Knives Out:Knives Out is a fun mystery flick with comic moments and social satire along with the requisite tension and suspense. Highly successful mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is turning 85, and is rather critical of his extended family, who sponge off him. The morning after his well-attended birthday party, he's discovered dead, and although the police initially think it's suicide, celebrated private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) shows up and suspects "foul play." Blanc has been hired by an unknown party, but as he and the police dig, they discover that almost everyone had a motive. At the center of everything is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas, previously seen in Blade Runner 2049), Harlan's nurse, with whom he's grown quite close. She seems to be one of the few if only characters who likes Harlan for himself, which makes us like her too, and we see much of the film from her perspective. The family members, including characters played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon and Toni Collette, like to say Marta's part of the family, but in a nice running gag, they can't even agree on what Spanish-speaking country she's from, and their devotion seems to end at the checkbook's edge. A big fan of mysteries, writer-director Rian Johnson keeps things moving and delivers some shocks along the way, but it's the satire of privileged white people who are far less civilized than they believe that really makes Knives Out distinctive and amusing.
You'll likely see some of the twists coming but not all of them. I appreciated that the biggest incongruity for me was eventually explained. That said, murder mysteries often have an inherent implausibility to them, so it helps to like the genre a bit to go along with the inciting incident and the convention of intricate behind-the-scenes plotting. I think the film probably would be fun to watch a second time but perhaps less interesting past that. Daniel Craig worked hard on his Southern accent, and it's better than the one he used in Logan Lucky, but in interviews he claimed he nailed it and… he didn't. He's still enjoyable to watch, though, and sells at least one key moment. I liked parts of The Last Jedi but thought Rian Johnson mishandled others (review here); I'm much more a fan of Looper (the third film reviewed here) and his original, memorable if somewhat uneven high school film noir, Brick (the fourth film reviewed here). The final scene of Knives Out is nicely done, wordless, pointed and memorable.
Harriet: The general rule for biopics is that the lead performance is notably stronger than the film as a whole, and that holds true for Harriet. It's great to finally see a major motion picture about such a notable historical figure, a black woman whose life story really is quite extraordinary and seemingly great cinematic fodder. English singer, stage and screen actress Cynthia Erivo plays the slave "Minty," who eventually adopts the name Harriet Tubman after she escapes and then returns again and again to rescue other slaves at great personal risk. As if those attempts weren't inherently challenging enough, she occasionally has dizzy spells or passes out due to a nasty head injury she sustained as a slave.
Erivo is a strong screen presence and brings the steely resolves the role demands; she also does a great job singing the rousing credits song, "Rise Up." It's nice to see a core black team for a black woman's story, with director-cowriter Kasi Lemmons, cowriter-producer Gregory Allen Howard and producer Debra Martin Chase. I wanted to like Harriet more than I did, but two factors detracted from it for me. The first is the decision to depict Harriet as having visions and feelings that warn her of danger and steer her to the correct path, like a divine spider sense. Although the historical Harriet was religious and did have visions and dreams, probably related to her head injury, she was also extremely clever, and going the supernatural route strips her of some agency and minimizes her intelligence and inventiveness freeing slaves. The second is a late confrontation between Harriet and a white man from her past. It plays out very much as a typical Hollywood scene, and may resonate for some viewers, but its obvious artifice pulled me out. The style contrasts with the more realistic and harrowing approach of 12 Years a Slave, which I prefer (it's reviewed here). That said, I’m glad Harriet was made and hope more slave narratives are made into films. A good biopic of Fredrick Douglass seems long overdue.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: This is a solid entry and ending to the Dragon trilogy, and if you've seen the others, you'll want to see this one. The Vikings and their dragons are once again in peril, this time due to Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham), a deadly dragon hunter leading a dangerous gang. In this film, seemingly lone night fury dragon Toothless also gets to experience potential romance when he encounters a female counterpart, a light fury dragon. (Toothless' wooing attempts, spurred on by his literal and figurative wingman Hiccup, make for some of the best comedic scenes.) The Hidden World is really about transitions and letting go. Hiccup faces the prospect of losing his best pal, Toothless, to either a lethal hunter or domestic dragon bliss far away, and does so even as he himself faces marriage with his longtime girlfriend, Astrid (America Ferrera), and all the life changes that entails. Hiccup's feelings toward Toothless are comparable to losing a beloved pet or even perhaps a parent seeing a child leave home, and his ambivalence in this film represents his most adult struggles to date.
The main problem with The Hidden World is that the first film (the sixth one reviewed here) remains the strongest entry in the series by far. Nothing in the two sequels, which are quite good, can compare with the sheer magic of the first flight sequence in the initial film, with lovely animation "camerawork" and the soaring score of John Powell (who returns here as composer). That's not really a fault of the sequels, because narratively, the first film allows for a much more deeply embedded, strong element of discovery and wonder, which the later films can partially capture with new revelations but can't fully match. (To jump genres, the same is true of The Bourne Identity compared to its sequels – it's Jason Bourne's "what did I just do?" reactions and "who am I?" dynamics that make it so interesting, whereas in later films he's aware of his abilities and dealing more with external challenges than internal struggles.) I appreciate, though, that the Dragon franchise has not just tried to remake the first film over and over again, even if it is my favorite. The filmmakers have sought to do something different with each sequel and have Hiccup grow as a person over the course of the trilogy, and they've succeeded. (The secondary characters change and grow, too, which is a sign of good writing.) Plus, you've still got Vikings (some with Scottish accents) and dragons. What's not to like?
Captain Marvel: The first Marvel movie focusing on a superheroine isn't the strongest entry, but it's still decent popcorn fare. It's partially a journey of self-discovery and self-actualization for Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and part 80s/90s buddy flick with Carol and S.H.I.E.L.D's Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) on the road. Danvers fights for the alien Kree Empire against its arch-enemies, the shape-changing Skrulls, but she also suffers amnesia and has special, mighty powers she doesn't fully understand or control. Tangling with the Skrulls, she winds up with access to some extracted memories and they all wind up on Earth in the 90s. (The trailer featured a great shot of Captain Marvel crashing into a Blockbuster video store, which generates a laugh but also establishes the era. Good writing.) Carol eventually encounters people who knew her on Earth and each discovery just seems to lead to more questions. Larson's a good actress and she and Jackson have nice chemistry. Lashana Lynch, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Bening and Jude Law also have notable roles. The biggest problem with Captain Marvel is that our heroine's powers are not well-defined, most of all their limits, and unbalanced power dynamics are rarely very interesting. Such decisions are more forgivable in an origin story, though. (And I did enjoy all the bits with Goose the cat.)
Spider-Man: Far From Home: The second Marvel Spider-Man film isn't as good as the earlier Homecoming, but Tom Holland remains perfectly cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and it's got some entertaining scenes. In this movie, Peter Parker is on a European trip with his high school classmates, but S.H.I.E.L.D's Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) contacts him about saving the planet from powerful elementals. Meanwhile, Parker's fallen for Mary Jane/MJ (Zendaya), and is working up the courage to say something. His best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) encourages him when he remembers but is completely enrapt in a saccharine relationship with Betty Brant (Anguourie Rice). Superhero-wise, Parker's main challenges are hiding his identity while working with Mysterio/Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), who claims to the last survivor of another dimension destroyed by the elementals. Parker's hungry for father figures, and he and Beck hit it off well. Marisa Tomei is back as the ridiculously young Aunt May Parker and Jon Favreau is back as Happy Hogan. J.B. Smoove and Martin Starr are quite funny as the kids' overwhelmed teachers and chaperones. And although Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) continues to be Parker's main high school tormentor, the filmmakers do take a moment to humanize him. If you're familiar with the comics, you'll likely figure out some things before the rest of the audience, but the movie's still enjoyable. The final battle is pretty interesting, most of the secondary characters have good moments, and one of the puzzling aspects gets a funny payoff in the end credits. The film does end with a cliffhanger of sorts, though – I was surprised to see Marvel make that particular choice and am curious to see where the studio goes next. (Sony and Marvel/Disney were doing some posturing and threatening about no more Marvel Spider-Man movies, but it would be idiotic not to get Tom Holland into another Spider-Man movie, make a good flick we hope, and get both studios a ton of money.)
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker: (I'm going to be less cautious with spoilers with this one, because you've probably seen it or at least the trailers.) First, the good stuff: it's a Star Wars movie. It's got lightsaber fights and space battles. C-3PO, R2-D2, Lando and Chewbacca get some good scenes; C-3PO probably gets his best scene of the last three chapters. We get one last look at Carrie Fisher as Leia. Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) continue their bromance. Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is a bit more interesting and bit less whiny. Ian McDiarmid is back as the Emperor Palpatine, which is ridiculous from a story perspective, but he makes for a great, scenery-chewing villain. And as Rey, Daisy Ridley remains a compelling heroine. (We also get some Jedi training sequences, which were oddly lacking in the previous film.) The movie's got some other fan-pleasing moments, and some of the scenes from the trailers, including fighting a speeding craft on foot and a lightsaber duel on a tempest-tossed shipwreck, live up to their teaser hype and are pretty cool.
The bad: let's cut the filmmakers some slack due to Carrie Fisher's death, because supposedly she was going to play a much bigger role in The Rise of Skywalker. But it really feels like the studio didn't work out the storyline for all three last films before they started making them. J.J. Abrams returns as director, which is all right because the original pick, Colin Trevorrow, concerned a lot of fans. (His underwhelming job on the Jurassic World films might have cost him the Star Wars job, thankfully.) But Abrams largely throws out what Rian Johnson did in The Last Jedi, a film with some significant problems but also a few great scenes. (My review is here.) Why all this talk of "dyads" if that was a major part of The Last Jedi but the term was never mentioned? Why all this mention of the Skywalker and Palpatine families when the entire film series has focused on the Skywalkers (it's in the friggin' name of this one) and we've never met or even heard of any Palpatines beside the Emperor/Darth Sidious? Likewise, why shoehorn in a brief scene of Leia training as a Jedi with an unconvincing narration trying to paper over major story problems of these last three episodes rather than planting those ideas in the earlier films? Why almost completely sideline Rose (Kelly Marie Tran)? Why tease us with a scene that evokes the fantastic Dagobah tree sequence from The Empire Strikes Back and have it last all of 10 seconds? (I'm exaggerating only slightly.) How the hell did the bad guys build this massive death fleet in secret and where did they get the resources for it? Does the Empire (or the First Order) ever invest in major weapons smaller than "planet-killer"? And do the shambling followers of the Emperor have nothing better to do than just sit in bleachers and cheer on his evildoing? Do they ever eat or have semi-normal jobs and have they spoken to their doctors about the dangers of a major Vitamin D deficiency? (Okay, those last few are a bit silly.)
