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WaPo, Weigel... and Whaddya Want From Me?

It's been a while since I managed to get out in front of a developing story, but apparently, Twitter is my friend: my post on Dave Weigel beat out a lot of Washington journo types, even if it didn't break far and wide. My own desire to see other reactions, though, was frustratingly delayed, and it's only in the last few hours that I got a good survey in as well as some examination of more of Weigel's work.

I think there's a couple of lingering lessons to Weigel's departure from the Washington Post, though it's anyone's guess if there can be a sustained discussion on them - indeed, given that one place where that conversation was probably essential, the JournoList itself, is no more.

There's been a lot of handwringing and soul searching about the List and about what did or didn't happen on it. I think it's clear, however one wants to play this, that David Frum's hyperbolic take on the JournoList as a dangerous subversive force is decidedly overblown (Frum, in his usually bright way of having it all ways at once, even smartly posts his own corrective, but doesn't retract anything in his own piece).

Is/Was the JournoList, or the idea of it harmless? Is it just, as defenders suggest, a nifty way to get a conversation going and lively debate, or is it, as others suggest, a more dangerous invitation to groupthink and exclusion? Pardon me if I think the answer is both; I have no doubt it served a purpose and probably a useful one for a number of people (just as I suspect that Ezra is right that, in some form, it will sneak back, probably smaller, and more closed). I think a lot of people bandy the word "groupthink" around, but don't entirely understand how it works or why, ultimately, it's problematic. And while I'm sure there was lively debate and dissent among a collection of writers and thinkers, the substantive problem is exclusion and secretiveness. What Ezra has never entirely explained, or revealed, is who was on the List, and why; or who wasn't and why not. Vaguely, he's written that the Listserv was left leaning/liberal and designed to avoid the kind of "food fight" dimensions of left/right debate as it currently plays out. That's fine... but you can't talk about a "lively debate" where all sides get aired... and leave out a side. And just as pointedly, you can't make obvious points about self selection, exclusivity and elitism... and argue how open the litserv or its ideas were. A closed loop is defined by being... well, closed.

I don't think this kind classist, elitist, exclusionary debate is going to just go away; and in many ways, and on many levels, the divisions within elite circles - as well as the large numbers excluded from them - is central to our politics, our culture and our blogosphere, just now. As much as I think JournoList was benign and not all that crucial to the political discourse... I think the sense of "in or out", of whether you were in on it or out of it, was  what brought JournoList into prominence, what made it problematic (as many outsiders are now pointing out), and in its way, made the Weigel incidents all too likely to occur. As I concluded in snarky, but serious, manner the last time: the promise of the web, really, lies in the possibilities of broadening our conversations and exposing more people to more ideas and information. Yes, there are problems, but in general, I tend to favor what the web has wrought: more transparency, less ability to hide, and less ability for message controlling elements to entirely succeed.

Just as tantalizing, though, I think, is that Weigel's dismissal from WaPo underscores the question of what is journalism just now, and what constitutes "doing it well". It's telling, I think, that so many posts about Weigel, admiring his brilliance, offer no real examples or links to his work. Having scanned through a good bit of writing, I don't think what Weigel's been doing is all that remarkable, passing along observations and some insights into the conservative side of the political spectrum just now, usually for more left-ish outlets. Much is made, and has been of Weigel's personal politics... but this is one case where the personal and the political are beside the point: finding out what's driving "tea party anger" and energy on the right isn't hard; discovering that the appeal of Sarah Palin is real and speaks to a disaffected audience is hardly a stretch. But the reality is... many liberals/ progressives don't want to know and can't be bothered to find out. Weigel's work, then, becomes easy shorthand for doing the actual work: here's what they're saying, here's why they say it... and usually, here's why they're wrong.

Is it any wonder, then, that many conservatives were getting progressively more steamed at suggestions that Weigel was some sort of brilliant "reporter" of the right wing?

I'll go further: I don't think this is journalism. And in a week where Michael Hastings reminded us, brutally and brilliantly, what real journalism is and what it can do, it's perhaps instructive and related that both Weigel and McChrystal were forced to resign, and in many ways, over the same thing: supposedly "private "comments, aired in public, that reflected badly on their professional responsibilities.

As much as anyone, I share the sense that newspapers and newsgathering organizations are floundering in this new web driven age for a couple of reasons: advertising revenue has been decimated by the web, especially in turning classified ads into Craigslist. And also because from a content standpoint, new organizations are still struggling to integrate what's useful about blogs into their overall structure without losing sight of the need for "old fashioned" skills like reporting and fact checking and editing. As I've said, I like Ezra Klein, and in no small way, he's been a personally important guiding light for me in figuring out how I could, in fact, blog for myself. But I have no idea, none, what his blog contributes to the Washington Post that isn't better served by actual reporters and more fully developed news stories. Because the thing is, Ezra's not that great at many things, and doesn't necessarily know all that much... like many of us. What made his blog so intriguing that what he did know was well presented, and that the conversations he generated were, in themselves, productive and revealing. I suspect that was as true in his Journo List. But that's not journalism, either.

