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Calendar Girls
(Reviewed December 19, 2003)
Middle-aged women become overnight celebrities by taking their clothes off. Phooahh! That’s what I call empowerment
Full Review
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
(Reviewed December 19, 2003)
News flash from Errol Morris: America’s war in Vietnam was a big mistake! Come and join him in ridiculing Robert McNamara, one of its last living architects
Full Review
Prisoner of Paradise
(Reviewed December 16, 2003)
The sad story of Kurt Gerron, a great Jewish talent from pre-war Germany whose memory is entirely overshadowed by his brief collaboration with the Nazis
Full Review
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Diary
ENTRY from December 18, 2003
The capture of Saddam Hussein could not have happened more fortunately for American purposes in Iraq. Not only were there no casualties in the operation, but Saddam did us the huge favor of looking like a coward in giving up without a fight. In an honor culture like that of the Arabs, the importance of such a humiliation cannot be over-estimated. One way you can tell its impact among Iraqis is that the paranoid conspiracy-theorists are already working overtime to insist that U.S. forces must have drugged him first in order to prevent him from resisting. How he could have been drugged before he was captured they are still trying to work out.
"We feel he either should have fought, or if he was surrounded and there was no other way, committed suicide. That’s what we were expecting," said an Iraqi quoted by Alan Sipress in the Washington Post. "When he didn’t, it wasn’t a surprise for us. It was a shock. . . Frankly, he let us down." Another Iraqi said, "We’re asking ourselves, is this the man who ruled us for 35 years? This man was ruling us with an iron fist and he ends up in such a submissive way in a ditch." And he concluded, noting that after making a tape which urged Iraqis to resist, Saddam himself had given up without a fight: "He is lies, lies to the end."
Pulp Garbage.
November 30, 2003.
As the movies have come to pride themselves on their remoteness from reality, the business of movie criticism has become ever more tricky — from The American Spectator, November 2003 ...
Full Article
The Culture of Mistrust.
November 30, 2003.
The California recall produced boom times for the scandal trade — so how is it not a scandal that the traders pretend to serve the public interest — From The New Criterion, November, 2003 ...
Full Article
The Wages of Spin.
October 31, 2003.
Political opposition seems more and more to consist of charges of dishonesty — about which charges those who make them are often none too scrupulous — From The New Criterion, October, 2003 ...
Full Article
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