Month: June 2009

The Misinformation Spread on Ricci

by dday

The Supreme Court handed down their decision in the Ricci case, reversing with a 5-4 count the lower court opinion that the city of New Haven can refuse to apply a promotions test for firefighters because no African-Americans passed it. The city feared a discrimination lawsuit over the test, but the Court basically waved that away.

The case was previously decided by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by a three-judge panel that included Sonia Sotomayor. And so now we’ll hear all about that honky-hating judge reversed again (how does this affect her “reversal rate”?) and the manly men of the Supreme Court helping out those poor white firefighters who worked so hard to pass that test. As Eric Boehlert chronicles:

Not only was the reversal a foregone conclusion, but so too, was the narrative now being played out in the press. The press and Republicans (notice how they work in tandem) have been touting this reversal for weeks, hyping it as a potentially “embarrassing” reversal, which would (supposedly) raise all kind of doubts about Sotomayor’s smarts and her ability as a judge.

And trust us, this meme is already being hammered and will likely continue throughout the week: Sotomayor was reversed–she got smacked down–by the Supreme Court! It’s a huge deal.

Except, of course, it is not. Judges get reversed everyday. In fact, the system of American jurisprudence is built upon the idea of judges getting reversed. It happens all the time. And yes, the Supreme Court reverses judges all the time. But only now, in the case of Sotomayor, is the press pretending that that reversal is a singular rebuke; that it’s a mark of shame for Sotomayor because she got the case wrong.

In addition, Courts of Appeals, in a general sense, follow prior precedent rather than make the sweeping changes that can be made at the SCOTUS level. Far from being a slave to “empathy,” Sotomayor followed the law available to her in concurring with the majority decision on her Appeals Court. In fact, as Sam Alito wrote in his concurrence today, “But ‘sympathy’ is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law . . . And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.” The Second Court had no precedent on which to rely to offer that enforcement, and if Sotomayor reversed the District Court ruling in Ricci, she would have been relying on sympathy. Which is what her critics say she always relies on.

Nevertheless, the leader of the Republican Party says that ” “The court found that she was indeed a racist”, by a 9-0 margin, somehow (that’s the new meme). Judge Sotomayor’s position on this mirrored the Justice she is prepared to replace on the Court, but never mind.

Those on the right wing will certainly spin this as proof positive of Sotomayor’s incompetence, or her hatred of white people, etc. They’ve been preparing the ground for this ruling as a “seminal moment” that could derail the nomination, and they will come up with whatever distortions necessary to try to ensure that. But the charge rings pretty hollow and is based on a misunderstanding of the law, which is characteristic of many conservative arguments, actually.

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Just Like Buying Groceries
by digbyKrugman sez:

Both George Will and Greg Mankiw basically argue that we don’t need a government role because we can trust the market to work — hey, we do it for groceries, right? Um, economists have known for 45 years — ever since Kenneth Arrow’s seminal paper — that the standard competitive market model just doesn’t work for health care: adverse selection and moral hazard are so central to the enterprise that nobody, nobody expects free-market principles to be enough. To act all wide-eyed and innocent about these problems at this late date is either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous.

I haven’t read Kenneth Arrow’s seminal paper, but my common sense and intuition tell me that free market principles aren’t enough. Even if individual economic decisions were entirely rational, which they’re obviously not, when it comes to life and death, the only rational decision is to do whatever it takes to live. That’s an unusual economic decision.
I realize that Krugman’s talking about the insurance market not individual incentives, but I do think that when you drill down to the essence of what the free market conservatives are saying, it’s that people who don’t have the money to pay for good insurance deserve to die. It’s really just an outgrowth of their belief in social Darwinism and Randian exceptionalism — good people have money, bad people are parasites — and those who can’t afford to keep up are lacking in moral fiber and work ethic. It’s how they see the world — until they too are caught in the web, at which point they blame women and minorities.

Update: Here’s a good comment from Adam in the comment section. There are others as well:

My suggestion is that you read that paper, or better yet, just read Akerlof’s paper. It’s pretty weak tea to just announce without support that your intuition and common sense lead you to believe that the market doesn’t provide optimal healthcare. Why not? What common sense principals lead you to believe that the market fails here? What intuition guides you to this conclusion?

