USA in the 1950s

A soupçon of synchronicity was experienced at the weekend. On Saturday I was led, via a link at naked capitalism, to some photographs:
20+ Rarely Seen Photos Of America In The 1950’s Show How Different Life Was Before

Monika Brazaitytė wrote:

"The 1950’s are often viewed as a golden era in U.S. history, a time of happiness and prosperity, despite the threat of nuclear annihilation, racial segregation and the looming Cold War.

While most photos from the time are in black and white, color photography was still a relative novelty at the time and the film was quite expensive for regular people, the photos below are in glorious color. This means that they are more relatable, and makes the period feel closer to us than ever.

Many of the photos were collected by Denis Fraevich, a New Yorker of Russian descent who loves to bring the era back to life. “The pictures were found at auctions, flea markets and yards, digitized and posted on the Internet,” he told Bored Panda........"

An interesting collection of photos!

Later the same day we decided to rent a handful of DVDs for weekend viewing. One of my choices, watched the same evening, was picked purely due to director and cast members: Suburbicon. The movie, directed by George Clooney, was originally a Coen Brothers vehicle from the 1980s, but was shelved until Clooney came along, re-wrote parts of it and took over direction. Matt Damon and Julianne Moore have starring roles. How bad could this be?

It was, in fact, pretty bad! Synchronicity? Well the story is set in much the same era as depicted by those photographs I'd looked at just hours before. In fact it was almost as though some of those photographs were coming to life before my eyes.

Suburbicon is a mess of a movie, although it did hold our interest. The storyline didn't go where we initially thought it was going, there were continual deviations along with a fumbled attempt to weave two separate themes together.

The ultimate message, for viewers who managed to stay with the film to the end, was that back in the 1950s, racial hatred in the USA was so intense that it could blind the seriously prejudiced to such an extent that pure evil, going on right under their noses, was able to pass, almost without notice.

After watching Suburbicon, those photographs mentioned at the top of the post didn't seem at all "Golden Age-ish". The 1950s, in the USA anyway, had distinctly creepy underpinnings!

White Nationalism ~ "the primal fault"

A quote from one of the better diatribes I've read during the past few days, on the issue of racism, white supremacy etc. It comes from Stonewalling Washington: Trump pushes leftist view of US racism further than Obama or Clinton, by Ramin Mazaheri at
The Saker blog.

"For true leftists – I don’t see how Trump’s comments can’t be seen as a major positive! The idea that Trump is fomenting White Nationalism in America is like being worried about rain falling in the ocean."

Those words immediately brought to mind lines from a favourite poem by
A.E. Housman: Stars, I have seen them fall:

The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.

The piece by Ramin Mazaheri begins:

I feel sorry for Americans – they have such lousy leaders they feel compelled to defend.

I don’t mean Trump or Obama or Clinton or even JFK – I mean George Washington.

It’s really gotta be a blow to the national pride when Americans have to admit, if only to themselves: “Trump makes a fair point: the father of our country, George Washington, was a slave-owning bastard, just like Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.”

LOL, Trump deserves some sort of leftist medal: “Unwitting Service to the Advance of Leftism Despite Overwhelming Idiocy,” or something, because his recent statement has done more to push a truly leftist analysis of American history than anyone could have hoped.

Racist, imperialist, bourgeois, repressive, anti-worker, pre-modern…this describes all of the US leaders Trump mentioned. A true leftist must be a wall of stone on this point, so…kudos to Trump, no?

Please, do go read the full piece.

In July of 2012 I blogged about a little-known Canadian film, adaptation of a stage play by playwright David Gow : Steel Toes. I titled my post HATRED "the madness of the heart (words borrowed from Lord Byron). The film's content in August 2017, five years later, is relevant to current issues. I'd bought the DVD of Steel Toes during my search for films in which a favourite actor of mine, David Strathairn, had appeared.

In Steel Toes , set in Montreal, but would be equally relevant in any location, anywhere in the world, a liberal Jewish lawyer, Danny Dunckelman (David Strathairn) is appointed to represent a white supremacist, neo-nazi skinhead, Michael Downey (Andrew Walker). Downey is on trial for the racially motivated attack and murder of an East Indian immigrant.

There could be no clearer illustration of what hatreds can lead to than the first, barely watchable, scene of this film. Downey, crazed by hatred kicks to the edge of death - wearing steel-toed Doc Marten boots - an Indian cook, who has accidentally splashed Downey's clothing when throwing out some liquid.

90 minutes of dense and intense dialogue take viewers through opposing mindsets, beliefs and embedded hatreds of the skinhead and the lawyer. The lawyer, professionally bound to defend this man whose beliefs he finds alien and despicable, needs to delve deep into his own background and the teachings of his father, to face his own dormant hatred before he can begin to find a way to assist the neo-nazi to understand, and come to terms with, his own emotional excesses.

The lawyer understands, and tries continually to explain in some way to Downey, that the struggle against evil is primarily an internal one. Downey's failure and downfall was to externalize his struggle and inner fears by identifying specific scapegoats. Immigrants, for him, were The Enemy of "besieged" white men. Taking a broader view, outside of the film's scenario, instead of (or as well as) immigrants, targets could have been gays, any non-white people, or conversely from a "black" point of view any white people, muslims, the 1% (I must watch myself!), political right-wingers, left-wingers, women, men.....the beat of hatreds, both deep and shallow, goes on.

Strathairn and Walker give exemplary performances in what must have been seriously difficult roles for both: Strathairn isn't Jewish, and Walker, in real life, is worlds away from the skinhead neo-nazi mentality. The actors needed to acquire in depth insights into the beliefs of the film's two central characters. In interview at the end of the film David Strathairn explained that he, though not Jewish, had attended Temple and read parts of the Torah in preparation for the role.

Before the injured man died in hospital from internal bleeding he had made a statement, written for him by his wife, detailing his loss of sight, inability to walk or sit resulting form the brutal beating he received from Downey, but offering Downey compassion and forgiveness. Dunckelman repeatedly makes Downey read this document aloud until a change occurs and crazed hatred and anger begin to subside.

The film will long remain in my memory, especially lawyer Danny Dunckelman's words in the last scene of all as he examines his father's prayer shawl (Wiki has the proper term for this shawl = a tallit). I recalled a phrase used by the commenter I had quoted earlier in the post: "....our social fabric is frayed..." Danny Dunckelman says, echoing earlier meditations (and I admit to not really understanding the words, but still finding them beautiful) :

These seven threads comprise a cloth: spirit, light, time, space, birth, death, and the seventh thread, which is the mystery of the universe. This seventh thread is also the opposite of spirit, the opposite of light, the opposite of time, the opposite of space, the opposite of birth, the opposite of death. The seven threaded dimensional cloth, which is the very fabric of the unnameable. The fabric extending out from any point of our universe. This movement, this animation, this extension in the cloth is the divine dance of eternity.

Mid-week Movie ~ Desierto and Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Around a couple of weeks ago (HERE) I was scribbling about allegory and mentioning how it is often used in movies - sometimes without simple-minds like mine being aware of that intention, until prompted. I, all unknowingly, happened upon this circumstance again last week. As a change from undiluted Netflix we decided to rent a handful of DVDs from our local video store. One of these, chosen purely due to its leading man, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, turned out to have been ...yep...an allegory.

