With Rummy on the ropes, Dubya and Cheney rush to the defense of their man in Defense. Hey, hold him to your breast as long as possible, Mr. President…maybe then, you’ll all go down together come November.
Category: World at Large
Blowback.
From The Economist to the NY Times, Salon examines the growing calls for Rumsfeld to resign as a result of Abu Ghraib. When even Karl Rove is forced to admit the damage done by these horrifying pics, you know it’ll be rough for Rummy in the weeks ahead, even with Dubya’s vote of confidence. Well, I’m all for getting rid of Rumsfeld, but I don’t think he should be the only fall guy for this Iraq fiasco…the decision may have began with Cheney, Wolfowitz, & co., but it ended with Dubya. For Abu Ghraib as with so much else, they all gotta go.
A Moral Abattoir.
I don’t know how we will ever recover from this. Medley aptly sums up my stomach-churning disgust at the Iraq atrocity photos now circulating around the world. If there wasn’t a connection between Dubya’s carnival sideshow in Iraq and the war in terror before, there assuredly is now. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, just think how many possible US-hating terrorists have been born with each one of these vile and grotesque snapshots. Our entire nation and way of life have been shamed by these depravities, perhaps to fatal effect.
The Wrath of Kahn.
So, with the first slew of summer tentpole movies still over a week away (and, aside from Troy and possibly Spidey 2 and Azkhaban, it looks like a remarkably poor crop this year…Exhibit A: Van Helsing), I went over to check out My Architect: A Sons’ Journey at the Lincoln Cinemas last night. The documentary follows writer-director Nathaniel Kahn’s attempt to understand and come to terms with the life and work of his deceased prodigal father, Louis Kahn, who, besides being one of the more renowned architects of the postwar period, also kept up three different families and died anonymously and deeply in debt in a Penn Station bathroom in 1974. Mostly haunting, occasionally saccharine, My Architect succeeds inasmuch as it explores the mysteries of the father, but fails whenever it wallows in the emotional insecurities of the son.
The advertising copy for My Architect quotes a New York Magazine review deeming it a “Citizen Kane-like meditation,” and at its best moments the film does suggest comparison with that 1941 classic. Inveterate romantic, spiritual nomad, ill-tempered workaholic, and a scarred and often-anxious thinker obsessed with issues of permanence and legacy, Louis I. Kahn is a man of many, many layers, and much of the resonance of My Architect comes from seeing his friends, admirers, lovers, and enemies grapple with their still-powerful memories of him, twenty-five years after his death. The film might have benefited from a more dispassionate analysis of Kahn’s work — certainly not all of his buildings are masterpieces (the film does say as much about a U-Penn medical complex), and I thought his plans for redesigning downtown Philadelphia were particularly ill-conceived. (I’m all for reducing automobile traffic in urban areas, but it seems strange and off-kilter to commemorate the cradle of the republic with the type of primitivist ziggurat Kahn seemed to specialize in.) Still, one can hardly fault Kahn for erring on the side of eulogy when remembering his father in film.
What one can fault Kahn for, however, is the amount of time spent in My Architect on his own personal Oprah-esque mission of emotional acceptance. Particularly in the second hour, the movie takes long detours away from the architect’s portfolio to examine Nate’s relationship with his half-sisters or his cloudy memories of his dad’s hands. And, while I’m sure this is all very important to Nate Kahn, it’s frankly not very interesting to the viewer. In fact, I thought after a while that Kahn’s persistent presence — perhaps even mooning — in every interview or location detracted from our understanding and appreciation of his subject. For example, it’s hard to contemplate how Louis Kahn’s failure to build a synagogue in Jerusalem may have impacted the man when we have to sit through Nate cutely dropping his yarmulke over and over again.
Still, to be fair, this gripe, while a significant one, doesn’t kill the movie by any means. If it comes to your town, My Architect is well worth seeing as a study of one man’s struggle to achieve some kind of permanence during and despite a transient life, and how memories, like buildings, can both last forever and fall into disrepair.
Iraq-Contra?
“Woodward reports that in July 2002 Bush ordered the use of $700 million to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, funds that had not been specifically appropriated by the Congress, which alone holds that constitutional authority. No adequate explanation has been offered for what, strictly speaking, might well be an impeachable offense.” Sidney Blumenthal sees the behavior underlying Reagan’s Iran-Contra fiasco revived, while law professor Cass Sunstein delves deeper into the illegality and unconstitutionality of Dubya’s likely misappropriation of funds.
Revisionist History.
Once again, it seems, the Bush administration is falsifying records to cover up their shadiness. This time, the Pentagon deleted key remarks made by Rumsfeld to Bob Woodward on the certainty of the Iraq war. (Regarding an invasion of Iraq, Rummy told the Saudis in Jan. 2003, two months before operations commenced, that they could “take that to the bank.”) Given the other times the Bushies have been caught doing this, their withholding of Reagan and Bush Sr. papers, and the general moral turpitude of this administration, one has to wonder how snarled up the historical record is at this point.