Because I think your ignorance (please know that I mean no harm in using that word, I love this blog) does damage to your case. You argue that conservatives feel that anyone without money (to simplify too much) deserves to be without care. I think it is much worse than that.

The two principals Krugman is referring to are adverse selection (what liberals are usually concerned about) and moral hazard (what conservatives are usually concerned about). Adverse selection is, very simply, the condition where because of asymmetric information, even perfectly functioning markets will fail to provide goods efficiently–Akerlof’s paper shows an example with used cars. The example with healthcare is easy to visualize. You and I know much more about our health than any insurance company can possibly know (even if we filled out questionnaires truthfully and to the best of our ability). This means that we are more willing to get health insurance (which is basically synonymous with health care in this country) when we know we are sick than when we are healthy. And we are even willing to pay high premiums when we KNOW we will require care, because the cost of care is so large. So the pool of money from premiums doesn’t cover the cost of care (those folks who spend years paying into health care while just getting primary care choose to opt out for the same reason), and insurance companies raise the premiums.

But, health insurance companies don’t know if a customer willing to pay high premiums is just showing their risk preferences or that they are secretly very sick. So a customer willing to pay higher premiums may just be signaling that they will require more care.

In some sense, this is why we ALREADY have massive government intervention in health care. The benefit tax exemption (originally negotiated in WWII as an agreement between companies, the gov’t and unions in exchange for wage freezes and what-not) is a massive subsidy to the health care industry and incents companies to package health care with employment (so the total compensation isn’t taxed). This limits consumers’ abilities to opt out of health care (say, if they are male, aged 18-25 and think that they are bullet-proof), but plenty still do (deliberately, while many who want health care are forced out due to employment restrictions and the inflated cost of offering health care outside of the workforce).

Once we understand the adverse selection point, this begins to look a LOT like the market for student loans. Same information problems, similar solution (government provides some loans and subsidizes others). SAME conservative response–when Obama pushed to replace subsidies w/ public loans (A good thing), conservatives fought back with the old “gov’t is bad” refrain, despite the fact that the entire private student loan industry survives on government loan guarantees.

It isn’t so much that they are social darwanists. It is that they have become fixated on a stream of income but are intellectually incapable of seeing it as subsidy. Deficit spending is fiscal expansion without the immediate pain (c.f. Reagen, Bush II). Military spending is closet Keynsianism (Barney Frank had a good comment about this). Hell, agitating for war overseas w/ someone elses’ sons is war without the war.

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Huey Lewis & The News Must Be On The Radio

by dday

When I think about the 1980s, I am reminded of Pac-Man, The Cosby Show and Central American military coups orchestrated by School of the Americas graduates.

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was ousted by the army on Sunday, capping months of tensions over his efforts to lift presidential term limits.

In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Mr. Zelaya, a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, angrily denounced the coup as illegal. “I am the president of Honduras,” he insisted at the airport in San José, Costa Rica, still wearing his pajamas. (nice touch -ed)

Later Sunday the Honduran Congress voted him out of office, replacing him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

Romeo Vazquez, the head of the Honduran military, matriculated at the School of the Americas. I’m not completely up to speed on the ins and outs of Honduran politics, but you can figure out the players with that kind of scorecard. And here’s another tell: the Wall Street Journal editorial page supports this overt military coup. Not just at cocktail parties, but in their own pages.

… an interesting assessment of the situation from Charles Lemos.

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They Never Quit

by digby

I don’t want to get into another generational spat today, but there seems to be a building meme that the people to blame for the economic problems are the undisciplined baby boomers, which is simplistic at best and truly devastating if it catches on. This is because it plays into the hands of the fiscal scolds who want desperately to drive a wedge between the generations so they can use this crisis to finally destroy social security.

Here’s CNN yesterday:

ROMANS: Let’s talk a bit about how the boomers could slow down a recovery. Could that be a factor?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: I think it’s going to be a very real factor. We know that households in general have lost an enormous amount of wealth in this recession. Their housing value, their stock market portfolios got hit hard and they started with a lot of debt. We would expect everyone to save more to rebuild that wealth going forward but the boomers are closer to retirement and they’re a big chunk of the population so we’d expect them to save more and have a bigger influence. They say that is less spending and I expect consumer spending will be sluggish going forward.