We first came across Jeffrey Dean Morgan (hereafter referred to as JDM) in his part in the later seasons of The Good Wife when he joined the cast to play an investigator, and a new love interest for leading lady Julianna Margulies. Very engaging, thought I! He'll go far! He has, but in what I consider the wrong direction - but then, I'm old, what do I know?

I backtracked in JDM's career and found on Netflix (or maybe Amazon?) a series in which he had played the lead in 2012/3: Magic City. We watched both seasons of that - not bad! He was sans beard back then, and a tad heavier I think. I also read that he had a minor part in Grey's Anatomy (season 9) but so far we've not caught that one, not being big fans of hospital series. However, though JDM has said, in interview, that he could probably have spent his career playing romantic-comedy-type roles, when he was offered a change he gladly took the opportunity to widen his range. He has now played, and quite unromantically I guess, The Comedian in Watchmen and Negan in The Walking Dead. In Desierto, the movie I began to write about earlier, before falling down the JDM rabbit hole, JDM is the arch-villain.

I wasn't expecting to actually enjoy Desierto or admire the character JDM depicted, but decided I ought to sample this one to catch up with the arc of his career, as my stomach would probably not take kindly to either Watchmen or The Walking Dead.

In a nutshell, and basically that's what the theme of Desierto amounts to - a nutshell's worth of plot, with a very nasty nut in the lead! "Sam" [Uncle?] is a seriously obsessed murdering vigilate-type who lives near, or stalks around, the US/Mexico border, with a beautiful dog called Tracker, who has been cruelly trained (I blame not dogs - ever!) Tracker will, by the way, before the film ends, comply with my "Rule of Dog in Film".

David Sims' review in The Atlantic: Desierto Is a Horror Movie for the Age of Trump is a good and, for me, an enlightening read as to the film's allegorical intention. Maybe the heat is getting to me, but I hadn't connected the vigilante's name, Sam, to the US iconic avuncularity thing.

Jonas Cuarón’s film sees a racist vigilante stalking and murdering Mexican migrants as they cross the border. Sims' review begins:

The premise of Desierto is simple, and blunt. A truck full of Mexican migrants, attempting to cross the U.S. border illegally, is attacked in the desert by a lone gunman. For the next 90 minutes, the truck’s occupants are hunted by this demented figure toting a sniper rifle, a horror-movie villain who mumbles to his dog about keeping his country safe. If the metaphor seems obvious, well, it’s supposed to be — the Mexican director Jonas Cuarón has manifested a villain out of recent anti-immigrant sentiment, and is terrorizing viewers with it.

Desierto is not a good movie, but it’s an interesting pop-cultural footnote, especially given its release in the final weeks leading up to a U.S. presidential election in which Donald Trump seized the Republican nomination partly on the back of his extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric. It’s a horror movie first and foremost, although not a particularly original one.

Later in the piece:

Perhaps that’s Cuarón’s larger point — that viewers can reconcile themselves to this awful violence, especially when it’s presented in a genre format via an action thriller playing out in the landscape of a wide-open desert. But the film’s battle lines are drawn so quickly, and its point made so unsubtly, that it’s hard to go much deeper. Yes, the rhetoric of politicians like Trump, who tar Mexican immigrants as monstrous rapists and murderers, is worth investigating, and Cuarón’s obvious anger over it is both palpable and understandable.

But because of its one-note message, this film isn’t likely to change anyone’s mind about anything. Desierto succeeds in portraying the savagery of racism, but in the end, it’s completely cold.

Without at first being aware of the wider, allegorical, intention of the movie, I hated Sam anyway, which was the whole simple point of this movie. I suspect that JDM was offered the part of Sam due to the rather unromantic reputation he has been gathering from Watchmen and Walking Dead - obviously not from his yummy, and rather believable character in The Good Wife! Sadly, it seems that JDM could go the way of another of my early romantic favourites, Bruce Willis, with whom I fell in love aeons ago in Moonlighting; then fell out of love with a clatter after seeing him in his Die Hard evolution - as well as discovering that, politically, he's a Republican supporter. I don't know whether a similar fate awaits JDM, but I shall be watching for clues and evidence!

Bill Maher's Word Trouble

Something else in the news during my off-blog week: Bill Maher blotted his copybook - again. He had let slip the "n" word in response to something a Senator from Nebraska had said to him. I'll not repeat the context here, but link to a relevant article for detail - there are numerous others online.

http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/bill-maher-apologies-again-on-hbo-show-1202461271/

I long ago lost all admiration for Bill Maher, but I was an avid fan of his early on in my time in the USA. I hadn't ever marked him as racist though - west coast elitist limousine liberal, yes, Obama apologist, yes (cost him a $ million donation that did!) Anyway, he apologised immediately for his use of the "n" word, also apologised further, multiple times, in the following week's show. That show had several black guests who were given free rein to upbraid and school Maher which, it appears, they did with enthusiasm. Rapper, Ice Cube, declared that the "n" word is the property only of black people, white people are not allowed to use it. Hmmm. Perhaps the best plan would be if black people (especially rappers) didn't use the word either. Take it out of the human lexicon altogether throw it in the trash, burn it - that's what is truly needed. From a report of Ice Cube's other remarks, he had said something to the effect that Bill Maher sometimes sounds like "a redneck trucker". Is that term not objectionable too, thought I? Maybe the term redneck should be reserved only for use by that particular ilk, if Ice Cube's rules are to be followed.

There was likely, I discovered after reading commentary, another layer to Senator Ben Sasse's remark during Real Time. The remark by Nebraska's Republican Senator which caused Maher to respond as he did, possibly had a hidden anti-semitic barb within it. I had not realised this. After Maher said something about visiting Nebraska,

Sasse hit Maher with the comment, “We’d love to see you working in the fields with us.” Maher didn’t hear “with us” so much as “working in the fields.” It was a dog whistle. There’s an old antisemitic caricature of Jews as people who live in cities, who don’t know anything about good, hard, manual labor – not like the Godfearing Protestant Christian farm folk of Nebraska. [Words in italics are from a commenter, Bill Kilpatrick].

If that is a correct assessment, then I can see more clearly why Bill Maher responded, in knee-jerk fashion, instinctively, as he did. That in no way excuses him, but could explain his manner of response more clearly.

Ye gods! When will people in the USA stop with this race thing? Perpetuating it appears to be almost an industry. We are human, all of us. When will we learn? Will it take a visit from extra-terrestrials to bash this point into our thick skulls? If surprise alien visitors decided to do as depicted in an old episode of The Twilight Zone and make it their objective to "Serve Man", then we'd darn well deserve to be broiled or grilled, plated and eaten...And, by the way, we'd taste better with garlic!

QUESTION ...

In Sunday's Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, aired by CNN, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were asked this question by American journalist and television news anchor Don Lemon:

"I want to ask both of you this question. I appreciate you responding to that question, but I want to ask both of you again. In a speech about policing, the FBI director James Comey borrowed a phrase from the Broadway show Avenue Q, saying, "Everyone is a little bit racist." What racial blind spot do you have? Secretary Clinton, you first."

