Let’s recap, shall we?

What can we expect from Kerry given last night’s speech?

a.) an aggressive but multilateral foreign policy
b.) higher taxes for the rich
c.) lower taxes for the middle class and for small businesses
d.) more funding for education
e.) an expanded health-care system
f.) more troops in the US armed forces
g.) a balanced federal budget and a smaller federal deficit

What’s not to love? I don’t know about you, but I’m walking a precinct tomorrow.

And now back to our regularly scheduled rant.

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Like snorting coke, voting Republican has consequences. And not just the rush of blood to the head that comes from doing something all of your friends and family disapprove of. Remember that whole thing about how awful bussing was supposed to be? How it breaks kids away from their precious local schools so that they are forced to go across town to the ghetto, where there are gangs and drugs?

Right. So bussing was stopped, and replaced either with nothing, or with various forms of “voluntary” integration that were then steadily eroded and dismantled because Republicans never actually wanted them in the first place. And guess what? Schools are less integrated now. The high point of integration in the public schools was reached in 1988 and has been on the decline ever since (NYT, “The Supreme Struggle,” 1/18/04). This is what comes of fighting integration – it goes away. We live in a less integrated world because of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and now George II. But do you hear anyone but “bleeding-heart” liberals like me shouting to the skies about this? (pause for a moment: I find it remarkable how when Jesus’s heart is bleeding it’s the sign that we as a society must mend our ways, but when some liberal’s heart is bleeding, it’s a sign that his/her mouth must be gagged and they need to be shut the hell up).

Now let us remind ourselves of why segregation is a bad thing, particularly when it comes to schools. Normally liberals like me focus on the consequences of segregation for minorities and the poor. How segregation by its very nature privileges some (us) and screws over others (them), mostly by concentrating the negative effects of poverty (crime, etc.) into specific neighborhoods far away from where the privileged few live and send their kids to school. And this is bad both because:
(a) it doesn’t actually get rid of the bad things from which “us” people are trying to escape (mostly poverty and crime, but sometimes darker things as well) but instead merely pushes them over into corners of the world where we don’t have to look at them as much. But also,
(b) it is morally wrong because “our” privileges come specifically and directly out of the pain and suffering of others (those people, them, the other) whom we have pushed into corners of the world where they have to deal with disorder, poverty, and crime, etc. so that we don’t have to.

But this is not the kind of argument that appeals to those who’ve had a whiff of the addictive smoke of Republican “me” weed. So let me try a different track. Segregation is bad because it leads us (the privileged) and our children to be ignorant, mean, and lazy:

- Ignorant because without interaction with “the other” we are left with media images, stereotypes, and folk wisdom. Ignorant because without interacting with people who are not like us we do not learn anything except to reinforce what we already think we know. Ignorant because we live in a diverse world, and if we are to know what difference means and what it does not mean, where are we to start but on our own street?
- Mean because it removes the “common” from “commonwealth” and separates us out into divided interests who share little. Mean because stereotypes of “the other” are usually bad stereotypes – it is easy to make ourselves feel good by pointing out the faults of others. Mean because who wants to share anything with people you don’t know and never meet?
- Lazy because homogeneity is easy and diversity is hard. Lazy because it is difficult to know that stereotypes are wrong when you live in isolation. Lazy because it is always simpler to deal with people who think and talk like you do.

Opposing integration leads to a meaner, lazier, and more ignorant world. But because Republican thinking has focused our attention on the chimera of “safe” and “good” (read: white and middle-class) neighborhood schools and the illusion of “educational choice,” we do not see the consequences of breeding a generation of educationally segregated youngsters. In other words, segregation is a bad thing not because it screws over “them” (even though it does) but because it turns our own children into little monsters.

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At this point the insidiousness of Republican thinking starts to re-work the synapses of one’s personal philosophy. Because the nostrums that are cooked up in the stills of Cato, or the American Enterprise Institute, are just as mind-altering as anything that comes out of a trailer-park meth lab in Tehama County.

