Roger Ebert is a fat, humorless lump of misanthropy.
In a notice he wrote a few months back, Ebert gave the film he was reviewing one-and-a-half stars, and went on to say:
"There is a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor, and this movie pushes it as far as it can go. Its hero is the kind of nerd other nerds avoid, and the movie is about his steady progress toward complete social unacceptability. Even his victory toward the end, if it is a victory, comes at the cost of clowning before his fellow students.
"We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of Adam Sandler make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of this protagonist, I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about.
"Our hero is tall, ungainly, depressed, and happy to be left alone. He has red hair that must take hours in front of the mirror to look so bad. He wants us to know he is lonely by choice. He lives outside of town with his brother, whose waking life is spent online in chat rooms, and with his grandmother, who is laid up fairly early in a dune buggy accident. It could be funny to have a granny on a dune buggy; I smile at least at the title of the Troma film "Rabid Grannies."
"But in this film the accident is essentially an aside, an excuse to explain the arrival on the farm of the protagonist's uncle, a man for whom time has stood still ever since the 1982 high school sports season, when things, he still believes, should have turned out differently. The uncle is a door-to-door salesman for a herbal breast enlargement potion, a product that exists only for the purpose of demonstrating his cluelessness. In an age when even the Fuller Brush Man would be greeted with a shotgun (does anyone even remember him?), the uncle's product exists in the twilight zone.
"Life at high school is daily misery for our hero, who is picked on cruelly and routinely. He finally makes a single friend, the school's only Latino, and manages his campaign for class president. He has a crush on a girl named Deb, but his strategy is so inept that it has the indirect result of Deb going to the prom with his best and only friend. His entire prom experience consists of cutting in.
"Watching this movie, I was reminded of "Welcome to the Dollhouse," Todd Solondz's brilliant 1996 film, starring Heather Matarazzo as an unpopular junior high school girl. But that film was informed by anger and passion, and the character fought back. This guy seems to passively invite ridicule, and his attempts to succeed have a studied indifference, as if he is mocking his own efforts.
"I'm told the movie was greeted at Sundance with lots of laughter, but then Sundance audiences are concerned with being cool, and to sit through this film in depressed silence would not be cool, however urgently it might be appropriate."
So what movie is this that Ebert is slamming so mercilessly? Only the best movie of 2004!
Like, who wouldn't know that? So, Roger Ebert, why don't you eat a decroated piece of crap, and don't ruin it for the rest of us with your sniveling. What a grumpy old man.
This is a movie that will make your wildest dreams come true.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Primary Documents
A short list of the most important primary documents relating to the origins of the Iraq War shows that the idea of intervention in Iraq and plans for the invasion were formulated before the present administration took power, and years before the events of 9/11/01.
In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then-under secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of a paper entitled "Defense Policy Guidance" A classified document, it was intended for circulation only among military brass. Wolfowitz objected to what he considered the premature ending of the 1991 Iraq War, and outlined plans for military intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.
The contents of the paper were leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post, and caused so much controversy that the official version had to be re-written by then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
You can read the synopsis of this paper provided by the PBS documentary program "Frontline" at their site.
In 1996 Richard Perle led a group which drafted a study prescribing the U.S.'s future course of action not just in Iraq, but throughout the middle east. It offered the opinion that Iraq could be conquered and converted into a democracy, and that Israel could achieve peace through unconditional victory over the Palestinians. It's eight pages on pdf, but worth reading in its entirety (you'll need Adobe Reader). http://www.why-war.com/files/read.php?id=120
Possibly the most important of the Iraq-related prewar documents is the report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," issued by the influential neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century, chaired by William Kristol. Participating in the drafting of this statement were many now involved in the present administration -- Elliot Abrams, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Perle, and Wolfowitz among them.
A crucial portion of this paper reads: "The U.S. has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
"Rebuilding America's Defenses" calls for a permanent Gulf military presence even "should Saddam pass from the scene" as "Iran may well prove as large a threat."
This document runs to 90 pages in pdf format, but an excellent synopsis and analysis is available at the website "Information Clearing House.
Finally, there is the famous Downing Street Memo, which is short, entertaining, and well worth reading in its entirety. It's also available atInformation Clearing House.
Taken all together, these documents reveal a comprehensive pattern of deception and duplicity in the run up to the war. The real reasons for the Iraq invasion were carefully concealed from the public, although knowledge of them is easily available to anyone willing to do a little digging. At the same time, a litany of fake justifications for the war was deliberately cooked up and fed to a gullible electorate, still in shock from the events of 9/11.
The result of this misbegotten set of policies is now the subject of our daily headlines.
In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then-under secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of a paper entitled "Defense Policy Guidance" A classified document, it was intended for circulation only among military brass. Wolfowitz objected to what he considered the premature ending of the 1991 Iraq War, and outlined plans for military intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.
The contents of the paper were leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post, and caused so much controversy that the official version had to be re-written by then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
You can read the synopsis of this paper provided by the PBS documentary program "Frontline" at their site.
In 1996 Richard Perle led a group which drafted a study prescribing the U.S.'s future course of action not just in Iraq, but throughout the middle east. It offered the opinion that Iraq could be conquered and converted into a democracy, and that Israel could achieve peace through unconditional victory over the Palestinians. It's eight pages on pdf, but worth reading in its entirety (you'll need Adobe Reader). http://www.why-war.com/files/read.php?id=120
Possibly the most important of the Iraq-related prewar documents is the report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," issued by the influential neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century, chaired by William Kristol. Participating in the drafting of this statement were many now involved in the present administration -- Elliot Abrams, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Perle, and Wolfowitz among them.
