Thinking out loud

McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee.

Okay, what does this mean?

For Big Money, this is a big frickin problem. Big Money's most reliable ally in controlling the U.S. government has been, for the past century or so, the Republican Party. And Big Money hates McCain. Hates hates HATES him.

What does this mean?

It means that Big Money now has a choice. It can pull a complete 180 and start trying to build up McCain as a more palatable option to the conservative base. Unfortunately, they have to date spent millions making him completely unacceptable to that same base, and it's been money well spent, too. Do they really want to throw that investment away, when most people think McCain can't win the election anyway?

Conversely, Big Money can start investing heavily into someone it likes better. However, to justify that investment, whoever Big Money chooses as an alternate has to have a reasonable chance of winning the Presidency.

Big Money is sending conflicting signals right now, which indicates to me that a final decision has not yet been reached. On the one hand, one of Big Money's most powerful media voices, Ann Coulter, has come out and stated on Sean Hannity's FOX program that if John Cain becomes the Republican nominee, she will actively campaign for Hillary Clinton, because Clinton is the more reliably conservative candidate than McCain.



On the other hand, Mitt Romney has announced he's quitting his campaign:



Romney is as big a shill for 'the innerests' as Coulter ever will be, and if he's marching offstage, it's because someone bigger than him cut the marching orders. Romney himself says that he's doing this to shore up conservative support for McCain, and, yeah, I can see that. Within my admittedly limited understanding of the power dynamics here, that makes as much sense as anything else.

But... again... Romney is a shill for Big Money, and Big Money hates McCain. HATES him. So Romney stepping down is a pretty strong indicator that Big Money is giving serious thought to swallowing its intense dislike of McCain and getting behind his campaign.

Coulter's statement of support for Clinton over McCain, though, is an equally strong signal that Big Money is considering supporting someone else in this election. And when you can't find a Republican candidate you like well enough, where does a worried plutocrat go?

Straight to the nearest viable candidate named Clinton, that's where.

Right now, right this moment, The Innerests must be in a frenzy of frustrated indecision.

You're not even supposed to be able to get on stage nationally if you're not safely bought and paid for long in advance.

The most valuable thing any national campaign can have going for it is that mystical word 'viability' -- the perceived ability to win the election. As a general rule, viability is granted (or withheld) by the media -- if the media says a candidate has a good chance to win the election, then, as if by magic, that candidate does.

If, on the other hand, the media declares a particular candidacy to be non-viable, then that candidacy is dead in the water. Tell the electorate often enough that a vote for such and such is a wasted vote (worse, it will work out in actual effect to be a Vote For This Other Guy You Really Hate) and most people will swallow it hook, line and sinker. The candidate's positions, past record, and actual character become entirely moot once the public has been convinced that this candidate CANNOT win the election. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

The media, of course, by and large, works for Big Money. In effect, this means that for a candidate to be anointed as 'viable', Big Money must approve of them. Otherwise, they are 'crackpots', they are 'from the fringe', they are 'extremists' -- they 'cannot be elected'. And, guess what? They won't be.

Sometimes, though, candidates make their way through the cracks in the system. McCain has built a national, even an international reputation around being a maverick, an outsider, somebody who is willing to slap iron for the little people against the big movers and shakers in the Republican Party. Whether this is actual fact or not doesn't much matter; the point is, a lot of people believe it. McCain appeals to moderate Republicans and to independents, enough so to make him electable... if not in a general referendum, then, at least, at a Republican nominating convention.

More importantly, the press loves McCain. They want to see the guy become President, or at least, they want him to get a good shot at it. This is something political analysts often times overlook. Yes, there's a machine, and yes, the machine runs nearly everything... but the machine is made out of cogs, and sometimes, the cogs spin unpredictably. For whatever reason, the media has largely failed to embrace any other Republican candidate this year. They've gone, by and large, koo-koo for McCain puffs. That, combined with McCain's already noted appeal to moderates and independents, has made McCain's candidacy very 'viable'.

At this point, Big Money can still crush McCain like a bug. The press may love McCain, but the press can, ultimately, be brought to heel. Spend enough money on enough opposition ads, throw enough dirt around, form enough 527s, fire a few reporters who won't fall into line fast enough and promote a few others who will... Big Money will have no real problem tearing McCain down.

If they want to.

The problem is, who else have they got? Yeah, the Ann Coulter thing is a test balloon, but you have to figure it's a desperate long shot -- I don't honestly believe there is enough money in the universe to convince any significant percentage of the conservative base to vote for 'Hitlery'. That doesn't mean Hillary couldn't win with enough money behind her, but it's risky. If McCain takes the independents and the moderate Republicans, then Big Money has to somehow position Hillary to somehow be made appealing to conservatives who won't vote for McCain -- and, y'know, all the Democrats. Money and media can forge some weird coalitions, but that one stretches even my imagination to the breaking point.

Plus, Barack Obama has proven to be a dangerous monkey wrench in the works over on the Democratic side. It's very possible that Hillary may not even be nominated... in which case, Big Money has to go back to McCain. Who else are they going to buy up on the Republican side? Well, nearly anyone, sure, but again, I doubt there is enough money out there to simultaneously demolish McCain and build up, say, Huckabee or Paul to the point where either is 'viable'. Not that either of them much appeals to Big Money, either.

Here's how I'm figuring it, right now: the 2008 elections were supposed to be safe elections for 'the innerests'. After 8 years of rampant Bush/Cheney corruption, the Great Unwashed would be happy to vote for whoever wasn't a Republican, and Big Money was reasonably certain that would be Hillary. Yeah, the conservative base hates her, but 2006 shows that the conservative base is no longer in a position to decide elections. So let the 'other side' have one for 4 or 8 years.

Hillary has always been a reliable watchdog over big corporate interests. Bear in mind, her 'universal health care plan' is nearly entirely comprised of the Federal government forcing everyone in America to buy health insurance -- a gigantic economic windfall for The Interests, as it will directly profit the zillion dollar health insurance industry, while indirectly giving a big shot in the arm to every other U.S. company that currently pays substantial portions of their workforce's healthcare costs. Net winner, Big Money. Who takes it up the ass yet again? You and me.

So Big Money figured they had '08 locked down. They'd put up someone they could count on -- Rudy, maybe, or Mitt -- on the Republican side, and maybe he'd actually win, but even if Mr. Rich Guy lost (something all the smart money was predicting) well, they'd have another Clinton running on the other side, and could use their media mouthpieces to make sure that any other candidate who wasn't safely bought and paid for was pronounced 'non-viable'.

But McCain has royally screwed things up on the Republican side. Big Money can't stand him, but they haven't been able to tag him as 'non-viable', and he's picking up enough votes to make him a real pain in the ass for them.

Meanwhile, over on the Democratic side... well, we know who's been fucking things up for Big Money on the D side of the ticket.

So, once again... Big Money has a big problem. Suddenly there are way too many variables and things are getting wildly out of control.

What's going to happen next? It depends.

The next big signal will be who McCain picks as his VP. If it's Huckabee, or, worse, Paul, that's the end of him with Big Money. They'll go elsewhere for satisfaction. Look for 527 funded attacks on McCain to ratchet up to insane levels, and for some other candidate to start raking in big contributions.

On the other hand, if McCain picks Romney or Rudy or (more likely, for reasons I'll get to) some other corporate fat cat politician to run with, that's another signal -- he's telling Big Money that regardless of his history, he's their guy, and if he should get into office, he'll protect their interests. In that case, look for all the conservative media mouthpieces to suddenly turn on a dime and start up with the 'John McCain, a True American Hero' bullshit, and most if not all of the really nasty 527 attacks on McCain to get dialed way back, while, at the same time, the mud starts to be slung big time against whoever is running against him.

I have no faith in McCain's essential integrity, and he's pretty clearly a smart guy with a lot of self interest. If I had to bet, I'd bet he'll work very very hard to get Big Money back on his side. On the other hand, McCain has a lot of pride and can be as foolish as the next guy, and he'd hardly be the first to buy into his own self promotion. If he really enjoys the idea of being a maverick, he'll tell Big Money to go fuck itself and try to make himself over into someone who can fuse the moderates and independents together with enough of the conservative base to get him into the White House.

That's a very risky strategy, but who knows? He's a charismatic guy, and let's remember, George W. Bush was, in reality, not someone at all who should have appealed in any way to the conservative base, or to moderates, or to independents -- a spoiled little rich kid, a failure as a businessman, an alcoholic and a cokehead, who pulled strings to get out of combat duty and then didn't even bother to show up for the last year of his Air National Guard tour. When you have the media in your corner -- and McCain does -- you can work miracles. (To an extent, McCain already has.)

So here's how it looks to me right now -- if it's McCain and Clinton, then Big Money will strongly back whichever one of them seems most economically reliable... and I'm going to say that will probably be Clinton, as she's never gone after their nuts with any kind of serious legislative attempt at campaign finance reform. Look for a lot of anti-McCain swiftboating and a big summer-fall roll out of 'I hate to say it but Hillary is actually a better candidate on the issues that matter to Republicans than John McCain' from all the FOX News and conservative talk radio ventriloquist dummies.

Democrats and liberals will stupidly rejoice, Hillary will be elected President, the Bush tax cuts will remain permanent, no recent Republican legislation will be overturned, the rich will continue to get richer, the national security state will continue to become more oppressive and intrusive, and we'll all be offered jobs at $11 an hour working as call center customer service reps for Asian manufacturing firms -- and be assured that we should be grateful for the opportunity.

Of course, Big Money has to be careful to wait until Hillary is actually the Democratic nominee. Once she is, liberals and progressives and most Democrats can be trusted to swallow pretty much anything and vote for her in the general election. However, until she locks it up, Big Money does not want to seriously start flying that 'Hillary is more reliable on most conservative issues than McCain' flag. If they do, it's going to cost her the nomination. I'm surprised Ann Coulter jumped the gun the way she did... but it's important to understand that she did it a few days BEFORE Super Tuesday, and she was probably trying to throw those primaries to Romney. Now that it hasn't worked, don't look for this particular line of dialog to be repeated until when and if Hillary is finally coronated as the official nominee.

If it's McCain and Obama, and McCain has picked a pro-biz candidate like Rudy or Mitt as his VP, then I'm going to guess Big Money will swallow its pride and support McCain. Look for a lot of Osama Hussein Obama crap from the 527s and conservative talk radio, along with the usual 'John McCain, Greatest American Hero' nonsense. However, I wouldn't look for either Rudy or Mitt to be McCain's VP in this instance. Big Money knows both of them carry too much baggage to appeal to the theocons. They'll want to go out and find someone who can thump a Bible, rant a little bit about gay marriage and school prayer, and who is still rich enough to be willing to protect his own when it comes to economic policy. I don't know who that guy is, but I'll bet that if Big Money wants to bad enough, they can find him.

If, on the other hand, it's McCain the Maverick (running with someone like Huckabee or Paul as his VP) against Obama, well... things could get very interesting indeed. Big Money won't want either of those tickets in the White House. That, I suspect, is when we'll see Michael Bloomberg come out of the shadows with a whole lot of cash in his pockets.

Or it might be someone other than Bloomberg, but whoever it is, I guarantee you this -- campaign finance reform will not be part of their platform. And if they get into office, the first thing they'll push for is to repeal the McCain-Feingold Act... just to spit in John McCain's face.

