…allow me to submit the following piece about an ad campaign for…

…Wrangler jeans.

Money quote:

This is a despicable campaign. It fetishizes murder and violence against women. To sell blue jeans. The people making the ads should be ashamed, though Copyranter doubts they are.

That’s right; Jeff Fecke is right about something.

What an incredibly creepy ad campaign.

To bring the universe back into alignment; I suspect he’s dismally wrong about American Carol.  But I’ll let you know when I come back from the premiere.

More later.

Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn is dead at 89.

Through unflinching accounts of the eight years he spent in the Soviet Gulag, Solzhenitsyn’s novels and non-fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person’s courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

Along with Paul Johnson, Fyodor Dostoyevskii and P.J. O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn was one of the authors that paved the way to my becoming a libertarian-conservative, 25 years ago.

Beginning with the 1962 short novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn (sohl-zheh-NEETS’-ihn) devoted himself to describing what he called the human “meat grinder” that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.

His “Gulag Archipelago” trilogy of the 1970s shocked readers by describing the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe.

But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person — Solzhenitsyn himself — survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice.

Sheila O’Malley:

Shaking my head. Strange. How it feels like a personal loss.

The world was a better place, a more honorable place, a place where bravery was possible, and where truth was always louder than lies … because he was in it.

Jay Reding:

His influence helped foster in the end of the Soviet empire and the dawn of a new age of freedom. His willingness to speak out against the evils of the Soviet system helped forge the moral case against Communism. 

Read Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag. Great stories, great lessons – and history that mankind will forget only at its immense peril.

UPDATE:  One thing that’s important to remember about Solzhenitzyn; he was Russian, first and foremost.

While The Gulag was a key motivator that helped bring down the USSR, Solzhenitzyn also endorsed the authoritarian Putin, and supported many of the former KGB officer’s crackdowns and power-grabs.  This is not out of character with the “Russian personality”, of course; in a land that’s been a kick-toy for invaders for millenia, security trumps “liberty” in the traditional western sense, and Solzhenitzyn embodies this trait.

…that Rush Limbaugh’s nationally-syndicated radio program debuted.

To me, in 1988, it wasn’t a good thing; Limbaugh (and the contemporaneous euthanasia of the “Fairness” Doctrine) not only changed the content and tenor of talk radio (and saved the AM band in the process) but changed the business model as well. Up until 1988, talk radio was an expensive format; instead of hiring a couple of disc jockeys and sitting them down with a stack of records (on tape cartridge, in those days), you had to hire people who could talk about whatever the subject was, and put ’em in a studio; the audience before Limbaugh, lulled by the enforced mediocrity of “Fairness”-doctrine-era radio, was either smallish or, in the case of middle-of-the-road talk giants like WCCO, interested mainly in farm markets, temperatures and scores. And to staff those shows, smaller talk stations had to hire someone; sometimes, it was a 25 year old kid who’d had a graveyard shift show in Saint Paul who’d come to Santa Rosa or Columbus or New Bedford and work mid-days or evenings for $20,000 a year.

But Limbaugh changed that. His program was free; it cost the stations nothing. Limbaugh paid his salary, his tiny staff, the uplink fees, and covered it with advertising. Suddenly, stations had access to a big-budget, major-market air talent, and he was not only free, but his controversial, entertaining, funny program brought in gargantuan ratings. Which, for a smaller station, literally meant money for nothing.

Which didn’t do a lot of good for the career prospects of that 25 year old kid from Saint Paul. But it did turn talk radio into something nobody had dreamed about before then.

Any station could now be a talk station – which, for AM stations, was the life ring they n eeded. When I worked in radio in the eighties, there was serious talk about decommissioning the entire AM band; when I worked at KSTP-AM, it was the poor cousin of the Hubbard Broadcasting machine (including Channel 5 and KS95). The station was on the block, for a ludicrous price, and couldn’t get a taker.

Suddenly, Limbaugh made these underpowered, undervalued stations into money machines; hundreds of AM stations that had been ekeing out a terrible income playing country or oldies or polkas started carrying Limbaugh, sometimes several times a day via tape delay. And the money poured in – to the stations and to Limbaugh. When I went back to KSTP for my one-night fill-in gig for Bob Davis, I talked with my old friend, the late Joe Hansen, who was producing Jason Lewis at the time. The station, the former poor cousin, was “carrying the rest of Hubbard”, said Hansen.

A month or so ago, Zev Chafets did perhaps the essential profile on Limbaugh, in the NYTimes Magazine.

At 57, he is an American icon, although his fans and critics don’t agree on precisely what he is iconic for. I’ve heard him compared to Mark Twain and Jackie Gleason, the Founding Fathers and Father Coughlin. Serious people have called him a serial liar and a moral philosopher, a partisan hack and a public intellectual, nothing more than a radio windbag and nothing less than the heart of the Republican Party.

One thing is certain: Limbaugh has been a partisan force for two decades. In 1994, he was so influential in the Republican Congressional landslide that the grateful winners made him an honorary member of the G.O.P. freshman class. He moved not only voters, but the party itself. “Rush talked about the ‘Contract With America’ before there was a ‘Contract With America,’ ” Karl Rove told me. “He helped set the agenda.”

