Tom Watson

The Liberal

 

Growing up on Elaine Terrace on the eastern verges of Yonkers, tucked between Mile Square and Palmer Roads just up from the Thruway cut, there were three historic figures always in open reverence in my grandmother's house - one Italian, and two Democrats. The Italian was the Pope; in that time it was Pope Paul VI, formerly Cardinal Montini, the Archbishop of Milan and, as things went in the Curia of those days, a progressive who built churches and respected labor. One of the two Democrats was John F. Kennedy, recently martyred young President and a ghostly presence whose death came when I was 18 months old in the kind of catastrophic and televised spectacle that made it seem years later that I remembered watching it all. Of course, I didn't. I just remembered the endless conversations. The other Democrat was the real deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt - not just the greatest President of the 20th century but a New Yorker, former Governor, and a political leader whose colossal liberal reach touched my own family deeply and directly.

Those were the three famous portraits in two dimensions that overlooked my early years: the Pope and two American liberals. But there was a fourth liberal, a man whose portrait often included a uniform.

That was the other Democrat, Thomas J. Quinlan.

My late grandfather - he died 14 years before I arrived - was a constant presence in childhood despite his absence. His Army Air Corps hat hung from my grandmother's bedstead. His great coat remained in the vestibule between the front porch and the living room. His cigarette case was always in the left-hand drawer of the wide buffet chest in the dining room, along with his lighter and his magnifying glass. His radio remained by his chair, close to the fireplace. The house itself was his, a classic four-square design he'd set with purpose into a Yonkers hillside facing west to catch the afternoon sun on the front porch (the morning sun belonged to the kitchen), built after he returned from France and the American flying corps of the First World War. He was a salesman, in the building supply trade - but he was also a pilot who would serve again in the Second World War. He was the son of Irish immigrants from the southwest of Ireland, and my great-grandfather worked on the New York docks. As a young man, he attended Manhattan College when it was still in Manhattan and worked as a sandhog and later as an engineer, digging the city's subway tunnels for the Interborough Rapid Transit company. When he married my grandmother, he crossed the tracks to do so - to the better side. Her forebears had arrived from Eire earlier, and she came from a family of significant means and called a Murray Hill townhouse home. They lived for time on the Grand Concourse, just below Fordham Road, before decamping after the war for the country air of Yonkers and the start of a family.

My grandfather got involved in Democratic politics early; he came from the labor side of those tracks and knew the challenges of the working poor in America at the turn of 20th century. First, Governor Al Smith and first Catholic candidacy for President in 1928. Smith was the working class crusader, the Tammany man turned reformer after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire tragedy. Then in 1932, another New York Governor - Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By that time, Thomas Quinlan was in his late 30s and ensconced in the 12th Ward Democratic Club, which covered most of the east side of the city. He helped to run the successful Yonkers mayoral campaign of Joseph Loehr, a Roosevelt delegate in 1932, who served in city from 1932-39.

And he basically ran the 12th Ward for FDR and the New Deal.

From what I can tell from the old Herald Statesman news clips, it's clear he was a quiet kind of leader who didn't make too many bold speeches; he worked the back-channel. But he worked it pretty hard. In August 1936, organizing on behalf of New Dealers in the state, he presided over a meeting of the 12th Ward club that put down a revolt against Roosevelt's successor as Governor, Herbert Lehman, a progressive, by Tammany Hall conservatives. Two years later, he was part of a group of FDR men at the state Democratic convention who supported nominating Postmaster General James A. Farley to succeed Governor Lehman (the plan failed, Lehman decided to run again and served till 1942).  And in 1937, he was appointed to the Charter Commission that revamped Yonkers government.

His 12th Ward Democratic Club was hive of progressive New Deal politics and liberal speech-making. "Arrogant" Republicans were not admired. There are a lot examples in old Herald Statesman clips; and they all note who chaired those meetings.

In June, 1936 my grandfather was in the chair when State Senator James A. Garrity "scored the Republican Assembly for failure to paw the Governor's social security program, declaring it necessary to care properly for old people of the state. Discussing national affairs, Senator Garrity declared that President Roosevelt has brought the country out of chaos and into prosperity. He said this is indicated by reports of large industries."

