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But The Ending Kind Of Restores Your Faith In Humanity (#Snowtober!)

I'm sure karma had something to do with it, because I said, for two days, that this winter strom would turn out to be a dud.

After finishing my post yesterday, I got up from my table to get dressed for work. My mom said "big flakes!" and it was the first moment that I realized that the snow was stickiong and far more dramatic than I first thought.

Still, I set off for work; I know how to drive in snow, and where we were, things looked passable. And surely, plowing and salting were underway.

I knew I was in trouble when, one town over, I started to skid just trying to get up a minor incline. Major hills were in fact easier than mild grades. I called my boss to say the roads were looking bad, but we agreed I should still be on my way.

Then I turned onto Route 133, one of about 3 options I had to get from where I live to where I work. It's something of a country road, two lanes, rolling hills, but I figured since it was a major connecting point for the county, it must be  getting attention.

But it wasn't. It was pretty clear, right away, that we were in for trouble. Cars were packed onto the road, lots of spinning out, and trees, as predicted, were collapsing under the weight of the laready heavy snow.

I made it about half way towards work on this road when traffic just stopped. Using what judgement I could, I decided it was best to turn around and make it back to the side road I knew connected back to a mjor artery. I figured from there I had options to either try and get to work or head home.

And about 100 feet after turning around, I slid off the road into a ditch.

After the initial panic, I was surprisingly calm and sanguine about it. I mean, once you accept the reality of your situation, there's not much to do: here you are, and you're stuck. Unless someone pulls you out, you're not going anywhere.

And I wasn't going anywhere.

Four hours later, the magnitude of the disaster was apparent. Between listening to the news, and taking to drivers as they passed - slowly - it was clear that, across Westchester, this was really bad. Roads were unpassable. Trees down everywhere, Power outages all over.

And now, it was getting dark.

Something about the darkness simply froze my soul. I'd seen to many movies, heard too many stories. What if a tree fell? What fi power lines came down around me? It was clearly hours before help would come, if ever. And the fuel truck, which had slid off the road before me, just feet in front of me, had been pulled out. Now I was alone. The 4 other cars that had come off the road near me were all abandoned. No houses were really that close.

It was at that moment that a red truck pulled up, and yet another nice lady asked me if I was okay and if help was on the way. I said, more earfully than before, that I didn't know quite what to do. At which point she leaned over, and her husband leapt out from the driver side, grabbed a shovel, and dug out my tires. Then he got in front of me, and pushed the car as I tried to back out.

At first, we made a little progress, but the wheels started spinning. Then he dug around again, went back to the front, and pushed again. This time the car awkwardly lurched onto the road. I was free. Before I could even finish my heartfelt thanks, they were gone.

Driving back on 133 was an almost entirely unfamiliar landscape. Cars were abandoned everywhere, trees had fallen. I passed the remains of a burned out shell of a car, what I can only assume  resulted from a power line fall. Further on, a mail truck was jacknoifed going down a hill. I barely got around it.

I pulled into a gas station, called my mom, called my boss, and had a hot dog for dinner. I'd been trapped for four hours. And really, I was one of the lucky ones, getting dug out and able top ride to safety. I debated staying at the gas station. Eventually, abdout 45 minutes later, I decided to attempt the ride home the rest of the way. More downed trees, but the roads from here were in better shape.

In my own town, the power was completely out. Fire had broken out, burning down a local restaurant my mom and I had eaten at multiple times. They were barely letting cars through, but my house was on the near side of the fire trucks. I got home, hugged my mom, and sat in the dark. The wonderful, blessed, candle-lit dark of home.

Thirteen months ago, a tree fell on my car, and I survived. Yesterday, I spent four hours in a ditch in a blinding snowstorm. There's no punch line to this. No feeling of invincibility. Between those evnts I feel like a lot of clarity has fallen into my life - what matters, what doesn't, what it takes to survive and carry on. 

That and I've learned that we can survive best when we are there to help one another. I'm grateful to the kindness and decency of strangers. I always joke with my mother, at the end of especially sentimental films and TV shows, that they "kind of restoore your faith in humanity." This morning, my faith is thoroughly restored. And now, it's probably back to work.

Saturday Singalong: But Now I'm Not Too Old To Cry

It's been a weird couple of weeks, on the personal life front, and in these moments I generally turn to music. So I've actually built up a few singalongs in my head, this one actually being the hardest. It's something about British singer/songwriters and moddy, slightly sad songs, and moody, cold days... but more than that:

Kirsty MacColl, You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby. I rarely claim to have a favorites musical artist, genre, or even song; my tastes are wide and varied, and the best song I've heard is usually the most recent. But Kirsty MacColl may be the exception that proves my rule: she's near impossible to categorize, but I love her gorgeous voice and layered harmonies more than almost anything. Among her many cool things, MacColl was good friends with Johnny Marr, collaborating on several songs, and also doing this brilliant cover of a Smiths song. "You just haven't earned it yet baby, you must suffer and cry for slightly longer" is the lyric that comes closest to summing up my own mood, just now.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Accidents Will Happen. I tripped over this song, years ago, from some TV show, I can't remember anything about it, except it was about a radio DJ and Music Director who thought of this song over some incident on the show. I'm not the biggest Costello fan - I think he's often too pretentious to be worth the effort - but patience does yield up some real gems (my real fave is actually "Every Day I Write The Book" which I think is sweet without being cloying).