And none of this is to single out Ezra; I could say, and have said, similar things about Matt Yglesias, Spencer Ackerman (though Ackerman, oddly, has I think become a solid military and national security reporter) or a bunch of others, including most of the "obvious names" of the "Progressive Blogosphere." The value of blogs, I'm convinced, and live out, lies in the sharing of information and ideas... but it's not reporting, and it's not, usually, what journalism is or should be. That's not good, bad, better or worse... it's just different. And I think, as Americans, we're at once amazingly innovative and creative... and at the same time... we struggle with different. A lot.

Finally, just an observation: the real lesson of Weigel - and of McChrystal - is that many of the notions which define "public" and "private" are social conventions and illusions. It's one reason why, most liberally... I don't necessarily believe in an expansive notion of "privacy" per se. I do believe in the right to be left alone, but I think arguments, especially legal ones, built on notions that we have some "privacy zone" are shaky, at best (One day, I'll share my long argument that Roe v. Wade actually works because it says a woman has a right to consult her doctor and make decisions about her own medical condition, not because she has a right to privacy). And brings us back around: the trouble with a "JournoList" is that, ultimately, it equates exclusion with privacy. One's wrong, and the other is illusory... and our web instincts fly in the face of both: do it in the open, and invite everyone in.

In Which We Solve Repealing Glass Steagall By Passing... Something Which Isn't Glass Steagall

I've kept my blogging far away from "FinReg", the attempt to revive some financial regulations in the wake of the economic collapse, for a couple of reasons: a) it seemed absurd to get one's hopes up about any kind of actual serious reform and b) up until the past few weeks, I haven't been convinced that anything would get passed at all.

Still, like healthcare, this current moment in DC governance seems marked by "at any cost" approaches to legislating - these people will pass bills and take on the "hard topics" if it kills them.

Thankfully, the only thing that may get killed is more than a few careers in Congress. And possibly a second term for this President.

Let's just dismantle a few tropes that have driven the "FinReg" story (as wel as the atrocious use of "FinReg"): this economic crisis we're living through was neither unpredictable or unknowable. It was housing bubble that many saw happening, and which could have been stopped, or slowed, by a number of actions, which weren't taken, for a variety of reasons. And the financial regulation that clearly would have helped, and was repealed in a mistaken cave to the banks, was Glass-Steagall, the Depression era bank regulation which said, presciently, when you allow banks to speculate in securities without supervision... you'll get financial disaster.

Which we've now proved... twice.

Rather than restore some of the basic provisions of Glass Steagall, Financial Regulation Reform goes at most of the problems kind of backwards and on the edges; it's heartening, yes, that we will with this legislation see an attempt to regulate derivatives and hedge funds, and some of the modern effects of computer generated securities. But some very basic elements of asserting control over the financial system - like Glass Steagall's prohibitions on banks engaging in speculative trading - are dead issues that can't be restored... but should.

More basically, the problem I have with the financial regulation is summed up in "Too Big To Fail", the theory that some institutions, like AIG and Citigroup (and others we don't discuss much, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and GE Capital and GMAC) got to be monstrous entities that couldn't be closed because there was no way to unwind their hold over large swaths of the financial world. The new law, we are told, bravely takes on "Too Big To Fail" by putting in place provisions for unwinding even the largest companies. There isn't enough money and the whole idea is untested... but goodness yes, this time we're safe. Er. Er... safer.

Of course, a more simple, basic project might be to define "too big".

One other element of Glass Steagall - which seemed to work - was that it specificallyt limited the size of banks, holding them to a certain percentage of all deposits in the country (which, I recll, was somewhere between 20 and 25 percent). Both Bank of America and Citi had to get special waivers from Treasury - before Glass Steagall wads repealed - in some of their more recent mergers, because they became larger than the limit. Or... you know, too big.

I'm not trying to undermine the whole idea of reform here - thank goodness, really, that it looks as though the Congress will actually do something, however limited, to make some mild reforms. Even if, you know, those reforms are full of loopholes, and probably help put in place furture avenues for speculation and economic problems. At least, there's a start. Doing nothing, in this case, would actually be worse.

But let's keep in mind that the "heroes" of this story - Chris Dodd and Barney Frank - are as emblematic of the problem as anyone in finance, and probably should be questioned as closely. There's a reason that Dodd, a "family dynasty" politician who was quite comfortable supporting Connecticut's extensive ties to banking and insurance, is retiring this year rather than face what was shaping as an ugly defeat. And though Frank has mostly survived rough questions about his blind eye to Fannie's and Freddie's failings until well past the time when things needed to be addressed, he remains a dubious vessel for Democratic adoration on banking and finance... and continues to be a good example of the need to shake up traditional party machine politics.

