Personal highlights from a easy-to-read classic I should have read 20 years ago.
Friday, 23 February 2018
GENERATION X MARKS THE SPOT-ISM
Thursday, 22 February 2018
Is THE BLUE MAX (1966) Imperial Germany's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA?
The story of a morally conflicted, nonconformist WW1 antihero gets the full 1960s epic movie history treatment. But there is not a spec of sand in sight.
You know you are watching a 1960s epic movie when you get a blank screen and several minutes of gorgeous score before the movie has even started (The Overture). John Guillermin's 1962 WW1 air war epic is obviously a 'follow up' to David Lean's 1962 desert WW1 classic , how does it compare?
I am very much appreciating THE GREAT WAR on Youtube right now. It stands out on several levels:
I was so impressed with this free 200+ episode history show I sent them a list of my favourite WW1 movies. It contained the obvious ones such as Stanley Kubrick's Path's Of Glory (arguably the best Stanley Kubrick film), and not so obvious ones, such as Zeppelin (1971), the almost contemporary, The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927) and a strange but fun movie about the war in Africa, starring Roger Moore and Lee Marvin, Shout At The Devil (1976)
The list also included John Guillermin's The Blue Max, prompting me to watch the movie again, for the second time in less than a year. It's an interesting movie for 1966, obviously in the shadow of its major influence, but heavily anticipating much more politically conscious and critical movies to come in subsequent decades.
Set in a tired and increasingly insane Germany in the climatic final year of World War One, the German air force is so desperate for pilots it is recruiting the Middle Class (horror!) straight out of the trenches. New recruit Bruno Stachel is certainly made of different stuff, with a flexible attitude to honour and a fanatical ambition to win the greatest military award, the Pur Le Merite, The Blue Max.
I mentioned the score at the top. This genre of movie throws up the soundtrack as a major highlight, with an opening Overture before the movie has even started, then a special soundtrack portion just for the Interval. You need some great music to carry this kind of thing off and in Lawrence of Arabia you have Maurice Jarre's masterful theme, which may be the best movie music of all time. The Blue Max has a score by Jerry Goldsmith. Personally I'm a huge fan of this composer, his incredibly effective theme to Ridley Scott's original Alien may be the most under-regarded uic soundtrack ever. Goldsmith's music for Blue Max is not one of his very best but does it's job with an air of doomed military funeral grandier.
But let's get the main issue with this movie out of the way early on - George Peppard really isn't any kind of Peter O'Toole. I've never been a fan of this actor. He has a sort of galling smugness that reminds me of a porky James Franciscus. He belonged in tv, and was destined for a semi-comic role n something like the A-team. Many scarred veteran watchers of The A-Team might find it difficult to take George Peppard seriously.
Yeah. I'm right with you.
That said, his character in the movie, Bruno Stachel, is an overly ambitious slimeball with a chip on his shoulder. He's meant to be even more of an anti-hero than O'Tool's Lawrence and, if you are expecting not to overly sympathise with him, Peppard plays this quite well.
Ursula Andress isn't really attempting any acting Olympics but remains Ursula Andress, a 60s movie star of the highest rank. She doesn't have to do a great deal but convinces as an aristocratic Kaiserine 'wife'who is more aware of what is going on in the real world than any of the men.
James Mason seems to excel in playing military Germans, at least for Brits. His character, Count von Klugermann, is a long way from the role as Erwin Rommel that he became famouse for in two movies in the 1950s. Klugermann is a real relic from the world before 1914 (on all sides), a military fanatic who only lives to promote the 'German Officer Corps'. Time he could be spending with Ursula Andress he actually spends playing tabletop war games with someone elses wife. There is no character in Lean's epic like this (Jack Hawkin's General Allenby is probably closest) but there probably should be, for all the magnificence of Lawrence of Arabia there is little discussion of why men are being sent to die and kill in Palestine and Iraq when the real enemy is in France.
