing fraud case against him is disqualifying.

His time on Jeffrey Epstein’s Pedophile Island, after which he boasted about sharing a taste with Epstein for women “on the younger side,” is disqualifying.

The fact that he knows less about our constitutional order than does a not-especially-bright Rappahannock River oyster is disqualifying.

There isn’t anything one can say about Mrs. Clinton, monster though she is, that changes any of that.

Donald Trump is not fit to serve as president. He is not fit to serve on the Meade County board of commissioners. He is not fit to be the mayor of Muleshoe, Texas.

If he indeed is the Republican nominee, Donald Trump almost certainly will face Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election. That fact, sobering though it is, does not suddenly make him fit to serve as president, because — to repeat — the problem with Trump isn’t that he is less fit to serve in comparison to Mrs. Clinton, but that he is unfit to serve, period.

Paul Ryan is right to withhold his support, and those who have suddenly discovered that attending the Republican convention conflicts with their cat-shampooing schedule — both Presidents Bush, nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney — have in this matter chosen the better part, while former Texas governor Rick Perry has shown poor judgment. Trump, who long claimed (falsely) that he was self-funding his campaign and therefore was beholden to no one, has just named a hedge-fund boss and former Goldman Sachs partner to raise money, but donors are walking sideways away from him—as they should.

“Unite the Party” talk ignores the question: “Unite with what?” The answer, in this case, is a coddled, petulant, celebrity megalomaniac leading a small movement of cable-news-inspired populist drama queens whose motto is “Eek! A Mexican!” It is shallow, but celebrity is the most powerful force in American culture, more powerful than money and certainly more powerful than argument. Those of you joking about Kanye West running in 2020 shouldn’t laugh too hard.

But celebrity isn’t all-powerful. Trump had a smashing victory in the New York Republican primary, but he received far fewer votes than did second-place Democratic finisher Bernie Sanders, and barely half of Mrs. Clinton’s votes. The idea that a Trump candidacy is suddenly going to put into play states such as New York and New Jersey is fantasy. Those crying “Unite the Party!” might want to think about how closely they wish to be united with a candidacy that may very well lose 35 states and hand the Senate over to Chuck Schumer, who is of course another recipient of Trump’s many generous donations to progressives.

Those shouting “If you don’t support Trump, you’re for Clinton!” do not wish to speak or think very much about what the Trump movement and its enablers, from Sean Hannity to Ann Coulter, have done to the Republican party and to the conservative movement. They’re going to want to think about that even less as the months go by, and by January there’s very likely to be an outbreak of convenient amnesia. But the rest of us should be frank about what has happened.

The Republican party is preparing to nominate for the presidency a man grossly unfit for the office.

— Kevin D. Williamson is the roving correspondent at National Review.

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Obama, Explained, in ONE PARAGRAPH

by Annie | Leave a comment

Here it is.  You ready?  Because this is Obama, thus the insidious cancer of Progressivism, explained with the most sparkling clarity & brevity as I have ever seen.  Via Kevin D. Williamson at NRO, from whom I always learn something (the highest praise I can offer any writer) Bold text is my addition:

“Barack Obama isn’t a policy guy; he’s a personnel guy. An underappreciated aspect of Barack Obama’s politics is that he has been trying to convert the Democratic party from a party that lives in Congress to a party that lives in the White House. The Democrats owned Congress, and especially the House of Representatives, in the postwar era, with unbroken control of the speakership from 1955 to 1995. Until Newt Gingrich came in with the 1994 tsunami, the last Republican speaker had been a man born in 1884 who rode into office on the coattails of Calvin Coolidge. Except for a few brief interludes (January 3, 1947 to January 3, 1949; January 3, 1953 to January 3, 1955; January 3, 1981 to January 3, 1987), the Democrats ran the Senate, too, from the Great Depression until the Gingrich years. That version of the Democratic party was a lawmaking party. (It made a lot of bad laws.) Barack Obama’s Democratic party, the one he is giving birth to, is a different animal. He didn’t give a hoot what was in his signature health-care law — just so long as it empowered him to start putting his people in positions to make health-care decisions. His patron saint is Roy Cohn, who proclaimed the gospel ‘Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.’ Barack Obama doesn’t want to write laws — he wants to appoint judges. He doesn’t want finely crafted legislation — he wants ‘The secretary shall issue.'”

