I see from Yglesias that he's responding to Boardwalk Empire, the big new HBO series that is a Scorsese creation of some sort, with an indifference similar to mine. Well, maybe his reasons are different. I just don't find gangsters particularly interesting.

I used to feel bad about this because men are supposed to love the existential conflict and the male codes and all that. But I just think they're thugs. I don't even like The Godfather all that much. Excellent filmmaking, sure. I can see that. But that's just not the nook or cranny of the human condition that fascinates me.

I quit feeling bad about it. It saves me a lot of time, because a massive number of movies are about this. I've still never seen the Scorsese one that won all the Oscars a while back, something about Departed. Can't even remember the name. I guess I might watch it on an airplane someday or something, but I just fundamentally don't care.

Anyway that's not even what this post is about. Matt writes about Prohibition, and quotes from a new book on the topic by Daniel Okrent, thus:

[Frances] Willard's second principle, which blossomed as her fame and influence grew, was "Do Everything." Perceiving that the energies of the [Women's Christian Temperance Union] could be harnessed for broader purposes, Willard urged her followers to agitate for a set of goals that stretched far beyond the liquor issue but harmonized with the effort to improve the lives of others. Her "Protestant nuns" (as Willard sometimes called her followers) campaigned for suffrage, of course, but also for prison reform, free kindergartens, and vocational schools. After reading Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards in 1899, Willard declared herself a "Christian socialist" and broadened the WCTU's agenda once again, agitating for the eight-hour day, workers' rights, and government ownership of utilities, railroads, factories and (she was nothing if not eclectic) theaters. Along the way she took up the causes of vegetarianism, cremation, less restrictive women's clothing, and something she called "the White Life for Two"—a program "cloaked in euphemism," wrote Catherine Gilbert Murdock in Domesticating Drink, that "endorsed alcohol-free, tobacco-free, lust-free marriages."

I was always a wet rather than a dry in Prohibition terms, for class reasons, and because I like the occasional snort myself so it would be hypocritical to be otherwise.

But I read quite a bit about Frances Willard back in 2000, as I was writing my Hillary book. I think of all the figures in American history, Hillary is most like Willard, who was midwestern and a founding light of the temperance movement in America.

And reading about Willard showed me that the real reason the temperance movement started, when you got right down to it, was...what? Domestic violence. In 19th century America, a hell of a lot of husbands got drunk and beat the living crap out of their wives. That, I admit, put Prohibition in a new light for me.

I still think it was bad policy, for the oft-noted reason that outlawing drink is like outlawing sex or cheating or the rising of the sun. But if you consider the vastness of the domestic violence problem of the 19th century, you have to admit the urge makes a lot of sense.

I wish Boardwalk Empire success anyway, because I'm glad to see Steve Buscemi get a starring vehicle. He's excellent. Plus I saw him once at a Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros concert in Brooklyn Heights. Just standing there, by himself. Well after Fargo.

