CelticProgressive

God Hates Bigots

2009-03-21T20:14:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted anything about the death of Natasha Richardson because, frankly, there didn't seem to be anything to say about it other than the obvious fact that it was just awful.

Well, now I have something to say.

And you know why? Because her funeral's being picketed.

Picketed? Did you say picketed?

Yes, I did. And you'll never guess who's doing the picketing.

The Westboro Baptist Church -- you know. The "God Hates Fags" people.

This is what they say on their website:

St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church - Natasha is in HELL! 15 North Avenue WHY are these really rich, really dreadfully talented, exceptionally privileged PERVERTS hiding the time of this dead tart's funeral? We shall picket outside on the sidewalk of this funeral location. Words will not hurt you, silly! We do, after all, put the "fun" in funeral. Come on, give over the time already. Seriously, if you want to get the snap-shot of this vain woman's life, from any righteous person's perspective, here it is: her first husband, Robert Fox, had a living wife when they married. So she lived in adultery with him. But her most current husband, Liam Neeson (UGLY!), has no former wife. He's just a major pedophile-catholic-worshiper, so that's how they raised their two boys. Oh, and her dad - Tony Richardson - was bisexual and died of AIDS. Hence her avid support of AIDS research. There you have it, and that is what these disgusting perverts from DOOMED america, Cancerous Canada and Ultra-filthy UK are just going bonkers over. A dead simple slut who did not have enough sense to put on the helmet (it will muss my hair), then when she DID fall and hit her head, she was WAY TOO PROUD to get help (it might be embarrassing)! Shame on the whole lot of you. But despite it all, do you fools believe that Natasha was the worst sinner that has lived? Nay, but except YE repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

There's more -- there's a LOT more -- but I'll spare you the rest.

Do you believe these fucking idiots? Because Natasha Richardson supported AIDS research they're going to picket her funeral. Anybody have a car and some baseball bats? Because I'm up for making a trip upstate tomorrow morning to teach these motherfuckers a lesson in manners.

Tom Moran

What Do We Do Now?

2009-03-05T11:51:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that I've been a little quiet in this blog of late.

And you may have wondered why that is.

Well, it's like this:

This blog was started in a spirit of outrage and opposition. Four years ago it looked as if the worst elements of the G.O.P. were unstoppable, and someone had to say something to oppose their reckless and idiotic policies. I advocated for another way, and for a return to progressive values in this country.

And guess what? It happened. And now I'm stuck wondering where this blog goes from here.

Do I want to be a partisan cheerleader for the Obama Adminsitration? Not particularly. It feels nice to have a grown-up in the White House for the first time in 16 years, but I don't think they need me to tell them what to do or when they're screwing up.

Should I turn it into a more social and cultural blog, inveighing against the idiocies of our time? Sounds like something out of the movie "Network."

Or should I just let it quietly die, happy in the knowledge that we've done our job and taken back the country?

I'm not sure. I'm still thinking about it.

Tom Moran

These Are The Good Old Days

2009-01-06T10:17:00.002-05:00

Al Franken has been unanimously certified as the new Senator from Minnesota, and Ann Coulter has been banned for life from NBC.

Hot damn! Makes you proud to be an American!

Former Senator Norm Coleman said that he's going to challenge the results in court. Very classy guy, he is. Wasn't this the same guy who said that Franken should accept the results of the recount and concede? Or am I just imagining it?

And at the same time, according to The Drudge Report, hatchet-faced conservative hag Ann Coulter has been given the boot from the Today Show:

"We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either." Others inside the peacock network strongly deny the book's theme is at issue.

Of course, what NBC is not taking into account is that bitching and moaning about how awful liberals are is the only thing that Coulter does well -- in fact, it's the only thing that conservatives do well. God knows they've spent the past eight years proving to America and the rest of the world that they can't govern.

So let them bitch. Let them moan. They had their chance to run this country and they completely fucked it up. Now it's our turn, as we try to clean up the mess they've made of this country. Let them bitch all they want.

They're irrelevant now. And they know it.

Tom Moran

Camelot on the Hudson?

2008-12-28T07:18:00.002-05:00

If you read the article in today's Times on Caroline Kennedy, the most interesting part comes at the end:

Ms. Kennedy came to the interview with two aides, who had reserved the back room of the Lenox Hill Diner, on Lexington Avenue near 78th Street, for several interviews scheduled on Saturday.

As things wrapped up, a reporter tried to pose another question, but she interrupted him.
“I think we’re done,” she said.

That little colloquy (or lack of one) indicates nicely the tone-deafness and arrogance that has permeated Kennedy's pseudo-campaign since day one -- and also indicates why the backlash against her candidacy has been so thoroughly warranted.

There was a famous moment in Senator Ted Kennedy's first campaign for the Senate in 1962 where his opponent said of him in a debate that if his name had been Edward Moore, instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, that his candidacy would be a joke. But Ted Kennedy has turned out to be one of the greatest of all senators. Should we give the same leeway to his niece?

I'm not so sure.

I don't really have a dog in this race. There isn't any particular candidate I would rather see in the Senate than Kennedy. But like a lot of people I do mildly resent the idea that a person of wealth and privilege thinks that a seat in the United States Senate is just theirs for the asking. And I'm starting to get the feeling that Governor Paterson might just feel the same way.

Would she be able to raise money? Yes. But does that matter? The Barack Obama campaign has totally upset the old paradigm for political findraising, so it may be possible for a dark horse to go online with a strong message and raise enough money to be competitive that way.

Does she have name recognition? To people over 50, yes. But to younger voters, the Kennedy name is more associated with date rape and inept pilots (if at all) than with the magic of Camelot. Keep in mind that Arthur Schlesinger once famously stated that the Kennedy Administration was a "damn long time ago" -- and he wrote that in the early 80s.

Also keep in mind that whoever Paterson appoints, assuming that they're not a caretaker, will have to win not one but two elections in the next four years -- and Caroline Kennedy is the worst public speaker I have ever heard. Has she gotten better lately? Perhaps. Is she good enough to win an election on her own? I doubt it.

And just the way she has handled herself over the past few weeks has not inspired confidence -- to put it mildly. Ducking the press, avoiding tough questions, Kennedy's rationale for her candidacy seems to be "Vote for me, I'm a Kennedy." And I'm not sure that works anymore. It's not 1962, after all.

So I'm not at all sure that Senator Caroline Kennedy is a sure thing. Or even that it should be. Governor Paterson is starting to resent the strong-arm tactics being use to sway his decision, and I wouldn't be surprised if he chose someone else. And that might not be a bad thing.

Tom Moran

Publishing a Dead Man, Against His Will

2008-11-21T21:43:00.004-05:00

New books by long-dead authors seem to be all the rage these days. This year it's And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, a a 63-year-old collaboration between then-unknown writers Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Next year it will be the last, unfinished novel by Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov.

The delay in the publication of the former book is easily explained. At the time it was written, both of its authors were a decade away from publishing the works that would bring them fame -- On The Road for Kerouac and Naked Lunch for Burroughs. And the original of one of their characters and the book's inspiration, Lucien Carr, was very much alive and desirous that a fictional account of the most traumatic event in his life (the murder by Carr of his friend and stalker David Kammerer) not be published while he was alive. Only Carr's death in 2005 made it possible to publish the long-buried manuscript.

I've read And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, albeit with some trepidation, and all things considered I'm glad that it was finally made available. Both authors (Burroughs especially) are writing parodistically in the hardboiled style of Dashiell Hammett, and the novel is a fascinating time capsule of America in wartime, with classic French films playing on 42nd Street and men wanting to ship on any boat available in order to escape their fate. It's no masterpiece but it's a fun read, especially so when you know the real story involved (to which the novel cleaves pretty faithfully, with some details, like the murder weapon, changed). The book is a minor addition to the growing literature by and about the Beats, and it's worth a look if you're a fan of either author's more mature fiction.

The Nabokov is another story altogether. No matter what you may think of And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, at the very least it was a finished manuscript that the authors tried to publish at the time they wrote it, and neither man ever expressed the desire that it never see the light of day. The new Nabokov, entitled The Original of Laura, is being published by his son against the expressed wishes of its author, who instructed his wife on his deathbed to burn the unfinished manuscript (or, given that it was Nabokov, index cards).

Should she, should he obey his wishes? Tom Stoppard, speaking to the BBC, says yes: "It's perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it." Of course, if we followed Stoppard's logic, we would lose out on a great deal of literature: Virgil's The Aeneid, Kafka's The Trial and The Castle and Eugene O'Neill's More Stately Mansions at the very least. It's clear that both Nabokov's widow and his son have agonized over this decision, which was not taken lightly. Vera Nabokov defied her husband's wishes and let the manuscript escape the flames, but apparently could not bring herself to allow for publication. Now, 31 years after its author's death, the book is being prepared for publication by his son.

Should it be published? Or should Nabokov's wishes be respected? These are very touchy questions. The heirs of Albert Camus had to decide whether to publish his last, unfinished novel, the manuscript of which was in the car with him when he died in an auto accident in his 40s (it took his children 30 years to decide to publish The First Man). But at least, having been cut down unexpectedly in his prime, Camus had left no explicit instructions for what to do with the book in the event of his demise. Eugene O'Neill, on the other hand, knowing he would not live to finish the plays he'd envisioned as an immense cycle of American history (the overall title of which was to be A Tale of Possessors, Self-Dispossessed), methodically set about to destroy all the manuscripts of the plays that were unfinished. A version of one of the plays for some reason escaped the destruction, and More Stately Mansions, was produced on Broadway in the 1960s in a truncated version with Ingrid Bergman in the lead. It has since been published in a far longer (and theatrically unfeasible) version by Yale University Press.

Dmitri Nabokov thinks it's relatively simple: "My father told me what his most important books were. He named [The Original of] Laura as one of them. One doesn't name a book one intends to destroy." He went on to tell the BBC that: "He would have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he didn't see death staring him in the face. He certainly would not have wanted it destroyed. He would have finished it." Of course he would have finished it, the devil's advocate in me replies, but he didn't have time to do so -- and, rather than let an unfinished work that didn't live up to his standards go out into the world, he preferred to see it destroyed.

I'm very much of two minds about this, but in the final analysis I have to say that I would vote for publication. Even if The Original of Laura is total crap, Nabokov's reputation is secure. I mean, if it survived his awful translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin it'll survive anything. And when we consider some of the holocausts of literature -- from the destruction of the library at Alexandria to the well-intentioned but idiotic burning of Lord Byron's Memoirs -- perhaps it's better that, to paraphrase Mikhail Bulgakov, manuscripts shouldn't burn.

Will Hillary Get It?

2008-11-21T04:18:00.002-05:00

They're talking about it as if it's a done deal. CNN says that Obama is "on track" to nominated Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, according to Huffington Post. The announcement will be made after Thanksgiving. Everyone seems to think it's inevitable.

Why don't I believe it?

Maybe I'm just being cynical. But I just have this feeling that the deal's going to fall through -- and that Obama's people want it to fall through.

This is what I'm thinking:

The incoming administration considers Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. This would, if it goes through, appease all of those Hillary supporters who feel as if she was "dissed" by not being named to the ticket over the summer. The most prestigious post in the cabinet, it would be a very nice consolation prize for the woman who would be the president-elect today if she hadn't run such a miserable presidential campaign.

But in offering it to her, Obama's people know -- at least according to my slightly cynical theory they know -- that she can't, and invariably won't, accept it.

Why?

Because in order to accept the position, former president Bill Clinton will have to open up his finances (specifically, the donors to his presidential library) in order to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. And while Clinton has given what has been called an "unprecedented" amount of disclosure, there's a difference between unprecedented and total -- and I'm guessing that total is what they're looking for.

And if Bill Clinton doesn't give total financial disclosure, which they know he can't or won't give, they can use that as an entirely plausible excuse for not giving Hillary the position. And Obama gets the best of both worlds: he gets the credit for "offering" her the position, while Bill Clinton gets the blame for seeing to it that she doesn't get it.

A little too Machiavellian, did you say? Perhaps. It's certainly possible that Hillary will get the nomination in a week or so. But until then, I'm thinking that my theory is at least plausible. And I would guess that it's at least 50/50 that it'll go down that way. I'm betting Hillary stays exactly where she is.

But if she does get it, you can bet on New York Governor David Paterson appointing Bobby Kennedy Jr. to take her place in the senate. Why that is is something I'll go into at another time.

We're In, They're Out

2008-11-15T17:10:00.003-05:00

People have been complaining that the Obama Administration has so many Clinton veterans in it that it might as well be considered Clinton Redux. But these people, as people so often do, miss the point.

What Obama is doing by hiring so many Clinton veterans is avoiding the very mistake Bill Clinton himself made when he became president -- that is, hire too many young staffers who had never worked at the White House before, which made the beginning of the Clinton Administration a chaotic, pizza-strewn mess. In fact, when Clinton turned over the White House to George W. Bush, he congratulated him on having an administration with so many people who had worked there before -- like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Peggy Noonan, surprisingly enough, makes an interesting point:

It is obvious that Mr. Obama's people have learned from the experiences of Bill Clinton and will continue to try not to begin with a gays-in-the-military, my-wife-is-revolutionizing-health-care series of errors that will self-brand them as to the left of the mainstream. They do not want to do anything that will leave the middle-right saying "Uh-oh" and begin to push away. The great question, however, is: Do Mr. Obama and his people fully understand what will make the middle-right say "Uh-oh"?

It's clear that Peggy Noonan thinks she knows. I'm not so sure about that.

Obama's choices have been pretty much made for him -- at least for the first hundred days (an expression they use at the start of every administration but that actually means something this time). Our new president's priorities have to be, in order:

1) The economy
2) The economy
3) The economy

There isn't going to be any great liberal agenda coming out of this White House -- not any time soon, anyway. He's going to be working too hard to prop up the economy. This, ironically enough, might bring him into Carter-esque conflict with the more left-leaning members of his own party in Congress, who will want to use this opportunity to create or revive a lot of spending programs that we don't have the money for at this time.

And what will Republicans be doing all this time? Here Noonan again makes a sort of sense. She's speaking to some fictional Young Republicans (do they really exist?):

There is joy to be had in being out of power. You don't have to defend stupid decisions anymore. You get to criticize with complete abandon. This is the pleasurable side of what the donkey knows, which is that it's easier to knock over the barn than build it.

She has a point. After all, Republicans have shown that they have no clue how to govern, so they should be happy that they no longer have to try. After all bitching and moaning is what they do best -- and now they get to do it.

And I hope they get to do it for a very long time.

Behind the Proposition Eight Ball

2008-11-11T20:26:00.003-05:00

I've found myself posting on the My Space blogs of a number of disappointed and/or angry gay performers (and the Facebook page of an old college friend who has a lesbian daughter) who are outraged at the success of Proposition 8 in California, which overturns gay marriage in that state.

They're shocked -- shocked! -- that voters in the enlightened state of California would do such a heinous thing as to vote against something as normal and natural and seemingly inevitable as gay marriage.

Personally, I'm shocked at their naïveté. The gay community in California seemed to believe that voting "No" on 8 was a foregone conclusion, that it would go down to a resounding defeat if it wasn't for those dastardly Mormons (a protest against the Mormon Church is scheduled for tomorrow in New York -- for all the good that's going to do) and the money they put up to push the proposition through.

They couldn't be further from the truth.

The gay and lesbian community, both in California and around the country, need to face a couple of unpleasant but undeniable facts:

First, you can get people to vote for anything on a ballot initiative. And I mean anything. Did these people really thing Proposition 8 would fail? If it was on the ballot to eliminate the First Amendment -- hell, make that the whole goddamn Bill of Rights -- you could count on it passing. In 1954, if school desegregation was on the ballot, in California or anywhere else, do you really think it would have succeeded? If you do, let me know what you're smoking because I want to try some.

What California needs is a proposition to outlaw propositions.

Second, when the idea of gay marriage is put on the ballot in almost any state of the union, it's always going to go down to defeat. Gays and lesbians are completely blind to the fact that most Americans, probably an overwhelming majority of them, are simply opposed to the notion of gay marriage. By the way, so is Barack Obama. He's said so multiple times. How many gays and lesbians voted for him?

Gay marriage cannot be settled to the satisfaction of gays and lesbians by a plebiscite. It will fail every time. The only way that the subject of gay marriage is going to be decided one way or the other is if the Supreme Court rules on it. Some day a case will come to the court and they will make a decision, either as history making as Brown v. Board of Education, or as wrongheaded as Plessy v. Ferguson, and that will, hopefully, be an end of it.

But of course it won't. Because even if the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage tomorrow, that would just energize the lunatic right in this country who would be thrilled to have another cause to line up next to their anti-abortion crusade.

History does not always go in a straight line. You win battles, you lose battles. You take a step forward, then you take a step or two back. The vote on Proposition 8 is merely a speed bump on the road to legalizing gay marriage.

I think it will happen eventually. And I think it should. But the gay and lesbian community shouldn't delude themselves that it will happen tomorrow. History more often than not doesn't work like that.

Call Me Nostradamus

2008-11-06T18:55:00.003-05:00

Looking back at my recent blog entries, I found this prescient little gem (it's dated October 8th):

Obama will win Michigan. He'll win both Ohio and Florida. He'll win Pennsylvania and New Mexico. I also think he'll win Virginia and possibly even North Carolina -- which native son John Edwards couldn't deliver for John Kerry four years ago.If the election were to be held today Obama would get well over 300 electoral votes and McCain would get less than 200.It's not going to be a landslide on the nature of 1932 or 1964. But Obama is going to win, and he's going to win decisively.

You know, as predictions go, that's not bad. Obama won all seven of the states I said he'd win and he got over 300 electoral votes.

I really should play the lottery more often...

History is Made Tonight

2008-11-04T23:32:00.002-05:00

I had my window open and when the networks projected that Barack Obama would be the 44th President of the United States, it was as if the entire neighborhood exploded -- I could hear cheers and screams from blocks away. It was worth voting at six in the morning to hear those excited voices. History was made tonight.

Americans chose hope over fear. The future over the past. And decency over arrogance. The Republicans and their soiled legacy of the past eight years have been repudiated and the Democrats will go on to run the country for at least the next four years. Or, to put it another way, tonight Barack Obama and the Democrats have accomplished everything this blog has been advocating ever since I started it over three years ago.

And yet what I feel tonight is a combination of relief and foreboding. I'm relieved that the Republicans are being kicked out of power. I'm relieved that we're going to have a grown-up in the White House. I'm relieved that we might be able to reverse some of the more sordid aspects of the current administration (and protect some rights that they weren't able to destroy, such as a woman's right to choose).

But on this night, when so many people are celebrating so joyously, all I can see when I look ahead is a grim fight. Even with all that's happened in the economy in the past two months, people still don't really have a clue how bad it's going to get in this country in the next two years. And that's all Barack Obama is going to get. If he has a mandate, it will be for the next two years to turn this economy around and disentangle us from two wars abroad. He's got the votes in Congress and he's got to deliver, because if he doesn't, the Republicans are quite capable of roaring back in 2010 and taking back the Congress.

So feel good tonight, all you progressives out there. You've earned it. We all have. But when you wake up tomorrow morning keep in mind that the real fight hasn't even started yet. Remember: we've got to keep this guy alive for the next eight years. And a lot of people out there in America are going to be oiling up their guns tomorrow.

A Tale of Two Film Lists

2008-11-02T17:35:00.003-05:00

I thought I'd be nice and post something on here, even this close to the election, that's not political for a change.

Now you people who have been reading this blog for a while now (and both of you know who you are) know that I have a thing about lists. Doesn't matter what kind. You could post a list of the best left-handed Latvian baseball pitchers and I could find fault with it. But the fact is that most lists, and especially most cultural lists, are just pathetic. The people involved don't put enough thought into them, they just reel off the first things they can think of (which means the last things they've seen and/or read) and the end result is invariably lame.

Well, Empire Magazine has proven this thesis right yet again. They recently published a list of what they consider to be The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

Take a look at just the top 50:

1. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
3. Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
4. Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)
5. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
6. GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
7. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
8. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952)
9. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
10. Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)
11. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
12. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
13. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
14. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
15. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
16. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
17. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
18. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
19. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
20. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
21. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
22. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977)
23. Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
24. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)
25. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967)
26. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
27. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
28. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
29. Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)
30. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
31. Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
32. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969)
33. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
34. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003)
35. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)
36. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)
37. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
38. Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
39. The Matrix (Andy & Larry Wachowski, 1999)
40. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
41. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
42. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
43. The Big Lebowski (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998)
44. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
45. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
46. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
47. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
48. This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
49. Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1987)
50. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

Gives you a pretty good sense of who reads Empire Magazine, doesn't it? A bunch of retarded fanboys badly in need of girlfriends would be my guess.

Empire Magazine's list is a joke, but I recently stumbled over another list that isn't. Cahiers du Cinema (whose readers presumably aren't the same retarded fanboys who read Empire) published a list of what they call The 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World.

Here's their list:

Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
The Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton
The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) - Jean Renoir
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (L’Aurore) - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
L’Atalante - Jean Vigo
M - Fritz Lang
Singin’ in the Rain - Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) - Marcel Carné
The Searchers - John Ford
Greed - Erich von Stroheim
Rio Bravo - Howard Hawks
To Be or Not to Be - Ernst Lubitsch
Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu
Contempt (Le Mépris) - Jean-Luc Godard
Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) - Kenji Mizoguchi
City Lights - Charlie Chaplin
The General - Buster Keaton
Nosferatu the Vampire - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
The Music Room - Satyajit Ray
Freaks - Tod Browning
Johnny Guitar - Nicholas Ray
The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) - Jean Eustache
The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin
The Leopard (Le Guépard) - Luchino Visconti
Hiroshima, Mon Amour - Alain Resnais
Pandora's Box - G.W. Pabst
North by Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock
Pickpocket - Robert Bresson
Casque d’or - Jacques Becker
The Barefoot Contessa - Joseph Mankiewitz
Moonfleet - Fritz Lang
The Earrings of Madame de… - Max Ophüls
Le Plaisir - Max Ophüls
The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino
L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antonioni
Battleship Potemkin - Sergei M. Eisenstein
Notorious - Alfred Hitchcock
Ivan the Terrible - Sergei M. Eisenstein
The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola
Touch of Evil - Orson Welles
The Wind - Victor Sjöström
2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
Fanny and Alexander - Ingmar Bergman
The Crowd - King Vidor
8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
La Jetée - Chris Marker
Pierrot le Fou - Jean-Luc Godard
Le Roman d’un tricheur - Sacha Guitry
Amarcord - Federico Fellini
La Belle et la Bête - Jean Cocteau
Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder
Some Came Running - Vincente Minnelli
Gertrud - Carl Theodor Dreyer
King Kong - Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
Laura - Otto Preminger
The Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa
The 400 Blows - François Truffaut
La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini
The Dead - John Huston
Trouble in Paradise - Ernst Lubitsch
It’s a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra
Monsieur Verdoux - Charlie Chaplin
The Passion of Joan of Arc - Carl Theodor Dreyer
À bout de souffle - Jean-Luc Godard
Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola
Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
La Grande Illusion - Jean Renoir
Intolerance - David Wark Griffith
Partie de campagne - Jean Renoir
Playtime - Jacques Tati
Rome, Open City - Roberto Rossellini
Senso - Luchino Visconti
Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin
Van Gogh - Maurice Pialat
An Affair to Remember - Leo McCarey
Andrei Rublev - Andrei Tarkovsky
The Scarlet Empress - Joseph von Sternberg
Sansho the Bailiff - Kenji Mizoguchi
Talk to Her - Pedro Almodóvar
The Party - Blake Edwards
Tabu - F.W. Murnau
The Bandwagon - Vincente Minnelli
A Star Is Born - George Cukor
M. Hulot’s Holiday - Jacques Tati
America, America - Elia Kazan
El - Luis Buñuel
Kiss Me Deadly - Robert Aldrich
Once Upon a Time in America - Sergio Leone
Le Jour se lève - Marcel Carné
Letter from an Unknown Woman - Max Ophüls
Lola - Jacques Demy
Manhattan - Woody Allen
Mulholland Dr. - David Lynch
Ma nuit chez Maud - Eric Rohmer
Nuit et Brouillard - Alain Resnais
The Gold Rush - Charlie Chaplin
Scarface - Howard Hawks
Bicycle Thieves - Vittorio de Sica
Napoléon - Abel Gance

Now, I'm not going to say that I agree with every film on this list (I don't), but it's intellectually respectable. Which is more than you can say about the Empire Magazine list. In fact, if you wanted to know more about film, you could do a lot worse than plow your way through ther Cahiers du Cinema list.

My John McCain Problem

2008-11-02T13:21:00.002-05:00

I'm going to make a strange admission. Particularly strange, coming from me. You may not even believe it -- especially if you've been reading this blog for the past three-and-a-half years. But I swear to you that it's true.

I like John McCain.

I know -- isn't that weird?

Weird but true. This is the first presidential election since 1976 where I didn't loathe the Republican nominee (with the possible -- no, make that probable -- exception of 1996). I watched McCain on Saturday Night Live last night and I thought -- I like this guy. You have to admire a guy who knows he's going to lose, might even go down to a humiliating defeat, and who can make fun of his own campaign on national television.

That doesn't mean I want him to win. I want that noted for the record. But I like John McCain.

Tuesday is going to start a new era in this country. We're going to start digging out from under the mountain of debt and bullshit that the Bush Administration has poured on us, and life will start slowly getting better in this country for the majority of Americans.

But I suspect that, after the euphoria of Tuesday night, as we move into what looks almost certain to be an Obama Administration, the first people who are going to be disillusioned with Barack Obama are going to be the very liberals who worked so hard to get him into office. They're going to expect a great progressive agenda and there isn't going to be one. The New Deal Part Deux just isn't going to happen.

We'll get out of Iraq, either more or less messily. We'll start to put our fiscal house in order, with all the attendant pain that implies. We'll repair our standing in the world. But people who are expecting (or fearing) a socialist utopia in the United States are going to find out very quickly that there isn't the money to do the kind of things they want done. And they're going to blame Obama for not doing what can't be done.

In the meantime, John McCain will go back to the Senate, knowing that his dream of becoming president of the United States will never come true. And even though I'm not going to vote for him, I can't help feeling that he might, in another time and under different circumstances, have made a good president. After all, how many presidential candidates have read Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire even once? McCain's read it twice.

McCain is a tragic figure -- undone by how own ambition and the compromises that his ambition led him to make on his way to the nomination. And I suspect he'll spend some time in the next few months wondering what could have been. Maybe we should, too.

What Makes Franken Run?

2008-10-28T01:13:00.003-04:00

Jonathan Chait has a piece in Slate about Al Franken and his run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota which, in the wake of a possible Obama win, might just be successful.

The piece is sort of so-so until he gets to the end. Then, in my opinion, he blows it:

Franken has an infinite faith in the power of reason. Time and again, he tries to present his adverseries with detailed rebuttals and gets nowhere. One book has a small moment of triumph, in which he badgers House budget committee Chairman John Kasich into admitting that Republicans were employing a misleading measure of their plans to cut Medicare. "I took a few victory laps around the table," he writes. Franken doesn't write, however, that Kasich and his fellow Republicans continued to brandish the misleading statistic anyway.

