In the new movie, I like Beauty. I always do.

I even like the Beast. Yes, he suffers a bit of testosterone poisoning. He manages his anger poorly. He’s rude and talks coarsely. People are afraid of him. He’s ugly.

What’s not to like?

But even though I mostly like the leading characters, I don’t like the movie.

The central theme of the movie is fine. Beauty and ugly are only skin deep. But to support that, our friends at Disney get everything else wrong.

Here’s the story, for those who were sensible enough to pretend to fall asleep when fairy tales were inflicted on them as children:

The Beast imprisons Beauty’s kindly father in his castle in the French countryside for accidentally stealing a rose from the Beast’s garden. Beauty offers to take her father’s place, and the Beast accepts her offer.

But the Beast is not really a beast. He’s a handsome prince. He’s rich too. He’s just having a bad-hair decade because a local shaman cast a spell over him for being a jerk.

But it’s not his fault that he’s a jerk. It’s the fault of his father who was mean to him before dying and leaving him a beautiful castle and fabulous fortune that enables his life of trustafarian leisure.

His servants are under the same spell. They’ve been turned into a candelabra, a clock, a coat hanger and, well, you get the idea.

Beauty is initially put off by the Beast’s beastliness. He’s violent and threatening. He eats soup without utensils and wears dark pants after Bastille Day. Worst of all, his castle is stuck in that hideous Louis XIII decor that is so 1790s/1970s.

To make a long and predictable story into a short and predictable one, Continue reading →

An appellate judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Neil Gorsuch, has been nominated to fill a vacancy at the Supreme Court. As a lawyer who was privileged to practice before both courts, I’ve keenly watched the process of his confirmation.

This process is framed by some history. Before 1987, the Senate usually confirmed whomever the president nominated. But then, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork.

Bork had been an acclaimed antitrust scholar and professor at Yale Law School. He had been the solicitor general where he handled dozens of Supreme Court cases. He also had served as an acting attorney general.

Chief Justice William Burger dubbed Bork “the most effective counsel to appear before the court” during Burger’s 17-year tenure.

Bork had been unanimously approved by the Senate for a judgeship on an appellate court. He had served there for the five years prior to his Supreme Court nomination. He was a preeminent jurist.

Within hours after Bork’s nomination, Continue reading →

There’s a crime wave here in Aspen, and local government is an accomplice. I’m not exaggerating.

It’s rooted in the taxpayer-subsidized housing program. That’s the program where locals with incomes as high as $186,000 get taxpayer-subsidized housing in Aspen for dimes on the dollar if they win a housing lottery (or if they are insiders who bypass the lottery).

Most economists say such schemes make housing less affordable overall, not more. Indeed, four decades of taxpayer-subsidized housing in Aspen has produced the most expensive real estate in the country.

Economists also say these programs harm the intended beneficiaries by enabling employers to keep wages low, and that such schemes are rife with cronyism and inefficiency.

But now, more than 3,000 residents of Aspen receive this housing welfare out of a population of only 6,500. Reform is politically impossible — even as the projects fall into disrepair because the residents don’t maintain them.

All of that is not criminal, standing alone. It’s merely foolish. Aspen residents have the prerogative to get drunk on something-for-nothing economic elixirs, at least until the money runs out.

But here’s what’s criminal. Continue reading →

In the soap opera that substitutes for an American immigration policy, there are three actors. The first is the immigrant.

I admire immigrants. They’ve traveled thousands of miles to build better lives in a strange land where many don’t even speak the language. They send much of the money they earn here back to their families in their homelands.

America could use more such courage, work ethic and selflessness. I like seeing such people come to America — legally.

But the illegal kind is a different story. Continue reading →

In the movie “Thelma and Louise,” a bullied Arkansas housewife and a harried waitress ditch their mundane lives for a road trip in their 1966 Thunderbird convertible. It doesn’t end well.

In fact, it doesn’t even start well. Thelma, played by Gina Davis, gets drunk and is sexually assaulted. Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, rescues her. But then the assaulter insults them, so Louise shoots and kills him.

Their road trip turns into a getaway. They figure they’ll escape to Mexico, but Louise won’t travel through Texas because she’d once been raped there. They loop north to Arizona by way of the Grand Canyon.

Along the way, they meet a thief, played by Brad Pitt, who teaches them his trade. They blow up a fuel tanker, knock over a convenience store, outrun the FBI and steal a hat.

But the cops eventually catch up, and they’re cornered in front of the Grand Canyon where they’re forced to surrender.

Except they don’t. Instead, they hop in the old Thunderbird, kiss one another goodbye and floor it. They and the Thunderbird fly over the cliff and into the Grand Canyon.

That’s the end of the movie, and the end of them.

In another story — call it “The Dems” — the junior political party in America launches an extended road trip for their soon-to-be-elected president. But as in “Thelma and Louise”, things go south quickly. Continue reading →

Free speech is no longer free at our universities. If you say the wrong thing, your words will cost you.

Even if you say the right thing it’ll cost you plenty. At Princeton University, you pay tuition of $41,820 per year (well, this being academia, make that per two-thirds of a year) for the language police to ban you from words they deem sexist.

