Back when I was regularly writing screenplays and trying to determine a strategy to market my work, I paid careful attention to the weekly box office.  I would study those charts to see which movies were flashes in the pan and which held up over time.

Sometimes, after watching a film’s preview, considering its stars and its plot (as least what I could gather from the previews and publicity), I would guess how it would fare among film-goers.  I recall my delight when films like Josie and the Pussycats and Gigli tanked as I had predicted they would.

My forecasts, however, were not always accurate.  (I was convinced, for example, that Double Jeopardy wouldn’t earn back its production costs.)  I made sure to see a film which did much better at the box office than I predicted it would, particularly if it earned over $100 million.

After watching it, I would try to figure out why it had done so well.  Now I wish I had typed up my notes.

If a movie continues to draw audiences over several successive weekends, something in its story (or its star or its spectacle) resonates with the public.  And if it holds up over time, it has succeeded in tapping into something in what Jung called our “collective unconscious.”

As it is with movies so it is with books.

That’s why I think it’s wrong for people to dismiss the significance of books like Atlas Shrugged.  That book has continued to sell well long after its publication now over a half-century ago.  It’s not just today that the book is flying off shelves.  Despite negative reviews when it was first published, its sales have remained strong in the five subsequent decades.  In 1998, it was ranked #1 in a on-line poll of the “hundred best novels of the twentieth century.”

As I read it for the second time, I see its flaws more clearly than I did when I first read it as an adolescent.  Its characters are one-dimensional, the prose is often flat, the dialogue would sound clunky if spoken and goes on way too long, yet the story is compelling.  I kept reading it last night even as my eyelids were becoming increasingly heavy.

In dismissing books which continue to sell well over time as have Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings, literary scholars discount what once defined literature we now consider classic, its ability to illuminate, through a fictional narrative, something essential about the human condition.  And for that illumination to resonate with readers.

Despite her stylistic flaws, Ayn Rand does that.  Otherwise, her books wouldn’t have found an audience.

BONUSES FOR Fannie Mae execs? “Fannie Mae is planning to pay retention bonuses of as much as $611,000 each to several top executives of the government-controlled mortgage finance titan. Sibling company Freddie Mac is planning similar awards.”

Maybe Ayn Rand had a point about altruism.

Have you ever gone out of your way to help someone and find they keep asking for favors? And yet there are others who always remember to acknowledge you for your gestures, no matter how insignificant.  Then, it sometimes seems your act of compassion had a somewhat selfish end, garnering the appreciation of another.

Of course, it’s a little different with nieces and nephews.  They don’t always remember to send you thank you notes.  That doesn’t seem to matter all that much, at least to me.  There’s satisfaction in seeing (or imagining) the smile on a child’s face.

I was thinking about this today when, upon returning from my workout, I opened my (snail) mail box to discover for the umpteenth day in a pile of charitable solicitations, many from groups to which I had never given, some of whom send me regular mails.  I begin to wonder if they spend as much money in asking for money as they do in helping the people they claim they’re helping.  And the “gifts” they send me.  I’ll never need to buy address labels, greeting cards or scratch pads again.

Then, I check my e-mail to read a missive from a person (for whom I have gone out of my way in the past) repeating a request for a ridiculous favor.  Odd how this individual’s strategy differs from that of another friend for whom I have regularly (and willingly, eagerly even) gone out of my way.  When that friend mentioned last week that she was going to be in a staged reading this Sunday, I asked if I could go, knowing it would mean a lot to her.  Her response saying as much made me glad I had asked.

Note, the second friend didn’t request the favor, but got it.  And why did I so readily offer to go?  Because she’s a friend, a talented actress who works hard and deserves more success than this business has allowed her.  And because she has acknowledged every act of kindness I have performed on her behalf.

Maybe I’m not so altruistic after all.

I GUESS IT’S TOO BAD NOBODY READ IT BEFORE IT PASSED, THEN: The Stimulus Bill Explicitly Guarantees Contractual Bonuses Executed Before February 11.