I would guess that Franken is running for the Senate because he thinks he will have moments like these, when the superior force of his reason will carry the day. I have never seen or heard of a successful politician who thinks like this. I can't imagine he'll find politics anything but a crushing disappointment. But I'm eager to see him try.

Chait couldn't be more wrong. Franken's reasons for running for the Senate aren't reason-based. They're strictly emotional. And deeply personal.

Franken was a friend and admirer of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash in 2002, only 11 days before the election that would have given him a third term in the Senate. Former Senator and Vice President Walter Mondale replaced Wellstone on the ballot at the last minute, only to be narrowly defeated by Republican Norm Coleman.

Anyone who was, as I was from its inception in 2004, a devoted listener of Franken's radio show on Air America, knows what an emotional subject this was, and is, for him. Franken's campaign, although he is too shrewd to say so, started out as a Quixotic quest to regain Paul Wellstone's seat in the Senate for the Progressives -- as well as payback for the man who would have lost that 2002 election if Wellstone had lived. At the time Franken announced, he was a longshot -- now, thanks to Barack Obama, a downturn in the economy and the worst administration in the history of the republic, he's got a real shot at winning the election and becoming, not only Wellstone's heir in the Senate, but the 60th Senator needed to supply the Democrats with a filibuster-proof liberal majority.

Somewhere, Paul Wellstone is smiling. And if Al Franken, as I hope he will, wins a week from now, expect to hear an emotional reference to Paul Wellstone from the newly elected Senator from Minnesota in his victory speech.

The Worst Case Scenario

2008-10-27T15:16:00.002-04:00

Republican operative Bill Greener in an article in Salon.com makes a case that Barack Obama needs to be at over 50% in the battleground states because he is convinced that the so-called "undecideds" are going to break disproportionately for John McCain:

As you look at the polling data in the homestretch of this election, pay close attention whenever you see any numbers, be they statewide or national, where Sen. Obama is below 50 percent. So long as there are more than a handful of voters describing themselves as undecided, I will maintain that Sen. McCain is very much in the race. Even if Sen. Obama were to open a larger lead, my basis for analyzing things would remain the same. Are there enough undecided voters in crucial states to bridge whatever gap exists in the head-to-head? If so, don't be shocked if on Election Day, Sen. McCain is your winner.

If this analysis is true, then based on the one poll that I examined, that would mean that McCain will win both Ohio and Florida, as well as North Carolina and Nevada. Obama would win New Hampshire, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Could this be another long Tuesday night? We'll see in eight days.

Keep Your "O" Flag Flying!

2008-10-18T04:18:00.004-04:00

Barack Obama gave a speech in Toledo the other day. Here's a piece of it from YouTube:

Notice anything, well, unusual about the background?

Certain conservatives did. Certain really fucking stupid conservatives.

Conservatives like Bob Grant. Here is a transcript of Grant's show from October 15th (courtesy of Media Matters for America):

GRANT: Let me ask you this question, since you are aware of patriotic symbols. Maybe you don't know the answer. I'll be frank. I don't know the answer to this one, but what is that flag that Obama's been standing in front of that looks like an American flag, but instead of having the field of 50 stars representing the 50 states, there's a circle? Would someone please tell me what that is? Is the circle --

CALLER: Well, I thought it was our new flag.

GRANT: -- the "O" for Obama? Is that what it is?

CALLER: I thought it was our new flag. I thought we now instituted a new one under Obama, because we're going to change everything, and none of it is gonna be positive. And do people's mindset that Palin would be any kind of an adverse person around nuclear weapons, when you have somebody who has absolute deceived everybody from his onset of his life --

GRANT: All right, Sue. I want to thank you very much for your call. It's a pleasure to hear from someone who's paying attention to what's going on out there.

But really folks, did you notice Obama is not content with just having several American flags, plain old American flags with the 50 states represented by 50 stars? He has the "O" flag. And that's what that "O" is. That's what that "O" is. Just like he did with the plane he was using. He had the flag painted over, and the "O" for Obama. Now, these are symptom -- these things are symptomatic of a person who would like to be a potentate -- a dictator. And I really see this in this man.

Hey, I could be wrong. But I wouldn't say this on this great radio station if I didn't think there was some merit in this conjecture. And I stress conjecture. And so much of what we talk about is conjecture, is theory, is opinion based on intuition, based on some facts, based on some history.
I don't want to overdramatize this. Being dramatic, I must confess, does come easy to some of us, because, maybe that's why we're in this business. It is show business, is it not? I know some of my colleagues don't want to admit that, but they are the greatest showmen in the world. And I tell you this. I tell you this quite seriously. I am alarmed at the prospect of his election. I -- I would hope that if he is elected, that I could come before you one day and say, "Hey, there was no need to be alarmed, I was wrong."

Because I care about the United States of America and what future we may have much more than I care about being right or being wrong, having my candidate win or having my candidate lose. I want to know how many of you people think about the significance of the election.

I almost can't type this because I'm laughing so hard.

How stupid are these people? How clueless? How frightened? How threatened?

What Obama is standing in front of, of course, is the state flag of Ohio:

The white circle denotes Ohio's being "The Buckeye State."

But you have to admit, this was a beautiful illustration of how lunatic the lunatic right really is. It just goes to show that John Stuart Mill was correct in the Victorian Era when he stated that, while not all conservatives are stupid, all stupid people are conservatives.

The Right is Terrified (And They Should Be)

2008-10-17T22:14:00.005-04:00

The sound you hear is the Right shitting in their pants.

They can't believe what's happening. Not so long ago -- when this blog was begun, for example -- they seemed to have everything under control. The radical right had Congress in a headlock, and were looking towards (as one author put it) a Permanent Republican Majority.

Now everything they hoped for has come crashing down around them, and it very much looks like the Democrats will be in power, either in the White House or Congress or both, for the next 20 to 30 years.

That's what The Wall Street Journal is concerned about. In an opinion piece entitled "A Liberal Supermajority," they claim that:

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

I like the sound of that. Don't you? Certainly the Republicans liked it when they had control of the Congress. But now that the shoe appears to be slipping onto the other foot, all of a sudden this is something to be terrified of.

They continue:

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

Here's where the facts stop and the bullshit posturing begins. You gotta admit, though, the term "unchecked left-wing ascendancy" sounds awfully good. Just like pie.

Let's take a look at the facts:

When Roosevelt and the New Deal came into power with an overwhelming Democratic majority in 1933, the country was flat on its back. Roosevelt restored confidence and saved capitalism from itself and in the process created the FDIC (for which bank depositors are eternally grateful) and Social Security (which the Republicans have been trying to kill ever since its birth, in a sort of legislative late term abortion).
When Lyndon Johnson had an overwhelming Democratic majority, he was able to push through any number of progressive legislation, including Medicare, on which so many senior citizens depend and which keeps them a hell of a lot healthier than they'd be without it.

I'd take unchecked left-wing ascendancy like that anyday. We should be so lucky.

Republicans, what's left of the radical right and The Wall Street Journal should all stop whining. They had the goverment for eight years -- and they totally fucked everything up. We've had untrammeled, deregulated laissez-faire capitalism at home and fuck-you-to-the-rest-of-the-world interventionism abroad. And it's all blown up in our face.

There's no way that the Democrats could possibly do worse than the Republicans have done over the past eight years.

Frankly, as I've said before in this blog, I don't expect a huge, New Deal-like wave of progressive legislation from the next Congress or from a potential President Obama. For one thing, he won't have the money. He'll be relegated to doing what Democrats have been relegated to doing for the past 30 years -- being the schmuck with the broom walking behind the elephant in the circus parade. They make a mess, we clean it up -- that's been the story of the past 30 years.

But whatever the Democrats do with the power they're almost sure to have after November 4th, I sure am looking forward to it.

Bring it on!

Is It Over?

2008-10-15T23:37:00.002-04:00

Did the campaign end tonight?

John McCain did better in this last debate -- at least at the beginning of it -- than he's done in either of the other debates.

It wasn't enough.

I recently heard from a person who told me that they thought that Obama had a good chance of winning their home state -- of Texas.

Conservatives like Christopher Buckley (son of the founder of National Review) are endorsing Obama. People are starting to talk about a landslilde that will transform Washington.

And here I am trying to figure out how Obama and the Democrats are going to blow it.

I can't help it. I'm old enough to remember the Humphrey administration. Not to mention the McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry administrations. I've seen the Democrats yank defeat from out of the jaws of victory time after time.

I don't want to get my hopes up. I watch the talking heads on Charlie Rose (while noting that Doris Kearns Goodwin made a mistake in calling FDR "The Happy Warrior" -- that was Al Smith) and I don't want to believe them. I want to think that it's going to be close, and that it can still get away from us.

I'll watch the next 20 days very carefully. Because I get the feeling that November 4 is going to change the country. And I want to hope -- in spite of history.

McCain and "That One"

2008-10-08T01:01:00.003-04:00

It's the only moment from the second presidential debate that they'll remember.

When John McCain referred to Barack Obama as "that one."

The sheer contempt that McCain has for his fellow senator and the nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States was suddenly, painfully, viscerally obvious.

It was not a pretty moment.

John McCain is an angry and a desperate man at this point -- and he's got a lot to be angry and deperate about. After all, if Barack Obama by some miracle of atrocious luck were to lose this election, he's got a lot more chances. 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024... you name it. Consider the mind-boggling but very real fact that in 2032 Obama will be younger than McCain is now.

Time is on his side.

Time, however, is not on McCain's side. This is his last shot at the White House. It's do or die for him -- and at the moment it very much looks like die.

I sat down with an electoral map provided by AOL and tried to figure out a way for McCain to win this election -- and I couldn't do it. I don't think there's a way for him to do it. All Obama has to do is hold onto the states that Kerry won last time and add New Mexico and he's the next president. McCain's job is a lot harder. He has to win all the states that Bush won last time and that's not even remotely possible.

Obama will win Michigan. He'll win both Ohio and Florida. He'll win Pennsylvania and New Mexico. I also think he'll win Virginia and possibly even North Carolina -- which native son John Edwards couldn't deliver for John Kerry four years ago.

If the election were to be held today Obama would get well over 300 electoral votes and McCain would get less than 200.

It's not going to be a landslide on the nature of 1932 or 1964. But Obama is going to win, and he's going to win decisively.

And a new era could begin in this country. A better era than the one we've been dealing with since Ronald Reagan asserted so piously in 1981 that government wasn't the solution to our problems, it was the problem.

We know better now. And we're going to prove it in less than a month.

Where Are We?

2008-10-06T14:39:00.003-04:00

Things aren't looking too good right now.

It seems like we might be on the verge of, not just an American financial catastrophe, but a financial catastrophe of global proportions. The stock market is plummeting, people are frightened and are looking to the government for answers.

And Andy Sullivan thinks the presidential election could end up in a tie.

Oh, really?

Andy Sullivan (not to be confused with Andrew Sullivan, who's gay and supposedly conservative) wrote an article for Reuters yesterday floating the possibility that the 2008 election could be a draw:

A handful of battleground states are likely to determine the November 4 U.S. presidential election and it's possible that Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama could split them in a manner that leaves each just short of victory.

If that happens, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would pick the president but it's unclear whether Democrats would have enough votes to send Obama to the White House.

Does anyone really think this is going to happen? Or was it just a slow news day yesterday?

Sullivan elaborates:

If McCain wins Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida and Ohio but loses Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa to Obama, both candidates could end up with 269 electoral votes.

Other, less likely scenarios -- McCain losing Virginia and New Hampshire but winning Michigan, for example -- also could result in a tie.

I don't want to seem flippant, but the way things look right now (and keep in mind that the election is a month away and there's always the possibility of an October surprise) the only way that the Democrats could lose this election would be if Osama Bin Laden were to release a tape of himself and Barack Obama having sex.

Something tells me that's not going to happen.

What is likely to happen (given all the caveats I've stated above) is that this is going to be a transformational election, akin to 1932 and 1980.

Take a look at the record of the last 76 years:

Between 1932 and 1968 (not counting the latter) there were nine presidential elections. The Democrats won seven of them (Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 being the exceptions).
From 1968 to 2008 (again, not counting the latter) there were ten presidential elections. The Republicans won seven of them (Carter in 1976 and Clinton in 1992 and 1996 being the exceptions).

I'd say that it's logical to assume that the pendulum is going to swing back towards the Democrats -- possibly for a generation.

The economy is not a winning issue for Republicans -- and everything is about the economy right now. McCain and Palin know this -- which is why they're flinging mud so furiously at Barack Obama right now, hoping against hope that they can drive up his negatives enough so that they'll have a chance to pull even in the polls. It's not going to work -- not with the Dow taking a dump it's not.

Meanwhile McCain is pulling out of Michigan, Virginia Republicans think the state might go Democratic for the first time since it voted for Lydon Johnson over Barry Goldwater 44 years ago, and McCain pretty much has to run the table of states that Bush won in 2004 in order to win. Even Karl Rove thinks Obama's going to win. Karl fucking Rove.

I don't want to say what I think. I'm afraid to jinx it. But I'm getting more certain every day.

I'll give you a hint. It begins with "l" and it rhymes with "grandslide."

Republican senators (like Elizabeth Dole) are almost certain to lose their seats to Democrats. It's entirely possible that Obama might not win, but that he might win by a huge margin and take a shitload of Democratic senators and congressmen with him into office.

It's almost intoxicating to think about -- at which point I find myself muttering under my breath, "President Mondale... President Dukakis... President Gore... President Kerry..."

Sarah Barracuda Strikes Back!

2008-10-03T01:44:00.002-04:00

Sarah Palin exceeded expectations in the vice presidential debate on Thursday night -- by which I mean that she didn't vomit on herself. The bar had been set so low for her performance that only copious projectile vomiting could have made her look worse than she has lately.

All things considered I thought it was a draw -- which means that, arguably, Palin wins. The same way that, in the presidential debate, it was also a draw which meant that Obama won. McCain needed to land a knockout punch on Obama, and he didn't lay a glove on him. Palin didn't need to land a knockout blow Thursday night. All she needed to do was stay on her feet and not make an utter fool of herself. And by that standard she was successful.

But is that how it's going to seem in a day or two? Will anyone care in a day or two? The House is supposedly going to vote again on the -- well, whatever they're calling it Friday. I doubt they're calling it a "bailout" because people don't seem to care for that term. But whatever they're calling it, they're voting on it tomorrow, and that's all people will be talking about.

I was favorably impressed with Joe Biden, however, who had to perform an interesting (and easy to overlook) form of rhetorical jiu-jitsu against Palin that was, I think, largely successful. He referred to her solely as "The Governor" which I thought was perfect. He didn't correct her when she made mistakes because it would look condescending and sexist and because he knew that the media would later do it for him. He was respectful and yet he didn't give an inch. But in many ways he was more impressive for what he didn't do than for what he did.

Because what did Sarah Palin do? If you ask me, she sabotaged the ticket. And he just stood there and let her do it.

How did she do it?

By consciously espousing the old, tired, discredited Ronald Reagan philosophy that government isn't the solution, government is the problem. With the economy going into the toilet and people worrying about a recession if not a depression, that's not what they want to hear. They want to hear that government is on their side and has a solid plan to fix what's wrong -- not that they're on their own in a cold, cruel, dog-eat-dog world. All ther "darn its" and "you betchas" in the world can't hide the fact that the philosophy that the McCain-Palin ticket espouses is history -- and they will be soon as well. By 2010 Sarah Palin will be a question in "Trivial Pursuit."

With McCain pulling out of Michigan and Obama pulling ahead in the polls, it looks like this is going to be Obama's election, and that Obama is the man for these times, just as Roosevelt was in 1932 and Kennedy was in 1960. But things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, and I suspect that, sometime in 2009, Obama may be tempted to say to McCain what Kennedy once reportedly said to Barry Goldwater:

"You want this fucking job?"

Tom Moran

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much

2008-09-27T14:03:00.004-04:00

I have been pretty much an agnostic on the subject of Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I've written about her (or, more specifically, the passions she inspires) in this blog before. In that blog entry (no links -- we're not about links here, but it was around the time of the Oscars if you want to search for it) I profess my incomprehension at the ire she arouses in what otherwise might seem to be sentient human beings. Why the fury? Why the hate?

But recently Cody (whose real name is Brook Busey) wrote a blog entry on her My Space page that explains a lot about her personality and her feelings about her life and career. An article in Variety discusses the ridiculous enmity that both she and her "Juno" star Ellen Page arouse and Cody elaborates on that subject at great length. I find her post to be very revealing (sometimes unconsciously so) and, as I tend to do here, I thought I would break it down and analyze it so that people can get a glimpse of what's really going on beneath her persona:

A while back, there was a thoughtful article in the above-mentioned publication about Ellen Page and myself. The article was mostly about how passionately some people hate me. As I explained to my therapist the following day (ha) it's kind of weird to read something like that about yourself. On one hand, you feel defensive. On the other hand, you feel puzzled. You feel compelled to identify what it is about you that might inspire such vitriol. (I personally suspect the hate isn't that widespread; it's just loud.)I thought about it. For months. I even wrote a screenplay on the theme. And then, finally, I figured it out.

There's a lot going on in this one passage. I find particularly revealing the defensive "(ha)" when she reveals that she's seeing a therapist -- as if such a revelation will somehow threaten her tough-chick persona so she has to laugh off the fact that, apparently, she feels that she has issues in her life that need to be addressed in a theraputic context. The parenthetical statement is revealing as well -- it's as if she's willing herself to be more popular than she is, like a high school girl who wants the cool kids to like her. It's not really the case that most people hate her -- they're just a very loud minority (as opposed to the silent majority who thinks she's a genius -- it's a very Nixonian rationalization).

I have a response to those who are still boring enough to lob insults in my direction. (Those of you who are friends, fans, enablers, or dislike my writing for legitimate, rational, nonpersonal reasons can tune out now if you like. This isn't for you.)

This is a common ploy on Usenet -- whenever you're discomfited by a particular criticism, profess to find it deeply boring. It doesn't work there and it doesn't work here. However idiotic the people who hate Diablo Cody might be, they're clearly getting to her.

Anyone else? Bend thine ear:I am not Charlie Kaufman or Sofia Coppola (much as I supplicate at their Cannes-weary feet.) I'm not Paul Thomas Anderson. I'm not even Paul W.S. Anderson. I am middle-class trash from the Midwest. I'm a competent nonfiction writer, an admittedly green screenwriter, and a product of Hollywood, USA. I am "Diablo Cody" and if you're not a fan, go rent Prospero's Books again and leave me the fuck alone.

How to unpack this very dense and enlightening passage? From the faux-pretentious language (and just for the sake of the argument, when does faux-pretentious language cross the line and become actually pretentious?), the mention of other screenwriters to whom she clearly feels inferior, the self-contempt apparent in the expression "middle-class trash," the quotation marks around "Diablo Cody" -- it all points to a feeling of, if not exactly unworthiness (although that's clearly there as well), then a feeling of blatant self-inauthenticity.

The following passage points that up, as well as it sets up what follows and makes it more apparent:

I may have won 19 awards that you don't feel I earned, but it's neither original nor relevant to slag on Juno. Really. And you're not some bold, singular voice of dissent, You are exactly like everyone else in your zeitgeisty-demo-lifestyle pod. You are even like me. (I, too, loved Arrested Development! Aren't we a pretty pair of cultural mavericks? Hey, let's go bitch about how Black Kids are overrated!)

Whether it's original or relevant to slag on "Juno" is beside the point, whether Cody realizes it or not. The film is either good or it isn't. If it is, then all the attacks won't matter. If it's not, it doesn't matter either, because they're merely kicking a dead horse. And the sentence "You are even like me" might be the most revealing sentence in this very revealing piece of writing. The questions is not whether her critics feel Cody hasn't earned the awards she's won.

It's whether Cody herself believes that.

The defensiveness reaches fever pitch in what follows:

I'm sorry that while you were shooting your failed opus at Tisch, I was jamming toxic silicon toys up my ass for money. I get why you're bitter. I took exactly one film class in college and-- with the curious exception of the Douglas Sirk unit—it bored the shit out of me. I also once got busted for loudly crinkling a bag of Jujubes during a classroom screening of Vivre Sa Vie. I don't deserve to be here. We've established that. But I'm here. Five million 12-year-olds think I'm Buck Henry. Accept it (Incidentally, if you were me for one day you'd crumble like fucking Stilton. I am better at this than you. You're not strong enough, Film_Fan78. Trust me.) I'm sorry to all those violent, semi-literate fanboys who hate me for befriending their heroes. I can't help it if your favorite writer, actor, director, or talk show host likes me. Maybe you would too, if we actually met. I know my name is fake and that it annoys you. What, do you hate Queen Latifah and Rip Torn, too? Writers and entertainers have been using pseudonyms for years. Chances are, you're spewing bile under an assumed screen name yourself. I'm sorry if you think I'm like some inked-up quasi-Suicide Girl derby cunt from 2002, but I like my fake name. It's engraved on an Oscar. Yours isn't.

Is it my imagination, or is there a truly extraordinary amount of self-loathing packed into this passage? What I find most interesting about it is the extent to which Cody has clearly internalized her hate-mongers to the extent that she actually identifies with them (as in the "we" in "We've established that"). As Auden once said of Yeats that "He became his admirers," it seems that Diablo Cody has become her critics. Or, as they say nowadays, her haters.

It seems to me blatantly obvious that Cody is suffering from an advanced case of The Imposter Syndrome. Here's how it's defined (I snagged this off a Caltech website):

Imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.
It is basically feeling that you are not really a successful, competent, and smart student, that you are only imposing as such.

I think they mean "posing" instead of "imposing," but you get the idea.

It is very common for people who become suddenly and unexpectedly famous to feel as if they are a fraud on the verge of being exposed -- and Cody clearly feels that way. It really comes out in the following passage, which sounds like a genuine cri de coeur. Here Diablo Cody practically begs her critics to understand her (and, possibly, love her?):

Listen: I've been telling stories my whole life. Even when I was a phone sex operator, I was the Mark Twain of extemporaneous jerk-off fiction. I took every perspiring creep on a fucking journey. I don't know how to do anything else.I'm going to make more movies and shows. I doubt they'll all be good, but that's the nature of this life. Even though the public only knows me from one book, one movie, and several aborted blogs, I've spent the last few years hustling like Iceberg Slim out here to prove myself professionally. The people I currently work for, and with, are more than pleased with my post-Juno output. My pilot was so good (thanks, Toni Colette!) that it got picked up for series. That is rare, children. That is blue-rare. In summation: you try it.This is the last I have to say on the subject, unless I'm provoked by a journalist in which case I'll gladly reload. With relish, as Betty Rizzo might say. That said, I'm a 30-year-old woman with a dwindling interest in blog culture, and I don't have time to address this bullshit every time one of my projects comes out. I'm in love, I just bought a house, and my boss made E.T. I kind of have to focus on reality.And drinking. I have to focus on drinking.

The last two sentences speak for themselves. When you feel like a fraud, drinking helps to hide it. Until that becomes even more of a problem than your feelings of fraudulence. I don't know when that will happen to Diablo Cody but I'm pretty sure it's inevitable.

So what do I think of Diablo Cody? I think she's a moderately talented writer. I found Candy Girl, with its let's-see-how-many-inane-pop-cultural-references-we-can-stuff-into-one-sentence prose style, to be a little annoying. And I thought I would hate "Juno," but much to my surprise I didn't. I thought it was an overblown ABC Afterschool Special that didn't deserve to win an Oscar (which was more a tribute to the money it grossed and the perversity of Academy voters -- let's not forget, this is the same Academy that voted Stanley Shapiro the Oscar in 1960 for writing "Pillow Talk" over Ernest Lehman for "North by Northwest," Ingmar Bergman for "Wild Strawberries" and Francois Truffaut for "The 400 Blows"), and I found its politics to be both mildly racist and more than a little reactionary, but the woman clearly has talent. How much talent, and whether she will write anything that has permanent value, has yet to be determined.

But the kind of whining and self-pity that her blog entry represents is really beneath her -- beneath anybody, for that matter. It's just unseemly (and the "my boss made E.T." stuff is just pathetic). It reminds me of that outburst that the novelist Howard Fain spews at Youngblood Hawke in Herman Wouk's novel of the same name. Cody would do well to read that book, if only for the sake of that passage. In it, Hawke and his publishers have convened a meeting to discuss how Hawke should defend himself against a vicious attack by a famous and influential critic who has a grudge against him. Into the meeting walks (or, more accurately, staggers) fellow novelist Howard Fain, who, in the words of the old song, is all lit up like a Christmas tree. He tells the group that "Of course he's been unfairly attacked!" and then goes into a pages-long rant that I think Cody should not only read but learn by heart. It might help her get through this passage in her life with her dignity intact.

I don't have the book on me, but I'll boil the rant down to its essentials:

Keep writing, and don't bother to answer your critics.

To which I would add one personal comment:

Stop drinking. Now. Before you do something you'll regret.

Tom Moran

The Other Fellow Just Blinked

2008-09-26T12:13:00.002-04:00

John McCain will be coming to Oxford, Mississippi tonight to debate Barack Obama after all. What a shock.

It seems that, after suspending his campaign to pretend to be a working Senator for the first time in two years, McCain realized that he wasn't helping the negotiations (and was probably getting in the way) while at the same time he risked giving Obama an hour and a half of free air time on all the networks and the cable stations to talk to the American people without anyone there to respond to him.

Now, you gotta admit, that shows great judgment on McCain's part. The same kind of judgment that caused him to blow off Letterman -- and we know what that got him.

So after thinking it over (and, I would guess, having half his campaign staff scream at him to get on the damn plane), McCain caved and will be at the debate. Who knows what the fuck is going to happen with the bailout. A lot of smart people are saying that it really doesn't matter -- that the economy's screwed no matter what happens, and that we're in for another Great Depression.

I wouldn't go that far -- not yet, anyway. But it seems pretty clear that things are going to get worse before they get better, and that it's going to take someone of great prudence and great levelheadedness to run this country for the next four years.

Does anyone really think that John McCain is still that man?

That's all for now. More after the debate tonight.

The Era of Little Government is Over

2008-09-20T16:00:00.004-04:00

Does this quote sound familiar?

"The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Those words come from Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address in 1981. They have been more or less the guiding philosophy of the Republicans for the last three decades.

And now, somewhat belatedly, the G.O.P. has decided that they are a lie. In fact, they are proving even as I write these words that their entire political philosophy is based on a lie.

The lie is the idea of "let the market prevail." The notion that a free market economy, let undisturbed by government, is the best possible economic system. Laissez faire, dog-eat-dog capitalism.

Because in this present crisis, with less than two months to go before a presidential election, the Republicans are looking to bail out private companies to the tune of more than a trillion dollars in what has been called "Wall Street socialism."

Kevin Philips sets the scene well in a blog on Huffington Post:

We're not just looking at a real estate mess. Over the last quarter century, the total of public and private credit market debt in the United States -- most of it, in fact, is private -- has more than quintupled from $8 to $48 trillion, the biggest such orgy in world history. Over that period, domestic financial debt - the money borrowed by the financial sector for expansion, consolidation, empire-building, leverage, exotic mortgages, gambling, you name it - swelled from just $1 trillion to some $14 trillion. Employing these economic steroids, the financial sector ballooned itself from 14-15% of what back in the mid-1980s was the Gross National Product to 20-21% in 2004 of the newer Gross Domestic Product calculation. In the meantime, the once-dominant manufacturing sector fell far behind, dropping to just 12% of GDP. In a nutshell, the economy has been hijacked in recent decades by the very groups who now purport to have remedies - Wall Street, from whence Paulson emerged, and the money-bubbling, don't regulate the dangerous practices Federal Reserve Board, from whence Bernanke comes.

