Bush Report: His Own Worst Enemy

Okay, break is over; back to work.

I was stunned this week when the news came out about Scott McClellan's tell-all book about his days as George W. Bush's chief spokesman. Of all the Bush press spokesmen, first Ari Fleisher, then McClellan, Tony Snow and now Dana Perino, McClellan seemed the least likable, but also the least likely to turn on Bush. His dogged repetition of talking points that were obviously slanted, if not outright lies, got very tiresome. After the news this week, I now believe that McClellan's problem was that he has a conscience. His internal discomfort about the lies he was asked to spread about the Bush White House was displayed with every muscle in his face.

Those who claim that McClellan turned on Bush to further his own career, have not paid much attention to what happens to whistle blowers. Nobody likes a snitch, and after some short term publicity, most wind up wishing they had kept their mouths shut. In this case, the mainstream press does not like McClellan stating that it should have asked more hard questions. While a weasel will always be a weasel, the revelations by McClellan ring true. The Bush Administration had an advance look at the book so they have had plenty of time to come forward with evidence to rebut McClellan's book. By and large, their counter attack has consisted of fake sorrow ("This isn't the Scott McClellan we knew") but little, if any, demonstration that what he has said is untrue.

Another interesting point I have been pondering is how McClellan is only the latest of a long line of Bush insiders to come clean with what has been happening in the White House for the last eight years. I had not read any of their books, but decided I need to educate myself, so I put my name in the queue for the McClellan book at the library. I am number 13 on the list, so in the meantime, I decided to check out some of the other books.

The first one, which I am actually listening to as a book-on-tape, is Richard A. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies. Clarke, you may or may not recall, had a long career, starting with Ronald Reagan's administration. He was named as the chief counter-terrorism adviser under Bill Clinton's administration and continued in that post at the beginning of the Bush Administration, although Bush came into office paying little attention to terrorism and downgraded his position from cabinet level. Clarke says in the first chapter that it took from January, 2001, when Bush was inaugurated until the week before the 9/11 attacks to even get a cabinet level meeting about terrorist threats.

Clarke was in charge of coordinating the response to the 9/11 attacks and determining what needed to be done to make sure such attacks were not successful again. This is what he says in Chapter One happened the day after 9/11:

"I expected to go back to the (White House) to a round of meetings examining what the next attack could be; what our vulnerabilities were; what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than going after Al Queda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to try to promote their agenda about Iraq."

Here we are, five years after the invasion, more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost; hundreds of billions of dollars spent and no end in sight, and the best the defenders of the invasion can come up with is that "everyone" thought we should go into Iraq. No, "everyone" didn't think that. Richard A. Clarke didn't. Barack Obama didn't. Hillary Clinton did. John McCain did.

When I get to McClellan's book, I'll quote directly from the book, but my understanding from the news reports is that he admits that the truth was misrepresented to the American public. How much more evidence do we need until the American public will demand some accountability for the lies?

JACK Report: "Complex music that doesn't intimidate"

There was a nice review of JACK Quartet's concert last week in Sarasota, Florida in the Sarasota Herald Tribune. There are a lot of blurbs that could be pulled out: "young and enormously gifted," "thoughtful talents," "a formidable technical challenge for the quartet, which they met with ease, and pleasing to the large and attentive audience," "clean sonorities, rich tone and playful rhythms produced by the quartet were capitvating." The money quote though is the headline: "Complex music that doesn't intimidate."

The guys are off now until early August when they are doing a residency with the Muir String Quartet in Park City, Utah; then back to New York City for a concert at (le) poisson rouge, a multimedia art cabaret on the site of the old Village Gate; then to Mexico for the Festival Internacional Chihuahua.

It makes an old Dad proud.

Ebertfest: A Hilarious "Delirious"

Movies like Delirious is why I take a couple of vacation days every year to attend Ebertfest. It is a movie about which I had never heard, and would probably have never seen had it not been shown at the festival. It stars Steve Buscemi, the bug-eyed character actor who became famous as one of the bumbling hit men in Fargo, although he has had many great roles since then.

The movie is very funny, but it is also sweet and poignant. Buscemi plays the aptly-named, "Les," a paparazzi who wishes he were "more." Les is all chutzpah, but has very little to show for his attempted intrusions into the lives of the rich and famous. A good hearted, and good looking homeless kid,(who has to keep denying that he is gay,) Toby, played by Michael Pitt, attaches himself to Les, and then gets a lucky break when a Britney Spears type spots him and picks him up. That sounds like a typical Hollywood formula movie, but it's not.

