Killjoy Was Here

Eric Burns: The Spirits of America

National Review, December 30, 2003

Abraham Lincoln, a wise man and a brave one too (he was speaking to the sober souls gathered at a meeting of a Springfield temperance society), once said that the damage alcohol can do comes not "from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing." Drunkenness, not drink, was the real demon. Sensible words; yet, in their dealings with the bottle, his countrymen still lurch between wretched excess and excessive wretchedness. Moderation remains elusive. After the binging, there's always the hangover: dreary years of finger-wagging, sermonizing, and really, really dumb laws. Just ask poor Jenna Bush. Spirits of America, Eric Burns's entertaining history of the impact of an old pleasure on a new world, is rather like a Washington State cabernet sauvignon, unpretentious and thoroughly enjoyable. Burns, the host of Fox News Watch, is not a professional historian. His prose is engaging and relaxed, written in the rhythms of an accomplished raconteur rather than the jargon of the academic. In short, this book is about as dry as a colonial tavern.

To Burns, it's not surprising that the first settlers, as strangers in a strange and not always hospitable land, should have turned to drink: to beer, to whisky, to brandy, to rum, and even to an alarming-sounding series of proto-cocktails. Rattle-skull, anyone? Reading his account, it's easy to conclude that many of these early Americans spent most of the day drunk, proving once again (at least to this Brit) that they cannot have known what they were doing when, after a revolution fomented largely in those same taverns, they broke from the embrace of the mother country.

Needless to say, all this good cheer produced a reaction, and the greater (and most interesting) part of this book is devoted to prohibitionists and their long, far from fine, whine. It's a painfully familiar tale to anyone who has watched the drug war, the excesses of the anti-tobacco movement, or even the gathering fast-food jihad.

The parallels are telling. There's the junk science so shaky that, by comparison, "passive smoking" is as believable as gravity. Dr. Benjamin Rush, "the Hippocrates of [18th-century] Pennsylvania," linked drink to a wide range of health problems including scurvy, stomach rumblings, and, for the truly unlucky, spontaneous combustion. Around a hundred years later—and a century before the nonsense of DARE—the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was distributing an "education" program in schools that included the startling news that alcohol could lead "the coats of the blood vessels to grow thin [making them] liable at any time to cause death by bursting." Boozehounds should also watch out. Children were taught that even a tiny amount of this "colorless liquid poison" would be enough to kill a dog,

Like their successors today, these campaigners understood the uses of propaganda. Even the choice of that soothing word "temperance" (which ought to mean moderation, not abstinence) was, as Burns points out, nothing more than spin before its time. No less disingenuously, the name of the influential Anti-Saloon League camouflaged prohibitionist objectives far broader than an attack on the local den of iniquity, a technique that may ring a bell with those who believe that MADD is now straying beyond its original, praiseworthy, agenda.

Above all, what is striking is how, then as now, the zealots of abstention were unable to resist the temptation of compulsion. Burns is inclined to attribute the best of intentions to the "temperance" campaigners. He's wrong. The fact is that neither persuasion, nor education, nor even psychotic Carry Nation's hatchet was enough to satisfy the urge to control their fellow citizens that played as much a part in the psychology of teetotalitarianism as any genuine desire to improve society. From the Massachusetts law providing that alcohol could not be sold in units of less than fifteen gallons to the grotesque farce of Prohibition, Spirits of America is filled with tales of legislation as absurd as it was presumptuous.

Although he never holds back on a good anecdote (the story of Izzy Einstein, Prohibition Agent and master of disguise, is by itself worth the price of this book), when it comes to the Volstead years themselves. Burns gives a useful and, dare I say it, sober, account. Contrary to machine-gun-saturated myth, the mayhem (if not the corruption) was mostly confined to a few centers, and although Prohibition did clog up the justice system, enforcement, mercifully, usually tended to be less than Ness.

Even more surprisingly, while he doesn't come close to endorsing Prohibition, Bums is able to point to data showing that, in certain respects at least, the killjoy carnival was a success: Per capita alcohol consumption fell sharply, as did the incidence of drink-related health problems. But even these achievements may mean less than is thought. Other evidence (not cited by Burns) would suggest that, after an initial collapse, consumption started to rise again as new (illicit) suppliers got themselves organized, with often disastrous consequences for their customers. Winston Churchill, no stranger to the bottle himself, was told that "there is less drinking, but there is worse drinking," a phrase,  incidentally, that almost perfectly describes the impact on today's young of the increase in the drinking age to 21. As for the alleged health benefits, the 1920s also saw notable reductions in. for example, deaths from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver in Britain, a country that saw no need for prohibition.

What Burns underplays, however, is the fact that this debate should be about more than crudely utilitarian calculations. There's a famous comment (cited by Burns, but, sadly, quite possibly a fake) widely attributed to Lincoln that sums this up nicely. Prohibition, "a species of intemperance in itself . . . makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. [It] strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded."

Horror Show

Joe Bob Briggs: Profoundly Disturbing -  Shocking Movies that Changed History

National Review, August 26, 2003

The title is reassuringly lurid and the cover comfortingly nasty, but, on opening this book, anxious readers may worry that Joe Bob has left the drive-in. Now that would be profoundly disturbing. Author, journalist, cable-TV stalwart, and former NR columnist, Briggs overcame fictitious origins and nonexistent competition to become America's finest drive-in-movie critic. He saw Nail Gun Massacre and he watched All Cheerleaders Die. Who else could take on that sort of responsibility?

He is the Zagat of the Z-movie, the one indispensable guide for those who like slaughter, sex, and lethal household tools with their popcorn. He wallows in the movies that other critics flee. Ebert on Shrunken Heads? Silence. Kael on Fury of the Succubus? No comment. But Joe Bob was there for them both. He's funny, well informed, and succinct (The Evil Dead is "Spam in a cabin"), and he tells his audience what it needs to know (Bloodsucking Freaks: "pretty good fried-eyeball scene . . . 76 breasts . . . excellent midget sadism and dubbed moaning"). If Joe Bob tells you to "check it out," that's what you do.

And when, as a result, you are watching man-eating giant rats starting their gory feast (Gnaw), you will still be laughing at the memory of what Joe Bob had to say. Yes, he both subverts and celebrates these films, but who cares? It's better to lighten up, grab a beer, and just see Joe Bob as someone who delights in rummaging through cinema's trash heap and telling us what he's found.

He does this brilliantly, in a style — Hazzard County, with a touch of Cahiers du Cinema — that is all his own; but, after all these years, is the drive-in still enough for Mr. Briggs? Joe Bob's Jekyll, the erudite and rather more suave "John Bloom," has been developing a journalistic career of his own, while Joe Bob himself has been spotted on stage and screen, and in the pages of Maximum Golf magazine; can the country club be far behind?

In spite of this, it's still startling to find that Briggs chose The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as the first movie to discuss in his new book. The fact that it's foreign isn't the problem. Joe Bob has written about plenty of foreign films; they usually feature kickboxing, kung fu, gratuitous violence, more kickboxing, incomprehensible dialogue, over-choreographed fight scenes, and the exploitation of attractive young actresses who manage to lose their clothes and their lives in the course of the movie. They are, in short, identical in almost every respect to the domestic offerings he reviews.

Caligari is different. Yes, it's a horror movie, but it's a coffee-on-the-Left-Bank, furrowed-brow unfiltered cigarette of a horror movie and, like a number of the other films described in this book, it's far from typical territory for the sage of the slasher pic. It's a German expressionist masterpiece from 1919, an allegory of totalitarianism often thought to have anticipated the Nazi terror to come. There are no nunchucks in Caligari. Still, there's more than an echo of the drive-in in the irreverent glee with which Joe Bob penetrates the Teutonic gloom. All too often, Caligari is shown with a melodramatic "silent movie" musical backdrop, rather than the modernist score envisaged by its makers. Perhaps worse still, it has also been relentlessly over-analyzed by film highbrows. To Joe Bob, this is like "trying to watch Schindler's List with 'Turkey in the Straw' playing in the background and a professor pointing out every shaft of light as a pivotal moment in German Expressionism."

