Month: July 2008

Never Heard Of Em

by digby

And so the “independent” attack ads begin in earnest:

A newly formed Republican group broadcast its first commercial Sunday in four battleground states as part of a $3 million advertising campaign aimed at Senator Barack Obama. The advertisement opens with images of gasoline prices flying upward at the pump as a narrator says, “Record gas prices, a climate in crisis.” It then highlights Senator John McCain’s differences with his own party on energy policy. The commercial closes by summing up Mr. Obama’s positions on energy as “just the party line,” a reference to his opposition to suspending gas taxes or drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as he and other Democrats contend that a McCain presidency would represent a third Bush term. In response to the advertisement, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, Hari Sevugan, said in a statement: “What we need to solve our energy crisis is an honest debate about the choices before us, not more attack ads that mislead voters about the facts. […]
The new group, led by Brad Todd, a consultant who worked on the campaign of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, began broadcasting the commercial Sunday in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with plans to put it up elsewhere. The group is an independent expenditure arm of the Republican National Committee, which is flush with cash in comparison to its Democratic counterpart; under federal election restrictions, the new group is not allowed to coordinate with the McCain campaign.

Needless to say, John McCain will certainly disavow any knowledge of such ads and as a straight shooting, maverick sort of fellow, remind the voters he doesn’t think anyone should run attack ads and that he wishes they would just stop doing it. Not that he can stop them, it being a free country and all.

The Democrats also believe this, but they are actually taking steps to ensure that there is no money for independent groups to attack McCain, as a matter of principle. Some things are worth fighting for no matter what the cost.

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Meet The New Boss…

by dday

Matt Yglesias has noticed that the conservative establishment is not nearly as ashamed of the legacy of Jesse Helms as he thinks they ought to be. It does seem pretty jarring, but this is of course a major difference between the parties – literally nothing that conservatives do on ideological grounds can get them excommunicated from the party, while outspoken liberals are routinely shunted to the margins just for being outspoken, and for sins incomparable to Helms’. This has been happening for years. Conservatives will only drop you if you hurt the movement; then they’ll tell everyone that you were never a conservative to begin with (e.g. George W. Bush).

The problem here is that I think Americans of all political stripes can agree that Helms was an avowed racist. Sure, my NPR report on his passing yesterday carefully explained that he “used race effectively” in his election campaigns, but I’m not sure there’s any difference. While racism is still a fact of American life, it has been pushed underground, not to be talked about in polite society, so that everyone can delude themselves that these issues are no longer germane and that we’re all one big happy melting pot.

Helms didn’t do that, and neither did his advisors. And one of them now holds a high position in the John McCain campaign.

1984: Black Advised Helms on Senate Re-Election Bid and Bragged About Victory. The Washington Post reported, “‘It’s a tremendous victory for conservatives,’ Helms’ strategist Charles Black said. ‘It enhances his clout and influence in the Senate in the eyes of the press and his colleagues. He’ll be even more effective than he has been.’” [Washington Post, 11/8/84, emphasis added]

Black and Helms Used “Racist Appeals” to Win. Politics reporter Bill Peterson wrote in The Washington Post, “Lesson: A vicious new electronic form of negative politics has evolved and matured. And it is frightening. It is a politics of distortion, half truths and character assassination. Ends are used to justify means. Truth often takes a back seat. … Helms and the National Congressional Club, a political action committee run by his allies, had used negative advertising long before the Senate race began. … Racial epithets and standing in school doors is no longer fashionable, but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master. A case in point was the pivotal event of the campaign: Helms’ filibuster against a bill making the birthday of the late Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. … Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives. His campaign newspaper featured photographs of Hunt [his opponent] with Jesse L. Jackson and headlines like ‘Black Voter Registration Rises Sharply’ and ‘Hunt Urges More Minority Registration.’ Helms shamelessly mined the race issue.” [Peterson, Washington Post, 11/18/84, emphasis added]

1990: Black Advised Jesse Helms. As He Ran Controversial “Hands” Ad Against Black Candidate. Newsday reported that Helms, “through a series of blistering advertisements unleashed just days before, had beckoned the long-simmering issue of race to the surface of this senatorial contest. In doing so, Helms had hurled the campaign into its most bitter and acrimonious phase to date, namely by labeling his opponent, falsely, an advocate of racial job quotas and accusing him of conducting a ‘secret campaign’ in the black community. … On the television commercial, the camera zones in on a white man’s hands, crumpling what apparently is a job rejection letter. The announcer then intones: ‘You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is,’ the message continues. ‘Gantt supports Ted Kennedy’s racial quota law that makes the color of your skin more important than your qualifications.’” Black, an adviser to the campaign and a consultant for the Congressional Club — Helms’s political machine — insisted the race would come down to turnout: “‘What it’s going to come down to is turnout,’ said Charles Black, chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Helms adviser. ‘It’s, no question, the biggest challenge at this point.’” [Newsday, 11/4/90]

