Four-Movie Recap

Here in Brazil, I've been catching up on movies I'd missed back home. Rather than offering full blown reviews, I thought I'd recap and offer a few thoughts on each. In the order in which I saw them, they are:

Million Dollar Baby

By now you should all know that Baby was this year's big winner at the Oscars, netting a Best Support Actor award for Morgan Freeman, a second Best Actress award for Hillary Swank (her first was for Boys Don't Cry), a second Best Director award for Clint Eastwood (his first was for Unforgiven), and Best Picture.

Simply put, the movie deserved all of these awards. It's another Eastwood masterpiece coming on the heels of the equally critically-acclaimed Mystic River. Baby is better than River. The character development focuses on just three characters and is deeper. Eastwood's gruffness hasn't been this suited for a role since he played Gunny Highway in Heartbreak Ridge. He's quietly been carving out his niche in the pantheon of great American directors ever since his first effort, 1971's Play Misty for Me, the far superior inspiration for 1987's Fatal Attraction. Did you know that Eastwood also directed High Plains Drifter, The Eiger Sanction, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, Heartbreak Ridge, Bird and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?

I thought the Academy would be reluctant to award a second Best Actress Oscar to Hillary Swank so soon after her win for Boys Don't Cry and so early in her career, but there really was no way for them not to reward her for this role. First of all, this year was a weak field. Her only real competition came from Annette Bening in Being Julia and Kate Winslet for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both Julia and Mind are comedies (albeit with serious dramatic overtones) and the Academy doesn’t like comedies. Besides Bening and Winslet, Swank was pitted against relative unknowns Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace). These two fall squarely into the "It's-an-honor-just-to-be-nominated" category and never really had much chance at winning (although Staunton's performance in Drake is exceptional). That being said, one shouldn't attribute Swank's win solely to a weak field. Her Maggie Fitzgerald is a study in trailer-park pluck and determination and Swank carries it off effortlessly.

Freeman serves as the film's narrator and Eastwood's conscience, gently goading him into training Maggie and chiding him for his lack of belief in another fighter who has abandoned him. If this isn't Freeman's best role, the rest of his body of work cried out for an Oscar and here he is rewarded.

Much has been made of Baby's dark turn at the end (which I won't reveal here), but it is this turn which, to use a boxing analogy, gives the movie its punch.

Constantine

I was predisposed to like this movie. It wasn't because of any reviews, (I don't read them anymore) but because it's based on a comic book, specifically DC/Vertigo Comics' Hellblazer. Hellblazer isn't a marquee title like Batman or Spider-Man but has a devoted following nonetheless.

The movie stars Keanu Reeves in the title role. He is joined by Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, Confidence), Shia LaBeouf (Holes, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle), Tilda Swinton (The Beach, Orlando), Gavin Rossdale (the former lead singer of British rock band Bush, Little Black Book), Djimon Honssou (Galdiator, Amistad) and Peter Stormare (Fargo, Minority Report).

The plot is a complicated mish-mash of Catholic theology, exorcism and lore from the Book of Revelations and not worth delving into here.

Unfortunately, Reeves in his first post-Matrix role is miscast here. First of all, John Constantine is blonde. Secondly, Reeves captures all of Constantine's world-weariness but almost none of his sarcasm. Constantine's quips fall flat from his mouth.

The supporting cast were the standouts. Tilda Swinton's capacity for androgyny, used to great effect in Orlando, was just what was needed for her portrayal of the archangel Gabriel. Rossdale as the demon Balthazar is handsomely menacing and under-utilized.

I found young Shia LaBeouf most impressive as Constantine's apprentice , Charles "Chaz" Kramer. During the film's climax, when Constantine falters, young Chaz steps in to shoulder the burden and he's most impressive at it.

The Flight of the Phoenix

A few months back I posted a review of the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. In it, I was very critical of Hollywood's recent efforts at remakes. Phoenix shows that sometimes Hollywood can take a fine, older film and update it to great effect.

The original starred Jimmy Stewart as Capt. Frank Towns, a pilot for an oil company. While flying a group of roughnecks out of North Africa, their plane crashes. The crew, riven with personal conflicts, is forced to pull together in extraordinarily harsh conditions to build a new airplane out of the wreckage of the old (hence the title reference to the bird of Egyptian mythology).

In this version, Hollywood has kept the core of the story and tweaked it only slightly. Instead of crashing in the Sahara desert, they crash in the Gobi, and one of the main characters is a woman (Australian Miranda Otto, last seen upstaging Liv Tyler in The Lord of the Rings trilogy as the Shield Maiden of Rohan, Eowyn, who is Tyler's rival for the affections of Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen)).

This film features a fine ensemble cast with no big stars. Dennis Quaid takes on the role of Towns. Former male model Tyrese Gibson (Baby Boy, 2 Fast 2 Furious) is Town's co-pilot A.J. Giovanni Ribisi (Saving Private Ryan, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) reprises Hardy Kruger's role as the enigmatic and authoritarian airplane designer Elliott. Hugh Laurie (now seen in the lead on Fox's House, and best known for playing Bertie Wooster in PBS' productions of the Wodehouse novels about Wooster and the ultimate "gentleman's gentleman" Jeeves (Stephen Fry)) plays the oil company "suit". Jacob Vargas (Get Shorty, Traffic) is basically stereotype-cast as the Latino cook who longs to return to California and his lady love so they can open a taco stand (honestly) but Vargas, who is becoming an accomplished character actor gives humor and warmth to the role.

Quaid's Towns is actually a little more controlled and contained than Stewart's. Ribisi probably gives the best performance as Elliott. I like Ribisi, but he can be really hit or miss. I loved him as the soul of the squad, the medic Wade, in Saving Private Ryan, yet I hated him as he moped his way through the lead in the awful day-trading drama Boiler Room.

The Aviator

This was the other movie I was most anxious to see. Aviator was the other major contender for Oscar glory this year. Having seen it and Baby I think the Academy was right to honor Baby over Aviator.

Aviator is a hugely entertaining and well-made movie. It's a real piece of bad luck that Scorsese had to find Aviator pitted against Baby. In any other year, Aviator would likely have been the big winner.

Leonardo DiCaprio gives the performance of his young career as the brilliant but eccentric Howard Hughes. The supporting cast is impressive as well, featuring Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, Veronica Guerin) as Katherine Hepburn, the stunning Kate Beckinsale (Underworld, Van Helsing) as Ava Gardner, Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October, Dress Gray) as Pan Am chief Juan Trippe, Alan Alda (M*A*S*H, Same Time Next Year) as Maine Senator Owen Brewster, and Ian Holm (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fifth Element) as Hughes' chief meteorologist and factotum scientifica.

The movie doesn’t shy away from depicting Hughes' obsessiveness, but it offers only the barest explanation for its origins. The movie opens with a young Howard being bathed by his mother as she warns him of the dangers of disease. Now, this failure to offer compelling insight into what was a large part of the Hughes persona is hardly Scorsese's fault. We don't know, and probably never will, why Hughes was the way he was. But that doesn't stop the viewer from wanting to know the answer to this essential question.

Another question which arose in my mind, and which Scorsese makes no attempt to answer is the contradiction between Hughes' obsession over germs and his sexual appetite. It's hard to imagine a man who is so obsessed by germs bedding down so many starlets. Insight into this paradox in Hughes' character is completely lacking.

In this case, the supporting cast doesn't overshadow its lead (as in Constantine). Instead they complement him to great effect. Cate Blanchett took home this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her turn as Hepburn. Scorsese makes no effort to use Hollywood trickery to make Blanchett look like Hepburn. Instead, it's all in her speech. She channels Hepburn effectively. How do I know? Because Blanchett's Hepburn is every bit as annoying and abrasive as the real Hepburn. At least we learn that she came by it honestly in a scene in which Hughes is bullied by her family, especially Hepburn's mother, during a weekend lunch.

I hadn't known of Hughes' near fatal crash while test piloting the Air Corps' reconnaissance plane, the XF-11. When we learn the extent of Hughes' devastating injuries, it is amazing he even survived and no surprise that he became addicted to opiates later in life. He must have lived in immense pain for the rest of his days as the result of his injuries.

I am at a loss as to what Alda did to deserve his Best Supporting Actor nomination. He's not in very much of the movie and he doesn't really stand out. In the movie's climax, Brewster is completely upstaged at a Senate hearing in which he seeks to smear Hughes as a war profiteer. The hearing is an attempt to intimidate Hughes into giving up the fight for trans-Atlantic routes for his TWA, and anoint Trippe's Pan Am as the national carrier. Brewster fails miserably and is humiliated by Hughes.

What makes this episode so surprising is that Hughes' eccentricities and reclusiveness, as well as his extensive injuries as a result of his near-fatal crash, are by now well-known to Brewster and Trippe. They mistakenly believe Hughes will give in rather than face the intimidating publicity of a televised hearing. They badly underestimate him, and Hughes totally bests an unprepared Brewster.

I thought Baldwin as Juan Trippe more deserving of a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Baldwin, once one of Hollywood's biggest leading men has undergone a Kevin Bacon-esque transformation into talented character actor.

DiCaprio seems to capture Hughes' essence well. He bears a strong (if not total) resemblance to Hughes but can't quite doff the boyishness that plagued him in Gangs of New York but upon which Stephen Spielberg capitalized in Catch Me If You Can.

I said earlier that Million Dollar Baby deserved to be the big winner at this year's Oscars. It's because, while Aviator is a well-told tale of one of the towering American figures of the 20th century, it simply can't engender the emotion in the audience that Baby does.

