MOVIE REVIEW: Kill the Messenger

In Kill the Messenger, Gary Webb’s big story slowly begins to unravel, due in no small effort of the rivals of the Mercury News, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, to smear him.

jeremy-renner-kill-the-messenger-posterThe cover story of the October 9, 2014 issue of Metroland, the “Capitol Region’s Alternative Newsweekly,” was Return of the Messenger, about how a new film starring Jeremy Renner will serve as a belated vindication of an investigative journalist. The movie starts with clips of US Presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan extolling the virtue of fighting the scourge of illegal drugs.

“Kill the Messenger… is the true story of Sacramento-based investigative reporter Gary Webb, who earned both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series that revealed the CIA had turned a blind eye to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras trafficking crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere in urban America in the 1980s. One of the first-ever newspaper investigations to be published on the Internet, Webb’s story gained a massive readership and stirred up a firestorm of controversy and repudiation.”

The first part of the movie was like “All the President’s Men,” the movie about the Watergate affair that toppled the presidency of Richard Nixon, but on steroids, with hard-working Webb going out on a limb to nail this story. But his big story slowly begins to unravel, due in no small effort of the rivals of the Mercury News, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, to smear Webb, thus undermining the narrative.

This is an engaging story, but depressing in terms of both the government’s actions and the media’s complacency. Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991, who died recently, backed his reporters, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein when they investigated Watergate; the San Jose Mercury News eventually was less supportive of their reporter. The Washington Post’s actions in 1972 through 1974 were courageous and served the country well; the Washington Post of 1996, at least in regard to this story, was cowardly and petty.

At least some of the less positive reviews (75% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) suggest this movie also takes some liberties with the facts. This MAY be true – I know not – but it’s also possible, as The Myth of the Free Press by Chris Hedges suggests, that “these [CONTINUING!] attacks are an act of self-justification… an attempt by the mass media to mask the collaboration between themselves and the power elite.” In any case, the overarching narrative is probably accurate. Others suggest that the ending is unsatisfying; so it was, but that’s the way it really played out.

The Wife and I, who saw it on a recent Sunday afternoon at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, thought it was well worth our time.

Q is for Qualtagh

Sometimes, the first person I see after leaving the house in the morning is a grizzled old man smoking a cigarette because he is not allowed to do so in the house.

good-morning-this-morning (1)The Wiktionary defines qualtagh (Manx English) as “The first person one encounters, either after leaving one’s home or (sometimes) outside one’s home, especially on New Year’s Day.” Unused Words describes the word as “the first person one meets (either leaving or entering their house) after the start of the New Year.”

But the first reference I saw did not specify the New Year. So I started thinking about this: Who IS the first person I see when I leave my house? For the comic strip character Dagwood Bumstead, it’s Mr. Beasley, the postman he often collides with.

For me, during the school year, it’s often one particular school mom and her two kids, who seem to pass our house at just the right time. Last school year, it might have been the crossing guard, an animated woman who can practically stop traffic with her voice.

Sometimes, especially on the weekend, it’s one of the neighbors, a grizzled old man smoking a cigarette because he is not allowed to do so in the house. Occasionally, it’s a red-haired woman, the wife of a library school buddy of mine, doing her daily brisk walk.

I remember when I used to live alone, I would not have spoken to anyone before I left the house. On Election Day about 20 years ago, I was walking to the place where the election was conducted about 5:50 a.m. because I like to be first at the polls when I can. This cheerful man said, “Good morning!” I replied, apparently inaudibly, “Good morning.”

Mister Cheerful continued, “I SAID, good MORNING!” I explained that I had replied to his earlier greeting but that my vocal cords had not yet warmed up.

Y’know, that guy really ticked me off.

Here’s Good Morning from the 1939 movie Babes in Arms with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.

Plus Good Morning from the 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain, with Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and a young Debbie Reynolds. The Wife, The Daughter, and I watched the video together a couple of years ago.

abc15

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

Crummy, we feel

This may shock you, but people related to me have actually suggested that I might be just a touch cranky when I’m sick.

sickIt started with the Daughter a week before Halloween, sluggish going to school, going to her team’s soccer match that Saturday but too weak to play, tired on Sunday, then home sick from school on Monday. She went to school late on Tuesday, but too fatigued for gym.

