--"Orson Welles", on Fox's The Critic
Great, if short post here on The American Prospect (h/t to Matthew Yglesias) on the -gasp- full blueal penis of Dr. Manhattan in the new movie, The Watchmen. (Which is getting consistent "mehs" it seems, somewhat disappointing to this comic book fan, but it was directed by the godforsaken director of 300, for god's sake.) In the post, Phoebe Connely does a brilliant job quickly summing up the double standards of today's gender politics, where female nudity is a matter of course, but some consistent Quantum Guy Junk warrants mentioning by every reviewer everywhere, apparently. It reminds of hearing of people complaining about Brokeback Mountain (which I still haven't seen, sadly) and "too much gay sex" when, from what I understand, there was more and more explicit straight sex. Apparently, it's always "too much" when it's not targeted towards your team, so to speak.
There's a lot to unpack there (heh... package), but I really don't feel like it, so discuss amongst yourselves: Dr. Manhattan's full frontal nudity was neither full nor frontal nor nudity: Discuss.
In other news, Matthew Yglesias makes a compelling argument that Obama's "no lobbyist on staff" policy does more harm than good, because
well-qualified individuals who registered as lobbyists while working for progressive non-profits find themselves shut out of jobs, and the administration finds itself understaffed.
The problem here has always been that the lobbyist/non-lobbyist distinction doesn’t track any meaningful goals. Goldman Sachs’ lawyer, for example, is not a lobbyist, and therefore not banned from office. A “lobbyist” is just someone who talks to members of congress about legislation. You can be a corrupt special interest and not be a lobbyist, and you can be a lobbyist who only works for good causes.
But dumb as the pledge was, it’s dumber still to stick with it. Flip-flopping will look bad, but nobody will care in 2012 about an old flip-flop. By contrast, lots of people will care by 2012 if we’re in the midst of a prolonged depression...
I'm loathe to agree that lobbyists aren't inherently bad, but that's because I think of lobbyists as inherently being for private interests. And I don't suppose he could just ban all lobbyists for private interests? Of course what's worse is that Obama made exceptions for this at first (and apparently every Democrat he has ever known has freaking tax problems) but, as far as I know, is holding to it now, despite the problems outlined by Yglesias. But I haven't been closely following the news recently; maybe I'm wrong? (Except: D'oh.)
-J
(postscript: even this seemingly insightful review equates Watchmen's director's missteps in screen translation with not properly dressing Big Blue; I don't know that a codpiece really represents the artistic problems of the film, but that may just be me -- and that I haven't seen the film)
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