A good, old-fashioned political lashing of Republican callousness toward the more vulnerable in our society, and Thomas J. Quinlan was in the chair.

In July, Lawrence Tasker of Hastings, Roosevelt's campaign manager for Westchester County, ripped into the Republicans again - with Thomas J. Quinlan in the chair.

According to the Statesman, Tasker "urged the cooperation of the members to re-elect Mr. Roosevelt, said that the question facing the voters is whether the policies of the President are a success or a failure. 'There is no use trying to befog the issue,' he said. 'You are for the New Deal or against it. I am convinced—and I think most of the citizens of the United States are— that the Roosevelt policies have put us on the highway of prosperity.' He warned that the Republican Party will concentrate its attack on the cost of the New Deal and will claim that it has cost the taxpayer $13,000,000,000 since Mr. Roosevelt took office." 

At another meeting that year - President Roosevelt's aid to "the common man" was praised by former Alderman Thomas F. Sullivan - with Thomas J. Quinlan in the chair.

It wasn't all speech-making and vote whipping. The political clubs of those days had to deliver bread and circus. So the accounts included some fun and games. In May of 1936, for example, the 12th Ward Club put on a festival, no doubt a fundraiser: "Attractions included Leroy's Circus Side Show include Baby LaFrance, mentalist; Madam Tiny, electric box; Eddie Brown, magician; Mrs. Leroy, sword box; Bob-Bobett; Bedell, with mentalistic dog. Scotty McCrae and A. Lasky on front; Red Nagle and Ernest Truyn, tickets. Prison Show, in charge of Henry (Duke) Hyatt, and Snake Show managed by Joseph Toomy."

Later that year, "nearly 200 persons attended a card party sponsored by the Twelfth Ward Democratic Club last night at the clubrooms, 591 Central Avenue. Forty tables were in play."

That's a lot of Democrats, folks.

And it wasn't just about candidates and politics and counting heads - it was about policy. Through his New Deal politics, my grandfather became a pioneer in public housing in America. He was a co-founder and the first chairman of the Yonkers Municipal Housing Authority, and oversaw the creation of the public agency charged with building affordable housing in partnership with the Federal government. While "Yonkers public housing" later became nationally synonymous with racism and neglect in the 1970s and led to a Federal lawsuit, in the late 30s and early 40s it was the most progressive undertaking in the city's history.

Under his leadership, the city planned and built a development known as Mulford Gardens. Hailed at its opening in July 1940 by the United States Housing Authority as a "symbol of the American way of living," it was racially integrated and aimed squarely at working men and their families. Sadly, it later became a symbol of neglect, as government moved away from progressive ideals. But at the time, it was greeted as a new model; I was surprised in reading the archives to discover that my aunt, Margaret Quinlan Dermako, had been approved as a tenant supervisor for the project, and that my uncle Tom Quinlan (later, my godfather) had also been involved. And imagine my surprise to discover that my grandmother Gertrude Quinlan had also served on the Housing Commission, after my grandfather went back into the service for a second time in World War II (serving as a Major in the Air Corps, and sadly contracting the illness that took his life a few years later). Progressive politics was the Quinlan family vocation. 

Which is not to suggest that it was a radical lefty household. It never was. This was the practical liberalism of Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, the Kennedys. When I was two, I paraded around the back garden with a giant LBJ button. The liberalism we inherited was pro development, pro jobs, and pro business (my grandfather's work was selling building supplies), and it leaned pretty heavily on American patriotism. But it also rested on the basic belief that government's job was to actively improve the lives of citizens - that it should be heavily involved in the public welfare of the people. My grandfather the liberal Democrat ardently opposed - indeed, abhorred - take-it-all conservatism, mob bigotry, and small government. 

I never met my grandfather Thomas J. Quinlan so I didn't get to hear about his liberal Democratic politics first-hand. But I still had a great source: my grandmother, who carried the brightest torch for her Tom through my entire childhood, and for his brand of practical and progressive government. I knew how she felt alright, because she survived through Ronald Reagan's first term and never hesitated to call the Republicans the "party of the rich." Nonetheless, it's always worthwhile to look back. As we face an existential crisis in America - the biggest threat to our democracy since the Great Depression - I can't help but make the connection to my grandfather's politics of the 1930s, to organizing and supporting Democrats, to encouraging active and communitarian government, and to winning the battle against fascism.