Consider, for instance, the insidiousness of the simple proposition that government is inherently “inefficient” because it lacks the “drive for success” that comes from the “profit motive” (I am doing my best to simulate Republican thinking here people, though I confess I have never tippled myself. So I may come up with something more like a virgin daiquiri rather than the real shnockeroni). I suppose it makes certain sort of sense, once you accept the premise that “profit-seeking” is (a) a good thing, and (b) causes profit-seekers (i.e., rational individuals) to do all sorts of things like innovate, compete, and create new products and services to market to customers. This is, quite literally, the argument driving such policies as school vouchers, Medicare reform, and the privatization of social security.

Once you accept the premises, it all starts to make a certain amount of really crazy, looking-glass sense. Profit is good, right? The government doesn’t make a profit, right? (or if it does, it’s “theft” from the taxpayer, a different sort of insidiously addictive and mind-altering Republican argument) Profit-seeking makes you creative and competitive, right? And if Adam Smith and Ayn Rand said that egocentric competitiveness makes for a better society, then it MUST BE TRUE!

Okay, let’s step back from the bong for a moment to let our heads clear. What are the problems with this argument? Well, first off, it is not at all clear that government is inherently less “efficient” than the private sector in the provision of goods and services. The examples one could cite here are numerous: the debacle of energy deregulation in state like, oh, say, California, or the vastly better health care system of Canada (why are people buying prescription drugs from Canada? Something about how private sector competition, such as we have here in the U.S., but which they don’t have in “socialist” Canada, leads to the reduction of prices for the consumer? Explain this to me again, because I must be missing something?), or the perfectly awful job that KBR is currently doing supplying the U.S. Army (see “Trucks made to drive without cargo,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 5/22/04). Secondly, what else is privatization but a government handout the same as food stamps and AFDC/TANF? (Oh, sorry, I forgot: when the government gives money to rich white men it’s a reward for talent and effort, but when the government gives money to poor black women it’s a reward for vice and laziness. What was I thinking?). Thirdly, it’s patently obvious that whatever else privatization accomplishes, it enriches the few at the expense of the many – it’s taking my hard-earned tax dollars and putting them in the pocket of some old FOGII (i.e., Friend Of George II). In sum, the problem with accepting the notion that government is “inefficient” because it lacks “the profit motive” is (a) not supported by the evidence, and (b) drives people to support all kinds of not just illogical, but honestly quite bad, and indeed immoral and anti-social, policies. Taking a quite simple notion (profit is good) and mixing it with some other notion (the public sector cannot make profit, and so therefore cannot be good) is as dangerous as mixing decongestant and Drano.

Let’s take another brain-altering example: the “defense of the family.” Now, evidently, the world is going to come to an end now that gay people can get married in Massachusetts. What’s the argument for this? Well, it goes something like this: marriage is an “institution” that has been unchanged for centuries and is the “bedrock of our civilization.” To let gay people get married would somehow alter the fundamental stability of this “institution” and society will deteriorate as a result. Again, as with the whole “government is inefficient” thing, the assumptions here just don’t hold water: anyone with even a passing knowledge of history would know that marriage is in fact a wondrously varied institution that has shifted tremendously over time even in the United States. The usual example given here is the Mormon bit about “plural marriages are scripturally sanctioned. Oh, wait, no they’re not.” But there are others: miscegenation; shifting trends in whether or not people get married in church, a trend that does not go the way people think it does; whether or not married women may hold property; whether or not men may be charged with the unlawful disposal of their chattel property, which is to say, whether or not they can be charged with the murder of their wives; the list goes on and on. To focus on gay people getting married is to shift one’s gaze away from a whole bunch of other things that could in fact be “wrong” with marriage, but since our brain chemistry has already been altered by the powerful drug of “family defense” those synapses don’t fire, and we don’t even consider those possibilities.