In other words, we don't really make anything anymore, are awash in debt, and in general we are in shit up to our eyebrows.

And when the going gets tough, the Republicans abandon their core beliefs and rush to suckle on the government tit for a trillion dollars worth of corporate welfare in a last desperate attempt to save failing financial instuitutions (not to mention the presidential election).

Philips points out that at least some Republicans are being intellectually consistent in this matter:

Ironically, the best hope for resistance comes not from the left but from free-market elements of the Republican Party. I have not had much good to say about the GOP for years, but recent events may hint at their political and ideological renewal. Sometime back, when Congress passed the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bail-out program, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, ultimately voted against it. He had worked on its early stage, but ultimately voted no because seeing a pay-off to "Wall Street and K Street (the Washington lobbyist corridor)". Then the Republican National Convention, in a rejection of Bush, Paulson and Bernanke, put an anti-bailout section in its 2008 platform. A few days ago, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, called on the Fed to reject bail-outs and allow the markets to work even if the consequences are "brutal." And on September 18, a hundred Republican members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Paulson and Bernanke requesting that the two men "refrain from conducting any additional government-financed bail-outs for large financial firms."

These guys may end up being the last rats left drowning on the sinking ship of laissez faire capitalism, but at least they get points for consistency. Unlike the vast majority of Republicans, who at this point would be willing to do pretty much anything to keep these private financial institutions afloat.

The Republican Party is bankrupt. They have no ideas, no guts and no idea what to do except to throw government money at the problem. They are completely discredited.

It's time for the Democrats, as they did in 1932, to get into power and, ironically enough, save capitalism from itself. Like the old song says, we did it before.

And we can do it again.

Republican Socialism

2008-09-19T11:03:00.004-04:00

Didn't know that Republicans were socialists, did you?

Well, life throws you a few curves every now and again.

It turns out that the party dedicated to laissez-faire, dog-eat-dog capitalism is now begging en masse to be allowed to suckle on the government tit! Who knew?

It seems that if an ordinary citizen gets overextended on his house payments it's "Fuck you, buddy -- you're foreclosed!" But if it's a company like Bear Stearns or AIG and they screw up, well, they're just "too big to fail."

Sense a bit of a double standard here?

Consider the ramifications of the lead paragraph from Mike Allen's piece on Politico.com:

Congressional leaders said after meeting Thursday evening with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that as much as $1 trillion could be needed to avoid an imminent meltdown of the U.S. financial system.

That's one trillion dollars. With a "t."

And yes, he did use the word "imminent meltdown."

Still want to vote for the Republicans because you think Sarah Palin's hot?

To continue with the Politico.com piece:

Paulson announced plans Friday morning for a "bold approach" that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. At a news conference at Treasury headquarters, he called for a "temporary asset relief program" to take bad mortgages off the books of the nation's financial institutions. Congressional leaders had left Washington on Friday, but Paulson planned to confer with them over the weekend.

"We're talking hundreds of billions," Paulson told reporters. "This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get to the heart of the problem." [...]

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” said lawmakers were told last night “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications, here at home and globally.”

“What you heard last evening is one of those rare moments — certainly rare in my experience here — was that Democrats and Republicans decided we needed to work together, quickly,” Dodd said.

Are you scared yet?

It seems that the G.O.P.'s fiscal chickens are coming home to roost -- just in time for the election.

And it's time to ask some rhetorical (but important) questions:

Which party is better equipped to deal with this imminent financial meltdown? The party that got us out of the Great Depression? Or the party that got us into it? The party that ran up huge deficits, not once, but twice in the past 30 years? Or the party that turned one of those deficits into a surplus?

The answer's pretty clear. At least to me. Because voting Republican at this point in time is like hiring an arsonist to put out the fire he set.

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Sarah Not-So-Straight and Not-So-Tall

2008-09-14T13:35:00.005-04:00

I don't know who the hell this Michael Seitzman guy is, but I have to admit that I agree with every word of this:

Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we're going to agree to disagree. This isn't one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I'm not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.

He posts on Huffington Post (no links -- we're not about links here). On the other hand, he also claims that he finds her sexually attractive and wants to sleep with her, and if that's true then I think that he's either mentally ill, mentally disabled or mentally disturbed.

Because that woman is creepy. Deeply creepy.

Some of the squadrons of reporters flocking to Alaska to find out about Sarah Palin are starting to find out the truth about her. The New York Times has a story on the front page today that shows that, when you get right down to it, Sarah Palin really isn't all that different from George W. Bush:

Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages. [...]

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records. [...]

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

You have to admit, the bit about the Wasilla High School yearbook archives is priceless. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. This is exactly the same kind of cronyism that called FEMA to fall down during the days after Katrina. Do we really want more of that?

In the interests of fairness, though, I have to point out that there seems to be one glaring error of fact in the Times's reporting. They claim that Palin became governor of Alaska fifty years after it became a state, when Alaska became the 49th state in 1959 -- so it hasn't been 50 years yet (Hawaii became the 50th state later that same year).

So you see? We can be fair and balanced here. It's just that sometimes we choose not to be.

Sarah Speaks!

2008-09-11T19:19:00.003-04:00

The McCain campaign has held Sarah Palin in virtual purdah since McCain named her as his running mate -- she's given lots of speeches, in which she has stuck strictly to the text, but absolutely no interviews. No extemporaneous comments. No diverging whatsoever from scripts written for her by others.

And now we know why.

Tonight Sarah Palin gave her first interview since being named to the Republican ticket, to Charlie Gibson of ABC News (full disclosure: I worked briefly for ABC News). Even with extensive coaching, she still came off as someone who -- how shall I say this politely? -- is no Hillary Clinton.

Sarah Palin can't even lie convincingly.

Here is what I felt was one of the most interesting parts of the interview:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side. That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

Do I really have to point out that Governor Palin was lying through her teeth? Not only that, but she can't even lie convincingly. It's one thing to be a liar. It's another thing to be a bad liar.

First she tries to wriggle her way out of it by claiming that she didn't say what she said (only to be shut down by Gibson, who reminds her that it was an exact quote). Then she tries to claim that what she said was only what Abraham Lincoln had said before her.

The only problem with that is that it's a bald-faced lie. What Governor Palin said was the exact opposite of what Lincoln said -- and anyone who knows the Lincoln quote knows it. And she doesn't even get the quote right.

This, according to Jim Wallis, the author of God's Politics, is what Lincoln said:

"Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices—saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God's side."

For those of you who are into irony, John Kerry quoted the same lines of Lincoln in his acceptance speech at the Deomcratic convention in Boston four years ago.

Now, anyone who can read and is capable of comparing the two statements knows full well that Palin was not "repeating" Lincoln's words -- if she'd wanted to do that, she just could have quoted him, the way John Kerry did.

She said the exact opposite of what Lincoln meant. And thinks the American people are too stupid to know the difference.

I'll skip past the part where she encourages Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, serenely ignorant of the fact that such an alliance with those two countries would oblige us to go to war with Russia if Russia attacked either one of them. And I'll move on to my favorite part -- so far (there's going to be more on various ABC News shows in the next day or so):

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view.
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

Did you get it? The woman didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was -- and she's running for Vice President of the United States! And by the way, don't you love Charlie Gibson explaining it to her: "as I understand it" -- that was really priceless.

Sarah Palin makes Dan Quayle sound like Thomas Aquinas. And it'll be interesting to see what the G.O.P. does with her after this. Do they stick her back in purdah, away from those nasty beasts in the mainstream media? Or will Americans buy the bullshit that she's selling?

I guess we'll find out soon.

"My Muslim Faith"

2008-09-07T13:14:00.002-04:00

Guess what? Barack Obama's human.

On "This Week With George Stephanopolous" he made a mistake. Not a big mistake, more of a verbal slip, but it's one that the right-wing bloggers are already obsessing about, trying to make it into a big mistake -- and it's one that we're going to be hearing a lot about in the next few days.

I guarantee that Rush Limbaugh and the boys at Fox News are going to be jumping on this one like a horny football player on a slutty cheerleader.

What did he say?

He said that John McCain had not attacked "my Muslim faith."

Ooooops!

Was it just bad phrasing? Or was it a genuine Freudian slip? I believe it was the former, the right-wing bloggers are already claiming that it's the latter.

What he meant to say is pretty obvious -- that McCain has not so far been one of those people falsely accusing him of being a Muslim. It just came out wrong. I suppose he could have used an expression like "my alleged Muslim faith" or "my so-called Muslim faith" but that would have been seen as being demeaning to Islam.

I see this hitting the mainstream media by Tuesday at the latest. Did Obama make a gaffe -- which is Washington is defined as the moment when a politician accidentally tells the truth?

After all, the right-wing has nothing better to talk about. They can't run on the record of the past eight years (and Sarah Palin on ice skates can't run away from it fast enough), so all they can do is mock Obama for being "community organizer" (although if you think about it, as one poster on the ABC News board put it, so was Jesus Christ) and imply that he's some kind of a scary Muslim.

Will it work? The last 28 years of American history would seem to indicate that we would be distinctly foolish to assume that it won't.

Noun, Verb, P.O.W.

2008-09-04T23:10:00.002-04:00

John McCain talked about his personal story tonight in his acceptance speech on the last night of the Republican convention. He did so because there's nothing else he can talk about.

He heads a discredited party whose president couldn't even show his face at his own party's convention because it would turn off swing voters who distrust him when they don't despise him. He'd rather talk about being tortured himself in the 60s than admit the fact that the leaders of his own party have condoned torture of people who are being held in secret places without being charged with any crime. He'd rather allow his running mate to attack Barack Obama in carefully chosen code words (whenever either she or Rudy Giuliani used the words "community organizer" it sounded like those scenes in films like "Grand Illusion" or "Mean Streets" where we can tell that a character is anti-Semitic just by the way they pronounce a Jewish name) than to accept the fact that a party whose convention delegates are 93% white can no longer be said to represent America.

John McCain and the Republicans are the past. Barack Obama and the Democrats are the future.

Can John McCain run on the record of the past eight years? Of course not -- which is why he ran away from it as fast as he could. Are we better off than we were when Bill Clinton left office? Of course not -- which is why George W. Bush couldn't show his face at his own party's convention.

That's why you heard about John McCain's story ad nauseam during this convention. That's why we heard over and over again about how he was shot down and how he was tortured (but not about how he signed a confession) and how he came home with injuries that he carries to this day.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, wars are not won by P.O.W.s. And while McCain's service is impressive, and his courage is laudatory, it has no bearing whatsoever on the choice Americans have to make in November. After all, you never heard Franklin Roosevelt say, "Vote for me -- I have polio!" He told a country in the worst crisis it had faced in 68 years that he had a new deal for the American people. He spoke about optimism in the face of misery -- and he won in a landslide. John McCain, and his party, act as if it's 1980 and all it takes is a promise to cut taxes on the rich and boost military spending to get elected.

He, and they, are going to find out differently in about two months.

McCain's Problem

2008-09-02T11:41:00.004-04:00

I don't know about you, but I'll bet that, for a lot of Republicans, Joe Lieberman is looking pretty damn good around now.

John McCain is sending a squadron of operatives to Alaska to find out what else they might have missed about Sarah Palin -- besides the knocked-up teenage daughter and the husband with the DUI arrest, that is. A bit like closing the barn door after the cow's gotten out, if you ask me.

This is starting to look a little like 1972, for those of you whose memory of politics goes back that far. George McGovern chose Senator Thomas Eagleton to be his running mate, only to discover that Eagleton had mental health issues that were considered at the time to be disqualifying, and which caused him to drop out of the race.

But the funny thing is that McCain is really fucked. In theory, he could replace her now -- after all, Palin hasn't even been officially nominated by the convention -- but in a very short time Sarah Palin has become the "ooomph girl" of the rabid right, the very base that McCain most needs to shore up if he wants to have any hope of winning in November. If he drops her now, he alienates a part of the Republican party that he just can't afford to offend. If he doesn't drop her, he runs the risk of alienating everyone else.

McCain better hope (pray is more like it) that nothing else pops up in the near future about Sarah Palin's past (and keep in mind that the woman is already under investigation -- something that McCain's people knew when he picked her). What else have they missed? What other skeletons does she have in her closet? Because anything else just might prove to be fatal.

But let's be clear about something. I feel bad for Bristol Palin (not least because she has a mother who's stupid enough to saddle her with a name like "Bristol"). A 17-year-old girl from Alaska who's suddenly thrust into national prominence because a teenage hockey player and self-professed "fucking redneck" was too stupid to put on a condom deserves our compassion, not our scorn. The issue here is not the daughter.

The issue is McCain's judgment.

Naming a vice president is the most important decision that a candidate has to make, and it's pretty obvious that McCain made a hasty and ill-informed decision. What does that say about his qualifications to be president? That's the issue that the left has to keep hammering away at -- that McCain's choice of Sarah Palin is indicative of serious flaws in the way John McCain makes decisions -- flaws that could have serious if not deadly consequences should he get into the White House. And we can't afford to take a chance like that at this point in our history.

You have to wonder if the McCain camp is second-guessing themselves and quietly wondering who else might be available if they have to bail on Sarah Palin. The problem is that if they do, the campaign is pretty much over. For better or worse, they're stuck with her.

Sort of like a shotgun marriage. Appropriately ironic, don't you think?

An Interesting Week

2008-09-01T11:14:00.003-04:00

The week ahead reminds me of the old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. These are going to be interesting days ahead, with a lot of challenges for progressives as we try to make our way through the minefield and into the White House.

The Republican Convention has already been drastically curtailed because of Hurricane Gustav, and although at first blush it might seem churlish to consider the political fallout from that event, we should probably do it anyway. Is this going to remind voters of Katrina and the Bush Administration's horrifically inept handling of that catastrophe, or is it going to give Bush and his cronies a second chance to get it right and look good? Is the fact that voters won't be reminded of Bush and Cheney at the convention a good thing or a bad thing?

Then there's the naming of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be McCain's running mate. An opportunity for the Democrats, or a trap? Their first reaction to her pick was wrong-headed and Obama himself corrected it. And I think it's obvious that in the way we discuss and treat Sarah Palin we have to be extraordinarily careful and avoid the idiot excesses that some left-wing bloggers have already begun to indulge in (such as their suggestion that Palin's latest child is actually her grandchild, the son of her 16-year-old daughter -- do we really need to be putting stupid shit like that out there?).

One thing Gustav will do is force the Republicans to tone down the red-meat rhetoric at their convention. They have to sound statesmanlike, not like rabid attack dogs. And Democrats have to be careful how they respond.

There are a couple of ways to attack McCain's choice that don't make progressives sound sexist or like they're attacking a hockey mom. I would suggest we concentrate on them:

McCain wanted to pick Joe Lieberman to be his running mate, but was overruled by the right-wing of his own party, who, one could argue, practically made his choice for him. This could be a valuable line of attack, since it hits at McCain's so-called "maverick" status and points out the disturbing truth: that for the past eight years the worst, most fascistic elements of the Republican party have had McCain in their pocket.
McCain picked for his vice president a person whom he had met exactly once. The rashness and the recklessness of the choice and the way it was made is a valid point, and needs to be made.
Sarah Palin is a rabid right-wing extremist whose views are not mainstream -- which is exactly why the right wing of the GOP went so bonkers with joy when she was chosen. Pointing out exactly how far to the right of the American people she is makes a certain amount of sense.
If Palin's choice galvanized the base of their party, it also has to galvanize the base of ours. This woman has views that are profoundly at odds with the majority of the American people, and that has to get people to move over to our side. Make people vote Democratic who otherwise would just stay at home and not bother to vote.

At the same time, Sarah Palin is an attractive, personable candidate, and we underestimate her at our peril. I hope Joe Biden is very, very careful in their upcoming debate, because if he goes after her the wrong way it could just spell disaster. Keep in mind the debate between the vice presidential candidates of 1988, when Michael Dukakis picked the venerable Lloyd Bentsen and George H.W. Bush picked the laughable J. Danforth Quayle, who was not just beaten but humiliated by Bensten in their debate by the most ferociously effective put-down in the history of modern politics: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

But we know who won that election, don't we?

NOTE 9/2: Sarah Palin's daughter is 17, not 16. And she's pregnant. And if the left-wing bloggers had not accused her of giving birth to Palin's Down Syndrome son, the fact of her pregnancy might not have come out -- at least not now.

Post (and Pre) Convention Thoughts

2008-08-30T15:20:00.002-04:00

Now that one convention is over and another is about to begin (if a hurricane doesn't interfere -- and doesn't the fact that the GOP convention might be interrupted by a hurricane almost three years to the day after Katrina indicate to you that if there is a God He has a really fucked-up sense of humor?), this might be a good moment to sort out some thoughts on what has happened, as well as what is about to happen.

I will admit that I was slightly disappointed by Barack Obama's acceptance speech. It was sort of the declamatory equivalent of "Alexander Nevsky" -- he sacrificed a lot of what made him great to begin with, and I'm not at all sure that the trade-off was worth it. I understand the logic behind it (which was to give a lot of specifics in order to rebut the notion that he's all eloquence without substance), but in the end it came off a lot like one of Bill Clinton's old State of the Union messages from the '90s -- a laundry list of proposals that was meant to please everyone but became instead a little tiring to listen to.

Bill Clinton's speech, on the other hand, was a classic. He said everything that Hillary should have said but failed to deliver in her solipsistic, overly self-congratulatory speech. I've been critical of both Clintons during this campaign, but I fail to see how anyone could have improved on Bill Clinton's performance on Wednesday night (certainly Obama didn't top it the night after). It reminded me of Babe Ruth coming out of retirement and back to Yankee Stadium and telling the crowd, "You want to see a home run? I'll show you a home run." And then BAM! He hits it out of the ballpark.

Joe Biden did well by himself too. No one would ever consider him a master of eloquence (his own eloquence, anyway), but he told his story and helped middle-class voters connect with the ticket in a way that might help Obama with the voters he's going to need in the Fall. I think he was a brilliant pick and I look forward to his performance in the upcoming debates.

Then John McCain made his choice for vice president -- and chose a 44-year-old self-professed "hockey mom" from Alaska with even less experience than Barack Obama. A brilliant choice? A "tactical mistake" (as my old friend Robert George put it on his blog)? I'm sure the rabid right-wingers at Fox are spraying their pants over the choice (although I haven't seen any of the cable coverage, and am glad I haven't), but I'm with Robert. This was a very high-risk move on McCain's part that really calls his judgment into question.

Think about it -- Obama has a search committee that includes the daughter of John F. Kennedy spend weeks going through and vetting all the prospective candidates before agreeing on one of the most senior and respected members of the senate.

John McCain, on the other hand, picks a woman almost three decades his junior with very little experience whom he had met exactly once. And who's under investigation at the moment.

Forget about Sarah Palin -- what does that say about John McCain? If I were the Democrats, that's the line I'd take. What does it say about John McCain's judgement that he made the most important decision of his candidacy so quickly and casually? Is this the guy you want deciding whether or not we go to war with Iran?

The GOP in general, and John McCain in particular, are going to have a lot of explaning to do next week. And I can't wait to see what, if anything, they come up with. If they don't get washed out by a hurricane first.

Hillary's Big Moment

2008-08-27T07:02:00.003-04:00

I'm back. Did you miss me?

I hadn't intended to go so long without posting, but various circumstances (some technical problems and one traumatic disruption in my personal life) got in the way.

But anyway, now I'm back. Ready to disgorge my opinions on all and sundry (especially sundry).

So Hillary finally got her moment in the sun last night -- prime time at the Democratic Convention. How did she do?

Other people thought she did better than I did. I found her speech to be disappointing. She knew what she was up there to do and in my opinion she did it halfheartedly. Once again, when the Clintons speak it's all about the Clintons. She had to make the case for Barack Obama and I don't think she did it well enough. For one long stretch (more than 800 words in a speech that only had slightly more than 2,300 words in it, total) she didn't even bother to mention him by name.

Will it matter? Will her speech appease the legions of whiny menopausal bitches who were (and, for all I know, still are) threatening to vote for McCain because they didn't get their way? I have no idea.

But Hillary's case boils down to this one passage from her speech:

I want you to ask yourselves, were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

I have a sinking feeling that Hillary's hordes are going to say that they really were in it for themselves -- that they saw Hillary as a proxy for their stunted lives and that Hillary's going all the way to the White House was going to make it all better, that it would be the ultimate emotional Band-Aid on the boo-boo of their lives. Which might help explain why they went so berserk when she got beaten like a red-headed stepchild by a younger, smarter candidate -- who just happened to be male.

This campaign has a long way to go, and it may well be enough nail-biter. Did Hillary do enough to bring her supporters around to Obama's side? And will there be a price to pay if it's perceived that she didn't?

Sign of the Times

2008-07-27T08:22:00.004-04:00

Great quote in the British newspaper the Telegraph by film critic Jenny McCartney:

America, for all its manifold strengths, is still a country in which the population can be roused to a frenzy of condemnation by the sight of Janet Jackson's escaped nipple on the Super Bowl, but views the sight of a bound man being torched to death as all-round family entertainment.

That just about says it all, don't you think?

Where We Are Now

2008-07-19T01:01:00.003-04:00

The Democratic and Republican conventions are still in the future. Labor Day, when the campaign supposedly starts in earnest, is six weeks away.

Where do we stand?

Most people would tell you that the election is a lock for Barack, which, as anyone who has followed presidential politics over the past thirty years or so would understand, makes me nervous. And it should -- I remember the impregnable 17-point lead President Dukakis had over that Bush guy in 1988.

But some stats (from The Weekly Standard, no less) might help ease my incipient angst:

A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month found that nearly half of the liberals surveyed are enthusiastic about supporting Barack Obama, while only 13 percent of conservatives are enthusiastic about McCain. More generally, 91 percent of self-identified Obama supporters are "enthusiastic" about their candidate; 54 percent say they are "very enthusiastic." Seventy-three percent of such McCain supporters say they are "enthusiastic" about his candidacy, but only 17 percent say they are "very enthusiastic."

A USA Today/Gallup poll reported similar findings last week. That survey shows that while 67 percent of Barack Obama's supporters are "more excited than usual about voting" for their candidate, only 31 percent of John McCain's supporters can say the same thing. More troubling for the McCain campaign is that more than half of those who identified themselves as McCain backers--54 percent--say they are "less excited than usual" about their candidate.

Sounds good, right? Should we be measuring for drapes in the Oval Office?

Not so fast, Von Ryan.

They say a week is a lifetime in politics, and the G.O.P. is known for being considerably more ruthless than the Democrats, so given that they have to feel under the gun at this point I wouldn't be surprised at any dirty trick they might pull in order to remain in power -- tricks that will make the infamous Willie Horton ads seem like so many episodes of "Spongebob Squarepants."

But right now Republican operatives are looking at what's likely to happen in November are forecasting a "catastrophe." And what I find interesting is what might happen down-ticket -- particularly in House and Senate races. If 2008 looks to be as big a political tsunami as people say, Obama could be swept into the White House with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. How cool would that be?

And yet... I'm reminded of that scene in "Star Wars" when they get away from the Death Star and they go into the combat with the fighters that have been sent after them and when Luke Skywalker shoots one down (in a scene blatantly cribbed from Howard Hawks' "Air Force," he yells out, "I got him!"

"Great, kid," Han Solo replies. "Don't get cocky."

That would be my message to Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, progressives all across the country and myself as well.

Don't get cocky. Democrats have been known to snatch defeat out of the mouth of victory before. Let's play this one nice and careful and make sure we do everything we can to win.

And save the celebrating until November 5th.

The Coming Fiscal Shitstorm

2008-07-18T03:29:00.004-04:00

Does anyone have any conception of the fiscal shitstorm that Barack Obama will be walking right into if he is inaugurated President in 2009?

It's not going to be pretty, folks.

Here's what Paul Krugman of the New York Times has to say:

It’s true that some prognosticators still expect a “V-shaped” recovery in which the economy springs back rapidly from its slump. On this view, any day now it will be morning in America.

But if the experience of the last 20 years is any guide, the prospect for the economy isn’t V-shaped, it’s L-ish: rather than springing back, we’ll have a prolonged period of flat or at best slowly improving performance.

And that's the optimistic scenario. On Charlie Rose the other night, Gretchen Morgensen of the Times and Allan Sloan of Fortune were talking about the very real possibility that we might fall into the "D" word.

That's Depression. Not recession -- Depression. With a capital "D."

I was not reassured by all the happy talk being made by government officials, including President Bush, over the past week. I have a saying: whenever people in positions of authority tell you that the markets are "fundamentally sound" -- grab your balls.

They're talking about banks failing. Of possibly even runs on the banks. Things we haven't seen in this country since that awful winter of 1932-33, when it seemed like the country was falling apart and that capitalism itself was doomed to be tossed on the ash-heap of history.

I know, people might say that I'm sounding like Chicken Little. Perhaps the sky isn't falling, and that I'm just being a little overly concerned. After all, I don't have a mortgage and I don't drive a car -- why should I give a shit?

Because I have a feeling that between now and Inauguration Day, the economy's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. And that Barack Obama is going to be relegated to doing what Democrats have been relegated to doing for the past 30 years -- being the guy with the shovel following the elephant in the circus parade.

It won't be pretty.

Elder Care, Japanese Style

2008-06-22T10:20:00.002-04:00

Time magazine (full disclosure: my former employers) has a great story in their current issue.

I'll just give you the the first two paragraphs before commenting on it:

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

Shigeo Tokuda is, in fact, his screen name. He prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 films over the past 14 years. And in his double life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan's sexuality: in surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. Those figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest-growing genres.

I know. You love this as much as I do -- right?

You have to admit that, despite his age, Tokuda acts just like any other porn star, even to the point of being so fucking stupid he thinks he can be written up in Time magazine as a porn star without his wife and children finding out about it.

Nevertheless, the whole subject of "elder porn" is intriguing, to me at least, because it's a phenomenon that I've been predicting would happen for several years now -- in fact, I've suggested that it was pretty much inevitable.

I mean, think about it. The baby boomers have dominated virtually every aspect of life since the first of them was born. In the late 40s, American society was all about babies. Then in the 50s, it was all about little kids who came home from school to watch "Howdy Doody" and "The Mickey Mouse Club." Then the 60s were all about recalcitrant teenagers who wanted to smoke pot, have sex and avoid going to Vietnam. And in the early 80s, when the first of the boomers turned 35 and started seriously worrying about getting older, Jane Fonda was there with the first of her exercise tapes to help them keep in shape.

Now the oldest of the boomers is going to turn 65 soon. Now, given that this rather obnoxious demographic bulge has been the cynosure of American society from the instant they shot out of the womb, you don't expect them to get all shy when they enter their golden years, do you? As Spike Lee might say: Hell no!

I've thought for a long time that, given the endless self-aborption of the baby boomers, it would only be a matter of time before "elder porn" became a recognized genre of American adult film, but it stands to reason that the Japanese would beat us to it -- after all, they have an older population then we do. And when it happens, it might be a good thing.