So, stop the grandstanding, Barney and Chris.  You voted for it.  You own it.  You’re responsible for AIG doling out the taxpayers’ money (and that of their children and grandchildren) you handed over to them.

No wonder Obama wanted to rush this through.  I wonder what other provisions people are going to find objectionable, as we see how the law Democrats hastily passed takes effect.

*And those three Republican Senators.

Remember how eagerly White House Chief of Staff and his friends in the media were to dub Rush Limbaugh the leader of the GOP, given a poll which showed the conservative talk show host “was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters.”

Well, a new CBS poll shows that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a favorable rating slightly below that of the  conservative talker.  Limbaugh’s favorable is the same as that of the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (albeit based on a 2007 poll).

While Limbaugh’s unfavorable rating is slightly above that of the San Francisco Democrat, “more know or have an opinion about Limbaugh: 41 percent “Don’t know” or have “no opinion” on Limbaugh, yet, as noted above, 47 percent offered that reply when queried to assess Pelosi.”

And this from a poll noted for favoring Democrats.

Given that Pelosi’s Democrats colleagues elected her to a position of leadership, an honor Limbaugh does not enjoy, it’s time that Republicans adopt the Begala-Emanuel-Carville strategy and tie all Democrats to the House Speaker.  After all, the next national elections coming up are congressional ones, and all House Democrats did indeed vote for Mrs. Pelosi.

UPDATE:  I don’t think this will help encourage Mrs. Pelosi’s popularity, Pelosi says enforcing immigration laws is “un-American”

As I was reviewing a Washington Post article I had read this weekend (for a post I wanted to write today), a paragraph seemed to inaccurately portray George W. Bush’s first year in office.  Writer Scott Wilson held than taking a new tack and blaming his predecessor, President Obama is merely following in that Republican’s footsteps:

Upon entering the White House in 2001, Bush pinned the lackluster economy on his predecessor, using the “Clinton recession” to successfully argue in favor of tax cuts that won some Democratic support.

Now, I don’t recall ever reading then-President Bush blaming Clinton for the economic downturn in 2001.  But, then again, my primary news source back then was the Los Angeles Times.  Since the Post reporter took especial care to put the expression, “Clinton recession,” in quotation marks, the then-president (or his team) must have used it.

So, I searched the paper’s archives, but decided not to buy the one article using the expression, “Clinton Recession” from 2001, W’s first year in office.  That reference was in an opinion piece, ” The Blame Game,” by E. J. Dionne, Jr., not always a reliable source for information on Republicans.  And from what little information I can find on the article (without signing up for some service), it doesn’t appear W actually used the term.

As it stands right now, there are no news articles in Mr. Wilson’s paper reporting that Bush said what the reporter says he did.  But, the Post is not the only source of information.  For those of you with ready access to news databases from 2001 or with better web-sleuthing skills, could you let me know if, after he took office on January 20, 2001, Bush blamed Clinton for the economic downturn during his first year on the job.

If we can’t find anything, then a correction will certainly be in order.  And we’ll have one more piece of evidence that George W. Bush, despite his many flaws, had far more class than does his successor.

When all too many Americans comes out as gay or lesbian, while they may at first continue to adhere to the political philosophy they held before acknowledging his sexuality, after a time socializing with their gay peers, they gradually comes to adopt the political views of those around him.  Adopting such liberal political views, it seems, has become a rite of passage for the openly-gay American.

I have come to believe that more than anything else, the desire to belong, social conformity, determines the political ideology of a good number of American gays.  That belief came to mind yesterday when I read posts by two smart conservative bloggers, Tom Maguire and Paul Mirengoff reflecting on Shelby Steele’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, Why the GOP Can’t Win With Minorities. Some of the arguments Steele made on the difficulty Republicans had in reaching out to ethnic minorities could apply to sexual minorities as well.