The supporting players in Stachel's squadron, such as the Heidemann's and Corporal Rupp, are all sympathetic realistic human beings, and much like the opening sequence in Battle of Britain (1969) you wish the movie had spent more time on their banter. One thing it does have in common with Battle of Britain is the advanced age of the pilots, who all seem at least one generation older than the boys who actually lived and died in these planes.
The generally woeful Red Baron (2008)at least got that right.
Flying sequences genuinely are epic, and the movie is impressive in its historical accuracy.
The charge into Aqaba is the big action set piece in Lawrence, and The Blue Max has it's own, when Stachel's squadron are sent into action against ground troops to try and stem the beginning of the Hundred Days, the giant Allied counter Offensive which would eventually prompt a cease fire. Previously we've seen the squadron celebrate what the German's hope desperately will be there war winning push, only for it to collapse in exhaustion near Amiens.
Stock footage, props and planes from this movie would be reused in inferior productions (such as Roger Corman's Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) for the next couple of decades.
For the serious aviation nerds, they obviously built one or two 'hero' planes to closely replicate the machines of 1918 and padded these out with lightly dressed up Tiger Moths. The SE5s and the Fokker Triplanes look spot on to me. Apparently Peter Jackson later acquired these for his aero museum. Allegedly he lists the film as one of the top six World War I movies.
Dublin stands in for Imperial Berlin. I've been to both places (though not in 1918) and I was fooled. The rural locations look suspiciously green and lumpy but they are hardly unpleasant to look at. Douglas Slocombe might look familiar in the credits. One of the great British cinematographers, Speilberg chose him to lense the first three initial Indiana Jones films.
In summation David Lean's Law is obviously a much better movie, and this cash-in, and many others like it (55 Days at Peking, Kartoum) might never even have existed without Lawrence. For all it's merits though Lean's film is a complex biopic about a complex man which really fails to land any wider political point beyond "Don't trust the British and the French, - even if you are British and French".
The Blue Max, for all it's issues, goes squarely at the class system, the change from chivalrous combat to Total War, and the insanity of the military industrial complex. Despite his glory hunting and insubordination, which often puts his own squadron at risk*, Stachel is quickly seized on as a propaganda asset to boost Germany's collapsing home front. There is a hint of this in Lawrence with the interview with the American reporter but in this movie it is the main plot thread, driving toward a climax of cynical political expediency.
You could make an argument to say none of these characters are bad beyond the main character himself. They are merely trapped in an insane machine grinding their society and the rest of Europe into dust. In this respect you can see the mid-1960s progression from Lawrence, much more of a biopic, made in 1962.
Much of the credit for this can probably be traced to the novel of the same name on which the film was based by Jack D. Hunter. The theme of the fanatical quest to receive a German medal at all costs might seem familiar as it is the central theme of the classic Eastern front WW2 movie Cross of Iron. Cross of Iron is itself apparently based on a a novel of 1955, The Willing Flesh So perhaps Hunters novel, published in 1966, got the inspiration here and swapped one medal and one war for another. I notice James Mason seems to be paying a very similar roles in both both The Blue Max and Cross of Iron.
1966 was still an era for jingoistic war movies, particularly concerning WW2. In picking an unfashionable war, an unfashionable side to that war and an unlikable main character Blue Max bridges the historical epic to the far more anti-war tone of films in the 70s and 80s.
* Stachel is such an idiotic threat to his own fellow pilots he reminds me of Poe Dameron in THE LAST JEDI.
The scene I would most like to see in a directors cut of Last Jedi;
After his pointless and stupid “bombing run”. Poe Dameron marches onto Rebel cruiser and, after wiping out his own Air Force, he mouths off at the leader of the Resistance, General Leia (as per movie)
but instead of smiling Carrie Fisher calls him an insubordinate, incompetent prick and Force strangles him to death (like her father) in front of assorted nice people with purple hair
“APOLOGIES ACCEPTED GENERAL DAMERON”
You know you are watching a 1960s epic movie when you get a blank screen and several minutes of gorgeous score before the movie has even started (The Overture). John Guillermin's 1962 WW1 air war epic is obviously a 'follow up' to David Lean's 1962 desert WW1 classic , how does it compare?
