Hollywood conservatives ...3:43 pm
Not long ago I did a short post, linking to an article in the Washington Times, about a kind of developing movement among conservatives in Hollywood. I titled the post “Hollywood conservatives meet secretly; plot non-America-hating ventures” and I suppose my tone was one of wry and fatalistic amusement. I’ve been thinking I should apologize for that. These are, after all, the good guys, and they deserve more than dismissive sarcasm. It’s just that I found it so very hard to imagine them getting anywhere in the Babylon of left/liberal fantasy that seems to be Hollywood today.
In the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes provides a report on one very real new venture in a piece called “Hollywood Takes on the Left”.
[David] Zucker’s latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo.
[...]
Jon Voight plays George Washington. Dennis Hopper makes an appearance as a judge who defends his courthouse by gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten Commandments. James Woods plays [leftist filmmaker] Michael Malone’s agent. And Kelsey Grammer plays General George S. Patton, Malone’s guide to American history and the mouthpiece of the film’s writers.
I chatted with Grammer on the set at Warner Brothers studios. “I’m glad some of the bigger guys jumped in–Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, James Woods.”
Grammer has been out as a conservative for several years and has publicly mused about running for office. His name comes up periodically when California Republicans are brainstorming about candidates to take on Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein for their Senate seats. It’s not hard to see why. He is passionate about the issues that matter most to conservatives and extraordinarily articulate.
“The accepted way to speak about America is in the voice that disrespects it. And the voice that’s unacceptable is the one that loves America,” he says, wearing the uniform of an Army general and sipping from a bottle of pomegranate juice. “How did we get here?”
Over the course of two hours, we are joined by several others working on the movie and talk about everything from taxes–”the rich in this country are being criminalized”–to Iraq. “Petraeus has to couch every bit of optimism in some convoluted formulation to avoid the promised rush of disrespect,” Grammer says.
Eventually, the conversation turns from policy to punditry. Grammer, who is friends with Ann Coulter, says he quoted her once to some of the young people who work for him.
“‘Ann Coulter,’” he says, recalling their horror and assuming their voice. “‘She’s the antichrist.’ And I said: ‘What the f– do you know about the antichrist? You don’t even believe in Christ.’”
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Monday, August 11, 2008
Hallelujah ...10:24 pm
It’s a little discombobulating , but you owe it to yourself. Leonard Cohen, just about two months ago, in Dublin, Ireland, singing Hallelujah. On YouTube or play below.
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
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Obama’s Visions Of Sin ...9:52 pm
The title above is relevant to a short and very funny post by Keith Pavlischek at the First Things blog — check it out.
There’s also a link there to the source material in an interview given by Barack Obama to a then-reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times. The interview took place in 2004 — while Obama was running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, and is on the subject of religious faith. It’s pretty fascinating. Quite unguarded, although not, I think, totally unguarded. But I can’t imagine him giving anything resembling this interview today. Which is a shame, really.
…
Richard responds graciously to my post “Where has the old Barack Obama gone?”:
Well, I didn’t support any or the D’s, by name, 6 months ago, but now that we have Obama, I am in his corner. Now what about this flip-flopping? I think the word “significantly,” is the key. O. has not “significantly” changed his mind on Iraq. He’s actually done what McCain challenged him to do, and gone over and talked to the generals. He’s still in favor of ending the war, he’s willing to juggle the timetable. Am I missing something? Off shore drilling - significant? I don’t think so. Willing to compromise - sounds that way to me. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Compromise is the name of the game. Get a decent energy bill, even if you have to go for something you’d rather not.
I’ll give you campaign financing. Tsk, tsk on that one. Gun control and the death penalty pretty much got by me, but as I recall the gun control bit was more nuanced than a “significant” flip flop. Rev Wright - none too soon, and nothing wrong with a politician coming to his senses.
So, I stick with Obama because the other choice is McCain. McCain probably never had a chance with me, but when he embraced GW, even after the GW machine savaged his family, he lost my respect. I could have not voted for McCain and still respected him, so that’s a shame.
