'Bootleggers and Baptists': An Interview with Adam Smith

Over on Book Reviews by Rick Sincere is a recent interview with economist Adam Smith of Johnson & Wales University.

Smith is the coauthor, with his grandfather Bruce Yandle, of Bootleggers & Baptists: How Economic Forces and Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics, which was published by the Cato Institute in September.

The two authors gave a presentation about their book at Cato in October. Afterward, I spoke to Smith about the book and its title. Here is an excerpt:

Smith explained that the term “bootleggers and Baptists” originated during alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s, when “you had bootleggers and Baptists with aligned interests” even if they did not realize it.

Baptists, he explained, proclaimed “Down with legalized distribution of alcohol!” because they saw drinking as morally detrimental. Bootleggers, too, proclaimed “Down with legalized distribution of alcohol!” because Prohibition raised the price of illegal liquor and fed more profits to the bootleggers.

“It was a boon to the bootleggers,” Smith explained, “and the Baptists were kind of oblivious to that situation.”

Broadening the concept to include other kinds of regulations, Smith said, “what we see today in our modern political economy [are] many, many manifestations of the same kinds of strange bedfellows.”

More and more, he said, “we're seeing that those bedfellows are recognizing one another and coming together to form even more powerful would-be bootlegger/Baptist coalitions.”

There is also a relationship between “bootleggers and Baptists” and “crony capitalism,” when government grants preferential treatment to certain, well-connected businesses.

Smith said that, in the book “we call it 'bootlegger/Baptist' capitalism instead of crony capitalism.”

Read the whole thing here.

Designed to eliminate confusion: New name for NFL

Rick Sincere at NFL HQ in Ripon, 2012

News comes from Ripon, Wisconsin, that the venerable National Forensic League is changing its name to the National Speech & Debate Association.

The decision was made by the NFL's board last May.  One of the purposes behind the change in nomenclature was to reduce two separate but equally frustrating forms of confusion:  with the National Football League and with the term "forensics" as crime scene investigation procedures, as if the NFL were the trade association for characters played on TV by David Caruso, Ted Danson, and Gary Sinise.

To be fair, the term "forensics" derives from the courtroom rhetoric used by lawyers to prove their case beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Eventually this grew to encompass all the tools used by law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys, from fingerprints to DNA analysis as well as deductive reasoning and argumentation.  Orators and debaters laid claim to the word before the maggot-studying scientists started to use it.

In an FAQ on what used to be the NFL's web site, the reason for the rebranding is explained:

As a communication organization, we need to effectively communicate who we are and what we do. There is a common misunderstanding of “NFL” or “forensics,” including confusion with the National Football League or crime scene investigation; changing our name to focus on the activity of speech and debate will appeal to more students, coaches, alumni, sponsors, and the general public. We believe rebranding the organization as the National Speech & Debate Association will help us strengthen existing relationships, build new partnerships, increase national and local support for speech and debate, and allow us to pursue our mission to the fullest potential.

I have written on previous occasions about the positive impact speech and debate have had on my life and career.  Participating in debate through Marquette University High School's Webster Club and coaching younger debaters at the Georgetown University Forensics Institute (there's that word again) for three summers gave me analytical skills that I use every day.  Writing a blog post is not so different from writing a debate brief.  There just aren't as many bodies piled up on the podium, and you don't breathlessly tell your readers to "pull that across your flow."

It's too bad that popular culture has seldom offered a realistic view of speech and debate.  (Even the well-received play, Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam, is off the mark.)  Films like Thumbsucker and Listen to Me deserve thumbs up for effort but raspberries for accuracy.

The only recognizable portrayal of competitive speech on the high school circuit I have found is in James Magruder's novel, Sugarless.  In a brief review of that book in 2010, I wrote:

I don't read much fiction, in general, but when I received a review copy of James Magruder's Sugarless late last year, I simply could not put it down.

It has been almost a year since I read the book, but I still think about it because it resonates with my personal experience so much: not in every aspect, but hitting a sufficient number of points on the matrix to make me believe it.

Sugarless is the story of Rick, a 15-year-old high school student in suburban Chicago during the mid-1970s who, almost purely by chance, ends up on the speech team and finds out he has a talent for dramatic interpretation (or dramatic interp, for those in the know).

