What I’m Reading: “I am Spartacus!”

I’m reposting this because today is Kirk Douglas’ 103rd birthday. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Bakhtin's Cigarettes

I don’t want to jinx the man, but the fact that Kirk Douglas still lives is an unmitigated source of joy for me. If you believe, as I do, that movie stars become movie stars because of some internal life-force, whose aura is palpable even when projected onto a silver screen, then Kirk Douglas seems like the best proof of this theory.

At 101, Douglas is a living bridge to Hollywood’s second Golden Age—the 1940s to late 1950s. A bone fide movie start by 1949, Douglas was, along with other mavericks like Burt Lancaster, one of the first major actors to become a power-player in his own right. In an era when the Hollywood studio system traded actors like cattle, he formed his own studio and made his own films. He fostered young writers and directors—most notably, a brilliant, aloof young filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick.

But perhaps his…

View original post 1,021 more words

We Don’t Just Need a New Obama; We Need a New Mandela

When I was a college freshman in the mid-1980s, I wrote a paper for my History 101 class, explaining the existential nightmare that faced the nation of South Africa. This was at the height of the anti-Apartheid movement, in which countless entertainers, athletes, and other celebrities shunned the country. This had the effect of isolating white South Africa—and, in particular, its ruling National Party—in almost every way: politically, economically, and culturally. At the time, the white government in Pretoria ruled over a black majority that outnumbered 10-to-1. As my fervent little paper explained, Botha’s government had been able to hold onto power through a simple strategy of violence and terror, sending the army into the black townships to crush protests.

It was a crappy little paper. Although a young Democrat, I fancied myself as something of a budding Master-of-the-Universe, much like the college-Republican character that Michael J. Fox played in Family Ties. At the end of my paper, I concluded (in rather stentorian language typical of freshman writers) that South Africa was doomed to civil war, with the prospect of mass-murder on both sides.

I was, of course, just parroting the accepted wisdom of the time, shared by millions of armchair observers. As black protests got larger and more violent, the white government became more entrenched and violent, supported by neo-Nazi groups filled with ex-military thugs armed to the teeth. The regime even began a secret campaign of political assassinations, targeting prominent leaders of the African National Congress (ANC), whose intellectual head, Nelson Mandela, had been in prison for decades.