the sad red earth

Born into a family of photographers, the teenage Chuck Koton began carrying his camera wherever he went. He even set up a darkroom in his parents’ Bronx apartment. Around the same time Koton began his lifelong love affair with jazz. One night he came across his older brother’s copy of Miles Davis’ Someday My Prince Will Come. His life would never be the same. During his junior year in high school, Koton and a couple of friends began taking the “A” train downtown to Greenwich Village where they would spend nights at the Village Vanguard and other jazz clubs mesmerized by the likes of  Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Pharoah Sanders, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Sun Ra. It felt only natural that Koton bring his camera.

Fifteen years ago, Koton resolved to put his energy and resources into a lifetime project of documenting these brilliant, dedicated, and too often underappreciated artists. Koton’s approach to capturing jazz in an image is to convey through light, shadow, and motion what the music and the musicians have always conveyed to him: dignity and the spectrum of human emotion.

Chuck Koton: Shakin’ It

***

“Photography is jazz for the eye. ”

~Peggy Claxton

——

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 1:05 pm by A. Jay Adler and is filed under A Blue Guitar.

Somewhere something irritated Dave Weigel. Those were the butterfly wings flapping. (Whatever provoked the irritating behavior – caused the wings to flap – has long dissipated into the stratosphere.) Weigel breezed into a little venting on a not-so-private-as-he-thought listserve, and someone fed those growing winds into a full public downdraft: the blogosphere was scattered to all corners in the crosscurrents as Weigel lost his job at the Washington Post. Everyone was now huffing like the West Wind. Then Jeffrey Goldberg went all Dizzy Gillespie on us and offered his own judgments – not his best reporting – which in several posts over the same day he gradually retracted. All in all, a brouhaha of a storm in journo-politico circles, a fly fart to everyone else.

Until Glenn Greenwald decided to huff and puff and try to blow Jeffrey Goldberg’s house down. Had it been my house with that kind of shit storm leveled at it, I would have delivered his legal Greenwald of a New York closing argument, but Goldberg, despite his serious resume, decided to be a nice Jewish boy and invite Greenwald on a trip with him – to Iraqi-Kurdistan – so maybe Goldberg is cleverer than I am. But all this led me to be catching up on my reading of Greenwald, of whom I am not a regular reader for reasons that will become quite apparent.

Let it be known right away that I think Greenwald levies some very substantive criticisms against Goldberg regarding his reporting on the Middle East in general, and Iraq particularly, in the period leading up to the Iraq War. Goldberg chose not to respond to the criticisms. That might seem evasive, but the criticisms – about supporting the war and Goldberg’s allegiances to Israel – are not new, and I can well understand that it might be Goldberg’s position at this point that every time someone decides he wants to reargue these issues, Goldberg is not going to feel obligated to defend himself anew. Keep in mind that for a certain kind of political-absolutist Iraq War opponent, no kind of response other than self-commitment to a reeducation camp will suffice. And even then, upon release, the offender would have to bear daily to be spat upon in the street. In England, this monomania consists of a determination to have Tony Blair adjudged by God, man, and even himself, in shameful tears, a spawn of Satan who knowingly and willfully led England into and “an illegal and immoral” war, rather than someone, instead, who arrived at a different political – and moral – judgment than they did.

Greenwald wants Goldberg to admit his errors:

Given how completely discredited those articles are, those are awards [for Goldberg’s pre-war reporting] which any person with an iota of shame would renounce and apologize for, but Goldberg continues to proudly tout them on his bio page at The Atlantic.

Let me not be the one to abjure honest confession of error, if, indeed, such has been committed, but let’s not fool ourselves about the nature of such calls from our adversaries. On the one hand, Ross Douthat describes Weigel’s own mea culpa so:

a model mea culpa: Forthright and self-critical, rather than defensive and self-justifying.

On the other hand, the comments following Weigel’s account of himself, on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism, are not badly represented by the following:

How old is this guy? 10? Man get some Clearasil. No wonder he is a Marxist he is a dweeb and ugly goes right down the profile of a leftist. Ugly women emasculated men all become leftists as they can whine about being victims.

As Michael might more honestly have told Carlo near the end of Godfather I, “Just tell me honestly that you fingered Sonny, and then I’ll give you a plane ticket and let you live – until you get to the car, where I’ll have you strangled in the front seat.”

In this instance, Greenwald is not just finding fault with some of Goldberg’s reporting.

To see what a representative blight on journalism Jeffrey Goldberg is, one need not go back several years.

Even Goldberg’s backtracking later in the day was itself fueled by full-scale journalistic sloth and shoddiness.

Other recent comments from Goldberg illustrate the menace to journalism that he is.

And, to conclude:

The Jeffrey Goldberg Media continues to exert substantial influence and wreak real havoc, but as is true for most of America’s once-respected institutions — and, indeed, as is true for America itself — it’s inexorably weakening and crumbling, and the merit-free elites (like Goldberg) who cast themselves as the unfair victims are, in fact, the prime authors of their own demise.

It’s an indictment intended to be damning. Goldberg needed to respond to it, and the response he has chosen, rather than continuing debate, is to invite Greenwald to the scene of the crime, so to speak, to interview witnesses, thinking that might influence Greenwald’s thinking. I doubt it, and I will be surprised if Greenwald accepts.

Why, then, am I unsympathetic to Greenwald? For reasons, in fact, not unlike those that feed his antipathy for Goldberg, but that Greenwald never directly acknowledges. I have mentioned one of the reasons already: the tendency to characterize those who differed on Iraq not simply, if one believes it, as wrong, but as dishonest. Another reason for Greenwald’s antipathy emerges over the course of his attack.