Ok, so it's Congress that should be abolished

Thanks to my Dad for pointing out that it's Congress' fault that we can't flick our BIC on airplanes any more. Apparently the language calling for such regulations was buried deep within the intelligence reform bill passed earlier this year by Congress.

But this is the perfect segue for an idea I've been nursing for at least five years. If we can't abolish Congress, at the very least we can send them back to their districts where they belong, doing the job for which they were elected, namely representing their constituents.

Think about it: a virtual Congress. One of the biggest complaints about Congress is that they spend too much time inside the Beltway and lose touch with their constituents. I think that Rep. Smith and Sen. Jones might be more sensitive to the concerns of their constituents if they had to patronize the same businesses, worship in the same churches, send their kids to the same schools and generally interact with them more than they do now. Something tells me that there are fewer lobbyists in $1500 suits in places like Sumter, S.C., Tulsa, OK, and Puyallup, WA.

Twenty years ago such an idea would have seemed like something out of a science fiction movie. But today, with the advent of the Internet, a virtual Congress is easily within our grasp. Each representative could be linked to the others via a secure, high-speed data, voice and video network. All their business could be conducted via voice or video conference. The influence of lobbyists and special interests would be diluted since all of their targets would be dispersed across the U.S.

So, while we can't abolish Congress, we can send them packing.

Send 'em home, I say.

This is why government needs to be reduced

Folks, we've created an insatiable monster. Check out this from the Washington Times:

"A planned program in Oregon would tax drivers by the number of miles they travel instead of by the amount of gasoline they use to compensate for an expected loss of revenue caused by increasing use of more fuel-efficient vehicles. "

We need to beat back this beast before it's too late!

If they can't make it, what hope is there for the rest of us?

CNN is reporting that Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen are getting divorced after less than three years of marriage.

On the positive side, this means that Denise Richards is single.

TSA Must Be Abolished

Ok. I know I may not be the most objective person when it comes to assessing the TSA. After all, I have averaged about 150,000 miles of air travel a year these past three years.

That being said, what the heck are these guys smoking? The latest proclamation from the morons at TSA is the banning of cigarette lighters on board aircraft. I really don't have a problem with this since you can't smoke on the plane anyway. (I know, I know. What about the people who want to grab a smoke during a layover? Still, most people agree that we must give up some liberties in order to be safer and having to bum a light in a smoker's lounge doesn't seem like such a great hardship.) However, the stupidity of this regulation is that they aren't banning matches because they have no way to detect them!

Where the TSA regulations get positively Kafka-esque is in the banning of cigarette lighters in checked luggage! You read that right. Not only does TSA not trust us to carry a lighter on a plane, they also want to prevent you from putting one in your checked bag. Can someone please explain this to me? Just where is the threat in a BIC locked in my Briggs and Riley suitcase, safely tucked away in the cargo hold of the aircraft where no-one can get to them anyway? (Actually, anyone stowing away in the cargo hold of an airliner would probably need a BIC to keep them from freezing to death.)

Folks, this is exhibit 4,672 as to why the federal government should be kept out of our lives to the greatest extent possible: they just don't do most things well.

CBS Should Drug Test Dan Rather

MSNBC is reporting that Dan Rather thinks he is leaving on a "high note". I think he's on a high note all right. I think the guy is smoking crack if he thinks anyone with an IQ higher than that of a soapdish believes he is leaving on a high note.

Dan, you resorted to unethical tactics in your obsession to bring down the son of the man who made a fool out of you once during a news conference. You got busted by a bunch of pajama-clad amateurs. And you were forced out of your job as a result. Deal with it.

Now, please just go away!

Mexico to the United States: Waaaaaah!

A group of citizens from around the U.S., fed up with the federal government's willful refusal to do anything about the illegal immigrants flooding our borders, have organized a month of patrols along a 20-mile stretch of the Mexico-Arizona border (http://www.minutemanproject.com).

These modern-day Minutemen have vowed not to try and apprehend any of the illegals. Their purpose is merely to report their presence to the authorities. Obviously the Minutemen are calling the government's bluff. I mean, it's not like they can claim they don't know about the illegals reported by the Minutemen, right?

Predictably, victims' rights groups in the U.S. have denounced this move as anti-immigrant. Uh, wrong. It's anti-ILLEGAL immigrant.

However, the award for most chutzpah goes to the Mexican government itself. In a letter to the U.S government, Mexico has expressed concern that the Minutemen might violate the rights of the illegals. “Mexico doesn’t want the rights of its citizens transgressed,” says Geronimo Gutierrez of Mexico’s foreign ministry.

Here's a thought: Mexicans in the United States illegally have ONE RIGHT: to go back to Mexico and get in line like everybody else!

An Inspired Choice for the U.N.

We conservatives can gauge the quality of a nominee for any post in a Republican administration by the amount of bleating coming from the usual suspects of the left (the media, human rights groups, victims' rights groups).

By any measure then, President Bush's choice of John Bolton as the next U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is a home run. Bolton is currently the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security at the Department of State, where he has been especially critical of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il (referring to him as a "bloodsucker" and "human scum"). Bolton, a Yalie and a lawyer by training, has had a long career in public service at the Departments of State, Justice and the Agency for International Development.

Critics of his nomination are likely to focus on Bolton's public criticism of the body to which he has been nominated to represent U.S. interests. Bolton has been quoted in the past as saying it wouldn't matter much if 10 stories of the 38-story U.N. headquarters just vanished. (God, I love people that say what they think and mean what they say!) He is characterized as someone who does not believe in diplomacy for diplomacy's sake - a man after my own heart. His desk is decorated with a model of a hand grenade.

Frankly, I think it's high time that the U.S. sent a message to the U.N. that they can't continue to bite the hand that feeds them.

Go get 'em, John!

My Oscar Picks

Ok. This is my first Oscars since I started blogging. I have disagreed mightily with the Academy going back to the Forrest Gump Best Picture win of 1994. The stab in the heart that was Titanic beating L.A. Confidential in 1997. Passing up the chance to do the honorable thing and allowing themselves to be bought for Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan or Elizabeth in 1998. Passing up the chance to do something gutsy by choosing Gladiator over Traffic in 2000. The pre-selection of 2001 as "Ron Howard's year", when his above average A Beautiful Mind beat out a field of contenders each one of which was better than Howard's offering.

Everyone seems to agree that (a) no-one has seen any of these films, and (b) consequently no-one really cares who wins. It's been reported that in recent years Oscar drew its best numbers when there was a heavy favorite in the field (think Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator, The Return of the King). I'm sure by now TV execs are hoping and praying that the selection of first-time host Chris Rock will help to offset what are expected to be lackluster numbers. Rock has done his bit to generate buzz for the show by claiming to never watch awards shows and claiming that no self-respecting, straight, black male would.

That being said, here are my picks for the major categories. These picks are based on having seen almost none of these films, actors or actresses. My choices reflect my prediction on how the Academy will behave based on my intuition and knowledge of previous Oscar history.

Best Picture: The Aviator
Best Director: Martin Scorsese
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx
Best Actress: Hilary Swank
Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett
Best Animated Film of the Year: Shrek 2

We'll see how I do come Tuesday morning,

You asked for it Impish!

Dear Impish,

Thanks for stopping by again. I'm afraid I am going to have to take issue with your statement that,

"Well no need to prove whose worse among the current crop of leaders. george will win hands down with even authoratarian right wingers and fanatics "

I can list lots of leaders that are worse than President Bush. Kim Jong-Il comes to mind. As does Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. How about Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan? Or Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei of Iran? I could dredge up lots more examples of leaders with less-than-average respect for human rights and international law. Most right-thinking people would agree that all of these "leaders" represent a greater threat to their own people and to their neighbors than the United States. Your suggestion that President Bush is the worst world leader is pure hyperbole.

And as for "who I actually [am]" you might be surprised. Here are my results:

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 5.63Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.15

Now, I have been pretty open and honest in this discussion. Why don't you tell me something about yourself?

Dear Impish,

Thanks for stopping by. I'm sorry you didn't like what you found.

As for "my cup of tea", well, don't I get to decide what is and is not my cup of tea?

A fair reading of my blog would show it to be very clean. I've used "a**hole" once, hell once, and one "F" bomb. In all fairness, the "F" bomb was a quote (from Guido in Risky Business). I didn't say it, but I chose to use it for effect. So, we'll call it half an "F" bomb.

So, that's three swear words in I don't know how many words. Blogger.com has turned off the page statistics, but I used Word and came up with a word count of 14,000 something. I think you'll have to agree two and a half swear words out of 14,000 is pretty clean.

As to my charge that Chirac is an asshole (ok, three and a half), I was basing that judgement on his behavior. Now, you obviously don't like President Bush, but I challenge you to name a time where he behaved as rudely as Chirac did.

It seems kind of typical of someone on the left (as you seem to be) to make assertions instead of arguments.

Happy trails, pardner!

Can't the Left be consistent?

In something other than their hypocrisy, I mean.

I got this item from Chuck Muth's DC Confidential newsletter to which I subscribe (and to which you should, too!)

Take it away, Chuck!

"AH, THAT OL’ DOUBLE-STANDARD

Bring up the issue of illegal immigration and you’ll inevitably hear someone on the left argue that all these folks are trying to do is improve the prospects of a better life for their kids. And who can argue with that?

Um, the left.

That is, when the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. Here’s the deal.

Parents in Lexington, Nebraska, enjoy a certain level of school choice. That is, they are free to send their kids to any public school of their choice; they are not required to send them to the public school nearest their home.

Well, it seems Lexington has experienced a marked boost in the Hispanic population in recent years, primarily due to jobs at local meatpacking plants. And as a result, reports the Associated Press this week, “the in-town schools, with an enrollment of 2,500, have 804 students learning English as a second language, and 1,172 who are getting a free or reduced-price lunch. The six outlying elementary schools have about 130 students - none of them learning English as a second language and none of them living in poverty, according to the state Education Department.”