So now it looks like the regulations will pass. And get signed. And we'll be saved. Right?

Right?

Friday Evening Footwear

jinb
 

Inside, Outside, All Around The Town

Since I got my BlackBerry (and learned the whole meaning of "CrackBerry" compulsions to read it, constantly), I've found myself more connected to, of all things, Twitter. When I had to go to work in the midst of the McChrystal meltdown, it was via BlackBerry that I was able to get the key deets of the resignation, the choice of Petraeus, and pretty much the full gist of Obama's Rose Garden speech (much of which can be ascribed to a single man: CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, who tweets the President's every move, brilliantly).

Today, as I was doing other things, I learned that Dave Weigel resigned from the Washington Post.

Weigel, a longtime blogger - who as far as I can tell, was never that compelling a read - was recently hired to be the "right side" blogger for the WaPo, a post the, er, Post can't seem to successfully for any sustained amount of time (it's the same one that they gave to Ben Domenech, only to see Domenech's career destroyed as he turned out to have a fabulist past). Weigel was knocked, and has been under constant fire since his hire, for not actually being that conservative; he's among the well connected young DC blogger set, less connected to the actual right wing he was hired to cover.

That was bound to cause problems, though I'm not sure anyone could have foretold what unraveled in the past couple of days (stay with me): based on some gossipy reporting about Weigel (and his girlfriend, whop was named in a piece in the Examiner, though she wasn't there) at Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle's wedding, Weigel sent some incendiary comments out over JournoList, a listserv run by (I said stay with me) Ezra Klein, which were made public on a couple of other blogs.

Looking them over, I'd say the most problematic was his wish to see Matt Drudge set himself on fire, though even that comment, which suggested Drudge was a deeply negative person, didn't strike me as especially remarkable.

In any case, though Weigel issued an apology post at his blog, he has subsequently resigned.

I thought I'd written something about JournoList about a year ago, March 2009 specifically, when there was a Politico article about it and Ezra had to explain it himself. I didn't... probably because it wasn't all that interesting. But I thought then, and still do, that a listserv like JournoList is actually kind of problematic, and probably would lead to controversy.

Weigel's drama wasn't necessarily predictable, but there's something to all the thin-skinned responses, his included, to being subjected to the same journalistic impulses as anyone else: be careful what you say, especially when thinking a comment is "private" (to an e-mail list of prominent journalists? Seriously?), and also that blogging is a different thing when done professionally, as a job. And also should be treated accordingly.

As for Journo List, it's of a piece with my general thinking about ideas like the "Progressive Blogosphere" and the DC Bloggerboiz (who, naturally, are appalled by the WaPo making Weigel step down): this whole world of hip DC bloggers (oxymoronic all unto itself) is just too insular, too caught up in familiar DC tropes about being on "the inside" and part of the in crowd, and because of it, giving lie to the very notions of "openness" and "transparency" they claim to favor. Everything should be transparent... except an insider listserv of interconnected bloggers, academics and others. On the inside... it's a whole other story.

From the outside it does, yes, seem all very high school and silly. Except for the part where, like high school, the people from the in clique seem to think that being in it makes some sort of difference. That Weigel got canned for being, in essence, unprofessional is a good reminder that there are at least a few rules even the cool kids have to follow as well.

That, and I'm still waiting for this wonderful world of open, transparent blogging which I was promised. :)

Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend David?

Yesterday was one of those wonderful, terrible days for a news junkie like me. Events unfolding minute by minute, things moving fast and unpredictable... great... but what can you write about it?

As you may have noticed (heh), I'm not a minute by minute blogger. I think one sentence, single link posts are insulting, just generally, and I dislike opinion mongering on the fly (which, by extension, is why I find Ezra so frustrating - it's the dreadful combination of taking in too many stories, forming too many opinions on the fly, and being able to epound on them both quickly and at length. Dangerous combo, that).

I was all set to write a little something about the upcoming day's events... but pretty much as I reached for the pooter, McChrystal was pulling up to the White House, and I thought... "okay, wait and see." And then I went to work... and wait and see was watch and learn. So, in the end, I'm kind of glad I waited.

In retrospect, I think the President had no choice but to fire McChrystal ("accept his resignation' if you prefer); I didn't think that at the top of the week when the first few quotes surfaced, but by yesterday, when I spent the morning reading the Rolling Stone piece, it was clear: no one can, or should, survive this. Disrespectful on so many levels, insulting not just to people he works with on a daily basis, but also his boss, and, probably more troubling, to our allies (the thing about meeting the French minister as "fucking gay" probably really did him in)... an apology won't do, and "don't do that again" will not suffice.

