Clint Eastwood, the p-word, and ancient notions of manhood.

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a46893/double-trouble-clint-and-scott-eastwood/

In his auteurist prime (essentially from THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES to LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA), Clint Eastwood had people like Roger Ebert and Richard Schickel (among other critics/journalists) to burnish a relatively positive image of him as a politically conservative filmmaker who could also provide strong (by 70s/80s/90s genre film standards) female characters.  And in films like the now-mostly-forgotten WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART or Don Siegel's THE BEGUILED, Eastwood dared (unlike a lot of his peers past and present) to examine the harm unfiltered machismo can do to others.

Of course, none of that matters to younger generations.

And I cringed along with them when Eastwood embarrassed himself at the 2012 Republican convention by insulting an invisible straw-man version of Barack Obama sitting in a prop chair (presuming Mitt Romney operative Stuart Stevens thought he was inviting the we're-all-in-this-together Clint Eastwood who filmed the commercial extolling Chrysler and Detroit auto manufacturing).

So, at the age of 86, Clint Eastwood (along with up-and-coming son Scott) sits with interviewer Michael Hainey for ESQUIRE in his comfortable Malpaso offices on the Warner Brothers lot and snarls about the passing of the era of just accepting the occurrences of racial and other prejudices instead of challenging them.  Then, more scowling about today's too-sensitive "pussy generation."   Finally, a mixed verdict on Donald Trump; Clint thinks that Trump has said "a lot of dumb things" but can't bring himself to vote for Hillary Clinton.

And there's also this landmark of non-feminist patriarchal thinking from Clint--which likely won't persuade online Millennials to spend time separating the wheat from the chaff of his filmography (including the Charlie Parker biopic BIRD, which helped make Forest Whitaker a star):

ESQ: Clint, your father retired when he was sixty and died at sixty-four. Does his death haunt you? Like, "If I stop working, I will drop"?

CE: Maybe. A lot of people when they retire, they just expire. It happens to men more than women. Women usually have great interest in the family, because the family's always growing and they're always coming to the rescue.

SE: [Laughs.] Are you talking about my mom?

CE: For a man, once you've sired your pups, you're done.

Mitt Romney explained in just a few lines.

Passage from Charles Blow's November 1st NEW YORK TIMES column "Liberty To Lie" highlighted by me:
Unfortunately, there is some evidence that facts and the people who check them don’t carry the same weight that they once did.
First, the right’s disinformation machine is, explicitly and implicitly, making the argument that facts (science, math, evidence) are fungible and have been co-opted by liberal eggheads. They have declared war on facts in response to what they claim is a liberal war on faith.
This is an utterly false and ridiculous argument, but it works on some people.

I'm presuming these people look the other way when Romney sputters/falters after being challenged (i.e. the third debate) because they hear his voice and badly want to believe the Third Coming of Ronald Reagan (George W. Bush being the Second Coming) is among them.

JEREMIAH, SON OF CASSANDRA--LIVE VERSION

Recorded live at the Ugly Mug in Orange, CA in 2003.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ON

Updated version of my 2007 poem THIRTY YEARS ON--regarding the high school graduating
class of 1977, of which I'm a member.

Clear-eyed, unsentimental endorsement of Barack Obama from Daniel Ellsberg.

Excerpted from article written by Daniel Ellsberg for COMMON DREAMS:

The only way for progressives and Democrats to block Romney from office, at this date, is to persuade enough people in swing states to vote for Obama: not stay home, or vote for someone else. And that has to include, in those states, progressives and disillusioned liberals who are at this moment inclined not to vote at all or to vote for a third-party candidate (because like me they’ve been not just disappointed but disgusted and enraged by much of what Obama has done in the last four years and will probably keep doing).
They have to be persuaded to vote, and to vote in a battleground state for Obama not anyone else, despite the terrible flaws of the less-bad candidate, the incumbent. That’s not easy. As I see it, that’s precisely the “effort” Noam is referring to as worth expending right now to prevent the Republicans’ rise to power. And it will take progressives -- some of you reading this, I hope -- to make that effort of persuasion effectively.
The traditional third-party mantra, “There’s no significant difference between the major parties” amounts to saying: “The Republicans are no worse, overall.” And that’s absurd. It constitutes shameless apologetics for the Republicans, however unintended. It’s crazily divorced from present reality.
It will take someone these disheartened progressives and liberals will listen to. Someone manifestly without illusions about the Democrats, someone who sees what they see when they look at the president these days: but who can also see through candidates Romney or Ryan on the split-screen, and keep their real, disastrous policies in focus.
It’s true that the differences between the major parties are not nearly as large as they and their candidates claim, let alone what we would want. It’s even fair to use Gore Vidal’s metaphor that they form two wings (“two right wings” as some have put it) of a single party, the Property or Plutocracy Party, or as Justin Raimondo says, the War Party.
Still, the political reality is that there are two distinguishable wings, and one is reliably even worse than the other, currently much worse overall. To be in denial or to act in neglect of that reality serves only the possibly imminent, yet presently avoidable, victory of the worse.
The traditional third-party mantra, “There’s no significant difference between the major parties” amounts to saying: “The Republicans are no worse, overall.” And that’s absurd. It constitutes shameless apologetics for the Republicans, however unintended. It’s crazily divorced from present reality.
And it’s not at all harmless to be propagating that absurd falsehood. It has the effect of encouraging progressives even in battleground states to refrain from voting or to vote in a close election for someone other than Obama, and more importantly, to influence others to act likewise. That’s an effect that serves no one but the Republicans, and ultimately the 1%.
It’s not merely understandable, it’s entirely appropriate to be enraged at Barack Obama. As I am. He has often acted outrageously, not merely timidly or “disappointingly.” If impeachment were politically imaginable on constitutional grounds, he’s earned it (like George W. Bush, and many of his predecessors!) It is entirely human to want to punish him, not to “reward” him with another term or a vote that might be taken to express trust, hope or approval.
But rage is not generally conducive to clear thinking. And it often gets worked out against innocent victims, as would be the case here domestically, if refusals to vote for him resulted in Romney’s taking key battleground states that decide the outcome of this election.
To punish Obama in this particular way, on Election Day -- by depriving him of votes in swing states and hence of office in favor of Romney and Ryan -- would punish most of all the poor and marginal in society, and workers and middle class as well: not only in the U.S. but worldwide in terms of the economy (I believe the Republicans could still convert this recession to a Great Depression), the environment and climate change. It could well lead to war with Iran (which Obama has been creditably resisting, against pressure from within his own party). And it would spell, via Supreme Court appointments, the end of Roe v. Wade and of the occasional five to four decisions in favor of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The reelection of Barack Obama, in itself, is not going to bring serious progressive change, end militarism and empire, or restore the Constitution and the rule of law. That’s for us and the rest of the people to bring about after this election and in the rest of our lives -- through organizing, building movements and agitating.

Another clear-eyed, unsentimental Presidential re-election endorsement.

From editorial "Four More" in the October 25th issue of THE NEW REPUBLIC:
"At times, Barack Obama has failed to appreciate the virulence of the modern Republican Party.  He has earnestly entered negotiations with adversaries interested in breaking his presidency, not splitting the difference.  It took him paninfully long to arrive at a realistic assessment of his foes.  But over the course of this campaign, he has emerged as a different kind of politician--a populist bruiser capable of skillfully and passionately assailing his opponents, while remaining indifferent to the hand-wringing of establishment opinion.  Perhaps this is a style better suited for the next four years, in which his primary task will be managing a fiscal crisis that his opponents will cynically exploit.  Having extended the safety net, he must now protect it.  Without a second term, the accomplishments of his first would evaporate.  This is not a poetic rallying cry, but there is human suffering to be minimized and a new foundation to defend."

Clear-eyed, unsentimental Presidential endorsements from HARPER'S magazine.

From "Easy Chair: The Maintenance Crew" by Thomas Frank:
"We now know that Barack Obama is no Superman.  He has been unimaginative and conventional.  On his watch, the banks got bigger.  The oceans continued to rise.  The wars sputtered on.  But at least he has been a conscientious administrator of the state.  He is not flamboyantly corrupt, in the manner of Tom DeLay and his congressional cohort, or gleefully perverse, in the manner of the Bush Administration's Department of Labor.  And that makes the choice easy for me, despite my disappointment.  I will choose the safe over the venturesome, the maintenance crew over the wrecking crew.  It doesn't make for a soaring slogan or an existential journey, but it's the best we can hope for this time around."

