{"id":57259,"date":"2016-01-26T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T18:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57259"},"modified":"2016-01-26T13:05:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T19:05:54","slug":"leni-riefenstahl-looks-down-from-the-great-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57259","title":{"rendered":"Triumph Of The Bern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bernie Sanders is proud to call himself a socialist. \u00a0He&#8217;s happy to continue the ideological legacy of Mussolini, Peron and Hugo Chavez.<\/p>\n<p>I know I&#8217;m not the only one who sees the photos of his campaign rallies, and imagines them debouching out onto the street to look for pockets to pick and (fill in the unfavored minority) to beat up.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, I can&#8217;t help watch this spot and think &#8220;hell yeah!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2nwRiuh1Cug\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It takes my (far and away) favorite Simon and Garfunkel song, and wraps it around a whole lot of stirring images, and says <em>absolutely nothing<\/em>, and says it with glorious style.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it&#8217;s dishonest. \u00a0Bernie Sanders loves &#8220;America&#8221;, provided it acts like Sweden (or like Sweden did, until recently). \u00a0But it&#8217;s not Swedes he&#8217;s trying to convince to vote for him.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0<em>who cares<\/em>, really? \u00a0 \u00a0I want fill up a bathtub with this ad, and soak in it for hours. \u00a0The imagery, the videography, the intersection of picture and sound &#8211; all of them are absolutely glorious.<\/p>\n<p>Glorious pictures and sound have a long history, of course. We&#8217;ve seen that before; all the way back to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8\"><em>Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will<\/em><em>)<\/em><\/a>, the\u00a0signature movie by Leni Riefenstahl, the greatest female filmmaker of all time (that&#8217;s gotta sit just wonderfully with the Feminists) &#8211; a film (as opposed to a TV spot) that punches a lot of the same buttons.<\/p>\n<p>And no, I&#8217;m not comparing Sanders to Hitler, at least as far as\u00a0the whole &#8220;genocidal madman&#8221; thing goes.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s little content.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s very\u00a0little substance.<\/p>\n<p>But oh, lord, the imagery and sound and cinematography. \u00a0Is it any wonder that a nation of low-information voters turned out in droves back then, just as Sanders hopes\u00a0they will\u00a0now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bernie Sanders is proud to call himself a socialist. \u00a0He&#8217;s happy to continue the ideological legacy of Mussolini, Peron and Hugo Chavez. I know I&#8217;m not the only one who sees the photos of his campaign rallies, and imagines them debouching out onto the street to look for pockets to pick and (fill in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-campaign-16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57259"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57263,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57259\/revisions\/57263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}