Still, people who actually read the Rolling Stone piece - proof, by the way, that magazine journalism is still crucial, and good reporting trumps just about everything else - will realize that relieving McChrystal of command is no answer to the real problems the story raises: that the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan isn't working, and most likely can't work, both because it takes longer and needs more soldiers than we have... but also because the Army may, in essence, be fundamentally wrong about the whole thing to begin with.

Which, in the end is why the Petraeus choice is both politically brilliant, and probably the worst news yet in the war.

Let's give the President some credit: he rose to the occasion. At a moment when I think he needed a big political event to go his way, he delivered. Keeping his hand close, he kept his decision out of sight until it was a done deal, and then gave what, probably, was one of his best set of remarks yet - and I don't say that lightly or to cheerlead - showing that, applied properly, staying classy and focused on the matters at hand can be his best strength. He went out of his way to praise McChrystal, and respect his service. And, in strong terms, he reaffirmed civilian control of the military, and made it clear that some actions are firing offenses... and liking or not liking him is not one of them.

Selecting Petraeus is, on many levels, also brilliant: it will surely silence the right, all but the angriest and most shrill. Petraeus is their hero and unassailable. No serious conservative can fault Obama for picking him, even as they whine about the overall war plans. Which makes the whining, well... whiny.

On the left, given the day's events, many will take the optics over the deeper issues; so many people so badly want to cling to their unvarnished hero worship of Obama that any and every move must be portrayed as genius. And the genuinely succesful aspects of yesterday's actions will give them a lot to hang that hero worship on for weeks to come.

But Petraeus? Seriously?

The genius of the move, of course, is that failure - if that's where we're headed - will now be surely spread around. If General Petraeus can't make the counterinsurgency strategy work, no one can, and the decision to withdraw, if it happens on schedule, will look less like one side's refusla to stay and fight. But having Petraeus in charge makes another scenario all too possible: that, come 2011, if things are rough but leaving looks bad... it will be hard to withdraw on the set schedule.

The McChrystal mess presented the President, most, with an opportunity to restate and rethink the commitment in Afghanistan; it's been clear, in recent weeks, that almost every analysis of the war points to more failure than success, with few real options for fixing what isn't working. I've learned more, in the last few days, about "rules of engagement" in armed conflict than I ever wanted to know, and even I'm concinced that, unless something changes, our soldiers are stuck with bad rules that make it hard for them to do what they need to do to get it done. At the same time, a conflict like Afghanistan is horrible precisely because the rules are so gray: the lines between "civilians" and "soldiers" are extremely unclear, and war itself perverts the distinctions.

What General McChrystal expressed to Rolling Stone, along with his team, was a palpable frustration with a lack of the elements needed to win; that didn't change with firing him, or replacing him with a similarly gung-ho advocate of further fighting. From the beginning, the President's plan seemed like a hash of halfway measures, and still does. And halfway measures, really, never work. As heartening as it was to see the President rise to an internal challenge from his own team, the problems remain, and we're too loikely, I think, to see a return to the left-side cheerleading that makes it hard to get the necessary critical mass to turn back a disastrous strategy for a failed, and failing, war. Expecting David Petraeus to save us... seriously, what is that?

The Corporate Conundrum

As bad as Joe Barton's apology was - anyone who can, in one swoop, take the heat off of Obama, The Democrats and Tony Heyward all at once is a master of self destruction - one issue he raised does sort of sit there, tantalizing us: how do we manage the relationship between corporations and government, and is President Obama going too far in exerting influence over corporate leaders?

One of the lingering fallacies that shapes our political discussions is a kind of zero-sum notion about the political parties and big business: thanks to Roosevelt, and mostly because of the Depression, Democrats are considered anti-corporate and anti big business. Republicans, by contrast, are seen as catering to corporate interests and being the cheerleaders of a muscular, regulation free capitalism.

Neither story is especially true, especially now. And trying to unpack some of the oversimplifications would go a long way to redefining both our political conversation and set, I suspect, a more realistic sense of what can and should be done when government and business interact.

My own take is shaped, in no small way, by my workinglife, but isn't necessarily exceptional; it's just weird to be a liberal Democrat in the private sector, big business world. I've pretty much always worked for profit making companies, companies that succeed at what they do, and whose profits helped pay my salaries. As someone with extensive retail experience, I've got a very practical sense of what it means to make sales and help the bottom line. And at times, in various roles, I've been pretty good at helping my company make money.

I mention this because when you approach liberal ideas and ideals while believing, to some degree, in the strength and value of the private business sector... I find it does change the conversation. Though I don't think the Democratic Party is anti-business, I do think that liberalism, especially from liberals less involved in the business world, can be reflexively anti-corporate; it's instinctive, almost definitional, to suspect the motives and intent of businesses, and by extension, business people.

