Netflix Queue: 'The Twilight Samurai'

Three quick thoughts about 'The Twilight Samurai':

* This sweet, slow, and elegaic film focuses on Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai at the end of the samurai era. He is poor and dirty, loves his daughters and even encourages them to study books(!!), but serves out ancient obligations to his sponsoring clan. Because his clan is mostly at peace--until the end of the film--he and his fellow samurai have little to do; they serve as clerks and accountants instead, rarely drawing their swords in anger. Given this film was made in 2002, a few years into Japan's real-life "lost decade" of recession, it's not difficult to read his situation as an allegory of Iguchi's modern-day countrymen living lives as semi-neutered "salarymen" torn between past glories and current duties.

* The presence of women in this film is what makes it unusual, at least from my experience of samurai movie watching. In both Japanese and American action movies, we tend to like our sword- and gun-slingers somewhat ascetic, stoic, and bordering on chaste. Their deepest emotional attachments tend to be with other men--or, if with women, doomed. (Make of that what you will.) But Iguchi's love for his daughters shapes his other actions in this movie--and not in the usual "I've got to get vengeance for them or protect them from a threat" kind of way. That makes him a different kind of hero, actually vulnerable instead of movie vulnerable. And that's what draws us in, even if the pacing seems to drag a bit at times.

* In the end, Iguchi must strap on his swords and have a climactic battle. Though 'The Last Samurai' has an elegaic feel to it, it seems that here is where we're given permission not to mourn what has passed. Iguchi and his opponent do not fight for their own honor, or freedom, or anything noble. They're each performing the assignments they've been given--"You're an errand boy. I've been an errand boy too," his opponent says--in order to keep the pillars of Japanese feudal society in place. The fighting is messy, inelegant, fought by two complicated humans instead of Good Guy and Bad Guy. The fight and the film end on a bittersweet note, then: We are the warrior-protagonists in our own lives, and if the battles we're sent to fight are sometimes less-than-noble, or even outright incomprehensible, there's still an honor to be found in fighting the best we can, and in finding comfort in the ones we love.

Netflix Queue: 'Mean Streets'

Three thoughts about Martin Scorcese's 1973 debut, 'Mean Streets'...

• This is where Martin Scorcese started to become Martin Scorcese, after a few years of laboring under shlock king Roger Corman. It's got all the Scorcese touches, in an early and kind of raw form: The Rolling Stones on the soundtrack, New York, tracking shots and, of course, DeNiro. It's got a kind of punk rawness to it that's still kind of thrilling 40 years later.

• An immense part of the punk rawness comes from DeNiro. He's always been an intimidating, middle-aged presence in my mind--even when playing young Vito Corleone in 1974's "The Godfather Part II." So it's kind of amazing to see him playing, essentially, a kid—a cocky young man, wet behind the ears, barely into the world but already at war with it. He's beautiful and fierce, but (like Scorcese) he's not ROBERT DENIRO yet, and seeing the performance anew—after decades of DeNiro watching—is a kind of revelation.

• A friend on Twitter says this movie doesn't really hold up very well, and it's not aged well. It's got a slack Cassavettian talkiness that meanders nowhere in particular at times. There are scenes that appear to have been improvised by the actors without much in the way of direction except: "Argue! Now!" It's just not quite as entertaining as, say, "Taxi Driver" or "Raging Bull" or "Goodfellas" or even "Casino." But it's still worthy of viewing, a movie that ties itself firmly to its time and place (New York in the early 1970s, when the city was falling apart) and, as a document of that time and the young vision of a great director, a fascinating piece of filmmaking. "Mean Streets" isn't a masterpiece, but it shows you the preparation for a career full of them.

Eugene Robinson on Haley Barbour's failure to denounce the KKK

For those who do not see the Civil War through a revisionist gauze of gallantry and Spanish moss, Forrest is an abomination. In 1864, his troops mowed down scores of black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender, in what became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. After the war, Forrest became one of the founding fathers of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan - and was the group's first national leader, or "grand wizard."

Barbour was asked whether he would denounce the idea of honoring such a figure. "I don't go around denouncing people," he told reporters. "That's not going to happen."

via washingtonpost.com

I know many of my conservative and Republican friends really, really hate being tarred with the brush of racism—and I don't blame them. But if you want your movement disassociated from that sin, a good place to start would be by making sure your governors and former RNC chairmen unequivocally denounce the Klan. It's not a high bar.

