By Dennis Hartley
Reflections on what makes America great…via the Firesign Theater:
Tag Archives: On Politics
Star-spangled ban: thoughts on the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival
By Dennis Hartley
46 years ago today, the 3-day 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival opened. Attendees were estimated to be around 200,000.
Historically overshadowed by Woodstock (held 11 months earlier), it still boasted an equally impressive roster of performers. Granted, a number of Woodstock luminaries were there (Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Ten Years After, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Mountain et.al.), but there were top acts exclusive to the Atlanta Festival like The Allman Brothers, B.B. King, The Chambers Brothers, Procol Harum, Grand Funk Railroad, Spirit, Rare Earth, Mott the Hoople, and It’s A Beautiful Day (just to name a few).
The cost of a ticket? $14. I’ll spell that out, so you don’t think it’s a typo: fourteen dollars. Yes, I know, inflation, yadda yadda…but still (a front row seat at this fall’s Desert Trip will only set you back $9,400).
But I digress. Back to Atlanta, 1970. At midnight on July 4th, Jimi Hendrix performed to the biggest domestic audience of his career (sadly, just over two months later, he was gone forever). He played a rousing set, which is documented in the excellent 2015 Showtime production, Jimi Hendrix: Electric Church (currently available on Showtime’s In-Demand feature, if you haven’t caught it yet). Hendrix included his idiosyncratic “Star Spangled Banner” salute (how could he not do it on the Fourth?), with fireworks. Pretty awesome stuff.
Unfortunately, despite the “right of the people peaceably to assemble” (not to mention that whole freedom of expression thing) someone didn’t find Jimi’s paean so awesome (there’s one in every crowd). The “someone”? Governor Lester Maddox. Two days after the festival, he announced he was going to push for legislation to ban any future such DFH events in his state. Because you know…freedom.
Oh, Georgia. Happy holiday weekend, everyone!
Forward, into the past: A timely reissue of Peter Watkins’ Culloden ****
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 26, 2016)
“For some time, [United Kingdom] constitutional nerds such as myself used to float this kind of nightmare scenario, in which one or more parts of the U.K such as Northern Ireland or Scotland [votes to stay in the E.U.], while England, being the largest group [votes to leave the E.U.]…basically those other parts of the U.K. are out-voted. […] Now this has actually happened; this isn’t a nightmare scenario any longer, it’s the reality.”
– Andrew Blick, lecturer in politics and contemporary history (from an interview on CNN, June 24, 2016).
There’s been a substantial amount of speculation among the chattering class over the last 36 hours regarding a possible “contagion effect” on the nations who remain allegiant to the European Union, following the U.K.’s voter-mandated breakaway this past Thursday.
While no one with a modicum of sense and/or logic is expecting World War III to break out next week as a result of the “Brexit” referendum decision, there remain a number of compelling historical reasons why the possibility of profound political and socioeconomic instability in Europe down the road is concerning to those who keep track of such things.
For a continent that encompasses a relatively modest 3,930,000 square miles altogether (for perspective, the United States by itself is 3,806,000 square miles in size), Europe has a densely complex history of political volatility, avarice-driven disputes, willful military aggression and generations-spanning (ruling) family squabbles that boggles the mind.
I’m not saying we haven’t gotten our own hair mussed once or twice here in the good ‘ol U.S. of A; after all, 620,000 people died in the Civil War. That said, 17 million people died in World War I, and an estimated 60 million souls slipped the surly bonds of Earth in the course of World War II. Yes, those were “world” wars, but volatility in Europe was the primary impetus. I guess what I’m saying is, the fact that we have known the existence of a unified Europe in our lifetimes is a blessing that we have taken for granted.
However, as implied by the quote at the top of the post, what makes the Brexit decision even more fascinating to me is the possibility of the U.K. itself splintering apart eventually as a result. Which in effect would be history repeating itself, particularly in the case of Scotland, which voted almost overwhelmingly in favor of remaining in the E.U. In fact, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has already announced a plan to keep Scotland in the E.U., as well as noting that drafts are in the works for legislation proposing another vote on Scottish independence from the U.K. (there was one in 2014).