A crucial portion of this paper reads: "The U.S. has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
"Rebuilding America's Defenses" calls for a permanent Gulf military presence even "should Saddam pass from the scene" as "Iran may well prove as large a threat."
This document runs to 90 pages in pdf format, but an excellent synopsis and analysis is available at the website "Information Clearing House.
Finally, there is the famous Downing Street Memo, which is short, entertaining, and well worth reading in its entirety. It's also available atInformation Clearing House.
Taken all together, these documents reveal a comprehensive pattern of deception and duplicity in the run up to the war. The real reasons for the Iraq invasion were carefully concealed from the public, although knowledge of them is easily available to anyone willing to do a little digging. At the same time, a litany of fake justifications for the war was deliberately cooked up and fed to a gullible electorate, still in shock from the events of 9/11.
The result of this misbegotten set of policies is now the subject of our daily headlines.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The Monster Returns
The wild man of American letters is back with his first book in seven years.
Times have changed for Cormac McCarthy, and his life is much different than it was prior to 1992 when his work was unread outside university graduate schools and literary salons. Back then he lived mostly in cheap motels and ate canned food warmed on a hotplate. He survived thirty years of utter obscurity, during which two wives left him, unable to endure the grinding poverty.
Some critics have taken McCarthy to task for the ubiquity of mindless violence in his novels, perpetrated by evil, even demonic men whose motives aren't revealed or even hinted at. McCarthy never moralizes or attempts to explain, he just lays the mayhem out deadpan. To my mind, this reflects actual reality, the real state of affairs in a world where police most often describe the violence they encounter as "senseless."
However, hardly anyone denies McCarthy's prodigious writing skill and verbal gifts (only one reviewer of my acqaintance disagreed with the universal acclaim). His prose erupts volcanically from the page, with tremendous density and sometimes overwhelming energy. From the book that made him famous, 1992's Blood Meridian:
"They entered the city in a gantlet of flung offal, driven like cattle through the cobbled streets with shouts going up behind for the soldiery who smiled as became them and nodded among the flowers and proferred cups, herding the tattered fortune seekers through the plaza where water splashed in a fountain and idlers reclined on carven seats of white porphyry and past the governor's palace and past the cathedral where vultures squatted along the dusty entablatures and among the niches in the carved facade hard by the figures of Christ and the apostles, the birds holding out their own dark vestments in postures of strange benevolence while about them flapped on the wind the dried scalps of slaughtered indians strung on cords, the long dull hair swinging like the filaments of certain seaforms and the dry hides clapping against the stones."
Word. Now there's a sentence for you.
The New Yorker's reviewer, James Wood, didn't like the new book. He praises the style but appears uncomfortable with the absence of any rationale for the violence, or to put it less charitably, moralizing.
I'll suspend judgment till I've read it, although I have to say I like McCarthy's earlier stuff better. His m.o. seems to have become a little more commercially-oriented since Hollywood put All the Pretty Horses on the screen, and No Country for Old Men has already been picked up by the studios.
My own personal favorite is Outer Dark, but I have to say that Blood Meridian is a prodigious accomplishment, not to be missed.
Nobody since Flannery O'Connor has rendered dialectical conversation as well as McCarthy, and with his absence of small-bore punctuation, he's even better at it than she was.
A complete list of his novels includes:
The Orchard Keeper (1965)
Outer Dark (1968)
Child of God (1974)
Suttree (1979)
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
The Crossing (1994)
Cities of the Plain (1998)
And now the new one, which is in the mail.
Times have changed for Cormac McCarthy, and his life is much different than it was prior to 1992 when his work was unread outside university graduate schools and literary salons. Back then he lived mostly in cheap motels and ate canned food warmed on a hotplate. He survived thirty years of utter obscurity, during which two wives left him, unable to endure the grinding poverty.
Some critics have taken McCarthy to task for the ubiquity of mindless violence in his novels, perpetrated by evil, even demonic men whose motives aren't revealed or even hinted at. McCarthy never moralizes or attempts to explain, he just lays the mayhem out deadpan. To my mind, this reflects actual reality, the real state of affairs in a world where police most often describe the violence they encounter as "senseless."
However, hardly anyone denies McCarthy's prodigious writing skill and verbal gifts (only one reviewer of my acqaintance disagreed with the universal acclaim). His prose erupts volcanically from the page, with tremendous density and sometimes overwhelming energy. From the book that made him famous, 1992's Blood Meridian:
"They entered the city in a gantlet of flung offal, driven like cattle through the cobbled streets with shouts going up behind for the soldiery who smiled as became them and nodded among the flowers and proferred cups, herding the tattered fortune seekers through the plaza where water splashed in a fountain and idlers reclined on carven seats of white porphyry and past the governor's palace and past the cathedral where vultures squatted along the dusty entablatures and among the niches in the carved facade hard by the figures of Christ and the apostles, the birds holding out their own dark vestments in postures of strange benevolence while about them flapped on the wind the dried scalps of slaughtered indians strung on cords, the long dull hair swinging like the filaments of certain seaforms and the dry hides clapping against the stones."
Word. Now there's a sentence for you.
The New Yorker's reviewer, James Wood, didn't like the new book. He praises the style but appears uncomfortable with the absence of any rationale for the violence, or to put it less charitably, moralizing.