I read Charles Pierce's piece on this, along with always good commentary at his website, then began to ask myself the same question.

Actually, I asked myself a two-part question

#1 What blind spot do I have regarding my native Britishness while trying to understand the way of life in the USA.

#2 What racial blind spot do I have, bearing in mind my own Anglo-Saxon ethnicity.

Trying not to sidestep both by saying a blind spot is a blind spot is a blind spot, so I can't see it, I tried to come up with something. It's a difficult question to answer.

#1 = I have a blind spot in the USA in not being able to understand why so many people here vote against their best interest, and why, oh why they had not risen up and demanded a national health care system for all, long before now. My blind spot remains blind because I don't have a long background of political experience here.

#2 = I have a blind spot as a British-born Anglo-Saxon person because I didn't live in the USA during the years of horrific segregation. Having read about it and heard about parts of it from my husband, I can only try to empathise and understand how African Americans felt. Those who did not experience segregation cannot possibly appreciate the true horror of it, and the scars it has inevitably left behind.

We can't help our ethnicity, our nationality, the colour of our skin, our gender, our varied cultures, they come with our human packaging as we plop into what becomes our stint on planet Earth. What we can help is not being alert and openly opposed to all kinds of discrimination related to any of those factors, from whatever source.

How would you answer Don Lemon's question?

Bernie Sanders and BLM

After last weekend's Netroots Nation intervention of Black Lives Matter activists during speeches by Democratic presidential candidates Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders, there was, it seems, a veritable onslaught of anti-Bernie stuff in the Twitter-verse, and ongoing argument, still, at some political websites.

A 20 minute video of the full segment of Senator Sanders' contribution at Netroots Nation is at the end of this post.

I, as no regular reader will be surprised to read, agreed with Bernie Sanders' responses. Some could have been made in better tone, and with a few additional points more relative to what the BLM people were shouting about. A little less discourtesy on their part and a little more tolerance on his part wouldn't have gone amiss. Still, he made the point that the issues he was speaking about: income inequality, inequality of opportunity, low wages etc. were at the root of much that is causing the wrongs felt by the African American population now.

Senator Sanders was, to my mind, taking what medical people might describe as an holistic approach - looking at the whole body of the USA, not a single symptom. In medicine this can be good or not so good, depending on circumstance. Treating a specific symptom is good, but ignoring underlying, and very serious conditions which are creating the situation is unwise and sometimes even fatal.

Police violence on African Americans is a very obvious wrong. Senator Sanders knows that it is a wrong powered by deeper factors, and unless those are dealt with there'll be no justice.

BLM activists made their point, I guess. It's odd, though, that they felt the need to make it in the place and at the time they did. I wonder from whom that idea originated? Sanders and O'Malley did show up to speak at Netroots Nation. Would it not have been more reasonable to direct some of the BLM's shoutings towards Hillary and the Republicans for not even bothering to attend, or maybe go to campaign speeches by Republicans such as Scott Walker, and try for a disruption there?

Throughout his career Bernie Sanders has been avidly pro-civil rights, that is a starting point from which to decide his attitudes. He is calling for controls on the police, the dismantling of the prison systems, full employment, free education....yet BLM, and countless on-line commenters choose to go after this candidate, attempting to discredit him?!

I feel certain that Senator Sanders' mis-step on Sunday, if it can be called that, as well as any hint of unpreparedness for hecklers, will be put right. He is a shrewd and experienced politician who has campaigned for mayoral and senate positions more than once during his long life. Yet he has never campaigned for the presidency of the USA. That has to be something entirely different, and something for which there is no possible preparation other than actually "doing it". It's a good thing Bernie began campaigning early, he has time to polish his game, and so have his advisers.




UPDATE: Sanders Calls Violent Arrest of Sandra Bland 'Totally Outrageous Police Behavior'....Recently challenged to address issues of racial injustice and police brutality more forcefully, Sanders does just that.

Sooner Be Somewhere Else

Jon Stewart summed up the latest in a string of embarrassments for those of us unfortunate enough to live in what's known as The Sooner State (I guess that title nowadays is best translated as meaning "sooner be somewhere else").

Video of the Jon Stewart segment is HERE.

What irritates me, in tandem with the ignorance and ugliness displayed by university students, is that people consider these yobbos still to be "kids". To my mind 19-year-old people are not kids. 9-year-olds are kids.

Take a time-travelling trip back to the 1940s in Europe and Asia - we'd encounter 19-year-olds risking their lives every day in armies, navies and airforces. Sad to report, though, as far as American military personnel were concerned racism ruled, whatever the age of those concerned. Segregated units existed, no better than the segregation going on in their hometowns. That is where the cancer originated, it's a cancer that keeps on coming back, no matter how many good people have done their their best to excise it and begin a healing process.

So the two students leading the racist chanting have apologised. They said, as new members of their fraternity, they were taught the offensive chant. Yep!



That's the lamest excuse I can imagine for a 19-year old to give. I'd take that from a 6-year-old maybe ("Johnny taught me to pull the cat's tail and make it squeal"). Dang! FFS, doesn't a 19-year old have the gumption to question what someone is "teaching"? So what would happen if a student being taught a racist chant questioned its content? Has anyone even tried this? No? Why not? The answer stares back at me. Racism has already been taught, at home, from an early age, the lesson was learned; any thought of protesting wouldn't even enter their minds.

Members of the small sensible fringe of folk in this backward state wait, depressed but sure that it will not be long before another embarrassment hits the websites, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook. "Senator takes snowball to congress to explain why global warming is a hoax"; "education department seeks to change history books to put the USA in what they think of as more "exceptional" light...." they keep on coming.

The Rude Pundit posted a story this week, relevant to the above, about his own experiences with members of one of those ridiculously juvenile, elitist, fraternity cliques. It's an interesting read.

Why should America tremble with morons like these in the wings to take over governments, corporations etc. in due course?

Mini Rant and More Thoughts on Scotland

Tomorrow the Scots will have their chance to vote on the issue of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. I've already said my piece on this, post is HERE. Reading around during the past few days, though, I've been shocked at the naked racism contained in much online commentary. Some commenters seem to assume that it's alright to malign the English in general, as a race - one blatant example from many:
Comment under a piece at Smirking Chimp:
Giving the Sassenachs a Big Scare by Eric Margolis:

from "oldeyank"

Well deserved split.....Fuck the English!
Nasty, vicious, arrogant, pompous ass, condescending, buck-toothed chinless wonders. Serves them right! And, about bloody time.

Would it be acceptable to make comparable comment about African Americans, Native Americans, Jewish people? Of course not. Because it's about the English people it's seen to be okay?
No it's not okay! Do some Americans actually understand what racism is? This reveals that there remains a need to nurture racism in the hearts of certain factions in the USA. When they are pilloried for hating this group of people or that group of people, they turn on a set about whom they know practically nothing and shed their vile hatred upon them with impunity (or so they assume).

I have never seen such a load of arrant bullshit, written by Americans in comment threads, as I've seen on this topic. I did come across one very good observation late yesterday, it's part of a weekly post at Avedon's Sideshow
I hope the blogger, Ms Carol, an American resident in London, will not object to my copying it here.