We Shall Fight on the Beaches

I haven't read too much about the source material for Christopher Nolan's seat-rattling bones of war epic Dunkirk, which I finally experienced (and that's the right word) in a late-night Imax showing that severely aggravated my already bothersome Trump Era insomnia. But I was certain that one scene in The Longest Day, the massive 1962 Zanuck production packed with more stars per square inch than Eisenhower's jacket, must have influenced Nolan - whose beautifully and precisely drawn landscapes are vital to the film's success. There's a moment in the Zanuck flick where actor Hans Christian Blech, playing a German major in a bunker at Normandy, witnesses the size of the Allied invasion fleet for the first time as the mist lifts along the French coast. 

 

That look was mirrored by one of the best characters in Nolan's war story: Kenneth Branagh as Commander Bolton, the Royal Navy pier-master during the evacuation. Like Blech's Wermacht officer, Branagh's Commander executes that classic cinematic head-turn of shocked surprise toward the camera (think Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life or Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men). Both are senior military officers serving on the front lines; both are fighting on the defensive, and both will be on the battle's losing side. Yet we know, of course, that one side will win - and so Blech's look is one of horror, the shadow of death over a regime that will fall in bloody combat. But Branagh's expression carries hopefulness and pride. The small navy of private British yachts and steamers has emerged from the Channel fog to rescue 300,000 soldiers who will fight another day - some of them, on the longest day. Either few second of film that can stand in as a visual tweet for the entire narrative of both pictures.

Branagh's turn in Dunkirk - like so many others - is understated. Nolan has created an amazing visual architecture of violence and movement and time (his one big "trick" of an asynchronous but precise timelines was a bit too tricky for me). The dialogue is generally pretty sparse; the actors convey so much through expression and movement. In some ways, it's one of the greatest ensemble portrayals of human fear that I've ever seen. Tom Hardy, playing RAF fighter pilot Farrier, does more with a single eye than many actors do with full anatomy. The sound is demanding and punishing for the viewer, and it sure as hell lit up the fight or flight instinct in my seat (I closed my eyes and covered my ears several times); it was much scarier than any Hollywood horror film. Yet Dunkirk holds down the gore factor in favor of the random nature of warfare - and survival.

Throughout the film, we barely glimpse the enemy. I suspect this is close the experience of actual foot soldiers and sailors under attack submarines. Yet there's a simple message of heroism in Dunkirk that goes well beyond the Churchillian speeches - that of being able to stifle fear and get on with it. Shall we call it resisting fear? I think we should. We need heroes these days, just as we need to find the courage to resist.

The moral rock at the center of Dunkirk is, of course, veteran British actor Mark Rylance, who plays Mr. Dawson, a pleasure boat owner who steers for Dunkirk and danger. He's a middle class character, superbly crafted (the yacht itself is also a star) and accompanied by his son and a local boy. The closeness of existential danger - of the murderous battle itself - to his home and family is deeply etched in the lines on Rylance's face. His lines are few but powerful, and they cover sacrifice and choice: "There’s no hiding from this, son. We have a job to do."

Dunkirk is a technical and visual marvel, one of the greatest action films ever made, certainly one of the best English language war films ever. I suspect it will not be as popular with critics over the long-term (and the awards judges) because of the lack of a cohesive human narrative, or that big star turn, or an explicit social message. The sea and sand and the ships and planes and costumes and sound are the stars. But they do tell a story. And frankly, it's a story that's as right for 2017 as it was for 1940. 

Addendum:

Strongly recommended reading: 

The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo by Walter Lord. Many of the stories portrayed in the Nolan film clearly came from this 2012 history. 

The First of Human Qualities

A number of years ago, my Parliamentary namesake the well-known Labour MP Tom Watson from West Bromwich East was kindly giving me a tour behind the scenes of Whitehall, where he was then running the Cabinet Office at the very center of the British Government. As I recall, Tom's office overlooked Horse Guards Parade on one side and the back garden of 10 Downing Street, then tenanted by Gordon Brown, on the other. Catching my look of historical hankering as I gazed out his windows, he took me on a whirlwind look through the passageways until we ended up in Number 10 itself (it's really all one big, rambling connected complex - but perhaps that's a state secret I shouldn't divulge).