I am very much appreciating THE GREAT WAR on Youtube right now. It stands out on several levels:
- Accessible, fun, history teaching that isn't dumbed down
- It's honest, fair and doesn't necessarily follow accepted opinion
- It is repeatedly anti-war at a time when a slow drum beat, particularly in the US and Russia, seems to be starting up
- It reminds us why the internet, and the interaction it creates, is a bonus for humanity and not a hate machine
I was so impressed with this free 200+ episode history show I sent them a list of my favourite WW1 movies. It contained the obvious ones such as Stanley Kubrick's Path's Of Glory (arguably the best Stanley Kubrick film), and not so obvious ones, such as Zeppelin (1971), the almost contemporary, The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927) and a strange but fun movie about the war in Africa, starring Roger Moore and Lee Marvin, Shout At The Devil (1976)
The list also included John Guillermin's The Blue Max, prompting me to watch the movie again, for the second time in less than a year. It's an interesting movie for 1966, obviously in the shadow of its major influence, but heavily anticipating much more politically conscious and critical movies to come in subsequent decades.
Set in a tired and increasingly insane Germany in the climatic final year of World War One, the German air force is so desperate for pilots it is recruiting the Middle Class (horror!) straight out of the trenches. New recruit Bruno Stachel is certainly made of different stuff, with a flexible attitude to honour and a fanatical ambition to win the greatest military award, the Pur Le Merite, The Blue Max.
I mentioned the score at the top. This genre of movie throws up the soundtrack as a major highlight, with an opening Overture before the movie has even started, then a special soundtrack portion just for the Interval. You need some great music to carry this kind of thing off and in Lawrence of Arabia you have Maurice Jarre's masterful theme, which may be the best movie music of all time. The Blue Max has a score by Jerry Goldsmith. Personally I'm a huge fan of this composer, his incredibly effective theme to Ridley Scott's original Alien may be the most under-regarded uic soundtrack ever. Goldsmith's music for Blue Max is not one of his very best but does it's job with an air of doomed military funeral grandier.
But let's get the main issue with this movie out of the way early on - George Peppard really isn't any kind of Peter O'Toole. I've never been a fan of this actor. He has a sort of galling smugness that reminds me of a porky James Franciscus. He belonged in tv, and was destined for a semi-comic role n something like the A-team. Many scarred veteran watchers of The A-Team might find it difficult to take George Peppard seriously.
Yeah. I'm right with you.
That said, his character in the movie, Bruno Stachel, is an overly ambitious slimeball with a chip on his shoulder. He's meant to be even more of an anti-hero than O'Tool's Lawrence and, if you are expecting not to overly sympathise with him, Peppard plays this quite well.
Ursula Andress isn't really attempting any acting Olympics but remains Ursula Andress, a 60s movie star of the highest rank. She doesn't have to do a great deal but convinces as an aristocratic Kaiserine 'wife'who is more aware of what is going on in the real world than any of the men.
James Mason seems to excel in playing military Germans, at least for Brits. His character, Count von Klugermann, is a long way from the role as Erwin Rommel that he became famouse for in two movies in the 1950s. Klugermann is a real relic from the world before 1914 (on all sides), a military fanatic who only lives to promote the 'German Officer Corps'. Time he could be spending with Ursula Andress he actually spends playing tabletop war games with someone elses wife. There is no character in Lean's epic like this (Jack Hawkin's General Allenby is probably closest) but there probably should be, for all the magnificence of Lawrence of Arabia there is little discussion of why men are being sent to die and kill in Palestine and Iraq when the real enemy is in France.
The supporting players in Stachel's squadron, such as the Heidemann's and Corporal Rupp, are all sympathetic realistic human beings, and much like the opening sequence in Battle of Britain (1969) you wish the movie had spent more time on their banter. One thing it does have in common with Battle of Britain is the advanced age of the pilots, who all seem at least one generation older than the boys who actually lived and died in these planes.
