| Was J. Edgar Hoover really a Crossdresser/Homosexual and does it really matter? |
[Jul. 12th, 2009|12:50 pm] |
Hoover has been on my mind lately because he's a character in John Birmingham's Axis of Time alternate history trilogy and the movie "Public Enemies." I'd heard rumors about and seen references to his cross-dressing my whole life, but I had never bothered to investigate them for myself until now. So I checked out his Wikipedia page and some other online sources and it seems there is alot of uncertainly as to whether or not he was actually a crossdresser. The main open source for these rumors was sued for libel in another matter and had an axe to grind against the FBI and Hoover. Depending on how good a job Hoover and his cronies did covering-up the details of his life, we may never know for certain one way or the other.
But I can certainly see why the rumors would take hold. Hoover never married yet worked closely with Clyde Tolson (who also never married) and also ate dinner with him almost every night and even vacationed with him--for 40 years. They didn't live together, but that kind of relationship had to raise questions in our more conservative past. It would raise questions these days, although hopefully there would be more acceptance of it.
In my opinion, the big deal about Hoover's sexuality is how it may or may not have affected his job. There were rumors that the Mafia was blackmailing him about it, but that probably never happened. But if Hoover was gay, then I'm sure he was paranoid about the fact becoming public. That's probably why he gathered all that dirt on powerful people--he was practicing his own version of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).
If Hoover was spending so much of his time protecting his image and gathering dirt, then I believe he had to have been neglecting other areas of his job and ultimately the security and well-being of the nation. In Birmingham's books, time travelers use their knowledge of the crossdressing rumors and sophisticated eavesdropping tools to expose Hoover's private life. It wasn't because of homophobia, but because Hoover was an implacable political enemy to them and they also believed he wasn't doing a good enough job of protecting American's national security during WWII. So they used a sophisticated "modern" media and political campaign to bring Hoover down and he eventually lost his job and killed himself because of it. I think the same ultimate outcome is probable if any post-WWII President had been willing to weather the resulting political firestorm and fire Hoover.
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On a related note, here's an interesting article about the US's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and how it compares to the "Openly Serve" policies of our allies:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090712/ap_on_re_us/gays_in_the_ranks;_ylt=AgqqwKwl9C5qUzpIMoc6Doys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoZDI0bXNiBHBvcwMxNARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNhbGxpZXNzdGFuY2U- |
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| Some things I liked and disliked about Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|01:30 pm] |
Warning: Some mild spoilers follow
Things I liked:
--Mann's use of actual locations whenever possible like the Little Bohemia Lodge
--The realistic gun battles
--The interesting supporting cast (including two veterans of "The Wire")
--The powerful, foreboding musical score
--Marion Cotillard's portrayal of Dillinger's girlfriend. She gets the best scene in the movie
--The effort to show how both the FBI and organized crime evolved in response to the actions of Dillinger and the other flashy, violent "Public Enemies"
--J. Edgar Hoover's and Melvin Purvis's authorization and use of extreme interrogation methods certainly echoes the mood of our post 9/11 world
--Mann's continued use of his pet "two warring tribes" theme
--How Mann used scenes from the movie Dillinger was watching right before his death to illustrate themes from his own movie
Things I disliked:
--The mannered "hollywood smooth" dialogue employed as opposed to the more naturalistic speech and body language Depp used in the re-creation of the newsreel footage from when Dillinger was captured
--The half-effort to blend historical accuracy and a riveting storyline. I think Mann should have either tried to be as accurate as possible or decided to be even looser with the facts so that he could have constructed a better dramatic plot a la De Palma's "The Untouchables"
--The scene at the end of the movie where Dillinger walks into a Chicago police station and then wanders around the office space of a squad assigned to capture him. It struck me as being too surreal and sentimental in contrast to the rest of the movie |
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| 3 Questions Meme |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|11:50 pm] |
Because all the cool kids are doing it....
