V for Vendetta

I've been dumping on a lot of movies lately, and as many of you know, I hate a lot of things. But V for Vendetta compels me to positivity. I loved this picture. It's the best big budget film I've seen since Batman Begins, and my favorite of all Wachowski brothers movies (yes, I'm including The Matrix).

I won't reveal much story because I really want you to check it out if you haven't already. Those who know me can call me afterwards. Those who don't can geek out with me in the comments section. And those who know me and live in the same area I do should know that I am definitely up for seeing this picture again.

The Raiders Sign Aaron Brooks

The Raiders signed QB Aaron Brooks today. I like the move. He has mobility, a live arm, and some leadership qualities. Is Brooks the answer the Raiders are looking for? I don't know. But he should be fun to watch, and, because they're both scramblers, he'll be a big help if the Raiders choose to bring in and develop Vince Young.

The Next Ten Worst Sequels in Movie History

Okay, recapping 25-15

25. Godfather III
24. Jaws 2
23. Nighmare on Elm Street 2
22. Amityville II
21. Hello Mary Lou, Prom Night II
20. Star Trek V
19. Terminator 3
18. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
17. The Karate Kid III
16. The Exorcist II: The Heretic
15. The Cave Dwellers

Now to continue:

14. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Okay, the Ewan McGregor scenes were okay, and everyone loves to see Christopher Lee; but long term exposure to the Anakin/Amidala "I love you yet I cannot love you plot" has been known to kill housecats and small dogs. Check out the scene where Amidala's top gets ripped in half so that she can sport a Britney Spears-like look. That is the second worst skin-exposure-during-battle moment in film history. The worst? When the bad guy punches the hero of Future War in the face, and KNOCKS OFF HIS SHIRT!

13. Batman Forever. The sequel to this one is coming. Trust me. But this film hurt me. Susan Sontag defined camp as failed seriousness. What do you call failed camp? A film directed by Joel Schumacher. Taking the terminally, tragically divided Harvey Dent/Two-Face and transforming him into a generic psychotic thug is a deep and terrible crime against Batman. Further, the movie does nothing worthwhile with Chris O'Donnell. It's loud and garish, but dull. I ended up turning it off before I could get through it, finally catching the end several months later on cable. A big letdown.

12. Jurassic Park 2. I've never made it all the way to the end of this one. I recall a lot of pseudoscientific rigamarole between Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore, and a googleplex of stock disaster movie characters parading by; but after a while I turned away from the movie and looked outside because at least outside things, however mundane, were happening. I saw a man dragging his garbage to the trash and I ENVIED HIM. Piece of Crap.

11. The Mangler 2 This one I haven't seen, but when the director of the movie sinks to writing poorly edited third person defenses of the film in the imdb comments section, you have to know you're in for far more shit than shinola. A little tip, Mr. Wright: when Michael Bay defends his crap on imdb comments, he employs an alias. It doesn't stop people from making fun of him, but it gives people slightly less to make fun of.

10. Bad Boys 2. Some of my memories of this film get mixed in with the original Bad Boys, which contained similar footage of Will Smith running around with his shirt open or off while bathed in saturated yellow hues. (I suppose Michael Bay used the same lighting in a milk commercial or something and just kind of stuck with the style.) Most hateful scenes: the one where the two Bad Boys intimiate the prom date of one of their daughters (they pull guns on him); the gratuitious speedboat chase; and the Hummer crushing the shanty-town scene (people do live in those places, Mr. Bay). I'll say this for Michael Bay, the man can aim a camera. But his films seem to actively hate human beings so much that I really don't give a shit.

9. Under Seige 2. Yes, I know, the originial Under Seige was nothing special either. But Tommy Lee Jones gave a wonderful over-the-top performance as the villain in that one, and Erika Eleniak was easy on the eyes. Its success, sadly, made the sequel inevitable, so we got this piece of crap. Eric Bogosian is the baddie in this movie, and while I really like Eric Bogosian, I ended up feeling sorry for him. Was he thinking, as he read his crummy dialog, that given ten minutes with a laptop he could spin something much richer and more interesting. (Or maybe he was just thinking about the nice house this movie would buy, but we'll get to Michael Caine in Jaws the Revenge shortly.) Steven Seagal beats up a bunch of people on a train, then stops Eric Bogosian from using some satellites to do something mean to somebody. There's your fucking plot summary. Next film.

8. Halloween 5. Or was it 4? They run together after a while. The original Halloween was a touchstone in horror film history, like The Exorcist, Psycho, The Shining, or the first Hammer Horror Dracula. Done fast, cheap, and scary as hell, the Carpenter redefined the genre for the next twenty years. Unfortunately, it also provided commerical justification for this piece of crap. Michael Meyers escapes again and goes off on yet another rampage while Donald Pleasance (between this movie and L'uomo Puma, I'm gussing Pleasance had many, many college educations to pay for) fights to protect a girl with psychic powers who can see into Mike Meyers's mind, or something like that. In the end, Michael Meyers is trapped and once again defeated. Or is he?

7. The Final Conflict. Hey, I'm a big Sam Neill fan. From Reilly: Ace of Spies to The Piano, the guy really is superb, and he should be much more famous than he actually is. James Mason must have spotted the talent in him, because he recommended that Neill play Damien Thorn in the final (uh-huh) chapter of the Omen Trilogy. Neill is okay in the flick, but, oh, Roger Ebert says it best: "In addition to its opening sequence, THE FINAL CONFLICT has one other great scene involving a fox hunt and a plot by the priests of the Italian monastery to lure Damien away from the hunt and kill him. This scene is wonderfully staged and edited. But the movie is otherwise a growing disappointment, as we realize that the apocalyptic confrontation between the forces of good and evil is being reduced to a bunch of guys with Italian accents running around trying to stab Damien in the back." As with most other religious expressions, this film is probably best admired for its music. Everything else about it is pure bullflop.

6. Return to the Blue Lagoon. Okay, remember the original couple from The Blue Lagoon? Apparently, they died on their way back to civilization, but their child lived to be picked up by a passing ship. Sadly, this ship later starts to suffer from the plague, so to save the child, this woman gets on a lifeboat with her adopted child and her natural son and floats back to, BOING, the same island. This is a stroke of luck, because the previous tenants left their infrastructure behind. (I'd have broken it down to build a better raft, but that's why I'm alive and they're dead, I guess.) The mother then drops dead so that the way is clear for the two children to develop into adolesence, discover "bumps" (sorry, I flashed to that Dr. Who parody where the Master, played by the marvelous Jonathan Pryce, explains that his new breasts are, in fact, Dallek bumps, which can detect energy transmissions and...everything.), and otherwise follow the plot of the original film. A line from the MSTified version of Cave Dwellers comes to mind when I think of how they cast this film: "If you can look bored and speak haltingly, you're in."

5. Jaws the Revenge. Yes, this time it was personal, but not in the way the blurb writer meant. I hated this movie, and if I ever get my hands on the sonofabitch who greenlighted it, I'll... Okay, trip this. Remember the shark that Sheriff Brodie blew up in the first Jaws picture? Well, aparently that shark, or a relative of that shark, or a clone of that shark, or a shark who went to middle school with that shark, took offense and decided to hunt down the entire Brodie family. (Not that this involves a lot of hunting. There are only two sons and they both live on coasts. Now, if this fucking shark wanted to impress me, he'd have munched on Sheriff Brodie's shitball fundamentalist cousin in Nebraska.) Killing the first son is easy. He's local, and works on a boat. After that, though, the shark has to get the other son and Mrs. Brodie. How does the shark know where the other Brodie son lives? Bet you'll never guess. Go ahead. Try. Give up? Mrs. Brodie gets on a plane after her son's funeral and flies down to the Carribean, and the shark follows her! Evidently this shark, though bloodthirsty and bent on revenge, remains capable of exploiting his many connections with the upper echelons of the airline industry. Anyway, the shark starts harassing Mrs. Brodie's son, which makes it slightly harder for a local pilot (Michael Caine) to put the moves on her. Eventually, to prevent further death, Mrs. Brodie goes out to sea to sacrifice herself while having flashbacks to events in Jaws that she wasn't around to see. Caine and Brodie's kid fly out to rescue her, crash, but end up getting into the boat, shark notwithstanding. Then some random things happen that end with the shark impaling himself on the prow of the boat, roaring his death agony(!) At the end, the Michael Caine character threatens to tell another story, and everyone moves, leaving no forwarding address.

Why I'm Jaded About 2006

I'm sure I've brought up many of my reasons for looking at the 2006 elections pessimistically, but Kos wraps them up in a neat little package.

It's Contagious

Three reasons I'd like to visit Italy:

1) I can kinda get by in the language.

2) The culture, the history, the food. (Sort of a 2a, 2b, and 2c there)

3) They can't give me too much shit when they have a leader like this:

In a campaign that has largely avoided pressing issues, Berlusconi managed to win what amounted to an endorsement from President Bush and a rare opportunity to speak before the U.S. Congress early this month. Although Bush is unpopular in Italy, Berlusconi has used his friendship with the president to prove his importance on the world stage.

And many Italians buy it. They laugh at him, or roll their eyes, but they also, begrudgingly or not, admire his successes. He has managed to portray his many legal troubles, including calls Friday for yet another indictment, as a plot by communist judges and prosecutors out to get him. Even his embarrassing comments he later blames on leftist journalists out to get him.