Paper Moon, Turning Colours Into Greys.  In my annual "why haven't you tried Pandora yet" speech, I would use this as Example A: I created a "Kirsty MacColl" station and got this song as a selection, from a Canadian band, completely unfamiliar to me. "I don't know how to breathe, anymore" in their hands is both sad and moving.

Beth Orton, Concrete Sky. This is another discovery from my new Pandora station. I tend to keep singers like Orton - though she's very much unique (while reminding me of, say, Tracey Thorn) - at arm's length; I tend to feel my age when listening to smooth, middle of the road ballads. Still, I have a secret love of Central Reservation, and also this song - harder than a heartbreak, too.

Kirsty MacColl, Soho Square. This has been my best discovery so far from Pandora, probably the best cut from Titanic Days, Kirsty's album recorded during her divorce from producer Steve Lillywhite. As you might guess, the album's moody and sad (and MacColl vowed not to record another until she cheered up), but this song is somehow not that. I've decided it's the song Dusty Springfield would have recorded if she had worked with Prince her heyday, a piece of late Sxities era, mod Britpop, driven by unexpected instrumentation (never mind the string quartet, the solo bridge is an oboe!). Meanwhile the lyrics are both sad and hopeful all at once, about a lonely birthday on a park bench in a wintry park, that somehow devolves into the catchiest chorus and lovely images of hanging stars and soaring birds. And I miss Kirsty MacColl all the more because I just discovered this, yet another example of her brilliance.

 

Anonymous: Much Ado About The Ginger Menace

All I can say is, after watching Anonymous, the "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" polemic, is that avid Shakespeare defenders ought to relax a bit. The problem with Anonymous isn't the easily debunked, shoddy assertions about who wrote the plays... the problem with the film is all the dismal things it has to say about writing generally, and British History in particular.

Though I would point out that a lot of what's wrong with Anonymous, in terms of the Shakespeare angle, is something the Shakespeare worshippers brought on themselves in no small measure. It's the people who talk about Shakespeare and Shakespearean works with near biblical fervor who enable the kind of narrow, nonsensical perspective that this film brings to the the subject of playwriting.

I was brought back to my high school days and a great teacher - the one who helped me do especially well on my SATs - who encouraged his students to remember that Shakespeare wrote for the stage: that is, when reading Shakespeare's plays, it helps to stage them in your head. For me, that really unlocked a door to understanding, and both improved my approach to the plays, and increased my love of theater at the same time.

Anonymous argues that William Shakespeare was neither educated enough or serious enough to write the plays; instead, they refresh a theory that the 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the plays, and used Shakespeare as his frontman because the subjects of so many plays (the histories, the allegories in the major tragedies) could be seen as seditious. I won't go into the historical issues, but the simplest rebuttal is that the dates don't work: there are plays outside of the Earl's potential writing lifetime, and elements of theatrical history that don't fit.

But the problem with Anonymous is deeper and more basic: for a film about writing, there's really no serious attempt to examine the process; for a film about Shakespeare, there's precious little actual Shakespearean text included; and for a film about the joy and artistry in Shakespeare, the film is surprisingly dismal and downbeat.

Structurally, the film is a mess: we open on a modern day staging of some sort of play of "Anonymous" (all the world's a stage, or something), jump back to a moment late in the action, and then jump backwards and forwards through a retelling of the life of the Earl. The lack of consistent chronology is jarring and confusing (and a sign of some really sloppy screenwriting and editing), and tends to rob individual moments of their full dramatic impact.

The film cherry-picks its examples of "proof" of an outside hand: we get snippets of Hamlet, the Witch prologue from Macbeth. the initial courtship scene of Romeo and Juliet, the battle sequence from Henry V... but these examples do not an argument make. The most telling selective inclusion is from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which Oxford is supposed to have written a about age 10 (there's a slipperiness as to the dates, which matter regarding how old Elizabeth I would have been when seeing it), and conveniently, we see him recite Puck's final speech. Granted, a 10 year old might have written that. What a 10 year old probably wouldn't write is the complexities of the romantic quadrangle among the four principal young lovers, which we never see.

Examples like that abound: Hamlet's "To Be or Not To Be" is lyrical and dense... but other sections of the play don't fit so neatly into the film's convenient theories. Even as political intrigue, the "play as allegory" argument is debatable: even if one buys that the play was a warning to the Queen about her main advisor, Sir William Cecil... who is the allegorical Elizabeth? Ophelia? Gertrude? The film hedges its bets by casting two Elizabeth lookalikes (to their credit, men in panto) in both parts, but this just adds confusion. And let's just stop before getting into just how Julius Caesar applies to any of the historical incidents in question.