But, let’s face it, neither of them is pure, and anyone who thinks either might be just woke up in a cabbage patch.
Well, I’m in total agreement on the last point.
We would have to disagree on other things, including the extent to which Obama has, well, recalibrated his positions on issues. My post was really addressed (rhetorically) not to someone in Richard’s position but to those who’ve fervently followed Obama from the very start — wondering at how they can feel like they are really supporting the same candidate, substantively speaking, now that he’s adjusted, and continues to adjust, for the general election. (And then there’s someone like Joan Baez. Who exactly does she think she’s supporting?)
To take just the Iraq issue: he’s now willing indeed to juggle the timetable and consider conditions on the ground, but it was my impression that many people voted for him in the primaries and caucuses precisely because they thought he was most likely to take the troops out no matter what. It is definitely laudable that he appears willing to make some concessions to reality. Should he become president, that will prove a useful trait.
However, I’m not hitting him with the label of “flip-flopper” as if that’s the deal-breaker. It’s the particular and disingenuous kind of way in which he’s advanced from one position to another that I don’t like. It seems to demonstrate a capacity or a willingness to finesse just about anything.
But the thing that inspired the “Where has the old Barack Obama gone?” post was, more than anything else, Obama’s evolution from someone who promised a new politics and a different kind of campaign to someone who now insists on following the the same old ingrained rigmarole of choreographed conventions, super-slick ad campaigns, and a few carefully planned and rehearsed TV debates in the fall. As someone who was (frankly speaking) never going to support Obama, or any other conceivable Democrat nominee, in the 2008 election, I still harbored some benign feelings towards him because (1) he seemed to be succeeding in ending the stifling reign of the Clintonistas in the Democratic party and (2) he seemed to promise a more civil and candid kind of approach to political debate. I think that Obama’s rejection of McCain’s idea of multiple town hall debates leading up to the conventions (after having indicated as recently as May that he liked the idea) just puts paid to the possibility of having a different kind of campaign in 2008. Obama doesn’t like how the McCain team has mocked him as a celebrity, but he’s quite deliberately passed on his best chance to prove his substance and to truly let America get to know him — as opposed to having a war of images and sound-bites. Which is what we’re going to have.
As for McCain — obviously I’m supporting him, despite reservations which have been brooded over often enough before. Of-course my reservations have nothing to do with his having embraced Dubya, but more to do with times during which he’s opposed him (tax cuts, ANWR, campaign finance “reform”, etc.).
Well, the campaign will continue, and chances are that the republic will survive whatever happens in this election.
There are those on my side of things who think that — with Obama failing to take an expected strong lead at this stage, and with the mocking “celebrity” label appearing to have traction against him — this election is looking almost sewn-up for McCain. I don’t think so. I think it should be clear to the Obama team that they’re not going to win by floating along on “change” and “hope” and whatnot, like they did in the Democrat primaries (those that they won, at least). In fact, some of the very stuff that led to Obama’s success in the past now appears to have deteriorated in the popular perception to the level of laugh-lines. The Obama campaign must realize that McCain is trying to make this a referendum on Obama, and in particular on his lack of experience and substance. Their next move, if they have any political sense, will be to attempt to turn the tables and make it a referendum on McCain, and in particular on his age and temperament. That’s not nice, but I think it’s reality. And I think that there are many out there in the mainstream media who are willing to do some of the work on that score.
So, it’s looking to me like the only way in which this election is going to be different to any others in recent memory is the degree to which it is going to get really, really nasty.
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Sunday, August 10, 2008
Just walkin’ ...3:49 pm
If one happened by church this morning one may have heard the passage from the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, where Jesus walks upon the sea and saves his apostles in a storm-tossed boat.
Making an effort to think of a Dylan reference to this, what came to my head was not a song, but a scene from that funny and interesting little movie from 2003, “Masked and Anonymous.”
