Tag: politics
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What doesn’t kill you…
You know that episode of “Weeds” during season 3, when Mary-Louise Parker’s Nancy Botwin gets a tattoo of a u-turn sign as a symbol of strength against a former adversary of the same name? That kind of sums up why I want this Barack Obama socialism poster, fashioning the Commander-in-Chief after Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight,” hanging on my wall. I’m screwy like that. Over at The Guardian, by the way, Ben Walters does a pretty good job of shooting down the effort being made here by those suddenly on the outside looking in.
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6/12 Web Round-up
(Wow…that week went by fast.)• Patrick Goldstein thinks the new “Shutter Island” trailer is overkill for those who don’t want everything spoon-fed. [The Big Picture]
• More on the alleged misogyny of Lars von Trier. [CNN]
• Shia LaBeaouf talks “Transformers” with John Hiscock. [Daily Telegraph]
• Sarah Palin, the bold, the bright, turns her own daughter into a rape joke punchline. Idiot. (Sorry for the politics but it was worth conveying.) [Politico]
• Is “Bruno” coming along at an inopportune time for the good fight? [New York Times]
• Eight documentary dos and don’ts from Sundance programmer Basil Tsiokos. [indieWIRE]
• Jeffrey Wells reports from a “Whatever Works” press conference in New York. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Speaking of which, Jeremy Kay has something to say on the franchise glut. [The Guardian]
• In honor of the out-dated plot of “The Taking of Pelham 123,” Christopher Campbell offers up 10 stock market scams from the movies. [Spout Blog]
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Michael Moore says goodbye to General Motors
In case you’ve been under a rock, allow me to inform you that General Motors was finally backed into a corner this afternoon and filed for bankruptcy, most certainly marking the end of an era and the next embossed chapter in the ever-expanding volume on American capitalism. To mark the occasion, filmmaker Michael Moore has written an on-cue goodbye letter to the company on his website, which he also blasted to email subscribers.Now, say what you will about the hyperbolic Moore, but speaking as a former owner of a Pontiac, a Dodge, a Honda and a Toyota,I find little to disagree with in this paragraph:
It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
Just recently Moore announced a release date for his upcoming, as-of-yet untitled, documentary on the economic crisis. You can bet there will be plenty of talk about General Motors in there. Read the rest of the GM send-off at MichaelMoore.com.
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Been waiting on this a long time
Not Oscar or movie related, but if you’d like to see Jon Stewart dismantle Jim Cramer on “The Daily Show,” have a look. This has been a LONG time coming:
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Tuesday is bigger than movies
Way off topic for a moment, but I am Canadian, proud of my country, happy to be here, though I confess to having always been fascinated with American history and politics. There are many friends of mine in the United States and I enjoy visiting whenever I can. Cocoa Beach, Florida is a popular destination for my family and Los Angeles is always great fun.I was four when JFK was killed and vaguely remember my parents being visibly upset at something around that time. As I grew older I was most aware, and deeply saddened when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and watched the train carry RFK home, tears streaming down my cheeks for reasons I did not understand. Watching Nixon resign was bittersweet because I always believed he had it in him to be a great President (and indeed proved to be a great Statesman), and watched with great interest when George Dubya was “elected” in 2000.
Never in my lifetime did I expect an African-American to be elected President of the United States. There would always be too much racial hatred, too much anger, too much prejudice. What a pleasant shock to find that was not true, that people really wanted a change. To quote “2010”: “Something’s happening…something wonderful.”
We are in the midst of witnessing history this week, seeing something extraordinary. In remarkable recognition of what might have been, Obama’s own children stated it would have been just as exciting to have seen Hilary Clinton win and a woman lead the United States.
I am staying home Tuesday because I want to see history as it happens. And I welcome Obama’s chance to take America into the next stage of their greatness.
And I have every confidence he will do just that.
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A sad day for the web
…the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.
“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.
Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.
An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”
But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.
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One more thing on Prop 8
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Could an earlier ‘Milk’ release have killed Prop 8?
I find myself just now making sense of the passing of Proposition 8 here in California, an appalling measure that, however naive it may be to admit, I really thought had no chance of passing.Well, it has. Homosexual couples are banned from exchanging vows like the rest of the country, and beyond rage and outright disgust, I’m left saddened and somewhat unable to fully enjoy Obama’s convincing victory.
What the hell is wrong with this country when one of the most liberal states in the union, a battleground, in fact, for gay rights, passes such a despicable pieces of legislation? But more to the point of our beat here at In Contention, I’m left wondering whether an October release for “Milk” could have made a difference.
A large portion of the film is dedicated to the fight against Proposition 6, a 1978 ballot measure that would have cost homosexuals working as educators their jobs. Their careers were at stake 30 years ago. Yesterday, it was their right to wed — and with wicked political conniving, the proponents of Prop 8 made this year’s fight about school in the end, just like Prop 6. “They’ll teach gay marriage in schools,” ignorant imbeciles would scream. “They’ll tell my son it’s okay for a man to marry a man.” Well, “they” would be right, but that’s beside the point.
Writing in The New York Times over the weekend, Jesse McKinley covered some of this terrain:
In many ways, the battle sparked by this latest proposal echoes the one that inspired Mr. Milk’s most famous crusade.
“It’s surreal,” said Cleve Jones, a veteran civil rights activist who is portrayed by a curly headed Emilie Hirsch in the film. “It’s like there’s a 30-year cycle.”
Call it life imitating “Milk,” or vice versa, but the parallels between the campaign chronicled in the movie and the real-life battle over Proposition 8 are striking. Social conservatives pitted against gay activists? Check. A Republican governor (and former movie star) siding with gay Californians? Check. Close polls, a nationally watched campaign, the potential for heartbreak?
Check, check, check.
But, again, that was the weekend. Now, it’s the day after. And I can’t help but wonder what “Milk” might have meant for today’s cause, if anything, had it landed in the marketplace last month.
Some of the film’s most inspiring and, indeed, captivating moments come during the sequence that details the Prop 6 fight. Consistently, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn’s career-best portrayal) makes the point, to paraphrase, “We have to make them understand that they know us.” That message, I think, might have carried a lot of heft if voters had made it to the polls four weeks later.
But I’m not a studio head and I don’t make these decisions. A studio’s priority is, of course, to shareholders, and “Milk” is likely to make more money in its current release plan than something earlier in the season. But you can’t help but wonder what might have been. And you can’t “give ’em hope” after the fact.
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Election jibber jabber
Have at it in this space. Though I have to say, I’m terribly frustrated with the conservative coverage of CNN. I understand the networks dropped the ball eight years ago, but Wolf and company are calling states 30 and 45 minutes after they’ve been called elsewhere. It’s difficult to watch something when you feel like you’re missing the news, so I’m making good use of DirecTV’s “election mix,” much like I enjoy multiple games on Sundays. MSNBC seems to be calling stuff with a little more haste, while Fox News, believe it or not, is finding a happy medium.
Also, a friend just mentioned an important point. How much does the choice of after-election party venue say about each respective candidate? Seriously, a posh, comfy hotel versus a community atmosphere and braving the cold?
Regardless, Ohio and Pennsylvania pretty much makes it game over, no?
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Did anyone just see Rick Sanchez dismantle Joe the Plumber?
UPDATE (3:59 p.m.): Ask and ye shall receive (thanks to Dan Crooke for pointing it out):
EARLIER: Holy shit, Joe might want to see if his balls are intact. That was brutal. I hope it pops up on YouTube ASAP.
