Brad Warthen's Blog

Never mind maneuvers...

Just watched the end of a movie in which Lawrence Olivier was strutting about in Napoleonic-era admiral's uniform with one empty right sleeve, which could only mean he was portraying Lord Nelson. And there was Vivien Leigh talking about Lord Keith and St. Vincent and the rest, so I was hooked to the end of it. Saw a highly melodramatic rendering of Nelson's death at Trafalgar.

As you know, I'm a huge fan of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Lord Nelson was Jack Aubrey's hero. In the books, Jack is the one to whom Nelson said, "Never mind maneuvers, always go straight at 'em." In reality, he said that to Lord Cochrane, upon whom Aubrey is largely based.

Here's the kicker: After the movie, the guy who introduces the features on TCM said the movie was so chock-full of homilies about the importance of standing up to dictators that the director was summoned to Congress -- still gripped by isolationism -- where our lawmakers were investigating pro-war propaganda by Hollywood. He was scheduled to appear on Dec. 12, 1941, so he lucked out there. By his appearance date, isolationism was no longer quite the thing, you know.

Imagine that -- Hollywood being investigated for pro-war propaganda.

I'd better go to bed now.

'25 Best Conservative Movies'

As y'all know, I am inordinately fond of movies, and also of Top Five Lists and their lesser cousins, Top Ten lists and other denominations.

So it was with interest that I perused this one put together by National Review, "the 25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years," which are described as "great movies that offer compelling messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more." It's not a list it would have occurred to me to compile, since I don't think in those left-vs.-right terms. And in some cases NR has to put an odd spin on them to make them "conservative," but in others I see the point, to the extent that it matters. Who cares? A good movie is a good movie. But I perused it with interest, as I do all such lists. Here I add a little of my own commentary on each (for the magazine's commentary, follow the link):

