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April 30, 2004

U.S. Forces Abuse Prisoners of War

By now, most people will have heard that photographs have emerged documenting members of the U.S. military humiliating and torturing Iraqi captives in a prison outside of Baghdad. George has a round-up of links to a variety of sources on the story. These photographs are among the most disturbing images I've seen since the beginning of the war, and they represent a serious threat to Bush's assertion that the US has eliminated the human rights abuses experienced under Saddam Hussein, and these images will only exacerbate negative perceptions of the United States in Iraq:

"This is the straw that broke the camel's back for America," said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi. "The liberators are worse than the dictators."

"They have not just lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis but all the Third World and the Arab countries," he told Reuters.

To be fair, President Bush and military leaders have acted quickly to investigate the charges and to prosecute the guilty, with Bush himself expressing "deep disgust" over these actions, but the power of these images threatens to linger long after Bush's apology (note this USA Today poll taken before these images were made public).

The situation raises any number of questions about the US military effort in Iraq, including the appropriateness of using mercenaries, as Daily Kos points out. Perhaps most disturbingly,

One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young, male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.
Kos has frequently been critical of the use of mercenaries, I think, with some justification, given the confusion about military law.

Several soldiers, most notably Staff Sgt Chip Frederick , have emphasized that they have been assigned tasks that they were not trained to perform. Frederick's lawyer, Gary Myers, noted that his client (who has been charged with posing in a photograph sitting on top of a detainee, committing an indecent act and with assault for striking detainees) had not even read the Geneva Conventions. While this lack of training does not excuse Frederick's actions, it does indicate what might be a larger problem regarding the training of soldiers and the deployment of mercenary soldiers.

I'm also trying to think through Henry at Crooked Timber's concerns that

there seems to be a persistent unwillingness among many Americans to acknowledge the ugly things that are being done in the name of their national security.
I do believe that this story will lead many people to rethink their position on the war, but in an atmosphere in which even the Nightline tribute to US troops is being regarded as a politicized anti-war action, I'm not sure this will happen.

I do think it's wrong to suggest that these actions are due to the military recruiting from "the bottom rung of society" as one Crooked Timber commenter suggests (scroll down in the previous link). The suggestion that working-class and poor people are more likely to be predisposed to violence is rather unfair. In part, I'm drawing from my experiences with students who are members of ROTC and family members who were in the military, and while some mebers of the military may be attracted to the big guns, to attach that attraction to a specific social class simply seems wrong and makes it entirely too easy to dismiss these actions as the behavior of a few bad apples rather than a larger systemtic problem in which prison gurads have not even been made aware of the most basic aspects of the Geneva conventions.

Note: The Mirror.co.uk has posted several stills from the video footage. I'm ambivalent about linking to these images, but documentation seems crucial here.

Posted by chuck at 7:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Pit Bull on the Pant Leg of Opportunity

I hadn't planned on contributing to the "Poem on Your Blog Day" to honor the end of National Poetry Month, in part because so many other bloggers had contributed so many wonderful poems:

My contribution is somewhat different than the rest of these poems, but I have a strong affinity for "found poetry," and while doing some research this afternoon, I came across Richard Thompson's "Make the Pie Higher," an arrangement of George W. Bush quotations into a poem. In the same spirit, I'll also link to William Gillespie's Newspoetry.

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
“Is our children learning?”
“Will the highways of the Internet become more few?”
“Do you have Blacks in Brazil?”
“Why don’t the French have a word for ‘entrepreneur’?”

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pant leg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope,
where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the toll booth!
Make the economy gooder!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

Posted by chuck at 5:06 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 29, 2004

Zell Miller Fights Against "The System"

Making fun of Zell Miller is far too obvious at this point, but I can't resist commenting on Zell's latest foray into rewriting the Constitution. Miller now suggests that we should repeal the 17th Amendment, which declares that Senators should be elected rather than appointed by state legislatures. Miller suggests that special interests have far too much control over elections (so, Zell, any significance to the fact that you were appointed, not elected?), so instead of trusting the people to vote for Senators, Miller suggests that state legislators, a group well-known for being above influence by lobbyists and special interests, should take on this privilege. Miller comments (and, no I'm not making this up):

"The individuals are not so much at fault as the rotten and decaying foundation of what is no longer a republic," Miller said on the Senate floor. "It is the system that stinks. And it's only going to get worse because that perfect balance our brilliant Founding Fathers put in place in 1787 no longer exists."
You know, Zell's too easy a target at this point, and to give him credit, he was an ardent supporteer of campaign finance reform. But I really don't understand the logic here. Not that I really want to understand how Miller's mind works (via Atrios).

Posted by chuck at 2:30 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 28, 2004

Movie Miscellany

Just a few quick links as I'm on my way to campus. In The New York Times Dave Kehr reviews Justice, an independent film about three different New Yorkers dealing with life after 9/11. The film's title comes from a comic book character, who calls himself Justice, created by one of the film's lead characters.

I'd planned to link to this Filmmaker Magazine Richard Linklater interview last night, but my computer wasn't co-operating. It's a pretty insightful discussion of Linklater's newest film, Before Sunset, a follow-up to his indie fave, Before Sunrise, revisiting Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's characters ten years later (the comparison to Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel cycle is interesting here). Also interesting is that the film will take place in real time, which as Linklater explains, can make shooting a film rather difficult.

And speaking of Linklater, I just found out that Wiley Wiggins, star of Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Waking Life, has a blog.

Posted by chuck at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Stepford Corollary

Given the hypothesis offered by Aaron Hendren in Film Threat that zombie movies tend to proliferate during Republican presidencies, what conclusions can we make about the fact that a remake (IMDB) of the Nixon-Ford era film, The Stepford Wives, is coming soon to a multiplex near you?

Posted by chuck at 1:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 27, 2004

The Grapes of Wrath

I watched John Ford's 1940 film version of The Grapes of Wrath tonight. It's a fascinating film, what Roger Ebert calls a "a left-wing parable, directed by a right-wing American director," in a review written before the DVD release. I'd never seen the film before, but the famous shot of the Joad family riding their battered, decrepit car into the destitute Okie transient camp in California has haunted me ever since I saw that scene in a clip tape we used in film courses at the University of Illinois. It's a great shot (by Citizen Kane cinematographer Gregg Toland), and while I probably won't be able to teach the whole film in my summer class, I'm trying to catalog a few film clips that I'd like students to see, and this shot beautifully captures Toland and Ford's near-documentary style in Grapes.