What Rush was was a voice to people who’d not had one; the masses of Middle Americans who consumed American media culture, but really weren’t part of it. TV, newspapers, NPR and traditional talk radio, all of them based on the coast, driven by the dominant, Northeastern culture, had very little to do with the lives of most of Middle America, and cared even less.

And then, along came Limbaugh. He gave that huge mass of people something that resonated.

“Yeah”, say the detractors, “racist sexist lies!”

Well, no. He gave them a voice in New York, who didn’t so much shout back at the lumpen masses of the media establishment, but cut their knees out from under them with humor, biting satire, and something that they just weren’t used to; articulate opposition.

His success has vexed his detractors for a solid generation, now; they’ve tried many times to meet and beat him in the free market, with Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower and Air America and Nova M. And all failed, to the point where the American left is next going to try to resort to government bullying to shut up conservative talk radio.

They missed the point, of course:

When we met he was on the verge of signing a new eight-year contract with his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks. He estimated that it would bring in about $38 million a year. To sweeten the deal, he said he was also getting a nine-figure signing bonus. (A representative from Premiere would not confirm the deal.) “Do you know what bought me all this?” he asked, waving his hand in the general direction of his prosperity. “Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn’t buy this house. First and foremost I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.”

And for all that, the part that most inspires me is this:

Limbaugh was a failure almost as long as he has been a success. And although he is now an apostle of sunshine (“having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have,” he crows on his show), he spent many years trying to convince his family — and himself — that he wasn’t wasting his life…Limbaugh drifted from job to job…In the mid-’80s he took a job in the front office of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. He was making $12,000 a year, and he almost quit to take a more lucrative job as a potato-chip distributor. “They were offering $35,000,” he told me. “That sounded like a lot of money.”

“But what”, ask his detractors, “does this say about our society? That all the dumb people are listening to Limbaugh?”

Well, the simple answer is, they’re not. As most multi-issue movement conservatives can tell you, conservatism takes more thought than liberalism. And Limbaugh’s audience bears this out (emphasis added):

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners. The study found that “readers of newsmagazines, political magazines and business magazines, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and NPR and viewers of the Daily Show and C-SPAN are also much more likely than the average person to have a college degree.”

Read the whole (nine-online-page!) article, perhaps the best thing I’ve ever seen in writing about Rush.

And happy anniversary, Rush! Your new contract means the NARN has eight years to get its act really humming!

(Brad Carlson also writes on the anniversary, and Jen O’Hara not only gathers scads of great tributes from others, but writes a wonderful one of her own).

…I guess this is big news: Cheech and Chong decided to get the band together again:

Cheech Marin told AP Radio that he and Tommy Chong “looked at each other going, `If we’re ever going to do something it has to be now because you’re not getting any younger and neither am I.'”

They tossed around some ideas and figured a comedy tour would be “the most fun” and “the least hassle,” the 62-year-old Marin said.

Like, I suppose, man.

Marin and Chong, who broke up amid creative differences, have tried to reunite before, but have always fought too much.

scraaaaaaatch

“Creative Differences?”

“Like, I wanna do a joke about being stoned, maaaan”.

“Fuchicapesta, I wanna do a joke about being high, man!” 

Marin said he thinks dope humor can be as funny today as it was back in the ’70s

Buy oregano stock.  That’s all I have to say.

To: USA Network Programming Department

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Criminal Intent

Guys,

One of the “gimmicks” on all of the shows of the Law and Order franchise is the relatively high turnover on the various casts.

For example, in the years since Chris Noth was brought back from Staten Island and onto Criminal Intent, he’s been through a few partners – he’s even recycling one from a couple of years ago, now.

But given the way the writing of the show has changed since CI jumped from NBC to USA, I have a suggestion for next season.

Angela Lansbury.

Thanks. Hey, we gotta do lunch. Have your people call my people. Is that your Audi?

That is all.

Dennis Haysbert – formerly “President David Palmer” on 24 – says that his role on the hit show may have given people positive mojo about a black president:

“If anything, my portrayal of David Palmer, I think, may have helped open the eyes of the American people,” said the actor, who has contributed $2,300 to the Illinois Democrat’s presidential campaign.

“And I mean the American people from across the board — from the poorest to the richest, every color and creed, every religious base — to prove the possibility there could be an African-American president, a female president, any type of president that puts the people first,” he said Tuesday.

To be fair, Haysbert’s “Palmer” had coherent policies, and didn’t change his statements from season to season episode to episode.  While “Palmer” was a Democrat, he was more of a Bill Richardson than a Jimmy Carter.

Now, Wayne Palmer…

Haysbert, who now stars on “The Unit” on CBS, made his comments to reporters during a teleconference call promoting the upcoming American Century Celebrity Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe.

Haysbert, who also played Nelson Mandela in the 2007 film “Goodbye Bafana,” said his role as President Palmer seemed to “confuse people” who would approach him on the street “every day, almost every hour, and ask me to run.”

“I still, even after three seasons into `The Unit’ playing Sgt. Maj. Jonas Blaine, I’m still asked by people on the street to run,” he said.

Now, Sergeant Major Blaine I’d vote for.

