Michele suggested that we go to Ramen Dojo for her birthday dinner. Ramen Dojo is, reputedly, the best ramen joint in San Mateo – if that seems strange, you don ‘t know San Mateo – and the ramen was great (chewy noodles with spice garlic and pork sauce).
Happy Birthday, Michele!
Michele and I saw Zero Dark Thirty Sunday night and we liked it alot. I was prepared to not like it, because of the torture controversy, and my general lack of enthusiasm for Hurt Locker (which won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, so what do I know). The best way I can describe the picture is that it is gritty and dense. I have never been to Pakistan – and, apparently, the picture hasn’t either having been filmed in Jordan and India, which pissed off both the Pakistanis and Indians – but the movie fit my imagined picture of Pakistan exactly.
Driving through the streets of Lahore, it seemed like they were either using thousands of extras or they really were there. I loved Django Unchained and Argo but, compared to Zero Dark Thirty, they seemed like cartoons shot on a set. Zero Dark Thirty seemed like the real deal. It was thrilling and, at the end, the audience cheered the winning team. Our Team! And I think that may be a problem.
The movie, sort of, presents itself as a documentary or fictionized documentary like Truman Capote’s True Blood. But it is not the real deal. It is not an objective look at what happened and today I am a little hung over from feeling so good while I watched the movie. There are several people who say it better than me, Jane Mayer and Matt Taibbi for example, and I think that I can best serve my point by giving a couple of quotes.
From Jane Mayer: In addition to providing false advertising for waterboarding, “Zero Dark Thirty” endorses torture in several other subtle ways. At one point, the film’s chief C.I.A. interrogator claims, without being challenged, that “everyone breaks in the end,” adding, “it’s biology.” Maybe that’s what they think in Hollywood, but experts on the history of torture disagree. Indeed, many prisoners have been tortured to death without ever revealing secrets, while many others—including some of those who were brutalized during the Bush years—have fabricated disinformation while being tortured. Some of the disinformation provided under duress during those years, in fact, helped to lead the U.S. into the war in Iraq under false premises.
From Matt Taibbi: Mohammed Al-Qatani, the so-called “20th hijacker,” who may have been some part of the inspiration for the “Ammar” character who was tortured in the opening scene, might have been the first detainee to mention the name of bin Laden’s courier. But as Gibney points out, al-Qatani gave that information up to the FBI, in legit, torture-free interrogations, before he was whisked away to Gitmo for 49 days of torture that included such insanities as forcing him to urinate on himself (by force-feeding him liquids while in restraints), making him watch a puppet show of him and bin Laden having sex, making him take dance lessons, making him wear panties on his head, and making him wear a “smiley-face” mask, along with the usual sleep and sensory deprivation, arm-hanging, etc. In other words, the key info may have come before they chucked our supposed standards for human decency.
In the end, nursing my post movie hangover, the, movie makes me a little sad.
and one quote…From Jane Mayer: Knowing the real facts—the ones that led the European Court of Human Rights to condemn America for torture this week—I had trouble enjoying the movie. I’ve interviewed Khaled El-Masri, the German citizen whose suit the E.C.H.R. adjudicated. He turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, an innocent car salesman whom the C.I.A. kidnapped and held in a black-site prison for four months, and who was “severely beaten, sodomized, shackled, and hooded.” What Masri lived through was so harrowing that, when I had a cup of coffee with him, a few years ago, he couldn’t describe it to me without crying. Maybe I care too much about all of this to enjoy it with popcorn. But maybe the creators of “Zero Dark Thirty” should care a little bit more.
I think that Tavi Gevinson and Stephen Colbert are two of the most interesting people in the world. Colbert sets himself up as a ranting right-wing idealog but I have seen him, over and over again, set up lefties to tell their point of view better than they usually can do. And he can sing and he is friends – and tumbling-mates – with Amy Sedaris. Gavinson is a savant without the serious mental disabilities. She would be very accomplished for a 35 year old woman, but she is only 16. And I mean, really an only 16 year old kid. She looks like a kid and talks like a kid and takes English and History in Highschool and has an accomplished staff of 50 on a magazine she founded and, apparently, runs. Check it out.