OK, the reason Scots want independence from Westminster is that Westminster is being run by a load of right-wing scum that seems to take special pleasure from screwing Scotland. (Well, Maggie sure did.) Of course those people are also screwing most of the people in England, which is now a runaway train, thanks in large part to the way the Labour Party membership has allowed their own party to be run by people who may not be capital-C Conservatives but are certainly Tories. Which sounds a lot like American politics, of course, except that there doesn't seem to be much threat of, say, California declaring itself an independent nation and taking it's Democratic votes in the Electoral College with it. A lot of people are fretting that without Scotland, England will be stuck with Conservative governments forever, but that is true only to the extent that everyone is happy to let neoliberal policies keep marching on without an argument. The question, judging from the kinds of arguments some of my friends are having, is whether the answer is a new generation of Labour members banding together to take back their party on behalf of real people, or whether creating a new party is the more feasible path to that end. Again, sounding familiar. In both cases, of course, nothing is going to work unless people are prepared to fight the right-wing rhetoric, as well as the policies, with something more than fevered angst.

Rant over.

Whatever the majority in Scotland decide tomorrow they will have to abide by it. Speaking of majorities, would it not have been a fairer basis to the referendum if a minimum percentage had been made a requirement in the Yes/No result, before a complete break from the UK were possible? I dunno exactly what percentage, but certainly nothing as close as most predict the result is going to be.

I hope the Scots do not forget, as they cast their votes, that the new boss will be "same as the old boss" (as sung long ago by English rock band The Who). As another commenter, elsewhere (edcaryl) observed, "This is Scotland's version of Obama's old "CHANGE" slogan - and "YES WE CAN!" It means all things to all people... and nothing".

I doubt anyone voting tomorrow will be reading this blog. Anyway, an interesting piece I found, written by Ewan Morrison, an award-winning Scottish author and screenwriter, is a good read for general interest. The experiences described can be related to many politically-related issues and attitudes. Something to bear in mind as, in the USA, congressional elections in November approach, and a General election in 2016 is being gambled upon already.
Title: YES: Why I Joined Yes and Why I Changed to No


Last words go to two other commenters from around the net, the first whose screen name I've accidentally lost:

Whether or not Alex Salmond gets his place in history as the man that destroyed the UK, he will still get his place in history as the man who divided and destroyed Scotland, inciting hatred and spite across Scotland and UK. Would hate to be in Scotland when the results come through. Could be a dangerous place to be.

And from "barrybethel", appropriate to a blog where astrology is frequently a topic:

Perhaps it's cyclical also. Students of markets such as Elliott, Kondratiev, Gann etc. have long noted that there are tides in the affairs of men (oh, and the Bard too it seems).

Sometimes we are harmonious, productive and all for closer union - the next, it's all going to hell and divorce and war are on the cards.

Maybe it's just in the stars.

Maybe so!!

Liberally Confused

A headline at Huffington Post the other day caught my attention : Paul Haggis: I Wrote 'Crash' To 'Bust Liberals'. Included in the piece is a brief video of an interview in which those words are spoken by Haggis.

At first I felt puzzled. I looked back to my own post about Crash and a couple of other Paul Haggis movies. :



Clip from my post of March 2013:

Crash, set in Los Angeles, puts the focus squarely on racism in the USA. The embedded message applies equally elsewhere, of course. Crash uses what I think of as "the tangled net" method of story-telling. A number of totally unconnected characters are introduced, and by the end of the movie we find they are linked in some way to at least one of the other characters, often to several. The Crash characters all have different ethnic backgrounds: African American, Middle-Eastern, Asian-American, Mexican, Caucasian, Latin-American (hope I didn't forget any). There is heavy stereotyping, and that is a drawback, but in this film it was necessary to get a point across in limited time. Each incident and reaction is drawn in extreme terms - cartoonish in fact. After I'd watched the film my first reaction was that it wasn't at all true to life, it was more like distilled version, keeping only the strongest flavours intact. It reminded me a bit of the way people sometimes train a puppy not to soil the living room carpet by rubbing its nose in the mess. Our noses were rubbed in the mess we sometimes make of relationships with others of different background from ourselves.

So as not to end on a completely negative note, Paul Haggis made sure that he did show that most characters though their bad traits were horrendous, had a decent, or even heroic, side too. Whether this was a cop out to stop audiences hating the movie I cannot say. I saw only one truly decent guy in the film - a Mexican locksmith.

I watched the video presented with the HuffPo article and confusion cleared. In the video Haggis clearly states, when asked, that he is "left of liberal" - which would have been my guess, though I wasn't 100% certain considering that most commenters to the Huffington Post article seemed to assume that Haggis is conservative, giving his liberal opponents a poke in the eye. I thought that perhaps those commenters knew something I didn't know. I was wrong.

People, or most, in the USA don't seem to get that there is a fair land left of liberal, and that liberalism, at least as it plays out in the USA, ain't always what it's cracked up to be. The kind of liberalism Haggis is pointing out is just a mini-step away from what I consider conservative-lite, and sadly there's a lot of it about.

Anyway, I did get a wry chuckle out of my own confusion, and the clear misunderstanding of those commenters who had obviously not taken the trouble to watch the video before making their observations.

The Week's Leftovers ~ Race, LSD, HSBC.

I mentioned a few days ago, to my husband, that I was thinking of writing a blog post about possible reasons why black individuals, on the whole, surpass most white individuals in certain spheres (a) boxing, some athletics, many sports and (b)certain styles of dancing (especially by males). I had my solution ready, I thought: i.e. genetically, black races have more muscular strength and durability passed down via DNA, and more innate rhythm than white races. Husband surprised me by his response: "Good luck with that, but be ready for accusations of racism."

I'd be complimenting people of the black races (not only African Americans, mind you), not offending them for goodness sake! What is wrong in defining races by their talents? Could I comment that Jewish people, on the whole, seem to surpass in business, science, legal and entertainment spheres - and what talented lot they are, and I often wonder how that came about. Am I being racist? I'm being sincerely curious. White people, in general (which covers a lot of ground and many nationalities) tend to have a modicum of talent in most areas, often defined by their nationality's stereotype.

Dang!

I do not understand the racism thing which causes paranoia in the USA. I get that there are some remaining bigots and horrible throw-backs to darker times. They should be approached with all the contempt they deserve. Surely that doesn't mean we ALL have to tread with fairy feet because of them? The best and only solution to end racism is to consider all ethnicities on the the same level: as human beings, discuss all in similar terms, discuss their differences, their talents, their faults without fear of being accused of racism.

While watching an old film on Turner Movie Channel this week husband spotted a price tag in one scene, marked "3d" -



"What does 3 D mean?"

"Threepence, you know - that little yellow-coloured coin, the 'thruppenny bit' ".

"Huh?"

"Three pence, three pennies."

"D = a penny - why?"

"Ahem...let's see if I can remember! LSD - you know - pounds, shillings and pence, British currency before decimalisation in the 1970s. L=pounds S=shillings D = Pence - danged if I can remember why though!"

Looked it up - ah yes, now I remember it well!
Wikipedia:

£sd (sometimes pronounced, and occasionally written, L.s.d.) is the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies once common throughout Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, which was one of the last to change, as well as some other Commonwealth countries. The abbreviation originates from the Latin currency denominations librae, solidi, and denarii. In the U.K. these are today referred to as pounds, shillings, and pence (pence being the plural of penny).