Caligari is, Briggs argues, a film that "changed history," but in this book that can mean less than you might think. The movies in Profoundly Disturbing may all "have been banned, censored, condemned, or despised" at one time or another, but some of them wouldn't change the course of an afternoon, let alone history.

Perhaps this is why Joe Bob is careful to stress that, in a number of cases, the only history that has been changed is cinema history. How the films he discusses relate to the broader cultural picture is complex: Did a movie influence the culture, merely reflect it, or a bit of both? As he tries to find an answer to this question, quality can be irrelevant. Deep Throat is a terrible film even on its own terms, but somehow it managed to help shape the Ice Storm era and thus had much greater cultural impact than the far more artistically significant Caligari. Caligari may have warned Germans about the dangers of totalitarianism, but little more than ten years later Hitler was in power.

If Profoundly Disturbing doesn't always convince us that the movies it describes "changed history," it is, nonetheless, a hugely entertaining account of the frequently bizarre way they came to be made. Some of these films were made by people operating at the creative edge (the art director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre was, we learn, able "to indulge his lifelong fascination with animal bones") while others were manufactured by those who had hit artistic rock-bottom (Linda Lovelace for President) and didn't care. This is a cinema of desperate improvisation (the night before the "classic tongue-ripping scene" in Blood Feast, the victim still hadn't been cast) and even more desperate finances.

And then there's Mom and Dad (1947), a "sex education" movie that circulated for over 20 years through small-town America. This cautionary tale of the dangers of premarital naughtiness included footage of a live birth and hideous syphilitic sores. It grossed an estimated $100 million. Showings came complete with two women in nurse's outfits and a 20-minute lecture by "Elliot Forbes," an "eminent sexual hygiene commentator." At one point there were no fewer than 26 Elliot Forbeses, "most of them retired or underemployed vaudeville comedians."

If this all sounds like a carny stunt, it's because it was. Profoundly Disturbing includes a good number of more "serious" films (and Briggs writes about them very well), but the movies that make up its sleazy, captivating core are the successors of the freak show, the circus, and old-time burlesque. As told with gusto by an author obviously far from ready to quit the drive-in (whew!), theirs is a story of that wild, ludicrously optimistic entrepreneurial spirit that is, somehow, very typically American. Combine those hucksters, visionaries, and madmen with the dreams of a restless, somewhat deracinated population spreading across a continent and we begin to understand how this country's popular culture became the liveliest in the world — if not always the most elevated. Mencken was right: No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

Why so much of that taste revolves around mayhem and gore (that sex has box-office appeal is no surprise) is a mystery beyond the scope of Profoundly Disturbing. Suffice to say that it does, and the result is a book that blends fascinating pop-culture history, first-rate film criticism, and learned commentary on the stunt-vomit in The Exorcist.

Check it out.

Everybody Must Get Stoned?

Jacob Sullum: Saying Yes - In Defense of Drug Use

National Review, June 20, 2003

Jacob Sullum is a brave man. In his first book, the entertaining and provocative For Your Own Good, he attacked the excesses of anti-smoking activism and was duly—and unfairly—vilified as a Marlboro mercenary, a hard-hearted shill for Big Tobacco with little care for nicotine's wheezing victims. Fortunately, he was undeterred. In Saying Yes, Sullum, formerly of NATIONAL RF.VIEW and now a senior editor at Reason magazine, turns his attention to the most contentious of all the substance wars, the debate over illegal drugs. Sullum being Sullum, he manages to find a bad word for the mothers of MADD and a good one for 19th-century China's opium habit.

Sullum's effort in Saying Yes is more ambitious (or, depending on your viewpoint, outrageous) than that of most critiques of the war on drugs. Supporters of legalization typically base their case on moral or practical grounds, or both. The moral case is broadly libertarian—the individual has the right to decide for himself what drugs to take—while the practical objection to prohibition rests on the notion that it has not only failed, but is also counterproductive: It creates a lucrative (black) market where none would otherwise exist. Sullum repeats these arguments, but then goes further. Taken in moderation, he claims, drugs can be just fine—and he's not talking just about pot.

Whoa. In an era so conflicted about pleasure that wicked old New York City has just banned smoking (tobacco) in bars, this is not the sort of thing Americans are used to reading. Health is the new holiness and in this puritanical, decaf decade, most advocates of a change in the drug laws feel obliged to seem more than a little, well, unenthusiastic about the substances they want to make legal. Their own past drug use was, they intone, nothing more than youthful "experimentation." Most confine themselves to calling for the legalization of "softer" drugs and, even then, they are usually at pains to stress that, no, no, no, they themselves would never recommend drugs for anyone.

Sullum is made of sterner stuff. He admits to "modest but instructive" use of marijuana, psychedelics, cocaine, opioids, and tranquilizers with, apparently, no regrets. (Judging by the quality of his reasoning, I would guess the drugs had no adverse effect on him.) He seems prepared to legalize just about anything that can be smoked, snorted, swallowed, injected, or chewed—and, more heretically still, has no truck with the notion that drug use is automatically "abuse." "Reformers," he warns, "will not make much progress as long as they agree with defenders of the status quo that drug use is always wrong."

In this book Sullum demonstrates that if anything is "wrong"—or at least laughably inconsistent—it is the status quo. The beer-swilling, Starbucks-sipping Prozac Nation is not one that ought to have an objection in principle to the notion of mood-altering substances. Yet the U.S. persists with a war on drugs that is as pointless as it is destructive. This contradiction is supposedly justified by the assumption that certain drugs are simply too risky to be permitted. Unlike alcohol (full disclosure: Over the years I have enjoyed a drink or two with Mr. Sullum) the banned substances are said to be products that cannot be enjoyed in moderation. They will consume their consumers. Either they are so addictive that the user no longer has a free choice, or their side effects are too destructive to be compatible with "normal" life.

To Sullum, most such claims are nonsense, propaganda, and "voodoo pharmacology." Much of his book is dedicated to a highly effective debunking of the myths that surround this "science." There's little that will be new to specialists in this topic, but the more general reader will be startled to discover that, for example, heroin is far less addictive than is often thought. The horrors of cold turkey? Not much worse than a bad case of flu. (John Lennon—not for the only time in his career—was exaggerating.) Even crack gets a break: Of 1988's "crack-related" homicides in New York City, only one was committed by a perpetrator high on the drug. That's one too many, of course, but 85 percent of these murders were the result of black-market disputes, a black market that had been created by prohibition.

So if drug users are neither necessarily dangerous nor, in most cases, addicts, can they be successful CPAs or pillars of the PTA? Sullum argues that many currently illegal drugs can safely be taken in moderation—and over a long period of time. He interviews a number of drug users who have managed to combine their reputedly perilous pastime with 9-to-5 respectability. Sullum concedes that they may not necessarily be representative, but his larger point is correct: The insistence that drugs lead inevitably to a squalid destiny is difficult to reconcile with the millions of former or current drug users who have passed through neither prison nor the Betty Ford. As Sullum points out, "excess is the exception," a claim buttressed by the fact that there are millions of former drug users.

Typically, drug consumption peaks just when would be expected—high school, college, or shortly thereafter. Then most people grow out of it. The experience begins to pall and the demands of work and family mean that there's no time, or desire, to linger with the lotus-eaters. Others no longer want to run the risks of punishment or stigma associated with an illegal habit. Deterrence does-— sometimes—deter, and it may deter some of those who would not be able to combine a routine existence with recreational drug use. But this is not an argument that Sullum is prepared to accept: He counters that the potentially vulnerable population is small and may well become alcoholics anyway, "thereby exposing themselves to more serious health risks than if they had taken up, say, heroin." Sullum is not, we are again reminded, an author who is afraid of controversy.

But is he too blithe about the degree of potential medical problems associated with drug use? As he shows (occasionally amusingly and often devastatingly), much of the "evidence" against drug use has been bunk, little more than crude scare- mongering frequently infected with racial, sexual, or moralistic panic; but it doesn't follow that all the dangers arc imaginary. To be sure, he does acknowledge some other health hazards associated with drugs; but he can sometimes be disconcertingly relaxed about some of the real risks.