The movie really is about the need for approval. Les has a crappy apartment, is doing crappy work and has disapproving parents. When he meets Toby, he finally has someone to whom he can feel superior. Toby's lucky break leads Les to homicidal rage.

Tom DiCillo, the director was overcome with emotion when he started talking, after the showing, about the problems he had with the distributors of the movies, and how Roger Ebert helped him out by answering questions and giving him a good review. DiCillo, describing both the movie and his own encounter with Ebert said, "All your life, you sit around waiting for someone to say, 'you're okay.'"

I gave this movie five plus stars, which is darned good for a rating system that only goes to five stars.

Ebertfest Report: "Hamlet ", The Endurance Test

The 10th Annual Ebertfest, opened Wednesday night with Kenneth Branagh's marathon version of Hamlet. Sadly, Roger Ebert, could not make his own film festival this year, having fallen and broken his hip while undergoing rehabilitation from his previous multiple cancer surgeries. (Although Roger's wife, Chaz, who is acting as master of ceremonies this year, said last night that he might still show up for part of it if he can get the okay from his doctors.)

The movie is visually stunning. Part of it is the 70mm format and the large screen at the Virginia Theater, show detail and richness that is lacking in the 35mm and digital formats to which we have grown accustomed. But, I am sure the movie looks good in any format. No unhappy family or troubled kingdom ever looked as good as Hamlet's or Denmark. Movies are supposed to show, as well as tell the story, and the beauty of this version demonstrates one of Shakespeare's most famous quotes, "There is something rotten in Denmark."

The "A" list cast, including even Charlton Heston, who in 1996 was only a few years away from Reaganesque dottering senility, does a fine job. Julie Christie came out of retirement, looking as lovely as ever, to play Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Other well-known actors who appear include Richard Attenborough, Judi Dench, Gerard Depardieu, John Gilgeud, and Kate Winslet. Surprisingly, even American comics like Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams are in the movie and do very creditable jobs.

The problem with the movie is that it is just too friggin' long. We got there at 6:00 p.m. for the 7:00 p.m. showing, and with the customary late start, and the opening remarks, the movie didn't start running until 7:30. We didn't get an intermission until 10:00 p.m. and after a half hour break, we still had 1-1/2 hours to go, so we didn't get out of there until midnight, six hours after we had arrived. That's too long for any movie, no matter how good.

I have seen many Shakespearean plays over the last 50 years, and countless Hamlets, and I have never watched a four-hour version, so I wondered how this one came to be so long. Part of it, of course, is that Shakespeare only wrote the words, so the length of a play can vary greatly depending on how the words are presented, i.e. what comes between the words. Branagh makes this version longer than it would have to be because of how he presents it. The other part is that this version includes all of the fragments in various scripts and folios that are not always included as part of the text. In this case, more is definitely not better. The movie drags for long stretches of time, and it was a relief when there was a chase or fight scene, even though I am not a fan of action movies.

Besides being too long, the movie had too many British actors whose mush-mouthed diction, I just can't understand. Branagh, I could usually make out, and I could understand the Americans with their fake British accents very well, but at least half the time I only had a vague idea of what was being said by the British actors. This is a problem I have experienced at many British movies, not just this one, and I have said before, I wish they would have subtitles for Americans. I used to think it was a problem with the volume, but the sound in this movie was turned way up, in fact, at the beginning The Wife was complaining that it was too loud.

It has become traditional for the festival to open on Wednesday nights with a 70 mm print, the Virginia Theater, where the festival is held being one of the few venues in the country (and the only one in the Midwest) with a projector capable of showing 70mm. Branagh's Hamlet, released in 1996 is the last film shot in 70mm, and it was the only movie made in that format in England in 25 years.

Hollywood and the film industry have always been about money, so it is not surprising that 70mm films are no longer being made and shown, but it is, nevertheless, inexcusable. If bread customers can be given the choice between a $2 loaf of white bread and a $5.50 multi-grain loaf from Great Harvest, why shouldn't movie watchers have the option of seeing large format films on big screens instead of having to watch digital and digitally enhanced versions on television-sized screens? I think there are many people who would be willing to pay higher ticket prices to see well-made movies, but, unfortunately, theaters don't make their money from ticket prices but from selling popcorn, soft drinks and candy. People are not going to buy bigger tubs of popcorn just because the screen image is better.

If I could give a separate rating for acting, format and visuals, that part of this movie would get five stars, while it would get only two for plot and length. Since, by law, I can give only one rating, I have to give it three out of five stars.

Rocking and Rolling

For Californians, our little earthquake this morning was no big deal, but East Central Illinoisians are reacting like kids from the tropics seeing their first snow flakes. Everyone was talking today about where they were, what they were doing and how it felt when our very own 5.2 magnitude quake hit.