This then leads to the third parallel between Republicans and crack whores, namely the refusal to reckon with the consequences of one’s own actions (to be continued…)

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The all-you-can-eat buffet is an increasingly familiar sight on the American cultural landscape. These days, with rampant obesity as American as mom and apple pie, the buffet has somehow managed to (mostly) steer clear of the barrage of fire coming from the figurative guns of the nation’s health professionals. Despite the proliferation of stomach stapling techniques and the emergence of the tragically trendy category of “morbidly obese,” buffets continue to soldier on valiantly, providing culinary comfort to millions of Americans. Sometimes known as the smorgasbord, these beacons of gluttony and gastronomic excess have taken on varied and intriguing incarnations. Like most major American cities, my hometown of Sacramento is dotted with a great variety of them. We have the traditional American buffets like J.J. North’s, the Chinese-American buffets like Luau Garden, the breakfast/brunch buffets at local hotels, strip mall Indian buffets, the buffet-esque Mongolian barbeque and, recently, several new sushi buffets. One of the most ubiquitous restaurant chains these days is the Hometown Buffet, a family favorite in Sacramento. In fact, the parent company of Hometown Buffet operates nearly 400 buffet restaurants across the country under various soothing and vaguely familiar monikers like Old Country Buffet and Granny’s Buffet. Rather than being part of a fad, buffets are established institutions that have only continued to grow in popularity despite the contemporary concerns over the collective health of all Americans. Amidst the cacophony of squawking by dietary Chicken Littles, one message is clear: All-you-can-eat prime rib and lobster is pretty damn hard to beat.

Even with the proliferation of buffet restaurants across the nation, the exemplars of the grand buffet are still the casino buffets, namely those in Las Vegas. Sin City is known for catering to the vices of Americans. Whether your pleasure is gambling, smoking, drinking, carnal pleasures, or all of the above, Vegas has it all. However, one sin that is sometimes overlooked is the gluttony encouraged by the dozens and dozens of buffets in the city. Any hotel-casino worth mentioning will feature one or more buffet restaurants which are a great way for visitors to spend a little quality time when they’re not losing money on the casino floor.

As one might be able to imagine, homogeneity of buffets is rare in the competitive atmosphere of Las Vegas gluttony. Among the many types of buffets in Las Vegas there are several identifiable subspecies. The selection can be parsed in many ways. One can choose by per-person price, from the expensive buffets along The Strip ($30+) like those at the Bellagio and the Four Seasons to the more pedestrian choices at smaller hotels like the Golden Nugget (under $12). The time of day can dictate the availability of different buffets, whether that’s breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or the rarer 24 hour buffet like that of the Holiday Inn Boardwalk. Naturally, prices for these vary depending on what hour one decides to dine at. Cuisine is, of course, the easiest way to distinguish them. For example, there are seafood buffets, ethnic cuisine buffets, and gourmet food buffets. Then there are the buffets that try to be many things to many people. The so-called “Rio buffet,” often touted as Las Vegas’ best, could actually refer to one of two buffets, the Carnival World Buffet or the Seafood Buffet, situated at the opposite end of the hotel. The former has individual stations for American, Mexican, Chinese, Italian and Japanese cuisines while the latter even offers the satisfaction of a thick cut of prime rib or steak for those patrons who don’t know what the word “seafood” entails. Even the ostensibly French cuisine-oriented Le Village Buffet at the Paris Hotel offers to diners prime rib, lamb, venison, crab legs (split in half for ease of consumption), boiled shrimp, salads, mashed potatoes and a huge selection of desserts including Bananas Foster. Indeed, Las Vegas is the Mecca for American buffet dining and should remain so in perpetuity.

Although my doughy physique is a dead giveaway, I want to state for the record that I enjoy dining at buffets and have dined in all-you-can-eat establishments in locations as varied as Boston, Bangkok, Arkansas, Las Vegas and Mandalay (No, not Mandalay Bay Resort, Mandalay the city in Burma.). However, I’ll admit that I find it difficult to eat at buffets on a regular basis. For me, going to a buffet is one of those things that should be done only once every six months or so. Yes, I realize that it’s a disappointingly low frequency in relative terms, but I don’t have the hardy constitution of the American buffet denizens I encountered during my extended stay in Arkansas. Nonetheless, being a veteran of buffets, I’ve developed a personal methodology by which to approach these temples of depraved self-indulgence. Although a viable one-size-fits-all strategy is impossible to devise, for my next article, I’ll share with you my own carefully honed approaches to buffets and the world of gluttony that lies beyond. So, in the meantime, get out there to your favorite buffet and remember, America, you’ve earned that fifth piece of chicken fried steak!