It’s a scene where Uncle Sweetheart (played by John Goodman) and Nina Veronica (played by Jessica Lange) are discussing the troubled upcoming benefit concert, and how unhappy the people running the TV network are that the only star they’ve procured to headline the show is Jack Fate (Bob Dylan’s character).
Uncle Sweetheart: Don’t they understand who Jack Fate is?
Nina Veronica: Nobody knows who Jack Fate is anymore! Nobody cares! He doesn’t make records, he doesn’t go on tour, he doesn’t do interviews — he doesn’t do anything!
Uncle Sweetheart: He doesn’t have to! He’s a legend. Does Jesus have to walk on water twice to make a point? Besides, he’s virtually free. Who else can you say that about?
Nina Veronica: Virtually free? No one is virtually free. You’re either free, or you’re not free. You know, if he’s going to play this concert, then he’s going to play exactly what we tell him.
It’s characteristic of the dialog in the film that things emerge on repeated hearings that at first seemed merely throwaway. Caught up in thinking about the self-referential-Dylanological elements in a scene like this, it’s easy to miss what’s under the surface. As in that line of Sweetheart’s: “Does Jesus have to walk on water twice to make a point?” It seems like an offhand rhetorical question, to which the answer is supposed to be, “No, of-course Jesus doesn’t have to walk on water twice — he made his point the first time.” But then you think about it a little more, and you get to thinking that the answer to this rhetorical question is arguably the exact opposite of what it appears as first. After all, for the world, Jesus’ walking on water once did not, in many ways, suffice. It — along with many other miracles — did not make all believe. It didn’t prevent his execution. It didn’t prevent his own apostles from fleeing and denying him. And for the world to this day, it does not suffice. You would think that your own walking on water would make a very big point indeed, but it seems that you’d be surprised at how quickly such an achievement fades into the past and into a perceived irrelevance.
…
The soundtrack CD for “Masked and Anonymous” closes with a version of Dylan’s song City of Gold performed by the Dixie Hummingbirds. It can be heard at the moment on YouTube, accompanying someone’s slideshow tribute to mom.
…
Dylan’s latest tour has started with two shows in Pennsylvania. Details and early reviews from fans are as ever at Bill Pagel’s tour guide page.
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Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Dean and Duke ...9:07 pm
Few people, surely, would have something better to do with three minutes and twenty-six seconds than to spend it watching the clip below of Dean Martin and John Wayne appearing on Dino’s television show during the 1960s. In this clip, Wayne demonstrates that he is not only a great actor and a truly iconic personality, but also arguably the greatest singer of the twentieth century.
…
And if that’s not enough, there is this clip, also from Dino’s show, where Martin and Wayne banter around (on horseback, in the TV studio) and John Wayne speaks seriously for a minute about the kinds of things he would like to impart to his then recently-born daughter.
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TV Talkin’ ...5:29 pm
For those able to view it, PBS stations in the U.S. are airing a documentary on Johnny Cash. It’s tonight at 10 p.m. in my area; check your local listings, as they say. In the NY Daily News, a writer draws comparisons between this film and the “Don’t Look Back” film on Bob Dylan. It includes footage of Dylan and Cash performing together.
More on it at the PBS website.
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Sunday, August 3, 2008
Where has the old Barack Obama gone? ...6:15 pm
In yet another move away from the kind of campaign his supporters would have expected of him not so many months ago, Barack Obama has effectively rejected John McCain’s invitation to do multiple town hall type debates across the country in the period leading up to the conventions. He is agreeing only to the standard three debates after the conventions, in a variety of arranged formats. Though not unexpected at this point, his decision is a complete turnaround from the candidate he portrayed himself as barely three months ago. As even the AP writer notes:
In May, when a McCain adviser proposed a series of pre-convention appearances at town hall meetings, Obama said, “I think that’s a great idea.”
Why is Obama unwilling to give voters this almost unprecedented chance to really get to know him and McCain in a relatively freewheeling and open context? It’s the kind of thing that those longing for change in the American political system always say they want — that is, a campaign based more on debate and discussion, and less on 30 second television ads and choreographed appearances.
