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The Obama Legacy: A World Beyond Cynicism
It really makes you want to scream and cry bang your head against the wall, hoping against hope that you’ll wake from a dystopian nightmare.
The toxic combination of delusion and narcissism that characterizes President Obama and his administration churns through our society like venom as the president trumpets one imagined victory after another and vilifies every critic, all while overseeing the catastrophic disintegration of moral standards, common values, and national security.
By what kind of perverse calculation does the leader of the free world negotiate a hostage release — which should have been part of any treaty from the outset — for the sole purpose of masking the corrosive consequences of that very treaty at the moment of its implementation? Such contrived deception mixed with political incompetence literally staggers the imagination.
The only thing worse is the chilling reality that the president actually believes that he is making the country and the world safer and better. Like Jimmy Carter, Mr. Obama will live out his life believing that he was one of the country’s greatest presidents, and he will remain utterly baffled why no one recognizes his greatness.
Read Charles Krauthammer’s dispiriting post-mortem here.
Black Actors Matter
Well, yes, of course they do. Just like black lives.
But does that mean the white actors don’t? Just like, as it often seems, white lives don’t? And what about (alphabetically) Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, and Native American actors? Do their careers matter? Do their lives matter?
Don’t ask Kathleen McCartney, the president of Smith College who was coerced into apologizing for having the audacity to send off an email with the provocative subject line “All Lives Matter.”
Apparently, some lives matter more than others.
And now, so do some actors.
It’s more that a little astonishing that, in an article dog-piling on the Motion Picture Academy for its racism, the Daily Beast could still manage to rattle off a list of 18 black Oscar winners and nominees.
(Interestingly, the Beast doesn’t seem to think Halle Berry counts, since she’s half-white. Kind of like our half-white president.)
It is true, roars the Beast, that Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, Forest Whitaker, Queen Latifah, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo, Eddie Murphy, Octavia Spencer, Djimon Hounsou, Taraji P. Henson, Don Cheadle, Viola Davis, Terrence Howard, Jennifer Hudson, Will Smith, Gabourey Sidibe, Quvenzhané Wallis, and the late Ruby Dee have all received Oscars or Oscar nods since 2001.
Be that as it may, “the last two years have felt like an alarming regression.”
Really? Isn’t two years is an awfully short time span to constitute a trend of any kind, much less one that could be considered even remotely “alarming”? But no: the politics of race and victimization are unbounded by time.
Because, ultimately, it does all come down to politics.
Back in 1971, after delivering one of the greatest screen performances in history, George C. Scott became the first actor ever to refuse an Oscar. The BBC quoted Mr. Scott as having said that the politics surrounding the awards was “demeaning” and describing the Oscar ceremony as “a two-hour meat parade.”
Some things never change.
As the most liberal of all liberal institutions in liberal America, Hollywood continues to produce propaganda pieces despite the inevitability of their box office failures. Films like Brokeback Mountain and Lions for Lambs may have been well-received for advancing certain political and social agendas, but neither attracted much of an audience.
Sidney Poitier where are you, now that we need you?
Indeed, there’s no limit to Tinseltown’s political correctness; and now there’s no arguing against cinematic affirmative action. I suppose it won’t be long before every actor has to get a statuette, just like every kid in Little League has to get a trophy.
And what will be after that? My bet is that it’s only a matter of time before short people file suit claiming discrimination by the NBA.
In the meanwhile, it’s worth revisiting these thoughts on the movie industry from 2009.
Spam Rebound
Have you ever wanted to spam the spammers?
Here’s what it might look like:
Watch with a friend. Preferably not while you’re working or driving.
Alan Rickman and the Heart of Darkness
I’m not a fan of the Harry Potter movies which, as is so often the case, paled in contrast to the sheer genius of the books. But if there was one portrayal that stood out head and shoulders above the rest, it was Alan Rickman’s pitch-perfect rendering of Severus Snape, the slippery potions-master who tormented Harry Potter throughout his career at Hogwarts while secretly protecting him from harm.
I’ll allow myself to boast that I never doubted Snape’s loyalty, even after he killed Dumbledore at the end of The Half-Blood Prince. Mostly, I trusted the author. J.K. Rowling did a brilliant job of developing Dumbledore’s character from the outset of the series. If Dumbledore trusted Snape, then there was no way Snape could be a traitor.
Reportedly, Alan Rickman turned down the role initially. He thought the character two-dimension and found no challenge in the role. But Ms. Rowling had her heart set on him, and so she revealed to Mr. Rickman what no one else knew yet, that Snape was really Harry’s secret protector, who would ultimately give his life to save the boy from harm.
So for all those — young and old alike — who missed the books but saw the movies, Alan Rickman brought to life the character who teaches us that no matter how dark someone may appear on the outside, there may yet reside a soul of light and goodness within.
By way of tribute, I offer this return to my recent essay on the wisdom of Harry Potter.
Read the article at: http://www.learning-mind.com/reading-harry-potter/
A Week of Ironies — Iranian Hostages, Nikki Haley, and $1.5 Billion
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama patted himself on the back for making peace with Iran while, at that very moment, Iran held 10 American sailors in violation of international law and the Geneva Convention. The next day, Secretary John Kerry thanked the Iranians for not keeping the servicemen as hostages.
In the same speech, the president also lamented his failure to create an atmosphere of bipartisanship and cooperation, while passing up no opportunity to snipe at everyone who disagrees with him.
After South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley responded to the president’s address, the angriest voices loudly condemned her for condemning the angriest voices.