Magruder's verisimilitude about high school forensics struck me more than anything else in the book, even the parts about the protaganist's struggle with coming out as gay in an era far less accepting of that than it is now. His descriptions of the scenes at speech tournaments are amazingly accurate, and his portrayals of coaches and competitors are eerily familiar to me.

The one detail that other readers might find difficult to believe is the choice of the protaganist's speech coach to have him do an excerpt from Mart Crowley's play, The Boys in the Band. People unfamiliar with high school forensics may think that a play about gay men would be off-limits, especially in 1976, and especially in the American Midwest.

The truth is, a cutting from The Boys in the Band was circulating at that time, and my own coach asked me to do it. For reasons unrelated to the content of the piece, I ended up doing a different selection. (If I recall correctly, it was the courtroom scene in A Man for All Seasons, a far more conventional choice.) So I can testify against the doubters that an excerpt from The Boys in the Band was, indeed, being performed on the high school forensics circuit in the mid-1970s.

Having just seen the excellent documentary about Crowley and his play, Making the Boys, at the Virginia Film Festival, my memories of reading Sugarless earlier this year and my own experience in high school rushed back to me.

I recommend Sugarless to anyone who has competed in speech and debate or to anyone who was once a gay teenager. It's an excellent book, and a compelling read -- a real achievement for a first-time novelist, even one who, like Magruder, is an accomplished playwright and translator.

I would love to see Sugarless on screen, although I doubt that's likely to happen anytime soon. Too niche; too talky; too gay -- but delicious all the same.

Having mentioned Sugarless, I should also note Mark Oppenheimer's relatable, readable memoir, Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate. Oppenheimer portrays accurately the debate environment in which he competed, but that was not policy debate under the auspices of the NFL or the NCFL (National Catholic Forensic League). It was, rather, a self-contained regional circuit populated by New England prep school teams, different from the kind of debate people tend to encounter elsewhere in the country (Upper Midwest, Texas) and even in today's urban debate leagues. My review of Wisenheimer was published in December 2010.

While old-timers like myself may feel the rebranding of the National Forensic League into the National Speech & Debate Association (no approved acronym or abbreviation ) is a rejection of the organization's historical roots, at least it is an accurately descriptive moniker for the group.  It requires no more explanation than what can fit on a business card.

A final note:  it was announced earlier this month that the policy debate topic for the 2014-15 school year will be "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth's oceans."

Ocean policy got me into college and was one-quarter of my master's degree -- but those are stories for another time, another day.

Blog Action Day 2011 Blog Post: Food

Two years ago, I participated in Blog Action Day for the first time. That year, the topic was "climate change." This year the topic is the less specific "food." (I can imagine plenty of blog posts featuring favorite recipes or odes to chocolate.)

This year Blog Action Day is scheduled to coincide with World Food Day, October 16. According to its own blog, 2,250 bloggers from 100 countries are participating in a global conversation about food.

I thought I might just revisit some of my previous posts about food and beverages. (I missed last year's topic, "water," which is the most common and, arguably, the world's most important beverage.) It turned out there are not many of them, at least not many that have been tagged for easy reference. Still, a few jump out and, as you will see, certain shared themes emerge from them.

My latest food-related item was posted in July, marking National Ice Cream Month. Previous to that (on April 7, 2010) was one that drew attention to a bizarre kind of Easter candy, and the one before that was an odd report about some New Zealand scientists who advised people to eat their pets as a way to save the environment.

It seems that there's something about food in the news that brings out weirdness, since I also noted the existence of "cock soup" on the shelves at Kroger back in June 2009, and in March of that year I wrote about the Oakdale Testicle Festival. Then in October of 2008, there was a report of a political candidate who was denying his opponent's calumnious accusations that he was a vegetarian.

On a more serious note, in the wake of then-current reports of "tainted tomatoes" across the country, in June 2008, I republished an old article of mine about the benefits of food irradiation, a topic that could be revisited in light of the recent listeria-infected cantaloupes scare in the United States. A few days earlier, I looked at the food policy of the U.S. government in a post called "How Congress Makes Us Fat."

Three days previous to that, I looked back at the 1996 Democratic National Convention and how the journalists there engaged in a literal "feeding frenzy" each afternoon, when the DNC hosts laid out a big buffet catered by local Chicago restaurants.

More sentimentally, on February 3, 2008, on what would have been my mother's 70th birthday, I recalled how she liked to entertain with food, particularly on occasions like Super Bowl Sunday.

