What separates Ralph and his friends from your run-of-the-mill juvenile thieves, you ask? When the prostitutes balked because he and his friends seemed so young, they told the women they were “people of restricted growth” and that refusing them would be illegal discrimination against the disabled!

I am in awe.

I’d been encouraged to read this book back in 2006, while staying at a friend’s house. I started the book, but didn’t really care for it. Since then I’d heard positive things about Blue Like Jazz, and it was a valued friend who recommended it, so I gave it a second try.

Here’s what I learned: It’s often the case that the last thing you’ll find at church is God. “Religion” is a turn-off and a drag.

That might sound strange, coming from a Christian. But the author, Donald Miller, is strange, in a normal kind of way. His writing is not an impersonal, instruction manual. It’s a highly personal testimony. And just like jazz, it’s improvisational.

I spend most of my time reading non-fiction books, trying to learn new things — to connect dots, build heuristics, and discover ideas I can use. At first, this book felt like an indulgent, time-wasting diversion. As it turns out, I just needed to keep going because I was getting to know the author in a highly personal way. As I read, I found myself relating to him. In a word, this book was “real.”

Christianity, in the eyes of most people reading this blog post, is a systematized, corporatized, and ghettoized institution, run by a group of people who want to profit from it. Blekx!

There’s a big difference between spirituality that permeates your life, providing a sense of direction and meaning, and institutions, that are committed to preservation, profit, and power. And it’s “post-modern” Christians who are waking up to this distinction.

Since reading Blue Like Jazz, in a completely separate set of events, I had what you might call an “ironic religious experience” — or at least a series of “A ha! moments.” I too discovered that, “Organized Religion is the problem,” or… “Religion tends to corrupt, and Organized Religions corrupt absolutely.”

I believe Miller outlines part of the remedy for Organized Religion in some wonderful passages I’ll quote in a future blog post (stay tuned).

But to sum up, I discovered that I want my faith to be more like Jazz music. That means practiced in small, improvisational settings, content to explore, enjoying the feelings evoked, and satisfied that not everything gets resolved.

That’s not how I’ve lived my life over the last decade or so. I’ve wanted an explanation for everything! I wanted to be sure I was right. But the pursuit of knowledge, usually exhilarating, can also be exhausting — never quite satisfied. And systematizing everything sucks some of the life or beauty out of that which is special to you. Go to college to turn your favorite hobby into a career, and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, after trying it a second time, I would now recommend Blue Like Jazz.

Hardball delenda est.

Francis Fukuyama said something along the lines of we are all “liberal democrats” now. Meaning Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, almost all third parties (except those who want communism or theocracy) are “liberal democrats” (again, small l, small d), even Pat Robertson is a liberal democrat!

That said, the word “democracy” breaks down further. You could think of “democracy” as a genus with different species. One species of “democracy” is republicanism. Another species is direct democracy. The Framers of America’s Constitution had strong distaste for the kind of “direct democracy” which they, correctly in my opinion, associated with mob rule. A majoritarian mob could vote away the rights (or the property!) of the minority. As such, America’s Founders put many republican checks on majoritarianism and tended to call such a system “republicanism.” That’s the kernel of truth in the otherwise mindless mantra, the United States is a republic, not a democracy.

These republican checks include such things as 1) separation of powers, 2) elected representatives as opposed to the people themselves writing statutes, 3) sometimes having elite electors instead of the people themselves putting politicians into power (think of the Electoral College or “super delegates”), 4) limited enumerated powers of government, 5) judicial review, and 6) the notion of inalienable rights itself which means individual rights that majorities cannot abridge. This list is not exhaustive just illustrative.

One modern example of “direct democracy” or “mobocracy” which America’s Founders would have hated (this is what they railed against, when they criticized “democracy” and lauded “republicanism”) are BALLOT MEASURES, like those they have in California. Prop. 22 which tried to ban gay marriage is especially anti-republican because not only is it mobocracy, but it’s the case of the majoritarian mob taking away rights from individuals or minority groups.