If this were just a standalone Star Wars flick, I'd be less critical. And some of us Star Wars fans love the franchise despite its flaws, including not just the occasional bad dialogue or odd scene, but major implausibilities and head-scratching choices. But The Rise of Skywalker is concluding a nine-film, beloved series, and the best of those, The Empire Strikes Back, was a genuinely excellent film with decent acting, great writing, iconic scenes and significant depth in addition to being part of a pop culture juggernaut. The film that launched it all, Star Wars (later called A New Hope), was a little hokey but had an undeniable magic and energy that captured the imagination of more than one generation. Those films set the standard for the franchise. And although I wasn't expecting The Rise of Skywalker to be as good as those two, it felt, like episodes VII and VIII, to be a film made by committee and often the worse for it. I do think it'll probably be good that Disney has finished with the core nine films now, because any new Star Wars projects should be less constrained by specific story demands or even just expectations, besides a basic desire for a certain level of quality. And I will give The Rise of Skywalker credit for a pretty good, satisfying final scene. More in the… (SPOILERS)
We haven't seen Force healing before in the movies (yes in the extended universe, apparently, much of which is no longer canon, for stupid reasons), but that seems like a reasonable addition. Teleporting objects is completely new, too, and kind of ridiculous, but the fans enjoyed it, so okay. The Emperor's return is ludicrous, because his body was incinerated in The Return of the Jedi, and claiming he just returned somehow because of Sith powers is some of the laziest hand-waving ever perpetrated in a major film, but as we covered above, we kind of go with it because Ian McDiarmid is awesome. But his plan at first involves Rey striking him down and then apparently him possessing or merging with Rey. (Force ghost, evil Sith style.) But then he finds out she and Kylo Ren are a dyad and he suddenly switches to trying to kill her instead. Huh? The rules of this zombie Sith possession crap are unclear and apparently change on a dime. Kylo Ren gets to redeem himself, which is kind of nice, but it's also a bit weak that Star Wars tends to kill off redeemed villains right after their moment of grace (Darth Vader being the other major example). Although it makes sense from a narrative standpoint, because Kylo Ren meeting Finn, Poe, and the rest of the Rebel Alliance leaders would be unbelievably awkward if not completely unfeasible. So it's a bit of a cop-out, but ehh. I thought the redemption arc made Kylo Ren more interesting, at least. And I did like both the Han Solo and Luke Skywalker moments, which help sell both the Kylo and Rey arcs rather than just being cameos. So well-done on that front.
(If the spoiler button isn't working, you can read the spoiler text here.)
Tolkien: This is a decent but not great biopic of Jonathan Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the English professor most famous for writing the classic fantasies The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Nicholas Hoult is well-cast as the young Tolkien, and captures his insatiable curiosity and love and talent for languages. Lily Collins plays Edith Bratt, the intelligent, artistic young woman he woos. Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson and Tom Glynn-Carney play Tolkien's schoolmates, with whom he grows extremely close. The Tolkien estate did not endorse the film and Finnish director Dome Karukoski (a Tolkien fan) makes some odd choices, as do screenwriters David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford. I questioned some of those decisions more after listening to the commentary and watching the deleted scenes. Tolkien served in the Great War, which was a pivotal experience for him and his schoolmates, but a key scene with one of them during the war was cut. Taking some artistic liberties with reality is to be expected, but some of the real stories of Tolkien wooing Edith are much more interesting than some of the more clichéd scenes we're presented – if you're going to invent things, make them better. That said, there's a marvelous scene with Tolkien using Welsh to get him and his coconspirators out of a jam that also conveys his sheer love of language and its magic, and all the scenes between Hoult as Tolkien and Derek Jacobi as linguistic professor Joseph Wright are delightful. If you're a Tolkien fan, go in with tempered expectations and you'll likely enjoy at least some of the scenes.
You have to adopt the mentality of an Irish street cop – the world is a bad place, people are lazy morons, minorities are criminals, sex is sick but interesting. Ask yourself, what would scare my grandmother or piss off my grandfather? And that's a Fox story.
– Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon), Bombshell
Bombshell, with its clever double-entendre title, tackles the real story of sexual harassment at Fox News, most notably by its head, Roger Ailes, and how it was covered up for years. We follow three women: Fox News star Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron); on-air talent Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), who is falling out of favor with Ailes; and Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a young, aspiring employee who would like to appear on air (a fictional character). John Lithgow play Ailes and Malcolm McDowell is Rupert Murdoch. Bombshell does a good job of depicting the harassment but tries to avoid discussing politics, an odd choice that feels like a glaring omission for anyone familiar with Fox News' overtly political mission.
Parts of the film work quite well. The makeup artists justifiably won an Oscar for their work – Charlize Theron is almost unrecognizable, looking very much like Megyn Kelly and getting her verbal cadences down as well. (There's a good New York Times article about what the makeup department did to recreate the Fox News look for women: blonde hair, heavy eye makeup and lip gloss, short skirts and couches or glass desks to show off their legs – turning the women into Barbie dolls, just as Ailes wanted.) It's another good performance from Theron, and she depicts Kelly as a successful woman who wants to be taken seriously as a journalist, but suffers insults and even death threats after she crosses then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Nicole Kidman likewise gives a solid performance as Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America and Stanford graduate who Ailes often lambasts for not looking pretty or sexy enough, or for expressing political views at odds with the party line. John Lithgow, also done up in impressive makeup as the aging, ailing, overweight Ailes, captures his sharp, politically calculating mind as well as his leering, predatory nature. We see and hear several stories of harassment over the course of the film, but the core scenes focus on Margot Robbie as Kayla, who's young, pretty, ambitious, and fairly naïve. I thought Bombshell was particularly effective at not glamourizing the key harassment scenes at all and giving us a good sense of how degrading and humiliating such experiences are.
We first see Bombshell trying to sidestep politics in the inciting incident for Megyn Kelly, because we only see and hear a snippet of her clash with Trump during a Republican primary debate – her pressing him on his misogyny and him getting very nasty in retaliation. I wonder if the filmmakers had footage rights issues or were just worried that showing too much of Trump would derail the film? I understand not showing much of Trump later, but shying away from showing the full exchange feels like a really bad choice. That fight sets Kelly's storyline in motion. It also shows that she does have principles. (The real Kelly, while quite conservative, often brought up women's issues.) The politics of Fox News and its audience are also key to the Kelly storyline – Megyn Kelly was beloved of the male, white, conservative Fox News viewers, who openly lusted for her, but they turned on her in an instant and sided with Trump when she challenged him. We do see some of the misogyny and even death threats Kelly's subjected to, but not really how endemic sexism is for Fox News viewers as well the company itself – Kelly's high status was contingent on her not being perceived as uppity. We get a better sense of those sexist, mind-your-place dynamics from the Gretchen Carlson storyline, but even so, the most political observation in the entire film is the great quip from Kate McKinnon as the fictional Jess Carr quoted above. Although sexism and sexual harassment are by no means limited to conservative organizations, the extremely conservative views at Fox News, and its dictatorial, hierarchical, conservative power structure, surely contributed to the problem. I'm guessing the filmmakers didn't want to display Kelly's political views too much because they wanted her to be sympathetic. (The worst we hear in Bombshell of Kelly's actual statements is her ridiculous claim that Jesus was white.) Likewise, although Fox News can fairly be called a propaganda network in a way most major media outlets cannot, highlighting that and the deal-with-the-devil aspect of accepting fame and fortune to mislead to the American people risks making Kelly and Carlson less sympathetic. Depicting that type of moral complexity can be achieved, but not quickly or easily. Director Jay Roach is mostly known for comedy, and writer Charles Randolph justifiably shared an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Big Short. Bombshell isn't nearly as successful as that brilliant film, but it's still worth a look. Although it pulls its punches and largely avoids a critique of Fox News and its viewers, Bombshell does capture some dynamics of sexual harassment well and in a manner sympathetic to the victims. (I do wonder how much female input the filmmakers got, but one of the two credited producers is a woman, Dede Gardner.)
By the way, if you watch the Frontline episodes "American's Great Divide: From Obama to Trump," parts one and two, it's striking to see how Megyn Kelly, despite how badly she was treated at Fox News, will still spout party-line, conservative bullshit she must know to be false. I'm sympathetic to her over her treatment by Ailes and Fox News. But I was disappointed to see that some other things haven't changed.