The generally woeful Red Baron (2008)at least got that right.
Flying sequences genuinely are epic, and the movie is impressive in its historical accuracy.
The charge into Aqaba is the big action set piece in Lawrence, and The Blue Max has it's own, when Stachel's squadron are sent into action against ground troops to try and stem the beginning of the Hundred Days, the giant Allied counter Offensive which would eventually prompt a cease fire. Previously we've seen the squadron celebrate what the German's hope desperately will be there war winning push, only for it to collapse in exhaustion near Amiens.
Stock footage, props and planes from this movie would be reused in inferior productions (such as Roger Corman's Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) for the next couple of decades.
For the serious aviation nerds, they obviously built one or two 'hero' planes to closely replicate the machines of 1918 and padded these out with lightly dressed up Tiger Moths. The SE5s and the Fokker Triplanes look spot on to me. Apparently Peter Jackson later acquired these for his aero museum. Allegedly he lists the film as one of the top six World War I movies.
Dublin stands in for Imperial Berlin. I've been to both places (though not in 1918) and I was fooled. The rural locations look suspiciously green and lumpy but they are hardly unpleasant to look at. Douglas Slocombe might look familiar in the credits. One of the great British cinematographers, Speilberg chose him to lense the first three initial Indiana Jones films.
The Blue Max, for all it's issues, goes squarely at the class system, the change from chivalrous combat to Total War, and the insanity of the military industrial complex. Despite his glory hunting and insubordination, which often puts his own squadron at risk*, Stachel is quickly seized on as a propaganda asset to boost Germany's collapsing home front. There is a hint of this in Lawrence with the interview with the American reporter but in this movie it is the main plot thread, driving toward a climax of cynical political expediency.
You could make an argument to say none of these characters are bad beyond the main character himself. They are merely trapped in an insane machine grinding their society and the rest of Europe into dust. In this respect you can see the mid-1960s progression from Lawrence, much more of a biopic, made in 1962.
Much of the credit for this can probably be traced to the novel of the same name on which the film was based by Jack D. Hunter. The theme of the fanatical quest to receive a German medal at all costs might seem familiar as it is the central theme of the classic Eastern front WW2 movie Cross of Iron. Cross of Iron is itself apparently based on a a novel of 1955, The Willing Flesh So perhaps Hunters novel, published in 1966, got the inspiration here and swapped one medal and one war for another. I notice James Mason seems to be paying a very similar roles in both both The Blue Max and Cross of Iron.
1966 was still an era for jingoistic war movies, particularly concerning WW2. In picking an unfashionable war, an unfashionable side to that war and an unlikable main character Blue Max bridges the historical epic to the far more anti-war tone of films in the 70s and 80s.
* Stachel is such an idiotic threat to his own fellow pilots he reminds me of Poe Dameron in THE LAST JEDI.
The scene I would most like to see in a directors cut of Last Jedi;
After his pointless and stupid “bombing run”. Poe Dameron marches onto Rebel cruiser and, after wiping out his own Air Force, he mouths off at the leader of the Resistance, General Leia (as per movie)
but instead of smiling Carrie Fisher calls him an insubordinate, incompetent prick and Force strangles him to death (like her father) in front of assorted nice people with purple hair
“APOLOGIES ACCEPTED GENERAL DAMERON”
Thursday, 15 February 2018
Don't blame Trump, blame these people
Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?"
And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."
How did the worlds most famous liar, a man who brags about sleeping with the wives of his friends, and who is described by the Secretary of State he appointed as a 'Fucking Moron' end up as the most powerful man in Earth?
You can't hold Trump responsible for Trump. He's really not that special.