I suppose this means I've finally talked myself around to supporting Barack Obama more or less unequivocally in the election. Yeah, I hate the way he panders to the Democratic religious base, but, well, I guess that's better than pandering to the Republican religious base, or to Big Money. I'm not crazy enough to think he can get into office without owing a few favors, but I am pretty sure he's not as completely sold out to high finance as everyone else. And who knows? He may be willing to put his boot up a few Congressional Democrats' asses, once he's in the White House.

At the very least, I don't think an Obama Administration will be 'business as usual'. Which is, I suppose, really the best we can hope for.

The center does not hold

Romney quits. Big money Republicans must be tearing their hair out right now, and Rush Limbaugh must be thinking about putting a gun in his mouth. I mean, seriously. All these powerful, elite people who are used to writing a few checks to various PACs and bundlers and 527s to express their will as regards the results of any significant election... will now have to cozy up to the one Republican they hate the most, because he's the one Republican who helped author the only substantial campaign finance reform legislation to become law since 1974. (It's crappy law, mind you, that doesn't really accomplish anything worthwhile or have any real effect, but, still, it's the principle of the thing. McCain did something to slightly inconvenience the wealthy players in our political apparatus, and they have never, ever forgiven him for it.)

And now they have to dance with the rat bastard. Ah, karma is sweet, sometimes.

That shitheap Limbaugh is an especially humiliating position. He's done everything except lead a lynch mob armed with pots of boiling tar and bags of feathers against Big John, and now he's going to have to climb on board the Straight Talk Express, too.

At this point, the only real alternatives these people have are Huckabee and Paul. I suppose they could decide to pour a lot of money into either of those campaigns, and maybe it would make a difference... but Huckabee seems to be what Bush only claimed to be, a genuinely compassionate conservative Christian who, for all his backwoods provincial ignorance, genuinely wants to see tax dollars spent to help the poor. I can only imagine how wealthy, powerful conservatives must shudder at that concept.

As for Ron Paul, well, to the wealthy conservative elite he's a fucking lunatic, straight up; the only guy running on the Republican ticket who has said right out loud that the minute after he finishes taking the Oath of Office, all our troops stationed in foreign lands are on the first plane home, and American foreign investments can look after themselves. You can't imagine anyone with a few million or billion bucks tied up in Middle Eastern redevelopment, or petroleum stocks, being happy about that prospect, either.

So it's McCain's way or the highway for all these pricks.

I have no doubt they'll all come around to embracing the new reality pretty goddam quickly; if there is one thing conservatives and Republicans both excel at, it is turning every single thing they claim to believe in 180 degrees the minute it suits them to do so. And Limbaugh can rely on his particular market share to honestly forget he ever said a word against McCain the instant he starts praising the guy instead. After all, every single Dittohead in the world seems to have had no trouble accepting the... hrm... unusual, shall we say... premise that every junkie in the world should be locked up forever or simply executed, just like Rush says... except, of course, for Rush himself, whose little excursion into oxycontin addiction was a completely forgivable, and apparently entirely forgettable, mistake.

I'm going to predict that within one week's time, every conservative pundit that has been bewailing McCain's campaign as 'the death of the Republican party' or some such horseshit (Ann Coulter actually went on TV and said if McCain is the Republican nominee, she will campaign for Hillary Clinton!) will be fully on board, and all we'll be hearing rolling out of Rush, or Michael Savage, or Ann Coulter, or Michelle Malkin, or any of those retards, will be "McCain, glorious McCain, war veteran McCain, patriot McCain, straight talking McCain, McCain, the Great Man Who Will Lead America Back To Greatness!"

And I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

And hope they all burst a few blood vessels every time they do it, too.

Bits of string less than three inches long

• Did a quick redraft on a few of the more problematic sections of WARREN'S WORLD. For some reason I do not understand, if you copy/paste from Word all your apostrophes turn into skludge when posted to the Internet, or, at least, to Angelfire. So you need to copy/paste from Wordpad instead. Strange but true.
  


• Got a big boost to the hit counter from a comment I left in a Sadly, No! thread a few days ago, but now that song is over... I'm back down to my usual 30 or so a day. More hits really doesn't mean much of anything, though, as none of the new traffickers troubled to leave a comment over here. Some of them lingered for minutes or hours, but apparently had nothing to say. You'd think I wasn't obnoxious, or anything. Course, some of you regulars lurk for minutes or hours too and never leave comments, either, so, it's pretty much business as usual over here.


• Hey, that last bullet point went to a snarkier place than I meant it to. Sorry.


• On the other hand, all around goodfella Tony "12 Pounds" Collett linked to me again. So I got that goin' for me. Which is nice.


• At this point, it's between Hillary and Barack (I don't know why people always say 'Hillary and Obama'. Shouldn't it be consistent? If you're going to call her by her first name, call him by his. ) Anyway, while it makes me sad that John Edwards isn't in it any more, and makes me even sadder that Ralph Nader will never be President, still, if it's a choice between Hillary and Barack, I am desperate for it to be Barack. And I don't quite know why, except that Hillary strikes me as being very nearly as calculating and insincere as Mitt Romney, while Obama strikes me as being reasonably genuine. Mind you, his pandering to the devout makes me physically ill, but I guess a Presidential candidate's gotta do what a Presidential candidate's gotta do, in a country too stupid to keep superstitious idiots from voting.


• WizKids is doing their level best to get me back into the HeroClix thing, and their level best is pretty darned good -- Silver Age Aqualad, Silver Age Speedy, Silver Age Kid Flash, Silver Age Wonder Girl (in the Nick Cardy outfit, mmmm yeah), Mercury, Lead and Tin of the Metal Men, Psycho-Pirate, Dr. Sivana, Star Sapphire, Jack and Ten of the Royal Flush Gang, Liberty Belle, and Uncle Sam. Probably the best Flash dial yet (albeit with hands down the worst sculpt ever), and some other goodies as well. So it's a damn fine effort for them. But, it isn't going to work. Still... nice effort, guys. (Although I think you're going a little nuts with the Double Figures.)
  


• That is all.


• For now.
  

Living in the future now?

Jim Kunstler, doomsayer extroardinaire, posts a fairly terrifying email from one of his readers who lives in South Africa:

SOUTH AFRICA IN THE PREMATURE LONG EMERGENCY


February 4, 2008

It began with a few potholes in the roads, the odd interruption to the water supply in the suburbs, a couple of days with strike action preventing the delivery of municipal services – no garbage collection, protest action disrupting the mining industry and picketing & toy toying at shopping malls…It continued over the next couple of years, largely with disregard for the disruptions, a little irritation to daily commercial and home life by the lack of service provision in food, gas, water and power.

In recent months, at the receivables end of the supply chain, there was a little aggravation at the delays, the lack of service, the shortage of a few consumer luxuries in the retail shops…, ‘but hey, what the hell, this is a great country, we cannot fault the lifestyle, the weather…’. For a couple of months, perhaps a year back or so, there seemed little or no reason to change our way of life, our lifestyles…a little further down the road and the disruptions become more frequent, we learn to cope, learn to accept the rising cost of living, gas supply shortages in the Winter of 2007, the intermittent water disruptions, the odd power outage and the potholes. Potholes may well be the singular measure of the calamity we are in or about to face.

We accept the transitions in South Africa, but it is all very well passing over these problems in the name of development, infrastructure development, greater housing plans and urbanization as a promised deliverable by the ANC government, together with the balancing of the wealth quotient. Access to finance and the shift of the material wealth are an indication of the success of the plans for economic growth in the New South Africa.

So, there have been interesting times, a few PDI’s (previously disadvantaged individuals), through black economic empowerment, becoming significantly enriched through commerce and business and, dare I say, politics. But the cracks that are now evident are tell tails signs, not only of the effectivity of the New South Africa and an explanation of the path traveled to this point in time, but more of what is promised for the future. And the future may be more a by product of global issues than issues unique and unfortunate to South Africa.

So what do we have at hand, what are the reactions and what are the consequences???

South Africa has been flung full tilt into a Premature Long Emergency. In the up market suburbs, not least to say generally all over the urban landscape, there is not a 1km (1/2 mile) strip of tarred road that is not full of potholes (hugh gapping holes, across which vehicles cannot drive), the roadside curbs are disintegrating, the road maintenance programmes over the last 10 years have failed to maintain the roads in a serviceable and passable state. The nation is gripped in a crisis of rolling power outages caused by the incompetence of highly paid government ministers and their charges. The news of the weekend is that the nation is in dire straits with the supply of clean, drinkable water to households and business alike. We are faced with unusual weather patterns, floods at the moment, high rain fall for the Summer, the expectation of an early, long cold Winter.

THE POWER EMERGENCY

The rolling power outages are resulting in about a 25% national power outage per month. The ramifications of this can be related directly to an income loss of the same amount, retail supplies are being interrupted and from a security point of view it is dangerous to shop in malls. The Electricity Supply Commission – ESKOM are indicating a forced reduction on power usage by 10%, further, the mines have been told not to work on Fridays. There are revenue and cost implications here that extend beyond the obvious monthly figures. What of the power saving measures that may in turn lead to greater problems, the mines are unable to pump excess ground water from the shafts, the maintenance programmes are due to suffer. And what of the safety indications, miners are protesting the possibility of being caught under ground or in lift shafts as the random power cuts hit the service grids.

It is not only that ESKOM have not maintained or expanded their operations in the last 15 years, but the next big whammy is that there is no coal to keep the power stations running…at most times, there is a couple of months supply of coal onsite for electricity operations, today there is hardly a few days supply. Incidentally the reason given for this catastrophe is that the trucks delivering the coal have been unable to get to the power stations as the road infrastructure has deteriorated- potholes again. In the Afrikaans language: ‘slaggate’ – a direct translation to ‘slaughter holes’. As this is written, we wait for the next couple of days to see the effect of the ‘coal emergency’.

THE WATER EMERGENCY

At some point the effect of the power emergency on water and sanitation supply should be considered and this would be part of the roll out of unexpected events resultant of the collapse of the power supply, but the water board have usurped the power supply with homegrown problems of their own…

So here we have it, 43% of the dams have safety problems and are in danger of collapsing. Further to this, the ground water in Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg, has radioactive contamination from mining operations.

Now, as a matter of interest, Johannesburg is one of the few cities in the world that is built on a hill and water has to be pumped up into the city!!!

THE FROG IN THE POT

And what of the peoples reaction? Complacency does not even come close, the nation is either brain dead or ignorant, or just plain ‘frog in a pot’ of water with the temperature rising.

The first reaction to the power emergency took the form of a rush for candles, refilling of gas bottles and the purchasing of generators (if you could get them). Then the complacency set it, business learnt to sit through power outages, retail shops were forced to close their doors for a few hours a day. There was and is a shortage of food supplies, food went bad in the fridges and had to been thrown away. It was kind of charming in a strange kind of way, to eat dinner by candle light and forgo the ‘soapies’ on TV. Traffic lights were out over a large number of suburbs and delays in getting to business meetings became the norm. The schools are unable to teach a full day’s lesson. The internet service providers and the mobile phone companies’ frequently have service delays or are just plain ‘off line’. The battery runs out on your laptop and that’s the days productive work is over until the power is back on…Patients in ICU or undergoing operations, as the power grid went down, were at risk of and did, die.

