Ayn Rand is a cult figure for Tea Party types, but if a bad movie gets them reading, they may be surprised by her ideas If Ayn Rand were alive today, would she be a member of the Tea Party? The controversial writer – whose philosophy, Objectivism , advocates the “virtue of selfishness” – has long been something of a literary hero to American conservatives and the rise of the rightwing populist movement has only worked to increase Rand’s popularity. Tea Party members can’t get enough: references to the writer’s works appear on their protest signs; political favourites such as Rand Paul namedrop her; and they seem staunchly devoted to promoting the first instalment of the three-part film adaptation of her epic tome, Atlas Shrugged , which opened modestly, if not quietly, last weekend in around 300 theatres across the US. The conservative grassroots group Freedomworks took the helm in promoting the film , sharing the online trailer with its mailing list and hyping the movie’s opening day – 15 April, America’s tax day. The low-budget movie with its cast of nobodies received resolutely scathing reviews – it garnered a dismal 7% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes – yet, through conservative support, it still managed to pull in enough revenue to justify expanding the film to more screens. By the end of April, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 could be on as many as 1,000 screens. Despite the buzz, rigorous devotees of Objectivism aren’t likely to appreciate Atlas’s big screen treatment. For the uninitiated, Atlas Shrugged depicts a dystopian US where irrational government officials work with greedy socialist corporate heads to impose draconian regulations and taxes on those who have achieved success through hard work and natural talent. The novel’s heroine is Dagny Taggart, an ambitious railroad executive, who teams up with Henry Rearden, an innovative metal manufacturer, to set out to save the country from being crushed by the collectivist government. Along the way, they partake in rambling diatribes about the glory of achievement and the nobility of pursuing greatness. It’s rousing stuff – the first time, anyway – until it’s belabored again and again throughout the novel. Sound familiar? The sections of the book that made it into Part 1 certainly seem written directly for current conservative interests, namely that a small section of the population must fight against the oppressive restrictions and heavy taxation of a socialist government. Yet, probe beyond the triteness of Rand’s plot and the fragmented rendering of her philosophy, and striking discrepancies between her Objectivism and conservative sentiment become apparent. Yes, Rand was a staunch advocate of capitalism and limited government. She was also a staunch advocate of abortion rights and sexual hedonism, and an atheist to boot, which her conservative admirers have largely ignored. Rand and her characters maintained that morality wasn’t something that could be imposed by outside institutions, rather should be a consequence from individuals acting in their own rational self-interest . Which, obviously, steps way out of line with the thinking of the Tea Party, which encompasses the religious right . As Jennifer Burns, the author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right , has said, today’s conservative pundits have found that they “can use the parts of Rand they want to use and not engage the rest” . Which is where one of the most glaring incongruities between Tea Partiers and Rand’s philosophy appears: Rand, almost above all else, championed the individual over the collective. The notion that a populist movement is using her name and economic philosophies to mobilise their broader political goal is laughable. During her life, Rand was outspoken in her disgust for Republicans, feeling that they were soft on individuals’ rights. Today, it is only Randians who can argue that her philosophy is being inadequately promoted. However, there is a silver lining for Rand purists: while the movie’s publicity has managed to stir up paltry interest among cinema-goers, it has succeeded in awakening a larger interest in the literary work. Rand’s novel has sold around 100,000 copies a year in the US since its publication, and since the financial crisis and the rise of the Tea Party, that number has increased five-fold. The movie’s publicity has only propelled sales yet higher – the opening weekend saw the book version of Atlas Shrugged shoot to the No 4 spot on Amazon’s bestseller list . So, while the Tea Party’s promotion of Rand has made a splash, Objectivists can take comfort knowing that the impact has largely been on book sales. If one has to delve into Randian territory, it’s better to go straight to the master’s words rather than a choice interpretation of them or convenient soundbites. Tea Party movement Republicans US politics United States Philosophy Megan Gibson guardian.co.uk
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Bishop of Oxford urges CoE school heads to allocate no more than 10% of places to practising Anglicans The Church of England plans to encourage its schools to offer more places to non-Christians. The Rt Rev John Pritchard, who is chair of the CoE’s board of education and the bishop of Oxford, said he was urging headteachers to allocate no more than 10% of places to practising Anglicans. At the moment, if a state-funded church school is oversubscribed it can select pupils based on their and their parents’ religious observance. If it is not oversubscribed, it must take those pupils who apply. The change could end the practice of parents attending services purely to secure their child a place at a popular CoE school. Pritchard told the Times Educational Supplement that he wanted CoE schools to be “as open as they can be”. “Every school will have a policy that has a proportion of places for church youngsters … what I am saying is that the number ought to be minimised because our primary function and our privilege is to serve the wider community. Ultimately, I hope we can get the number of reserved places right down to 10%. It goes back to what we see the mission of the church as being. I don’t think the mission generally is about collecting nice Christians into safe places.” About half of the 4,800 CoE schools set their own admissions criteria. The CoE cannot force its schools to change their admissions practices but it will issue guidance this summer designed to encourage them to do so. Professor Anne West, an education expert at the LSE, said the change could have “the biggest impact on admissions to CoE schools in a generation”. Pritchard said offering a greater proportion of places to pupils whose families do not attend church might lead to a drop in CoE schools’ exam results. “We may not get the startling results that some church schools do because we get some very able children, but we will make a difference to people’s lives,” he said. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said Pritchard had become the first high-profile Anglican to admit that church schools achieved “league-topping results by using privileged admissions criteria to select the best pupils”. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of Accord, which campaigns to end religious discrimination in school admissions, said current practices had meant that religion and discrimination in schools had “become almost synonymous”. “Schools should be inclusive and tolerant and no state-funded school should be allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion for any of their teacher posts or any pupil places,” he said. The previous government tried to ensure that a quarter of all places at new faith schools were for pupils of other faiths or no faith, but lobbying from the Catholic church forced ministers to drop the plans. Schools Christianity Secondary schools Anglicanism Religion Primary schools Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …An attorney representing two cops charged with rape yesterday asked if the accuser’s vagina was like a “snapping Venus flytrap” as he questioned a medical expert. “That is a terrible example,” interjected an angry judge in the New York City courtroom. The cop partners are charged with raping an intoxicated…