ROMANS: The two sort of factors here, we talk about blaming the boomers for this whole thing and there is the fact they rejected the frugality of their parents and really perfected the art of spending someone else’s money then there is also just the big size of the cohorts that they say demographics, just this huge size and they start to slow down to retire, when they start to take their money out to live on. That has a huge impact for the rest of the country.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: It’s a huge impact for the country. It’s a huge impact for the world quite frankly. The United States has been the last retail market for a decade now. China, India, Europe, Japan you name it, they counted on selling goods into the United States. As we come out of this recession the whole world has to find a different way to do business. We are going to need export more to other countries and we are going to need to have spending by businesses instead of just households.

ROMANS: Let’s talk about the baby boomers’ health care and Social Security needs. This is big, too. The youngest boomers start turning I think they start turning 45 this year so you’re talking about 15 or 20-year period where there will be more pressure on health care and Social Security?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: We’ve seen this coming for a long time. It is really vivid in the federal budget, past 2011 you see the Medicare lines ramp up, you see the Social Security spending ramp up. And to be quite frankly we are not in a position to pay those bills. There needs to be serious work on Medicare and that’s part of the health care reform debate this year. It’s obvious that we need to fix Social Security and we probably should do it quickly.

So, what we have is the idea that the boomers were a bunch of spendthrifts who gambled all their money thus causing the recession, but now they are going into retirement and are not going to be spending as much money so they are prolonging the recession. You can’t win. And the youngest boomers who are turning 45 will be spending into the fund for the next 23 years or so are chopped liver whose contributions into the system count for nothing — as do those who paid all that extra money in over the past 25 years so the government could put it in a “lockbox” for our retirement, which they promptly spent on wars and tax cuts for rich people.

Look, it’s not that some of this isn’t true. They have been a hugely affluent generation and lived it up, often to excess. (A lot of us are going to pay for that in our old age in more ways than one.) Their contribution so far to the political leadership in middle age has been fraught with stale battles that long ago lost their salience, no doubt about that.

But it should be remembered that the affluence in which they grew up was heavily subsidized by the government which used to tax those who benefited but somewhere along the line decided that it would be better to borrow the money instead. The Greatest Generation wasn’t frugal like their parents, who were traumatized by the depression and kept their money under the mattress. The Greatest Generation had the best public subsidies and private pensions in American history and they raised their standard of living accordingly. Their progeny assumed they would have that too, but America being the “exceptional” place we all know it is, they also apparently believed Ronnie and Newtie when they said they could have it without paying taxes.

This is a big topic and probably beyond my ken. But I do know that the young are actually beneficiaries of this recession, at least so far. Dean Baker wrote a great piece about this a couple of months ago:

Finally, the recent collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting stock market plunge have reduced the wealth of older workers and retirees by close to $15 trillion. This is a transfer to the young, since they will be able to buy the housing stock and the corporate capital stock for a far lower price than they would have expected to pay just two years ago.

Remarkably, the granny basher crew has somehow failed to notice this enormous transfer of wealth from the old to the young. They just continue their crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare as though nothing has happened.

It should be evident that the granny bashers don’t care at all about generational equity. They care about dismantling Social Security and Medicare, the country’s most important social programs. It is important that the public recognize the granny bashers’ real agenda so that they can give them the respect they deserve.

Indeed, CNN itself featured evidence for that in their previous segment today:

WILLIS: I want to talk to you about a study out from Harvard University, the Joint Center for Housing studies, there, they say the silver lining here, the people that are going to save the market are Gen-Y. these are the folks that are going to come in and buy these homes boomers want to unload. And yet, I mean, you just said it, they’ve got college debt, they’ve got credit card debt, this is a tough time for them because of the recession. What would you advise people who are in that age category really want to buy?

MCBRIDE: Well, here’s the thing. Three or four years ago a lot of those same people thought they’d never buy a house. Right? Because prices were so high. But, prices have come down, 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent in some markets, mortgage rates are low. So, they have a lot of tail winds.