In any event, there we were looking around the grand staircase with its portraits, the white drawing room where Presidents are photographed with Prime Ministers, and the famed cabinet room. And just before we left the building - through the black No. 10 door itself, as it turned out - Tom pointed out a rather deflated old brown leather wing chair in the corner of the vestibule. That he said, with some historic flourish, is Winston Churchill's reading chair.

I was recalling this moment of history-related generosity on Mr. Watson's part - it was very cool - as I sailed through The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, the posthumous collaboration between the eminent Connecticut historian William Manchester and Paul Reid. Manchester, the most prominent Western  hemisphere Churchillian, was the author of two volumes of a planned three volume biography of Churchill, the last of which was published in 1988 left Churchill on the edge of the premiereship - and the Second World War - in 1940. Manchester's health failed him, though he compiled acres of notes and outlines for the final volume before he died in 2003.

Like many armchair historians, Manchester's writing was formative for me. Goodbye Darkness, his account of the war in the Pacific, in part a first-person narrative, is among the great war books ever written. Manchester had the knack for weaving large-scale events into ground-level stories that imparted both the global machinations of empires and lives of actual people. So when my friend Eric Goldberg, over some Italian wine at I Trulli, strongly recommended the Manchester-Reid book - and Eric has never steered me wrong on history - a download was imminent.

I'd read the somewhat mixed reviews last fall when the book was released, but was intrigued by how Reid, who met Manchester as a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, deciphered both the old man's notes and his intentions like a one-man Bletchley Park team and produced a long, final chapter. And I'm not disappointed. Indeed, I think Reid's journalistic skills serve him very well on the vast, global canvas that was the last quarter century of Churchill's life. And I'm struck with the real generosity and ambition of the book. Certainly, the world didn't demand another Churchill biography; the Roy Jenkins book could certainly have served as the last big 20th century summation of that giant's life. Yet Reid is sure to explain - and then to demonstrate in capturing the sweep of events that defined Manchester's first two works - that this is a Manchester book and worthy of that reputation. The bones of garden are Manchester; the walls and pathways are laid out and familiar and the soil well-tilled with a lifetime's research. The plants are mainly Reid's - but they're arranged in the way that Gertrude Jekyll gardens still are decades after the great gardener's death. The grand design is recognizable.

As to Churchill, such is the cartoonish reputation still that it's always refreshing to read an open-eyed biography - one that countenances weakness, failure, and (perhaps) the immorality and folly of empire itself. Nonetheless, courage really was contagious in Britain in 1941 - and Churchill's keen sense of the Cold War's rise remains an example of actual strategic thinking by a major political leader. I'm not saying Churchill's world view should be welcomed early in this new century as a tonic for our global problems, nor that Churchill's famously loopy tactical ideas are either. But that clarity? By all means.

Fifty-Cent Piece

Fifty years ago today, John Glenn circled the Earth three times aboard Friendship 7, the first American in orbit. Fifty years ago yesterday, the New York Mets opened their first spring training with Casey Stengel's stories in St. Petersburg, Florida. And 50 years ago tomorrow, I slipped into this world. My parents had watched Glenn coverage on snowy black and white television the day before, and my grandfather bought a new camera for the occasion of my birth. There was a snowstorm in New York.

Such a round number, fifty. The states of course. The half dollar. The knowledge that within limits of human biology, 50 is often the biggest anniversary most people attain. The Rolling Stones are 50 this year. So is Darryl Strawberry, that meteoric and magical Met, born three weeks after I was. David Foster Wallace would have been 50 tomorrow, born the same day as me in upstate Ithaca.

My father was a newspaperman on the production side, and my mother a school teacher. The American world they brought me into was far smaller and less connected, far more conservative and tribal than the one my children will bring their children into. In 1962, the year that James Meredith sought to enroll as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, much of the South still broiled under legal segregation. Women had little access to the top ranks of the work place, and the Ivy League was all-male. Homosexuals hid their identities away, or faced terrible consequences. The idea that a one-year-old baby born in Hawaii the year before me to mixed race parents would someday occupy the White House was the stuff of pure political fantasy.