But it gets even worse for the anti-gay marriage forces. All of California’s republican institutions seem to be in line with gay marriage. The legislature twice voted in gay marriage. This puts to rest the notion that the CA Sup. Court in the recent pro-gay marriage decision usurped the “role of the legislature.” No, they were just enacting the legislature’s will. That’s two branches of California’s republican government that support gay marriage. The Executive branch seems somewhat on the fence, but is arguably pro-gay marriage. The governor is certainly pro-gay rights. He vetoed the legislature’s gay marriage bill ONLY because it conflicted with Prop. 22. And now that CA’s top court has ruled their state constitution demands permitting same-sex marriage, the governor said he does NOT support amending said constitution via ballot referendum to overturn this decision. So arguably, all three branches of republican government support gay marriage in California. Everyone is in line except the mobocracy, which in 2000 voted 61.4 percent to 38.6 percent to ban gay marriage. And they’ve got a mechanism of “direct democracy” — the ballot referendum — which may permit them to overrule the court’s recent decision. That’s democracy trumping republicanism exactly as America’s Founders would not have had it.

Remember folks we are a “republic” not a “democracy.” And in California it means they ought to recognize gay marriage regardless of what the mobocracy thinks.

Along the way there was also this comment, which strikes me as one of the stronger arguments against same-sex marriage:

It is wrong to equilibrate a generative relationship that provides children both a mother and a father with a NON generative (by design) relationship that provides a mother and guardian or a father and a guardian.

Children are the only reason for marriage, thus gays should not have access to the institution. I thought I’d repost this in reply, since it says everything I think needs to be said about all of these arguments: Marriage is unique to adult human beings, and cannot apply to animals. It is ideally a partnership of two. It is not, however, contingent on the possibility of children. And yes, the government does have a role to play. Here’s why…

Regarding Maggie Gallagher’s recent stint at the Volokh Conspiracy, Cathy Young writes,

[Gallagher] is arguing that the reason the sexual union of male and female is and has always been surrounded by special legal protections, and has been accorded a special status, is that such unions are known to result in children. Take away procreation as a crucial element of marriage, and the rationale for special government sanction for marriage vanishes… it becomes just another private relationship in which society has no special interest. The end result, Gallagher predicts, will be “the de-institutionalization of marriage altogether.” And like it or not, she has a point. Unless children are an issue, why should the government take an interest in whether we settle down with a steady partner in a sexual relationship?

…One more point to ponder: If the primary purpose of marriage is the romantic happiness and satisfaction of adults, then staying together for the sake of the children even if romantic passion and intimacy have gone out of the marriage — an ideal many people who are neither reactionary nor bigoted would like to reclaim — becomes a far less tenable proposition.

Either marriage is for children — or it’s for our selfish romantic desires. One of these two points at government benefits, and that’s what it’s all about.

Now, the argument goes, while society may well need children, and while this may justify government involvement, the government has no business recognizing our romantic desires alone. Therefore children must be the only real reason for a government to recognize marriage. Gay couples might love each other passionately or even romantically, but that’s simply not enough to secure the benefits they want. […]

The trouble is that “children or romance” is a false dichotomy. Worse, it contains the not-so-hidden premise that government confers legitimacy on marriages. I disagree with all of this.

In reality, marriage is about nurturing, and nurturing alone confers legitimacy. Government accommodates either some, or all, or none of these nurturing relationships, but even non-accommodated relationships may still be nurturing and therefore legitimate marriages.

I want to devote the rest of this post not to any stirring defense of same-sex marriage but merely to a definition of marriage that everyone seems to be ignoring. And why are they ignoring it? Because the language of rights — or romance or babies — is easier to speak. Nurturing is harder to talk about.

It’s harder to talk about, but this, in one word, is the true purpose of marriage. Nurturing is the one essential thing that all good marriages have in common, be they gay or straight, fertile or infertile, octogenarian or twentysomething. Nurturing is the reason for marriage and the goal toward which marriage should lead us.

Marriage is not, as Young and Waring imply, merely about choosing a steady sexual partner. On the contrary, it is a reciprocal agreement with another individual (and often with God), to look after the total well-being of that person and of any children that might come into your mutual care.

This total well-being encompasses all aspects of life, including not just the sexual, but also the spiritual, social, economic, psychological, and physiological best interests of the partner. Ideally, it lasts from the time the marriage is solemnized until the death of one of the partners.

It cheapens the covenant to say that marriage is just about sex, or just about rights, or just about children. Marriage is about all of this — and more. Marriage is a complete, all-encompassing, nurturing relationship. It’s about care for the whole person, so much so that no one else in all the world is quite as important.

(In the argument I offer below, I will use “nurturing” to refer only to these sorts of relationships, even while, for example, siblings may nurture one another in the far more casual sense of the word. These are emphatically not the sort of relationships that I mean — although I do concede that the understanding of marriage offered here can’t really rule out a brother-sister coupling without invoking the outside help of genetics.)

