The Enlightened Despot

No one, if Fox has anything to say about it:

The long-gestating court battle over the film rights to “Watchmen” took a possibly cataclysmic turn late Wednesday, as Judge Gary Alan Feess declared that 20th Century Fox holds a valid copyright interest in the property that would cover distribution of the upcoming “Watchmen” movie.

The ruling doesn’t bode well for Warner Bros., which is producing the Zack Snyder-directed pic scheduled to hit theaters on March 6. That release date could now be in jeopardy, although the judge appealed for both sides to find common ground and negotiate rather than continue through a trial, The New York Times reported.

People have been trying to turn Alan Moore’s celebrated graphic novel into a movie since the 80’s, and so far, the project has seemed cursed. Terry Gilliam wanted to make it very badly, but failed. This is probably all to the good; as much as I like Gilliam, it’s hard to imagine this movie not looking ridiculous without CGI.

Snyder’s film looks very, very good, however, so I very much hope Fox’s lawsuit doesn’t blow it for everyone. In the meantime, a new trailer has been released, though only in Japan. For those readers who don’t speak Japanese, shame on you, but bear with it - though the voiceover will be unintelligible, the Japanese are a literate people, so the dialogue isn’t dubbed. Also, note that Richard Nixon will again be featured on the big screen, this time in a work that acknowledges its status as fiction:

As the past few days of posting should make clear, Frederick and I are more or less on the same page as far as the drug war is concerned. This last post would be dead on, except that it is slightly too generous to the Brookings Institute. The claim that “the war on drugs has failed and will continue to do so unless its strategy is dramatically changed” isn’t merely so understated as to be obvious, it’s so understated as to be false, because there is no dramatic change in strategy that could make the drug war successful. Well, perhaps that’s unfair - we could nuke Afghanistan and all of South America. That would probably end U.S. drug consumption as we know it for at least a few months. Failing that, though, the government will always run into the fundamental problem that they don’t - and can’t - care as much about stopping drug use as junkies care about using drugs.

We spend vast sums of money messing with the drug trade so as to drive prices up, in the hopes of driving demand down. Your Intro Econ teacher will tell you that demand for drugs is completely immune to changes in price; this is, of course, a stupid, oversimplified thing for your Intro Econ teacher to tell you, but the fact remains that these are single-issue spenders. As more and more money is spent fighting drug use, voters start to complain, but addicts are still looking to score. So it remains in someone’s interest to find a way through the enforcement, or to come up with a new drug the addicts will like.

Again, that’s all a bit more simplistic than I like to be on this issue, but the basic problem I’m trying to highlight - that the people breaking these laws will always care a lot more about the issue than the people enforcing them - is, I think, a big part of why anti-drug efforts have been so ineffectual.

Finally, here’s some more from Richard Nixon (and Bob Haldeman) on the subject of drugs. You can almost see our deranged national attitude towards drug use developing in front of your eyes:

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In the interest of fairness, here are some excerpts from our former president’s conversations about legalizing marijuana:

You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they’re trying to destroy us.
…
Now, this is one thing I want. I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, uh, Domestic Council? I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them. I see another thing in the news summary this morning about it. You know it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it’s because most of them are psychiatrists, you know, there’s so many, all the greatest psychiatrists are Jewish. By God we are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss

In the spirit of actual, non-snarky fairness, I should point out that Nixon didn’t think marijuana users should go to jail. So a guy who thought the legalization movement was a jewish/communist conspiracy to destroy our country was in favor of much saner legislation than we have on the books today.