Black Defended “Hands Ad.” Black defended Helms’s “Hands” television ad, which featured white hands crumpling a job rejection letter and linking Helms’s black opponent to racial job quotas. Asked about the ad on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Black said, “Well there is nothing racial about the campaign.” When asked if there was anything improper about the ad, Black said, “Of course not.” Another guest on the show, DNC Chairman Ron Brown, pressed Black again, saying, “You are a principal adviser of Jesse Helms. Would you advise him to run that kind of ad, Charlie? Do you approve of that ad, Charlie?” Black responded, “I advised Jesse Helms to do what he’s always done.” [MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, 11/5/90]

This is not to say that McCain is a racist (though voting against the King holiday at the age of 46 doesn’t exactly speak well of him) but that there’s an essential continuity between this Republican candidate and those of the past. They have a new campaign staff in what Krugman is calling the battle for Rove’s third term. If they thought it would help they’d go to a medium and summon up the ghost of Lee Atwater. The tactics are just as harmful and noxious, playing to fears. And the common thread is that they know how to play the press to maximum advantage. They loved Jesse Helms then as now because he “did what he’s always done” and it worked. In a way Barack Obama is an imperfect foil for these types of expected attacks – they’d rather be far more indirect than come out and say “do you want this man in the White House?” But make no mistake – this is the legacy. And it’s one that’s unbroken.

P.S. Hilzoy has the definitive Helms list, both of the conservative encomiums and his own words. He was a charmer.

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Spinster-Americans

by digby

I was going to write about Dowd’s column today, but then I read this one By Molly Ivors and realized it would be futile. Just read it.

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Distress

by digby

There’s a lot of talk this week-end about Obama’s comments on late term abortion to a Christian magazine in which he said that the didn’t think “mental distress” was an acceptable exception to the prohibition against them. I don’t have lot of time to delve into this in depth today, but others are making the arguments quite well.

For the legal argument, click here. (It’s a bad headline, but a good article.) The fact is that the pro-choice position on this is well founded in the law. The health of the mother has always been the exception to the prohibitions allowed under Roe vs Wade and that includes mental health. I don’t know who Obama thinks is going to decide that a girl or woman isn’t “mentally distressed” enough not to give birth against her will, but I can’t see that it can logically be anyone other than the woman herself and the people in her life who know the state of her health. Perhaps we can have a bunch of congressmen, senators and judges taking turns making that decision on a case by case basis? It worked for Bill Frist in the Schiavo case.

The medical argument is made quite passionately, here. Just read it. These are real people with real problems, not just spoiled girls who deserve to be punished with forced pregnancy.

I’m not surprised about this. There has been a movement afoot in Democratic circles to jettison a woman’s right to choose for some time and Obama has always shown some squishiness on it, going back to before he was a candidate:

It was January 17, 2001, and Illinois state senator Barack Obama was on WTTW11’s “Chicago Tonight.” Discussing his opposition to Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft, Obama praised newly-elected President Bush’s new nominee for Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. “The proof in the pudding is looking at the treatment of the other Bush nominees,” Obama said. “I mean for the most part, I for example do not agree with a missile defense system, but I dont think that soon-to-be-Secretary Rumsfeld is in any way out of the mainstream of American political life. And I would argue that the same would be true for the vast majority of the Bush nominees, and I give him credit for that. “So I don’t want to be pegged as being far left simply because I find certain aspects in John Ashcroft’s record to be divisive or offensive,” Obama continued. “I think it’s legitimate for me to raise that. As I said before, if he brought before us a nominee who didn’t agree with me on affirmative action and yet said that, you know, I do think that and showed a history for showing regard and concern for racial justice, if he came before us and said I oppose a woman’s right to choose, or I oppose abortion, I find it religiously offensive, and yet I do respect, for example, the notion that we shouldn’t be solving these things with violence, historically, if that had been what was said, then I don’t think I would object. And I think that’s a fair position to take.”

It appears that he was saying that having an Attorney General who opposed abortion rights would be fine as long as he doesn’t believe in bombing abortion clinics. (I’m not sure that Ashcroft backed bombing abortion clinics, but perhaps Obama had other reasons for opposing him. God knows, there were plenty of them.) But I don’t agree that it’s a fair position to take. Confirming an Attorney General who is adamantly opposed to abortion rights simply because he agrees that the issue shouldn’t be solved with violence seems like a pretty low bar to me. Roe is settled law. Would you confirm an Attorney General who believed that segregation was fine but who promised to fairly administer the laws against it?

It should always be remembered that abortion only became the cause de jour on the right once legal segregation lost its organizing clout. It’s all part of the same mosaic of civil rights, which has animated certain people on the right side of the spectrum from the beginning. And it’s served them very, very well. The abortion debate, after all, was conceived for political purposes:

In the 1980s, in order to solidify their shift from divorce to abortion, the Religious Right constructed an abortion myth, one accepted by most Americans as true. Simply put, the abortion myth is this: Leaders of the Religious Right would have us believe that their movement began in direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Politically conservative evangelical leaders were so morally outraged by the ruling that they instantly shed their apolitical stupor in order to mobilize politically in defense of the sanctity of life. Most of these leaders did so reluctantly and at great personal sacrifice, risking the obloquy of their congregants and the contempt of liberals and “secular humanists,” who were trying their best to ruin America. But these selfless, courageous leaders of the Religious Right, inspired by the opponents of slavery in the nineteenth century, trudged dutifully into battle in order to defend those innocent unborn children, newly endangered by the Supreme Court’s misguided Roe decision.