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Let us first draw a distinction between two classes of people. On the one hand, there is the poor benighted soul (whom I shall call “our experimenting friend”) who is led into a life of self-centered and social fabric-destroying debauchery by the glamour of the Republican lifestyle. On the other hand, there are those unrepentant addicts who, gleefully wallowing in their own filth, refuse to see the error of their ways.

Now, being a liberal (in both the secular and the Christian sense), I hold out the hope of redemption for all who have fallen into error. However, addiction is a terrible thing, and requires not finger-pointing and podium-thumping by self-appointed guardians of virtue (i.e., moi), but care, thoughtful self-reflection, repentance, and most of all the support of the community. A blog, unfortunately, cannot provide any of those things. Hence, I do not expect for this series of columns to do much good in convincing self-identified Republicans that they are doing themselves, their loved ones, and their neighbors a great deal of harm by persisting in their awful chosen lifestyle. That requires a very different sort of intervention.

Instead, I shall focus on appealing to the “undecideds,” the “fence-sitters,” the people for whom sniffing a little Republican marching powder might hold some appeal. I know several people who flirted with Republicanism in college, for instance. And they’re good people, really. Decent, hardworking citizens who have thought about the world and their place within it, who have thought about what they want a decent society to look like, and who have thought about what they need to do in order to live a good life. In other words, people who are asking themselves Socratic questions and are struggling with the answers. This is a good thing.

But then they go and do something silly like start voting Republican. Now, normally the first hit isn’t really such a bad thing – say, voting for a Republican for city council or school board because that candidate is publicly committed to some policy our experimenting friend cares about and which is, on its face, eminently laudable. Fiscal responsibility, say, or good schools, or safe streets – you know, all those “values” which Republicans “own” because they’ve somehow smeared Democrats as being in favor of fiscal profligacy (what’s the phrase? Oh right, “tax and spend liberals”), such terrible public education ideas as “forced integration” (the horror!), and “coddling criminals” through such worthless policies as drug treatment programs, half-way houses, and rehabilitation.

Yes, the first hit is fine – it gives one a hit of moral superiority, of the kind of smugness which is perfectly intoxicating (and believe you me, I am an aficionado of intoxicating smugness). It’s what happens when the experimentation becomes a habit, you see, that we start to see problems. Because once our poor experimenting friend votes for the school board member, or the county commissioner, they then get a plug for why we need good Republicans as State Representatives, or State Senators. Because of course all of those local issues – the safe streets, and the balanced city budgets, and the “school choices” – need the support of state policies. And so our friend starts voting for Republicans in state races, and in federal, and pretty soon it becomes part of their lifestyle.

That’s when it becomes hard to stop, not least because of changes in one’s brain chemistry (to be continued…)

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You’ve seen the bumper stickers, right? The ones that say “Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.” An obvious twist on the old MADD slogan regarding friends and drunk driving. But I got to thinking this weekend (yeah, yeah, a dangerous thing, I know), and I wondered: is voting Republican in fact, to borrow the matchless phrase of Wesley Snipes in New Jack City, akin to sucking on a glass dick? Let me share with you a few of the parallels (dates in parentheses are dates of posting, as this will be a multi-volume series):
a.) the slippery slope of addiction (July 14th)
b.) changes in one’s brain chemistry (July 21st)
c.) refusal to see the consequences of one’s own actions I (July 28th)
d.) refusal to see the consequences of one’s own actions II (August 4th)
e.) destruction of neighborhoods and schools (August 11th).

