Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Return Of The Zombies

by digby

…in which the Village begins a campaign to revise history and redeem itself for its support of George W. Bush:

The idea that 44 might in the future continue to seek the counsel of 43 would until recently have struck partisans on both ends of the ideological spectrum as absurd. But that was before the transition commenced and Obama began to tip his hand in the area of foreign policy. Before the appointment of the power troika of Bob Gates, Jim Jones, and Hillary Clinton, each of whom plausibly could have filled the very same jobs in a John McCain regime. Before the hints that Obama might not be fully, rigidly committed to the rapid timetable for drawing down combat troops in Iraq that he advocated during the campaign. Before, in other words, the pat assumptions of the right and the left were blown to smithereens. That all this has come as such a shock to so many owes to a misreading of Obama as a starry-eyed idealist—when there was ample evidence that lurking just beneath the surface was a hard-eyed, sometimes hawkish realist. One obvious implication here is that the next four years may be marked as much by continuity with Bush’s policies as by radical departures from them. But a less conspicuous consequence is that, although the president and his supporters shared a dim view of Obama as a prospective commander-in-chief, the supposedly woolly-minded, lily-livered Democrat may wind up doing more to salvage Bush’s legacy than the grizzled Republican nominee ever would, or could, have done.

If Obama wants to join him in ranking as the worst president in US history, he’ll do just that. There is no salvaging this neocon nightmare and any attempt to try will drag him down with the sinking Bush family ship. (Not to mention that it would be disastrous for the country.)

Heileman goes on to assert that Bush isn’t really as much of a global miscreant as everybody thinks. Apparently he’s been pretty darned level headed these last few years, more like his Dad, who everyone in Washington now seems to agree was the model president. All Obama needs to do is follow the Bush blueprint, but add a little of that patented Obama smooth talk about hope ‘n change and it’s all good.

This entire thesis seems to me to have far less to do with Obama than with the villagers’ desire to legitimize their own failures during the past eight years. And predictably, the establishment line dovetails nicely with the embarrassingly obvious Republican efforts to co-opt Barack as a post-partisan keeper of the conservative flame. William Kristol today practically adopted him as the long lost son of Barry Goldwater:

I also have to admit that I look forward to Obama’s inauguration with a surprising degree of hope and good cheer. For one thing, there will be the invocation, delivered by Rick Warren. I suspect he’ll be careful to say nothing pro-life or pro-traditional-marriage — but we conservatives have already gotten more than enough pleasure from the hysterical reaction to his selection by the tribunes of the intolerant left. And having Warren there will, in fact, be a welcome reminder of the strides the evangelical movement and religious conservatives (broadly speaking) have made in recent decades.[…]

One more heartening tidbit — from my point of view — about the president-elect: he’s been in the past an intermittent smoker, and is now a nicotine gum chewer who admits that he’s occasionally fallen off the wagon this past year to indulge in a cigarette. He’s been chastised for this by some scolds. The editors of The Mercury News told him recently he needed to make “a very public show of quitting” to set a good example for young people. Bah, humbug. Those of us who dislike finger-wagging nanny-state-nagging liberalism relish the prospect of President Barack Obama sneaking a cigarette on the second floor of the White House while rereading Harry V. Jaffa’s great work on Lincoln, “Crisis of the House Divided,” then taking a break to stroll over to take a look at the White House’s copy of Emanuel Leutze’s painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” then going back to the family quarters to tell his kids to get back to memorizing some patriotic poetry, all of this interrupted occasionally by calls from Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno — his Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman — to discuss progress in the wars we’re fighting, or from Rick Warren to discuss their joint efforts to fight AIDS in Africa and to reduce the number of abortions in the U.S. Now that’s a presidency I can believe in.

I know it’s unfashionably partisan and all, but I really hope that Kristol is forced to eat those words. Because if he isn’t, I’m afraid that conservatism will remain the default political identity of the villagers (and a good number of Americans) who will then gravitate back to the Republicans if they’re allowed to forget that it was conservatism that failed in the first place.

I know that most people believe it doesn’t matter if voters think progressive policies are conservative as long as they are progressive in reality. And certainly the policy is the most important part of the equation. But most people’s understanding of policy is vague at best and, in any case, politics has a number of moving parts and heuristic elements. For most voters politics are predicated on identity and affiliation as much as anything else and it matters to long term political success how most people see themselves on the partisan spectrum. As important to the country as it is that Barack succeed in enacting progressive policies, it’s equally important that he till the soil for other progressives to follow.

The modern conservative movement has been disastrous on both policy and politics in America and I think it’s a mistake to allow them to simply lay low and co-opt the successes of a center left president until they can regroup and come back to screw it all up again. Their economic and foreign policy radicalism has very nearly wrecked the world and I don’t think the “serious people” in the political establishment should be allowed to pretend that it was anything but what it was. And I certainly don’t think they should be allowed to state that Obama was elected to carry on the Bush family legacy without challenge. I’m pretty sure we’ll come to regret being complacent about such things when the next George W. Bush comes along pretending to be a compassionate conservative — and actually finishes what Junior started.