Meanwhile, it's hard to review Bombshell without also mentioning the 2019 Showtime miniseries, The Loudest Voice, based on Gabriel Sherman's book of the same name. Overall, I much prefer The Loudest Voice, but to be fair, it's roughy 350 minutes long in all compared to Bombshell's 109 minutes. The Loudest Voice shows some footage of Megyn Kelly but she's not a major character, although Gretchen Carlson is. (She's played by Naomi Watts, who's incidentally friends with Nicole Kidman.) Bombshell is more tightly focused on sexual harassment and perhaps told more from the women's point of view. That's not to say that The Loudest Voice doesn't depict sexual harassment – it shows plenty of it, and makes us likewise sympathetic to the victimized women. (At least one repulsive scene really captures how a forced sexual act is more about power than the sex per se.) But The Loudest Voice is more a biopic of Roger Ailes, with a great lead performance by Russell Crowe. The series takes us through two decades of Ailes creating and running Fox News. It gives us much, much more of Ailes' politics and how the Fox News approach was extremely innovative, extremely manipulative, extremely conservative and extremely bad for America. It's a much more accurate and in-depth look at Fox News as a political entity and delves into its driving force, Roger Ailes and his paranoid, take-no-prisoners, absolutist psychology. As depicted, Ailes was a true believer in some far right, crazy ideas, like Obama being born in Kenya, but regardless of his personal views, he definitely shilled them relentlessly at Fox. He's basically Rush Limbaugh in his crazy, wingnut world view, but with less charisma and more brains. Ailes is a genuinely smart guy, a hard worker and a master operator, with an instinctive feel for what the conservative Fox News audience wants, because he is them. He's also ruthless, a far right ideologue, and one of the most influential and evil Americans of the past several decades. (Among other things, as the series shows, it's doubtful that Trump would have become president without Roger Ailes.) Crowe and the filmmakers make Ailes fascinating to watch. The supporting cast is quite good, with the aforementioned Watts, Simon McBurney as Rupert Murdoch, plus Sienna Miller, Annabelle Wallis, Seth McFarlane, Josh Stamberg, Aleksa Palladino and Emory Cohen. The Loudest Voice's greatest weakness is that many scenes are necessarily speculative, but enough firsthand accounts of Roger Ailes exist that those scenes ring true in addition to playing well.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: It's a Tarantino movie, and you'll get the usual: some good performances and great scenes, some extremely violent sequences, plus plenty of self-indulgence in an overly long film. We've given two storylines: the main one centers on Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a fading TV star who plays macho tough guys, and his stunt double and best friend, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The second storyline is about Dalton's next-door neighbor, actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who lives with her celebrated director husband, Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha), although he's barely in the movie. Dalton wants to be more respected as an actor and is anxious about his declining career, leading to bouts of insecurity. Booth is extremely easy-going and thus a good balance for Dalton; Booth also drives Dalton around LA because Dalton lost his license for driving under the influence. Some of the best scenes involve Dalton struggling on the set of a TV western, which includes several interesting exchanges between him and a very mature, serious child actress played by Julia Butters. Booth gives a ride to a young female hitchhiker who lives at… Spahn Ranch, because she's a member of the Manson "family" cult. Meanwhile, we follow Sharon Tate around town as she attends parties, chats with friends and watches a movie she's in.
DiCaprio and Pitt are good both individually and together, with DiCaprio getting to swing between deep emotional extremes over the course of the movie and Pitt mainly oozing effortless charisma. Margot Robbie seems wasted, though, because we don't really get to know Sharon Tate well. She's pretty (and coveted by men) and seems nice, if sometimes to the point of naïveté. But she's often shown alone and thus not speaking with anyone. We barely see any of her relationship with Roman Polanski, which seems like an odd narrative choice, and I'm guessing is because he's currently a controversial figure. Tarantino seems more interested in Sharon Tate as a symbol and icon than a real person.
As for the rest, the film is bizarrely critical of Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), portraying him as arrogant, which doesn't seem accurate at all (and has been disputed – and come on, you may be a good fighter, but you ain't beating Bruce Lee). Tarantino has figured out you can be extremely, gratuitously violent and the audience will cheer if you pick really nasty targets. Tarantino does get some notable actors in small roles, with Al Pacino and Bruce Dern being particularly good. I like parts of Tarantino's films (and I'd say Pulp Fiction is still his best and most innovative), but I do think he's massively overhyped and uncritically worshipped in some quarters. (For example, OUATIH is engaging enough, and I can understand it on some top 10 lists, but I do question picking it as the absolute best film of the year over Parasite or a few others. But alternative history fantasies that aren't comedies also seem a bit pointless to me.) All that said, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has some great and memorable scenes, and if you're a fan of Tarantino, DiCaprio, or Pitt, you'll want to check it out.
Uncut Gems: Adam Sandler gives a good performance as a thoroughly unlikeable character, Howard Ratner, a jeweler in New York City who tries to cater to the rich and famous but also has a really bad gambling habit. It's 2010, and Howard sometimes lives in the city with his younger girlfriend and employee, Julia (Julia Fox), and sometimes in the suburbs with his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) and their kids; they're supposed to get a divorce after Passover. Howard obtains a rare black opal, the uncut gem of the title, which has an interesting rainbow effect. Howard's spent a long time and considerable money obtaining it. Howard's employee Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) is mainly paid to bring in high-profile clientele, and arrives with none other than basketball star Kevin Garnett (playing himself during his NBA days). Howard can't resist showing off the opal, which Garnett loves and wants to buy, but it's already slotted for auction. Garnett insists on borrowing it for good luck and offers his Celtics championship ring as collateral. Meanwhile, Howard owes a ton of money to a loan shark, Arno (Eric Bogosian), who happens to be his brother-in-law. So Howard starts out in plenty of trouble, tries to gamble his way out of debt, and will lie shamelessly to anyone and everyone. He has a few moments of decency, I suppose, but he's an awful husband, father and boss, a jealous boyfriend and is almost unrelentingly selfish, using everyone around him. The film also looks shot on video, especially in the early scenes, although apparently it was shot on 35 mm film by notable cinematographer Darius Khondji. It's mostly high-key lighting and not his usual moody, noir-ish style at all, but give the camerawork credit for helping create a sense of urgency.
Although I didn't like Howard Ratner much, I did find Uncut Gems became more interesting as it progressed. It plays as a thriller much of the time, and it does make some unconventional and interesting story choices, so it's not a cookie cutter film. Kevin Garnett plays a surprisingly large role in the film and is also surprisingly good, especially in a late scene between him and Howard. And as self-absorbed as Howard is, he has one of his more gracious moments late in the film, not long before the extended, climatic sequence. Howard's master scheme is risky and gutsy, but it's hard not to root for him during it, and it makes for a pretty riveting piece of cinema. (It also took considerable ingenuity by the filmmakers, writer Ronald Bronstein and cowriters and codirectors Josh and Benny Safdie.) Uncut Gems is one of the most divisive films of 2019 – I've encountered people who loathed it and others who adored it. The Weeknd plays a small role as himself, Judd Hirsh plays Howard's father-in-law, and Keith Williams Richards is memorable as Phil, the most violent and menacing of Arno's henchmen. More in the… (SPOILERS)
I debated the believability of the ending, with Howard opening the security door to let in Arno, Phil and Nico. Howard gets shot and killed, of course, and I bought Phil's action, but Howard opening the door seemed unusually risky if not idiotic. I think it was somewhat plausible in that, in that moment, he's achieved the greatest gambling victory of his life and has literally beat the odds. He's gone from serious danger to (he thinks at least) safety. He's absolutely ecstatic, plus clearly he can pay Arno back now, so why would anyone possibly kill him? Arno has even shifted to cheering him on. But it does betray a lack of understanding about human nature and specifically not comprehending Phil's character. Phil's expressed his hatred of Howard and is not a rational guy. Howard would have been better off letting them leave through the outside door and promising to drop off the money later – he doesn't even have it yet. But I think his fatal error is somewhat understandable. Phil killing Arno is similarly rash but also seemed plausible, given how far Phil has gone. The film has some minor story bits I liked, for instance, Howard's earlier gambling, where he follows his bets in the car, goes extremely well, which is not what usually happens in gambling addict stories. So the cliché would be that he loses money and gets deeper in the hole; instead, Howard wins, or would have won, but Arno stops the bet, which is why Howard's still in peril for most of the movie.
(If the spoiler button isn't working, you can read the spoiler text here.)
The King: The main reason to see The King is Timothée Chalamet, an interesting young actor, as England's beloved Prince Hal/Henry V, a potentially meaty role. The film itself is neither fish nor fowl – it strays considerably from history but it's also not really an adaptation of William Shakespeare's plays, either. It includes Shakespeare's invention, Falstaff, but changes him from a comic, boozing, cowardly but larger-than-life character to a sober, quietly courageous, war-weary, wise, and low-key veteran soldier. (He's played by Australian actor Joel Edgerton, who cowrote the script with the director, Australian David Michôd.) The film likewise has Hal face off with Hotspur, who did exist, but their confrontation is likewise an invention by Shakespeare, from Henry IV, Part 1. That's fine, because it makes for some good scenes. The film borrows the most from Henry V – the French Dauphin (Robert Pattinson) sends Hal a tennis ball as an insult, and eventually we get to the main event, the 1415 Battle of Agincourt. But the movie also oddly invents an assassination attempt on Hal, and presents it as the main reason for the reluctant young king to invade France, which contrasts markedly with Shakespeare's Hal, who's eager to seize back France and happy for a pretext. (The King also invents another complicated conspiracy.)
Take The King solely on its own merits and it's somewhat interesting; consider other options and it's more disappointing. As the Dauphin, Pattinson's accent plays a bit comically, which could work for a stage version of Henry V but does not seem to be intentional for the more serious tone here. (Pattinson's somewhat effective in that he's smarmy and unlikeable.) It was nice to see some mud in the Agincourt sequence, but it's presented as the making-you-slip kind rather than the historical accounts' we-have-to-wade-through-this-crap type. That's perfectly fine, but the point is that the filmmakers make a series of choices that aren't that interesting compared to existing alternatives from Shakespeare, history and cinema. I was hoping for a good Battle of Agincourt, which would have forgiven a host of sins, but it's not staged that well. The invented conspiracies of The King make Hal a bit of a dupe and thus less interesting. Edgerton gives a decent performance as Falstaff, but almost completely inverting the character and writing him for yourself to play feels like a vanity exercise. So if you're familiar with any of the source material and watch The King, you'll probably find yourself asking yourself often, what's the point? Why have Falstaff at all, if you're not going to do Shakespeare? Why depict the Battle of Agincourt, a pretty interesting clash, if it's not going to be frickin' awesome? Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film version of Henry V is one of the great Shakespeare adaptations, but it's also simply a great film, with a stunning climatic battle sequence despite a small budget. And it turns out that Shakespeare wrote Hal as a much more intriguing character than Michôd and Edgerton can muster for The King. I don't want to completely bash the film, because if you're a Chalamet fan and don't care much about the history or Shakespeare you'll probably enjoy it much more than I did. But my primary response is: Henry V is a much, much better film, and unless you're completely turned off by Shakespeare, watch it instead.