Think about it. Can you think of a depiction of mature sexuality (defined, let's say, as sexual contact between persons 50 or older) in media that isn't somehow a joke or made an object of ridicule? It's almost impossible. You would have to go back thirty years and to Woody Allen's "Interiors" to find a positive depiction of mature sexuality.

But as some people have discovered that interracial sex is hot, some people are similarly discovering that intergenerational sex is hot as well -- one of the better selling series in the Girlfriends Films line of lesbian porn concerns itself with older women seducing young girls. And in the hetero market it's no big deal for men in their 40s or older to be banging girls young enough to be their daughters.

But what about older people having sex with each other? Is that, or can that be, erotic, not to mention profitable? Frankly, I think it's inevitable. The most narcissistic generation in history is going to want to see their sexuality reflected in the adult entertainment that they consume, and given how many of them there are, if it's made, they'll watch it.

Almost makes you want to consider a career change...

Obsequious Sorrow

2008-06-15T09:07:00.003-04:00

With all due respect to Tim Russert, who by all accounts was a superb journalist and a stand-up guy, I found the coverage of his death to be nauseating.

It combined two of the most distasteful elements of our society: the incessant self-regard of the media when one of their own dies, and the obnoxious solipsism of the baby boomers when confronted by their own mortality.

Was Tim Russert's death a bad thing? Obviously. Anyone dying suddenly and before their time is a tragedy for their friends and family. But he was the host of a TV show, not the president. Breaking into regularly scheduled programming to announce his death with the same tones that used to be reserved for such earth-shattering events as the Kennedy assassination or the Moon landing was just ridiculous.

And it's only going to get worse later today, as the Sunday morning chat shows lay it on with a trowel -- which is why I'm not going to be watching them.

A good man died. You announce it, preferably at the end of the broadcast, and you let it go at that. To perserve with such an orgy of "obstinate condolement," as Claudius once said to Hamlet, bespeaks "an understanding simple and unschooled."

That's a pretty good capsule description of America at this point in time. Simple and unschooled.

Tom Moran

The End (We Hope) of Hillary

2008-06-08T08:26:00.003-04:00

There's a story about JFK on the morning of his election as president saying of his opponent, Richard Nixon, who had churlishly semi-conceded, "He went out the way he came in -- no class."

Well, Dick Nixon was practically Fred Astaire compared to the way Hillary Clinton ended her campaign. Should we be surprised?

A number of columnists and pundits are writing Hillary Clinton's political obituary this week. If Barack Obama wins the White House and serves two terms, that would close off the presidency for a Democrat until 2016, which would almost certainly be too late for Hillary.

Gail Collins of the Times tries to be gracious about Hillary's defeat:

I get asked all the time whether I think Hillary lost because sexism is worse than racism in this country. The answer is no. She lost because Obama ran a smarter, better-organized campaign. It’s possible that she would have won if the Democratic Party had more rational primary rules. But Obama didn’t make up the rules, and Clinton had no problem with them until she began to lose.

Actually, this is not the whole story. Obama didn't just run a smarter campaign -- Hillary ran a dumber one. Obama didn't win this nomination so much as Hillary lost it -- lost it by her own hubris and her own arrogance. She thought this would be a coronation process that would be over in January, and by the time she figured out that it would be a fight it was too late. The Clintons held Obama in contempt as a lightweight, and before they knew what hit them he had run right over them.

Michael Crowley in the L.A. Times is pretty scathing:

A Washington mentality may even explain Hillary Clinton's astoundingly inept approach to the nominating process. The Clinton team seemed to treat the primaries more as a media narrative than a race for delegates. First, in their insider arrogance, Clinton's aides assumed that they could eliminate Obama early, in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. When that didn't happen, they focused on the importance of wins in such "big states" as California, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the Obama team grasped that it could lose such key high-profile contests and still take the nomination by methodically racking up delegates in smaller, unglamorous places the media had little interest in, such as Idaho, Colorado, Maine, Kansas and Utah.

When Obama started to overtake Clinton in the pledged delegate count, she fell back on the ultimate Washington insider's argument: that superdelegates, the creation of the inside-Washington party machine, would come to her rescue and override the will of the voters. Not only did this strategy fail, it enhanced Clinton's image as an insulated Beltway manipulator.

Even Clinton's supposed mastery of political media backfired on her. Her media team overplayed its hand early in the campaign, engendering resentment among reporters with a bare-knuckled, kill-or-be-killed philosophy cultivated during past Clinton scandals. Last September, for instance, Clinton aides forced GQ magazine to spike a critical story on her campaign by threatening to withhold access to Bill Clinton.

And other aides, notably Penn, became figures of ridicule with their constant over-spinning as they found ever-more creative ways to explain away Obama's wins and Clinton's losses (caucuses don't really count, Clinton won more "electoral votes," etc.).

Hillary's supporters didn't help either and are not helping now, as Collins points out:

They vowed to write in Hillary’s name on their ballots in November; to wear “NObama” T-shirts all summer; to “de-register” as Democrats. One much-circulated e-mail proposed turning June 3, the day Barack Obama claimed the nomination, as a permanent day of mournful remembrance “like the people in Ireland remember the Famine.”

With "friends" like these, do the Democrats really need enemies? Is this "If I can't win I'm going to take my ball and go home" attitude the way to win the White House?

Hillary was arrogant and stupid, blew the nomination and was too pig-headed to even admit it for close to a week. If she had won the general election and run the country the way she ran her campaign, her administration would have been a disaster. We should all be glad that she did not win the nomination, and let's hope that her followers grow up and vote the way they should in November, and not spend the Summer whining into their orange pekoe.

But I'm not hopeful about that last part.

Tom Moran

Leaving the Room With Dignity

2008-06-01T10:13:00.004-04:00

Has Hillary Clinton finally admitted to herself that it's over?

A piece in today's New York Times by Adam Nagourney, Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny would seem to indicate that she knows that it's time for the lady in the pantsuit to pack it in:

... Mrs. Clinton’s associates said she seemed to have come to terms over the last week with the near certainty that she would not win the nomination ... Her associates said the most likely outcome was that she would end her bid with a speech, probably back home in New York, in which she would endorse Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton herself suggested on Friday that the contest would end sometime next week.

Has reality finally sunk in? One would think so, but then there are indications elsewhere in the same piece that Senator Clinton is still firmly in denial:

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a superdelegate who has been at the forefront of calling for uncommitted Democrats to make a choice soon after the last vote, said in an interview that Mrs. Clinton called him last week and urged him to “keep an open mind until the convention.”

So which is it? A graceful exit (if that's even possible at this late date) or whining all the way to the convention and beyond?

Democrats want a nominee. They want one now. They want this process to be over, so they can start working on the general election and the task of defeating John McCain. All Hillary Clinton can do at this point is make it more difficult for Barack Obama to win the general election.

So what is to be done? Hillary Clinton will not -- repeat, will not -- be the nominee. Barack Obama is not going to put her on the ticket (not unless he wants to be the first presidential candidate to be assassinated by his running mate). There's nowhere for her to go at this point.

There's a famous quote by a standup comedian named Lotus Weinstock: "I used to want to change the world, now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity."

Is Hillary Clinton capable of leaving the room with a little dignity? This week might give us the answer. But based on past performance, I wouldn't count on it.

Reasons for Hillary To Stay In The Race

2008-05-25T10:31:00.002-04:00

A lot of people have been making arguments for Hillary Clinton to get out of the presidential race. After all, they claim, she's pretty much mathematically eliminated, she can't win -- what's the point?

Well, recently Senator Clinton pointed out why she's still in a race she has no chance of winning -- after all, she said, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June. There's no telling what could happen.

And you know, she does make a certain amount of sense. So I decided to tote up all the things that could conceivably intervene between now and the convention that would necessitate making Hillary Clinton, and not Barack Obama, the nomineee of the Democratic Party:

Obama could be shot by a crazed gunman in love with Jodie Foster.
He could be shot by Jodie Foster.
He could be eaten by a puma.
He could develop a crack habit.
He could contract bubonic plague.
A sex tape could surface in which he performs with Paris Hilton.
He could turn out to be Canadian.
He could be caught in a public restroom reading The Fountainhead to a truck driver.
He could be struck by a bolt of lightning.

You see? Any of these are real possibilities. So get off Hillary's case! She's just playing the percentages. After all, shit happens, and if anyone knows how to take advantage of shit...

Tom Moran

A Good Year To Be A Democrat

2008-05-18T10:09:00.004-04:00

This is starting to look like it might be historic.

A wildly unpopular president. A party in tatters. A young, charismatic candidate. A party that's hungry to regain power. A country that wants to go in any direction but the direction it's going.

There's change in the air. Can you smell it?

(God, I'm starting to sound like Peggy Noonan.)

Certain Republicans can smell it -- some of them, anyway.

Former National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Davis can see what's happening after three losses in three consecutive special elections -- in Louisiana, Illinois and most recently in Mississippi.

Democrats winning in Mississippi. Mississippi. Fucking Mississippi.

Just think about that for second.

“The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006," Davis is quoted by Politico as writing, "when we lost 30 seats (and our majority) and came within a couple of percentage points of losing another 15 seats. Whether measured by polls, open seats, money, voter registration, generic ballot, presidential popularity or issues, our party faces a steep climb to maintain our current numbers.”

That's putting it mildly. Our party faces imminent disaster is more like it.

Can you spell "filibuster-proof majority"? Because that's starting to look like a distinct possibility. When voters in Mississippi start going for the Democrats, real change is about to happen.

Davis is saying that the GOP could lose 19 seats in the House -- and if he's willing to go that far, who knows how big the real number could end up being?

I'm not counting the Republicans out yet. They could try any number of Swiftboat-like attacks on Obama and the Democrats in a desperate attempt to hold onto power. It might just work.

But things are looking very positive right now. People are fed up with the Republicans and their bullshit, and are in a mood to throw the bums out. And I don't blame them.

Which makes it a good year to be a Democrat.

Tom Moran

Hillary's Agenda

2008-05-11T12:18:00.002-04:00

Stick a fork in her, she's done -- right?

I mean, it's over. Obama is the nominee -- right?

So why is Hillary still in the race?

After all, people tend to do things for a reason, and Hillary is nothing if not motivated, so if she's still in the race, and refuses to concede reality not to mention the election results, it must be that she has some agenda that we haven't figured out yet.

What could that agenda be?

Bob Herbert wrote a scathing column in the New York Times about Hillary's latest attempt to belittle Barack Obama:

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

Ouch!

I hate to admit it, but Herbert's right on the money here. Hillary is desperate and resorting to the worst sort of Lee Atwater tactics in order to pull victory out of the jaws of an all-but-certain defeat.

She's lost. She has to know that. Hillary Clinton is many things -- stupid isn't one of them.

So what's going on here? What is her agenda?

There are a couple of possiblities.

One is that she's just putting one foot in front of the other because she doesn't know how to do anything else -- sheer dogged determination has gotten the Clintons so much of what they've wanted in the past, and they've perservered and won when anyone else would have given up (after the Gennifer Flowers revelations just before the New Hampshire primary in '92; after the Lewinsky scandal first broke; during the impeachment hearings) that they're going through the motions simply because it's worked before.

Another possibility is that she's staying in hoping that something -- anything -- will happen to change the outcome, rather like the poker player who's deep in the hole and keeps betting anyway in the hopes that the next hand will turn things around. She strikes me as being too rational for this scenario, but I guess we can't rule it out. Anyone who lived through the year 1968 (and that would include me) can't rule it out either.

Then there's the ugly scenario. The really ugly scenario, which some pundits have begun to whisper. I'd like to think that Hillary isn't capable of this kind of Machiavellian thinking. But I have to admit that it's possible this could be the real deal.

It could be that Hillary knows that if Barack Obama wins in 2008 and is reelected in 2012, that would mean it would be 2016 before the White House became open again. And it would be unlikely that Hillary can pull off the nomination by then. So what does she do? It's now or never.

There's only one other option: to so damage and weaken Obama by her attacks during the primary campaign that he loses to an elderly John McCain, who then leaves office after one term making it possible for Hillary to run and win in 2012.

Would she do that? Would she so betray the standard bearer of her own party (not to mention the party itself) in order to obtain power?

What do you think?

Tom Moran

A Touch of Class on The View

2008-04-19T01:42:00.003-04:00

Jenna Jameson was on "The View" the other day. Take a look at the footage before you read my comments:

Do you believe that smarmy and condescending introduction? And the way Barbara Walters looks like she might contract HIV if she even looks at Jenna?

Tacky. Very, very tacky.

In fact, the only one who acts halfway decently towards her is Sherri Shepherd, whom I've been critical of (and harshly so) in the past, but here she redeems herself by treating Jenna Jameson as a person and not as a stupid bimbo being forced on them by the producers because she's good for the ratings.

The women of The View (and of the mainstream media in general) need to wise up. Porn is the new mainstream. Like it or not, we have become The Pornographic Society, and explicit depictions of sexuality are not going to go away. Barbara Walters can look as pained as she wants at having to sit next to a porn star, but the fact is that Jenna Jameson is far more famous than she is -- and a hell of a lot hotter. You ask soldiers in Iraq who they'd rather have come with the USO to entertain the troops, and I'll bet you more of them would want to see Jenna Jameson than almost anyone else in the States.

The irony is that Jenna conducted herself in that interview with more class and more self-deprecating wit than the women interviewing her -- who are supposed to be professional interviewers. She doesn't apologize for her wildly successful porn career but admits (as she did at the most recent AVN award ceremony in Vegas) that it's time for her to move on.

Will America -- and the mainstream media -- let her move on? Or will they continue to patronize and condescend to her in the manner of the women of The View?

Tom Moran

She Just Doesn't Get It

2008-03-30T14:18:00.002-04:00

Hillary claims that her lie about landing in Bosnia under "sniper fire" was due to sleep deprivation. Well, I'm sleep deprived like the mom of a newborn but I don't think I was ever under sniper fire.

Here's how CBS News reported the trip at the time:

I suppose next John McCain will be saying that he visited a market in Baghdad while it was under nuclear attack...

Tom Moran

The Oldest Profession

2008-03-16T08:43:00.003-04:00

Like everybody else, I've been watching and reading about the whole Eliot Spitzer scandal on TV and in the papers, and it's amazing to me how people are missing the real issue involved.

Granted, it's easy to miss the real issue because people think the story is about Eliot Spitzer, and the fact of his incredible hubris and hypocrisy (which, you have to admit, is mind-boggling) does tend to cloud the issue somewhat. But there is a larger issue to be discussed and no one (as far as I know) in the mainstream media is discussing it.

Let's think about this in the abstract -- as a "thought experiment" as Bill Bennett might say.

A man, married and with three daughters, has trysts with high-priced call girls. He's wealthy and using his own money. Aside from his wife, whose business is it?

And even if it is a politician, why should we give a shit?

People get all moralistic about this to the point where they deny reality. Politicians are powerful men with powerful drives -- and such men have large amounts of testosterone and high libidos, libidos that are, more likely than not, not likely to be contained within the friendly confines of a monogamous relationship. That's just a fact, inconvenient though it might be.

The more powerful they are, the more likely they are to fuck around. You want a politician who stays faithful to his wife and never screws around? You get Richard Nixon.

These sorts of things happen every day and we're always shocked -- shocked! -- when they happen. Granted, Spitzer's was a particularly awe-inspiring, almost Swaggart-esque form of hypocrisy, but the principle remains the same. Powerful men have powerful drives, and one of those drives is sexual.

Isn't it time we grew up about this?

The internet has revolutionized prostitution, and it's time to admit it and to legalize it. What two consenting people do alone in a hotel room, even for cash, is no one's business, and it shouldn't be considered a crime. Other countries are far more sane about these things, and it's time that we as a nation grew up, stopped being childish and just admitted that there are men who want sex and women who want money and these two are going to find each other to take care of each other's needs no matter what obstacles, legal or otherwise, are put in their way.

A long time ago I had a conversation with a call girl when she was, so to speak, off the meter. She was the friend of a friend of mine and we ended up talking all night. It was a very revealing conversation, and ever since my take on the subject has been tinted by what I learned from her. I don't know whether I've written about this before in the blog (I suspect I have but I'm not going to look it up), but the inescapable fact is that, for young attractive women in New York City, giving it up for money is always an option. Always. I remember having a conversation some years ago with a struggling young actress and when I told her how much call girls could make in one night she sighed and told me, "I'm so glad I didn't know that when I first got here." Meaning that, if she had known that, she might have ended up a call girl.

From the media reports, Ashley Alexandra Dupre (the young call girl in the Spitzer scandal) is a party girl with a troubled past, ambitions for a music career and expensive tastes. She's also a dead ringer for the Australian actress Rachel Griffiths -- so much so that if I was a producer on ABC's "Brothers and Sisters," I would seriously think about giving the Walker clan one more illegitimate daughter. It would give the ratings for that show a much-needed boost.

She's young and gorgeous (if you can overlook the skanky tattoos, which I can't) and by all accounts very good at what she does. So why shouldn't she do it?

It's time to begin the discussion about legalizing prostitution. If not in the country as a whole, at least in New York City. And as the new governor takes the oath of office tomorrow, perhaps he should consider bringing up with the state legislature the idea of recognizing reality, and at the very least decriminalizing an act that occurs between consenting adults.

Politicians recognizing reality. Wouldn't that be refreshing?

Tom Moran

Between Barack and a Hard Place

2008-03-09T10:40:00.002-04:00

This is not an easy time to be Barack Obama.

He has aides caught in what they thought were off-the-record statements calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" who will do anything to win, and Clinton aides are comparing Obama to Ken Starr. When asked if Obama was a Muslim, Hillary hedged, saying that he wasn't "as far as I know." The Hillary Slime Machine is in full force, attempting to do what they can to drag Obama down to the level of the Clintons. She's even suggesting that as far as national security goes, McCain woulf be preferable to Obama. Can't wait to see that turn up in a Republican ad this fall.

Ironically enough, this has the effect of proving Samantha Powers, the Obama aide who called Clinton a "monster," to be more or less correct. Clinton will do anything to get elected -- and that's what some Democrats want. They're tired of seeing their candidates go down to defeat after being swiftboated by Republican hacks -- they want to do their own swiftboating.

This mindset was explicated for me by a highly intelligent friend I spoke with the other day. They see Clinton as vicious and unprincipled but they see Obama as another Jimmy Carter -- too soft to be president. To get anything done, this argument goes, you have to be an unprinicipled vicious son of a bitch -- which, they claimed, Clinton has proven herself to be.

The problem with this argument is that it placed Obama in an untenable position. If he doesn't respond to Clinton's scummy attacks, he's a wimp and not suited to be president. If he does respond in kind, then he's a phony and doesn't deserve to be president.

He loses either way. Gotta love these Clintons. They'll do whatever it take, no matter how slimy it is. Winning is everything.

Bob Herbert in the Times offers a hint as to how Obama should respond:

Whatever anger and frustration he may be feeling, he should stick to the high road. He can’t win wrestling in the mud with Hillary Clinton. That will not put Barack Obama in the White House. Mr. Obama’s strength was his message of hope and healing, the idea that he could bring disparate groups together to work on the nation’s toughest problems. That has gotten him this far, which is much further than almost anyone expected.

He now needs an added dimension. He needs to articulate a vision. He needs to spell out to voters where he wants to take this country over the next few years, how he will alleviate the suffering of millions trapped in vicious economic circumstances and what he will do to restore the honor and prestige of the U.S. around the world.

It would be nice to see that happen. But in order for that to happen he can prove he can respond to the Clintons and their slimy attacks without getting covered in mud himself. That's not going to be easy. President Eisenhower, in a similar situation regarding Senator Joe McCarthy, once famously said that he "wasn't going to get into the gutter with this guy."

Unfortunately, that might not be an option for Barack Obama.

Tom Moran

From The The "Get A Life" Department

2008-03-01T05:47:00.002-05:00

I know that there has been some controversy over Diablo Cody's win of a screenwriting Oscar for "Juno," but it's not something I could overly relate to, since I have either read the script (which has been published) or seen the film (which is still in theaters). I know, lazy fucking me.

I did read her book, and I wasn't all that crazy about it. But that's another story.

But I know that some people get seriously bent out of shape on the subjects of "Juno," Diablo Cody and the film's star, Ellen Page. I just wish I understood why.

And then I saw this clip on You Tube.

I'm wondering what you think of it. This young woman absolutely horrifies me. Where does all this venom come from? I mean, really.

Check out the video and see what you think:

Does this girl need some serious therapy or what?

It almost makes me want to see the movie, if only to discover what could possibly inspire such near-pathological hatred in what looks to be a perfectly ordinary young girl.

Tom Moran

Going Through the Motions

2008-02-24T10:28:00.002-05:00

The Washington Post announced that "Consumer advocate Ralph Nader said on Sunday that he is launching another long shot independent campaign for president of the United States."

If you ask me, I think that "consumer advocate" should be replaced by "perrenial presidential candidate," because Nader has long ago lost any credibility he ever had. He's the Harold Stassen of the new millennium. It's kind of sad, actually.

Nader says that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are addressing the real problems of Anericans, and that, my friends, is total bullshit. Nader doesn't have a reason for running so he uses as a pathetically lame pretext that neither party is addressing the concerns of Americans.

The fact is that Nader's first ego-driven run for the presidency was directly responsible for the fiasco in Florida that enabled George W. Bush to weasel his way into the White House -- therefore, if you ask me, all the casualties of the War in Iraq, all the dead and all the wounded can, in a very real sense, be laid at his feet.

And he wants to run again? Who the fuck does he think he's kidding?

This is not about what Americans want. This is about what Ralph Nader wants. It's about the dictates of his ego, and nothing else.

It's sad. Very sad.

Tom Moran

Believing the Unbelievable

2008-02-16T01:20:00.002-05:00

It's just being whispered now -- barely. Nobody's really taking it seriously -- yet. But as time goes on and we get closer to the conventions, it just might be seen as a plausible scenario.

And what is that scenario, you ask?

Eleanor Clift writes about it in the online edition of Newsweek:

Al Gore on the second ballot: A scenario that a few weeks ago seemed preposterous is beginning to look plausible to some nervous Democrats looking for a way out of the deadlock between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It goes like this: We love them both, but neither is a sure bet when it comes to electability. It's not about gender and race, each has more mundane vulnerabilities. Hillary's negatives will drive white men to John McCain; Obama's inexperience will require a gut check on the part of voters. What if the super delegates decide not to decide, denying either candidate the requisite number of delegates to secure the party's nomination. Democrats want to win. The new rallying cry: Gore on the second ballot.

This is a science fiction scenario, right? Could never happen. Not really.

Could it?

Well, actually it could -- at least in theory. Clift claims that the last time a convention went to a second ballot was 1952, which is probably wrong -- it was 1956, when Adlai Stevenson left the decision of a vice-presidential nominee up to the delegates. The contenders were Al Gore (the current Al Gore's father), Estes Kefauver and a young senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy. Kefauver won the nomination and the Stevenson/Kefauver ticket went down to defeat against Eisenhower and Nixon.

But Obama's going to win -- right? He's got it all locked up -- right?

Not exactly. Clift gives a surprisingly plausible scenario:

How could this unfold? Superdelegates are not bound to any candidate. They can do what they want, including changing their mind or withholding an endorsement until the balloting begins. Delegates won in the primaries go to the party's convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular candidate, but one of the biggest myths of the delegate selection process, according to a Democratic National Committee document, is that delegates are bound to follow that pledge on the first ballot. A delegate is asked to "in good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them," a provision designed in part to make the convention a deliberative body. If Hillary's attempts to secure the nomination are seen as illegitimate, and they fail, yet Obama is not seen as a clear victor, Gore's name could be introduced. All it would take is a delegate perhaps from Tennessee, his home state, to raise a point of order, and with backing from five other state delegations, Gore's name could be put in play as a prospective nominee.

Okay, it's still implausible. Unlikely to put it mildly. Odds are that Obama's going to win on the first ballot.

But you have to admit, it's fun to think about. When was the last time a political convention was worth watching? 1972, maybe?

But on a more serious note, the main reason why it's worth thinking about is that Democrats need to win in 2008. We have to take the country away from the lunatics and into the hands of people who will restore it to its rightful place in the world. Who will help to fix its ruined economy and give the middle class a break. We can't take a chance that the Republicans will steal yet another election.

Clift puts it quite nicely:

Surely [Gore] would happily take Obama as his running mate, ending the Clinton dynasty and positioning the Democrats for a potential 16-year reign at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A Gore-Obama ticket would be unstoppable, the thinking goes, matching the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain, on national security and experience, while embodying a powerful message of change.

Bring it on, baby. That's all I have to say.

Tom Moran

Elizabeth Rodham Wurtzel

2008-02-15T05:36:00.003-05:00

Elizabeth Wurtzel, who enrolled in Yale Law School some years ago after some intemperate remarks about 9/11 and has been remarkably quiescent since, has emerged with an intriguing piece in today's Wall Street Journal about Hillary Clinton.

The piece, of course, is far more about Elizabeth Wurtzel than it is about Hillary Clinton. No matter what Ms. Wurtzel writes, it always comes down to being about Elizabeth Wurtzel. She could write an article about aborigines in Australia and find a way to make it all about her. That's what made More, Now, Again one of the best books I've read in the past few years - and what makes this article so myopically wrongheaded.

The gist of Ms. Wurtzel's argument, once you get past the "this-is-really-all-about-me" paragraphs that precede it, is that what's currently happening to Hillary Clinton is somehow emblematic of what happens to women who try to get ahead in the world -- they get put in their place by men who just plain don't deserve the credit for all the hard work that women do.

Hillary is grotesque because she has gotten to where she is, indeed, by playing it every which way -- by being a career woman when that made sense, a wife when that was advantageous; working on her husband's behalf when that seemed the way to the top, then working for herself when the coast was clear; standing by her husband despite infidelities because she loved him, while belittling Tammy Wynette for offering the very advice she was ostensibly taking; pooh-poohing the prospect of having teas and baking cookies instead of having a profession, and then becoming first lady and having teas as a profession for a full eight years. Yes, Hillary Clinton will do anything, bless her heart: That is how you amass power as a woman. We hate her, because she exposes the sordid business of having it all for the grotesque thing that it actually is.

Get the feeling that more than a little projection is going on here? Did somebody get passed over for the Yale Law Journal?

Wurtzel closes her piece with a stirring peoration:

Right now, it looks like Barack Obama will be the nominee. Hillary Clinton is unlikely to win any more primaries for a few more weeks, and at that point, it may be too late for this championship season. But pundits count her out at their own peril. That woman is a force of nature. One of these years, Hillary is going to the White House. If she has to win every single vote one by one, she'll do it. If she has to take hostages, hold a gun to the head of every voter as he enters the booth, she'll do that too. She may even cry.

Never underestimate Hillary Clinton.

Sounds a little frightening, doesn't it? It doesn't seem to occur to Ms. Wurtzel that that is precisely the point -- that Hillary Clinton's near-psychotic Will to Power (or at least that's how it's perceived by many voters) is exactly what's going to keep her out of the White House, both now and in the foreseeable future. Because people know or at least strongly suspect that politics for Hillary Clinton is not about public service or about working to make life better for the American people. It's about power. Nothing else. Power for its own sake. Wanting it, lusting after it, being willing to do or say anything to acquire it. Voters want to vote for someone who makes it about them -- for Senator Clinton, clearly, it's all about her, and nothing else.