Yesterday, King wrote (in re the death of George Carlin):

…for those of us who were early teens around 1972, George Carlin was the guy that gave you the “seven words you can never say on television”, which when played on your crappy stereo in your bedroom caused howls of laughter and a furtive look out the door to see if Mom had heard those words…Gone now, a reminder of how time marches past as much as my teen now being in his twenties, and my Littlest starting high school in a few months. What humor will she hear that makes her giggle as much as Al Sleet?

I was (and, actually, am) a tad younger than King – but it got me thinking; what comedy did my little crowd listen to, back then?

Here’s what I remember:

1. Cheech and Chong, Los Cochinos:  I can still recite large swathes of “Pedro and Man at the Drive-In”, “Sergeant Stadenko”, and “Basketball Jones”.  As gloriously puerile as it got.
2. Robin Williams, Throbbing Python of Love:  Recorded somewhere between “Mork and Mindy” and Williams’ ascent to superstardom, I remember furtively listening to it at one of my friends’ houses; I think Elizabeth Edwards owned it, which would have totally scandalized her father.  (I could be wrong about that.  The ownership, I mean; Mr. Edwards would have been mortified).  I can still recite most of “Elmer Fudd sings Bruce Springsteen” (“I’m dwiving in yoah caah/I turn on the wadio…and when we kiss…oooh…Fiiiwe”).
3. Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album: Most of us of the “we love Monty Python” set didn’t know, yet, that the album was a toss-off – literally, as the title said, to punch a contractual ticket.  I doubt we would have cared.  I and my geek friends still can recite “Traffic Lights”, “Never Be Rude To An Arab”, “Finland”, “John Denver Being Strangled” and most of the rest of the record by heart. 
4. Steven Wright, I Have A Pony: This was in college, obviously – my senior year, if memory serves (and it serves less and less these days).  And the album itself was almost as anticlimactic as one of Wright’s jokes; most of us, weaning ourselves on his regular Letterman appearances, knew most of his material (“sometimes I like to fill the bathtub up, and turn on the shower, and pretend I’m in a submarine that’s been hit”) by heart before the album made it to North Dakota.
5. And of course, Class Clown by George Carlin:  This one filtered down to us only via a few of our cooler classmates who had much cooler older brothers and sisters. 

OK – your turn…

George Carlin, dead at 71:

Jeff Abraham says Carlin went into St. John’s Health Center on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain. Carlin died at 5:55 p.m. PDT. He was 71.Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. It was announced Tuesday that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Carllin – on cassette and eight-track tapes, on school road trips – was my first exposure to edgy comedy.  In the late seventies, he was pretty vogue.  And then, in the early eighties, I saw an HBO retrospective on Carlin’s very, very long career – his road from fairly “straight” comedian to “counterculture” icon, and realizing how very, very good the guy was.  Angry and dyspeptic, to be sure – but amazingly funny.
Of course, one of his bits was a useful mnemonic for me:

The dean of counterculture comedians, Carlin constantly pushed the envelop with his jokes, particularly with a routine called “The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV.”

I remember seeing Carlin performing in the early-mid nineties, and thinking “this is kinda sad” – it was like he’d lost his comedic mojo somewhere along the way.  But when he was on, he was surely on.

Sh*t,, T***, P**s, F**k, ***t, C********r, M**********r.  Now I’m sad.

Pauline Kael, the late New Yorker movie critic, was the master of the pithy, scathing review.

Finally, from beyond the grave (he says with visions of Frank Marino/Jimi Hendrix coursing through his head), the reviewing mojo is passed…

…to Gary Miller, who gives what could be called a “lukehellish” review to Showtime’s Californication:

After watching Duchovny’s character Hank Moody fornicate you want to beat him up. You want to break off one of his molars at the gum line. You want to sodomize him with a wooden plunger and make him thank you for it. You want to make him wear wool socks, drag his feat across some berber, and touch a door knob. Californication had me asking what day it was that God made David Duchovny and why couldn’t he have rested on that day also. I put it back in the little red envelope after 2 miserable episodes.

I’d never watch it on basic principle (not because of the subject matter so much as I boycott even once-removed Red Hot Chili Peppers references). But now, I’ll really not watch it.

So tonight the two-part finale of Top Chef kicks off. 

My grand unification theory for Bravo “reality” series is, at best, on life support.  The theory is that each of these shows’ final threes must include:

• An arrogant SOB
• A cute chick
• A hypertalented, usually gay, guy.

It usually makes for a decent dramatic triangle; the guy everyone loves to hate, every girl’s best pal, and someone to keep the fellas tuned in. 

So this year, we have:

• Richard, the hypertalented and not remotely arrogant straight guy.
• Stephanie, an extremely talented chef (she and Richard, if memory serves, won the most eliminations) albeit not Casey-Thompson-level eye candy.
• Lisa, the mercurial, lesbian whose cooking during the show was seemingly hit-and-miss (she was a regular on the “chopping block” all season long), who beat out Antonia (who had, if memory serves, won several quickfires and a couple of eliminations, and who’d never been on the chopping block) in a really questionable call.

I’m gonna give my theory another season before I officially retire it.