The previous November, I discovered a favorite recipe of foot-tapping Senator Larry Craig, an odd concoction that involves pushing a hot dog through the center of a baked potato. (I am not making this up.)

More nostalgia came up when I found an article in the Marquette Tribune about a durable Milwaukee tradition, the Friday night fish fry.

One of my favorite odd-food stories was the one about the clergyman who discovered that eating soy products results in homosexuality. (Tofu does what?)

In terms of beverages, my favorite post has to be the one I published on the 25th anniversary of the introduction of New Coke. You would have thought Netflix had learned from that episode before introducing Quikster.

Speaking of anniversaries, it's hard to talk about beverages without talking about alcoholic ones -- so I celebrated the 75th anniversary of the repeal of the Prohibition amendment, on December 5, 2008.

That, of course, suggests cocktails, including the recipe for Alter Kaker, which linguist Michael Wex published as a "Yiddish mixed drink."

In the end, however, realizing the sobriety (no pun intended) of the topic adopted by the people behind Blog Action Day, I decided to focus on the darker side of food -- that is, hunger.

I found a book review I wrote while I was in graduate school about the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. The Horn of Africa is currently experiencing a serious drought, which is hitting Somalia particularly hard. While parts of Ethiopia and Kenya have also been affected, drought there has not turned into widespread famine as it did in the 1980s because the governments there are now far more responsive to the needs and wants of their people. Ethiopia overthrew the Stalinist Mengistu regime in the early '90s, and Kenya has been having democratic elections since Daniel arap Moi was forced from power more than a decade ago.

Both countries, while far from perfect, are far more open to free enterprise than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, and -- has history has shown -- while drought may occur in free-market economies, drought in such countries does not turn into famine. (Somalia is still a basket case, divided by clan rivalries and beset by terrorist groups with ties to al-Qaeda.)

What follows is my review of Breakfast in Hell, by Myles Harris.

RICHARD SINCERE
A Doctor’s Story Of Deliberate Famine And an African Hitler 

Breakfast in Hell: A Doctor’s Experiences of the Ethiopian Famine, by Myles Harris, Picador, London, $4.85, 221 pp. 


In the play Man of La Mancha, the poet Cervantes explains what impelled a plain country squire toward becoming the knight Don Quixote: “Being retired, he has much time for books. . . . All he reads oppresses him, fills him with indignation at man’s murderous ways toward man.”

This is one of those books. Breakfast in Hell came to my attention through an article by the author in The Spectator, the British public affairs weekly. The title was “The Regime That Kills Ethiopians,” and that sums up the whole story. It would be extraordinarily difficult to come away from Myles Harris’s account of the state-imposed famine in Ethiopia without profound anger and indignation.

Myles Harris is a medical doctor who has worked all over the world caring for the malnourished, ill-housed, poorly clothed and impoverished people who make up such a large number of us. Prior to his six months in Ethiopia with the Red Cross, he and his wife Janet had worked in undeveloped regions in Papua New Guinea, Australia and the Kalahari Desert.

It is clear from the outset that Harris went to Ethiopia with few, if any, preconceptions of what he would encounter there. The Red Cross needed medical personnel to work in famine areas, and he responded to their call. He had no trouble adopting the apolitical life of a Red Cross delegate and wanted only to help suffering Ethiopians.

He emerged from the country half a year later with bitter feelings toward the Mengistu regime, toward international aid agencies and toward petty Communist Party officials who blocked genuine humanitarian relief; he has fond and loving memories of his Ethiopian co-workers and the farmers, townspeople, young mothers and children he encountered in the feeding camps and medical stations.

Harris writes vividly and pulls no punches. He compares the Emperor Mengistu (as he calls Ethiopia’s Marxist military dictator) to Hitler and Stalin; indeed, reading some of the descriptions of Mengistu’s atrocities makes one think Adolph and Joe were mere pranksters.

For instance: The Soviets, as part of their aid to keep him on his throne, sent a unit of the East German Volkspolizei, “a secret police force with one of the finest pedigrees in suppression in the world. . . . At the time of the Ethiopian terror in 1977, some of the most senior Volkspolizei officers had once been serving members of the Gestapo. For, at the end of the Second World War, the capitulation of half the Third Reich to the Russians had meant little more for them than. . . swapping a swastika for a red star, before it was business as usual.”