Anonymous, ultimately, is less about theater, anyway, and more like "The Tudors, The Next Generation" or "Elizabeth, Part 3" - a convoluted tale of intrigue and infighting amongst the titled landed gentry. This, too, plays terribly, seems historicvally inaccurate and doesn't really work. The film is a special waste because the one stellar performance in it is Elizabeth herself (actually two: Vanessa Redgrave as a sublime elderly monarch, and Joely Richardson as her younger, charismatic self), but the film reduces Elizabeth's brilliance and resilience to afterthoughts, making her all too vulnerable to the manipulations of both the older Lord Cecil and his deformed son, who both easily manipulate her with what amounts to "you're in danger, girl" rhetoric.

In the film's retelling, Elizabeth was no one's idea of a Virgin Queen - not just sexually active, but pregnant more than once. Nor is the film subtle in suggesting where her relations might have wound up - casting a string of fair strawberry blondes to suggest a bloodline; making the film, in no small part, a War Between the Blondes and Brunettes. 

Beyond Redgrave and Richardson, the film's performances are both too much and not enough: Rhys Ifans, David Thewlis and Derek Jacobi are all talented actors of substantial depth... but it says something that their careers all hinge on playing fairly complicated freaks. There's a conspicuous lack of the kind of pretty, big name Brits who are traditionally associated with Shakespeare in England - Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Ken Branagh, the Fiennes brothers, the Jude Law types. The acting on display is heavy and portentous, with few moments of lightness, and little real humor. That, too, is kind of missing the point of Shakespeare's brilliance - the mix of high and low, playing to different parts of an audience.

Director Roland Emmerich has never been known as a director of particular depth, so just why a dense historical drama about the world's great plays would suit the director of Godzilla and Independence Day remains a mystery. As his pedigree suggests, Emmerich's best visual moments are big ones - vast crowd scenes, distant shots of the Elizabethan landscape, slow motion battle sequences with explosions and fire. The film's more intimate moments, and the human drama on display, just don't hvae the kind of emotional resonance they need.

Ultimately, Emmerich fails to make a case because he's so focused on Shakespeare as written text: we see nothing of the process of staging a play, as if the work of actors to create parts, or directors to stage work (or even Stage Managers to organize the production elements) were nonexistent. A script is written... and so, there's a play. That's not, really, how it works, something Emmerich should know all to well. And as impossible as it is to see this film's drunken, self satisfied Shakespeare as something other than a fool, watching Oxford simp around in dressy outfits (and a couple of stunning furs), moaning about the difficulties of the writer's life is by no means any more convincing. We see vast collections of papers, Oxford's hand are convincingly ink stained... but the effete, upperclass sensualist on display seems no more capable of writing the wide scope of Shakespeare's work than the man himself. 

The real message of Anonymous, then, is dismal: classist assumptions about how high art can only come from the wealthy and well educated, while simultaneously asserting that Britain's biggest political problem is an entrenched landed upperclass with no regard for the needs of the many. The film is equally simplistic insisting that "political art" serves the simple purpose of arousing the rabble and sending mobs into the streets. All of which, really, is poppycock. Balderdash. 

Footloose: And He'll Go To His Grave As The Angry Young Man

Live long enough, and it's true: the fads and fashions of your youth will come back around, for no apparent reason. I always liked Footloose well enough, when it first came out, and I certainly played my way through the soundtrack much like the rest of my pop generation. But the curious reverence for it as we age has always seemed odd; it's something about Kevin Bacon and one's youth and a "time to dance"... or something. All of which seem both like silly reasons to me, and also somehow really missing the point of why the film, as a film, touched a cultural nerve.

The original Footloose was something of an oddity. There hadn't been a muical in several years, especially since the antidisco backlash of late 1979 and early 80; until 1982 we were in a bit of a dark musical moment. Footloose was also one of Hollywood's early tests of the new-fangled MTV and the surging youth culture crashing behind it; and as such, it had a pretty clear field on which to make its point (coupled, neatly, with Flashdance). It's worth remembering that Kevin Bacon, like Jennifer Beals, was an actor with no real dance skills whose dances were filmed with a carefully shot double. At heart, the people behind the film didn't entirely trust that audiences would go for a film with dancing at its core.

It's unsurprising, perhaps, that somebody would be stupid brave enough to go back and remake Footloose. It does make one wonder if we're going back to resurrect Flashdance too... let's hear it for the welding ballerinas who strip in their spare time! But Footloose is an easier sell: it's a high school story about rebellion and music and sex and dancing. And even if it is "iconic" in the original version, like Dirty Dancing, some of that "iconic" status is probably way overblown.

The remake of Footloose does make a good argument that, yes, you can tough the teen legends of eighties pop culture and not just get away with it, but yes, improve on it (indeed, much by the remake of Fame of a couple of years back). This Footloose swaggers with more confidence, knowing that an audience of film and TV dance watchers is all around. At the same time, it has a revernce for the original that's probably a bit unnecessary, and at times probably holds it back.