I realize that I’m out of step with my thinking on this. As Steve Benen reports in this post about Move On, most liberals don’t give a damn think it’s a top priority to hold the Bush administration accountable or reform politics and prefer that Obama devotes his time working on health care and global warming and getting out of Iraq. And I certainly can’t argue that those priorities are extremely important.

But somebody has to call bullshit on the Republicans and the media lest they successfully paper over their ongoing malpractice and succeed in convincing people that Obama represents some sort of continuity instead of the change the people actually voted for. It’s almost impossible to take them seriously at this moment, but if Obama succeeds we may very well find ourselves in a situation where the political establishment and the Republicans will take credit for his achievements to push their next aristocratic wrecking crew into power. Unless we challenge this new narrative, we could find ourselves right back where we were in 2000, with the country voting on the basis of who they’d like to have a beer with because the country is doing well and as far as they can tell there’s no difference between the two parties. And as we all know, it only takes a few short years of GOP dominance (and tepid, credulous opposition) to reverse it all.

Whether anyone likes it or not I’m going to keep an eye on the Village zombies. Remember:

Modern zombies, as portrayed in books, films, games, and haunted attractions, are quite different from both voodoo zombies and those of folklore. Modern zombies are typically depicted in popular culture as mindless, unfeeling monsters with a hunger for human brains and flesh, a prototype established in the seminal 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Typically, these creatures can sustain damage far beyond that of a normal, living human (generally these can only be killed by a wound to the head, such as a headshot) and can pass whatever syndrome that causes their condition onto others. Usually, zombies are not depicted as thralls to masters, as in the film White Zombie or the spirit-cult myths. Rather, modern zombies are depicted in mobs and waves, seeking either flesh to eat or people to kill or infect, and are typically rendered to exhibit signs of physical decomposition such as rotting flesh, discolored eyes, and open wounds, and moving with a slow, shambling gait. They are generally incapable of communication and show no signs of personality or rationality, though George Romero‘s zombies appear capable of learning and very basic levels of speech as seen in the films Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead. Modern zombies are closely tied to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, the collapse of civilization caused by a vast plague of undead. The ideas are now so strongly linked that zombies are rarely depicted within any other context.

I’m just saying…

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Tearing Down Camelot

by dday

I’m fairly lukewarm on Caroline Kennedy’s Senate “campaign,” which has consisted of her hiring insider consultants affiliated with Bloomberg and Lieberman and ringing up elites and putting pressure on the Governor to appoint her. But I have to say that I respect her a bit more after this interview with the New York Times, where she says something that probably most politicians have thought at one time or another.

With several weeks to go before Mr. Paterson makes his decision, she is doling out glimpses of her political beliefs and private life. But when asked Saturday morning to describe the moment she decided to seek the Senate seat, Ms. Kennedy seemed irritated by the question and said she couldn’t recall.

“Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?” she asked the reporters. “I thought you were the crack political team.”

If you read the transcript, you get a better sense of where that comes from. They were more than halfway through the interview at this point, and the whole thing had a certain People Magazine quality about it. The reporters asked Kennedy repeatedly about an imagined conversation they have in their heads, out of a bad biopic or something, a “moment of clarity” where she blurts out “I’m going to do this!” When Kennedy suggests that it didn’t actually happen that way, because, um, life pretty much doesn’t happen that way, they basically ask her to create a story where it does. That’s when the woman’s magazine crack comes in.

NC: So when in your own mind did it go from, ‘It’s kind of an interesting idea’ to ‘Maybe I should do this?’ (Pause) Or was that —

CK: Over the last couple weeks. (She chuckles.)

NC: Was there any moment where —

CK: No, I don’t think there was a moment, I mean, this kind of thing is too important for it to be, like, an on-off switch, right? This is a process, and as I became more serious about it, and talked to more people, you know, I thought — and then obviously I called the governor and expressed interest, and um, you know, so…

NC: The signs were on what day? Was it before you called the governor?

CK: The what? Oh yeah, that was a while ago.

NC: That was a while ago?

CK: Yeah.

NC: So that was after Senator Clinton had announced — so it was after the vacancy became possible?

CK: Well, yeah. Obviously.

NC: OK. (CK laughs.) I just wanted to make sure of the chronology.

DH: We just don’t know if it was after we started writing about you or —

CK: No, you guys had nothing to do with it. (Laughs.)

DH: No, we didn’t mean that. The timing.

NC: Uh, so sometime before those stories about your discussion with the governor, sometime after Senator Clinton had been tapped for —

CK: Yeah — yeah […]

NC: Was he the first person you told — do you know if you uttered the words, ‘I think I’m gonna go for this?’ Or, something like it?