Ask 3 questions about my fandoms or really anything I've posted about and I reply with some form of answer. |
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| WoW is exciting me again |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|08:09 pm] |
A couple of months ago my World of Warcraft Raid Group kind of imploded due to personality issues and various other pressures. I basically became a hermit after that and only grouped with other players when absolutely necessary. I played solo for a few weeks, but the game got kind of stale for me so I took a break.
But the last few days I've started to get excited about WoW again. Its due partly because I want to complete the Mid-Summer Fire Festival Achievement (don't want to have to wait a whole nother year to get it done) and partly because I'm been reading detailed info about the huge upcoming 3.2 patch. It contains alot of neat stuff and should give me alot to do even if I don't end up doing many raid dungeons.
The things that excite me most at this point are:
--Enginering changes/upgrades--this is the biggest non-expansion patch ever for my long-neglected favorite profession. I look forward to having fun with my gadgets again.
--Paladin class changes--Group healing will be easier/more flexible now that overhealing (including Holy Light splash heals) will count on Beacon of Light Heals. I won't be stuck having to just heal a tank so often. Illumination is getting nerfed but mana regen from items is getting buffed, so it will be interesting to have to worry about running out of mana again.
--A new Battleground and sensible changes to old ones--Isle of Conquest looks very fun and AB/Eye will be shorter now and Warsong will have a 20 minute timer (finally no more endless games!). And flag defenders will get a 50% honor buff for kills, which are all very good changes. Plus you will be able to earn xp from BGs, so it will make leveling more interesting. Also Wintergrasp will be limited to 100 players per side which should result in me facing less tenacity stacks and lag DCs. And Blizz is talking about adding rewards like green and blue items for winning a BG and also implementing so kind of rating system. I look forward to the day when I don't have to feel so frustrated because I enjoy BGs so much more than Arena.
--Other Stuff--The new Argent Tournament stuff should be interesting and the new epic gems gives me added motivation to level my Death Knight Jewelcrafter. And the Chef's hat will become epic in quality and also epic because wearing it will allow you to cook faster :) |
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| Brainstorming some interesting Master's Thesis topic ideas |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|07:37 am] |
Thankfully the library administration was able to figure out a way give me a full-time position again (which officially begins today) so I should be able to get free tuition at my university if I decide to work on another master's degree. I already have a master's in library science and my undergrad majors were history and French, but literature would interest me the most now or maybe popular culture studies, but I'm pretty sure my university doesn't have that.
So I was thinking about possible subjects for my master's thesis if I do work on literature. I hope to take some creative writing classes for my degree so maybe I could finagle my way into doing a fiction project for my thesis. But all my fiction ideas these days are fanfictional so I don't know how that would play with my adviser. Or I could do a non-fiction piece on some aspect of fanfiction, probably in relation to science fiction. Another idea I've kicked around for awhile is a study of the military and war experiences of SF authors like David Drake, Joe Haldeman, Jerry Pournelle and John Ringo and how it affects their writing. Maybe I could compare them to "mainstream" literature vets like Tim O'Brien. Or perhaps I could do something about how the political views of certain SF authors (Orson Scott Card, Pournelle, Ringo, Larry Niven etc) do or don't affect their fiction.
I probably won't start working on my degree for at least a year (I have to take care of the admissions stuff and probably study for and take the GRE again) but I wanted to write this down so I could come back to it when its time to actually chose a topic. What are your thoughts on this and do you have any stuff you personally would like to do a thesis on or see someone do a thesis about? |
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| Hundreds of teachers paid to do nothing in "rubber rooms" |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|08:23 pm] |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_on_re_us/us_rubber_rooms
I trained to be a high school teacher and two of my ex-girlfriends were high school teachers, so I found this to be an interesting article. As far as I know nothing like this exists in South Georgia. We don't have any teacher's unions down here so if you get charged with a fireable offense, you almost always get fired pretty fast. What's more common is not getting your contract renewed.