No wonder Elizabeth Wurtzel identifies with her.

It's becoming obvious that the tipping point in the 2008 campaign was the South Carolina primary. The Clintons showed a really ugly side of themselves in that race -- and Hillary has been feeling the effects of it ever since. She won some big states on Super Tuesday for no other reason than the clock ran out on Obama -- if those primaries were to be held today, he'd win them easily. I'm done with making predictions in this race, but it does not look good for Hillary Clinton. After all, if she's going to run the country the way she's run her campaign so far, why would anyone in their right mind want to vote for her?

In retrospect, I'm starting to wonder whether or not we'll look back and say that Senator Clinton's big mistake was in sitting out the 2004 election and not challenging George W. Bush. Granted, she had only been a senator for a relatively short time, but that doesn't seem to be stopping Barack Obama at the moment. Maybe by being prudent, by not grabbing the reins of the party when they needed someone to stand up to an incumbent president and take a risk on behalf of the American people, she lost her best chance at the White House, Because if she doesn't make it now, I don't see her making it later. Assuming (and granted it's a presumptuous assumption) that Barack Obama wins in the fall and serves two terms, that would mean the next shot a Democrat would have at the White House is in 2016, when Hillary Clinton will be 69 years old.

Do we really think Hillary Clinton will improve with age?

If Hillary Clinton's campaign flames out -- as it has every appearance of doing -- she will have no one to blame but herself. No matter what Elizabeth Wurtzel might think.

Tom Moran

God's Love -- With Batteries

2008-02-10T08:44:00.000-05:00

Stan Hegarty is a genius. Do you hear me? A genius.

Who is Stan Hegarty?

This is how he describes himself and his wife:

We are a youngish couple, who have been married for more than a decade and have been blessed with children. We are both committed Christians. We believe strongly in serving God in the various ways He has lead us, but also recognise the importance of having fun!

Stan lives with his wife in Wales and they run a little shop online that sells sex toys to devout Christians like themselves.

See what I mean about being a genius?

The website www.icWales.co.uk reports that Hegarty had "a vision from God telling him to set up the site."

And after all, who would be so churlish as to argue with a vision from God?

The report goes on to say:

Now Stan and wife Stella say that sales are soaring thanks to massive interest from frisky Welsh clergymen and women happy to buy sex aids off the net.

“We know that lots of our customers are clergy – Catholic, Anglican, all denominations – because some of them use their full title, like Reverend,” said mum-of-three Stella, 33.

“Some of them email us personally.

“And we mail a lot of our products to addresses called The Vicarage.”

So what can you get on Stan Hegarty's website?

Anything from "Female Climax Cream" to "Prolong Plus Erection Cream" to a "Triple Climaxer" vibrator. All sent in the mail to your home -- or your vicarage, as the case may be.

There's no porn on the website ("We believe that the Bible clearly teaches that images of sexual nudity are for within marriage only," they write. "We do not want to have any images of individuals with products on our site - we do not want to exploit any models in this way") so couples with Christian values can feel moral and justified going there and purchasing sex toys privately and discreetly.

This man should get the Nobel Prize. He has built a better mousetrap, and horny Welsh couples are beating a path to his website. He's the J.K Rowling of sex toys, and could conceivably get just as rich.

Genius is hard to define, but like pornography, I know it when I see it.

Tom Moran

Preview to Super Tuesday

2008-02-03T08:57:00.000-05:00

They're saying that Super Tuesday might decide the Republican side of the electoral equation, but no one is expecting the primaries held on Tuesday to tell us who the Democratic nominee is going to be. That's going to take a little bit longer.

I'm thinking something very different. I'm wondering what happens if we don't know who the nominee is by the end of the primaries -- which is entirely possible.

Here's a scenario that I think could happen: Super Tuesday arrives, and Clinton wins a few states. Obama wins a few states as well. But in the final analysis it really doesn't matter who wins which primaries, because when he wins a state, she picks up delegates and when she wins a state, he picks up delegates. So it's entirely possible that they'll both come out of Super Tuesday within shouting distance of each other in the delegate count, with neither of them having enough delegates to win a majority on the first ballot at the convention.

In fact, the further this goes, the more I think we should be keeping an eye on what are known as the super delegates -- those 842 delegates to the convention who are not chosen by primary voters, nearly 40% of the total. I think it's likely (just how likely is anybody's guess) that if either Clinton or Obama wins on the first ballot, it'll be the super delegates who put them over the top.

In April of last year, Tom Curry of MSNBC.com considered such a possibility:

In next year's contest, could a candidate amass a stockpile of super-delegates, survive disappointing showings in early primaries, and go on to win the nomination? That seems unlikely.

“Do the super-delegates have the capacity to resist the choice of the overwhelming majority of primary voters and caucus participants? The answer, I think, is a clear ‘No,’” said [Northeastern University political scientist William] Mayer.

Nevertheless, there’s a romantic streak in some political junkies who fantasize about a scenario in which the nomination could still be in doubt at the end of the primary season.

That hasn't happened in either party in 30 years.

In that scenario, perhaps party heavyweights would line up votes at the convention to swing the nomination to one of the contenders, or to a dark horse.

Such a scenario is looking more and more likely everyday -- and could look very likely on Wednesday.

Tom Moran

This Is All We Fucking Need

2008-02-03T08:54:00.000-05:00

You have to admit, this is pretty funny -- in a horrific sort of way. It's a little like a candidate for the Knesset being endorsed by Hitler. Keep an eye on Alan Colmes -- his reactions are priceless:

Tom Moran

One Year From Today

2008-01-20T08:47:00.001-05:00

Imagine there's no Bush. It's easy if you try.

One year from today, on January 20, 2009, that dream will be a reality. George W. Bush will no longer be in the White House, and we will have a new president.

Conventional wisdom has it that this is a Democratic year, which stands to reason: an unpopular war, an economy that certainly seems to be sliding into recession, a party in power that's been thoroughly discredited, it would seem to be a slam dunk for the Democrats.

Not so fast, Von Ryan.

Could John McCain, who won the South Carolina primary yesterday, win the general election if he's the nonimee? Against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? I think it's entirely possible. There are some Republicans (like Rush Limbaugh) who are not enthused about McCain because they don't think he's a real Republican. Tom DeLay dissed him in Washington recently for having "betrayed" the Republican cause, which is pretty fucking funny when you consider the source.

Obama appeals to upper-income, college educated whites and blacks; Clinton appeals to women, especially older women. But McCain appeals to blue collar whites and independents, and I'm not sure that he couldn't win enough in a general election to take it away from the Democrats. Could Robert Novak be right? Could nominating a black man or a white woman for president just hand the White House back over to the Republicans?

Not a pleasant thought. But then I console myself with the thought that, no matter who is taking the oath of office one year from today, it won't be George W. Bush.

Tom Moran

Bobby Fischer 1943-2008

2008-01-19T05:50:00.000-05:00

It would be hard to find anything more idiotic than the editorial in today's New York Daily News on the death of chess legend Bobby Fischer.

It's a decided chore to come up with charitable things to say about Bobby Fischer, formerly of Brooklyn. He was impossible. He was unpleasant. He was anti-Semitic and anti-American. But he did clean the Russian clock in a 1972 chess showdown that was as politically potent as the Louis-Schmeling fight of '35.

There are those who would argue that the entire Soviet collapse traces directly back to Fischer's dethroning of Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. Which perhaps overstates things, but it's certainly true that, for a while there, Bobby Fischer was one top-gun American.

Sad to say, he went on to reveal himself as increasingly despicable. A man who renounced his U.S. citizenship. A man who spat upon his mother's Jewishness. A man who cheered the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center. And he leaves this life unloved and mourned by few.
He sure could play chess, though.

Personally, I find it a chore to find anything charitable about the idiot who wrote this editorial, because this is hackwork at its worst -- they know nothing about chess, Bobby Fischer or anything else, but that didn't keep them from making their deadline.

Let's be a little more charitable, as well as more accurate.

Bobby Fischer was a genius. He was also mentally ill. I never took umbrage at his nonsensical ravings about the Jews or the United States because I understood them to be what they were -- the outbursts of a man suffering from mental illness, no more to be taken seriously than the barkings of someone suffering from Tourette's Syndrome.

Fischer was what the Germans call a fachidiot -- a genius about chess, an imbecile about virtually everything else. Chess was all he knew, and in the end it consumed him. The sport has a way of destroying its greatest players (or perhaps it has a habit of attracting those with incipient mental illness -- it's hard to tell). Paul Morphy isn't the only other example of a chess player in whom genius and madness went hand in hand.

Fischer's decline into madness was painful to watch for those of us who remember him in his prime -- at the 1972 chess championship match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. At that moment, as the New York Times points out, Fischer was to chess what Babe Ruth was to baseball, or Michael Jordan was to basketball. He made people who had never heard of the game take it up after watching Shelby Lyman's low-budget and engagingly dorky live commentary on the match on PBS. For Fischer, chess wasn't a game -- it was the intellectual equivalent of gladitorial combat. But he made chess fans out of thousands if not millions of Americans.

That should be taken into account when discussing his death. Yes, he descended into madness and some of his statements in his final years were hard to stomach. But he was also the best at what he did, and played better chess than anyone ever has, and quite possibly better than anyone ever will. Which of those is more important in the final analysis is for each of us to decide.

Tom Moran

Jonah Goldberg Concedes a Point

2008-01-13T11:14:00.001-05:00

In National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg reviewed a review of his new book, "Liberal Fascism." The title alone is enough to make me not want to read it, and since I have not read it, I will not discuss it here (not that that would discourage, say, Ann Coulter from doing so, but I have standards).

But while I won't discuss the book, I will discuss one little revealing point of Goldberg's so-called review, which is actually a protracted pout. Conservatives have become surprisingly good at pouting recently: and they'd better get used to it, because it looks like they're going to be doing a lot of it in the next few years.

David Neiwert, begins his review of "Liberal Fascism" by writing:

The public understanding of World War II history and its precedents has suffered in recent years from the depredations of revisionist historians -- the David Irvings and David Bowmans of the field who have attempted to recast the meaning of, respectively, the Holocaust and the Japanese American internment. Their reach, however, has been somewhat limited to fringe audiences.

It might be tempting to throw Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning into those same cloacal backwaters, but there is an essential difference that goes well beyond the likely much broader reach of Goldberg's book, which was inexplicably published by a mainstream house (Doubleday). Most revisionists are actually historians with some credentials, and their theses often hinge on nuances and the interpretation of details.

Goldberg, who has no credentials beyond the right-wing nepotism that has enabled his career as a pundit, has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It’s a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history.

Sounds plausible, doesn't it? Especially the part about Goldberg owing his position as a so-called pundit to right-wing nepotism (Goldberg, for those of you lucky bastards who slept through the 90s, is the son of Lucianne Goldberg, the scummy bitch who talked Linda Tripp into taping her conversations with Monica Lewinsky).

And what is Goldberg's riposte to this opening?

First, there’s the opening where he tries ever so slightly to tag me as a member of the David Irving Holocaust-denier camp. Then, [sic] he whines that I don’t have any credentials and I have no qualifications other than “right-wing nepotism” (You can expect this bleat to get ever louder, by the way, if the book becomes a bestseller). I like that, because it seems it’s only right-wing nepotism that bothers the party poised to nominate the wife of the last Democratic president, a party which remains a cargo cult to the Kennedys — every member of whom (save for pro-Nazi papa Joe) got where they are from nepotism (as for the charge I'm the product of nepotism: Yawn).

Interesting rebuttal, isn't it? It's actually what they used to call, back in the days of Watergate, a non-denial denial.

Let's break it down, shall we?

First, there’s the opening where he tries ever so slightly to tag me as a member of the David Irving Holocaust-denier camp.

Actually, Neiwert does no such thing: he does something far more amusing, which Goldberg doesn't seem to appreciate: he claims that, as scummy as such Holocaust deniers as David Irving might be, Goldberg is even worse, since at least Irving has at least some credentials as a historian while Goldberg has none.

Then, he whines that I don’t have any credentials and I have no qualifications other than “right-wing nepotism” (You can expect this bleat to get ever louder, by the way, if the book becomes a bestseller).

Somehow I don't get the feeling that it's Neiwert who's doing the whining here: he's merely stating a fact (we'll get back to this in a minute). As for the book's becoming a bestseller, well, while I would have to agree that stranger things have happened, I somehow doubt that "Liberal Fascism" will be topping the New York Times bestseller list any time soon.

I like that, because it seems it’s only right-wing nepotism that bothers the party poised to nominate the wife of the last Democratic president, a party which remains a cargo cult to the Kennedys — every member of whom (save for pro-Nazi papa Joe) got where they are from nepotism (as for the charge I'm the product of nepotism: Yawn).

Seriously -- could you stuff more crap into one poorly-written, run-on sentence?

Are we going to have to break this down even further? I think we pretty much have to if we're going to do justice to this sentence in all its gaudy glory.

I like that, because it seems it’s only right-wing nepotism that bothers the party poised to nominate the wife of the last Democratic president...

Earth to Goldberg: it's not nepotism if they vote for you. The party is not poised to do anything. And Hillary Clinton has so far won exactly one primary -- and that primary was not won by much, either. Her winning margin was something like 3%: hardly a landslide.

...a party which remains a cargo cult to the Kennedys — every member of whom (save for pro-Nazi papa Joe) got where they are from nepotism...

A cargo cult? For those of you who don't know what a cargo cult is (and up until five seconds ago that included me), here's a helpful definition courtesy of Wikipedia:

A cargo cult is any of a group of religious movements appearing in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically-advanced, non-native cultures—which focus upon obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking as well as religious rituals and practices—while believing that the materials were intended for them by their deities and ancestors.

Is the Democratic Party a "cargo cult" of the Kennedys? Especially given the fact that a member of that family has not been on a presidential ticket in 48 years (36 if you include in-laws)? This ploy only makes sense if you realize that, when a conservative gets desperate in an argument, they will invariably reach for the Kennedys. And as for "papa Joe" being pro-Nazi, that's just bullshit, which anyone who can read history realizes. I'm surprised that, given the level of Goldberg's desperation at this point, he didn't throw in Chappaquiddick.

...(as for the charge I'm the product of nepotism: Yawn).

Feigning tedium, as anyone who has posted on Usenet will tell you, is always the sign that someone is losing an argument -- but that's not the important point to be made here.

The important point is that Goldberg concedes the point. He doesn't argue that he's not a product of right-wing nepotism, because he can't. So he concedes the point and tries to disguise the fact by claiming that it's just too-too boring to talk about.

It may be boring -- to Goldberg, anyway. But it's a fact. Which even he can't deny.

Tom Moran

About Last Night

2008-01-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who watched coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night and spent a lot of the time shaking their head and asking: "What the fuck just happened?"

It's probably a good thing that we don't have yet another primary in five days. Or do we?

I'm just going to set down some first impressions on the morning after Hillary Clinton's surprise victory in New Hampshire:

You have to wonder how her "Monday Meltdown" played into the equation. As Robert George in his "Ragged Thots" blog points out this morning, Hillary Clinton is never as dangerous as when she's playing the victim. After all, that's how she got into the Senate to begin with. Could the turning point (or, perhaps, the tipping point) of the campaign have been in between the two parts of Saturday night's debate? In the first half she came off as a harridan; in the second she smiled winsomely and said, in response to a question about her lack of likability as opposed to Barack Obama, replied:

Well that hurts my feelings. But I'll try to go on. He's very likable, I'll agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad . . .

Could that moment of ironic self-deprecation have swayed older women, who, is it thought, made the difference last night? Could we be seeing in the future much more of a kinder, gentler Hillary? Especially since it seems to work with women voters?

Why were the polls so skewed? How could they have gotten it so wrong? Was it race? People are notorious for not wanting to tell pollsters that they're planning to vote against the black candidate, so they tell them one thing and then go into the polling place and do something else. Was that a factor? Polls were predicting a double-digit victory for Obama and he ended up losing. Either the pollsters really need to get their shit together or there is something really wrong here.
Where do we go from here? South Carolina is looming, where Obama is thought to be a lock, but then they thought that about New Hampshire, didn't they? And what happens on what they've taken to calling "Super-Duper Tuesday"? No less than 24 states will be up for grabs on February 5th, and it could be a real free-for-all -- what happens if the results on that day are inconclusive? You can already hear pundits whispering in hushed tones the words they love to toss around this time in the cycle: "brokered convention." The fact that there isn't been a brokered convention in most people's lifetime doesn't stop them. It's every newshound's wet dream: to have a convention that actually chooses the candidate, instead of the coma-inducing coronation we've had from both parties since 1972 or so. Me, I'd be happy just to see a second ballot (offhand I don't think there's been one since Adlai Stevenson put the VP nomination up for grabs in 1956).

Finally, there are two things to keep in mind when thinking about the events of last night:

John McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 -- and didn't win the nomination.
Bill Clinton didn't win New Hampshire in 1992 -- and did win the nomination.

Believe me, this thing is far, far from being over.

Tom Moran

Hillary's Moment

2008-01-08T14:56:00.000-05:00

They're calling it "the moment."

Most of you who keep up with the news know what I'm talking about: Hillary Clinton getting emotional in a restaurant in Portsmouth, NH, when asked by a sympathetic suporter how she keeps going.

The quote is from the AP (condensed to just her words):

"It's not easy. It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I've had so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards. So. You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political. It's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game. They think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country. It's about our kids' futures. It's really about all of us together. You know some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. And so when we look at the array of problems we have and the potential for it getting — really spinning out of control, this is one of the most important elections America's ever faced. So as tired as I am — and I am — and as difficult as it is to try to kind of keep up with what I try to do on the road like occasionally exercise and try to eat right — it's tough when the easiest food is pizza — I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation so I'm going to do everything I can to make my case and, you know, then the voters get to decide."

It's amazing that even while she's on the verge of choking up she can get in a little dig at Barack Obama ("Some of us are ready and some of us are not.")

But what's interesting is that people are speculating whether or not this was calculated -- an attempt to get people to see Hillary Clinton as a real human being, with feelings, instead of the snappish shrew of the first part of Saturday's debate in Manchester.

Was it an act? Or was it genuine? At this point does it matter?

The older pundits will compare it to the famous scene of Edmund Muskie seemingly in tears in the New Hampshire race in 1972, which cost him his shot at the White House. Tears back then disqualified you for running for president. What does it signify now?

Does it mean that Hillary knows that she's lost the New Hampshire primary -- and lost big -- and that Barack Obama is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party?

I have no idea. I think that Senator Clinton was being genuine, but that it hardly matters. If Barack Obama beats her by less than 10 points tonight she'll claim a moral victory -- "The Comeback Kid Part II." If she loses by more than 10 points it could look hopeless, in spite of the fact that there are a lot of primaries looming up ahead and a lot of delegates to try and acquire.

It's not going to be over after tonight. But we may see the beginning of the end of the Clintons as a real power in American politics. Elections, Bill Clinton was fond of saying, are about the future. And Hillary Clinton, with all her much vaunted experience and her wonkish expertise and all her baggage, is starting to look more and more like the past.

Tom Moran

NH Debate Impressions

2008-01-06T08:35:00.000-05:00

One solid fact emerged from the back-to-back debates in New Hampshire last night: the Democrats are going to win the general election.

Where the Republicans were sniping and bitching at each other and coming off like kids in a schoolyard yelling, "I know you are but what am I?", the Democrats came off looking like leaders.

I'll leave the Republicans for others to discuss and concentrate my remarks on the Democrats, since they're the ones who are going to win in November.

None of the candidates made a major gaffe or embarrassed themselves. The worst any candidate looked was when Hillary Clinton, looking overtired and miffed at Barack Obama, gave off a tirade about her so-called "experience" that had her coming off as shrewish -- not a good look for her. I remember thinking, "Oh, shit -- so this is what Bill has been putting up with all these years."

Someone must have spoken to her in the break, because she really toned it down in the second half of the debate and she was far more effective. Even charming.

Bill Richardson was both funny and effective but came off as a little peevish in the second half of the debate when he practically whined that no one gave a shit about the fact that he had an impressive resume (as opposed to, it hardly need be said, Barack Obama).

Obama looked a little tired but was effective if not stellar. He very deftly put Hillary Clinton on the defensive and both looked and sounded presidential: he didn't really need to do much more than that.

For me the star of the night was John Edwards. He was the only person on stage who didn't look like he was ready to keel over from exhaustion. He looked ready to tear into the Republicans and the special interests and the corporations who have so fucked up this country over the past few years. I appreciate the fact that he's just about the only candidate talking about poor people and the middle class and how to keep the latter from becoming the former. I thought he gave the best showing of the night.

There was one point in the broadcast when they had a two-shot of Edwards and Obama sitting next to each other and I had a bit of an epiphany. I thought to myself: This is going to be the ticket. You could see it right there -- the chemistry and the charisma and the impetus for change, just working between these two men. This, I thought, is a winning combination.

I don't know which of the two of them will be at the head of the ticket (and I'm not really sure it matters), but I think that an Edwards/Obama or an Obama/Edwards ticket, is going to be very, very tough to beat in the fall.

I'm excited about this election. Can you tell?

Tom Moran

The News From Iowa

2008-01-05T06:57:00.001-05:00

Now, pundits are more likely than not to make asses of themselves when pontificating about the results of an event immediately after the fact, but David Brooks in the Times, in his own dweebish way, outdoes himself.

Writing about Barack Obama's win in Iowa, Brooks writes:

Barack Obama has won the Iowa caucuses. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by this. An African-American man wins a closely fought campaign in a pivotal state. He beats two strong opponents, including the mighty Clinton machine. He does it in a system that favors rural voters. He does it by getting young voters to come out to the caucuses.

This is a huge moment. It’s one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance.

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

Personally, I think you'd have to have a heart of stone not to wade through this dreck without having the urge to purge. It sounds as if he's trying to channel Peggy Noonan at her worst. "The primordial themes of the American experience"? Not even Ken Burns would get this sappy.

He’s made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He’s made John Edwards, with his angry cries that “corporate greed is killing your children’s future,” seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over.

Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too.

Is he kidding? Obama won the Iowa Caucuses, for which he should be congratulated. He got young, first-time caucus goers to come out in large numbers, which I didn't think was possible. But to extrapolate from that that he's going to go all the way, and that John Edwards should just pack it in, is just ludicrous.

Does he know how many times the winner in Iowa has lost in New Hampshire? Or how few times the winner in Iowa has even gotten the nomination, much less made it to the White House?

Give me a break. I'm glad that Barack Obama won in Iowa, even if I thought that Edwards would, and I'm even more glad that Edwards managed to finish second ahead of Hillary Clinton.

But let's not make this a coronation. Not yet anyway. Not before New Hampshire. These guys, and this woman, have a long way to go before a nominee is decided. Not when they have roughly the same number of delegates to the convention, give or take a delegate or two.

Edwards is not dead. Hillary is not defeated. It's still a race. Let's stop pretending that it isn't. And let's see how all three of them do tonight in the nationally televised debate in New Hampshire.

Tom Moran

Who Will Win in Iowa?

2008-01-02T08:10:00.000-05:00

The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow -- is that possible? Are we really going to get this thing over with at long last? Some of these people have been practically living in Iowa the past few months.

Everyone says it's more or less a dead heat and that turnout will determine who wins. And some, like Adam Nagourney in today's New York Times, are postulating that the margin of "victory" could be so razor-thin that the results could be inconclusive.

My hunch is, though, that that won't happen. My hunch is that John Edwards is going to win the Iowa caucuses.

Why do I think that?

I have to admit, the very nature of a hunch means that it's hard to rationalize. But here are my reasons:

1) John Edwards is the only one of the three so-called front-runners who has run in Iowa before.
2) He made a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa four years ago.
3) He has practically lived in Iowa for the past year.
4) Unlike Hillary Clinton (who is targeting women and elderly voters, the latter of whom at least are disinclined to caucus in bad weather) and Barack Obama (who is targeting, among others, college kids who might not even be in the state during their college break), Edwards is targeting the hard-core caucus voters who have been there and done that before. I think that's the right move.

And last, but not least...

5) He's everybody's second choice. That makes a big difference in Iowa.

Now I could be wrong, and perhaps Senators Clinton or Obama will win outright, or, as the Times thinks, the results could be frustrating if not infuriating to all concerned.

But keep an eye on John Edwards on Thursday night. I think he might surprise people.

Tom Moran

Ann Coulter Blows It Again

2007-12-29T07:50:00.000-05:00

You know that I try to restrain myself when it comes to writing about Ann Coulter. I really do. I know you don't believe me, but I really, really do.

But then she writes something so egregiously ignorant and just plain stupid that I can't help myself.

Here is just part of her latest column, on Mike Huckabee:

[Huckabee] responded to my column last week -- pointing out that he is on record supporting the Supreme Court's sodomy-is-a-constitutional-right decision -- by saying that he was relying on the word of a caller to his radio show and didn't know the details of the case. Ironically, that's how most people feel about sodomy: They support it until they hear the details.

First, I'd pay a lot of money to hear how a court opinion finding that sodomy is a constitutional right could be made to sound reasonable. But the caller had the right response when Huckabee asked him, "What's your favorite radio station?" So he seemed like a reliable source.

Second, Huckabee's statement that he agreed with the court's sodomy ruling was made one week after the decision. According to Nexis, in that one week, the sodomy decision had been the cover story on every newspaper in the country, including The New York Times. It was the talk of all the Sunday news programs. It had been denounced by every conservative and Christian group in America -- as well as other random groups of sane individuals having no conservative inclinations whatsoever.

The highest court in the land had found sodomy was a constitutional right! That sort of thing tends to make news. (I was going to say the sodomy ruling got publicity up the wazoo, but this is, after all, Christmas week.)

So this little stretch-marked cornpone is either lying, has a closed head injury, is a complete ignoramus -- or all of the above.

Okay. I know you're dying to find out -- what's the dog that didn't bark this time? Besides Coulter herself, that is (oh, wait a minute -- that dog does bark).

It's not the fact that Coulter calling Huckabee "stretch-marked" is almost certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. That would be too easy. Way too easy. It's better than that.

It's not even the fact that Coulter is disparaging sodomy when she herself is a notorious fag-hag. That's not it either.

Are you ready?

Coulter doesn't know the meaning of the word "sodomy."

She can't. You know how I can tell? Because if she did know the meaning of the word, she wouldn't be so disparaging towards the idea of sodomy since she has almost certainly practiced it herself.

Coulter has the erroneous belief, shared by many ignorant people, that sodomy pertains solely to anal intercourse. It does not, as anyone who owns a dictionary can attest. It pertains to any and all sexual contact that is not heterosexual intercourse, including any and all oral/genital contact.

Its nice to know that Coulter knows as much about the definition of sodomy as she does about Darwin -- that is, absolutely nothing.

But that doesn't keep her from shooting her mouth off. So to speak.

Tom Moran

Stand and Deliver

2007-12-29T07:28:00.000-05:00

CNN last Wednesday reported a sight that was just a little bizarre.