Motherless Brooklyn: If you're a big fan of Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, you might not like this adaptation. Writer, director and star Edward Norton keeps the lead character, the inciting incident and some plot devices, but throws away the main plot and invents a substantially new one with new characters, even moving the story from 1999 to the 1950s. (Lethem gave Norton permission to make changes, at least.) In the new story, a key character, Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), is based on the real-life Robert Moses, a New York City public official with multiple titles who significantly reshaped the urban landscape, developing public works but also eliminating some neighborhoods, especially minority ones. Basically, Norton is trying to make Chinatown but for New York City, weaving some fictionalized real history into a film noir. (There's a bit of Devil in a Blue Dress, too.)
The protagonist of Motherless Brooklyn is Lionel Essrog (Norton), who along with most of his coworkers was an orphan essentially adopted by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who runs a detective agency. Lionel has Tourette syndrome and his tics and verbal outbursts get worse with distress. He also possesses a remarkable memory, though, and can recall everything he's seen and entire conversations verbatim. His tics unsettle many of the people he meets, but Frank finds Lionel's gifts useful for their detective work and has always been kind to him; he's a father figure. Frank asks Lionel and another employee, Gilbert, to serve as a backup for a meeting with unknown people with seemingly powerful connections. The upshot is that Frank winds up dead, and Lionel is determined to find out whodunnit. His condition makes him both ill- and well-suited for the task.
Norton's invented story takes over from there. Lionel meets some interesting people on his quest for the truth, most notably Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who works for Gabby Horowitz (Cherry Jones), one of the people fighting against Moses Randolph to protect minority neighborhoods. A neighborhood gadfly named Paul (Willem Dafoe) seems to know all the local history and behind-the-scenes deals. Michael K. Williams plays a jazz musician identified only as "Trumpet Man" in the credits, who seems loosely based Miles Davis for both his talent and general social outlook. Bobby Cannavale is Tony Vermonte, the most ambitious and probably sleaziest of Lionel's coworkers, who effectively takes over the detective agency; Leslie Mann plays Julia, Frank's widow. Credit Edward Norton for assembling a fine cast, who all give good performances, with Gugu Mbatha-Raw a standout. I had mixed feelings about the film – Norton is a good actor, but at times the entire venture, including his desire to play a disabled character, feels like an enormous vanity project with shades of the Hollywood stars satirized in Tropic Thunder. Given that Norton largely abandoned the source material, I'd have preferred that he title his film something else instead. Some of his choices are engaging; others felt too tidy. It might be interesting to watch the film again with Norton's commentary and any behind-the-scenes disc extras. (Lastly, Radiohead's Thom Yorke wrote a moody, original song for the movie, "Daily Battles," which I quite liked and thought fit the movie, even if it was a bit anachronistic. It made the initial nomination list of 15 for Best Original Song but unfortunately did not make the final shortlist of 5.)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters: I always want more kaiju fighting and less humans jabbering. Some of the monster shots are cool (they're called "titans" instead of kaiju in the film) and this latest American Godzilla flick features a pretty impressive human cast, particularly Ken Watanabe, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Zhang Ziyi and David Strathairn, rounded out by Millie Bobbie Brown, Vera Farmiga, Kyle Chandler, Charles Dance and Thomas Middleditch. The plot, such as it is, involves radicals who want to awaken the dread "Monster Zero" to restore balance to the Earth… by killing tons of humans, I guess, and only Godzilla can save the day. The film does not remotely sell such villain rationalizations as well-intentioned and plausible, but really, we just need any excuse for some big monster battles. Kyle Chandler's a decent actor, but I got a little sick of the filmmakers having him constantly kaiju-'spaining to the one Japanese guy, supposed expert Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe). At least Watanabe's given a fine scene later. It's nice to see Zhang Ziyi again, but her character supposedly has been studying the titans for years but seemingly uncovers key information through a quick, casual web search instead. The film makes at least one bizarre jump, skipping over the good guys discovering a crucial development and cutting right to them pursuing the bad guys. The film also just runs out of ideas and repeats itself in key beats (more in the spoilers). The different monster promotion posters and early trailers were great, but the movie itself is less engaging. The 2014 Godzilla directed by Gareth Edwards (reviewed here) remains a better American Godzilla flick, but I do credit this latest film, like its predecessor, for creating some sense of wonder about the kaiju/titans/monsters, and it is fun to see Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidorah, along with the lovable Gojira/Godzilla. (SPOILERS)
A human is about to be killed by the big bad monster and then is saved at the last moment by Godzilla not once, not twice, but at least three friggin' times. That's not just lazy writing, it's bad directing, which robs the later moments of suspense.
(If the spoiler button isn't working, you can read the spoiler text here.)
The Laundromat: I appreciate director Steven Soderbergh's prodigious output and willingness to experiment, but the quality of his films can vary wildly and sometimes I wish he'd slow down and develop a script more. The Laundromat is ambitious, essentially trying to be The Big Short but focusing on the so-called Panama papers, which exposed how rich individuals and corporations hide and launder money in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes and other obligations. The movie boasts an impressive cast, most notably Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas as suave, rich businessmen who explain to the audience how the crooked system works, and Meryl Streep and James Cromwell as victims of a tragedy, with justice blocked by a series of shell companies and semi-legal financial skullduggery. The film also mixes in the tale of Simone (Jessica Allain), who uncovers her rich African father's infidelity and is bribed with questionable assets, a Chinese money laundering scheme featuring some dark threats, and a shady German conglomerate. The result is a bit of a mess, with some interesting scenes and scenarios that never really build to a unified whole, further marred by a didactic approach in the home stretch. The Laundromat's heart is in the right place, but pulling off something as brilliant as The Big Short (reviewed here) is extremely difficult. It demands understanding tricky material and somehow explaining and it making it cinematic; it requires taking a global scandal and crafting a coherent narrative with actual characters; it begs for a satirical outlook at times but also human depth. The Laundromat deserves some points for ambition, but the project feels rushed and woefully, glaringly underdeveloped. Given the team involved, it's disappointing that no one seemed to notice.
Booksmart: Two studious, high-achieving high school seniors who have sacrificed fun discover right before graduation, to their shock, that several of their seemingly slacker classmates are actually pretty smart and going to prestigious schools. Feeling they've been missing out, they become determined to have a wild night and live it up before the graduation ceremony. It's a good premise with plenty of comedic potential, especially because they're such novices at acting out. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) is more brash and outgoing; Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) is shy, a lesbian and inexperienced. The actresses sell the goofball camaraderie of the duo and also their occasional clashes. Actress Olivia Wilde does a nice job in her feature directorial debut, and surely it helped to have a female director and four female writers for a female-centered teen flick. I enjoyed Booksmart, but it suffered for me from being overhyped and because a few key scenes (a fight with witnesses, the actual graduation) felt pretty conventional, in contrast with the more authentic and interesting friendship at the film's core. It's a good high-school buddy, coming-of-age movie and worth seeing. But I've enjoyed other films in this genre much more, including 2017's Lady Bird (reviewed here, and also with Beanie Feldstein) and 2007's Superbad (the sixth film reviewed here, and interestingly starring Feldstein's older brother, Jonah Hill). Your mileage definitely may vary on that front, though, and I imagine some viewers will like Booksmart best of those three.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It's the 75th anniversary this year.
Fresh Air's episode for the occasion features two good older interviews: a 2005 one with Laurence Rees on his book, Auschwitz: A New History, and an 1988 interview with Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, who died in 2016. The PBS NewsHour segment, "The lessons of Auschwitz, 75 years after its liberation," features some survivors revisiting the camp and some striking memories. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website has an excellent primer on Auschwitz and other resources. (Going through the museum's permanent exhibit is a powerful experience.)
Although a solely historical post might be appropriate today, it feels more pressing to note current events. Hate crimes are on the rise in some areas, and the number of high-profile hate crimes in recent years is troubling. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracks anti-Semitic incidents. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a more general "hatewatch" page, and both organizations maintain "hate maps." FBI statistics for 2019 hate crimes aren't available yet, but the website has information from1995 through 2018, and as CNN summarizes, the 2018 report "collected data from 110 fewer agencies" but "found that 7,120 hate crime incidents were reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI in 2018, just 55 fewer than had been reported in 2017. Between 2016 and 2017, the FBI found a 17% increase in reported incidents." Besides raw numbers, though, it's the overall efforts to intimidate marginalized groups that's disturbing.
The number of anti-Semitic hate crimes recorded by authorities in Los Angeles has now doubled, thanks in part to those changes. But the rising numbers also mirror a trend seen in cities across the United States. A coming report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, shows that anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — the nation’s three largest cities — are poised to hit an 18-year peak.
"It is something not seen in many years," said Brian Levin, the report’s lead author, referring to the fact that Jews in those three cities are now targeted as frequently as gay men and African-Americans in hate crimes. The report, which uses the most recent official police data, found that Jews in all three cities are being targeted at the highest numbers seen since 2001. . . .
"A substantial proportion of these hate crimes involve brutal physical attacks on Orthodox Jews who are easily identifiable,” Mr. Levin said. “Today anti-Semitism and ignorance about the Holocaust has simply become broadly acceptable, and that is reflected in the increasing number of assaults and a diversity of offenders, who now also tend to be older." . . .
[During Hanukkah], a man was charged with a hate crime in the stabbing of five Jews in Monsey, N.Y., at the home of a rabbi, and a gun battle at a kosher market in Jersey City, N.J., left three people inside the store and a police officer dead.