I have to wonder why NYC only has 23 arbitrators who only work five days a week to handle the cases of the 700 "rubber room" teachers. It would seem logical to increase the number of arbitrators or the number of days they work on teacher cases, but I'm guessing the overall strategy is to force a good number of the teachers to quit because they get tired of waiting. And for the ones that stick it out, I'm sure they are cowed by their experience and won't do anything that will get them sent back to the "rubber rooms." This whole set-up is just one more symptom of the illness that plagues the education system in the U.S. |
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| Shameless banner plug to help me get a vanity pet in World of Warcraft |
[May. 26th, 2009|10:03 pm] |
If you click through the banner and sign up for the site, you can start working on getting a pet and other prizes too :)
I get 50 tokens for everyone who clicks through my banner and signs up for the Mountain Dew site. It doesn't lead to you getting spam or anything like that.
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| Blue Oyster Cult superstars in the Watchmen universe? |
[May. 25th, 2009|05:38 pm] |
I finally got BoC's cult rock opera "Imaginos" on CD and listened to it for the first time in a decade. It still blows my socks off and inspired the thought that it would be very popular in the "Watchmen" universe because of its mysticism and pirate-friendly themes. It was released in 1988 but Sandy Pearlman (producer and inspiration? for the "More Cowbell" skit) and band member Albert Bouchard had been working on it in earnest since 1972, so I'm sure it could have been released earlier in the "Watchmen" universe and may have been the big thing before "Tales of the Black Freighter" came out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginos |
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| Space Tourist Richard Garriot sues NCSoft over firing from Tabula Rasa MMO |
[May. 10th, 2009|03:15 pm] |
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/tabularasa/news.html?sid=6209233
Basically it looks like Garriot got screwed over by NcSoft. His "departure letter" was just something written by the suits to placate the subscribers. The timing of Garriot being selected to go into space sucked for Tabula Rasa and I guess NCSoft didn't like it and then they gave the world another fine example or corporate stupidity.
I liked Tabula Rasa although I let my subscription lapse after nine months. But I had plans to come back after more end-game stuff was added. I think it could have been a better game if the suits at NCSoft hadn't interfered in some decisions, but overall it was as good as World of Warcraft in its first year. It just had the bad luck to be launched in a difficult time for new MMOs. |
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| Life Imitates "My Name is Earl" Plot |
[May. 3rd, 2009|01:19 pm] |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_odd_brotherly_shove
"Alaska man shoved officer to join brother in jail
AP
Fri May 1, 4:14 am ET
FAIRBANKS, Alaska – An Alaska man shoved a police officer just so he could join his brother in jail.
Thirty-five-year-old David Jacob Ginnis pleaded guilty Wednesday to assault on a police officer and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, with the full sentence suspended.
Ginnis' brother was accused of getting into a fight on Monday night in Fairbanks and was arrested on a criminal trespass charge.
Police say Ginnis, who appeared intoxicated, approached the arresting officer and asked if he could speak with his brother, who was in the back of a patrol car.
After five minutes, Ginnis asked if he could join his brother in jail if he assaulted the officer.
The officer told him that would "not go well" for him, but Ginnis shoved the officer with his fist."
Except that on the tv show Randy was not successful in getting locked up so he could join his brother Earl in prison. |
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| David Brin editoral on "Forgetting Our American (Military) Tradition" |
[Mar. 1st, 2009|08:45 pm] |
http://www.sigmaforum.org/editorial.php
I think he raises some very good points. I don't think American soldiers will ever get nearly as fanatical as Larry Niven's "Protectors" but I do see a real danger of them turning into something like the movie version of "Starship Troopers" sometime in the future. One of the reasons we failed in Vietnam was because of the huge disconnect between what our soldiers were doing over there and what was happening on the homefront. There is a similar disconnect in Gulf War II. While in one sense its good that the American civilian population doesn't have to make too many sacrifices for the war effort (aside from all of that tax revenue used to finance the war), but if we did, I'm sure things would have been different and the Bush administration would have had to been more accountable for their actions.
