Tag: KcM

Five Men of Harvard…

…gained victory today. (Sung to the tune of this.) Per tradition, I was out in Seattle over the past weekend for my college group of friends’ annual March Madness festivities. And, for the first time since…well, ever, Harvard actually won a game. This more than makes up for an otherwise sleepy set of second/third round match-ups — the most exciting by far was Butler v. Marquette — as well as my already busted bracket. I inexcusably bought the Gonzaga hype.

At Least Homer Read It.

Social Media friends and Flickr followers have probably already noticed that my actual doctoral diploma arrived in the mail last week. (Speaking of which, there’s a good economics dissertation to be written on the bizarrely high cost of professional framing.) On the same day, I also received this sweet congratulations gift from my girlfriend Amy: A print of the estimable Professor Frink examining Homer J. Simpson’s (lack of) brainwaves as he peruses the old dissertation, while Berk and I look on.

FWIW, this particular piece of awesome was drawn on commission by former Simpsons illustrator Gary Yap, who can be found on Etsy for custom works. He also apparently perused my Flickr feed and/or GitM for our look and general inspiration (Note the back of the book and Berk eyeing the Roomba.) I wonder if he made it as far as the shelves of old Simpsons toys, currently collecting dust and resale value in a Chesapeake, VA attic. In any case, very cool.

Things I’ve Learned from the Archives, 2002-03.

So, after more hours than I’d like to admit, I’ve made it through the first Movable Type year (2002-2003) of recategorizing and retagging the GitM archives. Among the things I’ve learned so far:

  • Paul Rudd will be playing Batman or Superman, against Christian Bale, in Wolfgang Petersen’s World’s Finest. Unless it’s Jude Law.

  • “Blue laser DVDs” are expected in the market by 2005…all models will be retro-compatible with red-laser DVD’s.

  • I had forgotten how this “pick-a-card” website could read my mind and had to figure it out all over again.

  • Lifetime’s Cinema Sequence is still quite a fun web game.

  • Over the past decade, GitM has gone from being worth nothing to $43,000 on the now-defunct Blogshares. Woot.

  • The Washington Post and Boston Globe have changed their link structures, so many old posts referencing their content are now dead ends.

  • I used to care more about deficits than I do now. (And, conversely, Republicans used to care much less.) In the parlance of the Beltway, “my views have evolved” on this subject.

    Part of the reason for the shift is the good versus bad spending dichotomy I talked about in 2010. But, more to the point, I’ve since read up on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). (See also: Warren Mosler’s Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy.)

    Basically, I was parroting the conventional wisdom on “fiscal responsibility” back then, and didn’t know what I was talking about.

    • Lost in the Archives.

    A procedural note: You may notice categories proliferating along the sidebar to the right. As it happens, the category tags, never very well fleshed-out in the first place, didn’t really survive the move from MovableType last year. So — particularly since I learned in history school that a source is only as good as its archive — I’m going back through all the old (MT) posts and adding more extensive tags and categories to them. (The Geocities Era involved hand-coded html files, so can’t do much there.)

    I’m only 200 posts or so in — Hello, summer of 2002. Gee, I wonder if these Harken revelations will bring down Dubya — and it’s already clear this is going to be a slow process. So apologies if you see an interesting topic listed that links to little-to-no content. Hopefully, eventually, it’ll all be up to snuff.

    The Clown has a Point.


    Hey all. Apologies yet again for the lack of updates around here. As I said a couple of times last year, I’m still figuring out where the old Ghost fits in the scheme of life these days. There’s a negative feedback loop happening where I don’t post at GitM that often, so fewer people swing by here, so there are no comments or feedback on the posts that I do spend some time on, which makes me even less inclined to post, so thus even fewer people swing by here…you get the point.

    I was thinking of starting up the movie reviews around here again for 2013, but having just spent a looong time on another giant project that few if any will ever peruse, I’m not really seeing the point of dedicating myself to spending even more hours of my day writing long-winded reviews that nobody ever reads. It’s just a lot of work with very little gain. I’ve been writing this blog for over 13 years and the reviews for over ten — If either were ever going to gain an audience, they would have done so by now.

    As for politics…eh. On the domestic front, all reasonable and common-sense attempts at achieving forward progress have been stymied for years now, mainly because of bipartisan infatuation with a totally fake problem. Sure, Obama (finally) talked a good game last night about climate change, voting rights, infrastructure, equal pay, housing, the minimum wage — things we expected from a progressive president four years ago, and that would undeniably make a profound difference for a lot of American families. But this is year five of this presidency — We know the score by now. When push comes to shove, he’ll be promoting Simpson-Bowles nonsense, extolling the Grand Bargain again, and advocating a chained CPI, all because, presumably, those evil, evil Republicans made him. Good cop, bad cop.