From "Why Vote?: When Your Vote Counts For Nothing" by Kevin Baker:
"So yes, go out and vote.  Go vote for Barack Obama, and whatever other Democrats or progressives are running for office where you live.  To vote for a Mitt Romney--to vote for the modern right anywhere in the West today--is an act of national suicide.  The right is hollow to its core; it has no dreams, no vision, no plans to deal with any of the problems that confront us, only infantile fantasies of violence and consumption.  But it is, at the moment, well-funded, well-organized, and feeling especially threatened.  It is capable of anything."

Full Mitt Romney Fundraiser Video Part 2

Full Mitt Romney Fundraiser Video Part 1

What most people don't want to hear about Bill Clinton.

"Bill Clinton offers essentially the same belief system as both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, one in which private industry runs the government through payoffs to ex-officials, and government returns the favor through bailouts. If Americans are ever going to grapple with the power of banks over their lives, they are going to have to come to grips with the real track record of their leaders, including Bill Clinton. And it isn’t pretty. And until people like Bill Clinton can be compensated in ways that aren’t obviously corrupting, and their track records honestly assessed, elections will continue to be unimportant, simple popular ratification of an increasingly authoritarian creditor state."

The above quote is from Matt Stoller's article "Clinton's no liberal hero":
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/clintons_no_liberal_hero/

Ted Strickland DNC Speech Democratic National Convention

Strickland wasn't part of last night's prime-time speechifying.  But he's worth watching--saying
things that need to be said--even if they're the kind of partisan rhetoric which apparently makes some DNC folks uncomfortable.

Chuck Norris and wife Gina's dog whistle to GOP evangelical Christians.

More coherent than Clint Eastwood's GOP convention talking-points improv, but resorts to invoking Ronald Reagan-as-God, plus playing on fundamentalist Christian fears of victimization.
Also, notice how Chuck and Gina don't motivate viewers to vote for Mitt Romney, but against "1000 years of darkness" presumably resulting from Barack Obama being re-elected for four additional yearws.

Selection of Twitter comments re Clint Eastwood's GOP convention speech.

Maybe Clint is a sleeper agent for the Democrats sent in under deep cover to make the Republicans look stupid. No wait, that's Romney.--Simon Pegg

Clint Eastwood on the phone with Obama now: "It all went according to plan,sir." --Chris Rock

I know what it was like for Clint Eastwood. In my career, I’ve talked to more than a few “empty chairs.”--Conan O'Brien

If Clint wanted to run for important office, the Base would veto him. He's speaking to the Republican Party of his memory.--Roger Ebert

Clint's imaginary Obama uses the F bomb. My imaginary Obama feels Clint really humiliated himself tonight and feels bad for him.--Sean Mannion

Dear GOD... let's hope that Eastwood doesn't die before making something great. This and his wife's reality show would be sad last memories.--David Poland

Analyzing Mitt Romney and opening act Clint Eastwood..

If you're Clint Eastwood, you're used to running things and getting your own way.  This probably explains why Clint's Thursday night GOP convention speech (demonstrating a willingness to try for improv comedy; i.e. the Empty Chair prop) had the air of something that might be seen in a luxury restaurant/penthouse at a Republican candidates fundraising dinner with millionaires/billionaires (and no ordinary people) in attendance.  I can easily imagine the Mitt Romney entourage giving Clint a prepared speech--and Clint throwing it aside saying "I'M NOT GONNA READ THIS CRAP!"  Ergo, the rambling ruminations which sounded a lot like Clint's character putting down all in sight during the early reels of GRAN TORINO.

As for Mitt Romney: There was a lot of rose-colored Remembrances of Simple Loving Times Past rhetoric which gave me the impression that both Peggy Noonan and Karen Hughes may have contributed to his speech.  There was the inevitable attempt to link Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter.  And, most sickening, the primal Dog Whistle to the conventioneers and TV/online audiences: "THE HELL WITH CLIMATE CHANGE!  I'LL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELVES JUST LIKE REAGAN DID!"