To my mind, the nurturing model explains better than any other the hopes and expectations that modern Americans bring to the institution of marriage. We respect marriage because we admire –and crave — the kind of love that comes from an exclusive, lifelong nurturing bond.

Sure, we may talk about rights or babies, but neither of them would make very much sense if we did not expect marriage to be a supportive and enduring environment for personal growth. We want the rights so that we may grow and develop in the ways that we see fit; we attach babies to marriage because we take it for granted that babies need this kind of nurturing most of all. And romance? It’s what draws us, when we are young, toward a life of steady devotion. It’s the genius of modern marriage to have taken youthful, impulsive romance and turned it toward this purpose. In the old days, money and family did the job instead, much as we hate to recall it.

I also suspect that many find the arguments tying marriage to children persuasive because we so much want our own children to have a nurturing bond as a foundation for their own growth, one that will serve as both a safeguard and an example for later years. Indeed, most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.

But the great benefits that children get from marriage do not exhaust or interfere with the good effects that adults may also derive from it. After all, who really wants to grow old alone? It is perhaps the bleakest question in all the modern world. Marriage answers it with the promise that no matter how ill or how deformed we may become in old age, someone will stand beside us until the end; someone will follow us into the unknown.

Next to this, the thrill of having a new sex partner is negligible.

The nurturing model of marriage comports well not only with our common hopes for the institution, but also with Judeo-Christian ideas about love and charity. In the modern era, Judeo-Christian religions have seldom placed any great stigma on the infertile or associated greater virtue with greater offspring. The very best of the Christian message, at least as this infidel understands it, is that we are to love one another as we love ourselves. An all-encompassing, all-nurturing marriage is a mirror of the relationship between God and man, just as all true forms of love reflect their source, which is God.

This model likewise explains why adultery is always a serious problem but not always the end of a marriage. Adultery strongly suggests that deeper problems are at work in a relationship. After all, one of the nurturing partners has a) gone elsewhere for an aspect of nurturing b) potentially exposed the other partner to disease and c) very likely lied about it. All of these are serious problems in themselves and may indicate that others are at work below the surface.

None of this, however, means that the relationship must be abandoned. By contrast, if marriage were solely about sexual fidelity (or romantic passion), it would be reasonable to end immediately all unfaithful marriages, no questions asked. That overcoming adultery in a marriage is commonly thought a loving and redeeming act shows that sex is not the be-all and end-all of the institution.

Many, I suspect, find that homosexuals simply aren’t capable of the lifelong nurturing that marriage demands, or perhaps even that this nurturing has something intrinsically heterosexual about it: To care for a man requires a woman, and vice versa. Yet even while this may be true for a great many people, it does not necessarily follow that it is true for all, nor does it follow that the exceptional cases somehow injure or degrade the ordinary ones.

I would even venture to say, although I am on more speculative ground here, that nurturing also answers Young’s provocative question above: Unless children are an issue, why should the government take an interest in whether we settle down with a steady partner in a sexual relationship?

I concede — happily — that the government has no interest whatsoever in regulating consenting adult sexual relationships.

Government has every interest, however, in watching over individuals as they nurture one another. This is because while sex and nurturing are both natural rights that we all possess as human beings, it is far more difficult to safeguard the right to nurturing.

(A conservative might say that the government has a positive interest in encouraging our nurturing partnerships; as a libertarian, I am content to argue more modestly that the government, as a servant of the people, has a duty to respect the essentially private nurturing agreements that we make with one another — agreements that, in all cultures and religions, are termed “marriage” or an equivalent.)

In the decisions that nurturers make for each other, fraud and abuse may lurk at every important juncture. Trust is essential: Nurturers must often act decisively at the very moments when their partners are most vulnerable and least able to act on their own. A situation like this cries out for an explicit, durable, and binding contract, made in advance. Without it, fraud would run rampant. The contract, though, and the benefits that it offers, are not the basis of marriage; these exist only for the sake of the nurturing relationship.

Protecting the right to nurture requires more than merely looking the other way. The nurtured are vulnerable, and nurturers do things for them that non-nurturers must never be trusted to do. Our natural right to designate (or act as) a nurturer therefore leads directly to a contractual right wherein the government distinguishes between nurturers (who may make decisions for us) and non-nurturers (who must not be allowed to pose as something that they are not).