I was still sleeping, the quake beating my alarm by four minutes. There were reports of some people being shaken out of their beds, but I found it just as hard to get out of bed at 4:40 a.m. as I always do. I did have the fun of feeling a little vibration in my chair from an aftershock at 10:15 this morning. It felt just like the last earthquake I experienced, in the early 1980s, when my family was sitting down eating supper. I felt a vibration in my chair, and since I couldn't account for the turbulence by having recently eaten beans, I remarked to The Wife, "I think we just had an earthquake."

Spring is finally here, next week is the Ebertfest and we have survived an earthquake. Could life be any better?

JACK Report: Pictures in Philadelphia

Paul Miller, a violist in Philadelphia has some nice photos up on his blog of the JACK concert last night in Philadelphia. No mention of teeth enamel.

SNT Report: "A Stunning Performance"

Oh, what the heck, if you can't brag about your kids, what can you do? Son Number Two has been busy performing, both with JACK and with other groups. An article in today's issue of The Gothamist, a New York City webzine asks the question, "What was the last great performance you saw," and Composer Adam Mirza replies, "Renate Rohlfing (piano), Chris Otto (violin) and Rachel Drehmann (horn) gave a stunning performance of Ligeti's Horn Trio last week." Stunning, huh? Mirza is a little prejudiced because he is a friend of the performers and arranged the concert, but still, "stunning" is pretty good.

JACK Report: It Will Leave the Enamel On Your Teeth

There's a nice article in today's Boston Globe about Helmut Lachenmann, the German composer who has championed the JACK Quartet, and JACK's performance in Boston on Friday night. The article quotes one eager listener as saying before the concert that he could stand anything that wouldn't take the enamel off his teeth. He wasn't so sure afterwards. The article erroneously has JACK based in Chicago. I don't know where that comes from. Two of its members are living in New York City; one is in Boston and one is in Lancaster, PA. Other than that, it's a very nice article.

JACK is performing in Philadelphia Monday night.

Ebertfest Report: 2008 Lineup is announced

Roger Ebert's annual film festival in our town is always a big event, with me. I usually take vacation days Thursday and Friday and devote myself to watching movies and listening to the panelists discuss them. Last year, I missed most of it (but I'm not complaining, the reason was a trip to New York to hear Son Number Two perform at Carnegie Hall.) One of the highlights has always been to listen to Ebert talk with his guests, but his throat cancer kept him from talking last year, and apparently, will again this year. The schedule for this year was announced Friday.

The movie I am most looking forward to seeing is Kenneth Branagh's four-hour version of Hamlet. This is the last movie made in 70 mm format, and the Virginia Theater, where the festival is held is one of the last, if not the last, theater in the country to have a projector that will show 70 mm movies. The difference between seeing a 70 mm movie projected on a wide screen and seeing a DVD version of the movie on your home television is like the difference between seeing the Grand Canyon through a viewfinder and seeing it in person. Still near the top of my movie viewing experiences is seeing the opening scene of the movie Patton, in 70 mm format a few years ago at Ebertfest. It was breathtaking to watch as Patton' head started ascending, in front of the American flag, and then, finally, a life-sized Patton standing there giving his speech. Hamlet has a laundry list of well-known actors, like John Gielgud, Judi Dench, Richard Attenborough and Julie Harris, Charlton Hesston, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet and Jack Lemmon. It should be great (at least if they give us a bathroom break.)

The director, Ang Lee will be the most famous guest of the festival. Unfortunately, the Lee movie that Ebert will be showing is Hulk, a movie that I would not ordinarily go see. However, since it is Ebertfest and Ang Lee will be there to defend the movie, I intend to go and see what I can learn.

I have less confidence in Ebert's ability to pick good movies since he foisted Bad Santa off on us several years ago. This film was even worse than Bad Santa since the director, Terry Zwigoff was there with the director's cut version which included scenes too bad to be in the theatrical release. I still haven't figured out what the redeeming quality was in that movie, and suspect it was shown only as a way to get Zwigoff and the movie's star, Billy Bob Thornton to show up at the festival.

The only other movie on the schedule I have heard of is The Band's Visit, an Israeli movie which has won a lot of awards. It happens to be playing in our local art theater this weekend, and I would have gone to see it had it not been on the schedule for Ebertfest.

