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No Government Takeover of Public Safety!

April 24, 2010 | Permalink

You remember Richard Clarke. He was the counter-terrorism adviser to Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and (briefly) George W. Bush. He’s the guy who implored the second Bush Administration in January of 2001 to keep a close eye on Al Qaeda, and move forward with measures to that effect which were still in place from the recently departed Clinton administration. In response, the Bush administration blew off Clarke’s warnings and demoted him to non-cabinet level status.

photo: Aude/Wikimedia Commons

He was later made Special Adviser to the President on cybersecurity, but resigned from the G.W. Bush administration in 2003. A year later Clarke testified before the 9/11 Commission; the Bush White House, knowing that his testimony would reveal their fuck-ups, undertook one of their trademark Karl Rove-style campaigns of character assassination. Some would disagree, but I believe an objective eye would conclude that the smear tactics damaged the Bush administration’s credibility far more than Clarke’s.

These days, Clarke runs a security consulting firm and serves as an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. This past Monday he was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, principally about his new book Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It.¹ After describing the serious threat posed by internet-based attacks, Clarke had this to say about the present state of our defenses against such attacks:

CLARKE: …Now, who’s defending us? Who’s defending those pipelines and those railroads and the banks? The Obama Administration’s answer pretty much is, “You’re on your own.” [The Pentagon's] Cyber Command will defend our military. Homeland Security will someday have the capability to defend the rest of the civilian government — it doesn’t today. But everybody else will have to do their own defense.

That is a formula that will not work in the face of sophisticated threats.

GROSS: When you’re saying everybody else is on their own, does that include the electricity grid, the power grid, banking…? Read the rest of this entry »

Torturama 2: Electric Boogaloo

October 23, 2006 | 1 comment

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: kudos to Bill O’Reilly.

From FOX News, via Andrew Sullivan:

O’REILLY: Now Brian Ross of ABC said — reported the CIA waterboarded [Khalid Sheik] Mohammed. That is dunked him in water, tied him down and then that broke him. Is that true?

BUSH: We don’t talk about techniques. And the reason we don’t talk about techniques is because we don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust. We’re in a war.

O’REILLY: Is waterboarding torture?

BUSH: I don’t want to talk about techniques. And — but I do share the American people that we were within the law. And we don’t torture. We — I’ve said all along to the American people we won’t torture, but we need to be in a position where we can interrogate these people.

O’REILLY: But if the public doesn’t know what torture is or is not, as defined by the Bush administration, how can the public make a decision on whether your policy is right or wrong?

BUSH: Well, one thing is that you can rest assured we’re not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield.

But what the American people need to know is we’ve got a program in place that is able to get intelligence from these people. And we’ve used it to stop attacks.

Before we begin scanning the skies for flying pigs, it should be known that the tough questioning in this excerpt is not necessarily typical of the interview as a whole. Nevertheless, O’Reilly deserves credit for putting the waterboarding question directly to Mr. Bush – it was more than anyone else had done.

Bush’s ham-fisted evasion, “We’re not going to talk about techniques… because we don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust” is ludicrous on several levels. First, it’s such an obvious smoke screen that it practically begs for a Colbert-esque “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ ” The absurdity is dialed up further with the notion that Bush’s answering the question would enable the enemy to “adjust.” This assumes that the preceding several weeks of public controversy over such interrogation methods somehow escaped the terrorists’ notice. To top it off, the president apparently believes that our foes are capable of turning themselves into amphibians in order to resist being waterboarded. This just in: Aqua-Man has defected to Al Qaeda.

George W. Bush is not just a bad president – he’s an embarrassment to the office. The loftiest hope I can summon for the next two years is that he does as little further damage as possible. The toll his policies have taken on the American citizenry is severe, and the stain he is leaving on the good name of our country will take years to scrub away.

Boo–Fucking–Hoo

July 5, 2006 | 3 comments

I get a kick out of listening to people who are on the top of the heap complain about how persecuted they are. That such individuals and organizations assume they will be flooded with sympathy when they advertise their complete lack of perspective, I find inherently hilarious. I don’t mean to imply that privileged people cannot be genuinely victimized (celebrity stalkers and the tabloid press are just two obvious examples of how they can be, and often are), but I’m referring to something else: I’m talking about luminaries of one kind or another who decry imaginary oppressors, or who (figuratively speaking) refer to the ants at their picnic as if they were bears.

In dishonor of these bellyaching fat cats, I have decided to institute the Boo-Fucking-Hoo Award, which I will bestow every so often upon those who distinguish themselves in the field of meritless complaint. Without further ado, I give you our inaugural recipient, Mr. Charles Simpson, representing the Business & Media Institute.

