Jeffrey Wells

I feel horrible about what may happen tomorrow in Indiana and North Carolina. Terrified. It could all finally start to be over (please!) if Barack Obama finishes slightly ahead of the Hildebeest among the Hoosiers and takes her, say, by eight or ten points among the tarheels. But it could go badly too, and the agony could well continue. Just ignore it, I’ve been telling myself today. Or at least don’t fret. At least until tomorrow.

Then I came across this 5.4 Kurt Andersen piece in New York (“About That Crush on Obama”) that perfectly describes everything I’ve been feeling and sensing over the last three or four weeks, and somehow this has brought some comfort. If a modest but decisive Obama triumph is not in the cards for tomorrow, there is at least solace in knowing that the relatively recent news media animus towards Obama, the never-the-twain-shall-meet attitudes that starkly separate Hillary and Barack supporters and the standard loathing I’ve been feeling for the Hillary hinterlanders for months has been well captured and understood.
Please read the whole piece — it hits it dead center — but here’s the best part:
“Yet the flip side of all this is why Clinton’s demographically determined constituencies haven’t felt the Obama magic, why for them he’s an acquired taste, like espresso. It’s not only that the people who create and run the media — and who love Obama — occupy the social and cultural upper rungs. The world depicted in ‘the media,’ broadly construed — not just straight journalism but everything we watch and read and hear — is overwhelmingly a bright, shiny, upscale, youngish world.
“Uneducated white people, residents of the so-called C and D counties, and the elderly — in other words, Hillary Clinton voters — are seldom allowed into the mass-media foreground, and when they appear it’s usually as bathetic figures, victims or losers. (And working-class black pop culture is considered part of the sexy mainstream in a way that working-class white pop culture is not.) The shocking eclipse of Hillary (an eight-figure net worth, maybe, but at least she’s got a normal American name and a Wal-Mart shopper’s bad hair and big bum) by this fashionable (black!) media darling is one more slap in the face for the people chronically excluded from the pretty mediascape version of America, one more damn new thing that they don’t really get. It makes them…bitter, and the bitterness makes them cling to the Clintons.
“The media didn’t see this coming. Back in February, when the new prince was gliding thrillingly up and up toward nomination, a part of the thrill for the media was their happy astonishment that they were no longer cosmopolitan outliers but finally (unlike in 1984 with Gary Hart) in sync with America: Regular folks, white people in Iowa and Virginia and Wisconsin, were actually voting for Obama!
“That was then. With the ten-point loss in Pennsylvania, the latest Reverend Wright eruption, and the shrinkage of Obama’s leads in the polls, the media are feeling lousy, and not just because their guy is taking a beating. If Obama is deemed to be an effete, out-of-touch yuppie, then the effete-yuppie media Establishment that’s embraced him must be equally oblivious and/or indifferent to the sentiments of the common folk.
“Uh-oh. As the cratering of newspaper circulations accelerates (thousands a week are now abandoning the Times) and network-news audiences continue to shrink, for big-time mainstream journalists to seem even more out of touch makes some of them panic. And…so…it’s all…his fault, that highfalutin Obama! Certain journalistic stars these last few weeks (hello, George Stephanopoulos!), instead of copping to the ‘elitist’ sensibilities they obviously share with him (and the Clintons and McCain) — we travel abroad and read books, we have healthy bank accounts and drink wine; so shoot us — reacted by parroting the Clinton campaign’s faux-populist talking points about Obama’s condescension toward the yokel class.
“But pandering to the yokels, pretending to share their tastes and POV? That goes pretty much unchallenged. If the wellborn New England Wasp George W. Bush (Andover ’64, Yale ’68, Harvard ’75) could be successfully refashioned as a down-home rustic, why shouldn’t Hillary Clinton (Wellesley ’69, Yale ’73) be talkin’ guns and drinkin’ Crown Royal shots and droppin’ all the g’s from her gerunds whenever she speaks extemporaneously these days? Naked disingenuousness apparently isn’t as off-putting as, say, failing to pin a tiny metal American flag to one’s lapel.
“For all I know, the Clinton voters find Obama’s spazzy bowling and Jay-Z referencing just as irritating. Like I said, the Democratic race has become for many of us an intense playoff simulacrum, and fans love their team and curse the opponents blindly and faithfully. I can’t quite believe that I have been driven to baseball-geek analogies…but here I find myself nevertheless, feverishly hoping that the story ends not in the fashion of last year’s awful, amazing Mets, but like the Yankees in 2000, when they nearly blew their big lead in the season’s final weeks before straightening up and winning the World Series.”

One and a half tablets of Tylenol PM resulted in four hours of sleep on a totally crammed 767 that left LAX last night around 11:50 pm. Groggily took the E train out of Jamaica, forgetting that I should have taken the A or the C which would have stopped at Broadway Junction, where you get the L train. A slow hellish ride ensued, the train poking along at an average of 12 mph through endless dark tunnels under Queens.