Missing the Internet in Rural America, and why NPR should be funded by the feds

In my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week, I argued for continued funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting largely on the basis that it's rural parts of the country that would suffer if services like NPR—with its in-depth news and coverage—disappear.

A story in today's New York Times kind of reinforces my point:

COFFEEVILLE, Ala. — After a couple of days in this part of rural Alabama, it is hard to complain about a dropped iPhone call or a Cee Lo video that takes a few seconds too long to load.

The county administrator cannot get broadband at her house. Neither can the sportswriter at The Thomasville Times.

Here in Coffeeville, the only computer many students ever touch is at the high school.

“I’m missing a whole lot,” said Justin Bell, 17. “I know that.”

As the world embraces its digital age — two billion people now use the Internet regularly — the line delineating two Americas has become more broadly drawn. There are those who have reliable, fast access to the Internet, and those, like about half of the 27,867 people here in Clarke County, who do not.

In rural America, only 60 percent of households use broadband Internet service, according to a report released Thursday by the Department of Commerce. That is 10 percent less than urban households. Over all, 28 percent of Americans do not use the Internet at all.

There are a variety of problems with this. As the Times notes, there are economic, medical, and education consequences to the lack of access to the modern world. But one of the problems is informational:  “This is about whether rural communities are going to participate in our democratic society," one of the Times' experts says, and he's right. Which is why cutting funding for the CPB really is a bad idea! The residents of Coffeeville, Alabama can't so easily call up the New York Times or the Washington Post or BBC News on their computers. NPR probably offers a nice and vital window to the broader world that isn't easily found otherwise. 

Remember Larry King's old USA Today column? That's Buzz Bissinger's Tweets in the Daily News.

I'm not so sure this worked:

Buzz Bissinger, author of "Friday Night Lights" and "A Prayer for the City," has joined the Daily News as editorial adviser and occasional columnist.

He also has 19,607 followers on Twitter. Here's what @buzzbissinger was tweeting yesterday. Which may explain why we still don't have a column from him. And why he has so many followers:

The Philadelphia Daily News is so desperate they want to reprint my tweets. Think it's a completely f---ed up idea.

Nothing to rant on. Gaga. Repubs. Dems. Big f---ing deal. Been there done that.

Phillies starters best on paper. Let's see what happens. One of them will get hurt. Trust me. Burden of expectations. Only disappoint.

I haven't taken my meds today. I should soon. Between the anti-depressants, Coumadin, Lipitor, baby aspirin. F---ing pharmacy.

And so on. "Burden of expectations. Only disappoint." Indeed.

A great, kid-friendly repurposing of a skateboard

Seen at Almaz Cafe in Center City. The girl's father gave me permission to shoot, FYI.

The coffee maker is dead. Long live the coffee maker.

Delivery from UPS!

More fan mail

A second missive from Billy Eger.

Dear Joel, you obviously don't know American history let alone world history,all your thoughts an reasoning are equal too that of a six year old but I expect that from a nutbag leftist Marxist fascist commie like you,let's see you are an infidel to the Muslim community , who will do nothing less than  chop your head off when thier done using you,democracies don't work, never have,we are a republic,something I know your 2 braincells can't  comprehend. So if you wanna prosecute someone start with yourself an charge yourself with treason to your country,oh wait you can't cause the commie fucks got rid of all the laws in their way too take over the country,you should be ashamed too being human cause obviously you don't have heart or truly understand what love is you'd rather spew your hate for your agendas of power,can't wait till the riots start here ,an for your sake you better hope are paths don't cross, shouldn't let words hurt you thier just words,be careful what you wish for.oh ps were you born an Asshole or did it come naturally?

billy from wickliffe

I should say: I welcome thoughtful and articulate disagreements with stuff I've written. I'll post such correspondence here when I get it. Until then, I'll post the thinly disguised threats and the like.

John Boehner unable to distinguish truth, untruth

Via Paul Waldman, a Sunday transcript:

MR. GREGORY: As the speaker of the House, as a leader, do you not think it's your responsibility to stand up to that kind of ignorance?