(Contrast this to sexual rights, which are by definition extended only to adults who can meaningfully consent, and you will see that there really is no conflict between a hands-off policy for sex and a formal codification for marriage.)

To respect the desire of two individuals who wish to nurture one another, a government must make certain that its laws do not interfere with the types of behavior that a reasonable person might want a nurturing caregiver to perform:

–The government has an obligation to respect our determinations about who should make medical, legal, and financial choices for us when we are incapacitated; about how we wish to dispose of our property on death; and about our decision to share childrearing responsibilities.

–The government ought not to compel the separation of nurturing partners merely because one is a foreign national; the citizen in the relationship must be expected to help the alien adapt to our culture.

–The government ought not to expect testimony from one nurturing partner against another; having developed (or at least promised) the lifelong habit of looking out for one’s partner, impartial testimony cannot be expected.

–The government ought to institute a formal process for initiating a nurturing relationship, if only so that the above rights may be unambiguously secured. This should ideally be an act distinct from the various religious rites of marriage.

–The government ought to institute a formal process for ending a nurturing relationship; while marriage for life is generally recognized as the ideal, some mechanism should exist for those who have determined that they will never reach the ideal owing to insuperable obstacles.

As to the tax incentives and/or penalties that accrue to married partners in the U.S., I have no strong opinions — except that they should all be abolished. (I will note in passing, however, that they fall quite unequally on people of different incomes. While many married couples face penalties that they should not have to endure, Scott and I would have saved hundreds of dollars last year if only we could have filed our federal taxes as a married couple. Neither situation is just, and all should be equal before the law.)

This, to me, describes the heart of marriage, its reason for being, and its connections to sex, family, spirituality, and the state.

For heterosexuals at least, I would have to say that our government has done a fairly decent job. It’s provided a package of rights known as civil marriage that apply to those who wish to contract nurturing relationships between two people of opposite sexes. I would fault it, but only slightly, for blurring the line between the religious rite of marriage and the civil status of marriage, but this is a minor quibble compared to all the rest. I might add that I regard divorce as a serious matter, and I am concerned that it is far too common. Whether this is because government makes divorce too easy or because society does not take marriage seriously enough is a question for another post.

In closing, I imagine most people are expecting I’ll offer some inspiring words in favor of same-sex marriage. I won’t.

The goal of my post has simply been to show how “marriage is about kids,” “marriage is about love,” and “marriage is about rights” all fail to address some of the most important aspects of the institution, and how a new model — marriage as the total nurturing of one other person — explains the institution much better than any other.

I will leave it to others to decide whether same-sex marriages are or are not capable of this ideal. In the meantime, I’ll just go on living my life the best I know how.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today in a surprise announcement just hours before the Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin, former President William Jefferson Clinton declared his total and enthusiastic support for Barack Obama to become the Democratic Party nominee for president, effectively becoming the last significant member of the Democratic Party aside from Hillary herself to endorse Obama.

“You know I love Hillary,” Clinton explained, “and short of remaining faithful to her sexually I’d do just about anything for her; but politics is the art of the possible and, quite frankly, that bitch just won’t hunt, if you know what I mean.”

In a brief question and answer period following his announcement, Clinton said he thought poor white voters would vote for Obama over McCain in November. “After all, they voted for me twice, so this time all they have to do is vote for a black president who’s, you know, actually black.”

Clinton also said the chances of Hillary being offered or accepting the Vice Presidential nomination were “about as likely as me giving Kenneth Starr ‘a Monica,’” and he flatly denied rumors that his endorsement came at the price of Obama naming him for the first Supreme Court vacancy. When asked as he was leaving the stage why then there were numerous recent reports of him interviewing female law students “for possible clerkship openings,” Clinton simply smiled and declined comment.

A lunch of found food includes sauteed morels on toast, steamed garlic mustard greens and fiddlehead ferns. Katie Letcher Lyle is a regular and enthusiastic forager in her home territory of Lexington, Va.

You find that toast in an alley somewhere, dust it off, it’s as good as new…

But I’m finding that it’s just sad, ugly reading — lots of infighting about issues that seem tangential or irrelevant, with little to offer an outsider about the value of having a Libertarian Party at all. Sometimes the articles don’t even explain why these people are fighting each other in the first place, leaving me rather mystified. And that’s saying quite a lot, coming from a guy who has just spent the last year of his life helping to edit the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism.

I look at the great philosophy of liberty, and the promise it offers mankind. And then I look at this stuff, and I want to weep.

