NYCweboy

J. Edgar: Nobody Says I Love You

Don't say you weren't warned: even the marketing department at Warners can't muster an ad campaign that disguises the dismal, depressing muddle that is J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood's entry for Oscar honors this year. If you're looking for upbeat or cheerful, don't bother. This is serious, and you will be punished. Particularly if you're a criminal, or a Communist.

"Communism," in all its ill-defined fearmongering glory, is the real bugaboo in J. Edgar, but Eastwood can't be bothered to try and sort out what, if any, aspect of Hoover's anti-Communist zeal might actually have more than personal animus driving it; indeed, this is the most curiously apolitcal biopic about such a significant political animal I can ever recall. Though Eastwood is nominally a Republican, he's not an especially political filmmaker, not in the sense of, say, Oliver Stone or Rob Reiner, and J. Edgar could arguably use a point of view, one way or another. But that's not, in the end, the biggest problem here.

As tempting as it is to blame Eastwood for why this film doesn't work - and this, along with Eatswood's similarly tame yet tortured approach to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil suggests some real issues with gay folk - I think the more likely culprit is screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, fresh from his bravura retelling of the story of Harvey Milk in Milk. That film's brilliance - growing so fully out of its smart script - gave Black a wide berth for future work. But J. Edgar is proof that Black isn't a magician. In trying to explore the potential connection between Hoover and his deputy, Clyde Tolson, Black has little to go on, and he fills in the obvious blanks with generic motivations full of problematic stereotypes that neither illuminate the man, improve the perception of gays overall, or provide much that is emotionally satisfying to a viewer. But the most glaring problem is striuctural: the film, like others recently, suffers from excessive cross-cutting between two different periods of Hoover's life, choppily edited and sloppily overlapping to no real useful end.

The ostensible hook for the story is Hoover retelling his personal history in founding the FBI, a historical record that is actually kind of interesting, even despite Hoover's obvious attempts to cast himself as the hero of every tale and the genius behind every great decision. Black does an all right job establishing Hoover as an unreliable narrator, but then has nowhere to go: if Hoover's version can't be trusted, and we get no real alternative to it much of the time... then is any of this film to be believed?

As Hoover creates a federal role for law enforcement - essentially making it up as he goes, and using a lot of "grey areas" where laws at the time were vague - he establishes a standard for Bureau agents as fine, upstanding men who live beyond reproach. Among his early recruits is Clyde Tolson, a Georgetown law graduate interested, though not deeply, in the idea of the FBI. As the film tells it, an instantly smitten Hoover hires Tolson almost immediately, and quickly makes him his closest confidante.. and by confidante, we are meant to mean "lovers", though probably at some distance in a much more closeted time.

Much of this is speculative, and Black does little to break out of generalities; there's some nods towards a gay past hidden from most people's view... but Black's gott little to go on, and it shows. Nor is the story helped by scenes of J. Edgar and his deeply controlling mother which underline old fashioned notions that gay men, especially twisted ones, have unnatural attachments to the female parent. What's on display here is often insulting, and kind of uncomfortable.

I haven't made mention of Leonardo DiCaprio's presence in the title role... mostly because there isn't much to say. Like a lot of his adult work, DiCaprio seems to have matured into an actor of limited range and somewhat lazy habits. For a film where he's in nearly every scene, he's remarkably unremarkable, rarely interesting, and generally emotionally inert. Much like Tom Cruise, DiCaprio seems frustrated that "movie star" doesn't equal "serious actor" when Oscar voting season rolls around. I'm hard pressed to see how he'll overcome that now.

Of the others, Armie Hammer has the better, more emotionally layered role as Clyde Tolson, and he does what he can... which isn't much under layers of aging prosthetics and lashed into narrow suits. I'm reminded of Madonna's line to Beatty in Dick Tracy - "I know... you can't decide whether to hit me or kiss me. I get a lot of that." Beatty's instincts are better - that dilemma is more intriguing, sexier if we don't see it literally play out. Hammer has to actually play it, and the effect is largely disastrous.