Senator James Webb (D-VA) came into the Senate chamber, called the Senate to order -- for exactly 11 seconds -- and then promptly ended the session, spending, according to CNN, a total of 57 seconds in the chamber.

Why was this ridiculous charade necessary, do you ask?

Because we have a psychopath in the White House, that's why.

You see, if the senate does not go into recess, then President Bush can't make any recess appointments, such as the one of John Bolton in 2005. If Bush is going to violate the spirit of the rules by sneakily appointing people who couldn't get confirmed while the back of the Senate is (in a manner of speaking) turned, then the Democrats in the Senate won't give him the opportunity. Hence the little charade on Wednesday, which will be repeated until mid-January by such Democratic stalwarts as Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer.

Personally I find it a little depressing that we have to go through asinine exercises such as this, but if we have to have this narcissistic lunatic in the White House for another 13 months or so, at least I can be glad that we have enough Democrats in the Senate to keep him from getting away with the kind of bullshit he's been getting away with for the past seven years. This is exactly the kind of thing the Democrats were voted into office to do.

Now if they'd only stand up to him on Iraq...

Tom Moran

2 Girls, 1 Cup = 1 President

2007-12-23T08:49:00.000-05:00

Now that Frank Rich has established that, unlike what Hillary Clinton and John McCain would like us to believe, experience is not going to be the primary criterion for choosing the next president of the United States, then what should that criterion be? If, as Rich claims, "Americans are not just willing but eager to roll the dice," how do we know how to gamble on the next leader of the free world?

I have an idea. You knew I would.

I think that all the presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, should each be put in a room, and once there they should be shown the infamous "2 Girls 1Cup" video.

If you don't know what that video is, don't ask -- it's the most disgusting thing you will ever see in your life, and you won't watch it if you know what's good for you. Let's just say (and this is being extremely euphemistic) that it depicts two women performing the most disgusting acts imaginable, short of dismemberment and death. It's truly vile.

However, this video has spawned a fascinating mini-trend on You Tube, where young people videotape themselves and each other (and, in one particularly twisted variation, their grandmother) watching the tape for the first (and, one can only hope, last time) to gauge their reactions. College kids in particular love to see what happens when unsuspecting people watch this video.

This is a pretty representative example of the genre:

Seems like a pretty good way to pick a president. Don't you think?

So let's see Hillary Clinton watch "2 Girls, 1 Cup." How will she react? Will she gag? Throw up? Leave the room? I'd love to see how she takes it -- wouldn't you?

What would Rudy Giuliani do? Would he be outraged at this disgusting violation of all that's decent and holy? Or would he simply roll his eyes and say, "Oh, that's nothing -- Judi and I do that all the time!"

(Okay, I tend to doubt that last bit, but let's face it: you never know with Rudy.)

How would Mike Huckabee or Barack Obama react? Would they get incensed or would they be too busy spewing?

I say we show them all the video, one at a time, and then watch their reaction tapes. And then let America vote, just the way they do on "Dancing With the Stars," to determine who should become the next president. It'll be a great way to get young people involved in the electoral process.

And you have to admit, it can't be much worse than the circus we have now.

Tom Moran

Projection 101

2007-12-06T02:51:00.000-05:00

You would think that I would get tired of writing about Ann Coulter -- after all, how much fun can it be to pick on the insane? But Miss Coulter's column is the gift that keeps on giving. Just when you think she can't say anything dumber or more inane, she manages to sink even lower into the ooze.

But this week's column is particularly interesting, because without knowing it she has managed to shed a little light into her thought processes and -- dare I say it? -- her psyche.

How does she do that, you ask?

Let me elucidate:

Miss Coulter's column concerns a review by Ronald Radosh of a new book by M. Stanton Evans on Senator Joe McCarthy, a book that Coulter, with her usual restraint, calls (and no, I'm not making this up) "the greatest book since the Bible," which probably means that it's the only book other than the Bible that Miss Coulter has actually read.

But I digress.

Radosh, as Miss Coulter points out, co-wrote a book about the Rosenbergs some years ago, which, in editor logic, makes him a perfect candidate to review a book about McCarthy. Now I must admit that I have read neither Evans' book (although I plan to shortly) nor Radosh's review (which, as far as I know, is not available online).

But it's not the book or the review that is at issue here. It's Miss Coulter's very revealing reaction to the review that is.

The review makes it comically obvious that Radosh didn't so much as glance through the pages of Evans' book. (Please forgive me, Eric Foner!) At least Kelly Ripa skims the summary cards written by her assistants who actually read the books when she interviews an author. Radosh doesn't even manage that.

Why is this revealing? Let's keep going with Miss Coulter's column and the point will be made:

But Radosh is not about to let the first book to render a full and honest historical account of Joe McCarthy ruin his blissful ignorance. Radosh knows less about McCarthy than I know about fly-fishing. He gets cases wrong, sources wrong, hearings wrong. He's been pulling this nonsense for 25 years now. The sole point of his current cliche-ridden ramblings in National Review is to make yet one more special pleading to liberals.

You have no idea how tempted I was to insert "Darwin" for "fly-fishing" in that last paragraph. Because Miss Coulter is accusing Radosh of doing exactly what Coulter herself did in her book Godless -- write about a subject about which she knew absolutely nothing. As I made clear in this very blog, Coulter wrote a book denouncing Darwin when she made it pretty obvious that she had never bothered to read Darwin herself -- and here she is attacking Radosh for arguably doing the same thing.

Projection is a wonderful thing. Don't you think?

Tom Moran

Thoughts of Iowa

2007-12-04T03:17:00.000-05:00

The Iowa Caucauses are slightly less than a month away, and it might be time to think a little bit about possible outcomes and what they might mean.

According to the Iowa Poll, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are the frontrunners, although the Democratic race looks to be a statistical dead heat. But more revealingly, when Democrats were asked who they would be most disappointed to see the nominee, 27% said Hillary Clinton.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: do we really want to see the presidency passed back and forth like a baton between two families for a period of 28 years? That's what would happen if Hillary Clinton won in 2008 and served two terms. From January 20, 1989 to January 20, 2017, the only people occupying the White House would be named either Clinton or Bush.

I don't know about you, but I'm not crazy about that prospect.

So what does it mean that Obama is, at least marginally, ahead in Iowa? It means two things, it seems to me: 1) Obama is by far the most charismatic Democrat in the race, and 2) Obama represents hope, change and the future. If, as Bill Clinton used to say, elections are about the future, Obama is the obvious choice for Democrats.

Is he my choice? I don't know yet. I would be happy with pretty much anyone except Hillary Clinton. I have nothing against the junior senator from New York, whom I have already voted for twice, but I don't think she's the best choice for the Democratic nominee.

But I wouldn't count her out yet. Iowa, more than anyplace else, is about organization -- you have to physically get your people out on what could be a ball-chillingly cold night and get them to the places where the caucases are going to be held. This leads me to believe that John Edwards, who made a strong showing in Iowa four years ago, might just surprise people a month from now. In fact, I'm not so sure that an Edwards/Obama ticket might not be the best thing all around.

But what about Huckabee? Is Huckabee surging ahead of Giuliani in the Iowa Poll a sign that Iowa Republicans are so convinced that they'll be defeated in 2008 that they'd rather go with a True Believer, even if they think he doesn't have a prayer? Or do they really think Huckabee can beat Clinton or Obama or whoever the Democrats end up nominating?

Personally (and granted this might be wishful thinking on my part), I think the Republicans don't think they can win and are opting for ideologically purity over pragmatism. Maybe they're hoping that an Evangelical Christian is their best hope, given that 40% of Bush's vote in 2004 came from the Religious Right. Or maybe Huckabee is a Hail Mary pass (so to speak) on their parts.

It's hard to say. But given how ridiculously front-loaded this process has become, we should pretty much know in six weeks or so who the prospective nominees are going to be. Because after Iowa and New Hampshire the ballgame's pretty much over.

Tom Moran

Do You Believe These People?

2007-11-05T14:35:00.000-05:00

Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, is up in arms.

Not that he's in the military (he's far too old to serve his country in that capacity), but he's outraged on behalf of the military.

And what is he outraged about? Can you venture a guess?

I'll give you a hint. It isn't about the fact that we're using National Guard forces as a de facto press gang in Iraq, violating their civil liberties by sending then back to Iraq over and over again in violation of their original commitments. It's not that we're holding American citizens against their legal rights. It's not that we're torturing people and murdering civilians.

Wildmon doesn't give a shit about any of that meaningless crap.

What does he give a shit about? Why is he so outraged?

Soldiers are able to buy and read Penthouse magazine on military bases.

GASP!!!!!!!

Oh my God! Naked ladies! Soldiers are able to look at naked ladies! This is an outrage!

It also, Wildmon contends, violates the law of the land.

Seems that 11 years ago (when the Congress was in the hands of Newt Gingrich and his group of crazed Republican thugs, many of whom were corrupt and many of whom are now, thankfully, out of power) Congress passed The Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996. This Orwellian-titled piece of legislation in the words of Peter Eisler of USA Today, "bars stores on military bases from selling "sexually explicit material." It defines that as film or printed matter "the dominant theme of which depicts or describes nudity" or sexual activities "in a lascivious way.""

In other words, it denies soldiers the very constitutional freedoms that they are ostensibly fighting for. Isn't that special? And isn't it precious that this blatantly unconstutional piece of legislation was upheld by a U.S. appeals court?

But back to Donald Wildmon. The military has decided (in an enlightened decision for which they should be commended) that certain publications such as Penthouse did not meet the standards of the legislation for sexually explicit material and thus could be sold legally on military bases. Wildmon disagrees. "They're saying 'we're not selling stuff that's sexually explicit' … and we say it's pornography," Wildmon is quoted as saying by USA Today.

Wildmon has started a letter-writing campaign wants to persuade Congress to make the Pentagon, in Wildmon's words, "obey the law."

The trouble is that the Pentagon is obeying the law. They obtained a legal opinion and they are abiding by the legal advice they have received.

Wildmon, of course, has also obtained advice from someone he considers his Lord and Savior, but he's choosing to ignore that advice.

That advice, of course, would be:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matthew, 7:1-5)

Tom Moran

Are We Stuck With Hillary?

2007-10-21T09:08:00.000-04:00

The closer we get to primary season and actual votes being cast by actual voters, the less enthralled I am by the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

Don't get me wrong. I like Hillary -- sort of. I'm not one of those people who hates her guts and I'm also not one of those people who think she's a goddess. I fall in the middle of the road where Hillary's concerned. I voted for her twice to be Senator for New York, after all. But do I want her as my president? And, far more importantly, do I think she can win?

Whether Hillary can win depends on who she runs against. If she runs against Rudy Giuliani she's got a real shot -- the best shot she has, actually. It's been said that 40% of Bush's vote in 2004 came from Christian evangelicals, and those people will not vote for Giuiliani -- and they might vote for a Perot-esque third party candidate on the Christian right. So Hillary wins in that scenario.

But if she runs against Mitt Romney, I think the evangelicals will swallow hard and vote for the Mormon -- and against the idea of another Clinton in the White House. If the Republicans put Romney up against Hillary, I think Romney will win.

A lot of this depends on what happens in Iowa. If anyone else other than Hillary Clinton wins in Iowa -- even more so if they win convincingly -- then it's anybody's ballgame. John Edwards did surprisingly well in Iowa four years ago and it helped him win the vice presidential nomination. Could he win Iowa in 2008? Because whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire (assuming the same person wins both) is the odds-on favorite for the nomination. If Hillary stumbles in both places, she's toast. After New Hampshire the race is like a snowball rolling down a mountain -- there's no time to make up for mistakes.

So I'll be watching the last few days before Iowa very carefully. If Barack Obama or John Edwards can manage to win in Iowa, then Hillary's nimbus of inevitability is gone, and it might be too late at that point to get it back.

Tom Moran

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

2007-10-19T01:10:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a person says something so well, in fact so perfectly, that all you can do is sit back and appreciate it.

Let's appreciate the words of Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA). He's a brave man saying the unsayable, who will no doubt be blasted by the Right Wing Noise Machine for telling the simple truth:

"They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fund the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you gonna get that money? You gonna tell us lies? Like you're telling us today? Is that how you're gonna fund the war? You don't have the money to fund the war or children. But you're gonna spend it to blow up innocent people if we can
get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Can't get much better -- or more honest -- than that.

Tom Moran

Ann Coulter, Incomplete Muslim

2007-10-13T13:52:00.000-04:00

You've probably heard of (if not already seen) Ann Coulter's infamous TV appearance (timed to coincide with her latest book -- what a striking coincidence that is!), in which she claimed that Jews need "perfecting" -- that is, they need to become Christians.

Of course, the first Crusaders believed that as well, so they "perfected" the Jews of Jerusalem by burning them alive in their synagogues.

But I digress.

It's not, however, her notorious anti-Semitism (which has been pointed out by David Brock among others) that I want to discuss here. It's her logic -- and the consequences of it.

But first, take a look at what she has to say (and the delightful way she gets bitch-slapped by Donny Deutsch):

Still with me? Stopped vomiting yet?

Now, Coulter thinks that Jews need to be "perfected" by becoming Christians since, in her opinion, the New Testament takes the Old Testament one step further and is the culmination of it. Therefore, by her standards, a Jew is merely an incomplete Christian.

And yet, Muslims believe that Islam is the perfecting of both Judaism and Christianity, that the Koran takes both the Old and the New Testaments one step further and that Christians and Jews both need to be "perfected" by converting to Islam.

Therefore, Ann Coulter is an incomplete Muslim. As well as an idiot.

Tom Moran

A History Lesson for Mets Fans

2007-10-03T12:57:00.000-04:00

My father had a story he loved to tell.

In the Fall of 1951 he was in the Naval Reserve on manuevers somewhere out at sea, and he and a couple of his crewmates were in the wardroom trying to get the first game of the World Series on the radio. It wasn't easy because the reception was lousy but they kept trying and finally they managed to get Armed Forces Radio through the static.

"Welcome.. [crackle crackle] to the first game of the 1951 World Series... [crackle crackle] between the New York Yankees..."

At this point my father took a big sip of coffee.

"... and the New York Giants."

My father spit the coffee all over the table and probably on a few of his fellow officers as well.

"The GIANTS?" he yelled. "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THE DODGERS?"

The Brooklyn Dodgers, you see, had been in first place by a dozen or so games when the ship had left port, some weeks ago, but after one of the biggest swan dives in baseball history, capped off by Bobby Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world" in a one-game playoff (which was 56 years ago today) they blew their chance to be in the World Series.

I would like to remind Mets fans, who are still grieving over the fact that their team blew a seven-game lead with 17 games left to play, that it's not the end of the world. There will always be a next year.

And in point of fact, the Dodgers were in the World Series four out of the next five years -- something Mets fans should keep in mind right about now.

Tom Moran

Let Ahmadinejad Look

2007-09-21T00:31:00.000-04:00

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who will be at the United Nations next week, asked for permission to visit Ground Zero, he was denied permission by the New York City Police Department. They cited security concerns, but the White House was less discreet in their response.

"I can understand," President Bush said in a press conference,"why they would not want somebody who is running a country who is a state sponsor of terror down there at the site."

In addition, Ahmadinejad is set to speak at Columbia University, at what Newsday calls "a question and answer session with university faculty and students as part of the school's World Leaders Forum. " This appearance is being protested by the city tabloids (John Podhoretz wrote a particularly inane column about it in the Post) and local politicians such as Christine Quinn, the head of the New York City Council, who claims that for Columbia to provide a forum for Ahmadinejad to spread his "hate-mongering vitriol" is offensive to all New Yorkers.

Well, I'm a New Yorker, and Christine Quinn (with whom I'm usually in agreement) does not speak for me in this regard. Is Ahmadinejad a Holocaust denier? Yes. Is that a sub-moronic thing to be? As they say in Minnesota, you betcha. Does Iran sponsor terrorist groups? Yes -- they sponsor both Hamas and Hezzbollah (neither of whom, it should be said, target the United States). Are either of those valid reasons to keep him from Ground Zero or from speaking at Columbia? I don't think so.

I would let Ahmadinejad go pretty much anywhere in New York he wanted to -- and talk to anyone who would speak to him. If he wants to go down to Ground Zero, let him. If he wants to speak at Columbia, let him. But most of all, I want New Yorkers to speak to him -- I want him to meet as many New Yorkers as possible and hear what they have to say, and take that back to Iran.

Will his mind be changed by what he might hear from the people of this city? Probably not. But I for one would love to have the opportunity to tell him that, in spite of the fact that I think this country should have a far more civilized discourse with his, anyone who thinks the Holocaust didn't happen is a total fucking idiot.

Tom Moran

Sherri Shepherd Sees the Light

2007-09-20T01:39:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday's episode of "The View," brand-spankin'-new co-host Sherri Shepherd tried to yank her foot out of her mouth and give an explanation for how she came to say that she didn't know whether or not the earth was flat.

She claimed that she didn't hear the question, which as an excuse ranks right up there with that perennial favorite "My dog ate my homework."

Think I'm exaggerating when I claim that her explanation is disingenuous (and that's a euphemism)? Check out the actual video and see whether you think she didn't hear a question that she repeats twice right after she hears it:

But at least she's acknowledging, however belatedly, that the earth is in fact round. Let's give her credit for that, at least.

Not too much credit, however, because she still believes that the earth -- the whole universe, in fact -- was created by a sky god with a big white beard who sits on a big chair in the sky. And she believes this, by her own words, because there's no proof whatsoever for the assertion.

Tom Moran

Where's Rosie When You Need Her?

2007-09-18T11:38:00.000-04:00

When TV actress and stand-up comic Sherri Shepherd was given the job of co-host on ABC's "The View," she viewed it as a "miracle from God." Claiming that prayers from her fans allowed her to fill the chair left vacant by Star Jones, she told those fans on her website:

"Now just keep praying, that every morning I don't put my foot in my mouth – but if you know me, it's bound to happen :O)."

Well, Ms. Shepherd was right about that, because on today's episode of "The View" she said (with a straight face) that not only doesn't she believe in evolution, she does not know whether or not the earth is flat.

Let me repeat that for the benefit of those of you who have not yet picked their jaws up off the floor: she does not know whether or not the earth is flat.

Bear in mind, this woman has a child. Whose mother does not know whether or not the earth is flat.

Was this woman hired to fill the idiot chair? Because the show already has Elisabeth Hasselbeck for that (and she does a dandy job). What demographic is Ms. Shepherd appealing to anyway? Don't tell me African-Americans, because the African-Americans I know are pretty clear on the fact that the earth is round and besides, they have Whoopi Goldberg to appeal to that demographic. So why is Ms. Shepherd there? To make mental defectives feel brilliant by comparison?

I think Ms. Shepherd needs a little adult education in the heliocentric theory of the universe -- and some grounding in evolution might not be a bad idea either. So if you're feeling charitable, please send some books on science to:

Sherri Shepherd
c/o "The View"
ABC TV
320 West 66th Street
New York, NY 10023

The sooner you can mail those books off, the better, because this woman's pathetic ignorance reaches millions of impressionable people every day, and the sooner she learns a little science, the better off all of us (not to mention her child) will be.

Tom Moran

Note 9/19: I have been informed by the webmaster of Sherri Shepherd's website (who has refused to pass along my blog item to her) that Ms. Shepherd, unlike what I wrote in my blog item yesterday, has one and not two children. The error has been corrected.

Monday Grab-Bag

2007-09-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of things I could conceivably write about today, but I don't feel like being constrained by a single topic, so I'm going to jump around a little if you don't mind (or even if you do -- nyah):

Newt Gingrich says that the odds that a Democrat will be elected president in 2008 are about 80/20. One can only hope he's right. I would put it at 90/10 if anyone but Hillary is nominated and 50/50 if she is.
O.J. Simpson is in jail again, arrested for armed robbery. You have to wonder who's going to defend him (he hasn't got the money for a "dream team" this time) or if the jury might be tempted to do a "jury mullification in reverse" (is there such a legal term?) -- where they decide to vote guilty because he got off on the murder rap ten or so years ago. Although from what I hear the whole thing was captured on tape so it might be a moot point.
Alan Greenspan finally spilled the beans this weekend when he said in his new book: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." He has since tried to backtrack from that comment, but those attempts have been unsuccessful. President Bush is reported to have been "surprised" by Greenspan's comments, but it reminds me of Washington's definition of a "gaffe": when someone accidentally tells the truth.
The bathroom stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport where Idaho Senator Larry Craig executed his now-notorious "wide stance" (and was arrested by an undercover officer) has become an unexpected tourist attraction. People are asking strangers to take their picture taken in front of the bathroom. So if you're passing through and you spot Inmotion Entertainment (a DVD rental store), ask Kelly (a young lady who works in the store) to take your picture. Maybe you can talk her into coming inside and taking your picture in the actual stall where Craig was busted. It's the second one from the right. Just don't tap your foot while you're inside -- after all, you never know who's in the next stall.

Tom Moran

The Best News of the Year

2007-09-16T09:13:00.000-04:00

We haven't had a whole lot of good news this year, have we?

Well, if you take a look to your left you'll see what is arguably the best news we're going to get all year -- the release, in December, of "Ford at Fox," 24 of the films that John Ford made while working for 20th Century-Fox, many of which have never before been available on DVD.

If you look at the length and breadth of Ford's career, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that he was, all things considered, American's greatest filmmaker. And while he worked almost everywhere in his long career, he made many of his best films at Fox -- so it's appropriate that the studio where he had such a long and productive working life should honor him with such a comprehensive DVD collection.

Among the films available in the collection are not just the films that most cinephiles know -- "Young Mr. Lincoln," "My Darling Clementine," "How Green Was My Valley" -- but the rareties and museum pieces that haven't been available before and that deserve to be seen by a wider audience. Films like Ford's 1924 epic "The Iron Horse," or the heavily Murnau-influenced WWI drama "Four Sons." In addition, "Ford at Fox" includes a documentary by 1997 Oscar nominee Nick Redman, as well as several of Ford's own documentaries such as "December 7th" and "The Battle of Midway" (which won a 1943 Oscar for Best Documentary).

It's not cheap (the collection has a suggested retail price of $299.98), but all told these films comprise an important and vital part, not only of American film history, but of American culture. No film fan can afford to ignore this set.

Tom Moran

Vanessa the Undresser

2007-09-09T20:17:00.000-04:00

The fetching young lady at left is Vanessa Hudgens. If you don't know who she is, then you haven't seen "High School Musical," Disney's phenomenally popular TV movie-musical.

I've cropped the photo a little, which I'm sure disappoints you, especially if you've seen "High School Musical" and have a penis (or a vagina and the right inclination, now that I think about it).

The fact is that the lovely Miss Hudgens is nude in the photo, which she took privately and has somehow (no one knows exactly how) found its way online.

People were shocked -- shocked! -- that a hot 18-year-old would want to show off her body for a camera. And it would seems that her career (at least with Disney) was imperiled by the existence of this photograph.

Miss Hudgens apologized profusely for the incident:

"I want to apologize to my fans, whose support and trust means the world to me. I am embarrassed over this situation and regret having ever taken these photos."

Disney Channel spokesperson Patti McTeague stated that Miss Hudgens' career with Disney would not be terminated, saying:

"Vanessa has apologized for what was obviously a lapse in judgment. We hope she's learned a valuable lesson."

I can only add one statement to this situation: Are you people fucking kidding me?

Seriously -- just how stupid have we gotten in this country? Just look at the look on that young woman's face as she shows off her gorgeous body. When was the last time you were that happy? Admit it, if you were 18 and had a body like that you would show it to anyone who wanted to look at it --no matter who they were.

Admittedly, we live in a culture where no young woman can feel comfortable posing nude because some asshole is going to get their hands on the photo and post it on the internet. So you can argue that, for someone whose fan base is predominantly teenage girls (and gay boys who maybe don't know that they're gay quite yet) , Miss Hudgens showed poor judgment.

But come on -- look at that face! Look at the rest of her -- which you can easily find on the internet if you look hard enough. Doesn't that make you renew your faith in humanity? I mean, really.

I can tell you what I would have liked Miss Hudgens to have said when the photo became public:

"Yes, I posed for that photo. I'm young and I'm hot and I like being naked and I posed for a nude photo while I still have a smokin' body. And if anyone doesn't like it, they can just fuck off."

But Miss Hudgens, being an ambitious young actress, knows, as Hugh Grant knew before her when he had a similarly awkward situation (which was not captured on camera, unfortunately), that a mea culpa was in order. So she did what she had to do to save her shapely young ass.

Wouldn't it be nice, though, if she didn't have to? And wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a society that didn't, in effect, punish young women for flaunting their beauty and their sexuality?

Tom Moran

The Tide in the Senate -- and Beyond

2007-09-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

The New York Times is reporting that Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel is set to formally announce on Monday that he will not run for reelection in 2008.

That makes three Republican senators who will not be running for reelection next year -- Hagel, Virginia Senator John Warner and, most likely, Idaho Senator Larry ("Wide Stance") Craig.

2008 is looking very good for the Democrats to extend their currently razor-thin majority in the Senate. And given how the Republicans are imploding, both on the executive and legislative level, it's theoretically possible that 2008 is going to be an election year that makes 2006 look like a tea party.

I haven't given much room to the 2008 Democratic candidates here lately, so maybe it's time to do a little ruminating, given the events of today and the past few weeks.

Robert Novak has been saying (or possibly implying would be the better word) that the Democrats are on the verge of shooting themselves in the foot by nominating either a woman (Hillary Clinton) or a black man (Barack Obama) to head the ticket -- something that he thinks is the only hope for the Republican party to hold onto the White House in 2008. It's an antediluvian and arguably racist opinion.

But is he right?

I'm not sure. I think Hillary Clinton would be a disaster as a candidate and would most likely lose in a general election -- and on the off-chance that she won, I think she'd most likely be an awful president. Based on what I've read in books like Carl Bernstein's splendid recent biography, Hillary Clinton, with her band of insane loyalists and her passion for utter secrecy, has more in common with George W. Bush than a lot of people might think at first glance.

If the Republicans had any sense at all (and based on the evidence of the past seven years they have none) they would rally around Mitt Romney as quickly as possible. There's no doubt in my mind that Romney could beat Hillary Clinton. He might be able to beat Barack Obama.

Could Obama get the nomination and actually win the general election? I'm not sure, although I'd like to think so. I'd like to know more about him, but what impression I have of him so far has been favorable. Clinton's people are making a crucial error for slamming Obama for his suposed lack of "experience." As JFK's speechwriter Ted Sorenson (who supports Obama) pointed out not long ago, Cheney and Rumsfeld had lots of experience when they began the Bush Administration -- and what good did it do them?

I've made no secret of the fact that my first choice would be for Al Gore to enter the race. But right now it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Events are going to start unfolding fast in this election cycle, and we could have a presumptive nominee by early February if not sooner. That means that the candidate with the best organization has the best chance of winning -- but it also means that if someone can somehow pull off an upset in Iowa and New Hampshire it could turn the whole race upside down, and lead to the craziest scramble for the nomination that we've seen in generations.

It's going to be an interesting six months, that's all I can say.

Tom Moran

Where's John Mark Karr When You Need Him?

2007-09-08T14:45:00.000-04:00

Remember Madeleine McCann? The cute little girl who disappeared in Portugal leaving her parents to appeal for her return and celebrities such as J.K. Rowling to cough up millions for a reward?