Alec Baldwin – who broke his promise in 2004 to move to France or Canada or Angola or whereever – has all sorts of reasons for voting for Al Franken against Norm Coleman this fall:

Norm Coleman, a former Democrat who had the unusual luck to run against a retirement-age Walter Mondale in order to fill the seat vacated by the tragic death of Paul Wellstone, is busy digging up clips of Franken’s old SNL and other satirical work in order to dirty him up for their Minnesota US Senate race.

Well, yeah!  I mean, it’s the only thing he’s done for his entire career, and all.

Onward:

Let’s make one thing crystal clear. Paul Wellstone was a great man. His death stunned and saddened progressives around the world. I stood next to Paul at a fundraiser in Minneapolis two weeks prior to his plane crash. Paul’s career was everything one could want to emulate in public service. He was smart, decent and brave. Paul could never be replaced. Ever.

Yes, yes, we all missed Wellstone, gotcha.

But why vote for Franken over Coleman?

But to fill that seat with a hack like Coleman? I can see states like Texas having not one but two hack Senators. People who never propose or cosponsor any significant legislation while in office. People like Hutchinson and Cornyn, who are the worst type of go-along-to-get-along lackey for the Bush administration. People who view their role as doing anything to preserve their own power and who never have an original or courageous idea while in office.

OK, so we have ad-homina against an entire state and a couple of Senators…

…but why would I vote for Al Franken over Norm Coleman? 

But Minnesota?

Coleman becoming a US Senator from that great state was a travesty. Now the time has come to correct that mistake. Coleman, who makes Mitt Romney look like a visionary, is so far from the best that state has to offer, it is unbelievable to imagine that he is even in the running for reelection.

So – a slur against a highly-accomplished former governor, and a hopelessly-broad generalization about what Minnesota “has to offer” – got it.

But…why vote for Franken? 

 An uninformed and weak-willed apologist for this awful administration is being challenged by one of the best progressive minds of his generation.

Ah, OK!  Now we’re getting someplace – information about Franken!

Let’s look and see: 

I don’t care how much ribald and salty humor he has dished out during is entertainment career.

And I agree!

But, Alec, my question remains – why should I vote for him? 

Judge Al Franken by what he stands as today: a searingly intelligent and abundantly caring son of Minnesota who has returned home to attempt to lend his voice to our nation’s political discourse on the most formal of levels. No blogging. No books. No comedy sketches. Putting his career and his opinions on the line on behalf of serving the people of Minnesota.

But Alec?  He has no public record, other than his entertainment career!  His “searing intelligence” to date has been expressed solely via his blog, his books, his sketches, his standup, his failed Air America show!  So as he “puts his career on the line”, that is all we simple plebeians have by which to judge him!

Well, that and the impassioned assurances of Alec Baldwin, a fellow who stars in a TV show and lied about moving to France.

So I’ll ask again – why should I, a mere Minnesota citizen, vote for Al Franken?

And what does Coleman do? He trots out old SNL material to grade one of show business’ most respected satirists and judge him as insensitive or inappropriate.

Well, Coleman has a right to an opinion, right?

As do Senator Amy Klobuchar and Congresswoman Betty McCollum, a couple of other “searingly intelligent progressives” who already represent Minnesota, and who would seem to be more critical of candidate Franken than any of us conservatives!

And again – his show biz career is the only basis we have for judging him!

So I’ll ask again – why would, should or could I vote fo Al Franken?

Voters of Minnesota, your choice could not be simpler. Coleman is a pathetic hack who will do as little as possible in a US Senate office other than cover his own ass and protect his power.

So another ad-hominem… 

Meanwhile, Al Franken is everything you could hope for in a candidate to represent your state in the world’s most august deliberative body. Smart, caring, brave. That’s the choice.

So my “choice” is “ad-hominem” versus a vague assurance that someone with no public record whatsoever is just doubleplus swell! 

But I keep trying to find out, Alec – How is his intelligence, his caring, his “bravery” expressed?  Other than his showbiz career, I mean?

 Mitt Romney light. Or a return to someone special in the US Senate from the great state of Minnesota.

Maybe it’s the audacious hope.

Of course, that IS good enough for a good chunk of the Minnesota electorate.

At any rate, Alec Baldwin; while I’m generally loathe to cop Laura Ingraham’s line – shut up and act.

And I don’t mean like in Nadine, either. 

To: The NBA

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Alleged Rigging

Dear Sirs and Madames,

As long as you are (alleged to be) going to the trouble of rigging your games, could you please rig them to be interesting?

That is all.

Mitch Berg

I went to a fairly obscure college in rural North Dakota.  But you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

My obscure little college had hellacious recruiting chops in foreign places, like Europe, the Middle East and Chicago.  At one point, the little school of (then) 600-odd students had fifty Iranians (the hostage crisis turned into an enrollment crisis, as they all pretty much left when the crisis started).  My freshman year, we had Germans, a Kuwaiti, thirty-odd scholarship athletes from Chicago – you get the picture.

The small campus had three dorms (four if you count the one that was just for married students).  In one, four Jordanians shared a suite. 

In another dorm, a couple of Palestinian kids shared a room.

And over in the dorm I lived in my last three years of school, there were seven or eight Lebanese – Christians, in this case.  (Rumor had it that a number of Israeli kids were on the brink of attending, but there was no way to make the cafeteria kitchen kosher).