The business these ex-Gestapo henchmen taught Mengistu was the need for a memorable terror to bring all Ethiopians into his iron grip. “Mengistu searched his heart for the most terrible thing he could do to bring his people through fear to the truth of Marxism-Leninism, and he thought of burial. Ethiopians hold burial to be one of the most important rites of life. To die unburied, to be forgotten in death, is so awful that even today those who whisper to you their memories of the Terror can hardly bring themselves to speak of this part of it…. [Mengistu] ordered that the bodies of the slain should lie unburied, and that those who tried to take them for burial were themselves to be slaughtered. One morning, the people of Addis woke to streets filled with corpses and a sky dark with vultures.” Later, “the lampposts were strung with corpses, not of men, but of young school boys who had tried and failed to rescue their fathers’ and brothers’ bodies for burial. . . . When it was over, of the 5,000 students at the University of Addis Ababa, only 1,500 were still alive.”

That excerpt exposes the minds of men who would, among other things, padlock food warehouses for days and weeks, refusing to give relief workers access to the tools of their trade; who would refuse hospital admission to obviously sick and dying children whose parents lacked the proper papers from the local farmers’ association, papers that took five days or longer to obtain; who would ship truckloads of grain from the famine-stricken north of the country to the healthier and more fertile south, where it was stored for unknown reasons -- perhaps for later shipment to the masters in Moscow. These are men who forbid the sale of yeast to Ethiopian citizens in order to secure a government monopoly on the baking and selling of bread.

Harris spares nearly no one from his understated but strongly felt wrath. The Red Cross and other relief agencies get criticism for trying too hard to work with and please the government -- a government that wants to keep the Red Cross from doing its job. At one point, he tries to explain this to his superiors:

“We had done exactly what we had been instructed to do by Geneva: emptied the camps of all except the very ill and returned the rest of the people to their villages.

“But each success would have found little favor with the Ethiopians. Suddenly, they had been washed into the center of a disaster worse than the First World War.

Confused and frightened, their only remedy -- huge feeding programs -- seemed the only rock to cling to. Then we came along and tried to close down their camps. Closing down their operation implied their failure, and, as in most aid programs, threatened bureaucratic livelihoods. Famine camps meant foreign aid, foreign aid meant jobs.”

Hitler, Stalin and Mao share one positive characteristic — they are all dead. But Mengistu and the communists who rule Ethiopia with him are alive and dripping with the blood of their countrymen. Why, then, do Western governments, the United Nations and Bob Geldof’s Band-Aid continue to send them money that perpetuates their tyranny?

Richard Sincere, a Washington writer, is currently pursuing post-graduate studies in international relations at the London School of Economics.

NOTE: This review originally appeared in the Washington Times on Monday, June 1, 1987, and in the New York City Tribune on Wednesday, June 3, 1987. It has been crossposted from Book Reviews by Rick Sincere, where it appeared on January 9, 2010.

Friedrich Hayek: 19th-Century-Born Video Star of the 21st Century

Sunday's New York Times featured a book review by Francis Fukuyama of a new edition of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, originally published in 1960 by the University of Chicago Press (the same publisher of the new edition, which is edited by historian Ronald Hamowy).

As Fukuyama notes in his first paragraph, Hayek -- who was born in 1899 and who died two decades ago -- is enjoying something of a renaissance of interest:

The publication of the definitive edition of Friedrich A. Hayek’s “Constitution of Liberty” coincides with the unexpected best-seller status of his earlier book “The Road to Serfdom” as a result of its promotion by the conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck. In an age when many on the right are worried that the Obama administration’s reform of health care is leading us toward socialism, Hayek’s warnings from the mid-20th century about society’s slide toward despotism, and his principled defense of a minimal state, have found strong political resonance.

That Glenn Beck is a fan of Friedrich Hayek should not be held against Hayek, because the Austrian-born Nobel laureate -- who also wrote about politics, society, philosophy, and culture -- is admired by far more intellectually solid individuals, not just Lonesome Rhodes types but also university teachers, think-tank scholars, journalists, business executives, and rap-music video producers.

Rap-music video producers?

Indeed, a surprising YouTube hit of recent months has been "'Fear the Boom and Bust' a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem," produced by George Mason University economist Russell Roberts and video artist John Papola. Since its Internet debut in January 2010, "Fear the Boom and Bust" has racked up 2,212,104 hits (and counting), leading to a sequel that was released on April 27, "Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two," which has had 589,253 views in less than two weeks.