To say that the history between England and Scotland is a “bloody” one would not be overstatement. Consider a particularly nasty bit of business generally referred to as the “Jacobite Uprising” or “The Forty-five Rebellion” (1745-1746). Depending on which historian you’re reading, the conflict was either a clan war betwixt Scottish lowlanders and highlanders, a religious civil war, or a Scottish war of independence against England. For the sake of expediency, I’m going to split the difference and call it “all of the above”.
The culmination of the conflict occurred on April 16, 1745 with the Battle of Culloden:
(from The National Trust for Scotland website)
Towards one o’clock, the Jacobite artillery opened fire on government soldiers. The government responded with their own cannon, and the Battle of Culloden began.
Bombarded by cannon shot and mortar bombs, the Jacobite clans held back, waiting for the order to attack. At last they moved forwards, through hail, smoke, murderous gunfire and grapeshot. Around eighty paces from their enemy they started to fire their muskets and charged. Some fought ferociously. Others never reached their goal. The government troops had finally worked out bayonet tactics to challenge the dreaded Highland charge and broadsword. The Jacobites lost momentum, wavered, then fled.
Hardly an hour had passed between the first shots and the final flight of the Prince’s army. Although a short battle by European standards, it was an exceptionally bloody one.
Culloden was not only “an exceptionally bloody” battle, but holds distinction as the last such pitched battle to be fought on British soil. Although the slaughter did not stop there:
(from The New World Encyclopedia website)
After their victory, Cumberland ordered his men to execute all the Jacobite wounded and prisoners, an act by which he was known afterwards as “the Butcher.” Certain higher-ranking prisoners did survive to be tried and executed later in Inverness. […]
Immediately after the battle, Cumberland rode into Inverness, his drawn sword still covered in blood, a symbolic and menacing gesture. The following day, the slaughter continued, when patrols were sent back to the battlefield to kill any survivors; contemporary sources indicate that about 70 more Jacobites were killed as a result…
[…] 3,470 Jacobites, supporters, and others were taken prisoner in the aftermath of Culloden, with 120 of them being executed and 88 dying in prison; 936 transported to the colonies, and 222 more “banished.” While many were eventually released, the fate of nearly 700 is unknown.
The Rebellion left a profound cultural impact on Scotland as well. From the same article:
[The ’45 Rebellion] had enormous psychological impact upon the Highland Scots, and severe civil penalties thereafter (for example, it became a criminal offense to wear tartan plaid). What followed can be described as cultural vandalism, with the destruction of a way of life that many had found meaningful, giving them a sense of identity and kinship.
So how does this all tie in with the Brexit vote? In a well-written 2011 Daily Kos piece inspired by the (then) 265th anniversary of the Battle of Culloden, OP OllieGarky notes:
Cameron and Thatcher’s recent ruthlessness towards Scottish public institutions is nothing new. It is a pale relic of previous attempts to rebuild Scotland into a properly British province, according to whatever fashion the current leaders took. […]
Culloden and its aftermath is an emotional issue for the Scottish Diaspora. Depending on your definition, how you include or exclude individuals from the Diaspora, the Diaspora outnumbers the population of Scotland by no less than 12 to one. This loss of people has been disastrous for Scotland in recent years, leading to the rise of the Scottish National Party. […]
The Scottish Nationalists are Nationalists in name only. They don’t espouse any of the ethnocentric bile typical of traditional Nationalist groups like the BNP, or White Nationalists in the US. Indeed, the music of Scottish Nationalism is disgusted with the ethnocentric ideas that are themselves an integral part of the BNP’s British Nationalism, or its predecessor the National Front’s English Nationalism.
It’s no secret that there was an undercurrent of anti-immigrant nativism streaking through rhetoric spouted by some of the high profile spokespersons in the “leave the E.U.” camp.