"He's a megalomaniac," said supporter Giuliano Ferrara, editor of the Il Foglio newspaper, which is partly owned by the Berlusconi empire. "But he's also a great victimist. He knows how to act like a victim."

Berlusconi, whose hair seems to grow thicker and darker by the day, has acknowledged having face-lifts. A short man pushing 70, he often wears makeup and heels and sports a George Hamilton tan. He is known for making poor-taste jokes that often insult or embarrass world leaders and for grabbing headlines with comments such as saying he would abstain from sex until the election and promising to sail to Tahiti if he lost. A former cruise ship singer married to an ex-actress, he plans to release a new CD of his songs ahead of the election.

"I am the Jesus Christ of politics," he told supporters over a dinner late last month.

"I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone."

And a few days before that, on a TV talk show: "We have worked a lot. Only Napoleon did more than me — but I am certainly taller than him."

Actually, the sailing to Tahiti thing sounds like win-win to me. But Italian politics sounds awfully American right now. (Right down to that Tahiti thing. Bush made a similar remark back in 2000.) A rich guy with no real thoughts runs on the I'm-With-Stupid ticket, achieves power, then spends all his time figuring out how best to remain in power, building a personality cult that, while not unversally effective, works for people dumb enough to fall for his okeydoke. My guess: Berlusconi will slither back into office again, allowing Italy to continue as a kleptocracy, just like us.

Bushism. Think of it as the political bird flu.

Silliest. Shooting. Ever.

Cyborg 2. Can't stop laughing. Just click the link.

Preach on, Brother Digby

I can't improve on this post from Digby demolishing the "knee-jerk left's" supposed hostility to religious Democrats. I volunteered for John Kerry and Al Gore, and I voted twice for Clinton. For Christmas, I bought my dad Jimmy Carter's most recent book, which we both like a lot. In the '88 primary, I pushed my mom to caucus for the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Hell, I was even there for Mondale--the son of a preacher man. Where were the rest of you?

I've always thought the crap that we freethinkers get from people like Amy Sullivan, implying that we somehow intimidate Democratic presidential candidates into hiding their religious faith, was pure bunk. The freethinking left just doesn't have the numbers to intimidate any but the most enfeebled candidate, and over the years we've happily tossed votes to, gee, thousands of overtly religious candidates at all levels of government. (It's that or don't vote.) Much of the squeamishness some Democratic candidates have shown about discussing their religion stems less, I think, from fear of nonbelievers than it does from simple good manners. When I was a lad, not so very long ago, I was taught that well brought-up people didn't air their religious opinions among strangers. Such discussions, my parents said, made for itchy, brittle evenings. It's a pity this standard of etiquette has fallen on such hard times. But I don't think for a minute that John Kerry seemed uncomfortable with public piety because he feared anyone or wanted to hide his Catholicism; it was because his mom and dad raised him right. I appreciated his reticence because it recalled better times, when the winners of Presidential elections actually became President. (Ms. Vowell, that joke of yours is gold, pure gold!)

Manners aside, all religions in this country may be equal, but some are more equal than others in the public square. White evangelicals and fundamentalists have been bullying their way onto the airwaves and into political parties for the last hundred years. There has been little to stop them, of course. America has been white Protestant-friendly since, well, always really. But it wasn't that long ago that Catholics couldn't join country clubs in this country. The KKK had, and may still have for all I know, Catholics on their enemies list. Mitt Romney, a Mormon, does nothing to hide his Mormonism; but he seems every bit as reticent to talk about his faith as John Kerry was to talk about his. (The Christian Right doesn't like the Mormons, as a rule, and Romney needs their support in '08.) When Joe Lieberman was running for the VP spot on Gore's ticket, pundits asked whether people would vote for a ticket with a devout Orthodox Jew on it. My response: not if that's the way he's going to debate Dick Cheney. And somehow I don't think America would feel quite so comfortable with out-and-proud Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims. (Does X take orders from Osama Bin Laden? What if Y reaches enlightenment just as the North Koreans launch their missiles? We put these questions to James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell tonight Hardball.) Many people who believe in minority religious faiths would have good reason to very twitchy talking about their faith in during an election campaign for fear of electoral failure, scorn, ridicule, and physical danger.

And as for atheists, well, George H.W. Bush's quote says it all:

I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

A very specific God. If Amy Sullivan wants to find out who has been making it hard for people of all religions--or no religion--to rub shoulders comfortably, she might want to recall the words of her Lord in Matthew 7:3: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

The Answers To Questions Nobody Asked

I don't know how big a movement it is, but it appears that a growing number of pharmacists want the right to refuse to serve patients whose prescriptions conflict with their religious beliefs.

"We are not dispensing machines," Rod Shafer, executive director of the Washington State Pharmacy Association, said, "We are professionals who have as many rights as anybody else."

No, they're not machines, but by refusing to provide medicines to people who legitimately need them, it seems to me that they're behaving unprofessionally. Maybe it's part of our pundit-infused culture, but we have a lot of people walking the Earth assuming that the demand for their opinions is brisker than it really is. (At this point, your friend and humble blogger eyes himself uncomfortably.) A pharmacist is free to publish his opinions about birth control or biotechnology or physician-assisted suicide in any newspaper, magazine, or bathroom wall that will accept them. If he feels so conflicted about what he's doing that he's uncomfortable in the job, this signals a moment for a career change. The clergy, I hear, takes people who enjoy dispensing religious advice.

Imagine if other professions started pulling this crap. Suppose you go to the drug store to pick up some cold medicine and a pack of condoms, but the only cashier on duty, a Christian Scientist, refuses to ring up either? Or how about a waiter at a restaurant who refuses to serve you a glass of wine or Coca-Cola because he's a Mormon? We could run things that way, I guess, but it would make life a much bigger pain in the neck than it really needs to be, and could prompt a good deal more religious resentment than a healthy society wants.

I don't deny that many people feel they have religious responsibilities, but they also have the duties associated with their jobs. If the devout find that their religious duties conflict with their work, they should seek what they regard as a more righteous way of turning a buck.

Declensions of Suck

Larry asks a simple but wonderfully complicated question. Why must people suck? I don't have an answer, but it might help things along if we break this question down, teasing out the variations of suckitude that permeate our species. After 2.3 million years of wandering around and asking each other for lettuce, we've come up with many varieties.

Epic Historical Sucking: Leading lights include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Milosevic, Torquemada, Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Gilles De Rais, Countess Bathory, Vlad Tepesh, and many many more. Those who suck on this level share a number of nasty traits. They are utterly ruthless, see no value in the lives of others, and enjoy playing out their sadistic fantasies. Most of them also express absolutist sentiments about right and wrong, and most feel a need to surround themselves with an aggressive personality cult that raises them to the level of godhood. Will George W. Bush, who displays most of these traits, rise to this level of suckitude? We must wait and see.

The Mediocre: Examples include Michael Bolton, Christopher Cross, Kenny G, Kerry Collins (we've released him at last!), David Brenner, Aaron Spelling, Glen Larson, Bill Frist, and many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many more. This is a large, but not the largest, category of suck, involving those who have reached a position of success in their field that their talents don't warrant. I'd hoped that George W. Bush would stay in this category, but he's much more ambitious than he ever lets on. If these people were less successful at eating up resources that could otherwise nourish the more talented, people might resent them less.

The Lazy: These people do the absolute minimum necessary to get by in life, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't often inhabit positions that can do us damage. Anyone, in any profession, can suck this way, which is really bad if you need new spark plugs in your car, new plumbing in your house, a good defense in a lawsuit, or a competent heart valve replacement. The masters of the half-assed job, the Lazy are ubiquitous.

The Spineless: Relatives of the lazy, these people always flinch at the first sign of danger. While this is sometimes a useful quality (A spineless Hitler would have been a lot easier to manage--"I want to kill the Jews and enslave the Russians, but, um, that's just me. What does everyone else think?"), it more often leads to disaster (the Democratic Party). The worst of the spineless encourage others to be brave on their behalf. I'm looking at you, Jonah Goldberg.

The Lickspittles: Often, those who are mediocre become notable for it by this route. These people are the Rosencranzes and Gildensterns of the world--slick, servile little friends to anyone who can do them the slightest favor. They are untrustworthy largely because, even if you're in the position to grant them favors, someone else is always in a position to grant more. Elizabth Bumiller is a lickspittle, as is Chris Matthews.

The Pious: Those who imagine themselves as on the side of that which is pure and good, while imagining that all others are degraded and evil. This kind of suckiness crossses all ideological lines, though it tends to be strongest wherever a clergyman is present. The pious can rationalize any awful deed they commit by invoking their piety. They're exhausting to deal with.

The Mingy: Those who delight in putting others through petty torments. Tall people who will seek out a short person in a movie theater and sit in front of them, hackers who write viruses for computers, urinators who piss on toilet seats, these people seek the attention of their fellow humans by giving them a small slice of hell. In countries ruled by people who suck on an Epic Historical level, the Mingy are the bureaucrats who take special delight in stamping DENIED on forms. In the corporate world, they're the people who haul you into their offices whenever you're a minute overdue from a bathroom break.

The Violent: Self explanitory. This applies both to physical violence and the crippling emotional violence common among certain cliques of teenaged girls.

