Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of the coverage of the 9-year-old shooting a range instructor and killing him with a fully automatic Uzi is that none of the stories questioned the absolute idiocy of a 9-year-old being given any real weapon to fire. Until now--when the gun people have gone crazy with "stand your ground" laws that undermine centuries of careful delineation of the criminal law of retreat and other perversions of common sense, I have not been able to muster outrage about the NRA or gun laws.
This incident, however, discloses how nuts so many people have become in this country. Actually, when I was a kid at camp, I loved firing a 22-calibre rifle. The range was carefully monitored, one shell at a time. Even in the Army, when we qualified on the range with the M-14, the control of weapons--loaded or unloaded--was one thing (one of the few) that the service appeared to take seriously. To me, the fanatacism of the gun people has now passed way beyond reason.
And, as I said, I've never been against responsible use of guns. I found D.C.'s total resistance to allowing anyone to have a gun almost as extreme and ill-advised as the NRA's opposition to any regulation on gun ownership. Granted, D.C. lost in the Supreme Court by one vote and I dare you to read Stevens's dissenting (5-4) opinion and not agree that it makes Scalia's majority one appear ridiculous. But to some extent, D.C. got what it deserved for taking an extreme position. Perhaps we shall see the current idiocy exposed when we start hearing the nuts defend automatics for 9-year-olds.
I've been participating in a colloquy with some friends, one in particular, about two significant articles about Israel and Gaza that have appeared this week. One by the former AP reporter Matti Friedman emphasizes how the world--Europe especially--holds Israel to a different standard than any other country and also tolerates anti-Semitism masked as anti-Israeli policy. The other by veteran reporter Connie Bruck in The New Yorker takes on AIPAC as a bunch of right-wing nuts who slavishly propound Netanyahu's hard-line positions and are essentially a Republican mouthpiece.
Both articles are right. My good friend points out that even agreeing that Israel has adopted bad policies--encouraging the right-wing settlers and its right-wing policies in general--it palls compared with Hamas launching rockets from schools and civilian bases on Israeli civilians. True enough. And I'm willing to agree, too, that ill-advised or even perverse Israeli government policies have not themselves inspired anti-Semitism.
But AIPAC's long campaign to equate anti-Israeli policy positions with anti-Semitism and to silence Jewish critics of Israeli policy as "self-hating Jews" have besmirched the Israeli cause. Israel was moving along the right path when Rabin and Olmert engaged with the Palestinians. Yes, the Palestinians rejected even the reasonably decent Oslo-era proposals. Had Isreal continued along those lines, much opinion now massed against it would likely have been focused on the Palestinians' intransigence.
Netanyahu is akin to the right-wing Republicans pushed even further to the right by the settlers and their ilk--who may make the Tea Party look centrist. These people exemplify the old adage of the extremes meeting--the Arabs who want to push the Jews into the sea and the settlers who want to push the Palestinians out of any territory the rightists claim.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
A Most Wanted Actor
Tonight it struck me after seeing A Most Wanted Man how much we will miss seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman on screen or stage. He took what was a pretty good John Le Carre spy novel, made it a wrenching picture that held my attention, and left the story better than he found it. That's saying a good deal because even a pretty good Le Carre is better than most people's best.
It was a masterful performance because in the Hamburg setting, Hoffman starts off with a little German to establish his bona fides and then turns to English with just enough of an accent to make it real. He makes you accept his character, too, as the author intended: a veteran in the cloak-and-dagger trade actually trying to do some good while doing what his job demands.
It's also good to see this picture because Le Carre has in his post-Cold War novels turned from casting the Soviets as the villains to putting the Americans in that role. The fine actress Robin Wright carries out that theme. Le Carre now has the Brits--and in this instance, the Germans--wrestle with the values at stake. (At least the Germans have more than one view--and strategy--so much of the struggle is between their agencies and personnel.) It will be interesting to see if Putin manages to change Le Carre's current views.
What also jumped out from the screen is how Le Carre's characters are old school in one major way: they smoke and drink--well, Hoffman's character does--to abandon. In this story, the smoking and drinking merely emphasize the tension his character has brought upon himself.
A few words to recall Betty Bacall. At 89, she may have been the last link with the old Hollywood she broke into when she was 19. She also lasted long enough to become more than Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, not that there was ever anything wrong with that or with the three pictures she will be remembered for co-starring in with him: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo.
The Big Sleep was the best of those, helped by Faulkner's adaptation of Raymond Chandler--but she was the major reason that To Have and Have Not was better as a picture than it was when Hemingway wrote it. Bogart was stalwart in it, Walter Brennan overacted as always, but Lauren Bacall, all of 19, blew them away with her cool, she a model only just arrived on the West Coast, a New Yorker out of Julia Richman High School. Her singing wasn't terrific but she managed to do "How Little We Know" convincingly, too.
I never saw the Broadway stage productions for which she won the Tonys that took the place of Oscars on her shelf. But I did remember seeing the picture where she held her own as an acerbic, sarcastic, absolutely delightful and highly attractive woman when up against no less than Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable: How to Marry a Millionaire.
Although her marriage to Jason Robards ended in divorce, she did at least find in him a man who could hold his own when put up against the imperishable image of Bogart. Best of all, she was a stand-up person who held her own, whether it be against the studios who made her movie career an endless roller coaster or the politicians who feasted off a usually supine Hollywood.
It was a masterful performance because in the Hamburg setting, Hoffman starts off with a little German to establish his bona fides and then turns to English with just enough of an accent to make it real. He makes you accept his character, too, as the author intended: a veteran in the cloak-and-dagger trade actually trying to do some good while doing what his job demands.
It's also good to see this picture because Le Carre has in his post-Cold War novels turned from casting the Soviets as the villains to putting the Americans in that role. The fine actress Robin Wright carries out that theme. Le Carre now has the Brits--and in this instance, the Germans--wrestle with the values at stake. (At least the Germans have more than one view--and strategy--so much of the struggle is between their agencies and personnel.) It will be interesting to see if Putin manages to change Le Carre's current views.
What also jumped out from the screen is how Le Carre's characters are old school in one major way: they smoke and drink--well, Hoffman's character does--to abandon. In this story, the smoking and drinking merely emphasize the tension his character has brought upon himself.
A few words to recall Betty Bacall. At 89, she may have been the last link with the old Hollywood she broke into when she was 19. She also lasted long enough to become more than Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, not that there was ever anything wrong with that or with the three pictures she will be remembered for co-starring in with him: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo.
The Big Sleep was the best of those, helped by Faulkner's adaptation of Raymond Chandler--but she was the major reason that To Have and Have Not was better as a picture than it was when Hemingway wrote it. Bogart was stalwart in it, Walter Brennan overacted as always, but Lauren Bacall, all of 19, blew them away with her cool, she a model only just arrived on the West Coast, a New Yorker out of Julia Richman High School. Her singing wasn't terrific but she managed to do "How Little We Know" convincingly, too.
I never saw the Broadway stage productions for which she won the Tonys that took the place of Oscars on her shelf. But I did remember seeing the picture where she held her own as an acerbic, sarcastic, absolutely delightful and highly attractive woman when up against no less than Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable: How to Marry a Millionaire.
Although her marriage to Jason Robards ended in divorce, she did at least find in him a man who could hold his own when put up against the imperishable image of Bogart. Best of all, she was a stand-up person who held her own, whether it be against the studios who made her movie career an endless roller coaster or the politicians who feasted off a usually supine Hollywood.
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