Notes From D. R.

Weekend Box Office: A Night To Remember

Prom Night takes the top box-office slot.

The Omega Man

Charlton Heston is laid to rest.

Cashing Out

George Will on economic anxiety.

Typical White People

Another controversy for Barack Obama. More from Power Line, the Washington Post, Blogs for John McCain's Victory, the New York Times and the Washington Times.

UPDATE: More from Power Line and the Washington Post.

Carr Insurance

You don’t have to like Howie Carr to acknowledge that he is a legend.

The veteran Boston Herald columnist and WRKO-AM talk show host has dominated Boston’s political and media culture for close to three decades. After years of being dismissed by those who preferred his Boston Globe counterpart, Mike Barnicle, Carr silenced his remaining critics with his acclaimed 2006 New York Times bestseller The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter-Century, a stirring account of the controversies involving organized crime titan James “Whitey” Bulger and his brother, longtime Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger.

Carr loathes most of the Bay State’s politicians, and they loathe him right back. In print and on the air, he has chastised the unethical personal and political behavior of Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, and virtually every post-Edward King governor.  He has branded members of the Massachusetts political class with nicknames that never seem to fade from the public mind, and in a notorious incident, he essentially forced a Boston city councilor from office in 1993 by constantly playing tapes of the councilor’s drunken 911 calls on his radio show.

Callers to Carr’s show have often poked fun at some of his apparent contradictions: the supposed voice of the working man who attended Deerfield Academy, the harsh critic of liberal suburbia who nevertheless lives in one of the state’s most exclusive (and most politically correct) towns. The apparent contradictions are laughed off, with the humor and sarcasm that has made Carr a household name.

I’m a fan of Carr’s, and I’m clearly influenced by him, but I have to concede that he is not flawless. Most of Carr’s political punches connect, but when they miss, they miss by a country mile. Carr embarrassed himself thirteen years ago when he used repugnant terminology to describe the supposedly Arabic mastermind of the attack on the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City; the outcry over Carr’s terminology almost forced him off the airwaves for good. Carr’s criticisms of the gay rights movement often stray into Michael Savage territory, a territory that he would be wiser to avoid.

Yet Carr is, on the whole, an asset to Massachusetts, a media figure who can always be relied upon to point out the illogical itinerary of the Bay State’s political travels. Carr is loathed by the Bay State political establishment because, at bottom, he does not accept the premise that Bay State politicians are looking out for the people’s best interest. Carr’s premise is that most Massachusetts politicians regard the average Bay Stater as an unintelligent mark who can be exploited with impunity—and he has spent years proving his thesis correct.

Carr can be cruel, yes, but there is a certain beauty in his cruelty; his fans recognize that were it not for him, most of the sleaze and subterfuge of Massachusetts politics would go without condemnation. Carr is, for so many Bay Staters, a resource, a conduit of common sense in a Commonwealth with so much claptrap.

Those who still dislike Carr will never understand why his fans love him so much. Such is the nature of ideological segregation in Massachusetts. Progressives and conservatives each live in their own world, never speaking to each other, only condemning representatives of the other political side; this is the way things go in the Bay State, and frankly, most people like it this way. Carr has been attacked by the same forces that have demonized Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby and any other media figure who views the world through non-liberal glasses; for many on the left in this state, it’s easier to hate Carr than to understand the actual reasons for his appeal.

Carr speaks to those who disagree with the Kennedy-Kerry vision of the world; he is the voice of those who believe that Massachusetts would be much healthier—politically, economically, culturally—if the state’s favorite color gradually changed from blue to red. Carr’s enemies have denounced him as little more than a Rush Limbaugh clone; their scorn of Carr reveals their lack of interest in discovering why he has become such an important figure in this state.

Carr has left an indelible mark on Massachusetts; years from now, readers and listeners will remember his cynical view of the state’s political culture, his feuds with various Beacon Hill “hacks,” his savagely sarcastic spirit. Carr was not expected to become a legendary figure in Boston—but his legacy is one of exceeding expectations.

Staying The Course

William Kristol on President Bush and the Iraq War.

War Child

Michael Gerson on Barack and Iraq.

No Sale

I have to agree with Thomas Sowell: most Republicans have no idea how to appeal to black voters.

Ladies First?

Hollywood plans more "chick flicks." (Better those than more Iraq War movies!)

End Of Days

Lanny Davis on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.

Fight On

Ericka Andersen on yesterday's Iraq hearings.

UPDATE: More from Margaret Hoover, Michelle Oddis and the Wall Street Journal.