Now get this: It appears that some white families interested in improving the prospects of a better life for their kids are sending their tykes to the uncrowded outlying schools where they won’t be held back, distracted or otherwise have their education inhibited by being in classrooms with kids who can’t speak English. Go figure.

And this, as you can imagine, has the left throwing a conniption, wailing about anti-Hispanic racism and 'white flight.' So it seems that what’s good for the Hispanic goose’s children isn’t good for the white one’s. How do these people sleep with their hypocrisy?"

Not to mention, there's this item which shows such charges to be false!

Crikey, I don't understand how someone can call themselves a Democrat or a liberal and still look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. They are nothing but a bunch of holier-than-thou do-gooders who aren't that good at doing good, and who will stoop to any tactic to try and foist their beliefs on the rest of us.

The rest of us need to keep up the fight!

Jacques Chirac is an Asshole

Pardon my French. (French, get it?) I try and keep this blog clean, but every once in a while I find that le mot juste is an off-color one.

Check out this item from the British tabloid The Sun.

Rarely does one see a world leader as petty and petulant as M. Chirac. Je suis desole, mon ami, but la France just isn't a force in world events any more. Get used to it.

Sorry, Anonymous. You're WRONG!

Two days ago I posted a piece on how the NAACP came out against the President's personal retirement accounts reform of Social Security. That same day an anonymous reader left this comment:

"The point is not whether its good or bad. Private accounts defined by the Bush administration is [sic] bad. Read the details. No one inherits anything, no one but a very small group of people can gift their accounts to their heirs. Newsweek has a great article on this plan."

Well, Anonymous is wrong! Check out this document on private retirement accounts on the White Houses' website. It clearly states that personal retirement accounts can be passed on to survivors.

Now, I am shocked (shocked!) that such a reputable, non-partisan, unbiased publication like Newsweek would misrepresent the president's plan in an effort to whittle away support for it from its readers.

You know you're on the right side of an argument...

....when Thomas Sowell agrees with you! Here's an excerpt from his latest column

"People who oppose the privatization of Social Security call it "a risky scheme." But is anything more risky than turning money over to politicians and hoping that they won't spend it before you retire? They have been spending the "trust fund" for decades."

Priceless!

A technology newsletter to which I subscribe had this as their "Quote of the Week:

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand (Putt's Law)

NAACP doesn't have a firm grip on demographics

Social Security is a bad deal for blacks. Especially black men. But that didn't stop the NAACP from blasting President Bush's proposed Social Security reform.

See, blacks don't live as long as people of other races. According to the CDC, black men born in 2002 have a life expectancy of 68.8 years and black women 75.6 years. That being the case, why would the NAACP, an organization that purports to care about the "advancement of colored people" (that's part of their name, after all) want to force its membership to accept such a bad deal?

Think about it. A black, male child born in 2002 will not be able to begin collecting Social Security benefits until age 67. So, after having contributed to the Social Security pyramid scheme for more than 40 years (in most cases), the average black man born in 2002 can expect to collect Social Security benefits for a whopping 21 months! What's worse, he will not be able to leave any of his Social Security contributions to his heirs.

Why on Earth would the NAACP not support a plan that would allow citizens to invest the money, take advantage of the miracle of compound interest to provide a higher return than Social Security could ever hope to, and be able to leave whatever is left to their heirs?

American Beauty's not great

I know this is going to seem like heresy, but bear with me.

So, I'm watching American Beauty again last night and I started to cogitate on how exactly I feel about it now that the movie has aged some.

What I decided is this:

In order for me to really know how I feel about the movie, it was necessary for me to disaggregate the movie from the message.

See, American Beauty was written by Alan Ball. Ball, who is also the creator of HBO's acclaimed drama Six Feet Under, is a middle-aged gay man. As such, it comes as no surprise that he subscribes to liberal orthodoxy. So the viewer shouldn't be surprised to find that in Ball's world, middle-class families are seething cauldrons of dysfunction. That military officers are repressed homosexuals cum homophobes. That corporate executives are depraved reprobates swindling their shareholders and putting honest, hard-working employees out of work for the pettiest of reasons. That middle-aged, married men can come that close to having sex with sixteen year-olds. And that the most normal "couple" in the neighborhood are the openly gay anesthesiologist and his partner, the tax attorney.

Now, despite all this, American Beauty is an enormously enjoyable movie. Superb acting from top to bottom. Kevin Spacey won the Best Actor award and heavily-favored Annette Benning only lost to surprise winner Hilary Swank, (Boys Don't Cry). Excellent supporting cast featuring Wes Bentley, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper and Peter Gallagher. Fantastic direction from first-time director Sam Mendes, who took home the Best Director trophy. And though I may not agree with his views, Ball can flat out write. The Academy thought so, too, as he took home the Original Screenplay statue.

But, let me get back to my original point:

American Beauty, while extremely good, is not great; Conrad L. Hall is.

Conrad L. Hall had the proverbial long and illustrious career in Hollywood. He was the cinematographer for nearly 40 movies. His credits include such hits as Cool Hand Luke and Marathon Man. Hall was nominated for Best Cinematography by the Academy 10 times. He won the award three times.

His first win came for 1970's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He then won back-to-back Oscars for American Beauty and Road to Perdition. The last two were both directed by Mendes. If you haven't seen Road to Perdition and want to see a top-notch cinematographer at the top of his game, check out Perdition. Watching it you can just feel that every shot is deliberate. And beautiful.

This year's Jarhead will be Mendes' first picture without Hall. However, don't expect much of a drop-off. Jarhead will be lensed by Roger Deakins

Djibouti

I promised my most loyal reader (she knows who she is) that I would write about my present location: Djibouti.

Djibouti's not really a country.

Ok. Let me qualify that some. Djibouti is a country in the sense that it has borders and a government and its citizens have passports that say Republique de Djibouti. What I really mean is that it shouldn't be a country. You see, there are no ethnic Djiboutians (pronounced Ji-boo-shuns). The people here are a mixture of Somalis (60%), Afars (35%), Ethiopians, Arabs and French (the remaining 5%).

The former French Territory of the Afars and the Issas became the independent country of Djibouti in 1977. There really is no reason for there to be a country here, though. Djibouti has no natural resources and no arable land. The only real reason for its existence is the French military presence. According to the CIA World Fact Book, "[t]he economy is based on service activities connected with the country's strategic location and status as a free trade zone in northeast Africa".

In fact, if it weren't for the French military presence one can only assume that Djibouti with its strategic location on the Gulf of Aden would have been a prime target for Ethiopia (who has no access to a port since Eritrean independence) or Somalia (for reasons of ethnic solidarity).

The French aren't the only ones here. Sitting astride the entrance to the Red Sea as it does (only 30 miles from Yemen at the narrowest part of the Bab al Mandab), Djibouti has attracted the attention of the U.S. (all four of whose services are represented here), Italian and German militaries. That's a lot of soldiers in a country that is slightly smaller than Massachussetts.

So, what is Djibouti like? Well, in a couple of e-mails to friends and family I've written (tongue-in-cheek) that it's "like Somalia without the warlords". Actually that's not far off. Physically, it's a very arid country (the CIA World Fact book describes it as "torrid"). Here in the capital (also named Djibouti) we are at sea level which means that it is quite hot year round. I'm told that this time of year is the "cooler" time of year; I can only imagine what July and August must be like. It's also quite dusty as the city is basically a desert port.

Djibouti is a small city. You could easily walk from one end of the city to the other in half a day. Unemployment is rife (around 50%) but that's true of most places in Africa. Djibouti has very poor infrastructure with only 364 km of paved roads. In the capital at least many of the paved roads are in extremely poor condition. There are an estimated 9,500 telephones and 23,000 cellphones among a population of 466,000. Life expectancy is a scant 43 years. Infant mortality an alarming 10%. Literacy is 67%, with only 58% of women able to read and write.

It's also extraordinarily dirty. This is where I will get into the more subjective portion of my assessment of DJibouti. You see, I don't judge a country's worth by how good the food is (not very). Or whether or not they have cute shops to buy souvenirs (they don't). Or how many museums they have (none that I've seen). Or whether or not there are sights to see (there are a few, but they are all natural attractions and outside of the city). No, I judge a place by how civil the people are. And I judge how civil they are by how they treat one another, how they treat visitors to their country and how they treat where they live.

So, by my standard, Djibouti isn't a very nice place. People here seem to have the dimmest awareness that others exist, but that doesn't stop them from refusing to queue or driving like they own the road. On several occasions I had people bump into me while I was walking on the street (sure sign of obliviousness) and on two occasions I wasn't sure if vehicles were going to let me get across an intersection. (Thanks, pal!)

They still seem to regard foreigners with more curiosity than I would have expected (given that the French have been here for at least a hundred years - of course, it could just be me walking around in a brightly tie-dyed Luigi's t-shirt and my "Eric Banas"*). They seem friendly enough, often shouting out greetings to me as I walk to the embassy on the weekend. However, often as not they are trying to hawk something (watches and sunglasses most commonly) and that may explain their gregariousness.

Of course, not every one is so welcoming. Yesterday afternoon as I was walking back to the hotel a young woman (incongruously dressed in a Muslim head scarf and - I'm not making this up - an Eminem t-shirt) began to berate me. I think because I was wearing shorts. Although that doesn't make a lot of sense because part of the French Foreign Legion's uniform are very short shorts (reminiscent of the old shorts they used to wear in the NBA) and those guys are all over everywhere. She wasn't yelling at me in French, that's for sure.

