http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 7 Jul 2004 01:38:48 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/07/013848.php Jackson MurphyIn baseball, it is interesting to see just how detached and out of context 56 game hitting streaks, batting .400, or hitting 715 home runs can be. Time passes, and 715 becomes just that, a number, a record, another statistic. But the years, days, games, innings, and home runs leading up to that stat, are what makes the number really sing. Tom Stanton's new book, "Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America" powerfully reminds us of just that. To tell the tale of Hank Aaron surpassing Babe Ruth as the greatest home run hitter of all time, Stanton weaves a complex narrative that begins with the death of Jackie Robinson in 1972 and ends with Aaron hitting that famed 715th home run in 1974. While the country focused on the front page scandals of Watergate and the end of Vietnam, Aaron did what he did best, play ball.Stanton makes a compelling, and beautifully written biographical account of how Hank Aaron got to 714. Stanton does a good job of comparing Aaron to the home run ghost. Contrasted against the legendary prowess of Ruth, Aaron "seemed as plain as raisin-less oatmeal. Reporters could spend days with him in hopes of discovering a telling detail that might capture the essence of the man or provide a bit of color to bring him to life for readers (or at least make him more interesting)." Aaron was the total opposite of Ruth. He, "didn't gulp six hot dogs at a sitting or mix a dish of Ma Gehrig's pickled eels with chocolate ice cream or go on drinking binges or wear full-length camel-hair coats or appear in movies or in Vaudeville or spend his nights cavorting with a half-dozen showgirls, staying out until dawn."The only thing the two men really shared was an uncanny ability to drive baseballs out of the park. But even their style of hitting homers was different. Where Ruth's homers were mammoth, almost dramatic, shots, Aarons were simple line drives, sometimes barely making it over the fence. It was probably in this regard that it seemed like, under the radar, Aaron literally snuck up on Ruth's home run record. Beginning the tale with death of the man who broke the color barrier in baseball wasn't done for dramatic effect. It was Jackie Robinson who, in his later years, had befriended Aaron and actually prepared him for the onslaught that would come as he approached the record. And it was Robinson and other early black players that helped Aaron focus on trying to unseat the beloved Ruth. "By shattering the home-run mark, Aaron would show there were no limits to the achievements of black players. He would slam an exclamation point on the accomplishments of his predecessors, and maybe, like Jackie Robinson, impact the larger world."Ruth's career, and home run record, certainly was beneficial to the business of baseball, reviving interest, driving up attendance, and some would even argue saving the sport from the disaster of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. When the fans finally begun to take notice, and as we look back now, Aaron's chase of that record was beneficial culturally. He was besieged by nasty and racist hate mail of all kinds, death threats, and even the snubbing of the commissioner of baseball. But to his credit, Aaron remained a class act. "His ordeal provided a vivid, personal lesson for a generation of children: Racism is wrong. Through his impact on those children of the early 1970's, and, indirectly, on their children of the 1980's and 1990's, Hank Aaron cleared a path of the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woodses of the sporting world."As Stanton places Aaron's 715th home run into context, the intersections of that feat with the wider culture are unmistakable. Just as Terence Mann, the character played by James Earl Jones in the movie "Field of Dreams", would say, "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."Baseball has done far more than mark the time. As Tom Stanton tells it, baseball has been changed by, and in turn changed, the world beyond its ballparks. Stanton demonstrates his skill as a writer by bringing an enthusiastic appreciation and a fan's passion to the back story behind the statistic known as Hank Aaron's 715th home run. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Books17184@blogcritics.org Wed, 7 Jul 2004 01:38:48 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/06/21/000330.php Jackson MurphyPretty much every review of the new film "The Terminal" focuses on what else Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have done. That's a lot to live up to. But this is the story is of a man unable to leave an airport terminal due to a crisis in his generic East European nation. Then comedy and other emotions ensue when Hanks's character gets to play matchmaker, gets a job, annoys the Homeland Security bureaucrat, and even gets to spend some time with the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones. Many of the reviews spent more time talking about some their previous works