Category Archives: Ayn Rand

After one of President Bidens recent executive orders provided encouraging news for trans athletes, backlash was sadly inevitable. After all, hes a new president and as weve discussed numerous times, transgender athletes have become a lightning rod in Americas endless and tiresome culture wars.

So its not surprising that during the confirmation hearing for prospective Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona, a few ambitious politicians would take the opportunity to announce that their number one academic priority was to throw a marginalized group under the bus.

Enter U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The first words out of his mouth tipped off everyone where he was going and it wasnt anywhere pleasant...

The Office of Civil Rights sent a letter to Connecticut saying that boys cant compete with girls in sports or shouldnt be forced to allow boys to compete in girls sports [sic]. If youre confirmed, will you enforce that Office of Civil Rights opinion?

To review, a duly elected U.S. Senator couldnt make it through one sentence (and thats being very generous with the term) without misgendering an entire community twice. It is a credit to Cardonas sense of restraint that he responded with an answer other than Grownups are talking. Why dont you go color?

Instead, Cardona asserted that his job as Secretary of Education would be to make sure were following civil rights of all students. He later expounded, I think its critically important that education systems and educators respect the rights of all students, including students who are transgender, and that they are afforded the opportunities that every other student has to participate in extracurricular activities.

That sound you just heard was one of Betsy DeVoss yachts exploding.

At that point, Paul began playing the greatest hits of Martina and the TERFs, spouting out talking points like destroy girls athletics, they dont get college scholarships, and hulking six-foot-four guys wrestling against girls. The proceedings transformed into less of a Senate hearing and more of a jukebox of bullshit.

Listening to his line of questioning, it was worth remembering that Paul considers himself a Libertarian. And if theres one singular piece of philosophy at the core of Ayn Rands canon, its that whenever people are left to freely pursue excellence in their chosen field, the government should step in to stop them as forcefully as possible. While calling John Galt a woman.

If trans athletes are such a threat to the core of Pauls world, maybe he can form his own barnstorming team called The Parasites.

That wasnt all. Later in the hearing, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah took the floor. In the past year, Romney has marched with Black Lives Matter demonstrators and was part of the Group of Ten Republicans who met with President Biden to give the appearance of being willing to negotiate with Democrats.

But when it came to trans athletes, Romney was almost enthusiastic in his support for Pauls demagoguery:

I want to associate myself with a number of the things that were said by Senator Paul. Thats not something I say very frequently! But he made a very, very good point. Ive got pictures of my eight granddaughters... they shouldnt be competing with people who are physiologically in an entirely different category. And I think boys should be competing with boys and girls should be competing with [girls] on the athletic field.

Epic sigh.

I understand that confirmation hearings are all about trying to generate soundbites, especially when the nominee already has the votes clinched. Furthermore, I also know there are many out LGBTQ Republicans and conservatives who align with Paul and Romney on many issues.

But this is a story of two extremely powerful leaders cynically singling out members of our community to score cheap points. They also serve to turn people who havent researched this issue against a group that is already marginalized, othered and attacked way too frequently as it is.

This sorry episode isnt about politics or ideological disagreements. These are two of the most powerful men in the country going all-in on punching down. Its one bit of political theater that should have closed during previews.

Originally posted here:

Paul and Romney embarrass themselves by lashing out at trans athletes - Outsports

Among our countrys many ailments is the spread of fake news. As Beth McMurtie argues in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, disinformation and propaganda are flourishing, with people increasingly in politically polarized media ecosystems.

Fortunately, there are doctors in the house. Specifically, universities are full of professors with doctorates in education, history, and communication who seek to cure students of disinformation.

Unfortunately, a number of these experts also spread the disease, like medieval doctors who failed to sanitize their own hands.

For instance, one professor that McMurtie interviewed, Jennifer Mercieca, observes that many students following politics lean toward conservative outlets. That trend, she tells McMurtie, presents a particular set of challenges given the right wing medias war on truth, including an attack on academics as liars and misleading and corrupt.

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that where ever others differ from them it is so far error.

Rather than disprove this perception of academic bias, McMurties article only confirms it by leaning heavily on conservative examples of prejudice. For instance, Professor Mercieca proudly insists that she never calls anyone a liar: Such labels, she says, dont reveal anything about why someone like Alex Jones, a far-right radio-show host who promotes conspiracy theories, is as powerful and as successful as he is.

Instead she helps students do their own analysis of Donald Trumps rhetoric to see how he claims to win even when his projects (such as building the wall between Mexico and the U.S.) fail to meet with much success.

And so the article goes, with McMurtie offering examples of how to deal thoughtfully with the misinformed (conservatives).

There is certainly bias on the right, just as there is bias on the left and everywhere in between. The reason is not so much politics as human nature, our predilection to believe we know best.

As Benjamin Franklin observed at the Philadelphia Convention, Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that where ever others differ from them it is so far error.

In this case, the Chronicle showcases that tendency by downplaying examples of partiality on the left.

There is no mention, for instance, of the factual inaccuracies in the 1619 Project promoted by the New York Times, despite substantial documentation by historians and economists.

There is no reference to Paul Krugmans column initially titled, How Many Americans will Ayn Rand Kill? Even the New York Times editors seem to have realized they had gone too far, changing the title to When Libertarianism Goes Bad.

There are no allusions to NPR giving Vicky Osterweil a platform to promote her book In Defense of Looting. Her interviewer did not even challenge Osterweils claims that looting enables people to demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free, or that we have to be willing to do things that scare us and that we wouldn't do in normal, peaceful times, because we need to get free.

Can we all agree now that such comments are problematic, regardless of the speakers political persuasion?

Instead, the Chronicle implies that students must be warned against conservatives and advised to trust real experts. Especially dangerous, according to one professor McMurtie interviewed, is the idea that the traditional gatekeepers of informationjournalists, scientists, and academics includedhave been side-stepped by self-styled experts who think they can read raw data and determine the truth about mask-wearing and voter fraud.

Is this really the solution? Drop the portcullis to exclude the supposed barbarians?

The problems in that approach were signaled decades ago by the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek. In The Intellectuals and Socialism, Hayek emphasizes the bias as well as the power of intellectuals, a class into which he places journalists, teachers, radio commentators, scientists, and doctorsthe very gatekeepers stressed in McMurties article. Hayek warns:

It is the intellectuals in this sense who decide what views and opinions are to reach us, which facts are important enough to be told to us and in what form and from what angle they are to be presented. Whether we shall ever learn the results of the expert and the original thinker depends mainly on their decision.

Hayek emphasizes that such intellectuals have good intentions but err in judging particular issues in relation to new ideals that fit their vision of an advanced society. The practical difficulties of achieving that society are of less interest than the broad visions, the specious comprehension of the social order as a whole which a planned system promises.

If we want to heal our country, we have to start by healing ourselves.

Hayeks point is especially prescient given current debates on how to respond to COVID-19. Who are the intellectuals, and how much power do they urge us to cede to state governments in relation to where we travel and how businesses can function?

One source that McMurtie interviewed, Michael Caulfield, stresses that since students cannot process all the data on COVID-19, it is better to rely on experts: You have to find someone who knows what theyre talking about. . . . And then think about whether what theyre saying is in the mainstream.

Caulfield is right that the source of information matters, but the danger of his emphasis on the mainstream is that it could lead students away from other perspectives that might be true or partially true. As John Stuart Mill observes in On Liberty,

...even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

Such prejudices not only heighten the polarization that McMurtie bemoans. They lead us to ignore how experts mislead us, as in the CDCs changing message about wearing masks. And they direct us away from other scientific perspectives on the pandemic, such as The Great Barrington Declaration.