As for the trash, well, look, just because you're poor doesn't mean you have to live in squalor. It doesn't mean you can't put trash in a trash can. This just shows lack of empathy and foresight and just plain laziness.

I think some of this attitude - especially the laziness - can be attributed to khat. Khat is a plant (shrub, really) whose leaves and stems contain a mild stimulant. It produces a mild euphoria when chewed. I think tht national productivity is held back by the chewing of khat. Most economic activity takes place in the mornings. Then, after about 1:00 pm, things grind to a halt and the khat chewing begins. Economic activity doesn't resume until after the sun goes down. Khat chewing is endemic. Walking down the street in the afternoons, just about every male you see has a huge bulge in his cheek from khat. And it's not only the men who chew it; the women do, too, although to a lesser extent.

Last week there was a short crisis when Ethiopia suspended its normal khat shipment to Djibouti. Apparently the Ethiopians were trying to raise the price per kilo and the Djiboutians cried foul. Luckily, the Somalis and Yemenis came to the rescue with an emergency shipment. Still, for two days there were a lot of miserable young men. The local paper reported that restaurants reported an uptick in business. Khat reduces the chewers appetite. I guess it's the reverse of the "munchies".

Well, that's Djibouti for ya. Not much to tell. I can't wait to get to Brazil!

(* - i.e., the Oakley Penny sunglasses worn by Eric Bana in Black Hawk Down a.k.a. the COOLEST SUNGLASSES IN THE WORLD!)

Yet another good reason to abolish the U.N.

Michelle Malkin has this great piece about yet another scandal at the U.N. This one isn't getting nearly the ink that "Oil-for-Food" is getting (which itself isn't getting nearly the public airing it should). That is a shame because this one is at least as disturbing as "Oil-for-Food" involving as it does the sexual exploitation of young women by U.N. "Peacekeepers".

This is the kind of organization over which Kofi Annan is presiding? The man really has no shame.

And I'll bet you haven't heard a peep about this one either, have you?

I think I'm going to be sick.

I found this on the highways and byways of the Internet.

What the hell were they thinking?

Only in New York

I found this on the Drudge Report.

You couldn't pay me enough to live in New York.

Lawrence Summers flap, Pt. 3

For those of you that are interested, you can read the entirety of Lawrence Summers' remarks at the at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce here.

For what it's worth, having read Summers' comments, I think this story is even more of a tempest in a teapot than before. Even a cursory reading of Summers' speech will show how loaded with qualifications his remarks were. In fact to the extent that Summers suggest that there are innate differences in ability between the sexes, he says so very obliquely and with huge qualifications.

Summers' remarks also raised the question, at least in my mind, so women are underrepresented in sciences and engineering. So what? As Summers himself points out, white men are underrepresented in the NBA, Catholics in investment banking and Jews in agriculture. And yet there are no efforts by society to correct these imbalances.

Disingenuous Reporting on Social Security Reform

MSNBC is carrying this item from the Washington Post under the headline "Poorest face most risk on Social Security".

This is so typical of much of the reporting done by the Post. Jim VandeHei writes, "No group of Americans would be affected more by President Bush's Social Security plan than those earning the least. Just ask 46-year-old Brent Allen."

VandeHei then goes on to describe how Mr. Allen has just been laid off from a his job at a Massachussetts paper mill and is facing the prospect of retirement with only Social Security benefits as income. We are told that Mr. Allen is a former investor. "I have had stocks, and have had them for six years, and I have lost money continually".

Well, then for sure there's no money to be made in the market. Thanks, Brent. I'm going to cash in my investments and put all that cash in my mattress. Hey, I won't be making any money, but I won't lose it either.

VandeHei then continues to mislead readers by omitting relevant facts. We are told that "nearly half the U.S. population, ...has no pension or savings to speak of" and that "more than 60 million Americans 25 to 64 years old reported incomes of less than $25,000 in 2002". What is relevant here, and what VandeHei doesn't tell us, is whether or not the half of the population with no pension or savings, or the more than 60 million Americans with incomes less than $25,000 are heads of their households.

If the answer is yes, then clearly this would be a cause for concern. If the answer is no, then we really need to examine the financial health of the heads of households. Clearly in a population this large there are going to be some heads of households who fall into this catergory. It would be informative to know how many do.

Gee, and I'm just spitballing here, could it be that Mr. VandeHei is a Democrat who is against Social Security reform (and anything else President Bush is trying to accomplish)? Could that be why he omitted relevant facts in his piece?

This is great!

The Times of London is reporting how a group of 35 Greenpeace protesters illegally entered the International Petroleum Exchange in London with the express purpose of paralyzing trading.

What they got was a HUGE surprise! Enraged petroleum traders kicked the crap out of the protesters.

Of course, now the Greenies are bitching and moaning about what thugs the traders are. Boo-hoo!

I am reminded of one of Joe Pantoliano's (Guido the Killer Pimp) lines from Risky Business, "In times of economic uncertainty, never ever fuck with another man's livelihood."

"I hate Republicans"

Thus spake new DNC chairman Howard Dean.

Dean spoke these words on February 12th at the Roosevelt hotel in New York at the final DNC forum before the election of a new chairman.

Now, when he said these words Dean added "...and everything they stand for..." So, let me ask you. In the interest of civility, couldn't Dean have said "I hate everything Republicans stand for"? Of course he could. But then he would have been lying by omission. See, I have no doubt that Dean really does hate Republicans.

The point I really want to make is this: did you read about this in the paper? did you see a news report about Dean's "controversial remarks"? Of course you didn't. The only thing even close to a major news organization that carried this story when I did a Google search of "I hate Republicans Howard Dean" was the New York Daily News.

Now, let me ask you: do you think ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN would have carried this story if George Bush or Ken Mehlman (Dean's counterpart at the RNC) had said "I hate Democrats"?

But there is no such thing as liberal bias in the media, right?

Doesn't the FBI have better things to do?

I mean, really. Al-Qaeda could be trying to launch an attack in the United States and the FBI is investigating the Boy Scouts?

Folks, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can't make this stuff up.

Let the whinging begin!

MSNBC is reporting that U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, will be the first "National Intelligence Czar".

First, let me just say that I was against this reform mainly for the reason that it is redundant. We already have a national intelligence czar. He's the Director of Central Intelligence. Contrary to what most people think, the DCI is not just the head of the CIA. The National Security Act of 1947 established the DCI as the head of the entire U.S. intelligence community, not just the CIA - a fact that even the State Department's website gets wrong (see sub-chapter 1, section 403) . Now, admittedly, it did not give the DCI budgetary authority over all the different agencies. But this could have been corrected without adding another layer of bureaucracy to an already red-tape heavy government sector.

Still, Negroponte has been selected so as the Brits would say, "Let the whinging begin!" (I love that word.) Expect groups such as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross and Human Rights Watch to vigorously oppose his nomination. Expect to hear a lot about how Negroponte has no respect for human rights due to his having been ambassador to Honduras during the early 1980s. (You might recall that the United States was trying to prevent Communist expansion into our hemisphere during that time.)

Howard Dean, Part Deux

My man Jonah Goldberg wrote a column about Howard Dean's upcoming reign as the Democratic National Committee chairman.

What was so hysterical was the anecdote at the end. I can't tell it any better than the J-man, so I'll just let him:

"Later, at another gathering, Gloria Nieto, vice chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, broke into sobs, wondering aloud whether the Democrats would remain a welcoming home for lesbians. Dean immediately 'leaped off the stage into the audience to hug her,' writes [Christianity Today's Tony] Carnes. 'With a sob of his own catching his voice, he brought the audience to standing ovation' when he declared, 'That's why I am a Democrat.'"

Folks, this is not a serious party.

Harvard Faculty to Lawrence Summers: Waaaaah!

CNN is reporting that members of the Harvard faculty confronted president Lawrence Summers over his remarks at a conference on women and minorities in the sciences. (See my previous posts on this tempest in a teapot here and here.) Apparently some even questioned whether he should remain as president of the university.

My Dad has a saying that he's fond of and that I picked up. I haven't had occasion to use in quite some time, but it's a propos here. These people are holding up their thumb to the sky and insisting the sun does not exist.

Would these same faculty members want their daughters to have to run track against the boys? Or play volleyball? Or soccer? Or basketball?

Of course not. Why not?

Because they would get clobbered.

Why?

I can't believe I even have to write this, but for the Harvard faculty out there, I'll write slowly:

Because - men - and - women - are - different.

This is a fact. You can look it up.

Now, does this mean that we shouldn't encourage women to participate in every field of human endeavour?

Absolutely. (Just kidding. I wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

Women are underrepresented in certain fields. If the education establishment decides that one of its goals is to increase their representation, don't you think they would do a better job of devising strategies for attaining that goal if they talked honestly about the problem instead of just insisting that girls are boys with boobs?

And, honestly, does anyone think that we are denying any opportunities to girls in the United States in this day and age? In Somalia? Definitely. In The United States? Definitely not.

Social Security Reform

Proponents of reforming Social Security via private retirement accounts (and I am one) often point to Chile as an example.

A think tank called The Century Foundation published this analysis of Chile's experiment with private retirement accounts. The good folks at the Century Foundation don't think partial privatization of Social Security is a good idea because the Chileans' program hasn't had the intended results.

Well, gosh, if the Chileans couldn't make it work, then I guess we can't either. Let's just keep the current, unsustainable pyramid scheme we have. I don't mind subsidizing people who already have more money than I do.

Boycott Destiny's Child

Ordinarily I could give a toss about R&B supergroup Destiny's Child. However, occasionally I am stuck at a post with limited TV options and I find myself watching something I wouldn't normally waste time on.

