This Just Sums It Up So Beautifully.

I'm in complete and utter agreement with the always-thoughtful James Bow: this is frickin' beautiful.

Thank Heavens I Don't Have to Live in Mississippi

People say that I never have a kind word to say about the President. Okay, here's a kind word about the President: He did a hell of a lot better job responding to the outrage over Trent Lott's hoof-in-mouth disease than Trent Lott has done.

President Bush used strong, forceful language and firmly repudiated both Lott and the ideas Lott is now trying to pretend he doesn't endorse. Had Lott himself said something that firm, he would have been off the hook a week ago -- but he can't, because even Trent Lott can't convincingly lie that much. At his core, he's racist and thus can't bring himself to call segrationism "morally repugnant" or "untrue to the ideals of this nation" the way Bush did. That's because Lott does believe that segregation would have prevented a lot of "problems" we've had since those days.

That's the core of the problem. Nobody I've spoken to about this (mostly Republicans) believe Lott didn't mean what he said the first time. You can't fake stuff like that, and you can't hide when you say it out loud. All the "I'm sorry"'s in the world are just going to sound like "I'm sorry I said that in front of a camera" to blacks and anyone with half a brain in their heads.

Even if Lott somehow managed to grit his teeth and lie to the cameras, there's his absolutely abysmal record on race issues to haunt him. He voted against the 1981 renewal of the Civil Rights Act. He supported Bob Jones University in the brouhaha over their ban on interracial dating. He opposed the creation of a holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. He championed the nomination of segregationist Charles Pickering for the US Court of Appeals (it was unsuccessful, thank heavens). He only got into Congress in the first place because he replaced his boss, arch-segregationist Bill Colmer. He is one of only a few few Senators to get consistent "F" grades from the NAACP during his three decades in Congress.

I personally don't have an opinion on whether Lott should resign his office -- he represents a pretty backward, poor and racist state (and yes, I've been there and seen this firsthand) and neither he nor the voters in that state seem to have any interest in making Mississippi anything other than the most third-world-like state in the union. They consistently show up as 50th out of 50 on most polls that measure which states offer anything like good health, good education, good social services or good jobs for their people, average literacy, average IQ and so on. This is, after all, one of the states with a confederate flag incorporated into its design.

So, as a representative of the state (both the physical state and the state of mind), he's probably doing a pretty good job. But Senate Majority Leader? Sorry, but I don't think so. I think it's past time Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle grew some balls and said "buh-bye" to Lott as Leader.

Whole Lott o' Shakin' Goin' On

Okay, let's get my biases out of the way first: I live for stuff like this. I love it when some pious piece of crap like Trent Lott puts his foot in his mouth, and it seems to happen to politicians of both stripes on a routine basis. However, it's extremely rare when anybody but a Republican says something quite this racist and shocking.

First, let's do something the Conservative Media rarely do: let's look at what Lott actually said.

"I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Most Americans are woefully ignorant of history, but Trent Lott is not among those people. He knew perfectly well when he said this that Strom Thurmond was running on the Dixiecrat ticket on a platform of segregation -- white people should be protected from black people, and black people should be isolated away from white people.

This is not a case of "oops, I didn't remember that part." You don't say you voted for Strom Thurmond for president in 1948 without also saying you are now (or at least were then) a racist. The fact that he goes on to say that if the Dixiecrats had won with their platform that we wouldn't have "these problems over all these years" is a explicit, direct and uninterpretable attack on the very concept of civil rights. In fact, he endorsed Thurman's platform in an almost identical way in remarks in Mississippi in 1980. This was not some trip of the tongue, friends.

I applaud the media for not blaming the wrong person. It would have been easy to make this about Strom Thurmond, who was and probably still is a bigot. Or maybe Strom really did have a change of heart a la former Georgia governor Lester Maddox (who I used to know personally -- he was a friend of my mother's -- and can attest that he did in fact reform, albeit in something of a simple-minded and unintentionally patronising way). I don't know how Thurmond truly feels about blacks today, I suspect he likes blacks just fine -- as long as they vote Republican. But Strom's former open racism and his views in 1948 are not the issue. The issue is that there are powerful men in this country who still hold those views, and do not repudiate them as morally wrong. Strom Thurman's former positions will, as a result of Lott's gaffe, be re-examined -- which is a very good thing. But hopefully this will not result in new hate being stirred up against Thurman. I personally can't stand the drooling old coot -- he has been nothing more than a warm body (literally) who's staff makes every decision for him for at least 20 years, just staying in place to prevent the possibility of some Democrat with a functioning brain getting into office. He barely remembers his own name, much less how to actually represent the people (the idiot people of South Carolina) who keep re-electing him. When he announced his retirement, I joked that they should replace him with Ronald Reagan to keep things consistent. But again, this controversy is not actually about Strom or his views, and so far the media have done a good job separating that from the actual fracas.

