Uncouth Reflections

Should Tea Party Organizations Be Tax-Exempt?

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

I don’t doubt too much that the IRS’s special treatment of Tea Party organizations had political motivations, ideological if not partisan. And that’s bad, bad bad let’s all agree.

And maybe Ross Douthat is right that the story is darker yet:

Where might an enterprising, public-spirited I.R.S. agent get the idea that a Tea Party group deserved more scrutiny from the government than the typical band of activists seeking tax-exempt status? Oh, I don’t know: why, maybe from all the prominent voices who spent the first two years of the Obama era worrying that the Tea Party wasn’t just a typically messy expression of citizen activism, but something much darker — an expression of crypto-fascist, crypto-racist rage, part Timothy McVeigh and part Bull Connor, potentially carrying a wave of terrorist violence in its wings.

Could be, though I’d prefer no wholesale rush to judgment on motivations. It is possible that a more nuanced explanation will emerge, if you will forgive me preferring fact to spin in the age of Shawn Hannity and The Daily Kos.

But why are political outfits like Tea Party groups tax-exempt to begin with? Ezra Klein, whom I often disagree with, has it right, I think, in arguing that it was not a good idea in the first instance to have awarded tax-exempt designations to those groups.

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Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged 401(c)(4), 501(c)(3), IRS, tax-exempt, Tea Party | 8 Comments

Letter from China: Just Big Pants

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

I am back in China again, this time to teach a class about American nonprofit organizations at a Chinese university. The Chinese experience with nonprofits is of relative recent vintage and the sector is small. Plus, many of the nonprofits out there are essentially appendages of the State, a function of the totalizing nature of the official ideology since Mao. Old habits die hard.

I was having a conversation with a Chinese friend who lives in Beijing’s central business district. Rem Koolhas’s CCTV building is right near where he lives, and, believe me, you can’t miss it, even with the haze. In fact, the haze makes it a tad more surreal than if you were to see it in the clear light of day, which is unlikely.

For proper effect, view image through cheesecloth

Here is our conversation:

Him: We call that building Big Pants.

Me: I can see why.

Him: Designed by Frenchman . . . can’t remember name.

Me: Koolhas? Dutchman?

Him: No, not him.

Me: Okay. Do people like the building?

Him: Not like. Not not like. Just Big Pants.

Posted in Architecture | 6 Comments

German and Austrian Restaurants

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

America’s love for things ethnic does not typically extend to the Germans. And Germans don’t typically revel in their heritage. Germans are the largest self-reported ancestry group in the United States, with 17% of Americans reporting German ancestry. But you don’t see us running off to German restaurants, now, do you? No, we wait in line with the rest of you for the opening of the latest Vietnamese place.

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Posted in Food and health | 16 Comments

Arthouse Movie Posters

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Movie culture is pretty much dead now, isn’t it? Sure, it’s possible to whip up some decent arguments to the contrary. But for all intents and purposes movies are no longer significant drivers of culture. Frankly, when a young person talks about movies, I’m often not even sure what he or she is referring to. The series of mostly animated 3D commercials that constitutes the modern summer blockbuster? Homemade iPhone porn? Grainy, recursive gifs of people putting things in their assholes? Serialized dramas streamed by the Netflix gremlins straight to your TV? All of these might qualify as movies. And yet in a sense they’re not movies, which for me is a term redolent of a whole art-and-entertainment ecosystem — one that’s gone and vanished, like the rhino in Mozambique.

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Posted in Commercial art, Movies | Tagged arthouse, Criterion Collection, Federico Fellini, Film, Hulu+, Ingmar Bergman, Movie Posters, movies, Pauline Kael, San Diego | 11 Comments

Oh, God. What New Devilry is Coming Our Way?

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Epaminondas

epiminondas writes:

Here.

Posted in Politics and Economics | Leave a comment

Cocktail Du Jour

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

At the Moosewood Restaurant, a legendary hippie restaurant in Ithaca, NY: the Kitchen Garden Bloody Mary — 360 Vodka (used not because it’s organic but because its bottle can be recycled); fresh thyme; and the Moosewood’s “secret” Bloody Mary mix. Verdict: Although it isn’t very peppery it has a little kick, but the general experience is like drinking a hearty, healthy glass of tomato juice. I wouldn’t bother ordering another.