As Mother Hoover, Judi Dench is steely, even subtly effective (reminding me, oddly, of Joan Collins, say, playing Joan Crawford), but to no good end. Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, Hoover's longtime personal secretary, and the keeper of his secrets, has little to do and remains an emotional cipher. Of the various star cameos, I'd say Jefferey Donovan (Burn Notice) really succeeds at pulling off Bobby Kennedy, for whatever its worth. Poor Ed Westwick, as one of Hoover's agent dictaphones, seems cruelly underused, as do the others. And, for what it's worth, itr's a measure of Eastwood's desperation to give this film any small jolt of glamour he can that he shoehorns in both Ginger Rogers and Shirley Tample in disquieting, even disturbing cameos (especially his use of Temple, which is typically twisted genius on his part). All that, and Charles Lindbergh... and Eastwood still has a glum tale of two fullly dressed men who never take it off, never mind share more than a sad smooch.

Like most Eastwood efforts, this is a handsome and tasteful looking film, though Eastwood's current fascination with a sepia tone approach to the twenties and thirties is getting to be cliche. That, combined with this film's muddled politics and lack of any real underlying theme, suggests to me that Eastwood would be better off with material he can connect with more deeply. J. Edgar amounts to an interesting, if mistaken, exercise, with no real point, and little to say about its subject that hasn't been said - and snickered over - before. And, like a lot of serious "Oscar driven" efforts, J. Edgar substitutes grim unlikability for an actual serious, thoughtful examination of a difficult subject (like for instance, figuring out what's good or bad in the FBI that Hoover wrought... just as a for instance). If Black is going to be Hollywood's go-to gay script guy then he's both got to get stronger in overall scripting, and figure out which subjects, really, are worthy. J. Edgar does not seem to be one of them... and I'm not even one of the people who finds him all that awful.

The Failure Formerly Known As Our Last President

Of course the "Super Committee" - what a dopey name - "failed." It was designed to fail, set up to fail, populated with people for whom failure was the only option. When President Obama announced the deal to extend the debt ceiling, with its absurd conditions, including a committee which would generate $1.2 trillion in cuts... or else... the painful stench of failure was already there. 

And really, it just never went away.

It's easy to pin this failure as Example 376 of How Washington Is Not Working. I find the sight of the pundits, all weekend and through yesterday, earnestly insisting that the Comittee wasn't a foregone exercise in failure, but an earnest attempt to get it done, both sad and hilarious. Nobody thought there was a workable deal. And the people who thought This Time Would Be Different are especially foolish and gullible.

Of course, Washington isn't working...but simply blaming the current crop of politicians is too easy. This is failure that Americans actually voted for, and we, as voters and citizens ought to own up to our role in it. These people in DC fail because, in no small part, we want them to fail. We don't want to pay more taxes, we don't want to see government services cut, many people just want what we had before the economy fell apart.... or more precisely, the economy we had mostly under Bill Clinton.

We elect people who promise not to make the hard choices... and then wonder why they don't make them. 

So beyond the obvious failure, the one we knew was going to happen months ago, what else was at work here, and what happens now? Well, I'd argue that the real success here, the one that was set up months ago, is a long term success for Democrats, and it's success that builds on the real failure that we've been struggling with for close to ten years... the failed Presidency of George W. Bush.

Why are we in this "debt crisis"? Well, we're here for a couple of reasons. One is because of a set of tax cuts, passed during the Bush years, which have decimated the amount of revenue the government takes in by artificially cutting everyone's income tax rate. The other reason is the implosion of financial markets, driven by an explosion in mortgage bonds fueld by bad loans... and exacerbated, in no small part, by a President who insisted "everyone should own a home," and who pushed policies and programs that would do that, including pushing people into loans that many shouldn't have taken and couldn't afford.

Since 2006, Republicans have lost election after election because of the failures of George W' Bush. That includes his policy failures, and the campaign of deep divisiveness pursued by his advisors. It also includes a failure on the part of current Republicans to repudiate the Bush-era disasters, and to develop new strategies. It's why Republicans have "problems with their base" and "Tea Party" politics driven by anger and loyalty tests to failed, contradictory philosophies.

