The big business of conspiracy mongering

Oliver Stone is still trying to find JFK's real killer:

The NYT heavily annotates its interview with Stone to point out that his grasp and interpretation of facts can, uh, depart from mainstream understandings of the matter. But it struck me to read this interview on the same day President Trump retweeted this bonkers bit* of conspiracy mongering:

Back to Stone: His movie, JFK, which was all about evidence of a conspiracy to kill the president in order to really go to town on the Vietnam War, reportedly made more than $200 million worldwide during its run in 1992. I saw it in the theater myself! The film received eight Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.

I mention all this by way of making what is perhaps an obvious point: Conspiracy mongering in the United States is often, well, a profit-driven enterprise. A studio invested its money into creating an alternative version of the JFK assassination, and it reaped benefits. A substantial portion of moviegoers ended up believing that alternative version as a result.

I don't doubt Stone believes everything he says. (I think -- contra his theory -- the evidence suggests JFK was stumbling into Vietnam on his own anyway.) But it took a whole system to bring his belief to mainstream culture. We didn't get here by accident.

* "Bonkers bit of conspiracy mongering" is redundant, I know.

MOVIE NIGHT: AD ASTRA

Three thoughts about AD ASTRA:

* TOMMY LEE JONES' EYEBROWS ... IN ... SPAAAAAAACE!

* "Hey guys, let's try to make a movie like 2001, but with fewer acid trips and more daddy issues!"

* And that's it. Feels like there should be more there there with this movie. It's well-crafted, but seems empty. Oh well.

Hugh Hewitt is wrong about China and right about 'A Prayer for Owen Meany'

Here's Hugh Hewitt in the Washington Post:

The central issue of the current campaign ought to be the nature and ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party — its reckless disregard for the world in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, its repression of Hong Kong, what may be genocidal treatment of the Uighurs and its plans to dominate not just the South China Sea but the international order for decades to come. The election of 2020, like that of 1984, ought to turn on which candidate is best equipped to deal with the country’s most significant adversary.

A few thoughts:

* Hewitt is wrong that the CCP should be the "central issue" of the presidential campaign. We should look in our own backyard, first! We've got a raging pandemic to deal with, as well as an incipient Depression. If the United States can't get its own act together, our ability to act effectively on the world stage will be curtailed anyway. China? It's Issue Number Three, at best.

* It's notable that Hewitt raises the issue of the Uighurs without noting John Bolton's report that President Trump sold out the Uighurs to the Chinese in favor of getting a trade deal. It's additionally notable that in a column that purports to compare Joe Biden and Donald Trump on the China issue, he makes no effort at all to defend Trump's handling of China.

* Meanwhile, Hewitt's main attack on Biden is that Biden was wrong about some stuff ... 40 years ago. It's unconvincing. Daniel Larison has made a better case on why to be skeptical of Biden on foreign policy, but it comes from a distinctly less militaristic bent.

* But Hewitt is right about one thing:

The left has long liked to attack conservatives for a supposed lack of intelligence and sophistication, along with alleged warmongering and other crimes. One of my favorite novels, John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” is marred by this twitch. It was published in March 1989, an unfortunate mere eight months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is full of the then-conventional contempt for Reagan that accompanied the nuclear freeze movement, that condemned Reagan’s deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe, his embrace of strategic nuclear defense — derided as “Star Wars,” first by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and then everywhere on the left — and, of course, opposition to Reagan’s support for the contra rebels of Nicaragua, which reached hyper-pitch as Iran-contra scandal unfolded.

“The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law — they disgrace democracy by claiming what they do, they do for democracy,” Irving has his narrator rail. “They should be in jail,” he huffs after labeling Reagan an “old geezer” and slamming him with the innuendo of Hollywood stupidity routinely traded in by anti-Reagan newspaper columnists in those days.

OWEN MEANY is a beautiful, funny novel -- I've read it once a decade, at least, since my 20s and find that I get something new out of it each time. But the Reagan hatred portions really are pretty tedious. Hewitt isn't wrong about everything.

Movie Night: THE CLIENT

There were many John Grisham movie adaptations made during the early 1990s. This is one of them.

Three thoughts about THE CLIENT, coming up....

* My favorite thing about John Grisham movies/novels is all the ridiculous names. Reggie Love. Roy Foltrigg. Thomas Fink. Avery Tolar. Gavin Vereek. Sometimes Grisham went the Dickensian route, matching names to the characteristics of his characters. And sometimes, I swear, a cat walked across the keyboard.

* That said, this is pretty powerhouse cast: Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, obviously, but also Mary-Louise Parker, JT Walsh, Bradley Whitford, William H. Macy, Will Patton, Anthony Lapaglia, and Ossie Davis, just to name a few. This is a by-the-numbers 1990s legal thriller, but all the good actors in it -- even in minor roles -- make it just a little better than it should be. 

* Two things really embarrassed me about this movie, though. Parker's character is a single Southern mom living in a trailer park, and my God, she plays it to the absolute max of what you think that character is. Not her fault. It's the work she was given. But hoo boy.

Also: Anthony LaPaglia's wardrobe:

Commonplace Book: On Democracy

From Jill Lepore's THESE TRUTHS:

Republicans and militarism

What we've learned from Lt. Col Vindman's semi-forced retirement from the Army and Congressman Dan Crenshaw's attack on Senator Tammy Duckworth is that the GOP really respects your service to the country -- unless you obey the law or a Democrat. 

It was already true that you should never believe politicians who use "supporting the troops" to justify endless, stupid warfare. Supporting the troops can and should mean "bring them home so they don't have to die, or live with having killed." The GOP in this century has been skilled at weaponizing (so to speak) the bodies of soldiers in service of their foreign policy objectives. But Republicans have increasingly revealed cynicism underlying their "pro-troops" rhetoric. Donald Trump was criticized for his attacks on John McCain and Gold Star families -- but he didn't do anything that the the GOP, with its swiftboating attacks on John Kerry and Max Cleland, hadn't perfected years before.

My own leanings are pacifist. But Vindman is being sacrificed because he told truth, Duckworth attacked because she ... isn't a Republican. Their service to their country was a source of respect from Republicans. Until it became inconvenient. 

Fauci should quit

From Fox News tonight:

Anthony Fauci has been a voice of reason during the pandemic. Perfect? No. But he has offered straightforward medical advice at almost every step of the way, and his guidance has frankly been better than the president's.

The president has undermined him, like he did tonight. And the president has stifled him -- the White House has curbed his U.S. TV appearances, probably because Fauci's advice rather notably conflicts with the president's.

So the best thing Anthony Fauci could do for public health at this point is quit.

He's 79. It's not like he has a lot of career ahead of him. And he wouldn't even have to criticize Trump directly. But as a newly retired foremost public expert on COVID-19, he might find his services to speak publicly and on TV in demand -- and might do a better job of getting good information to the public as a result.

The president is determined to magically think the virus away. And he has a leash on Fauci. The good doctor should quit, and serve the public by making his voice heard.