The Best Conservative Movies
1. The Lives of Others (2007): This WAS wonderful, and if you haven't seen it, order it from Netflix or whatever. It's in German, with subtitles -- so Herb should especially like it. I think maybe it made No. 1 on this list because it was one of the last movies William F. Buckley saw, and he raved about it. Well, the man always had good taste.
2. The Incredibles (2004): This was good, but would not make any kind of "best 25" list I would compile.
3. Metropolitan (1990): Never saw it.
4. Forrest Gump (1994): OK, fine.
5. 300 (2007): Didn't like it all that much. Too artificial.
6. Groundhog Day (1993): Definitely a Top 25 on any list, but this is one where the "conservatives" are missing the point, although they're certainly right to say, "Theologians and philosophers across the ideological spectrum have embraced it." You know where I first heard about it? In a homily at St. Peter's. Msgr. Lehocky was impressed by it because the entire point of the movie is that the only way Murray's character can escape the pointless treadmill of his existence is to live one day that is perfectly lived for other people, NOT for himself. "Conservatives" of the über-selfish, modern libertarian variety have to overlook that obvious message to like this flick. Again, it's not about the value of "the permanent things," but about living for OTHERS. But I'm glad for them to like it anyway. Everyone should.
7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Haven't seen it.
8. Juno (2007): Yes, it was wonderful. And yeah, it had a "conservative" message in that if affirmed life. Although I'm still, after all these years, trying to figure out how affirming life got to be "conservative." Yet another way that Roe has distorted the way we think, and even the way we think about thinking, in this country.
9. Blast from the Past (1999): Very enjoyable, and yeah, it spoke up for traditional values.
10. Ghostbusters (1984): Bet you didn't know that this one was political. Neither did I. The justification for this call is pretty thin. It seems mostly based on the bad guy being from the EPA, and Akroyd's hilarious line: “I don’t know about that. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!”
11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Yeah, OK -- I can see that.
12. The Dark Knight (2008): Again, seems odd on this list. And while it might be one of the best 25 new movies I've seen in the past year, I wouldn't elevate it above that.
13. Braveheart (1995): Saw it. Hated it. The first sign of Mel Gibson's obsession with characters who are gruesomely tortured to death, which is all I remember of it.
14. A Simple Plan (1998): Never saw it.
15. Red Dawn (1984): Well, of course. And I enjoyed it for what it was, minus the political preaching. I enjoyed it on this level -- there were times as a high school student I would have welcomed the fantasy of paratroopers suddenly landing in the schoolyard and shooting up the school, so that I'd have a good excuse to grab some friends (including girls) and some guns and run up into the mountains for an extended adventure. Didn't you think thoughts like that in school? OK, never mind...
16. Master and Commander (2003): Yes, folks, this is why I posted this entire item. As y'all know, I'm always bringing up O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books here on the blog, and nobody ever engages the subject, which is a big disappointment. This offers me another excuse. And yes, if you're reaching for it, I guess this movie extols conservative virtues. (I guess it didn't strike me because, having grown up in the navy, the conservative values it portrays are ones that I, and John McCain, take for granted.) As NR says, the H.M.S Surprise is "a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place." Granted. And Jack Aubrey is as Tory as they come. But then the stories are equally about Stephen Maturin, who is after all a former Irish republican, who detests authority from that practiced by naval officers to that assumed by Buonoparte. But Stephen is no modern, milksop liberal -- although strangely, in the movie version, he is portrayed that way (right up until the moment he boards the enemy ship sword in hand, which the movie makers really didn't prepare the viewer for, since at every moment up to that point you were given the impression he was a pacifist or something). Yeah, the movie was great, but the books are a thousand times better -- whatever your political orientation. Some of y'all go read them, so we can discuss them here.
17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005): Didn't see it; never particularly wanted to. I'm guessing you had to read this books as a kid to be interested.
18. The Edge (1997): Never saw it.
19. We Were Soldiers (2002): This was OK, but not any kind of top 25. An ironic choice for NR, since it was written by Joe Galloway, who was there. If you've read Joe's columns, you know what I mean. He doesn't see the world their way (or mine, either).
20. Gattaca (1997): Yeah, it was OK. Worth seeing. Not that great, though.
21. Heartbreak Ridge (1986): This movie stunk up the place! I can't get past the first 10 or 15 minutes. Awful acting. Cartoonish depiction of the Corps. Yeah, I was hoping this movie would be what NR seems to think it was. But it wasn't. Not one of Eastwood's better efforts.
22. Brazil (1985): Hated it. Yeah, it had its cool parts -- DeNiro's guerrilla repairman, for instance -- but on the whole a bummer. I hate these nihilistic, hopeless tales that go to such lengths to conjure a world in which life is useless and meaningless. Isn't life depressing enough?
23. United 93 (2006): A fine film, a fine tribute. Not a Top 25, though.
24. Team America: World Police (2004): Never saw it; never wanted to. (You get the idea that they included this one for ironic effect or something?)
25. Gran Torino (2008): Just saw it SUNDAY NIGHT, and it was great. My wife and I had a rare night out. It surprised me that she wanted to see it, and one of my daughters almost talked her out of it (we considered going to see "Slumdog Millionaire" instead, which would have been OK, but I really wanted to see this one). Well, we both loved it. The reviews that rave about it are not exaggerating. Clint Eastwood just gets better and better at his craft.

The magazine then listed 25 "Also-Rans," as follows:

Air Force One, Amazing Grace, An American Carol, Barcelona, Bella, Cinderella Man, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Hamburger Hill, The Hanoi Hilton, The Hunt for Red October, The Island, Knocked Up, The Last Days of Disco, The Lost City, Miracle, The Patriot, Rocky Balboa, Serenity, Stand and Deliver, Tears of the Sun, Thank You for Smoking, Three Kings, Tin Men, The Truman Show, Witness 

Of those, several should have made the Top 25, being way better than most on the list that made it, specifically:

Air Force One -- Nothing like a president who kicks terrorist butt personally. He'd have my vote. Aside from that, just a well-done action flick, as only Wolfgang Peterson can make 'em. (Although you know what I liked better? "In the Line of Fire." Not for its conservatism, but for its communitarianism. What? You don't remember Eastwood saying repeatedly how much he loves public transportation?)
Bella -- Beautiful flick, although the parts that flash back to the terrible thing that happened are hard to take. It helps to understand Spanish (the movie's sort of bilingual), but it's not necessary.
Knocked Up -- A real hoot, and of course we know about how it's an unconventional evocation of traditional values. It's still a hoot.
Serenity -- A little preachier than the original series on the whole anti-Nanny State thing, but the characters and the action make it easy to ignore. Why did "Firefly" not last? Because it was too good, I guess.
Witness -- Another of Harrison Ford's best. Excellent fish-out-of-water drama.