The Duplicitous: Again self-explanitory. In the movie Excalibur, Merlin says that truth is the most important value for a knight, because every time a lie goes unchallenged, part of the world dies. That's more or less right. In our current politics, that part of the world is Iraq.

Now, for extra credit, class, match each declension of suck to its corresponding circle in Dante's Inferno.

Re: Impeachment

I've been listening to the debate about impeachment between Lewis Lapham and Harold Meyerson. While I see that there are enormous practical problems with it (President Cheney? President Hastert? How to get past a Republican congress? How to get 2/3 in the Senate), I still see it as something the Democrats ought to pursue. It may not confer any advantages on the Democrats for '06 or '08, but that's beside the point. The point to me is that, since High Crimes and Misdemeanors aren't spelled out in the Constitution, what we and future generations have to go on is precedent--how the statement has historically been interpreted to decide what is impeachable and what is not. It would be sad indeed, if future Americans were to look back and decide that lying a nation into war, torture, kidnapping, domestic spying, defiying the legislative and judicial branches, and degrading the checks and balances meant to secure the republic were unworthy of impeachment, while lying in a deposition about a blowjob or leaping into a congressionally set impeachment trap merited trial in the Senate.

UPDATE: Actually, Congress, not just congressional Democrats, should pursue the matter. There must be one or two Republicans in Washington who have enough dignity and self respect left to resent all the lying, all the stonewalling, all the criminal assaults on our liberty. Must be? Well, probably not. But it would be nice to think there are.

Goodbye, Collins

The Raiders cut Kerry Collins this evening to free cap space. I'd expect Collins to turn up in Baltimore, where his former mentor, Jim Fassel, is the offensive coordinator. It's too bad Collins never found a way to ressurrect his career in Oakland the way Rich Gannon did. He seemed like a decent guy, but we can't be too sentimental about a quarterback with a 7-21 record.

So the Raiders move on. To where? It's anyone's guess. If the CBA isn't extended tonight, free agency is going to be tough for everyone. Chad Pennington is out of the picture, and my guess is that Miami will make a stronger play for Drew Brees than we will. Daunte Culpepper is still a possibility, but Tui or Walter would have to start the first few games of the season for him at the very least. Or it could be that the Raiders make a play for one of the top three quarterbacks on the board in the draft. Who knows?

Still, the Raiders need a fresh start, and so does Collins. It's for the best.

UPDATE: Collins gets a reprieve. Boy I'm sick of being jerked around on this.

Are You Threatening Me? You Do Not Want to Face The Wrath of My Bunghole!

Neuropolitics.org has a survey up that seeks to discover the psychological profiles of liberals and conservatives. I took the quiz, and here's my profile:

Your responses are consistent with the following attributes: You have a lower propensity for large-group social bonding than most people. Higher involvement of your olfactory system in your relationships. You have a probable elevation in your dopaminergic activation system. Possible reduction in serotonergic activity and a corresponding reduction in dominance-seeking behaviors. Your right prefrontal cortex is more involved in your political decision-making than your left. Indicators of enhanced right prefrontal and bilateral temporal activity in humor detection. Prefrontal cortical regions are facilitating greater than average behavioral inhibition. Color preferences may indicate an enhanced dopamine level in your visual cortex. Responses point to a probable increase in activity in the right anterior cingulate and amygdala. You have a higher tolerance for ambiguity in your thinking styles, and a greater inhibition of your left inferior parietal cortex. Your responses indicated a tendency to classify facial expressions as more threatening, and an elevation in activity in your right amygdala. Overall, your cognitive style is shifted more towards your right hemisphere.

Okay, a lot of the neurophysical lingo lost me, but I do find it interesting that I see most facial expressions as threatening. Maybe that's why I always loved the Cornholio character on "Beavis and Butthead". IN MY COUNTRY WE HAVE BUT ONE BUNGHOLE! ARE YOU THEATENING ME? THE STREETS WILL FLOW WITH THE BLOOD OF THE NONBELIEVERS!

Sorry.

Neuropolitics.org also discuss their survey data in this article. I think their discussion is based on a larger and more extensive survey than the online version. (Either that or I accidentally skipped questions.) Anyway, it more or less matches my experience. I do prefer cats to dogs. I'm very territorial but despise heirarchies (which is why I put up with all the crap involved in being self-employed). I oppose great concentrations of wealth. I never participated in high school team sports, and I've always been deeply introverted. I have a general preference for more saturated colors, though my favorite color is the color of Johnny Cash and the Oakland Raiders--black.

The Twenty-Five Worst Sequels In Movie History (Well, Ten of them anyway)

Entertainment Weekly put up their list, which to the best of my knowledge is not available on-line (sigh). Here's mine:

25. The Godfather Part III. Who'd have thought the Corleone family could be so dull? I tried three times to make it through this movie before I gave up.

24. Jaws 2. The other Jawses will be along shortly, and this one is as low on the list as it is only because it's hard to remember any of the characters in it. (Spoiler: The shark eats a lot of them.)

23. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. This movie I remember mainly because they showed it at Tracy Empey's birthday party in 1986--the first birthday party I was ever invited to. (I also had a bit of a crush on Ms. Empey. She looked great in that Tzeitel costume in Fiddler.) This movie was an okay bit of amusement at the party, largely because we were encouraged to mock the proceedings as they unfolded on-screen. We formed sort of an impromptu MST3K, saying things like "When she said 'slip me your pickle, she didn't mean that.'" (Those who've seen the movie know which shot I'm talking about.) Fundamentally, the movie is just more cheesy than it is scary.

22. Amityville II: The Possession. No one has ever hated anything as much as I hated this movie. The only reason it's not higher on the list is that a higher position might encourage people to watch this miserable, steaming pile of offal. I usually step off when I see the opening credits, but sometimes I make it all the way to the casual incest scene. (The older brother asks his younger sister to take her clothes off so that he can snap photos of her and SHE JUST DOES IT?!? This family was diseased before it was possessed.) The movie manages the amazing trick of being both offensive and dull.

21. Hello, Mary Lou. Prom Night II. Less offensive than Amityville, but just as boring. I only saw it because they were running it before The Shining on a Halloween night some years back. It's basically a warmed over Exorcist plot (a trait it shares with Amityville II, come to think of it) where lots of thirty-year old teenagers get naked and die in the most boring ways.

20. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. While it is true that Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis were all pretty mediocre films (note to Paramount: forget the whole even/odd thing. One word titles just aren't lucky for this franchise), this one is the bad one everyone remembers and the reason why Dennis Miller's "Star Trek VI: The Apology" joke spread so far and wide. Nimoy says he warned Shatner during pre-production that the story was bad, but Shatner, in perhaps the world's first George W. Bush imitation, ploughed ahead, assuring everyone that it was going to work. Well it didn't. And the lousy special effects, forced by the rushed production schedule, failed to make the story look better than it was. Ugly.

19. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. A great moment in The Princess Bride is when the kid, hearing that the hero is dead and that the evil Prince is going to live, cries, "Jesus, Grandpa, what did you read me this thing for?" I felt the same way at the end of Terminator 3. This movie did not seem to appreciate that in Terminator 2 the stakes changed. We were no longer interested so much in whether John Connor died. We were interested in whether we were going to die. Once this movie tells me that John Connor and his girlfriend get to live while my future involves being launched into the stratosphere and spread over a wide area, I'm sorry but I really can't express glee. And the future's not even so great for John Connor. He and the rest of humanity get to fight an endless war against an implacable computerized enemy. If that's what survival is all about, who needs it? I don't mind depressing cinema. We're all headed for a pretty ugly end some way or other and it's worth some thinking about. But movie romances don't lend themselves to those kinds of thoughts. It's like ending a fairy tale by saying, "And then the black knight killed Galahad, raped the virtuous Maid Enyde, and drove her into a life of degradation, alcoholism and prostitution. She died, naked and filthy, in hovel, rotten with syphillis and choking on her own vomit. Sweet dreams." Yeah, thanks Arnold.

18. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Nothing of any importance really happens in this movie. None of the characters arouse more than a flicker of interest, and every time one theatens to do so, Jar Jar Binks jumps into upstage them. Now I'd have tolerated Jar Jar's presence if he'd been either narratively important or remotely competent. He was neither, so I wanted him to die in a messy accident.

17. The Karate Kid III. During the first Karate Kid movie, I'm sure all Mr. Miyagi figured was that he'd teach this dumb Jersey kid a few moves and get some household chores done in exchange. Okay, maybe a friendship would develop. Then the kid would go out into the world, maybe dropping Miyagi a postcard or e-mail now and then. A wedding invitation or godfathership was not out of the question. A life sentence of rescuing Daniel Laruso from a never-ending series of contrived problems with bullies probably never occurred to Miyagi. Or us. And they don't get more contrived than they do here. See, the guy who ran the evil dojo whose students lost in the tournament to Daniel in the first movie goes to a friend who promises to help him get revenge and his business back. This involves bringing in a karate ringer and then convincing Daniel to re-enter the tournament and defend his title. Then, the reasoning goes, the ringer can beat up Daniel in the middle of the ring for all to see, and in this way, Mr. Evil Dojo gets more students. (Why this would work, I don't know; but I'm not really in a position to speculate on the psychopathology of karate tournament spectators.) Since Daniel won't sign, however, the ringer has to threaten him, Mr. Miyagi, and Daniel's friend until Daniel signs. It's called extortion, and you can go to prison for it; but does anyone call the police, or have security cameras installed, or anything? Of course not. Instead it all comes down to Daniel learning an even more unanswerable karate move from Miyagi so that he can win the tournament again.