Here in Djibouti the local cable channel (from South Africa) plays a music video or two in between programs. The other day I watched a little bit of a Destiny's Child video. The video was called "Soldier".

Silly me, I thought the song might be a tribute to our men in uniform. What was I thinking? Of course it wasn't!

Instead the song is about how gang members get them all hot and bothered. I won't bother analyzing the song. It's typical hip-hop stuff, glamorizing a bunch of illiterate thugs with droopy pants and gold teeth, complete with a male "guest rapper" who proceeds to remind us all how tough and rich he is and how many women he has slept with. Yawn.

Personally, I don't care if Beyonce and crew want to immortalize these goons in song and video. (Hey, this is the woman who is purportedly engaged to Jay-Z, after all.) What I have a problem with is her equating these guys with soldiers. Real soldiers.

Gang-bangers are cowards and punks. How brave is it to kill someone by means of a "drive-by"?

If you, or anyone you care about, is serving in uniform, I urge you to think about this song before paying any money for a Destiny's Child CD, DVD or concert ticket.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

MSNBC had this piece about American high school students' thoughts on our First Amendment rights.

Saying the results are disturbing is like saying Bill Clinton has a wandering eye.

More than a third of respondents said that the First Amendment goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees to us. Only half of the students said that newspapers should be able to publish stories without prior government approval. Fully 17% said that citizens should not be allowed to express unpopular opinions.

Think about that for a minute.

Now, as bad as these results are (and they are really, really bad), I think the point it makes is not that our current crop of high school students are dictators-in-waiting (or mullahs-in-waiting). Rather I think it highlights the dismal performance of teachers in America.

If our high school teachers were doing such a great job, how is it American kids believe that burning the flag is illegal? Where could half of American high school students have gotten the idea that the government can ban material on the Internet that it deems indecent?

Like Wanda tells Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, "These are all mistakes. I looked them up."

All I can think is that I am glad I won't have to live long with this cohort of Americans running our society.

Republicans Get Their Dream DNC Chairman

I don't get it. Have the Democrats completely lost it?

It's like the Democrats have gotten together and discussed it among themselves and decided, "Well, we're so much smarter and more enlightened than those troglodytic Republicans that beating them in an election is just too easy. It's not fair. So let's tie one hand behind our backs. Yeah, that's what we'll do."

How else do you explain the election of Howard Dean as the DNC chairman? As if Terry McAuliffe and Bill Clinton didn't do enough to wreck the Democratic Party already.

Oh, wait. I get it. They're crazy all right.

Crazy like a bunch of abortion demanding, U.N. loving, race baiting foxes!

They're trying to lure the Republicans into a false sense of security. They're waiting for us to decide that beating them is just too easy so that we decide to tie one hand behind our back.

Either that or they are trying to use the strategy that Homer Simpson used when he was a professional boxer: let the other guy hit you until he's so tired that you can knock him out with just a tap.

Yet another sign the Apocalypse is imminent

Folks, I won't elaborate much on this one. It's so outrageous as to defy comment. Read for yourself here.

You've been warned!

Lawrence Summers flap, Pt. 2

Syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg makes an excellent point (here): why are the free speech types giving Ward Churchill a pass and not Lawrence Summers?

You don't know who Ward Churchill is? For shame! He's the chairman of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado who wrote in a speech that the people working in the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns" and deserved their horrific deaths.

Now what I find most interesting is this: by almost any measure, Churchill is a fraud. His main claim to his position as chairman of the Ethnic Studies department at CU-Boulder is that he is an American-Indian. He does not hold a Ph.D. so it's not his academic credentials. (Frankly, ethnic studies departments are about the only departments you are likely to find with tenured professors who are not Ph.Ds.) It must be his heritage.

Except that Churchill isn't an American Indian as it turns out. Others have detailed his fraudulent claims far better and more extensively than I can (check out Ann Coulter's take). What I find interesting is that so many people are willing to give this pinhead the benefit of the doubt, but not Lawrence Summers.

Now, Lawrence Summers really is a professor - in a real discipline (not some pseudo-discipline like Victims Studi - er, I mean, Ethnic Studies). He has a Ph.D from Harvard in economics. He taught economics at Harvard before entering public service in 1991 as the chief economist of the World Bank. His public service career culminated in 1999 as secretary of the treasury. Summers became president of Harvard in July 2001.

Here's another little factoid (again, credit to Goldberg) that you may not have heard. At the particular portion of the conference during which Summers made his "controversial" remarks, participants were encouraged to think unconventionally. And during the course of his speech, Summers warned his audience that he was trying to be provocative!

Good grief! MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins seems like even more of a twit now than before.

And yet you haven't heard one peep from so-called "free speech advocates" in support of Summers, have you? Of course you haven't. Because what he said does not conform to liberal dogma (i.e., white people and men especially, bad; people of color, especially women, good).

Lawrence Summers flap

Lawrence Summers is the president of Harvard. During an academic conference on minorities and women in the sciences Summers had the audacity to suggest that one of the reasons there aren't more women professors in science and engineering may be due to innate differences between the sexes.

Predictably, Summers has had to back off his comments and issue an apology after a hue and cry went up from the victimization lobby in the U.S. If you haven't heard about this controversy, you can read about it here .

What I found hysterical was the reaction of one of the female attendees. (I have to thank George Will for this observation (you can read his columns here )). Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at MIT, said that upon hearing Summers' remarks she said that if she hadn't left, she "would've either blacked out or thrown up."

So, this is the progress women have made in academia? Someone says something with which she doesn't agree and she gets a classic case of the "vapors"?

God forbid she engage Summers in a debate on the merits of his argument.

Ding Dong, Eason Jordan's Gone

MSNBC is reporting that CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan is resigning amid protests over comments he made about American military forces in Iraq (here).

During a panel discussion at the Davos World Economic Forum (where the "anointed" (read your Thomas Sowell here) gather every year to remind themselves how much smarter and more enlightened they are than we "red staters"), Jordan claimed that American military forces were deliberately targeting journalists. He claimed that the American military had killed 12 journalists. Of course, he could offer no evidence to support such a claim.

Predictably, he is now saying that his remarks were "misunderstood" and that he never meant to say what he really did say. He claims that he is resigning to prevent the controversy from "unfairly tarnishing" CNN's image.

Doing its part to quell this budding controversy, both the Davos organizers and CNN are refusing to release a videotape of the incident. Curious, since if Jordan's comments really were "misunderstood" or taken out of context, a video record would settle the matter once and for all.

It's a little late to worry about tarnishing CNN's image, Eason. You've already tarnished it plenty (and fairly, I might add). Some of you may recall that last year Jordan admitting to tailoring CNN's coverage of Iraq so as not to upset the Hussein regime and thereby risk losing access.

Also, anyone remember the 1998 Tailwind scandal? Where Peter Arnett claimed that the American military had poisoned its own troops in Laos with sarin gas.

You remember Peter Arnett, right? He was the "journalist" that MSNBC and NBC fired in April 2003 after "...the journalist told state-run Iraqi TV that the U.S.-led coalition’s initial war plan had failed and that reports from Baghdad about civilian casualties had helped antiwar protesters undermine the Bush administration’s strategy" according to an Associated Press report reprinted here.

Wonder why CNN didn't have this?

Good riddance, I say.

Quick Hitter About the EU

CNN has a piece on their website (here) about how some European astronauts are going to take a copy of the EU's constitution into space with them.

Now, if we could only put all the EU bureaucrats on that same rocket and launch them into space...

Oh, wait. CNN reports that the astronauts plan on bringing the charter back with them.

Never mind.

End the "Gentleman's Filibuster"

"Filibuster" is one of those odd words that most people are familiar with. It conjures images of the Senate chamber in the 1950s with some Senator reading from a telephone book to block a piece of Senate business.

The sad fact is that used to be a filibuster. Today we have the "gentleman's filibuster" - and it is being used to obstruct business in the Senate, particularly when it comes to judicial nominees.

Traditionally the filibuster was a measure of last resort. It is a drastic measure intended to prevent a particular piece of business from coming to the floor. It signaled one side's commitment to blocking that piece of business. The catch was that they actually had to get down on the floor and actually filibuster. Basically, it's a contest to see who will blink first.

With the "gentleman's filibuster", all a Senator has to do is signal his intent to filibuster and that blocks that particular bill (or nominee, as the case may be) from a floor vote. The problems with this rule are so axiomatic, I'm not sure I can explain it any more clearly.

Let me try: Imagine you're at an auction, and an item which you wish to purchase comes up for bid. Now, in a real auction, I would actually have to bid against you to win the right to purchase the item for an indicated price. But let's say Sotheby's rules were like the Senate's. Say when that item came up for a bid, I signaled my intent to pay 10 million dollars for it. Recognizing how serious I am about purchasing this item, you decide not to bid. And then I walk up and purchase the item for a dollar.

This is what the "gentleman's filibuster" allows Senators to do. It allows them to block legislation or nominees without going through the tiresome business of actually blocking it. I think the potential for abuse is fairly clear. It allows even one Senator to hold any piece of business hostage.

This is very un-republican (remember, the United States is not repeat not a democracy) and the practice should be abolished.

Alberto Gonzalez is a scapegoat

I read a report today that Arlen Specter is predicting confirmation for George W. Bush's Attorney General nominee, Alberto Gonzalez. If that's the case, then what exactly was the point of the political theater we witnessed last Thursday?