The Wife, who is never sick – just ask her – was feeling off on Wednesday, stayed home from work on Thursday, and still recovering on Friday.

There’s something unfortunate about being ill on Halloween. The night before, I slept extremely poorly. The Wife, when she’s ill, wheezes audibly so that I can’t sleep. I went down to the sofa, but the cats running around made that not a viable option. Finally, at about 3:20 a.m., I went to live down on the floor in the Daughter’s room. I literally crawled back to bed one minute before the alarm went off at 6 a.m. I thought when I went to work that I was just tired, but realized by midday that I too was becoming ill.

This may shock you, but people related to me have actually suggested that I might be just a touch cranky when I’m sick. When I got home, I schlepped furniture from the front porch to the shed, because The Wife had asked me days earlier to move them, lest the trick-or-treaters use them in their pranks. I was spent after that and could put on a happy face briefly as I handed out the candy before the others took over the task. Home all weekend with various ailments: sore throat, headache, congestion, body aches, and vivid dreams.

The result of which is that I can’t write a cleverly coherent post here, though I wrote TWO posts for my usually neglected TU blog, one on the NYS ballot proposals and Albany School Board election, and one on the governor’s race, which was time-sensitive.

I did watch about a half of (US) football on Sunday, Cardinals over Cowboys – YES! I also saw this unfortunate gaffe on NBC News Saturday night in real time.

Back to work today, but just muddling through…

This shall pass. I hope so.
**
My friend Dan’s story on how fear, nastiness and dirty tricks sideline public discussion of the Albany City budget.

Eight and a half, no Fellini: Lessons from years of blogging

If this blog has at all a conversational tone, and I hope it does, it’s because I’m often having a debate with myself exactly what I feel about a given topic.

8 and a halfThis being my 8.5th anniversary, or 17th semi-anniversary, of blogging, I thought I’d praise the rightness of Anil Dash’s 15 lessons from 15 years of blogging.

1. Typos in posts don’t reveal themselves until you’ve published.

This is SO true. There’s a coterie of bloggers who will e-mail me with corrections, and I for them – you know who you are – because a self-edited blog will inevitably have typos. There are errors that I KNOW are wrong, such as your instead of you’re, that I’ve made myself. Worse, though, is when I’ve decided to link to a previous blog post, and only then do I see the typo that’s been out there for months or YEARS. Oh, the horror.

2. Link to everything you create elsewhere on the web.

This is one of the reasons why I created my shadow blog, which, I should note, I’ve not always been so thorough in correcting the aforementioned typos, even when I fix them here.

3. Always write with the idea that what you’re sharing will live for months and years and decades.

There’s a tendency for me to want to write on topical subjects, in order to appear zeitgeisty.

4. Always write for the moment you’re in.

But my greater instinct is to write what I want, and that’s the stuff I tend to be most pleased with.

5. The scroll is your friend.

Occasionally, when I’ve written something here I like, and it gets NO reaction here, I might post it elsewhere. But truth is, I don’t worry overly much, because the daily blogger with a job and a wife and a daughter and other obligations can’t be overly concerned about these things.

6. Your blog can change your life in a month.

While I won’t write about ANYTHING every day, I do note that I’ve written a LOT about racism, and some about sexism, in the past few months. I think that some people know how they feel about something before they write, but my thought process often evolves as I am writing. If this blog has at all a conversational tone, and I hope it does, it’s because I’m often having a debate with myself about exactly what I feel about a given topic.

7. There is absolutely no pattern to which blog posts people will like.

Ain’t THAT the truth! One week, my Times Union blogging buddy Chuck Miller listed my blog post about hedgehogs as one of the best of the week on that platform. Really? OK.

8. The personal blog is an important, under-respected art form.

Well, yes. What I’ve learned about the politics of New Zealand, or struggles with depression, or trying to write a novel or the love of one’s grandchildren, or selling used stuff, just to pick a few, has enriched my life.