I take Ebert's point that the dialogue can seem a little preachy. Specifically, he mentions the scene in which Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) says good-bye to his mother near the end of the film ("Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there"), and I certainly recognized the speech as self-conscious (echoing similar lines by Eugene Debs), but I'm not sure that it's entirely disproportionate to the scene or to Joad's charismatic character.

Posted by chuck at 2:15 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 26, 2004

Zombies in the White House

Ok, I found a few more cool links in GreenCine: First this Film Threat article, "Zombies in the White House," which argues that zombie films make comebacks when we have Republicans in the White House. And another article on zombie films by Matthew Wilder in City Pages.

Posted by chuck at 5:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cannes 2004 Schedule

Via Cinema Minima (and GreenCine Daily): Here is the schedule for the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, May 12-23. Quentin Tarantino is the Jury President this year.

While I'm in the neightborhood, GreenCine also links to a Nerve interview with Tilda Swinton; a J. Hoberman article on High Noon, which I'm considering teaching in my Introduction to Film class this summer; and an article on the TriBeCa Film Festival (I should have been reading GreenCine months ago).

And just for the heck of it: Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans, I'm still waiting to hear if my coneference paper proposal on the film is accepted) lists his "Ten Best Auteur Films;" and a faux website supporting the movie, Godsend (might be worth visiting for my Ring paper).

Posted by chuck at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Journeys with George

After commenting about my interest in documentaries about the President, I came across Alexandra Pelosi's Journeys with George. Pelosi, the daughter of California Democratic Congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, offers a breezy take on the press corps feeding frenzy that accompanies any presidential campaign, and while Pelosi discloses her politics (in one scene, she votes for Bradley in the Democratic primary behind Bush's back), the film appearss remarkably apolitical, at least in terms of addressing specific Bush policies, but that "apolitical" stance actually enables her much more complicated critique of presidential politics. Pelosi, who cheerfully narrates the film, playfully banters with Bush about her love life, jokes about his taste in turkey sandwiches, and generally captures the camaraderie of the press corps.

Tobias Peterson's Pop Matters review reads the film's representations of American politics very effectively, noting that even the impromptu scenes in which Bush playfully jokes with Pelosi and the rest of the press corps are "highly crafted," with both filmmaker and politician engaged in a complicated game of give-and-take, the fact that the press corps cannot ask difficult questions because the risk being snubbed, as Pelosi herself was when she pressed Bush on his death penalty record. Perhaps this is the significance of all of the food images in the film: the press gaggle has to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds them. [Towards the end of the film, there's a really fascinating shot of a squirrel nervously eating peanuts out of a friendly press person's hand, and I think this is where I'm getting this metaphor.]

Pelosi confirms this reading in an indieWire interview (by the way this is a fantastic interview--great questions, interesting answers), noting that people criticized her for letting Bush off the hook when he couldn't explain why his policies benefit "the little people and the unemployed:"

I wasn't there as Alexandra Pelosi, the independent filmmaker. I was there as an NBC News producer. Anyone can say, "Well, if I was there, I would have said this or that," but that's all bullshit because nobody could even get there, number one, and if they got there, they could NOT say those things because he'd walk away and then you'd have no more access and I think that's counterproductive. Now if I was there as somebody else, it would be a different conversation. I had a role and I had to play my role. In the name of my own little home movie, I'm going to offend him and lose my job and get kicked off the plane? I don't think so. I'm not willing to jeopardize it all. And that is the dirty little secret of American political reporting and I say that in the movie. The truth is that all of our careers were tied to George Bush during the election campaign.
I'd say the scene speaks for itself, however, as then-governor Bush tries to sell himself as the little guy, teasingly asking Pelosi if she's ever seen him next to his brother.

As I've researched to write this review, I've become more impressed by it. I'm charmed by Alexandra Pelosi's narration, her "home movie" presentation of the campaign, and the film benefits from foregrounding her presence as the filmmaker. Meanwhile, Bush remains a mere image, a relatively shallow man who carefully crafts his image, as suggested by the number of shots of cameras filming Bush (who in several shots takes a camera himself). In a post-9/11 world, it's a strange document, though, a reminder of a much different moment in American politics.

Posted by chuck at 12:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 25, 2004

On the Road Again

So, since everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd do the "States I've Visited" map. Like most other people, I've avoided including states where I've only had a layover in the airport. More confusing are those states I don't really remember visiting because I was a toddler, but if I know from photographs or anecdotes that I've been there, I decided to include those states, too.



create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

I'm not sure how I missed West Virginia (I know I've driven through the corner of the state, but that's about it), but I've done my share of traveling east of the Mississippi.

Posted by chuck at 9:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Kill Bill Vol. 2

I finally made it back to the movie theater this weekend, catching both Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Hellboy. I found both films to be rather entertaining work from a couple of the better pop auteurs working in the Hollywood genre scene today, Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro (speaking of Tarantino, the Dateline interview with him this evening was far too short). I'll save Hellboy for a later review.

In some ways, Tarantino's reputation has been constrained by his status as a "database filmmaker," mixing and matching references to a range of influences, including samurai, kung fu, TV shows, and blacksploitation films (thanks to scribblingwoman for the link). As a proud film geek, I love the cinematic references and Tarantino's ability to have fun with them, but I also find him to be a terrific storyteller who taps into some important cultural fantasies (spoilers galore). I don't think that Tarantino's stylized references to the cinematic past are purely trivial, as this Salon reviewer suggests, but instead refer to the cinematic past in order to rewrite it.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 (IMDB) picks up where Vol 1 leaves off, following the story of The Bride (Uma Thurman) as she seeks revenge on Bill (David Carradine) after he attempted to murder her in a wedding chapel in El Paso, Texas. Unlike Vol. 1, the violence in the second film is more subdued, and there's more character development, more conversation, with characters occasionally using popular culture to make points a la the deconstruction of "Papa Don't Preach" in Resevoir Dogs (I'm thinking here especially of Bill's monologue on superheroes). The relationship between the Bride (her "real" name is Beatrix Kiddo) and Bill is fleshed out. It turns out they were lovers, and she left him and their lives as jet-setting assassins, hoping to pursue a normal life as the wife of a second-hand record-store owner (a subtle reference to QT's own past as a video-store geek?). We also know from the first film that the Bride's daughter is still alive, a detail that Vol. 2 carefully suppresses for most of the film.

