Comments

1
Well, it's good to see them engaging the subject matter with a nuanced eye.
2
If they're going to clamp down on funding abortions, why not this?
3
Is this shitty dialog straight from the book, does anyone know?
4
Life is hard for the selfish. People call them selfish all the time. People are always asking them for money. Why won't everyone just leave the selfish alone, so they can just be selfish all the time.
5
That was awful. I demand a refund.
6
@3, it can't be STRAIGHT from the book, it's not wordy enough by a factor of ten. But the gist, yes. Ayn Rand had a very subtle, nuanced understanding of -- uh, sorry, she had not a glimmer of a ghost of a clue how people actually talk or behave, and neither do this abortion's screenwriters.

What she did have was a close understanding of what American ding-dongs attracted to Nietzschean Fascism but smart enough to keep it under wraps liked about sucking up to wealth and power. Her whole life was pretty much a domination role play, with acolytes whose minds had been sprung loose from their moorings by WWII -- not unlike her contemporary L. Ron Hubbard, now that I think about it -- groveling at her feet in hopes of a few scraps of "wisdom" about how pure greed and pure selfishness (neither of which have ever existed) are the paths to enlightenment, and everyone else is just a parasite. The real power dynamic on display is rather different. Rand, not unlike her modern-day right-wing followers, was also one of that special kind of Republican who substitutes grand but half-baked, even stupid, ideas and gestures to make up for the internalized fear of being seen for who they really are: clueless fakes, plaster heads.

Because she, in addition to being arguably the worst novelist in history (she makes that Bulwer-Lytton fellow look like James Joyce), was a fraud as well. But then, when you're role-playing, fraud isn't really an issue, is it? Gotta work out those psychosexual issues somehow, right?

In short, that's not remotely how real charities or real industrialists operate or have ever operated. Only fantasy. The world was weirder in 1955 than people today can imagine.
7
-Why are you not a Communist, Henry? We have cookies?
-NEVER!

That sure is some QUALITY writing...
8
Part I? Does that mean we have to put up with this, and then part II? How many parts will there be?
9
Yeah, I was about as riveted by this as I was by that awful book, which took me MONTHS to finish because it was just that bad. I actually liked The Fountainhead--actually had a story and wasn't as fucking preachy and totally removed from reality as AS was--although still had robotic characters and a fixation with male domination (as Fnarf pointed out, Rand's "literature" is littered with this obsession).

Btw, will an 85-90 page speech, Rand's self-proclaimed opus, make it into this movie?

I prefer Telemachus Sneezed.
10
I made 1:22 before I had an overwhelming desire to change the channel. A fucking whole feature film, and this is the best part, the part they send around to entice an audience? I can't even begin to imagine the epic awfulness of the rest of it.
11
I want this screened as a double feature with The Room.
12
@11, Oh hai Henry.
13
@11, Maybe we could get someone to splice them together into some kind of Frankenstein's monster.
14
This movie looks so awesome I can't wait to see it. As #11 said I plan on showing up drunk and throwing footballs in the theater and screaming cancer during the movie. Here is to hoping this is a 10 part series.
15
@8,
Shit, they could make three movies out of John Galt's speech alone.

In the book it never. fucking. ends.
16
My recollection is that in the Audio Book version, the 'This is John Galt speaking' speech takes four hours to recite (unless you're a speed freak guru surrounded by fawning acolytes).

I don't think it'll be in the movie.
17
Ayn Rand was not a Republican. Yes, she knew how to belabor a point in a way that makes Rachel Maddow appear to speak in haiku. Just don't see this obviously-going-to-be-awful movie. Why are you all so bitter? Why isn't this event a good thing for you, i.e. a way to turn folks off from all things Ayn.
18
I have never read Ayn Rand. Should I?
19
@18: Probably not. There are undoubtedly better things to do with your time.
20
@18 Hmm. You need to ask yourself if you're willing to sustain the kind of corrosive damage that you commonly see displayed here. You seem like a nice, reasonable person. Don't read what you can't handle.
21
"Why isn't this event a good thing for you?"

Because they're not conniving hyenas playing political chess and pouring over win/loss scenarios every breathing moment?