That's a lot of fans for two economists who ended up in the long run just as Keynes predicted they would.  Still, their ideas are still alive.

Here are the two videos.  You can judge their intellectual (and entertainment) quality for yourself.

"Fear the Boom and Bust":

"Round Two":

For those interested in diving deeper into the continuing controversy among public intellectuals about Hayek, his ideas, and his legacy, take a look at the Mercatus Center's Peter Boettke's brief response at Coordination Problem to Fukuyama (who has his own new book on store shelves now, part one of The Origins of Political Order).  I'm sure it is just the start of a stimulating conversation.

 

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Blog Carnival Round-Up

Several current blog carnivals have mentioned recent posts from here or from my book blog, Book Reviews by Rick Sincere.

The Salty Blogger has posted the "Anything Goes Carnival of Politics" yesterday, mentioning under the heading "From the Right":

Rick Sincere presents Remembering David Nolan posted at Rick Sincere News and Thoughts, saying, “David Nolan, creator of the Nolan Chart (which upends the traditional left/right political spectrum) and cofounder (in 1971) of the Libertarian Party, died suddenly on November 21, two days short of his 67th birthday. In 2010, Nolan challenged incumbent John McCain in the race for the U.S. Senate in Arizona.”

The Skilled Investor hosts the 167th edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning, saying under the heading of "Budgeting and Economics":

Rick Sincere presents Author Interview: Jim Bacon Predicts Economic ‘Boomergeddon’ posted at Book Reviews by Rick Sincere, saying, “In his new book, 'Boomergeddon,' author James Bacon explores the coming federal credit crunch, which will 'precipitate an unbelievable series of events,' starting with 'a massive Keynesian contraction which will probably push the country into a steep recession, if not a depression.'"

The 68th edition of the Baby Boomers Blog Carnival, hosted by Baby Boomers U.S. (The Blog), cites the same article:

Rick Sincere presents Author Interview: Jim Bacon Predicts Economic ‘Boomergeddon’ posted at Book Reviews by Rick Sincere, saying, “The new book, ‘Boomergeddon,’ is ‘addressed to baby boomers,’ says author James Bacon, those who will be retiring through the next 15 years and who ‘haven’t saved enough money for our retirement.’ Boomers will not ‘come close to being able to replicate our lifestyles that we’ve enjoyed until now.’”

Reading, Reading, & Life hosted the 57th Book Review Blog Carnival on November 28, including this mention under the category "Nonfiction":

Rick Sincere presents Revisiting Eva Perón: A Book Review posted at Book Reviews by Rick Sincere

Rick Says: "Digging through my archives, I came across this review essay I wrote in 1997, coincident to the release of the film version of Evita. It discusses two biographies of Eva Peron, which both remain in print."

Finally, children's book author and illustrator Wendy Wax hosted the November Carnival of Children's Literature and notes:

At Rick Sincere's News and Thoughts, Rick Sincere reminds us that it's the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Independent film maker Mary McDonagh Murphy has written a companion book, Scout, Atticus and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird, to go with her new documentary. Mary believes that teachers assign To Kill a Mockingbird to their classes year after year because of the indelible characters, social message, and race and class issues.

If other carnival citations roll in, I'll be listing them here later.

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Gift Ideas for Cyber Monday

Black Friday is past.  It seems to have begun this year on Thursday, Thanksgiving.  Merchants are happy because their sales receipts for Black Friday 2010 have outpaced those of Black Friday 2009.

Increased sales of push-up bras and other lingerie items tend to indicate a recovery in the retail sector, and, reports Reuters,

Total retail traffic will have risen 8.7 percent to 212 million shoppers from Thanksgiving Day through Sunday, compared with the same period in 2009, according to the survey from the National Retail Federation.

Shoppers will have spent $45 billion online and in stores over the four days, according to the survey, which includes estimated spending for Sunday. That compares with $41.2 billion in 2009.

Spending per person rose to $365.34 from $343.31 a year earlier, NRF said.

Tomorrow, November 29, is the much-vaunted Cyber Monday, when workers return to their jobs from the four-day weekend and begin using their office computers to shop on line (the honorable ones only during their lunch hours), ordering gifts for themselves and loved ones.

In between came a new shoppers' holiday called "Small Business Saturday."  The idea of that one is that consumers should visit local mom-and-pop shops and buy things there.  Even government officials got into the act.  Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, according to the AP, urged Old Dominion shoppers to patronize local small businesses.

