Meet Depressed

My reaction to the announcement that David Gregory would be the new host of NBC's flagship Sunday morning political hour, Meet the Press, was not unlike my response to the news that he would be replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews for MSNBC's primetime election coverage earlier this year. In short: ugh. It's not that I think an obvious partisan like Olbermann or an aggressive commentator like Matthews should be anchoring straight news, but Gregory's brand of milquetoast reporting is only slightly more incisive and compelling than the giggly, vanilla style of coverage doled out by Anderson Cooper every night on CNN.

Worse, though, is the fact that Gregory is a total toady: He was one of the loudest defenders of the mainstream media in the face of criticism that the White House Press Corps didn't do enough to challenge the Bush administration in the lead-up to the Iraq War, making him an ideal replacement for the late Tim Russert, who, shortly after 9/11, asked a guest (whose identity escapes me now) what he or she thought about the "theory" that United States foreign policy was the impetus behind the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. And as Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out in his latest column, Gregory's handling of an interview with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini yesterday in the wake of that country's controversial military assault on the Gaza Strip was an insult to objective journalism; no less than three questions in a row seemed like poorly disguised attempts at persuading Livini that Israel should overthrow Hamas. He stopped just short of daring her: "Come on. You know you want to."

Gregory's interview with Livini is not unlike his Q&A with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last summer regarding the Russia-Georgia conflict in which he seemed shocked to discover that Rice warned Georgia, "a close U.S. ally," not to provoke its neighbor. Like most of the American media, Gregory had clearly already made up his mind that Russia was the instigator without even bothering to explore the other side. During Scooter Libby's perjury trial last year, it was revealed that Dick Cheney's office believed that Russert's Meet the Press was an optimal format for the Vice President because he could "control the message"; with Gregory, Dick doesn't even need to make the trip because Gregory will spread the message for him.

Obama's New Preacher Problem

Barack Obama—and America—has a preacher problem. First, of course, was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, preaching from the pulpit with an almost gleeful hatred that, even if you empathized with the man and recognized the sources of his profound frustration and anger, felt alienating and counterproductive to the post-racial agenda Obama had so eloquently and sensitively put forward. Another preacher, evangelical pastor Rick Warren, is a man who, after inviting Obama to his church earlier this year for a nationally televised Q&A in a supposed effort to find common ground and then ambushing him with "gotcha" culture-war questions, compared abortion to genocide and Obama to a Holocaust denier. "Oh, I do," was the leader of Saddleback mega-church's hearty response when asked by The Wall Street Journal if he equates gay marriage with polygamy, incest, and pedophilia.

To hear some pundits' dismissive reactions to the outrage of Obama supporters in the hours following the announcement that Warren would be giving the inaugural invocation on January 20th, you'd think that the President-elect had invited Teddy Ruxpin to do it. Gay activists are apparently overreacting. They are evidently "looking for a fight" following the passage of Proposition 8 in California last month. In a video supporting the referendum, Warren said: "We should not let two percent of the population determine to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not even just a Christian issue, it's a humanitarian and human issue." And he was right. Civil rights is a "humanitarian" issue, the term being broadly defined as "having concern for or helping to improve the welfare and happiness of people."

The ins and outs of gay rights, though, are irrelevant here. What matters is that the next president of the United States just invited a bigot to launch his administration…right? Or maybe it's the fact that this next president of the United States has done it. Reverend Franklin Graham—who refused to take part in Sudanese peace negotiations in 1994, called Islam "a very evil and a very wicked religion" and condoned the use of WMD to destroy it, and, of course, declared that AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality—presided over George W. Bush's inauguration eight years ago. No shocker there. And had John McCain been elected, he undoubtedly would have been sworn in alongside "agents of intolerance" like John Hagee and Jerry Falwell. Hypocrisy is the name of the game in American politics. But compared to these folks, Warren is something like a cuddly, animatronic teddy bear.

In response to the controversy, Obama reminded us that he has consistently been "a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans," and that the invitation to Warren was an effort to be inclusive. These are the actions of a man who intends to govern as he campaigned, to lead as he orated. Unlike Bush's acquisition of the presidency, Obama's was not simply a power-grab: Rather than spend political capital far greater than Bush ever earned, and rather than exploit the so-called mandate of 53% (essentially a landslide in modern American presidential politics), he is living up to his promise. That is, perhaps, a political move in and of itself, since attaining power means nothing without maintaining it, but inclusiveness is what is going to make Obama a great president, and a stark contrast to Bush.