Added to that picture of bigotry, the Trump administration tried several times to institute a "Muslim ban," a measure with dangerous historical precedents, and finally succeeded in June 2018. The ACLU, which has a good collection of personal stories of living with the Muslim ban, reports that the Trump administration is seeking to expand the Muslim ban, but also that Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi is introducing a "NO BAN Act" to reverse the Trump measures. (Not that the current, Republican-controlled Senate will approve the bill.) It's also worth revisiting Josh Marshall's July 2016 piece, "A Propagator of Race Hatred and Violence," about Trump falsely, grotesquely claiming that American Muslims cheered the 9/11 attacks and the World Trade Center falling. As Marshall notes, "authoritarian figures require violence and disorder," and Trump has made other statements that are "the kind of wild racist incitement that puts whole societies in danger."
"What's required is a little bit of demystification of it," says Waitman Wade Beorn, a Holocaust and genocide studies historian and a lecturer at the University of Virginia. "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz. Concentration camps in general have always been designed—at the most basic level—to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."
The awful conditions in the camps are not accidental. Trump has a long history of racism and started his campaign with a racist tirade against Mexicans. At least one of his staffers, Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller, is an extreme bigot and a driving force on Trump's immigration policies. As Adam Serwer has observed of the Trump administration as a whole, the cruelty is the point.
Finally, who can forget the "Unite the Right" rally of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017, an alarming demonstration that lead to the murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer? Trump initially condemned the rally, but he just couldn't stick to that script, and a mere one day later, went on to claim that "there's blame on both sides" and "very fine people on both sides." Later indignant claims by Trump and his supporters that he wasn't calling neo-Nazis and other white supremacists "very fine people" were far from convincing.
Trump, his administration and his supporters are far from the only problem. The United States has never been free of bigotry – slavery, as well as the killing and displacement of Native Americans, are central to our history. Institutionalized, systemic bigotry persists even without conscious, active support. But it does feel as if some of the progress of the past several decades has been rolled back, or at least that what had been underground is now increasingly out in the open. Barack Obama and his family were subjected to an alarming amount of despicable, racist attacks. And whatever Trump and his team think of themselves, black Americans overwhelmingly view Trump as racist and white supremacists think Trump is one of their own.
Most acts of evil don't rise to the level of genocide. But genocide always has precursors, none of which are ever positive and none of which should ever go unchallenged. Some Holocaust comparisons are appropriate. Most importantly, there's never a bad time to oppose bigotry and cruelty.
Update:: The New York Times reports that the Trump administration has issued press credentials to:
TruNews, a website aimed at conservative Christians whose founder, a pastor named Rick Wiles, recently described Trump’s impeachment as "a Jew coup" planned by "a Jewish cabal." . . .
TruNews, which Wiles founded as an online radio program in 1999 called America’s Hope, has a history of spreading conspiracy theories and proclaiming an imminent apocalypse. It drew more scrutiny in November after Wiles, in an online video, accused Jews of orchestrating Trump’s impeachment.
"That’s the way Jews work," Wiles said. "They are deceivers. They plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda. This ‘Impeach Trump’ movement is a Jew coup, and the American people better wake up to it really fast."
Wiles also warned his listeners that "when Jews take over a country, they kill millions of Christians."
Afterward, Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida and Elaine Luria of Virginia wrote to the White House asking why TruNews had been allowed to attend presidential events. They did not receive a response.
In contrast, the Trump administration has banned CNN in the past and Trump's state department has recently banned NPR, most likely in an act of petulant retaliation. Apparently, the Trump administration views those organizations as a threat, but nominally Christian, far-right, anti-Semitic groups are welcome.
It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and given the recent and familiar saber-rattling we've been hearing, this time agitating for a war with Iran, it seems like a good time to visit King's speech, "Beyond Vietnam." He delivered it at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, a year before he was assassinated. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute has the text and audio, and it's nice to listen to his sonorous cadences. King took a significant risk in pushing back against concerns about political caution and instead spoke his conscience. Some of the references are very much tied to the era, but others remain all too timely.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.
Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?” They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.” It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that “America will be” are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
Digby has featured this speech before, emphasizing other good passages – it's full of them. And The New Yorker has a good piece from 2017 giving more background on crafting the speech and the political costs King knew it would incur. (It also covers John Lewis' memories of the speech.)
I appreciate that King linked war, and basically imperialism, to issues of class, race and lost opportunities in America. He received backlash for the speech, even though some passages of it are simpatico with that noted political radical, Dwight Eisenhower, who in 1953 asserted that "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." King emphasized race much more, of course, which surely made some of his white audience uncomfortable. And many of his points unfortunately remain all too pertinent.
In the questions for this election cycle's primary debates and in political chatter in general, we're essentially told that war, and all military spending, is free. According to conservatives, tax cuts and other giveaways to the rich and powerful are free as well or otherwise a national boon, and such largess will theoretically trickle down to we the peons. Apparently, it's only health care, and other domestic programs that could benefit the overwhelming majority of Americans, that cost money and need to be interrogated. Perhaps some wars are indeed necessary, yet the same people most likely to recklessly agitate for them typically argue against even the possibility of new or better social programs domestically. "I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor," said King. He wasn't fully appreciated in his lifetime, and his willingness to link the civil rights struggle to challenging other pervasive, oppressive notions is still not fully acknowledged now. As Cornel West put it, we should resist the "Santa Claus-ification" of King; it would be vanity to suppose we've already learned all he has to teach us.
Welcome to the 2019 edition! It's been an interesting year.
This tradition was started by the late Jon Swift/Al Weisel, who left behind some excellent satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs. As usual, I'll quote Lance Mannion, who nicely explains:
Our late and much missed comrade in blogging, journalist and writer Al Weisel, revered and admired across the bandwidth as the "reasonable conservative" blogger Modest Jon Swift, was a champion of the lesser known and little known bloggers working tirelessly in the shadows . . .
One of his projects was a year-end Blogger Round Up. Al/Jon asked bloggers far and wide, famous and in- and not at all, to submit a link to their favorite post of the past twelve months and then he sorted, compiled, blurbed, hyperlinked and posted them on his popular blog. His round-ups presented readers with a huge banquet table of links to work many of has had missed the first time around and brought those bloggers traffic and, more important, new readers they wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed.
It may not have been the most heroic endeavor, but it was kind and generous and a lot of us owe our continued presence in the blogging biz to Al.
Here's Jon/Al's massive 2007 and 2008 editions (via the Wayback Machine). Meanwhile, our more modest revivals from 2010–2018 can be found here.
If you're not familiar with Al Weisel's work as Jon Swift, his site (via the Wayback Machine) features a "best of" list in the left column.
Thanks to all the participants, and apologies to anyone I missed. (As always, my goal is to find the right balance between inclusive and manageable.) You still can join in, by linking your post in the comments. Whether your post appears in the modest list below or not, feel free to tweet your best post with the hatchtag #jonswift2019.
As in Jon/Al's 2008 roundup, submissions are listed roughly in the order they were received. As he wrote in that post:
I'm sure you'll be interested in seeing what your favorite bloggers think were their best posts of the year, but be sure to also visit some blogs you've never read before and leave a nice comment if you like what you see or, if you must, a polite demurral if you do not.
Without further ado:
You Might Notice a Trend "A Cruel Month for a Cruel Administration"
Paul Wartenberg: "A summary of everything dark and vicious happening under donald trump and Republican rule, and this was BEFORE all the crap about trump extorting Ukraine and things getting worse..."
Just an Earth Bound Misfit, I "We Never Will Learn"
Comrade Misfit: "A comparison of the War Against Drugs with the War Against Ethanol (Prohibition). It points out that our great-grandparents were a lot smarter than we are."
Mad Kane's Political Madness "Open 3-Verse Limerick To Donald Trump"
Madeleine Begun Kane: "My 3-verse limerick message to Trump remains unheeded, but hope springs eternal. (I include an audio version along with my written verse.)"
Strangely Blogged "Unbearably Hostile. And Also Very Contrite"
Vixen Strangely: "A heated discussion in my blog comments lead to me to unpack my hostility towards third party voting and my fears about the upcoming presidential election."
Show Me Progress "This morning at the Governor’s Mansion in Jefferson City"
Michael Bersin: "Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. As part of a grassroots organized "Everyone for Reproductive Rights" rally at the capitol in Jefferson City on June 22, 2019 pro-choice activists marched to the Governor's mansion to confront Mike Parson (r), Missouri's rabid anti-choice governor. After the speeches ended and as they left individually and in small groups activists placed wire coat hangers on the spiked cast iron fence in front of the mansion."
The Rude Pundit "You Idiots Are Causing 'White Genocide' Yourselves"
Lee Papa: "The dumbasses who shout about "white genocide" support politicians whose policies create the circumstances for the immigration that they fear. But, well, they are dumbasses."
The Rectification of Names "One Loopy Piehole; and Prolegomena to a Discussion of Russia Sanctions"
Yastreblyansky: "I usually submit what I think is the funniest post of the year, or the most satisfying from a literary point of view, but this year I want to focus on something different; this post starts off with a moderately amusing Fats Waller parody but goes on to one of the big things missing from the Mueller Report: the original! quid pro quo, or what Trump has done to repay V.V. Putin for his assistance in the 2016 election. Three-parter, follow the links at the end of the post."
[this space intentionally left blank] "Bringing A Strongly-Worded Letter to a Knife Fight"
Dallas Taylor: "In which I answer the perennial calls for compromise and civility with a reminder that the people we're being asked to compromise with and be civil to are acting in bad faith while they hollow out American democracy in the service of authoritarian oligarchs while the climate we depend on slides further and further into crisis."
Lotus - Surviving a Dark Time "The Erickson Report, Page 4: A Longer Look at open borders"
LarryE: "On my cable access/YouTube show "The Erickson Report," I have an occasional segment called "A Longer Look," going into some topic in more depth that a 30-minute show normally allows. This time it was on an immigration option that is rarely discussed and which may not be an answer but is surely worth considering: open borders."
Infidel753 "Some further ranting on culture and politics"
Infidel753: "Disengaged, low-information, pop-culture-obsessed voters aren't the ones who got Trump elected, nor are they the ones most likely to tip the scales toward his re-election. The problem lies elsewhere."