    Over on foreign policy, our Hope-and-Change president has accorded himself the power to kill anyone he so desires by executive fiat. And the response? Ostensible progressives back this ridiculous play, and a full 83% of America is totally cool with Death from Above without due process. Awesome.

    Speaking of due process, it is flat-out-ridiculous that we live in a world where Aaron Swartz was hounded to suicide by a DoJ-enabled Javert for freeing up JSTOR articles, of all things, and Bradley Manning is kept in a tiny box as Public Enemy #1 for exposing bad behavior by the military. And yet, our national torture experiment has still gone unpunished (because, hey, it worked!), and not a single bankster of note has been prosecuted, despite the massive levels of fraud that have been exposed and that brought the American economy to its knees. To the contrary, the president can’t stop asking self-serving and patently corrupt assholes like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein how we can better structure our public policy to cater to their whims.

    Admittedly, I partake in it myself semi-often, but I’m just tired of a Twitter-driven political-journalism culture that seems to think that the lulz of Marco Rubio being really thirsty is a more pressing issue to cover than the myriad holes in his obviously stupid, self-serving, and faith-based ideas. Or that Jack Lew having a funny signature is a more vital point to discuss about the probable next Treasury Secretary than whatever the hell he was doing at Citigroup when the goddamned house was burning down.

    I hate on the hipster Twitter kids, but establishment journalism is even worse. We live in a world where the totally inane Politico rules the roost and “wins the day”. Where our papers of record will keep warrantless wiretaps and drone bases quiet for years because the powers-that-be asked them to. Where idiot right-leaning “centrists” like David Brooks, David Gergen, Gloria Borger, and Cokie Roberts are queried for their inane views constantly, even though they don’t know anything and have never done anything with their lives but constantly mouth Beltway platitudes as if they were Holy Scripture. Where “journalists” like Chuck Todd, John King, and Jake Tapper — the latter of whom, let’s remember, made it big by kissing-and-telling on his Big Date with Monica Lewinsky — are taken seriously because they tsk-tsk about deficits like Serious People™ and passively nod along whenever obvious liars are lying. This isn’t journalism. It’s Court Stenography, Versailles-on-the-Potomac.

    Ain’t no use jiving. Ain’t no use joking. Everything is broken. So, no, I don’t feel particularly inclined to talk about politics these days either, because there’s only so many times you can bellow in rage about it all, especially when nobody swings by this little corner of the Internet anyway. I’m not officially quitting GitM or anything, but let’s be honest. I’m not really what sure when, if ever, it’ll get its groove back. I’m not sure I see the point. And besides, as Richard said, a withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.

    Dr. Who?


    It’s been a long strange trip, but as of last Friday, the dissertation has been defended and deposited, and I’m now — pending the final approval of the paperwork, of course — a Doctor of Philosophy.

    The dissertation manuscript — deemed well-written but far too long by every reader — now goes to Top Men (as per below). After at least a few weeks of rest, I’ll start working to cut it down for possible publication. (If that never pans out, I could see myself posting it here on the site, as per my other writings from back in the day.)

    At any rate, this milestone doesn’t change anything, really, about my current professional situation. Nor am I entirely clear yet on how it will end up being useful in the future. But, at the very least, this long, occasionally ignominious chapter of my life is done, and for once I didn’t end up going the Jack Burden route. And there was much rejoicing.

    Triskaidekaphilia.

    A very Happy New Year to you and yours. (FWIW, in keeping with a resolution to get out more now that the old dissertation is tagged and bagged — defense date, January 18th — I spent a fine New Years Eve-ning with The Roots in Silver Spring.)

    Also, just to let you know, I’m working on the traditional annual movie review post, but it probably won’t go live until mid-month, since two of the better-reviewed films of 2012, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty and Michael Haneke’s Amour, don’t arrive here in the Beltway Styx until 1/11. That also gives me another week to plug a few other holes via Netflix, like last night’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (dopey, but not nearly as terribad as I feared) and The Deep Blue Sea (a definite list contender).

    In any event, happy 2013 everyone. Since we’ve made it through the Mayan gauntlet and are already living in The Future, it’s all extra time from here on out. Let’s make the most of it! Onward and upward.

    Thir13en Ghosts.

    While it’s been a ghost of its past self for much of 2012, Ghost in the Machine, as of this morning, has limped along to its 13th blogday. [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 11, 12]

    As those few of you who still drop by here now and again know — and thanks much for that — it’s been a pretty grim year ’round these parts, and no mistake. We’re coming up on nine months since, after a year and a half (and on Valentine’s Day to boot), I suddenly got deemed “boring” by the ex I was quite fond of — the same insidious adjective applied to me back in 2006 — and then swiftly unpersoned by both her and a sizable majority of my then-current social scene. (They “went with Cheryl.”) Fortunately, I had a big project to absorb myself in with the old dissertation, but that’s come at the expense of the Ghost. Unlucky Number 13, I guess.