It occurs to me that if you’re a Democratic or a Republican political insider and you’re trying to milk the system for personal gain, the best way to do this is to work hard for electoral victory. You can expect to win fairly often, whereupon your loyalty will be rewarded by an appointment to the bureaucracy, to a legislator’s staff, or to a cushy ambassadorship (Ned L. Siegel, our ambassador to the Bahamas, was a plaintiff in George W. Bush’s lawsuit to stop the Florida recount. He also donated tens of thousands of dollars in Republican campaign money. I won’t say he’s in it only for himself, but the appeal to someone who is should be obvious).

But if you’re an insider to the Libertarian Party, and if you’re wanting to advance, you can’t look forward to many election victories, and these few won’t carry too many appointed posts for party stalwarts, either. In a minor party, the way to use politics selfishly is to take over the organization, and that’s going to mean stepping on some toes.

Thesis: Bureaucracy does a lot of bad things, but it does domesticate the insiders of the major parties. Minor parties are beset by infighting in part because the electoral stakes are so low for them, while the pre-electoral fights — against fellow party members — are the only decisive ones in terms of advancement.

Second data point: The Green party of the United States. The political principles could hardly be more removed, but the social dynamics seem about the same, no? Rojas, you’re watching the LP convention a lot more closely than I will be. What do you think?

One aspect of this oft-forgotten war is that it was quite divisive in its day. Whigs, particularly those in the north, opposed the war. Yet southern Democrats, smitten with the notion of Manifest Destiny and our perceived God given right to own “sea to shining sea,” enthusiastically supported it. Such disagreements should not be glossed over. Abraham Lincoln, then a Congressman, remained forcefully skeptical about Mexico’s alleged instigation of armed hostilities. Others, such as former President John Quincy Adams, felt the whole affair was simply an effort to expand slavery.

I share John Quincy Adams’ opinion on the matter. Northerners came to speak of the “Slave Power” then running the country in part because they found that the South seemed able to make decisions as massive as going to war even when the rest of the country did not agree. (Likewise with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.) The Mexican-American War was also the reason why in 1846 Henry David Thoreau declined to pay his poll tax, instead spent a night in jail, and went on to write “Civil Disobedience,” one of the great American essays of all time.

And lastly, it is a remarkable testimony to the undemocratic nature of the antebellum South that the first president who was neither from the South nor a northerner willing to concede everything that the South demanded was Abraham Lincoln, and that the South immediately left the Union upon his election.

I hate [haggling]. I am terrible at it. As a consequence, I bought nothing in Turkey other than tickets to various things, room, food, and a poster of Ataturk. And I overpaid for all of these things, I’m sure, which has left me a bit bitter about the place. Surely this is inefficient overall, no? I understand the price discrimination argument for haggling, especially in a country with a lot of poverty and tourism. But probably hundreds of my dollars stayed in my pocket because I didn’t have good information about the quality of products and I knew the retailer is better at bargaining over the surplus than I am, so… there was no transaction and no surplus.

Inefficient? Of course it is, if all you consider are the utility of the goods purchased and the sums of money involved. But I suspect that these markets still exist because people — tourists — want to haggle. It’s recreation to many of us who would otherwise shop at Wal-Mart.

Maybe knowing a little economics takes the fun out of it, since those of us in the know will realize that to one degree or another we’re getting a less than efficient price (or are we simply valuing the entertainment less, in a quest — misguided? — for sophistication?). But I don’t imagine that we’re the majority. Hagglers find it fascinating to be able to manipulate prices themselves, when usually this activity is done for them in a market. Meanwhile, the markets back home work even when most people don’t realize how or even that they are doing so.

“I’m still waiting to hear a valid negative (against) a kid accepting a scholarship, free education, at an early point in his life.” – Howard Avery, whose 8th grade son Michael committed to the University of Kentucky’s basketball program this month.

The obvious “valid negative” here, Mr. Avery, is that neither you nor your son knows what the fair market price of his talents really are. You might, after all, be selling (out) way too low.

Child athletes, be they gymnasts, tennis players or whatever, pose a special problem for our culture, especially given how much we pretend that much of our interference in each other’s lives is “for the children.” Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. There have probably been few cultures that have hated children more than ours does, going out of its way to regulate and micromanage their every activity, forcing them to spend over a decade in penal-like rehabilitation institutions, prematurely sexualizing them, encouraging them to engage in sexual intercourse and then branding thousands of them sex offenders when we catch them on the wrong side of the statutory rape laws.

