Retail Resistance

McCain vs. McCain

John McCain. He's a straight talker on his Straight Talk Express talking about why he can use the word gook. He's a republican constantly staking out positions disagreeing with Bush, torture for instance, then coming back to the Republican fold with a vengeance against habeas corpus.

Up steps the hardest working man in documentary, Robert Greenwald, of anti Wal-Mart and Fox News fame with his The Real McCain project. I can't say I particularly care for either of the aforementioned documentaries. As agit-prop they're fine and I'm glad he makes them. As movies they're nothing special. Now an LA Times story describes how Greenwald is going after John McCain on YouTube:

instead of creating a full-length film, he is assembling clips of McCain for a series of two-minute Web videos. The idea is to turn McCain's own words against him, spreading the videos through e-mail, blogs and websites.

His first video strings together some McCain statements on Iraq, the Confederate flag, Christian conservatives and same-sex marriage — remarks contradictory enough to suggest that McCain falls short of delivering the "straight talk" that he made a trademark of his first campaign for president, in 2000.

As you may have guessed, I'm cool with this. Especially because he's doing it in non-feature length fashion.

The Excorcist of George Allen

It's debatable whether William Friedkin is a great director. Like Hal Ashby, who I think is a great director, he had a string of good movies (?) - The Excorcist, French Connection, The Scorcerer - with great commercial success. I came across this piece on Jim Webb by William Friedkin recently on Huffington Post. Now we can judge Friedkin's prose skills in addition to his moviemaking.

My wife Sherry and I have been invited to attend Jim Webb's swearing-in as the new Senator from Virginia, the result of an unexpected, come-from behind victory over the Republican incumbent -- and former potential presidential candidate -- George Allen. We've known Jim since 1999 when he wrote an original screenplay called Rules of Engagement, which I directed. We remained friends in spite of numerous "creative differences" -- often heated, sometimes bitter.

I came away from that experience feeling that Jim Webb is the most complex, principled man I've ever known. He came away feeling good about what I had done with the finished film -- though he still refers to me as the only man in the country with a temper worse than his. I accept this as a compliment.

Presidential Auterism

Here's a little exchange between Chris Matthews and Bush's spokesperson Tony Snow about the difference between movies and real world foreign policy. Matthews, evidently, is of the school who think politics and movies share the same mechanisms and can be seen through the same lense. Tony Snow is in the camp of people who believe movies that portray our government as operating in secrecy with no democratic accountability should be considered as fantasy so our government can operate secretly and with no democratic accountability.

"MATTHEWS: So he will seek congressional approval before any action against Iran?

"SNOW: You are talking about something we are not even discussing.

"MATTHEWS: Yeah, but you are, Tony, because look at this. 'I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.' Isn't that about Iran?

"SNOW: It, it -- yeah, it is, in part, and what it is is it's saying, look, we are going to make sure that anybody who tries to take aggressive action -- but when Bill Clinton sent a carrier task force into the South China Sea after the North Koreans fired a missile over Japan, that was not as a prelude to war against North Korea. You know how it works.

"MATTHEWS: No, I'm just concerned because, very much in the years, in the months building up to this war in Iraq, we heard a kind of a drumbeat of the dangers from Iraq and the nuclear weaponry and what we're going to do about it, and then gradually we went to war....

"My concern is we're gonna see a ginning up situation whereby we fall in hot pursuit any effort by the Iranians to interfere with Iraq. We take a couple shots at them, they react, then we bomb the hell out of them and hit their nuclear installations without any without any action by Congress. That's the scenario I fear, an extra-constitutional war is what I'm worried about.

"SNOW: Well, you have been watching too many old movies --

"MATTHEWS: No, I've been watching the war in Iraq, is what I've been watching."

Yeah Right

RUDY GIULIANI

RUDY GIULIANI

RUDY GIULIANI

RUDY GIULIANI

RUDY GIULIANI

Rudy Giuliani

Dark of the Matinee

This is the full poem by Frank O'hara that A.O. Scott quotes from in his great NYT article on movie theaters and raising his kids to appreciate the full range of movies the world offers us all. And please do raise your kids this way. Otherwise as adults they'll come into the videostore and say, "I don't know what to watch. I've already seen everything." Meaning of course they are narrow minded and unadventerous and haven't seen anything other than the movies they've been mass marketed. Woeful are these people.