In talking to various people yesterday, I was surprised at how many hadn’t watched the inauguration on Monday. After all it was a holiday – maybe not on the same level as Christmas – without any football games to compete with it. Michele and I started watching it – DVR delayed – at eight in the morning and, after taking the middle of the day off, were watching, or re-watching, parts of it at ten that night. To me, it was a great reality show about America; the best, the worst, the meh. It was a reality show about the transfer of power.
Before he gave the benediction at the Congressional lunch for the president, His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church, looking at Chuck Schumer – the head of the organizing committee and MC for the day who was clearly having a great time – said Thank you, this is the greatest honor of my life. I can understand that, it seems to me that it would be the greatest honor in almost anybody’s life. He was the first Greek Orthodox anything to give such a benediction and it underline the theme for the day; inclusion. Inclusion in the American Dream, in the American tapestry. Acceptance and Acknowledgement in being an American.
In this case Acceptance included a second term African-American President. As an aside; I am one of those people who thinks winning a second term is even more important than winning the first. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said on Colbert the other night, using a football analogy, Winning once was like a Cinderella Team, winning the second time was defending the Championship. During his first term, Obama did some things very well and others not so good. He didn’t solve all our problems – I don’t think anybody could, they are just too big and too pervasive – but he diligently kept working at trying to solve them. I think he won re-election because the American people looked at him and saw an hardworking guy taking on huge problems as well as anybody could be expected to do.
Inaugurations are about the transfer of power. Something that was as rare as an unicorn until George Washington walked away from power after his second term. We are no longer the world’s only Democracy and, in some ways, we are not the most democratic, but we transfer power as well, if not better, than anybody. And, in a bigger and far more important way, we are the world’s leader in the transfer of power. The white, male, landowning, elite has transferred power to the rest of us. That is amazing. Just as George Washington was the first winning General to walk away from being a Dictator, I think that the American power elite was the first – and maybe the only, even today – power elite to transfer power.
Watching the Tuskegee Airman being honored by President Obama, in the Presidential Viewing Stand in front of the White House, brought tears to my eyes. But, the bigger, more important, image was the Tuskegee Airman’s escort, a black, female, Army Major. A black female who, during her career so far – and she looks pretty young so she is probably on a fast track – has commanded white troops. They might not have all liked it, but when she said Jump, they all jumped. That is astounding!
The parade that the President watched contained his Power Base. The new Americans: Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, African Americans. Without these Americans, Barack Hussein Obama would not be President. Without the Gay Vote and their Money, Obama would not be President. Without Women, Obama would not be President.
As an aside, it goes both ways;, Tom Ricks over at The Best Defense, posted, I think I didn’t appreciate how important Obama’s inauguration speech on Monday was to gay Americans. This thought dawned on me as I was walking my dogs on Monday night and passed a local gay bar. The entire second floor of the building was covered by a huge American flag. I found that moving. I find it moving, too. End aside.
I know that there are members of the White Elite Class that don’t like this transfer of power, that resent it and are afraid of the future, I know that there are some who want to take up guns and stop it. I know that there are those who want to go back to the Old Ways, but that will not happen.
The marchers in the street have felt their power, the power of being part of the American Tapestry, and I doubt they will be willing to go back. I hope and I expect the interlaced threads will only get more inclusive. Stronger. This Inauguration made me very happy.
Watching President Barack Hussein Obama’s 2nd inauguration made me proud to be an American. Again. From the time I saw him leave the White House to go to the Capitol, I kept tearing up (and marveling at the number of armored Cadillac limos it takes). The pomp, the tradition, a black man taking the oath of office on Martin Luther King Day, life is sweet.
And then to hear Obama acknowledge the Civil War and slavery with Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. 150 years after that war, almost 50 years after The March on Washington, is to see our collective picture of history start to change. To hear Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall together in an inaugural speech is not something I ever expected. Then to hear him talk about Immigration Reform and Climate Change. was way more than I expected. It was the progressive Obama I had hoped for and worked for four years ago.
Life is sweet today.