    I am fully aware that, in the great scheme of life’s problems, of course, this one is ridiculous. I mean, there are homeless guys living on the street right outside my apartment who are scraping for food in trash cans. All around the world, lousy and/or terrible things happen to decent, undeserving people every single minute of the day, from car crashes and diseases to IEDs, errant drone strikes, and Republican legislatures. But, what can I say? It hit me where I lived. If you’ve had your heart broken — and this isn’t even my first rodeo in this regard, which probably didn’t help — you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, then nothing I write here can explain how lousy much of this year has been, or make whining about it seem any less self-absorbed.

    But ANYWAYS, we’ve reached the half-the-relationship mark in terms of time passed, and while my interior landscape can still be pretty Gaelic and/or even Russian at times, we’ve hopefully reached the point in the movie where I’ve fixed my own back, done lots and lots and lots of push-ups, climbed out of the pit, and inexplicably shown up in a locked-down Gotham City again in my best suit. (This also means, presumably, that I’m about to run into Alicia Keys. Oh word.) So, notwithstanding the fact that, even on a good day, Bruce Wayne is a pretty damaged dude, here’s hoping for a better Year 14 for the old blog, and for life in general.

    In any case, with the dissertation finally done, I’m still figuring out what sort of big writing project and/or life project I want to take on next, and how GitM fits or doesn’t fit in to that. (This won’t be an immediate pivot. For now, I’m spending my new free time just catching up on great shows I’ve kept for this moment, like Treme, and decent shows I can now watch without creeping dissertoral guilt, like Boardwalk Empire.) I may start doing the movie reviews again, which I’ve always enjoyed writing — but they also take a lot of time without much in the way of reward. So we’ll see.

    Regardless, whatever comes next in life, I expect the Ghost will move along with me in some fashion — maybe in fits and starts, but forward nonetheless. So thanks for indulging me and, if you’ve been swinging by here since the 20th century or just got lost on the Google today, thanks, as always, for stopping by.

    Uphill all the Way.

    “‘The whole era,’ concluded Bourne in disgust, ‘has been spiritually wasted.’” Let’s hope, down the road a-ways from 2012, the last few years won’t feel the same. Anyway, that line’s from the first paragraph of the now completed(!) dissertation, which I sent off to my advisor and the committee this afternoon. It’s been a very long road, and I’m sure the euphoria will take hold in a bit. As for now, I just feel as per the clip above — plus exhausted with a twinge of Comic Guy.

    FWIW, the final draft, with footnotes and bibliography and all that, clocked in at 1269 pages. If anyone’s interested on what’s covered and the general layout, I posted the table of contents below. That is obviously far too long for public — or anyone’s — consumption. I mean, I wrote the damned thing and I only read, like, the conclusion and stuff…It’s about the 20’s, right?

    Seriously though, I’m sure I could have condensed it more than I did. For example, here’s the part on p. 527 where I talk about how the Harding administration used the Herrin Massacre as a public relations coup against the labor movement in 1922:

    “All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy. All work and no play makes Kevin a boring boy.“

    That goes on for about 70 pages. And I think, if I’d just worked at it a little harder, I could’ve really gotten that down to 40. Ohhhhh well.

    At any rate, I’m way too tired to be blogging at the moment, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Thanks to everyone for putting up with all the navel-gazing posts about this over the past few weeks, months, and years. FWIW, the general GitM readership got a shout-out on the acknowledgments page. With that in mind, work is crazy through election day, but this site should hopefully resume to normal status updates soon thereafter. First I need to sleep for awhile, clean up my paper-, book-, and dog-hair-strewn apartment, do some more sleeping, see all the movies I’ve missed — the only one I’ve seen in months was Looper (I liked it) — take my man Berk to the park, sleep some more, get a life, stuff like that.

    Also, there is still the actual defense to consider, which will happen sometime in the next two months. But I am assuming that today was the day I destroyed the Ring, and that will be more of an “I’m a scarred, melancholy badass now, so let’s kick Saruman out of the Shire” Scouring-level event. Also, I’m not counting any chickens, trust me, but I did go ahead and put the batteries in my brand-new sonic screwdriver.