As we head into February, it will be interesting to see the economic figures; theoretically the revenue generation for the period should be down by at least 25% or something similar to the power outage percentages. Notwithstanding that the stock market took a bend downwards and followed the USA crash and the antics of the Societé General rogue trader. (Well done on the foresight, James). The South African property market is following suit, as well.

And just as we were wondering how the effect, implications and opinions of an emergency would pan out into daily life, what the tell tail signs would be… it happened, all of this is the short space of about 2-3 weeks, the realization dawns that it has begun, the country is experiencing and living through the beginning of the Long Emergency, rather unexpectedly and certainly too prematurely.

I proffer that the events in South Africa, tragic as they are, as they play themselves out, will give a good indication of the events that the USA and other countries will realize in the years to come as The Long Emergency’ comes to pass.
[Ha! Just as I finish this, guess what… the power is out, the battery life in my laptop is about 5 mins, so at 11am, I cannot be productive for the rest of the day… the networks are down, so this cannot be mailed for the moment.]

This sounds to me far too much like life in some deeply depressing John Brunner or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro near-future dystopia.

Of course, we have every reason to hope that this will never happen here in America. Our government is among the most competent and foresighted on the planet, and our national economy is among the most fundamentally sound on the globe, and our nation as a whole long ago acknowledged the reality of these coming crises and put intelligently conceived, extremely effective initiatives in place to deal with them. Beyond that, the American people themselves, as a culture and as a society, are among the toughest, strongest, most resourceful and resilient human tribes in all history, and we are certainly equal to the challenge of...

...it... we... er...

[hysterical outburst of maniacal laughter]

...sorry, sorry. Where was I? Yeah... the American people themselves, as a culture and as a society, are among the toughest, strongest, most resourceful and resilient human tribes in all history, and we are certainly equal to the challenge of... of... of rising to meet, and overcomin... gggggg...

AH HA HA HO HA HEE HO HAA oh godd that's just SOOOOO fucking funny...!

I'm sorry. I'm...

...fuck it. We're all doomed.

At least the Patriots didn't win the Super Bowl.

I got yer dynasty... danglin

Goddam you people.

GODDAM YOU PEOPLE.

Don't you understand? DON'T YOU -- UNDERSTAND?

Don't you -- SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE???

It was supposed to be perfect. PERFECT. Comprende perfecto? It means flawless. WITHOUT FLAW, FELLA ME LAD. That's what it was going to be. The perfect season. How much perfection do you get a chance to see in one mortal lifetime, there, buckaroo? That's right. Not too fucking much, skippy. Not too fucking much at all.

The Patriots have won three Super Bowls in the 21st Century, they are a dynasty, they are not in any way to be resisted or humbled, this is clearly God's will. GOD'S WILL, BITCHEZ.

They were 18-0. EIGHTEEN MOTHERFUCKING ZERO. Do you get that? Do you understand the grandeur? The glory? Can you grasp that in your tiny, tiny little minds?

The Patriots earned that fourth Super Bowl ring. They earned it the hard way, on the scattered football turfs of America, running up the score against every opponent that gave them an opportunity to do so. They worked for it, they put in the time. They were entitled to that Super Bowl victory by every moral law of God and man.

There should have been an exception made. There should have been a special ruling. THE TITLE SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWARDED BY ACCLAMATION. GODDAMIT. THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN HAD TO PLAY IN THAT GAME LAST NIGHT.

You people look at Tom Brady's pissy little scowl all game long and you say "Ohhhh Tom BRA-dy you big BA-by". Well, FUCK you. Tom Brady is a GOD. EIGHTEEN-ZERO, BITCHEZ. HE SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN HAD TO PLAY THAT GAME.

Goddamit. GODDAMIT!!!! Tom Brady has supermodels to impregnate. Can't you get that? Can't you understand? He should not have been forced to play that game! It was wrong to make him show up there. It. Was. WRONG. Can't you get that? Can't you see how selfish you are?

And then you people look at how Bill Belichick ran off the field to pout and cry like a little girl after the Patriots had one of the most spectacular last minute meltdowns in the history of competitive sports and you say "Ohhhh Bill Belichick POOR sport POOR sport". Well, FUCK you. FUCK -- YOU!!!!! Bill Belichick is a DEITY. An 18-0 DEITY!!!! Sure he cheated but SO WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE DOES TOO OR THEY WOULD IF THEY GOT THE CHANCE AND HE SHOULDN'T EVEN HAVE HAD TO PLAY THAT GAME!!!!

Shouldn't.
Even. Have. Had. To. PLAY.


You know the world championship title should have been awarded to the Patriots by acclamation. You KNOW it. In your heart, deep down inside, where we all know the true things are truly true... you know it.

The Patriots deserved it. They DESERVED it, you COCKSUCKERS!!!!

You want to talk about poor sportsmanship? How about the Giants? Why isn't anybody talking about THEIR poor sportsmanship? They should have just conceded BEFORE THE GAME. They OWED IT TO THE PATRIOTS.

If they'd been men... men of HONOR... they would have done it. Sincerely. Magnanimously. Humbly. They should have called a press conference and announced to the world "We understand the New England Patriots are the greatest football team, nay, True Believer, the greatest group of professional athletes, no, more than that, THE GREATEST HUMAN BEINGS WHO HAVE EVER LIVED SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME. They should not even have to play in this final, meaningless game to be acclaimed as what they already are, THE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD. We humbly, willingly, enthusiastically concede the game to them."

And if they couldn't do that, if they didn't have the character to do that, then they should have played worse.

A lot worse.

Out of RESPECT, bitchez.

Respect for the Brady.

Respect for the Bill.

Respect for the people of Boston, and New England.

Respect for AMERICA, by the motherfucking jesus.

Goddam you people. Don't you... can't you... you can't... you mustn't... you're... it's... no!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

...

...you've ruined it.

You've ruined everything.

Expecting an 18-0 team to actually PLAY IN THE SUPER BOWL.

It is SOOOOOO WRONG.

Motherfuckers.

I'm sorry, I have to run into the locker room now.

* * *

UPDATE:

With the stunning verbal power of a 'roid enraged wolverine, with sheer poetic articulation that would put any authentic frontier gibberish to shame, with the awesome eloquence of some unbridled natural cataclysm like a tsunami or a Force Fifteen Typhoon (!!!!!!) this Patriots fan says it for all of us, better than any of us:

Hello, my name is JoAnne and I live in Chicago, IL. I just would like to say that the New England Patriots were cheated throughout the entire game by the referees. There were numerous penalties that were not called on the New York Giants and it was very clear to see on the replays. I have never seen a game where there were no penalties called when they were made. I really think that the New England Patriots should have had a better chance or FAIR chance at winning tonight's game. But that's okay, they had a perfect record all season and they will be back next season with avenges. Even though they may have lost the Superbowl game, they still went out of the season on top!!!

jojobellhill posted on Monday, Feb 4, 2008 12:16 am EST

That's right, JoAnne who lives in Chicago, IL. The Pats will be back -- next season -- with avenges.

Laugh while you can, monkey boys.

A letter to the Almighty

Hey, Big Fella,

I realize that for whatever mysterious and inscrutable reasons You may have, You are apparently not into doing any big stuff right now. So I won't trouble you with requests for world peace, or an end to poverty, or getting rid of racial injustice, or wiping out the international slave trade, or any of that big abstract stuff. Hopefully, You are working on all of that and we can expect good things from You over the coming millenia in these regards.

However, there are some smaller, more minor issues and problem areas down here that, if You have a few minutes, I was wondering if You could look into for me:

10. Somewhere, somebody has let things slip pretty badly down here as regards pro football. Now, I'm not talking about the Patriots, although if a whole batch of videotapes and/or other irrefutable evidence showing the true perfidy of that vile and wretched franchise could show up somewhere soon, that would be cool and I would certainly praise You extravagantly for it. But what I'm really requesting here is if You could put a word in the right ears to get the football season re-adjusted back to where it belongs, so we get exhibition games in August, the real season starts first week of September, we have playoffs throughout December, and the Super Bowl is the first or second weekend in January. Football playoffs used to be a wonderful little garnish to the holidays, and having them in January just isn't working for me. Do what you can, big guy, and I won't even add in any requests as regards, you know, keeping the Patriots out of the playoffs for the next twenty years. I figure if somebody can just make Belichick and Brady stop cheating and play fair, that will take care of itself. Nobody is that good, dammit. Not in the salary cap era.

9. Pop music in commercials, especially, pop music that I really like, is getting really really annoying, O Lord. If You could crush a few ad executives with a big celestial Thumb as a punitive example, I think we could clear this whole unpleasant situation up pretty quickly. Also, kind of on that subject, when whoever it is in the control booths hit those little buttons that send the little animated ads out into the lower right corner of the screen during an actual broadcast -- yeah. Again with the Big Celestial Thumb, please. I think You'd really only need to crush half a dozen of those little creeps into guano, tops, before the rest of them would get the message and stop hitting us with screen clutter. Thanks.

8. You know that thing You did to the Jim Carey character in LIAR, LIAR? Well, if You could kinda throw that 'cannot lie, must tell the truth no matter what' whammy on all the Presidential candidates and every other elected or appointed government official, that would be sweet. Also, everyone working for the media. Also, everyone in a management or ownership position in the business world. Also, anyone who inherits more than, say, $500,000, or has material possessions worth more than, oh, $2 million. Lying should be an exclusive privilege of the poor and the powerless. You know we have few enough of those.

7. If You could kinda-sorta send Britney Spears, Jamie Spears, their mom, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan off to some planet in another galaxy where altruistic aliens would provide them with some sort of advanced brain therapy that would resolve all their deep mental and emotional issues, and in the process, they experienced some kind of faster-than-light warp time dilation effect so that although they themselves did not age more than a few weeks, when they got back to Earth they discovered that thousands of years had gone by and they were the last humans alive on a global surface covered with irradiated ruins otherwise inhabited only by mutant cannibal vampire rat-beings, well, that would be cool. And if You could videotape what happens after that and send the tapes back in time several thousand years, that would probably be the best reality show ever broadcast, too.

As an after thought, if they could find Will Smith in a suspended animation chamber somewhere and wake him up, too, right before the mutant cannibal vampire rat-being armies attack en masse, that would be even better.

6. How about switching things around a little bit down here for a few centuries? Make pizza, ice cream, cheese, garlic bread, mashed potatoes, pasta, fried foods in general, and pretty much all pastries low-cal diet food that we can eat a ton of and still lose weight, while salad, raw veggies, and everything else in the produce section becomes very, very fattening. Also, if You could throw something in to the fried food and pastries that converts existing fat directly into muscle, redistributes it to the appropriate anatomical area, and tones it nicely, too, that would be great. Thanks.

5. If You really want me to play GUITAR HERO, Lord, You should talk to some executive somewhere about them releasing Blue Oyster Cult and Who expansion packs. I would learn to play that game if I could do it while buzzing through ME-262 or SUBSTITUTE, I promise.

4. It's pretty clear that the people in charge down here don't want me to have my flying car, so if You could have someone up there throw something together, I'd appreciate it. If You could have whoever You put in charge of the project lean heavily on design elements from the '59 Cadillac El Dorado, that would be perfect.