such as "Cast Away" and "Catch Me If You Can" than they do about the new movie. It is a movie The New York Press' Matt Zoller Seitz described simply as "Capra doing Kafka." But that notion probably complicates the movie a little too much. It's much more American-centric and simple than that. Certainly more Capra than Kafka highlighted with a certain amount of old school Chaplin-esque influence. As Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer notes, "The film is a wholehearted valentine to the dream of equality America represents. The terminal - not a real one, but a miraculously detailed set designed by Alex McDowell - is a microcosm of the nation, with whites and blacks and Latinos and Indians working together, sharing cultures and wooing each other." While The Terminal could have been better in many different ways, the one thing that really is worth the price of admission is the Terminal itself. It is a massive, beautiful, testament to detail and gives a shameless, yet charming, plug for many global brands. The terminal becomes another character and Spielberg has a lot of fun moving his cameras through it. Mostly because it's the kind of new, slick looking, airport you wouldn't mind spending a layover in. Not for months, but if you have a few hours, there are plenty of worse places to be. And, in an era of mind-blowing computer generated special effects, the art of an entire sound stage and wonderfully constructed set piece is a welcome throwback, sort of like watching a turn-back-the-clock night in baseball. Which I suppose is the whole point. In going absolutely nowhere, Hank's character Victor Navorski, actually gets a unique albeit strange experience. As an aside, about six months after 9/11 I spent an entire night in the terminal at Dulles International airport waiting for a morning flight. I thought it would be fun - actually I mean I thought it would be cheap. I spent about 10 hours in the airport. I slept on the floor, various chairs, and the floor again. It was uncomfortable so I watched "Thirteen Days" on my laptop, tried to sleep some more, and even made a few trips to the small store that was open all night. No one ever once gave me a quizzical look and the janitor never mocked me for slobbering all over the cold floor. One thing Spielberg's terminal missed that Dulles had, in spades, was the constant, loud, robotic messages about not leaving your baggage around. Sure they stopped at about 4 in the morning for about an hour; then again, maybe I was just hallucinating at that point. Oh well, details. Sure in an era of Post-9/11 and tight security, the whole thing seems mildly absurd. But there is a certain reassurance in how Navorski deals with being stranded in a bureaucratic purgatory between his homeland and America. Part of the fun of traveling is that idea of simply going somewhere, anywhere, but the adventure along the way are what make the whole thing worth while. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" which serves up political commentary and more 24-7. Video16688@blogcritics.org Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:03:30 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/05/165859.php Jackson MurphyRobert Kaplan's newest book, Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and Greece tells the story of a series of trips the author took to the Mediterranean as a struggling freelance writer. The book is part travelogue, part bibliography, and part history lesson as he weaves a travel tale across the region from past to present. In his previous works, such as The Coming Anarchy or Warrior Politics, the longtime foreign correspondent for The Atlantic has demonstrated both an encyclopedia-like knowledge of history and a mastery of astute political analysis. This time he does the rare feat of making the history and politics leap, literally, off the pages. Take for instance, his description of a three-hour train ride to Palermo and a stop at in Segesta's Greek Doric temple, which dates to the fifth century B.C. He begins with a painter or sculptor's description of the landscape before leading into his very first encounter with Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. The landscape lays the groundwork for the history, and for Kaplan it was a, "history worth knowing."Coincidentally Kaplan's first trip occurred just after the end of the Vietnam conflict offering a wonderful angle for exploring the Athenian adventure in Sicily, and a brief biography of "two of the most intriguing figures in classical history." "Sicily's heritage," writes Kaplan. "Suggested that Vietnam was less unique than many of my generation supposed. The manifold similarities between the two debacles provided a distance from the latter one. Sicily nurtured my compassion for the American commanders in Vietnam and the civilian officials who prosecuted the war. None were a traitor like Alcibiades, but quite a few were tragic and imperfect in their judgment, like Nicias."Kaplan captures other tales in exactly the same passionate way. Every train, bus, or boat trip into a new setting offers him a playground to explore. A