Author

Shawn Hamilton

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I am a writer, filmmaker, and founder of Production Portal, Inc. an accounting and consulting firm specializing in film, tv and event management. I blog here about history, politics, and culture. I live in NJ and work in NY.

[slideshow_deploy id=’1954′] Overview This was an interesting, but confusing week. On the international front, Nelson Mandela’s funeral and memorial service was Tuesday, yet the focus seemed to be on a series of ‘gates’ or mini-scandals, rather than his life and legacy. On the domestic front, Marco Rubio signed his family up for Obamacare while Michigan women are being urged to buy ‘rape insurance’. Also an epidemic of non-epidemics continue to capture the public imagination – the knockout game, the war against Christmas, and the Stalinization of the Pope. In the sports/entertainment world, aside from random trivia like Tila Tequila’s embrace of white supremacy and a strange beef between Jim Brown and Kobe Bryant, two albums vied for the public’s attention. One is by a man who seems to revel in his status as an outlaw and pedophile. The other is by Beyonce. Let’s take another look at the week. Entertainment/Sports…

Uruguay legalized marijuana a few days ago, inspiring drug reform advocates and drawing the ire of the United Nations. Here’s what the UN had to say: “[the decision to legalize] will not protect young people, but rather have the perverse effect of encouraging early experimentation, lowering the age of first use, and thus contributing to… earlier onset of addiction and other disorders,” And that: “[Uruguay] fails to consider its negative impacts on health since scientific studies confirm that cannabis is an addictive substance with serious consequences for people’s health”. And on top of that: “Cannabis is not only addictive but may also affect some fundamental brain functions, IQ potential, and academic and job performance and impair driving skills. Smoking cannabis is more carcinogenic than smoking tobacco,” That all sounds pretty bad, but also pretty familiar like the gateway drug/slippery slope arguments of a generation ago, so maybe the UN is…

The recent reincarnation of Robert Kelly should remind us of the dangers of waste: wasted time; wasted money; wasted potential. Defenders of R. Kelly are legion. The sophisticated  R&B connoisseur points out the brilliance of his arrangements; the strength of the vocals; the audacity of the lyrics. The indifferent consumer reminds us that there are bigger concerns in the world and every purchase involves a deal with a devil of one kind or another. And the generous of heart remind of us the old adage ‘do not judge, lest ye be judged’. These and many others are rational defenses of buying and supporting R.Kelly, but do not address the moral dimensions of the question. What does it mean to support a man who has sex with and urinates on children? That R.Kelly is brilliant in his way is not beside the point at all. It is the point. If his…

[slideshow_deploy id=’1837′] To their credit libertarians often present fascinating thought experiments for us to ponder. What would you do if you were trapped in the freezing cold and had to break into someone else’s house to save your own life? If you fell off a building and found yourself dangling from a flagpole – a privately owned flagpole – would you continue to hang waiting for help or would you refuse to violate the flag owner’s property rights and plunge to your death? Most respondents answer the same way a non-libertarian would, but that these kinds of questions are even up for debate tells us a lot about the libertarian mindset, which brings me to one of their more audacious experiments that could be coming to fruition: seasteading. Freedom Ship International, a (for now at least) Florida based company, is building the “Freedom Ship” – a 25 story high,…

Dear Shawn, I hope you’re right that Herman Cain will make another presidential run!  Reporters everywhere will rejoice, especially since they will no longer have Michele Bachmann around to entertain them.  But I think we both agree that Republicans will continue to have immense difficulty attracting minority votes whether their presidential nominee is Cain or almost any other of the likely candidates. I’m going to dodge your question about how to define a moderate, at least for the moment.  I’d like to go back to the Republican National Committee post-2012 “autopsy” I mentioned in my previous post.  The RNC view is that the Republican Party isn’t winning the votes of minority groups because it hasn’t done a good job of reaching out to them.  That’s true, even by the standards of the party’s past performance.  The GOP’s outreach efforts to Asian-Americans, for example, were much more extensive and successful during…

In ‘Rule and Ruin’, Geoff Kabaservice, explores the history of the Republican Party, shining light on what some consider now an endangered species: the Republican ‘moderate’. Geoff is an invaluable resource in our understanding of the inner-workings of party politics and the strange calculus that leads a party to appeal to one group at the neglect or even offense of another. Geoff and I have spoken on several occasions about the disconnect between African Americans and the Republican Party, often with an eye on the past. However, in this discussion or ‘diablog’ as I’ll call it we will turn our eye to the future. Geoff begins our discussion. I hope you enjoy. [hr] Dear Shawn, How quickly we forget. I was being interviewed last week and completely blanked on the name of the person associated with the 9-9-9 tax plan. It was my own personal Rick Perry “oops” moment. Once…

The trial of George Zimmerman began a few weeks ago with the prosecution resting its case last Friday. Like all high profile/high stakes trials, moments and    memes have emerged, but what stands out most for me is the man – George Zimmerman. There he sits: sad eyes, hangdog expression, portly and unassuming. The last person you would expect to see charged with 2nd degree murder and a far cry from the intense, lupine, almost predatory man we saw a little over a year ago. Today he looks like a man swept along by the tide of history rather than his own actions and I cannot help but be reminded of a similar figure from my childhood. Another pudgy, nonthreatening, and baby-faced man charged with heinous crimes: Wayne Bertram Williams. Between 1979 and 1981, 29 children and young adults were abducted and murdered in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. The bodies…

http://newbooksnetwork.com/henry-wiencek-master-of-the-mountain-thomas-jefferson-and-his-slaves-gsf-2012/ The Louisiana Purchase was a perfect illustration of the challenges, yet seemingly boundless opportunities that slavery presented statesmen like Thomas Jefferson. Napoleon Bonaparte had been dealt a significant military defeat at the hands of a slave revolt in Haiti, forcing him to reconsider his interests in the Americas and the Caribbean. So, when Jefferson’s emissaries began negotiating to buy the port city of New Orleans, Napoleon instead offered them the entire Louisiana Territory: a deal that essentially doubled the size of the United States at 3 cents an acre and expanded slavery into new regions. Decades earlier Jefferson had argued for ending the slave trade and enfranchising blacks. As a young lawyer he had taken the case of a black indentured servant pro-bono and fought for his freedom. He had included language in the Declaration of Independence denouncing the slave trade. Jefferson wrote the Ordinance of 1784 which would…

http://newbooksinpublicpolicy.com/2013/05/02/paul-barrett-glock-the-rise-of-americas-gun-broadway-2013/ History is in many respects the story of humanity’s quest for transcendence: to control life and death, time and space, loss and memory. When inventors or companies effectively tap into these needs products emerge that help define their times. The Kodak ‘Brownie’ allowed average consumers – without the knowledge of chemistry or math of a Matthew Brady – to capture powerful images. Ford’s Model T gave the ‘working man’ the ability to travel further and faster than wealthy aristocrats of previous generations. The Timex watch made time accessible to anyone with a few bucks, whether they had interest in philosophical debates about the meaning of time or not. The Glock handgun is on this list of iconic products and while it did not democratize deadly force like the AK-47 it has made its own mark on the American psyche. The Glock has become the standard bearer for American handguns,…