His discussion of LSD is a case in point. The causal relationship between LSD and schizophrenia is complex (and muddled by the fact that both schizophrenics and schizotypal individuals are more likely to be attracted lo drugs in the first place), but it's not too unfair to describe an acid trip as a chemically induced psychotic episode. The "heightened sense of reality" often recorded by LSD users is, in fact, exactly the opposite—a blurring of the real with the unreal that is also a hallmark of schizophrenia. Throw in acid's ability to generate the occasional-—and utterly unpredictable—"flashback" and, even if many of the horror stories arc no more than folklore, it's difficult to feel much enthusiasm for legalizing LSD except, just perhaps, under carefully controlled therapeutic conditions.

What's more, as a substance that, even in small doses, will create a prolonged delusional state, LSD is not exactly the poster pill for responsible drug use. But this exception should not distract us from the overall strength of Sullum's case. It is possible, he writes, to "control" drug consumption "without prohibition. Drug users themselves show that it is." It's unnecessary for him to add that the abolition of prohibition would imply a relearning of the virtue of self-control, a quality long imperiled by the soft tyranny of the nanny state.

For Sullum is not advocating a descent into Dionysian frenzy. The poverty of "Just Say No" may be obvious, he writes, "but moving beyond abstinence does not mean plunging into excess. Without abstaining from food, it is possible to condemn gluttony as sinful, self-destructive, or both . . . Viewing intoxication as a basic human impulse is the beginning of moral judgment, not the end. It brings us into the territory of temperance"—a word Sullum uses, accurately, to mean moderation. The 19th-century anti-alcohol campaigners who hijacked it were as cavalier with vocabulary as they were with science.

Proponents of legalization will, naturally, say yes to this book, but their opponents should read it too. Sullum's arguments deserve a response from those who disagree with him. As he points out, the costs of the war on drugs far exceed the billions of dollars of direct expenditure. They also include "violence, official corruption, disrespect for the law, diversion of law-enforcement resources, years wasted in prison by drug offenders who are not predatory criminals, thefts that would not occur if drugs were more affordable, erosion of privacy rights and other civil liberties, and deaths from tainted drugs, unexpectedly high doses, and unsanitary injection practices." Under these circumstances, it's up to the drug warriors to come up with a convincing explanation as to why we are fighting their drug war. Judging by this well-written, persuasive, and important book, they are unlikely to succeed.

Gas-Mask Chic: Dressing for Armageddon

National Review, September 30, 2002

For reasons that need, sadly, no explanation, we find ourselves living in a nervous, uneasy era, a time when every backfiring car becomes a bomb, every spilled sachet of sugar a plague. Once again, an enemy is out there, but the threat now is not the familiar Soviet-style Armageddon, but the occasional hit-and-run, jihad on the installment plan, which although revoltingly vicious, should, with luck— and preparation—leave most of us unscathed. Preparation? Back in the Cold War years, that never seemed necessary. Mutually Assured Destruction meant that the threat to civilians was both minimal and total. Now attacks seem certain, but the odds of survival are good. Still, with homeland security in the hands of Tom Ridge and Norman Mineta, it may be wise to improve on those odds—and that's just what many Americans are starting to do. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist strikes some stores saw a surge in demand for guns and televisions, a good first step, but then what?

In Gotham, where I live, New York magazine tried to help out. Its "Survivalist's Guide to Living with Terrorism" offered a series of spooky lists, tailored (of course!) to income level. Silk-stocking survivalists were told to get ready for a designer doomsday with equipment that included a Maxa Beam searchlight ($1,687), Altec suspension expedition backpacks ($329), Eagle Gear "War Bags" ($195), Mobiflex portable shelter systems ($2,700), a Sea Eagle HSR sport boat ($3,200), and, to keep the irradiated rabble at bay, two pneumatic Tasers (priceless). Poorer folk were expected to make do with rather less. Recommendations for Archie's bunker included candles, Ziploc bags, and (don't ask) kitty litter.

Missed that issue? Never mind, there's always the Internet. With its themes of menace, conspiracy, government ineptitude, and the chance to make a buck, the current crisis may be the web's finest hour. And why not? As is pointed out at www.gammascout.com (home of the "Gamma-Scout" radiation detector), "government can only do so much." Indeed. At www.gasmasks.com they avoid talk of politics and get straight to the point: "Do you really want you, your spouse or your children to go through life with breathing disorders or scarred flesh from 3rd degree burns, or worse? It's just not necessary." Well, it you put it that way . . .

So where to begin? With the threat of NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) attacks, we are now being offered carnage a la carte. I'll start with the nukes, but first, a disclaimer. As trial lawyers, like cockroaches, will undoubtedly survive the worst that bin Laden can throw at us, it's necessary to say that neither NATIONAL REVIEW nor I am endorsing—or condemning—any of the products mentioned in this survey, which is, I should add, about as comprehensive as this nation's airport security. Full disclosure: My own supplies include a radio, bottled water. Red Army-designed flashlights, a .357 Magnum (Tasers are for wimps), Cipro, potassium iodate, and cans of some nasty-looking beans (my wife is a vegetarian).

Now, back to the nukes. If a nuclear device explodes on top of you, there's not much to be done, but in the case of a dirty bomb, or a more conventional nuke that has gone off at a somewhat safer distance, there are some useful steps that can be taken. First swallow a pill. Fallout will contain radioactive iodine, something that is not only highly carcinogenic, but also thrilling fodder for the thyroid, a gluttonous gland, always greedy for a little more iodine, radioactive or otherwise. Greed, though, can be good: An effective defense against this menace comes from preemptively swallowing "clean" iodine, which should ensure that the duly sated thyroid has no room to absorb any iodine that glows. My own iodine stash comes in the form of potassium iodate pills from www.medicalcorps.org. I'm not convinced there's a huge distinction, but at www.nukepills.com they're selling "FDA-approved" potassium iodide ("different spelling, different drug").

After pills, pillboxes. Those wanting their own purpose-built shelters should check out www.disastershelter.com, but the homes in this line may be of limited use in Manhattan—some of these constructions are rather larger than the average apartment. Helpfully, at www.disastershelters.net (no relation) guidance is given on how to design a better-than-nothing shelter (the euphemism is "expedient") for the real-estate-starved or the simply improvident. One suggestion is to huddle under a table in a basement with "two feet of books or other heavy objects . . . placed on and around the table." Anything by Bernard Lewis should work particularly well. For those who have forgotten their kitty litter, "a 5 gallon bucket with plastic bags could be used for sanitation."

But what exactly would you be sheltering from.' Fallout is see-through, and if you want to see it through, some sort of radiation meter will be essential. But be careful. At the cheerfully named www.planetwide-exodus.com, they warn, accurately enough, that many Geiger counters now on the market were designed for geological research and "cannot handle" the amounts of radiation that would be produced in the aftermath of an attack, which is something they may have in common with us humans. The uncomfortably frank realists at www.homelandprotection.net are offering the Raditect: "the first Gamma Radiation Detector designed for home and office use" for those "nuclear emergencies that would present a long-term health risk, not immediate annihilation." Despite its promising name the focus at www.geigercounters.com seems to be on products for a more sedate era, including the "Inspector," which is, apparently, suitable for "applications requiring higher levels of sensitivity such as checking food for radioactive contamination." Forget food. What about me? At www.twotigersonline.com, there's a "pocket dosimeter" (in essence a personal nuclear odometer) designed to tell you just how irradiated you really are.

If the assault is biological rather than nuclear, coping may be a lot less work. We are already tragically familiar with the effects of anthrax, but conventional medicine—often antibiotics—will usually be able to deal effectively with most biological threats. If you have problems getting hold of antibiotics, www.tetrahedton.org ("an educational corporation" that deals with "health science and government cover-up[s]”) seems to be recommending a rummage through the feedlots. But with supplies of Advance Calf Medic (a possible source of oxytetracyline) being as scarce in Manhattan as a barnyard and a pitchfork, your HMO might, for once, be a better bet.