Self-Styled Siren "Olivia (1951)"
The Siren: "It's a superb film (directed by a woman!) that truly deserves a resurrection."
Bark Bark Woof Woof "The Sting"
Mustang Bobby: "Was it enough to just impeach Trump in the House, knowing that the Senate will acquit him? No, it’s not enough. But it’s close."
bjkeefe "A long but thought-provoking read"
Brendan Keefe: "Some of the reactions I had to Scott Alexander's post, "New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed." "
The Debate Link "In Relating to our Black Allies, Jews Need To Stop Being Babies"
David Schraub: "We in the Jewish community has a problem relating to our Black allies: we expect them to be condemn-antisemitism-on-demand toys, and throw a tantrum any time they want to talk about anything else. That's not a mature way to have a relationship among equals."
Perrspectives POST J"The Most Important Issue for Democrats in 2020? The Courts"
Jon Perr: "Republican control over the Supreme Court isn’t merely putting reproductive rights and marriage equality at risk. The increasingly reactionary federal judiciary at all levels threatens the entire legal basis for post-New Deal government."
M.A.Peel "History of Two Weeks' Tour Through Switzerland"
Ellen O'Neill: "I went to Switzerland to visit the hometown of my maternal great grandfather. It was an unexpected bonus that I found myself walking in the footsteps of my beloved Romantic Poets, Dumas, Dickens, Twain, et. al. When I got home, I discovered Mary Shelley's own travelogue of her travels with Percy, and the post is an homage to her writing."
First Draft "The Wind Calls Willard"
Peter Adrastos Athas: "Willard Mittbot Romney: Hero or Weathervane? It's up to him."
alicublog "The So-Called Network."
Roy Edroso: "I was sufficiently amused by Aaron Sorkin, high on his own supply, trying to talk sense to supervillain Mark Zuckerberg that I wrote my own Sorkin script for their encounter."
Special bonus post: Roy Edroso Breaks It Down "The bad dog"
Roy Edroso: "Our dog died last summer. Actually she was my wife's dog, but in the course of her dying I put a claim on her, which is what the post is about."
Ramona's Voices "I Would Make a Better President Than Donald Trump"
Ramona Grigg: "A light-hearted but semi-serious look at an alternative to our first (and hopefully last) dilettante president. Trump has set the bar so low even I could do a better job. One look at my cabinet choices should cement this whole idea."
World O’ Crap "Corner Man"
Scott Clevenger: "Scott sits down with Hall of Fame boxing trainer and Fox Sports commentator Joe Goossen to talk about the Ruelas Brothers, two young Mexican boys who wandered into his gym one day while selling candy door to door and refused to leave until he made them world champions. He didn’t want to…but he did."
Thomas Neuburger (at Down With Tyranny) "Why Everyone in the U.S. Who Counts Wants Julian Assange Dead"
Thomas Neuburger: "By many miles my most-read post of the year, picked up on sites both left and right. The world as currently run not only wants Assange dead, they want him hated. Generating that hate is the process we're watching today. The death will follow shortly."
his vorpal sword "Law With No Rules"
Hart Williams: "Going through the last year's posts, I was astonished at how prescient this was, predicting very accurately the issues that would lead to impeachment ten months and four days later. It also contains an important warning as to how democracies die that bears repeating."
Doctor Cleveland "Shakespeare Wasn't Perfect"
Doctor Cleveland: "Why do people keep coming up with ever less plausible candidates as the “real” Shakespeare? Because we can’t accept his flaws."
driftglass "The Bonfire of the Sanities"
driftglass: "Meet Mr. Michael Gerson: former George W. Bush chief speechwriter, senior Republican policy adviser and reliable Beltway Republican stalactite who now exists in a perpetual state of shock that his Republican Party is full of Republicans."
Vagabond Scholar "Bred for Circuses"
Batocchio: "Conservatives and Republicans can't win many arguments on the merits, so they try to reduce everything to an us-versus-them battle. Authoritarianism, a propaganda network, and outsized media personas are a big help for this."
Thanks again, folks. Happy blogging and everything else in 2020, which promises to be an eventual year.
Conservatives and Republicans can win few arguments honestly on the merits; most of their policies are awful for the vast majority of Americans and benefit only a select few, typically the rich and powerful. Conservative positions tend to be unpopular, too. Rather than change their policies, conservatives choose to lie constantly and shamelessly, and to stoke the worst impulses of their base. Key to these dynamics is ignoring matters of truth and fact, as well as any serious discussion of greater principles about how our country should work. Instead, they try to reduce everything to my team against your team, us against them. The Republican Party is aided in this by a large block of rabid, authoritarian conservatives and a propaganda network eager to feed the faithful the latest two minutes hate, 24/7. Outsized media personas play a critical role in this strategy. ("Conservative" and "Republican" are pretty interchangeable in this post, but for more on that, see the first link above.)
Conservatives and Republicans are also aided, however, by shallow political coverage by mainstream media outlets that far too often withhold essential context from their audiences by refusing to fact check or call out lies, by pretending policy doesn't matter, by pretending both major American political parties are basically the same and both sides are equally to blame for our political problems, and that any deeper look is pointless and/or partisan. Shallow coverage is cheaper to produce and avoids offending some viewers (while aggravating others), and is also seen as neutral and savvy by some reporters. Unfortunately, it's lousy for informing citizens and thus bad for democracy. Propaganda typically demonizes the perceived opposition unfairly, whereas shallow political coverage is loath to call out even clear wrongdoing or hypocrisy by one party. Thus both lying and gutlessness reduce the national political discourse to superficial, bad sports coverage of two competing political teams and to treating important matters as mere entertainment, a sitcom, a circus.
We've seen all these dynamics play out in the impeachment hearings on Donald Trump, related press conferences and media coverage of all of it. During the impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, several observers noted that Republicans seemed less interested in making coherent arguments or convincing the general populace of their cause than creating video clips for Fox News to run for the conservative base. After the hearings moved from the intelligence committee chaired by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) to the judiciary committee, Republicans pulled the stunt of putting Schiff on a milk carton poster, saying he was missing because he rejected their call to appear as a witness. (Republicans also asked to call the anonymous whistleblower yet again.) Schiff rejected the request, instead pointing to the intelligence committee's 300-page report and the evidence it covered, and added:
There is nothing to testify about. I think if the President or his allies in the Senate persist it means they are not serious about what they are doing. What would I offer in terms of testimony, that I heard Dr. [Fiona] Hill in open hearing say such and such? That is not pertinent. The only reason for them to go through with this is to mollify the President and that is not a good reason to try to call a member of Congress as a witness.
Trump has repeatedly, angrily expressed a desire to prosecute Schiff for paraphrasing him, but has run into the small problems that that's not illegal and Trump is not a dictator. Judiciary chair Jerold Nadler (D-NY) unsurprisingly sided with Schiff about testifying, and in his letter to Republicans, Nadler cited the "independent evidence" for the conclusions of the report and issues initially raised by the whistleblower. Nadler also reiterated for the umpteenth time concerns about witness intimidation and threats of retaliation by Trump and other conservatives against the whistleblower. As for the report itself, Professor Heather Cox Richardson, who's delivered excellent analysis on the impeachment hearings and related stories, offered up a nice summary on 12/3/19:
The big news today was that the House Intelligence Committee released its report on its investigation into the Ukraine scandal that is at the heart of the impeachment case against Trump. Although the report was long, it had two very clear points: the facts against Trump prove that he solicited a bribe—wording designed to show that the scandal meets the Constitution’s threshold for impeachment—and that Trump obstructed justice in his attempts to stonewall Congress and intimidate witnesses. Obstruction of justice is a crime; it is what took Nixon down in 1974.
The report lays out that the Ukraine scandal is at heart an attempt to rig the 2020 election and destroy our democracy with the help of a foreign country. It points out that this is a pattern for Trump, who benefited from Russian aid in 2016 and who has openly called for help from China as well as Ukraine before the upcoming election. The report notes that Trump’s call with Zelensky took place the day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified in public, apparently convincing Trump he was no longer in danger of being nabbed for working with Russia in 2016, and was willing to try a similar scheme again.
The report also notes that the Founders worried about precisely this behavior, and that if it is not checked, democracy is over. The House Intelligence Committee report is a remarkably clear, concise, and powerful document.
For their part, the White House ignored all the facts and relied instead on disinformation. . . .
These are grave matters, but Republicans do not want to discuss the facts and principles driving all serious discussions of impeachment. Likewise, Republicans showed little interest that intelligence committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-CA), who led the Trump defense in the first set of impeachment hearings, allegedly was part of the Ukraine scandal himself to some degree. As of late November, Republicans had offered at least 22 excuses for Trump (or by another count, 64), many of them contradictory. This blunderbuss technique is a reliable sign of bullshitting and bad faith. Similarly, the Republicans' competing impeachment report "is a series of red herrings." (As of this writing, the House has impeached Trump, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to coordinate with the White House during any trial in the Senate, further suggestion that the fix is in and the Republican-majority Senate will not convict Trump, regardless of the merits of the charges.) Meanwhile, Trump's unhinged letter to Nancy Pelosi frames the entire impeachment process as driven by a personal vendetta against Trump, not the serious matter of upholding core principles of the U.S. Constitution that it is. Trump's conceit is that Schiff, Pelosi, and every single person who's said something critical of him, given factual evidence harmful to him or moved to curtail his power simply dislikes him personally versus, say, being motivated to uphold the rule of law and think of the good of the country and other higher principles. Trump and the Republicans cannot win an honest, substantive discussion. So they need to reduce everything to: Their guy doesn't like our guy. Just because he's our guy. Fight for our guy. Fight for the team. Attack the enemy.