It’s a compelling story, no question about it. Except for one thing: It isn’t true.

Although various Roman Catholic groups denounced the ruling, and Christianity Today complained that the Roe decision “runs counter to the moral teachings of Christianity through the ages but also to the moral sense of the American people,” the vast majority of evangelical leaders said virtually nothing about it; many of those who did comment actually applauded the decision. W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press wrote, “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” Indeed, even before the Roe decision, the messengers (delegates) to the 1971 Southern Baptist Convention gathering in St. Louis, Missouri, adopted a resolution that stated, “we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” W.A. Criswell, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, expressed his satisfaction with the Roe v. Wade ruling. “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” the redoubtable fundamentalist declared, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

The Religious Right’s self-portrayal as mobilizing in response to the Roe decision was so pervasive among evangelicals that few questioned it. But my attendance at an unusual gathering in Washington, D.C., finally alerted me to the abortion myth.

In November 1990, for reasons that I still don’t entirely understand, I was invited to attend a conference in Washington sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Religious Right organization (though I didn’t realize it at the time). I soon found myself in a conference room with a couple of dozen people, including Ralph Reed, then head of the Christian Coalition; Carl F. H. Henry, an evangelical theologian; Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family; Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention; and Edward G. Dobson, pastor of an evangelical church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and formerly one of Jerry Falwell’s acolytes at Moral Majority. Paul M. Weyrich, a longtime conservative activist, head of what is now called the Free Congress Foundation, and one of the architects of the Religious Right in the late 1970s, was also there.

In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let’s remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.

Racial discrimination flowed directly into the anti-abortion movement. It’s all part of the same thing. Luckily, there still remains enough common sense and pragmatic relationships to real life problems among the actual citizens that the country has not moved far enough to criminalize abortion again. But it probably will. You can already see popular culture moving in that direction. And frankly, illegal abortion won’t be quite as prevalent it was before Roe vs Wade because society has changed and single motherhood and unwed pregnancy aren’t stigmatized as they once were.

But other things, like those cases cited in the link above, of women who can’t afford any more kids but can’t imagine giving up one of her children’s brothers and sisters to adoption, or young girls with serious problems who lived in denial for too long — or a married woman who had an ill advised affair while her husband was away in Iraq. Sex, failed birth control, bad judgment, rape, all these things will always be a part of human experience. As will the fact that insisting women give birth against their will and make an unwanted lifelong commitment (adoption or not) because a cluster of cells in a petrie dish or an incomplete human that lives inside her body has the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that she does, is to say that women actually have fewer claims to those ideals.

I have no doubt that Obama supports Roe vs Wade but I never had any great expectation that he would be a champion for reproductive rights. There are very few politicians around who are, even of the so-called liberal variety. They’d all be vastly relieved if the issue would just go away. The fallacy, of course, is thinking that it wouldn’t immediately be supplanted by another wedge issue for the right to beat the left over the head with. It’s how they organize themselves.
So why not just hold the line on this one?

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Dissing The Man

by digby

Jamison Foser does a full run down on the Clark hissy fit. It’s looks even worse when you see it all in one place. What he says here is particularly astute:

Let’s pause for a moment to review. According to the news media, if you call John McCain a “hero,” but say that heroism doesn’t qualify him to be president, you have dishonorably attacked his military service. (Feel free, however, to say the same thing about John Kerry.) And if you criticize McCain’s Iraq policies, you are participating in “an organized campaign against John McCain’s military service.” But wait! There’s more! The media’s knee-jerk defense of McCain doesn’t stop at their use of his military service to rule criticism of his Iraq policies out of bounds. It extends to (things having nothing to do with) his age, too. See, if you criticize John McCain for ignoring his own pledge to avoid negative campaigning, the media will quickly announce that you’re really attacking his age. That was ridiculous, of course, but McCain aide Mark Salter told them to say it, so they did. You get the picture: the media is on the verge of declaring any criticism of John McCain off-limits — even when it isn’t really criticism. Even when you call him a “hero,” but not quite enthusiastically enough.

Let’s pause for a moment to review. According to the news media, if you call John McCain a “hero,” but say that heroism doesn’t qualify him to be president, you have dishonorably attacked his military service. (Feel free, however, to say the same thing about John Kerry.) And if you criticize McCain’s Iraq policies, you are participating in “an organized campaign against John McCain’s military service.” But wait! There’s more! The media’s knee-jerk defense of McCain doesn’t stop at their use of his military service to rule criticism of his Iraq policies out of bounds. It extends to (things having nothing to do with) his age, too. See, if you criticize John McCain for ignoring his own pledge to avoid negative campaigning, the media will quickly announce that you’re really attacking his age. That was ridiculous, of course, but McCain aide Mark Salter told them to say it, so they did. You get the picture: the media is on the verge of declaring any criticism of John McCain off-limits — even when it isn’t really criticism. Even when you call him a “hero,” but not quite enthusiastically enough.One of the hallmarks of the Karl Rove era of GOP politics is that the Republicans aren’t particularly subtle about their tactics. They tend to clearly telegraph what they intend to do, though often with the slight wrinkle of accusing the opposition of doing what they plan to do themselves. That is certainly true of the McCain campaign. In the very memo in which Salter convinced the media to pretend that Obama’s criticism of McCain’s negative campaigning was an attack on the Arizona senator’s age, Salter wrote: “Senator Obama is hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race.” Yes, that’s John McCain‘s senior adviser complaining that the media has formed a “protective barrier” around Barack Obama.