Goldberg, whose devotion to Israel is so extreme that he served in the IDF as a prison guard over Palestinians … was described last year as “Netanyahu’s faithful stenographer“ by The New York Times’ Roger Cohen.

That fantastical, war-fueling screed — aimed at scaring Americans into targeting the full panoply of Israel’s enemies – actually won a National Magazine Award in 2003.

Two weeks ago, Goldberg — like all Israel-obsessive devotees — turned his ire toward Turkey for daring to oppose Israel’s policies.

As one emailer put it to me:  Goldberg is open about the fact that “he’s only interested in the plight of the Kurds when he can gleefully use it as a cudgel against Israel’s enemies.”

If anything provokes greater ire from Greenwald than does Goldberg it is Israel, and note that Greenwald goes so far as to accuse Goldberg of choosing his subjects and slanting his reporting with the aim only of leading the U.S. into war in Israel’s interests. This isn’t even a charge of dual loyalty. It is an accusation of serving as a foreign agent. It is also an example of what William F. Buckley, when he rejected John Birch Society founder Robert Welch, termed the “Birch fallacy.”

The fallacy,” I said, is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.

Greenwald won’t mind my citing the conservative Buckley in criticism of him, since Greenwald used to write for paleoconservative Pat Buchanan.

What loses, or should lose, trust in Greenwald’s argument is the overwhelming animus that motivates it. Greenwald, who is all for showing one’s cards in displays of honest reporting and analysis – though he doesn’t quite here – would perhaps find no flaw in this. There is a difference, though, between having a point of view and even passions (and succumbing, as anyone will, to some ill-advised invective) and forming one’s arguments out of the passionate point of view, rather than the passion from the argument. The former leads to the kind of closed, monovision of absolute believers like Greenwald, and the kind of slanting of which he himself accuses Goldberg – not showing one’s cards, but stacking them.

In the days surrounding the Goldberg post Greenwald took up many big issues – well, that is what Salon pays him for. They are big issues because of their weight and because of their complexity, but Greenwald never sees the complexity. It is all always very simple and clear to him. For instance, Greenwald wrote about the controversy surrounding Michael Hastings’ Rolling Stone piece on General Stanley McChrystal. The controversy for most of us was what McChrystal and others said of their civilian superiors; in the journalistic world the controversy was over Hastings’s reporting. Greenwald tellingly titled his post “The two poles of journalism.” Generally, this would lead to an analysis seeking some more nuanced ground between the poles. Not for Greenwald. Here is how he characterizes the criticism of Hastings and presents the two poles:

[Hastings] exposed and embarrassed rather than flattered and protected a powerful government official, and in our upside-down media culture, doing that is a sign of irresponsibility rather than fulfillment of the basic journalistic function.

Objectively put, no? No. There may be establishment journalists who flatter and protect, but that is no one’s argumentative position. And is it, rather, the job description of journalist to expose and embarrass? What if the subject does not warrant exposure? And anyone can be embarrassed. We are all that non-hero to our theoretical valet.

Greenwald rightfully went after Marc Ambinder for being among those, like David Sanger of The New York Times, who attended Vice President Biden’s pool party and had water gun fights with Rahm Emmanuel. One would think a high school newspaper editor would spy the cooption by power that represents. Ambinder never saw it. Still, in response to Greenwald, Ambinder wrote:

Greenwald demands skepticism toward those in power — which any good journalist must have — but then confuses this with implacable hostility. They are not the same. The job of a reporter is to question, understand, and inform. You need a vigorous skepticism to do this. But unreasoning hostility is as inimical to understanding as blind deference.

In considering the McChrystal imbroglio, then, Greenwald contrasts a video of Hastings with one of Lara Logan of CBS vehemently criticizing Hastings. Logan here is supposed to represent that other pole (flatter and protect), but that is because Greenwald (expose and embarrass) cannot hear Logan’s arguments: that the reporter is in a human relationship, which for Hastings permits developing the pretense of a trust the subject should not be fooled into placing, and for Logan includes the possibility of actually respecting the subject and what he does. Subjects can, in fact, warrant either treatment. However, that is a more stereoscopic vision Greenwald cannot have.

Greenwald wrote a post criticizing the use of the word “terrorist,”

the most meaningless and most manipulated word in the political lexicon.

It becomes clear relatively soon, however, that the post is another opportunity to bash Israel, and while the purpose of the post is avowedly to challenge the meaningful usage of the term, it unselfconsciously (self-consciousness requires a second train of thought, a second “vision”) states:

If any group meets the definition of “terrorism,” the Irgun does

and

It was once commonly accepted that Irgun members were Terrorists.  But that was then and this is now.

But the point of the post was to reveal the unreliable meaning of the word “terrorist,” resorted to these days – “now” – only to serve an American or Israeli agenda. Yet the sentence above offers the reverse, that now we have suffered some politically motivated debasement of a word that once had very clear meaning – that, if no one else, Jews could be terrorists.

