Navajo Veterans Cemetery, the Navajo Reservaton, Window Rock, AZ. Photograph by Julia Dean
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
A Film Noir
by
A. Jay Adler
DOUBLE DOWN
Part Two
The Story So Far
Part I: Jack Miles, rock n’ roll roadie, has returned home looking for a job. He meets old friends and begins new love. Her name is Sonny. She’s a detective. Jack’s estranged identical twin is about to be rich.
Now, Part 11: The old friends, Kyle and Ray, make a proposal to Jack. It concerns his brother. Jack and Sonny enjoy California’s roadways. Kyle warns his younger brother Billy off getting involved with the Mexican gang El Puño.
INT. CAB OF A TRUCK – MOVING – DAY
Ray is at the wheel. Jack rides beside him, looking glum.
RAY
So that’s the run. Fresno, Modesto, and back.
EXT. STREET – DAY
The twenty foot truck turns a corner onto the street. It comes to a stop at the curb, across from the bar. Kyle stands there waiting.
Kyle hops in beside Jack. Jack wasn’t expecting this. Ray drives off again.
INT. TRUCK’S CAB – MOVING
Jack eyes Kyle carefully
RAY
So what do you think?
Jack looks at him uncertainly.
RAY (CONT’D)
About the job.
JACK
I can do it. I need the work. Don’t know that I want it. Can I let you know?
RAY
Sure.
KYLE
You looking for something better?
RAY
I’m looking for something better.
KYLE
Aren’t we all. Question is, how do you get it?
Kyle offers Jack a cigarette. Jack takes it. Kyle lights them up.
KYLE (CONT’D)
Look, Jack, I’m not looking to piss you off, but I want to talk about your brother for a second. Can I talk about Joseph? Shit, it used to be Joe. Jack and Joe Miles, right? Then he became high and mighty.
Jack stares at Kyle. Kyle stares back.
KYLE (CONT’D)
I know you don’t like him. That’s really why I brought him up the other day — just making sure you still felt the same way. You know what I mean?
Jack listens.
KYLE (CONT’D)
First off, he’s a prick. Everybody knows that, probably you better than anyone, right?
RAY
Thing is, now he’s a rich prick.
KYLE
Well, not yet. The will’s still in probate. Here’s the thing, though — Kort never trusted him. I don’t know that it was personal — hell, she married him — but a rich old gal like that, not so great looking, marries a man ten years younger –
(to Ray)
Maybe more, huh? –
Ray shrugs.
KYLE (CONT’D)
She’s gotta wonder. She’s gotta be careful.
RAY
So she kept him on a pretty tight spending leash. Not much money in his own name he could control.
Kyle and Ray examine Jack’s reaction so far. There is none.
KYLE
We know this cause we got a source, an inside source, you might say. He tells us your prick brother played all sorts of games with the money he did control.
RAY
Inflated his expenses. He ran part of the farm, made deals with vendors to skim off the top on their contracts. He cut corners, there was money in it for them, too, so nobody squawked.
KYLE
So our source tells us, over five years, he put away maybe two hundred grand, in cash. It’s in a safe she didn’t know about, in the house. We know where it is.
RAY
If we can get into the house –
KYLE
If we know when he’ll be away, and his — what do you call him — manservant, Manuel, is away, we can get into the house. I can get into the safe.
RAY
But we need to know when he’ll be away.
KYLE
We can’t know that. Our source says he’s not in a position to know right now, either.
RAY
And once the probate’s complete — soon — there’s no reason for the stash anymore.
KYLE
You see what we’re gettin’ at. You need the money. You’d get a cut. We can talk about that.
EXT. P & R TRANSFER – LOADING DOCK
Ray comes to a stop some distance from the dock.
INT. TRUCK’S CAB
Kyle and Ray wait for Jack’s response.
JACK
Don’t misunderstand me. If you can do it, you do it. It’s not his money either, is it? But not with me.
Jack points past Kyle to the door. Kyle opens it and gets out. They all do.
EXT. TRUCK
Ray comes around the cab to Jack and Kyle. Jack tosses away his cigarette.
JACK
I know you took a chance telling me this. With my answer, you might think you’ve got reason to worry. You don’t.
(to Ray)
I’ll let you know about the job.
He walks off toward the street.
EXT. HIGHWAY – DAY
Sonny’s unmarked sedan travels a long empty stretch of a four lane route in the center of the sun-baked basin of the valley. Flat, wide open farm land on either side. Mountains in the distance.
There is one other car, a convertible, behind her.
EXT. JACK’S JUNKER CONVERTIBLE
Jack notes the car up ahead, thinks he recognizes it.
INT. SONNY’S SEDAN
Sonny checks the rear view mirror, notices the convertible gaining on her, thinks nothing of it.
EXT. HIGHWAY
Jack edges up on Sonny’s left, hits the horn to draw her attention.
Sonny glances over.
Jack grins.
Sonny lights up.
Jack points at her, then at himself, then to the highway ahead of them. But Sonny doesn’t get it.
Jack grins again.
INT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
His foot hits the pedal.
EXT. HIGHWAY
Jack takes off fast, ahead of Sonny.
INT. SONNY’S SEDAN
Surprised, Sonny shakes her head but takes the challenge. She takes off after him.
EXT. HIGHWAY
The two cars speed along. Surprise helped Jack put distance between them. But his junker is no match for Sonny’s sedan. Steadily, she gains on him.
INT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
Jack sees this in his rear view. He scans the road ahead.
INT. SONNY’S SEDAN
Sonny pursues him with determination and pleasure.
INT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
Jack eyes the length of grassy median ahead.
EXT. HIGHWAY
Suddenly, Jack does a quick, screeching u-turn over the wide median, dipping down into the trough at its center, bumping up again, gaining traction on the other side, taking off in the other direction. Sonny speeds past him.
INT. SONNY’S SEDAN
Sonny’s both pissed and excited. She starts her own u-turn.
EXT. HIGHWAY
Sonny makes it across and is again in pursuit.
INT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
Jack checks the distant Sonny in his rear view, laughing.
INT. SONNY’S SEDAN
The angry Sonny claps on her red, rooftop light.
INT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
Jack sees the red light whirling in his rear view. Now he really laughs.
EXT. HIGHWAY
Sonny gains fast.
INT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
Jack sees this. Again he scans the road ahead.
P.O.V.
A crossroad ahead, a dirt road cutting through farm land.
EXT. HIGHWAY
With Sonny nearly at his tail, Jack makes a quick right onto the dirt road.
This time Sonny’s with him.
EXT. DIRT ROAD
Sonny accelerates better out of the turn. She is on his tail now. Jack’s been run down.
But now he cuts right, off the road, over the plowed grooves of the field.
Sonny follows.