Which (finally) brings us to writer-director Peter Watkins’ largely forgotten, yet somewhat groundbreaking made-for BBC-TV docudrama from 1964 entitled Culloden. The film has been newly remastered for a beautifully-transferred “two-fer” (Region “B” only) Blu-ray release from BFI that also includes Watkins’ more well-known (and controversial) 1965 BBC docudrama The War Game (****), which is an unblinking, startlingly realistic envisioning of the after-effects of a nuclear attack on the city of Kent.
Truth be told, the primary reason I ordered the set was to snag a copy of The War Game; I was previously unaware of Culloden (it never aired outside of the U.K., unlike The War Game, which gained its higher profile from international cinematic distribution in 1966, subsequently earning it an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature back in 1967).
It is by pure kismet that I just happened to view Culloden for the first time about 2 weeks ago, so it’s fresh in my mind; otherwise I likely never would have connected this relatively obscure battle that took place 270 years ago with the results of the Brexit referendum just this past Thursday. At any rate, I was happy to discover this gem, which is very much in the vein of Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. While he shares Kubrick’s eye for detail and realistic depiction of the horror of battle, Watkins does him one better:
(From David Archibald’s essay, written for the companion booklet to the BFI Blu-ray)
“Culloden” emerged at the high point in British television. In 1956 Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble toured Britain for the first time, and the company’s non-Aristotelian, distanciation techniques, which attempted to highlight theater’s constructed nature and, in turn, politicize the spectator, were becoming increasingly popular among leftist theater-makers […]
The experimental and constructed nature of [“Culloden”] is all-too apparent: on-location shooting; fourth-wall breaking direct address to the camera; repeated, shaky camera work; tight close-ups on the protagonists’ faces and the presence of a narrator who describes events as if reporting on the daily news.
The anachronistic conceit that Watkins employs cannily presages the advent of the “mockumentary” (although you will discover nothing “funny” is going on in the course of the film’s 69 minutes). Yet there is nothing “gimmicky” about it, in fact, the overall effect is quite powerful and involving. As Archibald goes on to conclude in his essay:
Yet this is not simply an adaptation of [John Prebbles’ eponymous 1962 book] but stands in its own right as a legitimate historical representation of an important chapter in Scottish and British history. […]
[Peter Watkins] never returned to television [following “The War Game” in 1965], but he leaves behind a brace of innovative yet accessible, provocative yet popular documentaries, which remain strikingly fresh and politically potent.
Here are 2 things I know to be true: Culloden is strikingly fresh. And history is cyclical.
(BFI’s Blu-ray is Region “B”; it requires a region-free player for viewing!)
Orlando’s silver lining (?)
By Dennis Hartley
‘Wait’ has always meant ‘never’ – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Now is not the time to talk about [insert gun-violence related meme here] .” We’ve heard that before; predictably, we’re hearing it again.
But there is something about this mass shooting that screams “Last call for sane discourse and positive action!” on multiple fronts. This incident is akin to a perfect Hollywood pitch, writ large by fate and circumstance; incorporating nearly every sociopolitical causality that has been quantified and/or debated over by criminologists, psychologists, legal analysts, legislators, anti-gun activists, pro-gun activists, left-wingers, right-wingers, centrists, clerics, journalists and pundits in the wake of every such incident since Charles Whitman perched atop the clock tower at the University of Texas and picked off nearly 50 victims (14 dead and 32 wounded) over a 90-minute period. That incident occurred in 1966; 50 years ago this August. Not an auspicious golden anniversary for our country. 50 years of this madness. And it’s still not the appropriate time to discuss? What…too soon?
Everything old is new again: The cover of Time, Aug. 12, 1966
The Orlando incident contains nearly every hot-button trigger. The gunman: spousal abuser, obsessed with firearms, mental issues, of the Muslim faith. The weapon: a legally purchased assault rifle. The target: a nightclub popular with the LGBTQ community. The motivation: too early to say definitively, but history points to a likelihood of either personal, political, ideological, or perhaps ‘all of the above’. The initial rush to judgement per social media and the MSM: that this was a terror attack on America, pure and simple, end of story.
All I can say is, if this “worst mass shooting in U.S. history” (which is saying a lot) isn’t the perfect catalyst for prompting meaningful public dialogue and positive action steps once and for all regarding homophobia, Islamophobia, domestic violence, the proliferation of hate crimes, legal assault weapons, universal background checks, mental health care (did I leave anything out?), then WTF will it take?