More practical, if a little unsentimental, are the folks at Gasmasks.com, the compassionate conservatives of viral Armageddon. Their "Biological Survivors Caring Kit" is a complete head-to-toe outfit for someone who doesn't want to get too close: It's something to wear "while caring for a loved one contaminated with a deadly virus, so the caregiver cannot get infected."

Mention of Gasmasks.com raises the question of chemical attacks, the third pony of bin Laden's bargain-basement apocalypse. Comfortingly, some of the protective gear against this threat may be of use against N and B, as well as C, but be sure to watch out for gas-mask grifters. At www.homelandgasmasks.com, there's dark talk of the older (and often foreign) military-surplus masks being offered to "unsuspecting Americans." You can see a few of them (masks, not unsuspecting Americans) at www.approvedgasmasks.com with its rogues' gallery of gas masks fit only for use as a "Halloween costume or conversation piece," a list that includes the Russian M4I Aardvark. From the look of it, you will die laughing long before the gas gets to you.

Approvedgasmasks.com also boasts a wide range of hopefully more effective devices: the Scott ProMask, the SGE 1000, the SGE 400se, the MSA Advantage 1000, the MSA Advantage 3000, the MSA Night Ranger (lens resistant to shrapnel!), the MSA Ultra-Twin, and the M-95 Military. If that's too much to choose from, try the narrower selection at Homelandgasmasks.com (Panoramic Visor, Economy, and, for the kids, the Junior). Fashionistas will appreciate the different colors available at Gasmasks.com: neon yellow, midnight black, or, for the tactless, cobalt blue.

Of course, most such masks are somewhat bulky and difficult to carry around, at least without raising a few eyebrows. In preparing to save your life, you might well lose your job. At www.gasmasks-usa.com, they have a solution for this, a compact "Quick Escape Mask." This may buy just enough time for you to parachute out of your building (www.aerialegress.com), swallow your pill, grab your "One Person Tote N Go Survival Kit" (from www.areyouprepared.com—comes complete with emergency poncho and nine towelettes), and head for the hills, or, possibly, that book-lined table.

Once in the hills, thoughts will turn to longer-term survival. True pessimists will have bought the $6,320 Super Pak (one year, two people, 344 cans, one can-opener) from www.healthywealthyandwise.net. The state of kitchen facilities will, of course, be uncertain, but that won't worry purchasers of "super fresh, super tasting" MREs (Meals Ready to Eat, including country captain chicken, Jamaican pork chop, and many others) from Two-tigersonline.com. Cooking instructions include placing the unopened pouch "inside your shirt, allowing your body temperature to help warm the food inside."

That's the spirit: determined, dauntless, and a little bit daffy. Al-Qaeda doesn't stand a chance.

The Good Russian

Richard Lourie: Sakharov - A Biography

National Review, August 12, 2002

Sakharov's Grave, Vostryakovskoye Cemetery, Moscow, 1991 © Andrew Stuttaford

It takes more than a Bolshevik to erase history. Lenin intended his revolution to be a clean break with the unruly, uncontrollable past, but, in the end, he failed. Remnants of the older—and, for all its faults, more humane—Russia succeeded in enduring through three-quarters of a century of Communist brutality. Andrei Sakharov, the subject of this new biography by Richard Lourie, may have been born in the formative years of the Soviet dystopia, but he is best seen as a child of the earlier, finer civilization that the revolution had been designed to destroy. Miraculously, he too managed to survive.

More than that, he was even—for a while—to flourish within the Soviet system. The regime knew how to promote talent as well as to punish it. Although Sakharov was never a party member, his scientific ability was enough to bring him into the inner circles of the Soviet establishment. It was his moral strength, however, that was to take him out again. It turned out that the enormously gifted scientist, an explorer of the impossibly complex, was to find fulfillment in his dedication to some very basic truths. Sakharov, the man who gave the Kremlin the H-bomb, became a champion of human rights and—in a delightful irony—an architect of the Soviet collapse.

It was an extraordinary journey, and any attempt to make sense of it must begin with an understanding of the Russian intelligentsia into which Sakharov was born—a group, as Lourie puts it, that is "something between a class and a clan." Its members were, and are, "educated people whose sense of honor and duty compels them to take action against injustice." But, as Lourie also notes, "Lenin and some of the other Bolsheviks [also] were of the intelligentsia, its crude and jagged cutting edge. And there were also spiritual extremists." Indeed there were. Those true believers still shouting Stalin's praise at the very moment his executioners gunned them down were no less representative of the intelligentsia than were those gentle, thoughtful folk found in Turgenev or Chekhov.

What these people had in common was the idea that it was they who should set (and live up to) the standards necessary to build a better Russia. They saw themselves as intellectually and morally superior both to the dangerous and benighted masses below and the crude and despotic rulers above. They believed that they were the nation's true elite, elevated and yet oppressed. Theirs was a state of mind prone to lethal naivete and Utopian fantasy, to dreams of a finer, purer way of life that were to pave the way for the Bolshevik nightmare.

That Sakharov inherited this utopianism can be seen from his "Reflections," the 1968 essay that marked his definitive break with the Communist regime. It was an extraordinarily brave attack on totalitarianism, strangely skewed by a lingering attachment both to collectivism and dopily enthusiastic futurism. Science fiction is blended with Stalinist mega- project ("Gigantic fertilizer factories and irrigation systems using atomic power will be built... gigantic factories will produce synthetic amino acids"). As Lourie notes, Sakharov at that time still had hopes of a worldwide socialist paradise, to be achieved by technological advance, heavy taxation, and "convergence" between "democratic socialism" and "the leftist reformist wing of the bourgeoisie."

If this dreamlike world view was one aspect of Sakharov's fidelity to the traditions of the Russian intelligentsia, so too was his dedication to his work and the notion that he could somehow do something for the greater good. These are demanding standards to maintain in the best of times. Trying to live up to them in the moral slum that was the mid-20th-century Soviet Union was to lead Sakharov to a life of barely comprehensible contradictions. So, in the late 1940s, we find the future winner of the Nobel Peace Prize busily designing weapons of mass destruction, an apparently decent man conscientiously putting his talent for murderous innovation at the disposal of a regime already responsible for the deaths of millions the old-fashioned way.

Loyalty to his country (enhanced by memories of its huge wartime losses) was partly to blame, as were the shreds of belief in a Soviet future (the letter that Sakharov wrote to his first wife on the occasion of Stalin's death makes for nauseating reading). Ignorance, certainly, offered no alibi. Sakharov knew. The facility where he worked was built by slave labor. He wrote later that he saw them everywhere—"long lines of men in quilted jackets, guard dogs at their heels"—but it did not stop him doing his best for the government that had imprisoned them.

Then something changed. This loyal servant of the Soviet state began asking awkward questions. And when he didn't get the answers he wanted, Sakharov did what very few dared do. He persisted—and it is the great weakness of Lourie's book that it never really explains why. Superficially, the story is straightforward, and so is the way that Lourie tells it. Increasing concern over the dangers posed by the atmospheric testing of his nuclear devices led Sakharov to urge restraint. He was told, none too kindly, to keep his thoughts to himself and to get back to work, but he continued with his complaints, embarking on a voyage that would take him from privilege to protest, through gradual alienation to outright dissidence, internal exile, and, ultimately, triumph.

To be fair to Lourie, pinning down what drove Sakharov may be a hopeless task. This most public of dissidents was a private, reserved man. Aged about 50, he claimed to have only one close friend (a friend who subsequently let him down in a characteristically squalid, characteristically Soviet way); it is easy to detect a similar pattern of emotional distance in Sakharov's first marriage.

With Sakharov, however, there is always that capacity for surprise. Whatever the shortcomings in their relationship, he fell apart when his first wife died. A little later this quiet, dry, slightly prudish introvert found himself drawn to the lively, abrasive, and demanding Elena Bonner. Understandably enough, their partnership (they subsequently married) is often (and Lourie's book is no exception) discussed in a primarily political context, but it was, clearly, much, much more than that. This was a great romance, a grand, gorgeous late-flowering love affair that carried alt before it, a light in the midst of totalitarian darkness, a bastion of integrity in a state that had none.