EXT. FIELD
Jack does a series of quick rights and lefts, to shake Sonny. But he doesn’t. She anticipates, and on his next cut left, she cuts in front of him.
Jack brakes before he hits.
EXT. SONNY’S SEDAN
Sonny’s out of the car in a heartbeat, charging around the sedan to
EXT. JACK’S CONVERTIBLE
Sonny whips open the door.
SONNY
Reckless asshole. You want to play with me?
Jack is laughing. He tries to get out, but Sonny pulls him up by the shirt instead, slams him against the car.
She glares at him, furious.
But Jack keeps laughing.
She angrily tightens her grip on his shirt.
But she’s lost to his laughter. To the excitement of him.
She pulls herself with her grip to his face. Kisses him hard. Their arms wrap around in a hard, hard kiss.
INT. BAR – NIGHT
A weekend CROWD. All the pool tables active.
Jack and Ray play at a table against Kyle and his younger brother BILLY, 20′s, a community college student trying to play it straight against his own worst instincts.
They’ve all got drinks. They all smoke a lot.
RAY
The boss wants to know. That’s all.
Jack lines up a shot, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
JACK
I’m thinking about it.
RAY
He’s thinking about it.
KYLE
He’s a thinker, that Jack. Always was. He’s what you call a deliberate man.
RAY
“Deliberate”?
KYLE
Yeah. He deliberates.
(beat)
Like on this shot.
Jack glances up at Kyle. Finally he takes his shot. Sinks it. The eight ball is left.
RAY
Sounds like a college word to me, Billy. You teach that word to your brother?
Billy shrugs.
Jack lines up his shot on the eight ball.
KYLE
Thing is, sometimes you can deliberate too much.
JACK
I made the shot.
Jack shoots on the eight ball. Misses.
Kyle moves past him to take his shot, lines it up, shoots.
KYLE
It’s the game that counts.
Kyle sinks the eight ball. He looks at Jack. Jack gives him the finger.
Ray goes to rack up the balls for another game.
Kyle edges over to Billy.
KYLE (CONT’D)
So what’s this work you’re talkin’ about?
BILLY
Nothin’. Kyle, man, I just gottta have more money. This school shit takes a lotta time. Guys around me are makin’ things happen –
KYLE
So what’s the work?
BILLY
Just some guy I know at school, lives downtown here, says he could get me some errand work.
KYLE
Errand work? What kind of errand work?
BILLY
I don’t know. With some people he knows.
KYLE
What people? What’s his name?
BILLY
Garcia.
KYLE
Garcia. What Garcia?
BILLY
Just Garcia.
KYLE
Just Garcia. Just fucking Garcia. Who are these people, Billy?
BILLY
I don’t know. Why are you pushin’ me? What the fuck’s the matter with you?
Ray and Jack listen.
KYLE
What the fuck’s the matter with me? I’ll tell you what the fuck’s the matter with me. Errands? Just Garcia? I think this guy’s with El Puño. Is this guy with El Puño, Billy?
BILLY
Maybe.
Kyle gives a mocking smirk, suddenly grabs Billy’s shirt with his forearm across Billy’s chest, pushes him against the pool table.
KYLE
Are you fucking crazy? Are you fucking crazy, Billy? What the fuck are you thinking? You think you’re gonna be a bad ass mothafucker like them? You think you’re gonna be one of them?
Billy struggles against him. Looks around embarrassed.
BILLY
Let me go.
KYLE
Those fuckin’ Mexies think you’re shit. They’ll use your pale gringo ass and toss you on the side of the road. And then they’ll kill you.
BILLY
(softly, imploring)
Kyle, let me go.
Kyle lets up a little.
KYLE
I wouldn’t fuck with El Puño.
Kyle lets up, releases him. But he stays close.
KYLE (CONT’D)
(softer)
You need more money? I’ll get you more money.
BILLY
How? I know you don’t –
KYLE
I’ll get you more money. But you stay the fuck away from El Puño. And you stay in school. You wanna fuckin’ end up like me? You wanna end up like me, Billy?
Kyle gives Billy a serious stare. Then he walks to the nearby table to knock back his beer.
Ray walks to Billy. He stares seriously, too.
RAY
Listen to your brother.
Jack watches.
AJA
Video Compilation: mambohiphop
From the New York Daily News Obituary, February 16, 2009 — Salsa pioneer Joe Cuba, who was born the son of a Harlem candy-store owner and grew up to become the “Father of Latin Boogaloo,” died Sunday. He was 78. Cuba died at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan from complications of a bacterial infection, said Cheo Feliciano, a friend and member of the Joe Cuba Sextet. His death came a day after doctors disconnected him from life support, Feliciano said. A conga player and band leader, Cuba was a protege of Tito Puente. He and his band made a splash during the “boogaloo” craze of the 1960s with a string of hits including “Bang Bang” and “El Pito.” Cuba described his music, inspired by life in East Harlem‘s El Barrio, as having an “R&B feel with Latin rhythms.” “I still play the old stuff because the public asks for it,” Cuba told the Daily News in a 1995 interview. “People are coming to see Joe Cuba, the guy who brought all these tunes into their lives.” In April 1999, Cuba was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.
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One of the favorite argumentative gambits of conservatives and those otherwise unsympathetic to the making of present amends for past national crimes, is just that point – it’s in the past. It’s over. Let it go. And let me tell you something: I didn’t commit any crime.
Leaving aside the validity of that argument, which I have countered elsewhere, including here, the truth that presses on too few is that when speaking of crimes against American Indians, we are still speaking about the present. This was my fundamental point in “Aboriginal Sin.” The conquest of Native America is not nineteenth century history for those of antiquarian interest: it is ongoing.
The Individual Indian Money Trust Accounts (IIM) date back to the 1887 Dawes Act. While that is roughly the time at which the “Indian Wars” are considered to have come to an end, the whole history of Dawes itself is the substance and emblem of U.S. government conquest and destruction of Native culture. The monies held in the IIM, and the process by which monies enter the accounts, are the continuation of a system established during an era of Indian land allotment – the taking of land from American Indian tribes, the individual privatization of those lands, and the leasing of those lands for profit to private business via government trust.
During the 14-year history of the IIM litigation (Cobell v. Salazar), the evidence has been overwhelming of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mishandling of trust funds, within
Elouise Cobell and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Image by Getty Images via @daylife
the Department of the Interior, and effective federal government malfeasance. On behalf of 300,000 American Indian stakeholders, plaintiffs sued for $47 billion, an amount considered a low estimate, even by some in the U.S. government. Given that the U.S. is a nation still acting under the 1823 Supreme Court decision of Johnson v. McIntosh, which justified the Native conquest by inherited right of European discovery (the Discovery Doctrine), that few Native suits are decided in favor on American Indian plaintiffs, and that older Indian stakeholders have been dying off over the duration of the litigation, plaintiffs chose, finally, to settle. The agreed upon amount: $3.4 billion. And to make the point again, this law suit is the direct lineal extension of government acts and policies that involved conquest in war, ethnic cleansing, explicit policies of culturcide, and theft of Native lands. This is not history. This is then through now. This is ongoing. What has changed?