NRA issues statement on deadliest U.S. shooting
By Dennis Hartley
My apologies. We should have that audio for you any second now.
Aaaany second, now…
Oh. Never mind.
The big carnival: Weiner ****
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 11, 2016)
In my 2011 review of George Clooney’s political drama, The Ides of March, I wrote:
I suppose that is the message of this film (politics is all awash in the wooing). The art of seduction and the art of politicking are one and the same; not exactly a new revelation (a narrative that goes back at least as far as, I don’t know, Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”). The politician is seduced by power. However, the politician first must seduce the voter. A pleasing narrative is spun and polished, promises are made, sweet nothings whispered in the ear, and the voter caves. But once your candidate is ensconced in their shiny new office, well…about that diamond ring? It turns out to be cubic zirconium. Then it’s all about the complacency, the lying, the psychodramas, and the traumas. While a lot of folks do end up getting ‘screwed’, it is not necessarily in the most desirable and fun way.
In Weiner, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s no-holds-barred documentary recounting Anthony Weiner’s 2013 run for NYC mayor, their subject waxes rhetorically:
“Do my personal relationships suffer because of the superficial and transactional nature of my political relationships-or is it the other way around? Do you go into politics because you’re not connecting on that other level? […] Politicians probably are wired in some way that needs attention. […] It is hard to have normal relationships.”
To which your humble movie reviewer can only append: “Is there an echo in here?”
So, are those driven to willingly throw themselves into that shark tank we call ‘politics’ doing so to compensate for an inability to connect with (or commit to) someone else on a personally meaningful level? Or is it neediness, insecurity, and/or narcissism? Perhaps they are gluttons for punishment? Wait, that’s too cynical; surely, it must be attributable to a sense of altruism, patriotism or a sincere desire to devote one’s life to public service?
Of course I’m being coy; you and I know that if we’re referring to human beings, the answer is “all of the above”. While individual politicians are occasionally equated with saints, politicians and saints are mutually exclusive. Two lessons I’ve learned from films:
- “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” – from Chinatown
- “Well…nobody’s perfect!” – from Some Like it Hot
Kriegman and Steinberg’s film raises a number of related questions; the most obvious one being: should ‘we’, as constituents, be willing to forgive the personal indiscretions (barring prosecutable criminal offenses) of those who we have voted into public office? Should we view that as a personal betrayal? After all, if making boneheaded decisions in one’s love life was a crime, I’d bet that there would be barely enough politicians left outside of prison to run the country. Then there’s the existential question: WTF were you thinking?!
The filmmakers were given remarkable access to Weiner, his family and 2013 campaign staffers during the course of his ill-fated mayoral run (not really a spoiler, as I am assuming you’ve become familiar with the phrase ‘New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’). I’m guessing their fascination stemmed from the fact that Weiner was putting himself in the ring just two years after a highly publicized “sexting” scandal led to his resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2011.
The resultant public shaming seemed to go on and on; not helped by having a surname synonymous with the part of his anatomy that got him into trouble in the first place. This naturally offered limitless variations of nudge-nudge-wink-wink double entendre for late-night hosts, comedians, and water cooler wiseacres to reap from.
That’s a shame, as the directors remind us with an opening montage highlighting Weiner’s finer political moments. What tends to get lost in the flurry of sophomoric dick jokes that continue to this day, is that he was one of the first truly fearless progressive firebrands to stand their ground and call out the obstructionist bullshit amidst one of the most toxic partisan takeovers of the House in recent memory.
Which makes me sad. And mad…re-prompting “that” question. WTF were you thinking?!
If you’re curious to see this film because you think it reveals the answer…don’t waste your time. It’s not for lack of trying by the filmmakers; at one juncture (just as “new” details about the 2011 sexting hit the media) one director asks Weiner outright: “Why have you let me film this?” Weiner doesn’t really have an answer.