3. If You could do something so that the dirty dishes in the sink, the overflowing garbage cans, and the dirty clothes in their room are no longer invisible to my children, that would be wonderful. If I could humbly make a suggestion, disabling the Wii, the TVs, and the computer until such matters are appropriately addressed would probably work wonders.

2. If You could somehow arrange it so that whenever I have to go somewhere and do something, everybody else (who would otherwise be out clogging the streets, taking up parking spaces, or standing in line ahead of me) is, at that moment, busy doing something else, hopefully in their homes or at least some other county I'm not in right then, that would be great.

1. Last, and certainly not least, if You could make my phone number into a kind of 900 number for anyone I didn't personally give the number to? I don't mean actually change the number itself, I just mean, make it work so that when somebody I didn't give the number to calls me, it costs them, like, 99 cents every time they make my phone ring, and then $3.99 a minute to leave a message on my machine or actually talk to me? Just take the money directly out of their account and deposit it into mine, if that's okay. This isn't purely selfish on my part, either; if You could make things work this way, I would actually answer the phone and talk to telemarketers and people doing surveys and polls and like that. For hours and hours, if they'd let me. So, you know, everyone would win. Sort of.

If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to let You know, but in the meantime, this list of minor requests should do to be going on with.

Your Fan,

D.

The Zelazny Effect

Roger Zelazny is probably my favorite science fantasy author. Counting anthologies of his work, he has had 53 books published under his name, and another dozen or so collaborations with other authors.

He is perhaps my favorite fantasy author ever, and out of those, what, 65 books, I own, maybe, a dozen. I've read, I would guess, a dozen more. And out of those 25 or so books by Zelazny that I've read, I've only really, genuinely, enthusiastically enjoyed 7 of them -- the first AMBER series, the first novel of the second AMBER series, and, especially, LORD OF LIGHT.

I also own, and like, many Zelazny anthologies; he was, arguably, better at short stories than he was at novel length works. But, while I will pick up anything by Zelazny and try to read it, more often than not, I get a third or halfway into the majority of his books that I try out and then I give up in disgust. His plot wanders or disappears, his characterizations go demented, his prose style veers wildly out of control, I cease to be able to comprehend even remotely whether he is writing about a red red rose growing all horny-thorny from of the center of a solid steel catcher's mitt that once belonged to the half-blind Norse god Odin, or a fiery-mantled singing dog hung by its star-jeweled collar from the shimmering skyhook that is the Orion Nebula. And I can't begin to make myself care, either.

So it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Zelazny's work that I have read I do not like, and I have little hope I'd like much or any of his work I have not read. Regardless, anything I have not yet read by Zelazny I would happily essay given the chance, and even with all of the above, I still regard Zelazny as one of the best writers of fantasy fiction ever, and he is without a doubt my favorite all time fantasy writer, and why?

Because the first six CHRONICLES OF AMBER, and especially LORD OF LIGHT, are --
That. Fucking.
GOOD.

Okay. Hold that thought.

A Perfectly Cromulent Blogger has been kind enough to link back here to me based on a comment I left in one of his threads a few days ago.

The kernel of my comment that APCBer re-posted and then responded to at some length was as follows:

It’s odd. Something has changed in how films are made these days. Back in the 80s, when I was in college, I had many favorite directors, and I based my moviegoing choices around them. None of them were completely reliable (in fact, looking back on it, pretty much every director I ever would have listed as a favorite at that time — Hill, Spielberg, Scorcese, Romero, Myers, Gilliam, Kasdan, Cameron, Howard, Levinson, McTiernan — ended up producing more movies I disliked than liked; Hill, in fact, has only directed five films I really enjoy out of 25… and most of the others have similar track records).

And yet, nowadays it seems like I have no favorite directors, and while I will weigh directors when deciding what movies to see, it’s no longer anything like the decisive factor it once was. Curtis Hansen directed one good movie right in the middle of an ocean of crap, but it was SUCH a good movie… I like Chris Nolan’s work, but what the fuck was that INSOMNIA nonsense? Bryan Singer did USUAL SUSPECTS, sure, and the first two X-MEN movies were swell, but I still can’t scrape SUPERMAN RETURNS off my nutsack. Peter Jackson? Jesus Christ, even if I didn’t keep a cheap videotape copy of THE FRIGHTENERS around as a reliable insomnia cure, I need only remember how mind bogglingly awful the last two LOTR installments were to get me past that. Barry Sonnenfeld? Lick me, WILD WILD WEST boy.

And this has made me wonder exactly where it was that all my favorite directors each jumped the tracks. Because every single one of them has, at some point or another. A few of them are still making movies, but at this point, there is no particular director's name that will move me to automatically get my ass out to a movie theater to see something they've done. Even my favorites have disappointed me too often, so that nowadays, when I hear names like 'the Coen Brothers' or 'Martin Scorcese', yes, my ears perk up... but then I remember some dreadful piece of crap each of them has thrown at me over the past ten years or so (like FARGO and HUDSUCKER PROXY for the Coens, and BRINGING OUT THE DEAD and GANGS OF NEW YORK for Scorcese), and I falter. I hold back. If it's a good cast or there's something else about the project that interests me, I may make an effort to get out early and see the film; otherwise, I wait for reviews.

So directors no longer polarize me... at least, not to the positive. There are still directors whose work I will not watch for love nor money, people like Robert Zemeckis, or, lately, Frank Darabonte. The two Scotts, Ridley and Tony, will generally push me away from movies they helm because those movies are usually dreadful, but each of them has, by apparent random accident, directed a few of my favorite movies (THELMA & LOUISE, ALIEN, and BLADE RUNNER for Ridley, THE LAST BOY SCOUT and CRIMSON TIDE for Tony) as well, so, you know, I try to keep an open mind. But none of those four films are strong enough by themselves to get me over just how bad the vast majority of the Scott Brothers' product has been.

But the Zelazny Effect does, or at least, did, hold for a long list of other directors whose work I once enjoyed, from the early 80s through the mid to late 90s.

I'm almost certainly going to forget to list one or two of my 'favorite' directors from this period, but nonetheless, I'll take a stab at listing them all:

The Coen Brothers - I saw RAISING ARIZONA in the theaters in the summer of 1987 and fell in love with the Coen Brothers. I'd seen BLOOD SIMPLE on campus earlier in the decade (many of the thousands of movies I saw during the 1980s I saw on campus, for free, as a member of Syracuse University's Film Board) and been largely impressed with the directorial style even if I hadn't cared much one way or the other about the characters or the storyline. RAISING ARIZONA was utterly charming and remains to this day one of my all time favorite movies. The Coen Brothers then followed that movie up with the equally but differently brilliant MILLER'S CROSSING, which also remains one of my all time favorite movies. And this pretty much cemented the Coens in my mind as 'favorite directors' --

-- until BARTON FINK, which was good, but a good step or two down from the apex of cinematic genius represented by the Coens' two preceding films. Still, it was far from bad, so I had high hopes the Coens would get back to giving me topnotch entertainment with their next movie, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY.

Which, unfortunately, sucked.

But not as badly as FARGO, which is without a doubt one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and which may still represent my biggest cinematic disappointment of all time, as I deliberately waited on FARGO until I heard reviews, and all the reviews were excellent, and I really like William H. Macy, and regardless of any of that, FARGO still sucked so hard it left a blood blister on my balls.

I mean, Jesus CHRIST that movie sucked.

HUDSUCKER PROXY was just empty. Sterile. The Coens got a huge budget for the very first time, based on their previous two films, and they apparently spent every penny of it on wardrobe, sets, and lighting. Was there any characterization at all in that film? Maybe in the glowing tip of Paul Newman's cigars, or the soles of Tim Robbins shoes. Yet I would eagerly take shelter in a perpetual hell comprised of a movie theater showing nothing but HUDSUCKER PROXY and serving stale popcorn drenched in movie theater oleo before I would willingly sit through FARGO again, with its waddling, honking nightmare of a Frances McDormand bumpkin copper hooting and bumbling her way from one dumbass snow-encrusted crime scene to another. William H. Macy chews his own hair off, Steve Buscemi rolls his eyes and falls weeping to the ground, an enormous number of people get shot by morons, there are hookers everywhere, and I kept praying that Texas Ranger Jack Benteen or New York mobster Henry Hill would show up at some point and start either blowing holes in everything or pistol whipping everyone. But neither of them did and I wound up staggering out of that film like a drunken hobo, eyes wide with appalled disbelief, spine nearly dislocated from the force with which I had unconsciously shrunk back into the depths of my seat away from the dismal banalities and stupidities enacted on screen.

And since then it's been pretty much turtle shit all the way down. THE BIG LEBOWSKI, like that unseen tertiary character in CLERKS, died trying to get its own dick into its mouth. This would have cured me of the Coen Brothers forever, but then O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU came along and suddenly the motherfuckers could give me a good movie again. Huzzah! This suckered me into getting THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, which was nearly as enjoyable as watching a toad sit on an dead old lady's knitting for two hours. But then INTOLERABLE CRUELTY had George Clooney in it, so I watched that, which horror immunized me against THE LADYKILLERS, but now, all that good press and all those rave reviews have me wanting to see NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and maybe I should just lobotomize myself with a power drill to save myself some grief.

It's the Zelazny effect, you see. RAISING ARIZONA and MILLER'S CROSSING were so good, that the Coen Brothers only have to toss out one fair-to-middling film every eight years or so to keep me hoping, no matter how horrible the detritus they put out is in between them all.

Martin Scorcese - probably the living prince of the Zelazny Effect as it applies to film directors, Scorcese gave me four movies so brilliant that I am willing to forgive him for endless reams of disappointing drivel ever since. The four movies I liked so much? THE KING OF COMEDY, THE COLOR OF MONEY, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, and, finally and mostly, GOODFELLAS. So wonderful were each of these films that I stuck with Scorcese through such crapapaloozas as CAPE FEAR (the biggest goddam waste of Nick Nolte and Robert DeNiro in the history of film, and both actors have made some pretty crappy films), THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (I went hoping for the Daniel Day Lewis of LAST OF THE MOHICANS, and got some preening fop that Chingachgook or even Major Duncan Heyward would have cheerfully slapped to death with their scrotums), and CASINO, which would probably have been a fabulous movie if I hadn't already seen it three times better with Ray Liotta and Paul Sorvino.

All this crap should have cured me of Scorcese, and let me happily skip over everything he made afterwards, but, nooooo, I got sucked back into BRING OUT THE DEAD, which was pretty much unrelentingly pretentious garbage, and that should have warned me off anything else by Scorcese, but then along came GANGS OF NEW YORK, which looked SO cool I had to go see it, but it was unbelievably wretched, so that did indeed let me skip THE AVIATOR. But I got pulled back in to THE DEPARTED, because I like cop movies in general, and the cast was pretty good. And THE DEPARTED is a good movie by late 90s -- early Oughts standards, it's just kind of mediocre for Scorcese.

In point of fact, Scorcese may also be an example of the anti-Zelazny effect -- so utterly disappointing were CAPE FEAR, AGE OF INNOCENCE, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD and GANGS OF NEW YORK to me (not to mention earlier crap like AFTER HOURS) that it's very difficult for me to make myself watch a Scorcese movie now, because you just don't know when he's suddenly going to throw Terri Garr in a beehive hairdo up on the screen again, and I dasn't chance it, either.