You know, buying a house is like getting married, don’t do it if you’re not ready, you got to be in for the long haul and you have to be prepared for the financial commitment. So, if you have those two things, low mortgage rates are another boost to you…

Of course, you need a job and a down payment, and not all that many people do, but eventually people will buy houses and they will be buying them at lower prices. And the older folks who are selling them are often selling them at a loss, certainly of expectations if nothing else. Every transaction has two parties, right?

There is blame to go around on this and the boomers certainly bear their fair share. But I would hope that younger people don’t fall for the Fiscal Scold propaganda that says we have to dismantle the safety net because the baby boomers ruined the economy. Keep in mind that if these cranks actually succeed in destroying the safety net, you youngsters are going to need that big house you thought you could never afford because your aging parents are going to be living in the basement. And you’ll be changing their bedpans because medicare won’t be worth a damn either. It’s in every American’s long and short term self-interest to make sure the safety net is strong.

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Being A Villager

by digby

…means never having to say you’re sorry.

Following up on dday’s post below about the return of one of the original spite girls, Ceci Connolly, I thought it might be useful to remind everyone of the indefatigable Bob Somerby’s coverage of her journalistic blitzkrieg against Al Gore during election 2000. It’s all here and it’s all ugly.

Here’s just one tiny little example of Ceci Connolly’s journalistic malpractice:

Yesterday, Gore told a middle school class about his Vietnam service:

CONNOLLY (paragraph 2): Even though he and his parents opposed the war, Gore said he volunteered for the Army because he “thought it was the right thing to do.”

(3): Co-teaching Sandy Simpson’s history class, Gore described his months as a military journalist but said he could not remember his lottery number. (It was 30, a number that would have guaranteed being drafted had Gore not volunteered.)

We’ll let you decide why those last pointless facts are in this morning’s paper.

What Connolly absent-mindedly forgot to mention: Gore signed up for the army on August 8, 1969. The lottery came in December. When he volunteered, Gore had no way of knowing what his number would be. It’s not all that clear what it means to say that he even had a lottery number. Careful readers, though, can read the inferences in Connolly’s latest creation.

(We can’t prove it came from there, of course, but this is the kind of “fact” that would have come right out of the GOP oppo research department that all the kewl kidz were uncritically gobbling up with the same gusto they slurped down those Dove bars on Bush’s campaign plane.)

Ceci Connolly is still writing snotty, fictional scripts about people she doesn’t like. Dana Milbank is making junior high school drama class videos. Froomkin’s out on the street.

The worst thing about the right wingers calling the Washington Post the “liberal media” isn’t that it’s factually inaccurate — it’s that they are making liberals look so bad by lumping us in with these people.

Update: Speaking of Milbank, Julia reminded me of this:

MILBANK: You know what it is, Howie, I think that Gore is sanctimonious and that’s sort of the worst thing you can be in the eyes of the press. And he has been disliked all along and it was because he gives a sense that he’s better than us—he’s better than everybody, for that matter, but the sense that he’s better than us as reporters. Whereas President Bush probably is sure that he’s better than us—he’s probably right—but he does not convey that sense. He does not seem to be dripping with contempt when he looks at us, and I think that has something to do with the coverage.

There you go.

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Washington To Constituents: STFU

by dday

Ceci Connolly decided to jump on the opportunity to forward a “Democrats in disarray” narrative, arguing that grassroots groups inviting Americans to participate in their government is just too messy and risks hurting the feelings of those “friends” in the Democratic Party who resist real health care reform.

When asking me about the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s TV ads (which begin airing Monday in DC) holding Senate Dems accountable for taking millions from insurance interests and being on the verge of opposing a public option supported by 76% of Americans, Connolly would ask me ridiculous questions like, “Why are you attacking your friends? Wouldn’t you agree that these Democrats are better for you on most health care issues than Republicans?”

I had to patiently explain to her that the public option is the defining issue of the health care debate — if Senators like Baucus and Nelson aren’t with us on that, they are not our friends.

Connolly listened, and then chose to dismiss silly activists who are fighting for what 76% of Americans want:

Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of “true health reform,” but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.

Even though this story obviously sympathizes with those who want the hippies to STFU and enjoy whatever scraps they can get, I’m OK with having it out there. Because if the Village has to recognize the efforts in the grassroots, they’ve become too big to ignore. Also illuminating is the fact that not one named source would go on the record saying that such grassroots pressure on wavering Dems is harmful.