Footloose is still the story of Ren, a big city boy who moves to a small town after the death of his Mom, to live with a caring Uncle and his family. This time, thoughm rather than Utah, we're in Georgia, which does complicate some of the film's politics (racial issues... anyone?). But still, Ren arrives with all his teen rebellion, only to discover he's living in a dry town where dancing is banned. In short order he falls in with a cool crowd of kids who yearn to break the rules, incuding the town preacher's wayward daughter, whose brother died a few years back coming back from an out of town party. That's when the laws got passed.

This Footloose integrates its dance numbers more smoothly into the overall proceedings, and shows a surprisingly deft touch in terms of choreography that manages to both the "wow" moments wile not seeming too much like a completely set routine. There's a lot of hip-hop and breakdance thrown in, as these things do these days, but there's also a night urban country twist that makes this feel less like Step Up and such than it might otherwise.

As Ren, Kenny Wormald probably has the biggest shoes to fill, and if he's no Kevin Bacon, he gives off a gritty charm that seems properly scaled to this film's ambitions. This version is less preachy, less didactic, less obvious about the "kids vs. mean adults" vibe that drove the original. Everybody, this film suggests, is well intentioned, just perhaps a little overboard. Wormald's a pretty stunning dancer to boot, and that ease and grace doesn't just let him flow seamlessly from dialogue to dancing, but gives his performance a physical presence that Bacon's, to some extent, lacked. Wormald is a tight coil, waiting to spring into dance. Bacon, not so much.

As Ariel, the preacher's daughter, Julianne Hough also aquits herself nicely as more than a pretty (actually, strikingly beautiful) face and competent dancer. The mixture of cinstant simmering rage, the bad girl thrillseeking, and the sense of a youth pushing too hard and too soon to play grown up games all swirl in her, just beneath the surface. And when it comes out in her dancing... look out.

The rest of the cast is... fine. Miles Teller, as Ren's gawky, non-dancing friend manages the conversion to show dancing with a real charm. And Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell also update the John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest roles as Ariel's uptight parents - there's less distance between them and the kids (if nothing else... back then, they were the kids), easing some of the "they just don't get it" assumptions of the original.

With less push-pull tension between adults and kids, and a more seamless feel to its musical elements, this Footloose hangs together better than the original, and puts a newfound emphasis on the film's darker elements: the film brims with the sorrow of lives lost too soon (be it the kids from town, or Ren's Mom) and a real sense of rage at forces beyond our human control. One change, which makes Ariel's bad boy older and meaner, adds a lot to the darker feel.  But the film can't escape one of its less savory thematic suggestions: that "bad" girls just need the love of a good man, preferably one who can team with her concerned Dad.

That, after all, is a reminder that Footloose isn't especially different from a long line of moralizing films about "the youth of today" , Ren as a character not that far from James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. It's worth remembering too that Footloose's final, bravura dance sequence, doesn't happen until after a fairly ugly fight in the parking lot, where Ren shows himself both strong and sensistive. And once he drops that tire iron, it's all smiles and back to the dance floor. In real life... rage doesn't disspate quite so easily.

The Big Year: Flip Flop And Fly

I suspect the producers of The Big Year are onto something when it comes to timing: at a time of upheval and strife, the most successful entertainments saunter along quietly, offending no one, while taking everyone's mind off their troubles.

Add a few musical numbers... and you've at least got Footloose.

The Big Year is based on one of those "i did it" tales that are very Oprah's Book Club, or at least, were very Oprah until she exited the stage. Gender specific, they tell us of someone's accomplishment - often smaller than life - and all the Life Lessons we can get therein. For men, it's usually learning to be more sensistive, stop and smell the flowers. For women, it's finding your inner confidence and a sense of personal fulfillment.

Whether this kind of self help actually helps... well, let's just leave that aside. What's interesting is how these stories - Eat Pray Love is another obvious example, or Tuesdays with Morrie - are getting adapted to screens large and small. While they offer what shoud be fairly compelling stories, I get the sense that this genre suffers from a certain sense of self satisfaction and a lack of real drama. "Finding yourself" isn't exactly a conflict. And trying to whip up a different one is often a lot of labor for little reward. Small conflicts do not big films make. And for me... Go big, or go home.

The Big Year is the story of bird watching - apparently, in order for John Audubon to help convert Americans from bird hunting to bird watching, he added a spirit of competitiveness, tracking, through the Audubon Society, people who could see the most species of birds in one year. To do this, especially now, requires a great deal of travel and a sense of commitment. Or so we are told.

Jack Black plays our shambling hero, a nice young man with binoculars and a dream. He is joined in his quest by a retiring CEO finally using retirement to take that long planned journey... and both men are competing against last year's champion, a dedicated watcher who has made the quest his whole life, to the detriment of those around him.