CK: Well, I don’t know if I utter those kinds of words, but yes. You know, it was a mutual decision.

NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?

CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)

DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?

CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here. As I said, it was kind of over a period of time, you know, obviously we talked about politics, we talked about what’s going on, we’ve been watching the team that the president-elect is putting together — Hillary Clinton is going to be a spectacular part of that team, you know, then there was a vacancy here, you know, just like everybody else, you know: who’s going to fill it, isn’t that interesting, there’s a lot of great candidates, you know, obviously I have become much more politically involved than I have in the past, so you know, I figure, why not try, I really think I have something to offer.

NC: But there was no one moment you can draw on —

CK: I know I wish there was, I’ll think about it.

NC: If there isn’t, that’s what it was, that’s fine too. We’re not the crack political team, we’re always looking for good anecdotes and good stories.

CK: I know, and I understand. I’ll think about it a little more.

Kennedy’s mistake is assuming that there’s any kind of marker or dividing line between political media and magazine personality profile at all anymore. Sometimes those kind of profiles elicit vaguely interesting questions, but they sure have nothing to do with being a Senator. They have everything to do with creating a mythical persona, and in this case, puncturing it, for no real reason other than it’s good for business, I guess.

When the “crack political staff” finally gets around to asking about an issue, which they back into by asking Kennedy why she sent her children to private school and if she really should be credited with raising money for public schools, the entire thing is framed along whether or not she would break with a “conventional Democrat”.

DH: Just to talk a little more about issues: a lot of your political positions seem pretty straight-up-the-middle, conventional for a Democrat.

CK: Does that surprise you?

DH: No. But I wonder, what are the biggest areas where you disagree with Democratic party orthodoxy? We want to know what sets you apart. You’ve cited a lot of examples and influences; what would be a subject that we would expect your position to be a real surprise on?

CK: Well, I think that there’s a range of views in the Democratic party. And you know, I am a proud Democrat, those are the values, you know — middle class tax relief, helping working families, fixing the health care system — those are the national priorities right now. So those are the issues that I would expect — I mean, I am a Democrat, that is, you know — I am trying to become a Democratic senator, so I don’t, um — I mean, there are issues along the way, that I’m sure that people have differences of opinion. There’s controversies in all these areas.

DH: One where you have a clear-eyed idea about where you stand on something that is diff —

CK: That is different from who? Anybody?

DH: The party platform. I mean, pick some standard. Just something that would surprise —

CK: I support gay marriage, I support, you know, I’ve had problems with Nafta, I mean, I don’t — if we’re not comparing it to anybody specifically it’s hard to say where I’m going to disagree.

NC: How about Governor Paterson?

CK: But I’m a traditional Democrat, so that’s what I want to fight for, those are the values I want to fight for.

NC: Is there any issue on which you and Governor Paterson disagree that you can think of?

CK: Well, I think Governor Paterson has — I can tell you two of the areas where I think he’s done great work. Which is, alternative energy —

NC: That wasn’t the question. Is there anything on which you two disagree?

CK: No, I’m not going to talk about my disagreements with Governor — I think he’s done a great job as a leadership, yeah, absolutely.

DH: Two powerful, respected people are allowed to differ.

CK: They are. They are.

DH: We just wonder where we’ll find out that you differ.

CK: Well, you’ll find out over time. You know, as issues come along.

It’s a bizarre, accusatory tone, showing that typical reporter bias that the only way for a Democrat to show any integrity is to break with their own party. This fetish makes little sense to me, and the only explanation I have for it is that the reporters aren’t well-versed enough on the issues to talk about them substantively, so they use the “how are you different” shorthand even though they have little sense of what the Democrat should be different from.

Of course, the only reason a possible Senate appointee is getting grilled in this fashion is because she’s Caroline Kennedy, part of Camelot and American royalty and all that, and that belief that she sells papers, especially now that the narrative is set that she’s flailing about, which this interview is clearly designed to elicit. There are at least a dozen aspirants nationwide for Senate appointments – in New York, Illinois, Colorado – but none of them are being exposed to confrontational interviews where they are subjected to endless variations of the question “What makes you so special?” My preference would be for NOBODY to get appointed to a Senate seat, and all of them decided by special election. But while I think a Kennedy appointment ought to be open to questioning, we’d have to find another media to conduct that questioning, if we want any insight other than how ridiculous 21st-century reporting has become.

Most fitting in all of this is the Politico’s takeaway, as insubstantial as the interview itself:

One thing Caroline Kennedy would bring to Washington: A new, distinctive Kennedy verbal tic: She said “you know” 142 times in her Times interview.

Journalism par excellence.

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Who’s Their Daddy?

by digby

Newtie is becoming just insufferable lately and he’d better watch it or even some of his friends on the right are going to call bs on him. In response to that idiot sending out Limbaugh’s “Barack The Magic Negro” CD, he tells the New York Times:

“This is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it,” Newt Gingrich, a Republican former House speaker, said in an e-mail message. Referring to Mr. Obama, Mr. Gingrich said, “There are no grounds for demeaning him or for using racist descriptions.”