If we want to heal our country, we have to start by healing ourselves. We have to acknowledge the prevalence of bias across the political spectrum and the prejudices we are in danger of spreading.

Otherwise, we are making our students less aware and our country more divided. No vaccine can cure that.

Originally posted here:

Why Telling Students to 'Trust the Experts' Is Poor Advice | Caroline Breashears - Foundation for Economic Education

Binge-worthy doesnt even begin to describeThe Lady and the Dale, Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Druckers four-part, one-of-a-kind docuseries, premiering January 31 on HBO. Produced by the Duplass brothers, this twist-and-turning saga stars a three-wheeled car called the Dale (that may or may not have been viable) and its marketer extraordinaire, a visionary female entrepreneur (and longtime serial con artist) named Elizabeth Carmichael. With a promise of 70 miles to the gallon at a time when the 70s oil crisis was leaving Americans to linger at gas stations in Soviet-long lines, the Dale seemed to many a dream come true. And to others, too good to be true.

As Carmichaels over the top boasts and publicity stunts edged her ever closer to breaking the glass ceiling (and upending Detroit), a few corporate-friendly, straight white guys began to sniff around. (Most notably an equally egotistical local news reporter by the name of Dick Carlson yes, he who spawned that other pompous right-wing journo.) In short order, the story of an overhyped sports car became a focus on Liz Carmichael herself, which inevitably transformed into the tale of her former existence as Jerry Dean Michael, who for decades had scammed his way from coast to coast, dragging a loving wife and adoring five kids in tow.

But perhaps most remarkable or unremarkable of all was that the more Carmichael changed in physical appearance the more she stayed true to her grifter ways. Which resulted in a maddeningly ambiguous answer to the frustrating question that all non-cisgender folk have historically faced: Are you really what you claim to be? For ultimately, and ironically, the larger than life Liz had been able to convince more people to believe in her outlandish lies than to give credence to what seemed to be her sole inviolable truth. Sure, Elizabeth Carmichael had been born Jerry Dean Michael, but shed never been a man.

So to garner some clear-eyed answersFilmmakerreached out to Cammilleri and Drucker just prior toThe Lady and the Dales debut to learn all about their head spinning journey back in time and down the rabbit hole.

Filmmaker: So how did you all team up to do this series? And was it important to have both cisgender and non-cisgender folks involved in production (particularly for gaining access to the diverse range of interview subjects, from the trans to the transphobic)?

Cammilleri: I produced the project alone for the first six years. In that time it took all my effort just to gather the story of Lizs crimes, the Dale, the rose business finding subjects, writing court orders, mailing letters, digging up archival, getting funding. There wasnt a lot on Lizs life as a trans woman, save for a few diary entries published in the press. So when producers Allen Bain, Andre Gaines, and Duplass Brothers Productions came onboard in 2017 and 2018, we all agreed we needed representation across the spectrum (both cis and non-cisgender crew and speakers) in order to complete Lizs portrait as a wholehearted and three-dimensional trans woman.

Zackary came onboard immediately as a creative. It was clear she cared as much about Liz as I did. She helped me uncover a lot of Lizs trans life and personal journey in a way I hadnt seen before, and couldnt see because I didnt have that lived experience. Our production crew was so diverse, with so many opinions on who Liz Carmichael was, that it helped inform every decision we made about her life in an amazing way.

Because Id been shooting for seven years I had already interviewed nearly every cisgender interview subject you see in the series. So when Duplass Borthers Productions came onboard we reshot all the interviews, while adding some incredible LGBT scholars to help illuminate Lizs life as a trans woman. It just became a matter of who would be in the room for each interview. Once or twice the decision was made not to have Zackary there for fear of the subject being openly transphobic or withholding. But that was rare. Zackary conducted the interviews with all her subjects. I conducted the interviews with all mine. Allen Bain conducted the interviews with (family members) Candi and Richard. Every decision was a collective one.

Drucker: Making a film or television series takes a village, and the making of this was epic. Its fair to say that this project was transformative for many of us. We all learned something about ourselves and our families in its creation. Exploring such disparate vantage points added to its complexity. We all move in and out of various roles throughout our lives. Any trans person who has a large extended family knows that, even in your family of origin, there can be a wide range of perspectives and levels of understanding as to why you are who you are.

Filmmaker: I was particularly struck by the exquisite craftsmanship in this series specifically the combo of archival imagery, animation, and photo collage with the audio recordings. Even though Liz Carmichael died over a decade and a half ago, I actually got the sense that she was alive and well and telling her own story throughout. So how did you go about creating and stitching together all these various parts (which also includes many contemporary interviews)? Im guessing this must have been an incredibly time-consuming process.

Cammilleri: Because Lizs story was so effectively erased by the press, The Lady and the Dale became the most challenging project Id ever worked on. There was almost nothing left of Liz, so we had to piece her back together from the scraps of archival, stock photos, VO even employing crew members families to serve as character head replacements. (My grandfather Tommy portrays Mary Thayers husband in episode three. He crushed it.) That creative restriction soon resulted in such a rich and nuanced world personal to Lizs imagination, that grows and shrinks with her through the various phases of her story. Our animation team Awesome + Modest and Sean Donnelly, our animation director, deserve all the credit in the world for some of the most amazing animation Ive ever seen. They brought Lizs world to life.

Drucker: We had limited archival material of Liz, so much of her voice is reenacted based on direct quotes from articles since she was so extensively quoted or recorded in the media. But the breadth of other material was intimidating. There are thousands of pages of FBI files, hundreds of newspaper articles and lots of archival television discoveries. We interviewed more than 30 people, half of whom did not end up in the series. Animation is really the key to Lizs internal universe. Trans people create their own universes because we must claw out space for ourselves in a world that would probably rather we not exist. Lizs animation style is scrappy, DIY, paper-based cutouts with jagged edges. We wanted it to feel like this is how Liz would animate her story. Its tactile, its analog, there isnt a single digital dissolve or transition. Its a completely paper-based process/world.

Filmmaker: One of the most fascinating admissions in the series comes from Candi Michael, Lizs adoring daughter, who stressed that the whole family had been a part of Lizs transition from Jerry Dean. It happened slowly over time, which really made me rethink the era before hormones and surgeries became more readily accessible. Theres just something to be said for an unhurried process, one that allows loved ones to collectively come to terms with physical change. So were there any specific revelations regarding trans identity that you personally garnered through researching this story?

Drucker: Thank you, that is such a thoughtful question. In the scope of trans people through time, eking out an existence, swimming upstream, its hard to imagine Lizs story going any other way. I didnt know about Liz before Jay and Mark Duplass approached me with this project, and Lizs whole story was a tremendous learning experience for me. Many of the trans elders Ive known from her generation came out of a queer community, but Liz was isolated as a felon on the run, transitioning alone.

The harshest realization was how little mens views of trans people have changed over time. When asked about Lizs trans identity, many of our subjects had negative things to say, which in most cases was not necessary to include in the final cut. I introduced myself to interview subjects as Victoria, my passing legal name, and only one of the subjects seemed to notice that I was trans. Many of the rest didnt. I feel confident about saying that because of the derogatory things that they said about trans people, which I really doubt they wouldve said if they had identified me as trans.

Cammilleri: I wasnt too familiar with the LGBT community, so I never really understood why trans people were called frauds or con artists. Its one thing to read about it in a book, but its quite another to hear it and see it over and over and over as if being trans is as much of a crime as being a criminal. But Liz never conceded a day in her life. She woke up every day making the choice to be Liz Carmichael, despite knowing what she would face. Thats more courage than most people have in the world. My biggest revelation: survival is heroism.

