NOVEMBER 14, 2018
The Wrong Stuff: From Claustrophobia to the Cosmos Director Damien Chazelle has had a meteoric rise in the Hollywood firmament. His 2014 hit Whiplash had a $3.3 million production budget and earned more than $13 million at the box office, while 2016’s La La Land cost $30 million. Presumably because that musical scored five times its costs, Chazelle’s latest movie, First Man, almost doubled La La Land’s budget. I usually don’t dwell on film Continue Reading...
In the final analysis, it was painfully simple and should have been obvious to any clear-eyed observer, which my preternaturally hopeful self was not: The forces that were able to lie the most, be the most deceitful and the most underhanded would control the confirmation "process" to determine whether Brett Kavanaugh would slither into a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. And so they did and so he has despite an extraordinary outpouring Continue Reading...
Clift Notes: The Full-er Monty Making Montgomery Clift - the four time Oscar nominee for classics such as 1953’s From Here to Eternity - is one of the most singular nonfiction films this movie historian has ever seen. Like many others it is a biopic, but one with a unique take on its reputedly “troubled” subject, who was as renowned for his beauty as for his prodigious talent. Co-directed/co-produced by the actor’s nephew Robert Clift with his Continue Reading...
The New York Times reports that deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein talked about wearing a wire to record Trump’s insane prattering, and spoke ofinvoking the 25th amendment, which allows the cabinet to remove the president if he is incapacitated. Rosenstein’s office says that the remarks were facetious. They were recorded in memos by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, that somehow came into the possession of NYT reporters. Trump has Continue Reading...
Yesterday, at his press briefing on Hurricane Florence, which is likely to fuck up South Carolina, along with possibly North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and/or Maryland, Donald Trump, a man whose every word and hand gesture makes him seem like a carny barker trying to get people to see the "mermaid" that's just a dead monkey with a fish tail sewn on, shit all over Puerto Rico. Devastation from Hurricane Maria last year was exacerbated, according Continue Reading...
The Washington Post yesterday carried excerpts from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “Fear,” which profiles the Trump White House from hundreds of hours of interviews with staffers. Trump declined to be interviewed. Here are some of the main points regarding foreign policy (though the word ‘policy’ has to be taken with a grain of salt). 1. When Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad was accused of using chemicals in an attack that killed Continue Reading...
Let's be very clear why Donald Trump will not be attending the memorial service for John MccCain at the Washington National Cathredral on Saturday. He probably will be playing golf and that, of course, has much to do with the refusal of the man Barrack Obama called "the lion of the Senate" to kiss his ring. But the biggest reason writ plain and simple is that Trump has failed to accept the responsibilities of the presidency and has become Continue Reading...
According to the just-released grand jury report, in 1990, Bishop James Timlin of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was first made aware that a priest who had recently been transferred to his Diocese, Father Arthur Long, had admitted to having sex with underage girls in his parish in Harrisburg. Timlin was the bishop in the Scranton Diocese, which encompasses the entire northeast section of Pennsylvania, from 1984 to 2003. Prior to being the bishop, Continue Reading...
At a critical moment in the 2016 presidential campaign, President Obama met with Republican congressional leaders and, after presenting them with evidence of Russian tampering, asked that they uniformly condemn it. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others refused. The evidence just wasn’t there. But it was. And many of the same lawmakers eagerly condemned Hillary Clinton’s perceived misdeed, as reported by the FBI. So much for love of country.
Liberal democracy faces grave dangers, most significantly, perhaps, from rapacious capitalism that unremittingly concentrates wealth. Putin is another threat. After consolidating his own power in Russia, he has stepped up a campaign against liberalism abroad, first in Russia’s “near abroad” in Eastern Europe, and now the US. Is Trump his latest trophy?
For eight years, the GOP employed strategic obstructionism to stymie Obama’s mildly progressive agenda, even when his proposals, such as the Affordable Care Act or the stimulus, closely aligned with their own. Putting country first? Nope. This was pure partisanship in the service of partisanship. And it worked!
Is the so-called “liberal,” “elite” media really as cosseted and cloistered as its critics suggest? Actually, yes. Like the Democracy Party, the media – defined here as the mainstream variety – largely comprises well-educated, coastal types who have little in common (and often disdain) middle-America, working class whites. Little wonder it has earned the latter’s ire.
What happens when the purported party of the working class abandons its proletarian roots, while the other major party pushes crazed conspiracy theories, paranoia, and racism as an obfuscatory tactic to conceal its plutocratic agenda? A virulent populism that threatens the republic. Whose to blame for Trump? We all are.
How did a clownish buffoon rise from obscurity to lead one of the world’s great civilizations that produced soaring art and culture? Historians have been asking the question since the demise of the Third Reich. Hitler confounds. Here are some clues: cunning exploitation of nativist fears, exploitation of irresistible propaganda, and “bottomless mendacity.” Found familiar. It should.