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Medical workers targeted because they have evidence of security force atrocities, claims US-based human rights group Bahraini authorities have conducted a systematic campaign of attacks and arrests against medical workers who treated injured protesters during months of unrest in the Gulf kingdom, according to a US-based medical group. Physicians for Human Rights claims doctors and nurses have been targeted because they have “evidence of atrocities committed by the authorities, security forces and riot police” in the crackdown on Shia dissent in the Sunni-ruled island nation, which has been placed under martial law. The report by the group is the second to accuse Bahrain’s authorities of abuses in the medical system. Earlier this month, the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders called Bahrain’s hospitals “places to be feared” and claimed officials were arresting protesters who sought treatment. The military took over the main Salmaniya medical centre in Manama last month, and doctors and patients said soldiers and police had conducted interrogations and detentions inside the complex. Physicians for Human Rights said at least 32 healthcare professionals had been detained since Bahrain declared martial law last month to quell anti-government demonstrations by the country’s Shia majority demanding greater freedoms and equal rights. The report details attacks on physicians, medical staff and patients “with weapons, beatings and teargas”. “These attacks violate the principle of medical neutrality and are grave breaches of international law,” it says, adding that “high-velocity weapons and shotguns” have been used to fire birdshot, rubber bullets and teargas at unarmed civilians. About 1,500 troops from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are in Bahrain to help the ruling monarchy. Sunni leaders around the Gulf fear gains by Bahrain’s Shias could open the way for greater influence by Shi’ite powerhouse Iran in the strategic nation, which is home to the US navy’s 5th Fleet. At least 30 people have died and hundreds of demonstrators, opposition leaders, activists and Shia professionals such as doctors and lawyers have been detained since anti-government protests started 14 February. Bahrain Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Holy witchcraft! Did Emma Watson ditch Brown because she was sick of teasing by Ivy Leaguers smitten with their own relentlessly sophomoric Harry Potter humor? Chums say Watson dropped school because she couldn’t take one more “3 Points for Gryffindor” joke every time she answered a question correctly in class….
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Live bullets and teargas used against people in Damascus and several other cities during rallies after Friday prayers At least 20 people are reported to have been killed after Syrian security forces shot at protesters during a day of demonstrations around the country against the autocratic rule of President Bashar al-Assad. The violent official response to what activists massing against the regime had labelled “Great Friday” also saw security forces use tear gas to disperse protesters in Damascus. It came just a day after Assad signed a decree on lifting a state of emergency law, in force continuously for 48 years. Separately, the first person who submitted an application to hold a protest under the new legal regime, named as Fadel al-Faisal from Hassakeh, was detained by police for several hours after doing so. According to witnesses, who say the eventual death toll could be much higher, security forces opened fire on a series of demonstrations, including one in the city of Hama, where Assad’s father crushed an armed Islamist uprising nearly 30 years ago. “We saw two snipers on the building. None of us had weapons. There are casualties, possibly two dead,” an unnamed witness told Reuters from Hama. Elsewhere, troops shot at demonstrators in the Damascus districts of Barzeh and Douma, in Moudamiya, a town in the rural area around the capital, in the central city of Homs and on protesters heading for the city of Deraa, witnesses said. More than 220 protesters have been killed since unrest broke out on 18 March in southern Syria, rights groups say, including 21 protesters killed this week in Homs. The demonstrations were seemingly more widespread than ever before. In some areas statues and posters of Assad and his father and former president, Hafez, were torn down, and there were chants against Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s younger brother who commands the elite 4th division, regarded by most Syrians as a private militia and believed to be behind some of the shooting. In the first joint statement since the protests broke out, a group of “local co-ordination committees” across Syria set out demands including the abolition of Ba’ath party monopoly on power and the establishment of a democratic political system. It ended: “We will continue to demonstrate, whatever the sacrifices.” Security forces were heavily deployed ahead of Friday prayers, which have regularly proved a focal point for protests, with police setting up checkpoints across Damascus, apparently trying to prevent protests sweeping in from suburbs. After prayers finished in Deraa, several thousand protesters gathered chanting anti-Assad slogans. “The Syrian people will not be subjugated. Go away doctor (Assad). We will trample on you and your slaughterous regime”, they shouted. Syria Middle East Protest Katherine Marsh Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The whip is on the way out at Britain’s Towcester racecourse. Bosses at the course, one of the country’s toughest, will require riders to stick to the “head and heels” system, in which the whip can only be used for steering. “It is the Towcester board’s view that the public…
Continue reading …A bomb hidden under a table at a gambling den in Pakistan’s largest city killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more yesterday. The Karachi gambling club was run by criminals and officials suspect the bomb was planted not by Islamic extremists, but by a rival gang, Reuters reports….