Nicholas Meyer - I loved TIME AFTER TIME, which I first saw in the early 80s at Syracuse University. I was very pleasantly surprised when Meyer signed on to direct the second Star Trek movie, WRATH OF KHAN, and even more surprised when WOK turned out to be the best Star Trek story that would ever be filmed -- a movie so good, in fact, that it is still one of my favorite films despite plot holes big enough to fly a Romulan warbird through. (Why is Starfleet searching all over the galaxy for a lifeless planet to test the Genesis Effect on when it turns out the Project: Genesis satellite lab is actually orbiting a lifeless planet? And how is it that a genetically engineered supergenius can't figure out Spock's pathetically obvious "If we went by the book, Admiral, hours would seem like days" radio code? Or that in space, you can move your ship up and down as well as backwards and forwards?)

After TIME AFTER TIME and STAR TREK II, Meyer made VOLUNTEERS, which was pretty much crap but which I enjoyed anyway; then he made COMPANY BUSINESS which I badly wanted to like but couldn't, and then he made a really crappy Star Trek movie (VI) to balance out his really good one, and then he fell off the planet, so that's okay.

Walter Hill - Much to my surprise, when I look up Walter Hill, I find he's made something like 25 films. Out of those 25, I like five -- THE WARRIORS, 48 HOURS, STREETS OF FIRE, EXTREME PREJUDICE, and JOHNNY HANDSOME. I like these moves a great deal, so much so that I still consider Hill to be a 'favorite director' even though his other twenty films are, as far as I can tell, pretty much crap.

STREETS OF FIRE is one of my all time favorite movie length music videos; I think the transcendent brilliance of its casting director and chief photographer is matched only by the abject awfulness of whoever wrote that godawful script. Absolutely every single character in the movie looks completely and utterly perfect for the part they are playing; it’s only when any of the actors tries to mouth so much as a single syllable of the script that the movie becomes painful to, not watch, no, never watch, it’s doubtless one of the finest pieces of eye candy ever put together… but oh my god, it’s agony to listen to any of those jamokes bumble, grit, contort, and otherwise exhort their way through any of that execrable dialogue. Other than the music, which I enjoy beyond all let or hindrance, STREETS OF FIRE should have been a silent movie. Not that the crappy banter and verbal byplay would have worked any better on cards, but at least we would have been spared the anguish of Michael Pare and Amy Madigan attempting to emote.

Having said all that, SOF was probably Hill’s best directing effort ever, at least, from an entirely visual viewpoint. As far as complete films go, though, I’d say Hill’s best work was either EXTREME PREJUDICE (Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironsides, Clancy Brown, William Forsythe and Rip Torn blowing gigantic holes in everything that moves — life don’ ged much betta dan dat, even Maria Conchita Alonso running around breathing heavily for far too much of the footage can’t ruin that movie) or 48 HOURS… and I’d only consider 48 HOURS for the position because James Remar is such a good psycho.

I like THE WARRIORS a lot, but it seems to me to be pretty much a pencil sketch (albeit one by Jack Kirby, perhaps) compared to some of Hill's later, more fully realized works. STREETS OF FIRE has more dimension to it and is a more interesting urban fantasy, and while Hill certainly stages wonderful fight scenes, it’s his gunfights that truly excel. And, while I think Ajax is a fun character, he’s a two dimensional one (essentially, little more than a loud, mean asshole) surrounded by other cardboard cut outs in THE WARRIORS. His portrayal of Albert Ganz in 48 HRS, on the other hand, may be the best rendition of a pure sociopath ever seen in the action film sub-genre. And, of course, 48 HRS has a lot more going for it than just Remar; even with the disadvantage of Eddie Murphy’s constant preening, it still had a solidly memorable cast (Annette O’Toole just sizzles) and Nick Nolte’s brooding, unstoppable Jack Cates was a leading man performance only to be exceeded in Hill films by the same actor’s Jack Benteen later on in EXTREME PREJUDICE.

I'll end all this by saying EXTREME PREJUDICE may well be the finest pure action movie ever made.

Steven Spielberg - What I like Spielberg for is the first and last Indy movies, JAWS, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, and SCHINDLER'S LIST. Spielberg has made other movies which I wanted to like but that ultimately disappointed me (ALWAYS, AMISTAD, JURASSIC PARK,and A.I., just to name four) and one that is such a horror and a blight to me that I fly into a Hulk-like rage whenever I am reminded that it actually exists (MINORITY REPORT). All told, I'm pretty much over Spielberg (if MINORITY REPORT weren't enough, all the mediocre crap he's made since 1998 would have been) but I'm eager to check out the next Indiana Jones movie, just to see if digital special effects have progressed to the point where we won't be able to see Harrison Ford's walker in any of the action scenes.

George Romero - Romero became a favorite strictly on the basis of the last two DEAD movies, DAWN and DAY. His other stuff has been hit and miss at best, including the latest DEAD installment, LAND OF. Nowadays, I hear Romero's name and I go "nrrrr... maybe".

Terry Gilliam - MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL should be enough to make Gilliam a favorite director for all eternity in any sane continuum. You add in TIME BANDITS and BRAZIL and you'd think he could withstand nearly any subsequent flaw or failure on his part. But, well, along comes THE FISHER KING, and suddenly, you know, doubt creeps in. But then, he does TWELVE MONKEYS, which may be just about the only truly intelligent, internally sensible time travel SF movie ever made, so, okay, he's good again.

But then, along comes FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, which was not just bad, but "oh God somebody pop my eyes out of their sockets with a plastic DQ spoon and then rupture my eardrums with my Oreo Blizzard straw before I have to in any way perceive one more second of this godawful movie" bad, I mean, dreadfully appallingly bad, on the same level as DEEP IMPACT or SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE bad.

So, then, you pretty much have to resign yourself to the idea that Terry Gilliam may well never direct another watchable film in his life, and perhaps it's time to move on. Although I'm given to understand that if you drink heavily, do a lot of illicit drugs, or both simultaneously, FEAR AND LOATHING works much, much better for you. Maybe that's true; I wouldn't know.

So, in the end, Gilliam has fallen from my favor, which was really hard work, given how much I liked four of his movies.

Lawrence Kasdan - BODY HEAT, SILVERADO, THE BIG CHILL and THE GRAND CANYON are some of my favorite movies. On the other hand, watching THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST was like being trapped inside a gigantic molecule of pus for two years, I LOVE YOU TO DEATH was just stupid, and WYATT EARP was so fucking boring and poorly put together it made TOMBSTONE look like a John Ford Western. And speak not to me of the horror that was FRENCH KISS; like THE JANUARY MAN, those of us who actually enjoy Kevin Kline's work must never be reminded of this film's existence, lest we simply implode.

GRAND CANYON was somewhat misshapen, but still fairly enjoyable, whenever Mary Louise Parker wasn’t snarling, spitting, whining, pissing, moaning, and rolling her eyes all over the screen.

It's not out of the question that Kasdan could make a movie I might like at some point again before either of us die, but it strikes me as wildly unlikely.

James Cameron - Unlike most SF fanboys, I'm not wild about ALIENS, mostly because I was so disappointed that the interestingly futuristic, corporate controlled homeworld culture largely implied in the first ALIEN somehow metamorphosized into a 1980s Reagan era Planet America with interstellar spacecraft, humanoid synthetic slavedroids, and gigantic machine guns. So that movie, which many hail as Cameron's crowning SF achievement, never worked for me. On the other hand, you will find no bigger admirer anywhere of THE TERMINATOR, or of Cameron's mostly disliked underworld adventure THE ABYSS. (I admit, I much prefer the stripped down version originally released in theaters and on videotape to the more recent, much slower and more bloated Director's Cut that has recently come out on DVD, but that's neither here nor there.)

However, if I was disappointed with ALIENS, I was positively mortified by TRUE LIES and horrified by TERMINATOR II, with which, in one foul 137 minute stroke, Cameron managed to completely undo every intelligent, internally coherent story element established in THE TERMINATOR, and give us a lot of stupid horseshit dressed up with cool digital F.X. instead. Since then, of course, he's also gifted the world with TITANIC, which was sort of a weird adventure of The Phantom where The Phantom pretended to be a creepy rotter for reasons of his own, but it all turned out okay in the end because Leonardo diCaprio froze anyway. And then there was all that DARK ANGEL nonsense on FOX TV, which launched Jessica Alba's career, providing us with two FANTASTIC FOUR movies (the second of which is pretty enjoyable) and, sometime next month, THE EYE.

Paul Verhoeven - God I love ROBOCOP. And BASIC INSTINCT was pretty good, too, plus, I enjoyed FLESH & BLOOD. But TOTAL RECALL was a 5 gallon gas can full of fermented donkey piss, STARSHIP TROOPERS was an anal assault to every Heinlein fan living and dead, SHOWGIRLS was unwatchable whenever Gina Gershon wasn't sucking Elizabeth Berkley's tongue, and HOLLOW MAN was the biggest waste of Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Shue in the history of celluloid. Yet I would still check out nearly anything Verhoeven directed, based nearly solely on ROBOCOP. The Zelazney effect, indeed.

Ron Howard - A very reliable director (at least, for me) up through PARENTHOOD. Um… well, okay, he wasn’t, really; I loved SPLASH, liked COCOON fine, liked GUNG HO a bit less (never been the world’s biggest Michael Keaton fan), nearly put a gun in my mouth halfway through WILLOW, then came back for PARENTHOOD, which I mostly enjoyed. But Howard pushed me away with BACKDRAFT, a movie that had no idea what it wanted to do or be and that managed to utterly waste Donald Sutherland, Robert DeNiro, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, shoved me off a cliff with FAR AND AWAY, kinda-sorta threw me a half assed hank of knitting yarn for a lifeline with THE PAPER, got me all the way back with APOLLO 13… and then squandered it all with every movie he’s made since, especially the horror men call A BEAUTIFUL MIND. (The First Movie Where Jennifer Connolly Keeps All Of Her Clothes On, While Russell Crowe Loses His Mind. If only they’d used that tagline I could have saved seven bucks at the box office.)

Overall, I don't feel any wild, pressing need to check out Ron Howard movies any more. And I would normally go along with A Perfectly Cromulent Blogger's assessment of Howard -- "When he stuck with the harmless stuff - like Splash and Coccoon - that lingering Happy Days taint was fine, but even his Big Movies are too sterile and sitcom-y." But Howard proved to me that he could direct a Big Movie even within the limits of his old sit com writer gang Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz with PARENTHOOD, and move beyond them brilliantly with APOLLO 13. His work has fallen off badly since (although I admit, I enjoyed THE MISSING quite a lot; it's a very decent post-modern Western, in a fluffy, forgettable, "nobody's gonna care in twenty years" sort of way).

Barry Levinson - My love of Levinson all goes back to DINER, and, to a lesser extent, TIN MEN. Those two movies kept me interested enough in Levinson to keep checking out his work up through, I dunno, BANDITS. But BANDITS was pretty awful, and that, combined with how generally disappointing stuff like SPHERE, SLEEPERS, DISCLOSURE, RAIN MAN, and AVALON had been, and how unrelentingly awful TOYS and YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES were, and even DINER can't keep me afloat any more. I'll watch DINER another fifty or sixty times before I die, I have no doubt, and enjoy it just as much as ever every single time. But I'm not heading out to the theater on the strength of Levinson's name any more.