Please. I am all for conservatives coming over from the dark side. But the leadership of the movement that turned our politics into a cesspool simply can’t be taken seriously as arbiters of proper civility now that they are out of fashion. It “demeans” the whole idea.

Here’s a little reminder of Gingrich’s past advice on such matters:.

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.

He also said this (in 1998) which proves what an astute political leader he is:

“Mr. President, we are going to run you out of town”

We know how that turned out don’t we?

I don’t mind Newtie trying to make a GOP comeback. And that he would do it by riding the post partisan zeitgeist is exactly what I would expect of a sleazy operator like him. But I will absolutely lose my grip if I see any Democrat embracing this wicked little bastard. He is as responsible for what the Republicans did to this country as Bush and Cheney, maybe more. To allow him even the slightest bit of credibility for this predictable oozing insincerity is to sow the seeds of their own demise.

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Long Run Fantasy

by digby

Condi Rice and Laura Bush are insisting that the administration will be vindicated by history for all the wonderful work it has done around the world. Rice, especially, is intent upon making the case that if the world gets better some time in the future, Bush will be given the credit for it. (This isn’t the first time she and Bush have made this stupid comment.)

This definition of success would mean that you have to reevaluate Tojo since Japan has since become a prosperous, first world country. After all, if it weren’t for him, the world wouldn’t be where it is today. Hell, where would Western Europe be if it weren’t for that bad man in the mustache — or Eastern Europe if it hadn’t been for Stalin? Hey, even Caligula can be seen to be a hero if you believe that the world is better off today than it was during Roman times.

It’s not that Bush is necessarily as bad as those examples, but the logic behind Rice’s view inexorably leads you to evaluate everyone in history through the lens of human progress — which means that none of the great villains can be held responsible for their deeds and nothing can ever be learned from bad decisions of the past. As long as the world goes on you can always make the case that things will probably turn out ok in the long run. And that’s hardly any comfort —as the old saying goes, in the long run we’ll all be dead.

In fact, in the short run a whole lot of Iraqi people are dead because of the United States’ inexplicable decision to invade their country. It is what it is and it’s offensive to compare temporary political resistance to a pragmatic humanitarian policy like The Marshall Plan to the worldwide revulsion at an invasion for reasons that made no sense, as Rice does. If Iraq becomes a sane and prosperous nation some time from now, it will never render that policy, based on lies and propaganda, to be a good one — and Bush, Cheney and Rice will never get credit for any future progress because of it. They need accept that the best they can hope for is to end up among history’s inept clowns instead of history’s villains. It’s not much, but it’s all they’ve got.

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Patterns

by digby

CSPAN3 History is showing a fascinating look back at the Iran Contra affair today if you are interested, including press conferences by the likes of Weinberger and Lawrence Walsh.

If you want to know where the Bush administration got the idea that they could get away with anything, this is a good place to start. Bush Senior pretty much pardoned himself by pardoning those who could have implicated him, thereby shutting down the investigation. If there are no political ramifications, the presidential pardon is the checkmate. And since Democrats have shown they will never pursue such things while Republicans have proved without doubt that they will leave no stone unturned, even to the extent of impeaching a president over a trivial personal matter (and turning the independent counsel’s office into a partisan freak show) the result is the lawless Bush administration. I shudder to think what the next Republican administration will do.

*And once again, to those who have been convinced by some very hysterical people in the left blogosphere who have reading comprehension problems that I was against the impeachment of Bush, well, they’re wrong.

Just Right

by digby

At some point in the last few years I saw some conservative wag saying that the first part of the 20th century may have belonged to Keynes but the second half belonged to Hayek. I don’t know if that’s exactly true — after all, governments have turned tax cuts into holy rituals on the basis of Keynesian ideas about stimulus. But it is at least somewhat true. Free market fundamentalism (which Hayek didn’t actually believe in — he was more of an evangelical) has certainly been the order of the day for at least a quarter of a century and animated the arguments of the aristocracy, the Randians and the political anti-commies for longer than that.

But, just as with liberalism in general, when the shit comes down after the conservative ideologues have been allowed to pillage and destroy everything in their wake, it’s back to Keynes. And via Krugman, here’s an excellent article by Martin Wolfe in the Financial Times that explains that the ideological poles were between market fundamentalism and socialism, not Hayek and Keynes, the latter of whom was essentially a technocratic pragmatist. And so it also implies that electing a technocrat like Obama at a time like this may be the best possible news. I have a lot of problems with the idea that ideology doesn’t matter, but when put into an economic context it appears to be just what the Doctor (Keynes) ordered.