They know how to play the refs just the way the refs love to be played —flat on their backs, in total submission begging for a tummy rub.

John Amato caught the Andrea Mitchell footage I wrote about earlier in the week and wrote:

Watching the media react to Gen. Wesley Clark was a sight to be seen. The McCain camp basically just had to sit there and laugh at what was happening. Why bother issuing statements and whatnot when major news analysts like Andrea Mitchell can do their work for them? And this blog post about McCain being a Manchurian Candidate by who else–The Politico—didn’t help either. Andrea furiously threw it in Clark’s face as if he wrote it himself. She also accused Clark of being part of a coordinated effort to attack McCain’s military record.

Andrea: Well, let me point out that some of the critics from the Republican side have pointed out that there seems to be an organized campaign and whether or not you played into this that also on Sunday a liberal blogger…on Americablog wrote… First of all there’s a factual issue because no one has proved that to my satisfaction that John McCain ever did any propaganda for the enemy… He was an extraordinary man…

Foser gets this quite right, I think, when he points out that this hissy fit over Clark’s comments was designed to make any criticism of McCain off limits. He’s a hero! How dare you criticize him after all he did for us! It won’t entirely succeed, of course, but it puts the media on the defensive and makes them reflexively look for “inappropriateness” in the criticism and makes it necessary for everyone to issue a standard disclaimer saying “John McCain is hero and and I have nothing but respect and admiration for his great sacrifice and leadership but….” Kind of takes the sting out of, it don’t you think?

And they also accused the media of being in the tank for Obama, which is a standard “liberal media” charge, but which, at least in some cases, was an observable fact (although I think it had less to do with Obama and more with Clinton) and which now makes them all uncomfortable and susceptible to overreaction the other way. There is a reason why the Republicans laid so low during that period. They knew they could use it to pressure the media once the general election battle was engaged.

It seems to me that the smart thing to do is to relentlessly work the media on their ongoing, decades long sycophancy to McCain and his manly deeds. It’s far more embarrassing than a shot-lived trip on Obamamania ever was. I don’t see why this should be a one way street.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

by digby

Hotter than the Fourth: Movies that make you sweat

By Dennis Hartley

Since it’s the 4th of July weekend, which usually signifies the official kickoff of summer and all, I thought it would be fun to cobble together a list of really “hot” movies. You know-as in sweaty, steamy, dripping, sticky, sudoriferous cinema (get your mind out of the gutter!). If you’re like me (and isn’t everyone?) there’s nothing more satisfying than gathering up an armload of DVDs (along with a suitcase of Diet Dr. Pepper) and just happily pissing away the long holiday weekend ensconced in my dark, cozy media room.

So anyhoo, as a celebration of the season, I present (in no particular ranking order) my Top 10 “summer perspiration films”, or, “The SPF 10”, if you will. I’ve added a “runner up” for each selection, which would make for a perfect double bill, if you are so inclined:

Body Heat– A bucket of ice cubes in the bath is just not enough to cool down this steamy noir. Writer-director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 homage to Double Indemnity blows the mercury right out the top of the thermometer. Kathleen Turner is the sultry femme fatale who plays William Hurt’s hapless pushover like a Stradivarius (“You aren’t too smart. I like that in a man.”) The combination of the Florida heat with Turner and Hurt’s sexual chemistry will light your socks on fire. Outstanding support from Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston and an up-and-coming character actor named Mickey Rourke.

Runner up: The Hot Spot

Dog Day Afternoon-As far as oppressively humid hostage dramas go, this 1975 “true crime” classic from the great director Sidney Lumet easily out-sops the competition. The air conditioning may be off, but Al Pacino is definitely “on” in his absolutely brilliant portrayal of John Wojtowicz (“Sonny Wortzik” in the film), whose botched attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank turned into a dangerous hostage crisis and a twisted media circus (the desperate Wojtowicz was trying to finance his lover’s sex-change operation). Even though he had already done the first two Godfather films, this was the performance that put Pacino on the map. John Cazale is both scary and heartbreaking in his role as Sonny’s dim-witted “muscle”. Keep an eye out for Chris Sarandon’s memorable cameo. Frank Pierson’s whip-smart screenplay was based on articles by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore.

Runner up: Key Largo

Cool Hand Luke-Paul Newman shines (and sweats buckets) in his iconic role as the title character of this 1967 film, a ne’er do well from a southern burg who ends up on a chain gang. He’s busted for cutting the “heads” off of parking meters while on a drunken spree, but by the end of this sly allegory, astute viewers will glean what his real crime is: being a non-conformist. Stuart Rosenberg’s direction is assured; as is the script by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson (there he is again!) The highlights include Strother Martin’s “failure to communicate” speech, Harry Dean Stanton singing “The Midnight Special”, the, um, car wash scene and of course George Kennedy’s Academy Award-winning supporting role. The cast also includes Ralph Waite, Dennis Hopper, Wayne Rogers, Anthony Zerbe (Dog Boy!), and Joy Harmon as the, um, car wash girl. Did I mention the car wash scene?

