Recently, I wrote very negative things about Gus Van Sant while discussing his most recent mediocre film Promised Land. I said that his days as a great director where behind him. I used that film as well as Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester to make this case. But as long time reader Karl Paniczny pointed out, Van Sant was making small, personal films; it was just that I wasn’t watching them.

I thought that was an excellent point. So I picked up Gerry (which I plan to watch in the morning) and Elephant (which I just watched). Elephant is an odd film. It combines cinema verite with pointedly stylized camera work. The film operates at a glacial speed with incredibly long static and Steadicam shots that seem designed more for theme and mood than for plot. Other than a number of scenes shown from different perspectives at different times, the film makes almost no concessions for the viewer. Mostly, you are just left to piece the timing of various scenes together in retrospect. This works well, however, given that the story it tells is very simple.

I don’t find the main plot of Elephant that interesting. It is basically a fictionalization of the Columbine High School massacre. It is an almost impossible task to show a mass shooting without somehow trivializing the motivations of the perpetrators. Is it bullying? Is it video games? Is it insanity? In the end, I’m afraid it is all these things and nothing. The essence of drama is motivation, and Van Sant provides lots of motivations for Alex and Eric without pushing it too hard. But in the end, the act is so heinous that I rebel against the very notion of causality.

It reminds me of The Ox-Bow Incident, a film that is also about a heinous act. But in that case it is the result of group think and shows how everyone’s little faults work in synergy to create a tragic fault. In Elephant there is some evil synergy. And I felt like I understood where the two boys were coming from. But the result was so catastrophic compared to the causes. That does seem to be how life is at times. It is just not very fulfilling as drama.

Having said all of that, the the film is really compelling; the shooting seems almost like an addendum. I was particularly taken with how Elephant shows all the things that the kids do and worry about. Three girls go to the bathroom after lunch so they can vomit up all those calories, lest they suffer the horror of being a normal weight. A young couple is concerned that the female may be pregnant. Michelle seems to be afraid that her PE teacher will make her undress for class the next day. All of these fears are for nothing given how much longer they will live.

Especially compelling to me is the story of Benny. After most all of the carnage is over, he walks through the halls almost in a daze. He seems unable to accept that what most clearly has happened is still happening. It doesn’t end well for him. But I understand his quest. It just has to be all some big misunderstanding. In a fundamental sense, his quest is that of the film and the viewer.

Despite so much carnage, Elephant has almost no on screen violence. Almost all of the deaths are implied rather than shown. The main point of the last half hour of the film seems to be to show the lack of empathy of the perpetrators. Eric often shows anger, but Alex is completely disconnected as though he were playing a video game. This from a boy who a day before was frustrated playing the “Moonlight Sonata.” It is chilling, as it ought to be.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that Elephant was a great film. It may not even be good. I have problems with it, especially with the third act. But there is no doubt that it is a work of art. There is no pandering. It seems to accomplish what it is trying to do. And so I owe Gus Van Sant an apology: Promised Land is just his day job. He’s still working the graveyard shift in Portland on things that matter.

Afterword

For a film that won the Palme d’Or, the DVD for this film really sucks. In terms of features, it has the trailer and a 12 minute “On the Set” video. That is to say that it isn’t even a featurette in the sense of a “Making Of” documentary. It is very disappointing. I would have liked a director’s commentary. I suspect that Van Sant has a few things to say about his very stylized approach to the material. (Then again, as I recall, his commentary on Drugstore Cowboy was of little insight.)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for the removal of American troops from the province west of Kabul. He claims that the troops have been involved in torture, some even leading to death of civilians in that area. Here’s what I know: nothing. It could just be Karzai playing politics or it could be what he says is true or it could be both. American troops have done this kind of thing before. They have even done this kind of thing in Afghanistan. So it would be absurd to just dismiss the claim out of hand.

Unless, of course, you are part of the overwhelming majority of Americans who just know that we could never do any of the terrible things that we absolutely have done. The My Lai Massacre never happen, for example. That’s one of the frustrating things for most Americans: they have no idea why anyone in the world would hate America. After all, they’ve never seen news to indicate that America is anything but a force for good in the world. Those people who hate us must be insane or hate us for our freedom!

I first read about the Karzai allegations at NBC, Afghan President Orders US Forces Out of Key Province. The reporting is pretty objective. My only problem with it is in comparison with how it would have been reported the other way around. The American news media tend to take military claims as the truth. But I’m happy enough with this reporting: at this point it is just Karzai’s claim.