I'll suspend judgment till I've read it, although I have to say I like McCarthy's earlier stuff better. His m.o. seems to have become a little more commercially-oriented since Hollywood put All the Pretty Horses on the screen, and No Country for Old Men has already been picked up by the studios.
My own personal favorite is Outer Dark, but I have to say that Blood Meridian is a prodigious accomplishment, not to be missed.
Nobody since Flannery O'Connor has rendered dialectical conversation as well as McCarthy, and with his absence of small-bore punctuation, he's even better at it than she was.
A complete list of his novels includes:
The Orchard Keeper (1965)
Outer Dark (1968)
Child of God (1974)
Suttree (1979)
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985)
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
The Crossing (1994)
Cities of the Plain (1998)
And now the new one, which is in the mail.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Come Again?
What do you get when you combine wingnut ideology with really bad writing?
You get Pastor Swank
In some places, particularly at the blog "Sadly, No," reading Swank has become something of a "fade."
You get Pastor Swank
In some places, particularly at the blog "Sadly, No," reading Swank has become something of a "fade."
Saturday, July 23, 2005
War Crimes and Criminals
The Bush administration has gone to court to block publication of new pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib, which show detained women being raped and young boys being sodomized. Some of the women attempted to send letters asking their husbands to kill them and end their shame.
At the same time, the administration is threatening to veto next year's defense appropriations bill if it contains provisions for regulating the treatment of detainees, or provides for establishing a commission to investigate abuses at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
There are no words left to describe the level of viciousness and utter depravity to which this gang of war criminals has sunk. What's important now is that we resolve that someday, somehow, they will be brought to justice and made to answer for their crimes, no matter how long it takes.
At the same time, the administration is threatening to veto next year's defense appropriations bill if it contains provisions for regulating the treatment of detainees, or provides for establishing a commission to investigate abuses at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
There are no words left to describe the level of viciousness and utter depravity to which this gang of war criminals has sunk. What's important now is that we resolve that someday, somehow, they will be brought to justice and made to answer for their crimes, no matter how long it takes.
Friday, July 22, 2005
The Heinous Dictator (Again)
On a thread ostensibly devoted to listing George W. Bush's successes as president, a poster at Beliefnet recently wrote, ...he rid the world of a heinous dictator.
Ah yes, the heinous dictator again. It wasn't so long ago that he was our heinous dictator, as this picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with His Satanic Majesty in 1983 clearly will remind those of us who suffer from short memories and adolescent gullibility.
But, as George Orwell has pointed out, "he who controls the present controls the past." And if we can alter our memories so as to delete any recall of the years we supported Saddam Hussein, and urged him on in his Reagan-era war of aggression against Iran (which killed a million), then we can feed our fantasies of being the pure and virtuous angels of freedom and democracy, and and at the same time maintain our ignorance of our bloody crimes. After all, "Ignorance is strength."
At least the realpolitik cynics of the Reagan years were knowledgeable enough to be practical. Fearing the gathering power of Iran, they used Saddam and his Batthist Party as a practical counterweight against Shi'a fundamentalism, in Iran, in Iraq, and elsewhere. For that reason, the Reagan team tilted toward Iraq in the Iraq-Iran conflict, even though Saddam was the aggressor and in the wrong, and went so far as to funnel supplies to him to help with his weapons of mass destruction program. (See the excellent Wikipedia entry for "Iraq-Iran War.")
Pragmatism went out the window with the accession of Cowboy George and his idiot team of neocon maroons. Riding into Iraq like the James Gang robbing a train, they aimed to set up a "Fort Apache" style government in the middle of enemy territory, secure the oil supply, and gain the love and everlasting gratitude of the Iraqis in the bargain.
What happened instead? With the "heinous dictator" deposed and secured in a cage, the gang that couldn't shoot straight called for elections. They were hoping for a power-sharing arrangement among the country's various feuding tribes, sects, and ethnicities. Unfortunately, the Shi'a Imam Sistani, probably the most powerful man in the country, demanded a one-man, one-vote style election, and threatened to withhold support if he didn't get it.
So, Voila! Bush has succeeded! He's succeeded in establishing a Shi'ite government which has now initiated a warm and cuddly relationship with guess which powerful country next door?.
Now here's the latest news from Iraq. Our man, Iraqi P.M. Ibraham Al-Jaafari, recently seen at the White House hugging and kissing with the Great Satan himself, is now in Tehran, laying flowers on the grave of the founder of the Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Sometimes you just can't win for losing.
On the other hand, I'm sure we would have done a lot better if we hadn't turned our foreign policy over to a bunch of cowboys, yahoos, thugs, ignoramuses, clowns, arrogant sons of bitches, and garden-variety morons.
Ah yes, the heinous dictator again. It wasn't so long ago that he was our heinous dictator, as this picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with His Satanic Majesty in 1983 clearly will remind those of us who suffer from short memories and adolescent gullibility.
But, as George Orwell has pointed out, "he who controls the present controls the past." And if we can alter our memories so as to delete any recall of the years we supported Saddam Hussein, and urged him on in his Reagan-era war of aggression against Iran (which killed a million), then we can feed our fantasies of being the pure and virtuous angels of freedom and democracy, and and at the same time maintain our ignorance of our bloody crimes. After all, "Ignorance is strength."