Fire in the Hole.
Slate‘s David Greenberg (a Columbia PhD recently hired at Rutgers…congrats) examines the use and misuse of Iraq-Vietnam analogies.
Failing Up Yet Again.
Clandestine oil deals with the Saudis, secret (and quite probably) illegal misappropriation of anti-terrorism funds, Bob Woodward’s confirmation that Richard Clarke was right despite the Bushies’ smear machine…no matter how you cut it, the news coming out of the White House these days looks grimmer and grimmer. Now Dubya is actually running on the Patriot Act, of all things, and yet his poll numbers are rising?! I’m going to chalk up this latest bounce to sheer GOP cash flow (a funding discrepancy soon to change) and the post-primary press lull for Kerry. But, still, I find it hard to believe that anybody of an independent disposition can look at what’s going on in Washington these days and in good conscience vote for Dubya. This joker can’t handle the 9/11 commission without Cheney by his side, and he can’t even face the national press without begging to see the questions in advance. Why on Earth would anyone think this fool should stay in office? Inept and corrupt, Bush is easily the worst president America has seen since Warren G. Harding. In fact, he’s probably worse. Where’s the outrage?
Dubya and his cronies have coasted on the “soft bigotry of low expectations” long enough…let’s vote out these guys, already.
No Tenure for You.
Sean Wilentz reviews trained historian Condoleeza Rice’s sense of her field in light of her recent testimony, and finds her wanting. Notes Wilentz, “The American Historical Review’s notice of her first book, a study of Russia and the Czech army after 1948, charged that Rice ‘frequently does not sift facts from propaganda and valid information from disinformation or misinformation’ and that she ‘passes judgments and expresses opinions without adequate knowledge of the facts.’)” Well, dang, no wonder the Bushies jumped on hiring her for National Security Advisor…she sounds like a great fit.
Mission Compromised.
When writing about Touchstone’s new version of The Alamo, I find myself in a very similar situation as I was post-Hellboy. Part of me really wants to say nice things about this movie. The occasional film flourishes aside (such as Davy Crockett’s last stand), I think The Alamo for the most part tries to get the history right…Dennis Quaid’s Sam Houston is more a whiskey-doused speculator than American hero, Crockett is something of a congressman on the make, and there’s at least a nod to such ugly realities as American slavery and the land-grab nature of the whole Texian enterprise. Moreover, the Mexican view of the battle is also more fleshed out than we’ve come to expect in Alamo movies, even if Santa Anna is played like a straight-up Bond villain. Heck, compared to Gods & Generals, it’s like this movie was written by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
But, frankly, The Alamo turns out to be kinda dull through most of the middle hour. The set-up is well-done, the payoff is well-done (notwithstanding the twenty minute foray into the Battle of San Jacinto, which reminded me of the Doolittle Raid in Michael Bay’s lousy Pearl Harbor), but the twelve days of siege that comprise much of the movie is ultimately a bore. “Well, Col. Bowie, we’re all going to die.” “Yes sir, Lt. Col. Travis, that’s correct, we’re dead ducks. What do you think, Davy?” “I’m with you fellers. Mincemeat.” Part of the problem in this second act is that the film keeps slipping away from the history in favor of lapses into movie convention. We’ve got Davy Crockett and fiddle having their “King of the World” moment on the eve of the final battle. We’ve got the vaguely rousing “we will go down in history” speech by Travis. We’ve got Jason Patric — surely, the only actor who’s been poised on the brink of the big time longer than Billy Crudup — dying of consumption for interminable stretches, with all the deathbed movie tropes that entails. (Jim Bowie’s bout with sickness holds very little dramatic impact, given that we know he’s on the way out anyway.) For almost all of this section of the film, even as a history buff, I was fidgeting for the big battle to start, and I couldn’t help thinking (and feeling guilty about it) that all of this men-under-siege grimness was done better a year ago in The Two Towers.
Yet, the one major respite from the middle hour’s blandness is Billy Bob Thornton as Davy (“He prefers David”) Crockett. While Sam Houston is sidelined, William Travis is a (pretty good) unknown, and Jim Bowie is moaning and clutching the sheets, Billy Bob’s Crockett is just trying to keep his chin up, and he’s the only character here who seems both realistic and larger-than-life. Throughout the film, even when forced into the most goofy lines or plot devices, Billy Bob/Crockett has a grim, self-deprecating smile on his face that says both “Can you believe it? I’m Davy Crockett!” and “How the hell did I end up dying in this backwater mission?” And some of the best sequences in the film involve Davy ruminating on his own myth, or remembering his days as an Indian fighter. In sum, Billy Bob is so good here that I spent most of the film contemplating who else I’d cast alongside Thornton for the definitive American History miniseries. Christopher Walken as 1850 Henry Clay? Fred Thompson as James Buchanan? Adrien Brody as Mexican War-era Lincoln? The possibilities are endless.