Time is a strange phenomenon, particularly when considering generations. The last Civil War veterans died during the decade before I was born, but veterans of the frontier wars against the American Indian and the Spanish-American War were still around when I came on the scene. World War I vets were grandfathers, and World War II vets were the still-young middle-aged managers. The U.S. had a few military advisers in Southeast Asia, and the idea that an American army would someday invade a Middle East nation wasn't even on the radar screen, nor was Islam much of a geo-political factor. The enemy was communism and its spread, personified by 35-year-old Fidel Castro and his patron in Moscow, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. Winston Churchill still lived, as did Harry Truman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Douglas MacArthur and Charles DeGaulle. Mao ruled China. JFK was President, RFK his Attorney General and Martin Luther King was a young civil rights leader. Marilyn Monroe still had a few months to live.

'Tis strange to be 50, I'll admit. So much still to do, so many projects simmering. The challenges mount (precluding much time on this blog, long-suffering followers). But some things are timeless, and music is one of them. Here then, as a little gift to myself, one of the chart-toppers of 1962 (number one on some charts) - and a true classic of the genre:

Hanging Together

The committee to draft the Declaration of Independence reviews the crucial words in this scene from the HBO series John Adams - happy 4th, folks.

Their Shame, Our Stench

The Blue Wren has a long and brilliant, evocative, must-read post that casts a trip to the neat German villages of Bergen and Belsen in the light of current horrors. Here's a taste, but please go read the entire article and leave comments - very well worth it:

America, my country, feels that this horror, this atrocity, this mass murder at a distance, is necessary for a “new Middle East.”

Whatever that is.

America holds prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without trial or hope of release. We continue to enable and perpetuate a bloodbath in Iraq and stand by as that country collapses into a civil war we perpetuated. We shrug and turn our backs on poor, war-ravaged Afghanistan and we shake our heads, not very sadly, over the sad fact that hundreds of civilians dying horrific, violent deaths in Lebanon and Israel.

After all, there’s really nothing we can do about it. After all, most of the people who are dying are ragheads and Hadjis. They’re not really people.

The Nazis had a universal word for them. “Untermenschen.” Subhuman.

Really, we’re not responsible. We’re uninformed.

We go to work, we shop and play,we talk with our friends, we make love and we live our daily lives as if we have no personal accountability for what the leaders of our country are doing in our names. Never mind that like the good people of those little towns in Northern Germany, Bergen and Belsen, we have to hold our noses and breathe through our mouths to avoid smelling the stench.

Selling Treason in Jersey

For birders and lovers of Victoriana and its gingerbread architecture, Cape May, New Jersey is a throwback to a more genteel time. To the north, Wildwood is also a throwback, but not to gentility; property values along the precious Atlantic coast have not knocked away this last great Jersey Shore honky-tonk outside the gutters of Atlantic City and its failed experiment with organized crime. Strangely enough for a town in a pure blue state, Cape May is below the Mason-Dixon line and seemingly carries a whiff of southern charm and manners; Wildwood sits squat upon it and has neither. Indeed, lately it as become somehow a center for Confederate regalia, according to Rich Juzwiak's blog, fourfour. Rich offers a colorful and shocking photo tour of T-shirt shops and other inspiring sights on the beach and boardwalk of Wildwood, New Jersey [hat tip: Lindsay].

The Confederate flag - known as the Battle Flag to CSA buffs and the Stars and Bars to many others - is all over Wildwood's shops and swimmers, it seems. It's simple really - tons of people don't realize that the flag represents two things above all else: black slavery and treason.

They're content to wear it on their chests, tattoo it on their arms, stick it in their labels, fly it from their flagpoles, wiggle it from their asses, and emblazon it on all manner of vehicles - as if it were really a mere symbol of cultural pride, a lasting badge of honor.