Filmmaker: The fact that Liz, like fellow conservative Republican Caitlyn Jenner, grew up with the view of white male entitlement as an inherent right is a key part of her life story. (Indeed, its actually unsurprising that Liz was such a fan of Ayn Rand, who I always suspected was herself genderqueer as Rand was never able to comprehend, and practically despised, women who didnt male-identify as she did.) It just seems that Lizs contempt for society grew with the increasingly thwarted expectation of taking her white male privilege with her into womanhood. She just couldnt comprehend giving up that power or having it stripped from her. So how did this unsympathetic aspect a victim who couldnt see others as victims inform your approach to the story?

Drucker: You are spot on. I love this analysis. Im totally with you.

Cammilleri: Yes, thank you for such an incredible analysis. By 2000 everything was stripped from Liz, including her own name. She was forced to survive in the shadows as Kathy Johnson. Yet that entitlement seemed almost cruelly reflected in Mark Lisherons appearance. Early in my filming process, Mark admitted he had no journalistic reason to be at the compound. The irony of that admission always stuck with me. The very thing that withdrew Liz from society is what brought Lisheron to her doorstep. In that moment in that scene it became clear Lizs story was always a tragedy. A life filled with dopplegangers. Once we knew that, we just had to inch our way down, episode by episode, into that inevitable crevasse.

Filmmaker: Finally, how exactly did you get transphobic Dick Carlson to participate? (Was a straight cisgender white man strategically sent to do the interview?) The irony that libertarian Liz was taken down by another free-market Reagan Republican is just too rich. Is Carlson still to this day unable to see that he and Liz shared the same worldview?

Cammilleri: Well, the villain always thinks theyre the hero of their own story. So I told Carlson he was the hero, and he agreed. I shot the interview with our cameraman Matt LaCorte (a cis male) in 2016 prior to DBP coming onboard.

As for the last part, even if they did have a common worldview I dont think hed ever see it, because hes not looking to relate to her. She was an enemy to be defeated.

Drucker: Liz Carmichael continues to be one of Dick Carlsons amusing stories. Really hes a bit player in the arc of Lizs life, but what he represents is a deep legacy of the media-shaping opinions around trans-ness and gender expansive people that continues through to today. The future gets better and worse simultaneously. Liz could fly under the radar because trans people were not part of the publics imagination, but now we are certainly the most visible generation of trans people to come along, and the most organized. Our movement has grown, and so too has opposition to our rights. The story of Liz and Dick is a somewhat humble microcosm of what is today a global conversation. Dick Carlsons day is over, and Im not that interested in dissecting him but we have a whole hell of a lot of insight now into who Tucker Carlson is and what motivates his transphobia.

Read the rest here:

Liz was Isolated as a Felon on the Run, Transitioning Alone: Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker on Their HBO Docuseries The Lady and the Dale -...

To the editor In her book (which I have not read) Ilana Mercer is said to have reported that Donald Trump kept a copy of Mein Kampf as his bedtime reading. This book (which I have read) was based on the writings of Schopenhauer (will over intellect) and Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil) who were both avowed atheists. So was Ayn Rand, the grande dame of right-wing conservatism, whose rather crude novels were based largely out of the works of those two Germans.

Hitlers book obviously provided a road map for the Trump administration as it advocates rule by a fuhrer, white supremacy, casual use of lies and other forms of propaganda to control the masses, government control of the banks and of industry, etc. On Jan. 6, our would-be fuhrer and his hangers-on even tried a putsch but fell short of Hitlers success.

I was pleasantly surprised, during the most recent impeachment vote, to see that there were at least 10 remaining members of the party of Lincoln who are still defenders of our Constitution which is based on enlightenment thinking (science) and also the Sermon on the Mount.

Imagine my thrill to find our representative Dan Newhouses name among them!

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Letter: Pleased that Newhouse defended Constitution | Letters To Editor | yakimaherald.com - Yakima Herald-Republic

By Charlie Blanchard

Ever wonder about luck? I mean the role that luck, good and bad, plays in sports, politics, careers, wars and even life.

Winning a big lottery is very good luck; going down in an airplane crash is very bad luck. We have no control over luck, or so it seems. As years go by, I realize that we actually have control over precious few things while were on this earth.

Were born into life. Then stuff happens. We try our best or may even give up. Parents, genetics relatives, status, color, ethnicity, money all have critical roles in our life, which is not actually well-planned at all, to use an ill-conceived term a big investment firm used.

How one senses the role luck plays in our life seems similar to how we view happiness in general. No one can define happiness or come up with a prescription for how to be happy. Robin Williams had it all; he wasnt at all happy.

Luck. Fate. Stars. God. Chance. Cultural views about luck vary from considering it a matter of chance to being a matter of superstition. The American Revolution luck? Paul Revere may have spread the word that the British were coming to a small few, but luckily enough people heeded the message, or our Revolution would now be a footnote in English history texts.

I contend that, just as in life, luck plays a prominent influence in sports. Im not arguing or implying that our destiny is written in the heavens, or even in our genes, for that matter. But birth heritage and upbringing count bigtime.

Tiger Woods was raised, taught and tutored by his dad and mom to be a champion golfer from the time he was a toddler. Most of todays marquee golf tour professionals start out young and are groomed for the part, like Jordan Spieth and Michelle Wie. As juniors they go to golf camps and even academies.

Even Arnold Palmer, the son of a greens superintendent, and Jack Nicklaus, with private club access, started at early ages and became accustomed to competing and winning in the spotlight while young.

The late author Ayn Rand once said, any success requires both talent and luck. And luck has to be helped along and provided by someone.

After sifting through a lot of research concerning luck in sports, and especially golf, I find that luck is a tricky and fickle thing to analyze.

If you are a Chicago Cubs or a Buffalo Bills fan, all you have to do is think back over the years to understand how luck figured into so many heartbreaks. And we wont go into the agony of many of the U.S.A. Ryder Cup matches.

Researchers have tried to measure and quantify the role luck plays in tour wins, to no avail. Many golfers attribute it to good luck when a rival holes a lot of improbable putts. But thats like saying blackjack dealers in Las Vegas are very lucky.

And golfers often blame bad luck for their failures. Or is it lack of (enough) talent. Its hard to detect luck when its good; it looks so much like something youve earned and prepared for. Luck?

Until recently Tiger Woods had so many lucky shots they would fill volumes. One of the really lucky moments was when he made the 12-footer on the 72nd hole in the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines to tie Rocco Mediate, and then to win in the playoff. But the most unlucky thing was his drive into a fire hydrant a year later, which cost him dearly.

A lot of people think putting comes down to a matter of luck. Known as one of the best putters in his day, the late Jerry Barber said, [In putting],somewhere skill stops and luck takes over. The scoring range is probably from 15 feet in. Anything outside that is plenty of luck.

Many tour players, as they get older, including Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, view putting not as a matter of luck but as a game apart from actual golf.

If you want a fun read concerning the luck factor, try How to Make Luck: 7 Secrets Lucky People Use to Succeed, by Marc Myers, who says, lucky people take very specific steps to improve their odds of good things happening to them.

Dr. Charlie Blanchard is a licensed psychologist specializing in sports and leadership. Contact him at docblanchard71@gmail.com.

More here:

The more I practice, the better my luck - Las Cruces Bulletin

The most important collaboration in my life has been with Geddy, Neil Peart wrote in 2014. As Rushs drummer and lyricist, Peart had a profound link with Geddy Lee, the bands bassist, singer, and keyboardist though he also emphasized the importance of guitarist Alex Lifeson. Certainly I dont want to diminish Alexs role, Peart continued. After all, he is our Musical Scientist, the Funniest Man Alive, and a shamefully underrated and thoroughly wonderful guitar player. But the musical relationship between bass player and drummer, the rhythm section, is famously tight (or ought to be!). And of course the bond of trust necessary between lyricist and singer is even more intimate.

