by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter]

Robert Redford’s startled expression of realization and discomfort was so precious, appreciated more in later years’ viewing as my politics moved from short-pants liberalism-lite to more and more conservative long-pants appreciation of the enduring verities of life.  As ‘Condor’ in “Three Days of the Condor” the young hero, Joe Turner, confronts Higgins, the CIA executive, in Times Square, where they square off for the film’s coda scene.
 
Redford is disbelieving as this scene plays out, following the tortuous storyline of evil CIA rogues’ war-gaming scheme to plan for potential military confiscation of Middle Eastern oil fields in the event of some potential world crisis:... [more]

The Democrats have been saying for some time that Barack Obama will restore our reputation in the eyes of the world, and I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what went wrong in the first place.

The world hates us. We know this, because our own media inform us of it regularly through polls, editorials, and documentaries. Because of our actions, our policies, over the years, we have built up a reservoir of resentment worldwide that only Obama can sooth.

You know, I think they are right. Let's look at the sins we've committed with an eye toward helping our next president, whoever it may be, to regain our popularity in the world.

Most of the complaints have to do with the American reaction to problems overseas. Should America get involved, and in what capacity? From my observations, we have clearly blundered many times, causing them to hate us. [more]

Michael Kinsley is wearing his intellectual short pants again, in his essay on Swiftboating. Wishing upon wishes for a ‘clean’ campaign of purity, he asserts, “Swift-boat is shorthand for the brilliant, despicable Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry's honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor in his campaign. The phrase has become more broadly the term for a particular category of campaign tactics and has even become a verb. To ‘swift-boat’ somebody is to use these tactics against him or her.”
 
Kinsley is not stupid, nor ignorant, but plainly very conveniently ‘forgetful’ of much history in his lifetime, never mind that of the DNC and its minions earlier in the century, before Kinsley’s mind was even a glimmer in his parents youthful eyes.  Swiftboating began in January of 1929, nine gestative months before the Black Tuesday stockmarket crash foreshadowed the Great Depression, and the swiftboating by historians and journalists of Herbert Clark Hoover. [more]

by John Mark Reynolds [author, academic]

My most delightful Christmas gift was Life With Jeeves. Nearly as delightful are the video versions which include a young Hugh Laurie (House). My children claim that House is hateful, because Jeeves has left him.

For me, the compilation of three of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels was the perfect antidote to the serious nature of our times.

There is the War.

There is an election coming.

There is poverty and injustice.

On the other hand, the gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves must save Bertie from an ill advised marriage to a woman of the sort who “suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don’t sometimes feel that the stars are God’s daisy-chain. . ." [more]

Remember these names: Ali, Fatima, Abu Bakr, Aisha, Khadija, Muawiya, Husayn, Kerbala, Omar, Uthman and, of course: Muhammad the Prophet of Islam.  You need a program and a list of characters to follow this story of why the Shia and the Sunni hate each other so fervently. Think of the tale as one of Hadleyville and Sheriff Will Kane, without the Quaker wife.
 
It’s a tortuous story, worthy of your time and effort. Islam and Energy are the prime numbers in the enumerated subjects for which there are many readings you must engorge into you brain, and they are connected. In this tale on the Islam half of that required-reading mandate, the split begins less than fifty years after the Prophet’s death, whose cousin and son-in-law tends to his burial as others plot to take power, as the First Caliph, elsewhere in Medina. The ‘near shrine’ of the Ka’aba in Mecca’s center is burned to the ground at that half-century mark, and the split continues as those who believe Ali should have been chosen instead of Abu Bakr are thus the Party of Ali, e.g., Shi’at Ali – thus, Shia members, or Shiites. [more]

I often find myself wondering how seemingly normal people ever wind up being criminal defense attorneys.  When even Harvard law professor and one-time member of O.J. Simpson’s so-called dream team Alan Dershowitz claims that over 90% of all criminal defendants are guilty, why would any sane person want to devote his life to trying to spring hundreds, maybe even thousands, of felons? 

I realize that our legal system insists that every murderer, rapist, pedophile and kidnapper, is entitled to the very best defense his lawyer can provide, but what sort of human being wakes up in the morning and, even before brushing his fangs, is busy thinking up ways to aid and abet those monsters?  And just how is he morally superior to the goon who drives the getaway car? [more]

I'm an analog man trapped in a digital age. I liked the old gas pumps, the ones with the numbers on a metal ring that clicked as they spun by. I also liked 48 cents a gallon for regular. And that Dick Nixon; he was some character, wasn't he?

I don't know if I'm a coot or a codger, maybe a crank. I know I'm at least one of 'em, but fear I might be all three. See, I had one of those weeks when everything I knew as a kid seems better than anything today. If you're reading this with an actual newspaper in your mitts, I assume you know exactly what I mean. For the dailynews.com crowd, allow me to explain.

This isn't about nostalgia. Lots of things were crummy when I was a kid. If you were black, gay, a chick - pardon me, a woman - or a whale, life was considerably more difficult. [more]

by John Mark Reynolds [author, academic]

Some people pick churches the way they pick clothing: based on personal comfort and style. Other people select their religious home for bad reasons: they hope to gain some personal or political advantage from it.

It is difficult to understand how Senator Obama could attend a church for twenty years, defend it in one of the most eloquent speeches I have heard, and then suddenly have an epiphany, in the heat of a political campaign, about the nature of the place where he trusted his own and his children’s spiritual well being. If God appeared to the Senator on the Road to Denver, then miracles still do happen, but this miracle happened very conveniently for the Senator’s ambitions.