Much as in his brief against Goldberg, Greenwald cannot resist stacking the rhetorical deck and skewing the presentation of an issue according to his position on it – precisely what he charged Goldberg of doing in his Iraq reporting. Here he posts on the very important subject of targeting American citizens who might be fighting with the enemy, Islamic terrorists, against the United States. Notice I used the words “fighting” and “enemy.” Greenwald is amongst those who insist on conceiving widespread and organized Islamic terrorism as a law enforcement problem. Other people claim the nature of war in the contemporary era – access to massive amounts of conventional weaponry and potentially WMD, and ease of organization across national boundaries of non-state actors – has necessarily altered. This raises a host of complex issues, including that of how to confront citizens who side with the enemy. Were they advancing on a battlefield with weapon in hand, there would be no question. But since Greenwald will not acknowledge these complex new developments, these complexities are not represented in the discussion and so cannot be considered. Further, he loads his presentation with prejudicial terms such as “assassination.” People like Greenwald do the same with Israel. Israel, too, for more than sixty years has had to fight a long war that does not fit conventional understanding, and the killing of the enemy in war, if we accept it as such, is not assassination.

In the “terrorism” post, Greenwald argues that Anwar Al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen apparently based now in Yemen and considered an enemy combatant by the administration, is being wrongly targeted based on “his constitutionally protected advocacy of Muslims fighting against the U.S.” Mere advocacy of violence is a free speech right and Greenwald being a former “constitutional law and civil rights litigator” one might not bother to follow his link to the 1969 Supreme Court decision Brandenburg V. Ohio. and read it oneself. The exception to protect advocacy is “where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action,” with “imminent lawless action” having become the legal test. “Imminent,” of course, is not a precise term, but you can read here the history of Al-Awlaki’s “advocacy” and judge for yourself whether at this point he constitutes a danger of imminent lawless action. None of this you will read from Greenwald, for whom the complex tends to be inarguably simple.

In the current consideration – raised again by the Weigel incident – of what kind of journalism is superior, the traditional effort at an impossible objectivity or the acknowledgment to start of the biases at work, Greenwald does not offer a model case in support of the latter.

Update: Goldberg offers further response.

Update II: Greenwald replies to Goldberg’s initial response. As I anticipated, there will be no trip to Iraqi Kurdistan.

I’m not interested in an overly personalized exchange with Goldberg.

Along the way, Greenwald manages many unflattering juxtapositions to the Iraq War, including the Nazi invasion of various nations, in order to discount the relevance of how the Kurds may feel about the war, but these are not comparisons, he says. The Iraq War “may or may not be” comparable, “but that’s irrelevant” to his point. Still, it would take little effort to quickly concede “is not comparable” if that is what he thinks, though this would lead Greenwald into that gray world he prefers to live beyond. He even quotes Goldberg as having said that Greenwald has

an overly simplistic, black-and-white view of the situation

to which Greenwald responds

yes, I think unprovoked acts of aggression are clearly wrong; as lead Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson put it in his Closing Argument about the crimes of World War II:  ”the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars.”

So we almost end with what certainly seems a comparison to Nazi aggression. I say almost end because though he had managed it till then, Greenwald in his closing sentence cannot resist dragging Israel into the matter, his point appearing to be that while the U.S. is wrong in what he considers an act of aggression, Israel is wrong even in self-defense.

AJA

———

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 11:13 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under The Political Animal.

Weekend is over. Back to work.

1. Who is right about Iran, Leon Wieseltier or Fareed Zakaria? The answer later in the week. (The Answer Man)
2. What would be the nature of a Democratic president who was truly a Democrat, pursuing truly Democratic policies, with whom conservatives would genuinely respectfully disagree?
3. Is a female politician who disdains feminism like a worker who earns 30 dollars per hour, with a 35 hour work week, benefits, sick leave, and two-weeks paid vacation, who hates unions?
4. How much environmental damage would be enough for conservatives to believe that the loss of oil industry jobs was a necessary price to pay?
5. Does self-consciousness transform every act? If a woman wears two-inch heels in the full knowledge and desire that they sexualize her for men, do her knowledge and wish release her from the bonds of male desire? Does the woman then bind men in female desire, or has the woman only adopted the male vision of the female as her own?
6. Put your money down – Yankees, Tampa Bay, or Boston?
7. Did you know that Amnesty International claims that Israel still occupies Gaza, even though Israel dismantled its settlements there and withdrew in 2005? Do you know what AI’s definition of occupation is?
8. The rich kid on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis television series, named Chatsworth Osborne Jr., was preceded for six episodes on the series in a similar role by what ultimately world famous film actor and director?
9. Referring to question number 1, should the U.S. ever foster or support popular uprisings in undemocratic states? What should be the criteria for deciding to do so, if ever?
10. Was Albert Camus right, when he said, “We must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty”?

AJA

——–

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 3:00 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under Uncategorized.

A Film Noir

by

A. Jay Adler

DOUBLE DOWN

Part Five

The Story So Far

Jack Miles, rock n’ roll roadie, has returned home looking for a job. He encounters old friends and begins a new love with Evelyn “Sonny” Morales, a detective. Old friends, Kyle and Ray, propose to Jack that he help them rob his wealthy, but estranged, identical twin, Joseph. Jack turns them down, and instead goes to see Joseph for help with a job. But Joseph humiliates Jack and they nearly come to blows. Enraged, Jack lures Joseph to him and kills him, making the murder appear his own accidental death, then assumes Joseph’s identity.

Now, Part 5: Jack directs Kyle and Raye to the Kort mansion for the proposed robbery of Joseph, then purposely interrupts the robbery. The next morning, Sonny discovers the body of the apparently dead Jack and takes the lead in the investigation. She questions “Joseph” at the mansion.

EXT. THE KORT MANSION – NIGHT

Jack drives Joseph’s Jaguar sedan to the large garage a small distance from the house.

INT. JAGUAR

Jack searches the glove compartment, finds the garage door opener, clicks it.

EXT. GARAGE

Jack drives in. The door closes behind him.