However, if you want to see an uncompromising, refreshingly honest political documentary about how down and dirty campaigns can get in the trenches, this one is a must-see. Just be warned-it’s not for the squeamish. Not that there is anything gross, or graphic (aside from a little colorful language here and there). It’s just that some scenes could induce that flush of empathetic embarrassment you experience when a couple has a loud spat at the table next to yours at a crowded restaurant, or when a drunken relative tells an off-color joke at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s equally unfiltered and cringe-inducing.
Putting the deeper political and psychological analysis aside, the film also happens to be entertaining. In fact, it is so sharply observed and cleverly constructed (kudos to editor Eli B. Despres) that it plays like the best political mockumentary that Armando Iannucci never created (even he couldn’t concoct a script this perfect if he tried).
I came away with something else just as unexpected. In light of what is happening right now (and getting more horrifying by the day) regarding the 2016 presidential race, Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal, humiliating resignation from Congress, and subsequent ill-advised 2013 mayoral run (replete with all of its angst, mudslinging and “Carlos Danger” memes) already feels, in relative terms, like the distant memory of some bygone era when we lived in an America with a kinder, gentler, saner political landscape.
(Currently in limited theatrical release and on PPV)
We are the presumptive champions
By Dennis Hartley
Oh, Donnie. Brian May is less than pleased with Trump co-opting Queen’s “We Are the Champions” as his grand entrance theme:
[From Rolling Stone]
“I’ve had an avalanche of complaints – some of which you can see in our ‘Letters’ page – about Donald Trump using our ‘We Are The Champions’ track as his ‘theme’ song on USA TV,” May wrote on his website. “This is not an official Queen statement, but I can confirm that permission to use the track was neither sought nor given. We are taking advice on what steps we can take to ensure this use does not continue. Regardless of our views on Mr. Trump’s platform, it has always been against our policy to allow Queen music to be used as a political campaigning tool.”
[…]
May isn’t the first musician to deny Trump access to their catalogs. In September, after the politician used R.E.M.’s hit “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” at a rally, singer Michael Stipe angrily responded, “Go fuck yourselves, the lot of you – you sad, attention-grabbing, power-hungry little men … Do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign.”
Sad! In the interest of mediation, may I suggest the following (and much more apropos) selection for Mr. Trump’s intros going forward?
The other half of the sky
By Dennis Hartley
All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.
– Indira Gandhi
As Digby pointed out in her excellent piece this morning, it seems to be getting tougher for the MSM to recognize a truly historic moment right away, even when it jumps up and bites them right on the ass.
Ditto for a distressingly large percentage of the American population, whose collective attention span holds a rough equivalency to the average life expectancy of a photo once you post it on Snapchat.
However, I think it’s safe to say that, for those of us old and/or cognizant enough to have a sense of history, Hillary Clinton’s 99.9 % assured confirmation as the presumptive Democratic nominee for POTUS last night can be recognized as a truly historic moment.
Love her or hate her, this is significant. Yes, it’s old hat for other democracies around the world; for the nation that allegedly leads the way in such matters, it’s shamefully overdue, but most welcome.
As for Hillary herself; she’s survived more trials by fire than The Mother of Dragons. You have to respect that, begrudgingly or not.
So feel free to put your phone on silent mode and take a moment…
https://youtu.be/_O8s2kg8ufc
…than when standing in his shadow
By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 4, 2016)
No longer presidents but prophets
They’re all dreaming they’re gonna bear the prophet
He’s gonna run through the fields dreaming in animation
It’s all gonna split his skull
It’s gonna come out like a black bouquet shining
Like a fist that’s gonna shoot them up
Like light, like Muhammad boxer
Take them up up up up up up
— From “Birdland”, by Patti Smith
Some people have a special light. Not a light that you can necessarily “see”, per se; yet in the wake of their departure from this world, one senses a few less lumens within it. Muhammad Ali was one such individual. Normally, when a sports legend dies, you expect the usual accolades from peers and young up-and-coming athletes, citing the personal inspiration and offering admiring kudos for the accomplishments he or she made within the profession. But how many sports figures also incur this manner of observation:
For my generation and so many other people, we didn’t have a President Barack Obama; and so for my generation, in terms of exemplars—people of high achievement, high integrity (beyond my dad, my brothers, and my mom), Muhammad Ali was that for me.