typical chapter begins like this. A quick trip to Rodin's sculpture garden in Paris leads to the Greek and Roman styles that inspired him. Rodin and two thousand years of history, in turn, lead Kaplan to three books he happened upon in a New Hampshire bookshop - Gustafe Flaubert's Salammbo, Michel Zeraffa's Tunisia, and Livy's The War with Hannibal.Like Indiana Jones leading you into dark and cobwebbed hidden passageways, these books lead Kaplan into the world of empires and ancient civilizations from Rome, to Carthage, and Byzantine and beyond. Once there are taken into the lives of the characters that lived and breathed there, Jugurtha (a classical era Osama bin Laden), St. Augustine (whose "haunting, aromatic monologues" were an outgrowth of a "tough and restrained landscape") and Ibn Khaldun (a free spirited "writer, thinker, traveler, and historian of the caliber of the Italian Renaissance"). It may sound hard to keep up with, but it isn't. One of the reasons Kaplan has become such a wonderful travel writer is that he isn't just reporting what he sees. For him a journey includes stopping at a place like the Great Mosque of Kairouan, which he writes, "is still the most impressive building I have seen in the Arab world. I learned more from walking around its courtyard and prayer hall, and sitting quietly beneath its teeming forest of columns, than from many of the books about Arab civilization that I have read since."Two things become clear as Kaplan recounts such vivid impressions. First his modus operandi is to do his journalism "silently" and much of that can be done by getting to know, not just the character of the people, but the things they build. The second is Kaplan's quirky belief in never using a camera. "Photographs," he says, "can be passive and reductive. They allow us to recall too easily, omitting from view what is behind the camera, and to the sides of it."If there is one fault with this book, it is that through Kaplan's vivid and beautiful appreciation of the past you get the guilty feeling that you really haven't done near enough exploring of the world. In that sense it is more of a challenge than a failing. What Kaplan does especially well, particularly in Mediterranean Winter, is to explore learning as travel. Destinations, a book, a painting, a building, a view of a certain landscape are all a simple avenue to lift away the many layers of history and explore the world today. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Books15405@blogcritics.org Wed, 5 May 2004 16:58:59 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/04/233945.php Jackson MurphyThe 2004 election is still more than 10 months away but the campaigns have already incorporated the latest in cool and are blogging. When the USA Today is talking about the power of blogs and their influence on campaigns it is more than just a passing fad. But like learning how sausages and hot dogs are made, watching a campaign blog in action may just be as nauseating. Every major candidate for president has his own campaign blog. There is even a website devoted to "The Blogging of the Presidency." So from time to time over the next few weeks, I'm going to check in at all of them and see how the proverbial sausages are getting made. The best part is that without going all the way to Des Moines, Iowa, the blogs will tell you all about what it is like inside the war rooms of the campaign office. You can almost smell the stale coffee and the wretched stench from the interns pulling all-nighters from here. The vast majority of people aren't going to make their decision based on reading a candidate's blog, but they are at least an amusing, and impressively self-important art form. In fact the Internet, while seriously driving Dean's candidacy in message and fundraising, still takes a back seat to television. And getting people to click certainly still pales in comparison to actually showing up in person to vote. Take for instance, this post by on Howard Dean's Blog for America. "There is this constant activity that makes every thing seem to run on fast forward," writes campaign staffer Claire Gannon. "People walk quicker, (I've started literally running) phones ring constantly breaking up the chatter and key strokes that form perpetual background. Night falls without notice and every morning is too early, but then all of a sudden Inside Politics is on and you realize your stomach is growling because you didn't notice lunch time. Always, always, always there is laughter and humor (because we are all so clever)."Of course all the 'Deaniacs' are funny, clever, and lightning quick worker bees and more importantly think everything the candidate does is the greatest. Like the time Dean traveled to Stella's Blue Sky Diner in Urbandale, Iowa. "Proving that he will do whatever it takes to get a vote the Gov took part in a Stella's custom. Stella's is famous for it's milk shakes. The catch is when you order a shake you have to hold the glass on the top of your head and let the server pour the shake into the glass from about 4 feet above you. The Gov was a little bit nervous - we told him not to worry because strawberry shake would make his hair shiny - but in front of hundreds of people he held the glass on the top of his head and let the shake pour in! It was a classic campaign moment and luckily I got the whole thing on my video camera. (It's sort of Howard Dean meets Fear Factor!)