SPEAKER BOEHNER: David, it's not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people. Having said that, the state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That's good enough for me. The president says he's a Christian. I accept him at his word.

MR. GREGORY: But isn't that a little bit fast and loose? I mean, you are the leader in Congress and you're not standing up to obvious facts and saying, "These are facts. If you don't believe that, it's nonsense."

SPEAKER BOEHNER: I just outlined the facts as I understand them. I believe that the president is a citizen. I believe the president is a Christian. I'll take him at his word. But, but...

MR. GREGORY: But that kind of ignorance about whether he's a Muslim doesn't concern you?

SPEAKER BOEHNER: Listen, the American people have the right to think what they want to think. I can't--it's not my job to tell them.

 

I'm a 'whining liberal douchebag'

Fan mail:

from Phil  date Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:05 PM subject I read your blog today....

And it just validates what a great  country America is. After all, where else in the world could a

whining liberal douche bag like your self get published in an urban newspaper.

Get over it Joel- the people spoke last November, and don’t want  your brand of liberalism.

Pussies like your self get your panties in a bunch over the Patriot Act and Gitmo, but both

have helped save the lives of Americans.

And give up the tired mantra about  Bush, Cheney, Yoo, etc. as war criminals!!!!

Most Americans don’t obsess over the thoughts of radicals from Switzerland.

(Joel adds: Yes, he did include the Churchill photo at the conclusion.)

Bag o' Books: Michael Chabon's 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh' (McSweeney's iPad edition)

Three quick thoughts about Michael Chabon's 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh':

* I read this old book in a new way: On McSweeney's new iPad app. A day after I decided to give up reading fiction in digital form, McSweeney's announced its updated app would include access to a small number of e-books--each specifically designed and formatted for the digital medium, rather than (like so many e-books) merely pour text into the electronic format. McSweeney's promises to get more adventurous with future books; this one amounted to little more than a glorified PDF reader. Even at that, though, the experience of reading was a little more pleasurable than what I usually find in the Kindle or Nook apps on my iPad. Thanks to the typesetting and illustrations, Chabon's book felt like it's own thing--even within the app--instead of the Standardized Literature Content you find in so many of the main e-reading applications. That's the good thing. The bad thing is that nobody seemed to copyedit the McSweeney's version of the book, and it is replete with what appear to be electronic transcription errors of the type that happen when you convert (say) a Word document to a new format. Irritating, and shockingly shoddy. Still, I commend McSweeney's for attempting to utilize the format to its best, and I'm intrigued to see where it goes.

* As for the novel itself: This is Michael Chabon's first novel--written waaaaay back in the 1980s--with all the good and bad it implies. The good: it's lyrically written, with the mixture of good humor and tragedy that Chabon brings to his art. The bad: It feels less than fully formed, or less than fully Chabon's own. It's a coming-of-age-sexual-awakening story with gay men and Jewish gangsters thrown in, and it feels a bit like how F. Scott Fitzgerald might've written 'The Great Gatsby' had he been a fresh-faced novelist some sixty years later. Don't get me wrong: Chabon can do pastiche and homage, and do it well. But he was less able to pull it off successfully early in his career; here it feels more like imitation than his own hat-tipping creation.

* As for the Jewish gangster subplot: I'd rather see a full Chabon novel about these guys than what we get here. Instead, the thread feels designed to lend narrative structure to what would otherwise be a lovely, perhaps slightly rambling novella about The Summer I Started Having Sex With Men. But it feels churlish to complain; an early, half-formed Chabon is still strikingly readable. He's one of our best novelists, and it's fascinating to peek back in time to watch the seeds of his career start to sprout.

Matt Yglesias on the 'Obama apology tour'

I don’t even remember the president apologizing for our country. That conservatives are really pissed off at Obama for raising taxes is explained, in part, by the fact that bills he’s signed into law do in fact schedule large tax increases. But rage at the president’s non-existent habit of apologizing is a pure psychological manifestation of acute sensitivity around this issue. It’s a very pure distillation of the raw, hysterical, absurd atavistic nationalism that lies at the core of contemporary conservatism.