The ban applies to so-called hateful words and phrases like “layman,” “mankind” (which the censors deem not just politically incorrect but also oxymoronic), “man hours,” “workmanlike” and of course that most-hated word, “manpower.”

In addition, they’ve banned gender-specific pronouns. So you can’t say, for example, “Each person pays his tuition through the nose.” Do it, but don’t say it.

You can substitute “their” for “his.” So you can say, “Each person pays their tuition through the nose.” Grammatically speaking, this use of the plural pronoun “their” to reference one person is incorrect unless the person has a mouse in his/her/their pocket and the mouse is carrying its own $41,820, which it intends to pay through its own little nose. But let’s not let grammar, money or vermin stand in the way of social justice.

Where will this end? How far should we carry the emasculation of language for the emancipation of women?

In answering that question, Continue reading →

“We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America.”

— Barack Obama, campaigning for president in 2007

As a member of the right, I voted against President Obama twice because for me he is too far left. But this column is not about right and left. It’s about right and wrong, and Obama’s mixed message to black America about that.

Back when Obama was elected eight years ago, I was pessimistic about his liberal presidency, but I was optimistic about race relations in America. We had journeyed far toward the dream. Electing a black president seemed like the final leg of that journey.

I thought, “What a man, and what a country. No one but Obama could have achieved this, and in no country but America.”

Obama was born to a white mother and raised by her and his white grandmother after his black Kenyan father abandoned them. He was raised not in a failing inner city, but in the prosperous melting pot of Hawaii. He attended prestige universities, including Harvard Law School. He married a beautiful and smart black woman, and they have two lovely daughters.

Surely, I thought, this complicated man with a foot in black America and a foot in white America could bridge the two.

And he did. But it was not by anything he said. It was by who he is. Everyone with open eyes could see that he is smart, articulate and accomplished, but moreover he is by all accounts a loyal husband and a devoted father. He’s a good man.

But politics are complicated and cruel. Continue reading →

What do Al Sharpton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jon Stewart, Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, Cher and Whoopi Goldberg have in common?

The first, Al Sharpton, is allegedly a minister. White House visitor records show he visited the White House over 80 times to minister to President Obama.

The reason you seldom see Obama in religious services is evidently the same reason you seldom see him in a Pizza Hut. He gets it delivered. From Al.

As ministers go, Al is unusual in that he has over $4 million in tax liens against him. It seems the offering plate he passes around at the White House stays pretty empty.

Anyway, Al announced last year that if Donald Trump were elected, he would leave the country.

But he’s still here. Continue reading →

My recent column, “Panhandling in Paradise,” (The Aspen Times, Aug. 7)described my panhandling experience here in Aspen. You can find it again at http://bit.ly/2aJ1BaB. Spoiler alert: Someone gave me a $100 bill.

But panhandling is not always paradise.

I recently panhandled for a day in the town where I grew up, Colorado Springs. Around the terrific Broadmoor Hotel, that town is moneyed and beautiful. But the rest of the town is a modest home to slices of Americana: three military bases, the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, religious groups like Focus on the Family and a prestigious private college.

Wealthy tourists who brought money to the town when I was a boy are now bringing their money to resorts like Aspen and Vail. Much of the old tourist strip is now run down or even boarded up while renovation plans simmer. Sometimes the potholes are so big that they have to close a street.

The town is home to lots of homeless people these days, and panhandlers are common. I knew I wouldn’t be the spectacle that I was in Aspen, where panhandling is not only unusual but illegal.

In the back of my BMW I found my cardboard sign reading “SURVIVED CANCER BUT LOST MY JOB” (which happens to be true, though a bit misleading). It had gotten a little clean in my trunk, so I dirtied it. Then I put on old jeans and a tattered shirt and set out. Continue reading →

I’m of two minds about guns. You might call one “Gunny Glenn” and the other “Gunless Glenn.” We talked through it the other day.

Gunless: “Tell me, Gunny, why do you own guns?”

Gunny: “They’re half yours.”

“No, the guns are all yours.”

“In that case, thanks for paying for half.”

“Don’t mention it. But they’re dangerous, you know.”

“So are the bathtubs and balconies, and we don’t even keep those things locked up.”

“Answer my question: Why do you own guns?”

“I might want to go hunting. I know you don’t understand that because you’re too moral to eat meat — unless it comes from animals born to be eaten.”

“Ha, you never hunt — you don’t even drink beer and you can’t bring Chablis on a hunting trip!”

“Maybe someday I’ll go to the shooting range.”

“Give me a break. We don’t like the noise at the shooting range. And don’t snarl at me like you’re Dirty Harry.”

“I need the guns to protect you, Gunless, because, as we know, you aren’t as physically strong as I am.”

“Oh, come on, Gunny. Do you expect us to leap out of bed in our birthday suits, run to the gun safe, unlock it, load a gun and shoot an intruder — all in the dark — in the 1.3 seconds we have before he neutralizes us? What are we, SEAL Team 6?”

“OK, Gunless. If you really want to know, here’s why I have guns. Continue reading →