It’s been a while since I’ve featured this feature, and now that it’s 2010 I’ve got an entirely new crop of films from which to choose.
Here’s the very first film adaptation of ‘Frankenstein,’ in full, produced by none other than Thomas Edison himself. Considered the first horror film ever. Very interesting use of special effects.
More on the film here.
For more Century-Old Cinema features, click on the tag at the bottom of this post.
A creative and downright-devastating ad that raises political commercials to new heights (depths?).
The ad’s three minutes long, and you should watch it in full, but if you don’t have time the really good part starts at 2:21.
Chattarati’s John Hawbaker tweets:
“I think we can all agree that we deserve this sort of high comedy in the (Tennessee 3rd District Congressional) race.”
FURTHER READING: Someone in the know at Fishbowl LA speculates on how much this ad cost.
Spot-on - and downright old-school Machiavellian - advice from Ta-Nehisi Coates on how those who favor abortion rights should have reacted to the Tim Tebow anti-abortion Superbowl ad:
“I don’t think it was smart for NOW to protest the ad. I say this, obviously, as a pro-choice lefty. I don’t see what you gain out of essentially saying, “You can’t say that.”
The right strategy isn’t to restrict the other side’s room to speak, it should be to expand our own. Don’t like Tim Tebow’s ad? Salute his right to speak his mind. Bring out all the usual homilies about how great it is to live in a country where we’re free to respectfully debate heart-wrenching issues. And then after you’ve done that, cut your own ad and make your case. What’s the use of having all these effete Hollywood liberals if can’t cut a better ad than James Dobson?”
Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman of the Washington Post have similar advice:
“Women’s and choice groups responding to the Tebow ad should take a page from the Focus on the Family playbook. Erin Matson, the National Organization for Women’s new vice president, called the Tebow spot “hate masquerading as love.” That kind of comment may play well in the choice choir, but to others, it makes no sense, at best; at worst, it’s seen as the kind of stridency that reinforces the view that pro-choice simply means pro-abortion.”
Ed Morrisey makes this good point from the other side of the debate:
“Shouldn’t tolerance include hearing opposing viewpoints, or at least allowing them to be aired in public forums? After all, tolerance means putting up with something, not agreeing with it. If the only ideas we allowed to air publicly were those that had almost-total consensus, that’s not tolerance but political correctness — a rhetorical straitjacket that goes against the very idea of free speech.
When groups like NOW want to silence people like the Tebows, they’re doing so to protect their own turf. The ad asks people to choose life, not to ban abortion. If NOW really was pro-choice, they’d see nothing invalid about showing the end result of one choice and the faith that carried the Tebows from that terrifying diagnosis to the pinnacle of athletic and scholarly success.”
What do you think?
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Brightcove video.
Aunt B* on the group of Idahoan Christians currently tarnishing their religion’s brand in Haiti:
“I mean, seriously, if you are a part of a group that thinks Jesus is telling you to sneak into another country and steal their children, you are in a dangerous cult. You probably need to go to prison for your own well-being, if not for the well-being of the families you would victimize, because you cannot be trusted to be in society.
Unbelievable.
And that the minister is all “pray for our members, the Devil is working against them”?! Your members are involved in a plot to steal children. They are on the side of evil. And it is scary that no one in those churches seems to see that.”
What do you think? All opinions are welcome.
*HEADS-UP: the post linked above contains the f-word.
David Sanger on the implications of the FY 2011 budget released yesterday by the Obama administration:
“By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.
For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.”
SEE ALSO: OMB Director Peter Orzsag’s defense.
[image: Untitled, Red, by Mark Rothko (1958)]
The folk icon was going to sell it on e-Bay to raise money for Haiti relief efforts, but explains in the clip above he’s changed his mind.
A picture of the head formerly for sale after the jump.
(UPDATED BELOW)
Above: a 42-second version of President Obama’s appearance at the GOP Congressional retreat on Friday.
I’m late in weighing in on this (Friday as you may have heard was a bit busy) but want to get my thoughts in.