One of the weirdest things I’ve seen in the past few weeks has been the bizarre, reflexive loathing of FDR crop up again. I hadn’t actually seen anything like it since I was a kid and the old folks would rail against “that man.” It seemed ancient even then and that was a long time ago. And when I was in school it was taught without any caveat that Roosevelt saved capitalism, period. The historical context of that statement, in the middle of the cold war, was that communism was on the rise during that period and had Roosevelt not been able to get the country through the depression, there may have been revolution or a political overthrow on the order of Germany.

But that’s no longer a given — or perhaps it is, but the rise of conservative media makes the old FDR hating seem more mainstream then it did back when I was a kid. We are suddenly being bombarded with the convenient revisionism of crackpots like Amity Schlaes and the confident gibberish of Fred Barnes, who Susie at C & L catches blithly passing on the popular contrarian fiction that FDR actually made the depression worse. The stuff about how Ronald Reagan saved the world by destroying the air traffic controller’s union is especially rich. (The antidote to such lies and misrepresentations, is here, in this excellent article about FDR and the auto unions)

So, just as we seem to have finally been able to put the Vietnam era behind us (at least for the moment), we’re taking a trip back to the 1930s and we’re going to have those same stupid arguments all over again. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, yadda, yadda, yadda. It never really ends.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

You put THAT one on your list? No. Seriously?

By Dennis Hartley

It’s that time of year- for the obligatory Top 10 lists. Recently, I took a look back at what I thought were some of the best DVD reissues of 2008. Tonight, I don my Kevlar vest once again, to humbly offer up my picks for the best films that opened in 2008. I should qualify that. These would be the “top ten” movies out of the 40 or so first-run features I have selected to review on Hullabaloo since January. Since I am (literally) a “weekend movie critic”, I obviously don’t have the time (or the bucks, frankly, with admission prices these days) to screen every new release (especially with that pesky, soul-sucking 9 to 5 gig that takes up my weekdays-y’know, the one that pays the rent and junk).

And yes, I am aware that 2008 isn’t officially “over” yet, and we all know that the movie studios like to save their big guns (read: Oscar bait) for late December. There are a handful of such releases I still haven’t had the time or energy to catch (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt and The Reader) and the one I am most anticipating (The Wrestler) isn’t even slated to open in Seattle until January 9th (DAMME you, sirs!).

A gentle reminder, dear reader, that I’m just one of the ordinary motion pitcher watchin’ folks, plopping down my hard-earned kopeks at the box office like everyone else, and not a high-falootin’ critic who is comped into advance screenings or receives DVD screeners in the mail (OK…sometimes) or feted at Cannes (never!). I have resigned myself to the fact that, on the evolutionary scale of film criticism, I will never be held in the same esteem as a Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael or even a Jeffrey Lyons (although I would sincerely hope that I am taken more seriously than, let’s say, a Ben Lyons). So, with no asses to kiss and no promises to keep, may I present The List, in alphabetical order:

Burn After Reading– A welcome return to the type of dark, absurdist cringe comedy that the Coen brothers truly excel at. Leave it to the Coens to mash up the elements of screwball comedy, door-slamming bedroom farce, spy spoof, political satire, social commentary and self-parody into a perfect cinematic cocktail. The breezy script (penned by the brothers) is tighter than a one-act play, and capped off with a great zinger. It’s a rarity in film these days: an expedient, highly satisfying denouement. In other words, the film neither overstays its welcome nor feels rushed; it wraps up just when it needs to. With George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. Full review.

The Dark Knight– There was one part of the considerable hype surrounding this film that didn’t blow smoke; the late Heath Ledger is mesmerizing in every single frame that he inhabits, and his performance alone makes this one a must-see. He plays his Joker to Christian Bale’s Batman like John Wayne Gacy, coming for your children with a paring knife (and in the clown costume). I don’t know what war-torn region of the human soul Ledger went to in order to find his character, but I don’t think I’d ever want to go there, even just to snap a few pictures. Stylishly directed by Christopher Nolan. Full review.

The Gits– In the summer of 1993, Seattle musician Mia Zapata, lead singer of The Gits, was beaten, raped and killed, her body unceremoniously dumped in a vacant lot. Her murder remained unsolved until an astounding break in the case in 2003 helped bring her killer to justice. This random, brutal act not only had a profoundly disheartening and long-lasting effect on Seattle’s incestuous music community, but symbolically represented the beginning of the end for the city’s burgeoning music renaissance. Super-fans and first time filmmakers Kerri O’Kane and Jessica Bender have constructed an engrossing, genuinely moving portrait of Zapata’s legacy in a rockumentary that admirably avoids sensationalizing the tragedy; it instead gives us an inspiring portrait of four close friends truly committed to each other, their music and their fans. Full review.

