Leslie Nielsen, Actor, Dies at 84

By ANITA GATES NY Times
Leslie Nielsen, the Canadian-born actor who in middle age tossed aside three decades of credibility in dramatic and romantic roles to make a new, far more successful career as a comic actor in films like “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” series, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

According to The Associated Press, his agent, John S. Kelly, said Mr. Nielsen died at a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale where he was being treated for pneumonia.

Mr. Nielsen, a tall man with a matinee-idol profile, was often cast as an earnest hero at the beginning of his film career, in the 1950s.

His best-known roles included the stalwart spaceship captain in the science fiction classic “Forbidden Planet” (1956), the wealthy, available Southern aristocrat in “Tammy and the Bachelor” (1957) and an ocean liner captain faced with disaster in “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).

In the 1960s and ’70s, as his hair turned white and he became an even more distinguished figure, Mr. Nielsen played serious military men, government leaders and even a mob boss, appearing in crime dramas, westerns and the occasional horror movie.

Then, in the low-budget, big-money-making 1980 disaster-movie parody “Airplane!” he was cast as a clueless doctor on board a possibly doomed jetliner. Critics and audiences alike praised his deadpan comic delivery, and his career was reborn.

“Airplane!” was followed by a television series, “Police Squad!” (1982), from the film’s director-writers.

It lasted only six episodes, but Mr. Nielsen, his goofy character, Lt. Frank Drebin, and the creators went on to three successful feature-film spinoffs.

The first, “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” (1988), was followed by “The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear” (1991) and “The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult” (1994), whose cast included Priscilla Presley, O. J. Simpson and Anna Nicole Smith.

Other filmmakers cast Mr. Nielsen in a variety of comedies, including “Repossessed” (1990), an “Exorcist” spoof with Linda Blair; “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” (1995); “Spy Hard” (1996); and “2001: A Space Travesty” (2000).

None were received as well as the “Naked Gun” films, but Mr. Nielsen found a new continuing role as the paranoid, out-of-control president of the United States in “Scary Movie 3” (2003) and “Scary Movie 4” (2006).

In keeping with his adopted comic persona, when Mr. Nielsen in 1993 published an autobiography, “Naked Truth,” it was one that cheerfully, blatantly fabricated events in his life.

They included two Academy Awards, an affair with Elizabeth Taylor and a stay at a rehabilitation center, battling dopey-joke addiction.

In real life he was nominated twice for Emmy Awards, in 1982 as outstanding lead actor in a comedy series for “Police Squad!” and in 1988 as outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for an episode of “Day by Day,” an NBC sitcom about yuppies and day care.

Off screen, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor, in 2002.

Leslie William Nielsen was born on Feb. 11, 1926, in Regina, Saskatchewan.

The son of a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of Danish heritage and a Welsh mother, he grew up in the Northwest Territories and in Edmonton, Alberta, where he graduated from high school. Jean Hersholt, the Danish-born actor and humanitarian, was an uncle.

Mr. Nielsen enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force before his 18th birthday and trained as an aerial gunner during World War II, but he was never sent overseas.

He began his career in radio in Calgary, Alberta, then studied at the Academy of Studio Arts in Toronto and at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. This led him to his television debut, in a 1950 episode of “Actors Studio,” an anthology series on CBS.

By the time Mr. Nielsen made his film debut, in 1956, he had made scores of appearances in series and performed in one Broadway play, “Seagulls Over Sorrento” in 1952, as a tyrannical navy petty officer.

He continued to make guest appearances in television series throughout his career, and with great regularity through the 1970s.

And he did stage work, touring North America and Britain in a one-man show about the crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow.

His final projects included “Lipshitz Saves the World” (2007), an NBC movie comedy, and “Scary Movie 5,” to be released.

Mr. Nielsen married four times. His first wife (1950-56) was Monica Boyer; his second (1958-73) was Alisande Ullman, with whom he had two daughters; and his third (1981-83) was Brooks Oliver. Those marriages ended in divorce.

In 2001 he married Barbaree Earl; a resident of Fort Lauderdale, she survives him, as do his daughters, Maura Nielsen Kaplan and Thea Nielsen Disney.

His elder brother, Erik Nielsen, who was deputy prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1986, died in 2008.

In a 1988 interview with The New York Times, Leslie Nielsen discussed his career-rejuvenating transition to comedy, a development that he had recently described as “too good to be true.”

“It’s been dawning on me slowly that for the past 35 years I have been cast against type,” he said, “and I’m finally getting to do what I really wanted to do.”

Shouts & Murmurs
Nutty
by Paul Rudnick THE NEW YORKER
Mr. Peanut has a new sidekick, much like the Jolly Green Giant has Little Green Sprout. Mr. Peanut’s buddy is named Benson, and to make sure that snackers understand the pecking order between them, Benson is shorter than Mr. Peanut—one nut in his shell rather than two.

“Benson is quite enamored of Mr. Peanut,” Mr. Levine said, but they are, as the saying goes, just good friends.

—The Times.


I am Mr. Peanut, and I can be silent no longer. While I have only the greatest respect for Mr. Levine, who is the senior director for marketing at Planters, I cannot live a lie. I’m a gay nut, and Benson and I are in love.

After watching Portia de Rossi promoting her new memoir about her anorexia, her struggle to come out as a lesbian, and her eventual happy marriage to Ellen DeGeneres, I feel emboldened. (Although I regret that, because I am a carbohydrate, Portia may fear me.) And after seeing Ricky Martin discuss his new memoir, about his coming out and his joy in becoming the father of beautiful twin sons, I think it’s time to tell the world that Benson and I will soon be adopting a jumbo cashew and a pair of Jordan almonds; some people will call it bridge mix, but for Benson and me it’s our family.

As I reveal in my own upcoming memoir, “Right in the Nuts,” I had an agonized childhood. I was born and roasted on a dusty peanut farm down South, and my earliest memories are of being attracted to a macadamia named Jimmy Ray. But all too soon he was harvested and ended up in a small porcelain bowl placed on an armrest in first class on a Delta non-stop to Los Angeles. I still recall our time together fondly, whenever I hear a flight attendant murmur, “Warm nuts?”

Most of the peanuts I grew up with were destined for brittle or Goobers, but I always had a hankering for show business—maybe it’s the cholesterol. But the fear was always there. Would the Planters people ever hire me as their mascot if they knew my secret? I had no role models; it wasn’t until years later that I found out about Mrs. Butterworth’s decades-long relationship with Mrs. Paul, and even today Christian fundamentalists preach that it’s sinful to pour maple syrup on fish sticks.