Heck, even "The Island" was better than most of those that made the list...

Oh, just to finish the job. If I were to pick a Top Five List from among the above 50 -- just Top Five, regardless of political "message" -- I'd go with:

1. Groundhog Day
2. The Lives of Others
3. Master and Commander
4. Air Force One
5. Serenity

Mind you, if I were compiling a list of Top 25 from the past 25 years without restrictions, it would include a lot of flicks not among the 50 above. Such as "Almost Famous," "American History X" and "Apollo 13," and that's just the A's. How about you?

I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy...

Being an editor is often a thankless job, but you get these little rewards now and then. Such as this one, which probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone who doesn't love words as much as I do, but was a nice treat for me...

One of my colleagues had used "harrumphed" in an editorial I was editing, and I decided that I would check the spelling, on the off chance that it was actually in the Webster's New World College Dictionary, which is the one we use as an official arbiter in our style rules.

And it was! Which I thought was way cool. Also, I believe it's correct to call it an onomatopoeia, which doubles the fun, since that's a fun word to say.

Finally, it allowed me to use my favorite line from "Blazing Saddles" as a blog headline.

And who says editors don't have fun?

Tessio?!?! I thought Michael had you whacked...

Don't know about you, but I was really surprised to see on today's business page that Abe Vigoda is still active and working. In a story about Super Bowl commercials, there was this bullet item:

• “Barney Miller” co-star Abe Vigoda lends his voice to an H&R Block ad for income tax services, playing Death.

OK, so he's portraying Death, which is not the most upbeat of gigs, but hey, he's still around. That's really saying something, when you consider that his shtick on Barney Miller was playing the really, really old guy who was falling apart with various ailments. And that was the 70s.

He'll be 88 next month.

So I guess Tom Hagen did let him off the hook for old times' sake. Good for you, Sal.

I have a hunch something exciting is going to happen in the pork belly market

That's about all I wanted to say, after I saw this item on thestate.com:

    This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.”
    The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say well more than 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating or sometimes scolding its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Don't anybody tell Paula Moore over at PETA. Or George the Lobster, either.

Even I might want to pass on this carnivorous extravaganza. Although, on the upside, I'm not allergic to the recipe, which is not something I can often say about junk food...

Pork bellies, of course, are where we get bacon, which you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich...

We're nowhere near Barstow, but the drugs have begun to take hold

Just glanced out my window while cross my office to my desk, as the sun was setting, and could have sworn the 101st Airborne Division, circa 1944, was drifting down from the sky over the Congaree River.

Turns out, upon a double-take, it was just some small scraps of dark cloud that happened to be roughly WWII-era parachute-shaped, in the same sense that the beacon at Castle Anthrax was grail-shaped ("Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!")

More about the drugs later. And yes, the headline is a Fear and Loathing reference.

On second thought, I DO have something to say about Atwater...

After I had a good night's sleep, I thought of something I wanted to say about the Lee Atwater documentary I saw last night.

Last night I posted something sort of neutral and didn't offer an opinion about Atwater, probably because it just seems so long ago, and the man's dead, and since I don't have anything good to say about him, why say it? Unlike Kathleen Parker, I do not share the philosophy of Alice Roosevelt Longworth (someone my grandma, who grew up in Washington during that period, used to talk about a lot; one gathers Alice was sort of the Paris Hilton of her day, in the sense of being a constant subject of media attention), summarized as "If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me."

That sort of attitude appalls me. Folks who think I'm just mean as hell to the likes of Mark Sanford, or Jim Hodges before him, just don't understand how hard I have to be pushed to be that critical. Like Billy Jack, I try; I really try. But when I get pushed too far...

Anyway, a column in the WSJ this morning -- by that paper's House Liberal, Thomas Frank -- said something (in a different context) that made me think of the Atwater movie:

In our own time, a cheap cynicism has been so fully assimilated by the governing class that the disenchantment is already there, incorporated into the orthodoxy itself. What distinguished the late conservative era, after all, was its caustic attitude toward the state and its loud expressions of disgust with the media....