Perhaps Senator Obama is not made of the stuff from which martyrs are made, but if so it is very sad. [more]

Whenever retreat-now activists or their favored presidential aspirant are confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply is, "Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in 2003."

Well, I happen to agree with Sen. Barack Obama and his supporters on that count: At most, the terrorists had a tenuous connection with Saddam's regime. But it's 2008, not 2003. And our next president will take office in 2009. It's today's reality that matters.

It's as if, in June 1944, critics had argued from facts frozen in June 1939. ("Why invade Normandy? Hitler's content with Czechoslovakia.")

In the course of a war - any war - the situation changes, enemies evolve and goals shift. A war to preserve the Union becomes a war to end slavery; a war to defeat one set of totalitarian systems empowers a new network of tyrannies. It's a rare war whose end can be forecast neatly at its outset.

And you don't get any do-overs. [more]

This election will be all about Senator Obama.

He has made history in a good sense. Only a racist or a fool (while all racists are fools not all fools are racists) isn’t happy to see a nation conceived in the original sin of slavery nominate an African-American for president. That is not a good reason to vote for him, but it is a good thing.

Like Reagan in 1980, the country is fed up with the incumbent party. Like Reagan in 1980, the country is open (which is rare) to somebody more from the edge of acceptable politics. The attractive challenger can get a big majority of the voters . . . if. It is the “if” that makes this election interesting. My bet is that in the end it will not be very close. If Obama can show he is acceptable to moderates, then he will win. If he cannot, he will lose in Dukakis style.

Senator Obama has to not lose in order to win. [more]

It’s an odd thing about the way in which the two genders deal with their sexual experiences.  Early on, it’s most often males who do all the bragging, even if they have to lie about it.  However, as the years go by, it tends to be the female of the species who does most of the boasting.  I’m not sure whether that’s because as women age, they’re anxious to remind everyone that once upon a time they were hot stuff or whether it’s just that women have better memories and are far more likely to keep diaries.

What brings this to mind is that Barbara Walters, in order to hype her new book, is blabbing all over the place about an affair she and former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke carried on during the 70s.  That is, the 1970s, not their seventies, although, in my opinion, that would have been far more newsworthy. [more]

"Is 40 really the New 20?” asks Fox News, reviewing the Sex And The City hoopla that seemed to overwhelm everyone this weekend. “Pop culture expert and Party Girl author Anna David joins us to weigh in on the phenomenon…” And the burning question is, what do you make of this revolutionary idea that a woman can be single in her 30s, 40s, even 50s, and it’s not shameful, it’s fantastic?

Interesting. Let’s explore this revolutionary idea. How did Sex And The City make it okay to be single? After Anna David addresses how threatening this idea is to men—it must be, a reactionary Maxim magazine voted Sarah Jessica Parker the most unsexy woman alive (I’m sure the hook nose and the wart had nothing to do with it)—the Fox news anchor hit upon the kernel of truth in the matter almost unwittingly. [more]

Although its their own internecine fight, I have been impressed at the main stream media's manipulation and outright partisan interference in the Democratic primary. One doesn’t have to be a fan of the Clintons to see what’s going on - the overt attempt by the main stream media to anoint a presumptive nominee months before primary elections are held and decided.
 
They have pursued an overtly anti-democratic process, with their own cadres of pundits and commentators dictating the desired or forecast results prior to millions of their fellow citizens having the opportunity to vote.  Let us recall, that until recent history, presidential candidates were selected at the convention, following roll -call votes by the state delegations. Until such roll-call votes are held there is no official candidate.
 
Led by Tim Russert since early February, all of MSNBC and most of CNN has not only declared Obama as winner, they have been an echo chamber for Obama's campaign to urge Clinton to drop out and concede or to ridicule her for not doing so. "It's inevitable" they keep repeating. Then, following up on their arrogant prescience they belittle every subsequent primary victory for Clinton, even when won with lopsided 70-30 percent margins. [more]

Barack Obama insisted that he was going to be the post-racial presidential candidate, the man who was going to bring us all together and make us forget our racial differences.  It’s funny how that worked out.  I guess he forgot to mention his master plan to his nearest and dearest. 

First, let us consider his wife, Michelle.  If she is, as they say, his better half, I’d sure hate to see his other half.  What’s with the Democrats, anyway?  It’s bad enough that they keep coming up with creepy candidates for president, but look at their idea of a first lady.  Hillary Clinton, Teresa Heinz-Kerry and Michelle Obama, remind me of the three witches in “Macbeth,” but without their cooking skills.  As awful as the other two ladies were, when it comes to sheer nastiness and bitterness, they couldn’t hold a candle to Mrs. Obama, although one would be sorely tempted to try. [more]

Woman says Sex and the City inspired her to have sex at 14

ABC News.com is currently highlighting a Sex and the City- inspired story about a woman who says the HBO series inspired her to start having sex when she was 14.  Will the networks news shows pick up the story or will it remain an "internet only" feature, not likely to be seen by a broad audience?

The question is worth asking because ABC's Good Morning America was one of the first network morning news shows to salivate over last week's London opening of Sex and the City: The Movie.  As CMI reported at the time, GMA's "story" was couched around the premise that the HBO series had benefited the culture, especially when it came to women's views about sex.  So, in the interest of responsible, balanced reporting, will GMA report a less positive story about the movie? [more]