What was more interesting was reading the comments. I didn’t go all that far through them; I read around 50. But with one exception, they were all of the form: Karzai is just lying and we ought to get out of there anyway. But the one comment that was different was really telling. He actually believes the claims:

I feel so warm inside. I want to break into “You’re a Grand Old Flag”! After all, we’re just doing to “them” what they do to us. And we don’t know what those troops are going through, so we should support them twice as much as it logically possible. If they just want to massacre a whole village, they must have a very good reason! I need to take a breath…

When I hear people talking like this, it makes me think that it doesn’t matter how many al-Qaeda leaders we kill, they won this war long ago. It is one thing for a government to be evil—they pretty much are by definition. But the fact that people on a middle-of-the-road website cheer for torture shows that we’ve become a far worse nation than we were when I was a kid. At least then we had the ideal of rising to a higher level.

But the other commenters bother me more. They are the ones who really think they have a good bead on reality. They think they know what’s going on. They can’t imagine that they would ever fall for propaganda. And in this case, they may well be right. But the assumption they all make is that of course Karzai would lie and of course American officials tell the truth. And that is even more dangerous than the pro-torture cheerleaders.

Afterword

I almost forgot! I like that line about there never being a “boast or brag.” On one level, it is hilarious, because of course, it is a boast and brag. But on another, there used to be a feeling that we were such a great nation that we shouldn’t go around rubbing the noses of other nations in it. Well not anymore. I were to write the equivalent song today, it would be called, “We’re Number One! We’re Number One!”

Glenn Greenwald is one of the most important liberal journalists we have. And of course that means he works for a British newspaper. On Friday he wrote, Obama Officials Refuse to Say if Assassination Power Extends to US Soil. This is the kind of stuff that liberals would be all over if the president were a Republican. But a lot of liberals claim that they “trust” Obama to use these powers wisely. Even apart from the absurdity of the claim that anyone with Obama’s power can be trusted, isn’t it clear that Obama will not always be president? Isn’t it clear that these precedents will be used by very bad men in the future? Isn’t it obvious that a few generations down the line the president will use the exact same justifications to assassinate troublesome journalists on the streets of New York? It’s obvious to me, anyway.

Both CIA head nominee John Brennan and President Obama himself have been asked the same question, “Could the administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?” In both cases, the answer is, “We aren’t doing that and we don’t plan to.” This is a problem. This implicitly opens the door to a future statement that, “We changed our minds!” It almost screams, “Yes, we can!”

The administration has secret legal documents that justify targeted assassinations of American citizens outside the country. Most of these documents the administration won’t even show to the Senate. If this all sounds kind of familiar, it is because this is just like the Bush administration.

And who is the hero in all this? Up until recently, it was pretend libertarian Rand Paul who was all alone. He has promised to filibuster Brennan’s nomination vote until he gets an answer to the question, “Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a US citizen on US soil, and without trial?” He also says that the only acceptable answer to the question is no. In general, Paul is a total fucktard. But in this case he’s my hero. Of course, this says little about him and a whole lot about most politicians and political watchers.

I understand that all administrations are evil. But what I find most troubling about Obama’s administration is how much they’ve followed the Bush administration when it comes to secrecy. Here is Greenwald:

He goes on to note that there is no justification for keep such documents secret. What he means is that there is no good justification. It is clear that the administration wants to keep these documents secret because the administration knows that the legal reasoning is at best questionable and that if the public knew about them, they would rebel against them. That’s the thing about the vast majority of secret government documents. They are secret because the government (or specific powerful people inside it) don’t what the American people to know about it. Government secrecy is almost never right.

I read this morning over at the Bilerico Project, Top Papal Candidate Blames Child Sex Abuse Scandal on Gays. In it, John Becker quotes Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson as claiming that there are unlikely to be many pedophilia cases in Africa because the culture there just doesn’t countenance homosexuality. This is offensive in all kinds of ways, but let me start by naming two of the minor ways. First, I would think that someone from Ghana would not make the American mistake of thinking Africa is one homogeneous entity. Second, it is the most ignorant of people who think that by making homosexuality taboo a society will limit it.