Democrats, too, struggle with the Bush-era failures; though we made steady progress back to elected majorities in Congress and elected a President, the hangover of failed Bush policies has made dealing with the aftermath difficult. President Obama has proven to be weakest on economic issues, putting a team in place whose connections to banking and finance and acceptance of the status quo added to our problems. With no significant reform of foreclosures, big banking, or the mortgage industry, we have few real options for solving our current economic crisis. And on tax cuts, President Obama and congressional Democrats have been afraid to speak plainly that the Bush tax cuts - all of them - simply must go.

The "Super Failure" though, may offer some glimmers of solutions down the road - if the automatic cuts are adhered to, then some progress on spending will happen... and it will happen to the Defense Department, where it is long overdue. But more importantly, it now seems likely that the Bush tax cuts may well expire fully at the end of 2012. It seems clear that Congressional Democrats will not be blackmailed into bad deals over making the Bush cuts permanent, and the will to extend them past 2012 weakens every day. Further, the Super Committee debates, which rehashed familiar arguments on all sides, led more than a few pundits to a natural conclusion - we can talk about the Bush tax cuts ending, because more people are realizing that a main reaosn our deficits are so enormous is because tax policy makes no sense.

Republicans are, clearly, pinning a lot of their hopes to the elections next year, that dissatisfaction with President Obama - and managing to shift blame for much of the Bush hangover on to him - will give them the Presidency and greater control of Congress. There may be a scenario where Mitt Romney can become President... but it's still pretty unlikely, and no one, really can say what Romney's approach to economic policy would be with certainty (that's the underlying concern about his all over the place previous positions). But it doesn't matter when we're talking Bush tax cuts; those expire after the general election before the next President takes orfice. If Obama loses the eection... who thinks he'll sign off on a further extension of the Bush cuts? His best mischief would be to let them expire... and forc Romney to try and argue that recreating them makes sound budgetary sense. That won't happen, either.

Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will force us to move forward on other discussions - how to really tackle health care costs, reexamining the problems with banks and foreclosures, and probably having some sensible discussions about separating what's essential in governmetn spending from what can, and should, get cut. We could reform payroll taxes by raising the income ceiling. We could do tax reform that reduces deductions and resets tax rates in a smarter way than the Bush approach. There's a lot of options, and if the Bush cuts expire, we could start to figure out what they are.

Republicans need to lose next year because the Bush Presidency needs, still, to be fully and complretely repudiated. Our media avoids mentioning the failed Bush Presidency, partly because it's divisive, and partly because we don't like to talk about our past, especially our recent past. And the silence over the failed Bush presidency has alowed Republicans to pretend both that it never happened and that if it did happen, let's remember the parts we like. The failure of the Super Committee - whether we're talking the failures of deep political divisions that squashed meaningful debate, or the practical failures of deep debt and a wrecked economy, all stem directly, and pointedly, from the failures we lived through under George W. Bush. Thank goodness, really, that the Super Committee failed rather than giving us yet another way to paper over the Bush Administration's failures without directly naming them. The stench of failure you smell... that's the lingering smell of that failed President we had last time. Let's not go there again.

The Occupation Ends... And The World Goes Round

If it's worth having a "two month anniversary", can I at least get a few moments to ask what Occupy Wall Street managed to accomplish in two months?

And if I say, at best, the OWS movement has been a literal mess... do I still really have to apologize for not being a good lefty?

Either way, I'm still here, and I'm still saying it: two months of this poorly thought through, lousily executed protest and all we've got to show for it are our chains - I mean, those metaphorical ones where we 99% are shackled to the wheel, grinding away for the 1%. Or something.

Little over a month ago I said what, I figured at the time, was not wildly out of line: it seemed hard to tell what OWS was trying to accomplish, it was hard to see how a lot of people camped out in a park would amount to much, and the likelihood of things breaking down into disarray and chaos and possibly violence seemed all too real. Can I at least get a point for having some small amount of prescience?

