It's Thursday and that means Waypoints, where the site's staff and friends will bring something to share with each other and with you: a TV show, art exhibit, movie, album, or other thing from the universe of pop culture. to discuss, dissect, and enjoy.
Iāll be honest; at least for now, election results are too anxiety-inducing to listen to the discussion of. I skipped ahead to My Man Godfrey.
Really smart commentary on the film; I have to celebrate the wildness that the Bullocks are SO MUCH LIKE Ron Howardās Bluths. I agree with Austin that the film lands more on the āfun 90 minutesā end than the āfirst time I saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondesā end, but itās still one of my preferred screwballs. (Iām never putting myself through Bringing Up Baby again.)
Oh wow, I hadnāt even considered the Bluths comparison but thatās a great one.
I didnāt want to turn this into a hashtag for the internet to burn out on 3 months from now, not that I have any reach anyway, so Iām posting it here. Stacey Abrams is going to be at least 3rd place in the Democratic presidential primary. Sheās qualified and has name recognition. Also, it would be beautiful to watch a black woman beat a piece of trash like Trump. But thatās still a ways away and Iām no expert.
I am still going through and listening to this, but this is a very solid podcast so far. Iāll need to dig into that Gingrich piece.
I have some items Iād recommend for either Klepek or anyone else looking for follow-up reading on conservatism, partially (although not entirely) to potentially examine what Klepek refers to in this discussion about a lack of thought behind, er, āGingrinchismā, I suppose.
Iād recommend any of Rick Perlsteinās historical works (Before the Storm, Nixonland, and The Invisible Bridge). Iāve preached their gospel before, but they are all first-class narrative histories that are imminently readable and a great source of analysis from a leftist historian about U.S. conservatism and the post-Goldwater pivot. I find Perlsteinās pitch on Goldwaterās centrality to the history of modern conservatism to be persuasive, but also, in some ways, a fascinating accompaniment to what it sounds like this piece is talking about ā if Gingrich ābroke politicsā, he was building on a foundation that Goldwater started.
In the books, Perlstein sketches out a transformation of rhetoric from Goldwater, to Nixon, to Reagan (which is charted over the three books ā and I hope a fourth is on the way). While Goldwaterās free-market libertarianism contained elements of racism, which his campaign occasionally embraced with a proto-ālaw-and-orderā (which Nixon would perfect) angle, his animus was not the same as some of the Dixiecrats (like Strom Thurmond) who backed him and (Before the Storm argues) Goldwater, to an extent, limited those angles in his campaign. He was a genuine ideologue and not a winner-takes-all pragmatist ā perhaps the opposite of Gingrich, based on this podcast.
Seriously, canāt recommend these enough ā Iām sure yāall would enjoy them too.
My other recommendation is a (shorter) book Iām currently reading through, Corey Robinsā The Reactionary Mind, which seems like a pop-oriented analysis of conservative thought (as its subhead reads, āFrom Edmund Burke to Donald Trumpā). I am early in it, but I do think thereās value in understanding the development of ideas. Even bleakest nihilism has a continuity and a history to it. This is a softer recommmendation, as I havenāt finished it, but it seemed worth mentioning.
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