Here is the complete schedule, with the list of guests:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23


7:00 pm

Hamlet (238 min)


THURSDAY, APRIL 24


1:00 pm

Delirious (107 min)

Tom DiCillo, Director

4:00 pm

Yes (99 min)

Sally Potter, Director*
Christopher Sheppard, Producer*
8:30 pm Canvas (100 min), preceded by
Citizen Cohl: The Untold Story, a short film tribute to Dusty Cohl Joey Pantoliano, Actor
Adam Hammel, Producer
Lucy Engibarian-Hammel, Producer
Joseph Greco, Director
Barry Avrich, Director (Citizen Cohl)

FRIDAY, APRIL 25


11:30 am

Shotgun Stories (92 min)

Jeff Nichols, Director

2:30 pm

Underworld (80 min)

Alloy Orchestra

7:00 pm

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (83 min)

John Peterson, Himself
Taggart Siegel, Director
10:00 pm

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (121 min)

Paul Schrader, Director

SATURDAY, APRIL 26


11:00 am

Hulk (138 min)

Ang Lee, Director

3:00 pm

The Band's Visit (89 min)

Eran Kolirin, Director

7:30 pm

Housekeeping (117 min)

Bill Forsyth, Director
Christine Lahti, Actor

11:00 pm

The Cell (108 min)

Tarsem Singh, Director

SUNDAY, APRIL 27


Noon

Romance & Cigarettes (115 min)

Aida Turturro, Actor
Tricia Brouk, Choreographer

Ask Aunt Tillie: Is Your Nephew Going to Hell?

Blogger's Note: Since this blog is somewhat Amishcentric, I get questions from time to time from readers about Amish life and culture, which I refer to my Aunt Tillie, an opinionated, but humble Amish woman. Here is a recent question and answer. Please leave a comment or email me if you have questions you want me to refer to her in the future.

Dear Aunt Tillie:

Your nephew, Amishlaw, has been on an anti-religious kick lately. A few posts ago, he told about having his arm twisted as a young man to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior and join the church. Then on Easter Sunday, he implied that the physical resurrection of Jesus is make believe. Is he really a Christian? Is he going to hell? What are we going to do about him?

(Signed) Squawker

Dear Squawker:

(Sigh) I'll tell you, Squawker, I am way too old to be worrying about what to do about my nephew, Amishlaw. I have enough worrying to do about whether Grandpa is going to get the garden plowed this spring. It has been wet and cold for so long that he still hasn't gotten around to it. If I don't get my lettuce planted pretty soon, I'm going to start getting grumpy. But I'm sorry, I digress. You were asking about the salvation of Amishlaw. I guess we'll just have to let God worry about that boy. If he wants to risk spending eternity burning with that awful Reverend Wright and the rest of those radio preachers who make a living saying stupid things, then I guess he can just go on shooting off his mouth. We Amish are a little different from the Baptists and the Pentecostals and a lot of other denominations. We don't pretend to be able to know who is going to make it to heaven and who is going to wind up in hell. That's God's business. We say we have the "hope" of getting to heaven, meaning we don't know what is in the mind of God. We might think we have it all figured out and God might change his mind. He has before. After all, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. He might get so irritated at the church people that he'll decide he'll just send the church people to hell and bring the Saturday night beer drinkers and the Sunday morning late sleepers to heaven. I hope that isn't what happens; if it does, I've deprived myself of a lot of beer and television for nothing. But we can't possibly know. So stop worrying about my nephew and go look at some seed catalogs.

(Signed) Aunt Tille

Top McCain Advisor Won't Oppose Obama

Okay, you want politics, I'll give you politics.

I find this story so intriguing and emblematic of why I get excited about a Barack Obama candidacy. One of John McCain's top political advisors, his chief media strategist, Mark McKinnon, has said that he will resign from McCain's staff if the Democratic nominee is Barack Obama. He says he disagrees with many of Obama's positions, but he admires him so much that he does not feel comfortable opposing him. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Can you imagine such a thing? Is there any other candidate that you have ever heard of, in any political campaign, that has shown the potential Obama has for fundamentally changing the way politics is done? Think about it, not only the ability to draw Republicans and Independents who agree with his positions to support him, but to get people who disagree with his positions from fighting against him? It's unbelievable, really, but here is a portion of the transcript from an interview with The National Journal on Air for today's edition:

"Q: So you've said that you will leave the McCain campaign if Obama is the nominee. Does that still hold and why?

"McKinnon: Yeah. Well, this goes back to a memo that I wrote to the campaign when I came aboard more than a year and a half ago, and I simply let them know that I had spent time with Obama and read his book and I like the guy. I think he has strong character and a fascinating life story, and I disagree with him fundamentally on issues like Iraq and trade and a number of others. But I just flashed forward to the improbable scenario, at that time seemingly improbable, that John McCain and Barack Obama might face off against one other. And I just told them at the time that I thought that I would be uncomfortable being on the front lines -- being as aggressive as you need to be in a presidential campaign -- and not only that I would be uncomfortable, but that it would be bad for the campaign, and that if that circumstance were to come to be, that I would just take a step to the sidelines and continue to support John McCain 100 percent and be No. 1 fan and cheerleader. But just kind of take myself out of the front lines.