I began my career in vaudeville, as half of the successful dance team known as Peanut Butter & Jelly, and I’ll admit it: sometimes I pretended that we were a couple in real life as well. But Jelly was only my beard, and today she’s happily married to a block of Philadelphia cream cheese. People began to notice me, perhaps because I was the only peanut they’d ever seen with legs, a top hat, and a cane. But I fretted. Were the monocle and the spats “too gay”? Would bullies call me Miss Peanut or, worse, Mr. Penis? But my outfit made me special, and one day I got the call that every nut dreams of—a request to audition for the Planters board of directors. My agent warned me to “butch it up,” hissing, “Whatever you do, don’t come out of your shell. Your name isn’t Virginia Peanut.”

Trembling, I entered the boardroom. I sang and I danced, and, I’ll confess, I invented a Mrs. Peanut; I told the marketing people that my wife had died tragically, after a nasty little boy stuck her up his nose. “And I never saw her again,” I said, feigning tears. I could see that the Planters people were deeply moved. “You’re not just any peanut,” the C.E.O. told me. “I can picture you everywhere, from the tip of an elephant’s trunk to a barroom floor. There’s something wholesome about you, and I can tell that you’d never give anyone stomach cramps or diarrhea.”

Those were heady times, and my picture began to appear on advertisements and packaging all around the world. I went a little crazy, hooking up with both Buster Brown and the sailor on the Cracker Jack box, although my affair with Mr. Clean lasted well over a year. Mr. Clean, whose first name is Eugene, told me, “I don’t know what America is thinking. I’m a muscular bald man in a tight white T-shirt, with a single earring—to me that says San Francisco leather daddy.” In many ways, Mr. Clean was the perfect lover, because after even the messiest night of torrid lovemaking the bedroom was always spotless. We finally broke up after I came home early one day and caught him with Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy. “What can I say?” Poppin’ sneered, dripping with melted butter. “He likes my biscuits.”

After that, I went on a wild sex binge, with everyone from Cap’n Crunch to Snap, Crackle, and Pop, and I’ll just say this: none of those guys gets soggy in milk. I remember waking up in a cave in the jungle, in the paws of Tony the Tiger, who roared, “You were grrrrreat! ” But it all came crashing down when I found myself in a three-way, squeezed between Ronald McDonald and Snuggle, the fabric-softener bear, with dryer sheets stuck to my face with thick white clown makeup. Is this who I am? I wondered. What’s next? The Kool-Aid pitcher? Count Chocula? The Geico gekko?

I vowed to go it alone. The risk of exposure was too great. I’d seen what had happened after explicit photos had surfaced of two of the Keebler elves, deep within their hollow tree. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing, but if I were you I’d avoid the chocolate-covered mini-grahams. It made me think: What would happen to my career, and my brand, if people discovered that their favorite ambulatory snack was also, let’s just say, a mixed nut? Would the entire planet suddenly develop a peanut allergy? Would I be welcomed as Portia de Peanut, or would I be replaced by a more family-friendly peanut, a Palin peanut, a Joe the Peanut?

And then, God bless them, the Planters marketing people launched an image overhaul, and suddenly I had a spiffy new gray flannel blazer, the voice of Robert Downey, Jr., and . . . Benson. They call him my sidekick, but from the minute we were introduced we both knew that we were headed not just for a broad-based new campaign but for an announcement in the Sunday Times social pages, under the heading “Legumes Wed.”

What can I say? I’m nuts about him. And in bed, well, I’ll be discreet, but you know how whenever you pop open a new, freshness-sealed can of Planters it sighs? That’s how I feel. And that’s why I’m just like Portia and Ricky, because I want everyone to know who I really am. I want people to see that I’m just like any other delicious, all-natural treat. So please—understand me. Embrace me. Eat me. ♦

ILLUSTRATION: JORDAN AWAN

Palin's Handbook for 2012

Shushannah Walshe
Sarah Palin’s new book, America by Heart, goes after President Obama’s insufficient patriotism, his health-care bill, and Hillary Clinton’s “bra-burning militancy.” Shushannah Walshe says it’s an early look at Palin’s messaging for the 2012 campaign.

Sarah Palin’s new book, America by Heart, comes out Tuesday, and she will hit the book tour trail the same day in support of her newest work. If Palin decides to get into the 2012 race for president, America by Heart, which lays out her views of the nation and how to make it better while also going after President Obama, is sure to be her handbook.

Although she praises Obama for parts of the 2008 speech on race he delivered as a candidate for president, she is scathing in her criticism, setting up plenty of future talking points and arguments. “We have a president, perhaps for the first time since the founding of our republic, who expresses his belief that America is not the greatest earthly force for good the world has ever known,” she writes.
Palin adds that the idea may sound “a little jingoistic” to “many educated liberals,” but many Americans like herself think the country is a force for good, and despite the nation’s mistakes, pride in America is “perfectly justified.” Palin then hits Obama hard, writing that he “seems to see nothing uniquely admirable in the American experience.”

“The consequences of this average-to-below-average view of our country are profound, both at home and abroad. Indeed, especially abroad,” she writes.

Palin goes as far as to say the president has “a stark lack of faith in the American people” because of his “rejection of American exceptionalism.”

“There’s no other way to describe a governing philosophy that won’t trust individual Americans to control their own health care, plan for their own retirement, or even spend their own money,” she writes.

Palin also spends pages criticizing Obama for not adhering to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Her harsh words for the president may not be new—she often takes to Facebook to blast Obama over policy decisions—but her book’s highly personal attack is a clear early warning that a Palin campaign would be centered around the message that Obama is not sufficiently patriotic in the way Americans (and Palin) are.

Most of America by Heart is taken up with excerpts from the former Alaska governor’s favorite politicians (Ronald Reagan gets the most space, but there’s also Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and even President Calvin Coolidge); Founding Fathers and mothers (Abigail Adams gets a “You go, girl”); hero stories from several wars in which Americans fought (she even excerpts from John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers, in which he discusses his brutal torture), and many other writers, poets, and musicians. She even mentions her favorite line from a Toby Keith song inspired by the 9/11 attacks, “And you’ll be sorry you messed with the US of A ’cause we’ll put a boot in your ass it’s the American way.”

“We don’t consider the health-care vote a done deal, not by a long shot. Instead, it was a clarion call, a spur to action.”

Sarah Palin. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
Unlike Palin’s first book, Going Rogue, released last November, she does not use much of the new book to settle scores or get back at people she feels personally wronged her, as when she wrote about McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt’s “rotund physique” and went after Alaskan rivals for pages. One of the exceptions is Levi Johnston, who she mentions was not at his son’s birth until the end, so she had to “help deliver Tripp.”

