DISQUS

PS. - We can't know this: "But NOW only decided to endorse Obama after Palin joined McCain's ticket...even though McCain's ticket was just as extreme without her."

I bet they had decided to endorse Obama a while ago. Many organizations wait until closer to the election to make endorsements, to time them to when larger numbers of voters are paying attention. It would have been odd to endorse before both tickets were settled, and would have gotten utterly lost in the Palin news-drunk of last week,

How could NOW not endorse the most "feminist" ticket? This is what they do. Nobody forced them to take this stand.Why would they ever sit any election out? The only condition would be one where two women are running, both with equally strong feminist positions...and even then I think they would weigh which might have the most positive impact in the office.

I think the specific comments on Palin were meant to argue against the ridiculous notion that if there's a woman candidate running women should vote for her.

One of their best episodes, I thought. The Joan development - her talent, her high business value, the trigger of insecurity in her fiance, the
gross stupidity in hiring that young guy to do "her" job...boy, I hope they play this out well. It's rich material. Joan needs to head up the TV Department before this is over. --- Betty working up a sunrise sweat, beating the crap out of a chair, and slopping around in her wonder bread party dress... I liked it.

Haunted by an absurdity of last night's episode, I came here to see if it struck anyone at this club.
Given the way Don left Bobbie last week, would he really have showed up at this part with Betty in tow for crying out loud, and would the Don-Bobbie greeting have played as it did?!
Tom, I actually feel compassion for Don and Betty. They both just seem deeply lost to themselves.
Reynolds, I think Don is about addiction to secrets and a war between not being known versus being known. The sex strikes me as a subset of that.

It strikes me that both Biden and Obama are trying to just stay reasonably off to the side and let the under-vetted Palin candidacy make its way...to wherever it's going to go. Which, as things unfold, seems like a very apt instinct. I honestly think Biden meant his comment as a way of side-stepping the matter with what he meant as a light put-down of himself. My experience is that it's not the words so much as the energy behind the words. I don't get power-over or put-down energy from Biden. I think he genuinely loves and respects women. Maybe that's because I'm married to a man who can make some very un-pc, and often coarse, comments. Someone who doesn't know him could read his words and be offended. People who are lucky enough to know him revel in his idiosyncratic juicyness, and they all recognize him as a pure champion of all things feminine. Even my 75-year-old mother finds great joy and laughter in his most outrageous comments. Because she "gets" energy.

Ever been to the Smithsonian First Ladies Exhibit? It has loads of interesting history about their work, but the joy and color of the exhibit is the fashion: all their inaugural gowns and more. Should we force the Smithsonian to get those dresses out of there?

Now comes Michelle Obama, who has a tremendous and free fashion sense, which she carries on a strong body that radiates healthy self-confidence. How could people not notice? All things in their proper place, but fashion - which is part of beauty - has its place.

The author of that LA Times piece is one of their entertainment writers. It's part of the fluffy part of the paper. I'm not sure it's shit for an entertainment reporter to offer up some fashion analysis.

That said, I do worry about the daughters in general, just as I worried for Chelsea, who was - and this really was shit - made fun of for being homely when she was all of 12! - I remember - at a Thanksgiving gathering after the 92 election - making a quite loud scene when two guys made the sorry mistake of jumping on that hateful bandwagon. One fled the party. The other sent me an apology gift later.

I'm white. Grew up in small town Pennsylvania, very low black population. The two black kids I knew from most of my school classes were immensely popular; Ruth and Phillip were both very smart, creative, and funny. One night at a school basketball game, I was standing with a group of six "girlfriends" at half-time. At one point, Betsy Gipe - realizing she couldn't finish her super-size coke in time to go back into the gym - offered it to others to drink by sweeping her hand around the circle. But when her hand got to Ruth, it involuntarily jerked back. The rest of us were welcome to suck on her straw, but not Ruth. I happened to be looking at Ruth when it happened and we both recognized it for exactly what it was. I'll never forget what passed between our eyes. It changed how I viewed Betsy. I never looked at her again without thinking of that one ugly moment.