You really should watch the whole thing:
(image: NewsChannel9 director Matt Brunson)
I understand the GOP’s inclination to stay in a defensive crouch for the next three years, opposing President Obama at every turn. It’s definitely a strategy. But it’s not the only strategy.
Andrew Sullivan on the President’s State of the Union address tonight:
“I have one simple test: if the health bill dies from neglect and irresolution, Obama is no leader. He is a follower. He cannot vote present on this one. He has majorities in both Houses and a landslide victory and he is unable to deliver on a core priority in his first year. That’s a definition of a failed presidency and it is why the GOP - with nothing to offer the country - decided to make it his Waterloo. They knew and know how gutting this bill and killing reform and suffocating any serious change in this country is their way to a nihilist victory. And such a victory would not be a vindication of Republican policy right now. It would be a perfectly reasonable response to a Democratic party palpably incapable of governing and a president clearly unable to deliver.
If he cannot do this, he does not have the fortitude to be a successful president. And his weakness on this will be rightly interpreted as weakness everywhere else. That applies to foreign policy as well, with Netanyahu and Khamenei and Chavez and Sarkozy all watching to see what this guy is made of.
These are dark times as the forces of reaction and resistance redouble their efforts to prevent any reform on any issue. Obama was elected to break through that impasse. If he cannot deliver, he must cede to someone who can.”
Newscoma derives a great bit of wisdom after covering an especially contentious local meeting:
“After the meeting, I asked for a quote to use on the next day’s broadcast, which he gave me. After I had put the mic away, I asked him if this was ever going to get better. I was exhausted, the commissioners were exhausted but more importantly, the entire county was worn the hell out from the sheer emotion of it all.
“The thing is that we all need to live together. After any bit of politicking, you need to be in the right mind, that even if you disagreed on something completely, to be able to sit down and have a cup of coffee or a beer with that person you were arguing with before. That’s the way things work. Some times you are going to win, and other times you are going to lose, but we still live together. We forget that sometimes.”
“Do you think we will ever get back to that point?” I asked.
Head Nurse describes caring for an 18-year-old patient as she neared her final moments:
Populism has once again woven its way into the fabric of American discourse. So is that a good thing or a bad thing?
“Politics, in one respect, has really changed over the last two decades. Both parties, but especially the Republicans, now have highly efficient ways to get their talking points out to the rank-and-file, without confusing things by also informing them of the larger context. That’s really different than things were in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Back then, politically attentive people would watch the network news and the local news and look at the occasional newspaper, and maybe Time or Newsweek, and on top of that they would also be exposed to party talking points. Now, to a great extent, people’s only exposure to the news may consist of the party’s talking points (again, especially on the Republican side). So the old job of finding out how well those talking points are resonating by hearing whether ordinary folks use them to talk about politics is no longer a useful task. Increasingly, the only language to which people — once again, especially Republicans — are exposed is those talking points. For a Rush/Beck listener, there isn’t another language available to discuss the health care bill.”
John Judis (via Kleinheider):
“Working-class populism in America has always taken two forms: The first—let’s call it left-wing populism—has typically been directed at speculators who make money from people who work in factories and offices and who don’t seem to contribute to the actual wealth of society. The second form—let’s call it right-wing populism—has targeted immigrants, black sharecroppers, the unemployed, and other out groups who are seen as trying to deprive those who work of their rightful earnings. These two strains often appear together, as they did in the original American populist movement. And these sentiments are most concentrated among the embattled classes—those that see themselves threatened from above and below.
Obama has provoked both left-wing and right-wing populism. He provoked left-wing populism by using tax dollars to sustain the banks and auto companies and to reward their managers who had already shown themselves to be incompetent—and then by acquiescing when the bankers paid themselves additional bonuses. In a poll taken in early January by Allstate/National Journal, 1,200 respondents revealed whom they thought had “benefited most” from the government’s response to the financial crisis. Banks, investment companies, major corporations, and the wealthy were way out in front.