What is most offensive about the comment, of course, is the old canard that pedophiles are homosexual. It turns out that generally what makes one a pedophile is not having developed a mature sex drive. Thus, they aren’t interested in adults as sexual objects at all. Of those who do, it seems to be a wash: statistically they are like the rest of the population. Now let us think: what is a good way to stunt someone’s sex drive? I can think of one way: dogmatic religious doctrine requiring priests to be celibate.

This got me wondering why Catholics are so anti-gay when in some ways they are fairly enlightened. Only part of it is the Bible, and I think they could get past that. The big anti-gay writings are in the Old Testament. The anti-gay passages in the New Testament were all written by Paul who seems to have had a hard on regarding the issue. In Romans 1:27, he’s downright pornographic, “And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.” Jesus, of course, was silent on the subject. And no one at that time could have imagined the nice same-sex couples we have today with their very boring jobs, kids, and music tastes. On this issue, I think the church has to ask, “Are we really going to continue to base our theology of the bigotry of people 2000 years ago?”

The Bible is the least of the problem, however. The church’s position on homosexuality is primarily wrapped up in its totally messed up ideas about sex. But in its defense, at least it is consistent. The church claims that the pleasure of sex is only to encourage us to make babies. That’s why Catholics can’t have condoms or homosexuality. Of course, there are cracks in the philosophical edifice. The biggest is the embrace of the “rhythm method” of birth control. If God hates condoms then he also hates intended non-reproductive sex acts. Also, if God made sex pleasurable to encourage procreation, why did he make oral sex pleasurable? Why did is place the clitoris in its unusual position?[1]

The biggest problems facing the Catholic church come down to its ridiculous idea about sex being only for procreation. If that idea changes, then everything else will fall in line. The problem is that the church has spent so many centuries working out their careful “sex is fun only as a byproduct” philosophy, that they will greatly resist changing it. But they have little choice.

[1] The clitoris position is unusual from a theological perspective, not a Darwinian perspective. And from a “sex as fun” perspective, especially sex vis-a-vis mastrabation, it is extremely well placed. Now really: only an evil God would design sex organs like than and then say, “Don’t touch!”

Most of us are wise to the ways of admen, pollsters, speechwriters, and pundits. We know how high-flying words can be deployed in the service of cynical aims, and how the noblest sentiments can be subverted in the name of power, expedience, greed, or intolerance.

—Barack Obama, without a hint of irony
The Audacity of Hope

I’m not Calvin Trillin, but I’ve written a couple of political poems recently. The first sums up the Republican Party, and to a lesser extent the conservative movement. As you may recall, reproductive rights were more a Republican issue around the time of Roe V. Wade. And in the 1950s, voting rights were at least widely supported in the party. But the Republican Party has been committed to the interests of the rich in modern times. This has meant that they’ve been forced to make some unholy alliances. In the 1960s, it was with racists (although it took a while to pry that voting block away from the Democrats). In the 1970s, it was with the Christian fundamentalists.

Republican Coalition

Give those tax cuts to the rich
Show war mongers your big dicks
Pander to the racist hicks
Vaginal probes for all the chicks!

This next one I wanted to do with illustrations, but it was not to be. I also thought I would make it longer. You’ll get the idea. It is about the Confidence Fairy. This is a mythical creature that Paul Krugman invented. It is based on the belief of austerians and other assorted Deficit Scolds who claim that balancing the federal budget will instill confidence in the markets and cause growth. It is a nice idea, but the economy just doesn’t work that way, as the last 4 years have shown throughout the world. Krugman claimed that these people believed in the Confidence Fairy who (like the Great Pumpkin) will magically appear to reward good economies who balance their budgets.

The Confidence Fairy

The Confidence Fairy
Her powers will shock
Bond rates sink lower
She’ll goose up your stock!

The Confidence Fairy
She may be a myth
But she’s still effective
At helping the rich.

That’s all for now kiddos. As usual: if you don’t like the content, you get your full money back! And if you want to read real poetry, why are you here? Go over to The Good Typist.

This is a picture of Penny Winters. I always wonder about these things. It is a “mug shot.” And yet, Ms. Winters has been convicted of no crime. But somehow, the “justice” system seems to think it is just fine to release her photo to the world.

I present her photo to you as an example of an entirely typical victim of our fascistic corporate welfare injustice system. This 63 year old woman is facing felony theft charges for eating multiple unauthorized cookies while working at Walmart. Most recently, the management caught her eating Oreos. But if Walmart is like places I’ve worked, the management is busy going over months of video tape to see just exactly how many cookies the felonious Walmart employee ate. Is it any wonder that Walmart’s profits slipped from $16.4 billion in 2011 to $15.7 billion in 2012?!

