Life imitates legislation

Click image for full Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoon.

No sex, lies, and video (digital)

My daughter came home from work yesterday evening and, to accompany Thai food, she wanted to watch "Easy A". Oh, well, I've been the only owner of a Y chromosome in a movie theater. Twice. "Thirteen Going on Thirty" and "The Princess Diaries". One good, one bad, so...



"Easy A" is hysterical. Maybe I laughed too loud. At least I was only embarrassing at home.

It occurred to me about halfway through that our modern media culture is a perfect match for North Ojai High School, all gossip, rumor, and sensation, perception is reality, who cares what's true, image rules.

Typically, Hollywood slaps a happy ending on the triumph of bullshit. Olive's webcast, guerrilla marketing and all, we're supposed to believe, is good enough to shovel it out of her young life. It's a comedy, after all. And Facebook won't follow you all the days of your life.

I suppose I should take some joy from this movie metaphor. If I really can stretch it, it means that media is not channelling middle school pubescent angst and might be mature enough for high school adolescent angst. But I'm not feeling the joy.

Emma Stone's Olive wasn't having sex. We, on the other hand, are fucked. The Supreme Court's wingnut majority continues to hand wealthy people and corporations bigger and bigger megaphones, as if they needed them, to drown out the free speech of everyone who can't go toe-to-toe with whichever billionaire bogeyman is currently most prominent in financing the conservative con-game whose basic message is that we'd all be happier as peons in thrall to their every whim. Because they're so rich, they must be the greatest people who ever lived.

But I didn't let these dark thoughts spoil my viewing pleasure. I've been repressing reality a lot lately.

Zuckerberg lives

I just watched "The Social Network".  (Why didn't they call it "Social Network"?  Cleaner.)

Mark Zuckerberg is still alive, despite being (portrayed as) a conscienceless user asshole.  No, I didn't believe the young associate putting a sweet Hollywood bow on him at the end.  Although it did look as though she might be trying to cheer up the poor little rich boy with a little white lie...

The apparent fact the Zuckerberg is such a creep and is still alive is actually good news.  Not for the business world, which is full of similar successful self-centered sociopaths, but for the political world.

Movies come out every year in which the entire government is run by venal conspiracies that would just as soon kill you as frame you for a crime you didn't commit.  "Enemy of the State" had both.  The Bourne abstraction movies have a shadow government immune from democratic control.  I'm sure I'll enjoy the matrix-y paranoia of "The Adjustment Bureau".

For me, the question has lately been, with trillions of dollars at stake and with humans' obvious willingness to kill over paltry amounts, is our government subject to even worse than the obvious perennial purchase by moneyed interests.  Goldman Sachs has run our economic policy, irrespective of the party in power, for decades.  They got to the top the old-fashioned way; they stole, uh, sorry, creamed off huge proceeds and bought power by contributing to both parties.

Yet if push came to shove and a less wishy-washy reformer than Barack Obama won the Presidency against all the elite cultural factors stacked against him (or her - but not Hillary, she's too DLC), how far would the interests of wealth go to retain their control?  Yeah, this sounds paranoid even to me, its thinker.  But...

Zuckerberg lives.  Maybe popular democracy remains possible, despite the current overwhelming dominance of the wealthy elite.

And I did really enjoy seeing Larry Summers portrayed as an arrogant, short-sighted, ignoramus asshole.  Too bad the filmmakers couldn't prevail upon him to play himself.

Harvard is everywhere in this movie, and it doesn't come off well.  But now Harvard has Drew Faust, and the federal government has Elizabeth Warren.  Maybe the problem all along has been Harvard men, and what we really need is Harvard women to save us.

(Shhh.  Don't tell the wealthy.  Let them get comfortable with Faust's and Warren's admission to the club.  Then bust up the club good and proper.)

Source Vizzini

Inconceivable!

A former senior intelligence official said Thursday it is "inconceivable" that the CIA briefers would not have talked about interrogation methods that had already been used.