Along the way, Black reconciles with his gruff Dad (Brian Dennehy, at his gruff stolid best), our CEO learns how to slow life down to life's terms, and the fanatical champion learns... nothing. Or something. I wasn't really sure.

As a movie all about men learning How To Live Their Best Life, The Big Year is a bit of a snooze. The Black-Dennehy daddy issues aren't especially subtle or deep, The CEO is Steve Martin at his most charming, and Owen Wilson puts an interesting spin on his single minded character, but there's just not much there. These characters are sketches, and acting alone can't fill in every blank. Wilson gets especially shortchanged. Martin can do this aging good guy in his sleep, and one years for the sly, subversive comic genius of past decades. Black is, as usual, terrific at reminding us how cheerfully underrated he is. But that's about it.

Filled with lush, gorgeous nature shots and plenty of bird closeups, The Big Year balances storytelling and travelogue well enough, giving us some insight into the world of the most diehard birders (it's mildly interesting to learn about Atu, the furthest Aleutian Island, and why it's a bird haven in late spring).  But The Big Year isn't so much about birds and nature as it is about the Quest... and the quest here just isn't that dramatic. No offense to bird watching.

Probably more problematic is that The Big Year perpetuates a Hollywood fantasy about Americans and class distinctions that's even more fancicul than ever in these hard times. Black's character is an hourly worker who essentially can't afford his Big Year plans... yet the struggle for funds and solvency is only sketched at, and by midway through, just about ignored. It helps that Martin's CEO is both wealthy and good hearted, the dream most of us want of a life with a friend who could foot the extravagent bills, few questions asked. Martin's casual wealth is admired, and it looks swell. How many of us have the option of champagne filled New Year's in our Aspen retirement cabin? Not so much. Or at least... that's what they keep telling me about Occupy Wall Street and the 99%.

And the point, really is that these "self help" problems of finding yourself, chasing your dreams, living in a world outside of 9-5 jobs and responsibilities... these are luxury problems, divorced from much of the real struggles we - all 99, or at least 55, of us - face every day. The Big Year, them, is really just another dressed up, consumerist fantasy of the good life as a tale of personal growth. Spend all you want... just make sure you learn a life lesson from it. And turn that into a book. Easy, peasy... no?

"Best Speech Ever" When It Actually Applies. No, Seriously.

Perhaps "Act of God" may seem far-fetched, but the forces that made this weekend the one for Barack Obama's sppech at the Martin Luther King memorial dedication are surely big ones.

Originally planned for August 28th, the dedication was postponed - at almost the last minute - when it was clear that Hurricane Irene, combined with that week's Virginia's earthquake, would make holding the ceremony impossible. That weekend, of course, would have the historical significance of commemorating Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech. 

Two months later, it turns out, you can still have a lot of impact.

Today's speec, in some ways, might be seen as the speech that was much that his inauguration wasn't - not least because Aretha Franklin sang at both, and today was in far better voice with material that suits her best ("Take My Hand, Precious Lord" - shivers). But this was a day that also favored Obama himself; who, in many ways, has always aimed himself at being a very good inheitor of King's legacy, rather than becoming a great President. Taliking big picture, aiming to uplift the crowd, the President is on his strongest ground where faith and politics and a sense of higher purpose meet. And they surely meet at the foot of a giant piece of granite carved in the image of Dr. King.

The Presidnt's speech touched on the themes of Dr. King's life - the search for social justice, the demand that we be a better nation with a sense of a higher purpose. He quoted King, but most of it wasn't obvious or easy - many would have naturally clipped the most familiar lines, but Obama didn't need them. It's easier after all, when in so many ways you naturally embody the dream of a world beyond segregation.

More pointedly, the President took this moment, so well timed, to draw together the threads of social protest and the demands for social justice that come to us from the Civil Rights era and exist today in Occupy Wall Street. He both honored the importance of protest to force change and recognized the pain and suffering of so many, while challenging everyone, protestors or not, to see that real change takes hard work. And, more than he has in the past, the President didn't make his case theoretical or oblique; he spoke, clearly and squarely, about our current condition.

I was most impressed because Obama gave voice to things that have been top of my oen mind when it comes to these protests - the sense that we need to see one another, first and foremost, as human, in all our flaws and prospects. He spoke of the work of making change by finding the sense of commonality, the sense of thigs we share, our duty to one another, to help one another, and make sure everyone has a chance.

The speech was the most pointed evidence yet that it's absurd to count this President out in next year's election. This is a speech that could never have come from Mitt Romney, never mind Rick Perry, or darling of the moment Herman Cain. Contrast Obama's moment on the natonal stage with Cain's modestly successful, but frustrating appearance this morning on Meet the Press, and much of Cain's sense of "momentum" seems trite. Republicans can't win this election, never mind make it into the kind of referendum they want on the President, until they have a way to combat the President's ability to talk about the positives and our potential. America, as the President said, is a nation of optimists. We do not wind up electing people whose best argument is reminding us of our failings.