I mean, I assume Pawlenty doesn’t raise his kids to never apologize for their conduct. Apologizing is the right way to respond to wrongdoing. Sometimes I make factual errors in my posts and I try to apologize for them. I stepped on a woman’s foot by accident yesterday and apologized. That’s life. You apologize. Is it seriously an article of faith of the American conservative movement that the American government has never done anything worth apologizing for? That’s the official view of the political movement that allegedly thinks the other movement is too statist?

via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

Conservatives don't own a love of freedom in the Middle East

Charles Krauthammer plays fast and loose:

Today, everyone and his cousin supports the “freedom agenda.” Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared to challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism — the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans, and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy. Indeed, the Left spent the better part of the Bush years excoriating the freedom agenda as either fantasy or yet another sordid example of U.S. imperialism.

This is a gross distortion—maybe even a lie about—arguments surrounding the Iraq War.

Here's the truth as I see it:

* Liberals, generally, have never been opposed to the greater freedom and democracy in the Middle East. We *have* disputed whether the United States can impose its vision of democracy on the region, whether it can do so without the long and hard work of building up the supporting institutions of that make liberal democracy possible, and—most notably—whether or not the United States and its allies could impose freedom and democracy at the point of a gun.

And we were right to raise those questions.

* To the extent that there's a loud argument that Islamic culture is incompatible with democracy, it's come almost exclusively from the right, from Mark Steyn and Andy McCarthy and Newt Gingrich and others who run around screaming about sharia law. The term "islamofascism" originated in those precincts, and it's a term that doesn't really exist on the left, except when used to parody the right.

It's not "freedom" that was questioned by liberals. It was the "freedom agenda," which is something else entirely. The debate is about not ends, but means, but Krauthammer—who is a smart guy—would rather conflate the two in order to score a political point.

The American Prospect's proposal to stifle press freedom

I think a lot of good work comes out of The American Prospect, but holy cow is this a bad idea:

Because of the important role the press is supposed to play in democracy, the courts have made it virtually impossible for those misrepresented in the press to win a defamation lawsuit. On one hand, this deference has created a free and vibrant press, uninhibited by fear of retaliation. But there's a flip side: With no accountability, false stories crowd out the truth, end up misleading the public, and leave victims without recourse. Freedom of the press, it turns out, often amounts to the freedom to deceive. Given that outright partisanship increasingly crosses the line into pure falsehood, shouldn't it be easier to sue?

The Prospect's Pema Levy proposes that a journalistic code of ethics be established—she doesn't say by whom, but I presume the government—which would create a standard of "substantial truthfulness" that could then be used by juries when the lawsuits inevitably come.

The problem with the proposal is that we have substantial evidence that making it easy to sue journalists doesn't do much to make them more truthful—instead, it makes it harder for them to actually report controversial truths. Look no further than the United Kingdom, where journalists get sued for reports that defendants merely don't like. The result is that U.S. publications with international readerships are routinely sued in Great Britain for reports that would be laughed out of court here.

Levy is right that it is sometimes more difficult to get the truth out once a lie has been established. I'm not sure how you solve that. But her proposal seems more likely to stifle the truth than to help it blossom. The process is messy and ugly at times, but it beats the alternative.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: This is why it is occasionally difficult to do freelance writing from home.

I didn't pose this picture. He just decided to crawl up the back of my chair while I was working.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush Presidency!

Just in case you forgot, from a fabulous new tool created by the Economic Policy Institute:

I'll return to income inequality writing this weekend.

Cutting government, Tea Party-style

Friend and sparring partner Rick Henderson suggests I wouldn't give the Tea Party credit for anything under any circumstances. Not so. I am kind of impressed by this, if it holds:

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) has announced that the continuing resolution coming out of his committee — and likely to the floor sometime next week — will contain $100 billion worth of spending cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year (through September). This marks a significant political victory for House conservatives like Reps. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), RSC chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), and freshman members who insisted that the cuts previously announced by party leadership were insufficient.

That's not to say that I'll like the proposed cuts. I certainly reserve the right to criticize the specifics. But I've been critical of Republicans for awhile because of their habit of shouting about the need for cuts but failing to come up with specifics or, you know, cut anything. There's political risk in cutting dollars from programs that have constituents, and every program has constituents. It would appear the fresh-faced Tea Party GOPers are willing to actually do something—and even if I think it might be the wrong thing, I can at least acknowledge that it's not cynical.