At least the realpolitik cynics of the Reagan years were knowledgeable enough to be practical. Fearing the gathering power of Iran, they used Saddam and his Batthist Party as a practical counterweight against Shi'a fundamentalism, in Iran, in Iraq, and elsewhere. For that reason, the Reagan team tilted toward Iraq in the Iraq-Iran conflict, even though Saddam was the aggressor and in the wrong, and went so far as to funnel supplies to him to help with his weapons of mass destruction program. (See the excellent Wikipedia entry for "Iraq-Iran War.")
Pragmatism went out the window with the accession of Cowboy George and his idiot team of neocon maroons. Riding into Iraq like the James Gang robbing a train, they aimed to set up a "Fort Apache" style government in the middle of enemy territory, secure the oil supply, and gain the love and everlasting gratitude of the Iraqis in the bargain.
What happened instead? With the "heinous dictator" deposed and secured in a cage, the gang that couldn't shoot straight called for elections. They were hoping for a power-sharing arrangement among the country's various feuding tribes, sects, and ethnicities. Unfortunately, the Shi'a Imam Sistani, probably the most powerful man in the country, demanded a one-man, one-vote style election, and threatened to withhold support if he didn't get it.
So, Voila! Bush has succeeded! He's succeeded in establishing a Shi'ite government which has now initiated a warm and cuddly relationship with guess which powerful country next door?.
Now here's the latest news from Iraq. Our man, Iraqi P.M. Ibraham Al-Jaafari, recently seen at the White House hugging and kissing with the Great Satan himself, is now in Tehran, laying flowers on the grave of the founder of the Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Sometimes you just can't win for losing.
On the other hand, I'm sure we would have done a lot better if we hadn't turned our foreign policy over to a bunch of cowboys, yahoos, thugs, ignoramuses, clowns, arrogant sons of bitches, and garden-variety morons.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Flip Flop Flap
As some of you are aware, "our man" in Iraq, Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, was seen in Tehran a couple days ago, laying flowers on the grave of the Ayatollah Khomeini. This less than a month after he was televised smooching with GWB in the Rose Garden.
Now, you'd think our American press corps would be all over this important and somewhat ominous turn of events, like white on rice. Like flies on shit. Like Tom on Katie. But if you thought that, you'd be wrong.
I turned on the tube to MSNBC an hour or so ago and what do you suppose the big story was? Some female LaCrosse player on an undefeated college team wore flip flops to the White House, thus causing a scandal and inducing heart attacks and apoplexy among some of the WH staff, etc. Nattily-dressed Morales was going on and on about these stupid flip-flops, what kind they were and all, and even had an interview with the gal.
Hold the presses.
Did any of these dumbasses actually go to journalism school? Would any of them know a real story if it walked up to them and bit 'em in the ass? Who do these talking heads on CNN and MSNBC emulate? James Reston? Seymour Hirsch? God, they're too stupid for words.
So far, not a word from the MSM on the Al-Jaafari in Iran story. However, there is a good piece on it by Robert Scheer, posted at "Working for Change."
I guess I'm getting all my news from the alternative media from now on.
Now, you'd think our American press corps would be all over this important and somewhat ominous turn of events, like white on rice. Like flies on shit. Like Tom on Katie. But if you thought that, you'd be wrong.
I turned on the tube to MSNBC an hour or so ago and what do you suppose the big story was? Some female LaCrosse player on an undefeated college team wore flip flops to the White House, thus causing a scandal and inducing heart attacks and apoplexy among some of the WH staff, etc. Nattily-dressed Morales was going on and on about these stupid flip-flops, what kind they were and all, and even had an interview with the gal.
Hold the presses.
Did any of these dumbasses actually go to journalism school? Would any of them know a real story if it walked up to them and bit 'em in the ass? Who do these talking heads on CNN and MSNBC emulate? James Reston? Seymour Hirsch? God, they're too stupid for words.
So far, not a word from the MSM on the Al-Jaafari in Iran story. However, there is a good piece on it by Robert Scheer, posted at "Working for Change."
I guess I'm getting all my news from the alternative media from now on.
Monday, July 18, 2005
MacBush
Many people who haven't ever read "MacBeth" or seen the play still know the story. However, few people understand the intricacies of the "MacBeth problem" as delineated by the subtle mind of Mr. Shakespeare.
Having met three witches who tell him he's destined to rule the land, the baffled nobleman can't get the idea out of his head. He resolves to assassinate the king and usurp the crown, but when he reflects on the enormity of the crime and begins to weaken, his beautiful, ambitious, and somewhat shallow wife uses sexual blackmail to shore up his resolve. And once his hands are bloodied, he finds that to maintain his illegitimate position, he is forced to follow a path of serial murder. Once he has made that fateful first error, he relinquishes all power over his own behavior, and his own fate.
The question is, did the witches "make" MacBeth commit these crimes, or did he choose? Some see the witches as Satan's representatives on earth, capable of forcing people to do that which they would not otherwise do. But personally, I think MacBeth chose his fate. You can't fault the witches for knowing in advance what he would choose to do. They saw into his heart, marked his weaknesses, and knew his fate was self-destruction through bad choices.
So it is with George W. Bush. Born of privilege and raised like a domestic aristocrat, the young Bush early on exhibited character defects that have now brought him to grief, especially the combined traits of limited intelligence and unlimited ambition. In his youth he showed a marked capacity for both extreme frivolity and extreme arrogance, but eventually he had a change of heart and acquired a more serious purpose, unfortunately without acquiring a corresponding helping of humility.
