Newt Gingrinch?

Liberals “kind of admire” American terrorists? Which American terrorists is he referring to? Timothy McVeigh? Eric Rudolph? the KKK perhaps? And those are just some of the rightwing terrorists, can any one name one mainstream American liberal to endorse, say, the SLA or the vicious, but not quite deadly Weather Underground? And we “don’t mind” that Louis Farrakhan is antisemitic? Does that include Jewish liberals like me, because we love it when people are antisemitic. Gives us something to talk about.

So, how soon will it be before Senator McCain will be asked to reject and denounce the statements of his fellow conservative Republican and congressional colleague? Anyone out there expecting this question to come up when George Stephanopoulos interviews him tomorrow morning? Of course not.

Well, anyway, if you’re of a mind, do what I did and give Newt’s people a piece of your mind here. It’s fun!

Oh, and Newt thinks that Barack Obama is some way comparable to both George McGovern and Walter Mondale. I hope Republicans are that stupid. George McGovern is a good guy who was too mild-mannered and allowed himself to get pegged as an extremist; Mondale was not a terrible person but was a walking worst case scenario of a candidate, embodying all that was dull and out of touch about his generation of Dems. And, by the way, the country in those days had yet to be be driven into the toilet by a president with a double-digit IQ and his extreme right sycophants in congress. If after Iraq, Katrina, $4.00 gas, and everything else, Republicans really think this will be a repeat of 1972 or 1984 (both years with relatively popular incumbent presidents), boy do they have another thing coming.

H/t Huffpo

Oh, that’s what ABC/Disney thinks of us. Got it.

Go out and prove them wrong. You know what to do.

(No links on this post. You really do know what to do.)

UPDATE: I guess I was being a bit obnoxious just now. Taking out my anger at the media and it’s determination to prove The Daily Show depiction of them as mendacious tabloid panderers right at every turn on you nice folks. So here are a couple of links.

The Blogometer has an outstanding, link filled, rundown of blog reaction to the debate, titled, of course, “Worst. Debate. Ever?,” which was pretty much the reaction (minus the question mark, of course) in most places … that weren’t hard right. Rightwingers were, of course, delighted to have their “issues” raised. Yep, this is all they’ve got this year.

And a Former ABC News Employee gives you plenty of email addresses to vent at. Check it out.

Also, Kos, the man, not the blog, has nicely encapsulated his entire career into one post. This question STILL isn’t asked nearly enough: “Why are the “serious” Beltway blowhards always so wrong?” He’ll be on Real Time this week. Should be interesting — he’s one of the few people out there who’s got a mouth to rival Bill Maher’s.

Another Update: Another debate reaction.

h/t mspicata.

Yet One More Update: George Stephanopoulos responds:

“Everything we brought up in that front section had not come up since the last debate. And they all focused on the same theme — which candidate would be a stronger Democratic candidate in Novembber.” (sic)

“This is the core question for the campaigns, and a lot of Democratic voters right now. That’s why we decided to lead with it.”

In other words, it was a prolong “electability” debate. 45 minutes+ focused mainly on one particular candidate that seem clearly intended to harm said “electability.”

Whether or not George — who may, in fact, be a nice guy in real life and is one of the smarter members of the punditocracy for certain — knows this, what he’s really doing here is trying to get everyone in America on the same deeply sick, deeply distorted wavelength that the D.C. crowd is on. No concern for who’ll do the best job, only concerned with winning for its own sake and who cares how the nation is actually governed once your debased candidate actually gets into office. And, isn’t it funny how the assumption is always that the most “electable” candidate is the one who panders the most to the worst instincts of voters, rather than the one who tries to actually talk to us as if we have a brain in our head?

Seems to me, that’s basically the argument the Clinton campaign is making now: “Vote for us. The public is too stupid to vote for a good candidate!”

Tired of the lunatic silly-season behavior, Democrats, liberals, and moderates? Tired of a plain statement of fact becoming a “gate.” As Mayhill Flower says:

….Senator Obama– and also Senators Clinton and McCain– must see us and talk about us in such a way that sets the bar high. A leader will hold us to that standard. “Californians and Pennsylvanians,” our next president must say, “find your best selves in one another.”

Yes, but right now there’s only one campaign even trying to do that, and you can help it here. Your money and/or your dulcet tones on the phone (it’s not hard!) are badly needed to stop this thing in the Keystone, Hoosier, and Tar Heel states so we can start the real conversation for peace and true prosperity. The best solution to bitterness is action.

UPDATE: So, when I did my morning check of DailyKos and saw Hunter’s rant, I was very confused. Then a google and I saw this. Apparently, and I’m not kidding, Chris Matthews saw Obama’s turning down coffee and asking for orange juice for coffee as a sign that he was somehow unable to conduct himself in a diner and therefore, of course, perhaps not Joe SixPack enough to be President.

It’s obvious from watching his show that Chris gets plenty of caffeine, but he has got a problem with vitamin C? Is citrus now frou-frouy girlyman nutrition like…I’m not sure I should even mention it…arugula? Of does he think it’s rude to turn down coffee even if you don’t feel like drinking any? What, “real men never turn down coffee”??? Is this a reason to therefore vote for John McCain (we know Chris doesn’t much care for Hillary) because, while he might start a war in Iran, he’ll never turn down coffee, though he also might totally lose control of his anger over a perceived error by the waitress and use a very unpleasant noun to describe? Frankly, I don’t even understand what universe this comes from.

I don’t think this, er, story is going to get any traction but it is an example of why some of these pundits really do need to rethink they’re place in the universe. Chris Matthews can actually be intelligent and fun to watch at times, when he’s not being, as in this case, what can only politely be described as an assclown. However, as he Jon Stewart pointed out in discussing his new book awhile back (about treating your whole life as a political campaign) on The Daily Show, it’s really just a “recipe for sadness.”

If there were any justice, this would be a Joseph Welch moment: At long last, Mr. Matthews, have you no brain?

Another Update: The whole inane “bitter” mess summarized and diagnosed by Pennsylvania native, UC Economics prof. and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who I didn’t even know had a blog. So simple, yet so elusive to most in power. And one of his commenters mentions an apposite quote by H.L. Mencken:

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

There are moments when it seems you’re not allowed on television if you don’t fit this definition. I seriously hope Reich posts this essay elsewhere. Screaming it from the rooftops also works for me.

H/t MissLaura.

I’ve already waited too long because I didn’t want to hurt you, but I’ve been posting at another film-related blog. Every Thursday night/Friday morning and every Sunday evening. It’s not like what we have — just about all the new movies — but a blogger has needs

I just thought you needed to know.

Please don’t kill him….

A recently purchased screenplay premise I find strangely intriguing:

In “Bobism,” a shy college kid learns that his blog will be the basis for a utopian society in 1,000 years…

Although I’ve loved some of his performances, particularly in Richard Lester’s Three Musketeers films, The Big Country, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, and even — or is that “especially” — his controversial work in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Charlton Heston has never been one of my favorite actors….He’s never even been one of my favorite outspoken conservative actors nor even my favorite white actor who was involved with civil rights — which provides him with some truly tough competition pretty much across the spectrum.

Still, there was something about him that made him perfect for a certain kind of Hollywood kitsch, especially later on his career, and respect must be paid. Basically, though I just don’t know what to say. [UPDATE: Plagiarism Alert! I unconsciously stole the use of the quote in this next sentence from one of the blogs I linked to below…Genuine Stan Lee No Prizes are available for whomever correctly identifies my victim. Also, please don’t tell Hillary’s people…..] As Ms. Dietrich says in that last film I mentioned, “He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?” Besides, I realize I miss him more than I thought I would, just like in the movie.

Fortunately, other fine bloggers are saying stuff, including my usual suspects for this sort of thing: Brian D. Dennis C. (whose right on about his shabby treatment in Bowling for Columbine) and, of course, Campuspe. (They rhyme if you say them right.) Also as usual, Greencine has more, lots more, in the way of blogs and obits. And, finally, a less reverent take with some great video is available from one of my online compadres at my new twice-a-week moviebiz blogging home, Premium Hollywood’s Will Harris.

Ah, the colloquy of geniuses. Glenn “Pleasey reassure me you’re not an Al-Quaida Spy, Rep. Ellison” Beck and global warming denier James Inhofe discuss why the world needs less polar bears. Newsflash… they eat people!

H/t Dkos science blogger Darksyde and ThinkProgress, which has a shorter version up.

In the course of research for a project tied to the newly reissued Bonnie and Clyde DVD, I’ve come across a few tunes that are more than worth sharing…

From the U.S.A. (Note — Some disturbing and gruesome historical black and white photography later in this video. But you want to hear the music on the first half regardless.)

From the U.K. (Note — Features gratiutous imagery of spinning vinyl.)

From Germany (Note — Features rock video violence, an explosion, and punked out Teutons getting freaky)

From France (Note — Features gratuitous coolness, ahead of its time aural landscapes, Brigitte Bardot, and sexy suavity)

And also from France, same song, same guy, different time. (Note — Features Gaulois or Gitane smoking and gratuitously amazing performance near the end of a singer’s career and life.)

I’m a little late, but it’s time to mention a couple of important practitioners of the lost art of great middle-brow entertainment who have passed on. They were also both Jewish liberals. Not unusual in Hollywood, but these two played the liberalism game like they meant it and both fought real life injustice where they found it, and that’s not a small thing.

Jules Dassin might be best known by some as the director of Never on Sunday starring Melina Mercouri, which still sits on my DVR queue, unwatched. But I first noticed Mr. Dassin’s name on another film with Mercouri (who was also Mrs. Dassin), the strangely forgotten, amazingly stylish mid-sixties tongue-in-cheek caper film, Topkapi. Even pan-and-scanned and chock full of commercials late at night, it was a wonder. As a twelve-year-old, the scene where chubby Peter Ustinov, playing a character described by Ms. Mercouri and boyfriend Maximilian Schell as a “shmoe” and winning an Oscar in the process, is kissed on the mouth by the glamorous Mercouri threw me for a loop. I identified with this shmoe (as a kid I could have easily passed as Ustinov’s son and I think I knew even then that we’re both born on an April 15),and it was as if Mercouri were kissing me, which was something.

When I caught up with the film at the New Beverly a few years back, I was delighted to see that it held up remarkably, right from a dazzling, quasi-psychedelic opening scene to lengthy dialogue free heist sequence. If it wasn’t quite perfect, it was the kind of entertainment that took entertainment seriously, and for my money no tongue-in-cheek heist movie half as good would be made again until Steven Soderbergh breathed life into the form in his (critically and bloggily) underrated version of Ocean’s 11.

And it was only a few years back when I was finally able to see the film that Dassin was gently spoofing with Topkapi, the legendary and far more serious caper film, Rififi, which for brief spells can be a bit dry in the mechanics of the jewelry robbery — the wordless jewelry robbery sequence is brilliant, but the appreciation is perhaps more intellectual than emtional, but the movie is strong on character and the aftermath is one of the compelling, even devastating conclusions of a heist thriller I’ve ever seen. Not a perfect film either, in my opinion, but a great film demonstrating that crime really doesn’t pay, after all.

As it happens, Rififi is being remade with Al Pacino and a screenplay by Bo Goldman, which I guess might work. And, Topkapi is being remade as the sequel to the Thomas Crown Affair remake, if you can believe it and will be directed by Paul Voerhoeven, who I’ve really grown to hate in his post-Robocop life. (And don’t get me started on Black Book.) I hope, at least, that neither film dishonors Dassin, who also made some unusually strong — some would say great — film noirs, was blacklisted (he dropped out of the CP in 1939 in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin nonagression pact, and long before the full evil of Stalinism was widely acknowledged), helped end the rule of fascism in his adopted home of Greece in the early seventies (yes, folks, there was real life facism in Europe as late as the seventies, complete with repression and torture….anything to defeat the commies, you now) and was as far as I can tell an all-around great guy.

And one more thing. While still a U.S. director, Dassin, along with screenwriters Albert Maltz and Marvin Wald (who died earlier this month), basically created the template for modern police procedurals, especially Law & Order, with the terrific and utterly enjoyable The Naked City. Another film to check out for sure if you’ve missed it.

Much more about Dassin over at Greencine. And don’t miss the World Famous Siren’s righteous takedown of an AP obit and loving homage to Dassin’s fifties output.

*****

And, speaking of righteous indignation, it’s also important to mention the passing of screenwriter Abby Mann a couple of days back. Best known for Judgment at Nuremberg, which was a Playhouse 90 before it was a movie, and The Marcus Nelson Murders, which I recall as being a gigantically angry cop film for television about gross injustice — that somehow led to one of the most popular and disposable cop shows of the seventies, Kojak. Yes, the “who loves ya’ baby” Telly Savalas vehicle had its roots in an Emmy winning piece of agit-prop that left the young Bob shaking with anger. (I actually like movies that make me really mad, and always have…but this was almost too much.)

He later became a specialist in fact-based TV movies that were always watchable, didn’t shy away from coming to controversial conclusions, and even made headlines in his contention that the man who was convicted of a wave of Atlanta child murders in the seventies was innocent — which was probably not true. On the other hand, his contention that the McMartin school child molestation case was largely mass hysteria turned out to be counterintuitive, but also turned out to be the most correct interpretation.

Still, being a writer in Hollywood, Abby Mann didn’t really quite get the respect he deserved, I think….I don’t know for sure because except for Judgment, most of his trademark is unavailable and unseen by me since some time in the 1980s. Time for a DVD special edition of The Marcus Nelson Murders, if nothing else.

Once again, more on Mann via the invaluable Mr. Hudson of Greencine.

And, just because I love these kind of images, here’s a great pic from Jules Dassin’s Rififi…