Tough super-delegate math for Hillary Clinton, another even-steven Pennsylvania poll (the third in this vein), and Barack Obama leading Clinton 56 to 33 in North Carolina. But it would be disingenuous of me not to applaud Clinton for (according to Drudge) reportedly calling on Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
An “amazing gathering of film luminaries” are attending a weekend of mourning in and around London for the late director Anthony Minghella. A three-hour Catholic service was held this afternoon St. Thomas More church in Swiss Cottage, a suburb of London. Elegant and heartfelt words were spoken about Minghella by Talented Mr. Ripley costars Matt Damon and Jude Law, English Patient author Michael Ondaatje and costar Juliette Binoche, and Minghella’s producing colleague Harvey Weinstein (who also delivered a message on behalf of the ailing Sydney Pollack, who was Minghella’s producing partner).
Dominic Minghella (the director’s brother), Cold Mountain costar Renee Zellweger and Truly Madly Deeply costars Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson also attended. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, the present and former Prime Minister of the UK, were there as well. Ditto widow Carolyn Minghella, daughter Hannah Minghella, an exec at Sony, and son Max Minghella, an actor.
Also attending was Richard Curtis, who recently collaborated with Minghella on the screenplay of The #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which was partly shot in Botswana. Bishop Trevor Mwamba, an Anglican bishop from Botswana who met Minghella during the shooting of Detective, spoke at length, and cathartically. John Seale, who shot English Patient and Ripley, was there. Ditto producer Saul Zaentz, editor-producer Walter Murch (who came from Argentina, where he’s working with Francis Coppola on Tetro), and Working Title honchos Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner.
There was a big Minghella dinner party last night at the Groucho Club, a ilm-industry watering hole on Dean Street in Soho. Harvey Weinstein is giving a dinner as we speak at Lucio’s restaurant.
I was a little shocked by a 4.2 Public Policy Polling survey that has Barack Obama edging Hillary Clinton among likely Pennsylvania Democratic voters by 45% to 43%. I thought the big hope for the Obama team was to lose to Clinton in the Keystone State by 10 percentage points or less. I called PPP’s Dean Debnan to ask what’s happening. He said his team was surprised also “so we went back and ran the survey a second time with a different group of respondents,” etc. And the numbers are the numbers.
PPP surveyed 1224 likely Democratic primary voters on March 31st and again on April 1st.
The survey claims that Obama is “narrowing the gap with white voters, trailing just 49-38, while maintaining his customary significant advantage with black voters, [leading] that group 75-17. Obama also leads among all age groups except senior citizens, with whom Clinton has a 50-34 advantage. The poll shows the standard gender gap with Obama leading by 15 points among men while trailing by 10 points with women.”
Public Policy Polling release says it has had “the most accurate numbers of any company in the country for the Democratic primaries in South Carolina and Wisconsin, as well as the closest numbers for any organization that polled the contests in both Texas and Ohio.”
ABC News entertainment writer Marcus Baram has profiled Stanley Weiser‘s W screenplay, which Oliver Stone will begin shooting later this month, in some detail. At the end of the piece he quotes Bush’s former press secretary Ari Fleisher (who denies, amazingly, that Bush used salty language), myself and University of North Carolina at Wilmington history professor Robert Brent Toplin, who wrote “Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11: How One Film Divided a Nation.”
I’d love to be in the room when the Democratic Party bigwigs — Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, etc. — finally find the backbone to stand up to Billary in a conference or hotel room somewhere and tell them, no wavering and no backtalk, that the race is over. Shut up, sit down and call it off…or pay the price for years to come. Sometime in mid May, I’m guessing, or maybe even after North Carolina. In the meantime, a new national poll from the Pew Research Center.
In the view of two knowledgable guys interviewed by AP reporter David Germain, Heath Ledger‘s death will — sadly, ironically — be a kind of boon to the fortunes of The Dark Knight (Warner Bros., 7.18). Germain states that Chris Nolan‘s film “has already emerged as arguably the biggest movie featuring a posthumous role in Hollywood history.”
Everyone is tiring of seeing this same old Heath/Joker photo over and over — it would be nice if Warner Bros. would remedy this.