Parenthetically, Mr. Williamson also illuminates why we are $18 trillion in debt. Democrats had the purse at the dawn of the Great Society and did not let go until 1996. That’s not to say Republicans don’t own some of this disaster; they most certainly do. But it wasn’t conservatives who ushered in the welfare state and support it to this day. That’s on progressives. And that’s why we’re $18 trillion in the hole. Every social welfare program they have supported from the New Deal through the Great Society to Obamacare is not just broke, it’s breaking the back of the Republic.  Everything they touch turns to sh*t.

Everything.

I heartily recommend your read the entire thing, here.

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Dixiecrats = GOP? No.

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UPDATE: Hah! Quite by accident I came across another excellent article – brilliant, in fact – on the absurdity of GOP turning racist overnight in the sixties.  This time it’s by Kevin D. Williamson, “The Party of Civil Rights,” at NRO.  Check it out.

Came across this wonderful blog post giving some good, historical detail and sound analysis on why it’s nonsensical that the party of Lincoln, who for the entire nation’s history stood on the side of civil rights, would all of a sudden, in 1964-1965 just POOF turn into a bunch of racists. It’s written by a black conservative by the name of Bob Parks who writes at Black & Right.  Read his About Me page.  He’s an impressive fellow.

So! I recommend it highly.  Click here or read it below.

===

The Dixiecrat Myth

The left is quite annoyed that myself and others dare link the racist, segregationist past in this country to Democrats, at that flies in the face of everything they claim to champion, when it comes to civil rights, racial tolerance, etc.

The Democrats’ own website, to this day, attempts to take fraudulently credit for the civil rights movement and legislation, and when called on it, the recitation is the same: “we’ve grown”and “don’t forget about the Dixiecrats”.

Defensive liberals claim the Dixiecrats, as a whole, defected from the Democrat Party when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (no thanks to Democrats), and became Republicans which they claimed were more accepting of segregationist policies.

Well, I decided to get some opinions on the matter from some historians.

I contacted Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton for advice. Larry and I worked on a documentary based on a chapter on Ronald Reagan from his best-selling book, A Patriot’s History of the United States.

The idea that “the Dixiecrats joined the Republicans” is not quite true, as you note. But because of Strom Thurmond it is accepted as a fact. What happened is that the **next** generation (post 1965) of white southern politicians — Newt, Trent Lott, Ashcroft, Cochran, Alexander, etc — joined the GOP.

So it was really a passing of the torch as the old segregationists retired and were replaced by new young GOP guys. One particularly galling aspect to generalizations about “segregationists became GOP” is that the new GOP South was INTEGRATED for crying out loud, they accepted the Civil Rights revolution. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter led a group of what would become “New” Democrats like Clinton and Al Gore.

Larry also suggested I contact Mike Allen, Professor of History at the University of Washington, Tacoma (who also appeared in the Reagan documentary) for input.

There weren’t many Republicans in the South prior to 1964, but that doesn’t mean the birth of the souther GOP was tied to “white racism.” That said, I am sure there were and are white racist southern GOP. No one would deny that. But it was the southern Democrats who were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was George Wallace, not John Tower, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted FOR the Civil Rights of 1964-65. The vast majority of those opposed to those acts were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The confusion arises from GOP Barry Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 act. He had voted in favor or all earlier bills and had led the integration of the Arizona Air National Guard, but he didn’t like the “private property” aspects of the ’64 law. In other words, Goldwater believed people’s private businesses and private clubs were subject only to market forces, not government mandates (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”) His vote against the Civil Rights Act was because of that one provision was, to my mind, a principled mistake.

This stance is what won Goldwater the South in 1964, and no doubt many racists voted for Goldwater in the mistaken belief that he opposed Negro Civil Rights. But Goldwater was not a racist; he was a libertarian who favored both civil rights and property rights.

Switch to 1968.

Richard Nixon was also a proponent of Civil Rights; it was a CA colleague who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of  Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a “Southern strategy” based on Goldwater’s inroads. He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems.

Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a “local government, small government” party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home.

Jimmy Carter, a Civil Rights Democrat, briefly returned some states to the Democrat fold, but in 1980, Goldwater’s heir, Ronald Reagan, sealed this deal for the GOP. The new ”Solid South” was solid GOP.

BUT, and we must stress this: the new southern Republicans were *integrationist* Republicans who accepted the Civil Rights revolution and full integration while retaining their love of Jeffersonian limited government principles.

And what did Malcolm X say about the “Dixiecrats”…?

I’m sure the more learned Democrats will have issues with these explanations.

Oh well.

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