For about a couple of weeks, I had a post in mind about the fact that New Yorkers are, in fact, an extremely patient people - we get a bad rap for being angry and impatient, but it takes patience, and a remarkable sense of grace to live in the highly concentrated, congested quarters of America's largest city. And when it comes to acting out - and acting up - New Yorkers often turn out to be awfully patient. We just avoid Times Square, or go to the beach on Pride Parade week, or shop downtown while the New York City Marathon is running. Inconveniences happen. And most days, you will still have to wait in line for your morning coffee. Patience isn't just a virtue, it's essential.

That's why I don't think it's surprising that a lot of other cities and a number of other Mayors lost patience with their "Occupy" protests long before Bloomberg moved into Zucotti Park. Denver and Oakland and Portland and Seattle may give off West Coast (or Mountaintop) vibes of easy acceptance and anything goes... but all that mellowness is hard won and, well, leaves a dark cranky undercurrent. Live Free and Peaceful... just don't get out of line or cause too much trouble. Or we'll show up with tear gas and pepper spray.

By the time Bloomberg and Co moved in to Zucotti, patience wasn't jut thin, it was pretty much gone. "What do you want" has gone from being a plaintive cry to a sneer to a near screaming response. We get it... you're angry... but WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT? The reality, the sad reality, really, is that OWS has never quite figured that out. They're kind of mad about banks and world finance, they're kind of upset about foreclosures, there's a lot of "We Are The 99%"... but none of that amounts to a coherent case for changing something, never mind a set of proposals, always asked for, about some practical things that could be started right away, to really change things, or make a difference.

Even today, as the "Anniversary" is marked by fresh protests, Occupy Wall Street literally couldn't live up to its name. Still. Trying to march to Wall Street with the expressed purpose of "shutting down" the stock exchanges amounted to a lot of street blockades, some arrests... and little else. I spent the morning transfixed by the images on the business channels, where earnest, even caring, reporters tried to make sense of the protests... only to have to turn from that to reporting on the other actual business news of the days... because, regardless, the business of business was going to go on. Most obviously, and most tellingly, the idea of stopping or shutting the exchanges was impossible because "Wall Street" is no longer the center of the stock or bond market - the same internet that makes Twitter and Facebook the tools of the New Fangled Revolutions is the tool that's been destroying our economy at the speed of light. Nobody can shut down the stock markets without finding the "off" switch.

Much has been made of the "hundreds" of protests, the "thousands" of demonstrators, the "huge numbers" of bank accounts closed or moved in the movement's arguably one real challenge to the status quo, the Move Your Money protest. The reality though is that all of these big numbers are drops in a vast ocean of indifference and ignorance. Millions of people, still, probably don't know much about, or care, about Occupy protests. And even among the chattering classes, nominal support for some anger at economic injustice doesn't amount to doing anything at all. Millions of bank accounts are still at the largest (and worst run) banks. I don't love Chase, I think Jamie Dimon is part of the problem... but my checking account is still with them. And a Credit Union is no answer for me, though I still ponder the possibility.

And still, worst of all, I think, is the frustrating sense that blind support for Occupy is some kind of lefty expectation. Either you support the people in the streets... or you sympathize with the 1%. There's no way to say, apparently, still, that one cares deeply about economic justice and economic reforms, bank regulation and reduction of debt... but doesn't see the point of people camped out in parks, or swarming the streets turning a protest against banks into confrontations with police and local authority. Because, clearly, they're all the same. That kind of undifferentiated, nonspecific nature to the Occupy protests is the real and continuing indication that a leaderless mob is no answer to the problems we face. 