This issue has magnified something that has irked me about the Democratic Party for a long time. The right never panders to the left, but the left panders to the right almost pathologically. Is it simply proof that the nation is indeed "center-right," as many conservatives would have us believe? Or is it something deeper and more profound within in the collective psyches of Democrats? An attorney friend of mine was told by her superiors recently that she had a character flaw, that she was "too nice," and that if she were a man it would be okay. Perhaps the Democratic Party is afflicted with this same intrinsic flaw—one that makes them more gracious, inclusive, and willing to compromise. Yes, Obama is a bigger, and better, person than Bush. And yes, the country desperately needs a change from the divisive, strict partisanship of the last eight years. But in the twilight of those years, it isn't difficult to see why many Democrats wouldn't be so willing to extend the same invitation of camaraderie that was denied them since 2001.

If Obama's objective is inclusiveness, whom exactly is he going out of his way to include—or exclude, for that matter? So eager to heal the rifts and avoid the mistakes of Bush and even Bill Clinton (during the Human Rights Campaign Forum earlier this year, panel member Melissa Etheridge told presidential nominee Hillary Clinton that the gay community had been heartbroken by her husband's compromise on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and his official endorsement of the Defense of Marriage Act), Obama risks marginalizing his party's victory by aligning himself with the very people who seek to undo what they stand for.

The argument is, then, that in the interest of complete inclusiveness, perhaps Obama should invite a Klansman or an anti-Semite to his inauguration as well. They are, of course, part of America. But if Warren had made derogatory statements about blacks or Jews, he would be removed post haste and likely drummed out of public life entirely—which, it seems, would be the ultimate punishment for a man who simply glows in the national spotlight. Or if, per chance, Warren expressed actual anger from the pulpit, Obama would have thrown him under the bus months ago. The sad reality is that, in 2008, it's still okay to openly bash gays with little consequence.

If the past two years have taught us nothing else, it's that symbolism matters, but it's ultimately policy that will create real change. There is plenty of time to dialogue with people who have opposing ideologies, but how sad that the very first words spoken at this landmark moment for civil rights, and the first words that will officially usher in the first black president's tenure, will not come from Reverend Joseph Lowery, who has devoted his life to civil rights and who will preside over the ceremony's benediction, but from the mouth of a bigot. Warren is supposedly the kinder, gentler face of Christian fundamentalism in the 21st century, but he recites hate speech like a stuffed bear that's got a cassette tape stuck in its back.

Truth and Reconciliation

Six months ago, Slate compiled a Venn-diagram of presidential offenses that laid out and color-coded the crimes for which members of the Bush administration could potentially be prosecuted. As an exercise in wishful thinking, the diagram had John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales hitting the criminal jackpot, racking up charges of clandestine wiretapping, illegal Justice Department hiring and firings, involvement in the CIA tapes scandal, and condoning coercive interrogation. On the lesser end of things, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice all kept their hands relatively clean, sanctioning only coercive interrogation, or as those of us unversed in Newspeak like to call it, torture. Looking at the diagram, the administration's ability to normalize the scope of their crimes comes off as nothing short of incredible. While the call to prosecute Bush often seems like a pipe dream promoted in liberal college towns and on blue-state car bumpers, as Scott Horton observed in his December 2008 Harper's cover story, "this administration did more than commit crimes. It waged war against the law itself."

Last Friday, I was woken by an early morning call from my mother in D.C. vaguely instructing me to read the lead story of the day's newspaper. I pulled up the Times's website only to find articles about the newly uncovered Ponzi scandal splashed across the front page—not, I assumed, what she had called about. A visit to the Washington Post's site clarified matters. On the front page of the December 12th Post I found the article that had been quietly relegated to page A14 of the Times's print edition: "Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Top Bush Officials." According to a report released by the Senate Armed Service Committee, a bipartisan panel of senators headed by none other than John McCain, top Bush officials had been found directly responsible for the illegal treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay: a flat rejection of the administration's contention that "a few bad apples" had spoiled the bunch. "The report," its authors wrote, "is the most direct refutation to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation tactics—that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be true."

So why was a report of this magnitude, a publicly damning statement issued by a congressional panel and a potential cornerstone for legal action against the administration, generally overlooked in the media? In light of the recent outcry imploring Barack Obama to close Guantanamo before he even sets foot in the Oval Office, why dismiss one of the first real steps in this direction? Perhaps it's political neurasthenia or an unwillingness to entertain the possibility of change with Bush still in office, but as we approach the end of one of the most disastrous political tenures in American history, it seems like the best way to prepare for a brighter political future is to realign ourselves with the values that have been lost.