Bill Ramey, founder of the fansite Batman-on-Film.com, says that “more people will come to see [Knight] because of Ledger’s death. No doubt some people may be apprehensive about seeing it because there may be a little ghoulish factor about it. But I’m betting that more people now kind of look at it as a tribute to him, and the biggest tribute you could give someone is to go see it and enjoy his performance.”
Ball State University film professor Wes Gehring says “it’s a tacky thing to say, but what would have been a negative in the past now could be a positive thing. I think we’ve done a flip-flop on pop culture. Now it might actually be a selling point for a movie where you say, ‘So and so’s dead. Let’s go see his movie.’ What might have been a hindrance in 1935 now won’t be a problem.”
The list of major actors who starred in films after their deaths includes (1) James Dean (both Rebel Without a Cause and Giant opened after his car-crash death in September 1955), (2) Clark Gable (The Misfits came out 75 days after his passing on 11.16.60)), (3) Carole Lombard (To Be or Not To Be opened two months after her plane-crash demise), (4) Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner arrived in December ’67, six months after Tracy’s death on 6.10.67), (5) Jean Harlow (Saratoga opened six weeks after her death on 6.7.37), (6) Robert Walker (My Son John came out in April 1952, 9 months after his death in August ’51), and (7) Montgomery Clift (whose final film, The Defector, came out in mid-November 1966, about five months after his death in July of that year.)
Three mildly interesting things have just happened in the Democratic primary race — one today, two yesterday.
First, a Public Policy poll released earlier this afternoon found that Barack Obama had regained a sizable lead over Hillary Clinton among North Carolina voters, 55 to 34 percentage points. He leads 80% to 14% among black voters with Clinton topping him 47 % to 40% among white voters, although she was allegedly ahead of him with this group at 56% to 30% a week ago.
Second, Senate Democratic Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada told the Las Vegas Review Journal‘s Molly Ball yesterday that “things are being done” to assure that the Clinton-Obama race will be settled “well” before the convention (most observers believe it’ll definitely be settled by the early-to-mid May results of the North Carolina, Oregon and Indiana primaries).
And third, U.S. Senator Mary Cantwell of Washington State, a current Clinton supporter, yesterday told the Columbian’s editorial board that the candidate with the most pledged delegates at the end of the primary season in late June will have the strongest claim to the party’s presidential nomination.
In other words, there’s a slightly more pronounced feeling of support and sentiment tipping away from Clinton, and the impact of last week’s Reverend Wright trauma appears to be fading in some quarters. Weird, though, about the disparity between North Carolina voters and the hermetic, rank-and-file Pensylvanians — redneck, lunchbox, under-educated, down-in-the-mines, etc.
“In my home state of Pennsylvania Hillary has a nearly 20 point lead,” writes HE reader George Bolanis. ” We were expecting an HRC win but that margin is crazy. You know the deal of the Pennsytucky factor in the central part of the state. But even in the metro areas she seems to have a comfortable lead. The exit polls on swing white voters in OH was very telling.
“I have a feeling the ship is heading the wrong way for Obama and that he is going to lose momentum and perhaps the chance of brokering a nomination. While yesterday’s speech was magnificent, people like my in-laws just can’t get past his ‘angry’ and ‘dogmatic’ church.”
To which I replied, “And your in-laws are in their….what, 50s? Older? Over the past several months many fair-minded older folks have been responding to, or at least have tried to focus on, the positive, uplifting aspects of Obama and his candidacy while at the same time (and most of them will never admit to this) suppressing their gut feelings about African Americans. The Reverent Wright thing gives them license to vent those repressed feelings. That’s all that’s going on here.
“Yesterday’s speech reminded me once again that Barack Obama is the best man to come along for the presidency in decades. He said exactly the truth of the matter in yesterday’s speech — nailed it straight and true — and I believe in him wholeheartedly. If Hillary wins by 8% or 10% in Pennsylvania, it’s nothing. But if she beats him by 20%, he’s in some kind of trouble. The ugly tide has been rising in recent days. Fear, ignorance and stupidity have always been strong currents among American proles — always been that way, always will be.
“I think Obama will probably still win North Carolina, and there’s certainly no re-ordering the delegate math. And the Michigan re-vote bandwagon is all but stopped in its tracks. But the gutter-residing Hillary Clinton and the forces of the American Malignancy have managed to cast Obama as the black candidate, which is a tragedy of immense proportion.