I'm sure some will argue that a) this isn't over (I'd agree), that b) this was a necessary step to future action and c) that these protests have had meaningful results, if one just looks hard enough. I don't think OWS is over, but future protests won't, really owe their future success or future support to Occupy; they will be successful when and if the case is made for taking action and expecting actual results. The failure of OWS to do either is real, and OWS owns it, and should, fairly, be termed as failed. As for "meaningful results"... replaying old debates about how police and local authorities handle mobs doesn't strike me as what OWS set out to do, and the results, mainly, are reminders that the public will accept a lot of mistreatment of protesters if the result is a return to normalcy where the protesters go away. And no, that's not me saying "yea mistreatment!", it's simply to say that, as for example in Oakland, our ability to find one side sympathetic gets harder when the mob goes off on a window breaking, stone throwing rampage.

And sure, the protesters remain in Zucotti Park, the leaderless meetings go on, more protests will no doubt occur.  It's going to be hard, though, to sustain that energy through a long winter. Even more pointedly, I'd wonder just who's doing what with all that money ($500,000, I read) and stuff that OWS "owns" though it's "not organized" and lacks a leadership. Today, I suspect, the two month anniversary may mark the movement's last real gasp of relevance. From here, it strikes me as dwindling participation, a lot of conflicts over money and property, and a sense of an opportunity in the distance that was missed. And maybe someone learned something from the failures of Occupy... but my own sense is to doubt that. Which means, come next summer, probably some new protests with similarly boisterous crowds, full of sound and fury, signifying very little at all.

Immortals: Treasure Trails, And Minotaur's Tails

I'm pretty sure most film executives, never mind the rest of us, don't wake up saying "get me someone to do a film like 300", but someone did... and now we have Immortals. Or... excuse me Immortals 3D.

Immortals is 300 for the PG-13 set, which is to say, a little less gory, a smidge less gay, and a lot more serious... if that's possible. In that regard, the film seems like a "why bother?" but Immortals turns out to be a fairly approachable popcorn pleaser, visually interesting, and less ambarrassingly acted than one might think. In a sense, it's everything Clash of the Titans could have been, and wasn't - including the actual clash of the actual Titans.

Immortals is the story of Theseus, like Perseus, the child of Zeus and a mortal woman. In this case Zeus is hanging around, trying to school the boy in heroism (disguised as John Hurt - and why does Hurt seem to be the go-to narrator for this new Swords and Sandals revival?). Theseus and Mom live in Kolpos, a city dramatically carved into the side of a cliff, with a labyrinthine(!) temple, where the women go every day to pray. 

The temple of course, figures into the film's better set piece, a reimagining of Theseus and the Minotaur that proves central to the larger storyline. That being the quest of King Hyperion to obtain the Bow of Epirus, a magical bow that can free the Titans from their prison in Mount Tartarus, and restart their battle with the Greek Gods.

And if you find that eye-rolling, just stop here.

To its credit, the film makes the mix of Godlike and mortal action work better than most films. That has a lot to do with the visionary sense of Tarsem, who directs this film in what may be his most accessible, commercial effort yet (if you had The Cell inflicted on you, or were one of the 7 people who saw The Fall... you get the picture). Tarsem is one of those rare directors who really does think in big, dramatic visual storytelling, and all the elements are in place here. More impressively, he finds a surprisingly successful tone for the acting on display, which neither insults the heavy thespian chops of his largely Brit cast, nor wastes Mickey Rourke as the despotic, over the top Hyperion.

Rourke's found a second (or possibly third) life playing the dramatic heavy in these enormous tentpole films (quite literally - he's huge), and often he's too much - too intense, too wild, too hammy. Here, he underplays with remarkable effectiveness, and when he lashes out, it both makes his point and is suitbaly large scaled. It takes a real director's finesse to pull that off, and Tarsem delivers.

Much of the rest of cast is populated with familiar pretty boys and hardbodies - Henry Cavill as Theseus, Kellan Lutz as Poseidon, Steven Dorff as Theseus' "friend from prison"... oh never mind. I'm especially partial to Luke Evans, who plays Zeus here, fresh off playing Aramis in the recent Three Musketeers... and also Joseph Morgan, here playing a turncoat named Lysander, but currently also storming through The Vampire Diaries as Klaus. I should also mention the main female role, the Oracle Phaedra, with Freida Pinto as this year's stunning almond-eyed exotic.

