Lincoln Lawyer, Company Men, Idol - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

I've long been an anti-fan of actor Matthew McConaughey. I have never believed in any acting performance of his -- smugness and vanity always seep through, making it impossible for me to care.

Until The Lincoln Lawyer. With an excellent script by John Romano, based on Michael Connelly's brilliant legal thriller, McConaughey was given plenty to work with. But he's wrecked good scripts before.

So what makes the difference? McConaughey's face is beginning to show his age; I think his acting is, too. Maybe what I thought of as smugness and vanity were merely his youth, which as an old man I found irritating -- I'm as likely to be deceived by my own biases as anyone else.

But he's joining the ranks of tired old men, which is exactly right for the character of Mick Haller, a defense attorney who works on the cheap, maintaining no office except the Lincoln Town Car he drives (or rides in) from place to place. He has an ex-wife (the ever-luminous Marisa Tomei) in the state's attorney's office, who still loves him but hates the fact that he helps bad guys get out while she's trying to put them away.

The film is rated R for language -- needless F-words -- and one sex scene that, by itself, wouldn't have rated more than a PG-13. Nor is the violence particularly graphic. In other words, I think the R is there just to make sure dating teenagers don't bother the grownups while they're watching a good movie.

Unless the F-word bothers you a lot, there's nothing to bar you from watching a morally fascinating story about trying to make the system work despite legal obligations that force Haller to work against his own interest and against justice for a previous client he feels that he let down.

Then again, I find it more than a little bothersome that the F-words didn't bother me. Nobody I know personally uses the word at all -- I have become jaded to it solely through watching movies that have it.

Raise your hand if movie people are the only ones who ever use the word in your presence. I wish Hollywood could understand that most of us, as grownups, don't feel the need to use the word. It's such an adolescent thing. Ironic that using it more than once in a movie is likely to get you precisely the audience that no longer thinks the word is cool or even interesting.

But Michael Connelly used the word in the book, too -- it isn't only screenwriters and talentless comedians who need to outgrow the F-word habit. When writers tell me, "But that's how my character would really talk," I always answer, "And do you also have to show us how they really wipe their bums after they poop? No? You're able to leave out that extremely realistic trait of your characters? Then why not keep their poopy language out of our heads, too?"

Enough of that: You'll make your own decision about the rating. Suffice it to say that The Lincoln Lawyer is the first really excellent film adaptation of a Michael Connelly novel. (Clint Eastwood's Blood Work was well-intentioned, but it really didn't do the novel justice.) One of our best contemporary writers finally gets a really good film version.

The Company Men was, very quietly and without a single nomination, quite possibly the best movie of 2010. The reason I didn't mention it before is that I finally got around to seeing it in its tiny-theater two-showings-a-day holdover run at the Carousel.

What a mistake to wait so long. My guess is that most of you won't have a chance to see it until it's on video or cable. But when you get the chance, don't miss it. I mean really: Don't.

It's an absolutely contemporary, real, moving, yet subtly-handled story of men who spent their careers in a ship-building firm that over the years had become an international conglomerate, and is now, in the recession of 2008, downsizing in order to keep stockholders happy and earn huge bonuses to the top executives who do the firing.

The movie follows several executives as they are laid off, one by one. We see how decisions are made, as Tommy Lee Jones's character, a shipbuilder who was once the big boss's only employee and closest friend, tries and fails to protect several men who deserved better from the company.

All the rituals of being laid-off from a "caring" company are observed, but in an economic downturn, four months of job-placement help don't accomplish much except delay the inevitable sense of being adrift without a sail or oar.

We watch as Ben Affleck -- in the best and deepest performance I've ever seen him give -- is forced to humble himself and go to work (as a second-rate carpenter) for his contractor brother-in-law (Kevin Costner at his very best). Affleck learns the man's real value, but gradually. I love it when people discover that they and others are better people than they had suspected before.

By the end we see that the one laid-off executive who doesn't make it really decided, by his own despair, not to get a new life after being fired. To be fair, he didn't have the stock options that left one of the characters with millions in the bank (so he could afford an expensive divorce) after he was fired. But if there's a lesson in the movie, it's this: When bad stuff happens, you do what it takes to stay alive.

Ben Affleck's character's wife (I can't tell you the actress's name because the credits list only the women's first names, so I can't tell who is whose wife) immediately starts to cut back on costs even as Affleck tries to "keep up appearances." Another character's wife won't even let him come home during the day, so that neighbors can't see that he's lost his job. Delusional! Yet people really do act this way about money.

What the smart ones learn is that they are not their job; nor are they their house or their car or their club membership. But they are husband and father, if they really want to be and put some work into it.

Here's a spoiler, so you can skip the next paragraph -- though this movie does not really depend on suspense, but rather depends on development of relationships, which can't be spoiled.

I've heard the ending, when Tommy Lee Jones's character starts up a new shipbuilding company in the abandoned drydock where the original conglomerate started, criticized as "unrealistic," either because it's too "simple" and "pat" artistically, or because startups can't compete in a world of conglomerates.

Such critics don't know what realism is. For one thing, they start from the assumption that any kind of goodness or decency is unrealistic -- what a poor world they live in, and what bad art they're forced to admire. Second, and perhaps more important, they miss the business truth that almost everyone seems to miss:

Conglomerates are self-destructive by their nature. When a company is in business only to manipulate value for the sake of stock prices, dividends, and management bonuses and options, the people who are best at doing the actual work of the company's various divisions either quit, get lured away, or (as in this movie) get fired.

The result is that conglomerates become very bad that the work they're supposedly doing, and the opportunities for startup competitors vastly increase.

I saw it myself during a wave of mergers in the publishing industry in the early 1980s. Tom Doherty, seeing the opportunity, quit his job and started a new company, TOR, as an original paperback house, initially specializing in science fiction and fantasy. Everyone knew that you couldn't possibly start a paperback house in that era of publishing conglomerates. Everyone except Tom, who knew that publishing company mergers, contrary to received wisdom, actually get worse and less efficient than the original publishing houses were before their acquisition.

So what Tom created soon became the best publisher of science fiction in the business, and branched out into other genres as well. Tom Doherty was (and is) to publishing what Tommy Lee Jones's character was in The Company Men -- someone who had actually done most of the jobs at every level in the business, and who had the experience, the drive, and the integrity to manage other people and lead them to real achievement.

Here's part of the genius of The Company Men. Ostensibly a story about how people cope with losing their jobs (and it certainly covers that!), it is also a very detailed story of how conglomerates eat themselves alive and create opportunities for savvy entrepreneurs to cut them down through competition.

Every character deals with some level of despair, but what we learn (because it's true) is that every one of them is still required to make decisions -- mostly moral decisions -- that allow them to save their souls.

That's why Craig T. Nelson's character, the big boss of the company, is one of the most superbly written and acted characters of all. He is given every chance to make decisions that would have been right and fair and decent to his employees and which would have been good, in the long run, for his company's bottom line. Instead, he invariably chooses what's good for short-term stock gains and corporate warfare.

While in the real world, Nelson's character is as likely to "succeed" as fail -- it comes down to whether a takeover bid succeeds or not -- the fact is that he is exposed as being a man motivated by personal vanity, greed, and insecurity. He knows he doesn't deserve the power that he has, but instead of working to deserve it, he works only to preserve the appearance of authority.

It's hard to pity a man who is left with millions of dollars -- but he is, nevertheless, a pitiful figure, if only because he never grasps what most of the other characters learn (or, like Kevin Costner's character, already knew): that who you are depends, not on how other people treat you, but on how you treat them.

Or, as Jesus said in Matthew 15:11: "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." Morally, others don't pollute you; you pollute yourself by what you choose to do.

So wait a minute -- I'm quoting the New Testament in a review of a movie? Yes, I am -- not because I think the movie's creators had scripture in mind when they made it, but because I think it's telling when a movie makes a moral point that has already been tested by a couple of thousand years of people occasionally trying to actually live by what Jesus taught. (But then, I start from the theological position that God tells us things because they're true; they aren't made true because God said them.)

Despite the R rating -- earned by a moment of brief nudity and a profligate over-reliance on F-words -- this is a movie that is so truthful and well-made it approaches nobility.

But don't, I beg you, confuse it with the immature, misanthropic In the Company of Men, which is the opposite kind of movie -- one that purports to explore evil while really exploiting and perpetrating it.

American Idol without Simon Cowell: to my surprise, it's better. And here's why. The other judges relied on Simon to "tell the truth." But Cowell did it in such an unkind, uncompassionate way that it wasn't all that helpful, either.

Now, absent Simon, Randy is revealing that he deserves his long career as a record producer. He speaks realistically but kindly and the contestants who listen will get better.

Furthermore, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler are excellent. Experienced as singers and appreciative of good work outside the genres where they made their careers, both of them are charming in both their praise and criticism, but without a scrap of meanness in them.

The result is that would-be singers can learn from their comments, and the audience never has to feel demeaned or embarrassed by Simon's occasional cruelty.

I don't know whether the show will end up with as many viewers as in previous years -- after all, it's been running for years and nothing keeps the public's interest forever. But it's still the top-rated show on television, and this year there are some absolutely brilliant contestants -- Stefano Langone, who has great pipes and also knows how to sing the meaning of the words; Jacob Lusk, a soulful, wistful singer of enormous talent and likability; and above all Casey Abrams, probably the best pure musician this show has ever seen, with a range from raspy blues to soaring sweetness and a rich jazz sensibility. I especially love it when he accompanies himself on the bass.

There are also some wonderfully likable and talented performers who should probably not win but will end up with good careers no matter how they fare. My favorites are talented country bass singer Scotty McCreery, whose sweetness is so genuine that it shines through everything he does, and Haley Reinhart, who is still finding herself but is, in my opinion, the best of the women (in a fairly weak year for females).

I have no idea what anyone sees in Paul McDonald, a cross between Rod Stewart and the Cheshire Cat, or beauty pageant singer Pia Toscano; but that's why it's a contest.

Conclusion? American Idol is still a pleasure to watch. And if you want to handicap the races, check out http://americanidolnet.com, an unofficial site that runs a poll that does a fair job of showing how people are doing, though the margin of error means that they can't predict precisely which low-performer will achieve the absolute lowest ranking in any particular week.

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Cleaning, Courage, Anesthesia, and Mutt & Jeff

Thursday, March 24^th -- Don't Tie Me Down Day

Noted escape artist and magician Harry Houdini always claimed he was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, on April 6^th, but in fact he was born on March 24^th of 1874 in Budapest, Hungary, with the name Ehrich Weisz. He took his stage name in honor of noted French magician Robert-Houdin, with "Harry" as an Americanization of his childhood nickname Ehrie.

Ehrich ran away from home at age twelve, hopping a freight train and not returning to his family for a year. He held childhood jobs in that pre-child-labor-law era such as tie cutter, messenger, and photographer's assistant, though he was already doing magic for audiences. After he married fledgling actress and singer Beatrice "Bess" Raymond, they developed an act where they switched places in a locked trunk, which evolved into the escape-artist stunts that made him world famous. He made a joke of the best handcuffs and other restraints that leading police agencies could come up with, though few criminals could match his flexibility and deftness.

Intrigued by "spiritualism," in which mediums purportedly communed with the dead, Houdini searched sincerely for any kind of genuine way to contact his late mother, but he spotted every trick they used, and his conclusion was, "I respect every genuine believer in spiritualism or any other religion.� But this thing they call spiritualism, wherein a medium intercommunicates with the dead, is a fraud from start to finish.... In thirty-five years, I have never seen one genuine medium."

Alistair Cooke's BBC radio show Letter From America premiered on this day in 1946, with weekly observations on American life. The first broadcast told the story of British war brides traveling to America on the Queen Mary. It became the world's longest continuous running radio talk program; it finally ended on February 20, 2004.

On this day in 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground at Prince William Sound on the Alaska coast, leaking 11 million gallons of oil into one of nature's richest habitats. It remained the worst oil-spill disaster until last year's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010.

Friday, March 25^th -- Tolkien Reading Day

Girls' team cop show Cagney and Lacey premiered on television on this day in 1982. Never have two powerhouse actresses been so perfectly matched and well-served by writers. Tyne Daly won the Emmy for best actress three years in a row before Sharon Gless, who was also nominated every time, went home with the first of her two Emmys. Daly and Gless have gone on to do great work in other series as well -- Daly in Judging Amy and Gless in the ongoing Burn Notice. Smart and tough is more than their screen image -- it's in their own character as well.

This is Pecan Day, the anniversary of the planting by George Washington of pecan trees (some of which still survive) at Mount Vernon in 1775. They were a gift from Thomas Jefferson. The pecan, native to southern North America and cultivated by Indians, is sometimes called "America's Own Nut," though Jerry Lewis held the title for a while.