But as I said... I don't think that's the case with the Democratic Party, and I think the rise of a liberal, elite, well educated professional class has complicated the familiar lines about how bad corporations are and how they must be seen as the enemy. Beginning in the Clinton years I think you can trace the rise of a notion of "enlightened" corporat-ism, a "corporations are bad... but my company is doing things differently" kind of rationalization take hold for lefty indviduals who had to rationalize their own careers and choices while staying true to familiar beliefs. We bifurcate companies into good and bad, tell ourselves that, for instance, Apple is about doing good, while ExxonMobil, the most profitabvle entity on Earth, is bad. The left side view of corporations, I'd submit, has become complicated and confused, leading to a bewildering morass of policy and intraparty contradictions: liberals cling to notions of corporations as bad actors, yet the party relies heavily - too heavily, I'd agree - on the largesse of liberals who've made private sector fortunes, and compromises, constantly, on proposals and plans to try and prepetuate this idea of an enlightened corpoation, trying to join the public sector in doing good.

On the right, the pursuit of a bloc of entrepeneur class business generators, especially as part of the swing to the South and to religion-based conservatism, has undone a lot of reflexive, big business thinking among Republicans. Yes, the party still seems like the place for a certain kind of older, white corporate leader; but increasingly, the party's real appeal and strength lies in small and medium size business leaders and an investor class that includes successful retirees. That's why, in some ways, it's been easy for many of the exurban district Congresspeople of the right to sound as angry at BP as any inner city representing Democrat; their real constituency, as many have pointed out, is the more independent businesses of fishing and hospitality and retail along the Gulf coast, suffering as a result of the spill. 

It's easy, as many of us - the gadflyers and outliers on the left - have noted, to say the net result of all this realigning is that no one, in fact, is speaking well for the working class... but the other complication is that neither party, really, has a handle on how to manage the corporate sector. The left is hamstrung by the tension between doubting corporations and befriending them, while the right is riven by determining which master it would prefer to serve  (and thus, taking easy, pro-any-size-business ideas like rejecting almost all business taxes as excessive). And when an event like an oil spill occurs... both sides, all sides, are left... struggling to align their interests with the need to deal, forcefully, with BP.

This, I think, foes a long way to understanding why Republicans can't, as Barton demonstrates, get the balance right on BP: the noises some conservatives make about MMS being ineffective under Obama and not being sufficiently hard on BP flies in the face of years of Republican assertions that less regulation and more pro-business approaches to regulation were the ideal. And further, without developing any kind of long term thinking on energy policy and still, reflexively leery of regulating, Republicans have nothing to offer as a post-BP plan to prevent future danger.

On the left, though, things are not necessarily more clear: the rift between environmentalists who want BP banished and Washington types who made BP a "partner" in cleanup has riven the left to its core. Trying to unpack what happened on Deepwater Horizon and why has been complicated by shrill, anticorporate demogoging by reporters, Congressional folks, and concerned activists. I'm not trying to excuse or explain BP; no apologies here. But as I;ve argued repeatedly, environmental and enrgy policy on the left renains in serious denial of the relaities around oil: how much we need it, the lengths we'll go to get it, and the compromises we face to accept the oil needing world we helped create and perpetuate. Falling back on our familiar easy lines about corporate bad guys and distrust of big business doesn't just ring hollow... it simply won't work. Not when two of Obama's biggest contributors - employees of Goldman Sachs and of BP - amount to the people we say we want to punish.

In this complicated environment, then, I'm not sure that the bad thing here is that President Obama has found, in his way, an approach to refining the way the Presidency deals with the corporate world. Indeed, I'd say the President has been at something of his best pressuring GM, say, to remove it's corporate leaders as a condition of accepting government bailout money. Or getting BP to firmly commit $20 billion to an independent fund to pay people affected by the oil spill. These actions speak to realities we live with every day - the importance of car manufacturing in our economy, or the need for corporate players to shoulder responsibility when actions have consequences. Far from being examples of "government takeovers" or "shakedowns" of private industry, the President's actions chart a new course in the reality of our corporate driven world and reflects the intertwining of our public and private lives with business and government having a role to play.

Republicans, I think, don't have an answer to these confounding actions, because the current conservative distrust of government is killing their ability to think creatively about the public-private partnership... but I think the real challenge of Obama's more successful intercessions is on the left, where what's working so well in government actions challenges so many preconceived ideas of What Government Should Do and Whose Side We Are On. I don't think you can be on the side both of the big business and of the worker... but the reality is, both Democrats and Republicans are being pushed, ultimately, to pick a side... and you can't both, successfully, pick the same one. And right now, I think Democrats can, if they want, become the party that understands that there's a way to work the interconnections between government and corporations that can make some differences in how things work, and work better.

And facing that, I think, might give the rest of us the push we need to go find the right organization to speak for the renewed interests of the working class.

The A-Team: Pretty Boys, Exploding Toys, And Slightly More Smarts Than You Can Stuff In Your Shorts

Time has been kind to Stephen J. Cannell.