Continue reading …Los Angeles gangster Anthony Garcia would have gotten away with a 2004 murder outside a liquor store if it wasn’t for one slip-up: He tattooed a detailed mural of the crime scene across his chest. By chance, a detective who worked on the case saw the tattoo when flipping through…
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Accusations against Greg Mortenson highlight how many authors in the genre take a relaxed approach to accuracy The carcass of Greg Mortenson’s memoir Three Cups of Tea is being picked over in public as the Pakistani tribesmen he claims kidnapped him prepare to sue him and his publisher, Viking, “carefully review[s] the materials with the author”. But Mortenson is far from the first memoirist to fall from grace. From Surviving with Wolves by Misha Defonseca, who admitted in 2008 that her bestselling tale of living with a pack of wolves as she fled the Nazis was nothing more than a tale, to James Frey, who confessed under fire that his hit memoir, A Million Little Pieces, contained embellishments, readers these days would be forgiven for beginning to question the veracity of every memoir they read. “We don’t fact-check with memoirs, unless there are elements which could be libellous or damaging to other people,” admits Roland Philipps, managing director of John Murray, which publishes Frey. “A memoir is a different beast to an autobiography, which is a factual account, but a memoir is a literary form, in which some parts will be played up or down because it’s much more internal, how it felt to the author.” But a publisher has to be able, he says, “to trust the author to have a central truth”. Literary agent Luigi Bonomi of LBA agrees. “Apart from some basic fact checking, publishers absolutely have to rely on authors telling the truth – particularly if it’s a personal narrative, the veracity of which is only known to the author.” “There is a publishing assumption that authors warrant they have not plagiarised nor made facts up that are purporting to be facts,” says his fellow agent Jonny Geller, who will work to verify stories himself before he sells them as much as possible. “However, we expect fact verifications to be done by the publishers. In reality, this is rarely done. Publishers are willing to spend time and money on libel readings, but I have never had an editor question the premise or individual fact on a non-fiction book.” Author Andrew Crofts, who has ghost-written a host of memoirs, believes it’s better this way. “It is my experience that British publishers don’t tend to check facts in these sorts of emotion-based stories unless (a) there is something that doesn’t ring true, or (b) there is a danger of libel,” says Crofts. “I am very happy with (a). I tend to like books to be a matter of intuition, colour, emotional power and strong passions. I’m not a great fan of too many ‘facts’ in a narrative.” But with an increasing number of memoirs being discredited – as well as Frey and Defonseca, recent years have seen Kathy O’Beirne exposed for making up parts of her misery memoir, Don’t Ever Tell; Herman Rosenblat found to have lied about his romantic experiences during the Holocaust in Angel at the Fence: the True Story of a Love That Survived; and Margaret B Jones inventing a poverty-stricken, drug-ridden childhood in her memoir In Love and Consequences – isn’t there a danger the public is going to stop believing in the genre as a whole? Not necessarily: bad news, when it comes to books, can often be good news. Sales of A Million Little Pieces jumped from around 400-500 to around 1,500 copies a week in the UK in the first few months of 2006 when it was revealed that sections were made up, says the Bookseller’s charts editor, Philip Stone, while in January 2007, following the Celebrity Big Brother racism row, sales of the late Jade Goody’s memoir jumped 71% week on week. “In 2006, overall sales of memoirs were up 12% on 2005, so I don’t think that sales of memoirs in general were affected by the fact it was revealed Frey (and perhaps others) embellished, mis-recollected, or all-out lied about certain events,” says Stone. It’s all a question of degree, believes Philipps. “People respond to James Frey saying ‘I don’t care which bits you exaggerated or made up, it’s still a beautiful book’ – they’re responding to it as a piece of literature. “In the case of Three Cups of Tea, they are responding more to his external experiences and [the current situation] is potentially damaging for certain books [of that type] – the memoirs of people in extreme situations in extreme places.” Stone agrees. “I fully believe that sales of Three Cups of Tea will immediately have gone up following the column inches it has been getting, but [if the rumours are proven to be true] there may well be some much longer-term sales damage to the sort of humanitarian memoir genre in which Three Cups of Tea sits,” he says. “The UK public are very sceptical, and some book buyers may well think twice in the future before buying a similar title – especially Three Cups of Tea readers (of which there are many – about 3.5 million in the US, and 130,000 in the UK) who may feel they’ve been let down.” Publishing Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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