While most voices heard within Native America were supportive, under the circumstances, of accepting the clearly and dramatically inadequate amount of the settlement, some have been angrily opposed. As Tim Giago, founder of the Native American Journalists Association pointed out
$2 billion of the settlement would go to solve the age-old dilemma of land consolidation, since most allotted lands are so fractionated that oftentimes 160-acre allotments are co-owned by several hundred people.
This problem was brought on by the very people who became defendants in the Cobell lawsuit: the U. S. Department of the Interior and its agent the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why should the plaintiffs in the lawsuit pay $2 billion of their settlement to the very agencies that caused the problem in the first place? That is such a crazy scheme that it would laughable if it was not such a serious issue. That’s like getting a check from the BIA, signing it, and then handing it back to them and saying, “Thank you for ripping me off.” Insane!
Giago believes that plaintiffs should not have settled.
By settling for $3.4 billion, the plaintiff attorneys took the mismanagement and malfeasance of the government off of the table and allowed the United States to forever conceal their crimes against a destitute people.
Giago desires the exposure of historical crimes that he believes ultimate legal hearing would produce.
For the first time in American history, the people would have learned about an issue that has been covered up for more than 100 years. That is the sad part of settling this issue behind closed doors. The Indian people are the losers and their story of poverty brought down upon them by an uncaring government will continue to be hidden forever….
If the general public had been educated to the deprivation, poverty and anguish caused to the Indian people by the mismanagement of their resources and assets, an outcry would have rumbled across America and the world.
Many are less hopeful than Giago of such an outcome. Indianz.com laid out the case for why there is little reason to hope for more than what this settlement offers. It concludes
What happens if Congress doesn’t approve the $3.4 billion settlement to the Indian trust fund lawsuit?
Nothing. No one gets any money. Litigation will continue, at the expense of the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget, and Congress will continue to do nothing about trust reform.
That’s not what Indian Country deserves.
The settlement is the best — and only — deal we’re going to see. The Clinton administration never agreed to a settlement and the Bush administration proposed something so egregious that it hurts to think about it now.
Indian Country deserves better. Indian Country deserves a settlement to Cobell.
Less concerned about actual payouts to stakeholders, who would not be receiving what should justly be coming to them, anyway, Giago may get his wish of continued litigation.
The settlement agreed upon did not allow for congressional modification, and the executive and plaintiffs urged congress to ratify the settlement quickly. Instead, ongoing delay has produced several extensions of the ratification deadline. What has been called the last is looming, and some Republican lawmakers are acting in the well-established tradition of disingenuousness, callous abuse, and obtuseness. And, of course, as the government has for hundreds of years, they frame their obstructionism as care and concern for Indians.
It is time, in fact, to play the Republican anti-lawyer theme, even at the expense of Native America.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming has proposed capping lawyer’s fees at $50 million. Republican Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington sent a letter to [lead attorney, who has worked on the case without compensation since 1992] Gingold saying it was reasonable to limit those fees so the Native Americans would receive more. Gingold and Cobell both say Congress doesn’t have the authority to change the agreement, and that the proposed fee of just under $100 million would represent just 3 percent of the total settlement.
Here is what lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell has to say:
This is less than 3% of the settlement funds – a very low percentage for attorneys in class action lawsuits. Consider that attorneys representing tribes under Indian Claims Commission Act generally received 10% as mandated by statute and attorneys involved in suits related to Enron received 9.5% (almost $700 million). Many medical malpractice attorneys receive over 30%; and, the tobacco attorneys received billions of dollars and very few did more than file a complaint in order to immediately negotiate a settlement. Most cases don’t even involve discovery, let alone go to trial, but our attorneys have prosecuted seven major trials in this case, litigated countless appeals, filed thousands of papers and reviewed tens of millions of pages of discovery without receiving due compensation for their services. I fully support the fee application. It is in fact unusually low for attorneys involved in complex, heavily litigated class action lawsuits. Frankly, I am concerned that if the legal fees for our attorneys are unreasonably low that will discourage competent lawyers from future representation of Native Americans in class action litigation against the government.
If Barrasso and Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash, are so concerned about how much money Natives will receive, and they are willing to scuttle the present agreement in the attempt to alter it, why don’t they alter it by offering to increase the settlement amount rather than play politics over already exceptionally low legal fees?
Reports Indian Country Today
The next anger at Republicans involving Cobell came from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada. In early May, he tried to get the settlement passed by attaching it to a larger disaster relief bill.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., objected to the plan, which was enough to derail it under Senate rules….
Reid expressed frustration, saying May 7 that the Republican obstruction “denied justice to those who only seek fair settlement of their grievances.
“There is no excuse for Republicans to continue to employ these partisan delay tactics – in this case, as in so many others, they are only hurting those who were wronged and are fighting for what is rightfully theirs. We will continue to work on this issue until it is resolved. My view on this is simple: Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Said Hastings, according to ICT
I am concerned that repeated talk of a ‘deadline’ has turned into a pretext to pass settlement legislation without the thorough scrutiny that individual Indians have been seeking from their elected representatives and senators. [Emphasis added]
How shall we breathe in the presence of such noxious manure as that last? American Indians have not been seeking “scrutiny” of any deal by “their elected representatives and senators.” They are seeking the money that their elected representatives and senators have been party to stealing from them for 127 years and still withhold from them under the insufferable pretense, continuously made over the life of the nation, of doing it for the Indians’ own good.
We all know the lines about fool me once and fool me twice. Change it to “screw.” Make it a hundred times. Make it a thousand. Then what? What?
The dominating mentality of conquest is still present. Your Republican form of government at work.
AJA
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To begin, the politics of policy is so often so dishonest that one marvels that so much so decent has been achieved. So many so foul, who know it and know it not, so many so foolish, who never know it. How to enter into it all and be neither foul nor fool? The dilemma of those who seek service or power, or both.
Yesterday’s Thomas Friedman column in The New York Times, “As Ugly as It Gets,” gets right to the foul.
I confess that when I first saw the May 17 picture of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joining his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with raised arms — after their signing of a putative deal to defuse the crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program — all I could think of was: Is there anything uglier than watching democrats sell out other democrats to a Holocaust-denying, vote-stealing Iranian thug just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table?
No, that’s about as ugly as it gets.