Unlike many gay activists, including leaders of Log Cabin, I don’t think the Republican Party need develop a gay-specific outreach plan.  I simply believe the party should abandon policies which discriminate against gay people and otherwise leave us alone to live our lives as we please.  The GOP should focus instead on unifying conservative principles.  Indeed, this belief is in line with contemporary American conservatism.  As Steele puts it:

Still, an appeal targeted just at minorities — reeking as it surely would of identity politics — is anathema to most conservatives. Can’t it be assumed, they would argue, that support of classic principles — individual freedom and equality under the law — constitutes support of minorities?

Eschewing identify politics, however, might not work in an era of group consciousness.  In coming out and developing a gay identity, all too many of us contend that identity involves a certain political consciousness,  wherein we demand certain gay-specific policies in exchange for our support.

That consciousness comes from the circumstances of the 1960s which Steele believes “opened a new formula for power in American politics: redemption. If you could at least seem to redeem America of its past sins, you could win enough moral authority to claim real political power.”  Translated into gay terms, this means, we need state action to redeem America’s “homophobic” past.

As we learn of that past, we start seeing ourselves not just as individuals whose emotional and sexual attraction to our gender, distinguish us from our peers, but as victims of “heterosexist” society.  Whereas according to Steele, “American minorities of color — especially blacks — are often born into grievance-focused identities,” we are acculturated into a similar identity.  As just as for racial minorities, “The idea of grievance will seem to define them in some eternal way, and it will link them atavistically to a community of loved ones.”

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The very idea of the growing “tea party” phenomenon must be disconcerting to the myth-makers in the mainstream media and the Obama Administration.  According to their narrative, when people are agitating, they’re supposed to be upset about social inequality and corporate greed.  The very notion that they’d be protesting the ever-increasing size of the state upsets the worldview of these would-be opinion-makers.

No wonder big media is paying scant attention to the “tea party” protests.  So far the Administration seems only to follow the MSM as it’s “increasingly concerned” that “populist backlash against banks and Wall Street, worried that anger at financial institutions could also end up being directed at Congress and the White House and could complicate [the president's] agenda.“  (Italics added.)

End up?  End up?

If they’d be following conservative and libertarian blogs and/or paying attention to local media (particularly in the town where I was born), they’d realize that there already is a populist backlash directed against Congress and the White House–and not just for the bailouts of banks and Wall Street.  People are upset at the rapid increase in the size of the federal government that the president is proposing.

At the same time, this grassroots rebellion is brewing, we get a real sense of what the president’s “community organizing” really means.  As opposed to these tea parties, his is a top-down affair, with his new national outfit, Organizing for America, directing local groups to agitate for his agenda.

It’s even launching a “Pledge Project,” asking Americans to:

• I support President Obama’s bold approach for renewing America’s economy.
• I will ask friends, family, and neighbors to pledge their support for this plan

Over at Best of the Web, James Taranto, who like yours truly, finds this “creepy,” asks his readers for any examples of  “a Republican president, say during the past 30 years, asking people to take a similar ‘pledge’.”

I wonder if it’s beginning to dawn on many of Obama’s erstwhile acolytes that the enthusiasm his candidacy generated has less to do with any concrete vision of American than it did with his powerful presence.  It was more about a man than his ideas.

The media was fascinated by a movement built around a man, yet seems much less interested in a movement, like the American Revolution, built on an idea.  I wonder why that is.

Yesterday, while working out, I posed a hypothetical to a straight friend of mine, asking if he’d rather be funny-looking, but a nice guy or handsome and unkind.  He hesitate for a bit, then answered that he’d rather be funny-looking.

I had asked the question after seeing this well-built guy walk by, a straight man who always scowls and never has a kind word for anyone.  His cold presence called to mind another straight guy at our gym.  That man has a strange appearance; his workouts don’t seem to have altered his lanky physique, yet he always smiles and has something nice or clever to say when you greet him.  When I mentioned this guy (we’ll call him Larry though that’s not his real name) to my straight friend, his face lit up, “You know, he dates models.”

Somehow that made sense to me.  Larry is not the first funny-looking straight guy I know who dates beautiful women.  I’ve known overweight straight men with outgoing personalities, a great senses of humor and/or above-average abilities to listen who have dated strikingly attractive women.