Ave Maria

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won't
know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by
silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you
must
they won't hate you
they won't criticize you they won't know
they'll be in some glamorous
country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or
playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn't upset the peaceful
home
they will know where candy bars come
from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before
it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment
is in the Heaven on
Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made
the little
tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick
them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be
sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained
either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room hating you
prematurely since you won't have done
anything horribly mean
yet
except keeping them from life's darker joys
it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this
advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in
front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn't let them see when
they were young

Gerald Ford

James Wolcott,

A flag-draped coffin is acceptable viewing only if a dead president is inside.

Le Chat

Chris Marker has a new movie opening in Neuva York this weekend titled "The Case of the Grinning Cat." Supposedly it's a relative of his earlier "A Grin Without a Cat." Based on the titles alone that seems logical.

During the filming of "The Case" Marker started to chronicle and include in his film the appearances of another cat named Monsieur Chat who was spreading the gift of graffiti with Mr. Chat on Paris rooftops.

We can all watch and enjoy Monsieur Chat's slideshow on Flickr, and I recommend it. Unfortunately, as enjoyable as this is, it won't get any of us outside of New York any closer to the pleasures of Marker's newest film.

MERD!

CNN is FOXy

For the second day running I've read a news story about how ignorant the on-air "talent" is at CNN. It's like no one can get a job on these channels if REACTIONARY isn't listed as a job skill on their resume. Just listen to these fools.

First is a CNN anchor, speaking yesterday in that channel's Situation Room about the adbuction of independent contractors in Iraq:

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Well on the point that Michael Ware was making. That the people who are fomenting this kind of activity over there aren't stupid. They understand with the results of the U.S. midterm elections that there are a lot of unanswered questions in this country about what happens next. And they are going to use that opportunity to make hay while the sun shines if you pardon a kind of poor play on words. But our uncertainty and lack of direction at this moment simply creates another opportunity for the bad guys and they are taking full advantage of it.

Next is this offensive pseudo-question of Keith Ellision - our newly elected Congressional representative from Minneapolis, the first Muslim ever elected to Congress - by Glenn Beck on his November 14 edition of CNN Headline News:

BECK: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked, quite frankly.

With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

I say I don't know how these people get jobs, but clearly the people hiring them are no better.

Bills Are for Paying, Not For Rights

This is from our President's post-election radio address.

One freedom that defines our way of life is the freedom to choose our leaders at the ballot box. We saw that freedom earlier this week, when millions of Americans went to the polls to cast their votes for a new Congress. Whatever your opinion of the outcome, all Americans can take pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections even in a time of war.

Maybe when the Republican's are done amending the Constitution to prevent flag burning and gay marriage they can start working on all the occasions we don't deserve democratic elections. At this point, would anyone be surprised to hear Bush et al. saying of the blue states what Kissinger said of red countries after Chile's democratic election of Salvador Allende, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."

On second thought, ending elections during times of war should probably be the Republican's first priority. Next should come perpetual war - declared not by Congress, but via media address. After that, the thousand year Reich.

I don't see why dismantling democracy shouldn't be the best possible example our democracy could set for the world.

Rummy

Poor poor Donald Rumsfeld. No "heckuva job Brownie," just a swift kick in the boat and a don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Then the uppity Dixie Chicks forget their place all over again by throwing a couple kidney punches during a concert in Canada, saying, "Either the beer is free or you're happy that Donald Rumsfeld resigned today."

Now comes news in Time magazine of a lawsuit in Germany that will seek a criminal "war crimes" prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other top U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Time writes:

U.S. officials have long feared that legal proceedings against "war criminals" could be used to settle political scores. In 1998, for example, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — whose military coup was supported by the Nixon administration — was arrested in the U.K. and held for 16 months in an extradition battle led by a Spanish magistrate seeking to charge him with war crimes. He was ultimately released and returned to Chile. More recently, a Belgian court tried to bring charges against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

For its part, the Bush Administration has rejected adherence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on grounds that it could be used to unjustly prosecute U.S. officials. The ICC is the first permanent tribunal established to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Maybe this will help reopen the case outlined by Christopher Hitchens against Henry Kissinger, later made into an incredible documentary by Eugene Jarecki called The Trials of Henry Kissinger. This is the same filmmaker who made Why We Fight; another documentary that should be seen by anyone who cares about democracy in the United States.