Month: January 2013

Alec MacGillis wishes the press treated Republican debt ceiling recklessness more seriously:

[A] threat to plunge the nation’s into default and with it imperil the nation and world’s economy, seen only a year and a half ago as the political equivalent of a nuclear option, is now viewed as “better political ground.” What to make of this? 

The shift in mindset is surely in part a function of basic human nature: our remarkable ability — for good or ill — to adapt ourselves to new realities. More than that, though, it is a function of that far more Beltway-unique tendency, to report and comment on politics and governance as pure gamesmanship in such a way that conveys savvy but not judgment. And if it’s all a sport, who’s to object if one side has radically shifted the goalposts? Good for them, if they can get away with it. And after all, the higher the stakes in the clash, the better the story.

Bouie adds:

There’s something very wrong with Washington journalism when a threat to imperil the global economy is treated like a round of capture-the-flag.

This is what happens when the “conservative party” is in fact the revolutionary one – eschewing tradition, settled procedure, and institutional protection in favor of partisan ideological vandalism.

Tasha Robinson is struck by how Michael Apted's revolutionary documentary series, tracking British children from age 7 to 56, has evolved. As the program has advanced, publicity features more prominently:

Several of them express regret over artistic or political careers that never coalesced, particularly Neil Hughes, a periodically homeless, perpetually desperate-seeming district-council representative who complains that he just wants to be a writer, but that even the documentary series hasn’t sparked interest in his work. (This may come as bad news to interviewee Peter Davies, who returns to the series after skipping the last three films, and openly states that he’s doing it to draw attention to his latest band.) 

Her takeaway:

Part of Apted’s focus on the everyday seems to be an attempt to get at relatable, universal parallels—the similar concerns and the core values of life. … But the piercing scrutiny probably has its own chilling effect, particularly as the rise of reality television has taught a generation the importance of self-mythologizing by staying calm, cautious, and self-aware in front of cameras. And it’s periodically worth wondering whether some of 56 Up’s expressions of contentment and lack of regret are just the subjects playing to the cameras, knowing their life choices will be scrutinized and analyzed, not just in the moment, but by generations of filmgoers to come.

The NYT interview with director Apted is definitely worth a read. Bilge Ebiri's take:

The film misses out on intimacy, which could do more to reveal these people as individuals, for the sake of charting a broader trajectory. This is more social anthropology than psychology. 56 Up isn’t concerned so much with opening up individual lives as it is with showing us how the journey of an ordinary life — or over a dozen ordinary lives — can offer insights into our own, and into society.

And that was far more emphatically the case when the project was started: it was designed as an exploration into the British class system. My view, having watched almost every one, is that the individual stories eventually trumped the sociological ambition of the series. Maybe that has now come full circle, like so many of the lives in the film itself.

Previous Dish on the series here.

The Dish fiercely opposed the appointment of John Brennan to be CIA director in 2008 because of previous dubious statements about the Bush-Cheney torture program. Well, four years later, he's up for it again. I'm not as inclined to oppose him this time around, in part because torture has ended, and in part because he is increasingly one of the good guys on the drone program. From Dan Klaidman's Newsweek cover:

Brennan, a tough-minded spook who spent 25 years at the CIA, is unapologetic about the secret drone program. Indeed, he has been in many ways its most energetic public defender (if obliquely, since it remains covert). ?But behind the scenes he has also been an advocate for more transparency, placing counterterrorism operations on a firmer legal footing, and imposing reasonable restraints on the CIA’s operators…

Brennan’s “playbook” is more than simply an effort to enshrine the rules of the road for targeted killing. He is seeking to fundamentally reform the process by which targeted-killing decisions are made. One key proposal, according to three administration officials who have been briefed on the matter, is to harmonize the CIA’s and the military’s decision-making process for lethal strikes. This would not be just a bureaucratic rearranging of the deck chairs…

A common decision-making process with more uniform standards would almost certainly force the CIA to behave more like the military—that is, to operate with far less freedom. To take just one example: the CIA engages in a controversial practice known as “signature strikes,” targeting groups of military-age males whose identities are not known but who bear certain characteristics—or signatures—associated with terrorism. Under new protocols, the strikes, sometimes referred to as “crowd killing,” may still be permitted but would likely be more heavily regulated.

People change. If Brennan has Obama's trust in restricting and managing drone strikes with much less lee-way for the CIA, he's performing a vital service in morally re-callibrating the war against the remnants of al Qaeda.

(Photo: John O. Brennan, White House counterterrorism advisor, speaks during a memorial service for the Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie bombing at Arlington National Cemetery December 21, 2011 in Arlington, Virginia. By Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.)

A harbinger of an evolving and less zero-sum media landscape?