So you had in microcosm the entire Middle East problem; Arab Christians (who were allied with and supported by the Jewish Israelis), Jordanians (who had fought the Israelis and expelled the Palestinians ten short years earlier), and Palestinians.

Somehow they managed to get along with each other, even sitting in classes together without killing each other (or the poor Kuwaiti kid, a nice guy who got a stipend from the Kuwaiti government that put him in the top 5% of incomes in the city of Jamestown).  I’m willing to chalk that up to equal parts “oh, crap, if we get in trouble here we’re 4,000  miles from home” and, I’d like to think, “this is not why we’re here”.

The story is apropos not much – except that I thought about it when I read Ella Taylor’s passable City Pages review of what is apparently a passable movie (You Don’t Mess With Zohan).  The story (do I need to say it?), of a Mossad agent who retires from the business and comes to New York to work as a hair stylist, and manages to solve a microcosmic Arab/Israeli conflict in a Gotham neighborhood is…well, an Adam Sandler movie.  I’m not a movieblogger, as a rule. 

But this bit here jumped out at me:

With the Middle East returned to Hollywood’s table (albeit mostly in thrillers), Zohan is back…Score one for freedom of expression, I suppose, and pushed far enough into outrage the movie might have had something pungent to say about the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. As it is, the American way rides to the rescue: Even sworn enemies get along nicely living side by side in New York, no?

Does Ella Taylor a problem with this?

I mean, since it’s been pretty much a reality for most of the past 200 years?

Poles, Germans and Russians have not killed each other off for almost two centuries in America.  Russians have refrained from anti-Jewish pogroms; Irish and Brits have mostly stayed away from each others’ throats (except in Nick Coleman’s fervid delusions); Norwegians have largely refrained from kicking Swedish and German ass; Germans haven’t stomped on French; Hindi and Pakistanis work together; Turks go to Greek restaurants, and Japanese and Chinese generally co-exist in America; even Moslems and Jews rub elbows in most major cities.  They’ve all mostly had the good common sense to leave their squalid anscestral squabbles in the old country.

Of course we have our own to fill in the blanks; some blacks hate whitey for slavery; some whites return the favor; natives have a beef with us; Italians mix it up with blacks in Brooklyn; some Latino gangs practice ethnic cleansing against blacks in LA, where blacks and Koreans in turn mix it up. 

Maybe that’s the moral of the story; most ethnic groups come to America to forget their old anscestral squabbles, and adopt our new ones. 

God Bless America!

Robert Downey – not only working again…:

A winking nod to that tumultuous history is baked into the banter in “Iron Man.” The movie opens with Mr. Downey’s mitt wrapped around a tumbler of whiskey, rumbling along in a Humvee, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasting on the soundtrack and Mr. Downey acting all lusty and incorrigible. And when Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, the dewy-eyed, ever-loyal assistant he sees with new eyes by the end of the film, learns about his alter ego, Mr. Downey’s Tony Stark goes deadpan.

“Let’s face it,” he says. “This is not the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.”

That running dialogue — between audience and actor, between Mr. Downey’s past and present — gives the film a symbolic power not usually found in comic book movies. In the interview he preferred to leave that history between the lines.

…to say nothing of “alive”…

“It has struck me lately that I don’t have to talk about last century at all,” he said with a dismissive wave. But he does so, obliquely.

…and – um – conservative?

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.”

(Suffice it to say he is not one of the Hollywood types who weeps over innocents trapped behind bars.)

A hollywood actor who’s more conservative that I am?

I love this country.

UPDATE:  Robert, not Morton.

Why on earth  would a conservative pundit think “Morton”, anyway?

I tell people I was a liberal until my early twenties. The fact is, it was a slow slide, starting from when I was 15 or so, until 1984 – when I voted for Reagan (and made sure I told nobody about it). When I was 17 in 1980, I wrote the “Federalist” party platform at North Dakota Boys State; it was all full of “redistribution of wealth” and “comprehensive programs”, and probably qualified me as a McGovernite. By 1986, I was a conservative talk show host of sorts.

There were six people I credit with the change:

1. Jimmy Carter: The “Malaise” speech was about the first thing that started souring me on liberalism.
2. Ronald Reagan: I don’t think I need to explain.
3. Alexandr Solzhenitzyn: If One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago couldn’t convince one of the evil of the left run amok, what could?
4. Fyodor Dostoevskii: Crime and Punishment is the universal excoriation of the moral vacuity underneath socialism.
5. Paul Johnson: Modern Times pretty well gutted the historical record of liberalism’s “achievements” that I’d been given in high school (even in my relatively-commonsense rural district).

   and finally…

6. P.J. O’Rourke: Because after all of the above, I still needed someone to convince me that it was OK to be a conservative and play my music too loud; to assure me that conservatives were the kind of people I really wanted to be.

Oh, yeah – O’Rourke is coming to town:

P.J. O’Rourke, best-selling author and America’s leading political satirist, will be speaking at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, April 29th at 7pm. The event, titled “Yes, I’m Still a Conservative, Damnit!: An Evening with PJ O’Rourke” is hosted by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities chapter of Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

The event will be held at Northrop Auditorium (84 Church St. SE) in Minneapolis. The event is free and open to the public, with a special gift to the first 1000 attendees. No tickets will be issued.