But those looking for the source of Sakharov's anti-Soviet struggle need to look further than Elena Bonner. She accelerated the process and made it more bearable for the beleaguered physicist (two against an empire is better than one), but this was a question of speed, not destination. By the time the pair first met, it was 1970—and Sakharov was already in irrevocable opposition.

The key to the puzzle must lie elsewhere. Readers of Lourie's book are given enough clues to draw some conclusions of their own. It is necessary to look again at the influence of what Sakharov once referred to as the intelligentsia's "inherited humanist values." Add those values to a demanding family tradition, courage, and a certain innate goodness, and we start to understand why Sakharov began asking those awkward questions, both of his government and of himself And once he had begun, there could be no going back. Dedicated scientist that he was, Sakharov could not rest until he had arrived at the solution, no matter the cost.

This quest ought, one day, to be at the core of a more substantial biography. In the meantime, Lourie's book will do, not least because the stories it tells do give a good measure of the man that Sakharov became. Here's a wonderful example dating from the late 1970s (1978 according to Lourie; Sakharov in his Memoirs places it two years earlier). Bonner and Sakharov had been shown photographs of a dissident exiled to Nyurbachan, a settlement in a remote part of Siberia. Troubled by the look on the exile's face (that was all it took) they decided to visit him.

On the way to the airport, their taxi was rammed. Undaunted, they took another. The first leg of their journey brought them within 400 miles of their objective, but the next flight was "unexpectedly" delayed by 24 hours. They camped out at the terminal, and took the plane the next day. On landing, they were told that the bus to Nyurbachan had been canceled. There were still 15 miles to go. The secret police were obviously watching their every move. Lourie tells us what this indomitable duo, no longer young, no longer in good health, then did.

"Though it was getting dark, Sakharov and Bonner decided to walk . . . The forest path was moonlit, the air fresh, a Siberia of stars above the trees. They stopped for bread and cheese, sipping coffee from a thermos . . . Alt the KGB's machinations had only afforded them hours of happiness."

And, yes, they reached their destination.

Sunday School for Atheists

National Review, March 25, 2002

The His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman was, some said, the moment that literature for the young finally came of age. On January 22, Philip Pullman, a children's writer (although he objects to that label), was awarded Britain's prestigious Whitbread prize for the final installment of his best-selling His Dark Materials trilogy. In the opinion of the judges, The Amber Spyglass was Britain's book of the year. It was an unprecedented honor for a work aimed at younger readers, but Pullman is a man who must be getting used to praise, and not just in Britain. His writing has been described as "very grand indeed" in the New York Times, while reviews in the Washington Post have included adoring references to the "moral complexity" and "extravagant . . . wonders" to be found in Pullman's work.

There can, indeed, be little doubt that the first book in the trilogy. The Golden Compass, is a masterpiece, a sparkling addition to the canon of great children's fiction that leaves poor Harry Potter helplessly stranded in the comparative banality of his Platform 9-3/4. Within the time it takes to read his first few, skillfully drawn pages, Pullman takes us into a beguiling parallel universe. His spikily endearing heroine, 11-year-old Lyra, lives in an England that is a curious blend of the Edwardian and the modern. It is a place where the boundaries between what we would think of as the natural and the supernatural are blurred, no more distinct than the fraying edges of the alternate realities that Pullman describes so well. In Lyra's world every person has a daemon: a companion in animal form, part soul, part familiar spirit. There are witches in Lapland, and the most feared warriors in the North are a rampaging race of armor-clad bears, ursine Klingons who have fallen into decadence under the rule of a corrupt and vicious usurper.

In constructing this captivating, fascinating fantasy, Pullman has pillaged the past and looted from legend. He is a magpie of myth, an author whose work borrows from saga, folklore, and some delightfully obscure parts of the historical record, and, oh yes, he can write.

Lyra raised her eyes and had to wipe them with the inside of her wrist, for she was so cold that tears were blurring them. When she could see clearly, she gasped at the sight of the sky, The Aurora had faded to a pallid trembling glimmer, but the stars were as bright as diamonds, and across the great dark diamond-scattered vault, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny black shapes were flying out of the east and south toward the north. "Are they birds?" she said. "They are witches," said the bear.

That literature of this, well, literacy is being written for the young (Pullman's target audience begins at around 11, Lyra's age) is wonderful. And finding a large market for it in this grunting, ineloquent era is little short of a miracle. More than a million copies of Pullman's books have been sold in the U.S., and the same again in his native Britain.

Their author, however, would be a little uneasy to hear the use of that word "miracle." For he is, alas, a man with a message, and by the end of the trilogy the message has drowned out the magic. Narrative thrust is abandoned in favor of a hectoring, pontificating preachiness-—which has itself probably played no small part in the rise of Pullmania among the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic.

Pullman, you see, is a man with an apse to grind. He hates the Church, and he hates it with a passion. This is an unusual fixation for someone from the scepter'd isle; most of the English are rather relaxed about religion, tending to lack strong views about the matter one way or the other. Our predominant faith is a benign, "play nice" agnosticism, vaguely rooted in the Anglican tradition. Metaphysical debate is as foreign to us English people as a sunny day in November.

Philip Pullman is made of more strident stuff. He wants, he once told the Washington Post, "to undermine the basis of Christian belief." This is an immodest ambition even for a winner of the Whitbread prize, and the rationale behind it seems crude, no more sophisticated than that of the high-school heretic, and gratingly simplistic from such a clever writer. The history of the Christian Church is, Pullman intones, a "record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny." True, to an extent; but the full story is a little more complex than that. It is no surprise to discover that C. S. Lewis is a particular bogeyman: Pullman claims to hate the Narnia hooks "with deep and bitter passion." Among other offenses, Lewis apparently celebrated "racism [and] misogyny"—a choice of thought crimes that reveals the supposedly skeptical Mr. Pullman as a loyal follower of a very orthodox form of political correctness (the inquisitorial piety of our own time). PC's dismal spoor can be found throughout his books, a spot of class hatred here, a little global warming there.

And, above all, there is his omnipresent attitudinizing vis-a-vis religion. It's not so much the role of a wicked Church that is the problem (malevolent clergymen with twisted creeds are nothing new in fiction), but the tiresome little lectures that come with it. So, for example, in The Subtle Knife a speech attacking the sinister Church of Lyra's world becomes an attack on all churches everywhere: "Every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling." There is plenty more of the same, crude, nagging, and bombastic, its form objectionable, whatever one might think of the content. In writing his tales of Narnia, C. S. Lewis may also have been a man on a mission, but at least he had enough respect for his readers to prefer allegory and parable to assertion and propaganda. It is worth remembering that, compared with Pullman, Lewis was writing for a much younger audience, children of an age at which it is quite possible to read and reread the Narnia adventures and miss most or even all of the Christian references; aged eight or nine, I did. Nevertheless, Lewis was content to leave his message oblique; Pullman never allows his readers such freedom.

Despite these concerns, the second book. The Subtle Knife, remains imaginative and alluring if less startlingly original than its predecessor, and still able to survive increasing amounts of its author's pedestrian philosophizing. By the end of The Subtle Knife, however, it is becoming painfully apparent that Pullman's overall theme (basically, a variation on Paradise Lost) is unlikely ever to soar; a devastating weakness in a work that, like many epics, is structured as a quest. The Amber Spyglass, the allegedly grand finale of the series, is intended to bring resolution, but it is difficult to care. The object of Lyra's quest remains (at best) obscure and (at worst) highly pretentious, an unholy grail that simply does not engage the imagination.

When I asked 11-year-old Holly, the daughter of some friends, what she thought of these books, she said that they were "well-written." The story itself didn't quite catch her attention.

Dust is to blame; The Amber Spyglass is a book in which, despite some sporadically spectacular passages, any real sense of excitement is, quite literally, ground into Dust. Scattered over page after wearying page, this endlessly discussed "Dust" is the substance that represents consciousness in Pullman's universe, but it runs the risk of inducing unconsciousness in his youthful and, doubtless, exhausted readership.