A flashback to Beatrix's training with martial arts master, Pai Mei (Gordon Liu, voice dubbed by Tarantino), who Bill reports hates Americans, blondes, and women, allows QT to work out some of the critiques of his representations of East and West. Other scenes, such as Bud's fight with his boss at a rundown topless bar and his retreat into an isolated mobile home, evoking through the use of heavy close-ups, the westerns of Sergio Leone, address the difficulties of aging and decline (equally communicated by Michael Madsen's sagging jowls).

In this sense, the film seems to be negotiating the boundaries between the fantasy life embodied in Tarantino's "trash films" and the real world of domesticity and family. It doesn't seem accidental that many of the fight scenes take place in everyday settings, and here I'm thinking about the fight scene between The Bride and Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah) in the tiny kitchen of Bud's mobile home, echoing the fight scene between the Bride and Vernita in Vol. 1. These preoccupations with parenting and family come across throughout the film, when Beatrix worries about Vernita's daughter or when she reads her own daughter (whom she has never seen) a bedtime story. The scene is surprisingly poignant for a film about betrayal and revenge. Still, even without the emotional payoff, I found Vol. 2 to be a fun movie-geek ride and one of the better films I've seen this year.

I don't think I've quite captured what I liked about this film, but for now, my main observation is that QT's references, while often seen as connoting a pure surface or celebratory play, actually convey a much more complicated reflection on regret, betrayal, and loss, often using and reworking these earlier films in surprising ways.

Note: I just came across the Metaphilm review, and I find Mark T. Conrad's assertion that the Kill Bill films are "therapy sessions" for QT, in which he is "recreating his past in order to grasp it more realistically, with the father absent and the women powerful."

Posted by chuck at 7:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Documenting the Presidency

I was chatting online with someone about my planned conference paper/article on Uncovered and MoveOn.org when I stubled on an interesting future project on documenting the president. For now, I'd prefer to focus on documentary films that represent specific Presidents, how their images were portrayed in and through film, but I may also investigate feature films, such as All the Presdinet's Men, which takes on the Nixon presidency (though Nixon barely appears as a character, if he does at all). The problem there is that I risk making the project too expnasive. Just the early stirrings of a possible future project for now.

h says:
i bet people will like the connections [in the MoveOn/Uncovered paper], though
h says:
especially in the election year that it is
chuck says:
i hope so....i think it's an interesting topic....yes, it's certainly timely
h says:
moveon has been in the news so much
chuck says:
maybe i'll think long term abt a book on documenting the presidency...
h says:
that could be a good project
chuck says:
the presidency idea just occurred to me, but i'm fascinated by it
chuck says:
a chapter on the mckinley/roosevelt stuff
chuck says:
followed by a later chapter on FDR maybe, Kennedy, and then something like The War Room [IMDB] abt Clinton
h says:
well, like i've mentioned, jonathan has an article on McKinley and film -- the first pres. candiadte to exploit the film media [previous discussion here]
chuck says:
right, that's what i was thinking abt
h says:
"front porch" campagin
chuck says:
w/digital media, the Bush presidency's iconic status has been weird...lots of independent stuff online [I had sites such as Eric Blumrich's BushFlash in mind here]
h says:
yeah
h says:
it gets stranger and stranger
Yep, it gets stranger all the time. It's still way too early for me to be thinking about this project, but I wanted to document this conversation as something to revisit when/if I still find it to be a viable project. Any suggestions?

Posted by chuck at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Primary Kick-Off

Brief, shameless plug. Tomorrow at 3 PM, Cathy Woolard opens her campaign headquarters in downtown Decatur (a short walk from the courthouse, and more importantly, the Java Monkey). Depending on my schedule, I may try to swing by and show some support. So far, she's my favorite candidate among all of the Democrats running in the primary for Georgia's 4th district in the House of Representatives.

Woolard's progressive values would represent Decatur well in Congress without Cynthia McKinney's political baggage. She would also be one of the few openly gay representatives in the country. End advertisement. Via Blog for Democracy (which I found through Prison Notebooks).

Posted by chuck at 12:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Photos of Soldiers' Coffins

I'm sorting through my reaction to the release of several hundred photographs of the coffins of soldiers who have died in the war. The photographs themselves are powerful, unsettling in the anonymity of the coffins. I do think these photographs are important documents, and I firmly support the efforts to make them public. While I don't believe the photos will change many people's opinions about the war, I do think that these images provoke some kind of reflection, not just on the level of documentation but also on a second level that I'm still having trouble defining. I've been revising this paragraph for several minutes now, so I think it's best to simply provide a little conext for the debate and to allow the photographs to speak for themselves.

The photographs of the coffins have now been widely distrubuted on the Web as this New York Times article notes. The release of photographs of soldiers' coffins breaks with a Defense Department policy instituted in 1991 during the first Gulf War. The DoD has justified this policy on the grounds that it protects the privacy of grieving families; however, many anti-war activists have suggested that this ban is actually designed to prevent average Americans from seeing the devastating consequences of the war. There is a degree to which I share the desire to respect the privacy of grieving families; however, the claim that "only individual graveside services give the full context of a soldier's sacrifice" seems imprecise to me. I don't think that any image can truly represent this sacrifice, but I think we lose more by not making the effort towards representation.

Tami Silicio's photograph, taken in Kuwait, originally appeared on Sunday in The Seattle Times, according to this article, which reports that Silicio and her husband were fired from their jobs for Silicio's actions. The decision to publish the photograph (here's an article from Sunday's Seattle Times explaining the decision to publish) and Silicio's firing have provoked a fairly public debate about whether or not the publication of this photograph was justified, and again, according to the Seattle Times article, readers have generally been supportive of their decision to publish it.

Complicating matters, about 350 additional photographs taken in Dover Air Force Base were released under a Freedom of Information Act request by Russ Kick, who runs the website,
The Memory Hole (includes Kick's explanation of how he was able to obtain the photographs). According to the Washington Post, the Defense Department has again ordered that no more photographs be released. An earlier Washington Post article provides more context for this policy.