Essentially, being told that this pressure isn’t working by folks inside the Beltway is a sure sign that it IS. So watch out, Kay Hagan, who apparently is holding up the inclusion of a public option in the Senate HELP Committee’s draft. And the same goes for Blanche Lincoln, who has been squishy on the issue in her public statements. Blue America will have a lot to announce on that front in the coming weeks. So support the Campaign for Health Care Choice as we “run the risk of alienating centrist Democrats” once again.

…what’s funny about this is the lack of understanding of who controls the process in the health care bill. It’s completely obvious that Republicans will not support any kind of reform. Therefore, anyone who wants to impact the legislation must work on the Democratic side. That’s simply a rational calculation of where to place pressure.

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Shameless

by digby

Coincidence, I’m sure:

As financial markets tumbled and the government worked to stave off panic by pumping billions of dollars into banks last fall, several members of Congress who oversee the banking industry were grabbing up or dumping bank stocks. Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup — some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows. Financial disclosure records show that some of these Financial Services Committee members, including Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, made bank stock trades on the same day the banks were getting a government bailout from a program Congress approved. The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest. “I don’t think that any of these people should be owning these types of financial instruments,” said Brian Biggins, a Cleveland securities lawyer and former stock brokerage manager. “I’m not saying they shouldn’t be in the stock market. But if they’re on the banking committee and trading in these kinds of stocks, I don’t think that’s right.”

Wilson wasn’t the only one. The article cites several other members of the committee, of both parties, who “coincidentally” traded around the time that they were privy to information that others didn’t have and were being personally lobbied by people who were trying to get something from them. It stinks to high heaven.

Many details about the massive financial bailout last fall were widely known outside Capitol Hill. Yet members of the Financial Services Committee were privy to closed-door discussions, staff briefings and political horse-trading decisions between political parties, Congress and the White House. Banks lobbied Congress and the administration heavily. Banks that received bailout money spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center found that the banks spending the heaviest got the biggest rescue packages. There has been no direct evidence that this allowed members to engage in insider trading. But when lawmakers overseeing banks also buy and sell bank stocks, it can create “the appearance of a problem,” said Anthony J. Hartman, a Cleveland securities attorney. “I do a lot of different types of litigation, and I just don’t think anybody ought to be putting themselves in a situation where as an elected official, I can be suspect of what they are doing,” Hartman said.

I do not know why members of congress who oversee certain industries should ever be allowed to invest in those industries. It’s ridiculous on its face. And it’s even more ridiculous that they did it knowing full well that it would be disclosed.

I don’t want to hear another word about how much these people hate fund raising and having to beg for money for their campaigns all the time. Apparently, they are very well compensated for their trouble.

h/t to bb

Pitney vs Milbank

by digby

Just to put this into perspective, think about this: Nico Pitney has spent the last two weeks tirelessly developing sources from inside Iran, aggregating every relevant story available on the internet through every available form of the new communication technology and synthesizing one of the most most difficult and important foreign policy stories of the decade. Dana Milbank has spent the same period bitching about the “low press” getting to ask questions at a press conference and filming snotty little gossip items for his little insider video embarrassment called “Mouthpiece Theatre.”

You tell me which one’s the “real” journalist.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Lighten up, Francis

By Dennis Hartley

Director and star: So God and Jesus walk into a bar…

It’s official now. With his latest film, Tetro, a mad fever dream of a family angst drama that plays out like a telenovela on acid, Francis Ford Coppola has become Colonel Kurtz.

CORMAN
“Well, you see Willard… Every man has got a
breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his.
And very obviously, he has gone insane.”

WILLARD
“Yes sir, very much so sir. Obviously insane.”

-from Apocalypse Now

OK, perhaps I exaggerate a tad. I don’t really mean to insinuate that the venerable 70-year old director has literally gone completely around the bend in his new film; but as an artist, it signals that he has come full circle-in a sort of insane fashion. Back in 1963, under the auspices of the famously “no-budget” producer Roger Corman, a then 24-year old Coppola wrote and directed a B & W horror cheapie called Dementia 13. The story revolved around a twisted family with dark secrets. It’s been a while since I’ve screened it, but I seem to remember one of the family members creeping about the estate wielding an axe. While it’s not ostensibly “horror”, one could thumbnail Tetro as a B & W film revolving around a twisted family with dark secrets; and, oddly enough, there is a climactic scene where one of the family members creeps about an estate-wielding an axe.

