Month: July 2004

God Made Him An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse

Marlon Brando died today. I suppose, like all celebrity deaths, some mean more to us than others. This one means something to me.

It’s not that I have any particular feeling for Brando as an individual. He was only mildly interesting as a person. Perhaps the most interesting thing he ever said (and it revealed a lot about his acting) was “The more sensitive you are, the more likely you are to be brutalised, develop scabs and never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything because you always feel too much.” Perhaps his great talent was to be able to channel that enormous sensitivity into his characters.

I have long thought that he was the greatest American film actor ever. There was a time in my life when such a thing seemed very important and I spent long hours watching and studying film. In my view, nobody could touch him at his best. I still think so.

He is now thought of as The Godfather, which isn’t a bad role to have as your enduring image. It’s the most memorable role in one of the most iconic movies ever made. (In my view, the best movie ever made.) But, Brando’s filmography actually contains a handful of the best performances ever captured on film.

In the 50’s he epitomized “the method” the natural acting style popularized by the Actor’s Studio. But, Lee Strasbourg said that he didn’t teach Brando a thing. He showed up fully formed as an actor — he just had it. For those of you who are too young to have paid any attention to him as anything beyond Don Vito, you really should take a look at A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, Viva Zapata and The Wild One.

As great an actor as he was, he wasn’t the smartest guy on the block. He got himself caught up in the 60’s and did almost nothing of note. And then along came The Godfather. But, that same year he made another movie which I think may be his greatest performance ever — Last Tango in Paris. Most people remember it for it’s explicit sexuality, which was groundbreaking at the time. But, Brando delivers a performance so complex, so intimate, so amazingly sensitive yet brutal that when I was a freshman in college and saw it the first time it went so far over my head that I hated it. Ten years later I saw it again and it left me speechless with wonder. Still does.

Brando reached his peak with those two incredible performances, I think, although Apocalypse Now has stood the test of time much better than I thought when I first saw it. I was caught up in the process of filmmaking in those days and appalled to read that Brando had so compromised Coppolla’s vision of Col. Kurtz by showing up on the set overweight and unprepared that I overlooked how remarkable his large, bald shadowed head and hypnotic voice really was. His performances were often like that for me. I’d see the film and get a certain impression. Then I’d see it again later and the brilliance of the performance would just wash over me like a warm wave and I’d get it.

In later years, he was this overpaid character actor with bad celebrity kids.(And sometimes he was just beyond weird as in The Island of Doctor Moreaux.) But, there were flashes of his brilliance from time to time as when he sent up his Godfather role in The Freshman or when he somehow managed to make himself charming and sexually attractive in Don Juan DeMarco despite being an elderly man who weighed 350 pounds. (Now that’s acting!)

I’m sure there will be much finer eulogies and obituaries than this one over the next few days. But, this one’s from the heart. His legacy is a precious gift to the art of film and acting. RIP Marlon Brando. Thanks.

Flounder Filet

Q. Did anyone in the White House or the administration ask Irish television or its reporter, Carol Coleman, to submit questions in advance of her interview with the President last Wednesday?

MR. McCLELLAN: Bill, a couple of things. I saw I guess some reports on that. I don’t know what every individual office — whatever discussions that they have with reporters in terms of interviews. But obviously, the President was — is pleased to sit down and do interviews with journalists, both from abroad, as well as here at home, and to talk about the priorities of this administration. And I think anytime that there is an interview that’s going to take place, obviously there are staff-level discussions with reporters before that interview and to —

Q. — what are the —

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, to talk about what issues might be on their mind, and stuff. That’s — but, reporters —

Q. That’s not the same thing as asking for —

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me finish. Let me finish.

Q. — and my question is, were questions asked for.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me finish. Reporters, when they meet with the President, can ask whatever questions they want. And any suggestion to the contrary is just —

Q. Right, but that doesn’t answer the question. Did somebody in the administration ask her for questions in advance, and is that your policy?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, in terms — you’re talking my policy?

Q. No, the administration’s policy.

MR. McCLELLAN: I don’t know what an individual staffer may or may not have asked specifically of this reporter, but some of these interviews are set up by people outside of my direct office and control.

Q. Well, will you say from this lectern that it is not the policy of this White House to ask for questions in advance?

MR. McCLELLAN: Will you let me complete what I’m trying to say? Thank you. Just hold on a second. As I said, and you know very well from covering this White House, that any time a reporter sits down with the President, they are welcome to ask whatever questions they want to ask.