But I digress. So what if professional athletes and prostitutes both ruin their bodies for the amusement of total strangers? We do still outlaw child prostitution, quaintly enough, but child athletics are not only encouraged, they are actively promoted. What better way to get your kid into Princeton or Stanford on a free ride than to find some niche sport you can start them in at around three or four in hopes of having them recruited for the varsity team? And if the kid shows enough talent for a possible pro career? Hey, who wants to waste years grooming a kid to go to Johns Hopkins Med School when the NBA draft is right around the corner? And nobody ever sued a starting point guard for malpractice, either. (Point shaving, on the other hand, well, you know.)

Children pose a special problem for libertarians. Put a bit more amusingly, a friend of mine says that libertarianism is an adults-only activity. On the one hand, children are not and cannot be regarded as their parents’ property. On the other hand, the only viable recourse against child neglect and abuse is the state. Obviously, reasonable people can disagree as to what exactly should count as actionable abuse or neglect. So, for that matter, can unreasonable people, people who contend a mere spanking or letting kids eat junk food are sufficiently egregious to warrant state intervention. But surely even the most adamantly purist libertarian would admit that, for example, children are entitled to the same level of police protection against assault that adults are and that it shouldn’t matter in such cases that the assailant is a parent. (Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, might have a problem with child free-riders, here, but I digress again.)

I have little concern whether Michael Avery goes on to play for Kentucky someday though I do hope the kid manages to get some good advice from a sports attorney between now and then, too. I hope he doesn’t get injured along the way or that he manages to get someone to pay for some heavy insurance against such an accident keeping him from a lucrative pro career. I don’t even know if such insurance is possible, but if it is I hope he gets it. And maybe, just maybe all this is not only what the kid really wants but, far more unlikely, he is sufficiently mature to be making these sorts of decisions. In any case, I wish him well.

As for the Kentuckys and the sports fathers of the world, it would be nice if I could wave a magic wand and forever prohibit any of them from contending that what they were doing was really “for the children.”

Yes. Within the limitations discussed below, Speed Racer is a good movie, though not perhaps advisable for anyone with epilepsy or prone to motion sickness. The story is hardly nuanced and most of the characters are three dimensional only in the visual sense, but there are legitimate good guys fighting legitimate bad guys for legitimate reasons, plot-wise, and you might well just find yourself cheering on the good guys as the thrilling conclusion thrillingly concludes. True, the good guys are Speed and his family’s family business while the bad guys are, wait for it, evil corporations; but has anyone successfully switched that shopworn trope in anything actually literary (hence, Ayn Rand doesn’t count) since Major Barbara? Besides, there’s a funny monkey here, people!

Constant Viewer freely if abashedly admits he had every intention of hating Speed Racer. Why? In the first place, he hated the 1960s crappy cartoons — CV wasn’t hip enough to use words like “anime” back then — both because the animation was on a par with Clutch Cargo and because CV finds watching other people (including cartoon characters) driving fast cars either boring or frustrating. In the second place, Constant Viewer considers the Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix sequels among the greatest artistic frauds ever perpetrated on the movie going public.

But fair’s fair. CV could start throwing out adjectives like dazzling, spectacular, mind boggling and so forth, or he could wend his way through a catalog of Speed Racer’s influences such as the color palette of Dick Tracy, the phantasmagorical animation of Fantasia, the mixed media of Tron and, of course, the entire history of Japanese manga and anime. That might, might, mind you, make CV sound like a more knowledgeable film reviewer – then again, it might make him sound like a kid reaching to pad a term paper in a film appreciation course – but it wouldn’t help convey the gape-mouthed reaction most viewers will probably have while watching Speed Racer.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the film is that, while it starts off with dazzling special effects, it manages to continue to build and outdo itself like a grand fireworks display. Frankly, Speed Racer is a good 20 minutes too long and (reminiscent of just about every Lucas film ever made) a bit too impressed by its own technical brilliance to pay adequate attention to the minimum dramatic requirements any genuinely good movie must have. CV knows he said roughly the same thing about Iron Man recently; but Speed Racer is a borderline experimental film and cannot be judged by mere summer blockbuster standards. By those standards and those standards alone, CV understands that many people will likely judge Speed Racer as an extravagant failure. Judged as a cinematic work of art, however, it’s sure to get serious critical attention long after the summer has come and gone. See it.