• Shushannah Walshe: The Biggest Leaks from Palin’s BookAmerica by Heart opens with Palin’s thoughts on the Tea Party and how she identifies herself with the movement, calling it an “American awakening.” She spends a large part of the book praising and defending the Constitution and the nation’s founders, and in another big change from Going Rogue, she writes about policy. She takes on the president’s health-care legislation, writing that its proponents “seemed to think we could be bought” and that heath-care reform is about “doctors and patients, not the IRS and politicians.” She says it must be repealed, which was a constant talking point for her on the 2010 campaign and one that she will be sure to revive if she runs for president.

“Americans have been reminded many times that elections have consequences, and Obamacare was definitely one of them,” she writes. “But as my father would say, instead of retreating, Americans are reloading. We don’t consider the health-care vote a done deal, not by a long shot. Instead, it was a clarion call, a spur to action.”

Palin also goes after TARP, writing that the government needs to be smaller to be more efficient, and that means not bailing out banks. She backed the initial bailout bill when she was on the vice-presidential trail but now explains she was just following the top of the ticket: “If government exists to protect our God-given rights—and not to bail out big banks, buy car companies, take over our health care, and tell us which light bulbs we can use—then that government does a few things, does them well, and gets out of the way in order to allow its citizens to realize their potential.”
Palin writes about her beloved Mama Grizzlies: Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Gov.-elect Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov.-elect Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and failed Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.

“No, Mama Grizzlies aren’t a new phenomenon in America. What is new is our determination to rise up and take our country back before it’s too late,” she writes.

And although Palin’s love for her Mama Grizzlies is clear and she describes herself as a “feminist,” there’s one group that she has absolutely no love for: “left-wing feminists and their allies.”

This section is where she alternately praises and attacks Hillary Clinton, saying she is someone Palin likes and “admires personally in many ways” but that she seemed to be “frozen in an attitude of 1960s-era bra-burning militancy” when she spoke about pursuing her career when her husband ran for president instead of “stay[ing] home and bak[ing] cookies and ha[ving] teas.”

“Well Hillary (many of us wanted to say at the time), some of us like to bake cookies. Some of us also think we can do that and still have successful careers. And most of us don’t think we have to run down stay-at-home moms in order to make ourselves feel good about our choices.”

It’s a strange attack, as Palin will surely be courting the Clinton supporters of 2008 if she runs in 2012. She even revived Clinton campaign language when discussing the possibility of a presidential bid this month, saying she would “be in it to win it.”

The full title of Palin’s book, sure to be another instant bestseller, is America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, and at the end she explains that these are the values society should be based on.

“It’s family (when we talk about limited local government, it means the state knows better than the feds, the city knows better than the state, and the family knows better than the city). It’s faith (be it through religion or the moral values transmitted in our secular culture). And it’s flag (the understanding that we are an exceptional nation with an exceptional message for the world),” she writes.
Even without an official declaration for her future plans, she’s already got a political tagline she can put to use.
Shushannah Walshe covers politics for The Daily Beast.

Disque D. Deane, Real Estate Investor, Dies at 89

By CHARLES V. BAGLI NY TIMES
Disque D. Deane, a financier and real estate investor who at one time controlled the General Motors Building, shopping centers in New York, Massachusetts and Georgia, and the nation’s largest federally subsidized housing complex, Starrett City in Brooklyn, died on Nov. 8 at his home in Boston. He was 89.

The cause was pneumonia, his nephew, Curt Deane, said.

Mr. Deane, who had a reputation as a shrewd and combative investor, kept a stuffed white Alaskan timber wolf in his office as “a reminder,” he once said, “that you should always keep your organization lean and hungry.” A wolf also adorned the letterhead of his company, Corporate Property Investors, symbolizing both his lone wolf approach to investing and the dog-eat-dog world in which he operated.

“He was a very tough negotiator,” Donald J. Trump, a partner in the Starrett City complex, said, “but an amazing real estate mind.”

Mr. Deane may be best known for assembling a group of investors in 1972 to back the development of Starrett City, the largest publicly assisted rental complex in the nation, with 5,881 apartments in 46 buildings. The complex, which overlooks Jamaica Bay and has its own power plant, post office and stores, is regarded as a successful example of economically and racially diverse housing.

Mr. Deane’s partnership, Starrett City Associates, officially changed the name of the complex in 2002 to Spring Creek Towers, though it remained known as Starrett City.

In 2006 and 2007, at the top of the real estate market, Mr. Deane and his partners twice tried to sell the vast property, much to the chagrin of tenants, housing activists and many public officials who feared that long-term residents would be replaced by new tenants paying higher rents.

City, state and federal officials subsequently struck a deal to refinance the complex, enabling it to remain affordable to poor and working-class New Yorkers while the partners made an estimated $200 million profit.

Disque Dee Deane was born on July 6, 1921. He grew up in New York City, attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and Duke University.

He was a senior partner at the Lazard Freres investment bank, where he was active in corporate financing through real estate transactions.

In 1971, Mr. Deane formed Corporate Property Investors, one of the largest real estate investment trusts of its time. The company built a number of shopping centers, including the Roosevelt Field mall on Long Island, the Burlington Mall in Burlington, Mass., and Lenox Square in Atlanta.

Through his philanthropy, he supported the Deane Laboratories in Neurobiology at Duke University and the Deane Institute for Integrated Research on Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Mr. Deane is survived by his wife, Carol, and their two children, Anne and Carl; five children from two prior marriages that ended in divorce, Hare Stuart, Marjorie Swain, Kathryn Deane, Disque Jr., and Walter; and several grandchildren.

Take the No. 7 to Secaucus?

CHARLES V. BAGLI and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE NY TIMES
Ever since Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey killed an expensive plan for a new commuter rail tunnel to Manhattan, the Bloomberg administration has been working on an alternative: run the No. 7 subway train under the Hudson River.

The plan envisions the No. 7 stretching from 34th Street on the Far West Side of Manhattan to Secaucus, N.J., where there is a connection to New Jersey Transit trains. It would extend the New York City subway outside the city for the first time, giving New Jersey commuters direct access to Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and Queens, and to almost every line in the system.

Like the project scuttled by Mr. Christie, this proposed tunnel would expand a regional transportation system already operating at capacity and would double the number of trains traveling between the two states during peak hours. It would do so at about half the cost, an estimated $5.3 billion, according to a closely guarded, four-page memorandum circulated by the city’s Hudson Yards Development Corporation.

Unlike the old project, the new plan does not require costly condemnation proceedings or extensive tunneling in Manhattan, because the city is already building a No. 7 station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, roughly one block from the waterfront. In July, a massive 110-ton tunnel boring machine completed drilling for the city’s $2.1 billion extension of the No. 7 line from Times Square to the new station.

Still, the proposal faces a number of daunting political, financial and logistical hurdles in an era of diminishing public resources. Mr. Christie, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Governor-elect Andrew M. Cuomo of New York would have to agree to make the tunnel a high priority and work in lock step to obtain the city, state and federal money needed to make it happen.