Posted by chuck at 12:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 24, 2004

"The Last Underrepresented Minority"

Here's something I overlooked in my original entry on the Chronicle's articles on the "Single vs. Married wars" One of the interviewees Alice Bach, a profesor at Case Western University called singles "the last underrepresented minority." I remember finding her comments a little odd, but only to the degree that it seemed to trivialize the concept of minority status. After all, I'm a white, middle-class kid from the suburbs, so I found it a little odd for minority status to be conferred onto me.

Samantha Blackmon (no permalinks), an African-American (and single) professor at Purdue University, offers a much more impassioned (and significant) critique of this comment (also at the CHE's "live colloquy"):

"As a single, African American woman I found the quote in the article on this topic referring to single people as the greatest underrepresented minority on campus down right insulting. I look around everyday and I see scores more single people than I do African Americans. This does not mean that being single is not an issue, but it does mean that people should not claim 'minority' status, especially in the superlative, when there is no merit to the claim. A better question may be what can we do to even the playing ground for actual minorities in the academy."
Essentially, I do think that calling singles a "minority" trivializes the experiences of "traditional" minority groups in the academy. More later, perhaps, on the transcript of the live colloquy.

Via scribblingwoman, who has also collected several other comments on the singles vs. smug marrieds saga.

Posted by chuck at 1:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 22, 2004

The Single Guy

Thoughful posts all around about the recent Chronicle articles on the single/parents divide in the profession. The two most prominent articles, "Singular Mistreatment: Unmarried professors are outsiders in the Ozzie and Harriet world of academe" and "Singing the Grad-School Baby Blues." These articles invoke many of the typical difficulties that singles and parents face within the academic profession (whether or not to have kids if you're married, whether you can talk about baby strollers with your married colleagues). Like Laura at 11D (who has a thoughtful post on the issue), I think these conflicts reflect the pressures of an incredibly tight job market, leading workers to turn on each other. Laura adds that:

Everybody else's life looks better than their own. The parent workers are jealous of their single counterparts who can work uninterrupted, who get a full night's sleep and a weekend off. The singles feel that they don't have the excuse of a soccer game to get them out of a departmental meeting.
Quite honestly, I generally don't think I've ever felt "discriminated against" (as the Chronicle article describes it) because of my status as a single person. I don't feel like an outsider at parties, even if the topic changes to the best brands of baby strollers. And while I wouldn't be able to take advantage of some university perks such as cheaper tuition for my children, I don't perceive that as a personal loss because it's not an expense I face (perhaps a small bonus to apply towards my student loan payments would balance things, but I've got no real beef here).

I also realize that being single gives me lots of free time to think, write, and read, all tremendous assets in my profession. I don't have to worry about budgeting my time as carefully, which is kind of nice. I've felt a little pressure to teach at certain times because of my "single" status, but usually those times coincide with my personal schedule, so it hasn't been a major problem. Other singles complain of the difficulty of being single during the stressful, lonely moments of academic life, which I know from experience can be demanding, especially when combined with household tasks (running errands, paying bills, etc).

In general, I like being single (I'd make more of an effort to change things if I didn't), so I simply don't perceieve myself as being slighted here. Then again, according to the "Singular Mistreatment" article, my feelings could have a basis in my gender:

Women in academe seem to experience singleness differently from their male counterparts. That may be in part because female professors are more likely to be single. According to the Higher Education Research Institute's survey, 82 percent of male professors were married in the 2001-2 academic year, compared with 65.5 percent of female faculty members. The single male professor has an "almost fetishized status," says Johnnie Wilcox, an assistant professor of English at Ohio University's main campus.
It does seem significant that most of the people who were interviewed for (or at least quoted in) the Chronicle article were women, but in general, I'd imagine this is a question that deserves further investigation than the fleeting observations I'd be able to make. I do think these comments speak to how married and single people believe themselves to be perceived by their colleagues.

The "Singular Mistreatment" article does raise the point that the job market can be difficult for single people who have little choice about where they live, which might mean living in a small town where there are few romantic prospects, but again, I think marrieds and singles face similar difficulties here. While it might appear easier to be married in a small town, parents may be concerned about the schools and other community opportunities their children miss. Again, I think the real issue is that we're facing a tight market, and competition for a limited number of jobs brings out these complaints of bias, loneliness, and alienation. I don't have any solutions here, and I really should be grading, but I think it's important to recognize that both singles and "smug marrieds" are confronting similar problems, and that those problems are symptomatic of another, larger problem, which is a competitive job market and a struggling economy.

I may write more about Bella DePaulo's focus on the "psychology of singleness" later, but for now, I'll agree that I don't see singleness as a problem that needs fixing. And now, I really have to get back to work on finishing some grading. Regular classes end tomorrow at Georgia Tech, so I've got a busy day (and night) ahead of me.

All of these links via Scribblingwoman, who was too busy with parental obligations to comment at length (perhaps illustrating that I have it easier than I thought).

Update: These articles only pay the mildest lip service to gays and lesbians, who still tend to face difficulties in obtaining partner benefits at many major universities.

Posted by chuck at 12:38 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 19, 2004

All the President's Men II

Casting began today for All the President's Men II according to a source close to the chutry experiment. A long-awaited sequel to the 1976 feature film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as WaPo reporters Woodward and Bernstein who broke the famous Watergate scandal. Due to budgetary constraints, Dustin Hoffan's Bernstein has been dropped from the sequel, but Redford is in serious negotiations to reprise his role as Bob Woodward. Tinseltown is abuzz as conspiracy thrillers seem to be making a comeback unprecedented since the mid 1970s aftermath of the Nixon administration, with "Presidents" slated to compete with the movie version of Richard Clarke's insider book, Against All Enemies (this part is actually true).

Conveniently Woodward has a new book, Plan of Attack, that will provide the basis for a shooting script. In order to ensure brisk box office, only limited plot details are available, but the film promises at least 20% more scandal (and a much larger explosion budget) than the original. Woodward coyly revealed some of the details in an interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes Sunday night (now I really wish I'd watched). Perhaps the most surprising news was the revelation (and I wish I were making this up) that Saudi Prince Bandar has promised to flood the US oil market just before the election:

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: "They're [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."