Happy Go Lucky– Concerning a young Londoner named Poppy, whose improbably infectious giddiness is brought to life with amazing verisimilitude by Sally Hawkins, in one of the best performances by an actress this year. I venture to say that British director Mike Leigh is making a somewhat revolutionary political statement for this cynical, post-ironic age of rampant smugness and self-absorption; suggesting that Poppy’s brand of bubbly, unflagging enthusiasm for wishing nothing but happiness unto others defines not just the root of true compassion, but could be the antidote to societal ills like xenophobia, child abuse and homelessness. Then again, I could just be dreaming. Full review.

Honeydripper– Writer-director John Sayles transports us back to the deep south of the early 1950s, evoking the earthy blues poetry of the Delta, outfitting it in shades of August Wilson and transferring it to the screen. Essentially a languidly paced folktale, set in an Alabama backwater called Harmony, Honeydripper rolls along, slow and steady, like a glass bottle sliding up a steel string, and is easily his most engaging ensemble piece since Lone Star. With Danny Glover, Charles Dutton and Mary Steenbergen. Full review.

Man on Wire– On the surface, this may appear to be a straightforward documentary about an eccentric high wire artist who is either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid. But if you look closer, you might discover one of the best suspense thrillers/heist movies of 2008, although no guns are drawn and nothing gets stolen. It is also one of the most romantic films I’ve seen this year, although it is not a traditional love story. Existential and even a tad surreal at times, it is ultimately a deeply profound treatise on following your bliss. Directed by James Marsh, featuring music by Michael Nyman. Full review.

Milk-Gus Van Sant’s stirring (and very timely) biopic about San Francisco politician and gay activist Harvey Milk (assassinated in 1978) is one of the most straightforward efforts from the frequently abstract and self-consciously arty filmmaker since his surprise mainstream hit Good Will Hunting in 1997, yet it arguably stands as his most important work to date. The excellent script (by Dustin Lance Black) is richly engaging, yet never strays too far from Milk’s own words and deeds. And most crucial to the success of this film is the powerhouse performance that lies at its heart from Oscar shoo-in Sean Penn, who never falls into exaggerated caricature, opting instead to ostensibly channel the wit, passion and genuine humanity of this remarkable individual. A must-see. Full review.

Slumdog Millionaire– Leave it to Danny Boyle, who somehow managed to transmogrify the horrors of heroin addiction into an exuberant romp (Trainspotting), to reach into the black hole of Mumbai slum life and pull out the most exhilarating love story of 2008. Slumdog Millionaire defies category; think Oliver Twist meets Quiz Show in Bollywood. Just like the best Bollywood offerings, Boyle’s most epic tale to date (co-directed by Loveleen Tandan with a script by Simon Beaufoy, adapted from Vikas Swarup’s novel) is equal parts melodrama, comedy, action, romance and kismet. It’s a perfect masala for people who love pure cinema, infused by colorful costume and set design, informed by fluid, hyperkinetic camera work (from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle) and accompanied by the type of rousing, pumping, eclectic music soundtrack that you’ll want to download into your MP3 player immediately after leaving the theatre. Full review.

Vicky Christina Barcelona– Dare I say it? Woody Allen’s latest is his wisest, sexiest and most engaging romantic comedy in, um, years. Okay…truth? To rate it on a sliding scale: as far as his own particular brand of genial bedroom farces go, it may not be in quite the same league as, let’s say, Hannah and Her Sisters, but it still handily blows the boudoir doors off of any other romantic “comedies” one suffers through at the multiplex these days. Penelope Cruz deserves any awards she may receive for this performance; she’s a real force of nature here. A museum-worthy rarity: a comedy for grown-ups. Full review.

The Visitor– If Richard Jenkins doesn’t get an Oscar nod for his amazing performance in Thomas McCarthy’s culture-clash comedy-drama, I will personally picket the Academy. Writer-director-actor McCarthy’s previous effort was the critical favorite The Station Agent, and once again he draws us into an extended family of very believable, warm-blooded characters, generously giving all of his actors plenty of room to breathe. The “strange bedfellows” setup of the plot may resemble The Goodbye Girl or The Odd Couple on paper, but this not a glib Neil Simon play, where characters throw perfectly timed zingers at each other; these people feel, and interact, like real human beings. There is plenty of humor, but there is also genuine heartbreak and bittersweet melancholy. The important thing is that it is all perfectly nuanced, and a joy to behold. Full review.

And just for giggles, a special nomination for The Most Fun I Had Trashing a Film in 2008: My review of the (unintentionally) pre-hysterical 10,000 B.C., which many of Digby’s readers appeared to enjoy (just in case you missed it). Happy New Year!

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R.I.P. Harold Pinter

By Dennis Hartley

We had some sad news on Christmas Day. Renowned playwright, screenwriter, poet, and Nobel Laureate (for literature) Harold Pinter lost his battle with cancer. Simply put, his demise represents a great loss to the art of the written word. Indeed, “Pinteresque” has become part of the lexicon in the world of movie and theater criticism. For deeper background on his overall achievements in the arts (and his political activism), I will defer to the insightful and well-researched tribute posted by one of our long-time Hullabaloo supporters, film critic and author David Ehrenstein, over on his website.