“For years, nonaligned and developing countries have faulted America for cynically pursuing its own interests without regard for human rights,” observed Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment. “As Turkey and Brazil aspire to play on the global stage, they’re going to face the same criticisms they once doled out. Lula and Erdogan’s visit to Iran came just days after Iran executed five political prisoners who were tortured into confessions. They warmly embraced Ahmadinejad as their brother, but didn’t mention a word about human rights.
At the same time, it’s impossible not to see Friedman’s column as an indirect rebuke of that by fellow Times columnist Roger Cohen (fool), of last week, which I wrote about on Tuesday. In that column, Cohen rebuked the U.S. for not accepting the meaningless show deal.
Friedman rebuked the Obama administration too.
In my view, the “Green Revolution” in Iran is the most important, self-generated, democracy movement to appear in the Middle East in decades. It has been suppressed, but it is not going away, and, ultimately, its success — not any nuclear deal with the Iranian clerics — is the only sustainable source of security and stability. We have spent far too little time and energy nurturing that democratic trend and far too much chasing a nuclear deal.
He closes
I’d prefer that Iran never get a bomb. The world would be much safer without more nukes, especially in the Middle East. But if Iran does go nuclear, it makes a huge difference whether a democratic Iran has its finger on the trigger or this current murderous clerical dictatorship. Anyone working to delay that and to foster real democracy in Iran is on the side of the angels. Anyone who enables this tyrannical regime and gives cover for its nuclear mischief will one day have to answer to the Iranian people.
The Obama administration, very much in the realist manner of Bush 1, made a judgment call on Iran, that too overt expression of support for the protest movement could backfire. I thought the administration, while too restrained, overall played it right. Of course, that approach not enjoying any observable success, it was easy for the right to find democratic perfidy in what, once upon a Republican world, long, long ago, it would have accepted from that first Bush. The Right charged betrayal of democratic values even as the post-election resistance was at its peak because the only way Obama can do right by the Right is to be Right. The only thing Obama is not doing better, more aggressively, more effectively that Bush (despite some stumbles to be sure) in fighting the War on Terror is not to call it that and not to have actually started a war on faulty intelligence and bungled it for the first four years. But if Obama speaks the word “war” he will not, for the Right, speak it right. Foul.
Now Obama, rather than visit Arlington – for conservatives, suddenly the American flag lapel pin of veterans’ cemeteries – over the Memorial Day weekend, will visit Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery outside Chicago instead, and conservatives once again find him un-American. Of course, there is a perfectly reasonable other way to see it.
“We don’t really see the big deal, so long as he’s taking the time to honor our fallen war heroes throughout Memorial Day weekend,” said Ryan Galluci, spokesman for AMVETS. “After all, it’s not ground-breaking for a sitting President to visit other national cemeteries or overseas America cemeteries over the holiday. Arlington is certainly not the only place our fallen heroes are buried, so why not pay your respects to veterans around the country?”
But says Eric Erickson of Redstate.com. “Of course, Obama really doesn’t like the military, does he.” This is the same theme the Right now plays on any Democratic president, as it played it with Clinton. He doesn’t respect the military. The military doesn’t respect him. In Clinton’s case, the Right was replaying Vietnam. But now if you are a Democratic president without military service, you can expect it like the sunrise. Jefferson had no military service, by the way. Lincoln was in the Illinois militia off and on for three months in 1832. I don’t imagine that’s what made him a better general than McClellan. And can you imagine if Obama tolerated a McClellan today as Lincoln did then? Foul. Foul. Foul.
If Achilles, in Homer’s Iliad, was not “fleet-footed,” then he was “godlike” or “leader of men.” Hector, whom he slew, was “tamer of horses.” And when Achilles killed Hector, in a warrior’s burning rage, he dragged his body around the walls of Troy to humiliate both him and the Trojans. Odysseus, instead, was “resourceful” and “nimble-witted.” It was neither Achilles nor Hector who lived on archetypally in an epic of his own, but Odysseus. Of course, it took Odysseus ten years to lead his men home, to a house taken over by suitors to his wife, and a son usurped. No reelection for Odysseus.
It isn’t my intent to ill-favor Obama with a burdensome comparison. He has several buckets of balls in the air. The angle of the toss and degree of spin on each is easily critiqued without knowledge of where they’ll land, and that won’t mean anything anyway to his critics. But while he has a whole party of fierce, preening-warrior sons of Peleus to his Right, he’s got Charybdis to his Left. The Right imagines there is nothing to Obama’s left, but the Right is blinded by the smoke it snorts.
Yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Marcy Winograd, once more challenging Jane Harmon in the Democratic primary for the House seat representing California’s 36th district. This is a race and interview of particular interest to me because it happens to be my district, where Winograd won 38% of the vote on the last try. I will get Israel quickly out of the way.
As a Jew, I do not want my name or country associated with occupation or extermination.
Extermination.
The “root causes” of the Afghan war and terrorism?
Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and were angry at the proliferation of U.S. bases and forces in Saudi Arabia, so I think there’s a great degree of pushback over the presence of U.S. troops all over the world.
This is a woman who does not read and cannot learn.
JG: Is there anything you would do against terrorism militarily?
MW: I would join the International Criminal Court. I believe in diplomacy and the rule of law. When people are perpetrating acts of terrorism they should be tried before the world in the world court or tried in absentia. The strongest defense is when you create coalitions of people around the world, not when you have divided the world.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. (More fool.)
Many on the Right would have attacked Iran already. They got it right about Iraq’s WMD and Petrocolus has been slain. Winograd will ask Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs to play nice with their nuclear weapons. Odysseus, forced to sail between Scylla and Charybdis, chose to steer toward Scylla, where he might lose only some of his men, rather than the whirlpool of Charybdis, that might take the whole ship down.
Who knows what the exact parallel might be with Iran. But I like a cunning man. Here’s to tales of brave Ulysses.
AJA
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I’m repeating this “Jazz Is” entry from “How We Lived on It” (2), but it is so exceptional, no collection of jazz riches should be without it. The better quality of the two full-length versions available at Daily Motion is ad defaced, while the other has very poor video quality, and Mili’s filmmaking is too fine to show so poorly, so I have stuck with the driving second half. The first half is well worth putting up with the ads for the splendid film opening and Marie Bryant’s slow tempo-phrasing of the lyrics. Here, we get more Jazz greats than you can count in your dreams, and Bryant and Archie Savage dancing like you don’t even dream about.
Ladies and gentleman, mesdames et messieurs, mentches un maidels – get ready to swing.
Directed by Gjon Mili
Sax: Lester Young & Illinois Jacquet
Trumpet: Harry “Sweets” Edison
Piano: Marlowe Morris
Drums: Philly Joe Jones & “Big Sid” Catlett
Guitar: Barney Kessell
Bass: Red Callender
Dancers: Lindy Hop legends Archie Savage and Marie Bryant
Full ten minute short film available at Daily Motion.