“Extending the 7 line to New Jersey could address many of the region’s transportation capacity issues at a fraction of the original tunnel’s cost, but the idea is still in its earliest stages,” said Andrew Brent, a spokesman for the deputy mayor for economic development, Robert K. Steel. “Like others, we’re looking at — and open to discussing — any creative, fiscally responsible alternatives.”

Mr. Christie had not yet received a formal briefing on the idea, but his office said it was curious to hear more. “We’ve been open to ideas for solving the trans-Hudson dilemma, ideas that are affordable and fair amongst the interested jurisdictions,” said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Mr. Christie.

Last month, Mr. Christie, a Republican, put an end to the long-planned Hudson rail tunnel project after the estimated cost climbed to at least $11 billion, from an initial $8.7 billion. The project would have created two new tracks for New Jersey Transit from Secaucus to a new station deep under 34th Street, near Pennsylvania Station. The federal Transportation Department had pledged $3 billion, as had the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. New Jersey was responsible for the rest.

The federal transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, described Mr. Christie’s decision as “a devastating blow to thousands of workers, millions of commuters and the state’s economic future.”

The two sides are now wrangling over Mr. LaHood’s demand that New Jersey repay $271 million the federal government has spent on the project.

City officials had initially hoped that they could recapture the $3 billion pledged by the federal government, but that no longer seems possible, and the project will most likely have to compete with others around the country for the money. A spokesman for Mr. LaHood declined to comment on the proposal on Tuesday.

Another obstacle is the lengthy environmental review required of such projects, but officials are hoping to be able to use much of the work already done for the tunnel that was killed.

And it is unclear if New Jersey is willing to redirect to the No. 7 train project the money it had originally intended for the tunnel plan, which was known as Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC. “The issue again will come down to, what will Governor Christie say,” said Jeffrey M. Zupan, senior fellow for transportation of the Regional Plan Association.

It is very likely that the Port Authority would have to be involved, since it has condemnation powers in both New York and New Jersey, unlike the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s subways.

Lawrence S. Schwartz, the top aide to Gov. David A. Paterson, said Tuesday that the Bloomberg administration had not yet formally presented the plan to Mr. Paterson, a Democrat, but that similar ideas had been discussed in the past. The governor, Mr. Schwartz said, was “intrigued” by the broad outlines of the administration’s plan and looked forward to hearing more details.

“Getting cars off the road, reducing congestion and providing another access point for commuters between New York and New Jersey is going to benefit the region from a job-creation and development standpoint,” Mr. Schwartz said.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said that the proposal had recently been circulated to the governor-elect’s transition team but that there had been no high-level discussions so far.

Aside from relieving congestion on the rails, the proposal also would benefit New York’s real estate industry, because it would include an $800 million subway station at 10th Avenue and 42nd Street, an area with limited public transportation and a number of new residential towers. The station was part of the Bloomberg administration’s plan for the No. 7 extension, but was cut to trim costs.

And the project would almost certainly serve as a boon for the planned $15 billion Hudson Yards residential and office development, to be built on platforms over the West Side railyards. That project has been stymied by the recession and an absence of demand for new residential and commercial space.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, expressed his support for the plan.

“This is a bold idea that must be given serious and immediate consideration,” Mr. Schumer said. “Building the ARC tunnel and extending the 7 line for a second stop are both critical to growing the New York economy for the coming decades, and I will fight to deliver any available federal funds to make that happen.”

At a reception in Manhattan on Monday night, Stephen M. Ross, chief executive of Related Companies and the developer for the Hudson Yards project, spoke to Mr. LaHood enthusiastically about the idea of running the No. 7 to New Jersey.

“I think it’s a great idea and it could save a ton of money,” Mr. Ross said Tuesday.


Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting.

Extension 2010 and Tier V – Where They Stand in the Lame Duck Agenda
Michael Colliss.
Many long time observers of the U.S. Congress are beginning to see signs the agenda for the United States Congress during the lame duck session is beginning to take form. Before the lame duck session, the Democratic leadership had anticipated as many as 20 significant legislative actions during the lame duck. Now, recovering from their midterm losses, which President Obama called “a shellacking,” the Democratic leadership of both the House and the Senate are becoming resigned to a significantly scaled back list of hoped for legislation during the lame duck. It is reported that discussions are already being held between Congressional staff on what exactly can be enacted. The final, pared down list of legislative initiatives will probably not be clear until the Democratic leadership can meet with members upon their return to Washington next week but it does appear that unemployment extensions and possibly a Tier V legislation remain one of the items that will be taken up.

Looking at the history of midterms when there has been a shift in party control (which has occurred in the House in the November 2 election) it seems that the only things which get attention during such lame duck sessions are those things that A) have to be passed to avert a deadline or expiration and/or B) those things which can be quickly passed without prolonged debate and stalling. This should be remembered as we examine the “back story” on the effort to enact federal unemployment extensions. Although the new Republican majority in the House will not take over until January 3, their massive wins will have an enormous impact on the lame duck. The Republicans seem to be willing to put as much as possible on hold until the new Congress meets in January.

Democrats had hoped that they would be able to pass legislation that would fund the government through the next fiscal year. As it stands now, all funding for federal operations will cease on December 3. Rather than agree to a full year’s funding, it seems obvious that support will only exist for another stopgap funding measure funding the government until February. This will allow the new Republican majority in the House to have an impact on the budget when it comes up again after the new Congress is seated on January 3.

The issue on the mind of many is the question of an unemployment extension and Tier V. Although this will be taken up as a separate piece of legislation, its fate is becoming more and more linked to one item high on the Republican agenda; the continuation of the Bush era tax cuts. Although many have previously suggested that there is linkage between the two, with the Democrats agreeing to the extension of the tax cuts and the Republicans agreeing to unemployment insurance extensions and possible expansions, it is now becoming clear that it’s not as simple as that.

If there was one common theme for the Republican candidates that succeeded in the midterms, it was reducing the size of the federal deficit. The Republican leadership senses that this issue had wide acceptance among the voters, a belief they see as vindicated by the victories on November 2.

Thus it seems that if any hope of any unemployment legislation being passed into law by the U.S. Congress during the lame duck session it will almost certainly have to be one that is fully paid for by reductions in spending elsewhere. Some Republican Senators have suggested that to fund unemployment extensions would cost about $5 billion a month. While the Congressional Budget Office – which is the only authority the Congress uses when considering the costs of legislation – has not issued a cost analysis of unemployment extensions, the $5 billion estimate is close to the mark according to staffers for Democratic senators who spoke off the record because they were not authorized to issue public statement. To enact a limited Tier V (20 weeks) will probably cost an additional six to eight billion per month, a figure that is higher then the cost of reauthorization of Tiers 1 – 4 to account for the ever-growing number of 99ers. In other words, the Republicans seem to be insisting that there be cuts in monthly federal spending levels if they are going to support unemployment legislation and will also insist on an extension of the Bush era tax cuts.