Lee felt the same way about Peart, who died on January 7th, 2020. In an interview for our recent digital cover story on the drummers life and music, Lee looked back on 40 years of close collaboration.

Neil once described your bass playing as passionate and methodical. Of course, that very much applies to his approach on the drums as well.Yeah. The two of us really gravitated to each other. We really were like-minded almost from the beginning. When he first came into the band, we were just getting to know each other, not only as people but rhythmically. He was ambitious and I was ambitious. He loved to be hyperactive. I loved to be hyperactive. So in a sense, it was a marriage made in heaven. We looked at each other very much as equal parts of a whole.

We really strove to create an individual style of rhythm section that suited the kind of music we were playing. Of course, having a three-piece, in a way, is heaven-sent because every time Alex broke into a solo, you have to get busy, so it doesnt sound like the bottom of the earth just fell away. So that really suited us quite well, and we got to a point onstage where we could really intuitively feel where each other wanted to go, even when we were improvising. One of the great joys of my life was playing in a rhythm section that consisted of only two people with that fellow, because we really jibed. We really were in sync.

Neil said two things about the guitar-solo sections. He said he always was very respectful of the vocal during verses, but there was no such rule with the guitar during the guitar solos. And he also said that you saw the guitar solos more like full-band solos.Yeah, I think thats true. And we had the benefit of laying down our tracks first so Al had to work around us. So we would go mental and do our thing and then poor Al would have to come in and go, Shit, do I work around that part? Do I go with that part? So we constantly made life more difficult for our blond-haired fellow.

Ive been listening a lot to Fly by Night, since it marks Neils arrival into the band. What do you remember about the birth of this version of Rush, and starting to form those arrangements on that album, especially stuff like Anthem?First of all, we didnt have a whole lot of time. Neil joined the band, and two weeks later we were doing our first gig, opening for Uriah Heep, so we had to learn as many songs as we could and head out. So it was through that whole first tour that we were getting to know each other musically. We had a lot of dead time but not dead time where we actually had our instruments in our hands. So we couldnt jam really. Our whole day was leading up to 26 minutes onstage, and then youre off.

We got very few soundchecks until we started playing with Kiss on a regular basis. That meant we didnt have a lot of opportunity to investigate certain things, so that all had to be done on the fly and it had to be done during the playing of the songs. Subtle things would start to change night to night as Neil got to know the songs better and as we got to understand each other better as players. That kind of chemistry started to develop. By the time we hit Fly by Night,we were just so amped to do something new. And the Anthem riff that we had jammed on during Neils first audition with us was a direction that Alex and I had already started going down the road. We were listening to Yes more. We were listening to Genesis. We were influenced by the more proggy English bands that were coming out.

So in a sense, Neil just kind of fit in like a glove. And when we started writing, even in our hotel rooms, in the back of our minds we had an idea of where that could go. But it really wasnt until we got into the recording session, and started doing stuff like By-Tor and the Snow Dog which really developed in the studio that a whole other side of our nature was formed. That was a real getting-to-know-each-other album, but at the same time it was surprising how quickly it all came together. I mean, we recorded that album in 10 days.

You also were singing Neils lyrics for the first time, obviously. You always mention that Beneath, Between and Behind was almost impossible to sing at the pace that was required for the song.Yeah, and its funny, I listened to that song the other day and I was surprised how, aside from its hyperactive nature, how unhurried the lyrics sounded to me now. But back then, I felt like I was racing with the rhythm section to get all the lyrics spit out, but its funny how hindsight gives you a different perspective on it.

Not to belabor the Ayn Rand of it all, but you were presented with some pretty out-there lyrics at that point. I know theyve always told you selfishness was wrong. Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more. Even beyond the ideology, which we all know that Neil moved beyond, Im curious what you made of that at first. On any level, those were not typical rock lyrics.Exactly, and at first it was a huge leap of faith for us to just accept that. It wasnt his idea to write the lyrics. Alex and I sort of said, Make him do it. He reads a lot of books. Let him do it. When they first started coming along, I think the first one he wrote was Beneath, Between and Behind. And then when he wrote the lyrics for Anthem, they were a little more intense, and a little more about things that I would say were not second-nature to our thinking, at least expressed in that way, like some of the lyrics you just quoted, begging hands and bleeding hearts.

That whole thing was not something Alex and I thought of or talked about. Once we got on the road and got to know each other more and started sharing reading material, I think we got a better understanding of Neil and he got a better understanding of us. A lot of times he would inspire us to read something that was a little out of our comfort zone and so through all that we kind of developed that acceptance of that style of lyric, but it was definitely night and day when that album came out. As much as some people loved it, other people were disturbed by it, because that was not the Rush they had invested in from the previous record. It was definitely a new band.

Xanadu is one of the greatest Rush songs, and at the same time, you had Pete Way from UFO teasing you on the road for singing about dining on honeydew. Again, you must have had a reaction when you were first handed those lyrics.Well, yeah. Sometimes you werent into it and you didnt want to do it and you had to talk about it. If I didnt write them, I had to put myself in the writers perspective. I had to be sort of an actor playing a role and so all those things had to feel comfortable on some level, and that required discussion, of course. As our relationship developed over the years, you got bolder about what you would accept and what you wouldnt accept, and theres a bigger trust that was formed between us as singer and lyricist.

I marvel at the relationship that we developed because in the early days we were just happy to get lyrics. So yeah, These sound OK. Well do this kind of music with it. We didnt think too much about it, and our biggest concern was, can we make a powerful song out of it? How is this going to work? We were making two records a year back then, so we didnt have a whole lot of time to sit back and go, Well, I think we should try six different versions of this.

But as time went on, we developed a rapport and a feel for each other and a consideration for each other. Neil, in terms of writing, became more and more considerate of what I had to do, of my job not just as a singer of words but as a shaper of melody, and someone who also had to express emotions. He was very sensitive to that, and always for many years, sat beside me in the control room when we listened back to vocals. If we talked about something that could be improved, he would rewrite it on the spot.

In later years, while we were writing the material, he pretty much gave me license to choose the bits of his lyric that moved me the most, that I felt I could write a melody to or arrange a song around. Even if it was four lines out of six stanzas, he would go back and he would rewrite the song around those four lines. Neil was a perfect example of a guy who checked his ego at the door.

He was a proud guy, but at the same time he was a team guy in terms of Alex and me, and he really trusted, in the end, my opinion and my take on what I felt worked best for a Rush song and what didnt. Which is not to say we never had an argument. Certainly we would argue about a concept or if I had changed the meaning of a line or something that was really important to him, of course, we would work something out. But he turned into an incredible collaborator and a very considerate song partner as time went on.

Matt Scannell from Vertical Horizon told me that when he collaborated with Neil on a song, he was handed almost like a beautifully handwritten medieval manuscript of lyrics. Was that your experience as well?Yeah. They were all handwritten and he had little drawings at the top of all of them and he loved cartoons that described the song, and the titles were always a little on the ornate side. Thats how it would start, and even if he had to rewrite the thing four or five times they always came properly presented. He almost never just banged them out on a typewriter or something. Later on, when it was a computer age, he still managed to find a way to make his presentations to us as artful as possible. It was a big source of pride for him, and in the early days when we were writing on the road, he used to add in the top corner which towns we were in when he worked on that song, so it also served as a little travelogue.

It seems like you loved it when his lyrics started to turn to the more earth-bound in the Eighties.Oh, of course, yeah. His lyrics became more about the human condition to a large degree. You could say that he was always talking about one part of the human condition or another even through the years of using science fiction as a device, but it started to become more overt in style and more traditional in shape. I gravitated to that a lot because it helped me as a songwriter and helped me in terms of the direction that I wanted to go in.