INT. GARAGE

Jack gets out of the car, goes to a window facing the house. He checks the view, then he crosses the garage and looks out another window, facing the entrance to the mansion grounds. He turns away, prepares to wait.

INT. GARAGE – LATER

Jack stands by the window in darkness, smoking a cigarette.

He hears the LOW HUM of an approaching engine. He quickly puts out the cigarette and carefully looks out the window.

An old Camaro drives slowly toward the house. Jack watches until it is out of view. He crosses to the other window, sees the Camaro stop in front of the house.

Kyle and Ray quickly exit the car, look around, go to the front door.

Jack watches through the window as Kyle kneels before the door, works the lock. Then they’re in, and the door closes.

Jack turns from the window, checks his watch: 1:05 a.m.

Then it’s 1:07 a.m., Jack still checking the watch. He heads for the door.

EXT. GARAGE

Jack exits and walks deliberately toward the house.

He pauses at the door, then enters with Joseph’s keys, taking no care to be quiet.

INT. THE KORT MANSION

Jack closes the door loudly, stops and listens. Nothing.

He walks to a TABLE in the front foyer and drops the keys onto it. Still nothing.

He looks around, tries to guess where the safe might be.

He heads toward the study.

He stops before its closed door, prepares himself for what might be behind it.

He opens it.

Two figures — Kyle’s and Ray’s — charge past him, over him, knocking him down in their break to escape.

Kyle is first and gets by. But as Jack goes down, he grabs hold of Ray’s leg.

JACK

(feigning surprise)

What!?

He makes a show of trying to hold on to the leg as Ray is brought to the ground, tries to crawl away.

RAY

Fuck. Get the fuck –

Ray kicks at Jack’s face, glancing blows that Jack allows to beat him off.

Ray scrambles to his feet and runs off.

Jack gets up, makes no attempt to follow. He turns back to the

STUDY

Looks around. He sees the door ajar on a SMALL REFRIGERATOR built into the wall near the liquor table. He goes to it.

The door has a key lock on it. Its interior panel, on disguised hinges, is pulled away.

Inside, the secret compartment is empty. Except for a note, presumably written by Joseph. It reads: FUCK YOU.

Jack shows the trace of a smile. He crumbles up the note and turns away.

FOYER

Jack approaches the open front door. Outside the Camaro is gone. He locks the door.

Then he goes to the PHONE on the table, where he dropped his keys. He dials.

JACK

Hello? This is Joseph Miles at the Kort Orchards. That’s right, on Los Carneros Road. I’d like to report a burglary. And assault.

EXT. JACK’S BUNGALOW – MORNING

Several police cars, marked and unmarked are parked around the house. Another unmarked sedan pulls up.

INT. JACK’S BUNGALOW

Sonny stands watching beside the body as the MEDICAL EXAMINER zips up the body bag. A PHOTOGRAPHER snaps some final photos. A COUPLE OF CRIMINALISTS bag evidence.

Enter GENE SLOCUM, 40′s, Sonny’s partner, hard and steady, soft on Sonny, though she’ll never know it. He looks around, comes up beside Sonny.

SLOCUM

You okay?

Sonny nods.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

What do we have?

SONNY

(slow to respond)

Apparent overdose. Alcohol and –

Sonny indicates the vial of pills on the coffee table as a Criminalist bags it.

SLOCUM

Accidental?

Sonny shrugs.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

I’m guessing you knew him to drink his fair share.

Sonny glances at him, nods.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

Was he a pill popper, too?

SONNY

Not since I knew him. On the road he probably did about everything.

SLOCUM

So he’d tend to know how much is too much.

SONNY

You’d think.

Slocum pulls Sonny aside, away from the others.

SLOCUM

Any reason you know of it wouldn’t have been accidental?

Sonny looks in Slocum’s eyes sadly, shakes her head firmly.

Slocum feels for her, presses on.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

What brought you here?

SONNY

I was calling him. All night. He didn’t answer.

Slocum looks around.

SLOCUM

No sign of anyone else?

Sonny shakes her head.

SLOCUM (CONT’D)

Look, I can take the lead on this.

SONNY

I was first on the scene, Slocum.

SLOCUM

Good, you know procedure. Morales. Let me –

SONNY

(steely)

First on the scene.

(beat)

I’ll go check out what he did last night.

Sonny heads for the door.

SLOCUM

I’m sorry, Sonny.

Sonny stops, nods, leaves.

Slocum watches through the window as Sonny gets into her car. He sees her start it up, pause, then break down in sobs.

But she quickly pulls herself together. She peels out.

INT. KORT MANSION – DAY

Manuel opens the door to Sonny.

SONNY

Detective Morales. Mr. Miles is expecting me.

Manuel lets her in.

MANUEL

I’ll let Mr. Joseph know you’re here.

JACK (O.S.)

No need, Manuel. Mr. Joseph is here.

Jack stands at the entrance to the foyer. He and Sonny are both stopped by the sight of the other, though Jack tries not to show it.

Sonny does. Manuel leaves them alone.

JACK (CONT’D)

I know. Identical. Still.

SONNY

I’m sorry.

JACK

About what?

SONNY

I should tell you. This is not just professional. You’re brother and I — we’d been involved.

JACK

Then I guess I should say I’m sorry.

SONNY

But I am here on police business.

JACK

Of course. Let’s go into the living room.

INT. FORMAL LIVING ROOM

Neither Jack nor Sonny sits.

SONNY

Don’t misunderstand me — I have to ask about it. I gathered from –

Sonny has a hard time saying Jack’s name.