What fills people with disgust more than anything else is not his exceptional qualities but how familiar we are with his 'type'. The Scumbag Boss. A grandiose low-life who preys on women, has all the empathy of a pile of dog excrement and is out for only himself. He got where he is on the work of other people and stays were he his by exploiting the people around him. We all work for the Scumbag Boss some day and wonder how Homo Sapiens ever crawled out of the cave and built civilisation with these parasites riding along on the back of the real achievers who co-operate successfully.
But, as Trump apologists know, and there are a surprising number of them even in my country, the planet is full of people bashing Donald Trump (for some reason). So what's the point here?
It occurs to me blaming an obviously incompetent, despicable piece of shit for becoming the President of the united States really is a waste of time. He sure wouldn't care, and I'm not 100% sure he's even responsible for his actions. Is Trump responsible for his own rise? If you were offered a run at the Presidency of the United States would you turn it down because you were unfit?
The blame for Trump rests with his enablers, the ones we can really hold responsible in a few years when we are sitting in an economic and perhaps literal radioactive warzone.
And they are not all Republicans.
But lets start with them anyway.
And they are in charge. President. Congress and Senate. And they rigged the Supreme Court. For all the lectures we used to have here in the UK on the superiority of the US constitution it seems to have become a One Party State with great ease. And that's even before Trump really gets to work. I'll get to how this was allowed to happen when I get to The Party Whose Job It Is To Fail, but for the moment these are the people who directly enabled Trump's rise to control of the worlds largest nuclear arsenal and largest economy, and who should hold direct responsibility for it.
Principally:
Don't blame Trump - THANK TRUMP - for at least now he gives us the spectacle of the Grand Old Party slowly morphing from history's most immoral opportunists to human history's most laughable political invertebrates.
When it came to it though, they voted for Trump in droves. The loss of Michigan was crucial in the Republican electoral college win.
That bail out might have been a temporary reprieve though.
Who do car industry workers think will be stupid enough to bail them out the next time?
I try and be sympathetic to the views of the Trump voters, particularly the older generations, but white women Trump voters seem to have a special level of utter spinelessness and transcendent airheaded stupidity that makes my jaw drop.
What a strange tale this will be. Assange sets up an organisation which promotes the release of the truth, in Wikileaks. He then uses it as a weapon to strike back at an old foe in Hillary Clinton.
And by her defeat he puts the worlds most famous liar in the White House.
A year after Wikileaks started to expose the truth on the Clinton campaign, Trump's 'Fake News' has undermined the entire concept of objective truth itself.
That quote at the top is from Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS. It's a movie which still gets a lot of flak but in Robert Downey Jnr's insane character
W A Y N E G A L E
you'll rarely see a more honest and accurate depiction of the Australian-American news machine.
Trumps win, I can see now, is a long term consequence of the trauma of 9/11 and the crash of 2008. But.. "checks and balances" right? My A-Level history teacher drummed into us that the beauty of the system was that it could not be abused because one part could always hold the others in check. And if not that - you had the Electoral College as a final fail safe to prevent despotism.
This, I think, presumes that even when one party is not playing by the rules, the other one is at least doing it's job. I have no satisfactory explanation for 8 wasted years of fumbling attempts to do deals with people (like Mitch McConnell ) who patently didn't want to do anything but delay, or the rank incompetence of failing to appoint a Supreme Court judge when given the chance. What I do know is we can obviously see something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party merely by the fact that the people in charge of this historic ongoing display of incompetence are - amazingly - still there!
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, take a bow, you are almost as shameless as the reptiles in the party opposite. If you had an ounce of self awareness and responsibility you would have both resigned the morning of 09/11/16.
I was as bought into the inevitability of Hillary's win as much as anyone, even when I had previously seen the serious possibility of a win for Leave in the Brexit vote.
I told worried friends in the UK that there was no way Trump would be elected as "Americans, really, honestly, are not that stupid". Elderly relatives were particularly worried but it was easier to reassure them as they remembered the country of Eisenhower and Kennedy still with enormous respect. Trump was to them frightening and surreal, like signs of dementia in one of their oldest and most reliable friends.