And of course, the overall sound of the band kept shifting in many ways as well.Neil and I as a rhythm section were trying to get earthier and slightly funkier and trying to experiment with moving the songs in a different way instead of just kind of at breakneck speed.We always were a band that played fast. I mean, when you listen to an old Rush album, the first thing you notice is, Jesus, slow down! But we were in a hurry. I mean, we were in a hurry. So we consciously moved in to find a deeper groove and the idea of groove became different than the idea of groove as a young prog-rocker. So I think his lyrics changed at the same pace. As we were looking for a deeper groove he was looking for a more real way of expressing himself, a more earthbound way shall we say.

A song like Bravado is a great example of both of those changes.Exactly, yeah. I think thats one of his best lyrics. Its one of my favorite Rush songs. I always loved to play it, and it was emotional. I love to sing that song.

Youve got formidable skills of your own, but were there times when you were truly kind of awed with stuff that Neil either conceived or was just pulling off technically?With regularity. Ive never met a musician like him. He was a monster drummer of the highest magnitude. Ive met some great musicians but I had the pleasure to watch him every night onstage and watch him improvise, as he got older, through his solos. When he became determined to add improvisation as part of his drum solo every night, thats a bold, brave step for him and the level of complexity that he functioned at. I dont know many other musicians that can function at that level.

So for me, I was always trying to live up to his watermark, so to speak, because he pushed me. He would say the same thing about me, but of course, I always thought, No, no, Im following you. And hed go, No, no, no. Youre making me sound good. Heres all my rough edges. So it was a partnership. But he awed me over and over again. He was relentless in the studio and he would play it as many times as required. Half the time, youd be going, Well, thats a take, right? And he would say, No. It wasnt a take. Not for him. He was so incredibly demanding of himself and of course, you have to rise to that level. It just happens that way. It just becomes your band mantra when you see a guy working that hard. You work that hard.

One of the things thats unique about Neil and Rush is the number of songs where theres entirely different rhythmic approaches for different verses. How challenging was that not only as the bass player but the bass player who had to sing at the same time?It was intentional and it was discussed. Even way back when we did Beneath, Between and Behind, if you look at the third verse of that song, we said, Hey, lets just shift the emphasis and go back on the beat. It almost turns into a shuffle for one verse. So we both loved doing that kind of thing. Thats the fun part.

It wasnt a challenge. I mean, singing was always a challenge over the rhythm-section parts that we would sing together but I always worried about that later. It was the writing of it and the thinking up of those parts that was so much fun for us. Whenever we finished an album, we always ran off one version that was just bass and drums just so that we could glory in the quirkiness of our rhythm section together and also the unblemished sound of bass and drums before all that white noise [laughs] came and got plastered on top of it.

So you have your own personal, bootleg versions of Rush albums that are just bass and drums?Yeah, somewhere. I havent dug them out in years but somewhere I have our original bass and drums as did he.

Neil wrote in his book that he was very proud of the drum solo he did your final tour, and he was under the impression that you and Alex never said anything to him about it.Yeah, and its not really true! I told him lots of times. Ive heard that before and I dont know why he felt that way. I mean, I listened to that drum solo every night in awe and I talked to him about it numerous times. I dont know why he thought we didnt give him enough respect for it. He was hard of hearing so maybe he didnt hear me. [Laughs] It bothers me that he didnt feel that we gave him his due on that tour, because most certainly we did and his drum solo was incredible and different almost every night on that tour.

Neil felt a lot ofpressure to be the drum god people expected when he played. How did you see that weighing on him?He set the bar really high for himself, and as his body started to let him down he worried that he would betray that. He was really big on that. He used to say all the time that he never wanted to let down the kid in him. He would visualize him as a kid watching his own drum performance and never wanted to let that kid version down. But it was really a very difficult gig and as time went on and his body started to, as I said, let him down, it became much more difficult for him to get through it. Yet somehow he did. Any talk of a compromised version of one of our songs, its just not in the cards. If he couldnt do it the way hed done it in the past, he didnt want to do it, and that was pretty much it.

Still, you pulled off everything on the R40 tour, didnt you?Yeah, I know. But he struggled through that tour. He had lot of weird issues, physical issues, a tendency to get infections. He was so fucking stoic. He would never let, you know Youd see him limping or something and youd go, Man, whats going on? Oh, fuck I need to tell you. But you had to guess if he even had a cold, because he didnt grumble about that kind of stuff. He was the exact opposite of me. When I have something wrong, everyone in the fucking organization knows I have something wrong. [Laughs] I really tried to teach him how to whine but he just couldnt learn.

You had to guess if Neil even had a cold, because he didnt grumble about that kind of stuff. He was the exact opposite of me. When I have something wrong, everyone in the fucking organization knows I have something wrong.

When and how did you first become aware of Neils discomfort with fame and compliments and all of that sort of thing?Well, it happened over time. In the early days, he didnt behave like that. I think he always had a little bit of stage fright, but he got over it as soon as he hit the stage. But it really happened over time, the more demands that were made of his time and the more notoriety he was garnering as a drummer and as member of the band. All that stuff started to play on his nervous system, and he started reacting in a much more extreme way as he got older.

I was thinking about this the other day. Early on, the first few tours we did, he was laughing a lot, having a lot of fun onstage. There was a time when we would even sit backstage after a gig and sign autographs for fans, especially in the U.K. The U.K. fans were used to lining up to get autographs after certain gigs; there would be literally hundreds of people lined up. So we would sit there in the drafty hallway as they were ushered in, and Neil would sign for everybody. As we got into the Eighties, something changed in him that made him much more sensitive to his private time and his exposure to the public and he started backing away from it.

He started taking off on his own between shows, first on a bicycle and then on a motorcycle. How did you feel about that?Well, every once in a while it was odd for us. We missed him. We wanted him to hang out after a gig sometimes and just get wasted with us as we used to do in the early days. But it was his only method of staying sane, and he needed to do that. So we allowed him that luxury. There was no way you were going to stop him, anyway. Its not like we would say, Hey, Neil. Dont do that. That wouldnt have flown. With Neil, it was, This is who I am. This is what you have to deal with.

It didnt really affect our closeness, I would say. But sometimes you werent quite sure, and then youd see him the next day at soundcheck, and he just couldnt stop talking your ear off about this or about that. So there was always something that drew us back together and of course, our dinnertime conversations were really important to him. That was his touchstone with Alex and I, and that was our time to catch up and take a breath together.

But he was prepared to forgo after-gig partying. On days off, sometimes we would find each other in some town where he wasnt staying 100 miles away, and we would have strategically organized meals together from time to time. I would say Alex and I probably wanted him to hang out more than he did, but we just accepted that was who he was and thats what he needed to stay sane.

He always made sure to arrive at the venues early, but was it stressful to know that one third of a band was off on a motorcycle somewhere on the day of a show?It did make us nervous from time to time, especially when he was cycling through South America. We didnt know where the fuck he was, but you just get inured to it. You just get used to him taking care of himself and thats why he had Michael [Mosbach] with him. Michael was his security guy as well as his buddy, and he had [a satellite phone] so no matter where he was he could reach us.

You worried about his safety, but he was a safe driver. I remember one time, I did a bicycle ride, and youve never seen a guy observe every single road rule like him. I mean, he always had his wits about him.