SONNY (CONT’D)

You didn’t get along very well. Others say the same thing. I never noticed that in high school.

JACK

Well, you didn’t know us very well in high school, Evelyn. Me even less I think.

SONNY

Why didn’t you?

JACK

Get along? It’s supposed to be the other way, right? I don’t know exactly. It’s like — it’s like we were two people trying to occupy the same space. We both felt crowded. I think that’s why he left all those years ago.

SONNY

It’s almost the way he explained it.

JACK

My point, I guess.

Sonny becomes lost in thought, for a moment seems a little unsteady. Jack is genuinely concerned.

JACK (CONT’D)

Are you all right? I’m sorry. I should have offered you a seat.

SONNY

No. No. I’m just trying to figure out why he would do it. I can’t make any sense of it.

JACK

Do it? You think he killed himself? When you called, I don’t know, I just assumed it was an accident.

SONNY

There’s no way tell right now. Maybe never. The reason I came — I thought he might have come to see you, about a job?

JACK

He did, actually.

Sonny reacts alertly to this news.

JACK (CONT’D)

It was hard for him to do. I could tell. Probably the last thing he wanted to do. He did say it was because of a woman. He just didn’t say who.

Sonny waits eagerly for more.

JACK (CONT’D)

I didn’t have anything for him. Really. And to be honest with you, I didn’t look forward to his working for me anymore than he did. I guess that makes me sound terrible, but it could never have worked. I did offer him money, though. To tide him over until he found something else.

SONNY

Did he take it?

Jack shakes his head.

JACK

Probably the one thing it would have been harder for him to do than work for me.

SONNY

How was he when he left?

JACK

Disappointed. Wishing he’d never come, I guess.

SONNY

What time was it?

JACK

Eight. Eight thirty.

(beat)

I don’t think he would have killed himself over anything I did. And apparently he had something to live for.

They look at each other, seeing what they want to see.

SONNY

I heard at the station you had a burglary last night.

JACK

Yeah, it was quite a night all around.

Jack heads in the direction of the study, Sonny following.

JACK (CONT’D)

I gave the detectives all the details when they were here this morning.

SONNY

You surprised them?

JACK

It was Manuel’s night off. I was planning to get away for the night, too.

SONNY

Did Jack know that?

They stop outside the study.

Jack nods.

JACK

I told him he was holding me up. Seems cruel now.

SONNY

Where were you heading?

JACK

Pismo Beach. Sometimes, since Mirabella died, I just need to get away from the house. Couple of hours out I thought, “This is stupid. The night’s gone anyway.” I turned back.

INT. STUDY

Jack leads Sonny to the refrigerator. He shows her the hidden compartment.

JACK

They must have known where to look. I guess they thought they could get in and out fast. You think they knew I’d be gone?

Sonny examines the refrigerator.

SONNY

Seems that way.

Sonny considers a difficult thought.

SONNY (CONT’D)

You think there might be a connection?

Jack pretends not to get her drift. Then –

JACK

You mean with Jack?  That’s why you asked if he knew I’d be gone. I don’t know. I identified the two men as Kyle Corbett and Ray Hansen. Jack used to know them. Were they back in contact?

SONNY

(ignores the question)

The report said they got away with some money.

JACK

A few thousand dollars I kept for convenience.

Sonny looks closely at his face. Their eyes lock.

SONNY

There was a struggle?

Jack touches the scratches on his face.

JACK

Oh. Yeah. I don’t think I did too well.

Sonny heads out of the study.

SONNY

You’re alive. You did fine.

INT. FOYER

Jack walks Sonny to the door. They stop.

SONNY

Did you hate him?

JACK

It’s hard to know what you feel for someone so close when things go wrong. I think maybe you know what I mean. I’m sorry, truly.

Sonny nods and leaves.

AJA

——–

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 at 3:00 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under A Blue Guitar.

1. Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.

Saint Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England

2. This great evil… where’d it come from? How’d it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us?
Robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might have known? Does our ruin benefit the Earth? Does it help the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you too?
Have you passed through this night?

Terrance Malick, screenplay of The Thin Red Line

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at 3:00 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under A Blue Guitar.

Political perception is today enabled by enhanced technologies such as old high school friends rediscovered on Facebook who alert one to a Machine Gun Shoot and Lobster Dinner sponsored by the Pemi-Baker Valley Republican Committee of New Hampshire. I’m not sure why this caught my attention. They used to have machine gun shoots in Barack Obama’s hometown – you know, “Chicago-style.” They were good for settling disputes. I should be pleased to learn that New Hampshire Republicans only use them to put food on the table.

Seriously(?), though, the shoot is being held at the Pemigewasset Valley Fish & Game Club (“Aim to Please, Shoot to Play”), for which it not the only machine gut shoot. There is also the spring “General John T. Thompson Memorial annual Machine Gun Shoot” and the fall “Big Pumpkin annual Machine Gun Shoot.” Pumpkins are a swift, fierce prey, and need to be hunted with only the most lethal of weapons. If, on that serious note again, you are wondering what machine guns have to do with “fish and game,” I’m still looking into that. In the big city, where I come from, machine guns are on occasion used for hunting, but a different kind of prey.

General John T. Thompson, by the way, was the inventor of the “Tommy gun,” and the PVFGC seems to be fond of him – it provides a prominent link to The Unofficial Tommy Gun Page, where one can learn the history the Tommy gun. The logo image on its home page suggests, too, which of all those firearms used to hunt fish and game is its favorite.

Also favored by the PVFGC on its homepage is “gunchick.”