People who are waiting for the unemployment insurance to be reauthorized and expanded are of course wondering what will the bill look like; will it contain a Tier V? How many weeks will be authorized? Many will perhaps be surprised to learn that as of November 10, there has been no bill formally introduced in either the House or the Senate that specifically authorizes the renewal of Tiers 1 through 4 after their expiration on November 30. Now that the midterms are over it is almost certain that work is being performed on the legislative language of such a bill, however as it has not been introduced (and from all indications will probably not be introduced until after Thanksgiving) these questions will probably remain unanswered for at least two weeks or more.

While Representative Berkley in the House of Representatives and Senator Stabenow in the Senate have introduced bills which envision a Tier V, a careful side by side reading of these two bills show they are contradictory as to the conditions under which a Tier V would be made available which is a procedural problem. It is also worth noting that both of these bills envision paying for a Tier V as emergency spending (that is not paid for by reductions in the federal budget in other areas) and given the post election environment in the U.S. Congress it is hard to see these bills as going anywhere. Simply put, if a Tier V is to be created, it will more than likely have to be paid for with offsets if it is to get approval in both the House and the Senate.

It also has to be emphasized that the original Tiers 1 through 4 must be reauthorized because if they are not, there will not be anything under which a Tier V can be added. It also should be remembered that any legislation would require approval by both the House and the Senate before it can be signed into law.

It is an old saying in Washington that what legislation is passed is based on what can be done more than what should be done. This may sound cynical but it has been true since the first Congress met over 200 years ago. Even to pass what is becoming an obviously reduced “to do list” in the lame duck will not allow the leisurely pace that the entire Congress, but particularly the Senate, has taken during the past year.

One should also be aware that despite the fact that Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is still Speaker of the House during the midterms, her influence and power are nowhere near the levels she enjoyed before the midterms. While it seems probable that she will continue in some leadership role in what will be the Democratic minority in the House when the new Congress constitutes itself on January 3, during the lame duck she will be far less able to influence legislation than previously.

Over in the Senate, Harry Reid (D, NV) will continue to wield significant power as Majority Leader. Because of the way the Senate operates, the Majority Leader in the Senate has far more power to schedule votes, or in the alternative block votes, and can determine what bills are considered when. Reid will continue to be Majority Leader in the next Congress, though there have been suggestions that Senator Reid, at 72 years old, may decide he would be happier in a less visible role as he starts what is likely to be his final term in office.

Readers may have noted that there has been no mention of the position of President Obama in this article. While the President has spoken of the need to continue federal extensions of unemployment insurance he has not offered any specifics. This is probably not an accident. President Obama is scheduled to have a meeting with both the Democratic and Republican leadership late next week, and expect some serious bargaining to go on at that meeting. Perhaps a clearer expression of what the President will support will occur after these consultations.

Many have bitterly condemned the Republicans for their obstructive tactics during the last two years, not only on unemployment extensions but a host of other issues. It now seems that at least the Republicans are laying a clearly identified “marker on the table” on what they will insist on to allow unemployment legislation to become law. The Democrats are not without cards in this high stakes political poker game. They are fully aware that the Republicans have made extension of the Bush tax cuts a highly visible goal. This will undoubtedly make the Republicans more willing to reach a compromise on other issues (including unemployment legislation) to get the tax cuts that they have identified as a key issue for them.

The waiting and tension created by this uncertainty has been a huge burden for those who lost their job through no fault of their own during the recess scheduled to end on November 15. While some are expecting that there will be immediate action on unemployment legislation as soon as the U.S. Congress goes back into session next week, it is extremely unlikely that this will happen. As this writer has pointed out in previous articles, the goal is not to have a vote, but the goal is to have a vote that passes. It is almost certain that it will take at least a week or more for the negotiations to take place to move toward a vote on both tax extensions and unemployment legislation and thus it will probably not be taken up until the U.S. Congress returns after Thanksgiving on November 29.

What can be said from a careful examination of the political landscape that will exist during the lame duck is that it is entirely too early to predict the end of federal unemployment extension or to assume a Tier V will not happen. In fact, it seems that the framework of a deal to make these desperately needed extensions is becoming clear. What remains to be seen is if the Congressional Democrats and Republicans as well as the White House will be willing to perhaps give up some of their pet issues and decide and how much they are willing to compromise to make unemployment extension and a Tier V into law.

© 2010 All247News. All rights reserved.

In Alaska, a preview of the GOP's future
By Anne Applebaum
Alaska is darker in winter, colder all year and less densely populated than any other state. Alaskans are unique, too: They enjoy a higher level of per capita federal spending than anyone else in the union, as well as a state constitution that they think allows them to defy the Supreme Court. Yet for all of its anomalies - or perhaps because of them - Alaska's current electoral morass might well be a harbinger of the Republican Party's future.

For whatever the reason, the hypocrisy at the heart of the party - and at the heart of American politics - is at its starkest in Alaska. For decades, Alaskans have lived off federal welfare. Taxpayers' money subsidizes everything from Alaska's roads and bridges to its myriad programs for Native Americans. Federal funding accounts for one-third of Alaskan jobs. Nevertheless, Alaskans love to think of themselves as the last frontiersmen, the inhabitants of a land "beyond the horizon of urban clutter," a state with no use for Washington and its wicked ways.

Though they are usually not bothered by this contradiction, in the recent Senate race, Alaska's split personality finally split the Alaskan Republican Party. The party's official candidate, Joe Miller, campaigned as the candidate for the Alaska of would-be rugged individuals. Although endorsed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express, Miller proved an exceptionally poor choice for this role. He said all the right things about fiscal insanity, the repeal of Obamacare, lower taxes and slashing welfare spending. But like many of his comrades in arms, he gave no specifics and offered no plan for how to reach fiscal sanity or replace Obamacare. During the campaign, it also emerged that he had once collected farm subsidies; that his wife had once collected unemployment benefits; and that his family had received state health benefits. Perhaps it's just hard for Alaskans to avoid feeding from the federal trough.

The incumbent and write-in candidate, Lisa Murkowski, represented Alaska-as-federally-funded-paradise. The scion of a political family, Murkowski had no need for hypocrisy. "I will not apologize for seeking more funding for Alaska," she declared when re-launching her campaign. She pointed out that her senatorial seniority gives her a higher rank on committees, which dispense money. She talked up her friendship with the late Sen. Ted Stevens, whose ability to send cash to Alaska was legendary.