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Some other Bloody Marys I’ve drunk, including a few I’ve really enjoyed.

Posted in Food and health, The Good Life | Tagged cocktails, Finger Lakes, ithaca, Moosewood | 3 Comments

“Witch Hunt”

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Ed Jagels, the tough-on-crime Bakersfield D.A. who threw a lot of innocent people in prison

I loved this well-done, labor-of-love, low-budget 2008 doc about child-abuse accusations in Bakersfield, California in the 1980s. The accusations all — let me repeat that: ALL — turned out to be false. Nonetheless, many of them resulted in innocent people spending years in prison, and many of them also blew apart families and friendships. The episode has also turned out to be historically important. It was the first in what became a long string of absurd, “believe the children!” cases that defined the era as much as its pop music and politics did.

Don Hardy and Dana Nachman’s movie doesn’t focus much on the big picture — on giving context, or on setting the stage, or on venturing explanations. For that you’ll need to look at a book, or maybe just read this excellent Wikipedia entry. What it zooms in on instead is the local and the particular: on the experience of the people who lived through the craziness, and on the repercussions of the trials and imprisonments. It’s also a neat look at Bakersfield — a town that kept re-electing its D.A. even after it became evident how wrong he’d been — as well as an immersion in a bizarre, not-so-long-ago period in American history when Satanic-abuse fantasies and recovered-memory zaniness were the order of the day. WTF was all that about?

The movie also got me wondering: Is the fanaticism about diversity, anti-racism and tolerance that we’re presently enduring a related form of shared nuttiness? And why does America put itself through periodic episodes of quasi-religious frenzy?

More

The reporter Debbie Nathan did heroic work covering the Satanic-abuse scandals. Here’s her terrific book about the cases.
Wikipedia’s summary of the Bakersfield case is a good one.
An interview with the filmmakers.
A look at the career of Bakersfield D.A. Ed Jagels.
The film is available on Netflix — though, sadly, only as a DVD. Or you could buy a copy from Amazon.

Posted in Movies, Politics and Economics | Tagged documentary, movies, psychology, recovered memories, Satanic abuse, scandals | 14 Comments

“I Was Looking for a Street”

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

As the quote I posted a few days ago implied, I just read the first volume of crime writer Charles Willeford’s memoirs. It might be one of the best things I’ve ever read. The book covers the author’s childhood in Depression-era Los Angeles and his adventures at age 14 (!) riding the rails from California to Texas. The prose is easygoing yet direct, nostalgic without being overly sentimental. To contemporary ears, his early life could be read as a catalog of Dickensian horrors — both parents dead from tuberculosis, a stint in boarding school where children were also required to labor as farmers, begging for food on the streets of El Paso — but Willeford looks back upon these years with wry amusement and good humor.

There are wonderful scenes and passages on almost every page. His storytelling is so assured, he’s in such command of the form, that the writing feels artless and natural. Willeford’s work seems to have somewhat fallen by the wayside (he’s not nearly as well-known Leonard or Westlake, for example), but publishers Family and PictureBox have thankfully rescued this gem from undeserved obscurity.

More

GQ excerpts the book with the best 907 words about hats you’ll read this year.
VICE presents a longer excerpt.
Here’s a good profile of Willeford from The Atlantic that focuses on his Miami-based crime novels.

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing | Tagged autobiography, Charles Willeford, Great Depression, Los Angeles, memoirs | 3 Comments

Juxtaposin’: Martyrs

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Posted in Art, Politics and Economics | Tagged Francisco Goya, Juxtaposin', terrorism, terrorist babushka, The Third of May 1808, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva | 3 Comments

Cocktail Du Jour

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

At Booker’s, near Ithaca, NY: The Huckleberry Finn. Dock 57 Blackberry Whiskey; muddled blackberries, orange, sugar and bitters; topped by club soda and Ginger Ale. Verdict: refreshing and summery, and very amusing: first you enjoy the lightness and fizziness at the top of the glass; as you work your way through the cocktail to the bottom of the glass, you wind up in a fun wrestle with some seriously murky fruitiness and bitterness. I’d be happy to have another.