The confirmation hearing questioning that Gonzalez sat through bordered on farcical for anyone with even the slightest understanding of the Abu Ghraib "memogate" scandal. Here's what happened: The CIA said, Hey, we're fighting a war here, and we're apprehending some guys that don't really want to tell us what we want to know. Just how far can we go in the asking? A reasonable question, I submit. Well, who can we ask about this? Well, the President's our boss, and he's got a lawyer. Let's ask him. So, they did. Gonzalez put the question to his staff and to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Together they reviewed the United Nations' Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the congressional record on the U.S.' ratification of that treaty and the Geneva Convention. They then wrote a 50-page memo laying out the controlling legal authority (to borrow a phrase from Al Gore) in this area of the conduct of the war.

Now, I'm sorry folks, but reasonable people can disagree over whether combatants fighting under no nation's flag and not in uniform are entitled to Geneva protections. (I happen to think they are not.) What Alberto Gonzalez did was entirely appropriate. He asked the government's best lawyers, what does the law say on this matter? I can't believe I even have to write this, but that is not the same as advocating torture.

Another charge that gets thrown about is that Gonzalez' conduct in this matter created an "atmosphere" that allowed Abu Ghraib to happen.

First let me say that I don't think that what happened at Abu Ghraib was torture. Torture is pulling out people's fingernails. Torture is running electric current through the body. Torture is severe beatings. Torture is not threatening to do such things. Nor is it sleep deprivation. Nor is it forcing prisoners to assume uncomfortable positions for hours on end.

That being said, do you suppose Spc. Charles Graner or Pvt. Lynndie England spent much of their spare time reading secret government legal memos? And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't these memos leak only after the Abu Ghraib scandal made the news?

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee (Pat Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Dianne Fienstein, Charles Schumer, John Edwards, some of my favorites) were looking to score points and smear President Bush. I wonder what their reaction would have been (and the reaction in the media) if this this were a Kerry nominee being treated this way by a Republican minority?

Another Quick Hitter About The U.N.

Just for the record...

Kofi Annan was also on vacation (skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming) when the tsunami hit. In fact, he continued his vacation for three days after learning of the catastrophe.

(But you knew that, right? Surely, Dan Rather or Peter Jennings or some intrepid reporter at the New York Times told you.)

Quite literally....

....The Best Page in the Universe!

http://maddox.xmission.com

Read it. Although I must warn you that I don't read Maddox's page at work because I find myself laughing uncontrollably.

Warning contains profanity, side-splittingly funny observations about the stupidity and political correctness (but I repeat myself) permeating American society and pulls absolutely no punches! You've been warned.

"Time" Magazine

You know, for me, reading a Time or Newsweek is like reading a John Le Carre novel. Every time I finish one, I promise myself I'll never read another.

And, yet, like Charlie Brown misplacing his trust in Lucy as he tries to kick the football, here I was again this morning.

I'm posting this from the Austrian Airlines Business Lounge in Vienna. It's quite nice in here and I've quite literally got the place to myself. I've already finished the crossword in the USA Today (America's high school newspaper). There are no Herald Tribunes on the magazine rack, otherwise I'd occupy myself with the New York Times puzzle. As I was perusing the magazine selection, I spied the Person of the Year issue of Time with my hero, George W. Bush, on the cover. So, I picked it up.

I didn't even make it through the "Letters" section before getting so disgusted that I threw it down. There were two letters in particular which disgusted me. The first was from a Michael Foster of Fareham, England. This git feels that Yasser Arafat was given short shrift by Time in their Nov. 22 issue. He asks, "Isn't it somewhat disrespectful...to focus primarily on the benefit that his [death] brings to the peace process? ...shouldn't we concentrate more on what Arafat gave to the world during his life?"

And, what would that be, Mikey? Arafat is directly and indirectly responsible for the murder of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis. He helped popularize suicide bombings which are doubly despicable because they incite Arab teens and young adults to murder innocent civilians. Arafat was also a thief on a grand scale. He swindled his own people out of billions of dollars in monies intended for their benefit. Finally, he repressed and terrorized the Palestinians, and precluded any chance at a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is one of the supreme ironies that this murdering, stealing thug died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his wife and various sycophants at age 75 when he ruined and shortened the lives of so many others. It seems Mr. Foster is upset that none of Arafat's "contributions" were mentioned in the piece about which he was belly-aching. Sounds to me like Time was following the old adage that if you can't say anything nice...

The next letter was from a Deborah Mathijsen in Ghent, Belgium. She questions whether the Palestinians are even a threat to Israel and the need for Israel to build a security wall. She then goes on to establish her euro-credentials by...

(wait for it)

...blaming America! That's right. She writes that she is "...disappointed that Americans don't seem to care about the world outside [our] borders".

Pardon my French, but this really chaps my ass! Where to start? Ok, let's start with the glaringly obvious. Like how Belgium might today be called West Rhineland if it weren't for the United States? How about the several hundred million people who now live under fledgling representative governments because of the American-led (and funded) NATO which opposed Soviet expansionism during the Cold War?

If Americans care so little about the outside world, how is it we are the only country (ably backed by the Brits and Aussies) willing to do something outside our own borders to try and help people? This is what really burns me up about the criticism of America for the War of Iraqi Liberation. The fact that the leading international bodies of the political Left (the American Democratic Party, the European Union, and the United Nations) almost unanimously characterized the Hussein regime as evil and a threat - as long as it didn't mean actually doing anything about it!

Now as bad as the above sentiments are, I think the fact that Time even printed these letters says as much about Time as it does about the letters' respective authors. If I had submitted a letter praising America's actions in either arena, do you think it would have seen the light of day in the pages of Time?

As Merlin tells young King Arthur in John Boorman's Excalibur, "Never again!"

Movie Review: "The Manchurian Candidate"

Movie Review: The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Warning: This review contains spoilers!

One of the nice things about traveling so much is that I often have a chance to see a movie that I missed in the theaters back home. Tonight, in Sofia, was such a night. I saw the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. I wanted to see this movie since the original was so good. That should have been my first clue to avoid it. In the last 20 years, when has Hollywood remade a classic and done it justice? (Think Gus Van Sant's Psycho or Jodie Foster's Anna and the King.)

I have a bit of history with Candidate '04. It has been playing on United Airlines (which along with Sheraton is one of my homes away from home) for several months, but every time it looked like I was going to see it, something would happen to make me miss it. The last time was coming home from Melbourne in August. As I was settling in in first class, I looked at the in-flight entertainment magazine and was pleased to see that Candidate '04 was playing. After take-off, the purser announced the start of the in-flight entertainment program. As he announced the movies that were being shown, he mentioned that there would be a slight change. Instead of Candidate '04 this flight would be showing the execrable Around The World In Eighty Days with Jackie Chan (another horror show). Foiled again. Curse you, Red Baron!

So, how was it? In a word, disappointing. Despite a talented cast featuring Denzel Washington (Philadelphia, Training Day), Liev Schreiber (The Sum Of All Fears, RKO 281), and Meryl Streep (Sophie's Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer) and Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia), the movie doesn't stand up to the original.

Both movies reflect the political climates of their times. The 1962 original, directed by John Frankenheimer (Birdman of Alcatraz, Seven Days in May), is set in the 1950s after the Korean War during the height of the "red scare" and McCarthyism. It draws heavily on the theme of anti-Communist paranoia. Likewise, the 2004 version uses the current War on Terror as its political backdrop. An astute choice by Demme, although a political thriller set in the present day could hardly ignore it.

In the original, Frank Sinatra (From Here to Eternity, The Man with the Golden Arm) plays Cpt. Bennett Marco. (I'm a little hazy on the details of the original, so forgive me if I get some of this wrong.) Marco suspects that he and his Korean War Army unit have been brainwashed by the Chinese (hence the title reference to Manchuria). He begins to suspect that his friend, Raymond Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey (Butterfield 8, The Alamo), in probably the performance of his career, has been programmed to carry out a political assassination.

Of course, it is up to Marco to stop Shaw by deprogramming his friend (in the memorable red queen scene). Pitted against Marco is Mrs. Iselin, Raymond's mother. In the original, Shaw's manipulating, ubёr-ambitious mother is played by Angela Lansbury (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Mirror Crack'd) in a tour-de-force, clearly the movie's best performance. In fact, Lansbury was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (losing to The Miracle Worker's Patty Duke).

In the 2004 version, Denzel Washington plays Ben Marco and Liev Schreiber plays Raymond Shaw. In the movie's opening scene, we see Marco, Shaw and their squad in Kuwait in 1991. Their squad is assigned a reconnaissance mission, but are ambushed on their return to base. As Marco is engaging the enemy with his HMMWV's (a.k.a. Hum-vee) M-60, he is knocked unconscious. Shaw takes over, saves the day and is awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits.

Cut to the present day. In the near future depicted in Candidate '04, America is still involved in the War on Terror with no end in sight. Throughout the film, we hear and see news reports of the progress, or lack thereof, in this drawn out conflict (think quagmire, although the word is never used). We hear about U.S. getting involved in the "Indonesian Incursion". Later we hear about a U.S. air strike against chemical weapons facilities in the West African nation of Guinea. This last caused me to sputter in disbelief.

We learn that Shaw, now a congressman from New York, has been nominated as his party's vice presidential candidate. (In one of the movie's few original twists, we never learn which party. Although perhaps this was the case in the original. I can't recall. If so, then disregard my previous comment.) Next we catch up with Marco as he is giving a speech to a group of Boy Scouts. After the speech, he is approached by a soldier from his squad who tips him off that everything that happened that night may not have been as it seemed. Marco professes ignorance, but in the next scene we learn that he has his own doubts about the events of that fateful night.

