The D.C. Rules.

Good morning all — I’m back in the Big Tent right now (fortunately, bloggers tend to be late risers, I guess, as electricity is easier to come by right now), sifting through some of the latest swag (breath mints advertising “clean” coal power, chocolate smoothies via HuffPo, C-Span coffee mugs, etc.) and generallly figuring out where to flit around today. There’s a lot going on upstairs, and they treat us very well in here, but, even despite all the free caffeine, etc., it feels a bit like being a caged exotic bird in this tent. Every so often politicos or celebrity journalists swing through, pat us on the head, and say “oooh, the bloggers!”, then disappear to wherever the real action is. In a way, we’re all just embedded in here, bought off by swag bags, free massages (I have yet to partake), and Chipotle burritos. But, hey, I like Chipotle.

In any case, it’s good to refortify in here before venturing forth for another day of the “DC RoE.” For, however hospitable Denver has been thus far (and so far LoDo seems like a great place — I wasn’t expecting such a walking-friendly downtown), it’s clear the most aggravating tendencies of District life have thoroughly infected this entire municipal area for the week. Like I said yesterday, having spent the past several years ensconced in academia (which has its own occasionally exasperating mores to navigate), I’d forgotten how fundamentally irritating the DC ratrace can be. Consider this full-immersion therapy.

Rule #1 of the DC life: Access — and thus the appearance, if not the fact, of exclusivity — is everything. For example: Yesterday evening, a friend of mine from CQ and I looked to catch a drink somewhere nearby. We eventually found one, thank goodness, but not before having to negotiate with doormen, list-bearing aides, and sundry other “boundary mavens” in front of many, many bars, restaurants, and hotel lobbies. Everything was cordoned off, invites and VIPS only, unworthies please move along. Now, I understand the lobbyists gotta do their thing — If only this sort of thing was restricted to private parties. Alas, DC life, I have since been reminded, is basically one big rope-line. Every doorway involves a plethora of multi-colored passes, even those that lead nowhere particularly important. Every event here, even ungodly boring ones they can barely fill, have byzantine rules for crossing the threshold, and strange, unspoken hierarchies which determine who gets in and in what order. Get three people together in the District and one of ’em will start working on setting up the cordon. Frankly, it all gets a bit exhausting. (I’d like to say the special dKos couch I was joking about yesterday is a parody of this impulse, but it’s really just another sad manifestation of it.)

Which brings me to Rule #2 of Washington: You’re only as interesting as your status in The Hive. The District being a company town, the main thrust of virtually every social encounter in DC is “Hi-Hello-Who-do-you-work-for?” (I’ve heard LA operates much the same way, which makes sense, given that politics is basically showbiz for short and/or ugly people.) I can’t tell you the number of times during my Washington days when people I’d recently met would “switch on” once they ascertained I had a moderately important-sounding job. (It wasn’t really, of course, but Carville occupied his own unique tangent in Clinton-era Washington, so the rabid political climbers always assumed I had more pull than I ever in fact did.)

As such, people tend to accord you respect only in direct relation to your perceived clout, and if you don’t have any, you’re just not worth talking to. In DC, the most remorseless practitioners of the political arts — and thus often the most successful — will be endlessly scanning the room around you during your conversation, looking to see if there’s someone more important they should be talking to at that moment. It’s a peculiarly virulent form of douchebaggery that you really can’t escape if you venture into the politics business, and it, sad to say, has been very much in evidence here in Denver.

Like I said, I found this endless reducing of people to their places of employ tremendously irritating even when I occupied a relatively privileged position in “The Game.” Now that I’ve been out of the scene for awhile — having cashed in my chits, so to speak, to pursue the PhD during the Dubya years — and my hive status is lower than even drone, it’s that much worse. Now, here in the blogger tent, everyone — give or take a few e-celebrities, of course — seems very friendly, down-to-earth folk, and journalists, I’ve found, rarely traffick as baldly in this sort of behavior as the politicos (which is a lot of the reason I tended to hang with reporters and non-profit types while in DC.) But, get around the actual honest-to-goodness political people, who are obviously everywhere right now, and hoo boy. After an hour or two of being constantly Sized Up and Found Wanting by weaselly-looking guys in suits, it’s enough to send you screaming into the streets.

Ok, had to get that off my chest. I am having a great time here, honest! Still, it was a bit of a shock on my first day to be resubmerged so quickly and so thoroughly into the DC-politico culture. Oh yeah, it’s like that.

Things to Do in Denver…

Hey all…back at my friend’s place now, where the sweet, sweet electrical power flows freely. As some may have already noticed, I managed to get some pics for the day up here. Enjoy…I’ll have more to say in the next day or two, once I can gather my thoughts about events thus far. It’s been a lot to take in, and, frankly, I’ve been out of the DC environment for awhile. (Denver or no, DC rules of engagement are clearly the order of the day here…I’d sorta forgotten how this game is played.)

The Dream Redeemed.