16. The Exorcist II: The Heretic. John Boorman has made some wonderful films, as had Richard Burton. This is not one of them. The movie wants to contemplate the nature of evil and the power of good, but ultimately it's more about seeing Linda Blair's nipples and Richard Burton's sweat. And the less said about James Earl Jones dressed as a grasshopper the better.

15. The Cave Dwellers. Like Satan, this film is known by many names--The Blade Master and Ator L'invincibile 2 among them. It's the story of a really boring old man who shows his hot valley girl daughter his invention, which is everything and nothing. Everything and Nothing must be defended lest a man with a bird shaped hat use it to do something evil. So the valley girl must go to Ator, who gained his fame in the first movie by fighting the worlds largest velour spider puppet. Mr. Bird Hat attacks the boring old guy's castle, but even though the old man makes no attempt to hide Everything and Nothing, Bird Hat can't seem to locate it. Valley Girl runs to the Ends of the Earth to find Ator, and well, the rest of the movie is about them coming back. Along the way, they fight mimes and guys in wicker armor, encounter invisible villains, duel heart eating cannibals, and battle the best looking man in the middle ages. Eventually, Ator hang glides over the castle, carpet bombing it to clear it of guards, then fights the climactic battle with Mr. Bird Hat. A fun movie if you have a bunch of friends or the MST3K boys to watch it with.

I'd go on, but these memories are all painful to one degree or other. The next ten at a later date. Cheerio!

Yeah, Imagine What He Can Do

Senator Ted Stevens claimed that he backed off a bill that would have increased the number and the size of oil tankers that pass through Puget Sound at the request of Mike McGavick, Republican candidate for Senate here in Washington. Said McGavick: "I'm pretty proud of the role I played in this. If I can do this as a candidate, imagine what I can do as a senator."

Actually, he didn't do much of anything. According to the Seattle P.I.: "Since November, the legislation has been all but dead, anyway, mostly because of a filibuster threat by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash." Stevens's withdrawl was basically a stunt, meant to make McGavick seem more effective than he is. Indeed, it raises a couple of questions about his candidacy. If McGavick could stop Stevens all by himself as a private citizen, what do we need him in the Senate for? And, if this was just a stunt meant to boost McGavick's candidacy, what would McGavick owe Stevens after the election? How many bridges to nowhere and repeals of environmental legislation would McGavick be obliged to support?

This could turn out great for Stevens. In exchange for giving up on a bill that wasn't going to pass anyway, he has a chance to install his own pet in a nearby state. Stevens could then stick his tanker deal in some omnibus legislation next year, and McGavick could vote for the whole thing without having to endorse the policy.

Where The President Learned Governance

From King Richard IV, of course:

Messenger 3: My Lord, news...

King: What?

Messenger 3: Lord Wessex is dead.

King: (raises his arms in triumph; Messenger 3 raises his arms too) Ah-- (lowers his arms) This news is not so good.

Messenger 3: Pardon, My Lord?

King: I like it not. Bring me some other news.

Messenger 3: Pardon, My Lord?

King: I LIKE NOT THIS NEWS! BRING ME SOME OTHER NEWS!!!

Messenger 3: Yes, My Lord!

(Messenger 3 leaves; King tosses things aroung angrily; Messenger 4 enters -- actually just Messenger 3 pretending to be a new messenger delivering new news.)

Messenger 4: My Lord, news...

King: What?

Messenger 4: Lord Wessex is not dead.

King: Ah, good news! (lifts his arms halfway; Messenger 4 does also) Let there be joy and celebration; let jubilation reign!

Messenger 4: Yes, My Lord.

In our version the part of Messenger 3/4 shall be played by Michael Brown/Donald Rumsfeld, and Lord Wessex will be played by either Baghdad or New Orleans, depending on the day. For U.S audiences we've retitled the story Mission Accomplished.

You Can Take Off the Garments Now

In the L.A. Times

From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose A. Loayza the conviction that he and millions of other Native Americans were descended from a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World more than 2,000 years ago.

"We were taught all the blessings of that Hebrew lineage belonged to us and that we were special people," said Loayza, now a Salt Lake City attorney. "It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God."

A few years ago, Loayza said, his faith was shaken and his identity stripped away by DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.

"I've gone through stages," he said. "Absolutely denial. Utter amazement and surprise. Anger and bitterness."

For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.

For those outside the faith, the depth of the church's dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn't sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland — and that U.S. history books were wrong.

Brief pause here to point out that the reporter's analogy is imperfect. Historians would undoubtedly be skeptical if someone claimed that the Pilgrims came from Iceland, because the documentary and archeological evidence converges around the theory that they came from England in the early 17th century. If, however, a renegade historian had the goods, or at least led others to seek out and find the goods, the history books would have to change. That's the thing about history; we don't take it on faith. A more appropriate analogy, and one that stirs up religious passions all its own, is the lack of archeological evidence for a 40-year mass exodus of Hebrews out of Egypt. (The curious can go to Proquest and check out an article called "Conservative Movement Split On Exodus: In wake of Rabbi Wolpe's sermon saying event didn't happen, a debate on history vs. faith", orginially published in New York Jewish Week.)

Anyway, back to the L.A. Times:

Critics want the church to admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders have shown no inclination to do so. Indeed, they have dismissed as heresy any suggestion that Native American genetics undermine the Mormon creed.

Yet at the same time, the church has subtly promoted a fresh interpretation of the Book of Mormon intended to reconcile the DNA findings with the scriptures. This analysis is radically at odds with long-standing Mormon teachings.

Some longtime observers believe that ultimately, the vast majority of Mormons will disregard the genetic research as an unworthy distraction from their faith.

I always love it when a religion whose texts are "literal and without error" suddenly require "fresh interpretation" in light of scientific data. I wonder if the Church will retroactively excommunicate those responsible for the old "misinterpretation". To me it would be far simpler to admit that Joseph Smith was full of crap about the whole golden plates thing, but to each his own, I guess. Faith based reasoning, you've got to love it.

Happy News?

From Adam Schefter at NFL.com:

OUT IN OAKLAND ...?

Kerry Collins might have to look elsewhere for work next season.
The Raiders and reps for quarterback Kerry Collins are scheduled to meet later this week in Indianapolis at the Scouting Combine to try to determine each party's plans for the coming season.

It sounds as if the sides are headed for a mutual divorce, with the Raiders apprehensive about paying Collins the $2.5 million roster bonus due to him next week as well as his $6 million base salary for 2006, and the quarterback apprehensive about returning to Oakland to be the starter.

It looks like both sides feel it would be better to start fresh, the Raiders with a new face at quarterback, Collins with a new city and new offense. But nothing will become official until the two sides meet later this week.

Craig Not Bond?

Actually, according to his contract he is, at least for now, but some Bond fans want to boycott Casino Royale in protest of Daniel Craig's hiring. I know they won't listen to me, or even hear me, but if I could say anything to them I'd say this: give the bloke a chance. He may not fit the physical type we've come to expect, but from what I understand he's an excellent actor. Maybe he can make the Bond role his own, maybe not. I'm willing to watch him try.

Quote of the Day

"The words 'merely' and 'money' never go together."
--Sidney Reilly "Reilly: Ace of Spies"

Irving Goes to Jail

You can read the story here. I'm not a huge fan of throwing twits like Irving into prison for being twits--as I see it, you have the right to believe whatever half-witted bullshit you please, provided I have the right to debunk your fool ideas and mock you mercilessly. Still, it's hard to summon up much sympathy for Irving, a lying prick:

"I've never been a Holocaust denier and I get very angry when I'm called a Holocaust denier," he said.

I guess when Irving said in Erroll Morris's Mr. Death that the Leuchter Report made him a "hardcore disbeliever", he was talking about Santa Claus.

UPDATE: Michael Shermer, who has interviewed Irving, writes this well-considered editorial Free Speech, Even If It Hurts. I agree. Let's spring the bastard, for principle's sake. But let's use the truth to carve the hateful son of a bitch to pieces once he's out.

Brokeback Mountain

I had a free afternoon, so I went out and caught a matinee at the Seven Gables down in the U-District. I'm glad I did. I don't want to spoil anything because bitterspice might want to see it at some stage, and she's one of the two people who read this blog for something other than washer/dryer repair tips. I will say this. Those expecting gay erotica will be disappointed. Brokeback Mountain is a movie about obligations and fears, and how two very particular people negotiate, or fail to negotiate, them. What makes it interesting as a piece of gay cinema is that it doesn't spend a lot of time insisting on the humanity of its protagonists; it takes that as a given and explores their problems.

The movie does contain one element I wonder about. During a Thanksgiving dinner scene, a family is watching the Thanksgiving day game. According to the credits, the game that they're watching is the 1977 Grey Cup, which doesn't take place on U.S. Thanksgiving, and wouldn't be too popular in Texas. Did the NFL not want to license its footage for the movie? Did the league simply ask for too hefty a fee? Or was it that, because Brokeback Mountain was shot in Canada, some Canadian film board insisted on CFL footage? Anyway, it was lucky for the film that, from a distance, the Edmonton Eskimos look like the Green Bay Packers.