Rob Reiner - THIS IS SPINAL TAP in and of itself justifies lifetime veneration of Rob Reiner. Add in THE SURE THING, STAND BY ME, and A FEW GOOD MEN and he should be a solid lock for personal fave forever. But Reiner has thrown some truly horrendous horseshit down the chute at me over the years, too -- THE PRINCESS BRIDE, NORTH, MISERY, and THE STORY OF US, among others. (I shouldn't dislike THE PRINCESS BRIDE as much as I do, given how much everybody else seems to like it, and I probably wouldn't, either, if I hadn't read the book. Yes, Reiner's movie adaptation is about as faithful as any movie adaptation could ever be, but it just goes to show you, some books cannot be adapted well onto film, and probably shouldn't be. And you'll never get any points with me casting Robin Wright-Penn as any part that is supposed to be at all attractive, much less, as the most fabulously beautiful woman in all of human history. I mean, bitch PLEASE. And having said all that, Cary Elwes was a fabulous Wesley.)

John McTiernan - my high regard for this director came nearly entirely from PREDATOR and DIEHARD. But nearly everything he did after DIEHARD was pretty much turd-like, including the DIEHARD sequel he came back and directed when his name turned into box office poison after LAST ACTION HERO. The last thing he did was the dimwitted and boring BASIC back in 2003, but he's got four different movies in pre-production right now, so I suppose he could get lucky and have one of them end up being watchable. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.

Brian dePalma - What did I like dePalma for? PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, CARRIE, THE FURY (the book was better, but what the hell), BLOW OUT, SCARFACE, and THE UNTOUCHABLES. Is it enough to get me by crap like BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, SNAKE EYES and MISSION TO MARS? No no a thousand times no. I can, however, still remember how terribly disappointed I was when CASUALTIES OF WAR turned out to be crap, though. I'd really expected better of DePalma. I guess I had to learn sometime.

John Carpenter - HALLOWEEN was excellent, and I remember enjoying Carpenter's original version of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 a lot when I saw it on campus, too. Carpenter's THE THING was brilliant, as was THEY LIVE. Yet THE FOG was a retcher, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK turned out to be the worst SF film disappointment of the entire 80s, STARMAN made you wonder why you ever wanted to hit Marion Ravenwood in the first place, PRINCE OF DARKNESS just blew chunks, and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS was an even worse disappointment for the horror genre than ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK had been to SF.

And then Carpenter really started chewing up film stock and spitting it back out -- VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED just sat in the front yard eating dirt, ESCAPE FROM LA was (unbelievably) worse than its predecessor, VAMPIRES hit the ground with shovels in both hands, each tentacle, and every orifi, and ended up tunneling down nearly to the depths of DEEP IMPACT and SUPERMAN IV, and while GHOSTS OF MARS was several steps back up from VAMPIRES, it still was perhaps best summed up by the rhetorical question "What the FUCK am I doing still watching John Carpenter flicks?"

And I haven't even mentioned MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN, which would have made me run screaming out of the theater if I hadn't already knocked myself unconscious banging my head against the back of the seat in front of me.

Nothing Carpenter has done has been good enough to overcome the sheer tonnage of unrelenting crap he's done since, so the Zelazny effect really doesn't apply to him. I'm just done with him.

John Sayles - my listing Sayles as a favorite director is really only based on a handful of movies — BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, LONE STAR, CITY OF HOPE, and, especially, EIGHT MEN OUT, the finest sports film ever made. But that’s the same Zelazny effect in a nutshell… a few good movies, combined with one brilliant one, far outshine all the crap I couldn’t stand and, generally, don’t remember.

Since the early 90s, I really no longer have 'favorite directors'. As I said before, something seems to have changed in how movies are made these days. Maybe it's all the different studios working on the same property; maybe it's how movies get developed these days, with all the packaging and merchandising and attachments. Whatever it may be, no one director seems to do anything consistently any more; even prolific directors who do a great many films seem to mostly end up doing a lot of stuff I can't stand and maybe one thing I really like a lot.

These days, if a single contemporary director winds up making ONE movie I like, it's a cause for celebration. If that same director does TWO movies I like, it's like a thermodynamic miracle, and it's nearly as reliable as gravity that there will be three completely crappy movies between the two. It is almost impossible to imagine someone like Paul Thomas Anderson ever doing three movies I'd like... at least, it is after MAGNOLIA and PUNCH DRUNK LOVE.

So there are no directors who really move me, all by themselves, out to the theater any more. I mean, you can't trust any of them -- Barry Sonnenfeld gave me THE ADDAMS FAMILY and the first MEN IN BLACK movie, and then puked up the hairball that was WILD WILD WEST. James L. Brooks did BROADCAST NEWS, which remains one of my favorite movies ever, but I'LL DO ANYTHING was a disappointing abuse of Albert Brooks and Nick Nolte, and AS GOOD AS IT GETS made me shit blood clots for weeks afterward. And what the fuck am I supposed to do with Zack Snyder? His DAWN OF THE DEAD was a fun to watch but feeble remake of the utterly brilliant original, 300 was pretty astonishing once you get past the insanely conservative underpinnings and the usual Hollywood contempt for actual history, and, well, I just know he's pissing all over WATCHMEN even as I type.

For example, Curtis Hanson. I haven't liked anything else Hanson has directed (I mean, seriously, BAD INFLUENCE? THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE? THE RIVER WILD? WONDER BOYS? Can you say what the fuck, dude? Sure, I knew you could), but I am a huge L.A. CONFIDENTIAL fan.

Having said that (now, here's my L.A. CONFIDENTIAL schtick again, longtime readers of the blog, you've read it all before, you can skip to the end) I believe that movie ends five or six minutes before the actual ending; credits should have rolled immediately following the moment when Eckley ‘holds up his badge to show he’s a cop’, as the black and whites are rolling up the hill towards the Victory Motel, seconds after he’s ‘shot a suspect he knows is guilty in the back, to prevent him being acquitted at trial’. At that point, the movie is over and every character has completed their necessary arc — Lynn has advised Eckley that she’s ‘all right’, neatly taking her off the stage, Dudley, Bud, and Hollywood Jack have all paid for their murderous sins with their lives (some of them we’ll mourn more than others, but in a true morality tale, there can be no redemption for any of them short of the grave), while Eckley, who has never been guilty of anything worse than political conniving, has managed to prove himself a cop by Dudley’s entirely corrupt standards, while simultaneously demonstrating that he truly ‘doesn’t have to do it the way his father did’.

The last five minutes is crap; a sudden resurrection and happy romantic ending for Bud White and his hooker with a heart of gold, a medal for Eckley, and about 270 seconds of elaborate expository dialogue for those too lazy to pay attention to the preceding 133 minutes of film-making, or (ghod forbid) read the book. But as I have the movie on videotape, it’s no problem for me to hit STOP and then REWIND when I see Eckley holding up his badge and walking into the oncoming headlights.

No, there are no favorite directors any more... but, if movie making has changed in the last ten years, the entire medium is changing even more, even now. The time way well come when I will have favorite directors again... men and women who make entire movies entirely for posting on the Internet, or transmission via cellphone. When that time comes, who knows? Maybe I'll be able to say "I'm a big Fill In The Blank fan" again.

Until then, though, I guess I'll just be like everyone else, and go to see movies that have seriously kick ass trailers.

Magic act

Take one of those paper snowflakes that kids still make in kindergarten by folding a paper four or six times and then cutting it through in little triangles. Take it and crush it in the palm of your hand. Wad it up good. Clench your hand hard on it for a minute.

Then let go.

Watch it unfold again, bit by bit. See the intricate design start to re-appear, slowly, centimeter by centimeter, paper facet by paper facet. Uncurling crisply, there in your palm, with little crinkle-crackle sounds.

Now:

You see the title -- two words, superimposed over a slow tracking shot of an outdoor field that is full of top hats. Top hats, top hats, everywhere, tumbling on top of each other in a light, playful breeze.

You hear a voice -- it's Borden's voice, but you don't know that yet -- asking "Are you watching closely?" And as you hear it, we cut to a shot of --

Doves in a cage. Another voice comes in, explaning "Every magic trick has three parts, or acts --" An old man (part of you exlaims to yourself "It's Michael Caine!") reaches into the cage and lightly grasps a dove. He takes it out and shows it to an adorable little girl in a quaint dress from a long ago era. He continues, advising the little girl that the first part of every magic trick is called The Pledge -- "A magician shows you something quite ordinary" --

And we see a magician on a stage -- we don't know yet that this is Angier -- in front of a large audience, raising his arms. The curtain goes up behind him, revealing some sort of wondrous machine. The audience applauds --

And we're back to the old man, whose name is Cutter although we don't know that yet, either, putting the dove into a cage, and covering the cage with a cloth --

As the magician's female assistant, a woman we've never seen before (and will never see again, another minor point that will become very important later on), points to several men in the audience, allowing them to come up and inspect the machine themselves --

--but wait! One of the men is sneaking back stage, telling a stagehand who tries to stop him that he's 'part of the act' --

On stage, the magician takes his coat off as the machine starts up in a crackle of electricity, giving off a brilliant, frightening barrage of lightning bolts --

-- below the stage, we see the intruder go up to another stage hand and look in his eyes, closely -- the stagehand is clearly blind --

-- we return to old Cutter, who has made the cage and the dove disappear, explaining that this is called The Turn, and is the second part of the act --

-- on stage, the magician (Angier) turns slowly, stately and dignified, then moves into the machine, where he is surrounded by crashing electrical bolts, closing his eyes, opening his mouth, his facial muscles taut with pain, and determination, and... perhaps... fear...?

-- we see Borden beneath the stage, looking away from the blind man, now -- he sees a large square glass tank, full of water -- his eyes widen in -- surprise? Shock? Even... fear...?

-- the lightnings flash, and reach visual crescendo! Under cover of the blinding glare, a trapdoor opens beneath the magician's feet -- he drops into the tank full of water below the stage --

-- the old man, Cutter, gestures and lets a dove fly free from his other hand, as the little girl applauds in delight --

-- Borden, eyes wide, watches in obvious horror as Tangier pounds on the glass of the tank, screaming for help within the water, drowning --

-- the old man is on the witness stand, testifying that he saw someone slip below stage that night, and followed him -- it was Borden, and he was watching Angier drown --

-- we cut to Borden, in the dock, in chains --

That is the first three minutes and thirty two seconds of The Prestige.

The Prestige unfolds like that paper snowflake I was talking about. Its presentation of events is non-linear; the narrative jumps from one point in time to another every couple of minutes. Each particular facet of story you see gives you exactly enough information to proceed to the next presented moment. Information comes from every direction. This is Borden. This is Angier. This is Cutter. Angier is dead -- or is he? Borden is on trial for Angier's murder -- why? Oh, this is where Borden and Angier first met. This is how Angier's wife dies, and why he blames Borden. This is where the rivalry, the mutual obsession with each other's destruction, begins. This is how it proceeds -- back and forth. Up time and down. Minute by scattered minute, scene by disconnected scene.

Each man has a secret. Each man perfects a trick, an amazing trick, a trick no one can ever figure out, a trick each of them will kidnap, maim, murder, steal, blackmail, even die to protect and/or steal from the other.

The pledge.

The turn.

The Prestige.

Tremendous movie. Go watch it.