Tolkien Reading Day is established on the fictional anniversary of the downfall of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, when Gollum bit off Frodo's ring-bearing finger and then, cavorting with joy at his victory, plunged into the lava pool in the Cracks of Doom. In the fictional universe of devout Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the greatest work of literature of the 20^th Century, this is the functional equivalent of Easter.

Many honor this day by reading (or listening to the audiobook of) chapter 3 of the second book in The Return of the King. Others read the very last chapter, "The Grey Havens," where Frodo takes sail on the straight road to the West (functionally heaven), and Sam goes home to the wife and kids that Frodo never had. Still others read an entire Tolkien short story aloud: "Smith of Wootton Major" and "Leaf by Niggle" are wonderful favorites.

But no one ever, ever, ever celebrates Tolkien Reading Day by watching even ten seconds of Peter Jackson's excellent movie but faithless adaptation of Lord of the Rings, in which Jackson was so stupid he cut out the moral heart of the story ("The Scouring of the Shire") and replaced it with a bunch of nonsense about Arwen being sick and Aragorn falling off his horse, thereby proving that whatever else he is, Peter Jackson is so far out of Tolkien's league that he doesn't know that such pure storytelling even exists.

Saturday, March 26^th -- Political Courage Day

On this day in 1979, the Camp David Accord, brokered by President Carter, was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, ending 30 years of war between their two countries. In the accord, Israel would withdraw from the Sinai, which it had occupied since Egypt launched a war against Israel in 1967, and the two nations agreed to exchange ambassadors. They have remained at peace ever since.

It is Political Courage Day because of Anwar Sadat, who knew that there would be savage opposition from Muslim hardliners in his country. And, indeed, Sadat was later assassinated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, making him that rare thing: A statesman who gave his life for peace.

Few elected officials have the courage to take right actions that will cost them nothing worse than a chance of not being reelected. Let Sadat's courage put them to shame, especially in this season where Congress must take action to preserve our solvency as a nation and save our children from paying back debts that cowardly politicians entered into for the sake of popularity that couldn't be paid for.

American poet Robert Frost was born on this day in San Francisco in 1874. After the death of his journalist father, the family moved back to New Hampshire, where Frost was high school valedictorian, then dropped out of college and worked as a teacher and millworker before his career as a poet took off. He was known for writing poems in plain English that anyone could understand, yet which were subtle and powerful and memorably expressed. I regard him as the greatest American poet of the 20^th century, without rival.

Here's the haunting conclusion of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening":

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

That repetition of the last line -- common enough in songs and hymns, but not at all in poetry -- gives the poem a wistful, lingering closure that expresses all the resolution of being an adult with responsibilities that trump wishes. And here is "Fire and Ice," one of the greatest short poems ever written:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

But since you don't need the help of a professor to understand Frost, he is little admired or imitated by academic-literary poets today. It is their loss, and perhaps ours, but not Frost's. He made it look easy, but those who try to do as he did find that clarity and powerful simplicity are much harder to bring off than obscurity and emotional gushery.

National Kite Month starts today and runs through May 1. Kites really only make sense in spring, when there are likely to be brisk winds on warm, dry days. In the dead of summer, with the air sultry and still, kites aren't good for anything but portable shade.

I'm intrigued, though, at the thought that an official "month" can be 36 days long. Yet when I think about it, variable "months" make sense. For instance, don't you wish "Drive Like a First-Time Driving Student Month" lasted only five days, instead of 320 days as it does now? And "Yell Irrationally at a Child Month" apparently lasts 380 days in some households, requiring fifteen days of doubling up just to make it come out even.

Other extra long months: "Cheat Your Employer Month," which is celebrated with fake sick days, office theft, and general laziness; "Abolish Childhood Month," in which teachers pile on useless homework so that obedient children can be prevented from having any joy in their lives; and the ever popular "Permanently Remove Uncle Orson's Favorite Products From the Shelves Month," which is celebrated several times a year in many retail outlets.

Sunday, March 27^th -- National Cleaning Week

National Cleaning Week makes "spring cleaning" official. Of course, we're no longer shut up in our houses all winter, so that general airing out is no longer a blessed relief from cabin fever. But it's still a good idea to give your dwelling place a thorough, deep cleaning and decluttering at least once a year. It can even be fun, if you approach it that way. Or if you hire somebody else to do it.

