Monthly Archives: June 2012

Sorkin and nostalgia

Americana, Television

I want to be clear at the start by saying that almost everything I think about Aaron Sorkin is probably colored by the movie, The Social Network, which is an hatchet job on Mark Zuckerberg.  In defending  The Social Network Sorkin said “I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling”. I do want to acknowledge that it was good story telling, but it was fraudulent storytelling. Worse, it was fraudulent story telling about a real person – many real people, actually, especially Priscilla Chan who Zuckerberg is now married to – who is still alive.

As a liberal, I very much enjoyed The West Wing. Everybody was so right, as in correct, and so brilliant – especially President Josiah Bartlett – and they were so busy and quick witted. It all seemed so real. Of course it wasn’t, we didn’t have President Bartlett, we had President George Bush the Younger. When Studio 60 came on the air, I expected it to be great and I was very disappointed. It was pretty much the same fast talking gang but I was no longer particularly interested in them.

I saw some bad reviews of The Newsroom, but I still was looking forward to seeing it for all the reasons I liked The West Wing (and we have a subscription to HBO, so What the hell). The Pilot was very Sorkinesque – including the fraudulent part of Sorkin – with quick talking, witty, brainy people and maybe I should have loved it, but I didn’t. It replayed the BP Gulf oil spill and then played it in the same over the top way the press actually did play it, all the while inferring that the real news people didn’t cover it right. He is right, they didn’t cover it right because they covered it in the same breathless way that Sorkin pretends to.

Like Sorkin, they covered the oil spill as the worst ecological disaster in the history of mankind. And it wasn’t. But there is a real ecological disaster going on here and that is the degradation of the Louisiana coastline. The real newspeople aren’t covering that very much because it is not dramatic enough and Sorkin doesn’t even pretend to cover it.

But my biggest complaint is Sorkin’s nostalgia for the old timey news guys. Supposedly, they  were better at covering the news. One character – the wise old man, I guess – says We just decided to referring to covering the news with integrity which becomes the title of the episode, We Just Decided To. These are the newpeople who didn’t cover the deplorable conditions for blacks in the south for almost 100 years. They didn’t cover the lynchings, the reign of terror, until it was jammed down their collective throats. They didn’t cover President John Kennedy banging every woman in sight including many underage girls. Yes, they did cover the disintegration of the Vietnam War, but not as well as the disintegration of the Iraq war was covered.

The old timey newsmen were company men and the company was the white establishment. There is more information available, to even the most casual observer, today than ever before. More news and more real facts. In many areas, like the BP oil spill, the cable news channels probably dwell too much. Sure, it is harder to get information on the ecological disaster of the Louisiana coastline degradation than it should be, but nobody covered that 50 years ago at all. And this was when the Army Corps of Engineers was actively hurting it. My personal anger is that nobody covered the destruction of Glenn Canyon, one of the most beautiful places on earth, except to exalt Lake Powell. People who knew the area were screaming and the press ignored them while writing fawning articles about the Army Corps of Engineers.

I suspect that Sorkin didn’t set out to do  a hatchet job on Zuckerberg, he was just collateral damage in Sorkin trying to go after the web in his haste to glorify the good old days.

Henry Hill died

Around home, Film, Psychological Musings

Henry Hill was a low level Mafioso in the Lucchese crime family. He became famous because, when he ratted out his buddies to the FBI, he ended up having two movies tell his story. Both Goodfellas and My Blue Heaven were roughly based on his life (My Blue Heaven more roughly). Goodfellas was Michele and my first date.

I once heard Pauline Kael  say that she would never date anybody who didn’t like the same movies that she did. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, and it still does. Our second movie was La Femme Nikita. 

A year or so later, still together and still enjoying the same movies, we went to see a revival of  The Wild Bunch at the Castro in San Francisco. Standing in line, we noticed two acquaintances we had met in Temenos workshops, Peter Kuhlman and Ophelia Ramirez, and we knew we would become friends.

 

Why some people – at least me (I, ?) – get mad at the government

Americana, Politics

Michele Leohart is an administrator in the DEA and, maybe, she is stoned and that is her excuse for her ridiculous answers. But I doubt it, I think the real reason is the Washington culture that actually prevents honesty and introspection. In this case, thanks to Congressman Jared Polis for doing what our Congresspeople should actually be doing.

Summer Solstice 2012

Around home, Current Affairs, Photography

Michele planned the return from her trip to Ireland so she could be there for the solstice (and spend some time with her step-sister). Yesterday, she went to see the Drombeg stone circle near Baltimore and liked it so much she went back this morning at 5 AM for the Summer Solstice Sunrise. Yesterday, it was clear and green and very Irish and this morning, after getting up in the middle of the night and driving for an hour, the sunrise was fogged in and – I guess – still very Irish.

Of course she had her iPhone and, of course, she had her handy App that tells her where the sun is coming up – or the moon, or Jupiter –  and, of course, it works in Ireland.

As an aside, I have never been to Ireland and have no connection with it but I do know all the Counties around Baltimore; County Cork, County Kerry, County Clare, County Limerick, County Tipperary,  County Kilkenny, County Waterford. I don’t think that there is any other place in the world where the names are that famous. Not Paris, not New York, not even London. It is very strange. End aside.

Twenty three and a half hours later, I was watching the Summer Solstice Sunset

 

cast its alpenglow on the buildings of San Francisco.

As the light faded, wisps of fog came in softening the scene and dropping the temperature. A very San Francisco Solstice.