These dynamics are not remotely new, even if they've become more prevalent not just in politician's arguments but in the political coverage itself. Back in 2006, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg discussed the theatricality of political commentary, even comparing the choice of political talk show figures to sitcom casting. This was back when Ann Coulter was arguably at the nadir of her awfulness, selling shock value and viciousness, and getting plenty of coverage from mainstream media outlets in addition to her usual support from Fox News and other conservative entities. What Nunberg describes as political "smut" overlaps with behavior we might now call trolling, and Coulter was one of the most successful practitioners at the time:
Take Ann Coulter's recent description of the 9/11 widows as self-obsessed witches who were enjoying their husbands' deaths. As calumnies go, it doesn't have a patch on the things people were saying in the 1864 election, when the Democrats called Lincoln a leering buffoon, and Horace Greeley accused the Democrats of stealing the votes of dead Union soldiers. But it's only in the current age that remarks like those could turn someone into a media celebrity who's invited to appear on Jay Leno and the Today Show to repeat her choicest remarks for the delectation or outrage of their viewers.
Coulter's celebrity is a good measure of what has become of political discussion. You'd scarcely describe her as a political thinker, no more than you'd describe Simon Cowell as an critic of the arts. But like Cowell, she has an unerring gift for media theatrics. It isn't just her penchant for making snarky or outrageous remarks. Plenty of people do that without being invited onto the Today Show, and in fact Coulter doesn't get a lot of national attention for her run-of-the-mill ruminations about giving rat poison to Justice Stevens or fragging John Murtha. But the remark about the 9/11 widows was irresistible for its brazen and gratuitous tastelessness and the obvious pleasure Coulter took in consternation she created.
Is Coulter is sincere about the things she says? That's a silly question, like asking whether schoolchildren are sincere in the taunts they throw at each other across the school yard. But that doesn't make her a satirist, as her defenders like to claim -- usually with the implication that her literal-minded liberal critics don't get the joke.
Satire depicts things as grotesque in order to make them seem ridiculous -- what Stephen Colbert does in his Bill O'Reilly persona or Christopher Buckley does with the pointed caricatures of Thank You For Smoking. But Coulter isn't actually sending anybody up -- not herself, certainly, and not the targets of her remarks. Her fans may enjoy hearing her talk about poisoning Justice Stevens or say that it's a pity Timothy McVeigh didn't park his truck next to the New York Times building. But that's not because the remarks make either Stevens or New York Times seem particularly ridiculous. It's because Coulter seems to be able to get away with unbridled aggression by presenting it as mere mischief, leaving her critics looking prim and humorless. ("Perhaps her book should have been called 'Heartless,'" said Hillary Clinton after Coulter's remarks about the widows, inviting the response, "Oh lighten up, girl.")
That rhetorical maneuver doesn't really have a name, but it's a close relative of what we think of as smut. In the strict sense, of course, smut is the leering innuendo that veils sexual aggression. But in a broader sense, smut can be any kind of malice that pretends to be mere naughtiness. It might be a leering vulgarity, a racial epithet, or simply a venomous insult -- what makes it smut is that it's tricked out as humor, so that if anyone claims to be offended you can answer indignantly, "Can't you take a joke?"
In that broad sense, smut can sometimes be innocuous fun. It's a staple of sitcoms, in what you could think of as a Wooo! moment. That's the moment when a character who's comically malicious or catty (think Betty White, Rhea Perlman, Joseph Marcell) makes a remark that's just offensive or risqué enough to brush the limits of taste, and the studio audience reacts by saying "Woooo!!"
The political talk shows traffic in these moments, too -- not surprising, considering how much those shows owe to the classic sitcom. When you think of the most successful practitioners of the genre, whether Coulter, O'Reilly, or James Carville, there isn't a one of them who couldn't be the model for a recurring character on Cheers or Drew Carey -- the waspish virago, the bombastic blowhard, the sly yokel.
And as on the sitcoms, the drama of the political talk show is character-driven rather than plot-driven. Watching O'Reilly or Hannity and Colmes, you can't help recalling the bickering on All in the Family, where politics was always just a pretext for the clash of personalities. It doesn't matter whether the ostensible issue is the massacre at Haditha or an increase in wild bachelorette parties; it's going to be reduced to grist for the eternal squabble between liberals and conservatives -- not as adherents of opposing political philosophies, but more as distinctive political genders. ("Who are these parents who allow their kids to sleep with Michael Jackson?," Alan Colmes asked a couple of years back, and Sean Hannity answered, "Liberals.")
Coulter and Trump share a great deal in terms of a bullying style, but also in their knack for nabbing mainstream coverage and validation, in large part by crafting a character to sell, a media persona. (Coulter thankfully gets less attention these days. Incidentally, Coulter has criticized Trump for not building a border wall and not being harsh enough on immigration, but says she will vote for him anyway. My most in-depth post on Coulter is this one, although some links are broken.) Coulter, like many conservative political commentators, has always been light on substance or outright rejects it. Instead, the key selling point for such figures has always been viciousness and 'owning the libs,' to the delight of their audience. Coulter is now a less popular conservative belligerent than, say, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Tomi Lahren and perennial ragemonger Rush Limbaugh (among others), but currently, they're all eclipsed by the biggest conservative troll of them all, Donald Trump.
Trump's image as a successful businessman is an utter fiction constructed by Trump himself, aided by his late father and by fawning media coverage. He's not a business genius, or even a competent businessman – he just plays one on TV. As The New York Timesreported in 2016:
[Trump's] casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders. . . .
All the while, Mr. Trump received copious amounts for himself, with the help of a compliant board. In one instance, The Times found, Mr. Trump pulled more than $1 million from his failing public company, describing the transaction in securities filings in ways that may have been illegal, according to legal experts.
Conservatives sure love their macho daddy figures, from those fake cowboys, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, to that fake, successful businessman, Donald Trump. The book The Art of the Deal played a critical role in selling the myth of Trump, but its deeply regretful ghostwriter Tony Schwartz has explained how he made Trump appear far more thoughtful, competent and ethical than he actually is. The Art of the Deal in turn helped Trump get an even larger vehicle for mythmaking, the NBC TV show, The Apprentice. As The New Yorker article "How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump As an Icon of American Success" explains:
"The Apprentice" portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth—a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into limousines. “Most of us knew he was a fake," [producer Jonathon] Braun told me. "He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king." Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, "We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise."
Donald Trump is probably one of the worst businessmen in human history and also possibly the most successful con man. His image as a great businessman and dealmaker is a complete fraud. About the only authentic things about him are his vanity, bigotry, greed, proud ignorance and spite. Yet the conservative base loves him and congressional Republicans loyally defend him despite any misgivings.
Mainstream media outlets have often struggled to cover Trump, as well as conservative and Republican perfidy in general. In contrast to some of the excellent investigative journalism mentioned above, daily news coverage of political clashes often descends to a "he said, she said" level. For example, Dan Froomkin's piece criticizing a New York Times article on impeachment is aptly titled, "In the war on truth, the press can't be an innocent bystander." Fact-checking and calling out liars is essential, but often doesn't occur. Likewise, as we've mentioned before, "coverage on the 2016 presidential race almost entirely ignored policy issues and focused on shallow issues with false balance." Such coverage decisions help candidates with bad positions, slim policy portfolios or a habit of lying. False equivalencies and "both siderism" also remain persistent scourges to good journalism, but rather than delve into that here, I'll once again link past posts by digby, driftglass, alicublog, Balloon Juice, LGM and my own archives.
Consider entertainment programming – and news sold as entertainment – and the picture grows even worse. NBC created The Apprentice and played a central role in creating the myth of Trump that enabled him not only to run for president but win. NBC also let Trump host Saturday Night Live even after cutting ties with him over bigoted comments. And NBC and other mainstream outlets have long validated Trump and earlier toxic figures such as Ann Coulter. Trump received more than $5.9 billion of free media coverage during the election, over twice the amount received by Hillary Clinton. In 2016, then-CBS chairman Les Moonves made some infamous remarks about the "circus":
Donald Trump’s candidacy might not be making America great, CBS Chairman Les Moonves said Monday, but it’s great for his company.
"It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," Moonves said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, according to The Hollywood Reporter — perfectly distilling what media critics have long suspected was motivating the round-the-clock coverage of Trump's presidential bid.
"Most of the ads are not about issues. They're sort of like the debates," Moonves said, noting, "[t]here's a lot of money in the marketplace."
The 2016 campaign is a "circus," he remarked, but "Donald's place in this election is a good thing."
Moonves' later claim that he was joking was unconvincing. Trump was a horrible candidate who frequently behaved vilely, but he was a showman, so CBS, NBC, and other outlets gave Trump tons of coverage, some negative, but not really that critical, and certainly not substantive, given their scant discussion of policy. They rejected sound editorial judgment and shamefully if predictably chose short-term profits over a sense of civic duty to meaningfully inform their audiences, especially because they thought Clinton would win and their behavior could not affect the election. But it most certainly did.
Worse than the mainstream outlets, though, are propaganda outlets, most notably Fox News. Fox News has always scored poorly in terms of factual accuracy, but it's moved beyond being a conservative news outlet to being outright propaganda, comfortable to flat-out lie. The same is true of Republicans in government, and the two work closely together. See, for example, Jane Mayer in The New Yorker on "The Making of the Fox News White House" and Greg Sargent in The Washington Post on how "McConnell’s awful Hannity interview shows power of Fox News’s disinformation." In a similar vein, The Post reported, "A Justice Department inspector general’s report examining the FBI investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign rebutted conservatives’ accusations that top FBI officials were driven by political bias to illegally spy on Trump advisers but also found broad and “serious performance failures” requiring major changes." Attorney General William Barr, a Republican party loyalist, has undercut his own department and directly contradicted key findings of the report, as covered in Sargent's piece, "William Barr’s deceptions are more dangerous than you think" and Wonkette's "Just When You Thought You Couldn't Respect Bill Barr Any Less."Wired covered Barr and much more in "Fox News Is Now a Threat to National Security." Digby's commented on similar dynamics in "The Nonsense Ecosystem" (adopting a phrase from Daniel Dale) and many other posts. Fox News and the entire right-wing media ecosystem pose a serious and growing problem to democracy. As several people have noted, if Nixon had had Fox News, he might not have been impeached.