This system originated in the classical Roman Empire. It was re-introduced in Western Europe by Charlemagne and was the standard for many centuries across the continent. The system was in fact used in much of the British Empire until 1971. Under the British system, there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound. A penny was subdivided into four farthings until 31 December 1960 (when they ceased to be legal tender) and, until 31 July 1969, two halfpennies.

HSBC UK & me - all done, all gone! A while back I mentioned in comments that I'd had trouble being able to close my UK credit card account with HSBC due to a small outstanding amount which defied clearance for a variety of reasons. After e-mails, phone calls, letters and frustrations to boiling point I eventually received a phone call this week from a very nice lady at HSBC UK, apologising profusely for the absurdity of the situation, and telling me she had marked the outstanding 6 pounds 61 pence still outstanding on my credit card as now cleared. Ahhhhh! There are living, breathing, warm-blooded humans with common sense at the end of some communication channels after all. That was in the morning; when the mail arrived the same afternoon I received three letters from HSBC UK: two more boilerplate warnings about my non-payment of 6 pounds 61 pence, and one letter telling me that my credit limit had been cut in half - this in spite of my three or four, or five communications since October telling them I wished to close all accounts, including that attached to my credit card.

Earlier in the week I was at a loss to understand why a post of mine from June 2010 was getting beaucoup hits, day after day, this one: Lena Horne, Susan Hayward: Astrological Twins I checked around news outlets to see whether there was talk of an upcoming movie involving one of the subjects. No, nothing. It wasn't until I noticed, among a list of keywords involved in visits to the blog, mention of one Susan Agar. I clicked on the name and saw to my surprise, at the top of the Google page about Ms Agar (the daughter of Shirley Temple - her mother died this week) some thumbnail photos supposedly all of Susan Agar. One of the photos was of Susan Hayward, I had used it in my archived post. So, anyone clicking on it under the impression it was Shirley Temple's daughter, or Shirley Temple herself, got a surprise. Hits on the post are still coming too, from countries all over the world.

Weekend Pick and Mix

Gravity, the movie

We saw Gravity this week - had meant to see in at an IMAX theatre while in Columbus, but Ohio's Revenge got me. The movie is technically brilliant, hard to know just how some of those effects were perfected. Even so, I was a bit disappointed. I found the unrelenting feelings of tension went on too long. The movie is only 90 minutes long, but an hour would have been sufficient for the part we saw, with 15 minutes tacked on at each end to outline what led up to the story at the beginning, and more detail at the end of the full outcome. I'll say no more in case a passing reader is waiting to see the film.



Solar

Husband left me an article from a local newspaper: "Utilities, solar companies fight over rates."

Snip~

"Some power companies are proposing an extra fee for solar customers. Others are trying to roll back or block programs that allow those customers to trade the solar power they generate during sunny days for power they need from the grid during other times.

As rooftop solar extends from a niche product to a mainstream way to save money on power bills, utilites are afraid they will lose so many customers - and revenue - that they won't be able to afford to build and maintain the grid.............."

It's a pity that some (all?) power companies have been so short-sighted as to not get into the solar market from the very beginning. But then, in Oklahoma they wouldn't would they - 'cos their Senator, James Inhofe says global warming is a hoax.


Racial

Another of those bogus pieces trying to stir up racial argument.

How race affects who audiences forgive - Woody Allen and Roman Polanski get a pass from white audiences for abuse allegations - black artists don't. By Feminista Jones

I was glad to note that most commenters felt as I did, that this type of article is unhelpful and pretty darn worthless.

America

If anyone hasn't seen this piece by Eric Idle, formerly of Monty Python:
America the Half Beautiful,
do take a look. It's a good read. I responded, loudly, with "Hear hear!"

(More on Eric Idle and his natal chart in a post, Monday Mirthmaker, HERE.)

Strong Mind or Good Eye?

Here's something I saved a while ago, have lost my note of the website from whence it came, so I cannot link to its origin - my apologies to whom it may concern!

Well...can you read it? I stumbled over the first 2 lines then quickly "got my eye in" and read it quite easily. Strong mind - moi .....they might think that, I couldn't possibly comment. ;-)

White Privilege? Asian Offence?

Racism has been a blot on mankind, and a particularly big blot on the USA's past. I guess that I shouldn't feel surprised that race remains imprinted so clearly on the consciousness of people here. Still, finding elements of racism in fictional entertainment when, really and truly it's not there, isn't helpful or wise, but seems to be the in thing just now. I recall mentioning in a blog post not long ago comments about why Dr Who is always cast as a white male (see here). At the weekend two articles at Salon touched on what the authors see as racism in TV dramas.


“Breaking Bad’s” racial politics: Walter White, angry white man
Walter's brutal meltdown shows genius way "Breaking Bad" deals with white privilege, and men who can't get enough by Todd Van Der Werff.

And

5 most offensive Asian characters in TV history
"Dads" is just the latest sitcom to employ crude racial stereotypes. Remember Ling Woo from "Ally McBeal"? by Anjana Sreedhar.

I can only comment on those of the mentioned dramas and shows we've seen.

Breaking Bad, in my view doesn't deal in racial politics or "angry white men" at all. It deals in moral decay, not "white privilege". There's nothing in the drama differentiating between the races in any detrimental way. There's a dark-skinned Latino guy who is equally as evil and "can't get enough" as is Walter White, and, as far as we know without Walter White's initial motivation to safeguard his family after his death and to pay for the best possible cancer treatment. Drug cartels in Mexico, South America, the USA and Czechoslovakia are involved - blame spread equally between contintents. Angry white man? That might be more accurate if expressed as angry 99%, colour irrelevant.

As for the "offensive" Asian depictions, we've seen Lucy Liu in all seasons of Ally McBeal and Margaret Cho in the single season of All American Girl.

Well.....we are unable to detect anything offensive in either portrayal, but then we're not Asian. Ling, Lucy Liu's character was perhaps smarter than the rest of the characters put together, richer than most and went farther than the lot of 'em - is that offensive? Margaret Cho's short-lived comedic series might have taken stereotyping of her and her family too far, but then, in comedy that's par for the course isn't it? We found the series (seen via DVD) entertaining, funny and didn't leave any bad taste about Asian Americans - rather an affectionate after-taste. Maybe that's offensive to some?

What is it about some factions in the USA who keep gnawing on this bone of race? Are they trying to drum up further trouble? It would seem so to this relative newcomer to the scene. When the ugly spectre of racism does actually raise its head it should be confronted loudly, no argument about that. Searching for it in every nook and cranny, and finding it where it is not, is not the way forward.

"THE BUTLER"

On Monday evening we saw the movie The Butler (more correctly titled Lee Daniels' The Butler, due to some copyright debacle). The movie is another on the same wavelength as The Help and 42. The Help told the story of female African American domestic workers struggling against invidious segregation in the USA during the 1950s and 60s; 42 focused on an African American baseball player and his eventual rise to fame during a similar period. The Butler, as its title implies, shows us the view of similar times, but from the perspective of an African American butler in the White House. This film, like 42, is based on a true story, the life of Eugene Allen who served at the White House under eight US presidents from Truman to Reagan.