With more than one million words under his byline and more citations in the “Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations” than any other living writer, P.J. O’Rourke has established himself as America’s premier political satirist. He is the best-selling author of 12 books, including “Parliament of Whores”, “Give War a Chance”, “Eat the Rich”, “The CEO of the Sofa”, “On Wealth of Nations” and “Peace Kills”. Both Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal have labeled O’Rourke as “the funniest writer in America”.

They left out about 200 other countries, but we’ll give ’em points for effort.

Be there!

To: Comedy Central
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Lewis Black

To whom it may concern,

It seems odd to be lecturing “Comedy Central” on the subject of comedy. But it seems intervention is in order.

Lewis Black is not funny.

He has never been funny.

He will never be funny.

I know – he’s supposed to be a “dyspeptic crank”.  Sure, it could work; George Burns and George Allen and, what the hell, Dennis Leary have all made careers – and gotten a billion laughs – playing cranky misanthropes.

The difference, of course, is that with each of ’em there was something behind the dyspepsia; something you could identify with.  And I can’t even imagine the dissociative guy on the bus identifying with Black.
Summary: Lewis Black – not funny.

Thank you for your consideration.

That is all.

Go ahead and pick your Heston:

The academy award-winner?

Ben Hur was probably the first “serious” movie I sat through as a kid – the first time I ever got that a movie could be more than simple yuks and scenery, that a story could mean more than what was being put in front of you. Heston won his Oscar almost fifty years ago, before I was born – and the movie still amazes me.

Heston was an amazing actor. Brad Carlson links to an excellent video retrospective of Heston’s film career.

And nobody, anywhere, writes about actors like Sheila O’Malley does:

My brother Brendan and I watched The Ten Commandments on the night before Easter, and expressed amazement, for the 100th time, how incredible Heston is, how inevitable. …even today, lulled to sleep by CGI effects, there is something stunning and terrifying about the Red Sea parting, well done! – but none of it would matter a whit if it weren’t for Heston’s commanding (pun) performance. He had no fear. He embodied courage, and was able to portray it larger than life. This is something NO actors have today – NONE – it is no longer the “style” of acting, and no longer in vogue. And that’s fine. Things don’t have to stay the same forever. But at least we could look back at one of the greats and say, “Ah. There. That is how it was done. That is how it should have been done.”

Absolutely true.

How about the “other” Charlton Heston, the man that stood for his beliefs at every turn – the one who marched on Washington in 1963 with Martin Luther King, at the height of his career…

…at a time when social activism was not the fashion in Hollywood.

Joel Rosenberg:

In 1961, he attended a premier of one of his movies in Oklahoma.  The theater was segregated; he joined the picket line.  At a time when it was by no means politically expedient to do so, he marched with Martin Luther King Jr.  He was, throughout his adult life, a staunch opponent of communism, McCarthyism, and racial segregation.

A quarter-century later, Heston went on to spend the last fifteen years of his working life tirelessly fighting to protect the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans…

…which, for many people who were born too late to see Heston’s glory years on the big screen, was the Heston they knew best.

The Charlton Heston that drove more than a few people over the edge, helping cement the career of at least one polemicist, and assuring that he’d never do lunch in Hollywood again?  That was him.
Gary Miller:

Few did more than Charleston Heston to keep the stinking paws of the damned dirty apes off the firearms of law-abiding Americans.

Just like the patriarch Moses he played in the magnificent 1956 Cecil B. DeMille classic, he did not live to see the promised land. But if an originalist majority on SCOTUS prevails in the soon-to-be-decided Heller case he will have died just short of the River Jordan.

Of course I owe that Charlton Heston – the guy who helped galvanize millions to turn the tide on two issues that mean a lot to me and many like me, civil rights that are seen as two sides of a coin, but should not be – something, too.

Or maybe the guy in a city and business and society full of libertines and faux libertarians, who achieved far beyond anyone’s dreams and ascended to the pinnacle of a career that he’d stumbled into and yet mastered, and devoted a fair chunk of his life to doing what was right and, at the end of the day, stayed married to his high school sweetheart for an entire lifetime?

How do you reconcile all those different Charlton Hestons?

You don’t. You appreciate the entire package on its own terms. Back to Sheila, who comes up with the words I was flailing at trying to find on the show yesterday, to capture an ideal that as usual Sheila nails without effort. I’ll be slathering on the emphasis:

The most stunning tribute of all, it takes my breath away to this day, is Richard Dreyfuss’ tribute. He wrote it for National Review – obviously a publication with political leanings that has nothing to do with who Richard Dreyfuss is, and how he votes. But, as I have said repeatedly on my blog, as I have chased people away from my site who seem constitutionally unable to play by my rules, as I have stated in my comment policy: when you are dealing with art, and the appreciation thereof, politics must take a backseat. At least if you want to have a worthwhile conversation. And then there are those who say, “I liked Charlton Heston BECAUSE of his politics” and that is just as idiotic. His work transcends. He was an actor, first and foremost, a “great pretender”. So talk about his work, please – there is plenty there to keep us chatting for 100 years at least! Nobody “owns” Charlton Heston. Nobody “owns” John Wayne. The most flaming liberal in the world could appreciate and love Red River, and those who put politics at the forefront are completely missing the point. What we are talking about here is love. And these actors who touch us, who get beneath our skins, who create something indelible … transcend all of that. The editors at National Review knew that, and so did Richard Dreyfuss.

