Dan D’Amico and some 9 or 10 other grad students at GMU will be celebrating Murray Rothbard’s birthday tonight by eating at Denny’s (which Dan says was Rothbard’s favorite restaurant) and watching Death Wish (which he says was his favorite movie).

Interesting timing. I had just been wondering what Rothbard’s favorite movie had been. That may seem like a strange thing to wonder, but Jeff Riggenbach had recently mentioned Rothbard’s love of the Godfather movies:

It was the legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg, cast in the role of Hyman Roth, whom Wikipedia calls an “elderly Jewish organized crime figure retired to Miami and overlord of criminal enterprise[s] in Cuba” (that is, a renamed Meyer Lansky), who spoke a probably immortal line in an onscreen conversation with Al Pacino (as Michael Corleone) in The Godfather: Part II: “This is the business we have chosen.” Doherty writes that “Old movement hand Ralph Raico was known to sigh, at news of the latest absurdity or strategic misfire or failure on the part of a fellow libertarian, echoing the Godfather, ‘This is the movement we have chosen.’”

I used to hear Ralph say that back in the ’70s, but I always thought he’d got it from Murray (Rothbard). Burt Blumert seems to remember things the same way. “‘This is the business we have chosen,’” he recalled nearly four years ago in a short Internet essay, “was Murray Rothbard’s favorite line from Francis Ford Coppola’s great movie and he often adapted it when confronted by some wacky or unprincipled libertarian.”

This was the 4th or 5th time I’d heard the Godfather movies mentioned in connection with Murray Rothbard. I enjoy the mentions, because (a) they are interestingly connected, not always directly, with libertarianism, and (b) I love the Godfather movies and like to think that they were something I had in common with my hero. George Will hated them; Murray Rothbard loved them. All was in alignment.

But Death Wish?!

Now I know that Rothbard’s favorite bread was Wonder Bread, because he talks about it about half way through his lecture on price theory (MP3). When I first listened to this lecture, I thought Wonder Bread? WONDER Bread!? You gotta be kidding me.

Then I realized I was being the worst sort of snob: the sort whose snobbery is based on assumptions rather than experience. I hadn’t tasted Wonder Bread since I was 10 years old. I grew up with plenty of cultural indoctrination (and other sorts of indoctrination). Why should I assume Wonder Bread is lousy bread, that it barely deserves the name “bread”?

So I went out and bought a loaf of Wonder Bread. While I was at it, I figured I’d confront some other forms of food snobbery. I bought bologna, and Kraft’s individually wrapped slices of American cheese — the kind that looks too shiny to be real cheese. I bought the canary-yellow mustard that comes in the squeeze bottle. While I was at it, I bought some cans of Budweiser beer. Might as well confront all the big snobberies at once.

Well, now I am no longer the worst sort of snob — at least not for those products. I now know from recent personal experience that they are all awful. Really unbelievably awful.

I’m trying not to be the worst sort of snob about Death Wish. I haven’t seen the movie. I should suspend judgment.