Pictured, L to R: a scene from today’s delayed signing of Iraq’s post-invasion temporary constitution, and a scene from the September 1787 signing of the post-liberation United States’ constitution.
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Awww, John…We hear that you’ve been hospitalized with a bout of the ol’ gallstone pancreatitis, and for that, we’re truly sorry. We are, however, thankful that you have healthcare, unlike millions of uninsured Americans. And, if worse comes to worse, we’re sure you can find someone to help foot the bill, as you did when you were merely a senator from Missouri in the 1990s:
“Between 1994 and 1998 the pharmaceutical industry, insurance industry and various anti-consumer healthcare lobbies paid out nearly $1 million in contributions to Ashcroft’s reelection campaign. Ashcroft returned the favor on multiple occasions: Four times in the last year he voted against prescription-drug benefits for Medicaid recipients; twice he helped kill the bipartisan Patients’ Bill of Rights, which would have allowed consumers to sue managed-care companies for delayed or denied care. He also backed a phony business-sponsored Patients’ Bill of Rights that would prohibit consumers from suing their managed-care providers.”
Come on, John, get well soon! Everyday you’re out of commission as our Attorney General is a day that America is that much more unsafe; the USA PATRIOT Act and its sequel both feel somehow less substantive; Gitmo feels less secure, and we fear that hundreds of prisoners may in fact receive an actual trial; Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi might as well be on parole, and–this is embarrassing–we’re blushing as we gaze upon Justice’s exposed bosom, heaving ever-so-nakedly in your absence.
Let the eagle soar, John! Let it soar!
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Mustang Viggo
Beautiful Beasts: Viggo Mortensen and his costars
Hidalgo opens tomorrow in theaters everywhere. Based on the trailer, the film appears to be about the passionate bond between scruffy Viggo Mortensen and his strikingly beautiful horse.
Haven’t we seen this movie already? Wasn’t it called A Perfect Murder?
What’s the deal with Viggo and ungulates? It’s not just the Spence-educated variety, it’s the real ones, too.
The director’s edition DVD of The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers restores several scenes that show the deep bond between Aragorn and his horse, Brego. This is no mere directorial indulgence, it’s apparently vital to the Rings trilogy.
According to the copy on the back of the Aragorn and Brego collector’s toy:
Aragorn found a kinship with Brego, the wild horse of Rohan’s late Prince Theodred, who had been cut down by orcs at the Fords of Isen. Brego was traumatized by the loss of his lord, but Aragorn’s gentle hand stayed the beast’s fear, and in time he came to bear the king in exile as faithfully as he had once borne the Prince of Rohan.
Well, that clears that right up.
Ladies, if you love Viggo (that means you, Alex K.!), be sure to wash your hair with some Kiehl’s Equine Shampoo before galloping off to see Hidalgo. At least one person in the relationship should have clean, shiny hair.
Related: Hidalgo also features C. Thomas Howell. It’s been a long while, gentle friend, beloved soul man.
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CNN: Your news, ironied
(Click the thumbnail above to enlarge the image)
As this CNN.com screenshot from this morning’s headlines indicate, sometimes web publishing software seems to reveal some sort of virtual Lewis Black residing within–vitriolic anger and sarcasm pushing forth to convey a broader message while working within the tedium of the mundane, i.e. code, technology, news, headlines, whatever…
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’m not the one who’s conflated the developments in Iraq with those of the War on Terror™. That was the Bush administration’s initiative, you’ll recall.
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Lost Among the Debris: History
According to a caption in today’s New York Times, the AP Photo above shows “Looters on Monday at the house of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, where family and school pictures lay among the debris.” (Haitian Rebels Enter Capital; Aristide Bitter, by Tim Weiner and Lydia Polgreen)
What is not stated, is that the painting in the foreground depicts Toussaint L’Ouverture, the revolutionary who lead the slave revolt that brought freedom to Haiti, the first free Black republic in the world.
This would be like seeing a painting of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington amid a pile of post-revolution trash at the White House and calling it “personal effects and ephemera.”
See also: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (non-fiction account);
All Souls’ Rising, by Madison Smartt Bell (fictionalized account).
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Return of the King
The Real Messiah: Tony Soprano and His disciples, (photo by Annie Leibovitz)
The Sopranos returns to HBO this Sunday. The show’s been on hiatus for fifteen months, but returns just in time to save the world.
Maybe you’ve heard about the little culture war going on in America right now: frightening religious evangelism at the muliplexes, a bigoted election year proposal for a new Constitutional amendment , Clear Channel pulling Howard Stern from radio stations under pressure from the FCC, seemingly endless debate about a pop singer’s exposed breast. What we need right now is something to unify us, something we can all get behind. The Sopranos may just be the thing.
What we also need is a strong leader, someone who understands the moral ambiguities of this world but has the clear(ish) vision to (mostly) know the difference between right and wrong and who even occasionally does the right thing. Someone who has a leadership philosophy personally cobbled together from Sun Tzu and “that book Prince Matchabelli,” rather than handed to him by Karl Rove and Hop on Pop.
