January 9, 2008

• Quotable Quotes

  Obama's Platform

  (This could really be said of ALL the Presidential candidates.  Ed.)

  "Barack Obama is in favour of hope, unity and change. If only his rivals
  would
  agree to campaign on a ticket of despair, discord and stagnation, the
  electorate
  would have a real choice."

       --Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, January 7 2008

  Film Review: Chalmers Johnson on Charlie Wilson's War

  (Any of you old enough to remember when it was ILLEGAL for Ollie North to
  channel money "under the table" to the Contras in Nicaragua?  Now, in the case
  of Charlie Wilson, it's humorous and just a trifle heroic.  Ed.)

  http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/print/174877/Tomgram%253A%2520%2520Chalmers%2520Johnson%252C%2520An%2520Imperialist%2520Comedy

  [....]

  One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages

  seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists. They start

  believing that they are the bearers of civilization, the bringers of

  light to "primitives" and "savages" (largely so identified because of

  their resistance to being "liberated" by us), the carriers of science

  and modernity to backward peoples, beacons and guides for citizens of

  the "underdeveloped world."

  [....]

  When imperialist activities produce unmentionable outcomes, such as

  those well known to anyone paying attention to Afghanistan since

  about 1990, then ideological thinking kicks in. The horror story is

  suppressed, or reinterpreted as something benign or ridiculous (a

  "comedy"), or simply curtailed before the denouement becomes obvious.

  Thus, for example, Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with

  inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team,

  <http://www.alternet.org/stories/71286/> notes that the
  film's happy

  ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the

  leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."

  [....]

  The tendency of imperialism to rot the brains of imperialists is

  particularly on display in the recent spate of articles and reviews

  in mainstream American newspapers about the film. For reasons not

  entirely clear, an overwhelming majority of reviewers concluded that

  Charlie Wilson's War is a "feel-good comedy" (Lou Lumenick in the New

  York Post), a "high-living, hard-partying jihad" (A.O. Scott in the

  New York Times), "a sharp-edged, wickedly funny comedy" (Roger Ebert

  in the Chicago Sun-Times). Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post

  wrote of "Mike Nichols's laff-a-minute chronicle of the congressman's

  crusade to ram funding through the House Appropriations Committee to

  supply arms to the Afghan mujahideen"; while, in a piece entitled

  "Sex! Drugs! (and Maybe a Little War)," Richard L. Berke in the New

  York Times offered this
  stamp of approval:

  <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/movies/16berk.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>

  "You can make a movie that is relevant and intelligent

  -- and palatable to a mass audience -- if its political pills are

  sugar-coated."

  [....]

  My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the

  kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college

  fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the

  tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and

  destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being

  offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is

  James Rocchi's summing-up for Cinematical:

  <http://www.cinematical.com/2007/12/21/review-charlie-wilsons-war-jamess-take/>
  
  "Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more

  malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia." 

  
  

  • 8:08 am
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