Authoritarian conservatism plays a pivotal role in making the propaganda work; Fox News and similar outlets cater to an audience eager to hate their scapegoats du jour. In 2016, then-candidate Trump bragged that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." He considered it praise for his supporters' loyalty; it was instead an accurate and chilling description of unquestioning obedience and authoritarianism (and Trump's megalomania). One of Trump's lawyers has actually argued in court that as president, Trump could indeed shoot someone in 5th Avenue and get away with it (shades of Bush lawyer John Yoo). The transcript of Trump's call with Ukrainian President Zelensky is damning, especially with the added context that has been provided by later reporting and the impeachment hearings. Yet Trump and his allies have shouted to "READ THE TRANSCRIPT!" as if it exonerates him. Trump even held a rally where supporters were wearing t-shirts (presumably distributed by Trump's team) saying "READ THE TRANSCRIPT!" Naturally, as The Daily Show discovered in a great segment covering a later rally, most Trump supporters have not read the transcript and were not familiar with the key takeaways, even though some said – without irony or self-awareness – that reading the transcript, not being a sheep and being an independent thinker were all important. They simply believe what they're told, and do so gladly it's from the right authority figures, whether that's Trump himself, Fox News talking heads or other conservative figures. It's completely Orwellian; they will eagerly believe that black is white and insist that their chosen political team is always in the right. (Who are you going to believe, Trump and Fox News or your lying eyes?)
Trump was clearly unfit for office before the election and has provided overwhelming evidence of his unfitness since. The misdeeds for which he's being impeached may not even be the worst things he's done (and who knows what else will come out), but they're certainly sufficient grounds for removing him from office. The conservative base, Republican voters and congressional Republicans simply do not care. Nearly 90% of self-described Republicans voted for Trump in 2016, and assuming he's still in office by the time of the 2020 election, similar percentages will likely vote for him again, despite any disapproval they express. As of this writing, Trump has been impeached but the articles of impeachment have not been sent to the Senate. The Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 has not been chosen and the presidential election has not occurred. Despite some uncertainties about the year(s) ahead, we can make some reasonable predictions, among them that conservatives and Republicans will not behave honorably and it would be folly to expect otherwise.
Conservatives tend to be bullies with power and whiners without it. They've constructed alternativerealities with alternative facts, where they can believe what they want and feel simultaneously persecuted (and thus righteously aggrieved) and superior. Some religious conservatives (ostensibly Christian) will even cite ancient Roman persecution of Christians, that they were thrown to lions in the arena. There's some truth but mostly myth to that tale, but regardless, some religious conservatives will apocalyptically invoke the image as a future reality should "socialism" take hold (via a Bernie Sanders presidency, for instance). The truth is that conservatives thrill for combat with their chosen foes, and that they'd just choose new scapegoats if they ever succeeded in eliminating the old ones. They don't believe in treating others as they would like be treated, and certainly don't believe in turning the other cheek. They are pro-spectacle, anti-substance, pro-circus; authoritarian conservatives are particularly bred for circuses. They don't truly object to the idea of throwing people to the lions; they just want the power to choose the victims.
The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name "Armistice Day." Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful.
This post is mostly a repeat I run every year, since I find it hard to top Kelly.
Back in 2009, I wrote a series of six related posts for Armistice Day (and as part of an ongoing series on war). The starred posts are the most important, but the list is:
I generally update these posts later with links to appropriate pieces for 11/11 by other folks as I find them. If you've written one, feel free to link it in a comment. Thanks.
Dahlia Lithwick, who's written great pieces on the Supreme Court and legal matters for a long time, has penned a thoughtful, sobering piece called "Why I Haven’t Gone Back to SCOTUS Since Kavanaugh." It's worth reading in its entirely for her recap of the disgraceful confirmation process, the continuing, dreadful treatment of Christine Blasey Ford, and Lithwick's personal experiences. Lithwick takes aim at sexism and misogyny, but also delivers a more expansive critique of power and its abuses:
That is the problem with power: It incentivizes forgiveness and forgetting. It’s why the dozens of ethics complaints filed after the Kavanaugh hearings complaining about the judge’s behavior have been easily buried in a bottomless file of appeasement, on the grounds that he’s been seated and it’s too late. The problem with power is that there is no speaking truth to it when it holds all the cards. And now, given a lifetime appointment to a position that is checked by no one, Washington, the clerkship machinery, the cocktail party circuit, the elite academy all have a vested interest in getting over it and the public performance of getting over it. And a year perhaps seems a reasonable time stamp for that to begin.
The problem with power is that Brett Kavanaugh now has a monopoly on normalization, letting bygones be bygones, and turning the page. American women also have to decide whether to get over it or to invite more recriminations. That is, for those keeping track, the very definition of an abusive relationship. You stick around hoping that he’s changed, or that he didn’t mean it, or that if you don’t anger him again, maybe it’ll all be fine when the court hears the game-changing abortion appeal this year. . . .
It is not my job to decide if Brett Kavanaugh is guilty. It’s impossible for me to do so with incomplete information, and with no process for testing competing facts. But it’s certainly not my job to exonerate him because it’s good for his career, or for mine, or for the future of an independent judiciary. Picking up an oar to help America get over its sins without allowing for truth, apology, or reconciliation has not generally been good for the pursuit of justice. Our attempts to get over CIA torture policies or the Iraq war or anything else don’t bring us closer to truth and reconciliation. They just make it feel better—until they do not. And we have all spent far too much of the past three years trying to tell ourselves that everything is OK when it most certainly is not normal, not OK, and not worth getting over.
The Beltway gang – or the Village, as Digby's sometimes called it – generally doesn't like accountability for their own, regardless of political party. The powerful rarely learn the error of their ways unless they are held to account. And when they're not held responsible, it also sends the message to other powerful people that they can get away with misdeeds as well. Even if no one served jail time for lying the U.S. into the Iraq War or the Bush administration's torture regime, at least we still could have a truth and reconciliation commission or something similar. But even that would go way too far for Beltway insiders like Peggy Noonan, who in 2009 said in reference to the torture regime:
Some things in life need to be mysterious. Sometimes you need to just keep walking. . . . It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that.
Noonan, of course, was concerned with "good" coming to people in her social circle, of her class, not about justice for torture victims or all the other harm caused by the torture program. Nor was she concerned about ordinary U.S. citizens who might be bothered by abuses of power and might suffer the effects, later on if not immediately. She needn't have worried; no one was held accountable, and indeed no good came of it, if not the way she meant. Similarly, nothing good ultimately came of Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon. Nothing good came of George H. W. Bush pardoning Iran-Contra conspirators. (So are they all, all honourable men.) Nothing good came of barely holding anyone responsible for the financial industry's malfeasance in creating the economic crash of 2008. Likewise, nothing good will come of the current human rights abuses on the border and grotesque and flagrant abuses of power by conservatives throughout government. This is not the time for politeness or gutless pleas for civility. A true "armistice" is impossible without remembrance, investigation and accountability.
I was saddened to learn that long-time blogger skippy passed away recently. His alter ego Gil Christner was an actor and stand-up comedian, and chances are you saw him in a commercial at some point.
Gil's website is here and Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice has written a nice obituary.
skippy/Gil lived in Los Angeles, and was a friendly guy in person and online. I didn't know him terribly well, but we corresponded a bit, and he was admirably dedicated to linking other blogs. Most of his posts were written without capital letters, and he had the honor of having his blog mocked on The Daily Show by Jon Stewart. skippy and the late Jon Swift cofounded Blogroll Amnesty Day, in which participants linked and promoted small-ish blogs. That's always good karma. He also pressed corporate media outlets for accuracy and good judgment in their coverage. (He was one of the good guys in a 2008 post of mine about an Obama nonscandal that seemingly would not die, "Skippy and the Mystery of the Missing Journalism," which is a bit long but perhaps a helpful reminder of how vapid most political coverage is.)
If you'd like to honor skippy, check out his blog, read the obituary above and make sure to visit and/or link a few small blogs.
I'm afraid this is not a happy Independence Day. As several people have pointed out, we have tanks in DC and concentration camps on the nation's Southern border, both at the insistence of Donald Trump. The cruelty of the camps is the point; it's a feature, not a bug.
Most years for Independence Day, I post some videos, but this year, I thought I'd link a great poem I just discovered, "A New National Anthem," by Ada Limón. Follow the link for the full poem, but this may be my favorite section:
And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps
the truth is that every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins.
It's a great piece and timely. Check out the rest.
For me, one of the best and most hopeful American traditions is the conscientious critique: MLK, Pete Seeger, Dorothea Dix, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Frances Perkins, and countless more. (Add Ada Limón to the list.) There's always room for improvement; we can treat each other more kindly and do better as a nation.
That idea dovetails with a 2006 piece by E.J. Dionne I've featured before, "A Dissident's Holiday." My favorite bit:
...The true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I'd assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world's first flawless nation.
One need only point to the uses that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. made of the core ideas of the Declaration of Independence against slavery and racial injustice to show how the intellectual and moral traditions of the United States operate in favor of continuous reform.
There is, moreover, a distinguished national tradition in which dissident voices identify with the revolutionary aspirations of the republic's founders.
Dionne's views stand in sharp contrast with Trump's, who views Independence Day as an opportunity to play with tanks in the style of a Soviet May Day parade and invite adulation of himself. Donald Trump, like many other American conservatives, is an authoritarian. And he and his most ardent followers are cruel, gleeful bullies.
The conditions in the camps are horrible by design, because of bigotry and to maximize profits. At least the camps' grotesque reality is being increasing exposed, by visiting Democratic members of Congress, pediatricians and reporters, despite efforts to prevent the public from knowing what's really going on. We're seeing the ugliest attitudes in America, in a continuing dark tradition. But we're also seeing conscientious resistance and a push for reform. That impulse is always worth supporting and celebrating.