In the movie Forest Whitaker plays the fictional part of Cecil Gaines reflecting real life experiences of Eugene Allen (excellent performance it is too). We follow his life story from childhood on a cotton plantation, where he witnesses the murder of his father after his mother (played by Mariah Carey) is raped by the plantation overseer. Matriarch of the plantation (played by Vanessa Redgrave) takes pity on the bereft child, makes him a house servant, inducts him into the ways of house servants - along the lines of: The room should feel empty when you're in it.

After several years as house servant the young Gaines moves on, obtains work as a hotel steward, is further groomed, in the high arts of obsequiousness and attention to the smallest detail, by an old hand at the job. After some further years of polishing his skills Cecil is noticed and later head-hunted by a White House official.

The movie up to this point was done very well, I thought. It brought back memories of that wonderful mini-series Roots. I wasn't quite as impressed by the next section of the film, but was very interested to see how it unfolded.

We stagger uncertainly along with Cecil's first nervous steps in what would be an overwhelming experience for any of us, in any circumstance. One of the first things he's instructed by the head butler, and the first laugh of the movie for me and Himself:"We don't have politics in the White House". Cecil soon gets into the White House groove, his past training serves him well. We see him interact with a succession of presidents starting with Eisenhower (would you believe Robin Williams?), JFK (James Marsden who seemed way too petite for JFK - there must be actors more like him surely?) Jackie and Caroline Kennedy, LBJ (Liev Schreiber), Richard Nixon (good if cartoonish turn by John Cusack), and Reagan (interesting effort by Alan Rickman who couldn't keep that wicked twinkle from his eye), with Nancy played, to the chagrin of many commenters, by "Hanoi" Jane Fonda, I thought she seemed just right for the part, albeit maybe a tad too tall.

Along with the expected focus on highlights and lowlights of the several presidencies the film follows Cecil's home life, and regained its former quality in my eyes. He married Gloria (Oprah Winfrey -blogger muffles a groan) and has two sons, Louis (David Oyelowo ) and Charlie (Elijah Kelley). I'll not spoil the movie further for any passing reader who intends to see it by outlining the trials and tribulations linked to this part of Cecil's life. Enough to say that he faces heartache and dilemma vis–à–vis what is going on in the world outside the White House bubble in which he spends most of his waking hours. I'd best say also that, in spite of my strange intolerance for Ms Winfrey she did put in a very good performance.

The reason I wasn't as impressed with the White House section of the movie was its swing into almost cartoon mode at times. The film went from darkly serious, almost painfully so, to verging on farce. False noses, not even well-done false noses, LBJ sitting on the lavatory, JFK looking like a diminutive Tony Blair, Reagan - well...Rickman - need I say more? Now, I'm quite open to ridiculing presidents - most have deserved it at some point, but here it just seemed out of sync with the earlier tone of this movie and many of the later scenes. Cecil seemed to have genuine affection for at least some of the presidents. He wore a tie of JFK, given to him by Jackie, and the tie clip given to him by LBJ, to go to the White House to meet the new President Obama - this was after Cecil's retirement of course.

At this point I'll have a quick grumble.

As the movie ended, Cecil his family and friends were, naturally, overjoyed at the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. We watch them celebrate. At the time, in 2008, I celebrated too, I wept too. But ye gods, I'm angry now! Look what happened. Obama let them down. He let his people down. He let everyone who voted for him down.

"Enough"....I clearly remember newly elected Prez Obama saying that word. We should all echo it back to him....ENOUGH!

Beyond Reasonable Doubt?

The internet has overflowed with news and comment on the trial and jury's verdict on George Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin. I guess, though I haven't seen or heard any other media on the topic, that TV and radio will have overflowed too.

I haven't felt qualified to comment, let alone to judge, so haven't mentioned the matter before now. From what I read at the time of the incident, it appeared there would be great difficulty at the trial in deciding exactly what had happened, what were the the attitudes and motives of both individuals involved, one of them being dead, so unable to present his own evidence. How could any jury come to a certain conclusion "beyond reasonable doubt" in a case such as this?

The best piece I've read this week is written by Arthur Silber at the blog Once Upon a Time: Stop Doing the Vicious Work of the Ruling Class. Mr Silber minces no words, ever, on any topic. If, until now a passing reader has come to their own conclusion on the Zimmerman verdict, Silber's piece might supplement and modify their views somewhat....one way or t'other. His final paragraphs :

The Zimmerman case is yet another in an endless series of distractions. It is another bauble to be tossed around by the ever-busy writers and "activists" of this country's political factions. It is a means of fragmenting and splitting the people's political power, which would be far more meaningful -- and far more powerful -- if the warring factions could only be motivated to form strategic alliances. All those energies are safely directed into a non-threatening pathway -- while the ruling class continues to consolidate and expand its power over every one of us. To the extent the right and left play their parts with such enthusiasm, they do the ruling class's bidding. Most of those on the right and the left have enthusiastically placed themselves in service to the State, and the majority of them have no understanding whatsoever of their grievous failing.

At this point, I almost feel it's beside the point to blame the ruling class for this kind of thing. (Note: I continue to blame and condemn the ruling class without mercy.) What appalls me is how easy it is to distract the American public with incidents like this. Most Americans have been trained very thoroughly. The bell is rung, and they eagerly run to their designated positions. While they are entirely consumed with playing their meaningless roles in the affair of the moment, they pay no heed to the hell that is rising around them.

They'll finally recognize that hell soon enough, but only when it is far too late to do anything to stop it. From that perspective, I can certainly agree that the Trayvon Martin case is a terrible tragedy. But it not only the tragedy of one life ended far too soon. It is the ongoing tragedy of this nation, as it plummets into the nightmare from which there is no awakening.

HBO quite often is on the ball, ready at the drop of a hat to present old movies relevant to current events. On Monday evening they showed American History X. This 1998 film had an award winning performance by Edward Norton. It is the story of a young neo-Nazi, and his...erm... re-education. The film's storyline reminded me a little of another movie I've mentioned here in the past, Steel Toes , the post's title was Hatred: "the madness of the heart." Steel Toes (2006) was, for me, a much classier movie than American History X; it co-starred David Strathairn one of my favourite actors. Dialogue in both films, at times, made my skin crawl with the horror of such intense hatred carried by what appeared to have been otherwise intelligent individuals. I guess it's necessary to have one's nose rubbed into such horror to fully appreciate just how evil such hatred can be. I wish everyone could see these two movies - once a year perhaps - as dire reminders.

Whether some lesser, dilute, or modified version of the kind of intense hatred described in those two films was present in George Zimmerman must not have been clear to the jury members during his trial. In truth, only Zimmerman himself knows the answer.

I don't know how much of the neo-Nazi mindset is still around in the USA, whether it has, perhaps, morphed to a slightly different guise with different targets. I suspect a version of it remains in pockets of certain areas. Discussing this with my husband, he made the point that it's a different type of racism from that known only too well in The Deep South. It does seem that way to me too.....(sigh)...as though we need two varieties of this rotten disease of mankind.