Yet, if a gay guy were funny-looking, unless he were rich, he would certainly trouble finding a hot guy to date him, even if he had a most compelling personality.  The explanation is not in our sexuality, but our gender.  For whatever reason it seems men are more visual than women.  And more often than not, women just seem to value the person over his appearance.

This is not the first time I’ve noticed this nor am I the first person to say it.  It’s just something that struck me yesterday when I had that conversation . . .

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Leah writes:

Women often will take security – either physical or financial over looks.

I hate the idea that women are ‘better’ than men. We’re not. It’s just much easier to find fault with men since their faults are more ‘superficial’. Whereas it’s harder to pin point the woman’s weakness.

ALASKA DODGES BANKING COLLAPSE.

I believe I bought my first copy of Atlas Shrugged at Renzi’s Bookstore (long since defunct) in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  I either loaned that copy out or gave it away because I could not find the tattered paperback on the shelf where I keep Rand’s books.

So, last night, I headed to Barnes & Noble with a coupon determined to buy the book if they had it on their shelves.  Not only was I delighted to discover it there, but pleased as well to see it tagged with a pre-printed note “Our Staff Recommends,” underneath which someone had written in a clear and bold longhand, “One of the greatest novels of all time.”

Interesting that a clerk at a Hollywood bookstore would so label a book that so challenges the prevailing political ethos in this town.  Well, a film version is slated for 2011 release.

I wonder how I will experience the novel I so enjoyed at the twlight of my adolescence as I re-read it in the midst of my adulthood.

And Olbermann beats everyone else on MSNBC.

As we read yet again of Barney Frank’s grandstanding over executive salaries while remaining silent over his own cozy relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I recall Mr. Frank has an ethics problem which Congress has yet to investigate.

As you may recall, while the Massachusetts Democrat served on the House Banking Committee in the 1990s (now the House Financial Services Committee which he chairs), he was living with Herb Moses, then an executive at Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) regulated by his committee.  Since a heterosexual Congressman would have stepped down from a committee if it regulated the industry where his wife worked, a gay Congressman should step down in similar circumstances.

Frank led Democratic efforts to thwart reforms of Fannie and its sister GSE, Freddie Mac.

So, learning of Frank’s outrage over AIG, I decided to do something I had intended to do when the Democrat’s conflict of interest came to light, write to my Congressman, Henry Waxman, asking him to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

I just mailed (and e-mailed) the letter and encourage you to contact your federal representatives and ask them to do the same.  I include a copy of my letter below the “jump.”

To ignore this matter, would, as I have written previously, be tantamount to downgrading gay relationships.

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Roughly half the time I read articles on the task ahead for the GOP, the authors contend that Republicans can’t return to the ideas Ronald Reagan used so effectively to rally the faithful in the late 1970s and rebuild the party in the next decade as those ideas are out of date.  What worked nearly three decades ago won’t work today.

I and others contend that those ideas are timeless and particularly relevant today.  In the 1960s and 1970s, we saw an ever-increasing federal behemoth, the same thing we’re seeing in Barack Obama’s Washington.

Still, I agree with one thing the authors of the articles mentioned above get at with their criticisms:  we can’t mindless ape the Gipper’s platform.  We need to adapt his ideas to the world as it is today.  To that end, I highly, **highly**, recommend Jay Cost’s piece in the latest Weekly Standard where he urges Republicans to “be creative,”

I’d suggest Republicans discuss their future with greater confidence in the party’s core principles. There is no need to redefine them, or indulge in an existential “crisis of conservatism.” Instead, now is the time for Republicans to use their principles creatively–to generate new and compelling solutions to public problems.

But that’s not all. The GOP needs creative strategies to market those ideas. The biggest political problem the party faces is that the Democrats are fully in control of the national agenda. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid decide what is and is not considered in Congress, and Barack Obama can use the bully pulpit to guide public discussion. If Republicans are not inventive in how they promote themselves, they are bound to end up on the backpage.