Some dedicated researchers from this organization spent last year’s sweeps months in front of the TV checking their reflections, so to speak. Their overall conclusion, stated in a widely-circulated position piece by Mr. Simpson, was that the television industry is putting out too many negative images of… businessmen. Yes, that’s right: the captains of industry want the world to know that Hollywood is giving them a bad rap. Mr. Simpson’s leadoff:

Long after executives from Enron, WorldCom, and HealthSouth first graced the 24-hour news cycle, the four major networks have outdone the evening news with anti-business themes.

Apparently the TV networks missed the memo that it was their patriotic duty to rehabilitate the image of big business through their dramatic series programming. Executive America can see that it’s not having a good run lately in the non-fiction market, so it wants to know why fiction hasn’t stepped up for them? Mr. Simpson points to some of the numbers:

During the two sweeps months, you were five times more likely to be kidnapped or murdered at the hands of a businessman than terrorists, gangs, or even the mob. It’s enough to convince the risk averse to join the Peace Corps. After all, they’d be safer in Darfur than in an office space.

Ooh – funny funny! Stop, stop, you’re killing m-… oops, I know you’re sensitive about that. Nice line, though. Sorry I could only give sarcastic laughter on that one, I guess mass rape and genocide just don’t crack me up like they used to. Anyway, about the statistic: five times more likely to be killed by a businessman than “terrorists, gangs, or even the mob?” That can’t possibly be right. Hel-lo! Mobsters and gang members are businessmen! But wait, our guy Charles Simpson is warming up for his big finish, his coup de arrogance:

It’s mind-boggling that show business could be so anti-business. How can a multibillion-dollar industry be antagonistic to a cornerstone of American society?… it’s hypocritical to use a successful business model to undermine the free enterprise system that helped create it… are TV execs hypocrites, or just plain out of touch with reality?

At this point, I almost feel sorry for the guy because he comes within a hair’s breadth of getting it. The answers to Simpson’s questions, if he would ask them honestly rather than rhetorically, are hiding from him in plain sight. Instead, he becomes the ironic cherry on the top of his own folly by exposing himself as… a hypocrite who is just plain out of touch with reality.

Fairly or unfairly, Hollywood studios are being good businessmen by depicting evil businessmen. They know what their customers want, and that’s what they are providing. The Business & Media Institute may not see it, but for most others it’s easy to see why audiences draw cathartic satisfaction from the idea of corporate fat cats getting their comeuppance. To start with, the gap between the rich and the not rich in our society has been widening significantly due to factors including tax policy and the lack of lobbying reform. Second, the nature of employment has fundamentally changed in the last 20-25 years, with layoffs (or their euphemistic variants like “downsizing,” “outsourcing,” and “moving offshore”) becoming so commonplace as to seem inevitable, and the notion of job security regarded more and more as a relic of the good old days. Then, of course, there are the well-known and startlingly numerous recent examples of disastrous corporate malfeasance and fraud. While it’s true that such shameful episodes are the exception rather than the rule in terms of the whole business community, it’s also true that holy shit, there have been a hell of a lot of exceptional assholes popping up lately.

Either way, the blistering network portrayals of businessmen who lie, cheat and kill make one miss the old days of simple class envy.

Oh, what a shame… those mean TV networks are making people forget to be jealous of you. Well, I recommend you head on home and have your personal chef whip you up a nice Pity Puree. Maybe pop in your DVD of the first season of The Apprentice. Maybe it’ll be enough to make you forget that unflattering portrayals of you are profitable.

Homagesploitation

April 17, 2006 | 2 comments

On April Fools Day, my wife and I finally got our asses to the movies again. Just now I actually had to do research to figure out that the last time we’d been to a movie theater was to see Brokeback Mountain, a couple days after Christmas. My God, what have I become? I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a cinema-going drought since before I had a driver’s license. So yay for us – we saw and quite enjoyed Inside Man. The only unpleasant part of the evening was when I got run over by a trailer.

Before you start wondering how I could have been involved in yet another auto accident, let me assure you that I meant that last statement was only a metaphor (and a cheap little pun). To be more straightforward, among the previews before Inside Man was one for Universal’s United 93. If you haven’t seen it you can do so here.