The classic movie-movie (movie about movies) Singin' in the Rain premiered on this day in 1952. I was seven months old, so I didn't get to see it in theaters. In fact, I was first introduced to the most famous numbers when I saw That's Entertainment in 1974, and Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" made me laugh until I cried. However, I grew up with my mother singing "Good Morning, Good Morning" to wake us kids up each day. So even before I knew it existed, it was part of my life.

Monday, March 28^th -- Circus Day

The self-praising "Greatest Show on Earth" was formed on this day in 1881, when P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey merged their circuses. In those pre-television, pre-movie days, traveling circuses brought astonishing acts to every town; now, we've seen so many special effects that real feats of derring-do make us yawn. Even professional stunt people have a hard time impressing us after the magic that computer-graphics wizards have shown us.

Seward's Folly Day marks the anniversary of the purchase of Alaska from Russia at the initiative of Secretary of State William H. Seward in 1867. Seward, a holdover from Lincoln's cabinet, might have been mocked for his purchase of a huge tract of tundra, but even the insane people who hate Sarah Palin as if she were Hitler agree that Alaska was a good idea.

Maybe some of the people who are mocking Obama's program for improving our national railroad system will remember that even in hard times, there are difficult projects that are worth doing for the sake of the future. For instance, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln set in motion the transcontinental railroad project. And Thomas Jefferson, at a time when the U.S. was seriously broke (mostly due to his wrong-headed economic and foreign policies), paid money we couldn't afford to buy Louisiana Territory -- half the United States -- from a country (France) that didn't legally own it. And today we're glad he did.

Good leaders take actions they believe to be necessary even when their critics torment them for it. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong -- but one measure of a President is that he gets it done. When you disagree with a President's actions, it's always wise to present your arguments logically and calmly; open ridicule can leave you looking like the stupid one to future generations.

Tuesday, March 29^th -- Mutt and Jeff Day

Singer and Broadway star Pearl Mae Bailey was born on this day in 1918 in Newport News, Virginia. Her nightclub act was marked by her rapport with the audience, making earthy and funny side comments between songs. She was known for songs like "Birth of the Blues," "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home," "Come Rain or Come Shine," and "St. Louis Blues," but to my generation, her greatest moment of fame came when producers, as a gimmick to extend the run of the show, installer her in the lead role of an all-black cast of Hello, Dolly! There are those who claim that the part of Dolly Levi was never performed better. Afterward, Bailey became a goodwill ambassador for the U.S., and also earned a bachelor's degree in theology from Georgetown University in 1985. She died in 1990 while recuperating from knee surgery in Philadelphia.

Mutt and Jeff is credited with being the first successful daily comic strip featuring the same characters on a six-day-a-week schedule. It began as the strip A. Mutt, which was launched in the sports pages of the San Francisco Examiner on 15 November 1907. But it didn't really take off until creator Bud Fisher added a second character, Jeff, and changed the name of the strip on this day in 1908.

Fisher was smart enough to copyright the strip in his own name, allowing him to move it from Hearst's newspaper into syndication; Hearst sued him and lost. Fisher went on to earn more than $150,000 a year by 1915, and $250,000 in the 1920s -- that era's equivalent of a pop-star or star-athlete income.

So Mutt and Jeff Day isn't really about comic strips. It's a day when we should remember that often the best things in life come about when you join forces with someone who seems to be your complete opposite.

John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States, was born on this day in 1790 in Virginia. Tyler was the first Vice President to succeed to the presidency, when William Henry Harrison died in 1841, after a mere month in office. Tyler boldly took the title of President instead of modestly serving under the title of Vice President, a precedent which all later Vice Presidents have followed and which has long since been enshrined in law.

Tyler's wife died while he was President, and his remarriage made him the first President to marry while in office. In 1861 he was elected to the Confederate Congress, but he died before actually being seated. Naturally, the federal government offered no public recognition at his passing, since he had joined a rebellion against the Constitution to which had once sworn a solemn oath, and a nation over which he had once presided.

Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, was born on this day in 1918, near Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Once the youngest Eagle Scout in Oklahoma history, he has been widely blamed for causing the collapse of many downtowns when his huge box stores drew all the shoppers in rural areas. People drove to Wal-Mart because it offered a greater variety of goods at affordable prices than they could get anywhere else. And downtowns were dying anyway; they no longer served people's needs.