Caught a G train connection down to Lorimer and then three stops on the L line to Montrose. It takes a little practice to get back into the eye-contact avoidance that is required behavior on all New York subways. And then finally the ordeal of lugging three bags that felt heavier than sand up two steep staircases.
But all was right after a shower and a change of clothes. Now there’s only the immense peace that comes with an excellent wireless connection and a clean, clutter-free apartment. Blue skies and much sunlight and the warmth of a friendly neighborhood are just outside. Had a perfect slice of pizza with green onions and goat cheese, and a can of cold orange soda. (A strange urge to not eat healthily always overtakes me when I’m here.) I haven’t been in this neighborhood for over a year but the dry cleaning guy remembered my last name. That’s New York for you.

Oprah Winfrey aired a Tom Cruise interview last Friday, and today she’s running a tribute show about his 25 years of stardom. Cruise’s big career kick-off, of course, was Risky Business, which opened in August 1983. It strikes me as odd, as it has to Roger Freidman, that neither Cruise nor Winfrey thought to invite the film’s director-writer, Paul Brickman, to take part in the show. By any fair standard this seems like ingratitude and bad manners.

The reason for the blow-off, I’m presuming, is because Brickman didn’t become a powerhouse director in the wake of Risky Business‘s huge success and therefore isn’t flash enough to share the limelight with Cruise admirers like Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hofman, etc. But Cruise owes Brickman big-time. Risky Business was the springboard that led to everything else. Without it Cruise probably wouldn’t have been cast in Top Gun, which in turn led to The Color of Money, Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July — the three late ’80s films that firmed his rep as a serious actor as well as a hot-ticket movie star. If I were Cruise I would have insisted on Brickman being included. Right is right.
I’m also recalling how Brickman’s film was actually the vehicle in which Cruise gave his second stand-out performance, the first being Curtis Hanson‘s Losin’ It. Shot in late ’81 for $7 million and released four months before Risky Business, it was treated as a minor thing by audiences and (as I recall) most critics. It may have seemed like just another wild-weekend-in-Tijuana teen comedy, but I remember deciding early on that Losin’ It (which had a tender emotional element in Shelley Long‘s performance as a housewife on the brink of a divorce) was a cut or two above. I remember telling myself that Hanson was a director to watch. It costarred John Stockwell and Jackie Earl Haley.

I gather that the Winfrey-Cruise tribute is ignoring Losin’ It as well. To be honest I haven’t seen it since my first and only viewing 25 years ago, but writing this has sparked interest in the DVD. I wonder if it still plays. I’m presuming that it does.

“By seeking to tear down opponents and pander to voters, the Clinton campaign is playing just the kind of politics that Americans say they detest. We need a president who can forge consensus and compromise among ideological foes. Barack Obama is that kind of Democrat; Hillary Clinton is not.” — from the Chicago Tribune‘s 5.4 editorial “Indiana, Go With Obama.”

I truly admire the talent and effort that goes into writing an obliging review that sounds so smart and aware that you’re not aware what’s actually going on. Seriously — it’s not easy to do this right. I can think of no one better at tapping out intelligent critiques of this sort than Variety‘s Joe Leydon. At the same time, I would be less than honest if I said I fully trust Leydon’s take on films such as What Happens in Vegas. I’m saying this with respect.

“Some trend-conscious wags won’t be able to resist describing Vegas as Judd Apatow Lite, since it’s about a self-involved slacker who becomes more directed and/or responsible as a result of his relationship with a more mature woman. But, really, that set-up already had whiskers long before Apatow became a brand name.
“In fact, the roots of this new pic can be traced back to screwball comedies of the ’30s and ’40s. The big difference — well, okay, one of several big differences — between Vegas and those fast-paced comedy classics is that Vegas actually becomes more enjoyable as it tamps down the over-the-top helter-skelter of its early scenes.”
Leydon’s use of the words “okay, one of several big differences” is the Big Giveaway. Judgment slips out! You don’t need to read any further than this. On these words hang all the law and the profit.

HE reader Dan Revill has passed along a frame capture of Aaron Eckhart‘s post-disfigurement Harvey Dent, taken from the high-def Dark Knight trailer. “Judging from the slight scarring seen, I’m gonna say that’s not fire-induced,” Revill says. “Unless [fire] leaves him charcoal faced.” Down with that. I’ve always been an acid-in-the-face type of guy.

“Is there still a strain in the culture that struggles with the idea that intelligence isn’t just wasted on girls?,” the Independent‘s Deborah Orr wrote yesterday about the lore behind New Line’s Sex and the City (opening 5.30). “Why is it that a group of clever, ambitious and successful women, sitting around chatting about their tiny troubles, should be such a comedy goldmine?

“It’s because, isn’t it, they’re all bright enough to live life on their own independent terms, but still, despite their occasional protests, can’t stop projecting their ideas about themselves and their status on to men?
“That’s why Sex and the City is really about stupid men. Men who are too stupid to bag these fabulous women. Men so stupid that their heart’s desire is a life partner who is not an alpha-female, but an even-more-stupid-and insecure-than-me foil. Men who are so stupid that it is contagious and dangerous, because its virulence stupefies women too, like sleeping sickness.”

What a relief and a pleasure to see the Dark Night trailer all high-def and totally smack.