    Uphill All The Way: The Fortunes of Progressivism 1919-1929

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v
    DEDICATION ix
    PREFACE x
    INTRODUCTION 1

    • The Bourne Legacy 1
    • Progressives and Progressivism 7
    • Cast of Characters 12
    • Review of the Literature 15
    • Chapter Outline 17
    PROLOGUE: INAUGURATION DAY, 1921 22
    PART ONE: CRACK-UP: FROM VERSAILLES TO NORMALCY 30

    CHAPTER ONE: THE “TRAGEDY OF THE PEACE MESSIAH” 31

    • An American in Paris 32
    • A Human Failure 40
    • A Failure of Idealism? 47
    • The Peace Progressives 52
    CHAPTER TWO: THE “LEAGUE OF DAM-NATIONS” 58
    • Collapse at Pueblo 58
    • The Origins of the League 61
    • The League after Armistice 67
    • The Third Way: Progressive Nationalists 71
    • The Treaty Arrives in the Senate 79
    • The Articles of Contention 82
    • Things Fall Apart 94
    • Aftermath 107
    CHAPTER THREE: CHAOS AT HOME 111
    • Terror Comes to R Street. 112
    • The Storm before the Storm. 116
    • Enemies in Office, Friends in Jail. 133
    • Mobilizing the Nation 139
    • The Wheels Come Off 146
    • On a Pale Horse 150
    • Battle in Seattle 157
    • The Great Strike Wave 162
    • Steel and Coal 170
    • The Red Summer 184
    • The Forces of Order 193
    • Mr. Palmer’s War 205
    • The Fever Breaks 220
    • The Best Laid Plans 229
    CHAPTER FOUR: THE TRIUMPH OF REACTION: 1920 241
    • A Rematch Not to Be 241
    • The Man on Horseback 245
    • The Men in the Middle 250
    • I’m for Hiram 254
    • Visions of a Third Term 257
    • Ambition in the Cabinet 260
    • The Democrats’ Lowden 263
    • The Great Engineer 265
    • The Smoke-Filled Room 275
    • San Francisco 285
    • A Third Party? 296
    • Mr. Ickes’ Vote 318
    • Countdown to a Landslide 331
    • The Triumph of Reaction 347
    PART TWO: CONFRONTING NORMALCY 356

    CHAPTER FIVE: THE POLITICS OF NORMALCY 357

    • The Harding White House 357
    • Organizing in Opposition 373
    • Lobbies Pestiferous and Progressive 393
    • The Taint of Newberryism 400
    • The Harding Scandals 409
    • Tempest from a Teapot 417
    CHAPTER SIX: LEGACIES OF THE SCARE 439
    • The Education of Jane Addams 440
    • Prisoners of Conscience 444
    • The Laws and the Court 458
    • The Shoemaker and the Fish-Peddler 474
    • The Shame of America 491
    • The Right to Organize 518
    • Professional Patriots 547
    CHAPTER SEVEN: AMERICA AND THE WORLD 565
    • The Sins of the Colonel 565
    • Guarding the Back Door 575
    • Disarming the World 589
    • The Outlawry of War 606
    • The Temptations of Empire 620
    • Immigrant Indigestion 650
    CHAPTER EIGHT: THE DUTY TO REVOLT: 1924 671
    • Indian Summer 671
    • Now is the Time… 679
    • Hiram and Goliath 692
    • Coronation in Cleveland 712
    • Schism in the Democracy 723
    • Escape from New York 736
    • Fighting Bob 755
    • Coolidge or Chaos 767
    • The Contested Inheritance 777
    • Reds, Pinks, Blues, and Yellows 789
    • The Second Landslide 806
    PART THREE: A NEW ERA 823

    CHAPTER NINE: THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA 824

    • Two Brooms, Two Presidents 824
    • A Puritan in Babylon 833
    • Hoover and Mellon 842
    • Business Triumphant 865
    CHAPTER TEN: CULTURE AND CONSUMPTION 883
    • A Distracted Nation 884
    • The Descent of Man 902
    • The Problem of Public Opinion 908
    • Triumph of the Cynics 925
    • Scopes and the Schism 946
    • Not with a Bang, But a Whimper 963
    • New World and a New Woman 975
    • The Empire and the Experiment 1017
    CHAPTER ELEVEN: NEW DEAL COMING 1049
    • A Taste of Things to Come 1049
    • The General Welfare 1056
    • The Sidewalks of Albany 1073
    • For the Child, Against the Court 1082
    • The Rivers Give, The Rivers Take 1094
    CHAPTER TWELVE: MY AMERICA AGAINST TAMMANY’S: 1928 1115
    • The Republican Succession 1115
    • The Available Man 1135
    • Hoover v. Smith 1153
    • The Third Landslide 1187
    CONCLUSION: TIRED RADICALS 1197
    • The Strange Case of Reynolds Rogers 1197
    • The Progressive Revival 1202
    • Confessions of the Reformers 1206
    BIBLIOGRAPHY 1221