In addition to the "votes for oil" scheme, President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld also apparently worked a deal for General Tommy Franks to have unlimited finanical support for planning the Iraq invasion by November of 2001 (see Daily Kos for more on this topic), and by June of 2002, the President approved $700 million to support build-up for the Iraq war without getting Congressional approval:
"Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."
Details about the rest of the cast are sketchy right now (in other words this metaphor is running out of steam, fast), but look for a major plotline around Dick "War Fever" Cheney. The major difficult confronting the screenwriters now is keeping the film down to a manageable length, forcing the writers to exclude some of the Bush presidency's most famous scandals. Producers hope to have a film ready by the end-of-the-year Oscar season, and it has been confirmed that the film's marketing slogan will be: "History?...We'll All Be Dead."

Posted by chuck at 1:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 18, 2004

Tuition Hikes

Short Attention Span Sunday continues at the chutry experiment. I just learned from the Atlanta Desk that Georgia's four major research universities have all petitioned the Board of Regents to raise tuition by as much as 10% this year. University budgets are already clearly tapped out. According to the article, UGA and Georgia Tech have already laid off some employees, while other staff members do the work of two or three people. These increases are not just affecting research universities; community colleges have also requested tuition hikes.

These tuition hikes will also have the effect of endangering the already imperiled HOPE scholarship program (instituted by former governor Zell Miller before he launched his second career as a cultural critic). Of course we got a nice, shiny tax cut to play with, so I probably shouldn't complain.

Posted by chuck at 11:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Duke Abolishes 8 AM Classes

Duke administrators made what I regard to be one of the better university administrative decisions I've seen in a long time (note: Yahoo links are notoriously unstable). They've decided to eliminate 8 AM classes in order to "help its sleep-deprived students, who too often are struggling to survive on a mix of caffeine, adrenaline and ambition." Not to mention their sleep-deprived, over-caffienated, ambitious professors.

I really do think this is a good idea and not just because I am a "night person." Okay, I can't really think of any other good reasons, but still, early morning classes were nearly impossible for me. I do find it disconcerting that someone who could qualify for admission to Duke University would need sleep orientation to "understand the importance of sleep."

Yes, I'm in the middle of a grading marathon, which means I'll be easily distracted for the next few days.

Posted by chuck at 9:08 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

George W. Bush's Philosophy of History

From the Washington Post's report on Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, via Wonkette:

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
Wonkette's punchline is better than anything I could come up with, even after two cups of coffee. By the way, there's a good article on the hip new Washington gossip-satirist blogger in the New York Times.

Posted by chuck at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 16, 2004

Cinema India

My morning coffee reading: Interesting New York Times article on Cinema India, a film program touring the United States showing several Indian films.

A.O. Scott details several of the Indian film industry's features, specifically its deep roots in musical numbers, especially in Tamil movies. What I found interesting about the article is Scott's discussion of the "breezy cosmopolitanism" of many Bollywood films (this was something I'd noticed when watching Kal Ho Naa Ho a few months ago). And as Scott suggests, American audiences are often unaware of the fact of Bollywood's popularity.

In his discussion of 1995's Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ, as many fans call it), one of the films playing in the Cinema India series, Scott also discusses the attempts in recent Bollywood film to negotiate economic globalization while sustaining a unique cultural identity. He notes that DDLJ's "deft combination of adventurousness and conservatism — of youthful rebellion and filial duty, which are brought into harmony at the end — may be one source of its appeal. It suggests that India, which in the 90's was rushing headlong toward participation in the global economy after decades of semi-isolation, could embrace the wider world without sacrificing its history or its identity."

Note: I just did some digging and the festival is coming to Atlanta's High Museum of Art in May. Perhaps I can work in some extra credit in my film class this summer for students who attend one of these films.

Posted by chuck at 10:40 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 15, 2004

Driving Votes

Via Danah Boyd, I just came across Driving Votes, a website devoted to coordinating road trips to swing states to register voters for the 2004 election, with the goal of defeating Bush in 2004. The site appears to work on the grassroots principles similar to those of MoveOn.org. Driving Votes includes a "Blog Center," where you can learn more about the participants.

There is something strange about the logic that "votes in swing states count more," but I'm willing to admit that it's probably the political logic of 2004.

Posted by chuck at 11:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Some of the News That's Fit to Print

As Jen Brock at The Atlanta Desk mentions, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution now requires people who access the paper online to register. I've registered for the New York Times, Washington Post, and 2 or 3 other papers, but what makes this registration annoying is that you are required to list your phone number and address. Obviously they plan to sell this information to telemarketers and junk mail distributors. Initially, I was so annoyed that I refused to register, but then one of my students reminded me, "You know, Chuck, you could just make something up." So I did. I gave them the number of their own advertising department.

In addition to requiring people to subscribe, the AJC has decided to designate most of their sports columnists as "premium" content and to charge an exorbitant fee to read this material online. Now, I don't have to read the sports section, but it would be kind of nice. Consider me annoyed.

Posted by chuck at 5:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

If I Had a Billion Dollars

So I managed to finish and mail my taxes about six hours earlier this year than I did last year. Quite an improvement. And while I was out mailing my taxes, I found a few people from the local chapter of the Billionaires for Bush (a group Rachael mentioned a few days ago) staging a little street theater, handing outleaflets and thanking people for paying "their" taxes. If nothing else, the "Billionaires" made me smile, an impressive feat after I spent the whole day doing my taxes, only to find out that I owed money this year.

Update: Of course, the only reason I paid my taxes at all is to avoid being "shamed" on the web.

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April 14, 2004

More Uncovered Stuff

For my paper for CSA, one more review from OFFOFFOFF--The Guide to Alternative New York. Features reader comments. The review also handily summarizes some of the film's major claims about the war in Iraq.

Posted by chuck at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 13, 2004

Movies, Memories, and Time Travel

I'm never going to get around to writing full blog entries on these topics, so here's another grab-bag entry chock-full of interesting reading:

Now, I must get back to grading my students' research papers.

