Bastard out of Tennessee.

“Much of the pic’s dialogue is in French or German, and subtitles will be used, though Pitt will speak English in his role as a Tennessee hillbilly who assembles a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to take on the Nazis.” Brad Pitt officially signs up for QT’s forthcoming WWII epic, Inglorious Bastards. Also in negotiations to join the project at the moment: Nastassja Kinski, Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz, and B.J. Novak.

Hmm…I dunno. I haven’t read the script, which I heard was floating around, and probably won’t before I see the movie. I’d like to think that this’ll be a return to the form of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown for Tarantino. But the Kill Bills and Death Proof were so loopy, bloated, and self-indulgent that I fear QT has entered George Lucas territory, meaning that he’s surrounded by sycophantic yes-men and has sadly disappeared up his own ass, never to emerge again. And casting his buddy, torture-porn director Eli Roth, first only increases my wariness that this’ll be yet another self-referential bric-a-brac homage to exploitation flicks of the past. Still, hope springs eternal.

…and Sixty-Four on the Beach.

“The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” — Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 6, 1944. And, while remembering fallen heroes, today is also the 64th anniversary of D-Day.

Great Borah’s Ghost!

A busy day traffic-wise here at GitM: In a speech before the Knesset today, Dubya compared Obama to Sen. William Borah of Idaho (and not in complimentary fashion, although that case could be made too.) Here’s GWB: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.“

Now, as it turns out, Sen. Borah was the subject of my undergraduate thesis and features prominently in my dissertation. So, notwithstanding the self-serving idiocy and sad invoking of Godwin’s Law in Dubya’s words, I do want to take a moment to defend Sen. Borah, before — just as Philip Roth Cheneyed up Burton Wheeler — he disappears down the memory hole and is reinvented as simply a kneejerk reactionary. (I know Dubya brought him up to bash as a weak-kneed surrender-monkey, but I’ve also read several left-leaning comments out and about today that make note that Borah was a Republican, and thus belongs in Dubya’s camp. He really doesn’t.)

However wrong he was about Hitler in his final years, and obviously he was very, very wrong (although not perhaps as wrong as George Prescott Bush), Sen. Borah is neither the apostle of appeasement nor the GOP stooge that Dubya and folks pushing back would respectively make him out to be today. With La Follette and Johnson, Borah was one of the leading progressives in the Senate for decades, and one of its strongest civil liberties advocates in the years after World War I. In fact, if Dubya wants to ponder aloud the words of Borah, may I suggest the following?

“It may seem incredible to many, but to me the most vital problem in American politics at the present time is the preservation of the great guarantees of civil liberty, found in our constitution, and so long supposed to be secure and indispensable…One of the most common traits of the political pharisees – the man who is always professing great devotion to the Constitution and always betraying it, or disregarding it – is that of constantly expressing the fear that the people may have their minds poisoned by false doctrines.” – Borah to the American Legion, 1921.

“Everybody is in favor of the Constitution when it favors them, but too many are willing to trample upon it when it gets in their way. The war disclosed that the great principles and guarantees of the Constitution are vital to a free people and at the same time are easily disregarded in an hour of passion or crisis.” — Borah to S.S. Bailey, 1921.

“I have no use for the ‘reds,’ nor for the lawless nor for the anarchists, but I have infinitely more respect for the man who stands out and is willing to suffer and sacrifice for his cause than for the miserable hypocrite who professes to be an American and is at the same time perfectly willing that every guarantee in the Constitution shall be trampelled under foot.

The men who are destroying American institutions and who are a menace to American principles are not the ‘reds,’ nor the anarchistic…but rather the men who, professing like Augustus the Great, to preserve our Constitution, are subtly and with sinister and selfish purposes, undermining them.” — Borah to Frank Morrison, 1921.

But, civil liberties aside, what should we take from Sen. Borah’s unfortunate remarks about Hitler (which he made at the age of 75, less than a year before his death?) Well, to me, it might suggest that age can cloud the judgement of all of us, even long-standing Senate mavericks much-beloved by the media. It’s just a good thing that ancient, venerable lion of the Senate didn’t win the election of 1936, eh?

Remembering Rankin.

“Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote. So who says men don’t vote for a woman?” Resorting to a blatant gender pitch once more, Sen. Clinton name-drops Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, the nation’s first female representative. (She also took hold of the recent Kinsley meme: “‘Do you realize how much longer it takes for me to get ready than my opponents?” Clinton said. ‘I think I should get points for what I do, plus having to spend so much time getting ready.'”)

Just to set the record straight, Jeannette Rankin was a committed pacifist who not only led the “Jeannette Rankin Brigade” to protest the Vietnam War late in her life, but voted against American entry into both World Wars (and was the only person to vote against entry into WWII.) So, their common womanhood aside, I think it’s safe to say Rankin would be thoroughly disgusted by Clinton’s record on Iraq and Iran, and might well roundly reject the comparison.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich…’s T.O. Jersey.

“Cheering and screaming! Every Sunday I would cheer and scream for what?! How can they do this! 13-3 and home field advantage and they lost to the f**king New York Giants!…ELI SUCKS!” How did William Shirer miss this? As seen at TNR: From deep within his bunker, Adolf Hitler laments the Dallas Cowboys’ season. Perhaps in poor taste, as jokes making light of the Nazis often are, but still, I found this pretty doggone funny. (And it brought back fond memories of Mr. Bimmler.)

Risky Business.

As Claus von Stauffenberg, Col. Tom Cruise (sporting a funky, funky eyepatch, man) plots to kill Adolf Hitler in the new trailer for Bryan Singer’s Valkryie, also starring Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, and Eddie Izzard. Hmmm, maybe.

Condition’s normal and you’re coming home.

Pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, 1915-2007. “He never apologized for unleashing the devastating explosive force and insidious nuclear radiation that leveled more than two-thirds of the buildings in Hiroshima and killed at least 80,000 people, and perhaps as many as 127,000…’I never lost a night’s sleep over it,’ Tibbets said…He said he wasn’t proud of all the death and destruction and Hiroshima, but he was proud that he did his job well. ‘I didn’t start the war,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do anything except what I was told to do; what I had sworn to do, years before, which is “Fight for the defense of this country.”‘“

House: Remember the Comfort Women.

“‘Inhumane deeds should be fully acknowledged,’ said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee…’The world awaits a full reckoning of history from the Japanese government.‘” The House passes a resolution calling for Japan to apologize for its WWII “comfort women” program. [Text.] “Lawmakers want an apology similar to the one the U.S. government gave to Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. That apology was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan in 1988.” Well, I’m all for offically recognizing historical sins in the past — *cough* slavery *cough* — but, unfortunately, no mention was made in this bill of our own possible complicity in Imperial Japan’s ugly system of forced prostitution. The resolution might carry more rhetorical force if it did.

Small Comfort, greater shame.

“‘As expected, after it opened it was elbow to elbow,’ the history says. ‘The comfort women…had some resistance to selling themselves to men who just yesterday were the enemy, and because of differences in language and race, there were a great deal of apprehensions at first. But they were paid highly, and they gradually came to accept their work peacefully.‘” The continuing furor in Asia over Japan’s ignominious use of “comfort women” (re: forced prostitution) during WWII reaches America, as it comes to light that occupation Japan created a similar “comfort system” for American GI’s in the year after the war (until MacArthur shut it down in the spring of 1946.) “An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war…Although there are suspicions, there is not clear evidence non-Japanese comfort women were imported to Japan as part of the program.”

The Smithsonian: Fair and Balanced?

Ollie, you should’ve stayed at home yesterday. Conservative radio host and Iran-Contra embarrassment Oliver North gets in a tussle with the Smithsonian over his attempt to film a segment on the Enola Gay for a forthcoming Fox News show, “From the Manhattan Project to Tehran.” (The Smithsonian has secured what admittedly sounds like a rather shady exclusive deal, for a public institution, with Showtime Networks.) “We were surprised to read the column because we consider the request to be pending,” [Smithsonian spokesman] Brown said.“