Sunday Sermon

"If Religion be not within cognizance of Civil Government, how can its legal establishment be said to be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to perpetuate it [liberty], needs them not."

James Madison "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments"

Iran Renames Danish Pastries

It's a shame to see Iran sink to our level.

How Next Year's Shooting Will Go

Day One: Dick Cheney's hunting partner, Samuel Flurffen, was rushed to the emergency room with what the White House calls a "severe cold". In spite of the internal bleeding caused by Flurffen's "heavy sneezing", the White House says he'll be fine.

Day Two: The White House announced that Samuel Flurffen has come down with the very lightest touch of pneumonia. Scott McLellan described rumors that the fluid in Flurffen's lungs was the result of Cheney's firing bullets through Flurffen's torso as an example of "the conspiracy-minded liberal media at work."

Day Three: Samuel Flurffen's internal organs suffered what the White House described as "a slight catastrophic failure" today. While some experts say this occurred because of massive internal injuries and lead poisoning, the White House dismisses these claims. "Sam's organs experienced only a minor failure as the result of his cold. It happens to everyone. Why you guys are obsessed with this we just don't know."

Day Four: The White House reports that Samuel Flurffen is "fine, in the pink, dancing the tarantella and happy as can be." Scott McLellan said that those reporting that Mr. Flurffen's body is stiff and cold "hate America" and should "watch what they say."

Day Five: Samuel Flurffen has been sent to a farm way out in the country, according to White House officials, where he can run and play in the outdoors with other Samuel Flurffens. Scott McLellan said it wouldn't be possible for reporters to visit him at this time, but assured a relieved nation that Flurffen has many wonderful days ahead of him. In a related note, funeral services for Samuel Flurffen will be held at the Little Chapel of Sorrow, 12 King's Road, Amarillo, Texas.

The Valentine's Gift Arrived

For bitterspice's Valentine's Day present, I bought a 1997 Marchesi di Barolo Cannubi, which arrived mere minutes ago. I purchased this particular vintage because 1997 was such a good year for Barolo, and because the wine should be mature by our tenth anniversary in 2008. That should give me the time to save up for the tenderloin steaks that should accompany a wine like this, as well as the charcoal grill to cook them on.

Favorite Onion Bit Today

On making Bush's tax cuts permanent:

Jim Decker,
Systems Analyst
"These tax cuts are necessary in order to stimulate the economy to the point where we can pay for the tax cuts. Why is that hard for you to understand?"

Dateline: February 11th 2007

(AP) Vice President Dick Cheney went hunting in Texas today. Said Cheney, "Last year I got a taste for it, so I've returned to this place to hunt the world's most dangerous game...Man."

The Winter Games

I can't wait for the games in Turin to start. My favorite event is the luge. Any game where abject lunacy is a basic requirement of play is one I have to see.

Current Netflix Films

What I'm watching now:

The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster. If Paths of Glory reflects the most terrifyingly cynical ways in which human beings can treat each other, this film isn't far behind. Curtis plays beta male to Lancaster's alpha, but they're both terrified men. Neither of them can handle things slipping out of their control, and they'll use any means, however dirty, to ensure that things never do. An ugly portrait of the gossip column business in which I see not Walter Winchell, but modern bullies like Bill O'Reilly. (That's a generational thing, I guess.)

The Muppet Movie I haven't watched this one in over twenty years. I can't wait to see Kermit on the bicycle again.

Reilly: Ace of Spies Disc 2. I missed this series when I was younger, but I loved the first disc. Sam Neill would have made an excellent James Bond. Hell, he makes an excellent anything. How he manages to be feral and elegant simultaneously I just don't know.

Scenes From the Police State

I learned of this article by National Journal's Stuart Taylor from Atrios. It debunks the administration's assertion that their prisoners in Cuba are all Taliban fighters caught in the act of attacking U.S. Forces.

A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).

Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.

Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.

The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.

And the administration seeks the power to kill people in this country? If I thought it would help, I'd keep my doors locked.

Todavia Cantamos.

UPDATE 2/8/2006: Ilsa is quite right. Taylor's article is based upon a longer article, also published by National Journal. Taylor links to it, and so shall I.

In A World

Nathan Rabin over at the Onion AV Club blog discusses a movie trailer that asks whether anything you've seen can prepare you for Annapolis?

The answer to that is yes. Everything I've seen tells me that Annapolis will be a hackneyed, Frankenstein-monster of a movie consisting of the spliced together scenes of older movies that I've already seen. So in that sense, yes, I'm prepared for Annapolis. Now, what would prepare me to enjoy Annapolis? That's tougher, but I guess a night of whoring, liquor, Lamborghinis, hard drugs, and rampant mayhem involving dwarves, holstein cattle, and TV's John Stamos could leave me in enough of a stupor that I might like Annapolis. Remove any element from that list, though, and I'd probably decide to sneak into a better movie.

Rabin does ask a fun question though, which I'll leave it to you to answer, either in comments below or in the private reserves of your own souls: "Have you guys ever seen a film for which the 'nothing you've ever experienced can possibly prepare you for' hyperbole actually made any sense?"

Edward, Edward, Edward

Edward Jay Epstein wrote this column on the failure of Hollywood to market original films. While I'm sure they fail at it spectacularly, Epstein picked a very poor example with Michael Bay's The Island:

Consider, for example, DreamWorks' 2005 science-fiction film The Island, an original story about clones who don't know they are intended to be used for organ transplants for rich "sponsors," including movie stars, athletes, and presidents.

Mr. Epstein, The Island is a remake. Well, actually, everyone, including the friendly folks at IMDB, thought it was a remake; but according to the producers of 1979's Parts: The Clonus Horror, Bay and company plagiarized their story:

The producers of the 1979 sci-fi indie flick are suing DreamWorks and WB, stating that "The Island" is more than just a little similar to their low-budget film. "Clonus," produced by Myrl A. Schreibman and Robert S. Fiveson, who also helmed, tells the story of a secret colony of clones who are told they will one day go to a utopian place called "America." They're actually being raised in case their human counterparts need spare organs. One of the clones escapes into Southern California and is chased as he tries to expose the facility.

Now Epstein's main point, that the studios don't know how to market original material, still stands. Sidney Lumet complained in his book on moviemaking that the people who handle marketing for studios are the people who couldn't get jobs marketing other products. Still, Epstein should have done a little checking before he used Bay's ripoff as a case in point.

Meanwhile, Back At the Crawford Ranch

Apparently, the administration's Justice Department (which we will soon be calling the Ministry of Love, or miniluv, in Newspeak) is now providing legal justification for Bush-sponsored death squads. (via Majikthise)

If we know where a terrorism suspect is, why is it insufficient to arrest him? From Bush's point of view, arrest would place a terrorism suspect in the hands of the judicial branch, with all the inconvenient legal rights that involves. A prosecutor would have to explain to a judge why this person is believed to be a terrorist, which might expose a variety of intelligence tactics that violate the U.S. Constitution. A dead suspect can't plead for his legal rights or deny the charges against him. As long as the killing is kept secret, there's no opportunity for oversight from any level of government.

In essence, the Bush administration is claiming the power of life or death over the citizens of the United States. They've made mistakes in identifying Al Qaida suspects before--like that German-Arab fellow on Sixty Minutes whom the CIA kidnapped and tortured, only to release later. With sanctioned murder, the government has a means of guaranteeing that their errors will never be made public.

Next up--the sanctioned murder of incovenient scientists and government officials.

Pittsburgh 21; Seattle 10

Well, it went more or less as I figured. (I actually thought the Steelers would win by more than they did.) The Seahawks were the victims of some bad calls, but their own lack of execution and their befuddling performance with two minutes to go in each half ultimately doomed them. I usually give Holmgren more credit for clock management than that. Sheesh.

Anyway, congratulations to Pittsburgh. Now the offseason begins. Go Raiders!

Super Bowl I

Just got off the phone with my dad, and he told me about Super Bowl I, Kansas City vs. Green Bay. L.A. Coliseum. Apparently enough seats were available that those with bad seats, like my dad, were invited to move closer for the second half. One of Green Bay's receivers played the game of his life that day, catching passes thrown behind him for big yardage. He'd never play that well again. Lombardi's first Super Bowl title. Yeah.

My Super Bowl Predictions

1. The crowd will be much more sedate than they are during the Conference Championship games. That's because, while there are some hometown fans for each team in the stands, a large percentage of the tickets go to various corporate types who don't want the crowd noise to get in the way of their deal-making. This is one of the reasons why the conference championships are so much better than the Super Bowl.

2. The halftime show will suck. I don't give a damn who is doing the halftime show, the very nature of the halftime show precludes entertainment. The people tuning in to watch the games, real football fans, usually use this time to cook food, head to the bathroom, read Finnegan's Wake, and try to keep their spirit of fannish-hostility up. Further, the venue is too big to be suitable for a concert. What you see from the stands are a lot of lights and colors and some tiny-iddy-biddy people who seem only loosely connected to the music that's playing. The people attending didn't come to see the band, which makes them more lethargic than concert crowds. The halftime concert is thus less interesting than concert footage of the same band. Also, the halftime show lengthens the game by forty-five minutes, spoiling its pace. Imagine if, during your favorite movie, someone spliced in an hour's worth of footage of a Paul McCartney and Wings concert. You'd string the projectionist up by his own film. Well, that's what they do to football fans every fucking year with the halftime show.