A special amendment needs to be added to the Constitution stating that all citizens have to pass a short general education and political literacy exam before being allowed to vote. Something analagous to the 25-question quiz that everyone is required to take at their local DMV in order to get a driver’s license. Nobody squawks about this because driving carefully and responsibly is a life-or-death matter. But then so is voting. Much more so, if you ask me.
And so I’m asking myself a simple, fundamental question, to wit: why shouldn’t voters have to prove they have at least a somewhat educated awareness of basic political and social issues before being granted the power to vote? This seems to me like a completely reasonable suggestion. Really. Tell me why it’s not fair.
As Bill Maher mentioned two or three weeks ago, the shitkickers who voted for George Bush in ’00 and ’04 because he seemed more personable and prole-friendly than Al Gore or John Kerry (which he was…I’ll give him that) screwed things up badly for the rest of us. Look at the mess we’re in! We’re in a bad recession, caught in a ghastly no-win war that’s going keep draining us and lead our nation into even worse debt, the dollar is worth nothing overseas, gas is over $4 a gallon.
And — face facts — it’s all the fault of the social conservatives who swallowed the Karl Rove bait — the idea that Republicans are (a) better at looking out for the nation’s safety and (b) care more about bedrock values than the Democrats — hook, line and sinker. It was a bullshit line and they fell for it. And they screwed us all in the bargain.
Democracy can’t work and in fact can bring great harm to a nation as long as people with demonstrably flawed judgment — people who refuse to consider candidates and issues in a grown-up, semi-educated way, and who insist on voting for candidates as if they’re contestants on the Dating Game, or as if they’re running for church pastor or Boy Scout leader.
There’s a sizable percentage of people out there — 10% or 12% of respondents in a poll I read recently — who apparently believe that Barack Obama is a muslim. In all sincerity, our nation would be much better off if somehow these people could be disenfranchised as voters. People like that woman who asked Obama during the Philadelphia debate why he hasn’t worn a flag pin — her voting rights need to be cancelled for life. There are millions like her out there, and they’re a menace.
I’m not saying voters have to vote for Democrats or support liberal values, but there should be a rule that they have know their shit and not plan on voting based on emotional concerns about community values. Is it such a bad idea that prospective voters would be tested to see how dumb they are, and if they don’t get 70 % of the questions correct, they don’t get to vote? Seems pretty fair to me. I’m not trying to provoke people by doing one of my nutter rants. I’m completely serious.
Social conservatives who vote over bedrock moral values rather than political and economic realties (and some kind of shrewd assessment of the leadership abilities and allegiances of presidential candidates) are going to kill this country. They’re the children in the room…the fools, the drunkards. Things have gotten too serious and we really can’t mess around with these people any more. For the sake of our country, an effort needs to me made to thin our their ranks in terms of voting eligibility.
Here’s a discussion from a discussion board that I found this morning. http://www.gupshupp.com/forums/sitemap/t-1532.html
“In our idea of democracy we have one person one vote. A professor of political science or economics has the same vote as a 18 year old apprentice. Say your vote depended on your level of education. 1 vote for all but an extra vote for an A-level education — 2 for degree level — 3 for postgratuate, etc.” Another excellent idea!
“Would this change politics? Would we still have the same personality-based politics we now have? Would it change the balance of power to the right or to the left? Or would it not make a difference at all? Would it be acceptable and if not, why?”

Anne Thompson alerted me this morning to A.J. Benza and Neal Gumpel‘s “Real Guys” series — obviously a concept riding the coattails of Marcia Nastair and Lorenzo Semple‘s “Reel Geezers.” Here‘s their riff on 21.

I agree with Thompson that the Geezers offer more interesting insights and issues, but Benza and Gumpel feel like the real thing to me. They process and talk about movies in the manner of “real guys” (i.e., men who enjoy saying it straight but at the same time have some sort of trepidation about being too intellectual). It’s culturally valid, it’s fairly unpretentious and it adds to the national dialogue so I don’t see a problem. Are they Andre Bazin and James Agee? No, but are they pretending to be?

If Iron Man makes $100 million by late tonight, fine. Obviously good news all around, particularly for Jon Favreau (who will now be offered the grade-A material along with the other cream-of-the-croppers), Robert Downey, Jr. (whose career was on the ropes ten years ago) and the Marvel guys, who were probably driving around town last night in ostentatious babe-magnet cars and lighting their cigars with $100 bills.
And I’m not going to rain on everyone’s mood parade this morning by repeating the old maxim about the success of superhero movies being a direct reflection of feelings of impotency (or a sense of being overwhelmed or crushed by tumbling tides) among 45-and-under males. Because it’s not true!
Except it kind of is. Around the fringes, sorta kinda. I know that real men have their own inner and outer power, whatever that may amount to or however they may define it, and that every day them wake up, grim up and live with that thing.
I liked Iron Man — it gave me no pain and only a little remorse — but let’s have no illusions about what’s really going on here. Apart from the pure enjoyment of Downey’s hipster attitude, some excellent dialogue, high-quality CG, the joy of killing Middle Eastern terrorists and all that.