Posted by chuck at 3:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty

Carson Daly, who is 30 years old, will be receiving a lifetime achievement award from MTV's Total Request Live this week. He joins elder statesman, Sean "Puffy"/"P. Diddy"/"Puff Daddy" Combs who is 34, on the long list of TRL lifetime achievement winners. Via Salon (subscription or day-pass required).

This doesn't make me feel old. Instead all I can think is how sad it must be to be confined to the dustbin of pseudo-history before you're even old enough to run for President of the United States.

Posted by chuck at 2:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 12, 2004

Adaptation Review

Weird. I didn't realize that my review of Adaptation is out. Not sure when I would have noticed, but I just got an email from someone who'd come across the review. To be honest, I'm not sure it's my best writing. Still, the review conveys my ambivalence about Adaptation's cynicism. That's what really matters.

Posted by chuck at 9:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 11, 2004

Spider-Man Meets The Donald

While talking to some of my students before (during?) class on Monday, one of them mentioned a USA Today article on recent movie marketing efforts on television. The article emphasizes a 2.5-minute trailer for Spider-Man 2 (IMDB), which apparently aired during annoyingly ubiqitous reality TV show, The Apprentice.

Other examples include the USA cable network broadcasting the first ten minutes of the new Dawn of the Dead remake (my take on the film). Movie marketers describe this technique as "sampling." As usual, the USA Today article is irritatingly brief, but might provide a reference point for thinking about the marketing of Dawn for my horror film article.

Speaking of Spider-Man 2, I just learned that Michael Chabon wrote the screenplay. How cool is that? I'm probably the last person to know this (the last person who cares, anyway). Just politely ignore me if you knew about Chabon writing the screenplay six months ago.

Posted by chuck at 5:49 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 10, 2004

Learning From Toys

I'm fascinated by some of the toys and collectibles that have emerged after September 11. Here's yet another innocent childhood toy from Playmobil, a security check in (here's another image in case the previous one doesn't work), complete with conveyor belt to screen luggage and a metal detector (via Metafilter).

Posted by chuck at 5:43 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 9, 2004

Build Your Own Steadicam

Steadicams allow for smooth camera shots even while the camera operator is walking, jogging, or climbing stairs, but professional steadicams usually cost over $1000. Many aspiring filmmakers' cameras aren't even that expensive, so here's a way to build your own steadicam for only $14. Of course, you'd need to own a lot more tools and equipment than I do. And you'd probably need to know more about how to use them, too.

Posted by chuck at 8:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Upcoming Atlanta Film Events

Here are two cool Atlanta film events:

  1. Georgians for Democracy will conduct a free screening of Unprecedented, a documentary about the 2000 Presidential election on Monday, April 12, at 7 PM.
  2. The 48 Hour Film Project, in which competitiors have just two days to make a short film from scratch, will be in Atlanta May 21-23.
The 48 Hour Film Projet sounds like fun. Even if I don't make a film, I'd imagine the screening event would be a lot of fun.

Posted by chuck at 7:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Arianna's Blog Crush

Arianna Huffington has a crush on the blogosphere. Now she's started her own blog.

Her Salon article might be useful for my freshman composition course this fall, and her blog should be well worth watching. I'm now thinking that my fall course blog should include more links to more of the high profile political and journalism blogs that I'll suggest that my students read.

Posted by chuck at 12:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 8, 2004

Cultural Studies Association 2004

I've recently learned that my proposal for the Cultural Studies Association conference in Boston was accepted. The panel focuses on documentary film, and I'll be discussing the distribution and reception of Robert Greenwald's Uncovered, which I've discussed here, here, and here. The panel is a discussion group, which means the paper should only be about ten minutes long, just long enough to sketch out a very brief overview of my interests in the Greenwald film, but that's actually a nice break from writing a full-length conference paper (writing my paper on The Ring stressed me out quite a bit). Anyway, it should be a fun panel, and I'll get to fly for free. Hooray for flight delays!

More updates in the next few days, but I'm about to enter the grading inferno for about two weeks. I'll see you on the other side.

Posted by chuck at 11:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Guided By Voices Database

Via Metafilter: The Guided by Voices Database, which basically has all things GBV. The enthusiasm and the attention to detail is amazing:

This site allows you to navigate & search the Guided By Voices discography and gigography. Information includes catalog #'s, scanned album images, track times, credits, vinyl color, pressing information, release dates, setlists, and gig ticket/poster images. Song details include the releases the song appears on and gigs where the track was played live. GBV discography searches can be performed on album titles, song titles, and lyrics.

Posted by chuck at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 7, 2004

"Blair" Helmer Tackles TV

Via Cinema Minima: According to Variety, Blair Witch Project co-writer and director, Daniel Myrick, "is taking his bootstrap filmmaking style to the TV world, shooting a pilot with a significant online component." Reading the full article requires a subscription, so I'll keep scouting. It sounds like an interesting project, though.

Georgia Tech update: I've learned a little more news about the campus controversy I mentioned yesterday. It appears to be a more complicated case than the students' op-ed piece originally implied. So, until I get more public information, I'm probably not going to say much more about it.

Posted by chuck at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 6, 2004

Students for Academic Freedom

I must have missed this story because I was at ICFA. A Georgia Tech Public Policy professor is accused of discriminating against a student because of her political beliefs. The school is now facing political pressure from conservative critic David Horowitz, who recently wrote the "Academic Bill of Rights" and Georgia State Senator, Eric Johnson, who sponsored a bill passed by the Georgia Senate "that encourages public colleges and universities to refrain from discriminating against students based on their political or religious beliefs."

The AJC op-ed piece by two students in the class, Doug Gladden and John Putrich, reports that these allegations are essentially a "political witch hunt." Some of the basics as teh students explain them:

To recap the story, a Tech professor is accused of saying to a student: "You don't know what you're talking about. George Bush isn't doing anything for you. He's too busy pimping for the Christian Coalition."

As students in that class, we feel obligated to speak out on behalf of a professor whom we believe to be fair and highly capable. It doesn't matter whether or not we agree with what she said. What matters is that alleging "indoctrination" or "discrimination" based on the remark she made is nothing more than a political witch hunt.

The professor was reviewing for an upcoming test when two students decided to engage her in a debate that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Keep in mind that these same students have previously started discussions on current events rather than the course material. They routinely tried to steer these discussions to get an opinionated reaction from the professor.