As the plot unfolds, we learn that Marco and his unit were in fact the victims of high-tech brainwashing by an unscrupulous South African scientist. (White South Africans, with their apartheid past, being one of Hollywood's acceptable "bad guy" groups, along with skinheads, Russian ultranationalists, Colombian drug lords and - up until 9/11 at least - Arab terrorists. Now that Islam has been proclaimed a "religion of peace" - oxymoron that - this will undoubtedly change.) This scientist is doing the dirty work of "private equity giant" Manchurian Global (a bit of a stretch to justify the movie's title - I guess calling the film The Halliburton Candidate would have been too Michael Moore-ish). Manchurian Global is a corporation whose business is the training of private armies, the winning of no-compete government contracts (in a thinly-disguised dig at Halliburton) and controversial genetic research.

Now, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Hollywood feels obligated to make some changes when doing a remake, perhaps to differentiate it from the original . (Although the results when the filmmaker remains true to the original can still be disastrous, e.g. Van Sant's Psycho.) Candidate '04 is no exception.

In the original, Shaw isn't the candidate. Rather it is his stepfather who is the candidate, thanks to Lansbury's manipulations. Shaw is programmed to assassinate the president-elect thereby elevating his step-father to the presidency where presumably he will be the puppet of Shaw's mother and the Communist Chinese. In this version, though, it is Shaw who is the candidate and Marco who is programmed to assassinate the president-elect making Shaw the new president (bought and paid for by Manchurian Global).

Perhaps if I hadn't seen the original I might have enjoyed this movie more. Most of the cast gave solid performances. Washington as Marco easily equals the acting done by Sinatra (not that hard to do since Ole Blue Eyes wasn't that great an actor). Schreiber gave what I thought was the film's strongest performance as Raymond Shaw. (The same would have been true of Laurence Harvey's portrayal of Raymond Shaw in the original had Angela Lansbury not decided to set fire to the screen.) Schreiber made me feel Raymond's anguish over wanting to be a good son, all the while seeing and knowing what a manipulative monster he has for a mother. I really felt Raymond's fatalistic acceptance of his inability to stand up to Eleanor. Perhaps I'm biased since I really enjoy Schreiber's work (especially RKO281 - which if you haven't seen, you should).

Prior to seeing Candidate '04 I had read a review praising Streep's performance. I didn't see it. For starters, she doesn't appear in enough of the film to really be seen as the standout. Secondly, in this version, Eleanor Shaw is a senator herself, and not the behind-the-scenes kingmaker of the original. Lastly, the filmmakers gave a disturbing incestuous twist to the mother-son relationship. This last touch was superfluous and completely creepy. Surely this last was not Streep's fault. However it made me dislike the character all the more while at the same time making me lose any of the begrudging respect I felt towards Lansbury's Mrs. Iselin. In the original, you certainly don't like Raymond's mother but you are forced to respect her political skills - especially given that she is forced to play a man's game with the handicap of remaining behind the scenes. (And, again, I could be displaying my bias since I am decidedly not a Meryl Streep fan.)

There were several other interesting casting choices. The one I enjoyed most was Robyn Hitchcock as the shadowy private contractor Laurence Tokar. (Tokar is the one who delivers Marco and his unit to the brainwashers of Manchurian Global.) Just who is Robyn Hitchcock, you ask? Well, back in the '80s he and his band, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, were part of the British "alternative rock" scene. (Think MTV's 120 Minutes.)

Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home) takes on one of the larger supporting roles as a senator whose spot as the vice presidential candidate on his party's ticket is usurped by Shaw. Another familiar face was Dean Stockwell (Kim, Blue Velvet, Dune), disappointingly underutilized here as one of the corporate directors of Manchurian Global. Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs, Heat), and Miguel Ferrer (Robocop, Traffic) also appear as Marco's Army superiors. Both are more than capable actors, and like Stockwell, are underutilized here. I also recognized Bruno Ganz playing a scientist friend of Marco's who helps him to unravel part of the mystery. Ganz is a well-known German actor, probably best known for Wim Wenders' masterpiece Wings of Desire.

Lastly, Al Franken was fairly prominently featured as a TV political commentator. To be blunt, I hate Al Franken. I never thought he was funny when he was on Saturday Night Live, and I positively loathe him now that he has taken on the role of gadfly of the political Left. I guess he had to find another line of work since he is so unfunny. I'm sure my Bulgarian theater-mates were puzzled as to why this gringo in their midst kept giving the finger to the screen at odd intervals. I couldn't help it. It's almost a reflex at this point.

My advice? Rent the original.

A Quick Word About the U.N.

Want some insight into the United Nations? Well, they lowered their flags to half mast when Yassir Arafat died - but not when Ronald Reagan died.

As the inimitable Stan Lee says, "'Nuff said!"

Movie Review: "National Treasure"

As those of you who know me can attest, I am a HUGE movie fan. So, I thought I would start posting reviews of movies I've seen lately. Starting last year, I stopped reading critics' reviews. I wondered if they didn't predispose me to like or dislike a movie. Plus I figured that I am at least as capable of forming an opinion as to the worth (or lack thereof) of a given movie and then articulating that opinion.

This holiday weekend I saw National Treasure starring Nicholas Cage (The Rock, Con-Air), Diane Kruger (Troy), Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Patriot Games), Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music), Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home) and directed by Jon Turtletaub (While You Were Sleeping).

I'll be the first to admit that my expectations for this movie were very low. From watching the trailers, I assumed this was another big budget Hollywood monstrosity, long on effects and short on dialogue. I am happy to say I was pleasantly surprised.

While the movie is an action flick, it doesn't commit the two cardinal sins of action movies. First, it doesn't try to wring suspense out of each and every frame. For awhile in the 1990s it seemed as if Hollywood had adopted a philosophy that if one or two cliffhangers were good in a movie, then why not 17? Examples of this phenomenon are the Cage vehicle Con-Air, and Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One. It seemed as if Hollywood had collectively forgotten that in order to create suspense, you need to give the audience a breather. So, I was relieved that while, yes, there are suspenseful moments, there aren't too many of them.

Second, Treasure doesn't rely on special effects at the expense of a solid script and a decent story. Cage plays treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates. As a boy, Ben is told by his grandfather (Plummer) of a mythical treasure. Grandpa Gates enthralls young Ben with a story of King Solomon's gold, discovered by crusading knights in the Middle Ages. The treasure consists not only of priceless gems, jewels and objets d'art, but scrolls and volumes from the lost Library of Alexandria.

The knights decide that the treasure is too valuable for any one man to possess. So they form the order of the Knights Templar to guard it. Later (presumably to escape upheaval in Europe), the treasure is transported to the colonies where it comes under the protection of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The last of the guardians dies before he can pass on the one remaining clue as to the treasure's whereabouts to President Andrew Jackson. With his last breath, he passes on the clue to his coachman - Gates' ancestor. The men of the Gates family have spent the intervening years in a fruitless search for the horde. I won't summarize the rest of the movie since I don't want to give anything away. Suffice to say most of the movie is Gates deciphering the clues and searching for the treasure, one step ahead of bad guy Ian Howe (Bean), Gates' former patron and partner in his quest.

Along the way, Gates is joined by Dr. Abigail Chase (Kruger), a curator from the National Archives. Chase also doubles as Gates' love interest. I was glad that the romantic subplot didn't overshadow the main narrative. Also assisting Gates is his research assistant, Riley Poole (Justin Bartha). Poole is a wise-cracking slacker cum computer genius. Normally, I'm not that fond of these kind of archetypes, but Bartha gave an enjoyable performance. Judging from the reaction of the audience, I think most of us agreed. His lines drew the most laughs.

Again, I don't want to give too much away. For what it's worth, I found the movie to be just the right mix of action, humor, mystery, romance and suspense.

Let me know what you think!

Long time, no blog.

Wow. It's been over a month since I posted anything. And that period encompasses the election!

Well, since last we blogged, I returned home from Melbourne, Australia. I went down to Recife, Brasil, for my birthday (October 13) to hang out with my girl, Ana. Previously, I would have described her as my fiancee. Truth be told, I don't think it's going to happen. She is very young and reluctant to move. She has so far been unwilling to discuss custody of her son with either her son's father or a lawyer. So we're in limbo, for now.

I returned to the US on October 14. I spent the following week working downtown at the CA Support Desk. The Support Desk is the help desk that people from consular sections all over the world call for technical help. People like me take turns taking shifts downtown to share our experience from the field with the guys that work the desk. After that I took off for Mozambique.

I left for Maputo on November 1 and flew to Frankfurt, had a long layover, flew to Johannesburg, had a short layover and arrived in Maputo on the afternoon on November 3rd. I caught some of CNN's early morning election coverage in the Baobab Lounge in the Johannesburg airport. It was around mid-morning, so it would have been after 3:00 am in the studio. At that point, it was still close, still undecided but things were looking good for Bush. I had missed all the early exit poll drama! By the time I got to work Thursday morning, Kerry had conceded and all was right in the world. Pheww!

Maputo was all right. Definitely in the "better-than-I-would-have-thought" category. We stayed at an old, colonial hotel, the Polana. It looks out over the Indian Ocean (the Mozambique Channel, as the stretch between the coast and Madagascar is known) and is quite nice. The weather this time of year is quite warm. The hotel had a gym and tennis courts, so one of my colleagues and I hit some balls.

Our first (and only) weekend we went on an outing to Kruger Park, South Africa. Kruger is very large and pretty famous. (I always think of Marlon Perkins and "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" when I think of it.) We spent most of Saturday driving around the park. We were lucky and saw the Big Five (lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, water buffalo) that first day. We stayed at a nice lodge right at the gates of the park. We were up early the next morning for a game drive. After breakfast, we headed back to Maputo.

We worked all that week and then flew out Saturday afternoon, arriving back in Washington on Sunday afternoon. I'll be posting pictures from Kruger on Ofoto later. My next trip is to Sofia, Bulgaria on Dec. 7th.