Well, now there are two suspects in her disappearance.

Her parents.

The Portugese police (who appear to have botched this case from Day One), are now theorizing that Madeleine's mother, Kate McCann, killed her daughter accidentally and then made up the whole abduction theory to throw suspicion away from them.

Is this good police work? A lucky guess? Or merely a Hail Mary pass on the part of the Portugese police who don't have a clue where the girl is and just want to make this whole sordid story go away because it's bad for tourism, like the mayor in "Jaws"?

Personally, I think it's time for John Mark Karr to make an appearance and confess. That's about all this case is lacking right about now.

Tom Moran

Death of a Legend

2007-09-06T01:08:00.000-04:00

This is a sad day for opera lovers. Luciano Pavarotti has died at the age of 71.

For those of us who were lucky enough to see him in his prime, Pavarotti was as great as any Italian tenor in the second half of the 20th Century -- a great artist in the tradition of Caruso and Gigli. But we're far luckier with Pavarotti than we were with his predecessors, since with Caruso we're only left with arias recorded at a time when you had to sing into a horn, and Gigli, while leaving us with some spendid complete opera recordings (I'm partial to his "La Boheme"), wasn't able to leave behind anything like the body of work that Pavarotti has.

Not only his recordings, but also his opera broadcasts from the Met and other houses around the world will ensure that his artistry will live on for future generations. In an age of ersatz singers who are more the creation of media hype than genuine talent (consider the oaf on "Britain's Got Talent" who became an instant celebrity by mangling Puccini's "Nessun Dorma"), Pavarotti was the real thing.

His career spanned almost my whole life, and I was lucky to have seen him several times at the Met, most notably in one of his greatest roles, as the doomed king in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera." It was one of the great experiences of my opera-going life, and I will never forget it. Neither I suspect, will millions more, both alive and unborn, who will thrill to the many superb performances he left behind.

Tom Moran

Oh, Those Wacky Republicans!

2007-09-02T22:04:00.000-04:00

Senator Arlen Specter has said, in an interview on Fox News, that his fellow Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) should, in the words of the Bloomberg report from which I derive this story (since you don't really expect me to watch Fox News, do you?), "try to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in connection with an incident in an airport men's room and fight the case."

"I think he could be vindicated,'' Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the "Fox News Sunday'' program.

Specter, of Pennsylvania, said that Craig "hasn't resigned'' from the Senate, only that he "intends to resign'' as of Sept. 30. That gives Craig a month to fight the case in court, Specter said. If the case went to trial, Specter said Craig "wouldn't be convicted of anything.''

I hate to say it, but I agree with Arlen Specter.

Not so much on the legal front (do we really get "do-overs" in court nowadays?), but on the resignation front. It's not like he was caught in bed with a dead nine-year-old with an ice-pick in her chest or anything -- it was a private (or as private as a men's room stall can be) incident that should be left to Senator Craig and his wife. If I felt that way about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, then I think I should also feel that way about Senator Craig and the hunky undercover officer he tried to blow.

What happened to Senator Craig was a pretty clear case of entrapment. I really don't care what he does in men's rooms, with or without an undercover office, but I do think that the law should butt out of people's bedrooms.

Or their toilets.

Now, that having been said, I should also point out that this is a relatively easy call for me to make, given that, considered politically, Idaho is about as red as my face would be if I were to be caught in a men's room with an undercover officer -- so it's easy for me to say that Senator Craig should fight to save a seat that would be reliably Republican in any event. I wonder if I would stick to principle if the senator involved was John Warner, in the highly competitive state of Virginia.

But it's not. Idaho will have a Republican senator whether Craig steps down or not, so I say he should stick around and be a living example to the GOP of what family values are about.

Might even do them some good.

Tom Moran

He Put The "Ho" in Idaho

2007-09-01T01:54:00.000-04:00

Senator Larry Craig of Idaho is going, if media reports are correct (and when are they not?), to resign his Senate seat later today.

Over tapping his foot in the stall of a men's room.

Okay, we all know that it was more than that. Craig was most likely cruising for some gay sex in a public toilet, which offends some people, particularly Republicans. It's another lovely example of Republican sexual hypocrisy in action.

Part of me (the partisan progressive part of me) wants to gloat about yet another GOP hypocrite brought low. But another part of me, the part that believes in fair play and that thinks that consenual sexual conduct between adults is no one else's fucking business and who dislikes the notion of police entrapment, feels that all this is a wee bit much.

Granted, Craig is against gay marriage on moral grounds but has no qualms about blowing or being blown by another man in a men's room -- on one level he deserves what he gets.

But should someone lose their livelihood over something like this? What is this, the 1950s? Do we really want police officers trying to entrap men in toilets?

So I'm torn. On one level I feel sorry for Senator Craig, who should probably just hold a press conference and tell the world: "Okay. I did it. I wanted the big beefy police officer's mighty schlong down my throat. You got a problem with that? Tough shit. I'm still a U.S. Senator and I'm going to remain a U.S. Senator whether you like it or not."

But on the other hand, since he's clearly too much of a hypocrite to say that, I should probably just give him George Michaels' phone number. That should do it, right?

Tom Moran

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2007-08-13T17:27:00.000-04:00

When I logged onto AOL this morning (after a long and exhausting weekend), I found two stories on my main page.

One story was about Karl Rove leaving the White House at the end of the month, after which he will write a book justifying all of his scummy activities in politics, for which he will no doubt get a hefty advance.

The other story was about the head of a toy company in China who, after a recall of 967,000 of his tainted merchandise, committed suicide by hanging in his factory.

And I found myself wondering, Why couldn't it have been the other way around?

Tom Moran

Does Dinesh D'Souza Know His Ass From His Elbow?

2007-08-10T02:04:00.000-04:00

I suspect that most of you know the conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza, author of such tomes as What's So Great About America and The Enemy at Home (which is subtitled -- and I'm not making this up -- The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11). If you don't know him, you know his type: he's the phoney-baloney who sat next to you in class and pretended to know all the answers while secreting a cheat-sheet in his shirt pocket. Subtlety is not his forte.

His latest column is entitled Do Atheists Disbelieve in God, Or Do They Hate Him?

This poses an intriguing question, one which you would think could be answered fairly easily by anyone with a grade school education: can you hate that which does not exist? Can I, for example, hate the Easter Bunny?

The sheer stupidity of the question does not deter Dinesh:

When I read atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, I don't get the impression that they are motivagted [sic] by mere unbelief. I don't believe in unicorns, but I don't go around writing books full of rejection and bile about unicorns. When I read The God Delusion and God Is Not Great, I see that their authors do not so much disbelieve in God as they hate Him. Consequently, the arguments spelled out in these atheist books are out of sync with the actual vehemence of their authors.

I am not going to discuss God Is Not Great, since I have not read it (not that this would deter, say, Ann Coulter, who wrote an entire book "refuting" Darwin without bothering to read anything he'd written), but D'Souza's discussion of Dawkins and his book The God Delusion is not only what they call in the logic game a Straw Man argument, it completely misses the point. I'll get to that in a second.

Dawkins and Hitchens contend that God is not demonstrable according to the scientific method. But then, lots of things are not demonstrable according to that method. Can Dawkins and Hitchens give a scientific account of consciousness? Can they locate free will under a microscope? What about "equality" and "justice" and "rights": none of these things have any material existence, so does that make them illusions? Since even Dawkins and Hitchens have no problem accepting the existence of lots of immaterial things, they never explain why God is the one immaterial entity that stirs up their skeptical indignation. Somehow the scientific case against God seems to be an inadequate explanation for their belligerent atheism.

First of all, this line of argument is so specious it's really beneath contempt. D'Souza knows (or would know if he'd stayed awake during a Freshman course in philosophy) that there isn't an argument for the existence of God that hasn't been demolished centuries ago. The argument by design, for example, was pretty definitively refuted by Kant and Hume in the 18th Century.

So it's not the "scientific case against God" that explains the "belligerent atheism" of Dawkins and Hitchens. What does explain it is rather obvious: religion (or, to be more accurate, monotheism) is responsible for more pain and suffering on this planet than anything else. And that we're better off without it. It's not God they hate: it's the results of belief in God.

D'Souza then tries to set off Dawkins and Hitchens against Michel Onfray, the French author of The Atheist Manifesto:

While Dawkins and Hitchens insist that we can be moral without God, Onfray with astonishing frankness concedes Nietzsche's point that the death of God also means the death of Western morality and Western values. So if God goes, that means that "equality" and "rights" go too. This is a possibility that Dawkins and Hitchens have not even considered. In many ways I think Onfray's atheism is more honest, more darkly appealing, and more dangerous than the atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens.

It will surprise no one that D'Souza has a book to plug while he's spewing this junk. It's title? What's So Great About Christianity (can't accuse Dinesh of being overly original in his titles, can we?). I can't wait to read the chapter where he justifies the massacre of 70,000 Muslims by the first Crusaders (who also burned the Jews alive in their synagogues) as an example of what's so great about Christianity.

It may seem counterintuitive that a wave of atheist chic is hitting America not long after the 9/11 attacks, but I don't think so. I think people are finally waking up from their dogmatic slumbers and realizing that monotheism is not just stupid but evil -- and that the first Crusaders, the Nazis (who, for all their supposed antipathy to Christianity refused to allow atheists into the SS and had Gott Mitt Uns on their belt buckles) and the 9/11 hijackers all had one thing in common: they all thought that God was on their side. So did the slave traders of the antebellum South, for that matter, who used to quote the Bible to justify their "peculiar institution."

If there is a God, He's got a lot to answer for. More, I suspect, than Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens put together.

Tom Moran

Monster On (Not In) A Box

2007-08-08T23:25:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been toying with The Monster. The Monster (the term is borrowed from Spaulding Gray's monologue which was later made into a 1992 film) is depicted on the left. It is one manuscript -- all 1,867 pages of it.

This is not necessarily a good thing to do. I've spent the past few years wrestling with him, and I'm not sure I'm up to doing it again. But something tells me that this might be a good time to take another look and see what might be possible.

Could The Monster be made available to the public someday? Well, with the help of a new agent and a disgustingly large advance, possibly. It would still take a lot of work (it needs to be expanded a little).

In the meantime, he stays on top of the box. And there are other monsters on other boxes awaiting their turn. That's the good thing about having an incompetent agent -- you build up quite a backlog.

Tom Moran

The Helen and George Show

2007-07-14T01:22:00.000-04:00

Occasionally you find a text that cries out for deconstruction. Such a text was the recent press conference held by President Bush, in which he and Helen Thomas, doyenne of the Washington press corps, went at it over the Iraq War.

I'll quote their entire colloquy, explicating as I go:

Helen Thomas: Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point -- bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.

I have to admit I felt really patriotic when I heard Helen Thomas say those words. She spoke truth to power, and acted in the best tradition of a free press. The fact is that George W. Bush and no one else is responsible for this war, and all the deaths that have ensued are on his head. And his conscience, if he has one, which I sincerely doubt.

The president, however, was slinging the same old bullshit. Pointedly ignoring Thomas' remarks on the tragic consequences of his decision to invade Iraq, he goes straight into the Big Lie:

President Bush: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.

Does anybody believe this? Anybody? Does anyone really believe that Bush went to the UN as anything but a sop to Tony Blair and the Brits, and as a way of giving a figleaf of legality to what was a clear invasion of a sovereign state?

When I hear Bush talk like this, I have to wonder whether he's either delusional or a sociopath. Does he even believe what he's saying? Saddam Hussein did everything he could to avoid being invaded by the US -- including giving up his weapons of mass destruction, none of which, almost four-and-a-half years after we invaded, have ever been found.

Bush then takes the opportunity to go off on a rant:

Helen Thomas Didn't we go into Iraq --
President Bush: It was his decision to make. Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make, to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

Oh, really? I don't know about the world, which is a pretty big place, but I can think of about 700,000 corpses that would not be corpses if Saddam Hussein were not in power. Are they better off? I can think of several dozen if not hundred Iraqis who, in a grisly irony, would not have been tortured if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Are they better off? No one is denying that Hussein was a disgusting dictator. But anyone with eyes in their head can see that the chaos that is currently Iraq is not better than what the Iraqis had when Hussein was in power.

President Bush: Now the fundamental question facing America is will we stand with this young democracy, will we help them achieve stability, will we help them become an ally in this war against extremists and radicals that is not only evident in Iraq, but it's evident in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.

Actually, this is not the fundamental question. That question is: how long will American troops be made to referee in the middle of a civil war between Sunni and Shia? The "young democracy" in Iraq is a joke and everyone knows it -- except the Bush Administration, of course.

President Bush: We're at the beginning stages of a great ideological conflict between those who yearn for peace and those who want their children to grow up in a normal, decent society, and radicals and extremists who want to impose their dark vision on people throughout the world. Iraq is obviously -- Helen, it's got the attention of the American people, as it should; this is a difficult war and it's a tough war. But as I have consistently stated throughout this presidency, it is a necessary war to secure our peace.

Perpetual war for perpetual peace, as Charles Beard would say -- a war that will keep Halliburton and the armaments industry in business and making fat profits for a generation.

This was not in any sense a necessary war. That is just one of the many lies that this administration propagates in order to advance their bloodthirsty agenda. This was a war that Bush and his stooges wanted from the minute they got into power, and they exploited the deaths of 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001 to make it happen.

President Bush: I find it interesting that as this young democracy has taken hold, radicals and extremists kill innocent people to stop its advance. And that ought to be a clear signal to the American people that these are dangerous people and their ambition is not just contained to Iraq. Their ambition is to continue to hurt the American people. My attitude is we ought to defeat them there so we don't have to face them here, and that we ought to defeat their ideology with a more hopeful form of government.

Another big lie, arguably the biggest, and easily the most all-encompassing, which they always pull out when they get desperate: we have to fight them there to keep from fighting them here.
In fact, if we left there the Iraqis would kill, not us, but each other -- and in record numbers. Saddam Hussein was remarkably successful in stifling that sort of internecine bloodshed, but now that there's a vacuum in power, each side is willing to slaughter each other in order to gain the upper hand. And if we leave and there is a bloodbath in Iraq, as there surely would be, that would be oue responsibility as well.

It's like I've said for as long as I've been writing this blog. We're screwed if we leave, and we're screwed if we stay.

Tom Moran

Why Should We Believe You?

2007-07-11T10:20:00.000-04:00

Don't you find it interesting that, at a time when the president is experiencing the worst approval ratings of any president in 50 years, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that he has a "gut feeling" that we're due for another round of terrorist attacks in this country?

This at the exact time when the president is fighting Congress over funding for (and, by extension, control of) the war?

Do you find the timing as suspicious as I do?

An AP story says that Chertoff "based his assessment on earlier patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose."

Warnings based on intelligence he would not disclose. Something bad might happen and I know this but I'm not going to tell you how I know -- you'd just better do whatever I tell you to do.

Haven't we heard this song before? Many times? When this administration wants to get its way and can't find another method of doing so they just cry out that the sky is falling until they get their way.

And of course, if by some mischance there is a terrorist attack this summer or fall, what will it signify, as Trollope would say? That they were right all along in warning us about the potential threat? Or that they were just incompetent to stop it?

Tom Moran

A New Idea for NBC

2007-07-07T14:02:00.000-04:00

Are you tired of NBC being That Pedophile Network? Is it getting a little boring to watch one poor schlub after another walking into a clear case of entrapment and getting arrested for child molestation? Is it getting old? Would you like to see something, well, a little bit different?

Well you're in luck, baby, because I have the perfect idea for you. An idea that captures the smug smarminess of Dateline: To Catch a Predator and merges it with the gut-wrenching suspense of Deal Or No Deal.

You're intrigued, aren't you? I can tell you are.

Okay, here's the deal:

NBC sends a man out into the streets of an American city. But not New York or Los Angeles -- we want the heartland. Maybe Minneapolis or Austin. A large city, but not too large. Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland. Cities like that.

The man is reasonably attractive and in fairly good shape, but he's no Richard Gere. A little snow on the roof. No spring chicken. Definitely well into middle age. But he's dressed well in an expensive suit and wearing a Rolex watch on his wrist that costs more than I make in a -- well, let's not go there.

So this guy is on the street. And he approaches a young woman. A very young woman. A teenager -- somewhere between the ages of 15 and 20. Either jailbait or very close to it.

He tells the girl that he's there on a business trip and he'll only be there for the one day -- he's flying out of town tonight. He tells her that he finds her very attractive and that, if she'll agree to go back to his hotel room right now and have sex with him, he will pay her $3,000 in cash.

What the girl doesn't know is that the guy is fitted with a hidden camera, and that everything he says, and all of her reactions, are being not only recorded but transmitted to a monitor in the man's hotel room.

And who's in the man's hotel room, you ask?

The girl's parents. Waiting to see what her reaction will be to the man's proposition.

Keep in mind, the man tells her that he's getting on a plane in a few hours. She'll never see him again -- and he's offering her $3,000 in cash.

Let's say she agrees to go back with him to his hotel room. The hotel room is in reality a two-room suite: the man and the girl are in one room, the host of the show and the girl's parents are in the other room, watching the proceedings on a monitor. They can see and hear everything that goes on in the next room.

Now here's where the fun really starts.

The parents watch while the man and the girl walk into the hotel room. He starts to disrobe their daughter. Their impulse is to rush into the other room and stop it from happening -- and probably call their daughter a disgusting little whore while they're at it.

But what if the host decides to make it interesting? What if, let's say, he offers them $10,000 in cash to let it continue? And what if, once the girl is down to her bra and panties, the host offers them even more money to let her keep going without them interfering? What if he keeps upping and upping the ante? What if he finally ends up offering the parents half a million dollars if they'll sit there, not interfere and watch their teenage daughter have sex with a stranger for money right in front of them?

Will they rush into the room to keep it from happening? Or will they accept the money and allow their daughter to prostitute herself on national television?

I can tell you're dying to find out. You want this show on the air tonight, don't you?

And the funny thing is, I think NBC would go for this idea -- in a heartbeat. Assuming that they could iron out all the pesky legal difficulties involved in portraying prostitution involving minors on television, that is. But you have to admit, it would get great ratings.

Tom Moran

Bush Seeks Answers

2007-07-06T19:48:00.000-04:00

"He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way."

That sentence fairly leaps out at you from Peter King's recent Washington Post article on President Bush. The story, which has gotten a fair amount of press (King was on Charlie Rose this week to discuss it) portrays a president who seems to be torn between the psychotic self-confidence of a dry drunk and the jejune intellectual searching of a college freshman stumbling his way through Philosophy 101:

At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?

Now, I'm not an author (not having published a book yet) or a historian (in spite of having an interest in history that began when I was a small child, the legacy of a father obssessed with American history) or a philosopher (in spite of the fact that I've read a fair number of philosophers) or a theologian (in spite of the fact that I've certainly read more theology than the current president), but I nonetheless believe that I have answers to the questions that Bush is, very belatedly, raising. I'll get to my answers in a minute.

King continues:

Not generally known for intellectual curiosity [a masterpiece of understatement], Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.

As you can see, Bush, once again, wants to have his cake and eat it too, which is a hallmark of his administration. Think of Rumsfeld's desire to achieve overwhelming victory in Iraq on the cheap, or Bush's desire to fight a full-scale war without asking the American people to sacrifice much of anything, contrary to the practice of America in almost every previous war it's ever waged.

So it is now with Bush. He wants the American people (or that pathetic remnant of it that still supports him) to believe that he is "staying the course," but at the same time, in private, he is asking intellectuals, the same kind of intellectuals he has poured scorn on his entire life, to explain to him just how he could have fucked up his presidency so badly.

Typical.

So here are my answers to Bush's questions -- with some commentary.

1) What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world?

The very fact that you still think of this as a Manichaean question shows the extent of your intellectual limitations. The great problem of our age is the conflict between a secular modernity and the more reactionary religious elements -- of all three monotheistic religions -- as we inexorably move into a secular century. The very extreme nature of their pushback indicates how intractable this struggle is. My own opinion is that mankind will have to slough off monotheism if we as a race are going to be able to move forward and, you should pardon the expression, evolve. And you, Mr. President, with your brain-dead evangelical version of Christianity, are as much a part of the problem as Osama bin Laden. Quite possibly worse, as you've been responsible for far more deaths than he has.

2) What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing?

Don't go to war for petty personal reasons, for one thing. If you had been able to look at the world in general and that region in particular with the strategic eye of, say, a Richard Nixon, you would have known that destabilizing Iraq was like opening Pandora's box. As bad as Saddam Hussein was, what's come after him is unquestionably worse for the vast majority of Iraqis (the Kurds in the north being an exception). What history has to tell you now is that there are times, as with Eisenhower in Korea or Kennedy with the crisis in Berlin in 1961 that resulted in the building of the Berlin Wall, when you have to get out of a bad situation the best you can -- and then be man enough to deal with the consequences.

3) How will history judge what we've done?

To quote Tonto in that old joke about the Lone Ranger: what's all this "we" shit, white man? It's what you've done. And barring a miracle (such as democracy suddenly blooming in a part of the world where it's never existed before), you will go down as quite possibly the worst president in American history. Worse than Harding. Worse than Grant. Worse than Buchanan. The worst president ever.

4) Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America?

The key word in that sentence is "seem." The rest of the world does not hate America. It resents us sometimes -- justifiably so, because of the way we throw our weight around and don't pay attention to the opinions and interests of the rest of the world -- but I don't really believe they hate us.

5) Or is it just me they hate?

Of course it is. And can you blame them?

Tom Moran

Edwards Vs. Coulter

2007-06-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

You have to wonder what Elizabeth Edwards was thinking when she called MSNBC and confronted syndicated columnist and all-around skank Ann Coulter, telling her to cease and desist with the personal attacks on her husband.

It reminds me of that famous line that, as far as I know, Orson Welles originated: Never handle shit, even with gloves. The gloves just get shitty. The shit doesn't get glovey.

Of course, both sides in this little contretemps were being more than a little disingenuous: Edwards knows that Coulter has no intention of shutting up her continuous stream of bile because: a) she's a sociopath and has no conscience whatsoever, and: b) bile is her bread and butter. What else has she got going for her? Certainly not talent. Take away her bile and she's nothing but an underfed skank in a cocktail dress at seven in the morning (which always shows such class -- don't you think?). On the other hand, Coulter and her bile helps the Edwards campaign raise money, and each of these what I suppose we can call bimbo eruptions has been a windfall for Edwards and his presidential campaign.

Coulter, of course, was being disingenuous when she claimed that it was a free-speech issue. Edwards does not want to silence Coulter -- she merely wants her to show a little class (fat chance of that happening this side of a lobotomy). And Coulter wants to be attacked by the left because it drives up her speaking fees and pleases the dozen or so people who read her pathetic excuse for a column (which appears in -- how many papers? Eight? Nine? Do we even know?).

So this is a grotesquely symbiotic relationship which actually benefits both parties. And both of them know it. You have to assume, therefore, that this whole thing was an exercise in mutually beneficial hypocrisy on both sides.

Tom Moran

Tom Moran's Best 100 American Films List: The Also-Rans

2007-06-26T23:13:00.000-04:00

As sort of an appendix to my Best 100 Films list, I thought it might be interesting to show you the films that didn't quite make the cut. Out of all the films I considered, these were the 51 that did not make it to the list of 100.

I'll print them in alphabetical order:

America America
Apocalypse Now
Babes in Arms
Back to the Future
Badlands
The Band Wagon
Bataan
The Black Cat
Blade Runner
Cabaret
Cat People (1942)
David Copperfield (1935)
Deconstructing Harry
Dr. Strangelove
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
The Freshman (1925)
The Graduate
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Ziegfeld
Gun Crazy
Hannah and Her Sisters
How Green Was My Valley
Imitation of Life (1959)
It's a Wonderful Life
The Kennel Murder Case
The Kid
King Kong
Laura
A Letter to Three Wives
The Life of Emile Zola
Little Caesar
The Little Foxes
Manhattan
M*A*S*H
Mildred Pierce
Mister Roberts
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Modern Times
My Darling Clementine
Network
North by Northwest
Only Angels Have Wings
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
The Scarlet Empress
Star Wars
The Terminator
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Truman Show
Wuthering Heights
Yankee Doodle Dandy

Not bad for a list of also-rans, I must say...

Tom Moran

Notes and Musings on the Best 100 Films List

2007-06-25T08:17:00.000-04:00

I've been giving some thought to the Best 100 American Films list that I put on this blog and I'd thought some of those thoughts (and second thoughts) with you.

I said that when I put together this list I deliberately did not refer back to the list I put together in response to the AFI's original Best 100 list from a decade ago. But afterwards I pulled it up and gave it a look, and was intrigued by some of the differences. And the similarities.

Roughly 75% of the content of both lists is identical. The changes are mainly on the margins.

Only five of the top 50 films on my new list are not on the old list.

Those five films are (the number indicates their order in the new list):

24) The Kid Brother
26) Ace in the Hole
34) Trouble in Paradise
44) All the President's Men
48) Crimes and Misdemeanors

You'll notice in the first three of them that I was most likely influenced by the fact that they were previously hard-to-find films that have been released on DVD relatively recently (Ace in the Hole comes out on DVD next month from the Criterion Collection but has been on TCM recently).

The latter two films (All The President's Men and Crimes and Misdemeanors) are examples of films that have gotten better with the passing of time. Pakula's film seems better now than it did when it came out -- or at least it seems that way to me. And I think we're starting to realize that Woody Allen is America's greatest living filmmaker, who has made more great films over a longer period of time than any other active director. The trouble with Woody Allen was not what to put on but what to leave off -- I could have put another three or four Allen films on the list and felt completely justified. Will I feel that way in a decade? I guess we'll find out in 2017.

Here are the films that were on my original list but which did not make the cut the second time around (listed in chronological order):

Broken Blossoms
The Kid
42nd Street
Bombshell
Modern Times
Easy Living
History is Made at Night
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Detour
It's a Wonderful Life
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Fort Apache
Gun Crazy
Rebel Without a Cause
Psycho
The Manchurian Candidate
The Graduate
The Producers
Cabaret
Diner
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Rumble Fish
Stranger Than Paradise
Blood Simple
Hannah and Her Sisters
JFK

They're all good films, but there are only two of them that I think probably should have been placed on the new list (Modern Times and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington).

Here are the films in the bottom 50 of my new list that were not on the old list (number indicates their position on the new list):

51) The Circus
53) Gunga Din
55) Out of the Past
58) The Big Sleep
59) American Graffiti
63) Fury
65) I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
69) The Philadelphia Story
75) The French Connection
82) Husbands and Wives
83) East of Eden
84) Footlight Parade
85) The Day The Earth Stood Still
90) The Thing from Another World
91) Ben-Hur (1925)
92) The Awful Truth
94) Hail the Conquering Hero
95) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
96) Frankenstein
97) Queen Christina
99) They All Laughed
100) The Women

And, much to my chagrin, I find a film that was not on either my old list or my new list, but which really deserves to be on both of them. Its exclusion was and is a major mistake on my part.

That film is All Quiet on the Western Front.

Tom Moran

Addendum, 6/27: For those of you who would like the list broken down by decade, I decided to see how they would break down. 16% of the list is silent (two from the teens, 13 from the 20s and 1 from the 30s).