What the Tea Party can do to prove it's serious about liberty

Some Tea Party Republicans joined Democrats in defeating a renewal of Patriot Act provisions this week. That's the topic of my column with Ben Boychuk. My take:

It is appropriate the Patriot Act renewal was defeated the same week reports emerged that former President George W. Bush had canceled a trip to Switzerland, largely to avoid the possibility of criminal charges for approving the torture of terror suspects in the aftermath of 9/11.

For one week, at least, the gap between the Tea Party's rhetoric and the reality of Republican governance was narrowed. It had been embarrassing to see conservatives decry "tyranny" in the form of slightly higher marginal tax rates and entitlement programs, all while offering silent acquiescence -- or full-throated support -- to the government's efforts to conduct warrantless wiretaps on Americans, operate secret prisons abroad, waterboard terror suspects, and then to try those suspects before the kangaroo courts known as military commissions.

The gap remains, however. While nine new Republican lawmakers voted against the Patriot Act renewal, 78 other GOP freshmen -- many backed by the Tea Party -- voted for it. And as President Bush's failed trip to Switzerland demonstrates, the United States has still failed to come to terms with the fallout from its worst actions after 9/11.

If those Republicans want to strike a blow for freedom -- and embarrass President Obama in the process -- they can push to close down Guantanamo Bay prison, hold public hearings about White House plans to assassinate American terror suspects abroad, and call for the prosecution of Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, and anybody else suspected of breaking the law (and American values) in the name of the War on Terror. They'd be striking a blow for freedom that many liberals hoped would come from a Democratic president.

Anybody can vote against the Patriot Act. Real civil libertarians prosecute Dick Cheney.

Ben would rather see the Tea Party focus on reducing government spending. Read the whole thing for his take.

Why income inequality matters

See Part One of this series.

So we’ve established that there’s growing income inequality in the United States. The second question is: Does it matter?

This isn’t a question that’s well-answered in Paul Krugman’s “The Conscience of a Liberal.” He does a good job demonstrating that the inequality is growing, and he makes a reasonable case for why that’s happening—something that we’ll examine more closely in the next installment of this week’s series. And he talks a lot about pre-New Deal America (the Gilded Age, a time of extreme income inequality) being a time where the people on the low-end of the scale faced crushing poverty.

But Krugman doesn’t really make the case that the current growth of inequality is bad, so much as he takes it as a given. And while he laments the 1950s as a time when the middle class shared broadly in American prosperity, he seems more interested in seeing the country’s richest men and women get their comeuppance. He has, perhaps, not-bad reasons for that, but I’m not so much interested in keeping the elites reined in as in ensuring that the rest of Americans can fairly expect to provide for their families.

Can they or can’t they?

Relative to the rest of the world, they can. Here’s a chart that was posted last week in the New York Times’ Economix blog:

What’s notable about this chart is two things. First: America’s inequality is growing rapidly, but it’s still not quite as startling as the inequality in some emerging nations. (Although it is still massive, really massive, compared to other developed nations.) And relative to those emerging countries, America’s poorest workers are still doing quite well. Says the Times’ Catherine Rampell: “Yes, that’s right: America’s poorest are, as a group, about as rich as India’s richest. Kind of blows your mind, right?” The cost of living is higher here, of course, but it does suggest that poorer workers here have a better shot at clothing and feeding their families than people in much of the rest of the world. Not to suggest that it’s easy or fun.

(Compared to other developed nations, though, the poorest 10 percent is actually … poor, with a median income below the median income of the poorest 10 percent for that group of countries. Our richest 10 percent, however, blow away the richest decile of every other nation.)

If we grant that low-income American worker aren’t quite so impovershed by worldwide standards, though, there’s still reasons, I think, to be concerned about widening income inequality. Here’s a few.

The text of the Equal Rights Amendment

Doing some reading about feminism tonight, which prompted me to look up the text of the Equal Rights Amendment. At the barest beginnings of my consciousness—back in the late 70s—I can remember some hubub. But I didn't know what the hubub was about. 

This is it:

	Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
	Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
	Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Doesn't seem like that should've been that big a deal. So why was it?