."What a card that Dean is! Some of these posts are fairly amusing but others are so over the top. For New Years there was the promise of conference call by Dean and Al Gore. Nothing says New Years like a conference call. Now that's excitement you can cut with a large knife. But it isn't only Howard Dean's campaign that is blogging. Wesley Clark has one too. On Clark's blog which is updated less frequently than Dean's, you can find everything from announcements about Clark's first grandson being born to how many Dean supporters are joining the Clark team every day. Most interesting, was a post entitled, "Beating the spit out of Tom DeLay." It would be hard to imagine any campaign literature in the past vowing to beat up the Republican House Leader. But that's the fun of blogging isn't it? Over at John Kerry's campaign blog there is a regular feature called, "What Would Bush Learn If He Read the Paper Today?" But mostly Kerry's blog is ground zero for shameless positivity. Staffer Dick Bell posts, "If you've been reading the blog, you know that there's been a political sea change in the last few weeks: the press is positive, rallies are rowdier, and John is coming on strong in Iowa and New Hampshire." Never mind the reality that shows Kerry losing ground rather than gaining it. But that is what is interesting about the campaign blog. Inside the blog, inside the campaign office exists a perpetual state of optimism. That existed before the invention of the blog, and certainly before the Internet. You see if you ever truly conceded you wouldn't be able to get anyone to put up lawn signs or go door-to-door you would stop running and since no one has cast a ballot, no campaign is facing that reality quite yet. The Blog is a perfect medium and forum for keeping the insiders pumped up however removed from reality that message may be. Joe Lieberman blogs. Here you'll find relevant information about the USA Today poll on replacing the image of FDR on the dime with Ronald Reagan. Courtesy Joe Lieberman, we've stumbled upon the big issue of the 2004 election, the image on the dime. This may be why with such precious little time remaining before New Hampshire's primary Joe is asking for supporters to "play James Carville - tell us what you would do if you were in charge, to help put Joe over the finish line." A good reality show, yes. A good way of running a successful campaign, not so much. John Edwards' campaign blogs too. The Edwards' camp seems to employ something called the "Planburgler" who alerts Edwards supporters when another campaign has stolen something out of the Edwards tickle trunk. This is the kind of stuff that always turns me off campaigns. It puts candidates about two degrees of separation away from wearing a mascot outfit and clowning around with the San Diego Chicken (not that there is anything wrong with that). Has the advent of the blog helped anyone yet? It's too early to tell and plenty more blogs and posts to read. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Sci/Tech11439@blogcritics.org Sun, 4 Jan 2004 23:39:45 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/04/011133.php Jackson MurphyLong before the real action of the Presidential election there lies an incredible part of the democratic process. This is a time before the race really starts cooking, before normal people even think about tuning in, and where those ambitious enough to run for president pander to crowds at pancake breakfasts and make speeches in living rooms to crowds of thirty or less. It happens all across New Hampshire and Iowa in a time author Walter Shapiro calls the "Invisible Primary". Shapiro's latest book, One Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In is exactly as it is titled. An exploration of the much under-analyzed time period of the presidential campaign before anyone other than a few reporters, editors, insiders, and political junkies take any notice. The book's premise is a novel one. Writing a definitive book of the early days of the election before anything is decided. It's certainly the hard way to write a history of the 2004 election, but decidedly more interesting and with a degree of difficulty not often seen in this business. Shapiro, a political reporter for USA Today, peppers the book with more than enough politics, but the real power of the book, as in many things, is in the details. With a passionate eye for the actual art of the process Shapiro leaves few stones unturned. "I love New Hampshire living rooms," writes Shapiro. "No setting bettor conveys the wondrous intimacy of the Invisible Primary. It seems outlandish that in the twenty-first century a candidate theoretically can go in little more than two years from standing in front of a fireplace addressing seventy-five voters to governing a nation of 280 million." How the process takes someone, who most people could scarcely conceive of as 'president', make them press hands at every little stop in the crucial early days only to miraculously plump them into the White House two years later is anyone's guess. At first it may have you wondering if this is any way to select a prospective president at all. "Yes, in the beginning, there was one candidate, one car and one reporter. But in the end, there will be one Democratic nominee, armies of deadline-driven reporters waiting for a gaffe or a stumble, motorcades that snake across the landscape like freight trains, dozens of anxious Secret Service agents murmuring dark forebodings into their headsets and cheering crowds penned up with rope lines."Shapiro stresses that these ridiculous moments where future leaders are stuffed into tiny rooms are far more interesting, and certainly more useful than a year of sound bite laden newspaper articles. It is precisely because the people, who see the candidates at this stage, actually get to meet them and shake their hands.Along the way, Shapiro dispenses nuggets of wisdom on topics from media coverage to the personal lives of the major candidate running for the Democratic nomination. He describes the realties of a modern campaign where "buzz" travels faster than a reporter on the ground can hear about it. At one point he was, "sadly behind the curve" since he was reporting first hand rather than reading the lightening fast political gossip pages from his desk in New York. The implications that being a true arm-chair political writer at a home office thousands of miles away might be just as effective as being ten feet from a candidate are huge. A run for the presidency still begins by campaigning for small crowds, on rainy days, in places like Portsmouth New Hampshire two years before the election. A year after that, the crowds grow to sometimes 70 people at a time in a cramped living room. Shapiro ends not with the ramblings of a television talking head, but a true summation of each of the candidates at the time. At least how he, after following them for over a year, thought of them. Dean is "simultaneously beguiling and exasperating". Kerry is the candidate he'd most like to enjoy a beer with. Lieberman has the, "temperament befitting a man who wants to be entrusted with the codes for nuclear weapons." Gephardt reminds Shapiro what he likes about the "never flashy Midwest." And Edwards is far more "compelling in person than he is in theory."One Car Caravan confirms what is probably most comforting about democratic politics in America. That a run for the White House takes years, and involves countless stops along the way in people's houses and long trips in cars with a single aid. Even more reassuring is that two years before an election there are people who actually want to hear them speak. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Books10657@blogcritics.org Thu, 4 Dec 2003 01:11:33 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/01/020233.php Jackson MurphyEarlier this week the President of the United States managed to pull the wool off the eyes of the press corps. While many of the press gladly would have gone along for the ride some thought this was a tragic precedent to set. "That's just not kosher," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."That kind of outrage by the press is often bewildering and mostly just boils down to a major case of the "superiorities". That's why the new film "Shattered Glass" is such a horror for most journalists. The keepers of integrity in public life and the shapers of so much opinion can never be seen as infallible or corruptible or worse just plain wrong. The film, based on the exploits of The New Republic magazine's Stephen Glass, details how a young writer fabricated in part or in full 27 of his 41 articles. The first story that was written by Glass to be initially uncovered by another organization was, it now seems, completely fabricated right down to a now outrageously simplistic fake business website. Many reviews blame the current era and influence of fame that may cause journalists to fabricate stories. But it is nothing new. In a USA Today review DeWayne Wickham includes a 1924 quote by H.L. Mencken. "Journalism, to a considerable degree, has ceased to be the profession of intelligent, idealistic and charming gentlemen. It has become the profession of public office seekers, title hunters, social pushers, dollar diddlers, mountebanks and cads." It was probably the meteoric rise of Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate that caused many to automatically trust journalists above all else and with good reason. But clearly given Menken's thoughts long before the advent of fame inducing tools such as the Internet, cell phones, 24-hour cable news channels, and movie deals there was fortune seekers in the business and motivation to capitalize on them. Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun movie critic sees Stephen Glass as someone who, "occupies a position between whiz kid and class clown in a milieu that's hungry for both." And this only partially reflects badly on the press, as we certainly do our part too. As a former editor of The New Republic Andrew Sullivan who employed Glass as his personal assistant for a year in the time before the events of the movie take place thinks it hits many things spot on. He says it, "elevated the story into a tale of ambition and deceit that gives perspective to a lot of Washington lives and careers. It was chastening, because it was so close to the bone. And remarkably, it didn't glamorize Steve. It made him seem like the self-centered traitor he was."That is probably something that is often lost on those who simply consume the content of newspapers and magazines. Certainly those who read about President Bush's trip to Baghdad were less concerned with the media secrecy than with the story itself. But it is not unusual to that the press should project its own perspectives and echo-chamber reflections ahead of the news. Inside the media there exists an entire ecosystem where there are stars, elder statesman, good guys, and bad guys. Perhaps the movie overstates all of this. Slate's David Plotz suggests that the movie makes it, "seem more important to American life than it is. As a result, Shattered Glass misses the fundamentally ironic, self-mocking culture of the magazine: With a few notable exceptions, Washington journalists are less pompous than Shattered Glass suggests."Except that in spite of the supposedly rarely found pompousness of Washington insiders failed to act on many warning signs on Glass's work as chronicled in this review by The Weekly Standard's Jonathon V. Last. "There is a particular type of journalist who spurns the input of outsiders and believes that there is no truth beyond his magazine's horizon," writes Last. "The impulse to dismiss those who argue with our words as acting out of political disagreement or bad faith is a failing many of us share. It is an impulse which must be fought."Now, the movie version of the story of Stephen Glass offers no real proof, or indeed should, that journalists have as a profession something to apologize for. In fact they can lay claim to the holy characters that do uncover the Glass affair. There are always a few bad apples in the bunch. What this story and well-crafted film do is twofold. It cautions journalists against doing what Glass was so eager to do at the same time as reaffirming that the noble editor who helps to figure out Glass's lies is what is right with journalism. There is one other particularly interesting part of the movie. We have come to rely so heavily on Google and other search engines that it seems unbelievable that the fabricated of stories by Glass would ever pass muster with the fact checkers of such a prominent organization without simply getting "Googled". The fact that readers can now instantly Google a name or a business and get thousands of sites worth of information makes it even more hard to believe. Thankfully fact checking no longer begins and ends with the same people who publish the story. That Glass was able to fool so many of the journalists who are charged with uncovering the "truth" about news in general is disconcerting. How it came to be that Glass's stories could have been at one time so unquestionably true, then upon further reflection such obvious fabrications is the truly hard part to believe. Which begs the question why some rank and file journalists would have such a moral objection to a covert trip to surprise the troops on Thanksgiving while aiming to achieve the most protection for a president entering a war zone. There is plenty of journalism where the press acts like judge, jury, and executioner and probably not nearly enough times where it really does report and allow people to decide. Luckily the people more often than not have the last laugh. Let's be serious, if the people always went along with the conventional wisdom of the press it wouldn't be very exciting would it. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Video10567@blogcritics.org Mon, 1 Dec 2003 02:02:33 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/11/20/023126.php Jackson MurphyTimes change. The movie Master and Commander has already been ably discussed by many writers here at Blogcritics. But the thing that was most interesting about the film was just how much of a different world it was in the early 1800's. Sure the stirring film is about honor and duty during war but other than discussing its realism and authenticity the film hasn't taken on the same Saving Private Ryan reflection. After people saw Spielberg's "Ryan" many of the discussions were how did they do that. And not how did the film makers do that, but how did the soldiers go over than do that. But even in Saving Private Ryan, there were things you could recognize about the 1944 world. Radios, machine guns, landing crafts, aircraft, and telephones among others. But in Master and Commander there is no Global Positioning system, no laptops, no cell phones, no pagers, no blackberries, no internet, or no 24 hour a day news. No real hint of the shear simplicity of 2003-the things you just don't have to think about. The complete dearth of communication, for one, is both awesome in its minimalism and frightening at the same time. No Blogcritics too! No spam! Very few reviews have hit upon this theme. The Arizona Republic's Bill Muller attempts to hit upon the differences. But it is mostly about the raw power of a 19th century war ship. The impact on large events that time has, say 9/11 or the situation in Iraq, and the differences between 1805 and 2003 are astonishing. There could be no way to immediately second guess or even assess the military situation on the ground in post war Iraq for instance in a timely fashion. Then again there would not be the immediate impact of CNN and others. There wouldn't be a distorted bunch of news; there would probably be little news at all. Sure America can project force almost anywhere and anytime. Using precision guided missiles, having bombers take off from Michigan on a bombing run destined half way around the world, or be in constant contact with the troops on the ground. That said, the intrusive nature of up-to-the-second reporting takes away any chance that on any given Sunday the story will be seen clearly through the fog of war. Things may be going well, or they may be going badly. The truth is you'll probably never know until the end of the war what worked and what didn't. Which days were good and which ones were bad. Nation building, like the making of hot dogs and democracy, is best if you don't really know how it's done. Well that's not entirely true. The idea of the lone ship on the far side acting on its own on simple but direct general orders is mostly a notion for bygone era. The fact that navy ships once roamed the planet free from communication and orders, yet a mission somehow remained is pretty remarkable. As Dr. Edward J. Marolda of the Naval Historical Center senior historian suggests, "The movie reminded me that the Sailors of our Navy face the same deadly perils at sea today as they did almost 200 years ago."Thinking that these crews were warriors, builders, sailors, ambassadors, and explorers all at the same time and it is simply hard to fathom. Today some wonder why the military could not protect a museum during the tail end of major battle, or why they cannot get electricity back. While watching the movie one starts to wonder what the world of author Patrick O'Brian would have looked like had it included a few Michael Moores, the U.N., pesky international law, the modern Press Corps, France, and everything else that makes the situation in Iraq seem terribly difficult today.The same perils as before perhaps, but also a bunch of new ones too. A reflection on the differences between then and now is what makes the movie so good. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Video10284@blogcritics.org Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:31:26 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/10/22/000925.php Jackson MurphyOne exiting development in some recent films is the seamless integration of globalization. Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino's bloody new homage to kung-fu and spaghetti westerns Kill Bill Vol. 1 but it is as close to a movie can get to removing national borders. It's about as simple a tale as can be told, but Tarantino's thrown in 70's Hong Kong action star Sonny Chiba, music by Zamfir's that would make a clown cry, the rhythms of The RZA, the wildness of the 5,6,7,8's, and even boot walking Nancy Sinatra. The film is in English, it's in Japanese, there are subtitles, then they are gone, and there's even an Anime sequence. And let's not forget Uma! There are so many competing influences you'll probably have to see the film a few times to sort them out. Part of this potent cocktail is the magic of Tarantino. "I hardly think I would have believed that in Kill Bill Vol 1, his delirious splatter opera of cruelty and revenge, Tarantino could manage a similar feat with Zamfir," writes Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. "That's right: the pan-flute guy. In Kill Bill Zamfir pipes out 'The Loney Sheppard,' a quaver of a ballad that sounds like the most haunting spaghetti Western score Ennio Morricone never wrote."It was filmed in Japan, China, Los Angeles, and Mexico (as Texas) too. When the final showdown in Volume 1 is entitled "Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves" you get the sense that this is no ordinary tea house and no ordinary showdown. What Kill Bill does is go beyond the superficial appreciation of other cultures. It is not like going down to the local sushi restaurant or anything like going to the taco shack up the street to have a slice of culture. No, it destroys those 'gimme' acts of globalization and culture the same way going to a McDonald's in France tells you nothing really about America or France. It is more evolved than, say, simply mixing up culture like a bad fusion restaurant. It isn't just combining Chinese, Japanese, and Westerns into a western stir fry-it is taking them, loving them, and creating something new altogether. It may be an all-new wholly original Quentin Tarantino world or glimpse of movie making in the future. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Video9387@blogcritics.org Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:09:25 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/15/015148.php Jackson Murphy"The age of aesthetics, in all its pervasiveness and plentitude," writes Virginia Postrel in her new book "The Substance of Style." "Has come to bathroom cleaning. Every day, all over the world, designers are working to make a better, prettier, more expressive toilet brush for every taste and every budget. The lowliest household tool has become an object of color, texture, personality, whimsy, even elegance. Dozens, probably hundred, of distinctively designed toilet-brush sets are available-functional, flamboyant, modern, mahogany."This is just one of the many interesting passages in Postrel's book. Thoughts like that are probably enough to make the anti-capitalist, anti-globalization crowd boil over with anger and despair. Designer toilet brushes? What about the workers? She names Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo" and fervent anti-globalization guru, by name for rallying against 'logos'. And logos are important indicators and forms of aesthetics."A world of undifferentiated products and places would not only be less pleasant; it would be more alienating and more confusing. Without aesthetic signals, it would be harder to find what we wanted or to complement our own personalities," writes Postrel. One theme that underscores this book is how democratizing and liberating style is. And that is not as Naomi Klein would have you believe. She and those who protest globalization would have you believe that style is simply a dreaded tool of capitalism fooling people through advertising and dirty tricks. Thankfully, as Postrel writes, it isn't true. What she does, so successfully, in "The Substance of Style" is to break down and understand why style matters, increasingly so, even for products that perform purely menial or functional roles and nothing else, like those toilet brushes. And if style and aesthetics matter for these seemingly trivial things, then it must go likewise for everything from politics to business, from naming your children to hair colors and styles. And thankfully it is why the future isn't anything like what people used to imagine. "We citizens of the future don't wear conformist jumpsuits, live in utilitarian high-rises; or get our food in pills. To the contrary, we are demanding and creating an enticing, stimulating, diverse, and beautiful world. We want our vacuum cleaners and mobile phones to sparkle, our bathroom faucets and desk accessories to express our personalities. We expect every strip mall and city block to offer designer coffees, several different cuisines, a copy shop with do-it-yourself graphics workstations, and a nail salon for manicures on demand."Style is the reason why Starbucks can charge so much for a Latte or Mocha. Put simply, you aren't just paying for the coffee. It goes well beyond that. As Postrel investigates further, she finds that Starbucks is about the artwork, music, layout, design, even the smell, and general feeling you get when you walk in. As Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz explains all those factors, "have to send the same subliminal message as the flavor of the coffee: Everything here is best-of-class."So the Mocha may be $4, but you also get music, comfy chairs, and new perks like wireless internet. More important, those aesthetic imperatives might be the only difference between two products or two businesses. That is why it is so important. The cool thing about Postrel and this book in particular is that she digs into the popular culture of today and finds a vibrant, dynamic, and interesting landscape. It is one that is easy to navigate as people have choices between styles and brands.More importantly, these ideas, that aesthetics matter is coupled with the proposal that this new world is not one burdened or overtaken by idle superficiality, far from it. They are a part of other values and not just stand-ins for those values. These ideas and examples of style and aesthetics are best seen as vehicles to enhance our enjoyment of other things and places, from restaurants to business reports. It's not as easy as thinking of things as simply 'style over substance' or even 'substance over style'. Instead they both must be seen as a wonderful one-two punch in perfect harmony. The exceptionally good thing about Postrel is that her writing is heavy on example, long on interesting ideas, and completely absent of the typical gut reaction against frivolousness of style. The fact that there are more toilet brush styles than you can count isn't a misallocation of resources. No one's been duped into buying them. If you have to buy something you might as well be happy with it. It's the style, stupid. Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada. He is a senior writer at Enter Stage Right and the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political commentary 24-7. Books8380@blogcritics.org Mon, 15 Sep 2003 01:51:48 EDT