The Republican governor says small business accounts for 98% of all businesses in Virginia, and for 75% of job growth.

He said doing your holiday shopping Saturday supports what he calls the "lifeblood of Virginia."

For my part, I visited four local businesses on Saturday:  Carter Mountain Orchard, The C'ville Market, McDonald's, and Walmart.

Lest you object that eating at McDonald's and buying things at Walmart betray the spirit of "Small Business Saturday," keep in mind that both McDonald's and Walmart started out as small businesses, respectively six and five decades ago.  And for those of you who found this blog post through the most pervasive global business of them all, Google, it's good to remember that the search engine giant did not exist even 15 years ago.

The best lessons about how small businesses succeed and grow, I suggest the South Park episodes "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" (Season 8) and "Gnomes" (Season 2).

That second episode contains a speech about free enterprise that would put Howard Roark to shame.  As Robert Arp writes in his book, South Park and Philosophy:

In the spirit of libertarianism, Kyle proclaims something rarely heard on television outside of a John Stossel report:  "Big corporations are good.  Because without big corporations we wouldn't have things like cars and computers and canned soup."  And Stan comes to the defense of the dreaded Harbucks:  "Even Harbucks started off as a small, little business.  But because it made such great coffee, and because they ran their business so well, they managed to grow until they became the corporate powerhouse it is today.  And that is why we should all let Harbucks stay."

In short, today's small business -- or even a yet-unrealized business concept -- may be tomorrow's behemoth, and that's good for consumers, for workers, for entrepreneurs, and for stockholders.

Looking forward to tomorrow, however, I would like to make a few suggestions for Cyber Monday purchases, whether something self-indulgent or something that will be a stocking-stuffer for St. Nicholas Day or gift under the tree on Christmas. (You may want to order expedited delivery if you're buying Chanukah presents. The Festival of Lights begins on December 1 this year.)

Let me begin by recommending the four best books that I have read in the past year.  Three are non-fiction, one is fiction.  I regret not having written full-length reviews of these books yet, but I may get around to it eventually.

By far my favorite book of 2010 has been Daniel Okrent's Last Call:  The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.  The title is self-explanatory but completely understates the rich lode of historical matter that Okrent has gathered between the book's covers.  I thought I knew the story of Prohibition, and I was wrong.  So many rich details had slipped my notice over the years, including the seminal work of Wayne B. Wheeler, the pre-eminent lobbyist for Prohibition, who basically invented grass-roots political organizing and direct-mail fundraising years before Marvin Liebman, Richard Viguerie, or MoveOn.org.

Neither did I know how the forces of Prohibition had undermined the Constitution by preventing for a full decade the mandated reapportionment following the 1920 census, because those favoring Prohibition knew that a Congress that more accurately represented cities, suburbs, and recent immigrants would be less inclined to support stiff enforcement of the Volstead Act and would be more inclined to move toward full repeal of the 18th Amendment.  As a result of the manipulation of Wheeler and others, the Congress elected in 1930 represented the same districts as their predecessors did in 1912, a clear violation of the Constitution.

What's more, Okrent did some digging and discovered no evidence for the widely-held belief that the patriarch of the Kennedy clan, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a bootlegger.  Though Kennedy had imported liquor legally at just about the time that repeal seemed inevitable, there simply is no documentary proof that he had imported illegal liquor during Prohibition.  The rumor that the senior Kennedy had been a bootlegger, and had built his family's fortune on that, seems to have begun sometime in the 1950s and, as Okrent points out, if any evidence had existed prior to that date, Kennedy -- who had many enemies in business and politics -- would certainly have been called out on it.

Another book of history that I really enjoyed was Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market:  Ayn Rand and the American Right.  Burns, who teaches at the University of Virginia, wrote a page-turner about the Objectivist philosopher and novelist's life.

That may be hard to believe, since the outlines of Rand's career are so well-known, given previous biographies and memoirs.  Somehow, however, Burns is able to keep the reader's attention.  As I read along through the book, I kept saying to myself, "I know what happens next, but I want to find out how it happens."

Burns was the first outside scholar to be given access to Rand's personal papers and library, and the result of her research is a highly readable yet informative chronicle, not only of Rand's life but of her influence on the American conservative and libertarian movements. 