Must-read: Matt Taibbi on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital.

From Matt Taibbi's article:
By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

The unlikeliness of Romney's gambit isn't simply a reflection of his own artlessly unapologetic mindset – it stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street's greed revolution. He's not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He's not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He's been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let's-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.

Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz2549UrXsd

Will vote for Obama again--but with reservations.

In 2012, we're faced with a clear choice between two Presidential candidates.

Either vote for the flawed incumbent or vote for the even-more-flawed challenger who wants (among other things) to take American women back to the no-choice patriarchal era of the past.

Regarding Barack Obama, it's quite likely we're in for another four years just like the first term.

In the September issue of HARPER'S, there's a must-read article by Thomas Frank on "Obama in the desert of centrism."  And it says things that most of the blind-faith Obama supporters don't want to read/hear.

Here are a few quotes from the article:
"...President Obama has pursued government secrecy to a degree even the Bush administration never dared, and that he has arrogated to himself the right to kill American citizens overseas who have not been convicted of any crime.  President Obama likes (or used to like) to extend the hand of kindness to the nation's bankers: "Help me help you," he implored them back in 2009.  When he decided to go populist and snarl at the One Percent, he took care to dispatch an emissary to New York to let the finance industry know he didn't mean it.  (Just as he didn't mean it when he badmouthed NAFTA or promised to revisit the Patriot Act.)"

"For the Obama years to be terminated [if he loses because of GOP attacks on him as a "socialist"] on such grounds would furnish future historians with vast deposits of irony.  The president is a man whose every instinct is conciliatory.  He is not merely a casual seeker of bipartisan consensus; he is an intellectually committed believer in it.  He simply cannot imagine a dispute in which one antagonist is right and the other is wrong.  No, there is always something honorable about both sides, some concession to be made by each.  His presidency has been one long quest for a "grand bargain," as he has sometimes put it, between red and blue."

"What Barack Obama has saved [referring to the financial crisis] is a bankrupt elite that by all rights should have met its end back in 2009.  He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to those of 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover.  Today the banks are as big as ever, and he has done precious little about it.  The regulatory system is falling apart, and he is too idelogically demure to tell us why.  Organized labor is crumbling, and he has done almost nothing to help it recover.  Meanwhile, the people who told us that finance was king, that the "new economy" changed all the rules, that we didn't really need a strong supervisory state--those people are still riding high, still making their pronouncements from the heights of the op-ed page and the executive branch."

Nonetheless, I will go into the voting booth in November and mark my ballot for Obama's re-election.  If a Romney administration comes to power, it will be with truly dire consequences for the nation and the world.  Better to stay with a President who has scored a few mild victories in spite of willful GOP obstructionism--even if the notions of Hope and Change are little more than campaign promises that, like most, remain undelivered upon.

Roundup of Twitter comments (including my own) on the Ann Romney/Chris Christie GOP Show.

Media will go gaga over A Romney speech, make it seem like it is a momentum shifter. But in the end, it won't change many minds, if any.--Joe Adalian

Ann Romney is Princess Fiona working warm-up to Chris Christie's Shrek.--Colby Hall

Ann channels Oprah vocalese: "I love you WOMEN!!!"--me

When was the last time Ann Romney had to worry about grocery bills? Fn please--Mac G

Ann Romney knows well all "the little things" that average American women face. Like broken private garage elevators.--Marc Cooper

Ann Romney mentions her dad, omitting that he died an atheist & Mitt led a Mormon proxy baptism for him.--John Fugelsang

"Try to do okay" is actually not horrible advice to give a child.--Paul F. Tompkins

 

Ann Romney on how her husband "built success" -- yea, with internet, education, roads,infrastructure supported by government.Community,Ann.--Katrina vanden Huevel

 

Ann's portrayal of being impoverished in college got her in trouble in '94 Sen race--they lived off Romney stock options.--David Shuster

 

Chris Christie will spend a great deal of time introducing nat'l tv aud to a Repub he thinks they should know better. Chris Christie.--David Carr