Cannell, a longtime TV series creator, writer and producer, produced a string of workmanlike action adventure and police procedurals, helping to define the genre. Never the highest quality, his shows nevertheless accomplished their modest aims to entertain and thrill.  It's only in retrospect - when much of what seemed daring at the time, whether stunt-wise or premise-wise seems quaint - that I think Cannell's genius for structure, solid characters and a sense of pacing can be fully appreciated. Lord knows a lot of series - never mind NBC as a network - could use the back to basics foundation Cannell brought to his work.

The A-Team brings back to the big screen one of Cannell's odder successes - a mercenary team for hire action series, The A-Team didn't seem like much on paper, but in execution it turned out to be gangbusters, partly based on Cannell's skills, some over the top stunts, and larger than life performers, most memorably Mr. T, a former pro-wrestler, who brought a surprising amount of dignity to his role as a big bruiser, even if the whole thing was a bit of a cartoon of black man as brute force (and just consider how unlikely we are to see such a presentation fly today in a weekly series).

Like the series which inspired it, The A-Team works, and works well, for old fashioned reasons: structure, a good sense of pace, and a visceral feel for the thrill of boys and their toys. Chock full, from start to finish, of high octane, testerone fueled action (there's basically one major female role in the piece, and Jessica Biel is better than I'd ever have expected), The A-Team grunts and slams its way through one of the more satisfying rides of the summer.

A-list actors tend to go for these cartoon action films (it's the check), but The A-Team is surprisingly top heavy with a solid array of talent... and not for nothing, rugged good looks. Driven partivularly by the combination of Liam Neeson (who's aping Sean Connery's career so thoroughly these days it's beyond embarrassing) and pretty boy Bradley Cooper, The A-Team is sly enough to realize that manly and macho go over easier with attractive window dressing... without drifting into the homoerotic cartooniness of, say, a 300. It takes a minute to realize that the bill for explosives may not be that much larger than the bill for hairdressing on this project.

Neeson plays the lead Commander, a tough as nails Army Ranger who assembles a ragtag team of misfits into an elite fighting unit (your notion of "tough as nails" and Neeson's may differ, but he certainly gives "hard boiled" a touch of class). Cooper plays his pretty boy second in command, a love em and leave em lothario who's also a damned fine soldier to boot.

(It should be noted that Cooper has adopted a kind of all purpose approach to manly perfection, and has been playing essentially the same cool, lucky bastard in a variety of films - this role isn't that far from the asshol-ish ringleader he played in The Hangover, just a more heroic variation on a theme. It all works... but I think audiences may start to catch on. And I'm not necessarily sure Cooper has more colors to show as an actor.)

Rounding out the team are Sharito Copley as unstable flyboy Murdock and Quinton Jackson in the Mr. T role of BA Baracus, Jackson coming to films from the world of ultimate fighting, and, as with T, near perfectly larger than life.

The plot is mish-mash of derring do about Iraq war doings, some Treasury department printing plates for 100 dollar bills, and competition between the CIA, the A-Team and another elite fighting force. The A-Team can't quite sette on whether it wants to be a war movie, a Western or a caper flick... and that turns out to be all right. Doing Ocean's Eleven with a kind of military swagger and "law of the range" sense of justice fits, I suspect, the national mood. Don't trust big government... but do try to be one of the good guys, morally upright, standing up for country and your unit. And it helps if you look good while doing it, and throw in the occasional sly one liner.

In addition to Cooper, the pretty boy quotient is amped up with Patrick Wilson as the lead CIA guy and Brian Bloom - yes, Dusty from As The World Turns, still handsome after all these years - as the rival elite military squad leader. It's a shame more films don't start from a "war movie as fashion shoot" kind of take - but then, after these guys, it's pretty much Channing Tatum or bust. And both Bloom (who helped write the script) and Wilson are capable players who bring better than average scenery chewing to their villainous roles.

The pairing of Biel and Cooper as the closest thing this film has to a hot couple - it's an all boy affair, so they are relegated to a few mild clinches and one desperate kiss (that becomes a key plot point) - turns out to be inspired: Cooper can be hit or miss with his female leads, and here, as with Julia Roberts, he seems better suited to someone who can keep up, or even take the lead (his approach to pretty boy perfection is, in its way, terribly passive). Biel, I suspect, is a better fit for this kind of tough woman part that wouldn't immediately seem like a fit; it's easy to forget that the reason she seemed hemmed in by Seventh Heaven was that she seemed tougher, and more solid than the kind of shrinking violet a Christian family series looks for in a female child.