“‘We played with great character in one of the great games in international basketball history, I think,’ U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said.” Congrats to the US men’s Olympic basketball team, who returned to golden form this morning by closing out Spain 118-107. (Now, Coach D’Antoni, get thee to the Knickerbockers. We have work to do!)

Oscar Mike at Last?

“‘We have a text,’ Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after a day-long visit Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.” How badly do the Republicans want to keep the White House? Apparently enough that the Dubya administration, contrary to its earlier stance (and to McCain’s promises of “100 years” in Baghdad), seems to be on the verge of signing a withdrawal accord with Iraq that would have all U.S. troops out by the end of 2011. (Not that we have much choice in the matter, given that Baghdad has already made it clear it wants us gone.) Well, however politically influenced, this is clearly a step in the right direction…but it’s way too late in the game to save the GOP now. It’s not like we’re all going to forget who started — and enabled — this disastrous sideshow.

You’re no Ivan Denisovich.

Sure, Reagan did this all the time. Still, it takes either a man whose memory is too wracked by age to be president — or an inveterate liar — to simply make up this kind of story. (See also Reagan.) Apparently, John McCain’s heartwarming tale of the Christian guard in Hanoi, which he related again over the weekend at the mutual kissing of Rick Warren’s ring, was in fact lifted from Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. (Apparently McCain, and/or his ghostwriters, are fans of the man.) Uh, Senator McCain, did you really feel you had to embellish your time in a Vietnamese prison camp? The situation should speak for itself.

For what it’s worth, McCain is blaming the controversy on “the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd.” Well, speaking as a member of the prObama World of Warcraft crowd (really, Senator, you’re dating yourself — again), I should note that the story actually originated with the Freepers several years ago, once the mythical maverick felt the need to start peddling false wares to the nation’s conservative Christians. For shame, Senator.

Update: Forget Solzhenitsyn. According to scholars (via TPM), this tale isn’t from The Gulag Archipelago at all, but rather seems to be a right-wing fairy tale emanating from the likes of Chuck Colson and Jesse Helms.

Thunder Rolls.

When it comes to penning movie reviews around here, I tend to find writing about comedies the most difficult. (See, for example, my original mulligan on Borat.) For one, it’s hard to quantify exactly what makes a picture *funny*, and often what one person finds uproarious, another finds on the wrong side of lame. (Although I’m sure all right-thinking people can agree on the merits of The Big Lebowski.) For another, comedy more than any other genre seems dependent on one’s mood. (Case in point, Anchorman, which I saw in a funk and shrugged at, then caught later on TV and found quite amusing)

All of which is to say that, even more than usual, my thoughts on Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder should be taken with a grain of salt — Actual results may vary. For my part, even though both Stiller and Jack Black were basically doing their usual schtick, and Steve Coogan is pretty much wasted (in more ways than one), I found Thunder to be a decently funny experience last Wednesday. It’s got a bit of the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach, and some jokes — say, Tom Cruise gyrating in a Harvey Weinstein fat suit — end up getting run into the ground through overuse, Austin Powers-style. But, that being said, I had a good time. It helped that I’m a sucker for the sort of Hollywood inside-baseball humor that Thunder endlessly trafficks in. (IMHO, that’s also the only redeemable thing about HBO’s otherwise aggravating Entourage.) And there are elements of it that just appealed to my funny bone — seeing Nick Nolte finally get all Chris Walken up on us, for example, or the funny-’cause-they’re-tired ‘Nam-era ditties (Creedence, Rolling Stone, Buffalo Springfield) interspersed throughout the flick. So, I’m not going to say it was the best film of the year or anything, but as a diverting and amusing morsel of late-summer fare, Tropic Thunder gets the job done…for me anyway.

The story, as you probably know, involves a behind-the-scenes look at an Apocalypse Now-level movie disaster deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia. After a few wry trailers (the funniest and most dead-on being Satan’s Alley, although I’d have hated to be Eddie Murphy during The Fatties 2), we’re introduced to the gang on hand. There’s fading action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller, being Stiller), drug-addled comedian Jeff Portnoy (Black, going for Farley/Belushi and ending up with Black), Aussie thespian Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr, weirdly genius), hip-hop phenom Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson, used mainly to cover Downey’s ass), and newbie Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel, late of the Apatow factory), all under the supervision of video director Damien Cockburn (Coogan). Once the film ends up a month behind schedule (three days into filming), the who’s-more-grizzled source material for this ‘Nam picture, Four-Leaf Tayback (Nolte), insists Cockburn bring his bevy of spoiled stars into “the s**t.” Well, things go wrong, of course. And, soon, stranded somewhere near the Laotian border without even a Tivo on hand, this cast of thespians — only some of whom seem to understand the trouble they’re in — must navigate and negotiate their way back to SoCal-style civilization…but not before ticking off the local drug cartel, living out the inexorable men-on-a-mission tropes, and, just possibly, making a decent 80’s-style actioner in the process.