Other parallels, which I have considered, but will not treat at length, include
i.) spending on habit quickly outstrips resources (i.e., Dick Cheney’s stunningly perspicacious comment that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”)
ii.) the dealers are the worst offenders (e.g., Bob Barr, “defender of the family,” has been married how many times? Rush “get tough on criminals” Limbaugh is addicted to, what is it again? Oh right, Oxycontin, a.k.a. hillbilly heroin. Bill “Book of Virtues” Bennett has lost how much money playing slots? Other examples of rank and gross hypocrisy too numerous to mention here…).
iii.) intimate links with a shadowy network of international terrorists (Exhibit A: Bush Family LLC, formerly known as the United States of America).

A brief note: Like any good anti-drugs campaign, I hope for this column to provide amusement, instruction, and perhaps even a little dismay. Amusement for those (like myself) who count themselves teetotalers; instruction for those (curious moderates) who might be tempted to tipple; and dismay for those (convicted conservatives) who find themselves totally in thrall to the opiates of the Right. So, in memory of that dearly departed hero of the right, let’s make July “just say no” month, shall we? Even better, let’s declare November 2nd the “Great American Crack-Out” and celebrate it by ripping the needle out of our veins and giving up the Republican habit.

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Really dumb things come into clarity when you have practically unlimited time on your hands. Over the past month I have done little else than lie in bed, and for the most part stare at the television set. The bathroom is only fifteen feet or so, but on some occasions would take me several minutes to make the trip. This is so tiring and demoralizing that it makes me pretty much give up all hope and give my life over to immobility.

The first thing you realize is that television sucks. This, I admit, is hardly a revelation. Everyone is pretty much unanimous about the crappiness of television, but the scope of the crap comes into such vivid relief when you commit yourself to watching untold hours of it on a daily basis. Certainly I could, and probably should, have taken to reading books, but they tire me, and even now I can’t think of what I want to read, other than the standard trip planning manuals for Walt Disney World. Others expand their minds with reading in philosophy and history, or perhaps some well thought of novels, and I catch reruns of the Golden Girls. That being what it is, I would say that Golden Girls is in about the top two percent of all the offerings on television.

There is so much bad about television that one thing bothers me tremendously: why am I torn between watching two shows at all times, even when they both suck? It is an affliction, I suppose, of watching such a large amount of the box.

I don’t watch reality television, except in passing through it on the channel flipping, so that knocks out about fifty percent of all of the offerings. None of them appeal to me in the slightest. That said, I think there is a lower rung still. This slightly newer form is some kind of game show where the goal seems to be to embarrass yourself and others. Many people point to Fox as the bottom of the barrel scrapers, but to be fair, MTV takes the lead in the creation of really really crappy stuff. It has been a long time since they had any good shows, but now they seem to take pleasure in creating a special variety of crap. They basically created the modern reality show (with the help of Fox’s Cops) with the Real World (which remains as stupid as ever), but now they seem intent on lowering the bar to all new levels. Two new shows, Your Face or Mine and Boiling Points, stand out as being totally repulsive. Your Face or Mine is all about two contestants picking from pictures who they think the audience will say is more attractive. This crap would be enough, but the show includes the contestants themselves in the selections, as well as the contestant’s family members. It is an ego trip gone horribly wrong. It is so tacky and terrible that watching for more than a couple of minutes may cause suicide for the sake of society. Even lower on the ladder is Boiling Points. The premise is the worst so far. It is like a hidden camera show in most respects. There is a person in a contrived situation to make them uncomfortable. The problem is that on this show the actor does something that is intentionally annoying or insulting for like fifteen minutes to try and get the person’s ire up to the said boiling point. I am amazed that the actors still have their teeth intact. Why hasn’t any right thinking American socked one of these people in their jaw? I think it is the only right thing to do. The real kicker is the finish. If you successfully make it though the time without boiling over, they give you one-hundred dollars. One-hundred? That’s pathetic. I would sure as hell be punching someone if I got all the way though and someone was like, “well the jokes on you but here’s is a hundred bucks.” I think that their several thousand in dental work would be better compensation for my time and dignity. I would then sue them for hurting my hand with their face. Thankfully I haven’t watched this show for more than forty-five seconds at a time, but trust me when I say that that is more than enough to hate it. Is this what the youth of today finds entertaining? Jack-ass, the Apprentice, Boiling Points, and what the fuck is next. I fear for the future.

