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The Bum, the Cop and the Facts

By on December 4, 2012 in Culture

This is about the barefoot Times Square bum bestowed with a pair of boots on a cold November night by a policeman whose act of charity was photographed by an Arizona tourist. The bum, it turns out, was seen last Sunday on the Upper West Side. The new boots, valued at $100, were nowhere to be seen. The policeman, an earnest young man, has been praised by the New York Police Department and people across the nation for his touching act of benevolence. The photograph, which was shared upon request by the tourist with the NYPD and promptly distributed across multiple media platforms, like other images to spread quickly around the Internet, such as the snapshot of the Vancouver kiss, suggests something about the culture – something more than simply being moved by an act of kindness toward a 54-year-old homeless man by a cop half his age.

The lessons are informed by what we know by now. Though the picture seems clear that there’s a white person in a position of authority administering for reasons of his own to a less fortunate black man in tattered clothes, less than a month later we know that the black man, for reasons of his own, and his brother tells the press that his brother’s homelessness is a personal choice, has chosen to go barefoot, hiding the hundred dollar boots by his account, because the now famous boots are “worth a lot of money” and he could lose his life. We also know that the police officer is a former history teacher who still lives with his parents. So the man on the ground has the primary power over his own life, as if we need to be reminded, and the man crouching down is arguably not as fortunate as he might appear to be. After all, he is young, and he is among the first generations in U.S. history to be likely to be worse off – much worse off – than his parents. If he’d called into a Suze Orman show, knowing that he may not be able to afford a home of his own, she might admonish him about his generous expenditure: “You cannot afford that!”

Based on what we know, she would probably be right, not that his act of charity – and that’s what it is – is not kind and thoughtful and possibly even as rewarding as the young cop says it is. Spending $100 on a pair of boots for a stranger who chooses to go without shoes is not the best investment. So, in the context of today’s difficult times, the act – and the positive response to the act – remind us that sacrifice of self is admired. Our soldiers are sacrificed for the sake of nothing in wars that are not waged as war, coming home with bloody stumps or in body bags that no one talks about. Our policemen, like our soldiers, performing a legitimate function of government, struggle to make a living. Young people are forced to pay for older people as they are herded into economic and political slavery to serve Barack Obama’s huge confiscation and redistribution of wealth.

Race is relevant in the sense that we’re pummeled with the fallacy that whites are inherently and unfairly advantaged over – and unjust to – blacks and that any dissent by whites to a view held by someone, such as Obama or Susan Rice, who is (or merely claims to be) black is instantly smeared as racism. Any random act of hatred by whites toward blacks is magnified in the media. But race is rarely an issue when there’s any random act of kindness by whites toward blacks as is the case here, and, if it is, it’s usually another reason to say that whites are better off than blacks, never mind facts and causes. And never mind that the most charitable people on earth – the rich – are being singled out for persecution as I write this. How many millions of hardworking rich capitalists and Wall Street and business executives – so vilified, envied and detested by mobs of Americans and their re-elected deity – have performed countless acts of productivity (not to mention charity) that enrich the lives of both these men incalculably more than anything depicted here? Yet the rich are being stripped of their rights and enslaved by laws enforced by this policeman that redistribute their wealth to people like this bum. There is only injustice in that.

There’s nothing wrong with giving a pair of shoes to a bum – not if it’s your money and your choice. Increasingly, and rapidly, it isn’t, which makes this a picture of an act of charity by another victim of wealth redistribution. Given what he told the media about his new pair of boots, the bum, who has expressed gratitude to the policeman, seems to be the person most urgently aware that what he owns belongs to him.

Today’s Movie Theater Massacre

By on July 20, 2012 in Culture, Movies, News

News is still breaking about today’s attack in Aurora, Colorado, on a movie theater audience for The Dark Knight Rises. While I am saddened, I am neither shocked nor surprised. The latest American massacre (12 dead at this writing) is more evidence that the United States of America is in decline and dying. While movies matter and have the potential to bring us together, the assault demonstrates, especially to those who hate talking politics and avoid thinking about serious issues, that life can be wiped out in an instant by those who worship death. Today’s movie theater massacre reminds us that finding and applying the right philosophy is a matter of life and death. In my experience, many people turn the other cheek from the facts of reality by striving to make and see movies as an escape from reality – or they turn up their nose at political activism while perched in front of a television, from a comfortable place or detached from daily life in an intellectual ivory tower insisting that movies are “just movies” – and this bloody Friday shows that we are urgently running out of time. The president Obama, speaking this morning about the attack, says this act of mass murder is “beyond reason.” As usual, he – whose political philosophy is rooted in a death premise – is wrong. Today’s act, which is what it is, is perfectly accessible to the mind. Not only is the movie theater massacre open to our knowledge and understanding; life and happiness are only possible by choosing to think and live by a philosophy of reason, egoism and capitalism. In other words, Objectivism.

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News: Rodney King is Dead

By on June 17, 2012 in Culture, News, Obituaries

The man whose arrest and beating led to a government/media response that incurred the worst U.S. riot of the 20th century has been found dead, according to news reports (read my recent post on the Los Angeles riots here). His body was found by his fiancee in their home’s swimming pool 55 miles from Los Angeles. He was 47 years old.

I always thought convicted felon Rodney King was a sad person, whose eyes held such pain and sorrow when he spoke about what became of the city of angels in the wake of what he did and what was done to him. His famously uttered plea – “can we all get along?” – was immediately interpreted as some sort of universal challenge for everyone to love one another. But I think he spoke in desperation, as an exasperated, flawed black man suffering under the additional burden of racism, particularly the racism of those claiming to advocate on his behalf who were in some way demanding of him a duty to serve his race. Racism among blacks is as despicable as racism among any other race and its consequences are devastating (as I noted here in a post about an accomplished black journalist).

