Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Not all heroes wear capes.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The words do not have to be perfect.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

You are here: Home / Politics / Glibertarianism / Late Night Open Thread: Anthemic

Late Night Open Thread: Anthemic

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Described by a reviewer for Out magazine:

The sparkling and hilarious musical The Anthem—with a book by Gary Morgenstein, music by Jonnie Rockwell, and lyrics by Erik Ransom—opened Off-Broadway at the Culture Project’s Lynn Redgrave theater last weekend. Naturally, a musical is the best way to tackle Ayn Rand’s ponderous, poorly written, politically confused novel. With its 7-foot-tall leatherman executioner singing sweet, sexy music for the coitus chamber (in-between plying his trade with a disco ball of death), Rand at the very least provided the absurd premise for an absurd work…

As R.A. Lafferty once said: Tongue so severely in cheek as to protrude from the vulgar bodily orifice.

Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    mdblanche

    Charles Manson may not have gotten parole, but it looks like Bialystok and Bloom did.

  2. 2.

    jl

    The reviews say the songs are really good. So, if they don’t want to totally campsnark it out at a future revival, they can just change the book.

  3. 3.

    jl

    Another item for the list of flip flopping slimeballs.

    GOP Rep. Who Defended Bergdahl Now Calls Him Deserter

    Tom Kludt TPM June 5, 2014

    Back in 2009, not long after Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was taken prisoner in Afghanistan, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA) signed onto a letter along with 22 other members of Congress to denounce a Fox News analyst who described the soldier as a deserter.

    But this week, after President Obama negotiated an exchange to get Bergdahl back, Hunter found himself on Fox News making the same accusations he once found so detestable.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/duncan-hunter-bowe-bergdahl-deserter-letter-fox-news

  5. 5.

    KG

    Even when I was in the depths of the conservative movement, going to federalist society events, I had never heard of Ayn Rand. I’m still slightly convinced that she was a Chevy Chase character on SNL

  6. 6.

    piratedan

    @jl: just a further illustration that Cleek’s Law is in full effect. The R’s (and to a certain degree our failed fourth estate) can’t seem to find their way to give the man credit for his successes, even if it means decrying and denying nearly 250 years of American military tradition. If Obama cured the common cold, the front page story would be how certain pharmaceutical companies were now on the brink of bankruptcy thanks to the latest government intervention.

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jl: If Duncan “Lemon Chicken” Hunter looks in the mirror, he’ll see a detestable person.

  10. 10.

    Heywood J.

    Compared to Rand’s more popular doorstops such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Smugged, at least Anthem is blessedly short. Rush did the original musical to it anyway, with side one of the 2112 album.

  12. 12.

    PurpleGirl

    Waiting for President Obama to speak at ceremonies at the American Cemetery (9,837 buried there) at Coilville-Sur-Mer for the 70th Anniversary of D-Day. Watching it on BBC World News. Still hearing some background chatter from presenters but at least they aren’t American “news” readers.

  17. 17.

    Chyron HR

    We marveled after those who sought/
    The blunders in the world they wrought.

  20. 20.

    PurpleGirl

    President Obama gave a wonderful speech. The man is so articulate — there was one almost stumble but he recovered within the same word — that it makes you proud to hear him speak.

  21. 21.

    J R in WV

    Wow!

    It just feels so good to have a president we can respect for his abilities and accomplishments!

  22. 22.

    Sherparick

    First, I must admire our brothers on the right complete ability to forget anything they have written our said when the Party sends out a twit, text, e-mail, and fax that a new position has been adopted 180 reverse of the old. They have adopted “1984” as an instruction manual.

    “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”

    “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'”

    “Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”

    Unfortunately there old quotes and videos remain on the record. But they have accomplished a trick with themselves, their followers, and the MSM to pretend that it does not exist, as strong as if the Party was able to scrape clean the record of their past statements. In the end, grifters got to grift.

    Speaking of grifters, and the way grifters are often taken by other con men, this story from Phoenix is laugh out loud funny except for the innocent people whose lives this abusive old sociopathic monster is trying to ruin. http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2014/06/joe-arpaio-investigating-judge-murray-snow-doj.php?page=3

  25. 25.

    Walker

    This was already made into a rock album in 1976. It is not like a musical is that much more a stretch.

  26. 26.

    cintibud

    @piratedan:

    just a further illustration that Cleek’s Law is in full effect. The R’s (and to a certain degree our failed fourth estate) can’t seem to find their way to give the man credit for his successes, even if it means decrying and denying nearly 250 years of American military tradition. If Obama cured the common cold, the front page story would be how certain pharmaceutical companies were now on the brink of bankruptcy thanks to the latest government intervention.

    I couldn’t help but think of the headline: “Obama’s “cure” give big headache to thousands as Big Pharma anticipates huge layoffs”

  32. 32.

    GxB

    @Fair Economist: My take is it’s parody. Sort of like Springtime for Hitler but spoofing another kind of Nazi altogether. Had to read Anthem in HS (along with Animal Farm) the teacher was an old-school, anti-commie and it was the the waning days of the cold war.)

    As I recall, in addition to being short, it wasn’t a totally horrible story or premise – though that was so long ago and I’m sure I’d chuckle at my naiveté if I were to read it again.

  33. 33.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Fair Economist: You have to do something with the copyright every so many years to keep it from going into the public domain. That’s why there are sucky Conan the Barbarian moves every 30 years.

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    That’s why there are sucky Conan the Barbarian moves every 30 years.

    Actually, no, that has to do with the movie rights. The Howard estate still has the copyright on the books, but if the current owners of the movie rights don’t make a film, the rights will revert back to the estate and then the estate can sell them off to someone else.

    According to Wikipedia, Anthem is in the public domain because someone forgot to renew the copyright in 1966 (that was in the days before automatic copyright renewal and you had to manually renew your copyrights every 28 years).

  35. 35.

    Epicurus

    @Sherparick: QFT. Orwell has been proven prophetic time and time again. The modern GOP motto: “War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery.” Soon to be inscribed on the marble walls of MiniTrue. Always remember, 2+2=5.

  37. 37.

    grumpy realist

    @Mnemosyne: Erm. no, we don’t have automatic copyright renewal. We’ve hashed it up even more, so now that it’s N years from the date that the author DIED.

    If we could only go back to the 28 years….(whimper.)

  38. 38.

    Thursday

    I love the comments on there from Terribly Concerned libertarians: “How dare you call Anthem ‘ponderous’! It’s barely 100 pages (if you read my special, large print edition)!”

    An Ayn Rand postage stamp would be ponderous. It would shame any envelope that had actual writing inside.

  39. 39.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @grumpy realist: @Mnemosyne: I love the reviews

    Reviews

    Reviewing the 1953 American edition for a genre audience, Boucher and McComas were unsympathetic. Noting that “Rand implies that a sinister conspiracy of purveyors of brotherhood has prevented its American publication until now,” they ironically concluded “One can only regret that the conspiracy finally broke down.”[12]

    Indeed

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