I agree – and am awash in profound respect for a man that worked so tirelessly at the love he had for his craft, his country and its principles, and his family. Whose entire life is a monument to his love for all three.

As with Ronald Reagan (an underappreciated actor, albeit nowhere near Heston’s league), the different parts went together to make the whole man. You can – you have to, as Sheila correctly notes – appreciate them separately, and keep your art and your politics in separate silos. As Richard Dreyfus does, in the piece Sheila called out, and that you need to read. Written right after Heston’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s was made public five and a half years ago, it’s almost too full of perfect quotes. I’m going to grab two of them

I believe that films like Ben Hur were conceived because Heston was there to make them. He allowed these stories to be told because he was there to play the parts. …When I saw Charlton Heston as a kid, he took me far, far away, to places few actors could go. The only other American actor so comfortable outside of this era was Wayne, and Heston could time travel farther. Both held the magical alchemy that made me forget the commonplace of here and now completely. John Wayne allowed us into our American past. Heston, because of his perfectly male face, the depth of his voice, the measured almost antique rhythm of his speech, the oddly innocent commitment that allowed him to dive without looking into the role, took me farther, before the common era, as they say.

Somehow he was able to cut the myriad strings that connect us to our current lives, so he could inhabit our imagined past and imagined future so perfectly. So well did he do this that his discomfort was obvious when he played in the Now (actually, make that my discomfort, because he more than likely had a ball in the rare instances when he played something current). If it wasn’t the past it was the future. I could never have gotten to Ancient Rome without him, nor Ape City.

And…:

It has become fashionable to characterize his politics; almost as if his politics were a separate thing, like Diana’s popularity. People are either defensive or patronizing (if not contemptuous). I can only say I wish all the liberals and all the conservatives I knew had the class and forbearance he has. Would I be as patient or serene when so many had showed me such contempt, or tried to make me feel stupid or small? I doubt it, truly I do. This is dignity, simply and completely. A much more important quality than political passion at the end of the day, and far more lacking, don’t you think?

That may be the biggest thing to take away from Heston; to love what you do, to fight for what you believe in, to live a life you’re proud of, and to do it all with grace.

In remembering the man, his life, his accomplishments, his impact on this world – and as Dreyfus noted, the man in which they were all wrapped up and and coexisted so famously – you can note them all in parallel, and fondly remember them all.

And so I do.

And rest in peace, great American icon. You will not be forgotten.

I’ll take all of the Charlton Hestons. Thanks.

(more…)

Derb on the gathering wave of revulsion over China’s behavior:

All sort of other ideas for embarrassing the ChiCom gangsters are buzzing around. Some are suggesting, for example, that athletes simply not show up for the opening ceremonies…There is also the idea, which I rather like, that an entire national team might shave their heads the night before the ceremony to show solidarity with Tibetan monks and nuns, the bravest and most persecuted of Tibetan patriots.

And he notes that this is unfamiliar territory for Beijing:

At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It’s not clear they understand this. They’ve been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative.

And this is important. While societies and markets are instinctively adaptible, governments are not. People coloring outside the officially-approved lines is hard for these systems to deal with. A simple thing like “conservatives voting conservative” has flummoxed the Minnesota DFL and Media (pardon the redundancy) for over 20 years; the Chinese, obviously, could have it much worse.

And speaking of the market:

The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.

On the one hand, Derb is right; Communism is just not good at making big things happen. On the other hand, the American media has a huge investment in presenting a spectacle – not a news story. I don’t anticipate much light being shown on the cockroaches.

Now, if the attendees include bloggers?

I’ve said it in the past; conservatives need to engage the world of art. Not as opponents, necessarily (although there is much to criticize in art – both in specific pieces of it, songs and paintings and plays and what-not, but the way art is practiced in our society, especially the big, grant-driven institutional “arts” organizations) and consumers, but as participants.

And I’ll stand by that.

That said, I believe a strike force from “Complete Rejection of Asinine Performance-art” (CRAP), with tear gas and attack dogs, would have been better and more appropriate in responding to this bit here.

“ooh, look – a cynical critique of the hustle and bustle of the hopeless bourgeois life. We, the artists, who exist an a more noble plane, will silently mock their exertions, then scamper, giggling, away, wrapped in our smug sense of superiority”.

OK, maybe this bit caught me in a bad mood. It happens.

Discuss amongst yourselves – the only ground rule is that nobody may use the term “Neo-Con” even once.

But don’t get me started on that vacuous publicity-monger Spencer Tunick. Definitely tear gas and dogs for him.

UPDATE:  You’re right.  I was wrong.  I wrote the above after a crappy day. 

Objection withdrawn. 

Except for the Spencer Tunick bit. 

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit points us to a SlateV video that starts out showing similarities between Barack Obama and West Wing’s “Jimmy Santos”.

But the similarities don’t end there.

Go over and spend three minutes watching it.

As people stay home and watch DVDs on big-honkin’-screen TVs, the low-budget second-run movie house is gradually going the way of the eight-track.