It was his bad fortune to fall into the hands of ideologues who convinced him, before he was even elected president, that he could establish an unrivaled American hegemony in the middle east, and at the same time control the flow of oil from that part of the world, without which nothing in modern society functions. All we had to do was launch an illegal and immoral war, but hey, who's going to stop us?
Now his presidency lies in ruins, impaled on the twin horns of the Iraq insurgency and two-and-a-half dollar gasoline. As Jim Kunstler has pointed out, the "Hooverization" of George W. Bush has already begun.
Did he choose this disaster? Yes, of course, but at the same time, when you look at his character defects, you understand why he could not have possibly chosen any other way.
I'm sure GWB regrets ever having heard the name of Iraq, but that's not good enough. When he regrets the day he was born, that will serve as partial payment for his crimes.
And yes, I know the "MacBeth" analogy has been used before. In the 1960's, Barbara Garson wrote a play about the Lyndon Johnson presidency called "MacBird."
Having met three witches who tell him he's destined to rule the land, the baffled nobleman can't get the idea out of his head. He resolves to assassinate the king and usurp the crown, but when he reflects on the enormity of the crime and begins to weaken, his beautiful, ambitious, and somewhat shallow wife uses sexual blackmail to shore up his resolve. And once his hands are bloodied, he finds that to maintain his illegitimate position, he is forced to follow a path of serial murder. Once he has made that fateful first error, he relinquishes all power over his own behavior, and his own fate.
The question is, did the witches "make" MacBeth commit these crimes, or did he choose? Some see the witches as Satan's representatives on earth, capable of forcing people to do that which they would not otherwise do. But personally, I think MacBeth chose his fate. You can't fault the witches for knowing in advance what he would choose to do. They saw into his heart, marked his weaknesses, and knew his fate was self-destruction through bad choices.
So it is with George W. Bush. Born of privilege and raised like a domestic aristocrat, the young Bush early on exhibited character defects that have now brought him to grief, especially the combined traits of limited intelligence and unlimited ambition. In his youth he showed a marked capacity for both extreme frivolity and extreme arrogance, but eventually he had a change of heart and acquired a more serious purpose, unfortunately without acquiring a corresponding helping of humility.
It was his bad fortune to fall into the hands of ideologues who convinced him, before he was even elected president, that he could establish an unrivaled American hegemony in the middle east, and at the same time control the flow of oil from that part of the world, without which nothing in modern society functions. All we had to do was launch an illegal and immoral war, but hey, who's going to stop us?
Now his presidency lies in ruins, impaled on the twin horns of the Iraq insurgency and two-and-a-half dollar gasoline. As Jim Kunstler has pointed out, the "Hooverization" of George W. Bush has already begun.
Did he choose this disaster? Yes, of course, but at the same time, when you look at his character defects, you understand why he could not have possibly chosen any other way.
I'm sure GWB regrets ever having heard the name of Iraq, but that's not good enough. When he regrets the day he was born, that will serve as partial payment for his crimes.
And yes, I know the "MacBeth" analogy has been used before. In the 1960's, Barbara Garson wrote a play about the Lyndon Johnson presidency called "MacBird."
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Muslim Voices
I get tired of the borderline bigotry I read and hear in American media every day, and that's especially true of the electronic media. Sometimes the talking heads, particularly on Fox, but also occasionally even on "objective" channels like CNN, come close to characterizing all Muslims as terrorists (and it goes without saying that the United States and Israel are simply innocent victims). So partly because of that, and partly just because it's "fair and balanced," I'll refer everyone to this anti-al-Qaida editorial currently appearing on the Aljazeera site, and written by a young Muslim woman living in England and employed as a researcher at the University of London, Soumayya Ghannoushi.
Ms. Ghannoushi says in part: The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush's hammer and Bin Laden's anvil, hostages to an extreme right wing American administration, aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups, lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding.
Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that they are working in unison, one providing the justifications the other desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.
No wonder, it didn't take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them. Their puritanical missionary belief in being God's instruments on earth and grand imperial ambitions could now be realised through shameless emotional blackmail and bogus moral claims.
The whole thing is worth reading. I wish more people in this country were open to getting at least some of their information about Muslim views and intentions from Muslims, rather than just from maroons like Wolf Blitzer and Rush Limbaugh, and others I might name who can usually be found lurking in the environs of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
Ms. Ghannoushi says in part: The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush's hammer and Bin Laden's anvil, hostages to an extreme right wing American administration, aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups, lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding.
Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that they are working in unison, one providing the justifications the other desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.
No wonder, it didn't take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them. Their puritanical missionary belief in being God's instruments on earth and grand imperial ambitions could now be realised through shameless emotional blackmail and bogus moral claims.
The whole thing is worth reading. I wish more people in this country were open to getting at least some of their information about Muslim views and intentions from Muslims, rather than just from maroons like Wolf Blitzer and Rush Limbaugh, and others I might name who can usually be found lurking in the environs of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
Friday, July 15, 2005
The Maltese Approval Rating
The poster known as "Armwar" at Beliefnet conveys the following quoted information:
"The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 49% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president."
Anyhooooo...
That 49 percent approval rating number sounded a trifle high to me, especially because I don't even know any real people -- you know, the kind made of flesh -- that even like George W. Bush.
I'm like all the other fleshapoids I know. We sit around in front of the TV and when GW comes on we say rude things, man.
Yes, I know people on the internet that like him (cyberhumanoids), and I see people on TV that like him (mediapoids), and occasionally I even see people on the street that probably voted for him. They're the ones with the long faces.