Q. Yes, but that’s beside the point.

It goes on. I sometimes wonder what the public sould think if they actually saw these little performances by Flounder. The phrase “bullshit artist” comes immediately to mind.

Timing The Attack

Ezra Klein makes an interesting point about political attacks in this post. First, he says that for a political attack to be useful, it must be accurate. Second, it must be politically accurate and third, it must be effective.

The first point may actually be debatable. For the most part, it seems to me that it only needs to be believable in order to resonate. Still, I would not suggest adopting the character assassination method of political attack. If it isn’t accurate, I’m against it.

His second point is really the one that caught my eye because I don’t think people understand this and it’s important that they do:

Political accuracy is a bit different. It relies on the American people being ready to believe something is true. In April, 45% of Americans said honest and trustworthy were not words that applied to Bush. With that in mind, I think the populace is primed for a discussion over whether or not he is a liar. It’s an argument I think we’ll win, which is why I advocate it. Now, if less than half think Bush is dishonest, it stands to reason that even fewer will be willing to call him — or hear him called — a criminal. That’s why I argue against that label. The general rule of thumb here is that levying the charge shouldn’t do us damage — if it does, we’re better off keeping our mouths shut.

Absolutely. Here among ourselves in the clubby left blogosphere we’ve been hurling every insult imaginable at Bush for so long that it’s almost impossible to believe that the public in general doesn’t see that we are dealing with the most dishonest president in American history, and that includes Nixon. But, until fairly recently, his image held up as the all-american “straight shooter.” Only now are they ready to hear the charge that we all know has been true for quite some time.

This is an interesting thing and it’s worth thinking about a bit. When, exactly, did the tide begin to turn on that and what precipitated it? How did we finally reach a point where a polemic like F9/11 could cross into mainstream popular culture and have such an impact? When did the public give itself permission to challenge the orthodoxy and why?

There are many possibilities, but I think it’s actually one specific event and one slow realization combining to bring people to that conclusion. The first was the strut across the deck of the aircraft carrier which, while it thrilled the punditocrisy and many partisans, also stunk to high heaven as a phony PR stunt. Straight shooters don’t play that way.

The second, of course, is the missing weapons of mass destruction. People may not consciously blame Junior for lying, but there is a strong sense of discomfort at the idea a president would say the words “I will disarm Saddam Hussein” about 4,752 times and it turns out there was nothing to disarm. The dissonance is palpable.

So, we seem to have reached a point at which the public is ready to hear that the Empty Codpiece is a liar without it shocking their emotional perception of him as a straightshooter.

But, Ezra’s point is extremely important. While those of us in the vanguard of leftwing politics are out there shaking our fists, which is as it should be, we must also recognize that politicians have to be aware of the greater public’s capacity to absorb that reality. They must be coaxed along, not bludgeoned by our leaders. The bludgeoning is our job.

P.S. That Ezra’s good isn’t he?

Oh Hell

American military police yesterday raided a building belonging to the Iraqi ministry of the interior where prisoners were allegedly being physically abused by Iraqi interrogators.

The raid appeared to be a violation of the country’s new sovereignty, leading to angry scenes inside the ministry between Iraqi policemen and US soldiers.

[…]

Iraqi ministry of interior officials admitted that around 150 prisoners taken during a raid four days before in the Betawain district of Baghdad had been physically abused during their arrest and subsequent questioning.

The men were captured in the first big Iraqi-led anti-crime and anti-terrorism operation, which took place a few days before the transfer of power, with US military police in support and using US satellite images.

Senior Iraqi officers described those captured as ‘first class murderers, kidnappers and terrorists with links to al-Ansar’ – a militant group in the former Kurdish no-fly zone – who had all admitted to ‘at least 20 crimes while being questioned’.

[…]

US military spokesmen would not comment. “We can’t confirm that this took place,” a spokesman said.

One of the prisoners bared his back after his initial arrest to reveal open welts allegedly caused by baton and rubber hoses.

A bodyguard for the head of criminal intelligence, Hussein Kamal, admitted that the beatings had taken place.

Nashwan Ali – who said his nickname was Big Man – said: “A US MP asked me this morning what police division I was in. I said I was in criminal intelligence.

“The American asked me why we had beaten the prisoners. I said we beat the prisoners because they are all bad people. But I told him we didn’t strip them naked, photograph them or fuck them like you did.”

We sure could use a big ole whiff ‘o that moral clarity right about now.