I told them all it would be OK.
And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."
What fills people with disgust more than anything else is not his exceptional qualities but how familiar we are with his 'type'. The Scumbag Boss. A grandiose low-life who preys on women, has all the empathy of a pile of dog excrement and is out for only himself. He got where he is on the work of other people and stays were he his by exploiting the people around him. We all work for the Scumbag Boss some day and wonder how Homo Sapiens ever crawled out of the cave and built civilisation with these parasites riding along on the back of the real achievers who co-operate successfully.
But, as Trump apologists know, and there are a surprising number of them even in my country, the planet is full of people bashing Donald Trump (for some reason). So what's the point here?
It occurs to me blaming an obviously incompetent, despicable piece of shit for becoming the President of the united States really is a waste of time. He sure wouldn't care, and I'm not 100% sure he's even responsible for his actions. Is Trump responsible for his own rise? If you were offered a run at the Presidency of the United States would you turn it down because you were unfit?
The blame for Trump rests with his enablers, the ones we can really hold responsible in a few years when we are sitting in an economic and perhaps literal radioactive warzone.
And they are not all Republicans.
But lets start with them anyway.
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : The Republican Party
A mystical organisation, able to materialise an army, The Tea Party, out of nothing to wreck bi-partisan attempts to deal with the last financial crisis, only then to have it dissolve like ghosts into nothing when the same issues appeared when they were in charge. (Dear media : where are all the Tea Party budget fanatics you gave such attention to in 2012?)
Principally:
- Mitch McConnell
- Paul Ryan
- Jeff Sessions
Don't blame Trump - THANK TRUMP - for at least now he gives us the spectacle of the Grand Old Party slowly morphing from history's most immoral opportunists to human history's most laughable political invertebrates.
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : Evangelical Christian voters
Centuries from now, when Religious Hypocrisy is mentioned, the Evangelical endorsement of Trump will surely be one of the first and finest examples of the type.
"everyone loves a sinner who has repented!" they whined in explanation, somehow able to apply this to three times wed serial adulterer, abuser, and seducer of married women but not to missing emails of Trumps opponent.
Evangelicals, know that in the short term you may have done Donald Trump a favour but in the long term you have done Richard Dawkins and the secularist movement a far bigger one. We all know that Hypocrisy and Religion go together like money and politics, but in this you've given us perfect example that will be remembered for all time.
Proverbs 1:32 “For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them."
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : US Car workers
US voters in Michigan watched the car industry slide into crisis during the last Republican induced financial collapse in 2008. The Republican stance then was - "Market Forces! Let it fail!" Those Michigan voters were jubilant when Obama bailed their industry out at great expense. Some of the overconfidence in the disastrously complacent Democratic campaign of 2016 was down to the belief that Michigan would definitely go Democrat, because of the auto bailout.
When it came to it though, they voted for Trump in droves. The loss of Michigan was crucial in the Republican electoral college win.
That bail out might have been a temporary reprieve though.
Who do car industry workers think will be stupid enough to bail them out the next time?
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : American White Women voters
Next time you see a news item on the #METOO movement, remind yourself that most white women — 52 percent — voted for Trump.
They make masochism look bad.
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : Julian Assange
“For what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul”What a strange tale this will be. Assange sets up an organisation which promotes the release of the truth, in Wikileaks. He then uses it as a weapon to strike back at an old foe in Hillary Clinton.
And by her defeat he puts the worlds most famous liar in the White House.
A year after Wikileaks started to expose the truth on the Clinton campaign, Trump's 'Fake News' has undermined the entire concept of objective truth itself.
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : Rupert Murdoch
After turning UK political debate into an ignorant nationalistic carnival, the Dirty Digger took his show across the Atlantic with even greater success. Fox News has been instrumental in the political careers of Trump and the previous Republican president, who for most of the last decade was widely regarded as one of the worst presidents in history. Bush Jnr, lets not forget, entered the US into two unwinnable wars while cutting taxes on the super rich. And only a few years later the shameless idiots on Fox News were blaming the next guy in the White House for the skyrocketing budget deficit.