If I had to pick my favorite Pinter screenplay, it would be his masterpiece of sublimated loathing, the 1963 British drama, The Servant, which I consider to be the best of his several collaborations with director Joseph Losey. There are no axe murderers lurking in the closet, but this decadent class-struggle allegory matches Polanski’s Repulsion as a classic of psychological horror. Dirk Bogarde delivers a note perfect performance as a “manservant” hired by snobby playboy James Fox (in his screen debut) to help him settle into his new upscale London digs. It soon becomes apparent that this butler has a little more on the agenda than just polishing silverware and dusting the mantle. Actors talk about giving the character “an inner life”-just keep an eye on Bogarde’s facial expressions and watch a craftsman at work. A young and alluring Sarah Miles is memorable as Bogarde’s “sister” who is hired as the maid. The expressive chiaroscuro cinematography sets an increasingly claustrophobic mood as the story progresses; watch for the clever use of convex mirrors to “trap” the images of the principal characters. BTW, if you happen to be a fan of the 1960’s British folk scene, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for a brief, unbilled, rare glimpse of guitarist Davey Graham (who composed the classic instrumental piece “Anji”), playing and singing in a scene where James Fox strolls into a coffeehouse.

More to explore: The Caretaker , The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, AccidentThe Birthday Party, The Go-Between , The Homecoming, Butley, The Last Tycoon, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Betrayal, Turtle Diary, Sleuth (remake).

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The Power Of One Man

by dday

This activist Tim DeChristopher, who bidded up parcels of land sought by oil and gas interests for drilling is really a hero. I guess the Bureau of Land Management was all upset because an auction broke out at their nice little auction.

The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the auction was closed, with 116 parcels totaling 148,598 acres having sold for $7.2 million plus fees.

“He’s tainted the entire auction,” said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah.

Hoffman said buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids if they think they paid too much.

Huh? Paid TOO MUCH? If a buyer is paying millions of dollars for oil-rich land, they obviously think it’s worth it. What DeChristopher did was prove that the BLM was giving away federal land, basically owned by the taxpayers, to noncompetitive interests at obscenely low rates, and that the bidders would clearly pay more if forced. I thought these capitalists believed in the free market?

Now, DeChristopher did win some auctions, about 22,500 acres’ worth, and he fully intends not to pay. Then again, this is hardly different from the oil companies who buy up these lands with no intention of using them, just to pad their stock price. The oil companies get enough tax breaks to cancel out their below-market payments for the land, and it merely becomes an asset in their list of oil reserves. It’s the same thing.

Selma Sierra, who heads the BLM in Utah, said only 6 percent of lease parcels would ever see drilling because of the “costly and speculative” nature of the business. The federal government also typically imposes environmental safeguards on drilling parcels, Sierra said.

In other words, “Drill here, drill now” is a fiction. Thanks to this BLM official for making it so clear.

Considering how rapidly we’re experiencing the effects of climate change, and considering how long this oil company racket has lasted without anyone inside or outside the government stepping up, I’d call this perfectly justified. Not only should the government drop charges against DeChristopher, they should thank him for resetting the market. And activists can learn a lot from the creativity of this guy.

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We Just Disagree

by digby

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I think Americans are probably not destined to all come together in comity and good will to work toward the common good any time soon. And you also know that I don’t think there’s anything especially wrong with that. If politics is war by other means then that’s the way things are supposed to work.

Ezra Klein wrote a good piece on this the other day about the “president of all America” thing that I think makes an especially good point in this regard:

… the whole “President of all America” descriptor is popular these days, but a bit vague for my tastes. You’re president of all America when you win more than 270 votes in the electoral college. Not when people stop disagreeing with your agenda. There’s a tendency to downplay the degree to which America is riven by legitimate disagreements over the path forward. Those who think the occasional moment of symbolic outreach to Rick Warren will overwhelm arguments over socialized health care, or taxes, or abortion, aren’t paying respect to our essential commonalities so much as dismissing genuine arguments. Few in this country battle to see their policy preferences respected. They battle to see them enacted.

That is exactly correct. And the idea that it’s all about “respect” is falling into a conservative movement trap. They complain that they aren’t respected, and use that alleged lack of respect to hobble their opponent’s ability to make their arguments in good faith to the American people. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Warren’s agenda is a great example. Nobody says that you can’t make common cause on any issue on an ad hoc basis. If Warren and the environmentalists agree on how to deal with climate change, that’s terrific. But by Warren’s own reckoning, his primary agenda is social conservatism and it’s based on deeply held beliefs that aren’t going to be changed by liberals being told to stifle or believers being told to stay out of the public square.