"Q: So you are still going to do that?

"McKinnon: I'm a man of my word.

"Q: And it's because, what, you don't want to run negative ads against Obama?

"McKinnon: Yeah.

"Q: Or is there also a concern on your part that you don't want to run ads against Obama, the first African-American candidate to have this kind of a chance? Is that a factor as well?

"McKinnon: I suppose that is in part, but it's more just that I like and admire the guy. I've come to a point in my life where I think character is important. I think he has great character. Again, I think he's really wrong on fundamental issues, but yeah, I just don't want to -- you know, I kind of want to put my guns down. It's just a matter of degrees, and like I said, I don't think I'm the best person to have in that slot for the campaign. So it would just be better for me to step to the sidelines."

You can read a transcript of the whole interview here.

Okay, enough politics. I got a card from Aunt Tillie about the prospects of her nephew's salvation which I will run tomorrow or Sunday.

Is Obama Wrong About Wright?

For those readers I have left, if I have any, which I probably do not, here are my thoughts on recent political events.

I don't get too excited about hearing a preacher "damn America". I've been hearing it from conservative evangelical Christians for the last 50 years. I grew up hearing Billy Graham on the radio predicting that any day now God would strike out at America for failing to heed his commandments.

More recently, conservative superstars like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson have built empires on blaming American decadence for such natural disasters as hurricanes in Florida and New Orleans, and the AIDS epidemic. John McCain stood by smiling as right wing preacher, John Hagee, who calls the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore," and who claimed Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans because of gays, endorsed him. Although there was a minor brouhaha about McCain seeking Hagee's support, it was nothing compared to the firestorm over Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright's intemperate remarks. I don't defend Reverend Wright, any more than I defend the white preachers who get carried away with their own rhetoric. But the snippets of sermons played endlessly on the cable news networks did take some of his most inflammatory statements out of context. Anderson Cooper of CNN has an interesting article here. The long and short of it is that the "chickens coming home to roost" quote after 9/11 was a quote from an American ambassador on Fox News. If you have 6 minutes and 48 seconds, take time to listen to the more complete context of the famous "God damn America" snippet by Reverend Wright. It is probably not something I would say, but it is completely within the parameters of what has been said in pulpits many times by other ministers.

More importantly, Reverend Wright is not running for president of the United States. If he were, he wouldn't get very far, as other preachers, including Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee discovered (interestingly, Huckabee defended both Obama and Wright, pointing out that ministers speak extemporaneously and get carried away with their words sometimes.)

No one can reasonably say that Obama hates whites -- how could he, he is as much white as he is black. About the only thing they can say is that he should have left the church. Maybe he should have, if he was concerned only about his political future, he probably would have. I'm sure Hillary was telling the truth (for once) when she said that she would not have stayed in the church; of course, she would not have because she would have been afraid of the political fall out. (The same reason she voted for the war in Iraq; she was afraid if she didn't it would affect her political future.) I realize I have long been an Obama supporter and am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I was very impressed with his speech on race in Philadelphia and his refusal to do the expedient thing and throw Wright under the bus.

So, we will see how it all plays out. I am not as confident that Obama will wind up with the nomination as many pundits apparently are. Too many things can happen and I do not believe Hillary will ever give up voluntarily. If Obama wins the nomination, I am very confident that he will win the general election.

So, way too much politics here, but at least I'm writing.

More Ammunition for the Squawkers

Thoughts on Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008, a cloud-covered gray day, with a few snow flurries:

The Wife: "I'm just going to pretend that today's a beautiful day."

Me (tongue only slightly in cheek): "In light of everything else we're going to pretend today, that shouldn't be too much of a stretch."

Don't Squawk Unless You've Been Hit

I've gotten a lot of flack, privately, about my salvation post of January 18th, below. I'm reminded of a saying of my sainted mother (who everyone agrees will make it, despite her poor job at raising her sons.) She used to say that when you throw a rock into a flock of chickens, the ones who squawk are the ones who have been hit. You figure it out.

California Surprise

I promised this is not going to turn into a political blog. But this really surprised everyone; the wife of Arnold Schwarznegger, Republican governor of California who has endorsed John McCain, coming out unexpectedly at an Obama rally with a great speech. Watch.