Equal in Diversity

A linked article, Are We Equal, by Walter Williams also appeared in our local newspaper; my husband drew my attention to it, as a topic in which I'd be interested. I read it, re-read parts of it but remained puzzled about the point of it all. The topic seemed too clear to have required a professor of economics at George Mason University to explain it. Then, yesterday morning, I noticed a report that the US Supreme Court is this week deliberating on the issue of Affirmative Action. Aha! That could be why Prof. Walter Williams chose to write on that topic at this time?

Affirmative Action refers to policies taking factors including race, color, religion, sex, or national origin into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group in areas of employment, education, and business. It's a tool designed by Congress in the mid 1960s to ensure that positive steps were taken to advance qualified women and people of colour after decades of segregation and discriminatory practices.

In the 1960s, and for and a decade or so after, there was no doubt whatsoever that Affirmative Action was essential. The people of the USA, and especially those in Southern states had, for years seen African Americans as second-class citizens, treated them abominably through segregation - and worse. Women, unless of the wealthy privileged class, were still thought of as lesser than any male counterpart in matters of employment and education.

Those opposing Affirmative Action today bring arguments including the proposition that the need for this type of direct legislation has now passed. They propose that a new generation of women, and members of minority races, who have not been raised in, or with close memory of, segregation or ill-treatment, are no longer in need of the help afforded by Affirmative Action.

It will be interesting to find out what SCOTUS has to say on the matter. My view, for what it's worth, is that unless and until the day dawns when every last US citizen is free of every embedded, hidden unacknowledged racist or sexist feeling, there will never be equal opportunity and equal treatment for all. That point hasn't been reached in this country yet, far as I can tell. The next generation - another 20 or so years on - might see the dawn of such a day.

Back to Walter White's article. Surely, few people truly consider that we are all equal - on every level? Who has ever put forward that point of view? Is this what he had in mind? -

The opening of the United States Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, states as follows: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

All people of the USA have equal rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness .......It doesn't say that all people are equal in talent, insight, vision, skill, physical strength, mental strength. We each have those attributes in differing proportion and mixtures, but none of us, however wonderfully gifted, however powerful, however wealthy, is entitled to be treated under the law with greater preference.

We could, if we as the human race would only allow ourselves to do so, complement each others' proportions and mixes of qualities and strengths. We're part of a whole, part of the same huge jigsaw-puzzle of life. A piece depicting sky and clouds cannot be placed in the midst of a brick wall and still make sense. We are entitled to the same equal treatment before the law and before education authorities and employers, each according to our inborn and/or developed abilities and qualities. All pieces of our human jigsaw are equal, but equal for different purposes.

Movies and Messages ~ Million $ Baby, Crash, In the Valley of Elah

It was by chance rather than good management that we've watched three movies in the past couple of weeks in which Canadian director, producer and screenwriter, Paul Haggis had involvement. Two of the films were shown on HBO the other I'd picked up on DVD, in a junk store:
Million Dollar Baby,
Crash,
In the Valley of Elah.

Haggis was screenwriter and producer of two of the films which were also consecutive Best Picture award winners in 2004/5, Million Dollar Baby, and Crash, which he also directed. In the Valley of Elah (2007) had Paul Haggis as screenwriter (adaptation), director and producer.

I've nothing much to say about Million Dollar Baby, other than it was a well-acted, and an oddly engaging tale of a female who had the strange obsession to become a prize-winning boxer. I felt let down by the ending, but I guess it stands as a dire warning to those who might be nurturing similar obessions.

The other two movies had a lot more general relevance to life in the 21st century.


Crash, set in Los Angeles, puts the focus squarely on racism in the USA. The embedded message applies equally elsewhere, of course. Crash uses what I think of as "the tangled net" method of story-telling. A number of totally unconnected characters are introduced, and by the end of the movie we find they are linked in some way to at least one of the other characters, often to several. The Crash characters all have different ethnic backgrounds: African American, Middle-Eastern, Asian-American, Mexican, Caucasian, Latin-American (hope I didn't forget any). There is heavy stereotyping, and that is a drawback, but in this film it was necessary to get a point across in limited time. Each incident and reaction is drawn in extreme terms - cartoonish in fact. After I'd watched the film my first reaction was that it wasn't at all true to life, it was more like distilled version, keeping only the strongest flavours intact. It reminded me a bit of the way people sometimes train a puppy not to soil the living room carpet by rubbing its nose in the mess. Our noses were rubbed in the mess we sometimes make of relationships with others of different background from ourselves.

So as not to end on a completely negative note, Paul Haggis made sure that he did show that most characters though their bad traits were horrendous, had a decent, or even heroic, side too. Whether this was a cop out to stop audiences hating the movie I cannot say. I saw only one truly decent guy in the film - a Mexican locksmith.

I was glad to have seen the movie, but it left me part-irritated by the hyperbole, part glad that someone was at least attempting to point out how destructive racism can be.

In the Valley of Elah had a message too: war de-sensitises, war de-humanises.

The Last scene of In the Valley of Elah sees Tommy Lee Jones asking a guy to fly a worn and tattered Stars and Stripes in upside down position. His dead soldier son had sent him the flag. I had to look up the meaning of flying the US flag upside down; it means: "we are in distress".

We watched the movie on HBO, but had missed the first 15 minutes. I'd avoided this film when shown in the past, even though Tommy Lee Jones stars and is one of my favourite actors. I'd assumed it to be a war movie set in Iraq. We decided to give it a spin for half an hour or so to see whether it was as bad as I'd feared. It wasn't - and I'm very glad to have seen it at last. It's a story, based on real events, of a soldier's father seeking answers about his son's death, not in Iraq, but after his return to a military base in New Mexico.

Rather than recite the storyline here, Peter Bradshaw's 2008 review in The Guardian was a good one. My own takeaway from the movie was an underlining of something of which I was already aware: military action and war can brutalise and de-humanise even the best intentioned of humans. How many young soldiers come home alive but destroyed inside? How many commit suicide? How many come back with changed personalities - and not for the better?



Tommy Lee Jones' understated acting style, in the father's role was exactly right for an ex-Military Police officer with service in Vietnam, who has now lost the lives of his two sons to the army - one way or another. While watching the film I recalled another, from the past, in which Tommy Lee Jones played a character, a marine blighted by the war in Vietnam who, in the end, committed suicide: Heaven and Earth.



Crash and In the Valley of Elah are Two movies with messages that are important, very hard to miss and equally hard to disagree with. Paul Haggis did a good job!

Randy Newman's I'm Dreaming: I think he is, indeed, dreaming....

Randy Newman's new song, I'm Dreaming features the line: "I'm dreaming of a white president", is full of satirical, sarcastic anecdotes about someone who votes for a president because he is white. The song features lyrics like: "He won't be the brightest, perhaps, but he'll be the whitest, and I'll vote for that."

Newman said as he wrote the song the lyrics "didn't come that easy.....It's delicate enough that I'm not going to offend people every which way, but I wanted to get it right as best I could." He is supporting President Barack Obama in November's election. He says he wants the public to find comedic relief in the song, but to also know he's serious about his thoughts that racism is well and alive in the world and in the current presidential race. He called racism "the great issue of this country.......I don't know how many people you can get to admit it. I think maybe zero."(See article and video at Slate, 18 September 2012.)

