This week: the distinctive Wes Anderson, the talented Timothy Olyphant, and the misquoted Martin Luther King.
- In anticipation of the new season of Justified (which premiered this past Tuesday and looks as terrific as ever), the New York Times profiles star and executive producer Timothy Olyphant. It truly is gratifying to see Olyphant succeed with material he clearly loves after getting stuck in dreck for so long, even after Deadwood made it abundantly clear what he’s capable of. (Via Sean, who knows what I like.)
- Lili Loofbourow discovers a small volume of pro-suffragette satire from 1915 in the vast library of Project Gutenberg and reprints selected verses for our contemporary pleasure.
- Hendrik Hertzberg’s explication of just how badly the new Martin Luther King memorial misquotes the civil rights leader is a beautiful argument for how much context matters and how pithiness can do violence to true eloquence.
- The new preview of Moonrise Kingdom—recognizable as a Wes Anderson movie long before his name appears—prompts Slate to break down what makes the idiosyncratic director so distinctive. Of course, it’s all rather obvious—Anderson is so distinctive that pointing out how seems unnecessary—but the slideshow makes it fun.
- I didn’t watch the Golden Globes and didn’t miss it either, but Tom and Lorenzo’s coverage of the red carpet is always entertaining.
Much Review About Nothing 
Another collection of interesting links. I especially appreciated the Hertzberg essay about Martin Luther King and his sermon. What a great example of how going for the pithy one-liner so often is inadequate to expressing meaningful thought – and in this case totally misrepresents King. In fact I think the memorial itself is a disservice to Dr. King in its grandiosity and militantism. (I don’t think that last is a real word, but you know what I mean.)
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For over thirty years I’ve owned a book called “The Testament of Hope,” which is a compilation of most of MLK’s sermons and essays. I go back and read my favorite portions of that book briefly each year around this time for the MLK holiday. Of the many sermons in that book, “The Drum Major Instinct” is one of my favorites. I cannot imagine that anyone who has read (and understood) that sermon would attempt to defend the quote as it is etched on the MLK statue in Washington DC. The quote, which seems to show MLK as someone holding himself up as an example of a great leader for goodness, wholly misrepresents the main theme of the sermon – that Jesus’ idea of leadership is to actually practice humility in pursuit of service and justice to our neighbors.
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