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It’s everywhere. You look to your right: it’s stupid. You look to your left: it’s stupid. Open a newspaper (really – does anyone “open” a newspaper anymore?): stupid. Turn on the television: stupider. Michael Steele, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin? So stupid.
It may not be contagious, but it sure is influential.
What’s a non-stupid person to do?
Try to get away from stupidity, say by reading the blog of a very smart person, Norm Geras, over at Normblog, and what does he do? He writes about a stupid person.
Thanks, Norm, for leading me to Sathnam Sanghera, who writes for The Times of London, and who, I’ll have you know is a graduate of Cambridge University. What does Mr. Sanghera, a particular kind of mentally-limited devotee of the scientific method have to say for himself?
Indeed, a bit of me dies whenever young people say that they want to study philosophy at university. There is a naive view that three years spent pondering questions such as “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” and “Why are we here?” will help you to understand the meaning of life, when the truth is that philosophy is the most whimsical and self indulgent of academic pursuits, raising more questions than answers and too often being an exercise in intellectual showing off for those involved.
Now, first, I am going to venture to say that a bit of Sanghera does not actually die when he receives the distressing news of some youthful innocent’s philosophical study. This particular little fey dramatic gesture suggests that Sanghera, rather than the feature writer for the Financial Times he once was, might have been better suited – despite that he protesteth too much – to imbibing Romantic and Symbolist poetry in Left Bank cafes.
If the feature writer had actually studied philosophy himself, he would know that it does not involve the consideration of best selling booklets by rabbis and ministers seeking to assuage the moral crises of the flock. Ignorance is not a sufficient, or even a necessary component of stupidity, but added to the beaker with arrogance, it will provide the necessary combustion. Sanghera is clearly completely unfamiliar with the enormous range of issues with which philosophy concerns itself, which do include, for some, consideration of meaning in life, and one of the fortunately erasable markers of stupidity is to dismiss as unimportant in life what is unimportant, because unfathomable, to oneself. If Sanghera had studied philosophy, he would know that the very first thing philosophical study does is teach one how to think, adequate instruction in which our writer manifestly did not receive at Cambridge minus the “whimsy” of philosophy.
Also conveyed to me via Normblog (Norm has a keen eye for this stuff) is the brilliance of Raj Patel, who, we are told by Wikipedia
received a B.A in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Oxford, and a Masters Degree from the London School of Economics, and gained his PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University in 2002.[2][11] He has been a visiting scholar at Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. As part of his academic training, Patel worked at the World Bank, World Trade Organization and the United Nations.[2] He has since become an outspoken public critic of all of these organizations, and claims to have been tear-gassed on four continents protesting against his former employers.[2][7][12]
We may have our answer to the following from the tear gas, and no doubt the reception of it on four continents is a particularly toxic stew. And what does Patel have to say, queried by The Sydney Morning Herald to write about America?
What is wrong with America? It’s a country founded on the brutal extermination of indigenous people, where inequality and racial intolerance are on the rise, and where the government – once seen as a huge improvement on its right-wing predecessor – seems happy to renege on its commitments to climate change.
What follows is an extended damning and damnable indictment of the USA, but, really, all of Patel’s stupidity is on display in these two introductory sentences. If one reads this blog with any regularity, then the reader knows of my positions regarding the conquest of Native America, but “founded on” in this passage is as empty a receptacle of slipshod terminology as one can employ. By “America” does Patel mean the United States? Because, of course, America is a place, given a name, and was not founded at all 
– and was not, instead, the United States founded, at least in part, on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, and a whole host of politico-philosophical tracts? But by America, Patel does, indeed, mean the United States, in which case what to make of his ignoring the historical truth that all of the Western Hemisphere was settled in the process of indigenous genocide, and not just the United States? What to make of the London-born Patel’s failure to note that it was not “Americans” who committed a major part of this genocide, but various European peoples, whose descendents today are not less consequentially connected to this history than are Americans, except that the Europeans, having been kicked out of the hemisphere through numerous wars of independence, got to withdraw across an ocean and pretend one to two hundred years later that they had nothing to do with what they left behind on another continent. We’ll leave “happy” to renege on climate change commitments till – well, we’ll just leave it.
Oh, and by the way, Patel became an American citizen in January of this year.
Finally, we have Roger Cohen of the New York Times writing on Iran, which is almost the definition of stupid. Let’s begin with Cohen describing U.S.-Iranian relations as “the most traumatized relationship on earth and the most tantalizing.” Then let’s note that one needn’t even travel out of the region, more than a few hundred miles, to find a more traumatized relationship. Guess?
But Cohen knows no bounds.
Americans see Iranians as “devious, mendacious, fanatical, violent and incomprehensible.” Iranians, in turn, see Americans as “belligerent, sanctimonious, Godless and immoral, materialistic, calculating,” not to mention bullying and exploitive.
I’m just going to ask right now – do you think Iranians are all or any of these things? I don’t, and I don’t know an American who does. The Iranians I know – and they are more than a few here in Tehrangeles – are quite impressive people. Or does Cohen mean the Iranians who bravely, stirringly risked their lives around this time last year trying to throw off the three decades of oppression? Everywhere I was looking, Americans were quite admiring of them. Or does Cohen conflate here our view of the government with our opinion of the people?
What Cohen is engaged in is the time-honored inanity of reducing all conflict to misunderstanding based on people’s unfortunate misconceptions of each other. The
Ayatollahs and Ahmadinejads and Revolutionary Guards and Basij and the prison torturers since last June – types, with different details, you will find in any despotic regime – they’re all just misunderstood. Cohen’s memory extends in its deficiency not only over the whole three decades of Islamic rule in Iran, but even, blindly, over the past year. Nearly everything he writes in the column is either wrong – his description of French and Chinese reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish brokered “deal” – or, there is no other word, stupid.
I know, the 1,200 kilograms [of nuclear material that would be removed under the deal] now represents a smaller proportion of Iran’s LEU than in October and it’s no longer clear that the fuel rods will come from the conversion of the LEU in escrow. But that’s small potatoes when you’re trying to build a tenuous bridge between “mendacious” Iranians and “bullying” Americans in the interests of global security. [Emphasis added]
But that was the whole point – that the amount of LEU left behind would be inadequate to fuel offensive capabilities. And Cohen’s rationale for accepting a meaningless agreement is the frivolous straw man he constructed to characterize U.S.-Iranian relations? They guy, in fact, is not a bad reporter, but thinker?
Stupidity is not ignorance. Ignorance of the most fundamental kind – simple lack of knowledge –is mechanically curable by basic education. Ignorant people are by no means necessarily stupid, and as we see, very well educated people can be quite stupid. Sarah Palin isn’t stupid just because she’s ignorant, but because she has amply demonstrated her disinterest in curing her ignorance, in educating herself. Stupidity requires a form of arrogance, the presumption that one knows what one does not, or that what one doesn’t know doesn’t matter, and the foolishness to act in that ignorance.