And that, in a nutshell, is what Republicans must do, adapt our party’s core principles to the current world situation and develop creative strategies to market them.

We do ourselves a disservice when we ignore or dismiss those voices successful at reaching out to mass audience.  We now need to find means to reach out to audiences not yet familiar with the Republican message, but who, if it is conveyed in a manner they can readily understand, would eagerly join our ranks.

While I have frequently appreciated David Frum’s observations, neither I nor many other conservative bloggers and pundits would rank him among the top tier of conservative columnists and opinion leaders, those I deem the Olympians.  And sometimes I think he resents that others do not include him in that number.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Frum’s a good columnist, sometimes very good, but not a great one.  It seems almost that he agreed to do the recent cover essay for Newsweek badmouthing Rush Limbaugh primarily in order to get the attention that the great ones attract.  But, in doing so, he curried the favor not of conservatives and those sympathetic to conservative ideas, but of those antagonistic to them.

Lately, he seems to have become a conservative contrarian who opposes primarily for the sake of opposing.

Those Olympians don’t always hold firm to conservative orthodoxy even when their own ideas and observations help shape it.  Readers of this blog are well aware that I place Peggy Noonan in their number, comparing her to the goddess Athena.  Others who join her in the Pantheon include Charles Krauthammer, most like the wise Apollo, with a gift for prophecy.  While Victor Davis Hanson more closely resembles a muse, Clio whose bailiwick was history, than (he does) any of the Divine Twelve, he has clearly earned his place on the Olympus on punditry

There’s Michael Barone whose attention to detail calls to mind that of the divine craftsman Hephaestus, the hardest-working of the Olympians.  The wit, wisdom and playful prose of Mark Steyn make him the Hermes of punditry.  Rush himself could be compared to Dionysus, the last to enter the pantheon.  For like that god of wine, the conservative talk show host appreciates, indeed delights in, pleasures associated with the appetite, that is, his love for good food and cigars.

George Will is like a Titan, one who reigned supreme in a previous era, but has seen been overthrown by the new generation of deities indicated above.

And just as there are other Greek deities, who did not sit in the high councils of Olympus, but still contribute to the divine work, so are their conservative columnists and pundits not among the Olympians of commentary who do good work.  Perhaps, Frum would be less of a curmudgeon if he realized the nobility of being among their number.

BARNEY FRANK COMES OUT AGAINST “rewarding incompetence.”

Back when I was an undergraduate, I, like many right-of-center collegians, discovered and devoured the works of Ayn Rand.  I then thought she was a philosopher superior even to Plato and remember when back home, arguing as much with one of my mother’s friends who taught Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati.  I objected to his neglecting the architect of objectivism in his course curricula.

During my sophomore year, I shelved her books next to those of J.R.R. Tolkien to highlight their importance to me.

Later, as I read more libertarian economics and philosophy, I became disenchanted with the writer, especially as I learned of her arrogance.  She considered herself the foremost philosopher after Aristotle.  Still, I recalled how much I had enjoyed her books, particularly We The Living (the 1942 Italian film adaptation is particularly powerful).  I had not been able to put the novel down; her later works The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged kept me reading at odd hours and in odd places.  (Despite the flaws of the flick based on the former, it holds up pretty well, but that could just be Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.)

Now, that many people are going John Galt, withdrawing their talents because the state punishes their success too much, I feel maybe I should revisit that last novel, her magnum opus.

Blogress diva Little Miss Attila pretty much summarizes my thoughts on Rand when she pens, er, pixels, “I’m no unqualified Randian; I have plenty of squabbles with Objectivism. But Rand’s work is thought-provoking and very relevant right now.”

I wouldn’t call Rand a great philosopher, but, she is certainly thought-provoking.  And given the ever-encroaching hand of the state, I would have to say John Galt is becoming particularly relevant.

For all her flaws, Rand did understand the soul-crushing, incentive-destroying effects of Communism (she had witnessed its beginnings) and the real meaning of capitalism, how, in offering freedom, it allowed for innovation and individual achievement.  She alas was too dismissive of compassion, dismissing altruism altogether.  Those weren’t her only flaws . . .