Liberals, too, who grouse about this President's flaws and failings also need to face that, at his best, there's a reason so many people find Obama inspiring and impressive. He talks a good game. He connects with some of our best liberal impulses to help others. In hemself and in his own story reside so much of what the left fought for, for so long: a mixed race man, educated and intelligent, who sees the possibilities for others.Those who oppose him need to be clearer, more direct on what they would do differently. And why.

None of this is some sudden conversion on my part. I've said from the outset that there are things to admire in the President. The parts of his story that resonate with me, so much of what our lives are that are a direct result of the work of Dr. King, have always been the base of my own support for him. The problem, as I said, comes from translating these great theories and ideas of which he speaks into action. on that he's been mostly a failure, and I don't see that changing any time soon. But the President, today, gave a good reminder that when we think about change, what we deal with is a choice. Those who want the kind of justice and social change that Dr. King embodied in his life and work will have a choice next year about how to create change. Many, I think, will continue to see Barack Obama as the worst best option, but that, in the end, may be the only choice. Today's speech, I think, made his best case, right now, for his reelection. He makes it well. If we want more than that... well, that's where we have a lot of work yet to do.

CLASS-Less

With everyone focused so heavily on Occupations of one sort ot another (We're invading Africa! Again!), perhaps now is not the time to remind everyone about the other thing that the Obama Administration still struggles with - health reform.

Kathleen Sibelius made it official today, but this was in the wind for some time: the Administration has abandoned CLASS, the part of health care reform that was meant to provide some form of long term care insurance for seniors. Some of the ACA's most ardent defenders have had to do some backpedaling over this, because the long term care piece was both a signature achievement (it was one of Ted Kennedy's must-haves), and a fallback position when people complained that the ACA was mostly some moderate insurance reforms. "But we've also dealt with long term care!" was a big defense.

In reality CLASS was doomed because it made little or no sense. Indeed, as some especially disgusted partisans note, the real use of CLASS in the bill was to mask the fact that claims the bill was "revenue neutral" were never all that true. CLASS wasn't scheduled to kick in until 2016, but collections of fees and premiums were set to begin next year. By raising CLASS revenues well in advance of the program actually going live, the overall cost of ACA could book the revenue, without discussing the costs. And, the longer term reality was that, after CLASS kicked in, costs for the program were likely to soar.

That's because long term care - like rehabilitation for physical injuries, mental healthcare and other less time defined conditions - is actually very expensive to provide. One reason Medicaid is in such a disastrous state (among many) is because much of the program's funds are used to pay for nursing home care for the indigent elderly, complicated by the fact that nursing home costs will make most elderly people indigent long before they die. CLASS was always unrealistic - filled with rosy scenarios about how much the long term care would cost (even the $50 a day per person estimate on payouts was pretty ludicrous), and even under the rosiest scenarios, the program would cost far more than it could ever take in. Like... well, Medicaid.

Conservatives, of course, always opposed CLASS, much like the rest of the bill, because the math was so obvious and because it looked, more or less, like another entitlement that couldn't be appropriately funded from the get-go. This, of course, is indicative of the problem with health reform on the right: not that they don't make reasonable points about the cost of reform... but they've got essentially no solution but "suffer" when it comes to the actual problem. Opposing CLASS because of the expense missed the obvious - a program as badly conceived as CLASS was never going to happen.

All of which is to say that the Administration today was forced, yet again to admit the obvious: that, in fact, one of the key elements of their health care reform plan, cynically derided as expensive and unworkable was... you guessed it, expensive and unworkable. But then, as we all know, a bunch of the ACA's key assumptions - from the expansion of Medicaid without paying for it, to the cutting of Medicare without wanting to cut anything - are ludicrous, expensive, unrealistic, and unlikely to happen.

And I suppose one could, yet again, express exasperation with this Administration; point to the lousy process of creating a deeply flawed, unworkable health reform plan; complain bitterly about how Washington works; maybe handwrite a sign and take it to a local protest.... but for me, all I can do is shake my head. Two years of pointing out that this stuff won't work... and guess what, it doesn't work. Nothing but class... all the way.

The Stand Off

From a macro standpoint, there's a couple of ways of looking at the Occupy Wall Street protest: one has to do with the messaging and goals of the protest, the question of what constitutes "success." 

The other is a far more practical question around the physical presence of the protest in a park downtown.

I may not be thrilled with the underlying question of what the protestors - and by extension, much of the angry left - want to accomplish... but I'm not a particaularly vocal opponent of the physical protest. The camping out, the drum circles, the marching to and fro... the energy of it is undeniable. And the presence of the protestors, clearly, has forced a flummoxed media, and (to some extent) a flummoxed group of leaders to notice that in fact all is not remotely well.

Indeed, as I've said before, I think the problem the protest faces is that these two elements - the energy of the presence and the void in the messaging and demands - are the real conflict that the Occupy protests struggle with. Lots of people - me included - genuinely want to support this... as soon as we're clear on just what "this" is.