The also ran

So, here's a thing --

Couple of days ago, some person named 'ran' showed up for the first time in a few of my older comment threads. This person, whoever they are, was agreeable and complimentary, advising me that they agreed with every word I'd posted and, in fact, stating enthusiastically that "you've got a new fan, fanboy".

Then, in a more recent comment thread, I mentioned my preference for Israel over other, less democratic, more insanely xenophobic, Arabic countries.

You could nearly hear the abrupt SCREEEEEEEECH! of emotional brakes, the sudden KRAK! of an appalled and astonished head whipping around and the POP! of eyes bulging as 'ran', whoever he or she might be, took that particular comment from me in.

Then I got:

I take it you were a big fan of apartheid era South Africa too?

good day sir.

Sic transit gloria mundi and all that other good Roman shit, I guess.

This seems like as good an occasion as any for me to stick my foot right back in it, so, with no further ado, I re-present, from one of my previous blogs, originally posted back in December of 2002 --

SEMITISM

I just like Israel. Sue me.

I'm about to go on the sort of long screeching political tirade I'm really not very good at. Nonetheless, it's my blog and I'll make myself look like an idiot, for the very few who will every actually read this, if I want to.

Supporting Israel is one of those things that, these days, makes most of the other liberals I know want to disown me and insist that, no matter what I may say, I'm certainly no damned liberal they want to acknowledge as a comrade and kindred spirit. Over the course of my adult life, many of my opinions on hot button issues have convinced various left wing larynxes I'm acquainted with that I cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to consider myself anything but, at best, a 'moderate', and in many ways, a raving 'conservative'.

For example, since I am a white male, and I regard affirmative action as being a well intentioned, poorly conceived, badly executed program whose logic has been insupportable from its inception, many of my liberal contacts over the years have looked upon me with horror. To my mind, you do not combat racism by enabling and institutionalizing reverse racism, but most of the liberals I know, especially the Caucasian ones, have had oppressor guilt imprinted on their DNA patterns since their gestation, and are apparently simply incapable of understanding that you do not wipe out bias by instituting a system in which everyone making any sort of choice or distinction MUST, as a matter of law, pay MORE attention to race, and in fact, prioritize their choices BY race, rather than ignoring race altogether and simply looking at the qualifications of each candidate, as should be the actual goal of any social initiative meant to wipe out racism.

Affirmative action is a big one, but my liberal acquaintances are also appalled by my reluctant, through-gritted-teeth, less than full throated affirmation of abortion rights (as a male, I acknowledge it's not up to me, nor should it be up to the government, to decide for any woman what she will do with her own reproductive system; nonetheless, I hate the very idea of abortion and would have a very difficult time respecting any woman who ever had one for frivolous or casual reasons, or as someone on CHICAGO HOPE once put it, I support birth control, not abortion), and they especially hate the way I insist that although I really like the idea of gun control, the Constitution of the United States simply and irrefutably prohibits it absolutely, and any statute being enforced within the United States, be they Federal, State, or municipal, that in any way inhibits or interferes with the people's right to keep and bear arms, is unConstitutional, until such time as we amend the Second Amendment.

And, lately, as I wryly note above, supporting Israel, especially in its most recent horrifyingly violent ongoing conflicts with Palestinians, has become yet another issue that liberals want to disown me for.

However, I will note that until very recently, supporting Israel was considered to be the very definition of liberalism. American conservatives, for the most part, have viewed Israel's existence with dubiety (to say the least) for decades since its inception. Most conservatives used isolationist bluster to make what was actually simply 'good old fashioned Jew hating talk' seem more acceptable, but the bottom line for the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s seemed to be, if you supported Israel, or, at the very least, if you supported the idea of the American government supporting Israel in any way, shape, or form, you were either a goddam yarmulka wearing commie symp pinko Marxist Jew undermining American values yourself, or you were a devious fifth columnist in the secret pay of the Zionist-Marxist International Axis trying to overthrow the American government and bring the U.S. into a one world government dominated by the godless commies.

My, how things have changed.

Bill Connoll, whose alarmingly thought free left wing blog Thoughts On The Eve Of The Apocalypse I was recently directed to by the generally excellent (if slightly too knee jerk for my taste) Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, seems to sum up the viewpoint of most of the left wing liberal bloggers I'm aware of these days, in this post , where he notes, among many other things, a report entitled:
Killing The Future, Mostly of Palestine
Two days ago, Robert Fisk reported on the release of Amnesty International's recent report, "Killing the Future: Children in the Line of Fire

In one of its most shocking reports on the Israeli-Palestinian war, Amnesty International today condemns both sides in the conflict for their "utter disregard" for the lives of children -- 250 of them Palestinian and 72 Israeli -- who have been killed over the past year.

Although the Fisk report then goes on to say, with remarkable sanity and balance:


"It also attacks Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for imprisoning militants for political purposes rather than submitting them to fair trials for the killing of children. It says the assertion by Palestinian armed groups that international law imposes no constraints on them is untrue. "No violations by the Israeli army, no matter their scale or gravity, can ever justify the targeting and killing of Israeli children or any other civilians by Palestinian groups."
This clearly annoys Connoll, as it would most of my fellow self named liberals these days, who dislike it when anyone says anything mean about Palestinians, whom my fellow left wingers, in apparent knee jerk reaction to the current conservative and populist biases against Arabic culture, have embraced as oppressed, patriotic heroes and cultural martyrs. Connell notes :
Ironically, the very same day Fisk's report was published, the International Herald Tribune ran a storystating, "A 12-year-old Palestinian schoolboy was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers Monday and 22 other children were wounded by Israeli gunfire while throwing rocks and debris at army tanks in the besieged West Bank city of Nablus, local officials reported. Five adults were also wounded."

Remarkably, I've heard little about any of this in the American media.


Connoll's post is simply one of many I could have pulled off nearly any of the liberal blogs I read and generally enjoy and agree with. In fact, over on William Burton's always thoughtful and never, to my mind, knee jerk or reflexive, blog, someone whose name I cannot recall posted a several hundred word comment calling me a racist and a bigot, at great and enormous length, because I indicated in one of my own posted comments there that I like Israel a lot more than I like Palestine, in both sweeping general and pretty much every specific comparative point I was aware of.

Liberals, as I've stated, seem to have simply, for the most part, absorbed a maxim: American conservatives don't like Arabs right now, so we must love Arabs and defend their right to be Arabs and to exist as Arabs with every fiber and particle of our beings.

Since Israel is now, as it has pretty much always been since its inception as a nation, in a death-struggle with various Arab nations, but especially those who call themselves Palestinians, this apparently means that liberals are now against Israel.
Well, again, as I stated at the top of this: I just like Israel, especially as opposed to Palestine. And while I admit, I'm no minutely informed political power blogger who knows everything there is to know about domestic and international political affairs going back to the mid 19^th Century, and I'll admit, I may certainly be guilty of oversimplifying things, nonetheless, I would like to state some hard truths, as I perceive them, on this subject.

I like Israel, especially as compared to their cultural and political opponents, the Palestinians, for many reasons. I'm going to try to set out those reasons on a couple of lists -- List (A), of things Israel does that I generally judge in a kindly and approving fashion, and List (B) of things Israel doesn't do that I view similarly. Ready? Here we go:

List (A): Israel does:

• elect its government democratically


• tolerate different religious views


• live in peace with anyone, no matter what their origin, race, culture, or belief system, as long as they don't shoot at them


• eschew the mutilation of its adolescent female population's genitalia as a social control mechanism


• allow its women to wear whatever the hell they want to in public or private, pretty much
  


• allow its women to vote, drive, and fuck anyone they feel like fucking, whether or not they're married at the time


• allow its women to leave burning buildings regardless of their state of dress or undress


• have an actual criminal justice system with courts and judges and juries and trials, as opposed to one where religious fanatics make snap judgements on the spot and carry out barbarous, cruel, often lingeringly torturous punishments and/or executions without any chance of appeal


• commit most if not all of its violent acts with uniformed troops against an openly declared, sociopathically fanatical enemy, said uniformed troops generally acting only in either undeniable self defense or in retaliation for previous, terrorist style attacks by non-uniformed personnel who generally target civilians

I could go on and on, but -- no, wait, I think I will go on and on for a little bit longer, anyway, with List (B). Israel does NOT:

• enforce its own particular religious doctrines by allowing bands of armed thugs to roam the public streets beating those they see breaking the Laws of Moses


• punish girls caught taking walks with unsuitable boys by allowing government officials to gangrape them


• punish adulterous wives by burying them up to their necks in the sand and then having mobs of men throw rocks at their heads until they die, with or without an actual trial to establish the guilt of this remarkable non-crime


• dance and sing in the streets when large buildings full of non-combatant strangers fall burning to the ground, killing thousands


• deploy biological and chemical weaponry on its own citizenry, or, as far as I know, anyone else


• pay a death benefit to the families of sociopaths who strap bombs on themselves, walk into public areas frequented by Palestinian civilians, and then self detonate


• call those same self detonating, murderous sociopaths 'heroes' and 'martyrs', not to mention 'soldiers' despite the fact that none of them wear a uniform when they carry out their 'military attacks'


• dress up babies as suicide bombers as a hilarious cultural in-joke and then take pictures for the family photo album


• hijack airliners full of non-combatants and drive them into large buildings full of non-combatants to make some insane geo-political point


• embrace a rabid cultural ideology entirely devoted to the eventual eradication through any means necessary of an entire population of human beings they just don't frickin' like, regardless of whether or not that population actually accedes to their ridiculous demands or not

All of the above are reasons why, shockingly and appallingly, I support Israel, especially as Israel is contrasted with the Palestinians, and Arabic culture in general.

However, I realize that that list isn't enough. (Well, I realize that nothing I say will be enough; those who are adamantly opposed to me will not be persuaded by anything I say; only those who already agree with me before I ever sit down to write this will agree with me after reading it. But what the hell, it's a slow night.) So, a few more points to the 'why I like Israel and think Palestinians should shut up and go away' argument:

Let's look, once more, at one of the things my fellow left wingers (God, how they hate it when I call them that) bring up the most often in their 'Israel just sucks and so does the American media's coverage of the Middle East' blather, namely, the fact that lots and lots of Palestinian children have been killed in this conflict by evil Israeli Defense Forces -- apparently, far more of them, in fact, than Israeli children have been killed by Palestinian 'soldiers', 'martyrs', and 'heroes'. And this fact, my liberal fellow travelers endlessly trumpet, is all but ignored by the goddamned Israel hugging American media. (My fellow liberals do tend to eschew the terms 'Jew loving' or 'Zionist', but I swear I can sometimes almost hear them gritting their teeth as they force themselves not to type either of them.)

Looking at the report passed along by Connoll, I see the International Herald Tribune ran a story stating, "A 12-year-old Palestinian schoolboy was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers Monday and 22 other children were wounded by sraeli gunfire while throwing rocks and debris at army tanks in the besieged West Bank city of Nablus, local officials reported. Five adults were also wounded."

Now, this leads me to ask two rhetorical questions. The first I frankly admit, I don't know the answer to, and what I'd guess, based on my own beliefs and perceptions, could well be wrong. Still:

1. Exactly what is the percentage of dead Palestinian children that have been killed by unformed Israeli troops after violently provoking said troops by engaging them as an armed mob with missile fire, and, apparently, the support and encouragement, if not outright leadership of nearby Palestinian adults? As opposed to, say, the percentage of Israeli children who were killed by non-uniformed Palestinian terrorists walking into eateries and shopping centers and libraries with bombs strapped to their nutball asses and self detonating?