Just in case you wondered who else besides young men with excess testosterone and sperm buys all those movie tickets.

This interest in Pemi-Baker Valley, NH in military automatic weapons is not unrelated to attitudes elsewhere, where tic-like reference to the Second Amendment is as frequent a political message as an assertion of constitutional rights. (I mean, those guys didn’t wear hip holstered guns to political rallies last year because they feared for their safety, did they?) Take, for instance, Sharron Angle, the newly chosen Republican candidate for Senate to oppose Harry Reid. Marginalized earlier as being, well, at the margins of the party – though if you can find those without falling off the edge of the earth, good luck – Angle is quickly undergoing an attempted makeover. Previously, she was still engaging the social policy debates of the 1930s, looking to transition out of Social Security, for instance, though now she is advocating Al Gore’s “lock box” and seeking to “personalize” social security. That latter would be George W. Bush’s “privatize,” and, yes, Republicans, still in the age of Karl Rove, think the electorate are morons, who would be fooled by Clark Kent’s glasses.

More problematic for Angle is her previous party membership with the Nevada Independent American Party, originally founded as part of George Wallace’s 1968 presidential bid. And this January interview with a Portland talk show host:

You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.

I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

It becomes increasingly difficult for decent elements in the Republican Party to separate themselves from this kind of derangement – people who speak like this often end up being hunted by the FBI in rural backwoods after shooting abortion providers or for sending bombs through the mail. Unfortunately, it becomes increasingly difficult to find decent elements in the Republican Party.

Angle’s implied threat of uprising, her purposeful use, within the context, of “take out” regarding Harry Reid flirts with a call for insurrection only merely in not touching tongues. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” as Richard J. Hofstadter detailed it in 1964, then immediately applicable to The John Birch Society, reigns in conservative American politics today. It reigns within the Republican party, the Tea Party phenomenon and the Birch Society itself, which is increasingly mainstreamed on the right not only by its cosponsorship of the CPAC 2010 conference, but by the full Right’s adoption of its views. We needn’t review again all the paranoid fears and accusations directed at President Obama these past two years, as Robert Welch, JBS founder once accused (requires Google sign in) President Eisenhower:

For the sake of honesty, however, I want to confess here my own conviction that Eisenhower’s motivation is more ideological than opportunistic. Or, to put it bluntly, I personally think that he has been sympathetic to ultimate Communist aims, realistically willing to use Communist means to help them achieve their goals, knowingly accepting and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy, for all of his adult life.

How can we fail to see the parallels? We can if we are engulfed in the paranoia, for always this time is different. But it is not. The Tea Partiers and others on the Right claim they are losing their country – “I want my country back, according to the Constitution” is a famous summer 2009 town hall cry oft repeated. In that link I provided Monday to a JBS statement of beliefs and principle read into the Congressional record in 1980, we could read,

But for 30 years we have had a steady stream of governments which increasingly have regarded our laws and even our Constitution as mere pieces of paper, which should not be allowed to stand in the way of what they, in their omniscient benevolence, considered to be “for the greatest good of the greatest number.

That was, ironically, thirty years ago. The paranoid Right, which is, today, the Right, is always raising the cry of a nation lost, does not for the first time question the patriotic allegiance of the President himself. Just yesterday on the floor of the House, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas endorsed Thomas Sowell’s demented op-ed comparing Obama to Hitler, in which Sowell declared,

American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington.

Just last year Gohmert and other assembled Republicans declared

The Obama White House team is in a full-scale fascist flight-forward to ram through their Hitlerian health care “reform.” They are recklessly burning through every political asset within reach. If they succeed, they will destroy the United States.

Oh, no, wait that wasn’t Gohmert and the Pubs – that was Lyndon Larouche’s political action committee, which went on to praise another Texas congressman, Representative Sam Johnson, for calling Obama a “fascist dictator.” But no worries telling them all apart: Larouche is crazy.

The Birch Society itself is currently lashing out at Chris Matthews’ recent special broadcast on “The New Right.” (Strike up The Who.)

[T]he Matthews “documentary” turned out to be the predictable hard-left attack on virtually everyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi and Fidel Castro.

One shouldn’t be surprised at the indistinguishability in JBS eyes of Pelosi and Castro, for it makes this further case:

The villains he has lined up for his Rogues Gallery of the Right — Senator Joe McCarthy, Senator Barry Goldwater, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachman, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Alan Keyes, former Rep. Dick Armey, Tea Party activists — really just don’t look or sound that scary or crazy.

We might agree in a grand show of bipartisanship that those names do all go together, though I concede that that the glow of time and the mellow maturity of his aging do prompt me to wish to rescue Goldwater from that company. People like Ann Coulter have already resurrected McCarthy in conservative opinion, and ask Rush Limbaugh if he is uncomfortable in the company of Welch.

It really all gets kind of messy, like a mind that can no longer clearly perceive the world or coherently make judgments, a mind that cannot any longer distinguish right from far right, disgruntlement from disturbance, disagreement from danger. In the United States today, we now have one political party and one pathology. Fortunately, we just passed health care reform.

AJA

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 12:54 pm by A. Jay Adler and is filed under The Political Animal.

Back in December I posted about the death in Moscow police custody of Sergei Magnitsky. Yesterday – I presume because of my post – I was one of an undisclosed number of bloggers to receive from Magnitsky’s employer, Jamison Firestone, of the Moscow-based law firm of Firestone Duncan, the following video detailing the events of a $230 million tax theft and Magnitsky’s subsequent, fraudulent arrest, leading to his torture and death.

Firestone, a native New Yorker who has spent the past two decades in Russia helping foreign companies navigate the Russian business environment, himself chose to flee Russia in February, fearing that Russian Interior Ministry official were attempting to set him up for arrest in another tax theft and fraud scheme. Working from London, with his firm still operating in Moscow, Firestone is apparently attempting to provide for Magnitsky what most victims of official murder in largely lawless nations rarely receive, a professionally produced and orchestrated campaign to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Last month, Firestone gave a detailed interview to OpenDemocracy on the history of the case and his fight on Magnitsky’s behalf. Now there is an extensive website devoted to the case, Russian Untouchables. The website offers a trove of information, including links and copies of case evidence discussed in the video. The case appears to be heating up, as The Moscow Times reports: Pressure Mounts on Interior Ministry in Magnitsky’s Death.

The video itself is a high quality professional production – Sixty Minutes for the Internet. It is compelling viewing. As you watch, keep in mind what Bloomberg reports:

Perceived lack of law is one reason Russia has attracted less than one-fifth the investment in China and Brazil and half of what’s invested in India, its fellow members of the so-called BRIC group of emerging nations, according to three years of data compiled by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based fund- tracker EPFR Global. The nation’s economy shrank the most on record in 2009….

Russia ranked 146th in Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perception Index, tied with Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. The Berlin-based group’s Global Corruption Barometer suggests “endemic” corruption among public officials and civil servants in the country, with one-third of Russian respondents reporting paying a bribe in the past 12 months.

AJA

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 3:00 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under The Political Animal.

My intent with this series is not simply to present the greatest hits of jazz. I’m looking for video that are visually, if possible, or at least contextually, compelling too. I think you will find this one the former.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 3:00 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under A Blue Guitar.

You can make an argument for anything. You really can. Birthers. 9/11 Truthers. The world is run by the Tri-Lateral Commission or the World Wide Jewish Conspiracy. The mob killed Kennedy. Castro killed Kennedy. The CIA killed Kennedy. Every other democracy in the world is, literally, dangerously inferior to that of the United States and if we adopt any of the others’ practices – say, universal health care – death panels will soon be slipping us Soylent Green. They can’t keep a secret in Washington, but they can in Roswell, New Mexico for sixty years: aliens are among us – though we never landed on the moon. Hugo Chavez is a great democrat. (Bring it on, Oliver.) Obama is a fascist. Gaza is still occupied, even though Israel withdrew. Repressive, racist, murderous organizations are national liberation movements of self-determination. BP is a victim of presidential bullying.

All of these are, alas, just a start. And, indeed, made for all of them are lengthy, intricate arguments, densely convoluted with complex webs of factual assertion and easily obscured, unfounded premises. You couldn’t dissuade adherents if, like a careful lepidopterist, you attempted logically to pin their arguments to the board, because even then they’ll squirm for their lives. There are many reasons people get lost in the dark in the following of such arguments, and one of them is that they are inclined to believe them to begin.

Take, for instance, the BP escrow fund, for the establishment of which Obama held BP down, while Rahm Emmanuel worked over the corporate kidneys “Chicago style” and Joe Biden threw democracy out the window with the Gulf Coast bathwater. This presidential mugging, as some on the Right would have it, was the subject of one my questions yesterday. Here is another question for you.

Have you heard anyone on the Right talking up the “unitary executive” theory of the presidency since Obama came into office? Didn’t think so. Pretty amazing, no? Bush and Cheney are in office, with external threats to be met, and for the Right, externally or internally (warrantless wiretaps, evasion of habeas corpus for citizens deemed terrorists) the oval office begins to look like the privy chamber of George III. There is nothing the President can do (shades of Richard Nixon in the body of John Yoo) that isn’t legal if the President says it’s legal. With Obama in office, any exercise of Presidential authority and weight – the sheer force of political will provided added heft by the aura of the office – becomes a threat to the republic, especially if it messes with the holy of holies, big business.

The Right talks a good game of advocating for small business, and of course the laissez faire it promotes helps small businesses too, when it doesn’t nearly bring down the global economy or wreck the world, but Joe Barton didn’t apologize to any of the small business owners on the Gulf. He apologized to BP, and in the days since we have understood that this was no gaffe of the moment. Of course, it was no accident because it was a prepared statement. But we have since seen the evidence that Barton’s apology was part of a concerted campaign in the offing. From the predictable idiot twins Palin and Bachman to the more professorial intonations of Newt Gingrich (who, do not forget, is the father of the political world in which we live) comparing Obama to Hugo Chavez, there was a typical political talking point en route from the kitchen until Barton dropped the platter coming through the double doors. (Barton, you a-hole, you weren’t supposed to actually apologize to them.)

One way or another, however, the prime political allegiances of the Right are always revealed. The immediate cause here was the constant impetus to find fault with Obama, and then to pretend that our democracy was at risk from this overweening exercise of power. (And a study still waits of how the range of conservative criticisms of Obama have been a retributive rhetorical mirror of those levied against George W. Bush: not smart, not smart; master of malapropism, can’t talk without teleprompter; Texas oil money, “Chicago-style”; unqualified child of privilege, affirmative action baby – it goes on.) But the truth that emerges, like a slip of the tongue, is the fraud of conservative championing of common folk.

I won’t review here the arguments of Thomas Frank and others of how the Right managed these past three decades and more to persuade the vast majority of the nation to vote against its interests. The right likes to inveigh against collectivism. We are a nation of individuals: damn the collective! And another of my questions yesterday provided a statement of conservative principle, including that damnation, that could have been spoken at any tea party rally or even by many current Republican lawmakers. It was, instead, a 1980 statement of The Beliefs and Principles of The John Birch Society, read into the Congressional record by then representative Larry McDonald of Georgia.