3. People will make way too big a deal of the commercials. What kind of idiot watches the Super Bowl to see the ads? You'd have to pay me salary and benefits to do a thing like that, but apparently people in this world exist who find in a new Doritos commercial a cause for celebration. It's that kind of stupidity that shows us who Madison Avenue really has by the balls.

4. PIttsburgh will win. Seattle has the talent to win on paper, but so did Indianapolis and Denver. The Steelers's 3-4 defense in the playoffs has been every bit as devastating as those boasted by the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. I don't think Alexander will be able to find the edge against this 3-4, and he's not a great between-the-tackles runner. I like Matt Hasselbeck a lot, but I expect the defense to force Seattle to become one-dimensional, and once that happens, Hasselbeck will be a target for Dick LeBeau's seemingly endless array of blitz packages. Big Ben will, once again, make the plays he needs to make, and take a step toward creating a new legend in Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh 34; Seattle 17.

Cindy Sheehan arrested at State of the Union

I wonder what's on the menu for next year. Maybe they'll arrest the first senator, congressman, or audience member who stops clapping.

What, No Michael Bay This Year?

The Razzie nominations are out. Michael Bay didn't get it in the neck for The Island, but I guess when Uwe Boll and Rob Schneider make movies, everybody else just needs to leave the room. (Boll is his generation's John "Bud" Cardos, while Schneider is, well, just kind of a butt boil.) You can read the full list here.

Onion Bit of the Week

West Wing Canceled

NBC canceled its critically acclaimed show The West Wing after seven seasons. What do you think?

Janelle Peterson,
Social Worker
"The Democrats are even out of fake power?"

Eager Slaves

A passage from a wonderfully mordant Gore Vidal essay:

When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. "Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?" He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: "How eager you are to be slaves." I often think of that wise emperor when I hear Republican members of Congress extolling the wisdom of Bush.

Wake Me When The Great Awakening Is Over

While farting around this morning, I came across Michael Kazin's essay, which argued for Democrats to return to the politics of William Jennings Bryan. It depressed me deeply, because while I don't see much hope for progressive politics in the U.S. generally, I find even less in the progressive politics he propounds. My reason is that the schism between religious and secular liberals, largely buried between Bryan's first run for the Presidency and the Scopes trial, has already emerged. We don't really trust each other. Religious liberals blame secular liberals for losing the red states (because we keep bringing up gay marriage and supporting abortion rights, I suppose); and secular liberals suspect that we have no place in the revival that religious liberals like Kazin propose:

More than 80 percent of Americans hold strong religious beliefs, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Even Christians who don’t regularly attend church regard the Scriptures and the example of Christ as moral touchstones that dovetail with the ideals of Americanism itself. Secular liberals ought to make their peace with this reality, while making sure that no religious faction -- such as creationists -- can install its doctrine into law.

Okay, so we do occupy a position. We exist to stop creationists (like we could with less than 20% of the population). But as charming as that future sounds, Kazin ought to remember that one of the creationists secular liberals had to fight was Kazin's favorite religious liberal, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow's relationship with Bryan and his followersduring the early years of the 20th century broke down over evolution and race, two things that seem like worthy reasons for dissolving political ties. Why should the secular left think another collaboration should turn out any better? What happens if a faction of the religious left tries to install its doctrines into law? Are secular liberals to make peace with that reality? Are we partners in this relationship, or are we to be kept as pets?

Kazin says that secular liberals mistrust the devout because we "still harbor a nagging contempt for the God-fearing, the unhip, and the poorly educated". Perhaps, but let's not forget the contempt that the religious sling at the secular for being the "enemy of normal Americans", "Communists" and so on. I often think of Woody Allen's line in Annie Hall "Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here."

The religious left needn't ask my permission to take control of the Democratic party. In reality, they already have it, though they may not be aware of it. No elected officials at the national level make claims to atheism or agnoticism, and it's not likely in the current environment that any could. Any candidate who wants votes better make sure everyone knows how often he prays and which church he goes to.

Pundits wearing every color of parisan livery exaggerate the secular left's power, mainly so that it can be the scapegoat whenever things go wrong for the left. I don't have figures, but of the 20% of the population that is secular I wouldn't expect more than half to consider themselves leftists. There are secular libertarians, anarchists, objectivists, moderates, and business/supply-side Republicans out there as well. The secular movement (if you can call it that) is disorganized. It lacks leadership. It can't agree on spokespeople. It has no lobby. It has no influence over who gets nominated for judgeships. If you ignore all this, what is left is earth-shaking power. I can't deny it.

So, if the religious left wants to make a revival tent out of the Democratic Party, it seems to me that they're at liberty to do so. If, however, they'd like the secular left to come along, they need to show respect for its issues, not all of which revolve around the teaching of evolution in schools. They need to understand that some of their brothers would still help the poor whether Jesus endorsed it or not, and that many of their sisters reached their moral conclusions in spite of, rather than because of, organized religion. They need to understand that secular people have had believers' footprints on their backs since civilization first came out, so many of them are touchy and suspicious. And they need to respect the secular left's desire for public policy to be based on reason, rather than on competing interpretations of Biblical passages. I don't expect this to happen because politicians don't do anything unless necessity forces them to; but if Kazin wants a leftist reunion for sentimental reasons, it's what has to happen.

Toward the end of his essay, Kazin quotes Czeslaw Milosz:

If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother’s keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying that there is no God.

To which I reply (with a poem that proves that I should stick to prose):

I'm sorry I can't validate
Beliefs you say you have
I'm sorry that my doubtful words
Have made you very sad.
But if your faith is strong and true
What harm can my words do to you?
Since I don't resent it when you have to pray,
Stop telling me what I can and can't say.

The Myth of The Moderate Republican

Wondering where John McCain was when Bush said he'd violate McCain's new torture ban whenever he felt like it? Wondering why the only time Arlen Specter actually talks tough against the religious right is during election season? So is Andrew Altschul in his blog post The Myth of the Moderate Republican Check it out.

A Joke

Someone really needs to flay Ann Coulter alive with clam shells, cut off her head, and sell her corpse to the people who make Hygrade hot dogs.

Laugh it up, Ann.

Good News For Planet Hunters

Astronomers caught a brief glimpse of a rocky world of about seven times the Earth's mass orbiting a red star about 21,000 light years from here. Its discovery (made because of an extraordinary coincidence) suggests that smaller, rocky worlds may be more common than giant Jupiter-like planets, giving us better odds of someday spying a planet similar to our own. (LINK)

It's this kind of news that keeps me going after I read things like Jacob Weisberg's column on NSA spying. (LINK). In it, he recognizes that the claims of executive power the Bush administration is making lay the groundwork for dictatorship--albiet a dictatorship that is obliged to face elections occasionally.

Weisberg doesn't suggest this will lead to such things as the jailing of political opponents, and neither do I. Our reasons differ though. Weisberg thinks Congress would stand up to the President if he went that far. I don't. The administration has been going too far for years with scarcely a peep from Congress. The upcoming hearings on the NSA scandal will probably be a joke. No, I think the Bush administration, and its ideological allies, want to preserve the political opposition for the same reason that The Party in Orwell's 1984 preserved Goldsteinism--so that they can have something to drag out and humiliate whenever they need a propaganda boost. Having perfected their engines of slander and insinuation, the Rovists no longer need to do anything so crude as imprison a wayward writer or member of congress. They want instead to make each election a ritual of humiliation, where their candidate (righteous, patriotic, strong, religious, a Reformer with Results) will crush yet another weak, flip-flopping, bible-hating, gay-loving, Osama-backing opponent.

If the Rovists have their way, elections will be to the United States what trials were to the Soviet Union. The outcome will be decided in advance, but everyone loves a show.

It's a good thing scientists are finding other rocky worlds. We just might need to move to one of them.

Winfrey Dumps Frey

"I made a mistake," Winfrey said at the beginning of her show, shown this morning in Chicago, according to a transcript prepared by ShadowTV, a website that monitors broadcasts. "I left the impression that the truth does not matter, and I am deeply sorry about that. But that is not what I believe."

Link

Run I Tells You! Run and Hide!

Bush has a new health care plan.

Why Bush Can Spy On You

According to General Hayden, who manages the wiretapping program, the NSA can spy on you if they have a "reasonable basis to believe" that you are working with Osama. Not probable cause, not evidence, "a reasonable basis to believe".

Given the other things Bush claimed to have a reasonable basis to believe, this is a pretty fucking frightening standard. I suppose this means that if your neighbor is captured by the CIA, taken for a two-year long torture stretch in the People's Democratic Republic of Scrotumrippia, and he screams out your name while he has an elephant's foot rammed up his ass, you can have your phone tapped (pending confirmation of your reservation in the Shiny Happy People's Democratic Republic of Boilyournutsoffwhileyouwatchia).

Don't laugh. This is pretty much how they connected Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.

I Was Born To Be Wild. My Mom Said I Was.

Last Frey post. Did any of you catch the Larry King Live appearance where Frey goes on King with his mom? There's the badass spirit.