And there is, unfortunately, no escaping it. For there is Dust to be found in every nook and cranny of this wordy, wordy, wordy culmination of Pullman's three-volume morality play, which is, at its core, nothing less than an assault on the notion of Original Sin. In the end, the assault takes very literal form: After a battle that rather uneasily combines elements of Star Wars with the Book of Revelation, God (or, at least, an entity who is clearly meant to the the Christian God) is overthrown, the underworld is liberated, and a "Republic of Heaven" is proclaimed.

The true nature of this apparently marvelous republic is never made clear. It may be the materialist heaven on earth, but there are also hints that it could be the New Age's goblin-infested alternative, that empty-headed, shallowly superstitious zone where everything, and nothing, is sacred. It makes for a somewhat frustrating conclusion to this very frustrating trilogy, a flawed, fascinating creation of great promise that is eventually brought down by its tendency to go too far—much like naughty old Adam himself, as Philip Pullman would never say.

De-Demonizing Rum: What's wrong with 'underage' drinking?

National Review, June 25 2001

IT was a day of shame for the Bushes, an incident made all the more embarrassing by the family's previous well-publicized difficulties with alcohol. I refer, of course, to the regrettable 1997 decision by then-governor George W Bush to approve legislation further toughening the penalties for underage drinking. In Texas, the legal drinking age is 21. A typical Texan of 19—let's call her "Jenna"— is judged to be responsible enough to vote, drive, marry, serve in the military, and (this is Texas) be executed, but she is not, apparently, sufficiently mature to decide for herself whether to buy a margarita. The 1997 legislation made things worse: Miller Time could now mean hard time, a possible six months in jail for a third offense. It is a ludicrous and demeaning law, but it has been policed with all the gung-ho enthusiasm that we have come to expect in a land where the prohibitionist impulse has never quite died. In Austin, there is now a special squad of undercover cops dedicated to fighting the scourge of teenage tippling. In other words, they hang around in bars.

The crusade does not stop there. The Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse boasts a campaign called "2young2drink," which features billboards, a hot line (Denounce your friends!), and a program enticingly known as "Shattered Dreams." Other efforts include the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission's sting operations (Make your kid a snoop!) and, for those parents 2stupid2think, a helpful series of danger signs compiled by the Texas Safety Network. One early indicator that your child is drinking may be the "smell of alcohol on [his] breath." Who knew?

But it's unfair to single out Texas. The legal drinking age has been raised to 21 in every state, a dreary legacy of Elizabeth Dole's otherwise unremarkable tenure as President Reagan's transportation secretary. She is not apologizing; her only regret is that the age of barroom consent was not increased to 24. In her jihad against gin, Mrs. Dole forgot that the guiding principle of the Reagan administration was supposed to be a reduction in the role of the state.

And, as usual, government is not going to do any good. The only circumstances in which the approach taken by the zero-tolerance zealots could have the faintest chance of success would be in a society where alcohol was a rarity. Zero tolerance has been a disastrous failure in the case of young people and illegal drugs; how can it be expected to work with a product that is available in every mall or corner store? Sooner or later, your child will be confronted with that seductive bottle. The only question is how he is going to deal with it.

Not well, if the Dole approach continues to hold sway. Demonizing alcohol—and thus elevating it to the status of forbidden fruit—is counterproductive. Adult disapproval magically transforms that margarita from a simple pleasure into an especially thrilling act of rebellion.

My parents avoided this error. Growing up in more tolerant England, I could always ask them for a drink, and, fairly frequently, I would even be given one. At least partly as a result, I went through adolescence without feeling any need to drink a pint to make a point. My drinks were for the right reasons. The only recollection I have of any real parental anxiety in this area was when, at the age of about 13, I accepted a brandy from a friend of the family (an alleged murderer, as it happens, but that's another story). The worry was not the drink, but the uninsured glass containing it: antique, priceless, and, as our host explained to my trembling mother, quite irreplaceable. In the event, the glass survived me, and I survived the drink.

Parents, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how and when their offspring should be permitted to drink. Intelligent parents don't let alcohol become a big deal, a mystery or a battleground. They teach its perils, but its pleasures, too. Have a bottle of wine on the table, and let the kids take a gulp; it will not, I promise, turn them into Frenchmen. Treat a drink as a part of growing up, as something to be savored within a family, rather than guzzled down in some rite to mark passage from that family.

Furthermore, too much of the discussion about alcohol in this country reflects prohibitionist fervor rather than scientific fact. We act as if alcohol were a vice, a degenerate habit that can—at best—be tolerated. In reality, it does not need to be apologized for. Alcohol has been a valuable part of Western culture for thousands of years. It can be abused, sure, but it can inspire as well as intoxicate, illuminate as well as irritate. In excess, the demon drink merits its nickname; in moderation, it can be good for you.

Ah yes, some will say, but what about drunk driving? They have a point. While it is possible to debate the numbers, there can be little doubt that the higher drinking age has coincided with a reduction in the number of highway deaths. But has the price been worth paying? The question sounds callous, particularly given the horrors of the individual tragedies that make up the statistics, but all legislation is, in the end, a matter of finding a balance between competing rights, interests, and responsibilities. We could, for example, save lives by denying drivers' licenses to those over 65, but we do not. We understand the trade-off: There is an interest in safer roads, but there is also an interest in allowing older people to retain their independence.

In the case of the drinking age, the balance has shifted too far in one direction, away from individual responsibility and towards government control. Raising the limit may have reduced drunken driving, but the cost in lost freedom has been too high, and, quite possibly, unnecessary: Alcohol-related auto accidents seem to be falling in most age categories. The problem of teen DWI is best dealt with directly, by strengthening the deterrents, rather than obliquely, in the context of a wider attack on "underage" drinking—an attack that might, in fact, ultimately backfire on those whose interest lies in combating the drunk at the wheel.

For the most striking thing of all about the minimum drinking age of 21 is how unsuccessful it has been. A 19-year-old in search of a drink will not have to hunt for long; just ask "Jenna." Almost impossible to police effectively, our current policy sends a signal to the young that our legal system is capricious, weak, occasionally vindictive, and not to be respected. In the interest of enforcing important laws—such as those against drunk driving—we should do what we can to make sure our young people see the police not as interfering busybodies, but as representatives of a mature, broadly respected moral order, who are prepared to treat them as adults. Those who believe government should be in the message-sending business should pay a little more attention to the message they are really sending, when they ask the police to enforce unenforceable—and frankly indefensible—taboos.

(War) Toy Story: Where have you gone, G.I.Joe?

National Review, May 14 2001

TO Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan, it is the moment of crisis, the turning point when it all starts to go wrong; "You see this picture of a little boy with a stuffed bunny in one hand and a Lego gun in the other." Society, she argues, will push the tot to drop the rabbit, and this, she believes, is a tragedy, a brutal suppression of the sensitive man-child within. It is for insights such as these that Jane Fonda has just awarded Harvard $12.5 million, endowing a chair in Gilligan's name. That's very fortunate for Gilligan, because my nephew, Oliver, would be unlikely to give her the time of day. Sitting amid the debris of last Christmas’s festivities, the 6-year-old had a Seventh Cavalry revolver in his hand, a newly unwrapped Sherman tank at his feet, and, doubtless, dreams of battle on his mind. "This," he said, "is heaven." He was celebrating the season of peace and goodwill in an appropriately martial style, something difficult in his native England—a country where toy armies are in retreat and cowboys have to be armed with sticks.

Fortunately for Oliver, his uncle could help. In the finest tradition of the Atlantic convoys, I was able to come to the rescue with weaponry from across the ocean. The revolver came from the shop attached to the NRA's National Firearms Museum in Virginia (take your children!), and the tank from Toys "R" Us, a store that can usually boast at least one aisle where it is always 1944. It's all there; the armor, the artillery, and the dedicated, handpicked troops, including, of course, G.I. Joe, back now in uniform, after a post-Vietnam hiatus in which the poor fellow was shamefully repackaged as an "adventurer."

All, however, is not yet well in Toyland. In the more upscale FAO Schwarz, for example, it is still 1968. To be fair, if you look hard enough you can still find G.I. Joe and his friends, but they make up a small, desperate platoon, holed up in a last redoubt, lacking air cover and surrounded by Teletubbies, victims of our elite's continuing anxiety over the allegedly pernicious impact of plastic garrisons and battery-powered combat. (Even Toys "R" Us is not entirely safe: Every December, demonstrators picket selected outlets of this toytown Krupp, calling for the withdrawal of the playthings of mass destruction.)