Over the course of the past eleven or twelve months, I have had at least three opportunities to see Burns speak:  once at the Miller Center, once at the Virginia Festival of the Book, and once at a forum she assembled on the idea of "liberaltarianism," or the cooperation between libertarians and liberals in the public square.  On two occasions, I was able to interview her about Ayn Rand and about her book.

In the world of entertainment, it was my pleasure last month to see TV's Craig Ferguson perform his stand-up act at the Paramount Theatre in Charlottesville.

In anticipation of that show, I read Ferguson's own autobiography, American on Purpose:  The Improbably Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot.

As the title implies, the story culminates in Ferguson's decision to become an American citizen.  I was actually a bit disappointed that, for all the detail about his life and "adventures" earlier in the book, the section on the naturalization process was thin.  It certainly was not as complete as the reports Ferguson gave about it on The Late, Late Show on CBS while he was going through it.  (That included numerous offers of "honorary citizenship" from state governors, including a then-unknown-outside-Alaska Sarah Palin, whom Ferguson described at the time as something of a "sexy librarian.")

Still, Ferguson's chronicle of his life growing up in a lower-middle-class household near Glasgow in the 1960s and '70s, his love affair with the United States that began upon his first visit here at the age of 13, his early life as a drunk and drug addict, his first attempts at performing (which began with him as the drummer for a punk rock band, leading to a stand-up act as the character "Bing Hitler") that included encounters with other beginners like U2 and Alan Cumming, through his long-term engagement as a regular on The Drew Carey Show and finally, his becoming the best of the late-night talk show hosts (in my opinion, at least).

After Ferguson's performance at the Paramount in Charlottesville, I noticed his tour bus was still parked out back and, curious, I found a cadre of fans standing outside, waiting for the star to emerge.  Sure enough, only a few minutes later, he came out of the stage door and signed a few autographs and posed for a few photographs.  Luckily for me and Steven Latimer, who was with me that night, Craig let us pose with him in the very last shot taken that night.  Naturally, I posted it on Facebook as soon as we got home.  It appears here for the first time outside a social networking context.

As the picture was being snapped, I said to Craig, "You're the smartest host on late-night TV," to which he replied:  "That's like being a tall midget."  Maybe so, but I stand by my statement.

For what it's worth, I also purchased Ferguson's novel, Between the Bridge and the River, on that night at the Paramount.  I have not yet had a chance to read it.

I don't read much fiction, in general, but when I received a review copy of James Magruder's Sugarless, I simply could not put it down.

It has been almost a year since I read the book, but I still think about it because it resonates with my personal experience so much:  not in every aspect, but hitting a sufficient number of points on the matrix to make me believe it.

Sugarless is the story of Rick, a 15-year-old high school student in suburban Chicago during the mid-1970s who, almost purely by chance, ends up on the speech team and finds out he has a talent for dramatic interpretation (or dramatic interp, for those in the know).

Magruder's verisimilitude about high school forensics struck me more than anything else in the book, even the parts about the protaganist's struggle with coming out as gay in an era far less accepting of that than it is now.  His descriptions of the scenes at speech tournaments are amazingly accurate, and his portrayals of coaches and competitors are eerily familiar to me.

The one detail that other readers might find difficult to believe is the choice of the protaganist's speech coach to have him do an excerpt from Mart Crowley's play, The Boys in the Band.  People unfamiliar with high school forensics may think that a play about gay men would be off-limits, especially in 1976, and especially in the American Midwest.

The truth is, a cutting from The Boys in the Band was circulating at that time, and my own coach asked me to do it.  For reasons unrelated to the content of the piece, I ended up doing a different selection.  (If I recall correctly, it was the courtroom scene in A Man for All Seasons, a far more conventional choice.)  So I can testify against the doubters that an excerpt from The Boys in the Band was, indeed, being performed on the high school forensics circuit in the mid-1970s.

Having just seen the excellent documentary about Crowley and his play, Making the Boys, at the Virginia Film Festival, my memories of reading Sugarless earlier this year and my own experience in high school rushed back to me.  I recommend Sugarless to anyone who has competed in speech and debate or to anyone who was once a gay teenager.  It's an excellent book, and a compelling read -- a real achievement for a first-time novelist, even one who, like Magruder, is an accomplished playwright and translator.

I had planned to list a few novelty items here to round out this list of suggestions for Cyber Monday gifts, but these four books probably do the job.