That was from Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, in an interview on CNN this morning. For that matter, President Barack Obama didn’t have a, erm, President Barack Obama, either:
In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him – the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was – still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.
That was from the President’s statement earlier today (Digby put the entire text up in her tribute this morning). Yes, even the current leader of the free world has drawn inspiration from Muhammad Ali. Clearly, Ali’s impact on our planet is more substantial than achieving status as the greatest ever heavyweight boxing champion of said world.
This is borne out by the fact that amongst those championship belts, Olympic medals and other sundry sports trophies crowding Ali’s shelf, there is also the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2005), the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Award (1970), and the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage (1997)…to name a few. That’s because throughout his life, Ali lent his considerable clout, eloquence and sense of conviction to a number of humanitarian and social causes. Personally, I admire him most for his unapologetic stand against the Vietnam War in the 60s; undaunted by the fact that by doing so, he was committing career suicide. I’m in good company…here’s today’s most touching tribute:
Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand tall and fight for what he believed was right. In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand together. I may be 7’2”, but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow.
– Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, from a Facebook posting earlier today.
“Than when standing in his shadow.” Wow. I think we’re all feeling taller today. As a tribute, I’m reposting the following review/essay that I originally published on Digby’s Hullabaloo in November 2013 regarding the documentary, The Trials of Muhammad Ali:
My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me n***er, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father… Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.
-Muhammad Ali
There have been a number of films documenting and dramatizing the extraordinary life of Muhammad Ali, but they all share a curious anomaly. Most have tended to gloss over Ali’s politically volatile “exile years” (1967-1970), during which the American sports icon was officially stripped of his heavyweight crown and essentially “banned” from professional boxing after his very public refusal to be inducted into the Army on the grounds of conscientious objection to the Vietnam War. In a new documentary, The Trials of Muhammad Ali (not to be confused with Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, the 2013 made-for-cable drama that HBO has been running in heavy rotation) filmmaker Bill Siegel (The Weather Underground) fills in those blanks.
As we know, Time heals (most) wounds…and Siegel opens his film with a fascinatingly dichotomous illustration. We witness a young Ali in a TV talk show appearance as he is being lambasted by an apoplectic David Susskind, who calls him (among other things) “…a disgrace to his country, his race and what he laughably describes as his profession.” (Ali deflects the insulting rant with a Zen-like calm). Cut to 2005, and footage of President G.W. Bush Jr. awarding Ali the Medal of Freedom. It’s easy to forget how vilified Ali was for taking his stand (scars from the politically polarizing Vietnam era run deep; I know a few folks who still refer to Jane Fonda as “Hanoi Jane”).
Sigel then traces the evolution of Ali’s controversial stance, which had its roots in the early 60s, when the wildly popular Olympic champion then known as Cassius Clay became interested in the Nation of Islam, guided by the teachings of the movement’s leader at the time, Elijah Muhammad. Interviewees Kahlilah Camacho-Ali (Ali’s first wife, whom he met through the Nation of Islam) and a longtime friend only identified as “Captain Sam” provide a lot of interesting background on this spiritual side of Ali’s life, which eventually led to the adaptation of a new name and his refusal to serve in Vietnam.
As you watch the film, you begin to understand how Ali the sports icon transmogrified into an influential sociopolitical figure, even if he didn’t set out to become the latter. It was more an accident of history; Ali’s affiliation with the Nation of Islam and stance against the Vietnam War put him at the confluence of both the burgeoning Black Power and anti-war movements. Either way, it took balls, especially considering that when he was convicted of draft evasion (later overturned by the Supreme Court), he was not only stripped of his heavyweight title (and primary source of income), but had his passport taken away by the government. This was not grandstanding; it was a true example of standing on the courage of one’s convictions.