Can you point to drum parts of his that you loved the most?Its a big library of drum fills, but I loved his playing in One Little Victory. That was one of the few times that we could convince him to play the same part more than once. It was very difficult to get him to play the same part more than once in the same song but that was one of them. That whole triplet, double-bass-drum feel always blew me away, and in fact, I think that was the first thing that blew me away about him when we first met him. He got behind this little drum kit he had with 18-inch bass drums and he started playing those triplets, and wow. He had a thing.

He tuned his drums perfectly, too. A lot of drummers are great technicians, but not all of them tune their drums with the kind of fanaticism that he did, and his drums were very melodious because of that. They actually make his drum parts sing more and make them more memorable because of that fact. So thats a very important aspect of his musicianship is the way he tuned his drums, not just the way he banged them. Rhythm parts are one thing, but the melodious nature of how his drum kit was presented and tuned by him made him a really unique player in my view.

What were your usual methods for developing parts together?We just went down the rabbit hole when we did our bed tracks. In later years, I would write my part first and then he would write his drum part. In early years of course, we worked everything out on the floor together. When we wrote YYZ, for example, we would just talk it right through.

As I was writing the melody for that, we would talk through what he was going to play and where his bass drums were going to go, and I would go with it during rehearsal. Then you lay it down, and I could you hear what hes doing with his bass drum a little more clearly, and then I can move my notes around to smack right when hes smacking it. In later years, Alex and I would write the songs apart from him and send Neil a finished demo with, like, two versions, one with Alexs genius drum-machine parts, and one that had no drum-machine parts so that he could envision his own thing.

Then once we got together in the studio, he would play to a guide track of the part that I had written, and he would find it too stiff to play to, because it was obviously played to a machine. So very often I would plug in live while he was doing his drum track and play the part again, and this way we could figure out a groove together. I would then take his new part and change what I had written so that it was more simpatico with his presence on the track. So it was a kind of convoluted step-by-step process. We chased each other a little bit, but at the same time we always ended up where we wanted to be and by that time you really can hear all the nuances of the rhythm part.

What do you remember about Neil developinghis parts on something like La Villa Strangiato?That was really hard to play, that song, when we first wrote it. We couldnt get through it. We kept fucking it up because theres so many details, so many rhythmic shifts. Again, we wrote that kind of in sync with each other so I dont know how to describe that process really. As youre working on one section youre intimate with what hes playing, and then Im intimate with what Im playing and we try to make sure we can hear each other and Ill go to some new place and hell go, Oh, I like that. OK, Ill go there with you. And vice versa. And thats how you sort of build it and then you try to remember that sucker and thats not so easy.

How was it to deal with just someone who could be so methodical and perhaps rigid about certain things, and then being part of a triangle with him?Well, it wasnt always easy because he could be rigid. He could be unmovable on certain subjects. But I used to say this to the producers that we worked with: Just be honest with him. If youre trying to get him to do something, you have to, first of all, explain yourself very well. If you cant explain yourself very well, youre going to lose.

So when I dealt with him, he trusted me; I trusted him. He loved me; I loved him. I knew that; Alex knew that. But there are times where youre at loggerheads. So you have to make your case, and if you make your case well and its not bullshit, you actually are making sense, he will see your side of it, and so thats really what life with him was like. Sometimes he would be insistent that, No, I dont agree with you and thats not cool with me. We would just agree to disagree and maybe the part doesnt go anywhere. Maybe we dont use it. But more often than not we find a happy meeting place. He was a very reasonable dude, but what he wouldnt stand for is giving him a reason to do something that didnt hold water.

What were the kinds of things that he would truly put his foot down about?Well, gigs for sure. How often he would play, when he wouldnt play, how far the drives were between. He was very determined to do a tour his way. Thats one thing. In the studio, I dont know. He was pretty good to work with in the studio. I dont remember many hissy fits. But if hed done a song too many times and you wanted to ask him to change it, youd better have a fucking good reason to ask him to change it, because hed been chopping wood all day.

Hes not there to keep playing until youve satisfied every fucking weird experiment in your head. He would take that for a while, and pretty soon he would be done with that. Youre talking about a guy that left a serious amount of broken sticks behind him at the end of every session. Thats how hard he played. I mean, you could make a fire back there. So he had good patience, but he didnt suffer fools, and if you were going to play the fool, he didnt suffer you, either, no matter how much he loved you.

Youre talking about a guy that left a serious amount of broken sticks behind him at the end of every session. Thats how hard he played. I mean, you could make a fire back there.

Youve said that there arent really Rush outtakes, but is there really nothing in this studio archive as far as perhaps different versions, Beatles Anthologytype stuff?No, theres nothing. Theres nothing there. Theres nothing left. There might be half-finished demos somewhere where we got halfway through and went, Oh, this song sucks. And it never got made.

And its not really in keeping with your ethos to put stuff like that out.No, its not. I mean, some of those things may not even be in a stage that theres drums on them. Youd know when youre working on a song if youre beating a dead horse. If that song wasnt really coming together and especially with me as I got older I had less patience for staying with a song that obviously wasnt working.

Sometimes you come in the next day, and Alex and I would be working on a demo, and wed go, What the fuck is this song, anyway? Hes like, I dont know. Ive forgotten why we were doing it. So you just trash it and start again. We didnt record anything and then at the end say, No, that doesnt make it onto the record. Those things dont exist at all.

Neil once said he didnt really count in his head, despite the complexity of your songs.Well, first of all, he did count. [Laughs] We both counted. Theres certain things you count, especially pauses. You count pauses. When youre playing off time and you have a lot of pauses in a song, youd better be counting in the same meter or youre going to just blow it when you come back. You wrote your parts and this is where we thought the same. This is where we agreed. You learned the part and the part had a determined length of time, and you glued all these parts together.

So if youre remembering the part, you dont have to count it because the part goes this long and then the next part goes this long and the next part goes this long. So maybe thats completely unconventional, when you dont read music, to write like that, but thats how we did it. We wrote these parts and we put them all together and you just remembered them one after the other, after the other. Whether he was capable of remembering them into his seventies, I dont know. I dont know if Im capable of remembering them into my seventies. And maybe that was something that played at the back of his mind about playing when youre older, because your memory is not as sharp.

Its not like you can have sheet music in front of you.No, youre out there naked and if you lose it mentally, if you lose the count mentally, or the part disappears on you, which happens from time to time we have some fantastic train crashes once in a while onstage But thats a bigger fear, I think, than anything onstage, is trying to recall that bit that has somehow ran away from you.

I told Neil that watching him rehearse, I got the idea that his parts worked in a sort of three-dimensional geometry, and heactually said that was the way he thought of it as well. Did you ever talk about the way he saw rhythm?I think he had his way of splitting his mind into so many segments. He had true independence, as many drummers do, but he pushed that independence to its very limit and I think he equated it in a way of me singing, playing bass, playing foot pedals, all that. That requires a kind of separation of brain too. So I think from that perspective, he viewed his gig sort of like my gig, but I dont know how he fucking did half the shit he did because it was just so independent. Just the other day I was playing with my grandson and I was trying to teach him that idea and you start when youre a kid tapping your head and rubbing your belly. So you put that at the power of 1,000 and then youve got Neil Peart.

I mean, Neil was right you were also pushing the limits of that kind of rhythmic and musical independence onstage.Yeah, but my wife doesnt think I can multitask just because I cant make the main course and the appetizer part at the same time. So Im not very good at multitasking, apparently. [Laughs]

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Geddy Lee on the Genius of Neil Peart - Rolling Stone

The Lady and the Dale is a thoroughly engrossing, but sometimes uneven look at gender constructs, family bonds, and one of the biggest frauds to befall the automotive world. Directors Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker and Executive Producers Jay and Mark Duplass (whove become major players in the true crime realm as of late) have a lot of historical ground and themes to cover in their look back at groundbreaking entrepreneur and con artist Liz Carmichael. Four episodes doesnt seem like enough when trying to encapsulate Lizs curious place in automotive and transgender history, her rich family life, and the messes she created for all around her, but its also hard to tell where the truth lies when it comes to a grifter as savvy, cunning, and steadfast as Carmichael. Its a fine and entertaining primer, but some missing pieces hold The Lady and the Dale back from reaching its fullest potential.