But that number seemed high, so I asked around, Toots, as Philip Marlowe used to say, and I came up with this here.
So I guess George W.'s approval rating depends on who you ask.
"The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 49% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president."
Anyhooooo...
That 49 percent approval rating number sounded a trifle high to me, especially because I don't even know any real people -- you know, the kind made of flesh -- that even like George W. Bush.
I'm like all the other fleshapoids I know. We sit around in front of the TV and when GW comes on we say rude things, man.
Yes, I know people on the internet that like him (cyberhumanoids), and I see people on TV that like him (mediapoids), and occasionally I even see people on the street that probably voted for him. They're the ones with the long faces.
But that number seemed high, so I asked around, Toots, as Philip Marlowe used to say, and I came up with this here.
So I guess George W.'s approval rating depends on who you ask.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Duce! Duce! Viva Il Duce!
The Republican National Committee has released the list of GOP Congresspersons who have taken the loyalty oath on behalf of Karl Rove, and signed the promise with their own blood.
You too can put on the black shirt, do the stiff arm salute, and learn how to change the subject from examination of the criminal and his crime to impeachment of the victim(s).
Anyone of average intelligence or below can do it. You just have to be willing to put your lips around the sewer pipe emanating from the White House and suck real hard.
You too can put on the black shirt, do the stiff arm salute, and learn how to change the subject from examination of the criminal and his crime to impeachment of the victim(s).
Anyone of average intelligence or below can do it. You just have to be willing to put your lips around the sewer pipe emanating from the White House and suck real hard.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
The Top Five
A former student of mine, an intelligent and sincere young man, says he's not all that big on movies. That's too bad. He certainly understood all the books and poems he read in my class, and some of them were pretty difficult. Heart of Darkness is not for duffers.
Maybe he's been watching the wrong movies.
I'm an unapologetic film enthusiast. I like movies better than books, and I really like books a lot.
But it has to be the good stuff. I don't watch mass mania products like Batman Unfurled, or whateve the hell it's called.
So in the spirit of a would-be connoisseur, fan, and semi-snob, let me offer what I consider the top five among all the movies I've seen. I'm not saying that these were necessarily the best films ever made, but just the ones that I've enjoyed the most, and that I can watch again and again.
1. A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick in about 1970. Stars Malcolm MacDowell as the dangerous, charming, and completely sane sociopath Alex DeLarge. With his gang of "droogs" he spends the London nights roaming and stealing, committing random acts of senseless violence, and casually fornicating. The thefts and sex are just garnishes; raw sadism is the real payoff.
Anthony Burgess, who wrote the novel, didn't like Kubrick's movie because it leaves out the concluding and ambivalent twenty-first chapter. For my money, it's the best examination of the origins and rationale of sociopathy there ever was. It also takes up the question of whether such people's minds can be conditioned into more normal proportions, or you might say, into "morality."
This movie is not for the squeamish.
2. Fellini Satyricon, based on the fragmentary first-century Roman novel by Petronius, directed by Federico Fellini about 1969, and starring nobody in particular.
Nothing can prepare the viewer for the purely visual and audial impact of this film, and it's not meant to be understood or even watched so much as looked at and listened to. No other film looks like this, and I've heard from several sources that the genius behind the vision was not Fellini, who had very little understanding of the technical requirements of his craft, but his set builder and artistic director, a gentleman named Danilo.
Only disconnected pieces of Petronius's story remain, and this is reflected in the movie's lack of continuity. There's little or nothing in the way of segue or logical organization.
Satyricon is a study of perversion, corruption, the rootlessness and purposelessness of ordinary people in a demoralized and rigidly stratified society, the debasement of art and morality, and the cynicism born of the death of idealism. There's no doubt Fellini saw people's circumstances under the ancient and decrepit empire as an analog for life in modern times.
Like A Clockwork Orange, this movie is also not for the faint of heart. Every scene is a freak show.
3. Colonel Chabert, a 1994 surprise masterpiece by first-time director Yves Angelo stars Gerard Depardieu in the title role and features an incredible performance by Fabrice Luchini as the high-powered lawyer who volunteers to help the old soldier recover his property and his place in society.
Based on a novel by Honore de Balzac, the story concerns a Napoleonic war hero thought to have been killed at the Battle of Eylau, and the movie begins and ends on the battlefield, in the aftermath of the bloodletting. When Chabert shows up in Paris years later and after the fall of Napoleon, there are numerous people who are understandably unhappy to see him alive.
This is another film which, like the first two on the list, might be called an anatomy of corruption. A scene in which Luchini as the lawyer Derville describes to Chabert the betrayals and moral atrocities he witnesses daily in his office, and in which he sometimes participates, is almost unbelieveably simultaneously restrained, quiet, and intense.
This movie is completely tight and crafted. It has no weaknesses that I can see, and this from a rookie director. I wonder what else he has up his sleeve. Unfortunately, as of this writing the film is not yet available on DVD.
4. The Big Sleep, directed by Howard Hawks, is a 1946 adaptation of the novel by Raymond Chandler. The ultimate noir film, it stars Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe, and Lauren Bacall.
For reasons I don't understand, one of this movie's charms is that its plot is so byzantine and convoluted that it's impossible to follow or understand. Even Chandler admitted to having a hard time comprehending it. This is tantamount to an admission by the film's creators that their production isn't the least bit about story, but an abstract exercise in ambience, texture, and atmosphere.