Sigel has unearthed some revelatory archival footage from Ali’s three years in the wilderness. He still had to pay rent and feed his family, so Ali essentially found a second career during that period as a professional speaker (likely making him the only world-famous athlete to have inserted that phase of life usually associated with post-retirement into the middle of one’s career). During this time he represented himself as a minister of the Nation of Islam, giving speeches against racism and the Vietnam War (he shows to have been quite an effective and charismatic speaker). One mind-blower is footage of Ali performing a musical number from a Broadway play called Big Time Buck White.
It’s hard to see this film and not draw parallels with Edward Snowden; specifically to ponder how he will be viewed in the fullness of time. Granted, Snowden is not as likely to get bestowed with the Medal of Freedom-but god knows he’s being vilified now (remember, Ali didn’t just catch flak from the usual suspects for standing firmly on his principles, but even from dyed-in-the-wool liberals like Susskind).
Another takeaway is that there was more going on than cloaked racism; Ali’s vilification was America’s pre-9/11 flirt with Islamophobia. Ali was “safe” and acceptable as a sports celebrity (as long as he played the face-pulling, poetry-spouting ham with Howard Cosell), but was recast as a dangerous black radical once he declared himself a Muslim and began to speak his mind on hot-button issues.
As one interviewee comments on the Islam quotient “…Since 9/11, ‘Islam’ has acquired so many layers and dimensions and textures. When the Nation of Islam was considered as a ‘threatening’ religion, traditional Islam was seen as a gentle alternative. And now, quite the contrary […] Muhammad Ali occupies a weird kind of place in that shifting interpretation of Islam.” Welcome to Bizarro World.
Living through another Cuba
By Dennis Hartley
With all the dominating Trump news, I missed this passing last week:
(from the New York TImes)
Michael Ratner, a fearless civil liberties lawyer who successfully challenged the United States government’s detention of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay without judicial review, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 72.
The cause was complications of cancer, said his brother, Bruce, a developer and an owner of the Brooklyn Nets.
As head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner oversaw litigation that, in effect, voided New York City’s wholesale stop-and-frisk policing tactic. The center also accused the federal government of complicity in the kidnapping and torture of terrorism suspects and argued against the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, the waging of war in Iraq without the consent of Congress, the encouragement of right-wing rebels in Nicaragua and the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war.
“Under his leadership, the center grew from a small but scrappy civil rights organization into one of the leading human rights organizations in the world,” David Cole, a former colleague at the center and a professor at Georgetown Law School, said in an interview this week. “He sued some of the most powerful people in the world on behalf of some of the least powerful.”
Not a peep on any of the nightly newscasts (quietly dedicating your life to human rights just isn’t sexy enough, I’m afraid). Anyway…I found out about Mr. Ratner’s passing while listening to Democracy Now this morning on the way to work. Amy Goodman had the great Noam Chomsky on the program; he lent context to Ratner’s legacy:
Well, Michael Ratner has an absolutely fabulous record. His achievements have been enormous. A tremendous courage, intelligence, dedication. A lot of achievement against huge odds. The center, which he largely—it was a major—he ran and was a major actor in, has done wonderful work all over the place—Cuba and lots of other things. So I can’t be excessive in my praise for what he achieved in his life and the inspiration that it should leave us with.
It sounds like we’ve lost another of the good ones (*sigh*). We now return you to your regularly scheduled 24/7 Trump news cycle…
https://youtu.be/gxIP8wdLcv4
Living through another Cuba
It’s 1961 again and we are piggy in the middle
While war is polishing his drum and peace plays second fiddle
Russia and America are at each other’s throats
But don’t you cry
Just on your knees and pray, and while you’re
Down there, kiss your arse goodbye
We’re the bulldog on the fence
While others play their tennis overhead
It’s hardly love all and somebody might
Wind up red or dead
Pour some oil on the water quick
It doesn’t really matter where from
He love me, he loves me not
He’s pulling fins from an atom bomb
This phenomenon happens every twenty years or so
If they’re not careful your watch won’t be the
Only thing with a radioactive glow
I’ll stick my fingers in my ears
And hope they make it up before too late
If we get through this lot alright
They’re due for replay, 1998
(Written by Andy Partridge)
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