After they made their point, the professor replied with her own view, and then encouraged the class not simply to be flag-wavers for any party, but to learn about and support issues rather than a party platform. The professor's remark was much more a way to end the debate and return to the material in the course rather than an attempt at indoctrination.

The fact is that things will be said that you don't agree with, no matter where you are or what you do. The professor expressed a political opinion that cannot be debated objectively. In the end, however, our test included questions such as "discuss the Administrative Procedures Act" or "discuss the budget process," not "for which group is President Bush pimping?"

I don't know much more about this story yet, but I'll certainly start digging around. I've got a meeting on campus, but I'll do some digging tonight and try to get to the bottom of this story. The students in the editorial note that a campus group, Students for Academic Freedom, have been seeking out a "test case." Right now, it's leading me to rethink teaching English 1101 using an election theme this fall.

Posted by chuck at 11:22 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 5, 2004

So the Yellow Jackets Lost

At least I can take consolation in the following news:

Grammar God!
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Posted by chuck at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thirty Minutes to Tip-Off

The big game starts in just a few minutes. Not sure how much energy I'll have to blog the game. My allergies are hitting me hard today, so we'll see how things go. To be honest, I wasn't much of Tech fan growing up. I usually cheered for that other school down the road. But for tonight, I'm a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech.

It has been interesting to watch the police build-up for the game. They've basically sealed off campus, which is difficult to do in the middle of downtown Atlanta. They've been closing off all the roads into campus, and only Tech students, faculty, and staff are allowed on campus tonight. But with the recent history of college students rioting after basketball championships it makes sense. Apparently there were some serious riots at University of Maryland last year, and Purdue used to have a terrible problem with rioting every basketball season.

So, now it's just about game time (I'm a slow typist). I'll try to check back from time to time, but for now, go Jackets!

Posted by chuck at 8:46 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

April 4, 2004

Political Blogger Under the Microscope

A colleague at Tech (who will remain anoymous for now) passed along this article on the attacks on Daily Kos a moderately liberal political blog that has successfully raised thousands of dollars for Democratic candidates for Congress (as well as giving Howard Dean's campaign an early bump). For now, I don't have time to comment on the article at length, but it might usefully augment my discussions of blogs as campaign tools this fall in my English 1101 classes.

Posted by chuck at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More Eternal Sunshine

I caught Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night, but after a long day of grading-for-hire, I didn't have the energy to write a review. I think I'll have to see the film a second time to really give it the attention it deserves (which may mean waiting for the DVD), but I can say that David Edelstein's insight about Sunshine's reworking of the screwball comedy genre for the 21st century captures much of the spirit of the film (the connections to the work of Stanley Cavell also seem promising).

Also check out A.O. Scott's New York Times article, which covers similar territory. I have some more pressing writing to do right now, but hopefully I'll be able to write a full review soon. In short, I really liked this film, and like Shaviro, I think it's screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's best work and one of the more innovative studio films I've seen in a long time.

Update: Two more "Eternal" links. Steven Johnson's Slate essay on brain science and Dereks' review of ESSM, which led me there.

Posted by chuck at 12:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 3, 2004

Still Ramblin'

Wow! What a game! Georgia Tech advances to the national title game for the first time in school history on Will Bynum's last second shot. Center Luke Schenscher played an amazing game, rebounding, blocking shots, and shooting over the smaller Oklahoma State team. Maybe I'll follow Kathleen's example and blog the championship game on Monday night.

Update: Patrick's pretty excited, too.

Posted by chuck at 8:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Reel Families

Two good finds for the price of one. First, a recent trackback led me to creativity/machine, which looks like a really cool blog, and which led me to Patricia Zimmerman's book, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Arts and Politics of the Everyday), which also looks like a good, and valuable, read.

Update: While I'm thinking about it, Zimmerman's more recent book, States of Emergency, about documentary film, looks good, too.

Posted by chuck at 2:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dawn of the Dead 2004

I finally got a chance to see a movie tonight, and decided to watch the Dawn of the Dead remake (IMDB). To be honest, I don't remember the original that well, but I remember liking the earlier film's satire of mall culture, with the zombies unconsciously lurching across the mall. There are a few Muzak jokes (Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" and a cover of "You Light up My Life"), but the remake dispenses with that version of satire pretty quickly, with Ving Rhames' police officer, Kenneth, delivering one of the mall joke lines from the original quickly. But the mall serves primarily as a useful setting for the action of the film, which I think is a very smart move.

Instead, the film (like many remakes) becomes much more about media and communications technologies. The tour de force opening sequence shows nurse Ana (Sarah Polley, a personal fave) returning from a long shift at work. She talks to a neighbor girl and joins her boyfriend in their modest home. Soon after, the girl bursts into the apartment, bites the boyfriend, and the film explodes into action. Quick cuts, simulating channel surfing, show a social order on the verge of collapse, with cities, including the nation's capital besieged by zombies while Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" blares over the soundtrack. The film very quickly sets up the apocalyptic tone of the film and visually and aurally links that apocalypse to the television coverage of the zombie attack. This "haunted media" (Jeffrey Sconce's term--I need to come up with my own) theme persists later in the film as characters in the mall watch TV in several key sequences. The film also used the mall's security cameras in an interesting, though problematic, way (I'm not sure it complicates one security guard's voyeurism effectively enough). There's one other key use of "haunted media" which I'll explain below the fold to avoid spoiling the film for anyone who hasn't seen it.

I also liked the move of making the zombies faster, able to make decisions more quickly. I don't regard their unflinching slowness in the original as a flaw--it fit perfectly with the film's mallrat satire. But the speed of the new generation of zombies beautifully fit the speed of digital video, and the flicker effect worked nicely with what I regard to be the film's updated satire.

A few other observations: the film generally ignores the Romero film's self-conscious treatment of race although there is one interesting subplot (perhaps the film's creepiest) involving Mekhi Phifer and his very pregnant Russian girlfriend/wife. The film also makes the mistake of adding a few too many characters--I actually had a difficult time keeping track of some of them, but perhaps this, too, was intentional, a way of de-individuating the human characters. There were several great uses of humor, including Rhames communicating with a gun store owner across the parking lot using dry erase boards. The film did feel a little flat in a few places, and I don't think the satire was quite as compelling as in the original. But I do think that some critics have underestimated the new Dawn. I really liked the way in which the film was able to riff off of other recent horror films that have commented, in some way, on media and communications technologies. And it was pretty damn fun, too. Brief spoiler below.