History is simple: a murderous gang of treasonous southern leaders turned their back on the United States of America to defend the enslavement of blacks, for economic, cultural, and racial reasons. It was a catastrophic last stand for a horrid, immoral way of life that may have died out in another short generation because of growing distates for shackles and whip throughout the western world. The flag was the symbol of the armed rebellion against the very idea of America. It is an icon of the greatest act of treason in our history - an icon made worse by the constant attempts at its resurrection as a legitimate cultural symbol after Reconstruction.

But some people are literally unreconstructed; listen to this guy on Rich's blog:

I live in Virginia. I have always had friends from various ethnic backgrounds, grew up listening to hip-hop, and attended a predominately/historically black college. I'm not at all religious and believe in the equitable treatment of people from all races, belief systems, and sexual lifestyles. I also hold the Confederacy dear to my heart. The basic idea of freedom has been altered since the Union won the Civil War, to the point where there is basically no real choice left in America. When people bemoan the two-party system and the choice between two evils that they're forced to make every four years, they ought to understand that it began when the C.S.A. was defeated. It's unfortunate that the source of the conflict was slavery, because it clouds the issues of personal freedom and of the rights of the States. Slavery is indefensible, but this country was founded with an allowance for the freedom of each individual State, and that war destroyed this freedom and led to the death of many others.

So the Confederacy was about some basic idea of American personal freedom? Slavery "clouded the issue." Do they actually teach this stuff? Then there's this:

maybe it is time for a history lesson, the civil war wasn't about slavery and lincon didn't abolish it out of the goodness of his heart. the civil war was about states rights and economy, slavery was abolished as a way to further weaken the south, not to up hold the libreal ideals of abolitionists

And ok, one more:

I am black and the proudest of southerners. The Confederate flag is not patently offensive. What is more, perhaps many northerners should get off their high horse about blacks, slavery, the flag, and the south. The north has it own problems, including racism. I have friends that have the so-called Confederate flag, and they are not racist. As to this topic, it seems northerners lack the ability to comprehend the naunces of love for the South, it culture, long dead family members that fought in the lost cause, while not necessarily hating blacks or loving slavery. It is more than just bumpersticker logic to say that one can be proud of the south, as I am, without being a racist. I am proud of Martin Luther King, but I am also proud of Robert E. Lee, as he was an honorable gentleman, solider, Christian, and educator. We all make mistakes.

We all do indeed make mistakes, but symbols of those mistakes can be very powerful and incredibly offensive. In a land where we attempt to amend the Constitution to prevent the burning of our national symbol, and where mainstream commentators accuse newspapers of treason for reporting accurately on secret government programs, symbols do matter in daily life. And while arguing over the causes of the Civil War in the context of boardwalk T-shirt shacks seems silly, arguing over the symbol adopted by Klansmen to terrorize Southern blacks within many of our lifetimes does not.

Besides, the flag-burning amendment folks have one thing right - if you're an American, there's only one flag.

Tags: Confederacy Stars+and+Bars treason KKK racism New+Jersey Wildwood Civil+War

Paging Harry Truman

My friend Brendan - who runs the Hell Yeah! blog - is always telling me that a big portion of the right's motivation for the disastrous adventure in Iraq is business: and not just keeping the world safe for capitalism, either. Direct business. Big business. In short, profiteering.

Brendan argues that while Marines face trial for murder after more than three years of sitting duck duty, while the death toll nears 2,500, while insurgency melds into anarchy, the cash registers ring.

I was skeptical, but not very. And now I'm not - thanks to an ongoing series over at the wonderblog FireDogLake. In his original April post Merchants of Misery” and the “Do-Less-Than-Nothing” Congress FDL writer Matt O. remembers another backlash against profiteers:

Ironically, we intersect with another statement from the former president. Truman dubbed the 1948 Congress as the "Do-Nothing Congress" because they were in session for only 108 days. But I think the current collection of suits has them beat with only 97 days in session. It’s the "Do-Less-Than-Nothing" Congress and while they chase 12 million undocumented workers all over the country in the House and go off on gay-bashing tirades on the Senate floor, they are ignoring a major issue - war profiteering.