All of the men - and more - are set off neicely in Eiko Ishioka's costumes - Ishioka being Tarsem's go-to costume designer. What with leather Speedos having been done, and mini-kilts being so last year, Ishioka comes up with a creative alternative to show off the male physique, dropping the waistline of the tunics and skirts to sit low on the hips, framing the torso especially long (and dangerously close to, er, the edge of naugtiness). The result, especially on the Gods, is an especialy undressed sense of dressed, and no one's around to claim that they're too serious to be half dressed or less (Dorff is especially shameless at this, Evans as well). I'd call it doing a lot with a little. But seriously, Ishioka's costumes add considerably to the film's striking visuals, with their Eastern accents and stark colors.

The ending is both legendary victory and obvious setup for sequel - though how that might work is something of a mystery, since the legend doesn't really go past the final scene here. More than 300, I think Immortals stands as better than one might reasonably expect in the Sword and Sandals genre, miles ahead of Clash, and pretty darn entertaining. And really, how picky should we be in our popular entertainments? A reasonably diverting storyline, lots of shirtless guys... works for me. And that Pinto lady is awfully pretty, too.

Yet Another Of The Articles We Never Finished Reading

Or, "there isn't a violin small enough":

When Mr. [Tod] Abrams bought the brand-new apartment in 2007, his taxes were just $35 a month; he now pays $374 a month. When the exemption runs its course, in 2018, the monthly tax bill will be an estimated $1,629.

“It is utterly ridiculous,” said Mr. Abrams, a co-president of Alternative Marketing Solutions, which helps publicize films. “I have a home in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, and California is famous for high taxes, yet we don’t pay anything close to what I will be paying.”

- "421a Tax Exemption: Don’t Say You Didn’t Know" by Julie Satow, in the opening discussion of Tod Abrams' "mint condition" 2 bedroom condo, now on sale for $1.575 million (emphasis added).

And BTW, the last article we never finished reading, also in the NYT.

The Defiant One

Last week - on my storm break - I had planned to write about Herman Cain and his various harassment allegations... but I got busy and the story kept moving. And still, what I want to write now is essentially what I wanted to write then.

Cain's response to the allegations is about Textbook 101 in How Not To Run A Campaign, but that's not of deep interest to me - to take Cain's missteps seriously is to take Cain seriously, and long before we evaluate sexual harassment charges... Herman Cain is never going to be President.

Still, the unfolding "scandal" and Cain's fumbling response says more - and more good, I think - about the state of workplace harassment allegations than many want to admit. It's easy to look at the various negative aspects - the rabid defenders of Cain, mainly on talk radio, the ugliness from his campaign operatives - and see a lot of bad news on taking harassment seriously. But from the opposite angle - where these charges are being examined and reexamined and discussed - it's worth noting some of the good that's coming out of this.

First, sexual harassment is being taken seriously, and seriously, on the right. Conservatives, male and female have noted that if these allegations have merit (I think that's a more productive description than "true" which isn't nearly as concrete as it would seem), Cain is unfit for the Presidency. That's some remarkable progress, even in recent memory. Moreover, the women making these allegations - whether Karen Kraushaar's reluctant move into the public eye, or Sharon Bialek's deliberate steps - are being given room to make their cases and be heard.

Second, there's more agreement on what constitutes "harassment" than I would ever have expected: Bialek's story of a hand up her skirt and leering "you want a job, right?" proposition didn't get a lot of people trying to explain it away with discussions of her looks, or her outfit, or "she must have misunderstood." Yes, people have noted that her charges are "he said, she said" and hard to confirm... but even then, there's two choices: either he's right that it never happened... or she's right and it did... and that means it was harassment. Similarly, Kraushaar's been clear that "you come up to my chin" is both neither harassment, nor what happened. This too, is some fairly significant progress.