In any event, Amazon.com has set up a whole page of links aimed at the Cyber Monday shopper.

Book Review Blog Carnival Number 55 Is Now Live

As I foretold a few weeks ago, I am hosting the 55th edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival on my other blog, Book Reviews by Rick Sincere.

The carnival is a collection of submissions by various bloggers in categories like fiction, non-fiction, history, mysteries, children's and young adult (YA) books, "lists," and author interviews.

Check out the carnival today and consider submitting your own book reviews to future editions.

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Watch for the Book Review Blog Carnival on Halloween

The 53rd Book Review Blog Carnival was published today at Man of La Book.

The latest carnival includes two reviews of The Path to Tyranny by Michael E. Newton as well as a review of the classic, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, in addition to reviews of 15 other individual books and two review essays, one called 10 Books About Real World Crime and the other called 10 Books with Homeland Security Threats.

The next carnival will be hosted by Proud Book Nerd on October 17th. Bloggers can submit their book review posts at the Book Review Blog Carnival page.

At the end of the month -- on Halloween, as it happens -- one of my other blogs, (Book Reviews by Rick Sincere) will be hosting the 55th Book Review Blog Carnival, followed by number 56 on November 14 at Homespun Honolulu.

Just for the record, previously published book reviews of mine have been featured in Book Review Blog Carnival #51, Book Review Blog Carnival #37, Book Review Blog Carnival - 35th Edition, The 23rd Book Review Blog Carnival, and 19th Edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival.

I previously hosted Carnival of Liberty LXII.  This will be my first time hosting the Book Review Blog Carnival.  I'll be sure to post a reminder and a link here once the carnival is on line.

(Partially reposted from Book Reviews by Rick Sincere.)



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Blogging from CPAC

The world already knows the big news about the annual straw poll at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference:  U.S. Representative Ron Paul  (R-Texas) was the winner among attendees as the most favored presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, followed distantly by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.  Paul's victory was met with boos from the audience, though as one person put it on Twitter, since only about a quarter of attendees voted in the straw poll, the majority were "booing themselves."

Now Glenn Beck is talking about how the Republican Party has lost its soul and needs redemption.  He's repeating his trope about being a recovering alcoholic blah blah blah.

Rather than watching Beck -- who despite his criticism of "clown shows" is an exemplar of clownishness -- I have been uploading to YouTube a number of short videos that I took over the past two days.

The first one garnered over 120 hits within the first hour it was on the Web:  Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud (www.goproud.org) standing up to the National Organization "for" Marriage and asking, "Who is the pansy at CPAC?"  (GOProud is a group of gay and lesbian conservatives.)

I also was able to get a few comments from Jacob Hornberger, introducing his organization, the Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org):

I made a special effort to get some short interviews from authors about their books.

For instance, here is young Jonathan Krohn talking about his book, Defining Conservatism:

I also spoke to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, about his book, Leave Us Alone, which makes the case for the "leave-us-alone coalition" of people who believe in limited government:

I also had a nice colloquy with the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, who was signing copies of a revised and updated edition of his book, Stealing Elections:

Two constitutional scholars, Bob Levy of the Cato Institute and Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation, spoke on a panel about judicial overreach. They each signed copies of their books in the CPAC exhibit area: Spalding's is called We Still Hold These Truths and Levy's is an examination of Supreme Court cases called The Dirty Dozen.

Last year there was a big Tea Party-related march on Washington on September 12, turning "9/12" into a new catchphrase. Colin Hanna, president of an organization called Let Freedom Ring, gathered together photos and text about th 9/12 March in a volume called Grandma's Not Shovel-Ready!



I caught U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in a corridor of the Wardman Park Marriott surrounded by a gaggle of fans, just as she was asked whether she is supporting Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty for President in 2012. Here's her response:

I had a nice chat with Frank Enten, who for more than 50 years has been in the business of producing and selling campaign buttons. (I bought two Goldwater buttons from the 1964 campaign and one unique Nixon button from either 1968 or 1972, which I may photograph and blog about later.) Enten is known as "the Button Man" and he's had quite a career:

Finally -- at least for now, as I have more video to edit and upload -- Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner offered a few words about CPAC and its participants:

Glenn Beck is still droning on, this time about bottoms (there are titters in the bloggers' room). I will have more videos and photos from CPAC 2010 later this weekend. Be sure to visit again to see what other surprises I have in store.

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