Good thing reruns of the Iron Chef are still good no matter how many times you see them.

I’ve got to go now, my show is on.

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On July 16th, 2003, 86-year old motorist George Russel Weller hit the gas pedal instead of the brake. He and his Buick LeSabre barreled along for three blocks, crashing into a Santa Monica farmers’ market, killing 10 people and injuring 63. The only reason his car did come to a stop was because it was slowed down by one of his victims, trapped beneath the car.

A few months earlier, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo–the DC Snipers–nearly paralyzed the greater DC area with their string of shootings, killing 10 people in 13 separate attacks the spanned three weeks in the fall of 2002.

There is more in common with these two tragedies than simply the number of innocent lives that were taken: the circumstances of both are a product of a society built for cars.

The Snipers worked by parking their Chevrolet Caprice in some nondescript noplace in wastelands of our car culture, some location where people don’t venture. Noplaces like strip malls and exit ramps and parking lots, noplaces where people never linger and generally try to avoid. At a strip mall, patrons park close to their destinations and spend as little time as possible outside. There is no reason to stop and smell the roses: there aren’t any roses anyway, only an ugly expanse of asphalt. There is nothing for the pedestrian, so the pedestrian does not venture there. As a result, there is no one watching the space, there are no “eyes on the street,” there is no one who might notice a suspicious vehicle, or, after a shot was fired, identify where it came from.

My response to those who expressed a concern for my well-being during the sniper days–I live in DC–was that the sniper wouldn’t try an attack in the city because he wouldn’t be able to find a parking space. I said it jokingly, but I was half-serious–in dense urban communities, there are just too many people around for a sniper in a car not to be noticed. Gun and the gunshot disappear across a parking lot in a way they wouldn’t across a street. And the snipers would have had a hard time finding a parking spot, too. Indeed, only one of the attacks was in the District itself: along a wide road in a decayed part of the edge of town, one block away from Maryland. There were no attacks in Arlington, and none in Alexandria, both of which are considerably more dense and pedestrian friendly than the suburban sites of the attacks.

As far as I know, nobody kept track of the number of other accidental deaths during the Sniper days. But it did seem to me that there were approximately the same number of people killed in car wrecks during those three weeks as were killed by the sniper. Yet they didn’t bring about the same sort of fear and outrage that the snipers’ killings did. The same is true on a national scale: each year, approximately 43,000 are killed in automobile wrecks (and hundreds of thousands more injured), which is the same order of magnitude as the number of Americans killed in the entire 6 years of the Vietnam war (58,000). And this automobile carnage brings no protests and no memorials–it is treated as another aspect of life we must simply accept.

Such has been the fallout from the Weller incident. Here we have a driver who simply shouldn’t have been driving. It’s not surprising that his driving skills were deficient: as people age, their senses dull, their reactions slow down, their mental faculties deterioriate. This is not to say in any way that all old people should not be driving. However, whenever a proposal is brought forward simply to periodically test the driving abilities of older folks, the old folks raise a ruckus. The old folks aren’t worried about causing accidents or killing people, they are worried about losing their freedom. You often hear words to the effect of “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t drive.” They have found themselves stuck with the suburbanite’s choice: drive, be driven, or do not participate, and none of the options looks good.

The solutions that advocates for the aged have come up with are hardly inspiring: larger street signs, wider roads, cars that are better designed for an older person. I’ve even read a letter-to-the-editor suggesting a separate set of lanes just for older people (no mention of the cost of this, or how to design intersections.)

Mr. Weller was apparently on his way home from the post office when he crashed into the market. Why, I ask, must one drive to the post office? Why couldn’t he have walked? Instead of trying to make driving less hazardous for seniors, we should reduce the need for seniors to be in cars.