Obama’s health care plan has provoked a combination of right-wing and left-wing populism. The middle class and senior citizens see it as a program that taxes and takes benefits away from them in order to help those without insurance—the out groups—and to enrich the insurance companies themselves. They didn’t invent this perception out of thin air: It derived in part from the plan to tax “Cadillac” health care plans (which are sometimes held by unionized middle class workers), penalize workers who don’t buy insurance, and cut future Medicare spending, while providing new subscribers and profits for the insurance companies. Undoubtedly, the prior perception of Obama’s financial policies reinforced these suspicions about his health care plan, which is now as unpopular as the bank bailout.”
“It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.
Second, it absolves voters of responsibility for their problems. Over the past few years, many investment bankers behaved like idiots, but so did average Americans, racking up unprecedented levels of personal debt. With the populist narrative, you can accuse the former and absolve the latter.
Third, populism is popular with the ruling class. Ever since I started covering politics, the Democratic ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at people with M.B.A.’s that they will hand power to people with Ph.D.’s. The Republican ruling class has been driven by the fantasy that voters will get so furious at people with Ph.D.’s that they will hand power to people with M.B.A.’s. Members of the ruling class love populism because they think it will help their section of the elite gain power.
So it’s easy to see the seductiveness of populism. Nonetheless, it nearly always fails.”
While an honest look at my political sensibilities does reveal some sympathies to what lies inside populist sentiment, I have to ultimately reject them because I believe it places far too great an emphasis on black-and-white, either/or propositions. Being able to consider context, to try to see the other point of view in order to make an informed decision, is the only way anything can get done. That takes far more effort than many in the public discourse are choosing today, but I hope that’s not the case with you.
What do you think?
At right: me at the old NewsChannel9 building in downtown Chattanooga, on the newsroom’s only internet connection - dialup - in 1997.
What are categories and tags? They’re ways for me to classify each post I bring to you. The categories are broad - “biography,” “images,” “politics,” etc. The tags are more specific. “19th century painting,” “the new media,” etc.
Top 5 Categories from this blog’s 1st year:
On Saturday the Public Interest blog turned one year old, and the date also marks the 2nd anniversary of my blogging career.
Before we proceed, some stats you may find interesting:
Here are the top 5 most-viewed posts on the P.I. from the past year:
The winner of the 2008 Tennessee presidential primary makes a bold prediction.
As it happens, I agree with him. We’ll see.
“Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.” – President Theodore Roosevelt
Yesterday’s ruling (read it in full here in this PDF file) from the Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent in campaign finance. The ruling means that corporations (and, by presumption, unions) can donate unlimited amounts to federal elections, because they - according to the court - can be viewed as ‘individuals.’ It’s certainly a reflection of the corporate-friendly makeup of the current Supreme Court.
But personally, I take issue with that, because it seems to me that the influence a corporation now has through unlimited donations in an election doesn’t come close to equaling the amount of influence a single individual has. It doesn’t seem fair in the slightest.
Justice John Paul Stevens spoke for the court’s four dissenters:
“At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
This presents an interesting opportunity for a potential confluence of opinions of anti-corporate sentiment on both the Left and the Right.
Many Republican lawmakers expressed happiness with the ruling yesterday. But to me an identity crisis lies ahead for those lawmakers in relation to the populist “T.E.A. Party” movement, which has reservations for increased concentration of corporate and government power etched into its DNA. How these pro-business lawmakers, not to mention the most prominent faces of the right-wing media, will reconcile what they said yesterday with the get-the-power-back-to-the-people crowd will make for an interesting pastime. As will be whether Tea Partiers will even notice, or care.
I’d argue that both the Tea Party factions on the Right and anti-corporate, anti-globalization sentiments on the Left have been presented an opportunity to discover a little common ground in opposing this ruling.
What do you think?
EDITED TO ADD: Forgot to mention the fact that this will likely mean that the amount of political ads you see on TV, radio and the internet will increase by an order of magnitude. In a way, that is good news for me, an employee of a television station which may see an increase in revenue because of this. But the ‘viewer’ in me does not look forward to seeing that increase one bit.