I really liked the film's ending. The flicker effect at the end beautifully adds to the sense of chaos, and as the boat departs from the dock, we get a closure signal as we hear the completely innocuous white guy (is this a new horror film trope--save money by hiring an unknown for the male lead?) fire his gun off-screen, signalling that he has committed suicide rather than become a zombie. The cut to the videotape as the credits flash onscreen initially cues a joke at the expense of the sleazy rich guy, but then we realize that one of the survivors is filming, the handheld camera almost immediately recalling The Blair Witch Project. Then, as the boat reaches the island and the dog runs ashore, the violent movement of the camera signals the deaths of teh last remaining survivors in the film. Only the camera is left to record and remember what happened.

Side note: Walter Chaw's Film Freak Central review is quite good. The comparison between the zombie birth scene and Cronenberg's The Fly seems really apt. Elvis Mitchell gets the film almost completely wrong. I like the comparison to Troma's B-Movie films (Tromeo and Juliet, The Toxic Avenger), but Mitchell makes the comparison seem like a bad thing.

Now thinking it might be worthwhile to extend my project on The Ring into something a little broader.

Update: Mick LaSalle's SF Gate review adds the interesting reminder that the credits sequence also very clearly invokes the September 11 attacks, something I'd neglected to mention in my review, in part because I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to read these shots. I'm still not sure, but since I'd like to write about this film, I'm collecting all the useful links I can find.

Posted by chuck at 1:20 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 2, 2004

Uncovered Links

While taking a break from final revisions for an article, I've been collecting a few links for a possible panel discussion of documentary film. As I've mentioned, I'm particularly interested in Robert Greenwald's Uncovered. So, in no praticular order:

I'm not sure I'll write this paper, but it's nice to be writing ahead, collecting links, thinking about new projects.

Posted by chuck at 1:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 1, 2004

Reconstructionists Revisited

A few weeks ago, Kathleen mentioned Mark Crispin Miller's "scariest plenary ever," in which Miller discussed the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which seeks to radically restructure American politics into a Christian theocracy. A recent Creative Loafing article has revisited these issues. Not sure I have much to add here, but the Loaf article, by John Sugg, does offer a valuable overview of the movement, specifically its roots in the reaction to the 1960s counterculture and the Roe vs. Wade decision. Incidentally, the CRs also flourished in suburban Atlanta's Cobb County by the early 1980s.

Further, Sugg is careful to distinguish between CRs, who are usually Presbyterian, and evangelical fundamentalists, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. There are certainly ways in which these groups overlap (both oppose gay rights and abortion rights, for example), but the two groups have a much different understanding of how things will play out. The "traditional" right of Robertson and Falwell "were 'pre-millennial,' meaning they believed history was going to hell. Indeed, adapting the Revelation to the modern era, they prophesized that Armageddon would likely arrive with a nuclear blast." By contrast,

The Reconstruction and dominion theologians had a solution to the dilemma. They preached the gospel of 'post-millennialism,' meaning that it was Christians' job to take over the world and impose biblical rule. Christ would not return, they said, until the church had claimed dominion over all of the world's governments and institutions, and most of the world's population had accepted the Reconstruction brand of Christianity.
I do think these two groups must be understood separately, even if many of their goals are the same, and even with specific alliances such as The Council for National Policy, which Kathleen mentioned earlier.

Instead, the Reconstructionsists should be understood more in terms of what Bill Berkowitz calls a "tentacle influence," in which CR policies and practices are spread without necessarily adhering to the core theological premises. Of course, this doesn't mean that CRs haven't influenced elections or bent Bush's ear. It just means that the religious right needs to be understood as a much more complicated, amorphous group than we often see in representations of it. Still, the Sugg piece traces the CR movement's far-right and anti-democratic beliefs, and it's a movement that needs to be more carefully examined.

Not sure there's a direct connection here, but Kathleen's discussion of Miller's plenary also reminded me of his argument that "part of Bush's mass appeal lies in the vicarious pleasure of aggression and domination," which brought to mind Sidney Blumenthal's stinging Salon editorial condemning Bush's wisecracks about the "missing" WMDs in a slide presentation given just minutes after tearful testimony by the widow of one of the 9/11 victims.

Posted by chuck at 9:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Georgia House Upholds Gay Marriage Amendment

The times, they are a-changin' back. Reversing last month's decision to reject writing discrimination into the Georgia Constitution, the Georgia House of Representatives voted by a slim 122-52 vote (120 votes were needed) to support an amendment banning gay marriage. Governor Sonny Perdue has already announced that he will support an amendment, meaning that the amendment will be on the ballot in November.

Money quotes from the New York Times article:

"We cannot let judges in Boston, or officials in San Francisco, define marriage for the people of Georgia," Representative Bill Hembree, a Douglasville Republican and the amendment's sponsor, said in a speech to the chamber.
Quite frankly, I'd rather not have insurance agents in the 'burbs define marriage for the people of Atlanta, much less Georgia.
Representative Randal Mangham, a Decatur Democrat who had previously abstained from voting, said he changed his mind because he felt uncomfortable explaining the issue to his children. "I don't appreciate having to explain to my 9-year-old why two big husky guys are kissing," Mr. Mangham said. "God discriminates against the act, but he loves the person. I will continue to protect people who live that lifestyle."
Continue to protect them by taking away their rights? Mangham doesn't represent the section of Decatur where I live, but here's hoping that someone who really cares about protecting equal rights challenges him in the upcoming election.

I think that what troubles me here is the lack of any real alternatives in Georgia. Most of our states Democrats (especially outside of Atlanta) are relatively conservative, as this vote indicates. It leaves me feeling somewhat powerless. I do appreciate people such as Rep. Douglas Dean, a black Atlanta Democrat, who commented, "They're absolutely crazy," Dean said of the blacks who sided with Republicans and conservative Democrats. "It's a sad day, and I'm angry as hell." But right now, there just don't seem to be enough people like Rep. Dean out there. Not in Georgia anyway.

Posted by chuck at 10:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack