“Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” 4
Reg Henry counsels caution. A nugget:
This reserve is justified by the experience of recent years. During the Clinton administration, those crying wolf were in full throat over the Whitewater scandal, which wasted much time, cost millions of dollars to investigate and left the Clintons sitting pretty.
(snip)
And so it goes. From the moment President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the hate machine was cranked up. This happened with the last occupant of the White House, too, but that was a Model T hate machine compared with the super-duper, industrial-strength lie mixer rolled out for Mr. Obama. No other president in memory has had to fend off claims that he was not actually an American — and that was just for starters.
If you look at the facts on the supposed scandal, there’s really not much there there.
May 17, 2013 at 6:02 pm
Eventually they’ll have nowhere to go but to try and impeach the president. And that will be the battle of Gettysburg in Civil War 2, and they’ll lose again. But there will be a terrible cost. The GOP seems to really not understand they’re playing with fire the more they are seen as a national lynching party for the first legitimately elected black president.
May 17, 2013 at 11:00 pm
They have drunk their own Kool-Aid. To be blunt, they are no longer a political party, they are a racist mob. All they are missing is the sheets and hoods.
The question is binary:
What will they destroy first: the country or themselves?
I am not sanguine.
May 17, 2013 at 11:51 pm
I’ve a philosophical question that has to do with art and entertainment, one I’ve been mulling over for a blog entry. Why hasn’t Hollywood dealt with a dystopian USW future drama that has something to do with our present reality?
It does zombies, natural disasters, cosmic events. Walking Dead, which I like, based on a comic book, is a huge hit. But it has no relevance. Revolution, which was about electromagnetic pulse doom, which was a semi hit, but had nothing to do with anything normal. Last Resort, which was canceled mid-season, which I liked, was about a political coup that resulted in a nuke strike on Pakistan. Because it was canceled before a full run it never made any real sense.
But no one has touched a second civil war, or the collapse of a country riven by extreme internal division. If I’m not missing something. We can have cable reality shows out the wazoo about preppers and their scenarios of civilization’s collapse, and they’re all extreme right wingers, but nothing at all where the practical ramifications of national paralysis and decay as a result of increased radicalization and open conflict are explored in drama.
Why? Well, I’ll answer my own question. Hollywood is afraid, as many are, bullied into silence. They’re afraid of anything that would show a specific tribe of Americans as bad.
It really isn’t that hard to come up with an escalating plot on a cool civil war (and that’s what we have — a cool or Cold Civil War) and love and life among the decline and ruins. Yet they won’t grasp it.
May 18, 2013 at 1:40 pm
I think that’s part of it.
The other part I’d suggest is that movies about the current war have not done particularly well at the box office; movies are ultimately escapes, and they are too close to home. World War II movies did poorly during WWII (and well afterwards), Viet Nam movies did poorly during Viet Nam (and better, but not great, afterwards), Korea movies did poorly during Korea, and so on.
Hollywood is ultimately all about the box office, which means almost never taking chances.