Runner up: Brubaker

Do The Right Thing-Director Spike Lee wastes no time turning up the heat in this provocative allegorical dramedy about race relations in America, filtered through a day in the life of Brooklyn’s multi-ethnic Bed-Stuy neighborhood. From the opening credits, which literally explode onto the screen with a muy caliente Rosie Perez busting some serious moves to the strains of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, to the jaw-dropping climax, this is one of those rare films that manages to engage mind, body and soul all at once. One of the few films on the subject that is not afraid to admit to and confront the fact that bigotry comes in all colors. I think it remains his finest work to date. The cast includes Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro and Giancarlo Esposito.

Runner up: Summer of Sam

Swept Away -The time-honored “man and woman stuck on a desert island” scenario is served up with a heaping tablespoon of class struggle and an acidic twist of sexual politics in this controversial 1975 film from Italian director Lena Wertmuller. A shrill and haughty bourgeois woman (Mariangela Melato) charters a yacht cruise for herself and her equally obnoxious fascist friends, who all seem to delight in belittling their slovenly deck hand (Giancarlo Giannini), who is a card-carrying communist. Fate and circumstance conspire to strand Melato and Giannini together on a small Mediterranean isle, setting the stage for some interesting role reversal games (with definite S&M overtones, I should warn you). This film has a polarizing effect on viewers, which I think can be attributed to its fascinating feminist dilemma: How does one react to an obviously talented and self-assured female director with unmistakably misogynist leanings? BTW, in case you are curious about the Guy Ritchie/Madonna remake? Two words: Stay away.

Runner up: Castaway (Nicolas Roeg)

A Streetcar Named Desire -I’m here to tell ya-nobody could create a “simmering dysfunctional family reaching their boiling point in a southern hothouse atmosphere” scenario like the great Tennessee Williams. Put that together with a smoldering young Marlon Brando in a sweat-soaked T-shirt and you’ve got yourself an “SPF” classic. Brando’s unforgettable turn as boorish rage-aholic Stanley Kowalski really gets under your skin. A young and sexy Kim Hunter shines as the long suffering Stella, and Vivian Leigh’s realization of the beautiful but thoroughly deranged Blanche Dubois is the stuff of acting legend. Karl Malden is excellent as well, in the first of three collaborations he would take on with Brando (On the Waterfront and One-eyed Jacks were to follow). Williams adapted the script from his play (with Oscar Saul) and Elia Kazan directed.

Runner up: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In the Heat of the Night – “They call me MISTER Tibbs!” In this classic drama (which won 1967’s Best Picture Oscar) Sidney Poitier plays a cosmopolitan police detective from Philly who gets waylaid in a torpid Mississippi backwater, where he is reluctantly recruited into helping the bigoted sheriff (Rod Steiger) solve a local murder. Poitier absolutely nails his role; you feel Virgil Tibb’s pain as he tries to maintain his professional cool amidst a brace of surly rednecks, who throw up roadblocks at every turn. While Steiger is outstanding here as well, I always found it ironic that he was the one who won “Best Actor in a leading role”, when in reality Poitier was the star (it seems Hollywood didn’t get the film’s message). Sterling Silliphant’s brilliant screenplay (another Oscar) works as a crime thriller and a quintessential “fish out of water” story. Director Norman Jewison was nominated, but didn’t score a win. Future director Hal Ashby won for Best Editing. Quincy Jones composed the soundtrack, and Ray Charles sings the theme. The inspiration for Blazing Saddles? Beverly Hills Cop? Discuss.

Runner up: Mississippi Burning

The Day the Earth Caught Fire– Written and directed by Val Guest (Quatermass Xperiment), this cerebral mix of conspiracy a-go-go and sci-fi drama from the Cold War era is a sort of precursor to the X-Files. Nuclear testing by the U.S. and Soviets triggers a mysterious and alarming shift in the Earth’s climate. As London’s weather turns more weirdly tropical by the hour, a Daily Express reporter (Peter Stenning) begins to suspect that the British government is not being 100% forthcoming on the possible fate of the world. Along the way, Stenning enjoys some steamy scenes with his love interest (sexy Janet Munro). The film is more noteworthy for its smart, snappy patter than its run-of-the-mill f/x, but still makes for a compelling story. Co-starring the great Leo McKern!

Runner up: Last Night(Don McKellar)

The Wages of Fear -The primeval jungles of South America have served as a backdrop for a plethora of sweat-streaked tales, and this 1953 existential adventure film from director Henri-Georges Clouzot sits atop that list. Four societal outcasts, who for one reason or another find themselves figuratively and literally at the “end of the road”, hire themselves out for an apparently suicidal job transporting two truckloads of touchy nitro over several hundred miles of bumpy jungle terrain for delivery to a distant oilfield. It does take a little time for the “action” to really get going; once it does, you won’t let out your breath until the final frame. Yves Montand leads the fine international cast. Clouzot co-scripted with Jerome Geronimi, adapting from the original Georges Anaud novel. The 1977 William Friedkin remake Sorcerer has its detractors, but I recommend a peek.