When the first version of The Big Sleep was shot in 1945, Bogart and Bacall had just met. When it was partially re-shot nearly a year later they were married. You can't watch this movie without picking up on the tremendous electrical charge of sexual energy between the lead actors. Some of the looks Bacall gives her leading man would melt glass.
5. Barry Lyndon was made by Stanley Kubrick in about 1975, and stars Ryan O'Neil in the title role, and the fashion model Marissa Berenson as the rich, beautiful, and vapid Lady Lyndon.
This is a protest film. At a time when the pacing of Hollywood films was constantly accelerating through the use of frenetic cross-cutting, constant camera movement, and rapid-fire dialogue, Kubrick deliberately emphasized the slow, august unfolding of a classical eighteenth-century tale, written in the nineteenth century by William Thackery. In many scenes the camera is motionless, there is almost no action, and the overall effect is stagey.
At the same time, Kubrick's technique is sometimes revolutionary here. He was experimenting extensively with high-speed film, and some of the interior scenes were shot using only candlelight. A wildly careening hand-held camera captures some of the rare action scenes where appropriate, creating a sharp contrast with the placid, almost glacial pace of the greater part of the narrative. There's even a silent movie within the movie -- a couple minutes shot through a blue filter in which the lead actors, moving like Kabuki players in powdered wigs, engage in a stylized embrace and kiss to the slow, spare, echoing notes from a classical keyboard piece.
This is a connoisseur's film, and its impeccable technique combined with ideological insolence impelled the director Martin Scorsese to watch it for 100 consecutive days, every afternoon at a theatre in lower Manhattan.
The story concerns a brash young rake and social climber who climbs too high, then topples off his perch like a sack of coal. Don't even try to watch it if your idea of a good movie is one with lots of car chases and fight scenes, and don't be in a rush to go anywhere; it lasts about three hours.
Maybe he's been watching the wrong movies.
I'm an unapologetic film enthusiast. I like movies better than books, and I really like books a lot.
But it has to be the good stuff. I don't watch mass mania products like Batman Unfurled, or whateve the hell it's called.
So in the spirit of a would-be connoisseur, fan, and semi-snob, let me offer what I consider the top five among all the movies I've seen. I'm not saying that these were necessarily the best films ever made, but just the ones that I've enjoyed the most, and that I can watch again and again.
1. A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick in about 1970. Stars Malcolm MacDowell as the dangerous, charming, and completely sane sociopath Alex DeLarge. With his gang of "droogs" he spends the London nights roaming and stealing, committing random acts of senseless violence, and casually fornicating. The thefts and sex are just garnishes; raw sadism is the real payoff.
Anthony Burgess, who wrote the novel, didn't like Kubrick's movie because it leaves out the concluding and ambivalent twenty-first chapter. For my money, it's the best examination of the origins and rationale of sociopathy there ever was. It also takes up the question of whether such people's minds can be conditioned into more normal proportions, or you might say, into "morality."
This movie is not for the squeamish.
2. Fellini Satyricon, based on the fragmentary first-century Roman novel by Petronius, directed by Federico Fellini about 1969, and starring nobody in particular.
Nothing can prepare the viewer for the purely visual and audial impact of this film, and it's not meant to be understood or even watched so much as looked at and listened to. No other film looks like this, and I've heard from several sources that the genius behind the vision was not Fellini, who had very little understanding of the technical requirements of his craft, but his set builder and artistic director, a gentleman named Danilo.
Only disconnected pieces of Petronius's story remain, and this is reflected in the movie's lack of continuity. There's little or nothing in the way of segue or logical organization.
Satyricon is a study of perversion, corruption, the rootlessness and purposelessness of ordinary people in a demoralized and rigidly stratified society, the debasement of art and morality, and the cynicism born of the death of idealism. There's no doubt Fellini saw people's circumstances under the ancient and decrepit empire as an analog for life in modern times.
Like A Clockwork Orange, this movie is also not for the faint of heart. Every scene is a freak show.
3. Colonel Chabert, a 1994 surprise masterpiece by first-time director Yves Angelo stars Gerard Depardieu in the title role and features an incredible performance by Fabrice Luchini as the high-powered lawyer who volunteers to help the old soldier recover his property and his place in society.
Based on a novel by Honore de Balzac, the story concerns a Napoleonic war hero thought to have been killed at the Battle of Eylau, and the movie begins and ends on the battlefield, in the aftermath of the bloodletting. When Chabert shows up in Paris years later and after the fall of Napoleon, there are numerous people who are understandably unhappy to see him alive.
This is another film which, like the first two on the list, might be called an anatomy of corruption. A scene in which Luchini as the lawyer Derville describes to Chabert the betrayals and moral atrocities he witnesses daily in his office, and in which he sometimes participates, is almost unbelieveably simultaneously restrained, quiet, and intense.
This movie is completely tight and crafted. It has no weaknesses that I can see, and this from a rookie director. I wonder what else he has up his sleeve. Unfortunately, as of this writing the film is not yet available on DVD.
4. The Big Sleep, directed by Howard Hawks, is a 1946 adaptation of the novel by Raymond Chandler. The ultimate noir film, it stars Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe, and Lauren Bacall.
For reasons I don't understand, one of this movie's charms is that its plot is so byzantine and convoluted that it's impossible to follow or understand. Even Chandler admitted to having a hard time comprehending it. This is tantamount to an admission by the film's creators that their production isn't the least bit about story, but an abstract exercise in ambience, texture, and atmosphere.