22
Sorry, just to be clear, my intent is that whether you can handle something is a question for you.
23
@21 What?
24
"Why are you all so bitter?" Rand may not have been Republican but this is a favorite meme of the right. Otherwise, I think you're reading too much into things. "Corrosive damage" might be a projection.
25
@24 it's a favorite meme of the right in the same way that they cherry-pick shit out of the bible or the way that Reagan had to have it explained to him that "Born in the USA" would not be a good song for his campaign.
26
The bracelet-hating lady played her part well, I think. She had that "God I hope I don't vomit right now" face perfectly.
27
@17 Wanna try that in english?
28
Bravo! Outstanding! I think this will be a great hit in the cinema.
What? That wasn't the entire movie?
Oh shit!
29
The acting is better here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=…
(Bad quality video, old SNL sketch "Lyndon LaRoushe Theater")
30
@18: Everyone should read Atlas Shrugged, but few people had the luxury I had of being underemployed in the pre-Internet era in my early twenties in an expensive foreign country with few bookstores that carried anything in English. It made me a value reader: I read every 1000+ page book I could find.
31
@17, "Ayn Rand was not a Republican"?

Wikipedia: "Both she and her husband worked full time in volunteer positions for the 1940 Presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Willkie."

Again: "She also endorsed several Republican candidates for President of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964, whose candidacy she promoted in several articles for The Objectivist Newsletter.[85]"

Sounds like a Republican to me.

A startlingly high proportion of both Reagan's and Bush Jr.'s inner circles was composed of Randians.
32
She wasn't a republican but she was a conservative. She also was Russian born so that might have something to do with her lousy writing.

That was the best clip they could pull from the entire film?
33
A Former Objectivist Responds (Part 1)

@31 So if the teabaggers start going around saying how they think Gandhi was wonderful and yet they keep behaving the same way are you going to say Gandhi was a teabagger and become apoplectic over every mention of him? The object of admiration of my enemy is my enemy?

Republicans have no more idea of what Rand was about than liberals have. They just co-opt some of what they think she said for their own purposes. Throughout her life she was plagued by people she disapproved of who would try to associate themselves with her and her ideas. Have you ever noticed how good conservatives are at manipulating the superficial aspects of things, how they rely on messages that presuppose a lack of depth of thinking? Well, there they go again.

Ayn Rand often made the same choice that many of us make. She chose the lesser of 2 evils when it came to political candidates. However, she was outright against corporate socialism (read Atlas Shrugged to see some archetypes) just as she was against corrupt welfare statists (read Atlas Shrugged to see some archetypes).

It might interest you to know that she spoke of the evil of privatizing certain things like police forces. She would no doubt have been against the privatization of prisons. I believe she would have been against the "Citizens United" decision. She didn't think a corporation was a person just as she didn't think society was a person or the government was a person.

Liberals (like me - I'm a progressive) would do well to understand that Ayn Rand is more of an ally to them than to conservatives. Don't continue to concede all of her ideas to the conservatives like you do with national security and love of country. Ayn Rand was all about ideas and having a thorough understanding of why you think what you think.
34
A Former Objectivist Responds (Part 2)

True story: Decades ago I was an Objectivist. I only missed meeting Ayn Rand by a few years. I met (and hope to never have the misfortune of meeting again) what have been referred to here as some of her "acolytes." I found them to be some of the most unpleasant, and in the case of one prominent individual, downright paranoid people I have ever met. The man who Rand designated as her literary heir routinely purges the ranks of his movement and actually once released a statement saying "there are going to be fewer but better Objectivists." And they wonder why the movement never takes off.

I can therefore understand the general perception that Objectivists are assholes. References to these people are everywhere. "Dirty Dancing" has a guy waving a copy of "The Fountainhead" and saying "some people matter and some people don't." And that right there is the best example I've seen of what the problem is: People who missed the message inflicting their assholery on people who never read the message and now probably won't. And they'll go forth with the idea that Ayn Rand = asshole guy waving around "The Fountainhead."

Given my current philosophical and political views if I met Ayn Rand today I would be frog-marched out of the building. But I still recognize the enormous contributions she made and I still believe that she advocated many sound and important ideas.