The secret history of Anonymous:

The author of Imperial Hubris is unmasked and says he fears for his job at the CIA, not for his life at the hands of Al Qaeda

BY JASON VEST

A Phoenix investigation has discovered that Anonymous does not, in fact, want to be anonymous at all — and that his anonymity is neither enforced nor voluntarily assumed out of fear for his safety, but rather compelled by an arcane set of classified regulations that are arguably being abused in an attempt to spare the CIA possible political inconvenience. In the Phoenix’s view, continued deference by the press to a bogus and unwanted standard of secrecy essentially amounts to colluding with the CIA in muzzling a civil servant — a standard made more ridiculous by the ubiquity of Anonymous’s name in both intelligence and journalistic circles.

When asked to confirm or deny his identity in an interview with the Phoenix last week, Anonymous declined to do either, and said, “I’ve given my word I’m not going to tell anyone who I am, as the organization that employs me has bound me by my word.” His publisher, Brassey’s, likewise declined to comment. Nearly a dozen intelligence-community sources, however, say Anonymous is Michael Scheuer — and that his forced anonymity is both unprecedented and telling in the context of CIA history and modern politics.

Religiosity Gap

I’m in a bit of a mood today, so why don’t I take on the religion issue while I’m at it and piss off everybody I haven’t pissed off already?

Atrios takes umbrage with this Slate article that claims Kerry isn’t acting Catholic enough and, therefore, will lose the religious vote and the election. The author says, “if Kerry’s uncomfortable with religion then he’s uncomfortable with Americans…If Kerry’s really secular, he’s abnormal.” He quotes an anonymous Kerry aide telling the Washington Times,”Every time something with religious language got sent up the flagpole, it got sent back down, stripped of religious language.”

Uh huh. Certainly, anxious Democrats who anonymously talk to the Washington Times must be telling it just like it is.

This comes on the heels of an earlier article by Amy Sullivan chastising Kerry for not using values language and imagery and thereby alienating religious voters who might vote for him. In the course of her article, and this one in Slate today, it becomes clear that an even more significant problem for the religious left than John Kerry’s alleged lack of religiosity, is the aggressive secularism of the activist base of the Democratic party. They are rude to religious people, evidently, and this is seen as a serious threat to Kerry’s chances. (Both articles, by the way, mention how David Brooks really “gets it” in this NY Times column. Now, come on kids. David may be a nice guy, but he is not giving the Kerry campaign political advice out of the goodness of his heart. Think about it.)

Before we go any further, we should look at some actual data instead of relying on anecdotal tales of hurt feelings or bad communications. Ruy Tuxeira of Donkey Rising posted on this subject a month or so ago and reported some interesting numbers on the subject:

*Most progressives are religious. For example, in 2000, 81 percent of Gore voters professed a religious affiliation. That’s within shouting distance of the 89 percent of Bush voters who professed a religious affiliation (2000 National Study of Religion and Politics [NSRP]).

*It is true that progressives attend church less than conservatives. In the 2000 VNS exit poll, 33 percent of Gore voters said they attended church once a week or more, compared to 49 percent of Bush voters who said they attended church that often…

But the whole US population is trending toward less observance, not more. For example, in surveys taken over the last thirty years, it is the ranks of those who never or rarely attend church that have grown the most. According to a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study, those who said they never attended church or attended less than once a year went from 18 percent in 1972 to 30 percent in 1998. Confirming this latter figure, the National Election Study found that those who say they never attended was at 33 percent of the citizenry and 27 percent of voters in 2000. That is a group about twice the size of those who identify themselves as members of the religious right, and it is a group that has tended to vigorously support Democrats rather than Republicans.

Indeed, according to the NORC study, if you add to the 30 percent mentioned above those who say they attend church only once or a few times a year, it turns out that about half the US population attends church only a few times a year or less.

* In the 2000 VNS exit poll, it was widely noted that Bush won the support of voters who say they attend church more than weekly by 63 to 36 and voters who say they attend church weekly by 57 to 40 . And these voters make up 43 percent of the electorate. But even according to these unusually high VNS figures, the more observant groups were only a bit over two-fifths of the electorate. Each of the groups in the less observant three-fifths of voters those who said they attended church a few times a month, a few times a year or never–preferred Gore over Bush, with support particularly strong among never-attenders, who gave Gore a 61 to 32 percent margin.