It's in this context of harassment being taken fully and seriously that Cain's missteps have been so pronounced. Even Cain - reflecting his "DC outsider" status as a business world leader - has had to admit that sexual harassment is real and serious and disqualifying. His "I haven't never touched nobody" defense is too absolute and too quick to make this story go away. At the same time, Cain's been surprisingly muddled about offering the kind of simple evidence that would ostensibly prove his point - why not go back and at least review records from the National Restaurant Association before making pronouncements that can easily be disproved (like who've you met, or what setllements were paid). That's not the sign of business competence which Cain's been selling as his main positive attribute.

Cain's press conference was a similar nonstarter, full of abstract denials, a lack of specifically discussing his dealings with specific women, and a lot of third person references to "Herman Cain's decency." Cain's assessments of his own decency is neither the issue nor the point. Nor was trotting out a power lawyer like Lin Wood, who neither came off as objective nor reasonable, to simultaneously intone that sexual harassment is serious while positioning all of Cain's accusers as liars and deabeats. But then, Cain's campaign seems, even for them, remarkably ill-equipped to handle these events profesisonally or competently.

Admittedly, trying to make all of this seem to rosy would be a mistake - both Kraushaar and Bialek face some pretty ugly moments, there's a clear collection of unreconstructed men on the right who will never entirely get the issues around sexual harassment (not to mention Cain's "sexual harassment doesn't just happen to women" going on to insist that women harassmen too. Apparently man-on-man harassment is just too much to discuss). The news about our culture, as this story unfolds, isn't especially better than its ever been. There's been some change... but we still need much more.

I don't know what Cain did or did not do, and mostly, as I said, I don't especially care in the context of Cain's misbegotten run for the Presidency. It wouldn't surprise me to eventually confirm that much of what the women allege is true; it wouldn't necessarily surprise me to find out Bialek's story can't entirely be trusted, either.  At best it's worth noting what progress that has been made, I think, while noting that Cain's defiant denials do him no favors. That, and keep waiting for Cain to give in, and give up.

Finally, one other point in passing: I suspect that Cain's case got harder, not easier, with the revelations out of Penn State. The revulsion we're experiencing around Jerry Sandusky's conduct will make it much harder, I suspect, for anyone to simply wave away sexually inappropriate behavior, and in Cain's case, not help him when he tries to denigrate or marginalize his accusers. It would be different, perhaps, if the Penn State story didn't revolve around sports and hadn't captivated a lot more straight men than might otherwise take notice. But for now, I don't think anyone wants to be part of a news story where "sexual acting out" is part of the storyline. And Cain's defiant stance only makes chasing him and the story that much more likely.

Michael Jackson And The Sleazy Doctor Blues

So apparently, even sleazy doctors should have standards.

I'm not quite sure what those standards should be, but at the very least, those charlatans and feelgoods and doctor mills should take note: almost anything goes with your painkiller addict patients. Just don't get too hands on when they OD.

I'm not trying to excuse Conrad Murray, God knows, justify his sleazy ethics (and lack of them), or suggest that his actions leading up to Michael Jackson's death are defensible... but watching yesterday's trial verdict - indeed, following the trial at all - was quite surreal. And so, on the one hand, there was somehow no other vedict possible but guilty. On the other, I'm still not entirely convinced that Murray, alone, bears sole guilt for Jackson's death.

What, after all, was Michael Jackson doing in the bedroom of a rented mansion in one of the wealthiest sections of Los Angeles? Well, partly, because he'd blown through a vast fortune feeding his expensive tastes, including an addiction to painkillers and barbituates. He'd been getting regular administaryion of Demerol... from his dermatologist. And finally, desperate for more cash, he'd signed on to do a massive series of live performances, a grueling schedule for the healthiest of performers (the only comparable schedule I could ever think of was both Bette Midler and Diana Ross, who each did a month or more at Radio City), which he wasn't.

Why was Conrad Murray on a six figure retainer to "treat" Michael Jackson? Because Jackson, and his people, convinced the tour promoters that Murray could serve as the required "physician" to certify that Jackson was healthy enought to perform, so that the concerts could be insured. And why was Murray administering regular doses of Propofol, a surgical anesthetic? Because Jackson's drug habits, and most likely his withdrawal from Demerol, left him sleep deprived and desperate.