And indeed, that was Atwater's contribution to American politics -- cynicism of the cheapest, tawdriest, most transparent sort. The sort that brings out the Pollyanna idealist in me, that makes me want to say, "Have a little faith in people." Or in God, better yet. Or in something good and fine and worthwhile. Atwater embodied, without apology -- in fact, he boasted about it -- the dragging of our public life, our great legacy from our Founders (do you hear the fife in the background yet?), down to the level of professional wrestling.

He made politics -- already often an ugly pursuit -- uglier, as ugly as he could make it and get away with it, and reveled in doing so.

Oh, and before you Democrats get on a high horse and shake your heads at Atwater as "the Other," check the beams in your own eyes. It was fitting that one of the people in the movie who defended Atwater was Mary Matalin. And it's no coincidence that she is married to James Carville. Nor is it a coincidence that Carville -- check the picture -- looks like Gollum. All those years of cynicism ("It's the economy, stupid") have done that to him as surely as carrying the "precious" did it to Smeagol.

It's that "Oh, grow up! This is the way the game is played, so get over it" attitude that makes politics so appalling today. (I like what this writer said about Carville-Matalin: "For the love of God, please stop enabling them.") Both parties have thoroughly embraced the Atwater ethic -- or perhaps I should say, nonethic.

Good news, though: Obama just may be the cure for what ails us, since so many voted for him as an antidote to all that -- especially those young folks who flocked to his banner. Time to ask what we can do for our country, rather than merely sneering at it, as Atwater did.

(Oh, and before Randy says, "Why don't you condemn McCain for his horrible, negative campaign," I should say that you know I'm not going to do that. McCain disappointed me by not running the kind of campaign he could and should have run, emphasizing his own sterling record as an anti-partisan figure. But he didn't disappoint me enough not to endorse him, so get over it. Everything is relative. I could, as you know, condemn Obama for tying McCain to Bush, which was deeply and profoundly offensive to me given its patent falsehood, and all that McCain had suffered at the hands of Bush. That was a cynical and offensive ploy to win an election, and it worked. But I prefer not to dwell on that, and instead to dwell upon the facets of Obama's character that inspire us to hope for something better. Those facets are real -- just as the virtues of McCain were real -- and we owe it to the country to embrace them, to reinforce them, to do all we can to promote the kind of politics that lifted Obama above the hyperpartisanship of Carville and the Clintons.)

Anyway, that's what I thought of this morning to say about Atwater.

The Post and 'liberal bias,' then and now

Cal Thomas cries AHA! upon reading the Sunday column of The Washington Post's ombudsman, in which Deborah Howell writes:

Neither the hard-core right nor left will ever be satisfied by Post coverage -- and that's as it should be. But it's true that The Post, as well as much of the national news media, has written more stories and more favorable stories about Barack Obama than John McCain. Editors have their reasons for this, but conservatives are right that they often don't see their views reflected enough in the news pages.

For Mr. Thomas, this is an occasion for pontificating (in a column he wrote for tomorrow) about "what's wrong with modern media." For me, I'm reminded of "All the President's Men," which I watched again over the weekend.

There's a great scene in which Hugh Sloan is trying to explain himself to a fidgety Woodward and Bernstein. "I'm a Republican..." he begins, to which Redford's Woodward, eager to keep this critical source talking, says, "So am I."

In response, Dustin Hoffman's Bernstein gives Woodward this look. As focused as he is on the goal of getting Sloan to talk, he registers surprise, for just an instant. His look seems to say, "What did you just say? Going a bit far to ingratiate ourselves with this guy, aren't we?" The look combines incredulity with a touch of acknowledgment that maybe it IS true, and if so, this Woodward guy is really a different animal.

I really don't know what newsrooms are like these days because I haven't worked in one in a while, but in my day it was extremely unusual for anyone to declare a party preference, but a far greater rarity to say, "I'm a Republican." I can think of one reporter I had over the years -- one out of dozens -- who made a point of saying that, and it was sort of the running gag -- he was the "office Republican." He left the paper in 1982 to go to work for a newly elected GOP congressman -- Don Sundquist. Now he's a lobbyist for the insurance industry. I've mentioned him here before: Joel Wood.