So what did Lott do when confronted with the general outrage and shock over his remarks? He issued what I would have to say is the feeblest apology I've yet seen from a politico who steps in it:

A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embrace the discarded policies of the past.

Notice how he doesn't say that the Dixiecrat platform was wrong or morally repugnant. Just that they were "discarded," as if to imply that the ideas had some worth but people just moved on. Notice how he doesn't repudiate his original remark that he's "proud" of voting for Thurmond in 1948, nor does he retract the idea that the racist Dixiecrat platform would have solved "all these problems" we've had with the uppity black folk since then.

Now, this would be a big deal if anyone of such importance had said it. Even people from Lott's own party have condemned the soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader for his remarks -- such as Family Research Council head Ken Conner, who openly called for a new Senate leader.

But I ask those of you who doubt my insistence that the concept of the "Liberal Media" is dead and gone -- what would have happened if Gore had said this? If Clinton had said this? Would the conservative New York Times really have ignored the story for five days if Gephardt or Kerry had said this? Give me a freakin' break.

I watch the mainstream TV news outlets more or less daily. Not one word about this story on CNN. Not on MSNBC either. Or Fox as far as I can tell (can't stand to watch Fox for more than a few minutes -- talk about biased!!). If Clinton had said this, the whole country would have come to a halt as every major media outlet -- not just a few editorial newspaper boards -- would have raked him over the coals. You can be sure the Democratic Party would have been quick to distance themselves as fast as possible.

But the Republicans? They shrug and ask what's the big deal, he apologised?

It's as if they don't know that Lott has for decades been closely associated with the Council of Conservative Citizens, formerly known as the Council of White Citizens -- a pro-racist group Lott once got in trouble for addressing. At the time he claimed he was "ignorant of the group's agenda" but he has continued to align himself with them. On the incredibly evil Bill O'Reilly's Fox program as recently as last week, Lott pointed with pride to an endorsement he got from the group for his idea of using US troops to protect the US from "illegal immigrant invasions." In 1992, he specifically said to the CCC at their convention that they had "the right principles and the right philosophy." According to the CCC, as of 1999 Lott was a dues-paying member. Go and visit their web site and see if you think this is the sort of group the incoming Senate Majority Leader should be affiliated with.

President Bush seems to think so -- he and his lapdog Ari "I put my foot in my mouth a lot too" Fleisher have refused to directly criticise Lott or his statement.

That Lott isn't being asked -- by his own party -- to at least step down from the Majority Leader position (if not resign outright) tells you everything you need to know about which of the two corrupted political parties (and make no mistake, they are both corrupt) has the most rotten core.

December CULTural Calendar is Up (At Freakin' Last!)

Sorry about the delay, was busy with Hanukkah. The famous Chas' CULTural Calendar for Orlando is now on display here, and if you use iCal on your Mac you can just subscribe to it thusly.

Hello Class, My Name is Mr. Substitute

Okay, so I haven't posted anything here in a while. Insert ritual self-flagellation here. Then go look up "self-flagellation" because you can't remember what it means.

If you want to know what's on my mind of late, I find it has been expressed very well indeed by the psychics at Suburban Limbo and Blowtorch Monkey Armada (latest entries). Both blogs are well worth adding to your "read list," though Rich hasn't updated his in quite a while (40 lashes with a wet noodle for him). For that matter, neither has Ultra-Deb, (she'd probably like 40 lashes with a wet noodle though).

Tom Tomorrow Strikes Again

If this guy were on target any more often, the Army would use him as a Patriot missle.

War On Terror Rainy Day Fun Game

Phrase of the Week

"Jumped Up Jebus on a SEGWAY, can't these people ever get it right?"

Courtesy one of the all-time great websites, lileks.com.

Out of the Mouth of Babes #1

"It's hard to believe the Beatles were ever considered rock." -- my 28-year-old wife Heather, listening to a selection of early Beatles tunes while waiting for Enzian's "Popcorn Flicks" outdoor showing of Duck Soup to begin.