The reason given by the campaign for rejecting these debates is strikingly disingenuous:
Advisers to the Illinois senator, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss strategy, say Obama is reluctant to take chances or give McCain a high-profile stage now that Obama’s the front-runner.
Excuse me? Have they looked at the polls lately? Obama and McCain are effectively neck and neck, as they certainly well know. And, really, Obama has never had anything like a prohibitive lead in the polls. The argument that a front-runner shouldn’t give his opponent an opening has a certain Machiavellian legitimacy when it is true; when it’s not true, as in this case, it is the height of cynicism. (Welcome to the new political landscape of this Obama era!)
Ironically, cynicism is the most recent charge that Obama has made against the John McCain campaign. He has also called McCain’s recent ads “juvenile” and “distracting.” What better way to bring the campaign back down to the level of addressing the concerns of the voters than by doing these multiple town-hall debates and taking the questions of those voters? Each successive debate would allow the themes which arise to be followed-up upon and developed. The distinctions between the candidates and their real plans for governance would get an airing unlike any that has occurred in anyone’s recent memory of presidential elections. The McCain campaign’s response to Obama’s rejection of these debates could also be described as juvenile by the ever-so-serious Barack Obama, but it happens to be right on the money:
“We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he’ll reconsider,” spokesman Brian Rogers said.
And if he doesn’t reconsider, the McCain campaign has a perfect right to pound him on it from here to kingdom come. There is every reason to assume, at this point, that Barack Obama is simply afraid to have to defend his positions and policies in detail in a public forum. He’s just hoping that he’ll be smooth enough to finesse his way through the three more stilted debates in the fall, or that he’ll float through them on his aura and make up for any shortcomings by spending his unprecedented treasure-chest on a gazillion TV ads. It’s genuinely disappointing. Those of us who didn’t particularly like Obama’s policies, but welcomed the breath of fresh air he seemed to promise, now no longer have any reason to cut him any slack. He’s a pure politician (and there’s nothing pure about that). The only way in which he now appears to be a different kind of politician is the incredible degree to which he believes he can pull off being totally disingenuous.
And it’s just one more reason to wonder how it is that people who supported Barack Obama six months ago can still support him. He has modified his positions significantly on troops in Iraq, on offshore drilling, on gun control, on campaign financing, on the death penalty, on Jeremiah Wright and his church, on his grandmother, and on and on. If you agreed with him before he started changing his mind, then how do you continue to wholeheartedly support someone who appears so willing to adjust his beliefs for political convenience?
McCain is no paragon of purity, and neither is any politician, but compared to Obama he presents a model of a well-centered candidate who offers a plain WYSIWYG honesty. That’s precisely why he is unafraid of the kinds of unpredictable town-hall debates away from which his opponent is simply running scared.
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Where Teardrops Fall ...1:16 pm
On YouTube is a relatively rare performance by Bob Dylan and his band of Where Teardrops Fall — apparently from 2001 in Germany. Click here to go to YouTube or play below.
…
We banged the drum slowly
And played the fife lowly
You know the song in my heart
In the turning of twilight
In the shadows of moonlight
You can show me a new place to start
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Friday, August 1, 2008
Political theater indeed ...4:25 pm
As Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats adjourn and leave town without even permitting a vote on offshore drilling, Republicans in the House are refusing to leave and are making speeches without the microphones and TV cameras. Politico is thankfully covering it here, with updates here and here. It is both hilarious and inspiriting.
Update 6: Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. He stood on the other side of the chamber and listed all of the GOP bills that the Dems killed.
He then said, “I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan” and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered.
[...]
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), who was on a plane headed home, went back to the Capitol, walking on to the floor dragging his luggage. He got a standing ovation.
Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) called it a “new Boston Tea Party!”
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said he was “not leaving until we call this Congress back into session and vote for energy independence.”
Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the dimly lit chamber is a “vision of the future by the Democrat Party: The lights are out, there’s no power, and the air conditioning is gonna go off soon.”
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