And she won: Even if some legal obstacle prevents her from becoming senator, Murkowski's write-in campaign got the most votes. When offered a direct choice, in other words, the majority of Alaskans chose the corrupt, big-spending Republican Party of Murkowski over the shallow, hypocritical radicalism of Miller.

If nothing else, Alaskans' interesting choice must be keeping the Republican leadership awake at night: When faced with the reality of actual funding cuts, a year or two from now, might not other Republican voters suddenly feel they need someone like Murkowski, too? This must be a particular dilemma for the new Republican speaker, John Boehner. During his two-decade career as a Washington insider, Boehner has resembled Murkowski a lot more than Miller. As chairman of the House Education Committee, for example, one of his primary tasks was to entertain and indulge the companies that make hundreds of millions of dollars from federally funded student loan programs and that have been major donors to his campaigns.

At the same time, Boehner owes his new job to the anti-government rhetoric of candidates like Miller. So do many of his colleagues: Despite its profligate spending policies of the past decade, the Republican establishment attached itself to this year's wave of anti-establishment resentment and must at least pay lip service to its goals. Poor Boehner must feel pulled in two directions, particularly because so many Republicans - and so many Americans - don't practice what they preach. They want lower taxes, higher defense spending, more Social Security and, yes, balanced budgets. They want the government to leave them alone, but at the same time they aren't averse to the odd federal subsidy. They like the way Miller talks, but, in the end, will they vote for Murkowski? Which path will Boehner follow?

In theory, there could be a third way. If the Republican Party were serious about the deficit its leaders could, just for example, eliminate subsidies for farmers and homeowners. They could raise the retirement age and "privatize" Social Security. They could simplify our hideously complex income tax. They could impose a carbon tax instead. They could even do some of this together with President Obama. In practice, I'm afraid that for the next two years, we'll be watching the Millers and the Murkowskis struggle for the soul of the party. As Alaska goes, so goes the nation.

The Taste Of Coke Is All In Your Head
By Jonah Lehrer WIRED

I’m a big fan of Mexican Coke. I can bore you silly talking about the elegant slender glass bottle, and the simple sweet taste of real sugar (Mexican Coke is made with sucrose, not high-fructose corn syrup) and the slightly lower levels of carbonation. It’s a delicious drink, far less harsh and cloying that its American equivalent. (And did I mention the glass bottle? And the cool “Hecho in Mexico” sticker?)

But here’s the rub: Mexican Coke appears to be a cognitive illusion. Marion Nestle summarizes a recent study in Obesity:

You know how everyone thinks Mexican Coca-Cola is so much more delicious than American Coke because it is made with table sugar (sucrose), not HFCS? Oops again. The investigators could not find any sucrose in the Coke, but did find plenty of glucose and fructose. This suggests that Mexican Coke is also made with HFCS (or it could also mean that the sucrose had been split into its constituent glucose and fructose).

To review the biochemistry: Sucrose is a double sugar of glucose and fructose bonded together. HFCS is glucose and fructose, separated. The sucrose bond is quickly split in the intestine and its glucose and fructose are the same as those in HFCS.

I’ll begin with a defense of my tongue, before I explain before why my tongue is probably wrong. Although the researchers conclude that Mexican Coke is probably engaging in deceptive labeling (Red Bull and Vitamin Water also have some explaining to do), there are a few possibilities that could also explain the lab results. As Nestle notes, the sucrose could have been chemically split, or it could have been naturally separated by the carbonic acid in the bottle. Who knows? I’d like to focus instead on a chart in the paper that documented the average deviation between actual sugar content and the sugar content listed on the packaging. It turns out that, in many instances, there’s a ridiculous level of variation. For instance, “Coke from McDonalds” contained nearly 30 percent more sugar than advertised; Sprite from Burger King contained more than 20 percent additional sweetener. A jug of Hawaiian Fruit Punch Fruit Juicy Red was about 5 percent higher, while bottled Mexican Coke was about 5 percent lower. (It was also about 5 percent lower than American Coke.) So perhaps there is a taste difference. Perhaps the difference is simply that Mexican Coke is less insanely sweet. Maybe I’m not just another annoying hipster.

Or maybe I am. Although I can rationalize away that closet full of Mexican Coke bottles (thank you, Costco!), the psychology of taste perception suggests those rationalizations are wrong. Consider this clever study of soft drinks led by Samuel McClure and Read Montague. The experiment was a recreation of the Pepsi Challenge, except this time all the tasting was being done in a brain scanner. Each person swallowed sips of cola from a plastic tube while their brain was being scanned. When Coke and Pepsi were offered unlabeled, the subjects showed no measurable preference for either brand. Most of the time, they couldn’t even tell the two colas apart. But Montague’s second observation was more surprising: subjects overwhelmingly preferred drinks that were labeled as Coke, no matter what cola was actually delivered through the tubes. In other words, brand trumped taste. We cared more about the logo than the actual product.

But what was happening inside the brain? When the two soft drinks were offered unlabeled, the dopamine reward pathway became active. This makes sense: the pathway helps processes appetitive rewards, like sugary drinks, which provide us with a rush of sweet pleasure. However, when the subjects drank a cola with a Coke label, an additional set of brain areas became extremely active. The DLPFC, hippocampus and our midbrain emotional areas reacted strongly to the red cursive of Coke, but not to the blue Pepsi logo. (This happened even when subjects were given Pepsi with a Coke label.) For whatever reason, certain brand names are able to excite our nostalgic emotions, and those emotions influence our preference. (The scientists argue that the hippocampal activation is a sign that we’re accessing these commercial memories.) The end result is a strong preference for Coke, even though it tastes identical to Pepsi.

Why does Coke trigger our emotions? As the scientists note, Coca-Cola is “advertising incarnate.” The company was the first sponsor of the Olympic Games, gave its cola free to U.S. soldiers during World War II, and is credited with inventing the modern image of Santa Claus. Despite the fact that Coke is the most widely recognized consumer product in the world, the brand is still supported by more than $1 billion worth of advertising every year. Whether it’s animated images of a penguin family, or inspirational shots of a high-school football game, Coke ads are designed to trigger these remembered feelings of warmth and nostalgia. They are sentimental, not informative.

Mexican Coke has become my Coke. I see that glass bottle and I’m flooded with all sorts of dopaminergic associations, those smug feelings reminding me that I don’t drink that generic high-fructose corn syrup crap. I drink the real stuff, the cola made with old-fashioned sugar. But those associations are almost certainly an illusion – my tongue is too crude a sensory device to parse the difference between Coke and Pepsi, let alone between slightly different formulations of the exact same drink. The most convincing evidence comes from Coke itself. Last year, Rob Walker asked the company about regional variations in its ingredients:

It is true, acknowledges a Coke spokesman, Scott Williamson, that different sweeteners are used by the company’s bottling partners in different parts of the world, for reasons having to do with price and availability. But, he says, “all of our consumer research indicates that from a taste standpoint, the difference is imperceptible.”