While I do think Brin underestimates impact of all the Reserve Units called into action, I do believe our protectors and the society they protect should be linked closer together and that room can be made for average people to contribute to our defense effort like the civilian company in New Orleans that made all amphibious landing craft we used to win WWII. I find it fascinating to read books that depict a huge national or world crisis and how the military and civilian populations react to it. These are books like Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" to John Ringo's Posleen saga. When the do-do really hits the fan again, its going to take everyone working together to save us. If our protector class is too short-sighted and brittle, we won't make it. |
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| Dr. Michael Guido, a tv fixture in my youth as "the Sower", passes away |
[Feb. 22nd, 2009|12:50 pm] |
Michael Guido, an evangelist based not far from where I lived, passed away at the age of 94. I never actually saw him in person, but his sixty second "devotionals" that I saw sometimes on local tv stations were a fixture of my youth. They were called "The Seed from The Sower." The "devotionals" usually aired right before the tv channel went off the air for the night (and right before the "Star-Spangled Banner" videos and the test pattern) and I always liked them because they had a neat little theme music and Guido always told a little story that had a message that made you think sometimes. He wasn't a fire and birmstone evangelist and you could tell just from seeing him on tv that he was a guy that people liked and trusted. I'm going to miss him.
Here's a link to his website, where you can read the text for some of his devotionals:
http://www.the-sower.org/ |
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| What are your favorite "Opposing Father Figures" movies and tv shows? |
[Feb. 7th, 2009|11:36 am] |
The story of a young person struggling to figure out which opposing father figure he wants to follow is a plot that has been around probably since humans first began telling tales to amuse each other. Here are some movies and a tv show with that theme that have come to be my favorites over the years.
The first one on the list is "Conan the Barbarian." Conan learns of the "Riddle of Steel" from his swordsmith father only to see him, his mother, and his village perish at the hands of Thulsa Doom. After finally catching up to Doom many years later, Thulsa tells Conan that he once searched for the best steel, but he learned that flesh was stronger and that Conan should contemplate this on the tree of woe. In battle with Rexar, Thulsa's right hand man, Conan is first saved by flesh--the returned spirit of his love Valeria--and then by the strength of his Atlantean sword, which shatters his father's stolen steel blade. In their final confrontation, Thulsa tries to persuade Conan to join him in his crusade of flesh, but Conan ends the conversation with steel to his neck. Conan destroyed Thulsa, but in the end he must wonder what, and who, he can trust.
Pretty heavy stuff for a sword and sandals flick, huh? I found it interesting that Oliver Stone gets a screenplay credit for the movie. I don't know much about Stone's contribution to the finished movie, but I read that his screenplay was scrapped because it was so elaborate that the movie would have been much too expensive to make. But they must have kept some of his ideas if he got to keep the credit. I wonder if Stone influenced the "two fathers" theme of the final movie.
If he did, then Stone's "Platoon" is a masterful continuation of this theme. In this movie, the "good" father (Sgt. Elias) survives longer than Conan's father, but is still killed by the "bad" father (Sgt. Barnes). For me, the whole film leads up to Chris Taylor's final voiceover:
"I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. The enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days. As I'm sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called "possession of my soul." There are times since, I've felt like a child, born of those two fathers."
Pretty heavy stuff for a war movie, huh? Stone did a variation on the "fathers" theme with his "Wall Street." It again featured Charlie Sheen as the young struggler, but this time the "good" father turned out to be his actual father--fictional and real. I consider "Wall Street" to be a lesser movie than "Platoon," but it both are also notable to me for featuring the acting talents of John C. McGinley.
And McGinley is notable for portraying Dr. Perry Cox on the tv show "Scrubs." One of the main themes of the series is Dr. John Dorian's struggle between modeling himself after Dr. Cox or his nemesis, Dr. Kelso. This theme is made explicit in the episode "My Two Dads," which features a fantasy scene where Cox takes on the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kelso as Darth Vader strikes him down with his red laser scapal as Dorian (with a Luke Skywalker wig) looks on.
Pretty heavy stuff for a sitcom, huh? I don't know if the "Scrubs" producer and writers were inspired by "Platoon" and McGinley's connection with the movie, but I think it would be very cool if they had been. I find it interesting how I can draw connections between my favorites. What are your favorites and can you make similar connections? |
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