Elephant's Memory

Michael Steele on the future of the Republican Party.

All Good

This November marks the fifth anniversary of one of the most controversial rulings in Massachusetts history: Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health, the Supreme Judicial Court ruling which held that the state Constitution permitted same-sex couples to have marital rights equal to those of heterosexual couples.

The ruling set off months of acrimony, and made Massachusetts the Baghdad of the American culture war. The controversy over same-sex marriage has largely settled down, but those who were fiercely opposed to the ruling are still chagrined by the initial decision.

I opposed the Goodridge ruling not because I felt society would crumble into ashes if same-sex couples were granted marriage rights, but because I felt the court had overstepped its bounds. I had no quarrel with previous rulings on gay and lesbian rights, such as the 1999 Baker v. Vermont ruling and the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case. However, I regarded Goodridge as the new Roe v. Wade—a judicial overreach that would needlessly divide the country and raise partisanship to intolerable levels.

Five years later, it’s not clear that Goodridge has had a Roe-like effect. To be sure, the ruling played a role in John Kerry’s loss of the 2004 election to President Bush, but it appears as though the national anger over the ruling has gradually ebbed since then.

Why has same-sex marriage subsided as a major cultural issue in America? Perhaps people are less worked up now about same-sex marriage because of the fallout from another culture-war flashpoint—the 2005 Terri Schiavo drama. America gave a collective thumbs-down to the social conservatives who sought to preserve Schiavo’s life, and it can be argued that many of the folks who objected to the social right’s actions in the Schiavo matter decided to reject the cultural-conservative vision on other matters—like the definition of marriage.

Older Americans are still generally uneasy about same-sex marriage, but for Americans under the age of 35, the issue is largely settled; there is little opposition to “marriage equality” in this age bracket. It’s difficult to envision these Americans—who have spent their entire lives in a social atmosphere marked by a libertarian view of same-sex relationships—suddenly, or even gradually, altering their views on same-sex marriage. Thus, within 25 to 30 years, it’s quite likely that a majority of Americans will be in favor of “marriage equality.”

Despite my opposition to the Goodridge ruling, it’s hard to see how the social tide can be turned back. The gay rights movement is to under-35 Americans what the civil rights movement was to baby boomers—a chance to fix historical wrongs. Matthew Shepard’s death galvanized these young Americans, just as Emmett Till’s murder shocked the conscience of those who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s. For those under the age of 35, Goodridge is as profound—and as positive—as Brown v. Board of Education was for an earlier generation.

In a perfect world, Goodridge would not have been a court ruling but a legislative decision—one as earth-shaking as the legislative decisions that gave birth to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We don’t live in a perfect world, but there’s no way around the fact that for many Americans, the ruling was a way to make society a little less imperfect.

Has the sky fallen as a result of the ruling? No, but that should not have been the argument in the first place. Opposition to Goodridge should have always been predicated on legal, not social, grounds.  In a “progressive” state such as Massachusetts, the social arguments against same-sex marriage were going to fall on deaf ears: those who claimed that the traditional family would be imperiled by the ruling should have known that their assertions would be dismissed as paranoid proclamations. One ought not to sell things that others will not buy.

Am I still bothered by Goodridge? As a supporter of judicial restraint, I don’t think I can ever fully endorse the court’s decision. However, I must concede that the spirit of the ruling is in accord with the previous rulings I supported. The four judges who ruled that the state’s Constitution granted same-sex couples the freedom to marry did so out of a sincere desire to render null and void anything that smacked of second-class citizenship in the Commonwealth. One can disagree with the Court's decision—but how can one attack the Court's aims?

Sound Check

There are times when I love the Boston Herald, and there are times when I really, really hate the paper. The Herald's attempt to tear down Boston talk radio host Reese Hopkins is one of the latter times. I sincerely doubt WRKO-AM would have hired him without checking his background. Yes, WRKO did hire Tom Finneran, who has a perjury conviction, but let's just say Finneran and Hopkins play under vastly different social rules.

In just a few short months on the air, Hopkins has shown himself to be a voice of wisdom, humor and reason. I can't find the words to describe this strange effort to silence this voice; this effort is as nonsensical as the Herald's effort to smear Boston political reporter Jon Keller as a plagiarist last year.

Hopkins' radio career is enjoying a growth spurt. This is an attempt to strangle him in his crib.

Inherit The Wind

Dinesh D'Souza on intelligent design.

Heartbreak Hotel

Another setback for the Clinton campaign.

Stay The Course

John McCain on the Iraq War.

UPDATE: More from William Kristol and the Wall Street Journal.