Re-enter Tony Soprano, and not a minute too soon.
Tony may seem like an unlikely hero, but who else do we have? (Superman? Guy’s a total fuckin’ square.) In Tony, we get a hero these times deserve: He’s powerful, but gentle, decisive, but racked by insecurities. Tony’s complicated, off-center sense of morality is the perfect antidote to the simplistic manichean world views of our elected officials and the supercilious ‘talking heads’ who attempt to contextualize them for us on TV.
Tony knows this world is fucked, which is why he feels it’s up to each of us to define our own destinies. As he told his shrink in the first episode of the series “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
If that’s not a “God is dead” for our century, what is? (Ask Anthony, Jr. who said “God is dead” and he’ll tell you “Nitsch”.) Through his actions and the ways he deals with their consequences, Tony shows us that we all in our own ways upset the moral ecology: if there’s a shit storm all around you, you better look in the mirror before you shake your fist at the sky.
With the return of The Sopranos, we’ll all finally have something to talk about besides the election, terrorism, the economy, and conflicting interpretations of family values. (Well, those of us willing and able to pay for HBO, at least.) And Slate will bring back its panel of shrinks to analyze the show for us, instead of relying on pundits to read the entrails of the body politic. Soon, Tony and Carmela will return to magazine covers and supplant that other power-hungry dynastic clan. And what a great day that will be.
Besides, this culture war’s gone on long enough, hasn’t it? Let’s bring on the entertainment. It’s gotten to the point where no one can even remember why the war started in the first place. As Tony once said, “This whole war could have been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.”
That’s almost a little kinda true, right?
The Sopranos airs Sunday at 9PM EST on HBO.
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Exclusive: low culture blogs the Oscars®!
low culture asked Matt Haber’s dog to blog the 76th Academy Awards (“The Oscars®,” to those in the industry) in real time. Here’s her report from the biggest night in show biz:
8:30: I wonder if there’s anything left in my bowl. Sometimes I go back into the kitchen and there’s still a couple of pieces of food in my bowl for me. Maybe I should check.
8:32: Nothing in the bowl. Do I want water? Okay, a little sip.
8:33: Uch, I’m so itchy.
8:33: Ahhhhhhh… Scratching feels so good.
8:35: I wonder if there’s anything left in my bowl.
8:35: Damnit. Do I want water?
9:00: I’m not sleeping, just resting my eyes. I’m not even tired—
9:52: Itchy ear, itchy ear! Okay, that’s better. Maybe I should rest my eyes some more…
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When talking points collide
As German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met with President Bush at the White House today (both men presumably enduring the event with forced smiles and pseudo-affable buddy posturing), Number 43 let fly with a puzzling new iteration of one of his trademarked “Bushisms” as the two leaders discussed that whole war/crisis thing going on in the Middle East — specifically, the potential for democracy to flourish in the region.
“Bush and Schroeder also talked about the Middle East, with Bush stressing the need to put democratic institutions in place ‘that survive the whims of men and women.’
He didn’t offer specifics about what that meant, but repeated his belief that democracy and freedom can help stem terrorism.”
At the tail end, there, the AP’s Jennifer Loven was thoughtful enough to remind readers of the confusing tenor of the President’s remarks, but, in true objective journalistic fashion, neglected to take the opportunity to provide the most likely interpretation: his remarkable ability to stay on message all week long!
Of course, Bush seemed to have forgotten which event this was, and that he had already proposed his “marriage as a union of a man and woman” constitutional amendment earlier in the week, and that today’s particular remarks should have instead featured the President making the usual hyperbolic proclamations about making the world safe again.
Presumably, even, for homos, though we can forgive Bush for mixing up his discussions of conservative minority-as-majority regimes.
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Slipped Right Through His Fingers
Mike Tyson, London, July 21, 1989, Courtesy: The Ring Magazine. (From Boxer)
“Bankrupt boxer Mike Tyson is financially down for the count, saying things have gotten so bad that he’s struggling just to put food on the table.”
BROKE TYSON: I’LL FIGHT FOR FOOD, by Adam Miller, The New York Post, Feb. 27, 2004
Whenever I read about Mike Tyson’s travails—rape convictions, ear-biting, arguments with reporters, acrimonious divorces, fist-fights in a Brooklyn hotel, facial tattoos, bankruptcy—I always think of the scene in Barbara Kopple‘s phenomenal, empathic 1993 documentary Fallen Champ in which Tyson, age 15, has a breakdown between bouts at the 1982 National Junior Olympics in Colorado and sobs to his trainer Teddy Atlas:
“It’s all right now… I’m Mike Tyson… everybody likes me, yes, everybody likes me… I’ve come a long way, I’m a fighter now, I’m Mike Tyson.”
Just beneath the tabloid spectacle of Tyson’s public decline is a very real tragedy. Unfortunately, Tyson is such an unsympathetic figure that it’s hard to feel bad for the guy. Sadly, his story’s gonna get a lot worse before it ends.