But, she did create the character of John Galt, an image today of the producer who stops producing when society punishes him overmuch for his marketplace successes.

On Saturday night over dinner, a friendly acquaintance and I had a wide-ranging discussion about a number of topics, including gender difference, sexual ethics and marital fidelity.

For both of us (I learned in the course of the evening that he was gay), monogamy is non-negotiable in a relationship.  When I mentioned that I knew several gay men in open relationships, he asked me if I thought their relationships were fulfilling.

I commented that such friends seem happy, that it wasn’t for me to judge.  He pressed me on the point and I really couldn’t answer, having never probed those guys about their relationships’ well-being.  A small “l” libertarian, valuing freedom and recognizing human difference, I thought they could be.  But, another part of me, knowing human nature, wondered if that were so.

And then, as is my wont, when I’m not certain about my answer, I rambled a bit, illustrating my point, but each illustration seemed to pull me further from the more “libertarian” answer I had offered to such questions in recent years:  an open relationship is not the choice I would make, but who am I to say that such an arrangement wouldn’t work for others.

In an open relationship, at a difficult time when you’d want to stray, you might more readily seek satisfaction with someone else rather than face those difficulties.  A partner in a monogamous union would likely still be attracted to other guys, but in rejecting their advances would be affirming his feelings for his partner, a sign of how much he valued their bond.

Such were my thoughts and the more I articulated them, the more I realized how monogamy fosters intimacy, helps deepen the connection.  Later, as I considered our conversation (especially as I watched Spanglish), I wondered if perhaps I had shifted my once firmly-held belief that monogamy was essential to a fulfilling relationship so as not to appear out of sync with the reigning ethos of gay world.

Ever a libertarian, I still believe people must be allowed the choice to remain faithful.  But, I wonder if, in making that choice, they deprive themselves of the full benefits of their relationship.

After having two successive conversations on sexual ethics, dating and relationships, it seemed fitting that I concluded yesterday watching the Adam Sandler movie Spanglish. I had only a vague notion of the film’s subject matter when I picked it up the DVD on the super bargain rack (under $5) at Target earlier in the week. I had not seen it in its initial release, having heard that it received poor reviews.

Since then, a number of friends commented favorably on the flick, so it seemed worth the minimal purchase price. And while it was flawed, I found it brilliant, one of the few Hollywood films of late to capture a complex moral situation and break the Hollywood romantic formula to offer a socially conservative message about parental responsibility.

Spoiler Alert. If you have not seen the movie and intend to do so, don’t read any further unless you wish to know how it turns out.

Just like Bogart in Casablanca, one of the greatest movies of all times, Sandler, this film’s hero, learns there is something more noble than romantic love.  For Bogart, it was the fight against fascism.  For Sandler, it’s  his duties as a father.

Most of the films flaws are minor. I didn’t particularly like the framing device, a voice over by the daughter of the Sandler’s romantic interest as she reads her application to Princeton University detailing why her mother has been so influential to her. It’s not that I minded the voice over. It’s that it seemed a little overmuch.

And maybe one of the “flaws” was not so much in the movie itself, but in my expectation. Considering that Sandler was the lead, I expected a comedy, but what I got was more of a drama, with some of the comedic elements seeming out of place.

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It is uncanny sometimes how Bruce and I, while having very different blogging styles, often have similar ideas in mind.  This morning, when I checked the blog, I was delighted to discover his latest, How “Progressive” Are You? in large part because he had put the word “progressive” in quotation marks.

Yesterday, when reading this comment on the press conference between President Obama and Brazilian President Luiz Ina¡cio Lula da Silva, “Obama’s talking progressive policies, Lula is talking about free trade and business,” I noted how, in common parlance, that word, “progressive” has come to mean the opposite of “free trade” and many other freedoms.  Indeed, it seems to have become synonymous, at least for those who use it, with an increasing role for the state.

Who decided that big government means progress? Had those who did so studied history, they would see that it’s quite the opposite.