That quote at the top is from Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS. It's a movie which still gets a lot of flak but in Robert Downey Jnr's insane character
W A Y N E G A L E
you'll rarely see a more honest and accurate depiction of the Australian-American news machine.
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : Bernie Bros and Jill Stein voters
Thanks guys. You made me see the light. I will be voting Labour in the next UK even if they put Piers Morgan in as leader. I would never want to explain why I put a bunch of dangerous incompetents in charge of the worlds largest nuclear arsenal because I voted with my 'conscience'.RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : Putin
Putin, if there is any justice, will be blamed for turning the internet into a hate machine. The world wide communication tool which would bring us all together is hurtling us toward WW3. I can't see how that will be a positive for Russia.RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : Clinton campaign & the Democratic Party
Despite going into the 2016 election in a winning position, and outspending their opponents on the Trump campaign, who did not even 100% want or expect to win, the Democrats lost not only the Presidency but also both the Congress and Senate. I've been studying US politics since the mid 1980s and even I cannot fathom how this happened.Trumps win, I can see now, is a long term consequence of the trauma of 9/11 and the crash of 2008. But.. "checks and balances" right? My A-Level history teacher drummed into us that the beauty of the system was that it could not be abused because one part could always hold the others in check. And if not that - you had the Electoral College as a final fail safe to prevent despotism.
This, I think, presumes that even when one party is not playing by the rules, the other one is at least doing it's job. I have no satisfactory explanation for 8 wasted years of fumbling attempts to do deals with people (like Mitch McConnell ) who patently didn't want to do anything but delay, or the rank incompetence of failing to appoint a Supreme Court judge when given the chance. What I do know is we can obviously see something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party merely by the fact that the people in charge of this historic ongoing display of incompetence are - amazingly - still there!
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, take a bow, you are almost as shameless as the reptiles in the party opposite. If you had an ounce of self awareness and responsibility you would have both resigned the morning of 09/11/16.
RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP : ME
I worked on the Clinton campaign, No really. It was a fantastic experience with brilliant people, but I can't divorce myself from the outcome . Or the realisation that in four visits to the United States I've only been outside the coastal Blue states for one day, a trip to Reno.I was as bought into the inevitability of Hillary's win as much as anyone, even when I had previously seen the serious possibility of a win for Leave in the Brexit vote.
I told worried friends in the UK that there was no way Trump would be elected as "Americans, really, honestly, are not that stupid". Elderly relatives were particularly worried but it was easier to reassure them as they remembered the country of Eisenhower and Kennedy still with enormous respect. Trump was to them frightening and surreal, like signs of dementia in one of their oldest and most reliable friends.
I told them all it would be OK.
I loved I,TONYA
Told in whiplash,self referential style like a Winter Olympics version of 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, Margot Robbie is very sympathetic as the doomed skater with amazing support from Alison Janney (CJ* in the West Wing) and Sebastian Stan (the Winter Soldier himself)
I TONYA may be described as a comedy by some, and it is funny, but it is also brutal and realistic in showing the effects of poverty and the class divide, even in a sport as apparently genteel and civilised as ice skating. The world in which Tonya Harding is from is shown in unflinching detail - it’s no surprise to find Harding’s abusive poor as hell husband and his cretinous friends are working on a Republican election campaign...
This is before things all start to go wrong for her, and the famous plot to cripple her rival skater would be laughed of the screen if it wasn’t so tragically real.
I usually avoid looking at award nominations but I’m very relieved Robbie and Janney have both been nominated in the major acting categories.
I’m sad now and I’m going to watch Margot Robbie again in the fake Dundee trailer leading a chant of ‘FREE BEER!’ she bangs her empty pint glass and a machete in on outback bar.
*CJ Cregg is still high on my list as a preferred voice for my personal Alexa/Siri, (if we can just have Sorkin write the snarky responses)
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