Once, having given my feelings, my trust, and my hopes incautiously, I took myself out a door without destination, descended and stood in the night in front of an apartment building in a city not my own, and cursed the pavement and person on it.
“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
AJA
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In my famous (in my own mind) email to Jeffrey Goldberg offering him a question for Peter Beinart, I closed by stating
Ask him why this is not his focus, why this is not the article he published in NYRB. And “I’m a Jew, so I’m concerned with the behavior of Jews” is an evasion.
Why is this an evasion? Because a journalist and public commentator has a responsibility in that public role to attempt to represent to his readers the full truth, as complete a picture of reality as he is capable of rendering. That is a public responsibility as a reporter and interpreter of events. To overemphasize the flaws of one party to events because one identifies with that party, is a member of that group, and because one claims to be more morally invested in the behavior of that group, is to sacrifice truth to an immersion in one’s own preoccupations. It is, in fact, to confuse the two in the understanding of one’s readers. The consequences, in this case for Israel, can be dire and profound.
How, then does Beinart recap his experience of the past week, since the publication of his essay, and justify himself?
One last point. Leon, Jeff, Jon, Jamie, David and I are all Jews. In some sense, therefore, Israel’s crimes—unlike those of Hamas or Ahmedinejad—are committed in our name. We have a special obligation to expose and confront them. And we have a special obligation not to use the crimes of Israel’s enemies to excuse behavior that dishonors a Jewish state, and the Jewish ethical tradition that we all consider precious.
Called that one, unfortunately.
AJA (H/T Yaacov Lozowick)
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Too often, it can be hard to figure how some people can be so wrong. That’s why we have political parties, so we can put all the wrong people in the other party. That way we don’t have to put bells on them to know when they’re coming. As Graham Greene wrote in The Quiet American
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
Poor judgment is like Greene’s leper without his bell, the vital error that has strayed from the other side and sits with you supping with a smile.
Judgment isn’t intelligence, or maybe better said, intelligence isn’t judgment. We’re much involved these days in noting and naming the varieties of intelligence, the manner and boundaries of them, but the brainiac with no common sense, for instance, is an old conception. On more complex levels, thorough and coherent analysis of information – data, trends, actions, ideas – is one manifestation of good judgment: putting it all together, amid the myriad possibilities, in a way that most closely approximates reality. And reality? Well, one test is in a second manifestation of good judgment, the kind we seek in leaders – making right decisions, based on the analyses, to effect the outcomes we desire. If we can effect those outcomes, that’s evidence our analysis was correct.
Discourse into the Night
But judgment is a mystery. There is no telling, sometimes, where you’ll find it and when it will show up missing. Who would have guessed, beforehand, Truman? How shall we number, to look back to Greene, all of the mistaken judgments among the “best and the brightest” that went into the Vietnam War?
While poor judgment can be a mystery in the offing, however, once it is upon us, it leaves its marks to be read.
As soon as Peter Beinart’s NYRB piece appeared, Jeffrey Goldberg engaged him in a Goldblog discussion of his claims. In part II, Beinart said the following:
But over the long run, the best way to undermine Nasrallah and people like him is to give hope to those Palestinians and Muslims who do want a two-state solution. In Fayyad, and even Abbas, we have such leaders. Surely in those circumstances continued settlement growth, which simply convinces Palestinians that they will never have a state on most of the West Bank, is deeply self-destructive. I want the major American Jewish groups to say so, loudly. Instead, they deny that settlements are even a problem.
Now, I share Beinart’s displeasure with the West Bank settlements, always have, but they exist in a formidable complex of history and policy. It is a judgment to focus on the settlements above all else, and a bad judgment. I wrote to Goldberg suggesting a question to Beinart for part III of the discussion. Apparently, Goldberg is not yet letting me choose his interview questions for him, but I’m working on him. I suggested he ask Beinart why Beinart had not, instead of the above, written the following reformulation of it, which would, of course, have changed his entire article.
But over the long run, the best way to undermine Netanyahu and Lieberman and people like them is to give hope to those Israelis and Jews who do want a two-state solution. In Barak, and even Olmert, we had such leaders. Surely in those circumstances continued anti-Semitic education in Palestinian schools, Muslim calls for the destruction of Israel and rejection of every Israeli peace offer, which simply convinces Israelis that they will never have a genuine partner in peace, is deeply self-destructive. I want the major American Palestinian groups to say so, loudly. Instead, they deny the Palestinians are in any way responsible.
One can choose to perceive circumstances from either vantage point, from that of Israelis as active agents of events, of Palestinians as active agents, or – what seems most reflective of reality – of both. A supposition of the reformulation, were one to offer it, is that the Palestinians – the political and intellectual leadership, the people themselves – actually want a two-state solution. In fact, there is considerable evidence that this is not so, and that even when Palestinian leaders say they want it, they don’t mean it.
Critics of Israel who follow the general line of argument laid out by Beinart almost exclusively choose the first. Why? There are many motivations, many of them, we know, not good, but I attribute none of those to Beinart or to many other well-meaning liberals, with whom, on a host of other issues, I would otherwise be standing. Let’s look at another of Beinart’s statements, from part III of the interview, (The one missing my question, that Goldberg chose not to ask, though it was an excellent question. Jeffrey.)
I really think Israel and the U.S. botched the Hamas election victory–i think they should have supported, not torpedoed, a Palestinian national unity government even if it fudged acceptance of past agreements a bit (after all, Israeli governments haven’t respected all past agreements–Netanyahu said explicitly that he rejected Oslo when he was elected in 1996), and then dealt with the non-Hamas ministers as we do with the Hezbollah presence in the Lebanese government. That might have created an opportunity for calm, economic growth, and perhaps eventually new negotiations with a strong Palestinian government able to marginalize the rejectionists politically and impose control on the ground. The problem I have with the Gaza War is less that I think Israel used disproportionate force: it may well have, but war is always hell. It’s more that I think just wars must be last resorts, you have to exhaust the alternatives, and I think the Israelis and the Americans really didn’t. That’s not to excuse Hamas–which is a nasty movement–but it’s a way of saying that with a group like Hamas, which has deep roots in the Palestinian society, you can’t eliminate it through military force alone. You have to moderate at least elements of it by bringing them into the political process and investing them in non-violence paths to statehood. I think that was possible, or at least that more of an effort could have been made. Besides, think how much more leverage it would give Fayyad if he could show Palestinians that he got Israel to really stop settlement growth (as opposed to this sham “partial freeze,” which hasn’t really stopped actual construction at all), or even withdraw some far out settlements. If you hate Hamas, nothing would hurt them more politically.