Later this year, director Robert Greenwald will release the film Irag for Sale: the War Profiteers. But FDL is already on top of this. Today, Matt fires off another well-researched installment on "security and logistics" startup Custer Battles (sadly apt for this war) and tales of "gangland-style payments." From FDL: In March, the company was ordered by a jury to pay $10 million "in damages and penalties for defrauding the government on its work in Iraq." Alan Grayson, an attorney for the whistleblowers said:

"Companies like Custer Battles go there with the idea of
stuffing their pockets with cash. This jury of eight people heard the
evidence and were repelled by it."

Clearly, we need another Truman Committee - thought we're not likely to get one without a big sweep in  November. As Matt sums up (read his whole series):

Rapacious corporations profit off of the death and misery of an
ill-fated plan for war and are protected by their enablers in the power
structure. Their cost-cutting actions put our armed forces at greater
risk, inflame tensions with the locals for piss poor work (of which
many use imported labor), and thus, undermine our efforts. All while
ripping off the American taxpayers. I can’t think of anything more
treasonous than that.

Me either. Here's a preview of the Greenwald project via YouTube:

Technorati Tags: Irag, Bush, Truman, Rumsfeld, Custer Battles, Halliburton

A DaVinci Load

Dan Brown's spectacularly successful The DaVinci Code isn't anti-Catholic. It's anti-English. As in the language. While the Church can easily survive a silly pop thriller, I'm not sure the millions who've read the Code can stomach the assault on their literary minds. A.O. Scott nailed it today in his brilliant Times review of the new Tom Hanks vehicle, which is out to universal non-acclaim:

To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind"), have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair." Such language — note the exquisite "almost" and the fastidious tucking of the "which" after the preposition — can live only on the page.

To be fair, though, Mr. Goldsman conjures up some pretty ripe dialogue all on his own. "Your God does not forgive murderers," Audrey Tautou hisses to Paul Bettany (who play a less than enormous, short-haired albino). "He burns them!"

The hilarious "controversy" over the Code's alleged attack on the Church just sells tickets, to a movie that almost by definition has to be better than a dreadful book (I mean, can Hanks and Ron Howard fail to create a not unpleasant two hours)? As the Sawpit says: no one has a monopoly on Jesus. And as Gandalf, er, Ian McKellen told The Today Show this morning: how come there's no disclaimer in the front of the Bible? Different stories, different people, different truths. Or to quote Variety: Catholic League Ballistic. Ticket Sales Soar.

Book, meanwhile, remains a poorly-written, fact-challenged bit of fluffery.

So tonight there's Chris Matthews doing HardBall live from the Lexington Avenue headquarters of Opus Dei, doing his best Larry King imitation - "So Father, the Pope, great man, dead yesterday, already on his way to heaven? Or already there?"

Technorati Tags: davinci code | dan brown | Da Vinci Code

The Georgia Colossus

As President Bush's approval ratings continue to slide, the chattering conventions adopt resolutions comparing his slipping numbers with the lowest of the low: the ultimate Mendoza-line President, Richard Nixon. But right-leaning observers - those who are disgusted by Bush's failure but loyal to their politics - raise another colossal Oval Office flop time and again, when publicly wringing their hands about the slow destruction of their beloved party.

George W. Bush, they'll tell you, is getting perilously close to Jimmy Carter territory.

He should be so lucky.

For all the easy list comparisons of failure and malaise, Jimmy Carter is acres of fertile territory past George W. Bush as President of the U.S. It's not close, just on the basis of Carter's permanent introduction of human rights as an important factor in American foreign policy. Sure, there was the sweater, Iran hostages, oil prices, the stupid Olympic boycott - a litany of disasters, no doubt, and not easily balanced by Camp David, the Carter Doctrine of an open Persian Gulf, and his dual stance of Salt II with a human rights stick for the USSR.

Still and all it's a much shorter list, with fewer dead bodies, than Bush's - and human rights trumps all, in my book. (As does a post-Presidency career of a truly great man- and a burr in the saddle of every President after him). Even Reagan continued that human rights doctrine (on a very selective basis - along with every President after him - but it became part of the national debate permanently).

So yeah, don't lift Bush by comparing him with Jimmy - he wilts in the side-by-side.

Technorati Tags: jimmy carter | Politics | George W. Bush