We all know the sort of households where such concerns prevail. They tend to be grim places, where chocolate is rationed, bread is bran, and the preferred entertainment is PBS. Permitted toys are dully educational, preferably Swedish, and, ideally, made out of (non-endangered) wood. To these folks, war toys are the NASCAR of the nursery: declasse, disreputable, and more than a little dangerous.

Such attitudes are rooted primarily in snobbery and the vague and sentimental pacifism that permeates this culture. They have been around for a long time. Opposition to military toys has, however, been given fresh impetus by Gilligan-style educational theorizing and its even uglier sister, fear and loathing of the exuberant male child. These ideas are nonsense, but they have been skillfully publicized and are now increasingly the stuff of schoolroom orthodoxy. Inevitably, the success of such theories may lead anxious and well-meaning parents to ask themselves the terrible question: Should Joe go?

To which the appropriate response is: Hell, no. It is not possible to say this for all war toys, but—contrary to the fears of many parents-—toy soldiers are a constructive, not destructive, force. They encourage cooperative playing even if the form that cooperation takes—the arrangement of mock slaughter and atrocity—is not one that will bring joy to the heart of Kofi Annan; but as a spur to the imagination and a launch pad for creative thought, these toys are incomparable. These plastic warriors may be heavily armed, but there is not much they can do for themselves. In the era of PlayStation, they are a magnificent anachronism: The only programs they come with are in the heads of their owners.

What's more, the fact that these soldiers are drawn from the real past brings its own educational advantages. Sci-fi action figures are all very well, but the knowledge they encourage relates to Krypton, the Klingons, or the lore of the Jedi. Toy soldiers are, literally, more down-to-earth. They tell the story of what has happened on this planet. Detachments, say, of Union cavalry or World War I infantrymen are not much fun without some knowledge of the conflicts in which they fought. In an age in which history is taught as an afterthought—or, worse, a PC seminar— this is an incentive for children, and particularly boys, to turn to the real thing, glorious, bloody, confused, exhilarating, and endlessly fascinating.

And no, Mom, it will not turn them into killers. To judge by much of today's conventional wisdom, it is only a short step from the Hasbro tank to the Columbine library, a view that reflects the feminist prejudice that the entire male sex is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Certainly, masculine aggression is a fact of life (I should know, I grew up with two brothers), but it is not a disease or nasty pathology that needs to be treated, repressed, or medicated away. Correctly channeled (and, yes, toy soldiers can be part of this process), it can be a powerful positive force. Hand in hand with associated characteristics such as competitiveness, assertiveness, and a willingness to take risks, it can be a great engine for a boy's development.

Attempts to suppress it are, moreover, doomed to fail. You might as well tell a tree not to grow leaves. Such efforts may be worse than useless: Children generally take great pleasure in doing the opposite of what they are told. I remember, still with some fear, two childhood acquaintances from a household where war toys were strictly forbidden. Before any visit there, my Tommy Gunn (a British equivalent of G.I. Joe) had to disarm. He could be a fireman, but never a commando. Unfortunately for me, however, the family's creed of nonviolence did not always extend to playroom behavior. In the end, naturally, both boys became career soldiers. That's merely ironic; but it is not difficult to imagine similar rebellions taking other, darker forms.

Instead of denying and deforming a small boy's aggressive energy, it would be better to acknowledge and direct it. Another topic must not be ignored: fun, But when it comes to that subject, those who are recommending "nonviolent" alternatives seem to he clueless. The list of suggestions posted on the web by one New Mexico counselor includes "building blocks, crayons, scissors, construction paper, hand puppets, and puzzles." Hand puppets.

This is not to say that there are no undesirably violent toys. Visit any toy store and you will see some lurking there on the shelves. In a secure family environment, I doubt if they would do any child much harm, although the Diamond Dallas Page interactive figurine (one of a World Champion Wrestling series of "Bashin' Brawlers") could certainly be said to be delivering a rather unattractive message to the nation's young: "Punch his gut, and he yells. Grab his nose, and he yelps. Pile drive his head, and he screams." Better than a hand puppet, to be sure, but grim stuff. Give me—and the kids—G.I. Joe.

The Untempting Temptation

National Review, February 5, 2001

 All those organizations with the word "family" in their names can relax. The Fox network's new Temptation Island is no threat to the American republic, the institution of marriage, or the morals of our young. The first episode was, however, a terrible waste of an hour, 9-10 P.M. on Wednesday evening, quality time that could have been better spent watching World Championship Wrestling, Rivera Live, or—for those in need of cheering up—Surviving, a movie about double teen suicide.

In case you have not seen a newspaper recently, let's start with Temptation Island 's premise. Four "unmarried couples at a crossroads in their relationships" are taken to a tropical island. The lovebirds are then separated, and each of them will be "set up on a variety of dates" with some of the 26 "fantasy" singles who have also been taken there by Fox. The idea, and, allegedly, the drama, is to test the strength of these relationships. "This could rip two people apart," gloats one potential seducer.

Oh, really? Call me old-fashioned, but any couple agreeing to "test" their relationship in this way are not at a crossroads. They are at a dead end. There's no test, no one is going to be "ripped apart." If you want to talk test, talk Gandhi. That iron man of abstinence used to test his commitment (to celibacy, as it happens) by sleeping in the same bed as a naked woman. Nothing, we are told, ever happened. That is what I call a test. Now, I never knew Gandhi, but I did watch the couples of Temptation Island; and Billy, you are no Mahatma. Nor, Taheed, Mandy, Kaya, Valerie, Ytossie, Andy, and Shannon, are any of the rest of you.

If, then, viewers cannot look forward to the vicious destruction of previously strong relationships, can they at least hope for some smut? Once again, the answer is almost certainly no. The first hour featured bikinis, shorts, and a few naughty comments, but on the whole the show was tamer than Baywatch, and the cast, it has to be said, are not as good-looking. To be sure, the initial episode was set up as a teaser, but the same, I suspect, will prove to be true for the rest of a series that is likely to pack about as much erotic excitement as an MTV beach volleyball special.

Of course, subsequent episodes will doubtless feature what the British call a "snog" or two (ask Austin Powers), but much more than that will have to take place behind closed doors. Nudity? Not a chance: This is network TV. We can rely on Fox's killjoy pixels to blur what little voyeuristic fun there is to be had. What will be on display is far more shocking. In a future episode, we can apparently expect to see one of the participants (a grown man!) weeping on the beach. On Wednesday night we already saw some sobs from two of the ladies, Ytossie and, I think. Shannon. If this is what Fox is coming to, I might as well turn to Lifetime. Worse, there is a strong possibility that these early tears were only the overture. It is likely that much of the show will be dedicated to tantrums, wailing, whining, complaining, confessions, hugging, hand holding, insincerity, sincerity, empathetic moments, and men and women telling each other what they really, really feel. In fact, watching Temptation Island will be much like witnessing someone else's marriage-counseling sessions, and about as entertaining. Sartre was wrong; Hell is not other people, it is other people's problems.

What else can we expect after eight years of a president who wants to feel our pain? This is the Age of Oprah. We talk about everything; the notion of a private sphere of behavior is dying. Emotional restraint is considered to be a psychiatric problem rather than a necessary virtue. Publicly baring the body, a respected form of degeneracy since the days of Salome, may be too much for Fox, but baring the soul, it turns out, is quite all right. Of course, the latter is much more of an imposition on the rest of us, as even the most strait-laced should realize. Most strippers (Salome was an exception) ask nothing more from their audience than the dollars in their pockets. Emotional exhibitionists like the gang on Temptation Island are far more demanding, They would like us to share in their drama, and, yes, to feel their pain.

To some critics, this is a degrading spectacle, the show-biz equivalent of tearing the wings off some not very intelligent flies, a callous and potentially destructive exploitation of four supposedly close-knit couples. Unfortunately, the critics would be wrong even if these relationships were as strong as Fox would like us to believe—because, if anyone deserves humiliation, it is Kaya and his friends (yes, Kaya is a he). They will be contaminating my television with their simpering psychobabble and penny ante angst. They should be punished.