My guess, which again, I fully admit, could be wrong, is that both percentages are going to be pretty high. Furthermore, I'd also guess, just off the top of my head, that the percentages of Palestinian children killed by non-uniformed Israeli terrorists with bombs (or anything else) while they were just sitting around reading books or eating ice cream is pretty fucking low. Similarly, I'd also guess that the percentage of Israeli children shot down by uniformed Palestinian defense forces after they started screaming, charging, mobbing, and throwing rocks at said uniformed and armed soldiery is pretty low.

In fact, I'm going to guess that probably the reason so many more Palestinian kids have been killed by Israeli soldiers than Israeli kids have been killed by Palestinians, is that in general, Israelis, whether they are children or adults, do not attack armed soldiers with their bare hands, or with sticks and stones and pieces of street debris. (Unless, of course, the armed soldiers are trying to herd them into ovens or something.) This may speak to Israelis being more civilized than Arabs in general, or more intelligent, or more sane, or all three. In this specific case, I suspect it actually speaks to Israelis raising their children to be tolerant, as opposed to Arabs and Palestinians in particular raising their children to hate Israelis and to believe that if they die fighting the enemies of Allah they will automatically go to Paradise (and that last belief strikes me as not only being completely nuts and insanely irresponsible, but also simply an undeniably evil thing to teach a child). But what the hell do I know.

My second rhetorical question on this matter is this:

2. You're a uniformed tank commander in a region where you, the soldiers under your command, and the people you are there to protect and patrol, are surrounded at all times by violent fanatics who will stop at nothing to cause you, and them, harm. It has been demonstrated to you so many times, and so tragically, that no sane person can doubt it, and no responsible peace officer can disregard it, that among your enemy, there are no individuals who can be safely judged by appearance, gender, race, or age as non-combatants. It has also been demonstrated repeatedly that a mistake on your part will certainly lead to your death and the deaths of the people under your command, and those you are there to protect. Abruptly, while on patrol, you find yourself surrounded by a screaming mob of adolescents and some adults, all obviously hostile and vigorously and violently engaging you and your troops with sustained missile fire.

I want to take a moment to note, here, that 'you' as the uniformed tank commander in this example are not necessarily Israeli. You could be an American in Hanoi in 1968, surrounded by Vietnamese 'civilians'. You could be a Bosnian Serb. You could be a Sunni Muslim nervously patrolling a Shi'ite neighborhood, or a South Korean soldier in the DMZ. In some parallel timeline, you could be a Native American, fighting to defend your last remaining free territory from the evil encroachments of the Vile White European Invaders. And it's helpful (although those I'm writing this mostly to won't remotely want to) to try and take away the nationalist and cultural labels from this, and just see a generic situation. But, continuing the question, or thought exercise:

Utilizing what superhuman ability granted you by the deity of your choice, or perhaps your otherworldly origin or the effects of atomic radiation on your parents' DNA, do you instantly come to the conclusion that mixed in among the rocks, sticks, pieces of brick, bottles, and other missiles hurtling at you and your soldiers, there is no Molotov cocktail, grenade, or crude but effective homemade Semtex bomb? And, barring your use of said superhuman ability to instantly reach this crucial, life and death conclusion, what amount of force do you conclude is justified to preserve your own life, and the lives of your troops, and the lives of the people you are charged to protect, against this attack? And how much time do you think, in this exercise, you would have to ponder this before you had to take some sort of action?

Analogy is always suspect, but I'll tell you what: if I get a bunch of my buddies together, we all get rocks and clubs, and we head across town to the closest Islamic mosque and gather around it as a screaming mob, waving our clubs and hurling our rocks through the windows, I'm personally willing to bet that the cops are going to show up pretty goddam quick with guns drawn and tell us, in no uncertain terms, to stop doing that shit or they will shoot us dead. And I suspect even more that, if there were already cops standing around outside that mosque when we arrived, and we started tossing rocks at them, they'd start shooting back at us. And I suspect they'd do that even if me and my buddies were adolescents or teenagers, once they gave us a warning or two to cut the shit. American adolescents and teenagers have been known to carry guns and explosives, and the fact that an armed peacekeeper only sees rocks and clubs doesn't mean they won't necessarily respond with lethal force.

I'm also pretty sure, although the news reports Connoll reviles for their lack of balance (meaning, sympathy for Palestinian patriots, heroes, and martyrs) don't mention it, that the Israeli Defense Forces in question probably told the Palestinian mob in this particular example to cut the shit or they'd be fired on. Maybe more than once.

Now, suppose instead of cops protecting that mosque in my example, there are American Special Forces troops, with loaded M-16s and full combat ordinance, stationed there instead. And suppose instead of me and my buddies, or a bunch of obviously American kids that these Special Forces guys don't know, through generations of repeated atrocities, are willing to do anything to kill them, they are instead being attacked by a mob of -- I don't know -- fanatical Iroquois secessionists who have over the past forty years demonstrated a willingness to go to any extreme of violence to wipe out American soldiers and peacekeepers illegally occupying what they consider to be their own legitimate territory. Exactly what's going to happen to that screaming, attacking, rock throwing mob of zealous partisans?

My fellow liberal lefties seem to quite ardently believe that when Palestinian terrorists attack civilian targets with lethal weapons of indiscriminate effect, they are behaving patriotically and heroically. In contrast, when uniformed peacekeeping troops retaliate for those terrorist attacks, or even fire in self defense on fanatical mobs attempting to swarm their position, they are unconscionable war criminals who should be perfunctorily tried and then summarily hung.

Okay, that may be an overstatement; most of my fellow bloggers do, as a nominal afterthought, condemn Palestinian suicide bombers. Yet still, the vast and overwhelming impression I get is that the left wing of blogdom these days somehow, even while condemning Palestinian terrorism, views the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces as being somehow every bit as bad, if not actually worse.

One final rhetorical point and then I'm done with this, at least, for now:

"Land for Peace" is another biggie that both the liberal Israeli left wing, and the liberals over here, keep harping on. The Israeli occupation of the Left Bank is an immoral incursion. The Palestinians of the left bank are an illegally occupied and oppressed people. If Israel is serious about peace, then Israel has to get the hell out of the Left Bank, apologize for illegally settling it in the first place, pay reparations, and, I don't know, line up individually by the millions to kneel and kiss Arafat's ass and murmur sincere imprecations of their cultural remorse on live, internationally broadcast television.

I don't know whether or not the Israeli occupation of the Left Bank is an immoral incursion, and while I admit that, let me also state that I in no way am saying that the Israelis are some sort of fantasy Jedi Knight culture composed of nothing but noble heroes who are all wise and benevolent and good. Are there bad Israelis? I'm sure there are. Have the Israelis done bad things? I have no doubt. So has everyone. I've done bad things. Everyone I know has done bad things. America has done bad things, Russia has done bad things, France has done bad things, Belgium and Switzerland and, I don't know, goddam Luxembourg have all done bad things, I would imagine. And the occupation of the Left Bank, for all I actually know, is a Bad Thing that Israel has done. Nonetheless, I want to point out one more thing that seems to me to be obvious, but that no one else has even mentioned:

Based on what seems to be generally known and admitted by pretty much everyone of every political persuasion about Palestinians and Israel, what's going to happen if Israel just throws up its hands, says "Holy shit, you guys are right, we just suck -- we're outta the Left Bank, and y'all have a party, okay?"

My fellow left wingers all seem to think that, assuming the awful and intransigent and bloodthirsty Israelis would just open their eyes and embrace that most reasonable of all positions, why then, the Palestinians would fall to their knees and go 'lawsamercy, you Jews are our brothers after all!'. There would be a big group hug, everyone would dance and sing in the streets, two disparate cultures would embrace and learn from each other, the very heavens would open and manna would pour down and the Millennium itself would be fairly begun.

I'm sorry, I think that's just stupid. What I think is far more realistic is that the Palestinians would then say "About fucking time, you stupid fucking Jews. Now, since you've acknowledged that you have absolutely no moral claim on our holy ground, get the fuck out of Jerusalem right this instant, you infidel dogs, or we'll kill you all."

And I tend to think they'd put it exactly like that, too.

I also personally believe that if every Jew in Israel were then, at that point, to suddenly clap themselves on the forehead and exclaim woefully, “You know, you’re right, we have absolutely no moral grounds for living here in the Middle East, let’s just scatter ourselves back amongst the various nations of the Earth again", and got on planes and vamoosed, leaving the functional infrastructure of Israel behind for the Palestinians to take over without asking for one red shekel in compensation -- the Palestinians would still not say ‘thank you’. I suspect, at that point, that the Palestinians would move in, take over the houses and buildings and well irrigated fields built and paid for and died over by the Israelis for generations, and pretty much immediately lay plans to, using whatever methods were available or became necessary, wipe out the blot that they consider the Jewish people to be from the very visage of humanity itself.

(Actually, I suspect first there’d be a jolly damned big Islamic holy war over which particular subsect of Islam got to occupy the actual Dome of the Rock, and as long as they don't start throwing around nukes I say have at it, O Sons Of The Desert, but if there were any extremist Muslims left when the dust settled from that one, then they’d get around to plotting the deaths of every Jew in the world. After which, assuming there was ever an ‘after’ to that, they’d start plotting the deaths of every non-Moslem Shi’ite in the world.)

So, I don’t know. Maybe the Israelis should acknowledge that their occupation of the Left Bank is illegal and they should withdraw. Or maybe some of their detractors should acknowledge that Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, simply hate all outsiders in general, and all Jews in specific, and there is absolutely nothing Israel can do other than lie down and die, to placate them, or win lasting peace, in the Middle East.

Nothing, I mean, except wipe every Arab religious/cultural zealot off the face of the Earth. Which, to date, the Israelis have shown remarkable restraint in not actually setting out to do, in my opinion.

Ultimately, why do I like Israel, and dislike Arabic culture so much? Because Israel, and Judaism, are cultures of tolerance and permissiveness and individual freedom and democracy. Arabic culture, and Islamic culture, are based on intolerance, conformity enforced by instant, barbaric punishments, misogyny, autocracy, and violent repression. Jews, as far as I can see, raise their children to be tolerant and to not pick fights. Arabs, and especially Palestinians, raise their children to hate all non-Arabs (and some fellow Arabs) so virulently that they are willing to kill themselves, or send their loved ones off to horrible fiery deaths, in order to take a few of the enemy with them.

I sympathize with any innocents who get caught in a crossfire, and I also sympathize with those who are warped by spectacularly bad parenting, no matter what race or culture they may belong to. But when we’re talking about the victims of suicide bombers, as opposed to those killed when they willingly engaged armed soldiers in a violent confrontation -- well, sorry. My sympathies and support go to the Israelis.

I take it back. I’m not sorry at all.

It may be worth noting here, in closing, that it was probably this exact post that, long ago and far away, moved Dean Esmay, perhaps the prince of all right wing pro-war attack bloggers, to declare ringingly that I was his "new favorite blogger".

And it's this post, probably more than any other, that drives every left wing blogger who comes across it to near blithering insanity.

What can I say?

I just like Israel.