All the Lies That Aren't His Life

I haven't gloated so far about James Frey's misfortune at having been caught in so many lies in his memoir/novel A Million Little Pieces. It is nice to see a guy who was a jerk about how "real" he supposedly was in comparison to Dave Eggers get his comeuppance. I never did buy his yarn, because it seemed like Frey's persona fit so neatly with the story he was trying to tell--a smart-but-alienated suburban student suffers a tragedy that turns him into a badass-druggie before he finds redemption in rehab. The slimy bathroom details of Frey's book aside, how many crime novels, movies-of-the-week, Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations, and ABC afterschool specials fit this general narrative arc? (Take the drugs out of the picture, and it closely matches the plot of I Accuse My Parents, an addlepated good-suburban-kid-gone-bad story that became a popular MST3K episode.) The way I figure it, Frey picked the narrative first, then fashioned a persona to match it.

This may explain why A Million Little Pieces never made it as a literary novel. When the protagonist fits the story too neatly, readers will lose the illusion that the protagonist's decisions (or the untamable, contingent forces of life) drive story events. They'll feel, instead, that the protagonist is merely a part of the author's prefabricated construct--a widget built to the author's specifications. Again, that's fine in genre fiction, which we read more to enjoy the unfolding of the plot than to explore the existence of a person, but it doesn't work for the kind of book Frey aimed to write. Editors, reading the book as a novel, probably found it too pat, too shopworn a tale, to capture their interest. And it's why, as nonfiction, the book raised so many questions. Perceptive readers sensed the fiction in the nonfiction, even if they didn't bother to check up on Frey.

Now, if Frey wanted to do some literary non-fiction, I've got a pitch for him. Why not do a book, film feature, or documentary, in the style of Sherman's March, Adaptation, Out of Sheer Rage, where Frey, a failed fiction writer, looks back in his life and transforms his unremarkable, vanilla suburban experiences into an exciting, page-turning, baditudinous, graphically violent "memoir" that fools Oprah Winfrey and brings him riches the truth could never earn? The theme could be "I can't believe people really think life is really this neat, much less that they'd fill my bank account for confirming their belief."

Check out The Onion's take here.

Gay Panic

Chris Matthews and Don Imus share an "I am so heterosexual" moment (from James Wolcott):

"MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I’ve seen everything else but that. I just—

IMUS: No, I haven’t seen it. Why would I want to see that?

MATTHEWS: I don’t know. No opinion on that. I haven’t seen it either, so—

IMUS: So they were—it was out when I was in New Mexico and—it doesn’t resonate with real cowboys who I know.

MATTHEWS: Yeah—

IMUS: But then, maybe there’s stuff going on on the ranch that I don’t know about. Not on my ranch, but you know—

MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who’s on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]—what’s he call it?—he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That’s his name for the movie.

IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain..."

The transcript doesn't indicate whether buttocks were slapped or potted beef products were consumed during this exchange of manly views.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting mighty sick of this straight male pose that says "We can't (do this/go there/watch this) because we're too straight." I hear Brokeback Mountain is a pretty good picture, and I'll probably check it out either in the theaters or on DVD. I won't go there for an erotic charge because unlike Mickey Kaus I grew up and figured out that not all movies with sex in them are meant to be straight-guy stroke material, and because my track record of turning down offers of gay nookie makes my arousal unlikely. (Though not impossible. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are good looking guys, and I imagine if anyone could induce me to suck a dick, it would be one, or both, of them.)

Besides, I'll never get to be a gay cowboy trying to thread his way through a very straight culture. It might be interesting to consider what that's like. Why not? In my imaginative life I've used books and movies and plays to explore existence as a king, a prince, a princess, a slave, a beggar, a child prodigy, a private detective, a professor, an out-of-work auto mechanic, a boxer, an actor, a Soviet dissident, a victim of the Nazis, a British spy, a singer, a gangster, a starship captain, an alien, an FBI agent, a teacher, a lawyer, a tribal chief, an radio commentator, a serial killer, and a hundred other kinds of things. Why not add a gay cowboy to the list? It may not get me off, but that's not the only way for a story to capture my interest.

Another Memory

A long time ago, I was an actor. And once upon a time, I auditioned for two shows. One audition was for a part in a short film where I played a dimwitted mafia enforcer. The other, which injured me in ways that make me leery of ever returning to the acting trade, was one I arranged just as something else to do while in town. It was held in this little coffee shop/cocktail lounge run by two older women with beehive hairdos. The director was a large, flamboyant black man; the writer was bald and mousy. Their play, they said, was called "In Tandem With Vicki", and my part, they said, was that of her gay friend.

They asked me to camp it up, and I did. But even as I sat there I wondered how the writer, Alan Neff, had the patience to sit and write sixty-some pages of this nonsense. The script contained dialog Ed Wood, Jr. might have written if someone removed his talent for unintentional hilarity. It was attempt at a campy take on the murder of Vicki Morgan, a hustler who'd somehow gotten mixed up with the married Republican millionaire Arthur Bloomingdale. If we take Susan Sontag's definition of camp as failed seriousness, then what do we call failed camp? Even as I read it, I knew I didn't want to do it. I also knew, when I flopped on Neil's futon later that afternoon, that Neff would offer the part to me the first chance he got.

So began four miserable weeks, which ended, mercifully, with them firing me. It wasn't all bad, of course. I learned during the course of the costume fitting that an S&M lifestyle is very hard on the wallet. I learned, by watching a negative example. how important it is to treat actors nicely if you're paying them nothing and holding fourteen-hour rehearsals. Another negative example showed me how dreadfully misguided the maxim "Never give up on your dreams" is. Alan Neff was nothing if not persistent in pursuit of his, as I learned some years later in The Seattle Times:

Up until a few years ago, he directed his creative energies to free-lance movie reviewing. Then one day he checked out of the public library a biography of Vicki Morgan, a 1970s Hollywood call girl. He read the book in a single day and couldn't shake its images from his head.

So, for reasons never much clearer than "I woke up one morning and realized I didn't have a life," he sat down and wrote a play. Lo and behold, he was eventually able to persuade the Northwest Actor's Studio to produce it. He accomplished this largely by badgering the studio's director for months, until she finally relented.

"If I do this, will you leave me alone forever?" was the way the proposition was put to Neff. He accepted. The show went on and Neff still occasionally sweeps the stairs of the Actor's Studio in gratitude.

Yes, Alan Neff never said die, which was too bad really. After I was fired, my agent called me and told me that Neff and the Gang showed up during the intermission of the Northwest Actor's Studio's production of MacBeth and started doing scenes from In Tandem With Vicki on the MacBeth stage. They apparently did this without the knowledge or consent of MacBeth's director. Anger and recrimination followed. My agent told me that I got out at exactly the right time.

She was wrong. I should have gotten out before I got in. But I was my own victim here. I thought I could reach into the pile of offal that was Neff's script and extract a good performance for myself. With similar optimism, Napoleon escaped Elba.

Still, looking back, I wonder what happened to Neff. I've heard nothing from him in the last few years, and a quick google of his name turned up nothing. Maybe his job as a bill collector absorbed more and more of his time and he found his true calling. Maybe he gave up after spending tens of thousands of his own dollars on plays that only drew a handful of ticket buyers per run. He was not a better writer than Ed Wood Jr., but I hope he came, or comes, to a better end. I really do. These are the last lines of Neff's lone story in the Times

The production has a lot of "Hey guys, let's find a barn and put on a play" quality to it. There is not much polish but everybody seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. The cast and crew, who outnumber the audience about two to one, all work for nothing. Still, the production overhead is likely to come in at around $10,000. It is, Neff says, "not a very financially gratifying business."

That, not the quality of the work, is what initially interested me in this story. I wanted to know what might motivate people like Neff to spend so much time and money pursuing such high-risk, low-gain adventures.

What goes on inside their heads? I wondered.

I still don't have a clue, and after seeing the play I'm not entirely sure I want to find out. I do know this, however: We are a very unusual species."

Yeah. That's about the size of it.

Preach on, Brother Al! Testify!

Al Gore gave on hell of a speech yesterday. If you haven't caught it yet, go to CSPAN and check it out. (You'll need Realplayer, and it runs a little over an hour).

Five Little Known Things About Me

Last list for a while, I swear:

1. I, like Majikthise, once tried out for the teen version of Jeopardy!. I actually got pretty far. I passed the test and won all the simulated games, but two things probably killed me. I was kind of a cold fish in the interview (the story of my life right there), and I had, at the time, a case of acne that America really wasn't prepared to see.

2. I have a large collection of teddy bears, and I have invented personalities for each of them. (Hey, you spend most of your free time alone with pages and pages of your own prose and see if you don't invent a few friends.)

3. Someone once successfully dropped my name to Middle Passage author Charles Johnson.

4. In the early months of 1997, I had an affair with a polyamorous married woman. It didn't last for the following reasons: her husband kept pestering me to read his 300-page screenplay, the couple's raging homophobia turned me off, and I balked at having a MMF threesome.

5. Harlan Ellison once called me up and yelled at me because I wrote him to complain about the delay in the publication of "The Knife Man" in Pulphouse. Why did I write him about this? In retrospect, I haven't the foggiest. Ellison wasn't the publisher, and the publisher, Dean Wesley Smith, had a very good reason for delaying publication--his magazine was going broke at the time. I chalk this incident up to adolescent frustrations gone way too far. When Ellison told me I was being an asshole "five different ways", he was underestimating me. Dean was cool about it, though, and the story came out a few months later.