“The America that has been routinely derided by Brits and Europeans for its stupidity and butt-ugly racism is rearing up again, and it’s not just my face that is curdling with disgust. It’s not healthy or productive to give yourself over to hate, but I have loathed and despised the beer-gut rank-and-filers all my life, starting with the construction workers beating up on anti-war protesters in the early ’70s and this same crowd’s refusal to consider the Watergate scandal as it evolved and so on down the line, and I’m feeling it again big-time.
“I’m angry at the Obama team for not stepping up sooner and putting HIllary’s bullshit into its place. A friend told me this morning he feels Obama is basically Adlai Stevenson, which is kind of a damning thing to say. But the greater damnation belongs to the race-card players, for whom Hillary has been their Joan of Arc. Obama spoke more frankly and plainly yesterday than he ever has, and he has another big speech to make today and another tomorrow. But an awful lot of people don’t want to know from nuthin’.
“And if the super-delegates start to get really scared and threatened by the dumb-asses turning away from Obama in the voting, all bets are off. In the words of Tracy Morgan, ‘We are a racist country….the end.'”
To which Bolanis replied, “The Rev. Wright thing brings out mistrust because his words are divisive and extreme. I know many people who are sick of listening to the complaints of the Sharptons, Jacksons and Wrights, that many of the social ills of the black community are self-inflicted. Barack addresses this but his church will scare whitey.”
To which I replied with a palpable sigh, “But Obama is not one of them, and has expressed himself repeatedly to this end. Does he feel obliged to make room for their views, or at least not condemn thing in a public way? Yes, just as John McCain, looking to gather as much reactionary-conservative support as possible. is obliged to make room for the rancid nutbag views of certain wackjob preachers who are standing by him.
“Wackjob preachers are ubiquitous. The Rev. Billy Graham once spoke to Richard Nixon in the White House about controlling the Jews, or words to that effect. C’mon, man….this is one-sided.”
To which Bolanis replied, “The Wright thing doesn’t affect me but the old guard will be put off and this can be a swift-boat issue. The difference here is that there has not been an orator with a command of language and the smarts of Obama for a long time to take the stage, so it will not be as easy as it was with Kerry, but this will prey on a deeper well of black water.”
Thank God the last Clinton-Obama debate is about to happen. 12 minutes from now. A few days and no more listening to that raspy cackly witch-voice. No more looking into those cold steely eyes, or having to discern the real calculation behind those repulsively phony emotional offerings. I realize Barack has to act cool and unruffled like Ronald Reagan in the final debate with Jimmy Carter, but oh, how I would love to see some kind of serious slapdown between them, like that thing they got into in South Carolina.
This is it, the absolute ethical nadir of the Hillary Clinton campaign so far. To my mind sending out that 2006 photo of Barack Obama dressed in Somali garb during a visit to that country is scummy and reprehensible almost beyond measure. It is a a classic race-baiting tactic obviously aimed at latently racist rubes from Texas and Ohio who say they’re still on the fence.
Reacting to a headline on the Drudge Report (still up as I write this) claiming that aides to Senator Clinton had e-mailed the photo to reporters and editors, Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton team of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” with what is obviously an “attempted smear” that is seeking to inflame racial consciousness among those possibly pre-disposed to black-vs.-white thinking. This even outdoes what Bill Clinton tried to do in the lead-up to (and just after) the South Carolina primary.
Equally disgusting is a statement from Clinton campaign honcho Maggie Williams saying that “if Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed….Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely…this is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.”
A statement like that coming from a woman of color should be enough to make anyone of any ethical conscience physically sick. The mentality behind the mailing of the photo is demonic in itself, but to try and lie your way out of it by saying the Obama campaign should be “ashamed”? Remember the name — Maggie Williams — and keep this in mind when she comes calling in months and years hence. For she is a liar, and the father of it. And she will have this statement hanging around her neck for the rest of her life.
“Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing,” says Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan in a 2.8 piece called “Can Mrs. Clinton Lose?” “It’s not one big primary, it’s a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor.
“She is having trouble raising big money, she’s funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn’t have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he’s played a tough and knowing inside/outside game.