On December 15th, three days after the report was released, ABC's Jonathan Karl was granted an exclusive interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney, who is fully aware that a month from now he will have to take Henry Kissinger-like precautions whenever he goes on foreign vacations. After a brief discussion about the threat of terrorism, the interview turned to Cheney's opinions about the extent and use of torture:

Karl: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? [Mohammed, considered one of the Agency's "toughest" prisoners, was subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, which included sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, forced standing, and most famously, waterboarding.]

Cheney: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

Karl: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?

Cheney: I don't.

To raise the same question that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann posed the following night to George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, "As overly dramatic as this question will sound, did Dick Cheney just confess to a war crime?"



As Slate, the Washington Post, and Turley make explicitly clear, the actions of this administration have surpassed the realm of defense and entered into that of criminality, raising the kinds of human rights issues associated with the so-called "rogue regimes" that have been so fiercely targeted over the past eight years. But what now? How to begin the process of dealing with the normalized crime of the Bush era? The first thing to do is to call the media to task—Cheney's comment was largely overshadowed in the press by more trivial matters. When the second-in-command of the most powerful country in the world speaks flippantly about committing war crimes, everybody should be paying attention. Beyond this, Horton has proposed the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission—a hydra-headed executive/legislative committee designed to hold the administration accountable to the law that they've worked so effectively to dismantle. While Horton dismisses the possibility of holding trials in an international criminal court, a commission would at least be a symbolic gesture—an on-the-record repudiation of this government's criminal actions.

Here Is Your Goodbye Kiss, Dog

We're pretty sure throwing shoes is "a deep insult" and "a traditional sign of disrespect and contempt" in the United States too:

Australia, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Doubt, & More!

Australia (Baz Luhrmann). For about a minute or so, Australia promises to be some psychedelic version of The New World, but emotion is quickly subsumed by Baz Luhrmann's effusive style. The Wizard of Oz is referenced throughout, sometimes charmingly, but it's Gone with the Wind that Luhrmann's most interested in, grossly amplifying the 1939 classic's worst tendencies (and little of what makes it special): Luhrmann desperately announces his conviction to the displacement of half-white, half-aboriginal children, but his way of celebrating the spirituality of Australia's aboriginal people is by depicting them as, you know, magical negroes. And the horseshit doesn't end there. Maybe Luhrmann was pooped by the time he filmed Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman's reunion, but the way he botches their sightlines is just one example of how uncommitted he is to making their stone-cold romance seem credible. Are we supposed to think their affections for one another is rooted in anything deeper than that really gross harlequin-romance shot of Jackman flashing Kidman his pubes?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher). Last year it felt as if I was the only person in the world that disliked Zodiac, and now I feel like the only person in the world—at least in my critical circle—willing to rally behind the flawed but enthralling The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I will never be a fan of Cate Blanchett's obnoxiously fussy, vacuous acting style, which Tilda Swinton immaculately shows up in five minute's worth of screen time (even in silhouette, inside a sexily claustrophobic elevator, you marvel at the way this great actress sends her character's every doubt and desire rippling across her entire bodacious bod), so the film's framing device—Blanchett coughing up a storm in old-age makeup while dying in a New Orleans hospital—is quite the endurance test. Bad habits abound, not least of which are the much-noted Gumpian ones, from the New Orleans setting that exists for no reason than to permit a shameless Katrina reference, to the trite lumping of Benjamin Button in with the city's old, crippled, and non-white citizens (they're all outsiders, get it?), but I was dazzled by Fincher's prismatic images, each and every one a profound (at least in terms of deep focus) consideration of how time is of the essence to his characters. Brad Pitt and Blanchett aren't playing humans so much as gears in a timeline slowly inching toward each other, poised to meet once and never again, so praise for their work is perplexing. Is it poignant? Not exactly, but does it have to be? Fincher understands the way the old are taken for granted, seeing Benjamin's long, more curious trajectory from life to death as no more, no less of an American reality or tragedy.

Doubt (John Patrick Shanley). People tell me this material worked on stage, but if John Patrick Shanley's metaphors and themes were flung at Broadway audiences as hard and fatuously as they are here, I ain't buying it. For about 30 minutes, we're subjected to bippity-boppity-booing images of people just getting ready to do shit (like eating and writing and kneeling) before the stage begins to be set for Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman's epic screaming match. I like how Streep localizes her character's rage (and possibly her resentment for having lived a life beneath a nun's habit) entirely in the face and eyes, but the whole time I felt as if I were trapped inside an elevator (even when Shanley hilariously opens out the material to the projects near the school where the story takes place) with every member of the National Board of Review.

Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard). Yes, this is Ron Howard's best film since Parenthood, but it still blows. It smugly rewrites history to flatter its liberal audience, who can project their disdain for George W. Bush onto the pugilistic back-and-forth between Michael Sheen's David Frost and Frank Langella's Richard Nixon. You never feel as if you're watching a thoughtful consideration of political comeuppance because Frost's desire to hang Nixon out to dry isn't informed by any sense of moral duty, only a selfish interest to be seen as something more than just a bobble-headed celebrity interviewer. Essentially, Cinderella Man II.

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood). Fifty years from now, when Eastwood's talents will be respected as highly as John Ford's, we may recognize Gran Torino as the Man with No Name's version of The Searchers (please, try to tune out those easy comparisons everyone's making to True Grit). In short, Eastwood applies some interesting formalist strategies (he uses light to perpetually convey the feeling that his character has absolutely nowhere to go but up) to material that's pitched at the broad level of an '80s culture-clash comedy, and if the result isn't a masterpiece, the artistic friction on display here is delirious to behold. This is a less funereal, more self-conscious vision than the schizophrenic style Eastwood brought to Changeling, and it's one that pushes a poignant message about redemption and living for someone other than oneself.

The Reader (Stephen Daldry). Obviously made with Oscar—and only Oscar—in mind, The Reader is chockablock with some of the most absurd "prestige" moments I've ever seen in a motion picture. (I still don't know what to make of the dubious way Daldry's camera lingers on the wealth accrued by the Holocaust survivor played by Lena Olin, almost as if her passing judgment on the woman's attainment, only moments after pondering the impoverished death of one of her betrayers.) In reality—which is to say, something the film doesn't care to convey—the extraneous noises of the world dissipate when a person in love ponders their object of affection; here, though, a young German boy sits down to dinner with his family shortly after fucking the former Nazi guard played by Kate Winslet and the clatter of the silverware around him is grossly exaggerated in homage to the boy's pelvic thrust, making me wonder if Winslet really popped his cherry or turned him into a vampire.

Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes). Poor Kate Winslet, wasted in another trite evocation of suburban soul-suck. She's good in this, especially during her many smackdowns with an uneven Leonardo DiCaprio, but it's sad watching her earthy acting mode rub up against Sam Mendes's high-falutin' style, which consists almost entirely of slowly zooming into and out of people and their Eames furniture. Oscar soothsayers have decided Winslet is overdue for an Oscar, and they're so insistent on justice that you have to wonder if anyone is going to call out the shamelessness with which the movie works to obscure the actress's gifts, especially during its histrionically framed climax. I know the always-good Michael Shannon is getting mad props from the film's many naysayers, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of variance between his smugly characterized role—a former math whiz who seems to have traveled from the present into the past just to show how superior he is to everyone around him—and the last five or six loony tunes he's played on screen.

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle). This is no masterpiece, but I feel no shame in saying it may end up being my favorite Best Picture nominee. Anil Kapoor's performance is the pits, and the ending is a slog because it doesn't feel inspired by the type of melodrama I've ever seen in a Bollywood film, but you watch Danny Boyle's tricked-up version of Los Olvidados knowing that it wasn't made to win awards, only to elate. He soulfully expresses the significance of pop to an underprivileged people, most memorably in that early scene of young Jamal not wanting to get any of the shit coating his body on the picture of the movie star he wishes to have autographed, and dares to recognize a certain nobility in poverty people with money (or fans of Frozen River and The Visitor) don't seem to think exists.

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky). Agreeably small and scummy, just like Mickey Rourke's performance, and an obvious step up for Darren Aronofsky after The Fountain, but awfully conventional in a very calculatingly retro way. (Wendy and Lucy's vision of destitution feels more genuine to me, even if Kelly Reichardt has an annoying habit of downplaying emotion.) The problem here in a nutshell: Aronofsky wanted to make a '70s movie, but instead of looking back to Hal Ashby, Bob Rafelson, or Martin Ritt for inspiration, he takes a page from the John G. Avildsen more schematic playbook. Completely unrelated: Is it just me or are the same gay-rights activists giving Milk a free pass in the wake of Proposition 8 strangely mum on Rourke's recent "fag" comment, or are all bets off because the target of his disdain was Perez Hilton? Just saying.