• Peter Pan finally grows up 
Barbara Hoffman and Christina Amoroso, New York Post It may look and sound likes a kids’ show — and fake-barf, fart and spit like one, too — but Broadway’s “Peter and the Starcatcher” isn’t for the sippy-cup set. While there’s no profanity or violence in it, parents of very young children, beware: You may have to tell them who Ayn Rand was.     Share on Facebook

• • Lululemon Downplaying the Lulu to Keep From Turning Into a Lemon 
Sheila Shayon, Brandchannel Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | [Chip] Wilson is an Ayn Rand fan and Lululemon takes its values from Atlas Shrugged and last year began printing “Who is John Galt?” on its shopping bags, referencing the central character in the novel that espouses pursuit of self-interest as society’s highest ambition.     Share on Facebook

• The Siren's Call: Where's Rimbaud? 
Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times [Jamie James:] [M]ost historical fiction about artists sinks to the titillating sentimentality of “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” with Michelangelo as a blustering Ayn Rand hero.     Share on Facebook

• • HUFFPOST HILL: Correspondents’ Dinner: Important & Self-Important To Meet, Mingle 
Huffington Post Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  | Paul Ryan is distancing himself from tea party favorite Ayn Rand (something he should’ve done after that godawful “Atlas Shrugged” movie, if you ask us).     Share on Facebook

• • Paul Ryan Suddenly Decides That He Hates Ayn Rand 
Dan Amira, New York Magazine - Daily Intel Atlas Shrugged  | Yesterday, Ryan claimed that Ayn Rand’s philosophy “reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview.” But in 2005, Ryan said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” and in 2003, he claimed that he gave out copies of Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents. And those two examples are really only the tip of the Rand-love iceberg.     Share on Facebook

• • Paul Ryan's Budget Inspired by Ayn Rand, Not Jesus Christ 
Brad Bannon, US News & World Report - Brad Bannon The Fountainhead  | The New Testament chronicles Jesus Christ’s concern for the poor. In his haste to devour “The Fountainhead,” Ryan apparently didn’t have time to read it.     Share on Facebook

• • • Paul Ryan Suddenly Does Not Embrace Ayn Rand’s Teachings 
Jennifer Bendery, Huffington Post Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Image  | UPDATE: […] Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert downplayed the lawmaker’s apparent change of tune on Rand. “I wouldn’t make too much of this one way or another. Congressman Ryan was not ‘distancing himself’ from Rand, merely correcting several false storylines that are out there, such as the myth that he requires all of his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Saying he ‘rejects Ayn Rand’s philosophy’ was simply meant to correct a popular falsehood that Congressman Ryan is an Objectivist -- he isn’t now and never claimed to be,” Seifert said in a statement to The Huffington Post.     Share on Facebook

• • Picky meeters: Looking for love in extremely specific places 
Fiona Zublin, Express Night Out (Washington, DC) The Fountainhead  | The Atlasphere. WHO YOU’LL MEET HERE: Ayn Rand fans: objectivists, libertarians, “free-thinkers,” anyone who thinks poor people are only poor because they’re less virtuous.     Share on Facebook

• • • Did Paul Ryan lie about Ayn Rand? 
Matt K. Lewis, Daily Caller - Matt Lewis & The News Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  | [I]t is not only possible that Ryan got involved in politics because of Ayn Rand – but now rejects some significant elements of her philosophy — it is also highly likely. Such an evolution would make Ryan nothing more than a typical young conservative.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s atheism still affects today’s politics 
John Warzel, The Examiner Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  |Individualism  | It would be sad if a high-ranking member of the government was forced to pretend he didn’t like a classic novelist because of pressure from a group of priests. That is not seperation of Church and State, an ideal that America gets further away from every day. Ayn Rand, according to her writings, believed in individual rights. It’s not selfish when a philosopher tries to get people to think for themselves and search out their own knowledge.     Share on Facebook

• Health Care Economics 
Jared Bernstein, Huffington Post Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | If the economy were a person, here’s how I’d describe his travails in recent years. For far too long, he binged on junk food, with no regard for the impact of such dietary habits on his system. He gorged on sub-prime cuts of real estate and paid for it with cheap credit whose price failed to reflect the damage he was doing to his internal organs. He visited his doctor, a guy named Greenspan who’d studied medicine with Ayn Rand herself, but the doctor just slapped him on the back and told him he must be fine because he wasn’t sick... yet.     Share on Facebook