“The day she admitted she’d written herself a check for $5 million, Obama’s people crowed they’d just raised $3 million. But then his staff is happy. They’re all getting paid.
“Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she’s a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched. Prince Yusupov served him cupcakes laced with cyanide, emptied a revolver, clubbed him, tied him up and threw him in a frozen river. When he floated to the surface they found he’d tried to claw his way from under the ice. That is how reporters see Hillary.
“And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction: “I won’t be ignored, Dan!”
“Mr. Obama’s achievement on Super Tuesday was solid and reinforced trend lines. The popular vote was a draw, the delegate count a rough draw, but he won 13 states, and when you look at the map he captured the middle of the country from Illinois straight across to Idaho, with a second band, in the northern Midwest, of Minnesota and North Dakota. He won Missouri and Connecticut, in Mrs. Clinton’s backyard. He won the Democrats of the red states.
“On the wires Wednesday her staff was all but conceding she is not going to win the next primaries. Her superdelegates are coming under pressure that is about to become unrelenting. It was easy for party hacks to cleave to Mrs. Clinton when she was inevitable. Now Mr. Obama’s people are reportedly calling them saying, ‘Your state voted for me and so did your congressional district. Are you going to jeopardize your career and buck the wishes of the people back home?’
“Mrs. Clinton is stoking the idea that Mr. Obama is too soft to withstand the dread Republican attack machine. (I nod in tribute to all Democrats who have succeeded in removing the phrase ‘Republican and Democratic attack machines’ from the political lexicon. Both parties have them.) But Mr. Obama will not be easy for Republicans to attack. He will be hard to get at, hard to address. There are many reasons, but a primary one is that the fact of his race will freeze them. No one, no candidate, no party, no heavy-breathing consultant, will want to cross any line — lines that have never been drawn, that are sure to be shifting and not always visible — in approaching the first major-party African-American nominee for president of the United States.
“He is the brilliant young black man as American dream. No consultant, no matter how opportunistic and hungry, will think it easy — or professionally desirable — to take him down in a low manner. If anything, they’ve learned from the Clintons in South Carolina what that gets you. (I add that yes, there are always freelance mental cases, who exist on both sides and are empowered by modern technology. They’ll make their YouTubes. But the mad are ever with us, and this year their work will likely stay subterranean.)
“With Mr. Obama the campaign will be about issues. ‘He’ll raise your taxes.’ He will, and I suspect Americans may vote for him anyway. But the race won’t go low.
“Mrs. Clinton would be easier for Republicans. With her cavalcade of scandals, they’d be delighted to go at her. They’d get medals for it. Consultants would get rich on it.
“The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it’s fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He’s not Bambi, he’s bulletproof.
“The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented — ‘He’s too young, he’s never run anything, he’s not fully baked’ — the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones. You can bet on this. Go to the bank on it.
“The Democrats continue not to recognize what they have in this guy. Believe me, Republican professionals know. They can tell.”
Here’s a short political manifesto written by a Brookline-residing mom, titled “Why Caroline Kennedy and I are for Obama” and sent to me a few minutes ago: Her thinking is summed up in four words: “It’s about our kids.” It’s the most moving and concisely stated vote-for-Obama plea I’ve read since the primary season began.
“Remember when we were young idealists, 18 years old, voting for the first time? Who was your first? The first candidate I voted for was Jimmy Carter. I felt empowered, like my vote mattered, like together, we could change the course of history.
“That’s the last time I voted for the winning candidate. In the Reagan years I became increasingly disillusioned and felt completely out of touch with the rest of the country. I never liked Bill Clinton, although I liked his policies. He seemed sleazy to me, and has since revealed his base tendencies. But all that is beside the point.
“Our kids, Caroline and mine, are now of voting age and this will be their first presidential election.
“We brought these kids into a world where global warming, off-shoring, the shrinking of the American dream, housing priced out of their reach and failure of the safety net of Social Security and Medicare will be their reality.
“It’s our duty now to listen to them. This is their future and Obama is their candidate.
“He has shown that he can enlist the young en masse.
“In Caroline Kennedy’s words: ‘Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.”
“We’ve left a mess for our kids: they’ll never be able to own a home, they’ll never have job security and they’ll never be able to retire. Give your kids the President they want.”
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