Runner up:Fitzcarraldo

The Year of Living Dangerously– An irresistible mix of tense political thriller and sizzling love story, set in an exotic locale. Director Peter Weir transports us back to a very dangerous year in Indonesia (1965), when the government of President Sukarno was cracking at the seams. Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver portray an Australian radio journalist and a British attaché, respectively, who get caught up in the brewing conflict (and each other). Linda Hunt steals the show (and snagged a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) in an astounding gender-bending turn as local photographer “Billy Kwan”. Kwan is a fascinatingly complex character who vacillates between playing the matchmaker and the puppeteer, for his own enigmatic reasons. Weir’s sense of place and atmosphere is beautifully realized, ably assisted by DP Russell Boyd’s Oscar-winning cinematography.

Runner up: Under Fire

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Who Us?

by digby

Here’s Gwen Ifill being snotty to a blogger asking a perfectly legitimate question:

vastleft:

Many people believe the press failed to do its job in the run up to the Iraq war. Has Beltway reporting changed as a result?

Gwen Ifill:

I am not sure what you mean by “Beltway reporting.” Do you mean the New York Times reporting that exposed the Justice Department’s wireless wiretapping? The Washington Post reporting that exposed the poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center? Or do you mean the reporting done by Pentagon reporters from the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan? I continue to maintain that, on balance, reporters tell us more than we would otherwise know, and that the breadth and importance of the stories we break, easily outnumber the ones we miss.

Uhm no. He’s asking about the embarrassing cheerleading for that cretinous moron George W. Bush and suppression of dissent that got us into that misbegotten hellhole of a war, you preening twit.

There are a few villagers who commonly spout more conventional wisdom with more arrogance and superiority than Ifill, but not many. That’s why she’s on everybody who’s anybody’s short list to run Meet The Press. She wouldn’t destroy it quite as dramatically as she’s destroyed Washington Week in Review, but that’s only because the show is already such a gossipy, insider, shallow circle jerk that she can’t do much more damage than Russert already did.

But Ifill isn’t unusual. In fact, she’s saying what they all think: because there are great reporters out there like Dana Priest and James Risen, there is no need to even question whether the other 99% of what passes for political journalism is even worth wrapping a dead fish in. Why should they? It’s clear that you can have an incredibly lucrative and successful career as a celebrity gasbag without ever having an original thought in your head. In fact, it’s a requirement.

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Authoritarianism

by dday

Chris Satullo, a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, made the suggestion in his column the other day that, instead of Fourth of July celebrations this year, we should sit in quiet contemplation of the plain fact that our country over the past seven years has engaged in torture, indefinite detention without charges, rendition, and other unspeakable acts. It was a clear and provocative call to stand up for liberty in the face of fear, for honest criticism of our leaders as an act of patriotism.

We have betrayed the July 4 creed. We trample the vows we make, hand to heart.

Don’t imagine that only the torturer’s hand bears the guilt. The guilt reaches deep inside our Capitol, and beyond that – to us.

Our silence is complicit. In our name, innocents were jailed, humans tortured, our Constitution mangled. And we said so little.

We can’t claim not to have known. The best among us raised the alarm. Heroes in uniform, judges in robes, they opposed the perverse logic of an administration drenched in fear, drunk on power.

But did we heed them? Hardly. Barely . . .

Today, Satullo wrote a follow-up column, explaining the authoritarian response to his initial offering. His initial words about the death of outrage have revealed that, all too often in America, the only outrage is about the outrage.

…Rush (Limbaugh) gave my piece a dramatic reading on his Tuesday show. His intent was not to praise my Swiftian panache. He urged his listeners to let me know what a rotten person I am.

My computer screen soon filled with missives with angry exclamation points in the subject line.

I will say this: Rush’s listeners have a zest for insult and invective. Correct spelling, not so much. Also, I’m unclear what my sexual orientation (hetero, by the way) has to do with this topic. Wishing death on someone you’ve never met is unkind, to a degree. And telling someone to move to another country stopped being a witty riposte somewhere around 1967.

(The homophobic references are a staple of conservative criticism. Happens to be a plain fact.)

Satullo’s main response to this is one of deep confusion:

Just seven years ago, who would have ever thought that being against torture could prove so controversial? When did the running of Turkish prisons become an integral part of the American Way?

Will we ever move beyond this dead-end view: If you criticize America on some point, you are unpatriotic, and can’t possibly love or honor your country?

It’s rather incredible, isn’t it? But of course, we’ve been governed by leaders who have equated criticism with a lack of patriotism for seven years, and have been very skillful at it, besides. Sure, Bush is scraping bottom and even loathed by his own party now (they love his money-raising from his fellow authoritarians but that’s about it), but that’s because of how he damaged their standing, not the country. On the fundamentals, the Big Daddy belief that we should not question our great and glorious leaders, there is still a great consensus. As long as there are authoritarians willing to frighten the population with lurid tales about murderers on the loose, they will use that fear to bludgeon the country into accepting whatever powers they desire, and silencing dissent besides.

WASHINGTON – The White House said Thursday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. as a result of last month’s Supreme Court ruling about detainees’ legal rights. Federal appeals courts, however, have indicated they have no intention of letting that happen […]

“I’m sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said about al-Qaida’s former third in command.