There's an economy to the action sequences in The A-Team that few big budget actioners take seriously; almost nothing feels extraneous, tacked on, or thrown in simply to provide overkill - when this film sinks an enormous shipping tanker in the middle of the port of Los Angeles, it's with a decided sense of purpose and thought. And it's a damned impressive sight to behold. The A-Team is one of those rare action films that understands that in order to wow you, it's best to do the work of establishing characters and stories that are compelling enough to draw you in to see where they go. And as easy as it is to tease The A-Team's silly studliness - is that a gun in your pants, or the equipment you use to think with - beneath the good looks and boyish enthusiams are the good bones of well structured, well put together film. And that's anything but dumb.

OMFG! That Bitch! We Hate Her!

Since I am the last person to have any right to judge other people's reality TV habits (two words: Paradise Hotel. Two More Words: Big Brother), I just have to say up front: to all my friends and readers who like the Real Housewives series... this is not about you. Or your tastes.

That said, when friends say "Oh my God, you should watch Real Housewives of ____", I am always bewildered. First by the notion that I would watch them, and second... why anyone else would.

But TV can be addictive, and reality TV, after all, is designed to invent drama where little or none actually exists, so I can't say I don't know why people watch; I do. What baffled me, as I generally reply, is why the Real Housewives genre gets the attention that it does.

Over this weekend, watching parts of both New York and New Jersey (and having, in the past, caught parts of Atlanta and Orange County) I'm come to realize... that's not true either. It's not that I don't get the appeal of the Housewives series... it's that I do. And that, really, is why I find the whole thing so troubling.

It's easy, some five or six copycats later, to forget why the Real Housewives of Orange County was created to begin with: some combination of the success of MTV's Laguna Beach (itself an attempt to capitalize on the success of The OC) and ABC's success with Desperate Housewives created the alchemy of concocting a series following "real" stay-at-home wives, with wealthy husbands, and documenting their "real life dramas."  That it took off, like a rocket, was somewhat unexpected, and as Bravo has spun out carbon after carbon copy of the formula in city after city... it's become clear that the network tapped a fascination few could have necessarily predicted.

But why not? I've rarely tuned into the shows, since little of it fascinates me. The women chosen for these shows have lives that don't, generally, interest me, the kind of suburban (except for New York, but let's get back to that), slightly boring lives of women with money and more than a little free time. If you've worked in a mall - I have, a lot - you've seen these daytime shoppers, and it's not a way of life that ever held much interest. I don't mean that negatively - lots of livestyle choices aren't mine - it's just not my life, and wouldn't be, however well I married.

Still, what the Real Housewives shows get at is an intersection of money and class that does drive a lot of cultural conversation and commentary. In the eighties you could point to a number of women who had married well who tried, with varying success to break into New York's Upper East Side elite: Ivana Trump most obviously, but women like Pat Kluge, Carolyne Roehm and others. They were the staples of gossip columns and a certain kind of sneer-y celebrity journalism, their cravings for a kind of respectability laid against their lavish wealth, and their mixed efforts at good taste. This story is not new, and the judgments that play out in our culture tend, most often, to fall harshly on women.

The modest dramas that play out on the Real Housewives shows - and play out, it should be said, interminably, given the way in which the shows are shot and edited - tend, mostly, to pit, one or more of the women against one another; it's dizzying, even in a modest attempt at watching, to keep track of who's saying what about whom, why it matters, and who, in the end, bears the blame. And there's always blame. Someone, clearly, must be at fault. The dramas play out against the backdrop of upscale shopping, dressup parties (be they charity events, "fashion shows" or similar Function Hall type occasions), and the luxury homes that seem, in these shows to be in endless supply and constant variation. So many examples of crass luxury and dubious taste... so little time.

In the end, though, I was interested, though not surprised to discover that I could, in fact, figure out what drove the storytelling in fairly short order: familiar cultural tropes about how women must compete with one another and undermine one another, in the guise of a kind of friendship; and class based judgments meant to remind us that to have money does not mean one has class, and that the rich have problems and dramas that we (an audience not quite as rich) would never want, and should be relieved not to be wealthy, and not have the same issues.

(And, on a related note, it should be pointed out: what these shows try to say about promoting "enlightened" notions about gays, especially gay men, is beyond insulting, as well.)

As I said at the start... this isn't to indict the audience; I don't think there's something wrong with watching the Housewives shows, finding the dramas - such as they are - compelling, or taking sides (OMFG, Danielle! What's with her??). Reacting to the way the shows are edited and the stories are told seems to me like proof that the people making these shows do, in fact, know what they're doing, and what sells. But the bad taste I'm left with is about the people who are making these programs, who revel in other people's miseries, who profit from painting women of a certain class as greedy, catty bitches, callow, shallow and unworthy of respect or decency. It's insulting to women who, as far as I can tell (given all that editing), seem fairly ordinary and human, and whose mistake, if it can be called that, is that they think notoriety on reality TV is the same thing as fame, or respectability. Who's to say they're wrong about that, after all?