Here's how the films break down by decade:

1910s: 2
1920s: 13
1930s: 25
1940s: 20
1950s: 17
1960s: 1
1970s: 16
1980s: 3
1990s: 3
2000s: 0

I knew that the majority of the films would come from the 1930s and 1940s (the golden age of American filmmaking) but I was a little surprised that the 50s and the 70s came in almost tied. The 60s came up with only one entry, the 1980s and 90s with only three a piece, and this decade has had no great films as yet.

Tom Moran's 100 Greatest American Films

2007-06-23T16:28:00.000-04:00

Man, they say, is a list-making animal, and it would appear that the only thing he enjoys doing more than making his own lists is criticizing those of other people. I know that's certainly true of me.

Ten years ago the American Film Institute put out their list of the 100 Greatest American Films, and their list really sucked. So, to show them up, I came up with my own list. It's on my old website, part of which is still online -- you can find it on Google without too much difficulty if you wanted to.

Now, a decade later, the AFI has made a new list, taking into account a lot of the criticisms that I (and a lot of other people) made of the original list. This "new and improved" list is in fact a big improvement over their original list.

Is it as good as it could be? You've got to be kidding.

So I decided to make my own rejoinder list again. I did not look at my original list from the 1990s, preferring to start from scratch. I didn't line up the film alphabetically or chronologically -- this time I decided to lay them out in order from 1 to 100.

This, briefly, is how I did it:

I cut about 40% of the AFI's 2007 list.
Then I went to their 400-film ballot that voters were given to choose from and picked films from there.
Then I chose some films from the ones that the AFI dropped from its 400-film list of a decade ago.
Then I chose some films that were never on any AFI list.

That gave me a large number of films to work from, and I wrote the titles down on index cards. I divided the list into two categories: upper fifty and lower fifty. Then just cut and moved around from there. Tough choices were called for and made.

I'm relatively satisfied with my list, which is unconventional in several respects. I won't break it down and/or analyze it in any way, but I'll be interested in hearing what if anything you guys think of it.

Here's the list:

1) Intolerance
2) City Lights
3) The General
4) Citizen Kane
5) The Godfather
6) Casablanca
7) Raging Bull
8) Gone With The Wind
9) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
10) The Godfather Part II
11) The Searchers
12) On The Waterfront
13) Greed
14) Double Indemnity
15) Nashville
16) The Wizard of Oz
17) Sunrise
18) Singin’ in the Rain
19) The Birth of a Nation
20) The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
21) A Face in the Crowd
22) His Girl Friday
23) All That Jazz
24) The Kid Brother
25) The Shop Around the Corner
26) Ace in the Hole
27) Meet Me in St. Louis
28) Sunset Blvd.
29) The Adventures of Robin Hood
30) Scarface (1932)
31) The Crowd
32) Young Mr. Lincoln
33) Sweet Smell of Success
34) Trouble in Paradise
35) The Wind
36) Chinatown
37) Top Hat
38) The Magnificent Ambersons
39) The Conversation
40) The Apartment
41) Notorious
42) Rear Window
43) The Maltese Falcon
44) All The President’s Men
45) Sullivan’s Travels
46) Annie Hall
47) Jaws
48) Crimes and Misdemeanors
49) Avalon
50) Taxi Driver
51) The Circus
52) A Streetcar Named Desire
53) Gunga Din
54) Pinocchio
55) Out of the Past
56) Some Like It Hot
57) Mean Streets
58) The Big Sleep
59) American Graffiti
60) Wings
61) The Bride of Frankenstein
62) A Night at the Opera
63) Fury
64) Fantasia
65) I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
66) The Lady Eve
67) My Man Godfrey
68) GoodFellas
69) The Philadelphia Story
70) The Last Picture Show
71) The Gold Rush
72) All About Eve
73) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
74) Shadow of a Doubt
75) The French Connection
76) The Night of the Hunter
77) Duck Soup
78) Touch of Evil
79) Days of Heaven
80) Golddiggers of 1933
81) Safety Last
82) Husbands and Wives
83) East of Eden
84) Footlight Parade
85) The Day The Earth Stood Still
86) Vertigo
87) Ninotchka
88) Stagecoach
89) The Big Parade
90) The Thing From Another World
91) Ben-Hur (1925)
92) The Awful Truth
93) The Exorcist
94) Hail the Conquering Hero
95) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
96) Frankenstein
97) Queen Christina
98) The Strong Man
99) They All Laughed
100) The Women

Tom Moran

The AFI Does It Again

2007-06-22T02:53:00.000-04:00

Some of you who know me know that, almost ten years ago, when the American Film Institute put out their 100 Best American Films List, I tore it apart on my (then) website.

Now a decade later, the AFI has put out a new list of what they contend are the 100 Best American Films. Is the new list any better?

I've made a cursory examination of the list, and have come to some tentative conclusions that I may refine in the next few days. This is what I think at the moment -- my first impressions.

But first, let me remind you of the critique I made of the original AFI list, a decade ago:

Of the silent era, only four films were chosen: three by Chaplin and one by D.W. Griffith.
And actually, when you consider that both "City Lights" and "Modern Times" are sound films (albeit sound films that just don't happen to have dialogue), that makes only two silent films on the entire list.
Not one film by Buster Keaton was on the AFI's list. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was.
Not one film by Preston Sturges was on the list. "Dances With Wolves" was.
Not one film with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was on the list. "Tootsie" was.
"Intolerance" was not on the list. "The Jazz Singer" (one of the worst movies ever made) was.
"Sunrise" was not on the list. "Doctor Zhivago" was.
"Greed" was not on the list. "Midnight Cowboy" was.

Okay, you get the point.

The new list is marginally better than the old one, and a lot of the flaws of the old list have been taken into account and corrected in the new list. Both Intolerance and Sunrise made the cut this time. Buster Keaton, Preston Sturges, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers -- all are included this time. This is all to the good.

But some classic films that were included ten years ago have been pointlessly dropped -- such as All Quiet on the Western Front and The Birth of a Nation. The former is still one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made, as is the latter, Griffith's 1915 masterpiece, which almost certainly fell victim to America's passion for political correctness.

Offhand I counted at least 20 films on the list that for one reason or another I didn't think belonged there. And while the previous list was just a ploy to sell videocassettes, this list is pretty much just a ploy to sell DVDs.

The more things change...

Tom Moran

Leon Wieseltier and His Gemeinschaft

2007-06-21T10:08:00.000-04:00

Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic (which has recently reinvented itself as a fortnightly), has written a backpager for the magazine on the final episode of the HBO series The Sopranos.

Here is a (brief) excerpt from that article:

The hobbled and true language of Chase's people is an essential element of his devastating portrait of the dictatorship of ordinary life, of the alternately quickening and deadening influences of the commonplace. (So, too, is his exegetical use of popular music, whose salving effect has never been made clearer. I speak as one who is also inwardly fortified by "Denise" and "Oh Girl," and lifted up by "The Dolphins." And I can almost not forgive the show for leaving me so absurdly affected by "Con Te Partirò.") The Sopranos is a searching study of the problem of small horizons. The problem is that they are beautiful and they are crushing. Who does not come from a place that mistakes itself for the universe? All metaphysics is local. If it is possible to have a vision of the Virgin Mary, then it possible to have a vision of the Virgin Mary at the Bada Bing. The Sopranos locates the human lot in north Jersey, but the human lot is available everywhere or it is available nowhere. And the gangland Gemeinschaft provides the same satisfactions as any Gemeinschaft. (And the same hilarity. Meadow: "The state can crush the individual." Tony: "New Jersey?") Yet it provides also the same airlessness: the authenticity of these made communitarians does not exactly leave an impression of radiance. The bitter joke of the show is that these people are repulsive not only for their baseness but also for their provincialism. There is no Archimedean point outside the new Avellino. These are peasants with latte machines. Their insularity, their superstition, their immutability, their self-love: these, too, are human failures, like evil.

When I read this, I had the following reaction: you know, it's probably a good thing that Wieseltier is the literary editor of the magazine, because if such a pretentious piece of utter bullshit had come in over the transom, it probably would have been laughed out of the office.

Doesn't it read like a parody of head-up-their-ass intellectuals such as you might find in the pages of a Saul Bellow novel? It reminds me of when I worked at Newsweek, years ago, and Meg Greenfield used to write essays for the magazine. Or at least she called them essays -- in reality they were rambling, chaotic screeds whose sentences went on and on like Proust, only pointlessly. The problem was that all the editors at the magazine, knowing how close Greenfield was to Mrs. Graham (the owner of The Washington Post Company, which owns Newsweek), were afraid to edit her.

Let me repeat that -- they were afraid to edit her. So her windbaggy blatherings went on, unedited, to the end of her life.

So it's good to know the boss -- or, in Wieseltier's case, to be the editor. How else are you going to make an utter ass of yourself with impunity? But for me, I would just say: Leon, why don't you take your pompous article and stuff it right up your gemeinschaft. Bada bing!

Tom Moran

Vanity, Thy Name is Bloomberg

2007-06-21T07:56:00.000-04:00

Mayor Bloomberg has officially announced that he has abandoned the Republican Party that he cynically joined to become mayor in order to become an "Independent." This is widely seen as the first move towards a White House run as an Independent in 2008.

What do we think of this?

First, a little background.

Michael Bloomberg was a billionaire businessman and a lifelong Democrat who decided that he wanted to be mayor of New York. He realized that he didn't have a chance in hell of winning a Democratic primary, so he cynically switched his party affiliation to Republican (of the RINO -- "Republican in Name Only" variety) to order to get on the ballot.

Even with that, and his incalculably deep pockets, he would have been a long shot. A very long shot.

But then 9/11 happened.

Bloomberg owed his eventual election to Osama Bin Laden to such an extent that I'd be surprised if Bloomberg didn't send him a thank-you note. Without the attack on the World Trade Center Bloomberg would never have become mayor. New Yorkers decided that, in the aftermath of the devastation of downtown Manhattan, it would take a businessman to lead the city into the future, and when Bloomberg was practically annointed by Rudy Giuliani (who then tried to use the attacks as a way of staying in power after his term was over), Bloomberg beat out Mark Green and became mayor.

So he was once a Democrat who left that party when it was no longer useful to him. Now he has left the Republican party because he feels that they're no longer useful to him. Does that make him pragmatic and independent, or does it indicate that the man has no principles whatsoever except a simple, cynical expediency?

Now Bloomberg seems to think that he can run and win a third party candidacy for the White House. Once again his deep pockets (he is said to be willing to spend as much as half a billion dollars to buy the White House) will serve him in good stead.

But there are two things that he's not counting on.

1) No third party candidate has won the White House in more than a century -- or even come close. Teddy Roosevelt, a former president, couldn't do it in 1912. H. Ross Perot couldn't do it in 1992, with equally deep pockets. Bloomberg won't be able to do it either.

2) Bloomberg represents everything about New York and New Yorkers that people in flyover country can't stand: he's rich, he's pro-gun control and pro-choice, he's obnoxious, he's pushy, and oh, yeah -- he's a Jew. This is Jesusland, after all, and in a nation where the biggest fuck-up in the history of the White House can still manage to hold onto the blind loyalty of roughly a third of the electorate simply because he "Loves the Lord," I wonder just how many states below the Mason-Dixon line Bloomberg thinks he has a serious chance of winning (answer: none). Bloomberg's administration was a total fluke, and if he thinks he can parlay that into a successful run for the White House then he's delusional.

But if he wants to toss half a billion dollars down the toilet in a vain attempt at becoming president, I say let him do so. After all, it's a free country. Or so they tell me.

Tom Moran

The Sound of Silence

2007-06-19T19:42:00.000-04:00

Today is an anniversary of sorts. Can you guess what it is?

Okay, I'll give you a hint. It's a date in literary history. Does that help?

No?

Okay, I'll give you another hint. It's a date in American literary history. How about that?

Still stumped?

All right, I'll spill it. If you insist.

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the issue of The New Yorker magazine containing the very last (to date) piece of original fiction ever published by J.D. Salinger.

The story, "Hapworth 16, 1924" ran in the June 19, 1965 issue of The New Yorker. It took up pages 32-113. Don't look for this story in bound copies of The New Yorker in public libraries (those pages have long since been ripped out of the magazine by frenzied Salinger fans), and if you'd like to buy a used copy of the issue online be prepared to feel it financially -- it sells for $359.00. To give a gauge of comparison, it would be cheaper to buy the first 80 years worth of issues of The New Yorker in electronic form than it would be to buy that one back issue.

In the 42 years since the publication of that story, rumors have been rife about what if anything Salinger might have been writing since. He is said to have a safe in which he keeps at least one manuscript to be published posthumously (and posthumously might be any time now -- Salinger is 88 years old).

But Salinger's protracted silence leads to a lot of interesting questions about writers and what, if anything, they owe what used to be called "their public" back when people still read books instead of crap. Does an author have an obligation to write and to publish? Or can an author like J.D. Salinger, having published one novel and 13 stories in book form in slightly more than a dozen years, just ride out the rest of his life without feeling any obligation to provide his readers (the ones who have, amazingly, allowed him to live in comfort on the royalties from such a skimpy output) with anything new?

After all, in the years since Salinger stopped publishing, the equally reclusive Thomas Pynchon has published five novels, some of them of nearly Victorian amplitude -- in fact, some people asserted that Pynchon was really Salinger publishing new work under a different name.

In my opinion Salinger is a victim of what I like to call Radical Freedom -- where you are so rich and so famous that the rules that govern ordinary human conduct don't seem to apply to you. We've seen Radical Freedom destroy such famous people as Howard Hughes, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Michael Jackson and, possibly, Lindsay Lohan. When you have so much money that you have no obligation to be anywhere or to do anything so that you can, in theory, sit around and smear yourself with Ding-Dongs if you want to, some people will get seriously weird without any external compulsion to get unweird -- like a boss who can fire you or a landlord who can evict you. When you are totally insulated from the normal world your inner demons can become your daily life.

Something like that happened, I believe, to J.D. Salinger. I think that he came home from World War II with a severe case of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that in the ensuing decades he became more and more unhinged until he was pretty much incapable of writing anything that anyone else would want to read. There is evidence of this in Salinger's own writings, as well as the writings of his daughter and his one-time lover Joyce Maynard. So I strongly doubt that we're missing anything amazing from the pen (or typewriter, or word processor) of J.D. Salinger in the past 42 years.

But you never know -- he could always prove me wrong posthumously. And I doubt I would mind if he did.

Tom Moran

What Should Have Won, Part V: The 1970s

2007-06-17T12:27:00.000-04:00

If the years 1932-1945 represent Hollywood’s Golden Age, then a case could be made that the 70s were the Silver Age of Hollywood. For five years after the record-breaking triumph of The Sound of Music in 1965, every studio in Hollywood tried to recapture its success with one expensive, bloated musical after another, from Star! (which reunited Julie Andrews with her Sound of Music director, Robert Wise) to Paint Your Wagon, in which Clint Eastwood proved to the entire movie going world that, as they say down South, he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

On top of this disconnect, the country was changing and it was painfully obvious that Hollywood was behind the times. By the late 1960s kids were growing their hair, protesting the war in Vietnam and smoking pot like it was going out of style, and the men in suits running the studios were at a loss as to what the youth audience wanted to see at the movies. So they decided to gamble on a new, untested generation of young filmmakers, many of them right out of film school. By giving them artistic freedom, provided they stay under strict budgetary limits, they opened the floodgates to what became an extraordinary period in American film.

The Academy, on the other hand, was slow to embrace this new generation. Possibly because the average Academy voters in those years were older than The Three Stooges, and worked about as often, they were slow to realize what was happening under their noses. Nonetheless, in my opinion the Academy made more right choices in this decade than in any other – and at least one choice that was spectacularly wrong.

So let’s get started. Once again, a reminder of the rules: the film that I choose for Best Picture has to have been nominated in at least one category that year – it doesn’t matter which one.

1970

What film won Best Picture: Patton
What film should have won: M*A*S*H

Journeyman director Franklin J. Schaffner made a decent enough film about the eccentric WWII general, from a script co-written by future Godfather auteur Francis Coppola, but in retrospect it’s pretty obvious that the film of the year was Robert Altman’s breakthrough black comedy about army doctors in the Korean War, M*A*S*H. It was nothing less than revolutionary – from its mocking of religion to its completing the transformation of cinematic dialogue that Orson Welles has begun almost three decades earlier with Citizen Kane. Nothing would be the same after M*A*S*H, while Patton was just another war epic – albeit one with a masterful performance by George C. Scott. If you’re interested, the New York Film Critics Award that year went to the now badly dated Five Easy Pieces. The Golden Globes went to Love Story (Drama) and M*A*S*H (Musical or Comedy).

1971

What film won Best Picture: The French Connection
What film should have won: The Last Picture Show

This one is really a toss-up. I can’t argue that the Academy blew it, because if any two films ever deserved to be in a tie for Best Picture, it’s William Friedkin’s riveting crime drama and Peter Bogdanovich’s bittersweet ode to small-town Texas, from Larry McMurtry’s novel. If I give the nod to Bogdanovich over Friedkin, perhaps it’s because The French Connection has the same structural defect of the 1959 Ben-Hur – the biggest scene in the film comes two-thirds of the way into the story, making the climax somewhat anti-climactic. The Last Picture Show, on the other hand, just keeps getting better and better with the years. The New York Critics gave their Best Picture Award to Stanley Kubrick’s hateful A Clockwork Orange, and the Golden Globes went to The French Connection (Drama) and Fiddler on the Roof (Musical or Comedy).

1972

What film won Best Picture: The Godfather
What film should have won: The Godfather

People forget that The Godfather, while it did win Best Picture, wasn't the big winner at the Oscars that year. Bob Fosse’s Cabaret ended up winning eight Oscars to The Godfather’s three – and Fosse beat out Francis Coppola for Best Director (that was the year that Fosse won the triple crown – the Oscar, Tony and Emmy for directing – in the same year). James Caan, Al Pacino and Robert Duvall were all nominated for Best Supporting Actor – and all three of them lost to Joel Grey, who reprised his Broadway role as the emcee in Cabaret. But there’s little doubt that The Godfather is probably the greatest American film of the post-World War II period, so in the Best Picture category at least the Academy made the right choice. Ironically, the New York Film Critics blew off The Godfather on all the major awards – Best Picture went to Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, and Best Actor went to Laurence Olivier’s bravura performance in Joseph Mankiewicz's Sleuth. The Godfather and Cabaret both won Best Picture Golden Globes because they were nominated in different categories.

1973

What film won Best Picture: The Sting
What film should have won: The Exorcist

This might be the biggest injustice of the decade. It was a tight and crowded Oscar race that year, and a lot of worthy films weren’t even nominated for Best Picture – including Last Tango in Paris, The Last Detail, Serpico, Paper Moon and The Way We Were. The film that won was a fun, well-written comedy that had great star power in Newman and Redford and benefited greatly from being released at the height of the nostalgia boom of the early 70s, when people wanted to feel like they were living in pretty much any decade other than the one they were in. But the fact is that the film of the year was The Exorcist, and if it hadn’t been for the Academy’s bias against certain genres and the controversies about the film that flooded the press in the weeks before the voting (mostly concerning Linda Blair’s performance) it would have won Best Picture and probably an acting Oscar or two. The New York Film Critics gave their Best Picture Award to Truffaut’s delightful Day for Night (which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film) and the Golden Globes went to, respectively, The Exorcist and American Graffiti – which were exactly the right choices.

1974

What film won Best Picture: The Godfather Part II
What film should have won: The Godfather, Part II

This was a weird year for the Oscars. Although they picked the right film in a very crowded field for Best Picture, some of their other choices were downright bizarre. How can you explain the fact that The Towering Inferno got a Best Picture nomination? Or that in one of the most competitive Best Actor fields ever (Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, Dustin Hoffman in Lenny and Al Pacino in Godfather II), they went with Art Carney in the awful Harry and Tonto? They did get Supporting Actor right, though – even though three actors from Godfather II were nominated (equaling what happened with the original Godfather) Robert De Niro still won for playing the young Vito Corleone. Chinatown won the Golden Globe for Best Picture Drama (Coppola thought it would win the Best Picture Oscar), while the NY Film Critics gave their Best Picture Award to Fellini’s Amarcord.

1975

What film won Best Picture: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
What film should have won: Nashville

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ran the table at the Oscars – it became the first film since It Happened One Night to win all five major Oscars (Picture, Writer, Director, Actor, Actress). It’s hard for me to talk about because it’s one of the very few major films of that era that I didn’t see at the time – I didn’t catch up with Milos Forman’s film until thirty years later. But I think that the film of 1975, at least in retrospect, is Robert Altman’s Nashville (although Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon would come in a close second, and might have been my choice if Kubrick had only thrown away his zoom lens when he started shooting). The NY Film Critics gave their award to Nashville, while the Golden Globe went to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

1976

What film won Best Picture: Rocky
What film should have won: Taxi Driver

This was one of the toughest choices the Academy had to make in the last forty years – and they blew it. Three films nominated for Best Picture have become undisputed classics: Network, Taxi Driver and All The President’s Men. Choosing between them is almost impossible, and the idea of making it a threeway tie is very tempting. But the Academy chose to reward Sylvester Stallone’s personal Cinderella story of an aging boxer given one last chance (or so people thought that at the time – little did they know that no less than five sequels were in the offing!) at redemption. Any one of the three other films I mentioned would have been a better choice, but my vote would have gone to Martin Scorsese’s shattering vision of the underbelly of New York City, from a screenplay by future director Paul Schrader. If Woody Allen’s films provide us with a romanticized view of Manhattan, here Scorsese gives us the reverse side -- a bleak vision of Manhattan as Hell. Those of us who were around in the 1970s know that this vision wasn't all that far from the truth (God, I miss those days). Rocky won the Golden Globe (Taxi Driver didn’t even get a Best Picture nomination) and All the President’s Men won the NY Film Critics Circle Award (Robert DeNiro won Best Actor for Taxi Driver).

1977

What film won Best Picture: Annie Hall
What film should have won: Annie Hall

Woody Allen’s bittersweet romantic comedy almost became the third film in the history of the Oscars to pull off a sweep. Annie Hall won Best Picture, Woody won Best Director, Woody and Marshall Brickman won for Best Original Screenplay and Diane Keaton won for Best Actress. Only the fact that Richard Dreyfuss (for The Goodbye Girl) beat out Woody for Best Actor kept Annie Hall from winning all five of the major Oscars (collectors of injustices, however, will note that Gordon Willis was not even nominated for his cinematography). Irate science fiction geeks will take solace from the fact that Star Wars actually won more Oscars than Annie Hall did – if you count the Special Achievement Award to Ben Burtt, George Lucas’s space opera won seven awards to Annie Hall’s four. Annie Hall won Best Picture from the NY Film Critics, and the Golden Globe went to The Turning Point (Drama) and The Goodbye Girl (Comedy or Musical). Annie Hall wasn't even nominated in either category. To paraphrase the young Alvy Singer: What assholes!

1978

What film won Best Picture: The Deer Hunter
What film should have won: Days of Heaven

What an irony it was when the terminally ill John Wayne (he would be dead from cancer two months after the ceremony) presented the Best Picture Oscar to Michael Cimino’s anarchic Vietnam epic. It was a popular choice at the time, and it could be argued that the film suffers only when seen from the perspective of Cimino’s plummeting reputation in the wake of the whole Heaven’s Gate debacle, after which people would take a scathing revisionist look at his previous success. But I would assert that the clear winner this year is Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. It won Best Cinematography, and was nominated in other categories as well, but it was not a Best Picture nominee. Almost 30 years after the fact, though, it’s pretty obvious that Malick’s poetic epic was the best film of the year. Days of Heaven was nominated for a Golden Globe but lost to Midnight Express. The NY Film Critics gave their award to The Deer Hunter (although Malick won Best Director for Days of Heaven – explain that if you can).

1979

What film won Best Picture: Kramer Vs. Kramer
What film should have won: All That Jazz

Francis Coppola and Bob Fosse were both in their great periods at exactly the same time, and it seemed that they always went head-to-head when they had films out in this decade. Fosse beat Coppola in 1972, Coppola beat Fosse in 1974. But in 1979 they both lost – to Robert Benton’s adaptation of Avery Corman’s novel of divorce, Manhattan-style, Kramer Vs. Kramer. At the time people chuckled that Academy voters couldn’t identify with self-destructive choreographers or dazed and confused soldiers slogging their way through the jungles of Vietnam – but they could all identify with going through a messy divorce. In retrospect, though, Benton’s low-key drama, even with impressive performances by Dustin Hoffman and Merlyn Streep (the latter won her first Oscar for her relatively small role), doesn’t live up to the competition. The Oscar should have gone either to Coppola’s monstrous Vietnam epic or Fosse’s scathing personal vision. Although it’s a tough call, because of the trouble with Coppola’s ending (or lack of such) I would go with Fosse. The New York Film Critics gave their award to Kramer Vs. Kramer, as did the Golden Globes. They were all wrong.

Tom Moran

The Winning Ticket?

2007-06-15T06:46:00.000-04:00

Here's a little tidbit from Page Six of the New York Post:

June 13, 2007 -- DON'T count out Al Gore as a presidential candidate - Bill Clinton certainly hasn't. Clinton, whose wife, Hillary, is leading a pack of Democrats for the 2008 nomination, was at a recent Air America relaunch at the apartment of the liberal radio network's new chief, Mark Green, when political blogger Andy Ostroy asked him, "Do you think Gore's going to run?" Clinton replied, "Someone's got to fizzle. If someone fizzles, then, yeah, he could enter the race. He's got plenty of money, his own money, to do it." Ostroy predicts: "It'll be [Barack] Obama who will fizzle by September, and Gore will toss his hat into the ring and enlist the junior senator from Illinois as his running mate. An unbeatable ticket."

To which I can only add: from your lips to the ear of the almighty, baby. I'll take a Gore/Obama ticket anyday.

Tom Moran

Stick a Fork in Him -- He's Done

2007-06-14T06:17:00.000-04:00

Where's a vote of no confidence when you need one?

At times I think that it's a real shame that we don't live in a parliamentary democracy, because if we did we would have rid ourselves of this pathetic disgrace we call a president by now.

Bush's poll numbers are close to being as low as any president's have ever been since they started polling. 29% of Americans now approve of the job he's doing. 66% of Americans disapprove.

Those are the lowest numbers that any president has had in more than 50 years.

Even Ann Coulter, that usually reliable right-wing skank, has had it with Bush over the immigration issue. When she makes idiotic jokes about Bush's drinking instead of about Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, you know there's been a sea-change in conservative thinking on this president.

This administration has so dumbed-down the definition of success in Iraq that I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed that, if one American serviceman is still breathing on Iraqi soil by Labor Day, the surge has been a success.

This administration still has roughly another 19 months to go before they're replaced by Democrats who will know what they're doing, whether they're lead by Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or, as I profoundly hope, Al Gore. But what are we going to do until then?

And who are those 29%? Aren't you curious? Wouldn't you like to meet someone who feels that George W. Bush is doing a fine job and see if they can manage to wriggle their way out of the strait-jacket?

Inquiring minds want to know.

But in the meantime, I think we all just need to hold tight and just do what we have to do to survive these next 19 months. But I have to tell you, January 20, 2009 can't come soon enough for me.

Tom Moran