Liz Carmichael was always a con artist, but she wasnt always seen by others as a woman. Liz was a charismatic, protective huckster from small town Indiana with a penchant for counterfeiting, check forging, and establishing fake businesses that would cause duped investors to lose their shirts. Liz had several failed heteronormative marriages and kids she never saw before meeting Vivian, the wife and woman that would help Carmichael the most towards fully transitioning in her 40s. Once Liz fully identified herself to the outside world as a female and settled down in California, it was time to leave the smaller scale cons behind and mount her largest scale effort to date: the unveiling of an unusual looking, three wheeled car known as The Dale (named after designer Dale Clift), which she claimed to be the solution to all of Americas gas shortage woes in the politically and economically fraught 1970s. With The Dale, Liz became one of the first and most respected transgender businesswomen of all time for a moment.

The Lady and the Dale finds Cammilleri and Drucker (herself a transwoman filmmaker) building a documentary series around a subject whose life lends itself well to three different types of stories. Liz Carmichael is simultaneously a business person with a brilliant mind whose poor decisions cause them to fall from grace, a key figure in LGBTQ history, and a career criminal who defrauded people out of millions. While Cammilleri and Drucker have done an extensive amount of research into The Dale and Lizs personal life, each of these threads often struggles to take centre stage, with more time needed to tie everything into a cohesive whole. Its often hard to tell if The Lady and the Dale wants to see Liz as a sinner or a secret saint, with the cars creator coming across at some points like someone who genuinely wanted to mass produce her invention and others where theres no question about her guilt and evasiveness.

If The Dale was a grand con that was never going to see the light of day, Liz certainly did her best to treat most of the companys employees well while they tried to come up with a scheme that couldve legitimized her efforts. What The Lady and the Dale does best is to remind the viewer that theres often a very fine line between being a budding entrepreneur and a con artist. Think Tucker: The Man and His Dream, only with a lot less ambiguity about the person behind the business. People will say or do anything to achieve their goals and claim their share of the American Dream, and often, those efforts can lead down dark paths filled with shady money lenders, coworkers willing to openly participate in subterfuge and securities fraud, production shortcuts, and endless cycles of lying to keep things afloat. Most businesspeople are forced to live by the old adage fake it till you make it, and Carmichael was one of the many unlucky ones who never made it. Cammilleri and Drucker speak at length to Lizs family members, friends, co-workers, and those investigating The Dale, and while some are vastly more supportive than others, everyone the filmmakers profile are in awe of Carmichaels brazen gumption.

The Lady and the Dale does a decent job of trying to examine Lizs gender identity in the context of her crimes, but its the type of story thats begging for a whole episode devoted only to this facet of Carmichaels life rather than having these discussions interspersed throughout the series. The Lady and the Dale adopts the Tiger King approach to true crime documentary filmmaking. Theres never any question that Liz is guilty of a lot of nasty things, but Cammilleri and Drucker show a great deal of sympathy towards their subject. One of the filmmakers interview subjects, trans historian Susan Stryker, does an exceptional job of illustrating and contextualizing how transpeople throughout history were sometimes forced into criminal endeavours as a means to survive in a harsh, unaccommodating world, but something about Liz Carmichael breaks that mold.

On one hand, The Lady and the Dale wants to celebrate Carmichael as an unlikely trailblazer who was routinely hounded by bigoted media personalities who wanted to see her fail (most notably Dick Carlson, father of Fox News blowhard, Tucker). On the other, theres no denying that Liz was responsible for hurting and disappointing a lot of people, and that Carmichael was the type of person whod turn tail and hit the road at any sight of trouble. The tone of The Lady and the Dale swings wildly between true crime condemnation and progressive sympathy, and without a deeper dive, its sometimes hard to tell what The Lady and the Dale is trying to say, especially when it comes to Lizs relationship to her kids and her later years spent as a Libertarian, Ayn Rand worshiping recluse.

Some of the interviews with Lizs family (including daughter Candi, son Michael, and brother-in-law Charles) uncomfortably sound like people from abused backgrounds whove convinced themselves that a lot of Carmichaels actions were okay in the long run. There are villains who treated Liz with unquestionable and inexcusable cruelty (especially during her trial, which focused more on Lizs gender identity and less on the facts that were sitting right in front of everyones faces), but The Lady and the Dale never wants to fully call its subject out on their equally long list of transgressions, many of which were unconsciously abusive to her loved ones. To do so would require more time and tougher discussions than The Lady and the Dale has time to mount. Its also clear that some people closest to Liz have no desire or interest in participating here, while other participants that are no longer alive are deprived of a voice (especially Vivian), leaving some noticeable holes that raise further questions that remain unanswered.

But taken strictly on its merits as a true crime series, The Lady and the Dale is highly entertaining and significant. Utilizing some truly inspired and incredible looking cut and paste style animation for its recreations only helps to emphasize that Drucker and Cammilleri couldnt make this stuff up if they tried. The nuts and bolts details behind the creation and collapse of The Dale are a dramatists dream (which probably explains why theres another documentary about Carmichael due out later this year), and theres no denying Carmichaels status as an outright character worthy of such a unique profile. Although it leaves one wanting just a bit more, The Lady and the Dale appropriately feels like being locked in the front facing trunk of a dubious car thats driven by a charismatic egomaniac. Its a wild ride and a unique slice of both automotive and LGBTQ history.

The Lady and the Dale premieres on Sunday, January 31, 2021 at 9:00 pm on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the United States.

Movie title : The Lady and the Dale

Director(s) : Nick Cammilleri,Zackary Drucker

Genre : Documentary

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The Lady and The Dale | Review - The GATE

Ayn Rands perspective on morality and political power was philosopher Aaron Smiths topic at a symposium on classical Greek and Roman thought.

Power & Politics was the title of a recent online symposium at which I spoke to fans of ancient Greek and Roman thought about Ayn Rands perspective on political power.

The two-day event, hosted by Classical Wisdom, featured talks and panels with philosophers, historians, classicists and others including philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, psychologist Donald Robertson, and classicists Anthony Long, Michael Fontaine and James Romm.

My own talk, Morality and Political Power, emphasized the ways in which our cultures conception of morality, which extols self-sacrifice, leads us to use political power in destructive ways.

Among the topics discussed:

In the Q&A following my half-hour talk, I answered questions on:

If youre interested in Rand or classical thought, or both, you can read or listen to my article The False Promise of Stoicism or listen to a podcast about Aristotle and Ayn Rand that I recorded with Classical Wisdoms cofounder, Anya Leonard. For a conversation I had with my colleague and fellow philosopher Onkar Ghate about the classics and cancel culture, try our podcast Why We Shouldnt Cancel Aristotle.

Heres the symposium talk, recorded on October 25, 2020:

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Ayn Rand on Morality and the Misuse of Political Power - New Ideal

6:45 AM PST 1/27/2021byInkoo Kang

Throughout her long, madcap and utterly singular life, Elizabeth Carmichael boasted a talent for remaking reality. Carmichael had little use for the way things were not when it came to her body, nor to Americas ailing car industry of the 1970s. Her knack for making the world see things her way led her to pursue a gender transition in the late 60s, seemingly with no other trans people around to give support or advice. A decade later, that same force of will led to her highly publicized claim that she would create and mass-produce a three-wheeled, fuel-efficient car that would save the country from the oil crisis a pipe dream that helped her bilk millions from investors.