For the setup of this (possibly) very personal story, Coppola utilizes some of his own emotional leftovers to cook up a Tennessee Williams meets Douglas Sirk-worthy family stew (with just a hint of balletic Powell and Pressburger opera tossed in for flavoring). Tetro (Vincent Gallo) is an ex-pat living in Buenos Aires with his dancer girlfriend Miranda (Mirabel Verdu), who is an Argentine native. Tetro is a troubled soul; a highly gifted but unpublished writer-poet with a history of mental breakdowns who has willfully estranged himself from his family (for complex reasons that are unraveled in very deliberate, sudsy fashion). He is quite chagrined when an unwelcomed boulder comes smashing through this wall of self-imposed exile in the form of his younger brother Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich), who shows up on his doorstep one day, out of the blue. Bennie, a cruise ship worker whose boat “happens” to be in port, has not seen his big brother since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and is quite eager to reestablish contact.

In fact, Bennie idolizes Tetro; it is that unique mixture of envy and romanticized esteem that younger family members hold for the older siblings who are first in line to declare independence from parental restraints and strike out into the coveted world of adult “freedom” (we all know how soon that illusion gets shattered…heh). Tetro, however, is not eager to reciprocate. Not only does he make it clear that Bennie is not welcome to stay any longer than absolutely necessary, but he refuses to refer to him as a relative when introducing him to some of the locals. Undaunted, Bennie remains hell-bent to reconnect, and soon fate and circumstance serve to prolong his visit to Buenos Aires, setting off a chain of events that eventually forces both brothers to come to terms with their shared “Daddy issues” (Klaus Maria Brandauer chews major scenery as their narcissistic father, who is a world-famous symphony conductor… and world-class prick).

Coppola’s films have generally vacillated between the Big Theme (The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Gardens of Stone) and the intimate character study (The Rain People, One From The Heart, Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married). I have to admit to being more partial to his Big Theme films. As I conjectured earlier, this is “possibly” an extremely personal film; I’m no psychiatrist, but Coppola’s dad, Carmine, is a composer/conductor (since I don’t know the man, I can’t attest to whether or not he is a prick…but I’m just saying). At any rate, this definitely qualifies as a “personal” work on some level; it virtually screams at you from the passionate, high drama of the piece. It goes without saying that “family” is a recurring theme in his work as well; so in that respect, you could say that Tetro is a return to form. So is that a good thing in this case?

Well, I was with Coppola for the first half or so of the movie. Gallo delivers an explosive performance; I think it’s his finest work to date. The charismatic Verdu is very effective inhabiting a character who is at once earthy, sensuous and saintly (OK, you Freudians-I know what you’re thinking. Settle down-it’s only a movie). Newcomer Ehrenreich holds his own quite admirably with his more seasoned co-stars. The problem I have is with the film’s over-the-top third act. Even accounting for Coppola’s (literally) operatic construct that leads up to the jaw-dropping finale, it’s all a bit too…too (if you know what I’m saying). Maybe it’s me; if you enjoy that sort of thing, perhaps you’ll be more forgiving.

One cannot deny the visual artistry on display. Even when he lost me with the story, Coppola’s mastery of the medium kept my eyes riveted to the screen. So he did his job, after all. He’s been doing it for 50 years-so I’ll let him off the hook…for old time’s sake.

Previous posts with related themes:

Writer’s Block
The Savages

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Getting Clear

by digby

This series on Scientology is a revelation. I don’t care what people believe. Indeed, I find a lot of religious belief, particularly the supernatural stuff, really hard to take seriously. But these people have a system of intimidation that’s got few parallels. Not that religion isn’t often coercive — the Inquisition wasn’t exactly pretty — but this is quite modern and systematic in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen before. Using the establishment clause as a legal cudgel against free speech is quite creative.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a riveting read this lazy week-end, this is a good one.

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