"Atlas Shrugged" is an historically important novel. You may or may not find it a good read. I happen to have enjoyed the plot and the ideas presented. Others, clearly, not so much (see comments above). If you do read it and become excited by the ideas then be sure to go get some context. Read "My Years with Ayn Rand" by Nathaniel Brandon and "The Ideas of Ayn Rand" by Ronald E. Merrill. And please be aware that there is more than one group in the world that calls itself Objectivist. They advocate very different things from each other so you will need critical thinking skills.

What's my problem with SLOG? My problem is that I am disappointed in many of the people who comment here. I am disappointed when I see good, thinking people advocate burning books and disrupting movie premieres (even though they say no will attend -then why is it so threatening to you?) To me liberals represent the intellectual and moral high ground. If you continue to behave like a woman scorned over all things Ayn Rand I will continue to ask why that is. I expect better from you, SLOG. I will continue to ask which of Rand's ideas you reject. Is it adherence to Reason? Is it that the individual should not be a slave to the government? Is it that creative, intelligent, energetic people shouldn't be punished for being so? Fault Ayn Rand for the things she got wrong, not for everything she ever said or did. Could you survive against that standard?

And if your comment to what I have written here out of sincerity and genuine concern for your integrity is "tl;dr" then shame on you for posing as educated and thoughtful. Or as the kids say, I call bullshit.
35
First of all, I've never posed as either educated or thoughtful on an internet comment board as an avatar with little connection to my actual life. So I sympathize with those who must dismiss in order to do other things.

But all the points you bring up are fine. I know Rand was not a Republican. I know she was not Libertarian. Yet, it's easy to classify her in the conservative spectrum because she was an economic conservative. Conservatives also adopted the robotic, cold, selfish flavor similar to Rand's. Since I read "Passion..." I know that she was all-too-human and an idealist in much the same way as I imagine misguided revolutionaries can be. I also believe that both Rand and her successors in the Objectivist Institute were not that self-aware psychologically (perhaps Branden and his wife excepted themselves from this flaw). Furthermore, they refuse to acknowledge "premises" that might be considered heterodox with their rigid objectivist viewpoints--which sort of lends itself to "assholery."

"Is it adherence to Reason?"
Well, that's complicated because I believe that the entire Rand-Objectivist epistemology to be contrived and flawed. Rand and her successors never even acknowledge deviant logics that yield better results in the real world. They scoff at the most accurate experimental science ever (quantum mechanics), but provide no decent alternatives. There's something wrong with that. Yet they would claim that it's the science that's wrong with all proof to the contrary. Creationists do that too.

"Is it that the individual should not be a slave to the government?"
Are we slaves now? Are we slaves when we pay taxes or provide healthcare for everybody in society? What were slaves or servants? They were forced (kidnapped and stolen), by threat of death or extreme use of force, to serve the white population. Indentured servants were obligated to serve in much the same fashion as part of a contract with the rich. The government enforces nothing close to this presently.

"Is it that creative, intelligent, energetic people shouldn't be punished for being so?"
Where is the punishment? The levying of progressive taxation? I am looking for the mass punishment for creativity even in the worst socialist societies. Hell, even in shitty-ass China they reward the best. (I know, "reward" basically means you will be in a concentration camp style school--but those who graduate will be rewarded with a better standard of living.)

"Fault Ayn Rand for the things she got wrong, not for everything she ever said or did. Could you survive against that standard?"
Ayn Rand falls because she is a hypocrite in this respect. Even you admit that she and Peikoff ejected people from their inner circle because of petty disagreements that have been personal or philosophical, which is a pattern that continues to this day. This hypocrisy is readily apparent in "Passion..." Even her limited contributions can be found in earlier work.

36
Another example of a Randian disconnect: I saw an interview with her where she criticizes the 1960s hippy-dippy interest in something like Buddhism. Paraphrasing Rand's reason to not like Buddhism: How could people be so interested in something originating 2500 years ago? Then she goes on to hold up Aristotle--a contemporary of the buddha--as her ideal!
37
dirac: Thank you. I agree almost entirely with your comments. Can you see the difference between your tone and content and that of the others (and in other threads -this happens repeatedly)? People cannot escape the fact that they create a persona online. There are recognizable "people" here. The affinity one naturally feels for the characters on a blog plays into wanting to read and participate in that blog. I am entitled to feel disappointed when it's appropriate.

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