"I can't prove it," the official said, but added, "The whole point [of the briefings] was to make sure they [lawmakers] understood what we were doing." The official asked to comment anonymously so he could speak more candidly.

Some anonymous sources seem credible despite their anonymity. They are clearly in vulnerable positions, so their anonymity seems necessary.

This is not one of those sources. This "former senior intelligence official" seems like a Bushist spinner of bullshit.

The reporter, also anonymous, helpfully dittoed the former official's fig leaf that he needed to be anonymous to speak candidly. This is also bullshit. There's no candor in what he says, only self-interested speculation.

The use of these quotes is journalistic malpractice, in other words standard operating procedure for the insider Beltway press.

Helicopter grandparent

Everyone who's not a wingnut bonehead has figured out Republican bullshit on the Presidential helicopter foofaraw, and that is today's good news. John McCain has proven to be just another source of that bullshit.

Here's one good example of the people seeing through the empty suits on the right (February 24th, 2009 9:50 am ET):

This is nothing but partisan bickerfest. Bush orders the dang things and the rethugs blast Obama.

If a contract was signed by Bush, we may be STUCK with the bill.

Nothing new there.

There's a lot of uneducated speculation out there about why the President would need 28 helos (the number he apparently already has at his disposal) and why the new helos cost $400 million apiece. Since one big pile is better than two little piles, I'll add my own semi-educated speculation.

If Obama (or Duhbya and others before him) were merely the president of a Fortune 500 company, he could wait for a chopper to be repaired. Meanwhile, he could take a, say, limo or a cab or a walk. The President of the U.S. has to have fast transportation available to him every second of every day. Six sigmas ain't good enough. Twenty-eight may be too many, but, given the usual repair and refit cycle for most cutting edge aircraft (for high performance fighter jets, sometimes 24 hours of work on the ground per hour of flight time), it may be just right.

Anyone who has seen the real footage of Stingers in action in "Charlie Wilson's War" should understand why post-9/11 helicopters should be very secure. No helicopter can outrun a $100,000 shoulder-fired missile, so it had better have cutting edge electronics for early warning, incredible maneuverability plus pilots who know how to use it, and a shitload squared of effective countermeasures against all types of homing. Surviving a close-in missile launch is probably still a dicey business.

Update: Some really good stuff here, including this nostril exfoliator by MissMudd:

I loved the part when that fluffy swath of comb-over kept twisting in the wind while he was trying to look pertinent.

Seductive prognostication

After the polls closed on Tuesday, a friend and local legislative candidate called me to get the results from my town. I didn't have them yet, but I told her my guess: Narrow loss in one precinct and slightly larger win in the other, adding up to a narrow win for her here.

Fifteen minutes later, I had unofficial results, and I had been spot on. What a rush to have my finger on the pulse! (Or is that my pulse noticing when I'm given the finger?)

Predicting the Electoral College, I had the benefit of reams of polling, well explicated in many places, especially at fivethirtyeight.com. Buoyed by Nate Silver's confidence there, I put my marker down at 353-185. Of course, it is true that I suffered for days after with flopsweat and fear of dark deeds. It's also true that I titled my prediction "Wild-ass guess."

True, I'm proud that, with Missouri still out, the only state I missed was Indiana going for Obama. If Mizzou eventually votes for McCain, I'll be 50 of 51, though anyone who knows the word 'predict' should be able to call D.C. for the Democrat well in advance. In fact, let me be the first to declare that Obama wins D.C. in 2012.

It feels great to be right with so little effort, and that, I think, is the attraction. It's why big media spends so much time gazing into crystal balls instead of reporting actual events which have already happened. Not only do they spend time predicting and outlining what a prediction will mean when it comes true, they also argue about each other's predictions, as if they could settle the question inside the half hour.

Looking into the future is a mook's game. Despite movies like Déjà Vu and Minority Report, it's not possible to know what's going to happen for sure. We'd be much better served by the media if they would concentrate on what is instead of what might be tomorrow.

Shocked, I tell you

"I'm shocked, shocked that a black leader of the civil rights movement would notice that we Republicans have been fishing for anger from our supporters."