More Than 100,000 Pay for British News Site

By ERIC PFANNER NY TIMES
The News Corporation said on Tuesday that it had gained 105,000 paying customers for the digital versions of The Times and The Sunday Times of London since it started charging for access to their Web sites this summer.

The company said about half of those additions were regular, active subscribers to the newspapers’ Web sites, iPad application or Amazon Kindle edition. The rest were occasional purchasers. Another 100,000 readers have activated free digital accounts that are included in print subscriptions to the papers, the News Corporation said.

The company’s initiative has been closely watched among media analysts and advertisers because The Times and Sunday Times are among the first prominent general-interest newspapers to start charging for their digital content. Other newspapers are also moving to introduce paid services as online advertising falls short of publishers’ hopes that it might someday replace dwindling print ad revenue.

“These figures very clearly show that large numbers of people are willing to pay for quality journalism in digital formats,” said Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, the London-based arm of the News Corporation that publishes The Times papers.

The News Corporation already charges for access to The Wall Street Journal. The company, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, also moved another British newspaper, the tabloid News of the World, behind a pay wall.

The conventional wisdom among media analysts has been that it will be difficult to persuade readers to pay for general news online, given the panoply of free news available on the Web.

But, some specialty publications in areas like business and finance have had modest success with paid access.

The Financial Times, for example, says it has attracted 189,000 paying customers for its Web site, which uses a metered model, giving online readers a limited number of free articles every month before charges kick in.

The New York Times, which also publishes The International Herald Tribune, has said it plans to take a similar approach when it begins charging for its Web site next year.

When the News Corporation switched to a paid model, the company estimated that the number of visitors to The Times and Sunday Times Web sites would drop by 90 percent. In fact, traffic appears to have fallen by somewhat less. Nielsen, the media audience measurement agency, said last week that the average number of monthly unique visitors to the newspapers’ Web sites from Britain had fallen by 42 percent, to 1.78 million, in the third quarter, after the charges were instituted.

Many of those visitors do not go beyond the home pages.

But the News Corporation has said the newspapers will benefit despite drawing smaller audiences, because they can sell more focused advertising, as well as generate new revenue from subscribers.

Jim Chisholm, a newspaper consultant in Lille, France, said the News Corporation’s announcement left a number of questions for advertisers unanswered, including the amount of time that users were spending on the sites.

“Much as we all want newspapers to succeed and make money, in a market as rough and crowded as the U.K., The Times pay wall was always going to be a tall order,” he said.

Another question is what effect the charges are having on the print editions of The Times and Sunday Times. Paid circulation of the daily paper fell about 3 percent from June through September, to about 487,000, while sales of the Sunday paper rose by about half of 1 percent, to nearly 1.1 million.

Analysts say the move to paid-for Web sites could also open up other possibilities for the News Corporation, including bundled sales of online access with subscriptions to British Sky Broadcasting, a pay-television service with 10 million customers. The News Corporation owns 39 percent of Sky and has proposed buying full control.

A New Search Engine, Where Less Is More

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER NY Times
Start-ups and big companies alike have tried to take on Google by building a better search engine. That they have failed has not stopped brave new entrants. BLEKKO
The latest is Blekko, a search engine that will open to the public on Monday.

Rich Skrenta, Blekko’s co-founder and chief executive, says that since Google started, the Web has been overrun by unhelpful sites full of links and keywords that push them to the top of Google’s search results but offer little relevant information. Blekko aims to show search results from only useful, trustworthy sites.

“The goal is to clean up Web search and get all the spam out of it,” Mr. Skrenta said.

Blekko’s search engine scours three billion Web pages that it considers worthwhile, but it shows only the top results on any given topic. It calls its edited lists of Web sites slashtags. The engine also tries to weed out Web pages created by so-called content farms like Demand Media that determine popular Web search topics and then hire people at low pay to write articles on those topics for sites like eHow.com.

It is also drawing on a fruitful category of Web search — vertical search engines that offer results on specific topics. Many companies assume that Google won the contest to search the entire Web, so they have focused on topical search. Bing from Microsoft has search pages dedicated to travel and entertainment, and Yelp is a popular choice for searching local businesses.

People who search for a topic in one of seven categories that Blekko considers to be polluted with spamlike search results — health, recipes, autos, hotels, song lyrics, personal finance and colleges — automatically see edited results.

Users can also search for results from one site (“iPad/Amazon,” for instance, will search for iPads on Amazon.com), narrow searches by type (“June/people” shows people named June) or search by topic. “Climate change/conservative” shows results from right-leaning sites, and “Obama/humor” shows humor sites that mention the president. Blekko has made hundreds of these slashtags, and users can create their own and revise others.

Mr. Skrenta, who has been quietly building Blekko since 2007, has spent his career trying to improve Web search by relying on Web users to help sift through pages.

He started the Open Directory Project, a human-edited Web directory that competed with Yahoo in the 1990s and was acquired by Netscape in 1998. He ran three search properties at AOL and helped found Topix, the human-edited news site that was acquired in 2005 by Gannett, the Tribune Company and Knight-Ridder.

In some cases, Blekko’s top results are different from Google’s and more useful. Search “pregnancy tips,” for instance, and only one of the top 10 results, cdc.gov, is the same on each site. Blekko’s top results showed government sites, a nonprofit group and well-known parenting sites while Google’s included OfficialDatingResource.com.

“Google has a hard time telling whether two articles on the same topic are written by Demand Media, which paid 50 cents for it, or whether a doctor wrote it,” said Tim Connors, founder of PivotNorth Capital and an investor in Blekko. “Humans are pretty good at that.”

Still, for many other queries, the results are quite similar. Blekko’s challenge is that most people are happy with Google’s search results, which comScore says account for two-thirds of search queries in the United States.

“Most people aren’t saying, ‘I’m just overwhelmed with content farms,’ ” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land and an industry expert.

Google also enables people to easily search individual Web sites or set up a custom search of a group of Web sites, though it is a more complicated process.

Blekko is also taking aim at Google’s opacity about its algorithm for ranking search results. Blekko offers data like the number of inbound links to a site, where they come from and when Blekko last searched the content of a site.

Blekko has raised $24 million in venture capital from prominent investors like Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway and U.S. Venture Partners. It plans to sell Google-like search ads associated with keywords and slashtags.

Some start-ups that have taken on search have been folded into the big companies, like Powerset, which Microsoft bought in 2008. Others, like Cuil, a search engine started by former Google engineers in 2008, were flops. Blekko’s slashtags could be subject to spam since anyone can edit them, but Blekko says it will avoid that with an editor and Wikipedia-style policing by users.