In need of cash and with extra space on its hands, the liberal magazine The American Prospect decided to sublet part of its Washington offices. The American Conservative, tired of working from Arlington, Va., was looking for a new location. When the publishers Jay Harris of The Prospect and Wick Allison of The Conservative were getting lunch in August, they put two and two together. A six-month lease was soon signed. The self-described bastion of “traditional conservatism” moved in with the self-described “liberal, progressive, lefty” on Dec. 27.

“We have a water fountain labeled conservatives only,” joked Mr. Harris, who cleared the idea with his staff. “We turned to the staff and said, ‘Would you be comfortable?’ To a person, the folks who responded said, ‘Our values are pretty different, but we have a lot of respect for what The American Conservative does journalistically.’ ”

Dish alum Maisie Allison, now at AmCon, highlights the benefits of bipartisanship:

“Since we do not directly compete, we can only benefit from sharing ideas, formally and informally,” she said.

During the Iranian uprising of 2009, the Dish continuously clashed with Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, the most well-known skeptics of the Green Movement. The husband and wife team continue to blog at The Race for Iran, in addition to Flynt’s role as Penn State Professor of International Affairs and Hillary’s as Professorial Lecturer at American University and CEO of the political risk consultancy, Stratega. In a post last year on why the contested 2009 election still matters, they argued that “if anyone was out to steal the election, it was Mousavi, not Ahmadinejad”:

That is why Mousavi started alleging fraud even before the polls opened.  And, contrary to Dubai 0249, it was Mousavi, not Ahmadinejad, who first declared victory on election day, while polls were still open, Iranians were still voting, and not a single ballot had actually been counted.  If anyone was out to steal the election, it was Mousavi, not Ahmadinejad.    

Mousavi failed in this enterprise.  But he seems to have made a lasting impression on the thinking of those Westerners who are perpetually on the look-out for a Yeltsin-like figure who will catalyze the Islamic Republic’s transformation into a pro-Western, Israel-friendly secular democracy.  Continued attachment to the myth of the stolen 2009 election matters, because it continues to keep the United States from coming to terms with the Islamic Republic as it is, not as so many Westerners fantasize it might be.

In another post, the Leveretts explore Ahmadinejad’s legacy on economic reform. Read more in their new book, Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which comes out tomorrow.  

I was a little stunned to find myself defending it after one viewing. I was all ready to start a picket line. But the most pointed and polemical defense of the movie I have yet read is here. It’s from film critic Glenn Kenny. It’s somewhat aggressive to Glenn Greenwald – but Glenn’s a big boy. Read the whole thing, but I like the Ramones analogy:

In 1976 Robert Christgau wrote this about the first Ramones record: “I love this record–love it–even though I know these boys flirt with images of brutality (Nazi especially) in much the same way ‘Midnight Rambler’ flirts with rape. You couldn’t say they condone any nasties, natch–they merely suggest that the power of their music has some fairly ominous sources and tap those sources even as they offer the suggestion. This makes me uneasy. But my theory has always been that good rock and roll should damn well make you uneasy.” I agree with Bob in all these particulars, and even more so if you substitute  “good art” for “good rock and roll.” Zero Dark Thirty made me uneasy.

Greenwald’s evocations of amorality are not entirely inapt. There’s a sense in which the film at least skirts outright amorality by refusing to assign any definite values to the various Xes and Ys in the equation that makes up its narrative. Its perspective, from where I sit, is sometimes flat to the point of affectlessness. There is an almost cynical mordancy in its depiction of events, and this to me is entirely clear from the film’s visual grammar … But Greenwald sees none of this, and insists: “There is zero doubt, as so many reviewers have said, that the standard viewer will get the message loud and clear: that we found and killed bin Laden because we tortured The Terrorists.”

I guess I have more faith in the “standard viewer”. Kenny has a useful bunch of links, expanding on critical defense of the film. If you’re interested, many of them are very much worth exploring:

My review for MSN Movies, which I filed before even Frank Bruni’s column appeared, is now up. I stand by it. Manohla Dargis makes some salient points beautifully, as she always does, in her NYT review. The great Larry Gross has some provocative perceptions at Film Comment’s site. And Devin Faraci shows me more grace and kindness than I’ve ever shown him in commending my work in a piece about the film for Badass Digest, and I am grateful for his giving me a necessary lesson in humility, but more important, I think his perceptions on the film and his detailed descriptions combine for a wholly admirable piece of criticism. I thank him.  Scott Tobias’ AV Club review is valuable. Also, I am reminded that David Poland, commendably, got the ball rolling from our end with this piece. 

UPDATE 2: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s piece at MUBI’s Notebook is remarkable.

You can read through all our coverage of the debate over Zero Dark Thirty here.