The aspect of Tropic Thunder which *originally* was drawing the most heat is Downey, Jr.’s resurrection of one of Hollywood’s darker stains in its past, blackface. (Controversy has since moved on to the portrayal of mentally handicapped people in the film-within-the-film Simple Jack, which, to my mind, is patently absurd. Watch Forrest Gump or Rain Man again sometime and you should get the point.) At any rate, surprisingly given the poor taste involved in reviving minstrelsy in any form, I thought Downey and the writers actually pulled it off. This is mainly thanks to the incredulity of Jackson’s Alpa Chino to most of Downey’s racist tics, such as reveling in crawfish, gumbo, and the like. All in all, I’d say David Roediger should be proud: Downey and the Tropic Thunder team managed to make their blackface routine a comment about the enduring racist foibles of white people (and the supreme actorly ego of Russell Crowe-type Method men) more than anything else, and thus help to subvert black stereotypes by drawing attention to them. (Of course, one irony here, at least from Spike Lee’s perspective, is that Jackson’s “Alpa Chino/Booty Sweat” act could be construed as even more minstrel-ish than Downey’s role.) In any case, it was a high-wire tightrope act for Downey to pull off, and the fact that his performance has elicited so little controversy suggests how well he pulled it off. (In fact, the five minutes where Downey pretends to be Asian, and pretty much just chop-sockey’s it up rather embarrassingly, illustrates how badly this could’ve gone, and how much we’ve still got to work on.)

Saakashvili’s Fatal Blunder.

“How could Saakashvili have made such a catastrophic misjudgment? The answer is that he stepped into an elephant trap set for him by Russia. Moscow-backed Ossetian rebels had been provoking the Georgians for weeks with artillery attacks and raids. Saakashvili took the bait. He sent in his army for an all-out grab. But the Georgian offensive gave Russia just the excuse it needed to send troops and tanks into Ossetia. More importantly, the fact that Georgia launched the first attack has robbed Saakashvili of the moral high ground…Russia has once again proved itself a master of the brutal art of colonial politics.”

As Russian President Medvedev announces he is halting military operations (although, apparently, not quite yet), the Daily Mail‘s Owen Matthews explains what’s happened in Georgia…and what’s at stake. “The only non-Russian controlled oil pipeline from Central Asia and the Caucasus runs from Azerbaijan through Georgian territory to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan…It is too late for Russia to do anything to stop the existing pipelines — but a destabilised Georgia would doubtless undermine Western confidence in non-Russian gas supplies…[In addition] It’s impossible that NATO will accept Georgia as a member as long as its rebel regions are occupied by Russian troops – so in invading South Ossetia, Russia has effectively drawn a line beyond which NATO cannot expand.”

Georgia On Our Minds.

“‘I expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia,’ Bush said. ‘We strongly condemn bombing outside of South Ossetia.‘” As Georgian forces pull back from South Ossetia in the face of a full-scale Russian assault, the US, UN, and European Commission increasingly condemn Russian attacks across all of Georgia.

Meanwhile, Medvedev argues that Russian operations are winding down, but that troops will stay in South Ossetia for awhile. “Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a colonel-general on Russia’s General Staff, said at a Moscow news briefing that Russia was not intending ‘to invade Georgia’ and that a ‘key principle’ of the current operation was that troops remain inside South Ossetia — ostensibly to protect a population it said was under assault by the Georgian military, as well as its own peacekeepers stationed there.” Update: Russia pushes into Georgia.

Olympus — and Ares — in Asia.

“‘This is the worst nightmare one can encounter,’ he said. Asked whether Georgia and Russia were now at war, he said, ‘My country is in self-defense against Russian aggression. Russian troops invaded Georgia.‘” Well, so much for that whole settling-differences-through-sports shebang. On the day of the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, Russia has apparently invaded nearby South Ossetia, next to Georgia, on reports (or is it simply the pretext?) of a Georgian incursion and ethnic cleansing in the region.

It’s still unclear (to me, at least) exactly what is going on over there. According to Georgia president Mikhail Saakashvili (and the current CNN reports), Russian troops have “been amassing at the border for the last few months. They claimed they were staging exercises there and as soon as a suitable pretext was found, they moved in.” According to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (and some witnesses in the AP story), Russia is going in to protect Russian citizens in South Ossetia from both ethnic cleansing and a Georgian attempt to retake the breakaway region, which apparently Saakashvili has been promising to do for awhile. “Russia ‘will not allow the deaths of our compatriots to go unpunished’ and ‘those guilty will receive due punishment…My duty as Russian president is to safeguard the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they are. This is what is behind the logic of the steps we are undertaking now.‘” So, somebody‘s up to no good here on Opening Day, and, with competing claims to the region at hand, matters could soon get much worse.

In any case, at the moment we’re calling for an immediate cease-fire in the region, and have reasserted that “the U.S. supports Georgia’s territorial integrity.” More to come, I’m sure.

Brettie and the Jets?

In a move that will likely rival MJ’s ho-hum final years in Washington, the New York Jets sign quarterback Brett Favre from Greenbay. I’d say this was a panic move that’ll clearly backfire, but, then again, the Jets were rolling with Vinny Testaverde for a few years there, and he was older than dirt too. At any rate, NYJ are as close to a NFL team as I have in my fan arsenal, so here’s hoping it pans out.