• • • The Trouble With Philosophy 
Paul Waldman, The American Prospect Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  | It isn’t as though scholars just recently unearthed a new Ayn Rand text that reveals her to be a purveyor of a radical and despicable worldview. That worldview was always clear. It’s the thing that has drawn generations of lunkheaded frat boys to her books. And it’s the very thing Paul Ryan has been lauding all these years. He can’t claim he had no idea what she stood for.     Share on Facebook

• • • Paul Ryan erases Ayn Rand from the picture 
Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Jay Bookman Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Video  | [I]n an interview published Thursday in National Review, Ryan made it a point to dismiss as “urban myth” the notion that he draws inspiration and guidance from Ayn Rand, the libertarian philosopher-queen who celebrates the self over all else and who dismisses the very notion of a social contract.     Share on Facebook

• • Ryan: Catholics Can Disagree Over Budget Cuts 
Brian Faler, BusinessWeek Almost 90 members of Georgetown’s faculty and administrators signed a letter to Ryan accusing him of misusing the Catholic faith. “Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ,” the letter said.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ryan reverses course on Rand 
Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog (MSNBC) Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Video  | For years, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the right-wing chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been widely described as an Ayn Rand acolyte, best known for assigning “Atlas Shrugged” to members of his staff. Now, however, the Republican lawmaker finds humor in his reputation. “You know you’ve arrived in politics when you have an urban legend about you, and this one is mine,” Ryan chuckled in an interview with National Review. He added, “I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy.” Ryan said he prefers Thomas Aquinas, concluding, “Don’t give me Ayn Rand.” I’ll gladly assume the man is familiar with his own philosophy, but it’s curious to see him distance himself from Rand in this way, especially in light of his apparent preoccupation with her vision.     Share on Facebook

• • • Forget Paul Ryan: 7 Pols (Make it 8!) Who Still Dig Ayn Rand! 
Nick Gillespie, Reason - Hit & Run Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Individualism  |Image  |Video  | As longtime readers of this site and of the print magazine know, I’m not the world’s biggest Rand fan, though I think she (along with Jack Kerouac) remains the most influential American novelist of the 1950s and possibly the entire post-war era. Folks who dismiss her because they say she wrote bad sentences or don’t share her views on the hippies she helped catalyze are missing the point, I think. Rand was one of the great anti-conformist voices of the past 70 years and the fact that she still moves hundreds of thousands of books, movies, and spin-off material is nothing less than incredible. Sneer at her if you must (typically, it seems, because you went through an adolescent Rand phase that you are now ashamed of), but if you can’t understand why she resonates, you’re not really in touch with the country you live in.     Share on Facebook

• • A Is Not A, It Seems 
Paul Krugman, New York Times - The Conscience of a Liberal Atlas Shrugged  | Paul Ryan is trying to repudiate Ayn Rand, who was his main inspiration for getting into politics. Just remember: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”     Share on Facebook

• • Morning Examiner: Enter the Super PACs 
Conn Carroll, The Examiner - Beltway Confidential (Washington, DC) [I]n an interview with National Review on Wednesday, [Paul] Ryan addressed internet rumors that he forced his staff to read Ayn Rand , “You know you’ve arrived in politics when you have an urban legend about you, and this one is mine… I reject her philosophy.”     Share on Facebook

• • The stigma of entrepreneurship in Central Europe 
Les Nemethy, Sofia Echo (Bulgaria) Capitalism  | In the United States, in my view it is the Ayn Rand view of entrepreneurship that prevails: entrepreneurs are the ultimate modern heroes of society. They create the wealth and are the engines of development and progress. They are among the most respected members of society – in a place like Silicon Valley, probably the most respected. And as Steve Jobs once famously stated, their objective is to change the world (at least in their own little niche). They often succeed. In Central Europe, perhaps as a hangover from Homo Sovieticus, the intelligentsia typically looked down at business.     Share on Facebook

• • • Paul Ryan flip-flops on Ayn Rand, slams atheists 
D.K. Jamaal, The Examiner Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  | Now that Catholic groups have opposed Ryan’s budget by invoking Ayn Rand’s hatred of poor people, Ryan himself disavowed his long known adoration of right-wing’s favorite fiscal heroine, dumping on her Godlessness today.     Share on Facebook