[…]

* Conservatives and the GOP have made aggressive efforts to target Catholics. But there is no evidence that this targeting is actually working. “Traditional” Catholics, to be sure, are strongly supporting Bush (60-30), according to the 2004 NSRP data. But they are only 27 percent of all Catholics. The rest of Catholics — 73 percent — are supporting Kerry. The includes the “modernist” group (31 percent of Catholics) who support Kerry by a lop-sided 61-33 and the “centrist” Catholics — who are both the largest (42 percent) Catholic group and the real swing group among Catholics — who support him by 45-41.

More broadly, there is little evidence that centrist and modernist Catholics, which is the overwhelming majority of Catholics — including among Hispanics — are likely to vote the conservative social positions of the Catholic church on issues like abortion or gay marriage. That is what the GOP has been banking on, but it is highly unlikely to happen. Polling data suggest strongly that these Catholics are far more concerned and moved electorally by other issues, such as the economy, education, health care and so on.

There is also quite a large school of thought that even among those who report regular churchgoing that they “overrepresent,” due to social expectations and other pressures. In other words, they lie about how often they go to church. Furthermore, when pollsters ask about religion in specific terms it often turns out that people consider themselves very religious simply because they believe in God, or a Higher Power which actually falls under the secular category, not the religious category. In other words, the idea that there exists a huge monolithic number of highly religious Americans who will reject anyone who isn’t explicitly appealing to them in religious terms is probably a crock. Indeed, with the exception of those who “claim” to attend church once a week or more, the Democrats consistently pull even with the Republicans.

As it turns out even that gap has narrowed significantly in this cycle. The religion gap is highly overstated even among the super observant. According to the Pew Research Poll quoted by Tuxeira:

Another intriguing finding is an apparent narrowing of the “religiosity gap”–that is, the tendency for those who attend church more often to vote Republican with far greater frequency than those who attend less often. According to the Pew data, the gap in Bush support between those who say they attend church every week and those who attend seldom or never is now 14 points, compared to 27 points in the 2000 VNS exit poll.

There’s more here on the fact that Kerry is doing fine with Catholics.

So, what is this all about? Why are we having yet another interparty argument over something that isn’t even particularly relevant to our electoral chances?

Here’s the thing. This insistence that Democrats are disrespectful to religion is another one of those GOP propaganda ploys that we Democrats keep falling for. They have always claimed that we are godless heathens since back in the McCarthy era — of course, then it was godless communists. Nobody has ever believed it and from the polling, it doesn’t look like they do now. They have their bloc of extremely conservative Christians, but we have no hope of getting those votes even if we have Kerry wear a crown of thorns and flay himself on Meet The Press.

Besides, the entire argument validates this insulting notion that only very religious people can be elected to office in this country. In the Slate article, the author calls this new religious test “shorthand” for character. I think that’s exactly the association the Republicans want you to make.

All this infighting is, once again, playing into established GOP talking points to our own detriment. It simply is not true. Democrats are as religiously observant as Republicans and with the exception of the fundamentalists and extreme Christian conservatives, religious people vote with the Democrats as much as with the Republicans. (If we are going for Christian Right votes then might I suggest that we also adopt some racist rhetoric and promise to cut taxes for the rich. Those votes are ours for the taking.)

There has long been tension between the secularists and the religious in this country, but interestingly they have both fared well when they worked together to maintain the separation of church and state — as when the evangelicals and the secularists (which includes Deists) worked together to ensure the inclusion of the establishment clause in the bill of rights. (At that time evangelicals were a minority religion and in grave danger of being outlawed.) If one were to ask American Muslims and Buddhists today if they felt comfortable with all the religious talk in politics, I would imagine they’d say no. It’s all in where you’re sitting at the table, isn’t it?

I think it’s probably true that a lot of non-believers are rude about religion. But people need to grow up about this. The self righteousness of the religious believer has always inspired a certain, shall we say, ascerbic response. You want rude, I’ll give you rude — from two quintessential All-American boys:

“There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is – in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree – it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”

Mark Twain

“Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world — a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious, surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench’d, holding possession, yet remains (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.” Walt Whitman

Ouch.

So, let’s be clear, here. Secularism is most definitely not abnormal. It never has been and it isn’t now. It is as American as apple pie and we will take our slice of the body politic, thank you.

Shaun at Upper Left has some instructive comments on this topic, as well.

Update: For an inspiring look at the good people of the religious left, check out this interview with the head of the National Council of Churches by my American Street colleague, Chuck Currie. I’m happy to be on the same political side as this man.