As the trailer ended, I did something I don’t think I’d ever done (at least, not in public) in response to a theatrical preview: I booed. It was a sharp, disapproving boo, and fairly loud. I was a little disheartened that no others joined in, but I took some solace in the sprinkling of snickers my booing induced. I wouldn’t normally think of being snickered at as a desirable thing, but these were not snickers in the “can you believe that idiot?” vein – rather, they were ironic. They were snickers of recognition. (Mmmm… Snickers of recognition… [drool])

What I found boo-worthy was the idea of an action movie about the events of September 11. Before I go further into the issue, I feel that I should emphasize that I have no intention of passing judgment on United 93 as a movie, for the (hopefully) obvious reason that I have not seen it. What I have seen is the trailer, the content of which gave me every indication the movie will be, in my view, exploitative. Much of the media brouhaha over the past couple of weeks has centered around the question, “is America ready for movies about 9/11?” I suspect that many others essentially share the answer I would give, which is, “Movies about 9/11? Sure. An action movie about 9/11? Ugh… that’s not funny.”

The manner in which Universal and the film’s creators have been handling the imbroglio has only reinforced my distaste. First, the manager of the AMC Loews Lincoln Square multiplex in New York City stopped running the United 93 preview in response to the complaints of offended patrons. Notice, if you will, Universal Marketing honcho Alan Fogelson’s hedging assertion that the trailer is inoffensive because it accurately reflects the movie as a whole. The quote is formed a little strangely, making me wonder if what he said was taken out of context and pieced together. In any case his reasoning doesn’t wash, for a few reasons:

Since when have the studios given a rat’s ass whether or not a trailer accurately represents the movie it is promoting? Any somewhat attentive movie patron has caught on to the increasing number of previews that completely misrepresent a film’s actual content or emphasis in order to appeal to the broadest possible demographic. So what’s he even saying here?
OK, fine — let’s say the preview is true to the movie. If the movie itself is offensive, then the preview is offensive too. I found the preview offensive, so you’ll understand if I have a strong suspicion that the whole movie would make me feel more of the same.

More egregious is Fogelson’s equating the occurrence at Lincoln Square to one where a theatre removed one-sheets for The 40 Year-Old Virgin because of a customer’s complaint. As we say here on the internet, wtf? Let’s consider this: on the one hand, you’ve got perhaps a few sanctimonious prigs who are all bent out of shape over the assumption that Hollywood is mocking the notion of virginity. On the other hand, you’ve got a group of New Yorkers watching a preview that contains TV footage of one of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, and hurtles through a series of quick, action-packed cuts, underscored by ominous music and touting itself as being from the director of The Bourne Supremacy. Pretty much every American who was old enough to comprehend the events of that day is still powerfully moved by them; most also have deeply-held feelings about 9/11′s continuing aftermath. It’s just… kind of not the same as a few people’s belief that middle-aged virginity is comedically off-limits.

Subsequent press stories on the subject — like this one, for example — make a lot out of the fact that the families of those who were killed on flight 93 gave permission for the film to be made, and for its release. In fact, the studio and the filmmakers are taking moral cover behind the families. United 93 director Paul Greengrass describes how the very very very first step they took to make the movie was to seek the families’ approval, declaring that after all, the families are the only ones with the right to make a moral judgment about such a film being made. All of which is, of course, total bullshit.

OF COURSE they needed the blessing of the families to make the movie. DUH! What were they going to do — make the movie over the families’ objections, and get sued into bankruptcy? The approval and editorial oversight of the families is a peripheral detail. Make no mistake: a major Hollywood studio does not make a movie in order to cozy up to a single group of maybe a couple hundred people (the one exception being if group in question is the membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). The only endorsement they care about is that of the conceptual Joe Moviegoer, expressed by his showing up and buying a ticket. Preferably during the movie’s opening weekend.

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center has thus far provided less concrete fodder for speculation. In theory, it doesn’t sound like an exploitative premise, per se — two Port Authority cops fight to survive, trapped in the rubble of Twin Towers. To be honest, my first thought was, “Hmm… doesn’t sound particularly cinematic. Two guys trapped in one spot for days on end? Might work better as a play.” The movie’s long cast list on IMDB suggests that they went another way with it. The presence of Oliver Stone’s name on any movie is enough for many people to start prepping their ire hoses; presumably their ranks will grow when it’s a movie related to 9/11. I don’t share such apprehension: yes, Stone is a provocateur, but he doesn’t indulge in provocation for its own sake. Even films of his that I haven’t liked overall (Natural Born Killers, The Doors) demonstrate that he’s a filmmaker who can be counted on to have a distinct point of view. On the other hand, the release date of August 11th seems a little more than coincidental. I’m crossing my fingers that he and Paramount don’t trot out a cheesily manipulative preview, complete with some of that news footage of the buildings coming down. Just what we all need.