9. Meta-writing about a blog is generally super boring. (That probably includes this post.)

I do agree with the notion that “sorry I haven’t written in a while” posts are generally less interesting. Fortunately, because I never had the sense to leave, I’ve never written one, yet.

10. The tools for blogging have been extraordinarily stagnant.

This may be. ONE element that has evolved on the blogs themselves is the ability to write now, post later. I do appreciate the line of products I can post my blog to Facebook and Twitter without actually going there, such as Hootsuite. And I do like Bloglovin, where I put a bunch of blogs I want to visit, to see if/when they’ve last posted.

11. If your comments are full of assholes, it’s your fault.

That’s almost never been true here, though it has on the TU site, which is why I tend to write less there.

12. The most meaningful feedback happens in a very slow timeframe.

This is SO true. Things I’ve written about Raoul Vezina and FantaCo; or my grandfather working at then WNBF, Channel 12 in Binghamton; or my father, who people knew from 30 years ago; or my grief process regarding my mother’s passing, will generate comments two, three, FIVE years later. These tend to be quite meaningful.

13. It’s still early.

Dash writes: “Particularly as the idea of personal blogging has fallen out of fashion or even come to seem sort of old-fashioned online, there’s never been a better time to start.” EVERYONE was doing it, and now NO ONE is doing it because it’s not flashy, or brief, enough. Reason for me to continue.

14. Leave them wanting more.

He notes: “One sure way to trigger writer’s block when blogging is to think, ‘I have to capture all my thoughts on this idea and write it about it definitively once and for all.'” Fortunately, I DON’T think that I even KNOW what my definite thoughts on hardly anything is. I keep evolving.

Voting in New York

The Green Party candidate for governor, Howie Hawkins, has no chance of winning, which doesn’t prevent me from considering voting for him. I mean, he’s GREEN.

voteI found this article from September that explains to you folks outside of New York the crazy voting quilt: Why are so many parties allowed on the ballot in New York?

And this doesn’t even count some parties started just for this election. Governor Andrew Cuomo is also running on the Women’s Equality Party, as well as the Democratic and Working Family Party. I could explain this, but I’d infuse the commentary with too much sarcasm.

Even when I agree with him on some social issues, he comes off as an inflexible bully. And corrupt: most recently, his book publisher was given access to his campaign email lists.

My friend Dan is no fan of Andrew Cuomo, at all.

The Republican, Rob Astorio, is a rube, who said, re: the potential cut in dental benefits, almost literally, “Let them eat soup.” Does anyone REALLY want this guy, or do they pick him because he’s just the major party guy running against Cuomo?

The Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, has no chance of winning, which doesn’t prevent me from considering voting for him. I mean, he’s GREEN.

Then there are the ballot initiatives:

Proposal 1 revises the state’s redistricting procedure. It seems like such a great idea, and good government groups are actually split on it. But it is fake reform. Prop 1 will force future map drawers to consider the current district lines that are already flawed. Moreover, most of the participants on the group drawing lines are selected by the state legislature, AND the legislators can essentially ignore the committee’s suggestions.

Proposal 2 would allow electronic distribution of a state legislative bill to satisfy the constitutional requirement that a bill be printed and on the desks of state legislators at least three days before the Legislature votes on it, with requirements that the bill cannot be changed electronically without leaving a record of the changes. The legislature is a notorious tree-killer, and this seems to be a reasonable solution.

Proposal 3 has the attractive name, the SMART SCHOOLS BOND ACT OF 2014, which “authorizes the sale of state bonds of up to two billion dollars ($2,000,000,000) to provide access to classroom technology and high-speed internet connectivity to equalize opportunities for children to learn, to add classroom space to expand high-quality pre-kindergarten programs, to replace classroom trailers with permanent instructional space, and to install high-tech smart security features in schools.” How could one oppose this? My fear is that the computer hardware and devices purchased will become obsolete long before taxpayers repaid the debt.

Here’s an explanation of the importance of midterm elections to students, because American voters are notoriously bad at participating in non-Presidential elections. And when they DO decide to cast their ballots, they run into voter suppression.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial