If only the Jews still controlled Hollywood.In the late 60s/early 70s you could get a movie made starring Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, James Caan, Elliott Gould, George Segal, George Burns, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Walter Matthau, Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, Richard Dreyfuss, Dustin Hoffman, Mel Brooks, Barbara Hershey, Henry Winkler, Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Robby Benson, Alan Arkin, Dyan Cannon, Barry Newman, Jerry Lewis, Peter Falk, Harvey Keitel, Laurence Harvey, Charles Grodin, Gene Wilder, Elaine May, Jill Clayburgh, Ali MacGraw, Joan Collins, Anthony Newley, Goldie Hawn, Marty Feldman — and Topol.
Today?Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Sasha Baron Cohen, Shia LaBeouf, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Connelly, Sean Penn — and at least three of them are the progeny of older Hollywood.Notice the slight drop-off in quantity and quality?Screenwriters and directors and composers and studio executives — same story.
On a one-week visit to New York in the early 70s when my father had an exhibition there, I went to see The Exorcist (Friedkin), Serpico (Lumet), Papillon (Schaffner), with Dustin Hoffman, Mean Streets, with Harvey Keitel, The Getaway, a Foster-Brower production, Westworld, with Brynner and Benjamin, and Woody Allen’s Sleeper.
I don’t get it. She clearly is far more beautiful in the ‘before’ shot. Who are the advertisers trying to appeal to with such a plastic-face makeover? Robots?
‘In general cinema, violence is the biggest attraction. I’m a big fan of action and violence in cinema. That’s why Thomas Edison created the motion picture camera — because violence is so good.”
This is somebody who has seen little real-life violence.
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Every American should be proud of the President. I don’t mean just President Obama but any President. The office of the Executive is a powerful position held by a person that every 4 years the American citizens pick in peace. It is virtually singular compared to almost any country in the world.
But to hold such a high office is not to be without critical observation. That critique is also something that is not unique to our current President. But there are those that have taken this pride to a place where it;s just embarrassing. Case in point Chris Matthews.
As one of the key voices on MSNBC, Chris Matthews leads that cable network in its cheerleading for the President. They have long been so ardent in their support as to seem less like a news organization and more like a campaign office. Which is a dire result for an organization whose purpose is to be a watchdog for the public and a voice of reason to the actions of the Government.
Any thought of Chris Matthewsa being an impartial and unbiased voice went out the window as he imfamously stated
“I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”
From that point on, Matthews became the lap dog of the President and the Democrat Party. A dangerous position for someone that talks to the American public nightly.
Even so, I can understand the passion behind his blinders on mentality. He is adamant in his belief, like many still today, that President Obama will end “politics of the past” and live up to the expectations that garnered him a Nobel Peace Prize. Such blind devotion in one person is never a good thing when that person is a leader of Government. Especially when Matthews views his job as
“I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new Presidency work.
Yeah, that’s my job. My job is to help this country.”
Obviously GE and MSNBC agree as they continue to employ Chris Matthews. Thus I conclude they see their job as promoting President Obama and Democrats over any degree of responsibility to the American public.
Matthews gave America a taste of what such singular views mean when he commented on the cadets at West Point that observed President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. Matthews said
Chris Matthews saw resentment? He saw a lack of warmth? And the only answer must be because West Point is the enemy camp against President Obama?
How about seeing the cadets as a well-disciplined group of young Americans. Maybe the cadets were intent on listening for when thier future Commander-and-Chief would mention the word victory in his passionless speech about the war in Afghanistan. Perhaps those in the audience were waiting for an explaination on why this middle of the road discourse on how President Obama plans to retreat too 4 months to be reached while fellow soldiers died and President Obama toured the world.
How dare Chris Matthews insult the American forces, that have volunteered to stand for this nation no matter what political party is currently in charge. I want to add that the cadets and soldiers have such a love of America that they have volunteered to die for this nation, something that Matthews never had the courage or conviction to do himself.
But this is the depths of what the blind devotion to the policies of Democrats and President Obama breeds. An ideology that looks at any form of criticism, or even lack of outright praise and celebration, to the views of President Obama as racist, narrow-minded, and anti-American. Such thoughts are worse than an opposing opinion, they are a plague.
Americans have always have varying views on every President. Political debate has always been a key part of the freedoms that we enjoy as a nation. And the combination of these 2 elements have helped to lead our nation to become the envy of the entire world.
Somehow that is not good enough for Chris Matthews. He would rather attack our troops than question Osama Bin Laden and those that would follow him. He would accept on faith the words of a politician, powerful as that politician might me, rather than have critical analysis. And he would rather censure, marginalize, and discredit ANYONE that does not meet up to his standard of devotion to his choice of leadership. I haven’t seen such misguided beliefs since I was in Da Trud in Moscow.
I think Chris Matthews should take a moment to remember that it is the troops, in Afghanistan and West Point as well as across the world, that have enabled him to have the freedom to spout his bile on national television. Without them and their sacrifices he would only be able to parrot what he was told to say – even is he didn’t agree with it. Nor would he be able to live the lifestyle he has chosen to live. Nor would his children.
I understand that providing commentary on issues that are passionate points of debate can be difficult at times. I understand how it feels to see people not share your view and to come under fire for what you believe. I too am a member of the press and work in the media, so it is not foreign to me. But none of that is an excuse to forgo respect and/or to attack those whose blood literally guarantees our freedom.
Were I a viewer of MSNBC and/or Chris Matthews I would no longer be. But I have long ago lost any belief that either is a credible source for non-partisan information. This is just a wake-up call for those relative few that still watch. Chris Matthews does not care what is being said, so long as it matches what he blieves. Thus he is a great ultra-far left spokesperson and nothing else.
I suggest to my readers that they avoid MSNBC if they ever do view it. In addition I would suggest avoiding CNBC, NBC, and the rest of the programming under the unbrella that GE controls. Fruit of a poisoned tree is still deadly no matter what branch you pluck it from.
I would also suggest that EVERYONE send GE and MSNBC an email stating that their employing a politcal zombie who so hates debate and discussion that he would insult the very institutions that allow America to be free is the cause of your lost patronage.
An incredibly effective piece of advertising art, for beer, that has promoted the brand through hundreds of newspaper stories, thousands of blogs and hundreds of thousand online comments and tweets. The ad hasn’t run anywhere, and nor has Disney yet filed any legal action against the ad creators, if any copyright has actually been violated.
It’s a fair and free media exchange. Online news media get to run the image for free, in exchange for mentioning the brand and ad agency behind ‘the controversy’ in ‘the story’.
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A letter arrives at Salon from a concerned uncle, worried that his nephew is being seduced into a life of crippling fear and disabling paranoia by paying too much attention to Alex Jones.
The situation and concerns described in the letter may well be true, and some of the advice offered in return is good and solid : get your nephew away from the computer and take him camping in the wild for a week. But plenty about this letter doesn’t ring true.
The uncle claims to know a great deal about what his nephew is up to, and what be believes, what he thinks, the machinations of his nephew’s daily family life, even though the uncle admits he only has contact with his nephew a few times a year at family gatherings.
The letter, simply, reads Fake. I’m not saying it is fake, but that’s how it reads to me.
I have a 17-year-old nephew who is a smart kid but a very poor student.
We used to have in-depth historical and political conversations (I have a B.A. in global history and a J.D., speak several languages, and have lived in many parts of the world), but I got married a couple of years ago and subsequently moved to a nearby state, and our interactions became limited to family functions a few times a year.
Over the last few months, he’s gotten sucked into the Internet conspiracy black hole created by some guy named Alex Jones.
Jones does an Internet video broadcast alleging all sorts of conspiracies. It’s the same litany of shadowy cabals manipulating governments, businesses, etc., that have existed for centuries.
What bothers me is the quasi-religious zeal with which he embraces this mix of paranoid half-truths and apocalyptic fantasies. He smugly asserts that any criticism of this Jones is a product of the nefarious dark forces out to discredit the only man intelligent enough and courageous enough to tell the truth.
As far as I can find out, Jones is in many ways like the more public purveyor of this nonsense, Glenn Beck, that is, simply some deejay with a high school degree and not much else.
I kind of get the feeling that my nephew’s reaction is what 17-year-old young men in 1930s Germany felt like when told that they were in fact part of a master race being manipulated by the international Jewish conspiracy.
What can I do, if anything, to rescue my nephew from getting sucked down this black hole?