A fabulist, an inventor, an Ayn Rand-worshipping libertarian, a queer pioneer and a doting parent of five (and several more children she abandoned or never bothered to meet), the exquisitely complicated Carmichael is, among so many other things, a gift to documentary filmmakers. With HBOs The Lady and the Dale, directors Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker (a consultant and cast member on Transparent) do right by their subjects multitudes, presenting a rollicking and twist-filled bio-doc in four parts that doesnt shy from Carmichaels many flaws while supplying ample context for the transgender experience a half-century ago. TVs longform documentaries are seldom so illuminating, or entertaining.

Cammilleri and Drucker smartly eschew re-enactments for animation in telling Carmichaels life story a visually charming choice that underscores both the profound mutability and itinerant weightlessness of her familys existence. (It also means that The Lady and the Dale refreshingly looks like few other TV docs.) Born in Indiana in 1927, Carmichael roamed from city to city before and after starting a family with her umpteenth but seemingly final wife Vivian, almost always evading arrest for her latest con. The family of seven mostly kept on the move, the childrens records falsified and their schooling sacrificed to Carmichaels quasi-fugitive status.

The Lady and the Dale is the rare biographical doc in which the subjects domestic self is as interesting as their professional feats. Thats partly due to the series' star interviewee: Candi Michael, one of Carmichaels daughters, who refers to her parent as both my father and Liz. (Two of Carmichaels children participate in the doc, as does Vivians younger brother Charles Barrett, who does his best to provide his deceased sisters perspective on her wife.) The children, who appear to have been the people who accepted Carmichaels womanhood most readily, had a front-row seat to her transition. If theres one point where Cammilleri and Drucker falter, its in not furnishing a fuller account of the ways Carmichaels history of fraud and instability affected Vivian and their children, whose forged paperwork gives them trouble to this day with should-be-straightforward tasks like providing identification or applying for a job.

Many trans people throughout the 20th century have tried to cloak themselves in anonymity for fear of being outed. Not Carmichael. In publicity shots for the car she promised to build a two-seater called The Dale that looks like a cross between a banana and a spaceship Carmichael appears in long hair and a miniskirt or a Wonder Woman pose. She was a soundbite machine, too, bragging about her companys proprietary bulletproof, unbreakable plastic (which didnt exist) and telling reporters, I dont want to sound like an egomaniac, but Im a genius.

At six-foot-two and some 200 pounds, Carmichael, who didnt begin transitioning until her forties, couldnt escape suspicions about her gender presentation. Her appearance, combined with her outlandish assertions about The Dale, led journalists to comb through her past and reveal her mile-long rap sheet. (Seemingly every news story declared her, in the sensationalized and uninformed parlance of the day, really a guy.) When the R&D funds for The Dale ran out, with no viable prototype to show for it, Carmichael ran into legal trouble, which meant disproportionate shows of force by the police and brutal stays in mens prisons.

But the institution that arguably had the most catastrophic effect on Carmichaels life, especially during her later years, was journalism. Reporters were right to expose Carmichaels lies about The Dale, but a kind of tabloid journalism indistinguishable from entertainment would plague the entrepreneurs later years, when she finally seemed to be embracing stability and even helping down-and-out men by offering them jobs. Its a tragic snapshot of the sideshow lens trans stories were seen through by the mainstream press at the time a viewpoint promulgated by journalist Dick Carlson, who outed Carmichael as trans (and won a Peabody for it) and fathered son Tucker, who would later spout his own fear-mongering rhetoric against trans people.

Deception has long been a charge against trans individuals, most often for their attempts at expressing their true selves. Carmichael was accused of being deceitful, too but in her case, she actually was a lifelong scammer and probable narcissist who perhaps did more harm than good in the world, while also being an undeniable trailblazer. Its to The Lady and the Dales considerable credit that the doc underscores, rather than streamlines, the warts-and-all complexities of Carmichaels life. It feels like some kind of progress to consider someone as irreducible as Liz Carmichael in her full messy humanity.

Premieres Sunday, Jan. 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO

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'The Lady and the Dale': TV Review - Hollywood Reporter

Neil Peart performs with Rush at The Forum on Aug. 1, 2015, in Los Angeles.

Rich Fury/The Canadian Press

The city of St. Catharines, Ont., announced on Tuesday the commissioning of an original work of public art to recognize the percussive and poetic contributions of one of its favourite sons, virtuoso Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. Interested Canadian artists and creative teams are invited to submit proposals to honour the musician who died of brain cancer last year at age 67.

Peart spent his formative years in Port Dalhousie, a St. Catharines community of historical significance and waterfront appeal. The scenic spot is immortalized in the 1975 Rush song Lakeside Park, with wistful lyrics written by Peart about the days of barefoot freedom, the merriment of midway rides and shining stars on summer nights.

A pavilion at Port Dalhousies Lakeside Park has already been named in honour of the drummer, one of the handful of musicians with memberships in both the Order of Canada and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

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Were quite certain the park and the art piece is going to become a mecca for Rush fans around the world, said David DeRocco, head of the task force soliciting the artwork. From the get-go, the committee has said, Lets think big here.

According to DeRocco, who estimates he saw Rush in concert some 30 times over the years, the loose budget for the commission, which will be funded through donations, is $1.5-million.

Seeking benefactors, DeRocco and the task force might wish to track down the anonymous individual who in December plunked down US$500,312 for a set of chrome-coloured drums once owned by Peart. The Slingerland kit, sold as part of a sale of music memorabilia by Bonhams Auctioneers, was used by Peart for the first concert he ever played with Rush, at Pittsburghs Civic Arena on Aug. 14, 1974.

The progressive power trio released their final studio album, Clockwork Angels, in 2012 and stopped touring after 2015. In 2016, guitarist Alex Lifeson and singer-bassist Geddy Lee were immortalized in the form of Lee-Lifeson Art Park, a music-themed green space in the suburban Toronto neighbourhood of Willowdale where the two Rush members spent their childhood.

In addition to his musicianship, Peart was a motorcycle enthusiast who authored numerous books of fiction and non-fiction. His thoughtful, far-out Rush lyrics testified to an enthusiasm for science fiction and the philosophies of Ayn Rand. Last week Simon & Schuster published Neil Peart: The Illustrated Quotes, by David Calcano and Lindsay Lee.

Among the artists expected to compete for the Peart memorial commission is Morgan MacDonald, a well-known Newfoundland sculptor who has made it his business to immortalize heroes. Among his works is A Time, a bronze sculpture of the beloved Newfoundland folk singer-songwriter Ron Hynes that stands near the YellowBelly Brewery on George Street in St. Johns.

Newfoundland artist Morgan MacDonald works on a clay sculpture of the late Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart.

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This summer, MacDonald posted photos on social media of a clay maquette of Peart and his drums.

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It would be a huge honour if I were selected to create a sculpture of Neil, says MacDonald, a fan of Rush since childhood who had already put in more than 1,000 hours into the sculptures design before the commission was announced. After his death, to think that Rush was not going to be making music as a trio ever again, it hurt me to the core. You realize things dont last forever.

Music does last forever and, conceivably, so does art. Hopefuls have until March 29 to submit their proposal for the commemorative piece. A selection panel will then shortlist six finalists to participate in the design process. Organizers hope to see shovels in the ground for the project as early as next year.

That might be aggressive, given the realities of COVID-19 and the difficulties of putting on fundraising concerts, DeRocco said, but thats our hope.

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Closer to the park: St. Catharines commissions artwork to honour Rush drummer Neil Peart - The Globe and Mail