Assuming she doesn't kill me for posting this, I may show off a few other gems from this collection sometime. :)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Slight Let-Downs

I don't want to say that I was disappointed in the new HP film. It's good, it's just -- well it's a lot easier to criticise this one than the last one.

I enjoyed large sections of the film, but it didn't feel anywhere near as cohesive as the first one. Heather and I also felt that sequences with lots of special effects got way more play than character-building or storyline-advancing scenes, all for the sake of the visuals. Clocking in at three hours, you'd think they'd have found a way to balance this better.

Another observation: although it's only been a year since the first movie, it's been about two years since the first movie was shot, and man have those kids grown. It completely strains credibility to think of anyone but Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) as 12 years old. I was much amused by Ron's voice-cracking scenes (scattered across the film) versus the non-cracking scenes, which reminded me how long it takes to shoot one of these things. In a recent interview the boy was a complete frog when speaking. Eddie Izzard covered this phenomena so well in his Dress To Kill video.

As a non-lover of CGI effects, I was dismayed at the sheer amount of them. They really dominate the film, which is a shame. By contrast, the scenes of the train passing north to Hogwart's, and the flyovers of the castle/school itself, are far more breathtaking.

Even though the film is three hours (the new definition of "epic" in Hollywood), a huge amount of the book is cut out. In some cases, a smart move ... in most cases, not. I suppose it's compliment to say that a 180-minute film seems rushed, but it also feels rather jumpy, which is bad editing rearing its head. Good editing is invisible.

I wish I could say that Richard Harris is wonderful here, in his final performance, but he's really only wonderful in one short scene at about the 2-hour mark. The rest of time he's just there, and sounding much worse than in the previous film. I'm really sorry he's gone, but if they are looking to recast I now firmly believe my initial instinct was right: Tom Baker (best remembered as Doctor Who #4) would be the logical choice for the role in the future films. It's amazing how few actors of that calibre/generation are left.

I could go on, and perhaps I will when I get a second viewing in, but until then, here's a final thought: Chris Columbus has proven that he's a master at getting really good performances out of child actors. Best in the business.

But he has to go.

This film just did not have focus, and apart from the wonderful leads (all of whom could have long careers if they work hard to overcome typecasting -- they are all wonderfully talented), the major flaw is that Columbus fell back into his bad habit -- the trap of being very "Hollywood" and using SFX "magic" instead of relying on the magic of the book the way the first one did. Time for some fresh blood.

Hey Thanks Everybody

I went to see Bowling for Columbine again yesterday evening. I was frankly expecting an empty house. Despite my exhortations that everyone should get their eyes forcibly opened by this movie (and even the biggest Michael Moore fans are going to find at least two things in this film that will open their eyes), I didn't expect there to be much interest. After all, the film is:

a) A documentary. Who in America wants to learn anything? When was the last time you went to the cinema to see a documentary?

b) A documentary that know-it-all jackasses will think is about guns (it's not, really), or just Michael Moore essentially saying guns and/or the NRA and/or the Conservo-Publicans are bad (he doesn't). Moore may be a registered Green voter, but he's actually quite right-wing on some issues, like gun ownership. He's a lifetime NRA member and (at least used to be) a hunter and marksman. What the film is actually about is how we are all -- conservatives, liberals, swing voters, Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever -- being manipulated by the media. More than you think. And how that manipulation is in fact working, and how it's affecting us.

c) Upsetting in places. If you have any heart left, that is. Not many people seem to anymore.

d) Up against blockbusters like the new Harry Potter movie and as well as the usual assortment of Hollywood/mass media BS/star vehicles/made-specifically-for-drooling-morons type "entertainment" that is, frankly, a lot easier to get lazy and enjoy.

So try to imagine how heartened I was when we went to the cinema the day after the Harry Potter movie premiered and discovered that the screening room for BFC was nearly full. All races, all ages, all income levels. Kids and seniors, Hipsters and even some pretty obvious Republicans who looked like they were there on a dare.

Even more heartening was the ending, when people applauded. Nobody applauds films anymore unless they know the filmmaker or star are in the room. And all the engrossing snippets of conversation I overheard as we made our way out of the screening. The talk was of a much higher calibre than what you usually hear after a movie, even an art-house movie. I suspected the area coffeehouses and the nearby Krispy Kreme would be buzzing shortly.

Maybe, just maybe, this country can actually cut through the noise and learn something. Gosh I hope so, for all our sakes.