King, who recently wrote a book titled The Riot Within in which he expressed doubts about comparisons to Rosa Parks and other black heroes, seemed from the beginning of his unwanted fame to grasp that he was not a hero and he never seemed comfortable with being portrayed as a victim. That his body was found on Father’s Day is a reminder that being a man is about the sum of one’s choices, which form one’s character, not the blood in one’s veins. The sad, criminal life of Rodney King, who was arrested 11 times after the 1992 L.A. riots, is a lesson in how not to be a man.

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Remember Whitney for Her Ability

By on April 11, 2012 in Culture, Music

Note: two months ago today, singer Whitney Houston died (which I wrote about here on that date). The following is a piece I wrote to remember Whitney at her best.

Remember when you first heard Whitney Houston sing? Was it “The Greatest Love of All” or “I Will Always Love You”—or maybe her Super Bowl performance of the Star-Spangled Banner? Her voice had a wide range, a soulful style and she had an ability to glide through a song. Whitney phrased the lyric, made the transition and held the note in such a way that she sang in perfect tune. Now that the coroner has ruled her drug-related death essentially accidental at the age of 48, we can say there are important lessons and that we were lucky to have her, as Kevin Costner, her co-star in The Bodyguard, said at her funeral.

You might not know that from the negative spectacle surrounding her death. Even before she died, the media preyed on her troubles with sensationalistic headlines. Afterwards, they published a photograph of her corpse in a coffin. But Whitney Houston deserves to be remembered for what made her great, not primarily for whatever may have caused her demise. Mr. Costner, whose eulogy merits special attention, named the reason why.

Whatever else, Whitney Houston was a woman of exceptional ability. She leaves behind the most beloved and popular songs of our times, whether a haunting farewell, a defiant anthem or an exuberant declaration of a desire to dance. Yet our culture, filled with sniping and conjecture that denigrate her accomplishments, is consumed by her downfall.

Sensing this, Mr. Costner urged us to “remember the sweet miracle of Whitney.” In his remarks at her funeral, he sought to establish the context of her prematurely ended life by evoking their bond, which was made of pride and productiveness and their byproduct, joy.

In a tribute filled with references to God and the Baptist church—in which both he and Whitney were raised—he declined to invoke the usual insistence that the deceased is in a better place and, instead, he spoke to the best of their secular bond. Recalling that, as a boy watching his father build a church from the ground up, he wanted to be “in on the action,” he said that one of the men noticed and told him to “have at it” and start pounding some nails. Have at it he did, eventually making his own outstanding career which earned him the ability to cast Whitney Houston in his movie The Bodyguard, which made millions of dollars.

Kevin Costner talked about the challenge of working with Whitney. He spoke about the studio being dubious of casting a black actress opposite a white actor—reminding us of the burdens of breaking with tradition—admitting that he had to think twice. “Whitney,” he said, referring to an artist who had also been rejected by black audiences and criticized for catering to whites, “would have to earn it.”

Earn it she did—and she did it in a culture in which people of ability are envied and ridiculed. Mr. Costner, telling tales that elicited smiles and laughter, explained that Whitney first had to overcome her own doubt. It turned out that she’d used so much make-up during a screen test that it melted under the hot lights. When later asked why she’d done it, she said: “I just wanted to look my best.”

This was from a beautiful and glamorous star whom Mr. Costner recalled had once confided she’d told God she was going to be great. On the eve of her biggest-selling song from The Bodyguard, which turned out to be a hit movie, he said Whitney wasn’t sure if she was good enough.

Addressing himself to young people wondering whether they are good enough, he concluded: “I think Whitney would tell you: Guard your bodies, guard the precious miracle of your own life, and then sing your hearts out, knowing that there’s a lady in heaven who is making God himself wonder how he created something so perfect.”

There, in a word, is the key to the theme of Kevin Costner’s eulogy: that to be your best, you should value yourself first and foremost and be able to conceive of yourself as perfect. Perfection, he implied, is possible. Whether she ultimately knew it or not, Whitney Houston proved it in every rising note.

Kevin Costner said what needed to be said; that Whitney’s work was well done—that it was better than others—that it was perfect. He said it when it needed to be said and he said it to those who needed to hear it most. By eulogizing Whitney Houston for her ability—essentially praising the good for being good in an age of sneering nihilism—her onscreen bodyguard conferred upon her memory an act of poetic justice and a lesson for everyone to learn.

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New Ayn Rand Exhibit at Chapman University

By on March 15, 2012 in Ayn Rand, Books, Culture, History

Attending a reception earlier this month to formally open an exhibit at Chapman University, “Celebrating the Drama and Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, I had the pleasure of being given an extensive and informative tour by Ayn Rand Archives curator Jeff Britting and was surprised to find new and interesting material about works with which I’m extremely familiar. Among the items in the manuscript and photograph exhibit are first-edition copies of Rand’s 75th anniversary edition of We the Living, as well as some manuscript pages and photographs. We the Living, Rand’s first novel, is an excellent and haunting and relevant work of literature (read my 2009 take on We the Living here and my movie review here). Tucked inside an Orange County, California, library, “Celebrating the Drama and Philosophy of Ayn Rand” displays newspaper coverage, including book reviews, book cover designs, artwork, correspondence – with H.L. Mencken, for example – and more. The exhibit, which runs through June 29, also contains material about the publishing of Rand’s insightful collection of excerpted fiction writings and non-fiction essay For the New Intellectual. As philosophy professor Robert Mayhew, whose Essays on We the Living was recently released in its second edition with newly added essays, told me at the end of this interview, We the Living is the closest we have to seeing the 20th century’s greatest writer in her youth.