DISQUS

More than fair to Jim Baker? Well, since you felt (rightly) that such a statement required the qualifier "considering it's very much a pro Dem film", I guess you are agreeing with my point that the folks saying it had no political bias were either lying or (more likely in my view) comically blind to their own prejudices.

Not sure if or how the visuals affected my judgment of blandness. Consciously, I didn't think of it as a visual problem. More a lack of credible drama that often accompanies dramas populated by one- or two-dimensional characters.

Funny thing about this show -- I saw the people behind it on Charlie Rose, and they insisted that it had no political bias. For dramatic reasons, they took the perspective of the underdog (Gore campaign) they explained, but presented it down the middle.

That sounded wrong to me -- and I don't know why they would feel the need to say it -- but I couldn't say how wrong until I watched the thing. To say the least, it was heavily laden with political perspective. (I can't imagine too many folks would dispute this, but one never knows.)

By way of example, can you imagine the response in "progressive" circles if a Dem woman charged with overseeing election returns were attacked for her makeup and appearance a la Katherine Harris? Where's the umbarge that HRC supporters took for the Hillary-cackle-crowd?

Now, it's a historical fact that scorn was heaped on Harris by the D's, but the show didn't just show it -- the show joined and reveled in it, while ignoring more important historical facts (like all the post-election media recounts that showed Gore falling short.)

It's central theme is that the R's won because they only cared about winning, while the D's lost because they put country first. But what, exactly, did the D's refrain from doing to support this narrative? They went to the highest court they thought would favor them, where they won, and then lost at the next one up. Too bad, so sad, but where's the moral superiority?

Not coincidentally, the show was also strangely bland, I thought, given the inherent drama of what it portrayed (and the rave reviews). The lack of self-awareness that makes someone blind to their own bias seldom comes coupled with a gift for entertaining others, I suppose.

The R&R HOF is the very worst corporate exploitation of popular culture in the last 20 years.

Madonna clearly belongs in.

Those are NOT unrelated propositions.

But Madonna has provided some modest entertainment along with tons of self-important crap. The R&R HOF is nothing but the tons of self-important crap.

Quadrophenia shares the water theme with another 20th C. artist and Faber editor: see T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" (note the tetraphic name).

I daresay Eliot surpasses Pete's lyrical gift, but not by nearly so great a margin as that by which Pete outrocks the Possum.

There are numerous other Townshend-Eliot connections, which I'd love to see developed by someone with access to the resources necessary to get at the root of them. "Drowned" from Q and The Sea Refuses No River from Pete's solo work are part of the answer here (as, I suppose, must be his later solo work, "All Shall Be Well", echoing Little Gidding echoing Julian of Norwich). I think there's a reason the lyric "Teenage Wasteland" isn't "Teenage Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Night".

Someone who knows how Townshend came to work at Faber could doubtless contribute to this important study. My effort to raise it, years ago, on the U. of Missouri's T.S. Eliot listserve went over like a Led Zeppelin.

That Eva Marie-Saint has remarkable upper-body strength.

*There is, of course, more to the story with Draper/Whitman…*

Maybe. Or, maybe they'll just cue something by Journey and say, "f*ck 'em all."

Well, Giambi wiffed.

Hey, the Yankees have the tying run on deck with 2 outs in the 9th . . .

The wanna-be-author-dweeb's wife has an unusually expressive neck.

But, Brendan, Mill was speaking of the Tories, who really have nothing to do with U.S.-style conservatism (itself a difficult enough thing to define). See: http://politicalspectrum.blogspot.com/2005/11/a...

Greene was clearly anti-American, I think, if that definition includes someone who is not inherently hostile to the US or Americans, but is strongly opposed to US policy. In VN, he was also very prescient.

Another author who is sometimes considered anti-American, but I think was not, is Bernard Fall, the indispensible resource (in English, at least) on the French Indochina war, and a very valuable one on the US war (in which he died, ~1968, pursuing a story on the "Street Without Joy" that he had named one of his key works after).

I haven't read enough of Webb's work to make a judgment, though I have liked everything I have read (mostly articles, speeches and essays) and recommend "Fields of Fire", his first novel, very highly.

DeLattre did not lose the North. He did not lose anything. He concentrated on the North (when many wanted efforts focused in the south). He established a perimeter within which Hanoi and key rice fields were found, and defended in more effectively than anyone had been able to previously. When he was recalled, France's prosepcts were brighter than anyone thought they would be when he had started. But it wasn't enough; after he left, the line he had established could not hold, permanently, Dien Bien Phu came, and France lost Vietnam. Not the North: she lost the whole thing at once. There's a good piece on his efforts, prepared for a US military publication in 1969, at:

https://calldbp.leavenworth.army.mil/eng_mr/txt...

The Iraq War is a "colonial war" in the sense that, like the US involvement in VN, it carries all the disadvantages of a colonial war: resentment of occupation and outside interference, nationalist opposition, etc. I think you understate the significance of this when you say there is not "a particularly nationalist movement arrayed against us." To the extent this is true, it is only because Iraq is not, particularly, a nation. But there is significant resentment, combining national, ethnic and religious elements (with the latter predominating).

It is not, in fact, a colonial war because, if we prevail, we don't get to possess anything (like the US-VN scenario). This is a difference with enormous moral implications, but seems to have no favorable effect on our operations or reputation. In part, this is because many suspect that we have larger designs than we admit; in part, it's because any Western nation that seeks to control the internal political structure of a 3d world (and esp. moslem) country is going to be viewed as the moral equivalent of colonial for a long time, however benign their actual intent may be.

This got me thinking once again about the aptness, or inaptness, of parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.

Bringing in Gen. Patraeus reminds me of the French going to Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. de Lattre was a first rate commander, and enjoyed
a good deal of success before being withdrawn with a fatal cancer
(shortly after his son was KIA).

Some still say he would have won the Indochina War for France had he
stayed healthy. God willing, Patraeus will stay healthy, and he may prove just as able.

While most analogies between Iraq and VN (French or US) are severely
flawed, the following one, which may be the most important, holds up, I
think: both are out of time, in that each is post- or quasi- or neo-colonial. All of these cover for policies that are not in fact
colonial, but may as well be for all the chance they have of succeeding
in the modern world.

If de Lattre has stayed healty, France might not have been driven out of Indochina for a while longer, but she would have gone, just as she
went from Algeria, and just as we, whatever the abilities of Gen. P,
will eventually go from Iraq. We can, however, put that eventuality
off a very long way if we are prepared to remain in a state of armed readiness for battle. Are we?Should we be? Those are the important questions now, I think. Because whatever happens next, the day is coming when we will have to decide if we want to accept the
consequences of leaving, or those of staying, and neither is gonna be
pretty.