"Sir, here're your Southern strategy winnings."

(sotto voce)
"Oh, thank you."

I can kill an ordinary person

Sarah Palin - and it's completely undeniable that the 20-phone-call impetus came from her - believes that she can settle a personal score using the power of her office.

Wasn't Duhbya pissed at Saddam for maybe trying to kill his daddy? Now there's a good model for smart policy.

(The headline? Click the thumbnail image.)

Sellers market

Click image for full Bruce Beattie/Daytona Beach News-Journal cartoon.

'Cause even with all the shit going on in world, Sunday still has to have funnies.

Mel Gibson starring in Maverick

Ohmigod, McCNN is now calling Sarah Palin a maverick.

Look, they didn't pick that word by accident. It came to them straight from the McCain campaign or from a McCain supporter in editorial management.

Now, if the GOP can just get Mel Gibson to play McCain, they'll have their teen road movie fully cast. They can publish the script on McCNN as they write it.

A real journalist would be embarrassed by the headline. Maybe one of those who still works for CNN will make them take it down.

Sydney Pollack

Just last week, I looked up who directed "The Interpreter". Sydney Pollack, now gone.

I looked this up because over several viewings I have found much to admire in the acting that Pollack captured on film. Nicole Kidman has no peer at showing shellshock, but she is especially good in "The Interpreter". The play of emotion across her eyes is terrific. Sean Penn doesn't match his incredible performance in "Dead Man Walking", but he is good and real and his acting goes all the way through to his body language.

The stars, though, bring a lot of talent and craft to their performances. What I find more impressive is the depth into this cast of effective moments. The entire sequence after the bus explosion is filled with great, real moments. The Secret Service agents and news reporters all make their moments ring true.

Those moments could have been filler, but they weren't. I give Pollack credit for that.

Clueless

I'm sure Roy Edroso will do a better job of this, but I can't help making fun of the communists in Russia who don't like "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Depends". Probably Kathryn Lopez is angry that Cate Blanchett is playing the KGB agent - isn't that glamorizing the extermination of the kulaks?

Could the retro commies and the idiot wingnuts pleeeeeez meet in the World of Warcraft section devoted to Cold War nostalgia?

Click image for details of its generous release by Popperipopp into the public domain.

Facts just get in the way

For all teh people who think Jim Garrison was the spittin' image of Kevin Costner and a bunch of gay mafia Cubans assassinated JFK, it's always good to see mythic Hollywood extravaganzas get fact-checked, even a little tongue-in-cheek. The credulous are often the same folk who can't tell the mythic stories of the Bible from historical documents. No matter how many times you say Gilgamesh, they keep right on replying, "Never give up. Never surrender." And they believe "The Passion of the Christ" is history. Hey, it's in Aramaic!

It's amazing how well-represented Mel Gibson is in this panoply of bullshit, though it would be religiously incorrect to notice that "The Passion" is tendentious bullshit (not to mention a pornography of violence quite in keeping with Mel's secular work), and it is therefore omitted. Gives a whole new meaning to the line from "Notting Hill", "Mel does his own ass work. And why wouldn't he?" When it comes to gibsons, put your belief in Henry or in pearl onions steeped in gin.

I do have a hard time understanding how a movie released in 1968 can be held accountable for inaccurately predicting 2001. If "Back to the Future" showed the ridiculousness of Ronald Reagan's presidency from the eyes of 1955, even Ray Bradbury, who got closest with "A Sound of Thunder", couldn't have predicted the avalanche of decadence and stupidity that allowed Duhbya to take office in 2001.

It also cracks me up that sending a computer virus to alien spacecraft should be held up as an exemplar of authenticity. Probably just a Mac product placement and thus representative of the modern American commoditization, purchase, and sale of factoids as if they were true.

I have nothing against a good rollicking blockbuster myth. It's just that I can distinguish it from reality, and I wish more Americans could, too.