Ed Kilgore writes about that in this thoughtful piece on Beliefnet about the historic differences between the Christian sects, which have retreated (I would argue perhaps only temporarily) in American life. But he notes that a far greater schism exists and it’s so fundamental that it’s almost impossible to see how we can bridge this gap:

Nowadays, in the United States at least, such ancient indicia of “belief” have largely receded into the background. And among Protestants, the old disputes have been supplanted by one big dispute: the proposition of biblical inerrancy, and with it, a host of highly political and cultural arguments over issues of gender and sexuality, from the preeminence of men in family and community life, to gay and lesbian “lifestyles,” to abortion.

This mattered to me sitting there in that Southern Baptist Church because I am a conventionally orthodox Protestant according to virtually all of the traditional measurements of “belief,” but an enemy of the faith to those who demand subscription to biblical inerrancy and the patriarchal, homophobic, anti-scientific and culturally conservative attitudes that come in inerrancy’s train. I am acutely aware that what conservative Protestants (and for somewhat different reasons, conservative Catholics) view as God’s ordinances on the limited role of women in church and society, the “unnatural” condition of homosexuality, and the righteousness of war, I view as irrelevant cultural background noise that detracts from and in many respects contradicts the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I understand the gulf that separates those who somehow find in scripture an unambiguous condemnation of abortion as homicide from those who don’t. The former quite naturally think that ending the “holocaust” of legalized abortion is far and away the preeminent moral and political duty of Christians in this day and age; the latter either don’t see it as a religious issue at all, or like me, view abortion as a decision best left to the gender that God entrusted with responsibility for child-bearing.

So: according to these very contemporary and terribly polarized definitions, am I a “believer,” or just a disguised semi-pagan who profanes the Holy Name while seeking justification for “ungodly” behavior? And if I am a “believer,” what does that say about the Christians who believe I’m not? Are we in communion?

I can’t really answer these questions, but do know they can’t be avoided or papered over by pleas that Christians just link arms and learn to get along. I can no more abandon what I consider to be the God-given rights of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters or of the majority of God’s children who happen to be female, than conservatives can abandon the rights of the millions of “unborn children” they believe God is calling them to defend.

Imagine how it seems to we unchurched and atheistic types who depend upon the constitution to protect our rights from a majority who are so vocal in their loathing that they can say things like this and still get invited to speak at the inauguration:

Warren told his congregation that someone had asked if there was any kind of president he would not vote for. “I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, ‘I don’t need God,’ ” Warren said. “They’re saying, ‘I’m totally self-sufficient by [myself].’ And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It’s too big a job.”

That is, of course, his privilege. He doesn’t have to vote for anyone he doesn’t want to. But I vote for religious people every election day without giving it a second thought despite my own belief that a politician who doesn’t believe in God would not be saying that he can do the job “all by himself.” (I think it’s pretty clear that they all depend upon many, many other people to help them. ) Yet, I’m being admonished constantly for being intolerant and disrespectful of religion. (When is the last time anyone said that it was intolerant to proclaim that you could never vote for an atheist?)

As Ezra says, it’s not enough that everyone has their views “respected” in any case. I don’t even know what that means when it comes to fundamental issues of freedom, liberty, faith, duty etc. Of course I respect everyone’s right to their beliefs and I will fight the proverbial fight for them to be allowed to express them. But I don’t have to respect every view that comes down the pike and I certainly don’t have to willingly make room in my political coalition for people to enact their agenda if it goes against what I believe in. Why would anyone think I should?

The truth is that it’s disrespectful to sincere people on all sides to suggest their disagreements are so shallow that they can be dealt with by pretending that all we need to do is proclaim that we respect one another. Even if you respect someone, sometimes there’s no avoiding a fight.

Now, if we’re talking purely about civility in language, well, fine. We could theoretically all agree not to call each other names, act in good faith and be honest and transparent in our politics. (You’ll have to pardon me for waiting until Rush, Coulter and Mitch McConnell sign on the dotted line before I fall in with that — and somebody might want to ask Warren to rethink that stuff about gays being like pedophiles and women who have abortions being like Nazis, too.) But I’m perfectly willing to be more temperate in my language (I’ve always believed in acting in good faith and with transparency) if it doesn’t mean that I also have to respect the belief that Creationism is as valid as evolution or that the state should decide women’s reproductive decisions for them or that gays marrying will have some negative effect on my own marriage.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be enough for the Rick Warrens and Tony Perkins types, though. I have a sneaking suspicion that they are intent upon actually enacting their agenda and my respect for their views isn’t something they particularly care about unless I’m helping them do that. In that we are in perfect agreement. I don’t require that they respect my views either. I’m going to fight for my agenda and they can fight for theirs. We’ll see which one the country supports. The last I heard, that was what we used to call politics.

Update: A huge huzzah to Chris Hayes for saying essentially the same thing today on the CNN “after party” roundtable. (And another bug huzzah for his being able to keep his head when forced to debate the profoundly dishonest Stephen “Al Qaeda really was in cahoots with Saddam” Hayes. )

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