Far from being humiliated, however, they will revel in all the attention. They will be praised for their honesty, for "coming to terms" with themselves. If there is any residual embarrassment to the participants, it will be eased by the greatest of all the rewards this country has to offer—not money, but celebrity. If these couples play their cards right on Temptation Island, they could make their way to America's pantheon, right up there with Tonya and Monica, and even (dare to dream) Darva and Rick.

The show's 16 million viewers can either reach for the off switch or remain slumped on the sofa, hypnotized by the sheer tackiness. Those who are fascinated, but mortified, can reassure themselves that none of this is really "real": The island itself is already an alibi, a Robin Leach fantasy of tumbling waterfalls and enchanted beaches, a place where the ordinary rules are suspended. And then there are the players themselves, some with the sort of otherworldly names last heard on the bridge of the USS Enterprise: Kaya, Ytossie, Dano.

As for their jobs, well, let us just say that this is the least representative cross section of America since the Village People. Participants on the show include a singer, a singer/poet, a singer/waitress, an aspiring entertainment reporter, a practicing entertainment reporter, a bartender, the founder of an online dating service, a model/actress, an actor/drummer, the owner of a kayaking company, an artist, a masseur. Miss Georgia 2000, a teen-crisis counselor, and a motocross guy. And then, in a final hint that none of this really matters, there was the network's proviso that none of the parties should be married. It was a curiously old-fashioned gesture: a statement, in effect, that a "relationship," whether at a crossroads or not, is somehow less worth protecting than the real thing, marriage.

What a pity, then, that one of the couples turned out to be parents, the parents of a "real" child. That was against the rules too, and the wicked pair has been thrown off the island. It is on film, of course. We will be able to see it for ourselves in a few weeks. And so, one day, will their child.

A revised version of an article published on National Review Online on January, 14, 2001

Candida's Camera

National Review, Sept 11 2000

WHEN actress Candida Royalle (Legends of Porn, Classic Swedish Erotica 2, Teenage Pony Girls) announces that she is "going to be hard on you," you sit up and pay attention. Not that we needed the warning. We had all paid good money ($49) to see her perform, and we were sure she would not let us down. Nor does she. True to her name, Candida is open, frank, and often very revealing. Miss Royalle knows how to give a good lecture. Yes, lecture. To the crowd gathered in an upstairs room in Manhattan's "School for the Physical City," Candida Royalle is much more than a sex star. She is an entrepreneur, sharing her hard-won practical insights with an eager and ambitious audience. The event has been arranged by The Learning Annex, an "alternative adult-education organization" that offers evening classes at a number of cities across the country. The demand for its "powerful, inspirational, nurturing, and insightful" seminars is in the American tradition, a reminder of the relentless drive for self-improvement that took this nation from log cabin to Martha Stewart. Recent courses have included Spanish, calligraphy, running your own laundromat, the power of persuasion, becoming a medical transcriptionist, and "Breaking into Adult Movies—in front of or behind the camera!"

Candida's pupils are ushered into a large, brightly lit classroom painted in the Pokemon palette that only an educational bureaucrat would choose. It's all very normal—Educating Rita rather than Deep Throat. There's no buzz, no guilty anticipation, just a naughty pile of coarse, er, course materials heaped on a side table: flyers for FOXE ("Fans of X-Rated Entertainment"), an order form for Breaking into XXX—the Porn Stud Handbook. And our teacher? Miss Royalle is a trim fortyish blonde in a short skirt, more Mary Kay than Miss Jean Brodie.

This is not enough to hold two members of the class, who slink off within minutes, disappointed perhaps to discover that the evening will not feature "adult situations." Maybe they will be back for the Tantra lessons ("Reach higher levels of sexual ecstasy than ever!"). The only other source of awkwardness is the presence of a film crew shooting the lecture for National Enquirer’s TV show. Strangely, not everyone wants to appear in front of these particular cameras.

These are shy folks, mostly. One woman, an exotic dancer, is interested in making "bubble-bath-type videos" for her fans, but she is an exception. This mainly male crowd doesn't want to get naked. They want to be "suits," Sam Goldwyns of smut. That's wise, for as our lecturer explains, the life of a wannabe porn stud is far from easy. Performing under conditions that would make even Priapus pause (Viagra helps, apparently), men are props, not star attractions. As such they are not likely to make much money. Most people aren't renting adult movies to gape at the guys. So the women are paid more. As even the EEOC might agree, this is not discrimination, it's the marketplace.

Which is really the theme of the evening. Naughty pictures are now a significant American industry. The Nude Economy is for real: By some estimates, annual sales of pornography in the U.S. alone already exceed $10 billion. That's a Fortune 500, Wall Street Journal kind of number, one that tells us, among other things, that proper management has finally come to this improper trade. And that's where the Learning Annex fits in. As Candida's students earnestly take notes, she briskly runs through the economics of adult video, who gets paid how much to do what to whom, the complexities of copyright, the perils of distribution, and the market in foreign licensing.

It's surprisingly dry stuff, and the ensuing discussion is matter-of-fact. In the United States, business is a serious matter, and while we have come a long way from the Comstock laws, our cheery, upbeat lecturer is subject to an equally demanding set of rules, those of American enterprise. To Candida's obvious delight, it's a tough code and a little austere. And in the way she describes it, with relish and without irony, there's a touch of Cotton Mather, a hint of the old Puritan idea that self-denial is the key to success. The boogie nights are clearly over. The film set should be free of drugs and alcohol and carefully budgeted. The artistic impulse must also be kept firmly under control (only "one-third of the film can be story, with 60 minutes for sex"). There's respect for hard work, suspicion of ripoffs ("Watch everything, watch everyone . . . if it's yours, watch it like a hawk"), and a shrewd appreciation for what counts—the bottom line in every sense.

Unfortunately, these days the bottom line is not enough. Sanctimony has evolved, not died. We live in a time when many businesses, particularly those with a potential image problem, feel they have to go beyond the buck. They like to demonstrate, at least in their advertising, that they have some higher—usually vaguely politically correct—redeeming social purpose. Forestry companies become model environmentalists, brewers natter on about "responsible" drinking, and "the people of Philip Morris" are so busy sheltering abused women and feeding the hungry it's amazing they have any time for making cigarettes.

Candida Royalle is no exception. A few years ago the former "teenage pony girl" founded Femme Productions to make films that, she says, that men too will want to watch. Now she takes herself, well, a little seriously. As her website notes, Candida has "addressed many conferences . . . including the World Congress of Sexology, the Smithsonian Institution, [and] the American Psychiatric Association." Sadly, it's not enough for her films to be dirty, fun, and profitable. In our relentlessly didactic era they must also promote "positive sexual role modeling."

What's that? Well for one thing, something that, as we are clearly expected to know, Republicans oppose. Like most corporate piety, Candida's spiel has a liberal tinge. As some readers may remember ("House of Porn," October 27, 1997), Ms. Royalle is a founding member of Feminists for Free Expression, and presumably someone well able to understand that the principal threat to her business comes from a much larger group, the feminists against free expression and their fellow-travelers in the "progressive" camp. Despite that, her talk is punctuated by moments of leftish political commentary. There's an almost nostalgic swipe at "Reagan/Meese" and a dark warning that if George W. is elected, "we're really in for it."

But her audience doesn't seem worried. This is a Coolidge crowd. Their business is business. They have no more interest in discussing threats to free expression than a moonshiner would have in debating Prohibition. To these aspiring pornographers, the First Amendment is a commercial device, not a human right. They want to concentrate on record-keeping, employee relations, soundtracks, budgets, legal obligations, and the uses of DVD ("save your bloopers"). It's all about the economics of sex. Though far from romantic, it is still a pursuit of another American fantasy, the dream of success. Is it true, asks the exotic dancer, that one porn star makes "as much as $150,000 a year"?

At that, two stockbrokers in the class exchange faintly superior smiles. Still, they understand where she is coming from.