“They have an interesting spin,” Mr. Sullivan said about Blekko. “It might take off with a small but loyal audience, but it won’t be a Google killer.”

The 150-Year War

By TONY HORWITZ
MY attic office is walled with books on Lincoln and Lee, slavery and secession. John Brown glares from a daguerreotype on my desk. The Civil War is my sanctum — except when my 7-year-old races in to get at the costume box. Invariably, he tosses aside the kepi and wooden sword to reach for a wizard cloak or Star Wars light saber.

I was born in a different era, the late 1950s, when the last Union drummer boy had only just died and plastic blue-and-gray soldiers were popular toys. In the 1960s, the Civil War centennial recalled great battles as protesters marched for civil rights and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.”

Today the Civil War echoes at a different register, usually in fights over remembrance. Though Southern leaders in the 1860s called slavery the cornerstone of their cause, some of their successors are intent on scrubbing that legacy from memory. Earlier this year in Virginia, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell proclaimed April to be Confederate History Month without mentioning slavery, while the state’s Department of Education issued a textbook peddling the fiction that thousands of blacks had fought for the South. Skirmishes erupt at regular intervals over flags and other emblems, like “Colonel Reb,” whom Ole Miss recently surrendered as its mascot. The 1860s also have a particular resonance at election time, as the country splits along political and cultural lines that still separate white Southern voters from balloters in blue Union states.

But as we approach the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s election, on Nov. 6, and the long conflict that followed, it’s worth recalling other reasons that era endures. The Civil War isn’t just an adjunct to current events. It’s a national reserve of words, images and landscapes, a storehouse we can tap in lean times like these, when many Americans feel diminished, divided and starved for discourse more nourishing than cable rants and Twitter feeds.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Those famous lines come from President Lincoln, delivered not in the Gettysburg Address, but on a routine occasion: his second annual message to Congress. Can you recall a single line from any of the teleprompted State of the Union messages in your own lifetime?

The Civil War abounded in eloquence, from the likes of Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, the Southern diarist Mary Chesnut and warriors who spoke the way they fought. Consider the Southern cavalryman J. E. B. Stuart, with panache, saying of his father-in-law’s loyalty to the Union: “He will regret it but once, and that will be continually.” Or Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, brutal and terse, warning besieged Atlantans: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

These and other words from the war convey a bracing candor and individuality, traits Americans reflexively extol while rarely exhibiting. Today’s lusterless brass would never declare, as Sherman did, “I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” or say of a superior, as Sherman did of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, “He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk.”

You can hear the same, bold voice in the writing of common soldiers, their letters unmuzzled by military censors and their dialect not yet homogenized by television and Interstates. “Got to see the elephant at last,” an Indianan wrote of his first, inglorious combat. “I don’t care about seeing him very often any more, for if there was any fun in such work I couldn’t see it ... It is not the thing it is bragged up to be.” Another soldier called the Gettysburg campaign “nothing but fighting, starving, marching and cussing.” Cowards were known as “skedaddlers,” “tree dodgers,” “skulkers” and “croakers.”

There’s character even in muster rolls and other records, which constantly confound the stereotype of a war between brotherly white farm boys North and South. You find Rebel Choctaws and Union Kickapoos; Confederate rabbis and Arab camel-drivers; Californians in gray and Alabamans in blue; and in wondrous Louisiana, units called the Corps d’Afrique, the Creole Rebels, the Slavonian Rifles and the European Brigade. By war’s end, black troops constituted over 10 percent of the Union Army and Navy. The roster of black sailors included men born in Zanzibar and Borneo.

Then there are the individuals who defy classification, like this one from a Pennsylvania muster roll: “Sgt. Frank Mayne; deserted Aug. 24, 1862; subsequently killed in battle in another regiment, and discovered to be a woman; real name, Frances Day.”

If the words of the 1860s speak to the era’s particularity, the bleakly riveting data of the Civil War communicates its scale and horror — a portent of the industrial slaughter to come in the 20th century. Roughly 75 percent of eligible Southern men and more than 60 percent of eligible Northerners served, compared with a tiny fraction today, and more than one million were killed or wounded. Fighting in close formation, some regiments lost 80 percent of their men in a single battle. Three days at Gettysburg killed and wounded more Americans than nine years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have. Nearly one in three Confederate soldiers died — a statistic that helps to explain the deep sense of loss that lasted in the South for over a century. In all, the death rate from combat and disease was so high that a comparable war today would claim six million American lives.

As horrific as these numbers are, they’re made graphic by the pioneering photography of the Civil War. It’s hard for us to conjure the Minutemen of 1775, but we can look into the eyes of Union and Confederate recruits, study their poses, see emotion in their faces. They look lean (and they were: on average, Civil War soldiers were 40 pounds lighter than young men today), but their faces are strikingly modern and jaunty.

Then we see them again, strewn promiscuously across fields, limbs bloated, mouths frozen in ghastly O’s. When Mathew Brady first exhibited photographs of battlefield dead in 1862, The Times likened viewing them to seeing “a few dripping bodies, fresh from the field, laid along the pavement.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote that photographs forced civilians to confront the true face of battle — “a repulsive, brutal, sickening, hideous thing.” We’re spared this discomfort today, with the American dead from two ground wars carefully airbrushed from public view.

There’s another great difference between the Civil War and every other war in our history: the ground itself, a vast and accessible Yosemite of memory that stretches across the South and to points beyond, from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to New Mexico’s Glorieta Pass. True, much of the Civil War’s landscape has been interred beneath big-box malls and subdivisions named for the history they’ve obliterated. But at national parks like Shiloh and Antietam you can still catch a whisper of a human-scaled America, where soldiers took cover in high corn and sunken roads, and Lincoln’s earthy imagery spoke to the lives of his countrymen.

In an electronics-saturated age, battlefield parks also force us to exercise our atrophied imaginations. There’s no Sensurround or 3D technology, just snake-rail fences, marble men and silent cannons aimed at nothing. You have to read, listen, let your mind go. If you do, you may experience what Civil War re-enactors call a “period rush” — the momentary high of leaving your own time zone for the 1860s.

You wouldn’t want to stay there; at least I wouldn’t. Nor is battle the only way into the Civil War. There are countless other portals, and scholars are opening them to reveal lesser-known aspects of Civil War society and memory. Know about the 11-year-old girl who convinced Lincoln to grow a beard? The Richmond women who armed themselves and looted stores, crying, “Bread or blood”? The “Mammy Monument” that almost went up in Washington a year after the Lincoln Memorial?

It’s a bottomless treasure, this Civil War, much of it encrusted in myth or still unexplored. Which is why, a century and a half later, it still claims our attention and remembrance.


Tony Horwitz is the author of “Confederates in the Attic” and the forthcoming “Midnight Rising: John Brown’s Raid and the Start of the Civil War.”