So, I figure this takes care of any future blackmail attempts, unless someone finds out about...no fuck you, I only have to name five things in this list. This blog post is over.

Explain America In Ten Movies

From Lance Mannion

Explain America to someone from somewhere else by giving them 10 movies to watch.

The idea is not to give them a history lesson, so you don't have to start with The New World and end with Jarhead.

What you're trying to do is give them a sense of who we are---your take on our dreams, our attitudes, our idioms, what we think we are, what we are afraid we are, what we really might be.

My list:

1. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
This movie explores better than any in film history our misplaced faith in technological/systemic solutions to human problems.

2. Goodfellas
An excellent portrayal of not only organized crime in America, but also our drive for status and first-class treatment.

3. Superman: The Movie
We've always wanted to believe a man can fly.

4. Inherit the Wind
Don't mistake it for a documentary on the Scopes trial, but it gets the feelings right.

5. Full Metal Jacket
Because we still want to see exotic lands, meet strange and wonderful people, and kill them.

6. JFK
If you want to understand why Americans are cynical about their government, this is as good a place as any to start. Again, it is not to be confused with a documentary.

7. In The Heat of the Night
A genre film that nonetheless confronts racial issues in an intelligent way.

8. Network
So others can understand what our TV diet is doing to us, and what it might someday do to them.

9. Glengarry Glen Ross
So that other countries can know that this is the way we keep score, buhbie.

10. Pearl Harbor
Not that I'd actually wish this movie on anyone, but it does show how some of us, desperate for cash and certain that the audience is stupid, are willing to turn a terrible national nightmare that plunged our country into four bloody years of war into the backdrop for a badly written love triangle.

I invite LADblog and Bitterspice to play.

Quite A Weekend

The Patriots go down, as all good people wanted them to. The Colts and Steelers fought one hell of a game, and the Seahawks finally win in the post-season.

To me the Colts game illustrated one fallacy that dooms a lot of good teams--the belief that resting the starters once home field is won is a worthwhile idea. The Colts took a quarter and a half to find their rhythm, and it was during this time that the Steelers built their 14-0 lead. Maybe if they'd played their starters the last three weeks, they'd have preserved their timing on offense and come into the game sharp. Did they learn nothing from their blowouts of the Denver Broncos over the last two seasons?

It is true that James Dungy's suicide was a horrible distraction, but that's all the more reason to have the team play through the end of the season. It gives players something else to focus on.

It's too bad, really. I was looking forward to seeing Peyton Manning in a Super Bowl. He's a fun quarterback to watch.

Maybe next year.

The Newest Fashions for 2006

I do love election years, when the new grave threats come out.

You May Be In A Jerry Bruckheimer Movie If...

Well, I'll let McSweeney'sbrief you.

I'll just add one more:

20. Someone is always reminding you that "The clock is ticking" and that various objects are "going to blow."

Jerry Bruckheimer used to work in advertising. If only he'd listened to Bill Hicks.

People Sometimes Say the Dumbest Things

LB Joey Porter on the tactics the Colts used to beat his team a couple of months ago:

"They don't want to just sit there, line up and play football," Porter told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "They want to try to catch you off guard. They don't want to play smash-mouth football, they want to trick you. ... They want to catch you substituting. Know what I mean? They don't want to just call a play, get up there and run a play. They want to make you think. They want it to be a thinking game instead of a football game."

Hmm, a team doing everything they can within the rules to win a game. I can see where that might be upsetting. Porter's opponents should be obligated to do exactly what he expects them to do. Only then is the game fair.

This doesn't quite reach the level of that Jets player who, after losing to the Raiders said, "We didn't lose, we just ran out of time." It's still pretty dumb.

The Alito Hearings

The hearings are a kind of banality-of-evil-fest, wherein a dull technocrat to whom people (especially those who are poor, black, and female) are simply gum stuck in the gears of an otherwise perfect legal engine, sits in front of a tribunal and engages in sophistic sparring matches with Senators (ones where the Senators do most of the talking). These are tiresome ceremonies. Alito's a bad guy, and will probably be a very bad justice, but there's nothing to be done. He'll be on the court. The best that can be done is to educate the public on just how bad he'll be; but, if they don't know, they'll find out soon enough.


Side note: I didn't catch the crying jag that Alito's wife had, and I couldn't care less that she had it. There's her poor husband, who has to sit through, at most, two more days of futile questioning before the Republicans hand him a lifetime job. I'll save my pity for people with actual problems.

Not Our Spokesman

The fundamentalists in this country have taken to claiming that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who say a lot of batshit crazy things, aren't their spokesmen. Well, let's see, there's Jack Van Impe, who believes that the aliens in UFOs are fallen angels and that the Illuminati have been engaged in a conspiracy to usher in the reign of the antichrist. Or there's Ann Coulter's pal Rod Parsley, who's tells his worshippers to burn their bills and send the money to him to get out of debt.
Or there's this guy that Majikthise caught up with:

"Dinosaurs were lizards. Lizards never stop growing. That's why old alligators and crocodiles can grow to 25 feet or more. If they lived longer, they would grow even bigger. Before the flood, life lasted longer. Men lived to be 400 to 900 years old. I am sure you don't wish to embrace that thought, but if you embrace God, you embrace His word, and He does not lie. The climate changed after the flood. The earth itself burst open and poured forth floodwaters. The rift probably split the continents asunder, created the mountains, and even tilted the earth off an even 0-degree axis to a 23-degree angle to its orbit. Seasons were born, and winter is hostile to lizards. Thus the dinosaurs died out." MeInKC

So if the fundies don't want Roberston or Falwell as their spokesmen, that's okay with me. There's a sumptuous banquet of batshit crazy to pick from in their spiritual neighborhood.

Translating the Delay Departure in Star Wars Terms

Headline (AP) Coruscant: DARTH MAUL is out as second in command of the Lords of the Sith.

Potential successors include Darth Tyrannus and--after a recent party switch--Darth Vader. A closed-session lightsaber duel between these two Dark Lords will decide the matter, and the Empire waits to unite behind the victor. Each stands ready to deploy Force Lightning against all who "hate freedom".

You can check out the real world equivalent here. Finding out who wins this battle is kind of like finding out whether you're going to be impaled or disemboweled.

Damn

It looks like the Patriots are going to win going away. (I've stopped watching.) Could someone please destroy these bastards?

Yaweh Soprano Makes Another Hit

From JTA--Global News Service of the Jewish People

The Rev. Pat Robertson said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being punished by God for dividing the Land of Israel. Robertson, speaking on the “700 Club” on Thursday, suggested Sharon, who is currently in an induced coma, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995, were being treated with enmity by God for dividing Israel. “He was dividing God’s land,” Robertson said. “And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations or the United States of America. God says, This land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.”

So the manifestation of God's punishment is to give a heavy man in his late seventies a stroke? I guess that's as logical as saying God broke George Burns's hip when He didn't think Burns was funny anymore. First intelligent design and now intellegent gerontology. New sciences spring from the fecund mind of Pat Robertson.

Realignments

Josh Marshall and Max Sawicky discuss the parallels between the congressional elections of 1974 and 2006 here. And for those of us on the left side of the ledger these parallels won't blow a lot of sunshine up our skirts:

But it does at least suggest one point worth considering: the other side's scandals can reshuffle the political cards temporarily. But it probably won't be for that long if the scandals aren't intrinsically connected to the bases of the afflicted party's power or if their fall-out doesn't catalyze a some deeper political and ideological reconfiguration in the country. Nixon's dirty-tricksterism wasn't at the heart of the rise of the American right in the late 20th century. So it continued on without him.

I'm not convinced that the Democrats will do nearly as well in 2006 as they did in 1974. The Right has learned a lot since then, and while none of it has been in the areas of good government that betters people's lives, they've learned better how to contain scandals. They have a well set up media apparatus that Nixon didn't have during Watergate, and they know how to get their people on television to muddy things up just enough so that their boy can get away more or less clean. Further, unlike 1974, we don't have a majority in either house that can do some genuine investigating. Even if we took back the House or Senate this year, the shredders will have been given a year (two if you count the year The New York Times sat on the story) to run. Also, Nixon never had the advantage of a cluck like Joseph Lieberman, who'll throw downfield blocks for Bush by running to every network to caution us about the national security implications of trashing the President. (Isn't bipartisanship sweet?)

And ultimately, even if Bush were to go down, it doesn't mean much unless he brings Dick Cheney, Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Senator Ted Stevens with him. As long as the rich get their money and the fanatics get their judges, they don't care who's delivering the goods. Tear down Bush, they'll put up someone else just like him--another plainspoken guy from the sticks who's honest as the tress are tall and who cares, really truly madly deeply cares, about the poor. He'll call himself a "different kind of Republican", and all his commercials will be in soft focus. And you and I, knowing what unctuous crap is being mass dumped on our minds, will shake our heads, thinking "This can't work again. No way is this going to work again."

It'll work again.

As George Carlin once said "I gave up hope and it worked out fine."

Happy Fucking New Year

Bitterspice and I turned the calendar over while watching a DVD of Bill Hicks's HBO specials. Is there a better way to start a year off? I don't think so. If anything, it's probably all downhill from here.