Oops. I somehow lost the last line above - source for that is internet movie database.

Dawn, there's also another story about the ending: On "Inside the Actors Studio", director Mike Nichols said that the final "sobering" emotion that Benjamin and Elaine go through was because he had just been shouting at the two of them to laugh in the scene. The actors were so scared that after laughing they stopped, scared. Nichols liked it so much, he kept it.

I am confused. I don't hear Obama taking women for granted. Chris Matthews, who gets far less than a million viewers per show, doesn't speak for Obama and certainly doesn't sound like him. Meanwhile, the Democrats have done a lot more than protect Roe v Wade. Their general approach to health care and social security and education and 50-state civic engagement are all much more feminine in nature than anything the Republican Party offers. Is the Democratic Party perfect? No. No party ever will be. But it's something we can make better by all getting more actively involved at ground level. - I look at the videos of the Obama campaign's community activist workshops and note how genuinely empowering they are. They are giving people training that can be used for many other things than just working for Obama. This kind of ground-up empowerment is feminine in nature. I've waited decades for such potential to take root.

Awfully good job. Lance. --- But for the sound of gunshots in the neighborhood... right close, I might add... I would have been here longer. - I gotta say I'm having a hard time going with the misogyny notion vis-a-vis that film list. And, of course, I've read nothing but good things from the women he's worked with. But it would be interesting if a man served actual women well, while creating characters that revealed something else entirely. Interesting, but I don't see it here. His humor with May indicates his interest in playing with difficult types. But how is that misogynistic?

Lance: Oh. So maybe it was Spielberg's guardian angel what killed the porn!

JC says "(Ben's) just as empty as everyone else in the move" ... Really? I think he's lost, but doesn't he show some genuine feeling and vulnerability to Elaine? Couldn't she be drawn to this as more alive than what she has known?

Lance, I haven't been able to get to the book yet. It's right here, so close I can touch it. Like just now - there, I touched it. But all I know about it is from an online interview with the author by Elvis Mitchell on KCRW. Am wondering if it says much about things that found their way into the film accidentally but have been interpreted as having Big Meaning. - This has always fascinated me about film history: how often things happen in film making that weren't planned but end up making the film a very specific thing. One of my favorite examples: Bob Balaban published his journal from the making of Close Encounters. The original script had a substantial subplot about Truffaut's character loving porn. Every single thing they shot for this ended up damaged in some way and they had to drop that whole element. Now, imagine that film with the pornography stuff! I say that movie knew better and made sure it didn't get messed up by some director's personal fascination and over-emphasis on playing with one of his director-heroes. There are so many tales like this. Someone should collect them into a book some time.

I love Ben being **conveyed** in the opening airport scene. That he would end up on that bus is just perfect.

I agree with both Tom and Lance that it's a movie that was oddly out of its time, which probably (1) helped ease the broad audience into the genuinely subversive indies that would follow, and (2) lulled those studio execs into a naive security that let them give so much free reign to all those great directors who would make the 1970's the real golden age of movies.

But what The Graduate has in spades is style. In the performances. In the remodeled noir touches. In tremendously sophisticated use of color.

"No doubt Ben & Elaine would have wound up late 1960s early 1970s california divorcees"

Probably true. But I used to think I was teaching the children of the Ben & Elaine (types) in the movie (that is, late sixties college grads) - people who, though unconsciously unsettled by the energies of the decade, never really caught the conscious part of it. The kind of Boomers who are vaguely off to the side of their generation.

"By setting out to sleep with Ben, she’s threatening to destroy her marriage"

OR...

That marriage is already so dead she doesn't even feel or consider this possibility.

Maybe Ben - the recent grad - takes her back to a time just after she lost her life to this awful marriage?

"When Ben starts dating Elaine, Mrs Robinson sets out to destroy her own daughter’s future happiness"

OR...

She considers Ben poisoned goods. After all, she has poisoned him. What if she's protecting her daughter in some bizarrely twisted way that is born of self-loathing?

I feel for Mrs. Robinson...a walking dead woman to whom art once spoke.