Take away the millions and the fame and the media sideshow... and didn't we just more or less convict Jackson's drug dealer for shooting him up in a high-end smack shooting gallery? And if that's the case... then yes, I'm all for convicting drug dealers. But don't drug addicts bear some responsibility for their predicaments?

It's true,of course: Conrad Murray should never have signed on to the role of Michael Jackson's aesthesiologist. For one thing, it wasn't his specialty. For another, he seemed utterly naive about the depth of Jackson's addiction issues. But Jackson seems like an especially clever addict in this regard - finding the one doctor whose need for cash would override his muddled ethics long enough for him to get what he wanted.

But to lay guilt solely on Murray is to lose sight of how Jackson wound up in that place, at that time: the years of abuse as a child, the enabling behavior of record execs who "loaned" Jackson millions to feed his habits, and the cadre of sleazy doctors who fed Jackson's disastrous habits. Murray's not the first, or the last, or certainly the worst of a class of medical professionals whose prescription pad can be had at the right price. And Murray, it strikes me, is hardly the only reason Michael Jackson is dead.

Murray's conviction, in a cultural sense, absolves the rest of us of any feelings of guilt. Those of us who watched the Jackson freak show and knee something was not right, and that worshipful cult of Jackson's fans - some of the most obsessed and least clear sighted - for whom he could never do a wrong. That, after all, was Jackson's real drug: an approving crowd to applaud his every move, encourage his flights of fantasy, and never question his pain or criticize his choices. By all means, someone should try and stop those sleazy doctors. I just wish we'd stop kidding ourselves about what it takes to help drug addicts... or at least not pretend that Michael Jackson wasn't one.

Even The Trees Want Some Of That Action

Something like four days before the Big Storm That Changed Everything, I had this whole post planned about the natural beauty of Westchester County and the attendant problem of nearly running into deer on a regular basis.

Which is to say, even on the good days... life in the country means living on the edge of natural disaster.

But the storm came, and apparently I decided to take a week off to recover. Actually, as one might guess, work simply took over my life - my store was 150% of the past week's sales this week, no joke. The combination of power failure, which affected our two nearest sister stores as well as every surrounding town and village, along with our ability to actually keep pace (somewhat) with increased demand, made for a crazy week.

And we also lost Halloween somewhere along the way.

A week later, things are getting back to normal, sort of. Unlike Connecticut, our power problems seem to be pretty well addressed, and while some went as long as 5 days without power, the sense that things were moving, sometimes slowly, was apparent. It was also clear, as people ventured out and traveled around, that the extent of the damage was almost like nothing we'd seen in a long, long time, if ever. And frankly, we thought the damage from Irene was pretty bad. This was, if anything, worse.

More than the hurricane, I think, this snowstorm in October will be hard to explain to people who didn't experience it - even the hardiest among us - me included - who like winter and live to overcome the occasional hardship, were caught way off guard on the severity and intensity of tis storm. As I was driving - before I fell into that ditch - I had a greater than usual sense of driving in a completely new landscape, like landing on the moon or something. The day before, it was sunny and the trees lined the road in brilliant fall colors. And suddenly we were in a white out, and the trees were falling on the road.

A week later, the trees, having made their point, returned to standing upright. It's nearly as jarring, now, to drive in the expected fall landscape of rolling hills in fall's riot of colors. Like nothing ever happened, except for those last few piles of unmelted snow by the road. And those last dangling tree branches. And those 100,000+ people in CT still in the dark. I don't know about everybody else, but after the last couple of years, I've stopped seeing the trees as benign, silent presences. More than the deer, I think the trees want to remind us to tone down our hubris, remember that nature can go against us, that even the safest looking objects can hold untold dangers. 

Or something. I'm telling ya... we've been having a rough week out here.

Last night, I dreamt I was in an office building, on a fairly high floor, when out a window, I saw two tornadoes touch down. Just your average post storm apocalyptic nightmare. But after I woke up with a start, I drank a little water... and went back to it, to try and plan a better escape route. Hey... you never know.