Automobiles, using cheap gas and rolling over government-subsidized roads, made the big regional standalone store economically feasible. Lose cheap gas or the government subsidy for automobile roads, and Wal-Mart is likely to die just like those old downtowns. Amazon.com and other e-tailers are already starting to do to big box stores what Wal-Mart did to small downtowns. Business is business.

Wednesday, March 30^th -- An�sthesia Day

Dr. Crawford W. Long, having seen the use of nitrous oxide and sulfuric ether at "laughing gas" parties, noticed that individuals under their influence felt no pain. On this day in 1842, he removed a tumor from the neck of James M. Venable while Venable was under the influence of ether. The procedure had its opponents, who claimed that God intended pain as one of the trials of mortality, adding one more chapter to the long chronicle of idiotic ideas ascribed to God by people who have never met him.

The answer-and-question quiz show Jeopardy premiered on this day in 1964, with Art Fleming as the host. After a hiatus, the series returned in 1984 with Alex Trebek as host. In my opinion, Jeopardy existed solely so we could get to know longest-winning-streak contestant Ken Jennings.

The genius of the program is in the question-writing. As with Trivial Pursuit, the question writers (well, technically, Jeopardy has answer writers) do a superb job of making the responses guessable. Questions like "Who was the first surgeon to use anæsthesia?" or "What was Dr. Crawford W. Long noted for?" are no fun at all; the Jeopardy version is more likely to be something like: "Dr. Long's removal of a tumor in 1842 marked the first use of this common surgical aid." Now it's possible to guess "What is anæsthesia, Alex?" -- even if you never heard of Crawford Long.

On this day in 1858, Hymen Lipman was granted a patent for creating the first wood-cased pencil with an eraser attached to the end. He sold the patent to Joseph Reckendorfer, but the patent describes a pencil of a kind none of us has seen. The pencil "lead" (a graphite rod) only went halfway up the pencil. Then, in a wider groove, a long tubular eraser was laid all the way to the other end. So you sharpened both ends of the pencil, on the one end exposing more graphite, and on the other, more eraser.

A German company, Faber-Castell, challenged the Lipman-Reckendorfer patent in court. Faber-Castell was making the pencil we all know, with the eraser clamped onto one end by a metal band, and they didn't want to have to pay a royalty to the inventors of a more-expensive and less-convenient method of joining pencil and eraser. The Supreme Court upheld their challenge and revoked the patent on the grounds that Lipman had not invented anything -- he had just combined two existing items.

This put the whole pencil-eraser business in the public domain; Faber-Castell didn't have to pay Reckendorfer a royalty, but now anybody could also copy the Faber-Castell design -- which everyone did.

Thirty years ago today (1981), John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., obsessed with his love for the young actress Jody Foster, decided to impress her by killing the President, who happened to be Ronald Reagan. He nearly succeeded; Reagan might have been joking with doctors as he went into surgery, but the bullet had come perilously near his heart.

This was not because Hinckley had aimed well or because the Secret Service had failed to protect President Reagan -- the bullet that hit the President was a ricochet. Hinckley directly shot three men who stood between him and the President. Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty recovered fully; Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, remains paralyzed on the left side of his body. His injury eventually resulted in the "Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act," which went into effect on 28 February, 1994, requiring background checks before licensed dealers can sell someone a firearm.

(This seems like minimal prudence to me, but the National Rifle Association, an organization devoted to allowing any moron or wacko to own, carry, and presumably use guns of any kind, without limit, opposed these restrictions as if they signaled the end of freedom in America. They did not. And just in case you're wondering, those "statistics" that purported to show that gun violence went down in places where more people carried guns were as cooked as the statistics showing the "hockey stick" effect in global warming. Neither effect exists, though the delusions persist.)

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but remains in custody today, though he has been granted visits to his mother for up to nine days at a time, and is allowed a drivers license, though these privileges were granted over the objections of the prosecutors. The not-guilty verdict prompted several states and the federal government to revise the rules of evidence for the insanity defense, excluding so-called "expert testimony" from psychiatrists and psychologists on the issue of whether a defendant is legally sane, which is a different matter from clinical definitions of sanity. Besides, "experts" are notoriously faulty in their predictions of which defendants represent a danger to the community and which do not. Utah, Idaho, and Montana completely abolished the insanity defense.

Hinckley's "greatest love offering in the history of the world" was especially ironic in light of his father's work as president of the board of World Vision, an international evangelical relief and development organization whose stated goal is "to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God."