Hillary Clinton, who can boast the lowest national rating on trustworthiness since Richard Nixon, dismissed a new FBI investigation into her mishandling of classified information by declaring “that’s just not the way I treated classified information.” Transparency, at last.
However, none of this made much of an impression on an American public entranced by the dream of winning a 1.5 billion dollar lottery, even though about half of multimillion-dollar lottery winners eventually admit that sudden wealth proved more of a curse than a blessing.
Now that three winners are going to share the unprecedented payoff, they might want to take a page from the book of a middle-aged man in Atlanta who, back in the 1990s, won a $4 million dollar lottery – what was an exceptional amount for the time.
The winner had been working a double shift as a garbage collector. When asked what he intended to do after winning so much money, the man replied, “I’m going to quit one of my shifts.”
“Only one?” asked the incredulous reporter.
“A man has to have work,” replied the new millionaire.
Affluenza: Nothing new but the name
Some verbal atrocities are either too offensive or too absurd to ever be forgotten. Like Jonathan Gruber’s candid admission that “the stupidity of the American voter … was really, really critical for [Obamacare] to pass.” Or Brian Williams misremembering that he had been shot down in a helicopter. Or Al Gore’s claim that he invented the internet (although, in all fairness, that was not quite what he said).
But few violations of common sense and common decency compare to that of Jean Boyd, the judge who concluded that probation and rehab were sufficient punishment for Ethan Crouch — after he pled guilty to taking the lives of four people while driving drunk — because he was a victim of affluenza.
Now, two years later, after Ethan Crouch has violated his parole, fled to Mexico with his mother, and finally ended up back in custody, the Washington Post would like us to reconsider whether the diagnosis is really so ridiculous after all. Rallying experts to support his case, Post editor Fred Barbash suggests that affluenza may indeed be an authentic malady, citing ASU professor of psychology Suniya S. Luthar and Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College:
“High-risk behavior, including extreme substance abuse and promiscuous sex, is growing fast among young people from communities dominated by white-collar, well-educated parents. These kids … show serious levels of maladjustment as teens, displaying … marijuana and alcohol abuse, including binge drinking [and] abuse of illegal or prescription drugs.”[What also stands out] is the type of rule-breaking – widespread cheating and random acts of delinquency such as stealing from parents or peers among the affluent, as opposed to behavior related to self-defense, such as carrying a weapon, among the inner-city teens.”
“[What also stands out] is the type of rule-breaking – widespread cheating and random acts of delinquency such as stealing from parents or peers among the affluent, as opposed to behavior related to self-defense, such as carrying a weapon, among the inner-city teens.”
And finally: Serious depression or anxiety among affluent kids is “is two to three times national rates.”
No arguments from this quarter. But what does not appear in Mr. Barbash’s lengthy commentary is even the most meager attempt to identify why affluence produces teenage miscreants. What is it about growing up with every possible advantage that predisposes so many children to criminally irresponsible behavior?
The answer is quite simple.
State of the Union: Four Faces of Leadership
If we need another example of how upside-down our culture has become, we only have to look at the hype leading up to tonight’s State of the Union address by soon-to-be Former President Barack Obama. Even as the pundits all agree that the speech will be largely irrelevant and predictable, they can find little else to talk about.
Mr. Obama is expected to tell us how wonderful things are, how many of his goals he has achieved, and how much the quality of our lives has improved since he took office. The success of such an approach depends upon one of three factors:
- that his claims are actually true;
- that he can convince the people that his claims are actually true;
- that he can pound home the message (with the cooperation of an obsequious media) until people think there must be something wrong with them if they don’t believe it.
Whether the president succeeds or not remains to be seen. But it’s illuminating to compare his style to other presidents and presidential hopefuls, past and present.
Sean Penn — the twelfth monkey?
It may be the real-world incarnation of 12 Monkeys, the cult flick in which Bruce Willis goes back in time to save mankind and inadvertently causes the holocaust he is trying to prevent.
Sean Penn has traveled far and wide to uncover the warm, fuzzy side of such political personalities as Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro. We can only speculate on the motives behind his latest adventure, an elaborately staged meeting with El Chapo, the infamous Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, who was recently recaptured after escaping from his maximum security prison cell.
Irony of ironies, it was Sean Penn himself who inadvertently led authorities to Guzman’s location. And although Mr. Penn has had little to say about his role in the apprehending of El Chapo, it’s tantalizing to wonder whether he might seek help from Bruce Willis to travel back in time in hope of undoing what he has done.
Always Faithful
My son at his induction ceremony into the IDF.
May the Almighty watch over all those who put the lives of others before their own.
May we all find within ourselves the clarity and courage to stay true to the values that lie at the core of our humanity.
The Intern
Trans-Atlantic flying has gotten a little more tolerable with the almost limitless supply of movies on each passenger’s personal screen. All the more so when you come across one of those rare productions that provide everything you could possibly want from a movie.
The Intern, starring Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway, showcases Hollywood at its best. It’s clever, it’s clean, it carries you along effortlessly and leaves you happy and hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the world is not tottering on the brink of cultural implosion after all.
Robert DeNiro is eminently believable as a 70-year-old widower who finds himself working for an edgy, high-tech start-up and turns the business on it’s head with his old-fashioned work ethic and traditional, common sense values. Without sermonics or sentimentality, the film endorses the follow-your-dream mentality while simultaneously deflating the myth that you can have it all.
Loyalty, self-discipline, personal responsibility, and the wisdom of experience, all in a major motion picture. Who woulda thought?
Yonason Goldson 