The root meaning of “corporate,” from “the Latin corporatus, past participle of corporare to make into a body, from corpor-, corpus,” is to unite into one body. A corporation is a collective. Liberals have one vision of collectivity, conservatives another. Neither need diminish individuality; each can, rather, enhance it. (I own stock. I like my dividends. They are very helpful to me as an individual. So was unemployment insurance when I needed it.) But while, philosophically, the Right champions the individual, and critiques the Left for mostly abstract and theoretical concern for the common person, the Gulf disaster and the Barton brouhaha reveal, once again, a different truth.

Conservative commitment to the individual is to the dream of individual potential. That is the American dream, right? The achievement, success, and fortune all of us in the proper environment have available to us, if we have it in us. So conservatism always ends up the protector of that potential, which is to be the protector, in the present, of those with more. After all, you may one day have more, and you’ll want it protected too. Your parents may have only jobs on a Gulf shrimper and no health insurance now – but one day they could be rich, and you and they will be dammed if the long arm of greedy incompetent government is going to reach into their pockets and take a cut of that wealth before you get it. Better trust your fate to BP. And Newt Gingrich. And Joe Barton. And to an unregulated corporate universe. Because who knows, one day you too may be a corporation.

None of this is to defend Obama’s handling of the oil spill. He has done a poor job. But the best thing he has done has been the escrow account. He acted like the kind of President we all want in a difficult situation, when we aren’t blinded by ideological disposition: strong, decisive, breaking no laws, acting with the power of his office to help the people he governs as much as circumstance will allow. Immediately when possible.

In about 30-45 days, according to escrow account administrator Kenneth Feinberg, who performed the same job well and unimpeachably (contra the autopilot predictions of Gingrich) for the 9/11 victims fund, thousands of victimized individuals along the Gulf will begin receiving compensation checks for their losses. They won’t be waiting twenty years – after they have lost their businesses, their jobs, and their health – for the culmination of a finely theoretical conservative litigation process. (Now conservatives love litigation!)

There is something to be said for caring about the individual now.

AJA

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 8:26 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under The Political Animal.

The weekend is over. Back to work.

1. Would you rather ask questions or answer them? Yes, this is an all-in-one psychological profile. No need here for a Myers-Briggs. (I’m an INFJ, by the way.)
2. Do you believe that the European Union’s “rejection of Turkey, a hugely bad move, has been a key factor prompting Turkey to move closer to Iran and the Arab world” as Thomas Friedman said, or do you think events demonstrate that the E.U is fortunate to have done so?
3. Can you articulate a coherent political philosophy that does not fear the powers given the presidency by the Patriot Act, or state-administered torture, but claims that the $20 billion fund that President Obama persuaded BP to set aside for Gulf spill claims is a threat to our political system?
4. Do you agree with “Sir Brian Burridge, former British Air Chief Marshal in Iraq” that Predator drones produce “‘a virtueless war,’ requiring neither courage nor heroism”? Do you think we should stop using them and commit the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in order to retain such virtue? (Yes, two questions grouped in the same number count as one. My rules.)
5. Is it so that

Things are always terrible

for some people. The question

is the ratio of the palpable hurt

to the general session

of life in an era (?)

Do you know the ratio?

6. Did you know that yesterday Israeli President Shimon Peres said,

We did not understand then, nor do we understand now, why after evacuating Gaza, the rulers of Gaza started to fire thousands of missiles against civilian life in Israel. For what reason? For what purpose? The question remains unanswered today. Would Gaza agree to peace, to negotiations instead? Would Gaza leaders denounce terror, stop the building of tunnels and shooting missiles, stop attempting to kidnap Israeli soldiers and release Gilad Shalit who was abducted on Israeli territory, there would be no need for any sort of closure or blockade (?)

7. Did you know that yesterday Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar said,

the PA’s security apparatus should free our hands. In order to liberate Jerusalem and the West Bank, rockets must be fired from the West Bank. Why should this fire come only from the Strip?

8. Do you think the answer of Faisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam seeking to build a commemorative Islamic center near Ground Zero, when asked if he agreed with the State Department’s assessment of Hamas as a terrorist organization,

Look, I’m not a politician. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question

is an acceptable answer?

9. Which Republican lawmaker or Tea Partier do you think said the following:

We believe that for any people eternal vigilance is the price of liberty far more as against the insidious encroachment of internal tyranny than against the danger of subjugation from the outside or from the prospect of any sharp and decisive revolution. In a republic we must constantly seek to elect and to keep in power a government we can trust, manned by people we can trust, maintaining a currency we can trust, and working for purposes we can trust (none of which we have today). We think it is even more important for the government to obey the laws than for the people to do so. But for 30 years we have had a steady stream of governments which increasingly have regarded our laws and even our Constitution as mere pieces of paper, which should not be allowed to stand in the way of what they, in their omniscient benevolence, considered to be “for the greatest good of the greatest number.” (Or in their power-seeking plans pretended so to believe.) We want a restoration of a “government of laws, and not of men” in this country; and if a few impeachments are necessary to bring that about, then we are all for the impeachments (?)

10. Do you believe “it’s all good,” or that everything we know about love is true except for when it’s not? (Two questions joined by a disjunctive conjunction count as one. Reason: my rules.)

AJA

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 3:00 am by A. Jay Adler and is filed under The Political Animal.