 

Somebody tell Chris Christie the GI bill that put his father through Rutgers University was a government program.--Sean Mannion

 

Wondering if Chris Christie ever seriously listened to the lyrics on DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN.--me

 

Ann Romney said she wanted to talk about love. Chris Christie says the country is "paralyzed by a need to be loved."--Think Progress

 

Christie: "Tonight, we're going to choose respect over love."... Ann Romney: "Tonight I want to talk to you about love,"--Sam Stein

 

Note to Chris Christie: You balanced your budget with STIMULUS money.--Joseph J. Santorsa

 

Christie sounds as if he's about to say, "and I accept your nomination as president"--Sean Mannion

 

Christie mentions his dad graduating from college (GI Bill?) and daughters marching w/soccer team (Title IX).--Glennia

 

How many undecideds does Christie think he will win over with his menacing macho act? It's dangerous to believe ur own propaganda.--Marc Cooper

 

Uh-oh. Christie essentially promising that Mitt will be an 18th-century doctor bleeding America with the alleged Austerity Cure.--me

 

Christie: "Dems ideas have failed America." So come on everybody, let's start two more unfunded wars AND cut taxes. You loved 2008, right?--Sean Mannion

 

Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths, like "You're fired" and he will love it.--American Prospect

 

Ahhh, Christie playing the Fox News Fear Card. Well done, sir. Line him up for a show to host.--Sean Mannion

 

Chris Matthews claims Chris Christie's blustering oratory had a "touch of Churchill."--me

 

Rachel Maddow on Chris Christie speech: "One of the greatest acts of political selfishness I have ever seen on a stage."--Dana Stevens

 

Noticed Ann Romney's granite stare at Chris Christie when she and Mitt were applauding from their box.--me

 

Nearly the only thing one could not have taken away from Christie's speech is that one should vote for Romney.--Sam Seder

 

Chris Christie delivered the Menote Speech.--Lizz Winstead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selected comments on Romney's choice of Paul Ryan from Twitter.

Just think: In two years, THE NEWSROOM will be reporting Romney's VP pick.--Franklin Harris
Listen, any time you can double down on rich white guys who want to take healthcare away from people, you just gotta do it.--Jordan Zakarin
HBO already on "Game Change 2".--BWD
Little-known fact about Paul Ryan is that the first budget he introduced in Congress was a dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged.--Top Conservative Cat aka Tea Party Cat
The Ryan pick tells us that Romney was more concerned about winning his base than he was winning in November.--Markos Moulitsas (DAILY KOS)
Can't wait to see the transformation Julianne Moore makes to play Paul Ryan in four years.--Jordan Zakarin
Has there ever been a presidential ticket featuring two guys with better hair (or worse policy plans) than Romney/Ryan?--Scott Feinberg
NBC NEws reports that Tagg Romney told Pawlenty and Portman that they weren't the pick. Romney delegated the calls!--Marc Ambinder
Paul Ryan's been walking around w/ pair of salad tongs for 2months, trying to make Mitt think he's a fellow robot.--Hunter aka HunterDK

New poem THE BALLAD OF CORY BOOKER

New poem about Newark NJ mayor Cory Booker's promotion of Cory Booker on MEET THE PRESS: There's no such thing as nuance On the Presidential campaign trail. Surrogates can't go off-script Any more than corporate employees Or even some of us who produce  Commerce-flavored Art. You can't say you don't agree with 100 % Of what your party's candidate says. Otherwise you invite party officials And cable news pundits To transform into CGI werewolves That will bite and claw you to political death If you don't walk back your heresy By reading the exact talking point script You should have done One news cycle ago.

April 10--an eventful day.

On this date in 1979, I managed to survive a tornado which caused lots of destruction on its path through Wichita Falls, TX. 33 years later, my niece has given birth to her first child--a daughter. In the wider world, Rick Santorum has ended his tenure as the most viable opponent to Mitt Romney's inevitable GOP Presidential campaign. And George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin's killer, is still unarrested--at this writing, Zimmerman seems to have lost both his defense attorneys. So it goes as the Circle of Life continues its rotation.