We already know how to do this. In major cities of the world, older folks happily co-exist with people of all ages and lead fully satisfying lives without needing to drive. You start by putting the necessities of life within walking distance. Travel beyond walking distance is by subway, bus, and the occasional taxi. Add additional amenities like grocery delivery and elevator apartments with doormen and staffed front desks, and anyone can lead a dignified, independent life.

But as to the seniors themselves, facing a crisis of independence because of a loss of driving privileges, I have little sympathy. For one thing, this is an easily anticipated problem, and to put one’s self in a situation where one has to drive, while facing the possibility that one might not be able to drive, is poor planning. But beyond that–this world of drive-only suburbia is largely the world that today’s old folks built. When Jane Jacobs was published “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” George Russell Weller was 44 years old. Today’s octogenarians are the ones who stood by while the streetcars were dismantled, when neighborhoods were cut apart to make room for expressways, when redlining choked off money to rebuild cities, when a few thousand years of civic planning was being tossed in the dustbin, when all the patterns that led to today’s choice between driving, being driven, or not participating were established. The seniors’ predicament is one of their own creation, and to solve it, we’re going to have to bring back the ideas that they threw away.

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In another space, VC has already noted that Michael Moore’s new movie is, basically, OK but not great. And although it may come as something of a shock to readers of the Weekly Ration, I confess I have to agree with his basic point. Moore has some great footage, some wonderful pieces of commentary (both by Moore himself and more especially by those he interviews), but it is ultimately uneven, kind of unfocused, and not a little slapdash.

This does not mean I am unhappy that the movie was made, or shown at this particular moment. In fact, in the great game of politics – where timing is important, although not nearly as important to counting – I would imagine that many of the movie’s faults come from the fact that it had to be made for release this year and not with the clarity of historical hindsight. And in this numbingly, dumbingly, sweltering stretch of spring and summer that lies between the primaries and the conventions, when all that usually greets us is a stream of spun news and sour political advertisements, Moore’s movie comes as a welcome addition to the national debate. Hence, while I’d like to talk about what he’s made in Fahrenheit 9/11, here’s to hoping that Mr. Moore can be induced to filming a populist documentary of the dark age of the reign of the George II, sometime in the bright future when we have thrown off the yoke of tyrannical autocracy.

I have organized my critique into three parts: things Moore could’ve done a lot better at, things he did pretty well at (but which were also pretty easy), and things that Moore did brilliantly.

Two Areas for Improvement:
1.) The piece about which the GOP appears to be most hopping mad, which is to say, “The Houses of Bush and Al-Saud”
Much of the first part (third, maybe?) of the movie is dedicated to laying out the evidence for a long-established, carefully cultivated, and intimate set of links between Bush Family LLC and the Saudi royal family. There seemed to be a link somewhere between (a) the Bush family’s affection for the Al-Sauds and other big Saudi petrocratic clans (e.g., the Bin Ladin family) (b) the Al-Sauds’ need to protect their own base (in other words, genuflect to the Wahabi fundamentalists), and (c) George II’s decision to evacuate – without questioning – every member of the Bin Ladin family from the shores of the US on Sept. 13th, 2001. This chain of logic took a long time to lay out, and honestly could have been hammered home with either less humor/more moral outrage, or a clearer, simpler exposition of facts. That said, Moore did have a great punch with his line about “If you were paid $200,000 by the American people, and $1.4 billion by the Saudi royal family, where would your loyalties lie? Who’s your daddy?” Stated in those stark terms, it’s kinda hard to argue with.
2.) The 2000 debacle, and the Democrats’ complicity therein.
It was sickening, in quite literally a physical way (though perhaps that was the oysters I’d had for dinner) to watch the parade of U.S. Representatives present their petitions before the U.S. Senate, to a constant drumbeat of Al Gore gaveling and repeating sonorously, “are you a member of our special people’s club? Did any of us sign on to your pathetic whines? No. So get the fuck out.” To hear the genuine – and beautifully articulate – moral outrage of Congressional Representative after Congressional Representative, as they presented their demands for justice before our nation’s Senate was moving, surprising (I don’t remember this being covered in the news — was I asleep that week?), and depressing.