The Debate

The media has once again displayed its bias, declaring John Kerry the winner of the first debate. I just don’t see it. Of course, since I am in Australia, I didn’t get to watch the debate. Instead, I read the transcript. Maybe you had to see it. Maybe Kerry’s hair looked particularly presidential.

Oh, sure. Kerry says nice sounding things. He claims to have a plan for everything. While Kerry has plans, Bush can point to achievements. 50 million people freed from despotism with at least a chance at freedom. The Taliban has been deposed. The Hussein regime destroyed. Libya chastened.

I still find Kerry’s charge of “unilateralism” and "going it alone" infuriatingly arrogant. What about Britain, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Korea, et al.? Don’t they exist? Don’t their contributions mean anything? And yet, in that famously consistent way of his, Kerry favors unilateral action towards North Korea. Well, which is it, Senator? Are you a unilateralist or a multilateralist?

When John Kerry talks of unilateralism, he is basically talking about France and the UN. Can’t John Kerry understand that France is not our ally? France actually withdrew from NATO in the 1966, cynically so, since they still enjoyed the protection of US and German troops from the main threat of the Soviet Union. Recall also how our “allies”, the French, denied our warplanes the right to fly over their air space during the raid on Libya in 1986.

They don’t have our best wishes at heart. For more than 40 years, France has dedicated itself to engaging itself in the Middle East. What has been the result? Has there been an decrease in terrorism, either against Israel or other Western nations? Well, yes, in one country. France. Has there been less war? No. Instead there have been three wars between Arab countries and Israel, a war between Iran and Iraq and an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Basically, France’s track record in the Middle East has resulted in increased sales of French arms and contracts for French oil companies.

There would be nothing wrong with this – if we were in France. But, we’re not in France.

Look at France’s track record in Algeria or French Indo-China (a.k.a. Vietnam). They lost Vietnam and Algeria in two bloody insurgencies. Unlike the US, which lost Vietnam in the media and on the streets of the US, France lost Vietnam militarily, in Vietnam.

The UN? Where to start? First off, let’s dismiss this notion that the UN is somehow legitimate. The UN is a collection of governments. It doesn’t represent people. I think UN endorsement of a policy might mean something if that endorsement didn’t mean approval by such regimes as Cuba, Sudan, Vietnam, Libya, China, or North Korea. Does Senator Kerry seriously suggest that we supplant our own government’s judgment with the UN’s, when the UN is composed of mostly unrepresentative, often brutally oppressive, governments?

Then there is the UN’s track record – or rather lack thereof. I defy anyone to point to a single instance where the UN has successfully intervened to avoid or contain an international crisis. If there is one, I’m missing it.

Let’s not forget, the UN fiddled while Rwanda burned. And before the angry e-mails start, I know the US played a role in not intervening – but let’s not forget who was president then. It was the same guy who had only recently turned tail in Somalia.

Let’s consider the UN’s weapons inspection regime in Iraq. What a rousing success that was, huh? The UN had twelve years to try and disarm Saddam Hussein. Instead Saddam Hussein played Hans Blix and UNSCOM like a tourist at a game of three-card monty. During that time, Hussein’s regime assembled an apparatus of 20,000 people whose sole purpose was to obstruct the work being done by the weapons inspectors. Hardly the behavior of someone with nothing to hide.

The UN refused to act in the Balkans in the face of ethnic cleansing. Oddly enough, though, our European “allies” didn’t have a problem when we (I know it was NATO, but NATO is a shell without the US military) went to war in Bosnia. How’s that for consistency? The UN is also the same body that is, at this very moment, dithering while millions face death at the hands of (surprise, surprise) Muslim fanatics in Sudan.

My own view is that, given the UN’s lack of effectiveness, we ought to start them on a smaller project. Let’s let the UN prove they can re-build a nation and install representative government in Haiti.

Lastly, let me leave you with three words on the UN: Oil. For. Food. Anyone still feel like letting the UN take control in Iraq?

Kerry is so disingenuous and wrong, I don’t know if I could possibly cover all the examples. Still, I’ll try:

Before I get to all the ways in which Kerry is wrong, let me make this overarching statement. Every time Kerry says he has a “plan” for something, he never discusses the specifics of his so-called plans. So, bear that in mind every time Kerry talks about a “plan”. These aren’t plans. They’re wishes.

He says he has a plan to bring together the leaders of the Middle East. To what end? So they can pay lip service to democratic ideals and then go home to their own countries? Countries without a free press. No representative governments. No respect for freedom of religion or for the rights of minorities or women. What makes him think that getting Bashar Assad’s or Hosni Mubarak’s signature on a piece of paper will change anything?

During the debate, he said he has a “better plan for homeland security”. He then went on to say, “I have a better plan to be able to fight the war on terror by strengthening our military…” This is rich. John Kerry has compiled an abysmal record on defense in the Senate by voting against nearly every major weapons system of the last twenty years. I won’t try to list them all. It’s a long list. Plus, Zell Miller already did a masterful job of illuminating this glaring weakness of Kerry’s.

Kerry said that we had contained Saddam Hussein. Sure, contained him in one of his hundreds of palaces. I prefer George Bush’s idea of containing Saddam Hussein – in a cell.

Kerry claims that Bush “pushed our allies aside”. Wrong. Our allies abandoned us. We would have been glad of their support. They hypocritically refused to give it.

Kerry said, “Iraq is not even the center or the focus of the war on terror. The center is Afghanistan.” Wrong. Afghanistan used to be the center of the war on terror. Now the center of that war is Pakistan, a US ally that is working with the Bush administration to end this threat.

Kerry says that George Bush stripped Afghanistan of troops for the campaign in Iraq. Wrong. In fact, there are more troops in Afghanistan now than when the war in Iraq started.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. In the end, I am baffled that such an undistinguished politician could secure his party’s nomination for president. During the debate, Kerry didn’t tout even one accomplishment of his in the Senate. (Of course, he never misses a chance to mention his experience in Vietnam, and this was no exception.) Thank goodness that all the polls show Bush leading Kerry by anywhere from 3 to 16 per cent.

Personally, I can’t wait to watch Vice President Cheney clean John Edwards’ clock.

Reject Reality TV

It’s tempting all right. But, like most things in life, doing the right thing is hard. It’s like walking down the aisle in the supermarket with the ice cream case and not putting anything in your basket.

I’m not saying you should only watch The Learning Channel or PBS. I said you shouldn’t put any ice cream in the basket. I didn’t say you had to eat brussel sprouts.

I make a concerted effort to not watch any reality TV shows. And, while I strive to keep a humorous tone, I’m serious about encouraging you to do the same. There are three reasons why I don’t watch reality TV shows.

1. Hello! IT’S NOT REAL! The term reality TV to denote this new breed of shows is a gross misnomer. First, while the outcome of a particular show may not be pre-ordained, don’t kid yourself that these shows aren’t heavily scripted. You can be sure that the producers of the shows are working furiously to tweak the dials to produce the highest ratings. To do this, they will often manipulate contestants, pitting them against one another. Hardly reality.
2. The contestants aren’t real either. Most of daydream or fantasize about being a celebrity. However, most of us don’t dedicate ourselves to attaining celebrity. The same cannot be said of the average reality TV show contestant. For the most part, these people are supreme narcissists. Think about it. Are you so conceited so as to think that millions of people would be interested in the details, intimate, mundane or otherwise, of your life? Do you think that the average person is interested in your every feeling and opinion? (And, yes, I realize the hypocrisy inherent in making such an argument on a blog.) Worse, contestants are selected because they fit a demographic pigeon hole. The best example of this is the gay contestant. It all started with Pedro on “The Real World”. (In addition to being gay, Pedro also suffered from AIDS. Bonus! Two birds with one stone.) This trend really took off with the rise of “Survivor’s” Richard Hatch. (Mercifully, his descent back into obscurity was equally swift.) Now, the “gay one” is a reality TV staple.
3. It’s bad for you. I say this in all seriousness. This was the kicker for me. I found that when I tuned in to these shows, I would end up disgusted by most, if not all, of the contestants. In some cases, I would end up literally yelling at my TV set. (Ok, I do the same thing with Eleanor Clift on “The McLaughlin Group. But I digress…) Sure, sure, some people tune in to “Big Brother” or “American Idol” to cheer on a particular contestant. But, I believe that most viewers tune in to see who gets “voted off”. There is a German word for this: schadenfreude. It means secret pleasure at the misfortune of others. This is malicious spite, pure and simple. And it’s not healthy.

Worse, the popularity of these shows has begun to snowball. Reality TV shows, as a rule, have much lower production costs. Instead of paying a cast of actors, producers only have to pay one contestant. And since the shows have no scripts, the producers don’t need to hire writers. The lack of professional writers and scripts, combined with the average contestant’s intellect (or lack thereof), translates into an appalling lack of intelligent discourse. Put simply, these are dumb shows.

However, their increasing popularity means that the networks can charge more for advertising blocks. Lower costs + higher revenues = more money for the networks. You’re just encouraging them, folks.

I know it seems that most networks’ lineup consists of either reality TV shows or gory cop dramas. But there are good shows out there. HBO is consistently responsible for excellent series and mini-series (“The Sopranos”, “Six Feet Under”, “From the Earth to the Moon", “Band of Brothers”). Tune in to A&E or BBC America. A&E turns out high-quality productions, many of which have a literary basis.

Speaking of a literary basis, try reading a book. Catch up on your correspondence. Start a blog. Get some exercise. Whatever you do, just please don’t feed the contestant’s egos or line the network’s and producer’s pockets.

Just say no to reality TV!