Chris Satullo was making a fairly unremarkable statement about the need to consider our fundamental ideals as human beings, let alone as a nation that presumes to stand for concepts like freedom and justice and equality, and the knee-jerk reaction was unbridled anger and requests to shut his mouth. This will be repeated anytime anyone presumes to question whether the architects of these policies or torture and detention and rendition ought to sit in a jail cell for their crimes. The lack of a culture of accountability in Washington, of any connection between those founding ideals and the actions taken in their name, leads to the rot at the center of our collective souls.

…here we are in 2008. And I don’t think anyone can seriously dispute that the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any number of legal commitments to refrain from torture. Some people think these violations were good policy. Many of those who regard those violations as good policy, also maintain that higher constitutional principles grant the President the right to break the law. Which is precisely what you could say on behalf of Richard Nixon. And Bush, like Nixon, has become unpopular. But Bush won’t be hounded out of office.

I’m not exactly sure what accounts for the difference. I wasn’t alive in 1973-74. I have a vague sense that at that time America’s elites operated with some sense of conscience and dignity, and it was taken for granted even among Republican leaders that one couldn’t just break the law. These days, a misleading deposition taken in the course of a frivolous lawsuit aimed at avoiding the revelation of an affair is a grave national crisis, but it’s taken for granted that only a lunatic would believe that Bush or any of his henchmen should be held accountable in any way for repeated violations of the law. I don’t really know what changed, or why David Broder and other gatekeepers of elite consensus can’t see that something’s gone wrong here, but I’m not happy about it.

As Brad DeLong notes, it was ever thus among those guardians of the status quo like David Broder, who looked at the impeachment of Nixon as some sort of political game to map out, not a vital act to preserve some semblance of coherence to the rule of law. But from where I’m sitting, it certainly seems different, not among the elites but the public. Every four years, particularly when there’s a transition in the White House from one party to the next, we hear some encomium to the strength and vitality of the American system, that it can allow the peaceful transition of power, that election-year fights end on the day of voting and the country comes together in harmony to salute its new democratically elected leader. This comfort, this blissful faith in our democracy, is exactly what has made us so fat and happy that we practically cannot recognize a Constitution in crisis. We are so benighted that when a lonely voice, as if freed from the shackles of Plato’s cave to see reality as it truly is, yells “what has gone wrong with us,” he gets shouted down by those authoritarians who confuse patriotism with an blind loyalty for literally whatever declaration their leaders make (this all turns around when there’s a Democrat in the White House, of course, and such conventions like the Presidency are given precisely no respect).

This unthinking loyalty to party has presented a debate on torture where there ought to be none, a notion of liberty that must be subservient to security, and the sentiment of fear guiding belief far more than reason. There was always this strain in human behavior, but the difference in 21st-century America is that the authoritarian mindset has had seven years to bully the nation. We may score a political victory in November, but the authoritarians will not be vanquished, they will continue to use the weapon of fear, and the lack of accountability for the age of Bush will still leave a gaping hole in the nation, a wound not allowed to properly heal. The ghosts – and the young authoritarians who learned at their masters’ feet – won’t go away. They’ll return in a future Administration and seek more power, make the Presidency more like a monarchy, and thumb their nose at more dissenters who will be more marginalized. This will be the final outrage.

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Good Old Boys

by digby

McJoan over at Kos wrote an interesting post yesterday using some of the words of Senator Frank Church to explain why giving the government the right to spy on Americans without warrants is a bad idea. This is not some arcane theoretical argument. It’s real, it happened and it wasn’t that long ago.

This is probably a good time to reprise a post I wrote some time back on this same issue. As we listen to all the ecomiums this week-end to that racist creep Jesse Helms, we would be wise to remember another North Carolina Senator, Sam Ervin:

Very recent history shows that we are very wise to be suspicious of these things. It is not only not unimaginable, it was definitely done, within my adult lifetime, by a former GOP president and many of that president’s staff and acolytes who are now in the Bush administration. Congressional oversight was what nailed them before and they are determined not to be tripped up by that pesky constitutional requirement again.

For a full primer on this issue, read this fascinating article about conservative southern Democrat, Senator Sam Ervin, whose devotion to civil liberties led him to pursue inquiries that led all the way to the White House:

SENATOR SAM ERVIN AND THE ARMY SPY SCANDAL OF 1970-1971: BALANCING NATIONAL SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES IN A FREE SOCIETY

“For the past four years, the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States.” So charged Christopher H. Pyle, a former intelligence officer, in the January 1970 edition of Washington Monthly. Pyle’s account of military spies snooping on law-abiding citizens and recording their actions in secret government computers sent a shudder through the nation’s press. Images from George Orwell’s novel 1984 of Big Brother and the thought police filled the newspapers. Public alarm prompted the Senate Subcommittee on Consti­tutional Rights, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, to investigate. For more than a year, Ervin struggled against a cover-up to get to the bottom of the surveillance system. Frustrated by the Nixon Administration’s misleading statements, claims of inherent executive powers, and refusals to disclose information on the basis of national security, the Senator called for public hearings in 1971 to examine “the dangers the Army’s program presents to the principles of the Constitution.”