He was spouting stuff about “the Hegelian dialectic” and “neo-Malthusians,” which he gleaned from the broadcasts. He was surprised when I walked across the room to my bookshelf and pulled down my college-annotated versions of both Hegel and Malthus.
But I don’t know that if I spend the time to factually debunk Jones’ nonsense point by point that it will break through the “faith” aspect of my nephew’s fascination.
Please let me know what I can do to help guide my nephew away from this cultish fear-monger.
Thanks. Buck
So why is a man who is clearly intelligent, informed and educated (“a B.A. in global history and a J.D., speak several languages”) writing to an online magazine to seek a solution for something he clearly believes is dangerous to his nephew, who’s welfare he claims to be seriously concerned about?
‘Buck” writes : “But I don’t know that if I spend the time to factually debunk Jones’ nonsense point by point that it will break through the “faith” aspect of my nephew’s fascination.”
If he’s so concerned, in this age of instant information exchange (even from another state), why doesn’t he just find the time to do some point-by-point debunking? His nephew, with whom the uncle says he once spent a great deal of time, would probably appreciate the attention, and the arguments and debate.
Here’s a checklist of all the impact words and phrases ‘Buck’ managed to squeeze into his short letter :
“very poor student”
“conspiracy black hole”
“religious zeal”
“nefarious dark forces”
“paranoid half-truths”
“apocalyptic fantasies”
“master race”
“international Jewish conspiracy”
“this black hole”
“cultish fear monger”
All the classics are included.
I wonder if there are a whole bunch of Letters From A Concerned Relative, featuring those same impact words and phrases, entwining the names ‘Alex Jones’ and ‘Glenn Beck’, now arriving in the e-mail boxes of online news media editors and advice columnists?
Nah. I’ve probably just been listening to too much Alex Jones.
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I’ll keep the birthday postings to a minimum, but it’s hard to go past paying a birthday tribute to the brilliant animator Chuck Jones, not in words, but through his own art. For those under 20 who may never have encountered the art of Chuck Jones, this is one of his most accomplished, hilarious and demented works – Daffy Duck in the 1953 short Duck Amuck.
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Today is HG Wells’ birthday. More than 110 years ago, while still in his 20s, Wells wrote still famous and very readable books about planetary invasion by extraterrestrials (The War Of The Worlds), time travel (The Time Machine) and human cloning and genetic engineering (The Island Of Dr Moreau).
Google pays homage :
Almost everything HG Wells wrote during his extremely prolific lifetime is now available to read online for free. As it should be. While Wells is mostly know today for his science fiction (or as it was wonderfully known in his day, ’scientific romance’), he was also an extremely important essayist, and polemicist, and a remarkable historian.
The world before 1900 seemed to be drifting steadily towards a tacit but practical unification. One could travel without a passport over the larger part of Europe; the Postal Union delivered one’s letters uncensored and safely from Chile to China; money, based essentially on gold, fluctuated only very slightly; and the sprawling British Empire still maintained a tradition of free trade, equal treatment and open-handedness to all comers round and about the planet. In the United States you could go for days and never see a military uniform. Compared with to-day that was, upon the surface at any rate, an age of easy-going safety and good humour. Particularly for the North Americans and the Europeans.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
…the minds of our comfortable and influential ruling-class people refuse to accept the plain intimation that their time is over, that the Balance of Power and uncontrolled business methods cannot continue….
…..we are living in the end of a definite period of history, the period of the sovereign states. As we used to say in the eighties with ever-increasing truth: “We are in an age of transition”. Now we get some measure of the acuteness of the transition. It is a phase of human life which may lead, as I am trying to show, either to a new way of living for our species or else to a longer or briefer dégringolade of violence, misery, destruction, death and the extinction of mankind.
These are not rhetorical phrases I am using here; I mean exactly what I say, the disastrous extinction of mankind. That is the issue before us.
As I write, in the moment, thousands of people are being killed, wounded, hunted, tormented, ill-treated, delivered up to the most intolerable and hopeless anxiety and destroyed morally and mentally, and there is nothing in sight at present to arrest this spreading process and prevent its reaching you and yours. It is coming for you and yours now at a great pace.
Plainly in so far as we are rational foreseeing creatures there is nothing for any of us now but to make this world peace problem the ruling interest and direction of our lives. If we run away from it it will pursue and get us. We have to face it. We have to solve it or be destroyed by it.
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