Sep
16
2024

Art Appreciation Monday

Also of note:

  • You betcha. Christian Britschgi asks: Should We Blame Fauci for the COVID Pandemic? It's from the current print issue of Reason, now out from behind the paywall. It's a longish look at Fauci's onetime "rock star" status, now tarnished by numerous revelations about his (probable) involvement in the virus's origins, and his subsequent efforts to cover that up. Sample:

    In 2023, the incoming Republican House majority had reorganized the coronavirus subcommittee to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The information they'd uncovered, supplemented by years of dogged investigative journalism, was damning for Fauci and his agency.

    Fauci had long denied his agency had ever funded controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 pandemic originated. But weeks before Fauci's testimony, a senior NIH official admitted that the NIAID had funded such research. Days later, President Joe Biden's administration would strip EcoHealth Alliance—the nonprofit that the NIAID had paid to do that gain-of-function research—of its federal funding, citing the organization's lack of transparency and oversight failures at the WIV.

    Soon after, the select subcommittee revealed that Fauci's senior scientific adviser, David Morens, told EcoHealth scientists in emails that Fauci would "protect" the group from public scrutiny about the pandemic's origins and that Morens could pass any needed communications from EcoHealth to Fauci via a private back channel that was safe from public records requests.

    There is a suspicious lack of outrage about all things COVID. I suspect the media is reluctant to admit their role in mishandling and misreporting COVID news. And ashamed that they turned Fauci into a "rock star", when he's just another obfuscating, lying, bureaucrat.

  • Wait, they're eating them? I thought they were just for voodoo sacrifice! Well, whatever. Jacob Sullum notes our possible one-heartbeat-away candidate is doing his own Fauci-like dance with fantasy: J.D. Vance Says It Does Not Matter Whether 'Rumors' of Pet-Eating Migrants Are True.

    Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), Donald Trump's running mate, is sticking with the debunked story about Haitian immigrants who supposedly have been eating purloined pets in Springfield, Ohio. That tall tale provoked wide ridicule after Trump repeated it during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last week. Undaunted, Vance told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday that he preferred "the firsthand account of my constituents who are telling me that this happened" to the denials from Springfield officials, who say there is no evidence to substantiate it.

    Whether or not it is true that Haitians are dining on stolen cats and dogs, Vance said, the story has proven important in calling attention to the problems that Springfield is experiencing as a result of a migrant influx. "I've been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months," he told Bash. "The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

    "Gee, nobody was paying attention to what I was saying about migrant problems until I started making wild accusations about kitty-eating Haitians."

    I can understand his argument, although I don't think it's as solid a justification as he thinks it is.

Recently on the movie blog:

What's Up, Doc?

[4 stars] [IMDB Link]

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

I have fond memories of loving this movie back in the 1970s, Peter Bogdonovich's resurrection of the screwball comedy genre. Now, fifty years later, I still laughed, maybe not quite as heartily as before, but still…

Here's the story: Iowa musicologist Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) comes to San Francisco to learn whether he's been awarded a prestigious research grant from the Larrabee Foundation. (He is investigating whether cavemen were able to make crude music by beating on igneous rocks.) He has his domineering fiancée Eunice (Madeline Kahn) along with him. On the scene comes Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand), and she unaccountably falls into love with Howard (literal love at first sight). She successfully inveigles her way into his life, but not without causing much hilarious misunderstanding and impressive amounts of property damage.

A subplot involves four lookalike bags, one containing Howard's research rocks. The others containing top secret documents purloined by a wannabe whistleblower; a fortune in jewelry; and Judy's clothing. And of course they get mixed up. Adding to the hilarity and destruction.

Morbid me, couldn't help but notice that most of the stars here are no longer with us. Still (apparently) alive, however: Barbra, Michael Murphy, Randy Quaid.

I get the feeling the movie is poorly paced near the end, but I still had a good time.