The latest to spiral down the drain – the Rosevillie 4.

And that hurts:

Tuesday night movies at Roseville 4 Theatre — where the usual $2 admission is cut in half — will be gone soon because the theater is closing to accommodate the planned expansion of the adjacent Rainbow Foods grocery store.

Its exit — expected as early as March 31 — will leave one bargain theater in the east metro as the standard price of seeing a movie tops $8.

Owners of the Roseville 4 couldn’t find a new location that offered enough space at lease rates they could afford, said theater manager Barb Guetschoff. “I have a lot of customers who are really angry,” she said.

I’d be one of ’em.  The Roseville was always the kind of place where a guy could afford to take the kids, and maybe a few of their friends, to see a movie for under $20, with the concessions – or sneak away for a cheap, low-impact evening out.

Blah.

My mom had an unexpectedly-long layover yesterday on her way from DC to Minot (“America’s Vacationland”), so Bun and I went out to the airport (Zam was out with friends) to visit for a bit.

We were sitting in the terminal lobby by the baggage check, when I saw a guy guy holding one of those signs that drivers hold up to get their incoming fares’ attention. The name on the sign was “Mr. Roarke”.

And before I could catch myself, I thought:

“Well, isn’t that nice! He finally gets a vacation! And I always wondered if he’d get so sick of his island paradise that he’d actually come to Minneapolis in February for a break?”

“And by the way – does Tattoo yell “Bozz! Da ground! Da ground!” when the plane slips through the overcast?”

I shook the thought off, and continued visiting with Mom.

SCENE:  Dingy warehouse in seedy neighborhood.  Five dead terrorist – three shot, one head-butted, and one with a head bitten clean off – lie just to the left of the establishing shot.

BAUER is frantically working on a nuclear weapon, whose digital clock is ominously ticking below 1:00 minute.  He’s talking on a cell phone with one hand, using a pocket knife with the other.

BAUER:  I’ve got under one minute, or this thing’s gonna blow.

BUCHANAN:  Jack, the President called.  He said to get the bomb defused.

BAUER:  I understand.

BUCHANAN:  No, Jack.  He said to defuse it now.

BAUER.  Er, yeah.  OK, I cut the red wire.

MORRIS:  OK, Jack.  Now, wrap the wire from the “544C” socket around the neutral pole at least 34 times to create enough resistance…

BAUER: Dammit, Morris, there’s no time!

CHLOE:  Actually, Jack, if you hit the big green “reset” button, it’ll give you an entire ‘nother 24 hours.

BAUER: (Shakes head in disbelief).  Say again!

CHLOE:  The clock has a big green reset button.  If it’s not going well press it once, and it’ll put 24 more hours on the clock.  We can send a truck and a NEST team.  It’ll be a piece of cake.

BAUER:  Really?

CHLOE:  Pinkie swear.

(BAUER presses button.  Clock resets to “24:00:00”)

BAUER:  Ow.  Wow.  Cool.

CHLOE:  You’re welcome.

To: Disney Marketing

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Thanks. Really.

To whom it may concern,
My daughter saw the trailer for “Snowbuddies”.

Talking puppies. Really?

She is on me for the DVD like stink on…well, sled dog.

Thanks again.

That is all.

Mitch Berg
Consumer

I don’t get to all that many movies these days.  It’s a rare treat, indeed – I haven’t been in a theater since the last entry in the “James Bond” franchise, and that had been a while since my previous venture.

So I’m not so hip on who all the kids are watching these days.  Except Scarlett Johnannson.  And while she’s a fine actress (fantastic in Lost in Translation, among a few others), well, let’s just say my critique isn’t all that clinical, if ya catch my drift. 

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Heath Ledger.  I know I’ve seen a movie or two of his, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember which.  I know that in the back of my mind I knew “he’s not a crappy actor” – quite the opposite. Very good.

So I’ll just link to two people I know who do know their movies; First Ringer:

 Unlike [James] Dean, Ledger may not find posthumous Oscar glory unless a weak supporting actor field and a sympathetic Academy find something as mainstream as a Batman sequel worthy of a slice of acting immortality.  Despite all the logic against doing so, here’s hoping they do.

Surprisingly even to me, I find Ledger’s untimely death deeply disturbing on a personal level.  At 28 years of age, and as a struggling filmmaker who could only wish for 10% of Ledger’s professional success, I find myself tragically drawn to Ledger’s passing for reasons even I don’t yet fully grasp.  Having worked with plently of actors and other “talent” who vastly overestimate their skill, I am reminded of the few I have known who possessed genuine acting ability – and how so many of them wasted it on drugs, drink or a simple lack of ambition.  I’m also reminded – and horrified from seeing it firsthand myself – of the rigors that method actors like Ledger could put themselves through merely to entertain. 

and Red:

 I never ever had that thought [that he was “just acting”] with Ledger. And I remember, too, his couple of scenes in Monster’s Ball, another deeply portrayed kind of awkward guy, not used to speaking much – and given the right circumstances that character would probably be an awesome husband, partner … But as it was, he was relegated to isolation, stoic silence. I hadn’t seen Knight’s Tale when I saw Monster’s Ball, so that was my first impression of Ledger, and it has pretty much stuck.

And now, I’m impressed.