When the first version of The Big Sleep was shot in 1945, Bogart and Bacall had just met. When it was partially re-shot nearly a year later they were married. You can't watch this movie without picking up on the tremendous electrical charge of sexual energy between the lead actors. Some of the looks Bacall gives her leading man would melt glass.
5. Barry Lyndon was made by Stanley Kubrick in about 1975, and stars Ryan O'Neil in the title role, and the fashion model Marissa Berenson as the rich, beautiful, and vapid Lady Lyndon.
This is a protest film. At a time when the pacing of Hollywood films was constantly accelerating through the use of frenetic cross-cutting, constant camera movement, and rapid-fire dialogue, Kubrick deliberately emphasized the slow, august unfolding of a classical eighteenth-century tale, written in the nineteenth century by William Thackery. In many scenes the camera is motionless, there is almost no action, and the overall effect is stagey.
At the same time, Kubrick's technique is sometimes revolutionary here. He was experimenting extensively with high-speed film, and some of the interior scenes were shot using only candlelight. A wildly careening hand-held camera captures some of the rare action scenes where appropriate, creating a sharp contrast with the placid, almost glacial pace of the greater part of the narrative. There's even a silent movie within the movie -- a couple minutes shot through a blue filter in which the lead actors, moving like Kabuki players in powdered wigs, engage in a stylized embrace and kiss to the slow, spare, echoing notes from a classical keyboard piece.
This is a connoisseur's film, and its impeccable technique combined with ideological insolence impelled the director Martin Scorsese to watch it for 100 consecutive days, every afternoon at a theatre in lower Manhattan.
The story concerns a brash young rake and social climber who climbs too high, then topples off his perch like a sack of coal. Don't even try to watch it if your idea of a good movie is one with lots of car chases and fight scenes, and don't be in a rush to go anywhere; it lasts about three hours.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Blogging/Bragging
Everybody likes to brag about their kids, if they have something to brag about. So in that spirit, I'll stick out my chest and tell you about my daughter, Rachel Brice.
*One of the world's most beautiful women;
*One of the world's most talented performers;
*The most exciting, buzzed-about, and original belly dancer working today;
*A world-traveler, a sophisticate, gregarious, charming, and knowledgeable about all things artsifartsi;
*An honest, conscientious, and hard-nosed business head.
What parent could ask for more?
Like her old dad, Rachel was something of a late bloomer. Now, at the ripe age of 33, she's just hitting her full stride.
She learned her art on her own, by working endlessly to perfect the moves on a classic videotape by the legendary Suhaila Salimpour.
The great dancer Rudolf Nuryev once remarked that anyone who masters an art only does so through tremendous amounts of hard work. Rachel exemplifies that mundane but all-important principal.
Watch for her, because she might be coming to a venue near your home town. She's currently dividing her time between performing with Miles Copeland's Bellydance Superstars and working independently as a teacher/performer in her own unique classes, workshops, and performances.
My life would have been relatively impoverished if I had not had the opportunity to watch my daughter grow into the incredible force of nature she's become, and to enjoy the pleasure of her company. Still, I often look at her and still see her as the curly-headed little moppett she was 30 years ago.
*One of the world's most beautiful women;
*One of the world's most talented performers;
*The most exciting, buzzed-about, and original belly dancer working today;
*A world-traveler, a sophisticate, gregarious, charming, and knowledgeable about all things artsifartsi;
*An honest, conscientious, and hard-nosed business head.
What parent could ask for more?
Like her old dad, Rachel was something of a late bloomer. Now, at the ripe age of 33, she's just hitting her full stride.
She learned her art on her own, by working endlessly to perfect the moves on a classic videotape by the legendary Suhaila Salimpour.
The great dancer Rudolf Nuryev once remarked that anyone who masters an art only does so through tremendous amounts of hard work. Rachel exemplifies that mundane but all-important principal.
Watch for her, because she might be coming to a venue near your home town. She's currently dividing her time between performing with Miles Copeland's Bellydance Superstars and working independently as a teacher/performer in her own unique classes, workshops, and performances.
My life would have been relatively impoverished if I had not had the opportunity to watch my daughter grow into the incredible force of nature she's become, and to enjoy the pleasure of her company. Still, I often look at her and still see her as the curly-headed little moppett she was 30 years ago.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Free City
This a free city
And it sholy am pritty
SFO
Doncha wanna go?
GW Bush
no es President aqui
and marijuana is just another vegetable
That makes everything digestible
i smoked some in the vestibule
There's some joker in Sacramento that
Sounds like a Prussian
He needs a good brushin
Brush off sod off
He wont be around long
Burger King is hurtin
All his bidness is divertin
To the family-owned macrobiotic
Vegan restaurant next door
Sawcha piddy
Gay marriage?
Not popular here.
"I'd love to huke up wid u
Hunny,
But I dont wanna get
Tide down"
And it sholy am pritty
SFO
Doncha wanna go?
GW Bush
no es President aqui
and marijuana is just another vegetable
That makes everything digestible
i smoked some in the vestibule
There's some joker in Sacramento that
Sounds like a Prussian
He needs a good brushin
Brush off sod off
He wont be around long
Burger King is hurtin
All his bidness is divertin
To the family-owned macrobiotic
Vegan restaurant next door
Sawcha piddy
Gay marriage?
Not popular here.
"I'd love to huke up wid u
Hunny,
But I dont wanna get
Tide down"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)