Brain food

I guess Kate Capshaw's character in Temple of Doom was right to faint when offered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spoon monkey brains directly out of their skulls. Not that I needed much encouragement, but I'm striking brains off my list of potential edibles. At this point, here are the risks:

• pig brains (the new one) - unnamed inflammatory syndrome, no eating required
  
• human brains - kuru (not a large risk outside Papua New Guinea, particularly for those of us who long ago struck "long pig" from our diets)
  
• cattle brains - bovine spongiform encephalopathy (love that phrase), a/k/a mad cow or Creutzfeld-Jakob type II
  
• sheep brains - scrapie (not known in humans)
• squirrel brains - another spongiform encephalopathy, possibly afflicting Mike Huckabee
  
• deer and elk brains - chronic wasting disease, yet another spongiform encephalopathy

The story sources to Dr. Aaron DeVries this claim:

The disease bore no resemblance to mad cow disease.

Except, it's not transmissible from human to human, it shows neurological symptoms, and it's associated with using brains for food, all true of BSE. True, the symptoms are not an invariable decline to dementia and death, but that's hardly "no resemblance". I'd like to know more about what the Minnesota Dept. of Health or the CDC did to rule out another prion-based disease.

Pentagram vs. Pentateuch

I'm used to fantastic lunacy from Protestant Christians, but every now and then a Catholic Christian goes head to head with them in lyrical insanity, and it makes for head-turning reading:

THE REV. Ron Barker, pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic Church, deserves praise for having the courage to stand up and ban the Harry Potter books at St. Joseph's School in Wakefield ("Man from ministry bans Potter," City & Region, Oct. 25). These books, although fiction, can be very harmful to impressionable children, as witchcraft is a very real and dangerous practice in our culture today. There is a cult attitude that borders on frenzy around these books, and they can be spiritually harmful to children. There are plenty of good books out there that do not have occult themes. I pray that other schools will follow Barker's lead and get these books out of our schools. (emphasis added)

Pentagram vs. Pentateuch, I see that every day. Halloween is probably evil, too.

Pay it forward

Liberty Mutual's current ad campaign is terrific. Of course, it's marketing and thus not something I would ever take on faith about the company. But their ad agency created a good message whether it's true about Liberty Mutual or not.

Altruism can infect other people who witness it - and what a glorious infection to have. These ads pointedly show a diverse mix of people learning from strangers to be better people. The rednecks in the early model Chevy pickup belie their stereotype, and I really like that.

On a similar theme, the movie Pay It Forward had great potential, but its director, Mimi Leder likes bittersweet endings and ambiguous morals. I don't blame her - Hollywood is filled with Potemkin endings tacked onto stories that need to be hard. But Pay It Forward is the opposite; it's a bitter ending tacked onto a plot that demands perseverance of its characters, gets it, and then exacts the worst blood sacrifice.

Leder did need to back away from the saccharin possibilities, but she backed waaay too far away. Killing Haley Joel Osment's character in the final sequence whipsawed me to the conclusion that the rest of the story was a happy lie. The movie needed to acknowledge that altruistic examples couldn't solve problems easily, but an assault could have done that without the self-abnegating death of hope.

The Bourne Conundrum

Saw the Bourne Ultimatum the other night. It's gripping, and the fights are as well choreographed as the two previous movies in the trilogy. But, despite fawning reviews, it's not as good as Identity or Supremacy. In fact, it steals quite a lot from them, and it's repetitive on its own, too.

I still enjoyed it. That's the way of action movies.

Ultimatum has a political point of view. The Bushist executive-power black bag bodyguard of lies tell-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you covert types are the bad guys. But it's still a very small part of the movie.

The question the movie, like many before it, posed for me is this: There are clearly men who have the will to power, who inhabit powerful positions and are willing, even eager, to act in the dark. Are transparency, the open society, and a politics based on real, not manufactured, consent even possible? Has my belief in them been head-up-my-ass naive?

Fingermen

I suppose it's no surprise when soldiers fraudulently placed in harm's way in order to fight a shifting, disappearing enemy become fingermen.

The killings include the drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River as punishment for breaking curfew

But it still hurts.