There have been reporters who, if you forced me to guess, I would guess leaned Republican, and plenty of them who leaned -- some very heavily -- to the Democrats. But Joel's the only I remember who made a point of it. Come to think of it, I can only think of one reporter who made a big point about being a Democrat, and he did it to an embarrassing degree. He wasn't nearly as cool about it as Joel. And why do I just say "leaned" when I speak of the others? Because it's nothing I would quiz people about, not back in my news days, anyway.

So yeah, Woodward was a different sort of critter, certainly back in Ben Bradlee's day, and probably today. In another column, Ombudsman Howell says the following:

While it's hard to get some readers to believe this, I have found no hint of collusion between the editorial and news pages in my three years here. The editorial board's decisions have nothing to do with news coverage. In fact, Len Downie, who just retired as executive editor, famously didn't read editorials, and the computer system has a firewall that prevents the newsroom from seeing the editorial staff's work.

Republican-leaning readers -- along with some who say they are Democrats -- have overflowed my e-mail inbox saying that The Post is biased in favor of Obama. As I've noted before and will again, Obama has gotten more news and photo coverage than McCain.

Of course, readers who tilt to the right will say that with news people being instinctively, reflexively liberal, you don't need any collusion. (The Post, by the way, endorsed Obama -- even after years of agreeing more with McCain on Iraq.)

I'll close this post with a quote from yet another Howell piece, and this is an experience that everyone in the business can identify with, whatever their biases or lack thereof:

When I came to this job in October 2005, I heard more from Democrats who thought The Post was in George W. Bush's back pocket. The Post was "Bush's stenographer." Now I hear mainly from Republicans who think The Post is trying to elect Barack Obama president.

Yup. Been there, heard that.

'Boogie Man:' Atwater film coming to Cola

You probably already read in the paper that "Boogie Man," the documentary about Lee Atwater, is coming to the Nickelodeon. A fresh reminder came in via e-mail from Judy Turnipseed:

This movie which starts this week at the Nickelodeon about the famous Lee Atwater features Tom Turnipseed with a lot of other South Carolinians.  Tom will be on a panel about the movie on Friday night. 

 

Here is a review of it in the New York Times

 

http://tinyurl.com/4aqd8c

 

Here is a link to a trailer of the movie and how to buy tickets at the Nick if you want to see the movie.

http://www.boogiemanfilm.com/ 

 

Tom, of course, was the object of one of the most outrageously mean things Atwater ever said. Here, from a 1991 story by our own Lee Bandy, is a short version of that bit of history:

Tom Turnipseed, a liberal Democrat who ran for Congress in South Carolina, once accused Atwater of engineering a survey of white voters in which they were pointedly informed of Turnipseed's membership in the NAACP. Atwater denied the charge, but also said that he did not want to deal with allegations made by someone who had once been "hooked up to jumper cables," referring to shock treatments Turnipseed had received years before as a suicidal teenager.

He said that in 1980, when Turnipseed was running against Floyd Spence.

If we DO have a run on the banks, can I be George Bailey?

After posting my last post, I went to find this scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" -- one of my All-Time, All-Category, Top Five Movies (in fact, I listed it on the blog as my No. 1, but I go back and forth on that). Interesting thing, when I went to YouTube and typed in the title, the bank run scene came up second -- which makes me think others have that scene on their minds.

Surely things aren't that bad, are they?

Well, if it does come to that, can I be George Bailey? I want to be the reassuring guy who says, "Just remember that this thing isn't as black as it appears," just before the sirens go by. Then I can say,

No, but you're... you're, you're-you're thinkin' of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. Th-th-The money's not here... why, your money's in Joe's house, that's right next to yours, and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Maitland's house, and, and a hundred others. ... Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then they're gonna pay it back to you as best they can, now what're you gonna do, foreclose on them?

I've always enjoyed that, a nice communitarian lesson in how a healthy community operates economically.

Of course, if you'd rather get 50 cents on the dollar from that free-market monster Mr. Potter, wull-wull-wull go right ahead, but don't then don't come crying to ol' George Bailey... No, wait: I guess George wouldn't say that, would he?