The Discourse, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
There is a whole lot in there, including a factual error about Netanyahu and Oslo that has already been pointed out by Yaacov Lozowick. What I will point out is that the passage, like Beinart’s whole argument, and that of others who share it, reflects what in rhetoric is called a mixed discourse. What is Beinart doing – offering an analysis of statecraft or a moral critique? In fact, he is doing both together, mixing them up, confusing one for the other, the statecraft analysis for the moral critique.
Government agents of foreign affairs – ministry diplomats and top tier government officials – manage the state and manage its problems. Effective management involves constant review and assessment of policy to determine if the state, independent of what state parties are morally responsible for a situation, is serving its interests and achieving its aims. The Palestinians in general, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and Syria, and Iran, and so on are all threats the Israeli government has to manage. While I disagree that Israel mismanaged the Hamas election victory, one can reasonably argue, I think, that it mismanaged the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, in that by conducting the withdrawals unilaterally, Israel fostered the notion among its enemies that it had buckled at long last to their violent opposition, and that the enemies had gained victories. Such criticism is what I refer to here as statecraft analysis, and it is conducted among those, primarily Israelis, who share the same policy goals. But even if these withdrawals were badly performed, that does not make Israel morally responsible for the attacks on it, and its subsequent responses to the attacks, because its enemies chose to answer Israel’s disengagement with violence. And the withdrawals can only be judged critically to begin because of the enmity and bad faith of Israel’s foes.
Beinart here consistently analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of Israel as active state agent and the Palestinians as the problem to be managed. Even Palestinian misbehavior is argumentatively presented as poor Israeli statecraft. If Israel had accepted the Hamas election victory
That might have created an opportunity for calm, economic growth, and perhaps eventually new negotiations with a strong Palestinian government able to marginalize the rejectionists politically and impose control on the ground.
The focus is not on Palestinian support for a theocratic terrorist organization, not a on the absence of “calm” created by the Palestinians, but on the hypothesized better conditions that might have resulted from, in Beinart’s eyes, better Israeli management of Palestinian choices and behaviors, which are treated like a natural disaster that has no moral agency.
The dangerous condition Israel now confronts is one in which various critical forces mix. Among the clear and not as clear anti-Semitic attacks, and the ideological rejections of Israel’s existence in varied covert formulations, enters now increasingly this mixed discourse, in which critical friends and supporters of Israeli confuse Israel’s decades-long management of a problem with moral responsibility for the problem.
One day – fifty years from now, two hundred – future historians will analyze this subject and this era, and how so many misjudged reality so badly (it isn’t like it hasn’t happened before) will make fascinating reading.
AJA
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A Film Noir
by
A. Jay Adler
DOUBLE DOWN
Part One
(In which a rock & roll roadie comes home. He meets old friends and encounters a detective. She is beautiful. She tells him to spread ‘em.)
EXT. A Dry Valley – DAY/Night
A panoramic view of Caifornia’s Central Valley. Bright, washed out sunlight. Slowly, the day turns to night. Superimposed at the end:
EXT. HIGHWAY – Night
The sign says, “Welcome to Heaven”; in smaller print below, “California. Population 53,259.”
EXT. STREET – NIGHT
Dimly lit. A commercial strip in Heaven, California, a small city in the Valley.
JACK MILES, late 30′s, an ex rock & roll roadie who’s knocked around life and been knocked around by it. With no guiding light, he’s got a gambling spirit and a losing soul. He crosses the street in the direction of an old bar. It’s broken neon lights read only “Bar. Pool.”
MAN’S VOICE (V.O.)
A guy walks into a bar, looking for someone.
Jack enters the bar.
INT. BAR
A little seedy, but dangerous only to the faint of heart. Jack’s seen plenty of them.
He walks to the half-filled bar.
JACK
(to the bartender)
Bourbon up.
The BARTENDER, born 50′s and behind a bar, pours the drink indifferently.
JACK (CONT’D)
I’m looking for Ray Hansen. Is he here?
The Bartender stares at him.
BARTENDER
And whom shall I say is calling?
JACK
Jack Miles.
The Bartender takes a moment. He heads to one of several pool tables in the back, where two men play beneath a low hanging light. The Bartender speaks to one of the men. He looks up.
RAY HANSEN is Jack’s age, looks older. Not a bad guy, he can’t imagine life with any opportunities bigger than a small-timer’s vision of big. He walks to Jack.
RAY
Jack fuckin’ Miles.
JACK
(shrugs)
Too many miles.
He shakes Ray’s hand.
JACK (CONT’D)
How you doing, Ray?
RAY
When’d you get back into town?
JACK
Few weeks ago.
RAY
How’s rock n’ roll?
JACK
Dead. Haven’t you heard? Rap’s the thing.
RAY
All I know about raps is trying not to take one. You home now?
Jack shrugs.
JACK
I’m looking for a job. Someone told me you drive trucks now. I can drive them, any size.
KYLE CORBETT, Ray’s pool mate, also Jack’s age, also looking older, approaches. A hard ass, he’ good enough to love his brother, bad enough to like no one else.
KYLE
Is that Jack Miles, high school guitar star?
They shake hands.
KYLE (CONT’D)
You home to lick your wounds?
JACK
Nice to see you, too, Kyle.
KYLE
It’s always good to see old high school buddies. How’s your brother?
Jack turns away to the bar and his drink.
Kyle and Ray glance at one another.
KYLE
You’re not still nursin’ a grudge, are you?
RAY
Carrie left him a long time ago.
KYLE
(to Ray)
He’s still nursin’ a grudge.
(to Jack)
That’s too bad. Cause your brother just came into a lot of money.
Jack shows no interest.
KYLE (CONT’D)
I figured that’s why you came home.
Jack is expressionless.
RAY
Didn’t you know?
Jack didn’t know. He doesn’t care.
KYLE
He married Mirabella Kort. You know, that olive grower up by Los Carneros.
RAY
She died six months ago.
KYLE
Poor rich bitch. Heart disease or some such shit.
RAY
(to Kyle)
He didn’t know.
KYLE
I thought identical twins were supposed to be close. I know I love my brother.
(beat)
So what did you come home for?
JACK
I wanted to go to Heaven.
(to Ray)
Like I said, I’m looking for a job.
Suddenly two women appear behind the men, one a cop, the other plain clothes, flashing a detective’s shield.
The cop, PATTI HALE, 30′s, broad and sturdy, pushes Kyle against the bar. The detective, EVELYN “SONNY” MORALES, also 30′s, a tough beauty with the lid on, does the same with Jack and Ray.
SONNY
Hands in front fellas. Let us see ‘em.
The men are startled, Kyle and Ray momentarily nervous.
PATTI
They look like trouble. Should we spread ‘em?
SONNY
Just the one in the middle. Spread him wide.
Jack smiles. The men relax.
KYLE
Shit.
RAY
Fuck, Kyle, that’s Sonny Morales.
SONNY
Evelyn Morales, if you’re not my friend. Detective Morales to you.
KYLE
It’s a fucking high school reunion.
SONNY
I don’t seem to recall that you graduated from high school, Kyle.
KYLE
If you’re a detective Sonny, I know I’m on the right side of the law.
Sonny edges up close to Jack.
SONNY
I thought I told you to spread ‘em.
Jack stares at her.
JACK
I will.
Kyle and Ray take this in, look at each other.
RAY
You didn’t waste any time, Jack. Didn’t know you liked ‘em south of the border.
SONNY
I was north of the border when you were still traveling steerage.
KYLE
How’s your father, Sonny? He outta Soledad yet?
Sonny walks into his face.
SONNY
Nah, he’s gonna wait for you, Kyle. You know, break you in.
PATTI
I thought we were here for a friendly drink.
SONNY
We are. With friends.
Ray and Kyle get the message.
RAY
Catch you around, Jack. I’ll see what I can find out.
JACK
Thanks Ray.
Ray and Kyle go back to the pool table. Sonny and Patti sit.
SONNY
(to Jack)
You stayed carefully out of things.
(to the Bartender)
Bourbon.
JACK
You didn’t need any help from me.
PATTI
(to the Bartender)
Club soda.
SONNY
Jack Miles, Patti Hale, my best friend.
Jack and Patti reach across Sonny to shake hands.
JACK
Hello, best friend.
PATTI
Hello, Jack Miles. So you all go back a ways.
SONNY
We went to high school together. That’s all. They were ass holes then, too, especially Kyle.
(to Jack)
They your new old friends?
JACK
Just looking for a job.
PATTI
And so you two knew each other in high school.
SONNY
Only a little. Jack was a few years ahead of me. I had a crush on him, though he didn’t know it. He was one of the few Anglos didn’t call me wetback while trying to get into my pants.
JACK
I didn’t call her wetback, anyway.
SONNY
He even fought a guy once in the cafeteria when the guy got all touchy.
JACK
(facetious)
Was that you?
PATTI
He’s a gentleman, too. And now, after all these years –
Patti lifts her glass.
PATTI (CONT’D)
To new old friends.
EXT. BAR
Jack, Sonny, and Patti exit happy.
PATTI
My car’s this way. Nice to meet you, Jack Miles.
JACK
(nods)
Best friend.
Jack and Sonny head in the other direction, arm in arm. Sonny glances back over her shoulder.
Patti doesn’t look back, but her arm is extended with a thumbs up.
EXT. JACK’S BUNGALOW
A small rental in a rundown part of town, most of the lots empty. Jack and Sonny’s cars are parked in the back. A light is on. Slow R&B PLAYS on the RADIO.
INT. JACK’S BUNGALOW
Sonny is seated, feet up, at one end of an old sofa by the window.
Jack carries a fresh bottle of bourbon from the kitchenette, refills their glasses. He leaves the bottle on the coffee table in front of them, beside a bowl of pistachio nuts. He sits at the other end of the sofa.
SONNY
So it just never happened.
JACK
I was okay for a piss hole like this. I got my gigs in local bars. But I didn’t have the talent. I met people, though, and the roadie thing was fun. Close to the action. Money was good.
SONNY
So?
JACK
Got tired. It can be rough. The work and the play. I’m too old.
SONNY
Give me a break. Mick Jagger’s sixty what?
JACK
Jagger’s got two hundred and fifty million dollars. For that money I could put up a few more stages, sleep in a few more hotel rooms.
SONNY
(coy)
You don’t seem out of energy to me.
Jack finishes his drink. Pours another for both of them.
JACK
It’s a cold, lonely life, you know.
SONNY
Tell me about it.
JACK
I mean the road. It’s not much about getting close to other people. That’s not the nature of it. I mean it happens, but — Everybody’s after something. One way or another you’ve always got a small part of what they want, or you can get them close to it.
SONNY
You mean the groupies? No real love for Jack Miles?
JACK
Oh, I had plenty of women.
SONNY
I’m sure you did. Thanks for sharing.
Jack reaches for a handful of pistachio nuts, dumps it in Sonny’s lap. He takes another for himself.
JACK
There might have been a couple who said they loved me. Maybe even meant it. In the end they were like the others — star fucked me with their eyes closed, dreaming of fame and fortune. Shit, even I was always wondering what that entrance into the bright lights on stage was like.
They both crack shells with their fingers or teeth.
SONNY
It’s been different for me. The same. Men suck, you know?
JACK
I should know, right?
SONNY
I’d like to hear the groupies’ side. Anyway, there’s not many good ones around, at least not in the world I see.
JACK
Why did you become a cop?
SONNY
Maybe because of my father. I don’t know. Wanted to do good. Wanted to help. Most of the time you can’t do good, no matter what you do. You sure can’t help. I live in central California, land of sunshine — the Golden West, right? — but I don’t see the sun, Jack. I never see the sun.
Sonny finds a nut she can’t crack with her teeth. She tries again. Jack reaches over, takes it from her, cracks it in his own teeth. He puts it in her mouth.
JACK
And no good men.
SONNY
You think a male civilian can take being involved with a female detective? I haven’t found any with balls that big. The other cops, detectives — soon as they think you’re theirs, you’re not really on the job for them anymore. You’re just some girl who got her Shield by mistake. It’s dangerous out there, honey. Why don’t you just stay here in my pocket.
Jack reaches over with a nut for Sonny to crack with her teeth as he holds it.
JACK
You blame them.
Sonny cracks the shell. Jack takes the nut out. She eats it from his fingers.
SONNY
I blame them.
When Jack sits back, Sonny leans forward with her own nut. She holds it to his mouth.
SONNY (CONT’D)
I’m nobody’s girl –
Jack cracks the shell. Sonny feeds him the nut.
SONNY (CONT’D)
Not to be fucked around with or fucked around on.
Sonny sits back. They stare at one another.
SONNY (CONT’D)
I won’t let a man do that to me again, Jack. I won’t.
Jack leans forward with another nut. Sonny cracks the nut in his fingers. He feeds it to her, remains hovering over her.
JACK
But you are somebody’s girl.
Sonny opens her lips to reveal the nut still between her teeth. Jack leans down to take it from her mouth with his mouth. The exchange becomes a long, slow, passionate kiss.
INT. BEDROOM
They enter the room kissing, and the love they make, undressing themselves and each other, on the bed and pressed against the wall — her back to his front — pausing to wonder at the sight of each other, is a tender and frightening fall.
AJA
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