[…]

Although he did not know it at the time, Senator Ervin had started down the road to Watergate. It was during the subcommittee’s investigation of Army surveillance in 1970 and 1971 that Ervin stumbled onto the secretive programs and questions of executive power that would lead him to chair the famous Watergate Hearings in 1973. Ironically, it was at the same time that Ervin began his investigation into military spying that Richard Nixon and his men began their own political espionage that put them, too, on the road to Watergate.

[…]

Attorney General John N. Mitchell provided the legal basis for the increased domestic surveillance soon afterward. According to the Attorney General’s spokesman, the Administration had the right to collect and store information on civilian political activity because of “the inherent powers of the federal government to protect the internal security of the nation. We feel that’s our job.” Thus, the Administration claimed a virtually unchecked power — not subject to Congressional oversight — to carry out unlimited domestic surveillance on anyone it wished.

The Church Commission, formed after the Nixon administration, recommended the creation of the FISA court as a direct result of the abuses of the previous few decades on the part of both Democratic and Republican administrations. Republicans were upset by this:

An intense debate erupted during former U.S. president Gerald Ford’s administration over the president’s powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, newly disclosed government documents revealed.

Former president George Bush, current Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President George W. Bush’s acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

“Yogi Berra was right: it’s deja vu all over again,” said Tom Blanton, executive director for the U.S. National Security Archives, a private research group that compiles collections of sensitive government documents.

“It’s the same debate.”

[…]

Yes, it looks as though we have to clean up the same messes we cleaned up the first time these miscreants were in power and we’d better start preparing the public for it. Saying “trust us” isn’t going to cut it:

Civil liberties watchdogs worry that, in the reaction to 9/11, security agencies are going overboard, much as they did during the 1960s and early ’70s, when huge programs of illegal spying and dirty tricks led to reforms (box).”These agencies haven’t remembered what happened to them in the ’70s,” says University of Georgia scholar Loch Johnson, who as a staff member on the House and Senate intelligence committees helped draft those reforms. “You heard the same arguments back in the Johnson and Nixon administrations: ‘Why do you want to shackle our hands?'”

Why indeed. Given their history, we’d be fools to accept their assurances that they are not using their extraordinary police, military and intelligence power to spy on their political opponents. That’s what they always do. There are many, many examples of this administration’s “grown-ups” lying in wait for a quarter century to roll the clock back to a time of Richard Nixon and the Imperial presidency.

Sadly, that post was written more than two years ago trying to get the Democrats to back Russ Feingold. They didn’t listen then and they still won’t listen. Back in the day there were some people in the congress who had principles. Sam Ervin wasn’t a goo-goo latte sipping liberal. In fact, he was an old fashioned Southern Democrat with all that implied. But he did have a bottom line when it came to the constitution and the separation of powers. That used to be pretty basic stuff. Now it’s just another political issue like funding a highway bill or passing a resolution in praise of flag waving. They are about to enshrine these spying powers into law with a Supreme Court that very likely has a majority to uphold it.

Your representatives are out in their districts this week-end glad handing and trolling for votes. if you’ve got some time on your hands and you’d like to ask these people a few questions about why they don’t support the constitution, click over here to see where they are. Bring your video camera.

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Unpacking A Fragment Of Packer

by tristero

It’s just a throwaway line in a rambling blogpost by George Packer, but it stopped me in my tracks. The background:

Unthinkingly, Christopher Hitchens got himself waterboarded and concluded from the experience it was torture. You’d think someone as intelligent as Hitchens is supposed to be would know that without enduring it himself, but when you refuse to think, you do stupid things.

Now, Packer blogs about Hitchens’ waterboarding:

This is the beginning of an argument with himself—not craven self-denunciation, but a genuine effort to draw out and clarify the hard trade-offs and ideological confusions that the past years have forced on all thinking people.

The “hard trade-offs and ideological confusions that the past years have forced on all thinking people.” What a bunch of doubletalking gobbledy-gook. What on earth, or rather, who on earth is Packer talking about?

He’s talking about himself, of course and no one else. Unthinkingly gulled by Kanan Makiya – who was happy to trade off bitter experience for a thoughtless hope – Packer was all gung ho Bush/Iraq in 2002/03. Then, like Hitchens with waterboarding, he experienced it for himself and became opposed to the war.

Now, as thinking people here on Hullabaloo, let’s think about what Packer’s yakking about in his little throwaway. Packer says that thinking people, during the past years, had forced on them hard trade-offs and ideological confusion. But even five minutes of thought in 2002 would have revealed Bush/Iraq as screaming yellow bonkers. But Packer didn’t have the moral integrity to give Bush/Iraq five minutes of thought, as so many others did around the world. Instead, Packer let himself be unthinkingly swept away by Makiya’s rhetoric – and others’. Packer checked his brain at the door and went with his gut: LET’S DO SOME GOOD!

No, George. I ain’t beholden to an ideology, and there was nothing confusing about Bush/Iraq. Nor were there any hard tradeoffs to consider: Obviously, only deeper misery would come from an invasion of Iraq. And so it came. And nothing was forced on me, either, except the horror and shame of watching my country become mired in a ghastly, pointless, unnecessary, and disastrous war advocated by unthinking fools like yourself and Hitchens.