In the end, what drives me away from the Real Housewives genre is not that "I don't get it", but in fact, that I do: I get, all too well, a reaity TV world where women are catty and bitchy and call each other names and fight over trivialities. I grew up on soaps; I'm a lifelong Dynasty fan. And maybe it's just that I got my fill. Or maybe it's that, under the veil of fiction, I can comfort myself in thinking that in real life, I know better than to think women, really, are all about fighting and calling each other names. Whatever it is, I know I can't make the leap to watch a Real Housewives show, think that it's all fun and games and harmless and not perpetuating a lot of ugly stereotypes and myths about women and their lives that I have no business feeding into or perpetuating. Thanks but no thanks, and OMFG, I get it... she's a bitch, and we hate her. Is that enough?

Coco and Igor: Too Sexy For The Drycleaning

For the people who love art direction, and feel that movies don't do - and probably could never do - enough to depict the glorious world of twenties-era Art Deco modernism, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky is the kind of visual feast that will seem immensely satisfying.

If only good looks and sleek, modern (yet uncomfortable and unhappy) sex were enough.

Movie sex has many variations and colors - though honestly, not that many - but rarely has sex seemed as simultaneously stylish and sad as it is rendered here. Chanel and Stravinsky, presented as avatars of a modernism just coming into fashion and both, in their ways, pioneering, embark on an affair that is also modern, sleek and ahead of its time. That the sex also comes off as mechanical and not entirely comfortable  (say, on a wood floor covered only in a jute rug), is just to underscore how ahead they are and how not with it we are. This is copulation that doesn't worry about mundane matters like mutual satisfaction or how you would dryclean a hand embroidered silk coverlet. Pity the mortals who do.

Of course, we mortals also make up the audience and the net result is that for scads and scads of style, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky is a bit of a slog, not much fun, and once it gets the two titular characters together, there's blessed little left to do. Based on the real life story of the affair they had in the twenties, the film may have something to say about artists  and their creative processes, or what it is to be larger than life... but we'll never know, because no one here says much of anything at all. There's lots of moody looks, simpering in and out of stylish rooms, and passionate piano playing... but not much else.

Still the film isn't a total write off. The richness of the deco design cannot be denied, and the film, for my money, went a long way towards rethinking Stravinsky's music by stripping away some of the reverence and unapproachability. The score is enriched by themes and variations of Stravinsky's works, and the musings about his process - snatches of dissonant chords and phrases that gradually meld into a larger framework - are fascinating if incomplete. It's the kind of film that could make you seek out further work for better understanding.

Chanel, unfortunately, is treated much more as a cipher and a distant, distancing muse, and there's little here to give the character breadth or depth. Her design process is shown in snippets that tell us little, and her famed shop seems devoid, oddly, of clothes.The film focuses, for a moment, on the development of Chanel No. 5, but even that isn't told in an especially compelling or interesting manner. She sniffs some test strips, acts kind of demanding,... and settles on, well, test fragrance number 5. QED.

The film opens with Chanel, in 1913, attending the premiere of Rite of Spring, part of the transformational role in ballet created by the original Ballets Russe. Carefully restaged, the film does capture a remarkable picture of what the event entailed - the audiences shock and revulsion at something so new and different, the confrontational modernism of Nijinsky's choreography, the rough edges of Stravinsky's score (the film posits conflict between Nijinsky and Stravinsky that I tend to doubt; both were sensitive artists... but the collaboration was productive for both). Chanel, naturally, gets it. Flash forward - awkwardly - seven years or so, and Igor and Coco are formally introduced, Chanel offers him her country house as a place for him and his family while he composes... and the two, in short order, are doing it on any flat surface they can find. Eventually - after several weepy scenes that make her part especially thankless - Stravinsky's wife confronts Chanel, in person and on paper, as an amoral bitch, and Chanel essentially agrees. Why shouldn't she? Isn't it all so frightfully modern? Get with it, people!

It's tempting to blame Mads Mikkelson for what doesn't work here; as Stravinsky he seems terribly miscast... but then, I've never understood his appeal as an art house sex symbol, anyway. And to some extent, it's unfair because the part is doing him no favors, and he does, in repose, suggest a thoughtful embodiment of Russian gloom. Anna Mouglalis is too tall and long of face to really look like Chanel... but her model thin glamour look and way of simping around suggests Chanel by way of Louise Brooks and is probably a notion of herself Coco would have loved. Even Suzy Parker hasn't done as much to make a Chanel suit look so sexy.

No, the real failure here is the weak script and the airless direction of Jan Kounen, so concerned with the look and the details, but not really having a story to tell. And Chanel's fascinating life and her role in transforming the possibilities for women continues to remain elusive and out of reach, continuing to deserve better than a distant, off-putting notion of modern sex and morals. Or a film that has the decency, at least, to tell us how you get the stain out of a white suit.

Friday Evening Festive

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