It is clear that something happened to cause our nation’s political elite to close ranks, shut down debate, and declare “the election is over.” The Democrats, evidently, decided that closure was more important than extending the conflict. Now, some might take this as further evidence that there is no real difference between the political parties – that there is one political elite in our country, and whether it comes it comes with a red label or a blue, it’s still the same old hooch. I would draw a different set of conclusions, however:
a.) It is not clear to me at all that, if the situation were reversed, the Republicans would have been willing to do us the same favor. Given the vitriol, the vicious, rapid rhetoric of the Republican Right, their nasty, weirdly fetishistic, and unrelenting attacks on the Clinton administration, I am skeptical in the extreme that they would have been willing to close ranks for the sake of stabilizing our democratic order.
b.) If you ever wanted to know who is and who is not allowed to step inside the Big House and have tea with the master, you had only to look at who was doing the petitioning, and who was doing the gaveling. No wonder the Democrats have been put on notice not to take their constituencies for granted anymore.

Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel: Two Things Moore did pretty well.
1.) The Iraq war as 3 card monte.
Anyone who has been giving the newspapers even a half-glance in the morning will know that the war has been nothing but a bunch of lies, corporate shell games, more lies, carnage, yet more lies, profiteering at the expense of Ye Olde American Taxpayer, and – wait for it! – still more lies. Still, it was sobering to see footage of the civilian casualties. It was, if nothing else, a reminder that the whole point of war is that people die. So we damn well better be sure we’re ready to reckon with those consequences when we cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs.
2.) Bush as idiot
As pointed out by VC, this is hardly a difficult thing to do. Or as the “seriously” lady says it so concisely, “I think I want him gone most of all because he’s so goddamned fucking stupid.”
For a wonderful example of just what happens when someone who isn’t a cowed, toadying, corporate shill asks George II real questions, check out Carole Coleman’s (of Radio Television Eire) interview.

The Best Bit:
Everyone is saying how the best part of the movie is how George II sits there for seven minutes after Andy Card tells him about the Twin Towers, staring off into space and flipping through “My Pet Goat.” I disagree. While it is true that is rather a priceless piece of footage, it belongs in the “Bush as idiot” category, above. Did we think something else occured? If he had jumped into action and been all “decisive” and “manly” don’t you think that shit would’ve been plastered all over the airwaves months ago? I’m only surprised that the White House lost control of the footage and let it get out into the public sphere.

No, the best bits of the movie entailed first, the quiet dignity of Ms. Pederson explaining (a) her patriotism, and (b) her grief at the loss of her son. Was there ever a more fitting illustration of Wilfred Owen’s point about the Old Lie (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori)? Secondly, there was Moore’s final bit of populist editorializing, expressing astonishment how, in a country that exists only because of quite astonishingly effective class exploitation, that those who suffer most from that stratification system are the very first to enlist in its defense and protection. This is a puzzle not just for November (NASCAR dads, anyone?) but for the ages.

Why the movie failed as propaganda:
One last word about why I thought this movie was OK, or even pretty good, but not brilliant. I went away from this movie sick at heart at the state of our democracy. I did not go away mad as hell, as it told me nothing I did not already know about George II’s malfeasance. I did not go away jazzed at the thought that we might just give George II the ass-kicking he so richly deserves in November, as the polls are still neck-and-neck. And I most certainly did not go away rarin’ to vote for John Kerry, as there wasn’t a blessed word in the entire movie about the man, (furthermore, wasn’t he, ahem, a member of the Senate in the fall of 2000 and winter of 2001?)
In other words, this movie did not accomplish any of the usual goals of propaganda (despite what knee-jerk apologists for the administration — such as Mark Davis — would have us believe). Which, since it is ostensibly a documentary, was perhaps not the goal. But still, I wanted to be angry, or pumped, or something. Not saddened almost unto illness. Isn’t there some ray of hope that we aren’t all cowed sheep sitting in front of our telescreens watching our armies fight an endless war in Eurasia?

Perhaps I’m still dyspeptic from the oysters.

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