Sorry, Mr Newman, but I see the song itself as racist, serving only to further inflame remaining divisions in this country, akin to picking at a sore place.

Randy Newman may be a brilliant musician and songwriter but he's being disingenuous if he believes that anyone who isn't supporting President Obama's re-election is doing so because the President's skin isn't white. How about Mr. Newman writing a song about Prez Obama's policies - about how they differ wildly from his campaign promises? How about writing a song about the corrupt political system in this country? How about a song about this......(The remark featured on the board was one of the late, great George Carlin's). Perhaps Mr. Newman is in The Club, or at least on its periphery as an honorary member - and is no longer able to clearly see outward.



There may well be pockets of racism still existing in the United States - it'd be surprising if all evidence of that cruel and disgusting era which preceded the late 1960s were completely gone.

That's another matter. The matter of a president's record is what's important here, and what directs me not to support his re-election:

President Obama surrounded himself with conservative advisors and key figures - many from previous administrations, and an unprecedented number from the Trilateral Commission. He also appointed a former Monsanto executive as Senior Advisor to the FDA. He has extended Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, presided over a spiralling rich-poor gap and sacrificed further American jobs with recent free trade deals.Trade union rights have also eroded under his watch. He has expanded Bush defence spending, drone-killed civilians and children, failed to close Guantanamo, supported the NDAA which effectively legalises martial law, allowed drilling and adopted a soft-touch position towards the banks that is to the right of European Conservative leaders. Taking office during the financial meltdown, Obama appointed its principle architects to top economic positions. Obama's detractors absurdly portray him as either a radical liberal or a socialist, while his apologists, equally absurdly, continue to view him as a well-intentioned progressive, tragically thwarted by overwhelming pressures.(Hat-tip to a past political commenter, joe kiggy for the detail)

NOTE: More on Randy Newman, and his natal chart, from my archives HERE and HERE.

"The Help" - the movie (non-astro)

On Thursday evening we saw The Help. Neither of us had read Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same title. I'd read only an outline of it's storyline. We both thought it "a good movie, well-acted", and had little more to say to each other about it because, when we arrived home from the cinema, we found our hot water tank had sprung a leak - it was almost 10 pm.

We were unable to find any tap, valve or other device for stemming the flow now seeping through to carpeting indoors and out under the porch wall . My husband rang his son AJ, a heat and air expert, who lives quite close by. AJ came to our rescue. After examination it was decided that we'd need a new tank as the damage was internal and unreachable. He took out the old tank, coupled the water pipes to the cold water supply so's we could use all bathroom faucets. AJ was back next evening to complete the work, and we are now all-systems-go once more.

After mopping up and drying out, discussion of The Help, was far from our minds, overlaid by gratitude for our own helper, a tired but very willing AJ.
Before drafting this post I scooted around a few reviews and comment threads about the movie, and the novel. I was surprised to find that there's a sizeable body of dissent from what I thought was a fairly unanimous opinion that it's a good, entertaining movie -and that most readers had seen the novel as a darn good read.

For a passing reader unfamiliar with the storyline, The Help, starring Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, among others, is set in 1963 Mississippi, around the time of civil rights protests, the killing of Medgar Evers, assassination of JFK, etc. Those events feature only as background material, seen on TV screens, however. Focus is on the lives of some black domestic servants of wealthy southern households. The novel's sets "Skeeter" (Emma Stone) a daughter of one such wealthy household, something of a maverick among her peers, as "heroine". She comes home from college aiming to be a writer and looks for a job as a journalist locally. She obtains a very modest job on the town's newspaper, but as a sideline decides to try to write a book about how the local black women, domestic servants, view their lifestyles and their experiences in the town's well-to-do white households.

Skeeter's wet behind the ears, a tad too wet considering she's been in college for several years during some intense racial conflict. Yet she seems not to fully realise the can of worms she's attempting to open. The white women employers, her peers and "friends" are portrayed as uniformly horrendous - rascist, classist, selfish, self-obsessed snobs. I thought them caricatures but my husband assures me they are true to life for that era in that area of the US. There's only one half-decent white person, outside of that category, in the movie besides "the heroine": a ditsy Marilyn-type married to one of the local socialites, to the chagrin of local female socialites who class his Mrs. as pure trailer-trash.




It's probably pretty obvious from the above that the movie works basically via stereotype....both black and white. Which is alright, as long as that's kept in mind. Not all southern people were wealthy socialites, nor were they all racist - though in Mississippi in the 1960s it was the prevalent mindset I understand. Segregation, rascism and bigotry continued apace - black domestic servants were degraded in such ways that I began to wonder if I'd mis-read that bit of US history about "freeing the slaves". This kind of degradation was, to my mind, almost equally bad as slavery, it was wholly hypocritcal. I hated the wealthy white women on that silver screen with a hatred unbecoming to the peacelover I'm supposed to be.




The root causes of it all (and I do understand that a layer of racial prejudice was a substantial additon to the problem) the root is truly in class-distinction, which, in the UK we were always led to believe was absent in the USA; and in discrepancy in distribution of wealth. Today that two-headed hydra, class/wealth is rearing its head and roaring once again (not that it ever completely disappeared).

The gist of dissent about book and movie, often coming from African Americans, I discovered, is that the movie is patronising to African Americans, condescending. The scenario portrayed: a young white "heroine", would-be writer looking for a saleable book to make money - would be money off the backs of those suffering degradation. In the movie, though, some of the proceeds from Skeeter's book are shared among the black participants. (The objection could apply to novelist Ms Stockett.)




Skeeter, the young white writer figure, seems to many African Americans to be just another example of a regular pattern in novels of "white" rescuers coming to the aid of the black community. A novelist's tool to pander to the white guilt-soothing idea that there were some good white people ready and willing to play savior. Even that national treasure of a book To Kill a Mockingbird is mentioned more than once in commentary as using one of that ilk of "white savior" plots.

I'd have to argue that, though I can see what's behind the objection in general, it is an unfair objection to those kinds of novels. Logically - where would a black attorney have come from to fill the shoes of Atticus Finch? Were there any back lawyers in the US south of the 60s and before? It was no fault of the African American community, to be sure, but the fact is that black lawyers in the deep south in those days, would have been few and far between. Likewise, would a young black writer have dared to approach the subject matter presented in Ms Stockett's novel? I guess not. So, it was necessary for a white "helper" to step forward from time to time in order that tales of what went on, in fact, could be fictionalised in a credible way. Rosa Parks, for instance needed no white helper, nor did Dr. King, and countless others, but in the world of small town domestic servants, any stepping out of line by black people would be immediately dealt with in very unpleasant ways. The appearance of a white helper was possibly the one and only opportunity to "get the word out", in the case of The Help to show those horrendous travesties of the female sex for what they were.

While AJ was scrambling around our dripping water tank he asked about the movie we'd been to see. I told him: The Help.

"Was it a weepie or was it funny?" he asked.

"No not really a weepie, it was funny in parts, but serious. It's about black women domestic servants in the deep south in the 1960s and the white women they worked for who were all arseholes - and I suspect they really were back then."

"Yes... and even now", he replied with a rueful grin.