Today, we will see what unfolds between the OWS protestors and City government, which has decided that today needs to be the day that Zucotti Park - a private park space run by one of the major real estate concerns - will be cleaned. The City says the Park will be cleaned in stages, the protestors are convinced that this is a fabricated excuse to try and push the protests out. Protestors also point to volunteer efforts to clean the park, and have called for addtional people to be present this morning to try and deter efforts to move them.

In short, this morning has the makings of a major standoff, with the attendant potential for things to go from bad to worse.

This isn't me trying to say the protestors are wrong to resist the "cleaning crew;" though I'm leery of agreeing to familiar notions of protestors=good, police=bad math. It's entirely possible that the net result will actually be more fizzle than conflict: the City could stand down, there could be a modest attempt to address some physical space concerns, there could be a lot of people waiting for a confrontation that never comes.

The underlying question of this standoff, and what will likely be future standoffs, though, will remain whatever happens today: Occupy Wall Street lasts until... just what, exactly? Until there's no longer an economic crisis? Until we no longer have banks? No more Wall Street? It's fine to say that this "leaderless" protest is "open ended"... but patience with this protest is not infinite (and I don't mean, in any sense, my own sense of exasperation that's defined my sense of it from the start). The world will not watch this protest forever, cheering on the triumph of the common people. Refusing to leave, refusing to move, refusing to set some terms... at some point, that leads to "enough is enough." Fall is here, and in short order things will get colder and wetter. What then?

The physical standoff today is, no doubt, important. It would be devastating if things devlove into violent confrontation, or even mass arrests. But the real standoff here is between the admirable energy of the physical protest, and the more philopsophical question of just what all this energy is meant to accomplish. Until that standoff is resolved, Occupy Wall Street can't really be seen having a victory, something that says, "we stayed out here until things changed." Getting to stay in place, getting to resist the "cleanup" effort,  living to fight another day means maintaining a physical presence that much longer... until what? 

Raising Cain

The rise - and rise - of Herman Cain may be catching people off guard; I'm not exactly surprised, though mostly I think it hardly matters. Herman Cain is not going to become President.

Cain is the retired CEO of Godfather's Pizza, which might be more easily referred to as "one of those lesser known regional chains" to put Cain's general sense of his own importance into perspective. One thing about that pesky "CEO" title is that it's less hard to have one than one might think.

There's also no reason to ignore the main selling point of Cain's appeal, beyond a populist conservative message: Cain helps this year's GOP immensely by putting a prominent black Republican into the mix. Without him, the stage is a lot of old white men, and a really attractive brunette lady (and as we know, there's only room for one of those, too; and I don't just mean Sarah Palin. We could even go back to Elizabeth Dole).

In my own secret fantasy of a Presidential campaign next year that might at least be interesting, I have to admit dreaming of an Obama vs. Cain match-up. It's the only potential race with some real wild cards: how do you assess the black vote? What happens to everyone's familiar complaints about southern Republicans being racists? How does Obama succeed when his trump card - the one where he's not a person, but more of a symbol - is largely neutralized?

It's fun to speculate... but mostly it's just a dream. Cain can't win, and even he seems somewhat aware of it.

Cain's the candidate who has actually been tapping most strongly into the real resevoir's of Tea Party anger, and giving it a voice. Even Michelle Bachmann, for all her deliberate courting, doesn't have Cain's natural edge that comes from being the only actual DC, non-governmental outsider in the mix. Cain's biggest success has been speaking to audiences without the usual veneer of political niceties, where everything is stated just vaguely enough that one position can easily morph into its opposite.Cain's much more about tyhe certainties, the "I know what I know: approach, and he's not just talking up limited government and pro-business approaches because its Republican boilerplate. He does, genuinely, believe it.

Cain's also offered up just about the only concrete plan for tax policy on either side of the 2012 debate, the oft-repeated "9-9-9" plan, which is shorthand for a 9% flat rate income tax, a 9% corporate tax rate and a 9% national sales tax with some modest exceptions. It's kind of like every crazy Republican idea - flat tax! almost no corporate taxes! no deductions! no loopholes! - rolled into a ball, with the added sheen of VAT, the tax that tax policy people are very sttracted to but nearly every person who votes, hates.

Cain's plain spoken qualities, combined with some great backstory, as well as that wild card appeal of Republicans coming up with a black man to challenge Obama, probably accounts for Cain coalescing into the anti-Romney. He's been helped immensely by the fact that other darlings have either flamed out (Bachmann and Perry) or opted out (Christie et al). Cain, in fact, probably helped feed Perry's fall by being pretty much as outraged or more than other prominent black voices over that "N-head" stone in Perry's yard, a good gauntlet to throw when some liberals think "black republican" is synonoymous with "i'd like to be white". In a world of few good choices... Cain looks, well, interesting.

If only that were enough. Cain's no-nonsenseness looks great on domestic economic issues, but beyond that he tends to fade. He's virtually nowhere on foreign policy (and he's surprisingly negative on wars like Iraq and Afghanistan), and shows little interest in wading into complexities and nuance, where much of our foreign policy problems live. As well, Cain's appeal, as it turns out, is about where you'd think it'd be: it's the older, retired, educated talk show listening male crowd of the shows that brought him to prominence, like Limbaugh and Hannity. Cain's support among women is lighter, and it's hard to see how he appeals to moderates. That may be no big deal just now, when it's all about that deeply conservative base.... but at some point, women who shop for their family's everyday necessities are going to speak up about just what a terrible idea a nine percent sales tax would be for them.  And without that, what Cain is raising is mostly hot air.

The A-List: Drama, Queens, And Silver Foxes

I debated whether to go back and review Season 2 of The A-List: New York, but reality intervened: for all my interest in jumping back into watching it... I got busy, and the work of catching up didn't quite happen.

And it just seemed long - Season 2 wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, the "reunion" was this past Monday (with more to come next Monday), Going to parties and saying bitchy things, sure... but 13 weeks of it? God help us.

And if God was a DJ... the music would be a lot louder by now.

I just finished catching up on the New York reunion, and caught the first episode of A-List: Dallas, and between them I think lies the relative pleasures and pain of watching reality shows built around a group of close knit gay men. What seemed merely slightly disappointing about New York in Season One has become impossible to ignore; while Dallas offers, it seems, mostly fresh meat, in every sense. Whether the bloom falls off the Texas rose as much as the Manhattan one, we shall see.

In one sense, I'm not sure the shows are exactly the same: while New York's conception of "A-List" was about an "almost famous" kind of success-by-association game (which, for Season 2, just seemed smaller and sadder), Dallas is more brass tacks. In a smaller, southern, gay community, a lot of what defines "A-List" is not semi-celebrity, but money. And the Dallas cast fairly drips it.

And that, really, may be more in tune for Logo's audience, in some ways, than New York. The initial promise of "A List" after all, was that we would see some suggestion of really well known gays, in fashion or design or hairdressing... or something. Instead, the small cast of "who are theys" mostly interacted with each other, until the show devolved, by the end of Season one, into a vacation from hell at Reichen's family's Maine summer home (which, if nothing else, is terribly unfair to Maine). 

In Dallas, on the other hand, one doesn't expect any real boldface names, and fame isn't the issue. And, so far, the situation is way more incestuous, and perhaps more in tune with the real gay life of more gay men in the smaller cities. So when the religious semi-closeted Republican fundraiser has a crush on the sexy underwear company executive, along with the trust fund party boy and the successful real estate developer... I suspect I wasn't alone in nodding knowingly at every sudsy turn. Ah, to be twenty two and stupid and tipsy again!

Okay, so not... but that's what The A-List is all about, and either it has an appeal or it doesn't. New York, I think, for all the interest it's generating online (or so they say), seemed dismal and repetitive this season, all bitching and backbiting with little relief, and the addition of a wild card straight woman seemed disruptive. One of the things that struck me about season one was how it captured a lot of the reality of a gay man's life in New York, a life very separate from women, straight or gay. As season two devolved into "who does or doesn't like Nyasha", a sense of the show's central organizing principle got a bit lost. And also... generated a good bit of "who cares." It's telling, I think, that the biggest outlier of New York's cast - photographer Mike Ruiz - both came off as more sensible and sane than his costars, and also quickly decided that doing this is not for him. And Ruiz offered a put-down that really stood in, I think, for a wide swath of Logo's older viewers, pointing out that as you get older, there's really no need for a lot of pointless drama in one's life.

Whether Dallas can avoid the pitfalls - whether familiarity, in other words, simply does breed contempt - remains to be seen; at first blush, the cast is charming enough, the relationships engaging and the world on display at once familiar and fresh. For more than a few northerners, I suspect, this world will really seem quite alien. Just from my time spent in Baltimore, and traveling, I'm impressed with the way they captured the flavor of modern urban southern life, in all its garishness and inherent contradictions, the mix of familiar gentility and a more up to date racy edge (and, let's all note, the show is very, very white, which is at least an honest nod to how separate southern gay communities reflect the basic segregations of southern life). Unlike New York, the show has more sexual tension and a greater nod to the romantic lives of its main characters. 

Bottom line, of course, is that Logo won't amount to much with a world of "original programming" that makes it the gay Bravo (I know! Like Bravo isn't that, anyway!) - all "Drag Race" superstars mixed with "Real Gays of [Name Your Town]". (And, just an aside, let's ask... what, were Miami and Los Angeles busy? How about San Francisco? Jeez...) The A-List is an all fluffy, cotton candy exercise in TV that improves no one, and tells us very little... except that, still, these gay lives, in all their shallow details, are still lives that don't otherwise get entirely seen. It's a shame that New York seems to have to have lost sight of what ittle value it can bring to the conversation, of puttting some "realness" into the mix of TV's discussion about gay men's lives. For now, that "realness" in all its perplexing sexiness and shallowness, seems to be better served in Dallas. Which, suddenly... I find fascinating.