In all seriousness, what Ms. Winters allegedly did was wrong. But such “leakage” is common and accepted. If her total cookie intake raised her cost to the company by as much as 1%, I would be surprised. Walmart’s profits are falling because people like Winters don’t have as much money to spend at places like Walmart. And a high profile felony prosecution of an employee for filching some cookies is not going to do anything to improve their bottom line.

This is justice in the United States. Winters could go to prison for years for her crime. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for a single banker to go to jail for their fraudulent games that caused the current depression. I’m so very proud.

And the la-hand of the Freeeeee!
And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!

You can think of handsome devil on the left as Ted Rubio, if you want; I like to think of him as Marco Cruz. He is my pathetic Photoshop attempt to combine Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in one photograph. But there’s something that these two guys have in common. It is pretty obvious, but give that some thought while I give you a little personal history.

When I was 8 or 9 years old, my family took a trip to Texas to visit relatives. We stopped at some little dinner along the highway one night. There we all were: mon, dad, and four kids. My father is Portuguese. In California, he doesn’t look exotic. He could probably pass as Italian. But he certainly isn’t pasty white. And in Texas, apparently, he looked downright foreign. At the dinner, two good ol’ boys began discussing my father’s ethnicity very loudly. They couldn’t decide whether my dad was Spanish or Mexican. Eventually one said, “Hell, I don’t matter anyway.”

He was not indicating that all of us—Mexicans and Spaniards alike—are brothers and so it didn’t matter what my father was. Rather, he was saying that regardless of what my dad was, he was one of “them” and therefore not to be trusted. It was a very tense time. We paid our bill and left. The good ol’ boys followed in their truck. They tailgated the car all the way to country line. Then I guess they got bored, having struck a blow for the white man in their little town.

My point with telling you this is that my father’s last name (Moraes) had nothing to do with that little interaction with the “real” America that Republicans like so much. It had everything to do with the fact that my father’s skin is a little dark. He’s got that ethnic look.

Now look at Marco Cruz above? Do you think that he would be the subject of good ol’ boy speculation? I don’t. I think the only thing ethnic about him is his name. And that gets right to the heart of one of the many problems that Republicans have in reaching out to the Latino community. These guys are the future of course: in not so many decades, there really won’t be much of a correlation between skin color and ethnicity. They are on the leading edge. But I don’t think it is any accident that the two major Latino Republican figures are only slightly less pasty than Newt Gingrich.

So let’s see. The Republican Party has a economic platform that Latinos generally hate. They have a pretend immigration plan that most of their party hates in a very public way. And they have Latino candidates who look like they grew up in Chelsea. How’s that Latino outreach going, guys?

Greg Sargent asked a couple of questions of the deficit hysterics, Questions for the “Blame it on Both Sides” Crowd. But I think he may be a little confused about who he’s talking to.

His first question is reasonable enough, “What is it exactly that you think Obama could do to make Republicans compromise?” This gets to the core of Matt Yglesias’ idea about BipartisanThink. This is the principle that the center is always by definition halfway between the Democrats and the Republicans. So if Obama said we had to replace the Sequester with only tax increases, then the “serious” position would be halfway between that and the Republican position. Thus: half spending cuts and half tax increases. But given that Obama has now compromised and accepted the old “serious” position of half and half, there is a new “serious” position: three-quarter spending cuts and one-quarter tax increases.

Sargent’s second question gets at the absurdity of this BipartisanThink. He wants to know what the deficit scolds actually think. As we all know, they currently think that a mix of spending cuts and tax increases is the right way to go. Thus, they should be complaining that the Republicans are absolutely against even a penny in new taxes. This is where I think Sargent is missing what is really going on. The Very Serious Scolds want the two sides to come together. That position will always be elusive until a deal is reached.

What is horribly, horribly wrong with this idea is that it rewards people who will not compromise. The more one party compromises, the more they lose. Basic psychology should tell the deficit scolds that this only makes reaching a deal harder. And once that deal is reached, it will be far closer to the least reasonable party. Of course, none of that matters to the deficit scolds. If it did, they wouldn’t be deficit scolds. The very idea that reaching any deal is more important than reaching a good deal is ridiculous. As are the deficit scolds.